The proposed Stardust requirement wasn't thematically fitting to the Mining Guild. Some of you said that Unidentified Minerals was a better currency to use in this area. The question could also have been split into two separate questions so that players could vote on its requirements separately.
[/td][td] We agree with your feedback, so we've made some changes (see below). We've changed the original question so that you can vote on whether you'd like us to add it in the game. We've also added a new question so that you can vote separately on its requirements. We'd like you to decide whether the Amethyst Mining Spot should be a Falador Elite Diary reward, or a Falador Hard Diary reward. The Falador Hard Diary reward would have an additional requirement of 200 Unidentified Minerals which would be given to Belona.Although the Falador Elite Diary reward option seems thematically fitting, we are concerned about accessibility issues for the majority of players. The less accessible it will be, the more 'private' it will feel, which can be great for players who have met the Falador Elite Diary requirements but it would not solve the issue for other players who may need to obtain Amethyst Crystals.For this reason, we'd like to leave it up to a vote to let the Community decide on the best option. [/td][/tr][tr][td]Looting Bag
Some players felt that the Looting Bag changes should be unpolled as part of the Wilderness changes. As the question about utilising the Looting Bag within the Ferox Enclave is a non-issue for the majority of players that are not Ultimate Ironmen, there were concerns that the UIM-only question would become redundant as it relies on the previous question passing.
[/td][td] We'll be removing the question asking all players whether it should be possible to store items inside a Looting Bag when within Ferox Enclave. Instead, this change will be done as an unpolled change as part of the upcoming Wilderness changes. The question pertaining to UIM-only will remain in the Mini Poll, allowing UIM to decide on whether they also want to benefit from this change or not.[/td][/tr] [tr][td]Additional Changes
We've seen some complaints around Sourhogs tasks being frustrating and tedious. Since Combat Achievements is just around the corner, we have added a new question to see if you'd like us to make some changes!
[/td][td]We've added in Question #7 so check it out and let us know your feedback![/td][/tr] [/table] [/expand]
We’ve released some pretty long polls recently, so in the Guthixian spirit of balance we’re keeping it short this week with a mini poll!
The next big poll will mainly focus on PvP quality of life, but this mini poll is based around feedback we've received for recent changes to various aspects of the game. We've had lots of questions and comments about these issues, and the poll questions below will hopefully address those concerns. It's a marvellous miscellany!
First up – the Ash Sanctifier. When we originally polled this item, we didn’t make it clear whether completion of the Kourend & Kebos Diary would award you full Prayer experience for scattering ashes with it. So, let’s put this to the vote:
Question #1:
Should the Ash Sanctifier award players 100% Prayer XP upon completion of the Elite Kourend & Kebos Diary?
We’ve seen that the recent introduction of Amethyst Darts has caused an increase in demand for Amethyst crystals. Currently, the main way to obtain these Crystals is from the Mining Guild. As such, the current Amethyst Mining spots feel a bit crowded!
We propose adding an additional Amethyst Mining spot just North-West of the current one. Right now, there are 26 Amethyst veins within the Cave. The proposed expansion would introduce 36 more, which should free up more spaces for those willing to pay the price!
The newly proposed locations for Amethyst Mining spots within the Mining Guild (the design is not final).
Question #2:
Should we introduce an additional Amethyst Mining spot in the Mining Guild as pictured above?
As mentioned in our Changelog at the top of this Newspost, we'd like to give you two choices when the Poll goes live in-game on the requirement for unlocking this area:
A Falador Elite Diary Reward on its own.
A Falador Hard Diary Reward with an additional 200 Unidentified Minerals to be paid to Belona.
Once accessible, the area would be permanently open to all who have paid entry. When the Poll is live, you'll be able to vote on which option you prefer!
Question #3:
If Question #2 passes and the Amethyst Mining Spot is added to the game, should access be granted as a reward from the Falador Elite Diary, or the Falador Hard Diary? The Falador Hard Diary will still require an additional 200 Unidentified Minerals to gain access from Belona.
Some players may not need Enhanced Crystal Weapon Seeds after they’ve accumulated all of their Crystal weaponry, so they’re not a very satisfying reward. What if players could turn in unwanted Enhanced Crystal Weapon Seeds for Crystal Shards? One Enhanced Crystal Weapon Seed would have a trade-in value of 1,500 Crystal Shards.
Let us know if you like this idea, and we'll make it a reality!
Question #4:
Should it be possible to trade in duplicate Enhanced Crystal Weapon Seeds for Crystal Shards?
Next, we're looking at the Bow of Faerdhinen. We weren’t too sure on how the Ultimate community would feel about storing such a fearsome item within a STASH Unit. Although it is technically a Crystal Bow variant, it’s super powerful. What do you think?
Question #5:
(UIM ONLY) Should Ultimate Ironmen be able to store the Bow of Faerdhinen in a STASH unit, like main accounts can?
Let’s talk Looting Bags!
We recently discussed possible changes to the Wilderness, and one of our proposed tweaks was replacing all single-way combat areas in the Wilderness with the singles-plus format. This would mean that PvP always took priority in these areas, so if a player was in a fight with a monster, they can still be attacked by another player.
However, there's a common method UIMs use to fill their Looting Bags in low-level Wilderness that would be affected by these changes. Currently, Ultimate Iron players can 'box' a skeleton, putting them in combat with an NPC and preventing other players from attacking them. This then allows them to refill their Looting Bag. While we believe the Wilderness should maintain a healthy balance of risk vs reward (and preventing Ultimate Iron players from being able to 'box' a Skeleton would certainly increase the risk) we appreciate that this method has become an established strategy for many.
We'd like to avoid making exceptions to combat rules, so rather than making low-level areas of the Wilderness retain the current single-way combat format, we'd like to propose changing the rules of the Looting Bag itself. In future, it would be possible to store items inside it while in Ferox Enclave.
All other restrictions to the Looting Bag would remain the same.
