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Update: Sailing pirate combat

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Update: Sailing pirate combat

Update: Sailing pirate combat
Type Update
Videos 1 (first 2026-04-09, latest 2026-04-09)
Main source NEW PIRATE COMBAT! - Sailing Blog (OSRS)

Update: Sailing pirate combat is an update topic that Gnomonkey covers in 1 video on 2026-04-09. This article is a stub: his statements are grouped by type, repeated ones merged.

Contents

Tips

  • The blog offers players the option of being NDA'd and giving feedback to Jagex, which Gnomonkey highly recommends doing.1

Gnomonkey's opinion

  • Gnomonkey thinks having two win conditions (sink the hull with cannons or kill the crew) gives Jagex an easy way to balance cannons against other weapon styles, which Sailing combat has struggled with.2

Events

  • Jagex's Sailing blog proposed pirate ships at various locations across the sea that players fight for loot, with the pirates dropping mid-level crossbow armour that boosts heavy weapons including the ballista, crossbows and ship cannons.3
  • In the pirate encounters, players attack the enemy boat with the ship's cannons and fight the NPCs on the enemy ship with their own magic and ranged attacks; traditional combat cannot attack boats and cannons cannot attack pirate NPCs.4
  • When an enemy pirate ship reaches a certain health threshold, pirates may jump on the player's boat, where the crew panics and pauses their actions until the player has dealt with the threat.5
  • Enemy pirates are defeated either by killing the whole pirate crew, which sinks the boat, or by destroying the hull of the ship, causing it to sink.6
  • Jagex said the encounters are comparable in complexity to Tormented Demons: a more involved fight, but not quite a boss.7
  • Jagex said the content is aimed at mid-level and higher-level players, with some encounters in the 50 to 70 Sailing and combat range and others in the 75 plus range with upscaled stats.8
  • Jagex said pirate encounters will be added to bounty tasks and the activity is focused on rewards, not XP, so they give only some XP and are not meant to compete with other Sailing training methods.8
  • Jagex said it is not currently planning a major expansion to Sailing combat beyond the pirate content, but that NPC ship combat needs significant underlying infrastructure that could support future Sailing combat, and anything of larger scale (beyond the player-designed island, Wormscraig) would not be seen that year.1

Revision history

Date Video Change
2026-04-09 NEW PIRATE COMBAT! - Sailing Blog (OSRS) Page created: 10 statements (event, opinion, tip)
## References

  1. NEW PIRATE COMBAT! - Sailing Blog (OSRS), 2026-04-09. ▶ 21:21 ↩↩

  2. NEW PIRATE COMBAT! - Sailing Blog (OSRS), 2026-04-09. ▶ 1:57 ↩

  3. NEW PIRATE COMBAT! - Sailing Blog (OSRS), 2026-04-09. ▶ 0:00 ↩

  4. NEW PIRATE COMBAT! - Sailing Blog (OSRS), 2026-04-09. ▶ 0:30 ↩

  5. NEW PIRATE COMBAT! - Sailing Blog (OSRS), 2026-04-09. ▶ 1:02 ↩

  6. NEW PIRATE COMBAT! - Sailing Blog (OSRS), 2026-04-09. ▶ 1:28 ↩

  7. NEW PIRATE COMBAT! - Sailing Blog (OSRS), 2026-04-09. ▶ 2:26 ↩

  8. NEW PIRATE COMBAT! - Sailing Blog (OSRS), 2026-04-09. ▶ 2:56 ↩↩

Updates

Leagues 6: Demonic Pacts • Update: Yama • Update: Doom of Mokhaiotl rewards • Update: Blood Moon Rises • Update: Raids 4 rewards blog • Update: Demonic Spade • Update: Project Rebalance • Update: Summer Sweep-up • Update: Yama contracts • Poll: Bronzeman Mode • Update: Rubium and smithing nerfs • Forestry • Update: Varlamore fletching activity • Project Zanaris • Update: Sailing 10k XP hotfix • Update: Sailing Salvaging revert • Player Island Competition • Update history 2016-2023 • Update: Sailing pirate combat • Golden Gnome Awards • Update: Metal dragons task • Update: Nex • Update: Sunfire splinters removed from Doom of Mokhaiotl • Bugs and hotfixes (Doom of Mokhaiotl) • Poll: Mokha rewards • Update: Entry Mode CM CoX • Update: Membership price increase • Update: Sailing launch • Update: Sailing slayer monsters • Update: Sailing week 2 • Update: Slayer block lists per master • Update: Tombs of Amascut changes • Update: Wyrmscraig

Category: Updates