We're planning to launch the Sailing Alpha later this month! Read all about it…

Sailing Alpha

Fresh off the RuneFest presses, we can now announce that the Sailing Alpha will launch later this month!

The Sailing Alpha is a massive, open playtest packed with exciting high-seas adventure. It's a huge milestone for the Old School team, who have been diligently working towards our first new skill ever since you voted on it.

If you’re lucky enough to be at RuneFest, you can swing by the LAN area and give Sailing a try right now – we’re confident that you’ll love what we’ve made so far, although we’re afraid you’ll have to bring your own parrot, eyepatch, etc.

We couldn’t pass up the chance to watch some of you experience Sailing live and in person, so all RuneFest attendees also get exclusive early access to the Sailing Alpha before its official launch later this month. Sit yourself down at a free spot in the LAN area and wait for a J-Mod to help you get set up!

We hope those of you at home aren’t feeling too much FOMO – at the very least, you can rest assured knowing that the Sailing Alpha is just around the corner. Plus, this event will help us to identify immediate improvements before it goes live and make sure it's ship-shape when you try it out.

Some of you may still have questions or concerns about Sailing, and that’s exactly why the Sailing Alpha matters. It’s your chance to get hands-on and experience the skill for yourself. You already know how Sailing looks in blogs or videos, but we want to know how it feels when you're playing it.

We also want to be clear that the Alpha is NOT the final product for Sailing. While there’ll be plenty of features to enjoy, this skill is very much still in development. Features may still be tweaked or completely overhauled, depending on your feedback. We’d appreciate if you’d keep this in mind while you’re playing the Alpha and sending us your feedback.

The Alpha is expected to take approximately 75 minutes to complete, and it will be open for one week. Let's look at exactly what you can expect to try in the Sailing Alpha when it goes live later this month!

If you can't view the video above, click here.

Pandemonium (New Quest)

Learn how to sail a boat, dock, and do more basic gameplay tasks with Pandemonium, an introductory quest for Sailing. You'll also explore the Pandemonium, a new island intended as the home port for your adventures on the high seas.

Start the Quest by speaking to Will and Anne, who can be found on the docks of Port Sarim.

Will and Anne are a pair of salvagers in need of an extra pair of hands on their mighty salvaging vessel. At least, that's how they'd describe it. The truth is a bit more complicated, but we'll let you discover that for yourself...

After completing the quest you’ll receive a Captain’s Log, which you can use to track Port Tasks and other details of life at sea. If you ever lose your Captain's Log, simply right-click the Cargo Hold aboard ship to reclaim it.

Boats

Once you've completed Pandemonium, you'll get your very own Raft. At Level 10 Sailing, you'll be able to buy a Small Boat. In the future, you will unlock bigger boats at higher Sailing levels, however, only the Raft and Small Boat will be available for testing in the Alpha.

You can retrieve, buy and customise your boats by speaking to a Shipwright. A Shipwright can be found on most docks near the Salvaging Station – and you’ll meet one during the Pandemonium quest!

Once you’re on a boat, click the Helm to enter 'Navigation Mode', which will lock you in place.

To get your boat moving, set your sails by clicking them or using the side panel. Your boat will move forwards as long as your sails are set and you can adjust your direction clicking on the sea.

To stop your boat, you can click directly on the sails or use the side panel. You can also adjust your boat's speed through the side panel, if you wish. To move in reverse, right-click on the sail.

Every 30 seconds or so, you will notice a 10-second gust of wind around your sails. This is an opportunity to trim your sails for a nice speed boost and some Sailing XP. The animation will be obvious, so you should have no trouble spotting it! Let us know if you think we could make it even more visible.

If you have a wind-catcher facility installed, you can keep your speed boosts to use at a later time when you'd like to use it. If you don't have one, the speed boost will start instantly.

When you're ready to get off your boat, you can simply navigate your boat to a Port and left-click the gangplank to disembark. If you're picking up a friend at Port, you'll find that left-clicking the buoy will allow you to anchor your boat and wait for them.

Ship Customization

As you gain Sailing levels, you’ll also gain the ability to upgrade your ship. As a result, you’ll be able to weather increasingly dangerous seas.

Since this is just the Alpha, we’re not expecting you to grind for upgrade materials, or even bring the tools you’ll need to build them.

Instead, you’ll be able to obtain all the resources and tools you could possibly need in a handy chest next to the Port Sarim noticeboard. When you’ve got the materials, have a word with Shipwright Sam to start customising!

To upgrade your Keel, Hull, Sail or Helm, you can use the Shipwright's customize-boat option.