Question #6:(UIM ONLY) Should Ultimate Iron players also benefit from being able to store items inside a Looting Bag when within Ferox Enclave and the Wilderness?
Lastly, let's talk about Sourhogs. We know that they can be a frustrating task. They're often given in high quantites, with high health, in a single combat area. This is especially frustrating whilst Turael Skipping, where players might have to complete them very often hunting for a more enjoyable task. Since Combat Achievements are just around the corner, we'd like to reduce their quantity and weighting so that players don't feel like they need to avoid completing the "Porcine of Interest" Quest to have a good slayer list.
Currently, the amount of Sourhogs that a Slayer master can require you to kill on task can range anywhere between 35 Sourhogs and 50. That's quite a large gap! For this reason, we'd like to propose reducing this to quantity to 15-25 instead, making it a considerably less tedious activity if you get, well, unlucky.
We'd also like to decrease the weighting of the task (how likely you are to get the task in the first place). It's currently a task with a weighting of 8, and we propose reducing this to 6.
Question #7: Should we reduce the Quantity & Weighting for Sourhog Slayer tasks as explained in the Blog post, from 35-50 Min-Max quantity & 8 weighting, to 15-25 Min-Max quantity & 6 weighting?
Slayer Improvements - Poll 75 (Weekly Game Update - July 14th)
Issues and Hotfixes (July 14th)
[expand type="details"] [table] [tr][th]Issue Raised[/th][th]Current Progress[/th][/tr][tr][td]11:40 BST We are receiving reports of the Alchemical Hydra dissappearing during combat.[/td][td]13:45 BST [FIXED] These issues have now been resolved and the intended changes that came with this week's update have now been reimplemented. We will continue to monitor the situation and share any further updates. Thank you for your patience.[/td][/tr][tr][td]15:00 BST We didn't include Dawn's stuns with Poll 75's Grotesque Guardian changes.[/td][td]15:00 BST We apologize for this, it wasn't included in the update but after reviewing feedback it should have been. We'll look to include this as soon as possible.[/td][/tr][tr][td]16:00 BST The final phase of the Alchemical Hydra is not correctly swapping attack styles.[/td][td]16:00 BST We have deployed a hotfix to correct this. It should be working as intended.[/td][/tr] [/table] [/expand]
Slayers rejoice, because your Poll 75 changes are here – store your tasks, rock out in a fancy helmet and more! We’ve also updated some of our Terms & Conditions, so please read on for everything you need to know.
Poll 75 - Slayer Drop
The Slayer Helmets have had a facelift! The following helms now look different from their boss counterparts:
Black Slayer Helm (King Black Dragon)
Green Slayer Helm (Kalphite Queen)
Red Slayer Helm (Abyssal Demon)
Purple Slayer Helm (Skotizo)
Turquoise Slayer Helm (Vorkath)
Not feeling your to-do list? You can now store Slayer tasks for later - unlock this option for 1,000 Slayer Points within the Slayer Store! Only one task can be stored at a time, and it will cost you 50 points, but unstoring a task is completely free – just chat with a Slayer Master. Note that you cannot store Wilderness tasks.
There is now a Dust Devil task-only area within the Kharidian Desert Smoke Well.
Players can now choose to kill between 3–35 Zulrah bosses for the associated Slayer Task.
We’ve added a right-click option to board the Zulrah boat.
More Bloodvelds have been added to the God Wars Dungeon, allowing players to complete associated tasks without waiting for respawns.
The Alchemical Hydra has gained a new animation that signals when its attack style is changing.
Token Slayer XP is now given to players who kill Sire Respirator when fighting the Abyssal Sire. You get 50 Slayer XP for each Sire Respirator killed, with a maximum of four during one encounter.
The Kraken can now be awoken using Fishing Explosives. Rise and shine, buddy…
A shortcut has been added to the Asgarnian Ice Dungeon, taking you from the area the Hobgoblins inhabited to the Skeletal Wyverns. It requires 72 Agility to use.
Grotesque Guardian Energy spheres no longer deal damage when a player absorbs them.
In phase two of the Grotesque Guardians fight, you’ll now see an indicator where rocks will land. Heads up!
PvP World Rota
The PvP rota has moved to Period A:
539 - (US) - PvP World
548 - (Germany) - High-Risk PvP World
577 - (US) - Free-to-Play PvP World
559 - (UK) - LMS Competitive
Changes To Terms
We wanted to let you know about some updates to our End User License Agreement (EULA), Terms & Conditions, and Privacy Policy which are now live as of July 14th 2021. We want to make sure the changes are easy to spot so here's a short summary of the changes:
EULA:
We're future-proofing our EULA to cover the release of Space Punks, and any other games we might publish in the future.
Terms & Conditions:
Along the same theme as above, there's now fewer direct references to RuneScape or Old School, and more talk of Jagex Products.
Section 5: New content on Anti Cheat Technologies and added detail on Chat Monitors
Section 6: Recognition that games can be played via third-party platforms (such as Steam and other gaming platforms) and enhanced restrictions on the use of accounts
Section 7: Added further restrictions on the use of virtual currency
Section 10: New provisions for 'Must Nots' under our Content Standards Policy
Section 13: Reworked the 'Bonds' section
Section 15: Added a new section on third-party software
Privacy Policy:
This has been updated to reflect the new Brazilian privacy law (the 'LGPD'), and has an updated address for our Data Protection Officer.
Clan level-up notifications are no longer broadcast for levels below 50.
Some errant trees on Tutorial Island no longer render under the coastline.
The Ornate Dragon Square Shield has been given a stat buff to match the plain version.
Castle Wars Medium Helms have been given a stat buff to match standard Medium Helms.
A minigame minimap icon has been added to the Tithe farm in Hosidius.
The animation for scattering demonic ashes is no longer disruptive to walking.
