It’s been quite a while since Old School RuneScape talked about the development of its new Sailing skill, but that’s not because Jagex has been sitting idle; it was just collecting all of its progress in order to unload it all over two immense dev blogs and nearly two hours’ worth of video content.
The two dev blogs in question offer the usual highly granular look at where Sailing is now, covering things like how navigation works via sea charting and related rewards; the way players earn skill XP (by… uh… using a boat, among other things); the variety of tasks that can be found on islands, at ports and in the open water like daily quests, courier quests, bounty hunts, and shipwreck salvaging; and a rough idea of how combat works, which will begin with PvE but expand into PvP later.
As for when the skill will enter into wider testing, Jagex is still non-committal to a hard date, but it is on track to bring alpha testing to players sometime in the first half of next year, particularly since remote tests are easier for Jagex to run and the skill is at a point where it needs to be tested at scale.
As for the video, that effectively shares much of what the dev blogs have posted while also providing gameplay footage and adding extra details about boat collision, how the team is avoiding turning port tasks into “DailyScape” gameplay loops, and making sure that Sailing’s release doesn’t overcrowd 20 year-old zones. The full video awaits below.
