For the RuneScape community as a whole the release of Sailing marks the day a meme, a myth, a legend becomes reality. For Old School RuneScape – the retro spin off MMO of RuneScape 3 based off of an 07 backup – it marks the arrival of its first ever new, exclusive, Skill. It’s quite the regatta after the past proposed Skills, like Warding and iconically the first version of Sailing ten years ago, failed to pass the player polls. Now, however, the anchors are hoisted and the sails are set as Sailing voyages into OSR.
The origin of the ‘Sailing is the next skill’ joke is recorded in a YouTube video uploaded in July 2008 by Fang Gallo. Here he showcases a screenshot his friend, Qwertysumo, had shared with him – a supposedly bugged RuneScape Highscores page where Sailing was clearly listed. What Fang Gallo didn’t know is that Qwertysumo had created the image himself.
While simple, it was a clever hoax. The most recent Skill, Summoning, had experienced leaks in the runup to its January 2008 release, including a rumoured Highscore table bug. This meant that many of the RuneScape player base was primed to find supposed Sailing ‘evidence’, and find it they did. I won’t go through it all but my top three favourites are: the new website banner apparently showing the Sailing Skill Cape, the inclusion of pirate implings, and the Digsite barge that had been released in 2007. (In a turn of events I personally find quite funny, this barge wouldn’t sail until 2019 in RS3.) All of this would be debunked by a mod post in the RuneScape forums shortly after the video’s release and again in September 2009 during a Q&A.
Since then Sailing has become a long running fan favourite joke, especially whenever a new Skill is around the corner. (Rowboats in the City of Um? Sailing confirmed. Kind of. Not really. No.) It’s also one Jagex has embraced itself, with Sailing making an appearance in multiple April Fool’s jokes over the years, as well as in reminding players Sailing isn’t coming in the odd content announcement and, too, in in-game references, such as the Gower Quest in RS3 where you can play a sailing-themed mini-game. And so the arrival of Sailing for real goals beyond the typical excitement of a new Skill release, an already important occasion for fans. The RuneScape community is literally seeing their myth take corporeal form.
It’s a fact the developers behind it are aware of. “I think the reason that it survived as this myth and meme is because of how absurd it sounded. Like Sailing in Old School? How do you even make it work? I think we as a team are now experienced enough and we’ve earned enough trust with the community that we can actually tackle something this ambitious. It’s really awesome,” James Hardy, senior game systems engineer at Jagex, told Eurogamer.
One of the development challenges Sailing faced, however, was actually getting the boats to sail. Movement in ORS works on a grid system with the map being made up of thousands of tiles which, when clicked on, will move your avatar to that location on the grid. Hardy explained that while the development team tried applying that to Sailing, in practice it didn’t work. “Boats don’t feel great if they don’t have inertia, velocity, acceleration and deceleration,” Hardy added. After creating a prototype movement system that a group of player testers disliked, the team went back to the drawing board and created eight different methods for how the boat would move. This was tough.
Though the finalised Sailing movement system is still grid based, it’s a far smaller grid than the ones typically used in other areas of the game. This has allowed the development team to ensure players can still complete an interesting array of activities, while still keeping the old school feeling OSR always strives to maintain. You can definitely feel the marriage between retro vibes and innovation when sailing as an element of the classic RuneScape point-and-click gameplay is still present.
First, however, you must ensure your avatar is at the helm, or else you’re not going anywhere. With hand on the tiller, a white arrow will appear around your boat, allowing you to easily dictate the direction you’re sailing in. Alongside this, a boat’s speed can be controlled using the navigation panel and you can earn an extra speed boost by trimming the sail when gusts of wind appear around your vessel. It’s an easy system to learn, while also being successfully distinct from the typical walking and running mechanics players are used to.
When it comes to the boats themselves, you’ll start your journey across Gielinor’s seas on a simple raft. This can soon be upgraded to a skiff, for safer (and dryer) transport. It’s not just the whole vessel you can upgrade though! No, a visit to the shipyard lets you upgrade specific aspects of your boat, such as the hull and sail. The shipyard also showcases how Sailing is interwoven with the other skills. After all, no RuneScape Skill is an island and Sailing charts its course through many.
Woodcutting can be used to cut down new trees to upgrade your hull, for instance, while Smithing helps you gather resources for metal-based upgrades. Crafting, meanwhile, offers new fabric for stronger sails. The Skill which ties this all together, however, is Construction. You could have all of the best materials in the world, but, if your Construction Skill is too low, your vessel will only have the most basic equipment. Having a familiarity with the Construction Skill will also help you actually build the boat as it uses a similar ghost hotspot system to the Player-Owned House – white outlines showcasing where new equipment can be built.