That's everything for this week's game update. We'd love to hear your feedback so please let us know what you think via our official forums, on the 2007Scape Reddit, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel.
[expand type="details"] [table] [tr][th]Issue Raised[/th][th]Current Progress[/th][/tr][tr][td]11:50 BST We've received reports of some issues with Phosani's Nightmare:
Phosani's does not appear to wake up after first kill.
Thralls do not appear to attack anything inside Phosani's Nightmare.
No Sleepwalkers during final Phosani phase.
[/td][td]13:25 BST [FIXED] These issued have been resolved with the recent reboot.[/td][/tr] [/table] [/expand]
We’re keeping it short and sweet this week with a cosy wee update packed of small changes to improve your day-to-day Gielinorian globe-trotting. But before we get into those tantalising tweaks, let’s take a look at what's on the way for the rest of July…
What's New
Ok, let’s get into this week’s update.
Phosani's Nightmare
Personal Best now uses the precise timing setting properly.
Rifts will no longer spawn under Spores.
Phosani's loot drops will disappear after three hours as normal, rather than vanishing after two minutes.
The HP Bar should display correctly within both The Nightmare and Phosani's Nightmare.
We've also implemented various hotfixes since the launch last week. You can find the full list of fixes at the top of last week's newspost.
Equipment Rebalance
On the Set Bonus window, the Crystal Armour will now display the effect of each individual piece equipped, instead of requiring the full set to show you that much-needed info.
The Recipe Log for the Singing Bowl has been updated to include the Enhanced Crystal Weapon Seeds.
PvP World Rota
The PvP rota has moved to Period B:
560 - (UK) - PvP World
579 - (US) - High-Risk PvP World
561 - (UK) - Free-to-play PvP World
580 - (US) - LMS Competitive
Extras
Updated the following NPC's to preserve your attacks between type changes:
All Tekton Forms
All Maiden of Sugadinti Forms
All Chambers of Xeric Crystal Crab Forms
Wyrms (Including superior)
Vet'ion
Vespula
Slightly altered the healing values for Corporeal Beast to disincentivise purely special attacking the boss down, but still open up the method of killing the boss legitimately.
Many weapons have had their positions fixed on female characters so that they appear to be held correctly when equipped. En garde! Etc...
Workbenches in the Elemental Workshop have been updated to include left-click options. The bookcase at the quest start location has also been updated to give both items at once.
The Player Owned House farming tools in the workshop have been 'rebalanced' and now appear to respect the laws of gravity.
Hespori immunity now ends as soon as the last healer plant dies.
XP drops no longer overlap the Theatre of Blood Party Formation interface.
We’ve fixed the Fishing Trawler interface dodger.
The Ape Atoll glider button has been upgraded.
It's now a bit clearer visually whether bird nests are empty or contain seeds.
Some incorrect numbers have been adjusted in Imerominia's dialogue about the history of Kourend.
A grammatical error has been fixed in the description of some Kourend scenery.
A spelling error has been corrected in the menagerie of Player Owned Houses.
The coloured crystals of the Elf clans now restock faster in the shop, now that they have more uses.
Upcoming Content
July 14th: We're bringing you a bunch of Slayer-related changes that passed in Poll 75, including improvements to Zulrah, Hydra, Grotesque Guardians and more!
July 21st: It's time for the long-awaited Combat Achievements update! Step up to the plate as you face off against some of the toughest foes across Gielinor. Plus, we'll be making some changes to The Gauntlet.
July 28th: The Night At The Theatre quest's rework arrives with the final update of the month. This change will bring a more thematic approach to the quest, and you give you some deeper backstory around the Theatre and some of its mysterious participants.
Summer Summit
With the pandemic scuppering recent RuneFast plans, we’ve committed to offering more regular insights into upcoming content right here. You may remember us mentioning the upcoming Summer Summit – a collection of announcements and information regarding upcoming content? Even though we're not ready to give the exact date yet, it will be coming this month, so make sure to keep an eye on our livestreams and socials for updates.
That's everything for this week's game update. We'd love to hear your feedback so please let us know what you think via our official forums, on the 2007Scape Reddit, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel.
[expand type="details"] [table] [tr][th]Issue Raised[/th][th]Current Progress[/th][/tr][tr][td]11:52 BST We've received reports of the Corporeal Beast is currently summoning multiple dark energy cores.[/td][td]12:20 BST [FIXED] The Corporeal Beast will now spawn the correct amount of cores[/td][/tr][tr][td]12:18 BST We've received reports of players spawning into empty rooms whilst facing Phosani's Nightmare.[/td][td]12:36 BST [FIXED] The team has deployed a hotfix to tackle this issue. We will continue to monitor Phosani's Nightmare and update you here acordingly.[/td][/tr][tr][td]13:30 BST We've received reports of the rifts that appear during the Phosanis Nightmare encounter are stacking on top of each other, causing much more damage than intended.[/td][td]14:30 BST [FIXED] A hotfix has been deployed which should stop rifts spawning on top of each other. We will continue to monitor Phosani's Nightmare and update you here acordingly.[/td][/tr] [/table] [/expand]
Phosani’s Nightmare is even more of a scream this week with a daunting new challenge level, plus, we’ve made tons of tweaks as part of the Equipment Rebalance and New Client Feature projects! Read on for parasitic eggs, banana hats and much more! All will be explained…
Phosani's Nightmare
Phosani's Nightmare is back and stronger than ever! This new challenge will test only the bravest warriors as you face off against the toughest version of the boss – all by yourself. Naturally, you'll need to complete The Nightmare at least once before you can take on this terrifying new iteration.
If you think you’re hard enough, journey past the slumbering creature to find Sister Senga and the Pool of Nightmares. Senga will give you some insight into what's happening in this area of the Sanctuary, and upon drinking from the Pool, you'll begin your fight against the toughest Nightmare ever! Hardcore Iron players beware – this will be an unsafe death for you.
