NEW PIRATE COMBAT! - Sailing Blog (OSRS)
| Date | 2026-04-09 |
| Type | news-opinion |
| Video | youtu.be/8CSztSkDvnM |
Summary
Gnomonkey reacts to Jagex's Sailing blog introducing pirate ship combat that drops new mid-level crossbow and cannon-boosting armour. He finds the armour interesting but doubts the activity will be engaging or rewarding, and argues Sailing needs a real draw and long-term direction rather than band-aid combat updates.
Outline
- 0:00 Introduction to the pirate ships Sailing update
- 0:44 How pirate combat works: cannons vs. the hull, boarding, and two win conditions
- 3:14 Rewards focus and XP concerns; Jagex's XP/GP/unique-drop balance triangle
- 6:11 Cosmetics, sail swapping, pirate flag and the bosun's bench facility
- 8:09 New ranged armour: briny leather and Salachi sets
- 10:19 Where the armour could be used: Tombs of Amascut, Inferno and early bosses
- 11:43 Worries about drop rates and a Bell's Folly style grind
- 13:19 Comparison to Tormented Demons and the state of Sailing combat
- 15:56 Critique of Sailing's direction and what Sailing needs
- 21:21 Jagex's future plans and final thoughts
Topics covered
Update: Sailing pirate combat
- (0:00) 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.
- (0:30) 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.
- (1:02) 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.
- (1:28) 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.
- (1:57) 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.
- (2:26) Jagex said the encounters are comparable in complexity to Tormented Demons: a more involved fight, but not quite a boss.
- (2:56) 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.
- (2:56) 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.
- (21:21) 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.
- (21:21) The blog offers players the option of being NDA'd and giving feedback to Jagex, which Gnomonkey highly recommends doing.
Sailing
- (0:27) In his previous Sailing video, Gnomonkey said Jagex should hit the brakes on adding more Sailing combat and fix existing problems first, and he worries this update is another major encounter instead.
- (3:27) Gnomonkey is bothered that Jagex keeps saying Sailing activities are about rewards and not XP, as it did with trawling fishing, and sees no reason these cannot be an okay, not best, training method like Tormented Demons.
- (3:56) Gnomonkey says Sailing needs newer ways to train, finding the bounty task system annoying, Barracuda Trials fast but repetitive, and salvaging the option most people choose but very boring and AFK.
- (4:25) Jagex said it balances content on three factors, XP per hour, GP per hour and unique drops, and that content with great XP, great GP and great uniques would invalidate other ways to train Sailing.
- (4:52) Gnomonkey reads Jagex's low-XP stance as implying the pirates will not be high-effort content, and suggests the GP may be good while XP is low; he cites the Hallowed Sepulchre as high-effort content that has both good XP and good GP.
- (16:53) Gnomonkey thinks the pirate ship fights risk becoming a legacy fight that is left behind in a future Sailing combat rework, like old Slayer bosses such as Kraken or Thermonuclear smoke devil.
- (17:13) Jagex said on Reddit that Sailing combat is intentionally not a viable way of training Sailing, because that would make Sailing feel like a combat skill rather than a utility skill, so combat-focused content is balanced around rewards rather than XP.
- (17:24) Gnomonkey argues that if the main focus of Sailing was never combat, Jagex should not be rushing to fix combat and instead should add more charting and more methods to train the skill beyond Barracuda Trials.
- (17:56) Gnomonkey says nobody would have minded if Jagex launched Sailing with no ship combat and focused on islands with cool things to do, like frost dragons or Tormented-Demon-style Slayer monsters unlocked by a high Sailing level.
- (18:20) Gnomonkey says that now that the Sailing combat system exists and has an economy around cannons, Jagex is incentivised to use small band-aid fixes such as these pirates, which will leave the game worse than it could be.
- (18:35) Gnomonkey would put the new pirates on new Sailing islands as bounty task targets, perhaps with decent Slayer XP as a reason to train Sailing, with the rewards dropping from completed bounties instead of a small amount of gold.
- (18:58) Gnomonkey suggests more Barracuda Trials, boss-focused PvM islands, harder mobs like Tormented Demons, and player-designed islands with a new crafting method, all with methods better than the main game that require a Sailing level.
- (19:18) Gnomonkey says what players want most is a reason to train Sailing beyond the 99 cape, and an endgame hook such as unlocking a great Slayer monster, weapon or type of Runecrafting.
- (19:47) Gnomonkey says this update would not make him start training Sailing on his Hardcore Ironman since he already has a Bow of Faerdhinen and crystal armour, and he thinks many players are in the same position.
