SAILING RELEASES NEXT MONTH! (OSRS)


Date	2025-10-24
Type	news-opinion
Video	youtu.be/oKtiMu3iFGo

Summary

Gnomonkey reads Jagex's blog announcing Sailing's November 19th release, going through the launch feature list and the post-launch roadmap. He thinks the training methods are not engaging or fleshed out enough and worries about bugs and a short window before the dev team's December break, and he urges the community to leave both the 'hate sailing' and 'love sailing' camps and give genuine feedback.

Outline

0:00 Sailing release date of November 19th and why it surprises him
0:33 Features at launch: shipbuilding, crew, ship combat, port tasks, salvaging, Barracuda trials, deep sea trawling
3:37 Unique items and weapons coming with Sailing
4:05 His take that launch training content is not enough
5:04 Post-launch roadmap through 2026
7:00 Future content ideas: colossal boats, sea monster hunting, mineral dredging, sailing guild, NPC ships
9:42 Feedback gathering, ranked choice voting and the sailing Discord
10:15 What he expects at launch: bugs, over- and under-tuned training, dev break in December
11:49 Doom of Mokhaiotl and hardcore bugs as a warning sign
13:18 The hate camp and the love camp around Sailing
17:01 Final thoughts: what Sailing needs for high-level players, a roadmap and XP rates
21:01 Halloween stream plans and Sailing launch streaming plans

Topics covered

Sailing

(0:00) Jagex published a blog giving Sailing a release date of November 19th and listing everything Sailing will include at launch.
(0:00) Gnomonkey was surprised Sailing is getting released in the autumn before December, as he expected it to be delayed, and thinks the rush might say something about the state Sailing will be in.
(0:33) At launch Sailing will have shipbuilding and ship upgrades, like POH upgrades for your ship, using different materials and requiring Construction and Sailing.
(0:33) Sailing will have crew and multiplayer: up to 10 NPCs can be asked to join your crew and friends can sail on the boat too, with the blog saying up to five crewmates.
(1:06) You earn Sailing XP by successfully interacting with facilities on your boat, the simplest being trimming your sails, which gives a speed boost.
(1:34) Port tasks are delivery missions to NPCs across the sea or combat missions such as killing a number of monsters, and you can store up to five port tasks at once, each requiring a Sailing level.
(1:34) Gnomonkey likes that Sailing port tasks can be held five at a time, unlike Slayer where you do one at a time, as it gives players options.
(2:01) Shipwreck salvaging is the AFK Sailing option of pulling up treasure, and Gnomonkey says it can be two-ticked with tick manipulation: it gives two rolls every four ticks because you do a three-tick action but must step away and back, wasting a tick.
(2:01) Gnomonkey thinks two-ticked shipwreck salvaging may be the XP meta for Sailing, but is not sure.
(2:30) Sea charting is one-time XP for discovering a location, which Gnomonkey compares to lamps for getting levels and says will not be a long-term training method.
(2:30) Barracuda trials are races where you pick up cargo along the way for a bonus, and Gnomonkey describes them as a Sailing version of the Hallowed Sepulchre.
(3:04) Deep sea trawling is a Fishing Trawler-like activity catching big groups of fish, and includes new fish such as the new best healing fish and one needed to craft anti-bleed wraps.
(3:04) Sailing will also bring new quests, new areas, new resources including new mining rocks and thieving, and new training methods for other skills such as Woodcutting, Hunter and Fishing.
(3:37) Sailing's unique items include a teleport to boat spell, the gleaming rapier (like the zombie axe for stab) and the Horn of Plenty (which boosts Hunter), both from the new Griffin boss, and the Aqua Knight Hopper, which double bolt shots.
(3:37) Gnomonkey says Sailing's new weapons and armour are nothing super high level and mostly flesh out the mid-game.
(4:05) Gnomonkey considers Sailing's launch offering not enough for training, though perhaps acceptable at launch since Jagex wants to get the ball rolling and work on it afterwards.
(4:34) Gnomonkey compares Sailing's offering to Mining, which people feel lacks options even though it has iron, Motherlode Mine, Volcanic Mine, granite and blast mining, and says Sailing's whole offering is about as much as that.
(4:34) Gnomonkey notes Sailing has a good intensity spread: click-intensive ship racing, AFK or tick-manipulated trawling, and cargo missions somewhere in the middle, but he finds the training methods not super engaging and nothing is blowing his mind.
(7:00) Gnomonkey says he expects people to feel Sailing's training does not match other skills once they get hands-on, and that Jagex will add something after the feedback, though he admits he could change his mind.
(10:15) Gnomonkey predicts Sailing will launch with a ton of bugs and some training methods over- or under-tuned, as happened with Invention in RS3.
(10:48) Gnomonkey hopes nothing is so over-tuned that people reach 99 Sailing in a day, and wonders whether Jagex would roll back XP rates if it was a bug being abused, noting they cannot roll back a training method that is merely too good.
(10:48) Gnomonkey is concerned that the dev team goes on a December break and doubts they can smooth out all of Sailing's rough edges in the roughly two weeks after the November 19th release.
(12:21) Gnomonkey is very concerned about Sailing's launch quality and hopes it is not remembered as a bad launch, assuming Jagex wants to release it so people talk about it and so it can add content based on feedback.
(12:51) Gnomonkey predicts people will have a blast with Sailing at first, but after about a week will start hitting its problems, mainly that the training methods are not very in-depth or interesting.
(17:01) Gnomonkey thinks Sailing will be fun but is really weak in many areas, with training methods that feel janky and not very in-depth, and hopes Jagex fleshes them out and adds one or two.
(17:01) Gnomonkey hopes Jagex will not let major bugs linger on Sailing as it has with other content.
(17:32) Gnomonkey says Sailing launches with mostly low to mid-level content, which makes sense because that is where the bulk of players are, but it leaves high-level players with nothing new, a big reason for the hate camp.
(18:27) Gnomonkey believes Jagex should post-launch add something for high-level players, such as the mini sailing raid with three water caves and bosses mentioned during a game jam, a more dangerous boss, or some in-depth skilling methods, even just one or two things.
(20:01) Gnomonkey says Jagex should publish a full Sailing roadmap like those for other game content, because Sailing will need so much post-launch content, instead of a few bullet points at the bottom of the blog.
(20:01) Gnomonkey is concerned Sailing XP rates may be too slow, understanding Jagex is conservative in case players find tick-manipulation methods like the trawling one, and hopes Jagex buffs them if training feels sluggish so the hype is not lost.