Once you’ve built your ideal boat, you need to defend it! The waves hide all sorts of dangerous creatures after all… The good news is that traditional combat does work at sea, but it will be less effective. Why use a Mithril Sword when you can have a cannon? (A regular cannon – I don’t think a Dwarf Multicannon will fit.) Cannons can be assigned to one side of your boat, the bigger your boat the more cannons you can have. Eventually you’ll even be able to hire a crew to man the cannons while you steer!
“For Sailing’s launch we’ve opted for a very simplistic approach to combat. Mostly so that we can figure out what works and what doesn’t work a little bit safer, and get players used to it,” Chris Drysdale, senior game designer, explained to Eurogamer. Adding that “as more Sailing content comes out in the future we can look into creating interesting ideas, like pirates on a boat shooting your player.” It’s also worth noting that, at sea, a player’s health is replaced by boat health, which can be restored using repair kits. Losing all of a boat’s health, however, will return you to a set respawn dock.
Sailing isn’t just a Skill update though, it’s an area expansion. For the first time in the game’s 24 year history, Gielinor’s seas are open to explore with over 20 new islands only accessible using the Sailing Skill: from Pandemonium, where you’ll complete the tutorial quest (the first of four new Sailing quests); to the Great Conch, home to the Tortugan, a new race of humanoid turtles. Docking locations have also been added to many of the preexisting ports and islands. Though some of these will have prerequisites for landing – such as Crandor, where Elvarg will give you a fiery unwelcome if she’s not been slayed. As you travel you can complete various Port Tasks, including delivering cargo (to gain Sailing XP), salvaging shipwrecks, and even deep sea trawling if your boat is equipped with a net. There’s also hundreds of points of interest that can be recorded using Sea Charting – a good way to earn some one-off XP and explore a new location. Finally, it’s worth keeping an eye out for random encounters, like Ocean Man, on your voyage to the corner of the globe. Though I don’t know whether he’ll lead you to the land he understands…(If you know, you know!)
One activity you’ll likely find yourself becoming invested in are the Barracuda Trails. These are time trials where you’ll have to avoid hazards, like storms, as you collect lost supplies and rum. The rewards you earn are unique items – some you can use right away, while others are designed to encourage exploration. There will be three Barracuda Trails available at launch, with each one having three rounds increasing in difficulty. Don’t worry if you’re not a fan of time trials though, as it is possible to return with a higher level boat and brute force the challenge if it’s been causing you trouble. Though you might find that harder with the higher level trials…
Having played the Sailing demo during this year’s RuneFest before testing the waters further during the various tests which have run since then, I can easily say that I’ve greatly enjoyed my experience with the new Skill so far. It retains the feeling of a classic Skill, thanks in part to the OSR charm being deeply embedded in its heart – the tutorial quest, for example, follows the long standing tradition of your adventurer being tricked – while including modern innovation to keep the gameplay fresh. The opening activity of cargo delivery is a satisfying gameplay loop as you get to grips with the Skill, while also being a great way to start broadening your watery horizons. It’s this exploration that gets me truly excited for Sailing though. Having spent nearly 20 years in Gielinor, I know its secrets quite well, so I’m looking forward to making land on new soil and uncovering new treasures. (And getting the little frog flag I spotted in the release date trailer. That’s a must have for my boat.)
With Sailing finally unmoored in OSR, Drysdale believes the development team has laid a solid foundation for the future as, in his words, “it is very important that the skill itself is the thing that’s in the spotlight and the reason why people are logging on.” When it comes to the future shores for Sailing, the development team were keen to tell us that they’re considering tackling areas of the sea not available at launch. With Drysdale explaining: “The sea is in all of these colours [referring to the map], because these represent different hazards. So it’s been very easy for us to lock them off and say you don’t have the counter to get past the Sun Baked Seas by the desert, for example, as the counter doesn’t exist in the game, but will in the future.”
Ultimately, however, the Old School team’s focus will continue to be listening to what the players want, so the post-launch period will involve examining player feedback. Hardy added: “We have a roadmap for next year with a lot of Sailing things in it, but they’re intentionally left fairly vague so that we can do what we do best and respond to the community.”
It’s clear that, just like how the RuneScape community brought the Sailing mythos to life, they will now help chart its further development. Let’s hope exciting waters are ahead! (I wonder what RuneScape myth we’ll see next… Maybe a horse?)