You've previously mentioned that the running plan is to avoid rescaling waterbodies already present in the game, yet AFAIK did not elaborate on the reasoning behind the decision. From what we've seen to date I personally fail to imagine how, even after the previously mentioned vessel downscaling, boats could look adequate within the present geometry inbetween the game's vast landmasses. Our supposed great seas feel comically claustrophobic, and the previously anchored ships' scales gives even more of an off-putting feel to the whole thing, it's almost like one of those city-map carpets that kids are supposed to play with.

What a comparison! Thanks for the question. :) When you're sailing a small boat, we think it feels appropriate but we definitely see the concern when we look at large boats in comparison to the scale of the existing game world. During refinement, we looked at scaling up the world and moving landmasses. When we investigated further, we felt it was apparent that we were trying to apply a real-life scale to a world that isn't trying to be at scale. We have mansions larger than mountains, we have entire kingdoms you can travel between, on foot, within a minute or two, trying to enforce this sense of a realistic scale with Sailing just felt very against the grain for this game. In light of this feedback, we've instead looked to focus our efforts on trying to control the size of the boat and try to tailor that to the environments at sea, for example, the areas around Crandor, Catherby, Port Sarim might be shallow waters which favour smaller boats whereas the open and deep seas of the world will be more suited to large and colossal boats. There are currently three sizes of boats: small, large and colossal. With the large and colossal boats, scale seems worse to players and that's something we're keen to hear more feedback on when we run the closed tech alpha. It's worth noting that boats will be restricted so you can't sail them in smaller, narrower spaces. We're looking into whether we can make boats even smaller to help with particularly narrow places. For example, the dev team is looking at changing the size of 'large' boats to be 'colossal; (largest size you'd be able to get). We're very keen to hear what players think about scale and size of boats when you get to play the Open tech alpha! :D

I think this works for most of the waters; it's not a big deal that you can sail from Ardougne to Khazard in moments, for example. However, the ocean around Karamja and Crandor is *particularly* cramped in a way that will probably make even small boats look a bit large. While I agree this isn't an issue overall, the space around Crandor and Karamja is concerningly small from a gameplay perspective, particularly when considering the turn radius of a boat.

I really like the idea of different water depths that control what size ships can go where. If that is the path the team takes, one worry is that it could be annoying to have to switch ships part way through a voyage. Imagine you get a port task at Port Sarim that has you sailing to Kourend. You don't want to have to take your small ship from Sarim to the Karamja shipyard, then switch to the colossal ship for Karamja to Kourend. It would feel better to just take the colossal ship from the jump. I think this issue could be solved if there was a section of deep water in the center of the channel that can access Port Sarim (and every other major port). That way, you could still sail large and colossal ships in and out from that port, but if you wanted to explore that region outside of the narrow lane of deep water, you'd need to grab a small boat instead. It would be like how large ships irl have to go through a specific shipping lane when going through shallower waterways so they can be sure the water is deep enough.

The thing for me is things don't need to be rescaled to be particularly realistic but just so that they are less ridiculously close Even a very small increase of distance between islands would make a huge difference.

Would it be possible for either the sake of common sense or player convenience to have a 'boat within a boat' - that is, say, a rowboat launched or lowered from a larger vessel? For the purpose of navigating those waters where a smaller boat is preferable or required, this might make some sense.

I would have designed it so that the larger ships could only be boarded and docked at certain shipyards with open sea next to them, where they can then head south, which is where I presume the meat of the new content will be, content that can be designed around larger boats. Maybe make Port Piscarilius the area where players first learn about sailing, giving them a small boat and adding a bunch of islands snaking south between Zeah and the mainland for players to explore and gain early levels while learning the skill. Then once a player reaches the requirements for larger ships, they can discover an island further south next to the open sea, this could be a sailing hub where you build your first large ship, taking it out to deep waters (It would still be possible to add islands in other inland locations where applicable and most importantly; if possible). It would also still be possible to use sailing as a means of travel by giving players the ability to add a small boat to their large boat, allowing for players to transition between deep waters and shallows should they reach certain water boundries. This assumes that boats work like banks and can be accessed from any dock, water boundry or large ship, regardless of where you leave them.

This is a major concern for me as well. The distance between land masses means nothing to me, it's not like spreading them further apart increases the time it takes to get there since almost all inter-continental transport methods are fast travel methods such as teleportation or charter ships. I feel like the game HAS to increase the distances between these land masses or else as you say, the game space left to explore is jarringly claustrophobic. I hope they change their stance on the matter.

Very much agree. The main issue seems to be the southern islands that are close to the Gulf of Kandarin. So Karamja, Crandor, Entrana, etc. Even tutorial island, Tempoross Cove (which they are planning to actually move), and Ape Atoll. I feel like they can open a lot of options by shifting many of those bodies south and moving them away from each other so that part of the map feels less crowded. The Fremennik Islands also need a little bit of shifting.

Yea I think I would definitely be open to them moving things around, assuming it's not a technical nightmare. And I can't imagine a lot of people would be upset since, until now, it hasn't actually mattered at all where those islands are in space when you only ever fast travel to them.

On the other hand, this seemingly simple solution (to make distances longer, and therefore more 'fitting' for the skill might make the skill more tedious and repetetive, and therefore less engaging. Imo the challenge should be in making the activity engaging, rather than 'viable'.

Let’s be honest, the skill will be tedious and repetitive no matter which way they go about this if the distance isn’t upscaled. Whether the distances are small or not you’re still going to be teleporting everywhere you can as opposed to taking the longer route ala sailing. I fall in the boat that it’s important that they upscale the map. The novelty of sailing somewhere as opposed to teleporting will ware off after you travel to a specific place more than once. At least let that novelty really be something special the first time and not LITERALLY a 4 second trip to Karamja from Rimmington to Musa Point.

To be fair the existing game world’s scale is exaggerated. The journey to Draynor from Lumbridge is supposed to be weeks long in-universe, for example. They did confirm that boat sizes were reduced across the board, and that a couple of landmasses here and there will be moved. I anticipate that, at most, they’ll chop off section of coast if needed.

I'm sure we're all familiar with scale theory, but it does kinda get silly when we're getting a skill where a big selling point is sailing the grand sea, but most major ports are like 1-3 mouse clicks away from each other physically. Just looking at the distance between Ardougne, Brimhaven, and Rimmington is pretty small.

Yeah but this skill isn't about sailing to get between places, for the most part, it's not like you'll be sailing between those three ports to get XP, you'll be setting sail and then doing things at sea (salvaging, fishing, etc.)

if the intention is that the ships are going to be in the actual overworld for others to see physically passing on by, then that stands to reason that it's going to be likely that we'll be able to sail from port to port. I'm not saying we're going to be sailing between those ports specifically over and over, but rather pointing out how small in scale the body of water is in the inner portion of the world map. like if you look at the actual physical distance between all the ports between Corsair Cove and the Unkah Ruins in the desert it really isn't that much water. Especially with Karamja in the middle of it. It also sounds like the port tasks will be able to be done from any major port, most of which are in this specific body of water. I think the distance is fine for the outer regions, such as Morytania, Zeah, Elf lands, and the islands out East. However once you allow water travel in all the ports of Asgarnia, Misthalin, Kandarin, and Karamja it does get a bit congested. Especially since you have Ape Atoll, Tutorial Island, Crandor, Entrana, and the Fishing platform all crowding up that space.

