Sailing thoughts/feedback from a sailing enjoyer

As a sailing enjoyer, the recent changes are pretty rough to see. So much that I finally decided to make an account just to make this post with my thoughts. Sorry for the long post but let me know what you think. I'll try and keep the post to ideas for improvements.

Extractor:

Clicking once every minute for a large chunk of xp is pretty warping game design, no you don't have to click it every minute on the minute, but the unrealized xp adds up quick. Reducing the xp this rewarded was certainly the right move, but I'd like to propose a 2nd thing that makes the gameplay loop a bit more flexible?
Maybe this serves as another future upgrade to the extractor, but if it could hold up to 2 charges at a time while retaining 1 charge / min, it would at least change the loop to be claiming when you can instead of hovering over it and trying to be perfect on harvesting. If killing a sea moster takes 1.5 min, you don't interrupt have to interrupt your flow of combat to still gain the full xp.

A second charge could also play into barracuda trials for when you harvest to gain one or both boosts while also adding some timers for natural sail trim + boosts.

Combat:

I want to like the combat, but it's just so damn slow and expensive.

Cannonballs are too expensive to buy for most, and too slow to gather them yourself at a maintainable rate.

IMO steel cannonballs/granite should have been split into dwarven cannonballs using the existing mould/double mould from giants foundry and kept their rate. Those cannonballs are huge and max hit a 30/35 when fired from a dwarven cannon. Sailing cannonballs visually are tiny, have a crazy reduced max hit, and are your primary method of doing damage via sailing combat.

I've got lots of ideas here:

Smooth out the damage curve a bit, going from rune to dragon cannonballs is a massive increase in damage but the cost/accessibility is so prohibitive they're not worth using and is what contributes to the combat feeling pretty lackluster.

This could be addressed by putting more strength into the cannon itself and less into the cannonballs? Right now a steel cannonball shot from a steel cannon maxes a 15, and steel from a dragon cannon maxes a 17. Putting more power into the cannon and less on the cannonball would mean a steel cannonball shot from a dragon cannon might max hit something like a 25, mithril could max a 27, dragon can stay at 40 or w/e, but this just rewards the upfront investment of upgrading your cannon and puts less weight on maintaining a supply of rune/dragon cannonballs. It can keep requirement where you need an adamant cannon to shoot adamant cannonballs but it should have a bigger buff on previous tiers of ammo.

Supply is rough. Steel and Mithril cannonballs are cheap enough that I don't mind using them, and steel/mithril bars are in high supply from things like motherload mine/blast furnace, so a long term sink for these bars seems fine. Adamant/Rune bars are expensive enough to have an opportunity cost of using bars for cannonballs for sailing vs smithing xp at foundry or turning into armor and alching.

Smithing cannonballs itself is just so slow, I don't have the level for the new island but with it needing a fairy ring to access, the hassle of using it doesn't sound like it's much better than just using edgeville? What's the math on rates if this just did half your inventory in one click, full inventory with the double mould? Cut the xp per ball at the new furnace if the smithing rates exceed blast furnace levels? Idk

Some people have mentioned a facility that can work like an avas device to recycle cannonballs. Put this behind a neat quest and I don't see why not, but I think we could be more creative here than just making an Ava's 2.

My personal take on reworking the combat itself is giving monsters a high flat armor (think like 5-15 flat armor on weaker mobs and 50+ on krakens, replacing the existing % damage reduction from your range/mage gear) that cannonballs ignore AND shred. This would turn into a gameplay loop of starting off shooting mobs with cannonballs to weaken them, and once their defense is shredded enough you swap to range/mage and finish them off. With the NPC's current mechanic of having a lower max hit, this rewards you for starting out the cannon yourself for higher initial hits, and then if you want to maintain some cannon dps you can put an NPC on the cannon while you continue range/maging.

This lets you still hit hard with your regular gear while still softly requiring ship cannons to be involved. This would also give better dps to high hitting slow weapons and alleviate some of the issues with cannonball expense, and creates a more engaging gameplay loop for ship combat.

In future content I'd also like to see some kinds of boss mobs that require micro managing your ship placement, or having creatures from the sea trying to invade your boat and you need to swap to melee for. Imagine how chaotic and fun it could get having to micromanage regular combat (prayers and gear swaps) on top of boat movement through some rapids to keep up with/escape from a larger sea creature.

Trawling:

I haven't tried this method, and I'm assuming most people haven't yet. There's a huge barrier to this method in that it requires a 2nd boat, and boats are expensive.

The feels bad parts are that you can't catch the higher tier fish without ray barbs, and ray barbs are rare enough that you'd consider skipping the Hemp net (2x4 barbs @ 79 sailing) for Cotton nets (2x8 barbs @ 84 sailing).

Two cotton nets will currently run you about 8m at current prices, and for irons they're gated behind however many cannonballs for the kc to get 16 ray barbs. This is on top of wanting essentially a maxed out boat for speeds to keep up with the shoals, and investing this all into a whole new boat separate from your skiff, combat/salvaging boat.

In addition to barbs, you'd also like a pearl (not mandatory, but nice upgrade), and the narwhal horn (again not mandatory, but nice to have), so this method is soft gated behind a ton ship combat.

