OSRS Shipwreck Salvaging Guide 2026: Every Wreck, Level, Hook and Loot Table

Shipwreck salvaging is the Sailing skill's gathering activity: park next to a wreck, drop a hook, pull up salvage, sort it for loot. It is slow XP at low levels and genuinely good XP with the right boat at high levels, and for an ironman the sorted loot is the point. Everything below is from the OSRS Wiki as of 17 September 2026, including the December 2025 XP review changes.

For Sailing training in general, port tasks, Barracuda Trials and the skill's unlock order, see the Sailing guide. This article covers salvaging only.

How salvaging works

The loop has two halves, and each gives Sailing XP.

1. Salvage. Sail adjacent to a shipwreck and use a salvaging hook built on your boat. Salvage range is 7 tiles from the edge of the wreck, measured from the hook, so some wrecks that sit under 14 tiles apart can be worked from one spot. You roll for salvage every 4 ticks; each success gives one unsorted salvage and the wreck's salvaging XP.
2. Sort. Use the salvage on a salvaging station at most ports, or on one built on your boat, to turn it into items and collect the sorting XP. Sorting XP is roughly half the salvaging XP.

Higher-tier hooks and a higher Sailing level both raise your success chance. Salvage goes in your inventory or your boat's cargo hold, which does not accept noted items.

Crewmates can be told to operate a hook. Their success chance is a fraction of yours that scales with their deckhandiness: 10% at deckhandiness 1, 20% at 2, 30% at 3 and 40% at 4, and they roll every 5 ticks instead of 4. Their XP per salvage is reduced the same way, so over time a crewmate earns only a small fraction of what you would on the same hook:

Crew keep salvaging into the cargo hold while you sort, stop when it is full or no wreck is in range, and resume on their own. Dragon salvaging hooks can only be operated by deckhandiness 4 crew, which means Jenkins and Jolly Jim are the only crewmates who can man them.

Spawn mechanics

Every salvaging area shares a spawn pool: typically 6 wreck sites with 4 active at once (since 5 December 2025 every hotspot has exactly 2 inactive wrecks). The despawn timer for a wreck starts the moment anyone begins salvaging it, and when it sinks another wreck in the area rises immediately. That is why salvaging on the official salvaging worlds (596 and 597, both US east) or the unofficial one (486) is faster: other players sinking distant wrecks keeps the ones next to you cycling.

What you need

Salvaging hooks are boat facilities. Each tier needs Sailing and Construction levels to build, and higher tiers need higher deckhandiness for crew to use them.

The salvaging station (facility) goes on a skiff or sloop hotspot: 42 Sailing and 34 Construction, 4 teak planks and 16 steel nails, 372 Construction XP. You have to read the salvaging station schematic first. It sits in the lockbox on Chinchompa Island, opened with a small key dug up on The Pandemonium, and getting there needs 42 Sailing that cannot be boosted. Until then you sort at port stations; the Ruins of Unkah station is 2 tiles from a bank chest and Port Khazard's is 5 tiles away.

Sorting on the boat

1

Rune pouch × 1 (Nature, fire, air and law runes for alching and teleports)

1

Chisel × 1 (Oyster pearls into pearl bolt tips at 41 Fletching)

1

Seed box × 1 (Hemp, cotton, camphor, ironwood and rosewood seeds plus frags)

1

Herb sack × 1 (Merchant wrecks)

1

Gem bag × 1 (Uncut gems from caskets)

1

Plank sack × 1 (Oak and mahogany planks)

1

Log basket × 1 (Teak and arctic pine logs)

1

Soul bearer × 1 (Fremennik wrecks, for ensouled troll heads)

The wiki example inventory is just a divine rune pouch, coins and a chisel. Add the storage containers for whichever tier you are working; everything else gets dropped or stored in the cargo hold.

Wreck tiers

Eight wreck types, in level order. Salvaging XP is per salvage pulled up by you; sorting XP is per salvage sorted. Duration is how long a wreck stays up once someone starts on it.

Some tiers sit in hazardous water and your boat needs the right part to be there at all, or you get the message that it is not safe to salvage in hazardous waters:

• Barracuda: at least an oak mast (most wrecks also want an iron helm); a camphor mast fully avoids Storm Tempor damage. At least one wreck sits just outside the Storm Tempor and needs neither.
• Mercenary: all of them are in tangled kelp, so you need an adamant helm.
• Fremennik: icy seas, so you need an eternal brazier. Ironmen must complete Making Friends with My Arm to make one.
• Merchant: eternal brazier for Winter's Edge or an adamant helm for the Southern Expanse.

Which wreck at which level

These are the setups the wiki's money-making guides assume for each tier, with the XP figures the wiki gives for them.

The reason the jump to 53 matters: below it you are on a skiff with one hook and no station, banking every trip. From 53 you are on a sloop with two hooks, a crewmate on the second one, and a station on deck, which is the setup that makes salvaging semi-AFK. The wiki's procedure is to man one hook yourself with Jenkins (or Jobless Jim before 60 Sailing) on the other, deposit everything into the cargo hold, and when it is nearly full hand your hook to a second crewmate while you sort.

XP rates

The wiki lists per-setup rates on each wreck page (in the table above) and Jagex published long-form tests after the 5 December 2025 salvaging changes. All crewmates in the tests had deckhandiness 4 and none included crystal extractor XP. Jagex did not say which wrecks were used or whether travel was included.

Two multipliers on top of any setup:

• Tick manipulation on the hook gives roughly 2 to 2.5 times the XP, at much higher intensity.
• The crystal extractor (73 Sailing, 67 Construction, needs a Heart of Ithell) gives 250 XP per wind mote every 109 ticks, which the wiki works out to 13,761 XP/hr if you harvest every time, or 14,103 with a keg of horizon's lure. After Song of the Elves each harvest also has about a 1 in 6 chance of a crystal shard.

The wiki's money-making guides quote salvage per hour of 140 (small), 160 (fisherman's), 220 (Barracuda), 360 (large), 360 (pirate), 315 (mercenary), 310 (Fremennik) and 280 (merchant), assuming crew do a third to two thirds of the hooking.