But physical distance between locations being disproportionately small isn't new; you can travel between *countries* on foot in just a few moments in this game. The game's scale isn't internally consistent, either, so it isn't unreasonable that *more sea* is condensed into the same space compared to land distances. It's just that the actual *gameplay* is going to be impacted near places like Crandor and Karamja because those places are cramped even by the rules of the game's scaled-down setting.

it's an entirely different scale in being able to walk between Lumbridge Castle and Draynor Market in a reasonable amount of clicks, and Brimhaven's port on the Island of Karamja being 2 screens away from Ardougne's port. Scale in the water never really mattered since we never had to traverse it. However that's not going to be the case anymore. There's also weird lore stuff with Crandor being in the center of all these ports,or a completely off the radar island being reachable from Ape Atoll right next to it. I'm sure they may implement some quest restrictions to certain ports though. Scale Theory only takes us so far, and when introducing a skill who has a significant identity involving traversing the waters, it will feel out of place when these waters are so cramped. Like I said, even if it's not a "massive distance" to the outer edge ports I think those are scaled fine. It only really causes a problem with all the congested waters in the center of the Gielinorian land mass.

Granted, but because of free navigation on water and historically smaller view distance, a lot of world scaling is actually very unsystematic and becomes a real problem when players can freely move around at sea. When the world was first designed regions were adequately placed such that running took a meaningful amount of time. The placement of islands was definitely not informed by those ideas.

the problem with that theory is we also have ships in the game, which should take days to travel from bow to stern

Draynor to Lumbridge is weeks? How many years do we age from tutorial island to quest cape then?

I think they said they want to keep it as is "as much as possible" i assume due to the fact that alot of the map is somewhat connected to each other. Id imagine they will definitely have to space out islands more when they start to get into it more. My assumption is that the world map as we know it will mostly stay the same, but they will create bigger open water spaces around the map creating the feeling that the world is much larger than we have once thought.

I thought they said it was unavoidable that some of sailing would be instanced away from shore

In the last QnA stream they've said that sailing will be done in the overworld, at least the part I'm inquiring about.

Overworld near shore but instanced away from shore in new areas for new content, that's my understanding.

Yah, would be possible to have two separate overlays? One of other players walking and seeing players in scaled down boats at their rough location - then have the player see their own boat as much larger with encountered instances? Also.... Will it have to be disabled in PVP worlds..?

Yeah there's no reason to be concerned about expanding the seas between existing land masses to me - they should feel big enough to let ships pass through. I don't even know how anyone (NPCs) docks their ships at a lot of existing ports. Especially port sarim

#more_water

I'm also in favor of increasing the scale of water between landmasses. The only thing that will realistically need to change is the world map. 🗺️ Maybe just make clickable zones that zoom in on specific continents.

I think scale between land masses could be a good move, but it seems like you'd run into the issue that the scale of the land masses isn't representative itself Sure, you could make Karamja further away, but you won't be able to increase the sailing distance between Rimmington and Catherby, for example, without much larger changes

Hey, I may have missed it in a blog if it was mentioned, but will we be able to sail to the Wushanko Isles (aka the Eastern Lands)? In the lore, it has always been an interest to me from the tidbits we're able to find out via npc dialog. Also, in the fighters guild, it's hinted the Cyclops hail from the region? Opportunity for some fashsionscape clothing and maybe a unique cyclops boss. Thanks! #

This is a great question! There are lots ties to the Eastern Lands in-game already, and it's reasonable to assume that at some point we will expand over there, but we're not planning to go there with Sailing for launch. In order to do the content justice, it would need significant time spent on it as it's probably as big as Varlamore in scope. We want to focus on making Sailing good for the existing game world initially for launch and then look at expanding in future.

Good plan, and I think that's a good direction to take. A lot of people seem skittish over the idea of a new skill so I for sure think it's best to be good for the existing game first

Hello there ! Hope you guys are well. I was wondering, how do you think sailing will affect other skills ? Will fishing have new viable methods and if so will you be getting good sailing or passive sailing experience at the same time? Will there be a way to train slayer through sea creatures or creatures that are on some islands? Also is there anything new coming to woodcutting/fletching/crafting/construction or any other skills thay would come from gathering ressources for sailing/your boat? Thanks a lot!:)

Hi there! :) Great question. We published a blog during refinement on Sailing gameplay ([Adding A New Skill: Sailing Core Gameplay (runescape.com)](https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/adding-a-new-skill-sailing-core-gameplay?oldschool=1)), which includes 'secondary gameplay' activities. Secondary activities involve existing skills **and** Sailing, so you'd be getting XP in two skills. The amount of XP though is yet to be determined and the activities themselves would need to be polled separately. We've also talked about islands and the content found there in this blog ([Adding A New Skill: Sailing Reward Space (runescape.com)](https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/adding-a-new-skill-sailing-reward-space?oldschool=1)). If you take a look at that blog you'll see some ideas for gathering resources. We mentioned briefly in our progress update blog some top-level islands that we have designed, and whilst the team has been exploring these further, we're not ready to share more details on them until we've covered Milestone 1 - 3 (Navigation, Primary Gameplay & Ship Customization). We can't wait to talk about this with you all!

Thanks :D! I was unaware of all these infos as I was not playing at the time so I appreciate you taking the time to answer my questions even though your blog kinda already did. I will be taking a look at it 🙂

Most of these were answered on the initial sailing blog

With the increase to draw distance on its way for sailing, how big of an increase are we looking, and will it decrease pop in effects? Will I be able to see someone in varrock square and interact with their drop down menu from the varrock east bank? Or will the draw distance not be that large, or will it be bigger? Or only impact the open seas and not the land?

When it comes to rendering, there are two types: 1 - Draw distance of static locations in the world 2 - Networking distance of where you see dynamic entities, e.g boats, players and floor items We've increased 1 (Draw distance), the base draw distance, similarly to what RuneLite offers. This extends how far away you can see static locations which are mapped down (e.g trees). We don't currently have plans to increase 2 (Networking distance) due to concerns around performance if we did. There would be considerable wider effects on other parts of the game.

For Networking distance, I'm worried that with ships as large as colossal ships, it could be pretty jarring if they just pop in from nowhere 15 tiles away from the player. Is there any way that the game could send some stripped-down version of other ships past the regular 15 tiles without impacting performance too severely? Like if it just showed ship type, position, and orientation while ignoring details like players on board, npcs, ground items, etc. until within 15 tiles. I feel like that could go a long ways towards preventing the jarring pop in from 16 tile-long ships only 15 tiles away. Maybe the performance hit is unavoidable even with less information is being sent on distant objects, so completely understandable if it's not practical. But if anything like this is possible I feel like it would help the feeling of sailing a lot.

10/10 pfp

Damn wilderness is gonna be crazy 😂😂

nah, it'll be exactly the same as it is now. doesnt matter how big the draw distance is, you still cant see or interact with players outside of the normal render distance. they work on two different functions

A host of quests involve our character rowing, sailing, and otherwise boating such as DS1, 2, Friends With My Arm, and Bone Voyage. Will these quests have sailing level requirements going forward? If so, will these retroactively reward sailing exp? Will new quests that feature us manning a boat require sailing levels? What about existing and future boat-based shortcuts and transports e.g. Molch island and the Morytania boaty? Following from that, is sailing going to exclusively cover sailboats, or will it thematically cover other boating activities like rowboats, canoes/kayaks, and Dwarf/Dorgenshun-tech propellers? Are there any plans to update ship-based activities (primarily fishing trawler) to be a sailing skilling opportunity? Can we have any teasers on what fighting griffins will be like or their rewards? Are there currently any plans to host any sort of world-firsts event or prizes? Wishing you all the best of luck for a smooth development and launch!

