The Barracuda Trials in Old School RuneScape (OSRS) become a real test of your Sailing skills when you’re trying to achieve the Marlin rank.
These trials give fairly little room for error. If you wish to ace the highest rank and clear it below the time limit, you’re going to have to be on point with both planning and navigating!
In this guide, we’ll tell you everything we can to help you achieve the Marlin rank on all of the Barracuda Trials.
How to Do The Barracuda Trials and Achieve Marlin Rank | OSRS
Basics and General Tips
There are 3 different Barracuda Trials for you to take on right now. Each one unlocks at a different Sailing level, as follows:
- The Tempor Tantrum (The Storm Tempor) – Level 30
- The Jubbly Jive (Backwater) – Level 55
- The Gwenith Glide (Porth Gwenith) – Level 72
As a note, only Skiffs can be used for these trials! However, your upgrades and Facilities are still usable. So, make sure to build and customize your ship to prepare for the trials.
Each one of these trials has 3 different ranks. Beating the time in a rank will clear it, unlocking the next rank. In order, the ranks are Swordfish, Shark, and Marlin.
As you might imagine, the lower ranks are easier with simpler routes and more lax time requirements. However, higher ranks provide better rewards, including Sailing XP!
Aside from the time requirements, all trials will also require you to collect lost supplies crates. You’ll need a specific amount each time, depending on trial.
As a general tip for Marlin Ranks, we recommend using the RuneLite client with the Object Markers plugin. This will allow you to highlight the lost supplies crates by shift-clicking on them.
With that, you want to do an unranked practice run of each Marlin trial by just planning your route and marking all the crates along the way.
You can use different colors to help you define at which point or lap of the route to collect them. We’ll help you with the actual routes themselves later, don’t worry!
While this step is admittedly a bit of a slog, it will greatly help you do a perfect run to beat the time limit.
As another tip, we highly recommend installing a Wind Catcher on your Skiff as soon as possible. It unlocks at Level 53 Sailing and allows you to use Wind Motes (shown above) to get a speed boost.
This becomes extremely important for the latter trials, especially on the Marlin rank! So, make sure to get it ASAP.
Also, as a last tip, we recommend bringing Repair Kits with you. You can use them to quickly fix your boat if you hit any obstacles.
Now, let’s go over the recommended routes to beat the Marlin rank time for each trial.
Recommended Marlin Rank Routes
The Tempor Tantrum
Green line is lap 1
Orange line is lap 2
Purple line is lap 3
Blue dots are rum boats
White dots are crates
The first of the Barracuda Trials is the simplest of them. For this one, you will need to sail around the area in a loop, collecting crates.
At the same time, you have to collect the rum from the southern rum boat and bring it to the northern one. With how they are placed, they act as checkpoints as you loop around the center of the area.
For the Marlin rank you need 36 Crates and 3 Rum within 4m 30s.
The main things to look out for here are the rapids, which appear as whirlpools on the water’s surface. Touching them will give you a boost of speed, which is crucial for meeting the time limit.
At the same time, make sure to avoid the black storm clouds and the rocks along the route. Hitting them will damage your boat and also cost you speed.
Overall, this trial should be fairly simple to complete as long as you keep the above in mind and practice a bit.
The Jubbly Jive
Note: clearing the Shark rank of this trial gives you a Captured Wind Mote as a reward. That allows you to make a Wind Catcher, which we recommend doing before the Marlin rank.
This trial ramps things up compared to the previous one by adding a few new gimmicks.
The first gimmick is the fetid waters, which show up as green bubbling waters. Sailing over these waters will greatly slow down your boat, forcing you to be much more careful so you can avoid them.
You can mitigate the effects of these fetid waters by trimming your sails and using Wind Motes for a speed boost. So, as we mentioned before, make sure you got that first.
The second gimmick is that you need to pass by a boat to collect frogs, which is the Supply Boat marked on the route at the top of this section.
Then, you’ll need to throw the frogs at flags along the route to lure the Jubbly to a specific spot. You can see the order of flags in the top left corner of the screen.
We highly recommend learning the route shown on the map above for this one. In particular, make sure to memorize when and where to trim sails and use Wind Motes.
Of course, all of that is on top of also having to collect enough crates! For the Marlin rank, you’ll need to collect 56 creates and lure the Jubbly bird to the white flag 3 times within 5m 21s.
Other than that, you’ll need to practice this one thoroughly. It’s a very tricky trial, thanks to the tight corners required to avoid the fetid waters, but we’re sure you can do it!
The Gwenith Glide
Blue dots are Wind Motes
Yellow dots are crates
The final Marlin trial is, in a way, the most straightforward of them all. The only gimmick here is the colored portals, which will teleport you from one place to another and are a key part of your routing.
At the same time, there are many ice crystals along the route that you’ll need to avoid. They deal damage to you while also slowing down your boat. Similar to the fetid waters, you’ll need to maneuver carefully to avoid them.
Besides that, though, there isn’t anything you need to be aware of besides collecting all of the crates. No rum or birds or anything like that! Just pure sailing.
So, with that in mind, the best way to beat this one is to memorize the route shown above and just practice. Your ability to handle the ship will be fully put to the test here. You’ll need to get 96 crates within 6m 09s.
That’s the end of our guide, so now you know everything you need to do to complete all of the Barracuda Trials and achieve their Marlin rank in OSRS! We wish you the best of luck with them.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