If you’d rather sit back and let someone else take the pain while you gloat from the sidelines – good news! By right-clicking on the Poll of Nightmares, you’ll be able to spectate. Yeah, watch other players eat it from the safety of your own cowardice, go on…
There's also a tablet that will record both the personal and global kill counts, death counts and best times. How will you fare?
Rewards
The Parasitic Egg is similar to Metamorphic Dust and can be used on Little Nightmare to transform it into a Parasite version of itself. Gross!
The Slepey Tablet lets you upgrade Drakan's Medallion so you can teleport inside the Sisterhood Sanctuary.
The quantity of regular drops has been increased to match the difficulty of the challenge, and some less desirable drops have been replaced.
Unique drop rates have been updated to match the fight length and difficulty increase – they’re slightly more common to compensate.
Equipment Rebalance: Ranged Meta
Bow of Faerdhinen
The newest bow from the Elven region requires 75 Ranged and 70 Agility to wield, and has the same attack range as the Crystal Bow. The Bow will work best with a full set of Crystal Armour.
The Bow of Faerdhinen’s stats are:
Ranged accuracy 128
Ranged strength 106
Attack speed 5 (4 using the Rapid Attack style)
It will consume one charge per attack. You’ll be able to tell when it's out of charge by its altered appearance.
Like the Blade of Saeldor, the Bow can be corrupted – by paying 2,000 Crystal Shards you can give it unlimited charges. You'll then be able to change its colour (more info on that in the Poll 75 section below)!
Enhanced Crystal Weapon Seed
To incorporate this fancy new Bow, we've elected to change the way that receiving the Blade of Saeldor works. Instead of the Blade itself, you'll now be able to obtain a Seed from either version of the Gauntlet. The drop rate remains 1/2000 for the regular Gauntlet and 1/400 for the Corrupted Gauntlet.
With this Seed, players can head to a Crystal Singing Bowl and turn it into either the Blade of Saeldor or the new Bow of Faerdhinen, for an additional cost of 100 Crystal Shards. This can only be done with 82 Crafting and 82 Smithing, and will reward players with 5,000 XP in each skill once the Seed is transformed. If you lack the requirements to change the Seed yourself, you can speak to any NPC near a Crystal Singing Bowl and pay 150 Crystal Shards, but you won’t get an XP reward (this will still result in either weapon gaining 10,000 charges).
Changed your mind? By paying 250 Crystal Shards, you can transform the weapon back to its original form. The Collection Log has been updated to include the Enhanced Crystal Weapon Seed, replacing the Blade of Saeldor.
Crystal Armour
The following changes have been made to the Crystal Armour’s pieces:
(Green = Buff, Red = Nerf)
Please note that the Set Bonus for individual pieces of the Crystal Armour doesn't appear on the Equipment Stats Interface when wearing parts of the set as oppose to the full set. This will be fixed with next week's game update.
Toxic Blowpipe
The Toxic Blowpipe accuracy has been reduced to 30.
The Toxic Blowpipe strength has been reduced to 20.
The Ranged strengths of Darts used with the Blowpipe have changed as follows (and apply to all variants):
Bronze to +1
Iron to +2
Steel to +3
Black to +6
Mithril to +9
Adamant to +17
Rune to +26
Dragon to +35
The accuracy of all darts has been reduced to +0.
Amethyst Darts
These new Darts will require 50 Ranged to equip (now reflected in the Skill Guide) and have poisoned, poisoned+ and poisoned++ variants. You can remove poison using a Cleaning Cloth. The Darts will have an Accuracy of +0 and a Strength of +28.
You are also able to make Amethyst Darts. Up to 8 Dart Tips can be created by using a Chisel on each gem (with 89 Crafting), which will award the player 60 Crafting XP per Amethyst. These Tips can be fletched into a full Dart using Feathers along with 90 Fletching. You’ll gain 21 Fletching XP per dart created.
You can also craft Amethysts into Bolt Tips (83 Crafting), Arrowtips (85 Crafting) and Javelin Heads (87 Crafting), which will all grant 60 Crafting XP per Amethyst.
Shayzien Armour
The Shayzien Platebody has been renamed the Shayzien Body. In order to allow the Shayzien Armour to better function as Ranged Armour, we’ve given all of the pieces Ranged accuracy but lowered the Melee defences of the Shayzien Body.
Here are the stat changes in full:
(Green = Buff, Red = Nerf)
Armadyl Crossbow
The cost of the Armadyl Crossbow's special attack has increased from 40% to 50%. The base chance for the Bolt activation has been doubled on the special attack and may differ from Bolt to Bolt (the bonus from Kandarin Diary does not increase this).
Crystal Bow
The Crystal Bow’s Ranged strength has increased to +78.
Dragonhunter Crossbow
The Dragonhunter Crossbow’s Ranged strength bonus has been reduced from 30% to 25%
Other Changes
Odium Ward's Ranged strength has been increased to 4.
Dragonfire Ward's Ranged strength has been increased to 8.
Twisted Buckler's Ranged strength has been increased to 10.
HP from the the healers at Zuk and the rangers within the inferno have been reduced by 5.
Poll 75
As always, we refer to the in-game timings as 'cycles'. Each cycle is equal to 0.6 seconds and is also commonly referred to as a 'tick' by the community.
The winning entry from the Design A Hat competition is now yours to wear! Head over to Diango to claim the opulent Banana Wizard Hat. It’s rich in potassium, probably.
The Blade of Saeldor can now be recoloured to match the crowns found within Prifddinas. Lliann will sell you the following crystals, which can be used on a Corrupted version of the Blade to give it a new splash of colour:
Crystal of Amlodd
Crystal of Cadarn
Crystal of Crwys
Crystal of Hefin
Crystal of Iorwerth
Crystal of Ithell
Crystal of Meilyr
Crystal of Trahaearn
With no players in its cave, the Corporeal Beast now heals 25 hitpoints every 7 cycles, instead of fully healing instantly. The boss still resets itself in full after three minutes of inactivity.