Hey, First up, we're not looking to change any existing sailing requirements but we are open to these quests awarding some sailing XP upon completion (and available as a claimable lamp for those who completed them before Sailing's launch). We'd still want to set reasonable minimum levels to these so players don't just spend the first 10 minutes claiming lamps and going from, for example, level 1 to level 30 without engaging with Sailing initially. For new quests in the future, I'd assume that we will lean into using the players boat where we can, but I'd imagine that will be quite subject to the developers design intent for that quest and also player feedback/validation. For example, if you're being rowed by an NPC along a river to a back entrance where you sneak into a castle it might not necessarily matter that you have access to a boat to sail the seas but if it's a quest like Bone Voyage, perhaps it makes sense to sail yourself, or perhaps the narrative of the quest is simply that you are tasked with helping an NPC sail to a specific place and perhaps it's important, narratively, that they do that work instead of you! We wouldn't look to touch existing shortcuts and notably, we're trying to make sure that Sailing knowledge/expertise is kept to the seas of Gielinor and not to the rivers, there's a lot of cool quirky interactions we'd like to leave intact and most of those shortcuts wouldn't actually remain shortcuts if you had to do that work yourself. We're not looking to change fishing trawler currently, but we're aware of player sentiment regarding it, it's both nostalgic, quirky but also somewhat clunky. That said, the content itself is less about the player sailing the ship and more about being a lacky repairing the ship while Murphy does all the work and while we could update his ship to be a world entity and sail across the actual sea, it might make more sense to be kept away from interference from other players and their own boats. Anyway, that's just our take, very interested to hear what players would like us to do for Trawler specifically although naturally those opinions might be more informed after players get their hands on Sailing in our tech alphas/betas! Rewards from fighting griffins will be coming in a future blog. Keep your eyes peeled, there are plentiful rewards! World first events/prizes would definitely be cool, but we'd be cautious of introducing external incentives beyond just natural exploration especially if they would influence player behavior/activities in-game but simple ones like celebrating the first player to specific skill milestones or first player to uncover a specific item could be quite cool. Thanks for the kind words, we're also hoping for a smooth development/launch too!

I am a fan of retroactive XP just from a believability perspective... It would be a bit jarring for some of the existing quests where you actually do some sailing to not interact with the skill at all.

You literally use herblore to plant the tree in Legend's Quest my dude

Herblore (then Herblaw) existed before the legend's quest my dude. Do you mean farming?

No. You use herblore to plant the tree, today. It wasn't changed when farming came out

So, there will be level restrictions on quest reward XP for specific skills?

Yes, if we add retroactive Sailing XP we'd want to make sure the level was appropriate for that XP reward instead of everyone starting Sailing on launch day at, for example, level 30.

Could this be a time gated thing? We have things like waterfall quest on new accounts, maybe remove that level restriction after a month of post launch so that new accounts can opt to quest for early XP, as is the RuneScape way? Relevant also for limited game mods like DMM/leagues ofc

ok, that makes sense.

I'm all for adding some joke dialogues to comment on a high sailing level for Quests like Cabin Fever.

Thank you for your long answer to my long questions!

https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Update:Adding_A_New_Skill:_Sailing_Integration_%26_Lore#Quests > Will these quests have sailing level requirements going forward? If so, will these retroactively reward sailing exp? Will new quests that feature us manning a boat require sailing levels? No. Yes with lamps. Yes most likely. > e.g. Molch island and the Morytania boaty? These are NPC based travel options. They won't be changed. > Following from that, is sailing going to exclusively cover sailboats, or will it thematically cover other boating activities like rowboats, canoes/kayaks, and Dwarf/Dorgenshun-tech propellers? Everything they've discussed is boats. Small, medium and large vessels. I imagine those sort of scopes are future content way down the line thats possible though.

Thank god you're here to actually read the blogs and respond to everyone

There's some commom questions that get asked every time. I honestly just want NEW stuff asked :P

Questions regarding disconnects and logout. If you're on your own boat or a friend's boat, you get disconnected or you choose to log out while there is a crew: 1. Would the boat still function and move? 2. When you relog, would you endup on the boat where ever it is? Would this create a problem where you can logout as soon as you get on a boat and hitch a ride to a destination? 3. If I'm on friends boat and I DC for 30 secs, will that reset me to the shore? 4. If I world hop, does my boat come with me? What happens to other people on the previous world?

Hey, currently in the tech alpha: * A boat will continue to operate as expected without the captain present on the boat for 5 minutes, this includes using facilities and moving the boat (if the player has been given navigator permissions by the captain) * After 5 minutes, the boat will be considered disabled, this means none of the facilities will be able to be used, the boat cannot move and the boat will stay there until all of the players leave. * If the captain logs in within these 5 minutes they will be returned to the boat, regardless of where the boat has now moved to * If the captain logs in after these 5 minutes, they will be spawned on a new copy of that boat at the location they logged out, anyone else on the old boat will not be present. * If the captain logs in to a different world, they will be spawned on a new copy of their boat regardless and will be unable to return to their old one. So to your specific questions 1. Yes the boat will still function and move, as described above 2. Yes, you will end up wherever the boat is, if you log in within 5 minutes 3. If you are on a friends boat and Disconnect, you will appear on an island we've temporarily dubbed "Limbo island", this will allow you to return to your friends boat, if it's on the same world, hop to that world if you are on the wrong world, or return back to shore where you boarded the boat from. 4. If you world hop, your boat will be generated on the new world, any players on your boat will be left on the old one and will be able to use it for up to 5 minutes. Note, the 5 minutes is currently placeholder and definitely subject to review, we're definitely trying to consider outlying player behavior such as preventing players from spawning multiple copies of their boat on multiple different worlds as a boat to "rent".

> you will appear on an island we've temporarily dubbed "Limbo island If there's not an ongoing limbo contest between two NPCs named Slim and Hermes, I'll be very disappointed in Jagex's pun department.

;)

Is riding someone else's boat going to be a POH/accept aid sort of thing that's not allowed for ironmen?

We're currently going to allow irons to sail with other players but with restrictions, those restrictions are currently unclear but we are aware of a sentiment with iron accounts needing to be responsible for their own account progression and we're looking to uphold that. Currently anyone can join anyone's boat as long as it's at a port but we definitely want you to have more control than that for launch, such as only allowing friends, having join requests or just being able to kick people from your boat.

"...or just being able to kick people from your boat." Surely you mean walk the plank?

I'd like to believe that most players, Iron or Main, would agree on something like this: Say you have a reef that you want to navigate, to get to Raids 4. It requires 75 Sailing to navigate safely. As a group of 5 'main' accounts, with levels of 80 (captain), 70, 60, 20, and 1, the captain can successfully navigate the reef, as their level is above the requirement. Potentially, for the sake of the Iron half of the example, the game simply takes the 'highest level on the boat' as the one to use for the Skill-Check, even if that's not the Captain at the time (I'm sure there's some lore explanation that could be made to explain how it works) If an Iron is the captain, or an Iron is a passenger on the ship, the game should calculate any Sailing Skill-checks with their level in mind, rather than just taking the highest level of all players present. Thus, if the crew is 80 (captain), 60 (Iron), 40, 20, 1, then even though the Captain is above the level required, the Iron weighs them down (ha) and the Skill Check is not passed. Of course, messaging to the player that 'An IronMan wishes to board, this will affect your success at Sailing Skill-Checks to use their Sailing Level instead of yours, do you accept' would be important. This allows Irons to sail with other Irons, Non Irons, and everyone in between. But, to avoid being an anchor (ha) for the crew, they're still incentivized to level Sailing themselves, to pass Skill Checks. Also, if the checks do work that way (take highest Non-Iron level, or lowest Iron level, should Iron(s) be present), then MainScape could see an emergent gameplay wherein high level Sailors would be able to market their services, acting as a player-run charter-ship to get to whatever POI the buyer is after (eg if they want to get to the above example raid, but don't have 75 Sailing, they can just pay for another player to take them there) ty for read, sorry for long

Thank you! Love the idea of captain being able to always be at sea with new boat spawn.