To build a new facility on your boat, click on the gangplank at the shipyard to go over to your boat and build hotspots – if you’ve done a bit of Construction, this will seem very familiar! Just as in your Player-owned House, each hotspot has different options, so check them all carefully.

In the Sailing Alpha, buildable facilities include:

• Bronze Salvaging Hook
• Iron Salvaging Hook
• Wind Catcher
• Cargo Hold
• Oak Mast
• Anchor

There are also buildable Cannons in the Sailing Alpha, although you won’t be able to use them as Ship Combat hasn’t yet been implemented.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer features are still early in development, but the Alpha does have something for you to try. You will be able to join your friends' boats and make use of their facilities as you sail together. Just make sure you have the right Sailing level, and you'll be able to sail and salvage shipwrecks while aboard your friends' boats!

We’ve also created a solution for having too many ships crowding your screen. The game will render up to 25 ships at one time, and a new shadow will appear beneath your boat to indicate when a fellow sailor is on top of you.

If you can’t view the video above, click here.

World Map & New Areas

What good would Sailing be if you had no seas to sail on? We’re turning the existing blue tiles of the World Map into something extra special. Shallow, Open, and Deep Seas will be represented on the World Map and in-game. At this time, the changes are purely cosmetic and won’t affect your boat’s speed or ability to sail through them – with the notable exception of the hazardous waters you’ll encounter in Barracuda Trials. In future we plan to add speed-related effects to different types of water, but these will likely only impact larger boats.

Eagle-eyed explorers will notice that the coastline around Menaphos is no longer a big blank hole. While we have every intention of unveiling that great city one day, as the desert storylines progress, that'd be a bit much to bundle into the Sailing project! You'll be welcome to sail around the coastline at a distance, but you won't be able to dock there... for now...

In the final version of Sailing, you’ll be able to explore a vast ocean space filled with new areas to visit – but for now, we’ve blocked out a limited area of the sea for you to explore. Wouldn’t want you getting lost now, would we?

The Pandemonium is a great place to start your adventure, but you can also sail on over to The Great Conch, home of the Tortugans. You’ll want to keep an eye out for other points of interest at sea too, including:

• Last Light
• Charred Island
• The End Island
• Dognose Island

Islands aren’t the main focus of the Sailing Alpha, so this is just a small taste of what they’ll eventually become. In the future, they’ll contain content for existing skills and feed into the reward space for Sailing. Once the Alpha has concluded, you can expect to hear more about all the fantastic places you’ll visit through Sailing, and of course, you’ll have the chance to vote for it all!

Port Tasks

Port Tasks are a lower-intensity training method that will have you Sailing from Port to Port, assisting NPCs with various problems.

Starting a Port Task is simple. Just head to the Notice Board available at most Ports. You'll start off with two slots, and as you level, you’ll gain more. In the Alpha, there are five Ports that you can take tasks from:

• The Pandemonium
• Port Sarim
• Catherby
• Port Khazard
• Ruins of Unkah

You can cancel Port Tasks in the Port Task interface, found in your Captain’s Log.

In our last blog, we mentioned that Port Tasks are repeatable and can change daily.

We designed them this way so that the Tasks would change frequently to keep things fresh, without changing so often that it became frustrating. The intended loop is to plan your route once a day, while the rest of your play session remained consistent.

However, you raised that this approach might limit your desire to play to certain days. We completely agree, so we’ll be revisiting this mechanic after the Sailing Alpha.

For now, you can use a temporary test item called the Portmaster's Watch to magically alter the date.

Shipwreck Salvaging

During your Sailing journey, you'll stumble across shipwrecks. Using a Salvaging Hook, you can retrieve valuable resources and lost treasures from them in a relaxed, laid-back training method.

Salvaging requires astonishingly little effort outside of the initial setup. It’s a great AFK activity while you’re watching TV… or that boring Zoom call. We won’t judge.

To salvage, simply navigate your boat close to a shipwreck. Make sure the sails are down, then exit the tiller and click your Salvaging Hook. There are two salvaging spots in the Alpha, to the east and west of Karamja. If you’re having trouble spotting them, check the World Map!

Salvage goes directly into your Inventory, but you can choose to store it in the Cargo Hold by right-clicking it. The basic Cargo Hold holds up to 20 items, but you can always upgrade it to get more room.

Most ports have their own Salvaging Station where you can sort your Salvage into loot.

Instead of a Light, Heavy and Advanced Hook as mentioned in our previous blogs, we've streamlined the design to now only offer one Salvaging Hook type that scales from Bronze to Dragon. In the Alpha you can upgrade it all the way to Iron!

