MMO player endures "heavy chest pains" and struggles "to stay awake" as his girlfriend brings him food during 4-day grind to become first in the world to reach max level

Evergreen MMO Old School RuneScape recently released its first new skill, Sailing, which prompted a rare race to become the first player in the world to reach the maximum skill level of 99. Countless diehard grinders showed up for the race, and after a few days, a player named AsianGrinder took first place. In a post-mortem of the Sailing grind, AsianGrinder says it was anything but easy, complaining of physical pain from long gaming hours.

Sailing, as the name suggests, is about maintaining a boat, fishing, delivering supplies, exploring uncharted lands, battling sea creatures, navigating nautical routes, and other seaside adventures. OSRS players have already begun mathing out optimal training methods, but at launch, everyone was flying – rather, sailing – mostly blind, following their best guess, beta findings, and emerging anecdotal wisdom. For his part, AsianGrinder says he did "mainly Barracuda Trials" to train, but the grind started well before the skill was even released on November 19.

"My journey began when Jagex announced the official release date of Sailing," AsianGrinder, who recently joined Twitch, explains in a Reddit post. (I was unable to contact them in time for press.)

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"I immediately called my boss and asked for a few weeks off work, starting the week of the release," he continues. "My boss was very kind in allowing me the time off for the entire duration, so big shoutout to him."

Using every scrap of beta and pre-release information available, AsianGrinder began to assemble a Sailing training plan. He stocked up on in-game supplies necessary for training the skill, went grocery shopping to make sure "I had enough food for me to focus on leveling Sailing," and got "plenty of rest before the event started, allowing me to stay up as long as needed, so I could stay on my AsianGrind." For anyone wondering where in Asia this grinder resides, he says, "I am from Denmark."

Given the closeness of the race, with AsianGrinder often neck-and-neck with runner-ups like FasT 07 according to community charts of Sailing XP gained, it would seem these preparations proved essential.

"After playing for several hours on day 1, I realized I was in the top 25 on the Overall Hiscores page," he recalls. "This gave me a crazy drive to keep going." A game update forced him offline, so he decided to get "3-4 hours of sleep." This was apparently all the rest involved in this grind, which ended roughly four days after release on November 23, as Mod Hend of developer Jagex confirmed.

"This ended up being one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life," AsianGrinder says. "I was completely drained of energy, sleep deprived and mentally exhausted having stayed awake for days."

AsianGrinder's girlfriend gets a special shoutout for "keeping up with my health, providing me food, and making sure I was generally okay. I can’t thank her enough for allowing me to do this despite me having noticeable issues in the end such as heavy chest pains and overall struggling to stay awake."

As a reminder, sitting still and/or going too long without sleep can pose serious health risks, so get some sleep and some stretches in, gamers.

Now we wait to see who'll be the first person to reach the maximum possible XP in Sailing. OSRS skills cap at 200 million experience, whereas reaching level 99 requires just over 13 million. In other words, someone has to pull off about 15 Sailing marathons – with better training methods, sure, but a taxing grind nonetheless. AsianGrinder, however, will not be competing for 200m XP. His watch has, at last, ended.

"I appreciate all the support you guys have given me along the way – the kind messages when I passed you by on my boat and everyone showing me love afterwards," he concludes.

MMO players get a sailing skill, immediately become pirates channeling a famous 2006 disaster: "Piracy as emergent gameplay is honestly perfect."