The Imbued Skull Sceptre can now auto-cast Crumble Undead on both Member and Free-to-Play Worlds.
Weaken spell effectiveness has been buffed by 50% for players using the Tome of Water. Splashing!
The following NPCs’ bones will now work with the Bonecrusher's effect (this does not work for any noted bone drops):
Chaos Elemental
Insatiable bloodveld
Regular bloodveld
Jogre
Jungle horror
Players can now toggle on/off the Dagannoth Bones perk from the Elite Fremennik Diary. Speak to Thorodin, just south of Rellekka.
Bats in the Inferno no longer drain combat stats if you are praying Protect from Missiles. Phew.
Zealot's Armour now has a Prayer bonus equal to Monk's Robes + 1.
The warning message for the Barrows tunnels can now be compressed into one text box by speaking to the Strange Old Man. Keep it brief!
We've added orange and blue recolours of the Sarachnis Pet. You can try them out by grabbing Egg Sacs from the Grubby Chest in the Forthos Dungeon.
The Shooting Star XP rate has increased as follows:
Death Runes now give 10 charges to the Ash Sanctifier, rather than 100. Any existing charges will be divided by 10.
Demonbane spells now have a base 20% accuracy buff that increases to 40% when Mark of Darkness is used.
When the Mark of Darkness’s effect wears off, a new animation plays, reminding the player to reapply the spell.
Offering spells from the Arceuus Spellbook now cast instantly, and have a cooldown animation instead of a warmup one.
The scattering animation for Demonic Ash has been updated.
The Giant's Den is now considered part of the Catacombs for the Prayer Restore effect.
The swarms to the north of Piscarilius are no longer quite so aggressive!
Death Charge restores can now be used when you defeat the Grotesque Guardians. A special attack is restored with each death.
New Client Features: Milestone #1
The correct text now displays on the new HP bar interface when tackling The Nightmare.
The XP drop bar no longer clashes with the Theatre of Blood HP bar.
Stat boost tooltips are now successfully cleared when the hovered stat is hidden.
Some other typos and text changes have been fixed.
PvP World Rota
The PvP rota has moved to Period A:
539 - (US) - PvP World
548 - (Germany) - High-Risk PvP World
577 - (US) - Free-to-Play PvP World
559 - (UK) - LMS Competitive
Other News
There are more increments on the volume and brightness sliders in the Options menu, so you can get them just right.
When a Kitten spawns, you’ll get a warning message if it's already on the verge of running away due to hunger or neglect.
Trees on Tutorial Island no longer render underneath the adjacent coastline.
Players must now be in the correct place when using the tunnel from the Forthos Dungeon down to the Catacombs.
Loot notifications can now be sent to a Clan Channel when an Unsired is placed in the Font (assuming the Clan has enabled such broadcasts).
Typos have been fixed on a soldier in Shayzien, in Commissioner Anwar’s dialogue, on the crate in Osten’s shop, and in the Settings menu.
Your sale quantity is now updated correctly when you’re inputting a number during in-game shop purchases.
That's everything for this week's game update. We'd love to hear your feedback so please let us know what you think via our official forums, on the 2007Scape Reddit, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel.
Dating all the way back to 2001, the Wilderness is the only place where players can engage in PvP combat and gain all the items dropped by their defeated opponent. If you want to test your fighting mettle and scoop up your opponents' rewards, it’s the only place to be.
Since the release of Old School RuneScape, the area's undergone a few changes, most notably the Wilderness Rejuvenation projects in March 2014 and November 2018. These revamps introduced new bosses, monsters, resources and activities.
However, those who brave the Wilderness still face some frustrations, and today we're going to look at how we're hoping to address them.
It's important that we highlight from the get-go that this blog isn't going to mention adding large pieces of new content. That will come later this year when we tackle the fabled Wilderness Bosses rework, which will include a host of new rewards and more, but that will be covered in a separate blog post. The intention of this blog is to address many of the long-standing issues that have been raised by all types of players, providing a strong foundation for future change that we can build upon.
General Wilderness Changes
The main issues we're addressing today are long-standing and largely relate to balancing. Many of the changes outlined here are also intended to benefit those who engage with the activities listed the most. As such, the content offered within this blog will not be polled. This approach is similar to our previous balancing efforts, only rather than simply adjust numbers, we're hoping to achieve better results by focusing on much higher-quality changes.
Firstly, we’d like to share the results of a recent survey.
The following results are from a total of 30,064 respondents.
Which of the following best describes how often you enter the Wilderness:
I don't go into the Wilderness - 5.67% I rarely go into the Wilderness - 55.91% I often go into the Wilderness - 38.42%
Which of the following best describes the main reason you enter the Wilderness:
I understand how the Wilderness works (e.g. unique game mechanics and game rules):
Agree - 92.79% Disagree - 7.21%
The Wilderness offers a good balance between risk and reward:
Agree - 31.05% Disagree - 68.95%
I try to avoid spending time in the Wilderness where possible:
Agree - 68.10% Disagree - 31.90%
I try and fight back if another player is attacking me within the Wilderness:
Agree - 31.87% Disagree - 68.13%
I think 'Skulltricking' within the Wilderness is a problem:
Agree - 69.95% Disagree - 30.05%
I would spend more time in the Wilderness if 'Skulltricking' was less common:
Agree - 49.62% Disagree - 50.38%
I think organised groups of players have too much of an advantage over solo players in single-way combat:
Agree - 87.95% Disagree - 12.05%
I would spend more time within the Wilderness if fights were fairer for solo players:
Agree - 74.91% Disagree - 25.09%
I think the Wilderness needs more content added to it:
Agree - 77.11% Disagree - 22.89%
When adding new content to the Wilderness, the focus should be on end-game, best-in-slot rewards:
Agree - 38.77% Disagree - 61.23%
When adding new content to the Wilderness, the focus should be on new skilling activities:
Agree - 52.43% Disagree - 47.57%
When adding new content to the Wilderness, the focus should be on PvP based rewards:
Agree - 83.17% Disagree - 16.83%
When adding new content to the Wilderness, the focus should be on money-making methods:
Agree - 67.66% Disagree - 32.34%
I think the Wilderness bosses need to be reworked:
Agree - 86.42% Disagree - 13.58%
If the Wilderness bosses are reworked they should have new rewards added to their drop table:
Agree - 85.70% Disagree - 14.30%
Skulltricking
Skulltricking takes various different forms, but ultimately the end goal is the same – to trick an unsuspecting victim into attacking another player, causing them to become skulled. This puts the victim in a position where they are risking much more than they had intended.
