When we asked what you wanted from Sailing, PvM was one of the features at the top of the list. We’re still early in development, so we don’t have much ship combat to show you today, but the foundations are moving along nicely.
In our last blog, we shared a #DriveByIceBarrage GIF – and it really fired up your imaginations! We love sharing these small milestones so you can see the progress we’re making, bit by bit. That particular example showcased the possibility of ship-to-ship PvP in future.
However, when Sailing launches we expect only PvM combat to be available, with PvP following at a later date. We’re developing Sailing combat in a way that ensures it can be enabled when the technology and our community are ready for it – so watch this space!
Getting the game to understand that your boat is fighting with an NPC at sea is no simple task. Right now the whole process looks a bit silly, because the player is obviously facing the wrong way, and retaliation mechanics haven’t been implemented yet – but make no mistake, these monsters do hit back!
Updating traditional combat to work on boats has significant technical challenges before we even get to the meat of the work. We’re not quite ready to share more than this just yet, but you can expect more details as we get further into development.
Sailing Alpha
In our last Behind the Scenes blog, we explained that the Sailing Alpha would be taking place next year, as we needed additional time to address problems like collision and validate whether our changes made a positive impact on feedback. Since then we’ve run a couple more on-site playtests, but we need to scale up before we’re confidently able to share Sailing with the whole community.
Thankfully, our fantastic team has discovered a solution to run remote playtests, which are of course much easier to run than on-site ones. Remote testing is already underway and will be carried out right up until the launch of the Sailing Alpha.
On the plus side, we’ve had time to add more features to the Sailing Alpha. When you get your hands on it, you’ll be able to try out much more than just Navigation.
We hope that these additional features will help players get a feel for Sailing as a fully fleshed out skill with real gameplay, not just a set of movement mechanics. We’re excited to get feedback on navigation in the context of other Sailing activities, instead of having you all float around aimlessly.
Obviously, we also hope to get your feedback on some of the newer features we’ve developed. We’re well into gameplay development at this point, so your feedback on the activities listed above is absolutely essential.
So, to summarise – the Sailing Alpha is shaping up to be more like a ‘vertical slice’, and your first, early look at how Sailing will actually play. It will be the first time we test Sailing at scale, and so you might notice some strange happenings at sea.
We’ve been taking steps internally to launch bots onto the high seas to test the technical implications of having hundreds of players voyaging about the ocean at the same time. If you see one, don’t panic – he’s helping us test our new skill, just like you are!
Before we sign off, here’s a look at the other things we’ve been working on since we last spoke.
Mod Grub has created the finalized concept art for Kandarin Simple Rafts and Small and Large Boats. We’ve also added the Simple Raft model to the game – isn’t it cute?
On top of the new islands we teased in a previous blog, we’re also populating the sea with smaller islands. During playtests, we decided that navigation would be easier when the sea is populated with landmarks, just like on land.
Small islands serve as excellent anchor points when trying to navigate around Gielinor’s seas, especially when you get into the deeper oceans away from the familiar lines of the coast.
The content on these islands could be almost anything. What would you like to see there?
For me, Sailing is a massive, exciting moment. For the first time ever, we’re working on a brand new skill for Old School RuneScape. We’ve delivered quests in old and new storylines, bosses, and minigames before – but a new skill is something we’ve never done and quite frankly, Old School deserves one! Skills are the backbone of progression and adding a new one lets us offer serious additional depth in this regard. The feeling of reaching milestone level unlocks, be it 85 Slayer to access abyssal demons or 53 Thieving to complete Desert Treasure, is something we want to continue to do with Sailing. The game is truly a network of unlocks and progression, and Sailing can absolutely weave its way into that. The possibility for new goals and reward space is truly exciting.
All this to say – levelling up a skill should feel good! There’ll be significant milestone unlocks like accessing a new quest or area. There’ll be boat upgrades, both minor and major. There’ll also be smaller perks and bonuses as you level up.