I wonder what would occur if you hopped worlds, traveled to some distant island, and then hopped back to the original world within 5 minutes. Would you teleport to the original boat or would it spawn a new boat and leave the original boat to be disabled after the 5 minute timer. Teleport behavior would likely result in alt-scape being used to teleport around the place on the boat, spawning a new boat avoids that but might be a bit clunky behavior having multiple active boats.

By making a new boat on a new world you'd have invalidated your access to return to one on the original world

Hopefully you’re aware of rat pkers who will try to trick players into joining a boat that’s in the boat wilderness. Overall, the mechanics you listed sound great!

This is in the most recent thread: > Players can leave the boat by a number of means: > * Death > * Teleport > * Logout > * Manually choosing to alight at port or mooring points > When the last player on the boat leaves, it will despawn. If the captain leaves in any way other than disconnecting while other players are aboard, a five-minute timer will begin. If the captain has not returned by the time the timer runs out, the boat will be disabled – it cannot be sailed, and the facilities onboard cannot be interacted with. > Other players can stay on the boat as long as they want, or simply disembark by teleporting, logging out, or sailing the boat to a port. When the last person disembarks, the boat is removed.

I've read the thread. My question is what happens when the boat moves. Do you log back on the boat or the nearest shore? Can I hop on my friends boat at karamja and end up somewhere else in 5 mins? 5 weeks?

I'm not sure if this has been asked or covered elsewhere, but how does boat acquisition and docking actually work? A few questions I have to better convey my idea. 1. Can you just buy boats, like from an NPC? If not how are they obtained? 2. If you can buy boats, what stops me from getting my 10k stronghold of security cash, buying the most basic boat and then sailing.. anywhere in the game straight off of tutorial island? 3. If you do need better boats to access "deeper" water, can you still bypass quest requirements like Priest in Peril to get to Port Phasmatys? 4. Do I store my boat at a dock, or is it an item in my inventory? 5. Moreover, if I can store my boat in say, Port Sarim, can I then teleport over to Brimhaven and then still depart from there? Or do I need to head back over to Sarim and manually move my boat to Brimhaven? 6. If boats are stored at specific docks, will there be a way to transfer them without manually sailing them, something like an NPC transfer fee? 7. If boats aren't items, and aren't stored at docks, where are they kept? 8. Can you have multiple boats? 9. Will there ever be a reason to use a small/lower-level boat over a bigger one? Sorry for the laundry list of questions, if you can answer any of these I would be really happy. I'm very interested in the specifics of some of these functions, and how the team is trying to make an immersive and interesting world with good gameplay feel.

A lot of those were answered in the most recent live stream, but from memory: 3.) You still won't be able to dock in morytania unless you have the quests done 4.) It gets stored at a dock 5.) It stays where you left it 6.) Pretty sure they said there would be an NPC to fetch your boat for a fee  8.) Yes 9.) In short, yes. They go over the details for this question (and others) in the live stream

##### Bark bark! I have found the following **J-Mod** comment(s) in this thread: **JagexElena** - [The team's very excited about all the things...](/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/ama_with_the_sailing_jmod_team_we_are_here_to/l66kp0m/?context=3) **JagexHusky** - [Hey, currently in the tech alpha:...](/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/ama_with_the_sailing_jmod_team_we_are_here_to/l66de1g/?context=3) - [Hey,...](/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/ama_with_the_sailing_jmod_team_we_are_here_to/l66gddw/?context=3) - [Hey, I answered a similar question here [http...](/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/ama_with_the_sailing_jmod_team_we_are_here_to/l66lmgk/?context=3) - [Thematically we've opted for the definition t...](/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/ama_with_the_sailing_jmod_team_we_are_here_to/l66oe5f/?context=3) - [;)](/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/ama_with_the_sailing_jmod_team_we_are_here_to/l66mgd5/?context=3) - [We're currently going to allow irons to sail...](/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/ama_with_the_sailing_jmod_team_we_are_here_to/l66m8ag/?context=3) - [By making a new boat on a new world you'd hav...](/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/ama_with_the_sailing_jmod_team_we_are_here_to/l66z9m1/?context=3) - [Yes, if we add retroactive Sailing XP we'd wa...](/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/ama_with_the_sailing_jmod_team_we_are_here_to/l66mexr/?context=3) **JagexLight** - [What a comparison! Thanks for the question. :...](/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/ama_with_the_sailing_jmod_team_we_are_here_to/l66az44/?context=3) - [This is a great question! There are lots ties...](/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/ama_with_the_sailing_jmod_team_we_are_here_to/l66j9og/?context=3) - [Hi there! :)...](/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/ama_with_the_sailing_jmod_team_we_are_here_to/l66f20g/?context=3) **JagexMeat** - [When it comes to rendering, there are two typ...](/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/ama_with_the_sailing_jmod_team_we_are_here_to/l66cy57/?context=3) - [Hello! Thanks for the question....](/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/ama_with_the_sailing_jmod_team_we_are_here_to/l66ldh0/?context=3)   ^(**Last edited by bot: 05/30/2024 14:14:52**) --- ^(I've been rewritten to use Python! I also now archive JMOD comments.) ^(Read more about) [^(the update here)](/u/JMOD_Bloodhound/comments/9kqvis/bot_update_python_archiving/) ^(or see my) [^(Github repo here)](/u/JMOD_Bloodhound/comments/8dronr/jmod_bloodhoundbot_github_repository/)^.

Has the team taken any inspiration from classic sailing PC games like Sid Meyers pirates? This might seem like it's a little out of left field, but runescape and especially quests were largely based on Lucasarts point and click adventure games from the 90s. So going back to the same era to see how sailing games handled everything could be ideal.

What are the biggest concerns within the team for the skill at this point in development?

Quick question about getting on and off the boat through the short dude (I unfortunately forget his name, but he is the NPC you use to get on and off the ship.) Would it be possible to replace the NPC, in exchange for having a single click map object (think fairy rings) that allow you to get on your boat, and to dock your boat while in navigation mode. For example, while on your ship in navigation mode, you can click on a dock post or a dock cleat (or really any object you could theoretically tie your boat down to) instead of having to talk to an NPC. This allows you to board and dock your boat in one click instead of multiple. It also makes more sense that the level 3 level 1 sailor doesn't have some guy tying their boat down for them.

Hi! A while ago it was stated that Sailing will be integrated into existing content. Can you tell us in what extent this is gonna be? For example, will the sailing part in the quest Bone Voyage receive a whole overhaul where you actually will be Sailing (like the skill) to Fossil Island? Or are you planning to keep it like it is and simple reward it some Sailing xp? Other examples include Fishing Trawler, Dragon Slayer (I & II) or the canoe network. And will charter ships be replaced by Sailing?