In our survey, 68% of respondents reported that they do not fight back within the Wilderness, and almost 70% of all respondents believe that Skulltricking is a big problem. This is not something we can simply ignore.
The easiest way to prevent Skulltricking is to turn off your attack options and disable auto-retaliate. However, by literally deterring players from fighting back, is it even PvP combat anymore? It’s easy to see why the majority of players don’t like this solution.
We want to make it so that players who are not planning to skull can still fight back when attacked – without falling into a position where they’re risking more than they initially intended. We are investigating the possibility of additional menu options such as ‘disable attacks that would result in getting skulled’.
In addition to this, we will also stop players from losing their skull whilst in combat with another player.
This is a big change to the unruly nature of the Wilderness, but we feel it will better the long-term health of this iconic area. We're hopeful that empowering players to fight back will bring new life to the Wilderness and create a much fairer platform for satisfying combat experiences.
Luring
Luring is any instance where a scammer tries to trick another player in order to steal their items. We’re committed to preventing these types of scams, and we’ve made good progress in the past, especially in regards to animation stalling and the mapping down of additional safe areas.
We want to make the following changes:
Map extra safe areas around Banks and hotspot locations in PvP worlds, to stop players from unintentionally straying into a danger zone.
Make doors always open in PvP worlds.
Are there any particular areas you’ve experienced this issue that we should focus on? Let us know!
Combat Area Tricks
The whole Wilderness is a PvP area, but some areas limit who you can attack and when. Currently the region is split as follows:
Single-way Combat Area: An area where a player or monster can be attacked by only one player or monster at a time.
Singles-plus Combat Area: Similar to single-way combat, with the exception that if a player is fighting a monster, they can be attacked by another player. Currently, only the Revenant Caves are singles-plus.
Multi-way Combat: An area where a player or monster can be attacked by more than one player or monster at a time.
It is currently possible to abuse these restrictions in certain situations. For example:
Player A and Player B are fighting in a single-way combat zone.
Player C is stood nearby in a multi-way combat zone.
Player A is close to dying but can instantly attack Player C, due to them being in the multi-way combat zone.
In this scenario, Player B is no longer able to attack Player A, as they are now in combat with another player!
To avoid this, we will ensure that if Player A is fighting Player B first, the rules of their area apply, and they can no longer attack Player C.
Single-Plus Combat & ‘PJ’ Timer
In most parts of the Wilderness, players who are attacked by an NPC cannot be attacked by other players. This normally is all well and good, but can cause issues when players run into a field of NPCs and "box" them, providing protection against a PK.
Some of you have also fallen victim to ‘Pile Jumping’ or ‘Player Jumping’ (both generally abbreviated to ‘PJ’) i.e. a player might attack you while you’re busy collecting loot from a kill, or steam into your fight when your opponent is nearly dead, taking the kill from you and swiping the loot.
We’re going to kill two birds with one stone here: we’ll be replacing all single-way combat areas in the Wilderness with singles-plus. This means that PvP will always take priority, so if a player is in a fight with a monster, they can be attacked by another player. In all other aspects, the old single-way combat mechanics would still apply.
Secondly, we’ll be adding a ‘PJ’ Timer to singles-plus combat areas. This will mean that players have a grace period in which they cannot be attacked by other players if they’re still fresh from an encounter.
Here's an example of how a typical combat scenario might work with the singles-plus mechanic:
Player A is attacking an NPC. Player B comes along and attempts to attack Player A. With singles-plus in effect, the NPC loses interest in Player A.
This means that Player A can now attack Player B. If Players A and B stop fighting each other, then other players could then attack Player A instead… but because of the PJ Timer, they would need to wait 10 seconds before they were able to do so.
This should mean that players can't be attacked by multiple aggressors in quick succession outside of multi-way combat zones. Speaking of which, no changes are planned at present for multi-way combat zones, and we expect those areas to remain suitable for those of you who want to group up and fight against other players.
Loot Keys
Back in November 2017, we pitched the idea of bringing across the Loot Key system from Deadman Mode, via Loot Key Scrolls. These would be a tradeable drop from Revenant NPCs found within the Revenant Caves, redeemable at Krystilia (the Edgeville witch). They would give players the ability to toggle Loot Keys.
When we put this to the polls, it narrowly failed with a 'Yes' vote of 73.9%. We haven’t revisited the possibility of adding these into the game – until now.
We’d like to bring Loot Keys to the game.
We think Loot Keys could help reduce the number of players waiting around PvP areas to simply loot leftover goodies, while also promoting a higher risk vs reward factor, as players could choose to stay within the Wilderness for longer without banking, or go for multiple kills in a row on PvP worlds without fear of losing their hard-earned spoils!
However, Loot Keys will work slightly differently from how they were originally proposed. Instead of being a tradeable drop, they will be a purchasable and permanent unlock for 5 million gold that will grant players the ability to toggle the functionality on or off as they please. This will only be possible at the Ferox Enclave, the same location the unlock is purchased.
Loot Keys will turn all the loot you'd normally get from a player in the Wilderness or PvP worlds into a Key, which will only use one inventory slot.
