The Red Reef Is Live: New Sailing Quest, New Cannonballs and Self-Repairing Boats
The Tortugan storyline keeps rolling. The Red Reef, the second quest in the line, is out now, and it landed alongside one of the chunkier Sailing patches we've had in a while. New cannonballs, a boat that patches itself up, sail colours, and a real buff to Deep Sea Trawling XP. Here's what actually matters.
⛵ The Red Reef Quest
This is an Experienced level quest where you help Floopa deal with an injury while a fresh threat to the Tortugans turns up. To start it, talk to Elder Raley on the Great Conch. He's in the south east house of the Summer Shore.
What you need before you set sail:
Quest: Troubled Tortugans completed.
Skills: 52 Sailing and 48 Smithing.
Heads up for the Hardcore crowd. Boat-to-boat combat is part of this one, and dying on the ship counts as a dangerous death. Your boat sinking is safe, but your character dying aboard it is not. Jagex suggests at least 65 combat to handle the encounters. Rewards are 2 Quest Points, 15,000 Sailing XP, 5,000 Smithing XP, full access to the Sacred Grove and its Camphor Trees, and the Bosun's Bench schematic.
🛠️ Bosun's Bench: a boat that repairs itself
This is the reward people will actually care about. Assign a crewmate (or yourself) to the Bosun's Bench and it periodically repairs the boat when it needs healing, without overhealing. It eats repair kits from your Cargo Hold and scales with your crew's Deckhandiness. Building it needs 63 Sailing and 54 Construction, plus 6 Camphor Planks, 24 Adamantite Nails, 2 Lead Bars and the schematic from the quest. It slots into any spot that supports a Salvaging Station.
⚔️ Two new cannonball types
Boat combat got more interesting with two new ammo types you can smith up to Rune:
Chainshot: halves enemy movement speed for 5 seconds while dealing normal cannonball damage. Made by combining a Chain (smithed from Steel bars) with two cannonballs.
Incendiary: sets sea enemies ablaze for damage over time, and the burn ignores flat armour bonuses. Made with 10 Rubium Splinters per pair of cannonballs.
Rubium is the new ore behind all this. Splinters are tradeable and need 48 Mining. Geodes need 68 Mining, are untradeable, and break down into splinters with a hammer and chisel. You'll find both in the centre of the Charred Dungeon on Charred Island.
🪙 The quality-of-life stuff that matters
Cannon auto-retaliate: cannons now fire back at attacking sea creatures on their own (on by default, toggle in Combat Options). Manual targeting is still faster, but this makes longer trips way less clicky.
Deep Sea Trawling buff: Sailing XP roughly doubled across all net types, gather rate dropped from 4 ticks to 3, and baited shoals correctly give the +20% catch now.
Sail cosmetics: seven solid colours unlock at 41 Sailing, 10 matching dye each, swapped in the Shipyard.
Medallion of the Deep: now works as breathing gear across the Fossil Island underwater area, cutting oxygen drain by 80% in the Agility and Thieving section.
Boat teleports: Teleport to Boat and Summon Boat both got a right-click "Last Boat" option.
A few non-Sailing fixes also snuck in. The Tombs of Amascut obelisk on the Path of Het had its HP nudged from 122 to 119, so 85+ Mining players stop occasionally failing the one-cycle kill. Revenant Cave Teleport Scrolls can now be dropped, and you can get into the Waterfall Dungeon without a rope again.
Need a Hand With This?
If you're not at 52 Sailing or 48 Smithing yet, or you'd rather skip straight to the rewards, MyPvM can sort it:
Quest service: get The Red Reef done without the boat combat headache.
Power leveling: hit the Sailing and Smithing requirements fast, or push to 63 Sailing and 54 Construction for the Bosun's Bench.
Combat achievements: clean up combat tasks while you gear up for boat fights.
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