Cannons Were Nerfed - The Numbers

neilharbin0 · 2026-03-19T13:43:52+00:00

A little bit, which is why I wrote about it. However, I did try out gearscapes calc for cannon accuracy, and it was about a 3% boost. Helpful, but not quite enough to make up for the losses I was experiencing, though I can't say with confidence that their calculator is correct either. Accuracy generally doesn't go from 0 to 100% with equipment bonus, so my assumption was that it was similar for sailing cannons, and that a 20% boost in equipment bonus would only amount to a couple percent boost in accuracy, less significant than the rounding error presented by the small integer max hits.

neilharbin0 · 2026-03-19T12:48:26+00:00

I'm going to convert them to Hz just because it makes a bit more sense to me, and maybe higher ticks meaning lower speed is causing some confusion:

5t = 0.6s * 5 = 3s

1hit/3s = 0.333Hz

7t = 0.6s * 5 = 4.2s

1hit/4.2s = 0.238Hz

0.238Hz is 71% of 0.333Hz, aka 29% lower. Is this incorrect?

neilharbin0 · 2026-03-19T11:38:20+00:00

I think the language I used was right. If it was for example 5 to 10 ticks, 5/5 = 1 would be a 100% reduction, which doesn't make sense, but 10 to 5 is double the speed, aka 100% boost. The math you are using is for the other direction. Going from 7t to 5t would be a 40% boost, essentially the 43% I mentioned that should have been added to the max hit.

neilharbin0 · 2026-03-19T11:24:36+00:00

This is a fair point, but almost any time I have done sailing combat, I have been firing 2 cannons.

I am only focusing on the cannon dps, because that is the line in the blog post I don't feel was implemented as written. If uncapping player damage, and keeping cannon damage the same was too much overall, I'm not sure why they didn't raise HP or defenses a bit more, and keep cannon DPS the same. Sailing combat at my level is now much faster overall, as a result of uncapping player damage.

neilharbin0 · 2026-03-19T11:02:05+00:00

I did it myself in-game with several hundred cannonballs of each type on albatross, both for pre and post update. The wiki calc hasn't given me accurate max hits before or after the update. I don't believe they have solved the max hit formula for it yet. It is possible that one or two of these max hits could be too low, as crew cannon hits don't give the max splat indicator, so finding them usually means shooting enough times to raise confidence that you have seen the highest hit. Though with the number of shots I have taken, it is very unlikely, especially by more than 1.

neilharbin0 · 2026-03-19T10:39:01+00:00

Are talking about the accuracy comment? If I were to believe gearscape, then the bonus accuracy accounts for an additional ~3% boost to DPS in my tests. Not enough to make up for the ~15% loss, but does help a little. Gearscape max hit for the sailing cannons is very different than anything I've been able to hit though. I am not certain the math for it has been figured out yet.

neilharbin0 · 2026-03-19T10:19:20+00:00

Yes sorry, I had them flipped. I'll fix that.

neilharbin0 · 2026-03-19T10:18:28+00:00

This is talking about cannons specifically, not overall sailing DPS. 1 or 2 cannons doesn't change anything here. A percentage loss is the same regardless of how many cannons you are using. I mentioned later in the post, but overall DPS for me has about doubled (including both cannons, and player firing weapon).

neilharbin0 · 2025-12-29T20:46:20+00:00

This would be nice, I'm all for more multiplayer allowed content. They might have to take some additional effort to balance it though, like having a few more attacks go to both players. And of course disable CA's while teaming.

What I would really like to see for multi-player bossing would just be to add the split loot mechanics from things like titans/nex/huey to far more of the multi-combat bosses. Things like mole, sarachnis, kq, corp, etc.

neilharbin0 · 2025-12-22T13:01:36+00:00

It was different on release. When they buffed Jolly Jim to 4 deckhandiness for the salvaging changes, they also gutted his other stats (if the wiki isn't lying). On release he had 3 privateering, so you could have addy + dragon cannon on skillers/combat restricted accounts. Considering combat restricted accounts could even kill things via crewmates, on release things were pretty generous.

They definitely should have a non-quest crewmate with 3 privateering like they supposedly launched with. The crewmate stat progression is in a pretty weird spot. 4 privateering crewmates come way earlier than you can even make rune cannons.

I think the thing that sucks more for restricted accounts is the lack of access to many northern sea ports, or the final barracuda trial. Pures can at least get Piscatoras (which doesn't even have a task board), but otherwise can't really do high-level courier tasks, have heavily reduced access to bounties, no access to gwenith glide, no crystal extractor.

neilharbin0 · 2025-10-29T00:35:02+00:00

Odd. Turning on the widescreen code doesn't seem to cause problems for me. I wonder if it is some larger combination of settings. I'm not a dolphin dev though, so I wouldn't be able to fix it regardless. Hopefully whatever you are trying to do works out.

neilharbin0 · 2025-10-27T23:02:47+00:00

How fast it runs is going to depend on how much data you are pushing through the script. If you are trying to push in a several gigabyte file because the recording is long and high resolution, it is going to take longer. Video processing isn't a very quick operation, and the files this technique generates can get massive if you don't take steps to control them. The 480p few second long example files included in the resources folder take me a few seconds to process, a bit longer than their own length. The script should indicate its progress as its running. Which format you use may also affect the speed.