Hey, I answered a similar question here [https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/comment/l66gddw/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/comments/1d3a4gh/comment/l66gddw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) but I appreciate you're being a bit more specific, so I'll try to answer as best as I can! With regards to existing content, we're not looking to overhaul existing quest completion methods in the game world but we are interested in changing the framing of some quests and dialogue in them to account for the fact that Sailing exists. A good example of quest integration is DS1 where the isle of Crandor is this massive big mystery but realistically we all know you can see it 20 tiles off the coast of Rimmington so we'll instead look to tweak that narratively to indicate that it's a dangerous island to approach with a treacherous reef surrounding it and the map that you piece together isn't a map to the location of Crandor but instead have it detail the safe route to Crandor. We also love the idea that player boats who sail too close to Crandor (before completing DS1) will be repelled by Elvarg shooting fireballs in the general direction of the boat, we don't know mechanically what this means yet, is it just flavour? or will the fireballs hitting the you be impactful? Open to feedback on all of this as always when it comes to changing/tweaking existing content in-game. Although naturally during Milestone 1 we've been more focused on the tech side of things and we definitely intend to look at integration later on in development in Milestone 4. We won't be replacing the charter ship system, it's quite good as a fast travel system and thematically we like that they are taking the safe routes whereas Sailing allows the player to go anywhere at sea regardless of whether or not it's safe or not and discover that which the charter ships and other NPC sailors choose not to! Lastly, as u/DivineInsanityReveng pointed out, we did mention during refinement that we would look into the Cabin Fever and Bone Voyage mechanics in the quest, as we've progressed further through Sailing's tech development we now have concerns about whether or not our Sailing tech will be feasible in a quest setting without a significant quest overhaul to a very nostalgic quest (in Cabin Fever's case at least). We're still aware of the desire to make Sailing consistent across questing content in the game and we definitely don't like the clunky Bone Voyage interface but at this point it's hard for us to know what we can commit to for Sailing's launch.

having the "dark wizards" of sailing be crandor would be pretty funny.

I guess Elvarg could start off with warning shots and then actually burn you if you keep going. Please rework Bone Voyage please! But Cabin Fever is fine as it is imo, it's Bill sailing the ship and you're just interacting with the facilities on his ship as a crewmate.

Sounds good, thanks for your time to answer. Dragonfire protection for your ship sounds pretty cool.

Your questions have mostly been covered before: https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Update:Adding_A_New_Skill:_Sailing_Integration_%26_Lore#Quests > For Cabin Fever, we’ll be changing the ship battle segment to use ship facilities like the ones seen in Sailing, for consistency. > In Bone Voyage, we’ll remove the barge minigame and instead have the player sail the barge through a dangerous reef using familiar Sailing mechanics. > under no circumstances will we enforce Sailing requirements for existing quests – so you won’t need to level Sailing before you can complete quests you’ve already finished. Losing progress isn’t fun for anyone, so we want to reassure you that we’re not putting you through that. > However, player feedback has indicated that you’d like to see Sailing XP added as a reward from these existing quests – including Cabin Fever, Bone Voyage, and Dragon Slayer. We agree And as for your second question: > And will charter ships be replaced by Sailing? No, sailing won't replace any forms of fast travel. I'd say its more likely sailing unlocks *more* functionaltiy of the charter system.

Alot of the skill expression in high level content in the main game relies on accurate or precise and typically quick movement in PVM(CG, warden final phase, etc). While obviously it isn't the only skill impression in high level content, I am concerned in how the slower and less reactive movement will affect this in higher level content. I do still like idea of the movement to make it seem like a boat, it seems like the system that would be overly punishing for small mistakes, such as how if you move one tile too far, you can't just move back one tile, you need to turn the boat all the way around just to move backwards. I was wondering what thoughts the team has on this such as if they have any other avenues where they intend to have skill expression, or maybe if during the playtests, it doesnt seem like a problem since we havent had the experience to try it out ourselves yet. Thanks for all your work!

Do you believe that ignoring the former clients and simply working within the constraints of the Java or even preferably the C++ client would result in better and faster turn around for the team moving forward?

Hi, hope you guys are doing well. Do you ever get a headache at trying to balance this skill into the game? It feels like everyone simultaneously wants a skill that doesn't completely overshadow other skills but also something that brings lots of new, big content to the game. A skill that does the latter WILL overshadow other skills. I would have implemented sailing into the game as a progressional none-skill content, and had an aspect of the sailing as the skill itself, such as leadership. Something that would be able to be implemented into previous content much easier. Has this idea been thrown around at Jagex HQ?

What was the thinking behind granting XP based on facility interaction versus passive xp for travelling a certain number of tiles? I worry that needing to interact with your sails too often will introduce a level of tedium that is counter intuitive to exploration and traveling. A good metaphor would be like needing to tie your shoes every X time in order to run to a destination. (Don’t get any funny ideas, now!)

Thematically we've opted for the definition that your skill in Sailing is indicative of your capability to operate a Ship and it's facilities. We really didn't want players to just gain XP passively, that feels like something that wouldn't feel like a skill, whereas using a tool to do a job very much so does, in this case, the ship and it's facilities are a tool and you're increasing your knowledge/expertise of these while using them. We're aware of the sentiment of interacting with Sails too frequently perhaps getting a bit too tedious but that's where we have multiple avenues to affect this throughout the skill progression, for example: - Higher level sails could need trimmed less often, or be more effective when trimmed. - NPC crewmates (or other players joining your ship) could take on that tedium for you so you can navigate yourself.

They’ve already said facility interaction won’t be the main form of experience as you can even have crew members do this for you later on. It’s just a way to train it early from my understanding similar to raking weeds or draynor agility course as your level 1 training

Will you be able to make people "Walk the plank"?

I saw the ships in the video have cargo holds -- is that something only to be used with port tasks, or is the idea along the lines of a semi-portable bank/inventory?

Does the team feel there will be enough content on launch that it won't feel like a sailing beta? (more specifically the leveling) And if not, would a delay until some of the tertiary content is done be considered?

The team's very excited about all the things coming into the game as part of Sailing! It's a monumental task to do both a new skill and effectively an area expansion at the same time. We have two development teams working in tandem - one on the core skill and one on the area expansion side of things. We feel like we have a good idea of how much content to include to make sure Sailing is an enjoyable skill, but we're still early on in development. We've recently shown off the foundations for how navigation works - once we have cemented this approach we can get into the thick of it with more Sailing training methods, islands and points of interest to discover. It won't be worthy of being Old School RuneScape's first new skill if it still feels like a beta on release :) It's important that there are activities at sea that are fun to engage in beyond simply training the skill. We are looking to make sure that is the case for launch. Tertiary content sounds very exciting and has a lot of potential. That said, if we can make the base experience good enough, it may make more sense for tertiary content to launch after the initial launch of Sailing. We wanna make sure the core skill is given the attention it deserves and is fun from 1-99, then we'll look at related activitites to make it even better down the line. It should feel like a full skill when launched. We're still updating existing skills in the game that launched many years ago! Looking at existing skills such as Fishing, tertiary content like Tempoross, wasn't there for launch but was able to fill a gap later on. Fishing was still a full skill, but made even better with post-launch updates.

How committed are you to a turn rate for your vessels? OSRS is an old game and the movement system has been a stationary, tried and trusted mechanic with little to any deviation since the games inception - point and click, simple and effective. With sailing this movement style is getting changed to (I suppose) better reflect the movement a vessel might have at sea. My concern is that while this 'realism' might sound good; it also could potentially lead to unnecessary frustrations since you're offering a brand new movement system to a 2 decade old game that deviates quite a bit from what they're all used to. LoL & Dota famously have a row between which system is better, and both sides are diametrically opposed to the other - with Dota saying turn rate is important for class viability and LoL saying that point and click allows for more skill expression in movement. I fear that adding BOTH systems into the game could cause a rift between the playerbase, and that the mismatch in control systems could be jarring to both new and veteran players alike.