Sailing

(0:33) Sailing launches with ship combat, which had a beta that Gnomonkey tried hands-on.
(1:06) Gnomonkey found Sailing's ship combat a little janky and strange in the beta, expects people to say it does not feel right and that Jagex will tweak it, but says it is runnable for release.
(2:30) Gnomonkey also found Barracuda trials pretty janky in the beta, saying the Hallowed Sepulchre feels much tighter and better, but that they are not terrible and Jagex will probably refine them over time.

Opinion: Sailing post-launch roadmap

(5:04) Jagex's post-launch Sailing plans in the blog include another turtle quest, a new type of port task, and a small-scale boss at sea.
(5:34) Jagex said it initially planned the player-designed island for Sailing's launch but realised players need to understand Sailing first, so the player-designed island competition will kick off shortly after launch.
(6:01) Gnomonkey says Jagex should add a somewhat tougher boss, around Zalcano-tier or a bit tougher, that drops decent items, rather than another Griffin, since the Griffin will be the lowest level Slayer boss and most Sailing players would be interested in such a boss.
(6:27) The Sailing roadmap includes a new Barracuda trial and a sequel quest in autumn 2026, with a sea expansion in late 2026; Jagex said the smaller updates are quick to implement while the player-designed island and a new sea boss need more time.
(6:27) Gnomonkey finds the post-launch plan uninteresting, likes the boss, and dislikes that nothing indicates Jagex wants to flesh out Sailing's training, as he was looking for new training methods and only sees additions to existing ones.

