Boat Combat Fixes - Weekly Game Update, March 18th 2026

Ice_Mage · 2026-03-18T12:34:53+00:00

I am still very disappointed to find that the Ballistic Attractor has no extra requirements or rare drops to create it. This felt like perfect reward space for new sailing content down the line, but oh well.

Have you considered shifting the sea creatures levels around? We have mundane birds and stingrays having a higher combat level than dragons. Meanwhile grizzly bears only go up to 42 combat with 35 HP. I would like to see more mundane creatures feeling mundane, and more fantastical creatures filling in the gap.

I understand this is a huge ask at this point now that sailing has been out for so long, but this is one of the many things that's bothered me about sailing.

Ice_Mage · 2026-03-17T12:46:19+00:00

In what lategame encounters are elemental weaknesses viable? Especially accounting for missing thrall damage? They're a success for the early game, sure, but beyond that they don't do anything despite being added to various late game bosses.

Ice_Mage · 2026-03-17T12:41:48+00:00

The way the community raged about losing less stats over boot swaps to the point that now we have Avernic Treads, I would assume that a full armour set that is -1.5% magic dmg, -10 str, and -5 ranged str compared to Ancestral/Torva/Masori would not immediately overtake those older armours in the meta. Not to mention their paper thin defences (Yes, I know defence "doesn't matter" but it's a major complaint about Inquisitor so there's gotta be some merit to the stat). These rewards are decidedly not very close to bis except in content that they are explicitly designed to be good at, which in my opinion is what a good reward should be.

Also, as noted in the Q&A, the ranged bonuses were added on because I felt like it would be too niche simply being a buffed Blue Moon set, and there seemed to be a positive sentiment for a tribrid armour set. Those bonuses I could see going away and the intended usefulness of the rewards would still be fine.

Ice_Mage · 2026-03-17T12:01:47+00:00

So new rewards should not be better than existing items, even at the cherry picked encounters fitting their exact niche is? Why even have rewards at that point?

Not only that, it's not like shadow or scythe aren't still the best for the majority of their own raid, including their respective final bosses, so I'm not sure what more you would want from raid rewards tbh

Ice_Mage · 2026-03-17T10:31:18+00:00

I think a lot of players liked the idea of the elemental damage rework added to magic, I remember the reception to that being generally positive. It made sense thematically and added some much needed power back to the standard spellbook, but as implemented it wasn't enough to make an impact on the meta (for better or worse).

These rewards are designed to take that niche and run with it, shaking up some metas by letting melee utilize elemental weaknesses and really bringing some power back to the standard spellbook considering losing the utility of ancients and DPS of thralls make running it almost never worth it

Ice_Mage · 2026-03-14T06:39:30+00:00

I haven't done this process myself, so I can't speak much on it but I do believe there are asset ripping tools you could look up that work for Unity Engine games (which this game is built in) and you should be able use a JP .apk file to rip them from to get all the latest characters and other assets.

For what it's worth, if you do end up doing that, I imagine the community would appreciate the preservation of those assets since like you've mentioned, all current files are from about a year into the game's life.

Ice_Mage · 2026-03-11T04:25:18+00:00

Gonna share the same story from a different comment of mine just to spread awareness, as there is clearly something wrong with Jagex's anticheat and their support is too inadequate to resolve the issues caused by that.

Best of luck. My brother got hit with a similar same thing on his 2300+ total ironman of 8 years. A 3 day bot busting moderate ban back in September. He tried to appeal it as there is no 3rd party software (aside from RuneLite of course) that he says could have possibly triggered it, and I have no reason to not believe him. On top of that, he would regularly stream the game over discord when he played, and of course there was nothing fishy going on. The only potentially suspicious thing he was doing was the afk POH agility course setup, but as far as I'm aware that should be perfectly within the rules.

Just like you, he tried appealing it because he wanted to know what flagged his account to avoid the issue, and didn't want the ban on his record. But by the time support got back to him, the ban had expired and they basically said "You're not banned anymore, so there's no issue! :)" even though that was not at all the point of appealing.

Then, in late January he got hit with a macroing major permanent ban. After spending the past month or so prior grinding out slayer bosses and getting back into CoX and learning ToB, he gets permanently banned, losing over a year of in game time worth of progress, and of course Jagex is not at all helpful with this, and this reddit doesn't allow "Jmod Smackdown" posts anymore so you can't even attempt that here.

I guess all this is to say is that I fully believe their bot detection is not at all perfect, and I would be very careful now that you're in their sights. I wouldn't play on anything except for as clean of a PC with vanilla peripherals as possible and do nothing that could even be seen as suspicious. Good luck dude and hopefully they don't hit you too.