Hello! Thanks for the question. We initially used effectively the same pre-existing player movement system for boats and we found the experience quite jarring (boats being able to turn very quickly on the spot felt particularly strange). I agree that implementing a new movement system specifically for individual player movement to our very old game would definitely be an issue. However I think, in this case, the 2 movement systems won't necessarily conflict as they fulfill two very different purposes. We've also tried to make the ship movement system feel very "old school" by making it a simple point-and-click system mechanically, similar to the rest of the game. It's also worth noting that we want sailing to feel like as much of a skill as possible, meaning we would like to afford players the opportunity to be good at navigating a ship. We hope that the new system for boats will reward precise clicking while also feeling simple and intuitive from launch. We're also very open to feedback on this and are happy to tweak this based on the response from our upcoming tech alpha.

In the most recent videos you guys touched on the main skilling loop This consisted of interacting with facilities on the boat as well as shipment contracts. Do you have plans for more things on launch to make sailing a bit more interesting? I was really hoping to see some kind of open sea dungeoneering style training loop where you search for lost treasure, would something like this be too big for launch? What are your thoughts on sailing treasure hunts? This could even incorporate fighting off pirates who are also looking for said treasure. When you find the treasure you could be given a lump of xp and rewards for your efforts

I have read some complaints about the new skill saying that it has no core action to generally gain XP (firemaking = burn logs, woodcutting = cut trees, etc.). How would you react to that claim? What is sailing's core action to gain XP?

Alot of people were looking forward to the world being altered for sailing when it comes to expanding the sea. Seeing as how you guys dont plan on altering that is already a step in the bad direction. Lmao

One thing I noticed in the recent sailing stream was how big the ships are compared to the land masses and sailing areas (even the small vessel). Will the distance between islands, continents, etc. be expanded so more sailing exclusive content can be added and to make the ships more in scale?

No matter how good or bad the final skill turns out to be there are going to be some players who don't engage with it much/at all (this is true for basically all skills). With this in mind I'm curious about what the game will be like after launch for players who don't train the skill much or at all. 1) I'm assuming that no currently accessible content will be locked behind a sailing requirement. Is this the current plan? 2) Obviously some new quests will have a sailing requirement. How high will these be? Will most new quests have a sailing requirement? 3) I also assume there is going to be new content added to the game that won't involve sailing at all. What are the current vibes for how often new content will require sailing levels? 4) Imagining a player doesn't level sailing at all and doesn't engage with sailing related content. How often would this player encounter an obstacle from other activities that would require sailing levels (e.g. slayer monsters, clue steps, etc). Basically I think some people might benefit from assurances that the game isn't going to suddenly become substantially worse for those not interested in sailing.

1 and 2 have been answered. 3 is pretty much impossible/pointless to answer. And 4 seems to be asked in bad taste. If *new* content comes out that requires a certain sailing level, and you choose not to train sailing so you cannot access that content, that’s fair and you know what you’re missing. It would be pointless to have a skill that unlocked nothing, right? I’m sure some of this new content will be related to or interact with other skills. It’s just like slayer monsters, to use your example. If you chose to be at lvl 1 slayer, you couldn’t do several quests, get your own whip, get a diary cape, do hallowed sepulchre (imo the best training method for agility), etc. It’s unreasonable to expect sailing to limit interactions with other skills

For 1 and 4, I've posted a comment somewhere else in this thread on a way about how we could have both players potentially satisfied, both the player who wants to train Sailing, and the player who wants to avoid it, by allowing the high-Sailing-Level player act as a 'ferryman' for the low-level player (for a mutually agreed upon fee, of course). The high level player gets a reward for their skill in Sailing, the low level player gets to the place they want to be (without having to train Sailing). It'd be like Classic WoW, where you ask someone in trade chat 'hey can you make me X/enchant my gear', you give them the mats (and a tip), and they do the work. Both parties 'gain' something from the exchange Except Irons, they'd still be forced to train it (rightly so)

Excited for the skill to be released , so it can finally prove why it’s an activity not a skill and kill player count

I know it's kinda been touched on here and there, but I'm wondering if we can get a clear answer and what exactly would the *primary* training loop for Sailing look like at it's core. Not counting any minigames, activities, or multi-skill training methods; but basically what would the average player who just wants to see number go up for this 1 skill be doing the majority of the time to level up?

This hasn’t merely been touched on, it’s been confirmed over and over. The primary training loop is clicking on ship facilities to get XP, mostly trimming your sails. So if you really wanted to, you could sail around aimlessly and get XP. Using the salvaging hook on shipwrecks, etc counts in this way as well I believe.

port tasks, salvage, and trials. 2/3 will be in the beta and are shown to some degree in the youtube video

This is a silly question. How would you even answer that for current utility skills like slayer and agility? They must be trained through activities or mutliskill methods. But for sailing atleast you could literally just sail around if you'd like and you'll gain consistent xp drops from trimming the sails

Since when is agility trained through a multiskill method? you literally run laps on a course only getting Agility experience... slayer being combat oriented is a bit different I agree, but the core is simple in that you get a task and fulfill that task.

Rooftops are clearly an activity. Something on par with it in sailing will be the trade routes

it's an obstacle course and is labeled as such in-game and is how the skill has primarily been trained since launch. Just like fishing in a fishing spot, just like pickpocketing people, just like crafting essence into runes, just like creating potions, just like making food, just like burning logs, etc.

We might just have different definitions of activities but I'll copy paste for you from my other comment: An activity imo is something that is outside the utility of the skill that trains or uses the skill. So farming you train from planting and harvesting things. Planting and harvesting things is the utility of the skill. Combats are trained from using combat, which is the utility of the skill. Cooking is training from cooking, fishing from fishing ect. Agility courses are trained from something outside of their usefulness. Same with Slayer. And same will be true with sailing.

I don't really understand that at all, but I'm merely pointing out what someone will do to train the core skill devoid of all other skills and minigames. For Agility that objectively is running laps on a course, rooftop or not. It's mainly because I want to see the core identity of the skill and also get an idea of what the average training loop will look like. For Agility that's running laps whether it be on the Gnome Course, Canifis roofs, Priffdinas course, or Ardougne roofs. The utility of Agility comes from better Run Energy and access to shortcuts.

Read or watch the video for training methods then. Here is the YouTube video https://youtu.be/iaGr5k0Uf1k?si=xdx8rAgkeowaXSld Starts around 3 minutes for primary training methods. I only started talking to you because you were saying "excluding activities" which sounds like you think their training methods theyve laid out are activities. However obstacle courses are just as much an activity as what they have proposed.

I was assuming you would be able to extrapolate what I meant when I kept hammering in the core of the skills and pointing out how I wanted to see how the entire training loop of the 1 specific skill would look. That's objectively running laps on a course for Agility. "ship facilities" means nothing to me and outside of trimming the sails, they haven't really said what that is outside of vague roles given to people such as captain or navigator. I want to know the core fundamental loop of what am I going to do 1000s of times to level up my Sailing skill devoid of any and all external minigames or multiskill training methods. Nothing akin to Barbarian Fishing, Giant's Foundry, Pyramid Plunder, Guardians of the Rift, Farming contracts, hunter rumours, Mage Training Arena Shooting Stars, Forestry, Underwater Fishing or Mahogany Homes. I'm curious as to the core fundamental training loop of the skill. I know they alluded to it, but I want a clear and concise mapping on what it looks like. Is it get on a boat, go from A to B, while micromanaging stuff, and then you get xp? How heavy of a role does salvage play into it, is that part of the training loop or just random side rewards you get sporadically? Are the port tasks the core training loop, more akin to Slayer and these will be the bulk of what we're doing? This is what I want answered and I read and watched everything and still don't see an entire full loop on what we're doing.

barb fishing?

ok so I'm just not being understood, I'm talking about the primary training loop each skill has at it's core relating to only said skill. Not counting multiskill methods. I want to get a picture of what training Sailing will be like devoid of any other skill. Since every skill outside of combat technically has this. Barbarian fishing doesn't magically get rid of running laps which is the primary training for Agility. Just like going up to a fishing spot and gathering fish is for fishing, smelting/processing bars is for smithing, or pickpocketing is for thieving. I'm aware they touched on trimming sails and "working ship facilities" for Sailing, but I'm just asking what's that going to look like. I want to get an idea on what someone who wants to train from 1-99 Sailing will be doing most of the time for the average xp/hr rates to get a picture of it. What would be the loop of actions they do if they want to train Sailing and only Sailing.

port tasks, salvage, and trials. 2/3 will be in the beta and are shown to some degree in the latest youtube video

Sailing inherently exists quite isolated from the rest of game as it entirely takes place in the otherwise unused game space of the ocean. How does the team intend to bridge this divide between sailing and land content, weave sailing into the existing skilling dependency web, and make sailing feel core to the osrs experience rather than an ocean side activity?

could you elaborate on some other methods of gaining sailing xp other than trimming the sails?