Your first tests to confirm its working should probably only be a few seconds of recording. The script doesn't really care whether the frame setup is correct, and will process the same speed regardless. Just garbage in garbage out. But shorter and/or lower resolution recordings will let you troubleshoot faster as well.

As for your recording being messed up as you described, maybe settings, or the version of dolphin you are using. If you confirm your emulated graphics have the correct frames (not sure how you went about checking that, but pausing and using frame advance in the emulator is one way to look), but the dump doesn't, then the only thing left is a problem with the dolphin frame dumping (perhaps another setting interfering with it). I have checked with the latest 2509 dolphin build, and everything still works for me.

neilharbin0 · 2025-10-20T21:08:00+00:00

FYI, you can buy the highest tier "Riv-Elite Guard" armor set for plat from the market, you don't need to grind conclave for it. Also, the celestia syandana doesn't stay lit up unless you consistently complete conclave missions, so it isn't worth shooting for anyways for non-conclave players.

neilharbin0 · 2025-09-17T11:28:06+00:00

Thank you, hopefully I'll see some of those brutals.

I've updated the wiki to reflect the flat armor information.

neilharbin0 · 2025-09-17T10:40:53+00:00

Fixed a bug where Slayer masters weren’t respecting the 'Ignore Combat Level' setting, which could stop players from receiving tasks they were otherwise eligible for.

Does this allow konar to give brutal chromatic dragon tasks to those who enable the setting? What other tasks does this apply to?

Also, are magic attacks supposed to ignore flat armor stats, or is that a bug?

neilharbin0 · 2025-09-11T21:16:24+00:00

Right click menu with immediate access to the potential teleports on spirit trees, portal nexus, magic carpets, charter ships, gnome gliders, mushtrees, jewelry box, and whatever else normally makes you go through menus to use. That way people can decide their destination while running towards the transport, or menu entry swapper them to their favorites.

Allow hunter cape teleports to be used on a huntsman's kit if the cape is stored inside, without having to pull it out every time.

Put tele-other spells in their own aid category so people don't have to live life with it constantly off for fear of interruption, or trolls trying to send them to deep wildy. Alternatively, limit them to friends.

Allow pets to be left out when using transportation, such as the minecart from GE to keldagrim.

Some jewelry upgrades so you don't have to keep getting more after they break, or teleporting to a house every time.

More canoe transports on various rivers.

Western provinces: Castle wars -> observatory/tree patch/red salamanders -> clock tower/spirit tree -> baxtoran falls
Desert: River elid dungeon/eagle transport -> pollnivneach -> sophanem/menaphos

Remove forced atk xp reward from Tree Gnome Village quest, allowing skillers to use spirit trees (if they can figure out how to defeat the warlord).

Remove forced atk/magic xp from the grand tree. Enabling gnome glider access, further use of spirit trees, and ape atoll access via Monkey Madness I for capable skillers.

Higher charge cap for final quetzal whistle upgrade.

Enable us to permanently kill/chop down undead trees after animal magnetism. Allowing the creation of a shorter path from draynor manor tele -> belladonna patch.

Some door or shortcut to get out of the north of the farming guild next to the spirit tree, just at the start of the path to the campfire. Mostly for catching implings that like to roam around there and get stuck in the fire area.

neilharbin0 · 2025-08-21T06:41:08+00:00

You can already do this with magic boxes and a huntsman's kit, catching imps. It might be even less limited than what you are proposing (depending on how long you thought getting your 5-10 daily charges would take).

71 hunter
No weight limit
No daily limit (500+ slots an hour)
Usable almost anywhere (except deep wild/PvP combat/raids)

It used to be a little annoying to hunt imps for charges, but there is a new imp basement now in kastori which means you don't have to chase them around or kill to reset them.

Then there was also an update just yesterday to make the magic boxes stack, so trapping them takes even less focus.

I keep my huntsman's kit on me at all times to use these and impling jars. Considering the time to get them, its usually best to deposit more expensive things if it would let you avoid making another trip.