I believe the journey players will go on from 1-99 is shaping up in a great way and I want to show you a little of it now.
From levels 1-50, in the Early Game, you’ll participate in activities in the ‘Shallow Sea’. There’ll be a few different training methods available to you – just like in other skills. You’ll learn the basics of Shipwreck Salvaging, complete your first Port Tasks, Chart your first areas of the sea and gain access to your first Barracuda Trial, which we’re calling the Karamjan Run. You will gain access to low-level ports like Port Sarim, Musa Point and Catherby. If you work hard enough, you could even get yourself a second boat.
At level 50, you’ll be in the Mid Game, which will move you into the ‘Open Sea’ around Port Khazard. You’ll unlock new ports too, like the Ruins of Unkah, Port Phasmatys and Rellekka. You’ll also get more from islands you’ve already discovered, like the Great Conch! Expect Sailing to become more challenging, but remember that as with most skills, higher level requirements result in better rewards. Some of these will further upgrade your boat. There’ll be some major milestones here for you to target, many of which will be linked to rewards from new islands and points of interest.
At level 85 you’ll enter the Late Game. Honestly, this is where we see Sailing as potentially improving on a lot of other skills. Many skills struggle to offer meaningful unlocks and rewards at this level range, offering only a long grind to level 99. While we’re working to improve that in existing skills, with Sailing we can ensure there are aspirational milestones to target even from launch. Firstly, this is when we’ll expect you to access the ‘Deep Sea’ – the entire Western Sea region of Gielinor. This will give you new areas to chart, new types of ship to acquire salvage from, and new ports in Mos Le Harmless, Piscarillius and Civitas Illa Fortis. Content in the Deep Sea will be much more dangerous, so you better make sure those boats are upgraded!
Let me just add that exact levels for certain unlocks are obviously not final yet, there’s a lot of work still to go and we’ll be refining balancing details throughout.
Like we said at the start of the blog, no two skills are identical but it’s worth drawing comparisons. Every skill has high and low intensity training options, with rewards to match the effort you put in. Not everyone likes every method, and we don’t expect you to, but we try to add options to suit every playstyle, and rewards that encourage you to try new things.
Hopefully you’ve got an idea of the core journey from 1-99. The scale of Sailing is vast by itself, but I hope you’ve also seen how it lines up with other skills. It’s a great chance for us to incorporate new resources that can help improve existing skills too, though we will be careful about not impacting too many metas.
Going forward, I think Sailing has a humungous amount of potential. The oceans and seas are a totally new kind of location for us to make content for and the idea of doing an underwater raid or heading out to some remote island is exciting. I always think of the Dragon Slayer 2 sequence out on the ships and how epic that could be if we had Sailing in place. That’s just one example!
Sailing is something I feel sits naturally in this world and I believe we are producing something that will expand the game in a truly awesome way. There are strong opinions on both sides of the debate. We’re conscious of this and are designing a skill that takes Old School forwards without harming everything it is and has been.
There’s been lots of talk about how Sailing needs to be a skill and not feel like a minigame, and that is what we believe we are doing. I feel what we’ve got has so much in common with other skills. It really is in no way like a minigame, but the proof is in the pudding. I’m excited for you to get your hands on it during the Sailing Alpha, but in the meantime, we’ll have regular updates to showcase what Sailing has to offer. The biggest difference between Sailing and most other skills is that it’ll largely take place on the seas, something you’ve had very little access to before.
I want to throw out a massive thank you to anyone who’s given constructive feedback and criticism on everything we’ve shown so far. I’m excited to hear more as we move through development. The level of communication between us and our community is what makes our game special. This feedback is what will ensure Sailing is special, too. The Sailing Alpha next year will be a huge part of this, and I cannot wait for you all to get your hands on that.
I hope that you like what we’ve had to show you today! Let us know what you think and I’ll see you out on the sea.
You can also discuss this update on the 2007Scape subreddit, or the Official Sailing Discord Server. For more info on the above content, check out the official Old School Wiki.
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