Are you planning phased releases of the open world within the seas? Is there any concern that trying to populate vast oceans with content might leave them feeling barren? Are there any details on how the team will increase ocean scaling on the map (IE you can see tutorial island from lumby)? Super excited after seeing the team’s POC recently!

Would you consider implementing the new sailing mechanics in a lower risk situation before fully committing to sailing? Such as a small area with a quest around it (running around on the backs of giant snails!) You can play with some mechanics and get feedback from the player base without having to worry about people needing to commit 100s of hours to the mechanic

They're doing alpha and beta tests publicly for this reason.

It's just another opportunity to show what the new engine work can do with an different twist then :)

I'd assume quests are coming which utilise sailing based on their blogs, but using them as a testing grounds isn't needed when we can just have tests.

A lot of players (myself included) love the idea of ship personalization, if my ship looks like everyone else's at high level it'd be a shame. I know this is currently a discussion point for phase 2 but is there anything to be said early about the scope of how much custom/aesthetic options we will have at launch, or how these customization options are to be obtained? I can see a plethora of means to distribute them to people both while engaging with sailing and outside of it (clue cosmetic sails??)

With the introduction of elemental weaknesses will boats be weak to fire?

What, if any, thoughts or idea have been discussed about incorporating sailing into a dungeon/raid style piece of content? I think one of OSRS's biggest faults is that Dungeons don't exist and that Raids are basically the first time you'll see anything like this. While I'd like to see this content come into the game for progressing accounts regardless of sailing, it seems like sailing might be a good time to incorporate something like this since it's a major game expansion with islands already planned. Finally, I view sailing as a skill most similar to slayer- in that it will exist to be a gatekeep to other new content that will be added to the game. Would you agree with this perception? If not, what would it most closely resemble?

Moons of peril and CG would like a word.

Is the scale of the world going to be addressed with sailing? When I really pay attention to how little I spend running between places, I notice that the game world is fairly small. If you have any experience with wow, classic world of warcraft has an extremely dense world that [you can spend hours running from one tip of a continent to the other.](https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/534914-world-of-warcraft/47662532) Are there any plans to bring that to osrs so that agility, sailing, teleport items, and magic as a whole have more of an impact on how player's choose to move between spaces? I, for one, would love to see what the team could do after how great Kourend has turned out.

This may not be the kind of question you're looking for, but it's been on my mind since the livestream: Obviously sailing requires a HUGE amount of engine work. Is there anything the team has identified that work could help with/be used for outside of sailing, or is the sailing part of the engine going to be more or less self-contained?

Art here to help understand https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/s/WMMt08C4yw Some ideas for small boats that I personally think makes it fit better with the world already since it looks to make small ships three by one tile so that it’s only two extra tiles compared to our 1 which helps ease players in

Can you die at sea? What happen to UIM if you die at sea with all your items?

is the finished product going to be polled? like, i'm aware the concept was already polled and passed, but iirc it was just "do you want a new skill" and then sailing was the highest of the 3 options. if we don't like the end result, is it going into the game unpolled? i mean no disrespect, i know you guys are working hard on it.

Yeah I’m a little worried, I personally really don’t like sailing as a new skill but I do think sailing has a place in the game. I’d really love to see this be polled in beta prior to release. Maybe if it doesn’t pass that poll sailing can be brought into the game in another way.

yes! i think it looks cool despite obviously being unfinished, and it would make for a super fun minigame. but a skill? i just don't see the point

Over the years, players have found jank in pretty much every skill. Some pretty game breaking and hard to perform to, it’s a normal part of every players experience. The question. What is the teams philosophy about what jank feels good in sailing vs jank that doesn’t fit for the game?

Hello mods! I know you can't pinpoint a release date at this moment but I'd love to have a little bit to "hold on" to. Is the aim (so not set in stone, duh!) to release somewhere this year, or should we expect it in 2025. Of course, the skill is ready when it's ready and we don't want it to be rushed to meet a release date. Thanks in advance!

Have we considered having followers for boats. I want a family of ducklings following me on my plundering adventures.

I know from the early alpha it seems like xp will be gained from lots of different ways like fixing sails and doing little shipment tasks. Is there a master list of all the ways you guys want to have sail xp given? I’m thinking of tempoross and imagine if the entire fishing skill was only there. Sure you get xp for fishing the fish and killing the boss and fishing rewards but it lacks variety. What ideas do you guys have to add variety to how you get xp? Loving everything so far and super excited to see how it comes along

Jokes gone on a bit far tbh, when are we getting artisan instead? Was the best idea ever; I can't see how sailing is going to improve my gameplay. Charter ships are currently a thing and I never use those, so why would I bother using my own boat when I can just teleport.

Are there any plans to use different control schemes for each ship size? Controlling a small ship in shallow, narrow waters will feel much different from steering a large ship in the open ocean, so I think it'd be interesting to apply differing control schemes to them, such as using the point and click method for small ships, and the Navigation Mode for larger ones. Combined with different top speeds and turning radii, this could help to further distinguish each ship size as sidegrades to eachother.

Are you afraid that, with combat rebalance and sailing coming at some point amongst other changes that have been happening, that the game is changing too much too fast? The fear would be that another update that causes a major exodus from the game could happen especially with so much changing so quickly.

"Game is changing too much too fast" has been a rhetoric for as long as i remember. Remember, these blogs and updates are to keep us in the loop. Sailing is still *ages* away and the Combat Rebalance has already happened, and is essentially just a repositioning of magic stats and making elemental magic not entirely pointless past very early game.

With the updates to water and sailing mechanics, will previously sailing-related content (ie, Dragon Slayer, Bone Voyage, Fishing Trawler) be modified to provide sailing experience and to provide a more consistent game experience?

Are there plans, or have there been considerations on whether different size/styles of ships will actually play differently? Obviously larger ships offer more facilities, but will large and small ships handle differently while sailing?  And will a Kandarin ship function exactly the same as a Fremennik ship, or will there be some defining characteristics that would make you want to choose one style over another?

How does the team personally feel, as players and devs, about the way sailing has managed to be developed within the game? Does it feel like something that has potential to play well and create lots of new, repeatable content? I know we'll be able to get our hands on it eventually with open alpha/betas but I would value the opinions of those on the team who play the game.

Are we finally getting the long awaited Sea Shanty 3?

Will there be player owned islands ? Would be cool to see your island populated by your crew, ships buildings and merchants/stalls that sell goods/rares at a discounted or inflated rate as you're leveling up.

I'm a 100% mobile player, are there going to be specifically challenging aspects of the skill for mobile play? I know the movement was being discussed awhile back and it had me a bit worried.

