[Updated] Old School RuneScape's Race to 99 Sailing Has Concluded - AsianGrinder Reaches 99 First

Update Sunday Nov 23: AsianGrinder hits world-first level 99 sailing. Huge congratulations!
Update Saturday Nov 22: We've got a couple of level 96! Our original post is below regarding level 80.

Old School RuneScape's first-ever new skill, Sailing, came out this week and players around the world are grinding their way to level 99 to see who can max the skill first.

Day 1 and Day 3 leaderboards, around mid-day.

As of publication, we've got four players who have reached level 80 in the new Sailing skill which includes Shampoo, SoloMission, FasT 07, and ka vi, only one of which, FasT 07, was in the Top 100 players for skill experience prior to the release of Sailing (as denoted by a trophy on the Overall Leaderboard).

It's fun to see players high on the leaderboard who were not previously capped on their skills. Last night, many players had hit the 60-70 area fairly quickly, which is right when the RuneScape Skill XP Curve starts to really take off so when you think about it, the they barely had their shoes on to get out the front door to start the journey.

RuneScape has always been known for having an abusive experience curve for skilling, with the halfway point of getting to the 99 cap being around level 92. Seeing players at level 80 right now, that means they are around 1/7 through the overall journey after 24 hours of gameplay which doesn't mean much since we don't truly know the full time commitment required to hit level 99 because it's highly likely that no one is optimally leveling yet and to make such a calculation more difficult, as you level up, typically tasks give you more experience so it's not a completely linear formula for experience gains either.

There are many in the community who are just watching others skill Sailing right now so that they can learn more optimal ways to level. If you're wanting to watch players play around with Sailing, there are tons of players streaming Sailing on Twitch.

How Are We Optimally Leveling Sailing so Far?

Details are still not perfect, but we have a few tips for those who want to get started with Sailing in Old School RuneScape. Here's our advice:

• During the early levels, run your Courier Tasks for quick XP and early upgrade materials.
• Sail through every ocean encounter you see - winds, glows, castaways. They are all free experience.
• Always chart the seas. Each chart point is a one-time experience bonus and every completed zone gives you a set of rewards.
• At level 12, do the Prying Times quest to unlock the Crowbar which opens up more charting tasks.
• At level 15 go buy the Skiff immediately because it is much faster and gives you more space.
• At level 22 finish Current Affairs for a chunk of XP and upgrades to your charting tools.
• At level 30 you will unlock the ability to do bounty tasks and the Barracuda Trial.

So ideally, early on just set your focus on sea charting and courier routes and as soon as you can the Skiff is worth getting because you can begin to salvage wreckages. Put a very high focus on finishing those charts though for large one-time skill experience boosts.

Congratulations to AsianGrinder

A huge congrats to AsiaGrinder for hitting first 99 skill in Sailing! Many others have also hit this milestone as of Monday morning.

So, what level is your Sailing skill at? Are you racing yourself to 99? Let us know in the comments below.