Opinion: Future Sailing content ideas

(7:32) Gnomonkey has little interest in Sailing PvP and thinks colossal boats, which Jagex says were too large for fluid navigation and are a nice-to-have, are not important.
(8:04) Gnomonkey is sad sea monster hunting, a combined Slayer and Sailing method discussed early in the beta like hunting Leviathans with custom-tuned weaponry, is not planned for 2026, calling it awesome.
(8:04) Gnomonkey says mineral dredging would be a nice addition, though he is not super excited about it.
(8:04) Jagex said it picked deep sea trawling as the one hybrid training method to flesh out fully at launch, and that coral farming, once a Sailing and Farming hybrid, was changed to a Farming-only activity.
(8:36) Jagex has no set plans for a Sailing Guild, but early conversations lean towards making it Barracuda HQ, where players meet the Barracuda leader NPC called Mako.
(9:10) Gnomonkey likes the idea of NPC ships such as traveling boat merchants selling food or resources far from everything, comparing it to Stalker, where you meet traveling bands of people to trade with.

Opinion: Sailing community discourse

(12:51) Gnomonkey says Sailing has become politicised, with two camps: people who despise Sailing and think anything tied to it is bad, and a devout cult of Sailing who think it can do no wrong.
(13:18) Gnomonkey says the anti-Sailing camp will hate things like the Griffin boss as soon as they require Sailing, while the pro-Sailing camp treats bugs as charming and criticism as monstrous, and calls both camps equally stupid.
(14:23) Gnomonkey says Sailing is not a skill he hates or loves; he voted for it, thinks a lot of good could come from it, but sees lots of room to add to it and says it needs improving or it will not be a good skill.
(14:56) Gnomonkey argues that devoutly loving Sailing and devoutly hating it both make the skill worse, because the polarised camps make genuine feedback almost impossible.
(15:25) Gnomonkey says someone who deflects all criticism of Sailing is maybe a worse problem than haters, because they interact with Sailing without helping it improve.
(15:54) Gnomonkey begs players to exit the camps and sit in the middle, giving specific feedback such as liking one training method while another needs a lot of work.
(16:28) Gnomonkey says he hates the politicisation of anything in a video game and that what matters is making the game good rather than being right.
(16:28) Gnomonkey notes players can give Sailing feedback through the in-game method and the Discord that will be started.
(21:01) Gnomonkey is concerned about the launch because of the hate and love camps and urges players to focus on giving Jagex the feedback needed to make Sailing really good for everybody.

Opinion: Old School polling and feedback

(9:42) Jagex said it recently published a list of polling improvements including ranked choice voting, and Gnomonkey thinks the polling changes were pushed because Sailing needs them so badly.
(9:42) Jagex said that about a week before Sailing launches it will sunset the dedicated Sailing server and ask players to send feedback through the official OSRS Discord.
(9:42) Gnomonkey wishes Jagex had included testimonials from internal playtesters rather than only the game devs, as devs will obviously love Sailing.

Doom of Mokhaiotl

(11:16) Gnomonkey says Doom of Mokhaiotl still has a horrendous drop table with major flaws that Jagex has not looked into or fixed, and the Sunfire Splinters change made it worse.
(11:49) Gnomonkey reports a Doom bug where killing the boss as it enters its second shield phase after the orb phase still lets the damage hit you, which can kill you and puts hardcore Ironmen at risk.
(11:49) Gnomonkey says that if you log out on a hardcore account at Doom, you freeze in place as at the Leviathan and get killed; he and Bodhi were both hit by that bug with a six-hour log, but luckily did not die.
(11:49) Gnomonkey cites Doom's unfixed bugs as a reason to doubt that Sailing, a whole new skill, will be polished quickly, since fixing a single high-level boss should be far easier.

Gnomonkey

(17:32) Gnomonkey describes himself as an oddball among high-level players because he does not hate Sailing and wants it to be good.
(21:01) For Halloween, Gnomonkey will be dressed as Sandwich Lady on stream and will attempt a no-pillar Colosseum, saying every dress-up stream involves a crazy PvM challenge.
(21:34) Gnomonkey plans to stream Sailing non-stop when it releases, training it on his main account and probably on his hardcore account.