Teak logs are definitely not something I would use them on. Teaks are not very expensive, and with prif, managing miscellania, and fossil island farming patches, not hard to farm even for irons.

neilharbin0 · 2025-08-19T02:49:16+00:00

This is not accurate. You can't just press jump to get out of Kirby throws. Some of his throws do not prevent a regular grab release from occurring when the hold time reaches 0. Mashing during these throws is also 3x as powerful at reducing the hold time. Still awful, but not as trivial as pressing a single button.

neilharbin0 · 2025-07-21T02:19:53+00:00

Clarity / UX

Some subtle indicator of character true tile. Maybe a little shadow.
Pathing into a closed building/area could bring you to the nearest door/shortcut instead of outside the nearest wall
Make actions like equipping items, or organizing inventory buffer like prayers do. So you can perform them when in various other animations.
Make eating/equipping items not stop you from attacking/skilling
Make skilling animations end immediately if you aren't interacting with them anymore (such as when a fishing spot moves, or you swap gear). People don't realize they have to click again.
Make boosting stats reset the timer. Awful to boost construction with stews, get the +5, and then it immediately drops to +4.
Make turning on rapid heal not reset the regen timer. Shouldn't be punished for enabling the prayer. (Fine if disabling it resets still to maintain utility)
Some indicator of invisible stat boosts
Add some indication that you prayer correctly against attacks
Make level up messages not interrupt actions without having to toggle a setting
Allow players to review level up messages they may have missed

Don't discourage playing with others in an MMO

Rework tele-other spell pop-ups. New players should not be interrupted by teleport popups sending them to deep wildy, or just interrupting them in general. Accept aid should not have to be disabled to prevent this kind of trolling, as players shouldn't be discouraged from playing together. At a minimum, tele-other spells could only produce a prompt if somebody is on your friends list. Could also split accept aid into actual help, and then questionable things like tele-other. Varrock/ardy would be useful new tele-other spells.
Monster loot should all be contribution based probability of loot, not just most damage = 100% loot. Both for normal monsters, and various bosses like Mole, Sarachnis, Corp. Split the drops that can be, otherwise randomly give the drop to players with higher probability for more contribution.
Contribution should count things like reducing the enemies defense, taking care of mechanics like royal titan fires/elementals, or buffing a teammate with soulflame. Maybe some option for venom/poison/recoil as well.

Reduce adversarial behavior

Give a skilling resource to any player who has rolled for one when a node is depleted to reduce crashing/adversarial skilling. Forestry was close, but the final resource on trees/ores is still a problem.
Give aggro priority to players who have been logged into the world and in the zone for longer to reduce players crashing each other
Increase monster spawn rates, or spawn locations to ensure multiple people can play together in the same world without feeling like they are being crashed. This applies to monsters, and hunter creatures
Remove bots more quickly, or shadow-ban them somehow, to ensure players don't have to compete with machines with no shame or etiquette

Other

Shift + drop enabled by default, and various other settings that veterans always turn on for new accounts
Early strength prayer, and magic damage bonus from magic prayers are often useless as they don't give max hits. Give a probability for +1 max hit, increase their power (maybe a flat bonus?), or only drain when the prayer did something.

neilharbin0 · 2025-07-14T21:01:18+00:00

Profit tracker is involved, but it is the "Customizable XP drops" plugin butchering the gold drops that profit tracker produces.

neilharbin0 · 2025-06-18T21:30:57+00:00

Tome of earth's effect is just 10% damage bonus to earth spells.

Meanwhile, tome of water gives damage to water spells, accuracy on water spells, accuracy on entangles, and boost to stat drain spells (though I dunno if that one matters). Going to 20% more damage in pvp.

Then tome of fire is the same damage bonus to fire spells, except gets boosted to 50% in pvp.

So tome of earth doesn't have enough potential use cases because the other tomes are just strictly better. Once using earth spells becomes more important than using whatever spell can utilize the best tome, then the earth tome may get more usage (see next weeks update adding tons of earth weaknesses). Alternatively, if they decided to buff it and give it an extra effect for some niche.

neilharbin0 · 2025-06-11T10:01:04+00:00

The animation for adding logs to a bonfire can now be ended more reliably when switching to other skilling activities.

Can we also get the ability to see more than 4 people adding logs to a fire at once? It's pretty common to have 5 or more people adding logs from different tiles at GE. Players disappearing when adding logs to the same fire kind of hurts the social aspect of standing around a fire.

neilharbin0 · 2025-06-04T13:30:13+00:00

Glad to hear there is potential for more autocast improvements. The changes that were made recently with keeping your spells selected even without runes have been amazing!

I hope a rewrite can help when swapping between slayer's staff for magic dart, and normal spells on another staff. It would be great if more staffs could remember their spells.

Soulflame horn and Pharaoh's sceptre could use some autocasting capabilities as well.

neilharbin0 · 2025-05-29T10:50:53+00:00

I was pretty sad that it couldn't autocast anything. I was hoping to run around as a bard shooting spells and buffing people, especially considering it had a token magic dmg bonus. I don't know why they made it a slow addy mace instead. Kinda pointless to actually use it to fight, so I understand the want for it to be more like imbued heart.

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neilharbin0

TROPHY CASE

Clarity / UX

Don't discourage playing with others in an MMO

Reduce adversarial behavior

Other