A player can hold up to five of them at once, after which PvP drops will revert to normal functionality until they have either redeemed or destroyed a Key.
Keys can only be redeemed at a Bank or destroyed. They cannot be banked.
Killing another player who has Loot Keys will assign you their most valuable Keys. If you already have a lot in your inventory, you will receive the most valuable Keys until you are holding a total of five.
Skulled players that have two or more Keys in their inventory will have a skull icon over their head that shows how many keys they hold.
We'll also be updating the functionality of Loot Keys by adding various levels of customisation, allowing you to tailor the benefits they provide based on your playstyle. The following options will be available on release:
The ability to exclude food and/or potions from Loot Keys, causing them to drop to the floor as per existing behaviour.
Players will be able to set a loot threshold, causing any items above that value to be excluded from Loot Keys. Instead they'd drop to the floor as per existing behaviour.
Ultimate Iron players will not be able to unlock Loot Keys, preventing them entirely from gaining access to the benefits they provide.
Fountain of Rune
In order to tackle risk-free usage of the Fountain of Rune, we will prevent players from logging out for three seconds after they use a spell that benefits fountain effects.
This only applies when the Fountain of Rune effect is used to get a free rune cost for a spell and will not apply to players using the fountain to charge an Amulet of Glory.
Iron Accounts & PvP Loot
With so many different ways to approach Old School, it’s great to see the many unique builds that players create to maximise their potential strength, especially when it comes to PvP content!
Players looking for a challenge might create an Iron account with the sole intention of excelling in PvP situations. These accounts cannot gain experience from combat with other players, so they must work around that limitation to create extremely powerful builds that would otherwise be impossible. And of course, Iron accounts can’t trade with other players, so they need to gather many items and supplies for this to be effective.
Currently, if an Iron player defeats another person in the Wilderness or PvP worlds, they cannot pick up the dropped items. This means that the defeated player can run back to where they perished and simply loot their items back, removing a lot of the thrill involved in fighting another player on such dangerous terms in the first place.
To make things more nail-biting, we’d like any items that would normally drop on death to still appear on the floor upon defeat, but no one will be able to pick them up – including the player who lost them. Untradeable items will still be able to be picked up by the defeated player where they aren't automatically added to your inventory (broken items, Graceful below 20 wild, etc.).
Equipment Rebalancing
With the recent Ranged Meta portion of the Equipment Rebalancing out of the way, our focus now shifts to PvP changes. For those unaware, we originally pitched them as focusing on Dragonhide armours and Dinh’s Bulwark. However, there some additions have been thrown into the mix. Let’s take a look.
Dinh’s Bulwark
Dinh’s Bulwark is an overwhelming defensive force in PvP, and a niche item. It gives certain account builds the potential to ‘tank’ in some encounters, such as the God Wars Dungeon. This is thanks to its incredibly high defence bonuses, with no negative stats to offset them.
Our previous proposal was to change its defensive bonuses, with a focus towards reducing Melee and Magic defence, making it an outstanding Ranged defence item instead. This would mean players using the shield in PvP situations would have to make up the lost defence in other aspects of their equipped gear, helping to further balance out the combat triangle.
A lot of you were worried that by reducing the defensive stats of Dinh’s Bulwark, we were effectively removing its only use. This wasn’t entirely accurate, given the shield does have uses outside of PvP, which the proposed changes would only have improved further. Nonetheless, we have a new idea that will ensure Dinh’s Bulwark has plenty to offer beyond just its reduced defensive capabilities.
We’ll achieve this by addressing one of the main feedback points we received – giving you the ability to fight back when using the shield!
This new design retains the existing nerfs to the Bulwark’s defensive stats, but allows it to better fill the ‘tank’ role, while also creating a niche defence-scaling offensive item; -something which doesn't exist in the game currently. Here’s what we’re changing:
We’ll increase its attack speed and attack bonus, giving it increased DPS and additional utility in a ‘tank’ role.
We’ll buff its special attack, allowing it to reduce the offensive capabilities of each monster it hits.
While in offensive mode, the Bulwark’s Strength bonus will scale based on the defence bonus of any equipped gear.
We’ve upped the Crush attack bonus to +124 to help slightly with its new role.
We’ve also increased the attack speed from 7 to 5. With its new passive effect (see below), having a more reasonable attack speed is more in-line with other slow two-handed weapons used for DPS, such as the Scythe of Vitur.
New Passive Effect:
When not in defensive mode, your Melee strength is increased by the following:
This results in one max hit every 12 average defence bonus above 200.
With less than 200 average defence bonus, this results in a max hit of 15 down from 24 (with no Melee strength bonus).
In full best-in-slot defensive gear, providing an average defence bonus of +498, this results in a max hit of 46 from 32 (32 would have been the previous max hit in this same gear).
All of which results in Dinh's Bulwark having an exciting new role as the only weapon which scales its offense on defensive gear!
This change makes a huge difference to where you would use the Bulwark. Notably, you would be able to achieve more DPS with it than when using a Zamorakian Hasta in full Justiciar against creatures like General Graardor (though it is still weaker than a Dragon Scimitar in full offensive gear). Essentially, where you would usually use Dinh’s Bulwark in a ‘tank’ role, you’ll be able to deal even more damage than before.
New Special Attack Effect:
In addition to the current area of effect damage of the Bulwark’s special attack, we’ll make it so that enemies hit by the special attack will also have their highest offensive stat reduced by 5% of its current value, either Melee (attack + strength), Magic attack or Ranged attack.
Xerician Robes
Xerician Robes are fabled for being a cheap alternative to Mystic Robes, and their low cost means they see great use throughout the Wilderness. Much like Dragonhide Armours, many players feel like their strength is too high for an incredibly low cost.
As such, we’ll be changing the offensive capabilities of Xerician Robes slightly by reducing the Magic attack bonus they offer. In total, 10 Magic attack bonus will be removed, with changes being made to the both the top and bottom.