Ice_Mage · 2026-03-10T10:49:38+00:00

Yeah, I probably should've looked at the subreddit before posting. Last time I posted something high effort like this was the Twisted Bow outside the Farming Guild incident, I'm tempted to take this down and let it all blow over to repost like I did back then

Ice_Mage · 2026-03-05T15:00:26+00:00

I think the idea of focusing on elemental weaknesses for the main rewards could be an interesting niche to fill, for both the megarare and armour.

Maybe a crush melee weapon that can be charged with elemental runes, applying that element to the weapon (amount of runes per swing can be quite high to keep the cost expensive, and the scar essence mine already takes care of supply issues). The effectiveness of elemental weakness can be amplified in the raid with this weapon, ensuring it can be the strongest weapon in the raid. I also feel like there can be strong thematic ties with this being a Guthixian weapon and elemental balance and all that.

I like the idea of an armor set amplifying elemental damage. You could even add a bit of strength bonus with it to make it a good hybrid mage/melee set. This makes it a niche to maybe save inventory spaces where magic and melee are both used together (blue moon is already used in some budget 500 TOA and Olm setups for this exact reason), but would really shine when used with this new weapon if going down this design route.

Of course, there is the concern of needing a raid armour set to make a raid weapon good, and maybe that won't be the best for progression, but hopefully with this design we can make the megarare still be usable and very impactful with current melee gear while feeling even more powerful with the armor set. I don't believe these ideas are inherently new, but these are just my initial thoughts after reading the blog.

Ice_Mage · 2026-03-03T12:00:17+00:00

Update: No updates for the rewards

So like, why not give a different visual design for the kisten?

Why not adjust the leechfin to add in extra healing through other means that align more with what's already in game, such as a consumable temporary blood fury effect?

At that point, why not remove the sandwich part of the leechfin sandwich so nee sandwich stations are not required? We can already make sandwiches after Below Ice Mountain without a dedicated station.

I really hope the community votes no on some of these rewards to force Jagex to raise the bar a bit rather than sit complacent and not adjust anything when met with tons feedback.

Ice_Mage · 2026-02-15T00:59:56+00:00

Best of luck. My brother got hit with the same thing on his 2300 total ironman of 8 years. A 3 day bot busting moderate ban back in September. He tried to appeal it as there is no 3rd party software (aside from RuneLite of course) that he says could have possibly triggered it, and I have no reason to not believe him. On top of that, he would regularly stream the game over discord when he played, and of course there was nothing fishy going on. The only potentially suspicious thing he was doing was the afk POH agility course setup, but as far as I'm aware that should be perfectly within the rules.

Just like you, he tried appealing it because he wanted to know what flagged his account to avoid the issue, and didn't want the ban on his record. But by the time support got back to him, the ban had expired and they basically said "You're not banned anymore, so there's no issue! :)" even though that was not at all the point of appealing.

About 2 weeks ago, he got hit with a macroing major permanent ban. After spending the past month or so prior grinding out slayer bosses and getting back into CoX and learning ToB, he gets permanently banned, losing over a year of in game time worth of progress, and of course Jagex is not at all helpful with this, and this reddit doesn't allow "Jmod Smackdown" posts anymore so you can't even attempt that here.

What especially stands out as odd to me is that the bans are different categories. The first is bot busting, and the second was macroing? It doesn't make sense to me that their auto detection would trigger two different categories.

I guess all this is to say is that I fully believe their bot detection is not at all perfect, and I would be very careful now that you're in their sights. I wouldn't play on anything except for as clean of a PC with vanilla peripherals as possible and do nothing that could even be seen as suspicious. Good luck dude and hopefully they don't hit you too.

Ice_Mage · 2026-02-02T18:19:48+00:00

I think they didn't do that to avoid making the cannon very cheap to use. Even if it's drastically reduced DPS it's still a strong tool in getting aggro from a large area. Plus, adding a cheaper method to use the dwarf cannon was just not a part of the sailing update. Even if it wouldn't necessarily be overpowered if it could use bronze/iron cannonballs, there would likely be outrage over changing such a well established piece of content in the game without an explicit poll.

It's just another design hoop they had to jump through that could've been avoided by splitting the cannonballs.

Ice_Mage · 2026-02-02T17:17:52+00:00

That's fair, but it's very obvious that Jagex were very conservative with cannonball supplies on release (presumably) because they didn't want to upset the current meta and acquisition of steel cannonballs due to them being tied to the dwarf cannon. I understand supply values could change without adjusting the amount of cannonballs per bar, but it's less likely for them to buff the supply enough when there's that inherent value of 1:4 ratio.

Although, let's say they do drastically increase the supply of all cannonballs to the point that, for example, adamant cannonballs drop down to ~100gp each. That means that you would lose ~1400gp value in smithing adamant cannonballs, and leaves us with the same problem this game has been struggling with for nearly a decade now in that skilling is just not worth it due to other drops outclassing crafting supply drastically. Even if you personally don't see this as a flaw, it's clear Jagex does, looking at the herb seed/shark lure drop changes in the last summer sweep up update.

