Jagex Pitched Three Potential Skills to Be the New OSRS Skill
Jagex is working hard to bring a new skill to Old School RuneScape. For over 10 years of Old School RuneScape, there have been many additions to the game: new bosses, new minigames, raids, new skilling methods, new items, and even new areas. But no other skill besides the original 23 skills existed 10 years ago when a copy of the 2007 version of RuneScape was released as OSRS. This article goes over what the potential New OSRS Skills are.
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The Backstory Behind Potentially Adding A New Skill
There have always been talks in the community about adding a new skill, with even a few failed attempts, such as the Warding skill. In 2018-2019, Jagex attempted to add the skill to the game. Still, after countless hours developing it, the potential new skill failed to receive enough support, and they temporarily abandoned the idea.
The idea continued, and the talk about a potential new skill remained inside the community. So in December 2022, during the Winter Summit event, Jagex announced they would add a new skill if the community wanted this. This conversation started after Jagex had already changed the polling system to require less information from the devs and a lower number of favorable votes for a question to pass at only a 70 percent majority.
Roadmap
Jagex has explained that there would be six stages in the development of a new skill: the greenlight poll, the community consultation stage, the delivery of skill pitches, the refinement stage that would end with a design blog, and a skill lock-in stage where the community would vote on whether or not they want the respective skill or not. If the community votes yes to this last stage, then Jagex will launch a beta of the skill and gather more feedback before the skill finally goes live.
Since the community has already voted with an over 80 percent majority that Jagex should add a new skill to the game, Jagex proceeded with the community consultation stage earlier this year and got an overwhelming amount of responses to help them come up with the pitches. A discord server with the sole purpose of gathering community feedback during the refinement stage has also been created to aid in the purpose. A few players were given the general contributor role so that they could share their opinions about the three pitches and what will be chosen by the whole community for the refinement stage.
On March 27, Jagex released a blog post and a video detailing the free pitches for three potential new skills: Taming, Sailing, or Shamanism. They have also scheduled additional videos and events via various social platforms to further engage with the community.
Sailing
Jagex tried to introduce the Sailing skill in 2015 but failed because of insufficient community support. Now, they are bringing a brand new Sailing skill centered around owning and upgrading your boat and exploring a new territory: the sea.
With Sailing, you could engage in various activities, but you can only explore areas according to your Sailing skill level and the boat you are using. The higher your Sailing level is, the better the boat you’ll be able to use and the more territories and activities you’ll be able to engage in.
Jagex exemplified that a few Sailing activities could be deep sea fishing or hunting marine animals or monsters. On top of this, they could bring navigation challenges that could resemble the agility rooftop courses. However, one vital point to consider is that Jagex wants to bring a new form of controls to move the ship since they believe the usual “click-to-move” might be too dull.
Other examples of sea activity could be delivering goods or discovering new islands or interest points within the sea. However, as presented by Jagex at this stage, the sailing skill isn’t profitable. That’s because its entirety would take place in a brand new territory, and the rewards are aimed more towards progressing the skill or unlocking quality-of-life upgrades or minigames rather than a way to get some GP. In this regard, the Sailing skill resembles more an aquatic expansion with a new 99 that could spark the interest of some players.
Taming
Taming could be another possible skill for Old School RuneScape, and the concept brings many fresh, new things to the table. Even though you could compare the skill to the Summoning skill, Taming wants to offer a different approach to having new companions. With this skill, you’ll earn the ability to befriend both creatures that already exist in the game and some more that Jagex would add with the skill.
The higher your Taming level is, the more creatures you’ll be able to befriend. But the skill is not limited to befriending the creatures, as you will also benefit from using their abilities, whichever they might be. You will also be able to train your creatures and level up their abilities to get even more for the effort of training them.
You would need to give your creatures a home, food, and activities—similar to how you’d use a ball of wool on the kittens not to let them get too bored. By leveling your Taming skill, you will gain access to new creatures and potential areas where some creatures might reside. This skill could be highly flexible as the not-yet-refined abilities could help you while training any other skill. With Taming, there will be a limitless possibility of integration.
Shamanism
While Sailing and Taming are both utility skills, the third pitched skill is a gathering and production skill that will allow you to harvest the power of nature and the spirit world, perform rituals, and infuse different objects with its magic. Shamanism is a radically different skill compared to the other two proposals.
The area you’ll unlock with Shamanisms is an alternate reality of the same Gielinor you know. Certain areas will represent hotspots where the veil between the realms is thinner, so some spiritual elements would leak into Gielinor. You can also enter and explore this spiritual world with higher Shamanism levels.
You’ll need to obtain natural elements from around the world and spiritual components from this new realm and then perform the ritual that will allow you to create these brand-new shamanic items. However, you might need to gather all the resources yourself since, at the pitch, Jagex stated that most components would be untradeable. Even if you have enough disposable GP, you can only train your skill if you gather the necessary items. On the other side of the same page, you won’t be able to make many profits with this skill either since you won’t be able to sell the products.
Shamanism seems to be the most “old school” of the pitches because its training methods involve activities you’d typically do in RuneScape, such as gathering and combining items to obtain something new.
Interested in Getting Involved?
If you want to get involved in deciding what skill should be refined, besides the in-game poll that you can only answer as a members’ account, you can also take part in a survey and keep an eye on the OSRS’ new Discord for even more details and discussions. The poll will go live after Poll 79 ends on April 4th.
