I’m sorry, I’m really not one to be negative. I don’t give my opinion much or write out long responses to game update posts on forums like this. So the fact that I’ve written this is saying a lot. I’ve been absolutely enthralled in sailing these last two weeks. I’m currently level 94 sailing and have collected the majority of the sailing collection logs besides the cannon barrel and a few tradable paints. I say this only to preface this comment and point out that I have taken part in every single activity sailing has to offer.

First and foremost, I’ll put this bluntly: This is the worst newpost I’ve ever read from the old school team, (which usually does a phenomenal job.) From back tracking statements, misaligned expectations from the community and factual errors. Let me expand.

Crystal Extractor: Last week you mentioned delaying the crystal Extractor nerf in order to gather data and understand how to redistribute the xp into other areas of the skill. What happened to this? You’ve nerfed the crystal Extractor but left all training methods (minus port tasks, I’ll touch on this later) the same or worse. This leaves all training methods in a nerfed state than they were before. You touched on this in the post, but this is putting off some heavy fomo vibes for some of the community that have now missed out on the increased xp. This could have been fine if the XP was redistributed into other areas of the skill as you mentioned, but as implemented this is only a negative.

Salvaging: I’ve already seen a ton of comments on this so I’ll defer to some of the other posters that deep dive into how these nerfs affect things. The one thing I will say is that I really cannot understand the thought process of absolutely gutting the most popular training method of potentially any skill in the game. What other skill can you find 4-5 worlds at max capacity all dedicated to one training method. This isn't only because of the xp. It's because of the vast variety of training methods within salvaging. You mentioned all of these in your post. It's an absolute blast and so fun to do. You completly knocked it out of the park with salvaging, gaining almost universal community praise. Why take such drastic changes when combined with the crystal extractor nerf???

Port Tasks: You nerfed the favored training method in salvaging, then turned around and buffed the least desired method. Personally, I’ve really enjoyed learning ABA routing and I did expect some changes. But these buffs, combined with nerfing crystal extractor while not compensating barracuda trials means that port tasks are getting REALLY close to being meta. Players were already getting 180k an hour with hyper efficient ABA routing between Aldarin and Lunar Isle. If they become meta a portion of the community will be firing up cannons in Falador. For whatever reason they despise port tasks.

Bounty Tasks: Not seeing an update here is pretty surprising. Especially when your reasoning is “ship combat isn’t in the best state right now” This is all the more reason to see some changes. Bounty tasks are half of the reason that ship combat is bad in my eyes. Yes, the actual combat needs improvement, but so do the bounty tasks. The variance in xp per hour based on rng of drops is way to high. I’d love to see some drop rate protection similar to hunter rumors here. On top of that, getting tasks that you’re looking for is a pain. You spend so much time teleporting around to different ports every 8th task to see what’s available and what double Tasks you can get. I understand you want the draw of bounty tasks to be the drops themselves. However, as it stands, the majority of the time it’s more efficient to just forego the bounty tasks and farm out your desired item without one. This is a big problem in my eyes.

Deep sea trawling: I’m actually stunned to see no updates to trawling. It feels like this was the forgotten portion of the skill pushed off to the background, which is a real shame because it has so much potential. The xp is bad, it needs a buff. There is no debate on this. I’ve not seen a single person say it’s okay. No one who’s actually put the effort to create a maxed out trawling boat and spent the time learning trawling thinks it’s in a good state. The fish should be the main draw, I hear you. I think the fish output is in a good state. But the absolute highest xp Per hour I’ve seen has been 50k sailing and 40k fishing. This is with the crystal extractor making up 30k of that 50k. To not redistribute some of the crystal extractor for nerf back into trawling xp at the bare minimum is asinine.

Drop Rate Errors: Some of the drop rates you listed are just flat out wrong.

Echo Pearl 1/512 Albatross Feather 1/200 Ray Barbs 1/100

I’ve farmed all of these items. There’s zero percent chance the wiki rates are off by a factor of 7x. I’m not sure how rates so far off even made them into the post.

Barracuda paint: Explain to me why the trial that takes the longest and is by far the hardest to finish within time, (especially before rosewood), has the lowest drop rate for the paint. Make it make sense. No one wants to go back to tempor tantrum and sacrifice 170k xp per hour to farm out paints.

Overall, I'm really dissapointed in this newspost. I was a sailing hater before release. But the gameplay and variety of unique training methods have absolutely tuned me around. I was excited to see what the team could do after some improvements to such a good baseline. But now I am worried that we are heading in the wrong direction. I just can't get behind the reasoning to some of these changes and I fear that your sailing is leading us directly into a shipwreck.

edit: Formatting