- (21:21) Gnomonkey says he thinks it is good for Jagex not to add a ton of Sailing content right now, and that Sailing needs careful long-term thought about its direction rather than band-aid fixes.
Briny leather armour
- (7:49) The briny leather armour set is a lower-level set made of vambraces, chaps, body and a tricorn hat, that comes from the pirates.
- (7:49) Briny leather armour introduces a new stat of heavy-only bonuses to ranged attack and ranged strength, which also boosts cannons, the crossbow and the ballista.
- (8:46) Briny leather armour is generally a bit worse than black dragonhide even when using a heavy weapon, though fairly close.
- (8:46) Briny leather armour requires up to 70 Crafting, 65 Ranged and 40 Defence, and the pirates are around 50 Sailing.
- (8:46) Gnomonkey does not think many players will bother getting briny leather armour, since hard clues already give black dragonhide pieces.
Salachi armour
- (9:15) Salachi armour is a higher-level pirate armour set with heavy-only bonuses, slightly better than black dragonhide across the board when using crossbows, and it also gives ranged strength.
- (9:15) Gnomonkey thinks Salachi armour has quite a lot of application as a mid-level character, since even Barrows gloves give no ranged strength.
- (9:46) Salachi armour requires 80 Crafting, 75 Ranged and 70 Defence, and the pirates it drops from are over 70 Sailing.
- (9:46) Salachi armour has a set effect of plus 10 heavy ranged and plus one ranged strength, which Gnomonkey believes means 10 accuracy and one strength but wants Jagex to clarify.
- (10:19) Gnomonkey thinks Salachi armour with a Sunlight hunter crossbow could let players do early Tombs of Amascut without needing a Bow of Faerdhinen, using a rune crossbow for Zebak and the Wardens.
- (10:53) Gnomonkey says Salachi armour with a crossbow could be used for Nex DPS, and for earlier bosses such as the Leviathan and Phantom Muspah without a Bow of Faerdhinen.
- (10:53) Gnomonkey says he could see himself bringing Salachi armour with a Sunlight hunter crossbow or rune crossbow to the Inferno, expecting it to be better there than normal armour.
- (11:43) Gnomonkey worries Salachi armour will be like the Bell's Folly and Griffin rapier situation: a very rare drop gated behind a long grind with little loot on the way, so easier ways around it, like getting Hueycoatl hide, will make it not worth the time.
- (12:15) Gnomonkey says that if the Salachi armour takes about 30 hours to get it is not worth getting, and if it takes about four hours it will be obtained quickly and not be valuable.
- (12:46) Gnomonkey says that if the pirates drop 50 to 100k a kill like a Vorkath loot table, people will kill them for the drops and the armour would be worth nothing, a hard balance when the content gives no XP.
Tormented Demon
- (2:29) Gnomonkey says Tormented Demons are his favourite Slayer monster and more complicated than any Slayer boss, so he does not believe the pirates will be as interesting to fight.
- (13:53) Gnomonkey says Tormented Demons give upwards of 60k Slayer XP an hour, lots of combat XP and incredibly good GP, with demon bane weapons as very useful rare drops.
- (13:53) Gnomonkey does not buy Jagex's comparison of the pirates to Tormented Demons, since the pirates give worse XP and the current Sailing systems cannot support mechanics as engaging.
- (14:20) Gnomonkey says Sailing combat is not engaging and has little depth, so there is not much Jagex can do beyond trading blows with the pirate ship and then hitting the boarding pirates with weapons.
- (14:50) According to Gnomonkey, when Jagex collected Sailing feedback, the main point players gave was that the combat is weak and needs to be changed.
Bosun's bench
- (6:11) The new pirates also drop a hammer that lets players build the bosun's bench facility, which assigns crew to repair the boat with repair packs.
- (6:30) The bosun's bench facility requires 63 Sailing and 54 Construction plus a bunch of supplies, and can be built in any facility slot that a ballistic attractor can be built in.
- (6:50) Gnomonkey is concerned that boats are getting too many facilities to fit, especially after the ballistic attractor, and would rather crewmates repair ships automatically based on something like deck handiness.
- (7:23) According to Gnomonkey, Jagex said on Reddit that it wants to encourage players to have different boats for different purposes, such as a combat ship and a pirate combat ship.
- (7:23) Gnomonkey finds multiple ships for facilities clunky and annoying, particularly when the rewards are as rare as dragon nails and dragon metal sheets.