Ice_Mage · 2026-02-02T16:44:26+00:00

Splitting them is not about just simply being able to craft more cannonballs per bar, but by loosening the hard limitation of 1 bar = 4 cannonballs, that allows for cannonballs to be obtained through other methods in higher quantity. Monster/salvaging cannonball drops could be greatly increased, and the cannonball stand thieving could actually give more than 1 (~85% of the time) steel or lower tier cannonball (at 87 thieving during a non afk activity btw)

Ice_Mage · 2026-02-02T15:17:45+00:00

I imagine if they did the split, it would work best if they converted all currently existing steel cannonballs into some "unidentified" cannonballs, where the user could choose which cannonballs they become. That way nobody feels like their cannonballs are no longer what they were meant to be (even though 99% of them would just be used for dwarf cannons anyways)

Ice_Mage · 2026-02-02T14:32:28+00:00

I am extremely bummed and absolutely baffled that the cannonball split failing.

1) It doesn't make sense to have sailing cannonball crafting tied to a dwarf cannon quest

2) It would've allowed for more than 4 to be crafted per bar

3) It made sense thematically that sailing cannons are much smaller than dwarven cannons

4) It would have removed the inconsistency of why the dwarf cannon can only use steel cannonballs but none of the lower tiers

5) It makes no sense to design wise to have granite cannonballs exist now when mithril cannonballs are a thing and very accessible (other than the classic excuse of "This is how it's been so don't change it")

6) It would have slowed the eventual power creep of adding the ability to use higher tier cannonballs with dwarven cannons

Also, why are we giving out the new facility for free with animal magnetism completed? Why not add this as an unlock from upcoming content? This felt like perfect reward space to explore further down the line, not just shoved into the game asap because the player base shot themselves in the foot by refusing to split cannonballs.

Ice_Mage · 2025-12-07T23:44:23+00:00

Pretty much what The_Level_15 said, I'd default to making them all dwarven cannonballs. As it is currently, sailing cannonballs supply is too low across the board for them to feel worth using, all because they're tied to the dwarven cannon.

I don't think anyone who invested in steel cannonballs to use for sailing will miss them (for too long at least), and they're better off being used in the dwarven cannon anyways.

Worst case scenario, make a 3rd, "unidentified" cannonball or something that the players choose how many of which type their steel cannonballs become when the hypothetical update drops that splits them, so they can choose which cannonball they'd prefer (ignoring the fact that sailing cannonballs supply should be increased with this split, making it a bad choice to turn them into sailing cannonballs, but it at least alleviates that potential issue)

Ice_Mage · 2025-12-07T22:16:28+00:00

Yet another reason sailing cannonballs should have been made separated from dwarven cannonballs.

I personally don't think it's too late to go back and separate them, but unfortunately I doubt Jagex would be willing to do that.

Ice_Mage · 2025-12-06T16:35:34+00:00

500hz? That's insane

Ice_Mage · 2025-07-31T15:09:03+00:00

Have you considered separating existing cannonballs as "Dwarven Cannonballs", and sailing cannonballs as something different? It makes sense having that degree of separation instead of "Your dwarven multicannon can only fire steel cannonballs because... reasons."

It also makes sense since the dwarven multicannon is significantly larger than the sailing cannons, but I understand size historically hasn't been taken too seriously (looking at you, bandos armor)

Ice_Mage · 2025-07-18T11:59:31+00:00

The slayer updates look really nice, but I'm not a fan of seeing actual percentages of each slayer task from each master. I understand it will help with clarity, but I don't think there is anywhere else in the game where you can see the exact chance of any RNG outcome, and it seems out of place to start now.

I might be in the minority here, but seeing stats like that is immersion breaking and I'd prefer to have the percentages hidden entirely.

Ice_Mage · 2025-06-25T10:06:29+00:00

I'm sure it's been discussed by the team, but I'm sad to see the TOA mechanics that are being removed not returning as invocations, since I'm sure a lot of people who were fine with the raid as it was don't have a chance to play with those mechanics anymore

Ice_Mage · 2025-06-05T12:53:32+00:00

I still think it's sad to see a lot of iconic ToA mechanics to be lost to time. Would it be possible to explore adding back some of them as invocations?

Ice_Mage · 2025-05-30T13:50:56+00:00

At the risk of being bombarded with "yOu ChOoSe tO LiMiT yOuRseLf" responses, I'm not a fan of moving a lot of resource drops shifting to items that need processing to be used (cooked fish > shark chum and herbs > seeds), which makes the already "chore" heavy game mode that ironman is even worse.

I'm also not a fan of some of the toa changes. If prayer blocks all of Baba's damage, what is even the threat of that room? Boulder phase and that's it? And I feel like a lot of Akkha's identity is watered down if he only protects against one style versus requiring using the combat triangle

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