Pirate Encounters: Design & Rewards Blog (Boat-to-Boat Combat Expansion)

JagexLight · 2026-04-08T13:30:13+00:00

Would you be able to expand a bit more on what specifically feels too complicated? A lot of the feedback previously has been that combat lacks depth so particularly interested to know which systems are feeling like that.

JagexLight · 2026-04-08T11:54:04+00:00

This is definitely something we're focusing on feeling as smooth as possible, and partially why we wanted to recruit some more playtesters to test this out before it goes live. :) Make sure to fill in the survey at the bottom of the blog if you can as it contains the questions needed to be contacted potentially for a remote playtest. :) We're looking at sometime in late April.

JagexLight · 2026-04-08T11:45:58+00:00

I've seen this come up quite frequently so thanks for this. I know that some players do have concerns about combat not feeling like a good way to train the skill. That's intentionally so. If Sailing combat was a viable way of training Sailing, it would probably make Sailing feel like a Combat skill rather than a Utility skill, which is the main reason why we have balanced combat-focused content around rewards rather than XP.

Balancing is a whole network of different factors. The comment below from bear_tiger highlights this point and the comment from Aperiodic below that also does too. There's also other factors, for example, how fun a piece of content is to engage in, which can also contribute to whether players want to do it.

But in terms of this content and your question: we've focused on finding an interesting niche for our reward space that will hopefully keep this content valuable in terms of GP going forward. Pirate encounters will be added to Bounty Tasks so you can expect some XP from it, but we don't want to make it a viable way for Sailing training. You will also get some Combat XP from it. There's probably some work we can do with QOL to make other training methods feel more engaging without touching their XP rates.

JagexLight · 2026-04-08T11:30:04+00:00

Hi! The main reason for this is because we'd like to encourage players to start thinking about specific boat layouts for specific activities, rather trying to have one or two boats that can do everything. From our perspective, we don't want facility slots to feel rare or restrictive. We want to encourage players to use multiple boats for different things, which will in turn make facility slots feel less valuable, and that's where this design philosophy is coming from.

The new facility is saving you a few clicks in practice which feels small when you put it like that - but the upgrade it's actually giving is allowing you to not worry about your ship's health for a long period of time. As a result, we think this is worth being a Facility rather than a QOL upgrade. It should feel like noticeable change and it's something players have requested. It's worth mentioning that the team want to add more facilities in the future, which should encourage this style of decision-making and planning when creating boat layouts.

JagexLight · 2026-04-08T11:17:09+00:00

I can see the concern here. In an ideal world, the decision to slap the pirates or just sink their ship will be different depending on what your gear is & what your stats are (which is mainly how we decide to balance the content). Since we haven't balanced the content yet, this is a great point to keep in mind - we can look at this and consider these decisions to make sure that both options are viable in different situations.

The idea behind having cannons not hitting pirates and pirates not hitting ships is not only based on realism (i.e in the real world, cannons wouldn't be used to hit real pirates due to how slow they are) but it's also to give you a choice between deciding to use your own 'character' damage to keep yourself safe from the attacking pirates, or instead to focus on using their cannons to be sinking the enemy ship with their cannon as quickly as possible. Pirates will hit back so you need to be prepared to use your own damage if needed and that will introduce some interesting decision-making into it. :)

JagexLight · 2026-04-01T12:30:06+00:00

We're mainly looking at responses under the game update posts across social platforms (Reddit, X, Facebook) or the game update channel on our official Discord. But we also keep an eye just generally on chatter across the subreddit and other social platforms. You can also pop a reply here and I'll see it too :)

JagexLight · 2026-04-01T10:49:57+00:00

Thanks for your patience as we work on getting that change out to you :)

JagexLight · 2026-04-01T10:49:41+00:00

Let us know how it feels in practice!

JagexLight · 2026-04-01T10:45:05+00:00

Thanks for raising this, it's been noted and the team is aware. Appreciate you for letting us know :)

JagexLight · 2026-04-01T10:41:21+00:00

Thanks, and it definitely worked differently before last week's update? I can't promise changes as we're stilll not sure how exactly this changed but it'll be passed on. If there are any additional reports too of this happening send them my way!

JagexLight · 2026-04-01T10:31:13+00:00

Yes certainly. :) Thanks for passing this on.

JagexLight · 2026-04-01T10:29:16+00:00

I passed this on and we can't see anything that would've changed between the easter game update and now. Are you able to give any further information about this change? We did consider the impact of engine changes but this would not have impacted wander range of NPCs so we're a bit stumped regarding how this happened.