For XP rates, reading others notes and watching some guides it seems like it's an incredibly active method (which sounds great because fishing is my least favorite skill to train, simply because it's boring to train).
The fact that it rewards BIS fish means it's a fine line for skilling between GP/XP/Loot. If it rewards too many fish too fast, the whole fish market can collapse because it's the definitive way to train the skill and crowds out alternatives (if a Marlin is cheaper and easier to access than a manta, why would you ever go for or purchase mantas).

As far as XP goes, karambwans should basically be the floor for rates. This is minutes of AFK for 30-40k xp/hr, very usable fish, and easy bank access being next to a fairy ring.

Tempoross as a boss is returning 50-70k xp/hr but frankly is also pretty low effort.

Idk fishing is awful just give it good xp rates because it's got a very expensive barrier to entry and it's super active.

Some ideas are adding existing fish to the shoals, like why can we fight sharks and mantas in the ocean but not catch them while trawling. Those hybrid shoals could have a chance to give a normal fish (like add sharks to shimmering shoal, mantas/sea turtles to glistening, anglers to the vibrant). This can balance out the rate of BIS fish acquisition, intertwines with existing game content.

Also can hemp nets not require barbs? Adjust the catch rate to be a decent amount slower or something but right now it feels like this isn't worth building at all when cotton is right around the corner.

Add some more fishing spots into the ocean that aren't shoals as well, like doing some ocean fishing just off the coast of some docks would help the world feel alive. The fish crates system are a great solution for extended trips before having to bank, this kinda devalues fish barrel but idk, could be balanced out a bit by limiting what you can catch.

Salvaging:

Personally I don't care for it, I don't like methods that are background content in general. That said, the method is incredibly AFK and the if the rates are too high it forces other training methods to be even higher or it salvaging just invalidates them. Why do high effort content when you can 20 min afk for almost the same rates. It sucks to get rug pulled on this one but for the health of the skill long term it's for the best. 1/3k for each of the uniques seems a little crazy, I don't have the math on expected time to get all of those + 1 or 2 hooks?

Trials:

I enjoyed the trials and having to learn the courses/master boat movement.

The 'feels bad' parts are when you just missed a crates hitbox and it takes 10 years to turn around, pick it up, and then get back on course. This is amplified at the gwenith glide course if it's a crate next to a portal and you TP away because you're better off just resetting. For a 6 minute course it feels awful to miss a crate on the later stretch.

Others have brought this up and I agree on the prif course, allow completing the course if you passed all the crystals but have a minor xp penalty for each box missed. Significant enough penalty that you won't intentionally skip a box, but not enough that you feel compelled to restart or take a 1-2 minute detour to go find it?

In Jubbly the biggest pain point was that orange pillar placement imo, the optimal route has you just skimming past this post, chunk loading/lag can cause yellow clicks which can turn your boat off course/into the fetid swamp that slows your boat down.

With marlin times only needing to be attained once for the unique/bonus xp, I feel it's okay to require little to no mistakes to get the target time, my only thought would be increasing the throw range for the flags one or two tiles, so you have a slightly bigger window to work with.

As a long term training method, I don't see myself going back to any of the trials until a new one is released. The XP rates can be the highest xp/hr method, but if the only reward is xp I have no interest in going back. If these could give some type of supply crates as a reward for additional marlin completion times, I'd consider going back. The supply crates could drop a small mix of GP, planks, repair packs, cannonballs, 2-3 crystal shards or like 40-50 zulrah scales, misc sailing supplies, just something as a secondary reward beyond the xp and I'd consider going back.

Charting:

The mermaids are pretty cursed, I was able to figure out like 3-4 of them pretty quick, the rest I just went to the wiki. Maybe half of them once I read an explanation I was like oh okay sure? I guess that makes sense. Future mermaids should probably tone down the cryptic, keep a couple hard ones for those that enjoy it but I feel like the average player should be able to puzzle out most of them if you don't want people just going plugin/wikiscape.

The TPs were funny the first few times but got a bit annoying, I ended up looking up what half the bottles do at the end and the ones that involved a TP i'd go hop on my raft in sarim and chug it, because I'm not re-sailing my sloop all the way back to relleka.
The ones that do TP, if we're going to keep that mechanic for future sea charting, are at least a mild annoyance when it just puts you ashore in the area you found the bottle in, like northern shore putting you and your boat in relleka or port piscarilius.

The rest was fine, they're a 1 time thing and give a pretty sizable chunk of xp so just enjoy it or be annoyed by it and move in w/e.

Interactivity with the rest of the game:

I feel like this will come in time, improving the combat could do a lot here. I honestly feel like the game does interact with other skills pretty well, adds a sink for smithing mats (and in turn mining). New trees to woodcut and these trees can be expanded on in the future for purposes. New construction training in making repair packs (better boat combat means more repair packs means more reason to make these).

New islands with slayer mobs. For the existing mobs that just got placed on an island it'd be nice to see them be more sailing/island themed? Like adjust the kurasks on that one island to be more sealife themed and have some exclusive drops like seaweed/coral/coral frags or something? Upgrade to the leaf-bladed weapons? A reason you might go to these islands specifically for the task over other locations.

The only other callout I have is to maybe revisit some older loot tables to intertwine with the new sailing content. Change some bosses shark drops to be halibut or yellowfin? Hemp/Cotton seeds added to a few bosses loot tables. Rework some cannonball drops to be from a cannonball table instead of only steel. Add the new logs/planks as rewards to existing places that give logs/planks as drops, just some tweaks that make sailing feel so secluded from the existing content in the game.