Jagex Broke Sailing Combat (OSRS)
| Date | 2026-03-20 |
| Type | news-opinion |
| Video | youtu.be/fZ5RVn7tNhI |
Summary
Gnomonkey reacts to Jagex's follow-up on Sailing combat changes, which uncapped player damage, buffed cannons slightly and made magic with the Tumeken's shadow or Eye of Ayak the dominant approach. He argues Sailing combat feels tacked on and monsters are too tanky, but that Jagex should take months rather than weeks to fix it properly and prioritize Raids 4 and other updates.
Outline
- 0:00 What changed in Sailing combat and Jagex's follow-up
- 1:38 Impact of the new 'mage everything' meta
- 2:36 Gnomonkey's general problems with Sailing combat
- 3:15 Monster health and drop-rate grinds on the wiki
- 5:06 Why fixing it is difficult
- 7:06 Why Jagex should take their time, with the Zeah comparison
- 9:15 Prioritizing better updates over Sailing combat
Topics covered
Sailing
- (0:00) A recent Sailing update added an attractor facility for your boat that saves roughly 60 percent of cannonballs.
- (0:26) The same update made cannons fire slower, at a seven-tick attack speed, with higher max hits, and added veiled Krakens as an extra source of the Dragon cannon barrel at roughly 1 in 1,000 according to the wiki.
- (0:26) The biggest combat change was that normal off-boat attacks, such as a Tumeken's shadow, now deal full damage to sea monsters without a damage cap, so players can again hit big numbers.
- (1:26) To compensate for the damage buff and keep kills per hour similar, sea monsters were given roughly 25 percent more health.
- (6:35) Gnomonkey says Sailing as a skill is pretty good but its combat is bad and feels tacked on, like it should have been a part two to Sailing and never launched with the skill.
- (6:39) Gnomonkey says adding combat later would have felt a little weird at launch but would have been better for the skill overall, since changing something already in the game is harder than building it cleanly from scratch.
- (8:26) Gnomonkey says none of the Sailing combat items are really mandatory and there are plenty of ways to train Sailing outside bounty tasks, so combat is not urgent.
- (9:35) Gnomonkey thinks Sailing could have a future with Leviathan hunting, pirate-ship jumping combat or mini raids, but that this requires a careful, clean rework of the half-baked combat.
Update: Sailing combat damage uncap
- (0:57) Gnomonkey says many players are upset because combat now boils down to having a Tumeken's shadow or an Eye of Ayak and using magic on every monster, with cannons acting like thralls dealing bonus damage.
- (1:26) Jagex said removing the damage cap on sea monsters was meant to make gear feel more impactful, but it let items like the Tumeken's shadow significantly outperform cannons even at the top end, which can feel frustrating given how long Dragon cannons take to grind.
- (1:55) The new Krakens have 15 flat armor, which reduces every hit splat by 15, whereas magic bypasses flat armor completely, which Gnomonkey says makes magic far better than anything else.
- (2:24) Jagex said it has no full solution yet but is reviewing the balance and exploring ways to make cannons feel more impactful, with an updated design expected 'in a matter of weeks rather than months' though not promised for the following week.
- (2:24) Gnomonkey says he does not like the new Sailing combat changes, and that his earlier suggestion of removing the player damage cap was not thought through, since it boiled down to mage everything and would have needed adjusted weaknesses or less flat armor.
- (2:56) Gnomonkey says cannons feel very weak and not worth the money to use, which is a separate problem.
Sailing
- (3:26) Gnomonkey lists wiki data: Albatross feathers for the Gale catcher drop at 1 in 29 with 179 health (five are needed), and Manta rays drop Ray barbs at 1 in 16 with 225 health (about eight needed for the best trawling net).
- (3:26) Narwhal horn drops at 1 in 100 from monsters with 220 health, and Great white sharks, which drop for the best salvaging hook, have 243 hit points.
- (3:53) Armored Krakens, which drop the item for the bottled storm teleport on your ship, drop it at 1 in 1,000, and the new Dragon cannon barrel source has 225 health at roughly a 1 in 1,000 drop rate.
- (4:28) Gnomonkey says the health of everything killed at sea is extremely high, citing a Reddit comparison where a Black demon has less health than a sea bird and manta rays have significantly more health than a Black dragon, so combat feels sluggish.
- (4:50) Gnomonkey says simply cutting monster health would roughly double bounty-task XP and might make bounty tiles the XP meta, so any change throws off Jagex's existing balance and drop speeds.
- (5:56) Gnomonkey says Jagex may have reasons for the long grinds, such as future Barracuda Trials (he thinks a fourth is coming) that could make items like the Gale catcher more valuable.
Opinion: Jagex should take time fixing Sailing combat
- (7:06) Gnomonkey argues the demand for an immediate fix is wrong: fixing Sailing combat correctly needs a very clear plan, and he suggests it should take months or even over a year, not weeks.
- (7:33) Gnomonkey compared Zeah at release, which looked like a private-server map with a big square and giant empty buildings, to the current cleaner Zeah, which took years of incremental work including the Hosidius rework.
- (8:05) Gnomonkey says Zeah was not fixed immediately because Chambers of Xeric was a priority a year later and the dev team was much smaller, and he feels the same about Sailing combat today.
- (10:09) Gnomonkey thinks the community anger partly comes from vitriol over the membership price increase, and that demanding an immediate fix with pitchforks will make the update worse.
- (10:41) Gnomonkey says rushing a fix could be four or five botched updates, and a quick fix may make a proper fix harder later because it feels almost good enough.
- (11:32) Gnomonkey says he cares more about Raids 4, quality-of-life updates to existing content and the sparse roadmap than Sailing combat.
- (11:59) Gnomonkey says he is more worried about the design of the Maggot king (recently delayed further), whether another Yama-like drop of overpowered items will unbalance the game, and the struggle over what the next mega rare should be.
- (12:27) Gnomonkey jokes that he is more concerned about the Arceuus spellbook teleport arrangement, with spells in the wrong place, than Sailing combat.