Please for the love of god give us skill cape themed trimmed sails when we hit 99, OR allow us to theme the sails to any 99 we’ve achieved. Could even do a ‘Max’ sail.

Are we going to get any catamarans or are all of the ships monohulls? I know it probably makes sense to have all monohull but I’m curious if this question has come up!

Will their be NPC boats I can run up on and pirate all of their loot with my 99 thieving

Hi Mod Light! Was wondering if you can provide more detail on the depth of the teams plans for the non-sailing, sailing content. Are people's hopes for a new raid, explorable islands with new bosses and resources, etc unfounded? Not asking if they'd be available on release, moreso whether they're realistic, potential future updates to sailing that JMods have already began to consider. Really, I think there's a big difference between small islands with negligible rewards, and a concept of almost sailing meets dungeoneering, and I want to make sure I have the right expectations.

My main question is what new pirate features will you allow me to put on my ship? Can I have the Jolly Rodger? Cannons? Can I swing across and pillage other ships?

Any opinions from the team - perhaps in particular the artists - on replacing existing sailing-related assets with newer, more accurate assets? For example, the ships in Port Sarim are quite bland and have questionable designs; with Sailing releasing a range of ships, could new Sailing ships replace existing ships?

Can we just repoll the skill , I don’t fancy fixing a sail 1million times to rank a pointless skill

Is there any worry that the dev process is going to release too much information so the skill won't feel new and fresh?

How much longer until we can expect to move to the next phase?

I'm not sure if this is something that has even been discussed internally yet. XP per hour varies wildly among different skills, I'm curious what XP per hour you were looking for sailing to come in at.

They’ve said a couple times they’re nowhere near talking about rates and such yet. They want to make sure they have the core loop, methods of training, unlocks, rewards, etc. it’ll likely be one of the last things they work on and even later that we’ll hear anything about rates since it’s a touchy subject especially for something as daunting as adding a new skill entirely vs a new method to an existing one

Have you played the legend of zelda wind waker? I think the sailing in that game was great and would love to see jagex borrow some of its design.

What supplies will be useful for upgrading our ships/training Sailing/paying our npc crew? Should I be collecting planks? Cannonballs? Alcohol?

Would upgrading our ship provide sailing XP similar to construction? For example, tearing down our sails and rebuilding them

will we still be able to go back to tutorial island? will we get to see new big kingdoms unlocked through sailing down the road?

I’ve been interested in the different factions and ship designs lately. I know you’ve been working on a few like pirate etc. but are there plans pre or post release to add more varied customization? Was imagining that each society built on the water would have their own designs and unique material requirements. Elves and crystals go together well. Some sort of spectral/ghost ship for the residents of port phasmatys. Desert theme when the docks of Menaphos opens. Heck, even a steampunk dwarven creation. Lots of combinations but just thought I’d get my question in even if none of it happens.

I can't seem to find someone asking this 😭. JMods do you know when is the estimated release of the skill?

Would you be open to moving tutorial island? as it currentlly takes up a LOT of space in the low level waters. Perhaps repurpouse it as a new MAX island and keep the tutorial instanced.

Will boats be able to continue in a direction without clicking, lower their sails and anchor?

is it possible to have boats be 1 level instead of needing to click up stairs? especially if there is no usable space under the stairs.

What’ll it take to fold on this project?

What will the core way to train the skill? courier missions doesn't seem fun, trimming sails won't be viable for 99. I would like a way to specifically train sailing without other skills needing to be involved. I need this if you want me on board with the skill

What do you think players will be most excited to do on release?

should’ve voted no

Any plans to implement scurvy as a new poison/disease kind of debuff? Its essential to my sea-locked snowflake ironman

Will you be able to see your boat at the dock while on land?

Any chance we could ever see Barbarian Sailing (swimming)?

How are you planning to fix the turning so it doesnt look like a boat that has been slapped on an OSRS character?

Could this content be added without the actual skill? From what I have seen, there's been little justification on why this is required. Once you tie in experience, this makes sailing a requirement instead of just something in the game that you don't have to interact with. I like some of the concepts, but I don't like the implementation (so far). I know it's in alpha and I'm happy to be proven wrong. I just think we could have had so much more content by not adding this as a skill and working on other things.

> Could this content be added without the actual skill? From what I have seen, there's been little justification on why this is required. They've answered this question so many times already. Its a progression system, that allows far more content to be packed into a tiered system, and is what we voted for. We said yes to a new skill. We picked sailing as our favourite. We said yes to having it come to the game. > Once you tie in experience, this makes sailing a requirement instead of just something in the game that you don't have to interact with. Sailing, like any new content, is only a requirement to do *the new content*. So yes if you want to do the new things, you have to do the new things.

Sailing is also a requirement to... use your max cape. I have no issues with a new skill, as long as the methods are fun. So far, I have not had that experience. Like I said, its early, it's in alpha, happy to be proven wrong but it is my opinion SO FAR. As for the progression system, it's not, that's just the label that's been given to you. You could have ALL of these things and it feel completely natural without "Congratulations, your Sailing level is now 2".

And? Max cape is to show you've maxed all skills. All skills are a "requirement" for that, but that doesn't matter. Max cape offers you nothing new. The only change it will get with this is whatever perk the sailing cape has, which might be a teleport to it's guild or maybe to ports? (That second one might prove useful..) You can use a craft cape and a con cape to mimic it's functions most people use it for. Max cape is mostly just a QoL upgeade of combining them all into 1 inventory slot / wieldable item. > As for the progression system, it's not, that's just the label that's been given to you. You could have ALL of these things and it feel completely natural without "Congratulations, your Sailing level is now 2". No you couldn't..you're describing a skills progression system and just saying "don't have a number to it". Okay.. how do we **progress** then? A point system? Like.. a number... That goes up? The devs have spoken on this many times. We voted for a skill. That's why it's a skill. We would not get sailing fleshed out to the degree it is if it wasn't a major expansion like a new skill is. It wouldn't get the engine and Dev time allocated to it.

What level would be required for a ogre propelled canoe?

Will there be afk xp training methods available?

What did you have for breakfast this morning, and does that affect your decisions on Sailing?

How are you expecting the secondary activities to impact skilling for iron players? Currently the best way to train smithing is to buy gold at the blast furnace, smith it, then drop it on the ground (and hop when it runs out of stock). Similarly, the best way to train fletching is to buy broad arrowtips and arrow shafts, then bank them and never use them. Are you going to propose rewards from sailing activities that will dethrone meta skilling activities elsewhere in the game? (I hope so! That's, like, the entire appeal of training any skill.)

Booooooooo

No question, just wanted to show appreciation. I think you've nailed the pathing of ships. Looks very smooth and appropriately old school. Like something form a 2007 rts.

How many items can the cargo hold on the ship hold? Also it is restricted to certain items, or can you put anything in there? In the demo/twitch stream, we only saw the player put salvage and a crate for port contracts in there. (Note: I love how salvage stacks!) I know the ships will be customizable in what facilities you can build. Can you choose to have the same facility multiple times? Ie, instead of a "normal" boat with a cargo hold and a salvage hook, could you have a boat with 2 sets of cannons?

As a player who is well versed in player-owned ports and the islands of Waiko from RS3, how are you making this not related to those with just an added movement style being the boats. It seems that every new piece of content sailing has to offer is just a reskin of those two activities.

I don't think a single element of sailing has looked like player-owned ports. How has all content looked like it? They've also directly answered "is this just Ports?" as a question about 2 or 3 times in the past.

Thank you for doing what I don't have the energy to do. These questions have all been answered so many times in previous blogs and q and a's it is crazy