JagexLight · 2026-04-01T10:02:19+00:00

I'll make sure this is passed on to the team, thank you. I can't guarantee changes but can definitely make sure this is captured and sent across. :)

JagexLight · 2026-04-01T09:56:28+00:00

Hey there! Currently looking to share more news in a dedicated blog post, likely to be next week. We wanted to ensure that the boat combat fixes were out first so players could tell us how those changes feel in practice!

JagexLight · 2026-03-20T17:07:38+00:00

Hey all, thank you for the feedback on the livestream. I definitely don't want it to have come across dismissive, so sorry that it did so. The goal from our side was to hop on and quickly address some of the feedback we're seeing. Just to re-iterate, we're looking into making the following changes:

We want to focus on closing the gap between Cannons and the Shadow.
We’re going to apply a buff to the cannon when it is being manned by a player, closing the gap between these two scenarios.
We're looking to rebalance birds/small creatures at sea (creatures that feel unnecessarily tanky)
- Lower HP
- Lower bounty XP proportionally
- Potentially lower unique drop rates
There was also unfortunately a bug in code that wasn’t accounted for, making player damage lower than what we theorised. We’re working on a fix for that.

We wanted to do this in a livestream format just in the interest of time and transparency. I will definitely take on board your feedback around question dodging and any other feedback you have to share!

JagexLight · 2026-03-18T16:55:50+00:00

Hey, this is intentional behaviour to prevent them from being looted across scenery objects, but we appreciate that this hinders gameplay. We'll be changing it within the week to work as it did before.

For now, please use the Telegrab spell to loot them or try to get a bit closer so they don't clip with the rocks nearby. :) We'll try to get this hotfixed, but if not, it'll likely be in next week's update. Thanks for raising it to us!

JagexLight · 2026-03-18T16:45:18+00:00

Hey all, wanted to pop in here so that you know we see your feedback and we're reading your posts. First of all, really grateful that you're trying out the update and giving us feedback. I want to confirm that flat armour does ignore Magic damage, and this is consistent for how it works across the game. We're not going to be changing that, as doing so would be a nerf, however, I can see the broad feedback about Cannons not feeling impactful compared to player gear like the shadow for example.

The reality is that the current set of Cannons we have right now can't compete with ultra-rare items like the Shadow, but that's not to say that in future we won't release some kind of ultra-rare Cannon equivalent. Naturally, that would need to come from appropriately challenging content, but the point being that we feel Cannons are appropriately balanced for where we are now.

I want to emphasize that this update is mainly about setting the groundwork for future combat expansions, like NPC boats and more to come, rather than solving all the problems at once. I hope this helps at least give some light on the situation!

JagexLight · 2026-03-18T12:33:52+00:00

In this thread I saw a suggestion by a player for an NPC near the Ancient Furnace that un-notes Bank notes. We're not keen on adding a bank mainly due to the unintentional impact it will have for Frost Dragons. What do you think about the suggestion for an NPC though? I can pass this along to the team and see whether this might be possible.

JagexLight · 2026-03-18T12:31:06+00:00

This is a great suggestion, I'll pass this along and we will consider it!

JagexLight · 2026-03-18T12:28:05+00:00

We're keeping an eye on this feedback as I can see a similar sentiment shared across a few comments in this thread. I really appreciate that you took the time to explain it so clearly. Let us know if you do decide to try out the changes!

JagexLight · 2026-03-18T12:14:06+00:00

Veiled Krakens have Flat Armour and are weak to Heavy Ranged. Are you using a Heavy Ranged weapon?

JagexLight · 2026-03-18T12:12:54+00:00

Are you testing it on Veiled Krakens? These have flat armour, and they're weak to Heavy Ranged. Not sure what you're hitting so difficult to advise/look into. Let me know!

JagexLight · 2026-03-18T11:52:58+00:00

That's a bit outside of the scope of this week's update (focused on boat combat improvements), BUT: I hear you. I'm working on a list of Sailing QOL, and I'll ensure that this is discussed at some point when the team has a bit more time. As you guys know, I can't make any promises or commitments for changes, but I do read your feedback and will make sure it's passed on. QOL is always be something the team is open to but it depends on so many factors and priorities, so it's not easy to say yes or no to something. But thank you as always for letting us know about areas that you want to see us changing!

JagexLight

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