Summary
- Sailing is Old School RuneScape’s first new skill ever, with customizable boats and multiplayer features.
- The Sailing skill will start with a tutorial quest named Pandemonium and will include new ocean tiles and islands.
- The Alpha launch for the Sailing skill is expected later this month, lasting one week to gather player feedback.
Jagex has released a deep dive into Old School RuneScape‘s Sailing skill, after years of anticipation from players. Sailing is set to become Old School RuneScape’s first-ever new skill, well over a decade after the game’s release.
Sailing has long been a massive meme in the RuneScape community. As early as the late 2000s, players were pitching a potential Sailing skill for the original game, although it never came to fruition. The speculation and community jokes continued into Old School RuneScape, but it wasn’t until March 2023 that Jagex actually pitched it as a possibility to players. The question marks surrounding Sailing had always been about how it would fit into the existing game, with Jagex eventually taking it upon itself to find out. Now, after a couple of years in development, it’s starting to come to fruition.
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After showing a trailer at RuneFest 2025, Jagex released a blog post offering a deep dive into the Sailing skill. The skill will start with an introductory OSRS quest named Pandemonium, serving as a tutorial. Players start off with a raft, and are able to unlock bigger boats as their Sailing level increases. These can be customized in various ways, with tons of facilities available to be built. Multiplayer has been announced, too, although Jagex claims this is “still early in development.” Up to 25 ships will be rendered at a time as players sail the seas.
Old School RuneScape Details Sailing Skill
Speaking of the seas, Jagex is turning all the game’s blue tiles on the world map into Shallow, Open, and Deep Seas, which will serve as a base for the Sailing skill upon launch. Islands are being added to the seas, which in the future will “contain content for existing skills and feed into the reward space for Sailing.” All of this isn’t to mention shipwreck salvaging and sea charting, providing more layers of depth to the upcoming skill. It was a risk for players to vote to add Old School RuneScape‘s first new skill in late 2022, but seeing it in action, it looks like great fun.
Jagex has yet to release an exact timescale for the release of Old School RuneScape‘s Sailing skill. However, as part of the deep dive, it did confirm that the Alpha will launch “later this month,” giving players their first taste of what to expect from Sailing. Not everything will be available for the Alpha, and it is “expected to take approximately 75 minutes to complete, and it will be open for one week.” No specific date has been given for the Alpha release, and Jagex says it will “use the feedback from RuneFest to determine the exact date the Alpha will go live for everyone,” with the skill currently playable in LAN booths at the ongoing fan event.
Free-to-Play
RPG
Adventure
- Released
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January 4, 2001
- ESRB
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t