Runescape Roundup: Behind the Scenes of Sailing: Volume 1

Ahoy there, and welcome to our Behind the Scenes blog on Sailing, a brand-new skill for Old School RuneScape.


It’s been some time since the community voted for a new skill back in 2022. At that time, the new skill team consisted of Mod Elena, Mod Husky, Mod Light, Mod Gecko, Mod Errol, Mod Jerv, Mod Grub, and Mod Curse, with support from Mod Ayiza and Mod Kieren. After months of player surveys and consultations, we presented our refined ideas at the 2023 Summer Summit, asking if we should lock in Sailing as our first new skill. Hundreds of thousands of votes later, we started work on Old School’s biggest project yet.


Until now, we’ve aimed to only share Sailing updates when everything feels perfectly polished. However, we’ve realised that you’re missing out on some of the most fun parts of the journey – even if they don’t look perfect just yet. Your feedback has been invaluable so far, so we want to bring you back on board as we sail through the treacherous waters of development to help guide Sailing safely to shore.


Today, we’ll be talking about how boats navigate from a technical perspective, path-finding algorithms, and movement styles. Next, we’ll go through the feedback from our Sailing Closed Tech Alpha, and our plans moving forward. Finally, we’ll give you an update on our Open Tech Alpha coming next year.


If you’re not ready for a long voyage through Sailing’s development so far, you can see the highlights right here. We highly encourage having a read through the whole blog, though – that’s where all the juicy detail is!