Hi all,
On 19 November 2025, Oldschool RS released perhaps its biggest update; the introduction of a 24th skill called Sailing.
Since its release, we've been hard at work figuring out the ins and outs of the skill to bring it to Alora as quickly as possible.
And now, after many months of hard work we have made substantial progress and are excited to showcase some of the content as we head into the final stage of development.
Without further ado, lets hoist our sails and navigate our way through some of the things we've been working on and what you can expect on release.
Starting off
To start, head to Port Sarim and speak to Shipwright Sam in order to buy your first boat. As a beginner, you will only be able to buy a raft. The other two boats have different Sailing level requirements to use. Players will start with a wooden raft by default upon release.
Boat Customization
Once you have obtained your boat, you can speak to Shipwright Sam about customizing a boat. He will send you to the Shipyard where you can upgrade various features on your boat such as the hull, sails and helm. There are also facility hotspots on each boat type, with the Raft having 1 hotspot, the Skiff having 7 hotspots, and the Sloop having 11 hotspots. Each hotspot will allow players to build a specific set of facilities in that spot.
These upgrades are locked behind sailing and construction requirements and considerably improve your boat. Lost Schematics have also been implemented in the game, which will lock various upgrades to the boat and facilities behind treasure hunts, requiring players to visit islands and discover schematics to build them.
Setting sail
Once you are happy with your boat, head back to Port Sarim through the Shipyard Portal and make your way to the southeast dock and board your boat using the gangplank.
In the Combat Options tab, you'll see a sailing options button. In this tab you are able to control your boat, read stats regarding your boat, and find information about the crew.
Shipwreck Salvaging
Shipwreck Salvaging is a low-intensity activity that requires you to deploy your salvaging hook at a shipwreck site. This activity rewards you with small amounts of experience and salvage which can be sorted at a salvaging station for some loot. Salvage and other sailing related items can be stored in the cargo hold.
Death and Capsizing
Each boat has a hitpoint counter which can be increased by upgrading the hull. If you happen to find yourself in trouble out in the sea and your boat hits 0 hitpoints, it will capsize and you will be sent back to Port Sarim.
To retrieve the boat, speak to Shipwright Sam.
Technical Hurdles
A large portion of our time so far has been invested in making necessary changes to both the server and client. Without getting too technical, this primarily involved retrofitting the client to support rendering smaller scenes (boats) on top of the existing game scene, while correctly handling player and NPC visibility, movement, and interactions. This was by far the most difficult hurdle to overcome for a project like Sailing. It required a massive client overhaul, a complete rewrite of server-side player updating, and the addition of a brand-new updater to handle boat visibility and movement. Furthermore, Sailing relies on a depth buffer for rendering. Because the client was originally designed to render the game without one, this required significant behind-the-scenes work. Fortunately, this new depth buffer implementation is also responsible for the large FPS boosts recently seen in the GPU plugin, and we plan to bring these improvements to the 117 HD plugin in the near future.
What's next?
Some of you may be thinking, "What are you waiting for then? Release it, cowards!", however there is still a lot to be done before we're ready to release the new skill. While we're happy with how everything visually looks, as well as the movement of ships, there are still a few milestones that are either in progress or need to be completed before we can release sailing. In all likelihood, this will come in a 2-part release, with the first part opening up access to all the new islands, salvaging, port tasks, and hopefully a few other things.
What's done:
-Boarding a boat and taking control of it (basic movement)
-Trimming sails for a speed boost
-Boat capsizing mechanics
-Sea hazards
-Boat upgrading
-Facilities upgrading/customization
-Lost Schematics
-Docking and Mooring
-Boat Recovery/Purchase
-Cargo Hold Functionality
-Boarding another player's ship
-Assigning another player as a navigator
-Salvaging
-Depth buffer support for various graphics modes, such as LD/GPU/117HD
-Crab trapping
What's currently in progress:
-Populating islands with NPC spawns and functionality
-Native HD support
What needs to be done:
-Mobile client depth-buffer support
-Barracuda trials
-Deep sea trawling
-Bounty tasks
-Courier tasks
-Charting
-NPC crew management
-Ocean encounters
-Sailing combat
-Functionality for many boat facilities
-Shellbane Gryphon
-Etc...
As you can see, there's still a lot to be done, but the progress is moving fast, and we look forward to keeping you updating along the way as things progress!
We're hoping to share more details on the release soon, and we hope you're as excited as we are to experience it!
Kind regards,
Alora Team
SAILING INC!