Sea Charting

As you voyage across the seas of Gielinor, you’ll find plenty of memorable locations, hidden currents, ocean depths, weather patterns, and other phenomena you’ll want to note down in your Captain’s Log.

Sea Charting rewards your natural desire to explore and is the perfect training method for completionists.

We don’t want to spoil all the different things you can find at sea, but in the Alpha, you’ll be able to chart the following starter zone locations:

• Bay of Sarim
• Mudskipper Sound
• The Firth of Lum
• Bedabin Basin
• Rimmington Strait

RuneFest attendees will have a handy 'skip' option in their interface which should get you everything you'll need to start charting. When you're trying this content at home, you can expect a miniquest, 'Prying Times', to provide you with more information about how to use the Crowbar.

Note that most tools will only become available after you’ve built a Cargo Hold, which is also where you’ll be storing them.

Here’s a big list of the items in question:

• Captain's Log: To record and document sea charting. It will also tell you information about where you can chart.
• Spyglass: Observe notable areas.
• Current Duck: Quack – sorry, track - the currents of the sea.
• Crowbar: Pry open crates found at sea and choose whether you want to drink what you find inside.
• Upgraded Diving Apparatus/Helmet: Gather sea depth data after assisting mermaids.
• Anti Rust Tonic: Removes rust from weather stations for the Troll Meteorologist.

For more information, check out our previous blog!

During the NDA playtests, we noticed that some players found the tools unintuitive. For the Sailing Alpha we’ve added ‘Inspect’ options to every tool, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on how you all get on. In future, we may look to tutorialise Sea Charting through additional miniquests. Please do let us know how it feels to play!

Barracuda Trial: The Tempor Tantrum

The Tempor Tantrum is Sailing's first Barracuda Trial.

This fast-paced, active training method will see you push the limits of your navigation skills across a series of trials. You’ll need to navigate obstacles and complete challenges as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Each Barracuda Trial has its own Trial Master, a seasoned Barracuda who functions as the starting point and ‘Record Holder’ for the trial. Beating their time will reward you with a one-time, Sailing-related reward. Each completion, regardless of your time, will award Sailing XP.

Initially we planned for Barracuda Trials to be instanced, but during development we realised that this activity functions perfectly well in the existing game world – and we think that’s a lot more interesting!

The Tempor Tantrum is our first Barracuda Trial, aimed at players with level 30 Sailing or above.

Sail towards the coast of Tempoross Cove, where the titular titan is raging. The Barracudas are challenging fledgling sailors to ferry shipments destined for The Pandemonium through the storm. Trial Master Rum-Dashed Ralph has all the information you need!

You’ll need to ferry shipments back and forth three times. On the way, you can also pick up lost supplies, which will add to your total score at the end.

Use the blue rapids to gain a speed boost. The more you speed over, the faster your boat will be, and the quicker you can complete the trial.

You can use a Raft or a Small Boat for this first trial, but we recommend the latter, as it can be upgraded to avoid damage from the storm and has a faster top speed. Good luck… you’ll need it!

Ranks

We haven’t added rewards to the Sailing Alpha, but you can flex your achievements by earning the top ranks in Barracuda Trials.

Ranks are earned by completing the Trial in under five minutes. The ‘Swordfish’ rank is analogous to ‘Bronze’, and requires a total of 14 lost supplies. Shark rank is the next highest and requires 25 lost supplies. Marlin is the top rank, and you’ll need all 36 lost supplies to get it.

The ranking system may change based on your feedback, so be sure to let us know how it feels!

We’ll use the feedback from RuneFest to determine the exact date the Alpha will go live for everyone. Although we’ve all been working hard to get it ship-shape, there’s always the chance that things don’t go quite according to plan. If anything indicates we should delay the Sailing Alpha, you’ll be the first to know!

When the Sailing Alpha does go live, we’ll have an in-game survey to collect feedback. We really encourage all of you to fill it out, as it will be the best way to have your voice heard by the development team.

We’ll also post an Alpha blog and update it periodically with any planned changes to the Alpha build. Keep in mind that most of your feedback will be actioned for our next playtest, rather than being added to the Alpha itself.

We hope you’re excited to get your hands on primary gameplay, the navigation system, and all the other Sailing activities we’ve discussed today! Remember, this is just a small taste of what’s to come. In future tests, you can look forward to Ship Combat, Crewmates, islands and more!

We can’t wait to see you finally enjoying Sailing, after so much work in refinement and consultation. If you’re at home this weekend, rest assured that you don’t have much longer to wait – and if you’re at RuneFest, set sail to the LAN area to give Sailing a go right now!

You can also discuss this update on the 2007Scape subreddit, the Steam forums, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel. For more info on the above content, check out the official Old School Wiki.

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