This will also help offset the Magic defence lost from Black Dragonhide (which is itself covered later in this blog), while still ensuring that they are a stronger Magic option than Wizard Robes.
Elemental Staves
During our initial Equipment Rebalancing proposal, many of you were interested in the rebalancing of lesser used and lower tier items to make them more effective. A popular suggestion was that we improve Elemental Staves, given how as you progress through the different tiers of staves, the only thing that increases is their Melee capabilities... which is rather irrelevant for Magic-based attacks!
The above changes would see each tier of stave benefit from a linear increase of 2+ to Magic attack and defence bonus.
This keeps them below the Ancient staff, which has +15 in both Magic attack and defence, but helps to alleviate some of the changes to Xerician Robes by providing better bonuses for higher valued items.
Dragonhide Armour
As we’ve mentioned in previous iterations of the Equipment Rebalance, Dragonhide armour has been notoriously powerful for an incredibly low cost. It offers high Defence bonuses, especially against Magic Attacks, with negligible negative stats to offset this. The armour generally goes against the combat triangle, and doesn't follow the same stat distribution as similar Ranged armours.
As the issue with Dragonhide is most prevalent in PvP, we feel it’s important that any changes are made as part of the Wilderness Changes project.
Our focus remains on changes to both the Melee and Magic defence bonuses of standard Dragonhide armours, in an attempt to encourage players to try different armour pieces. This will have a much lower impact on players focusing on PvM encounters, and naturally balances the Combat triangle.
We have adjusted our approach slightly based on your feedback, which can be seen in the tables below.
D’hide Bodies
We’ve scaled back on some of the nerfs to D’hide body Melee defence bonuses, but stuck with the previously proposed Magic defence bonus reduction.
To give an idea of how much of a difference this is from our previous proposal, here's the side-by-side:
Old proposal - 27% nerf to defensive stats of Black D’hide bodies
New proposal - 22% nerf to defensive stats of Black D’hide bodies
To see what a Black D'hide Body is currently like in-game, refer to the God D’hide row.
Dragonhide Chaps
Much like bodies, we’ve scaled back on some of the nerfs to D’hide chaps' Melee defence bonuses, but kept the previously proposed Magic defence bonus reduction.
Here's the difference:
Old proposal - 35% nerf to defensive stats of Black D'hide chaps
New proposal - 24% nerf to defensive stats of Black D'hide chaps
To see what Black D'hide Chaps are currently like in-game, refer to the God D’hide row.
Dragonhide Vambraces
There are no stat changes here compared to our previously proposal.
New Client Features: Milestone 1
With the introduction of our new client features, many things have changed. If you're experiencing issues when using a 3rd party client, consider switching over to the Steam client until they have been fully updated!
Hotfixes and Changes - June 23rd
[expand type="details"] [table] [tr][th]Issue Raised[/th][th]Current Progress[/th][/tr][tr][td]11:50 BST STEAM ONLY - Players can't mark tiles at Sire.[/td][td]11:50 BST This issue will be fixed next week.[/td][/tr][tr][td]11:50 BST STEAM ONLY - Players clients are crashing.[/td][td]11:50 BST Please make sure to update your game client via Steam before logging in to avoid these crashes.
To do this: right-click the game in steam, go to Properties -> Local Files -> Verify integrity of game files.[/td][/tr][tr][td]12:10 BST STEAM ONLY - The "minigame teleport cooldown"option has the same description as the home teleport cooldown option. [/td][td]12:10 BST This issue will be fixed next week.[/td][/tr][tr][td]12:35 BST STEAM ONLY - The XP bar clashed with the Theatre of Blood interface.[/td][td]12:35 BST This issue will be fixed next week.[/td][/tr] [/table] [/expand]
The first raft of new client features is here! Keep reading for a breakdown of all the nifty toggles ‘n’ tweaks that will make your game smoother than ever. And that’s not all – A Kingdom Divided, Theatre of Blood and Clans have all had a polish, and we’ve got some dazzling new merch to show off…
New Client Features: Milestone 1
Today sees the arrival of the first batch of shiny new client updates that we announced last week! We’re starting with some really core features, which will in turn provide the foundation for the next milestone that's coming very soon.
We must stress that right now these features can only be used on the C++ client through Steam, but don’t worry device-tappers – they’ll be arriving on mobile later. Stay tuned to our socials as we push forward with this game-changing project!
Here’s what’s in store for the first batch:
Opponent Information HUD
They say information is the greatest weapon. Err… they say that, right? Well, anyway – we’re saying it now. And when you’re facing off against an opponent, it’s always good to have the information you need to hand! In the latest update, you’ll see your adversary’s name and hitpoints bar in the top left corner of the screen, so you can watch those points plummet with every bludgeon. This is a toggleable feature, but it’s switched on by default.
For regular enemies, there’s a top-left interface that displays HP and monster name. This will be replaced by the larger boss HP bar for enemies with more factors to keep an eye on, for example:
Bosses in Chambers of Xeric have HP threshold indicators for Vanguards.
The Nightmare has both shield and HP values.
Buff Bar
When using timed buffs such as Stamina Potion effects, you'll now be able to see which buff is active and how much time you have left with it.
Regularly in the buff? Here are some of the toggleable options you might want to use:
Show/hide Buff Bar (it’s shown by default)
Show/hide Tooltips
Show/hide Leagues Relics on the Buff Bar
Show/hide Home Teleport Cooldown
Show/hide Minigame Teleport Cooldown
Stat Boosts
These are new info boxes that show any skills which are boosted or drained from a base level, alongside their skill icons. You’ll be able to see the boosted level/base level comparison, always prioritising combat skills.
Options for this feature include:
Show/hide Stat Boosts (it’s showing by default)
Display Stat Value (60) or Relative Value (+4)
Show/hide Tooltips
Change the number of maximum boxes shown at once (from 1–6, with 6 as default).
Fishing Spot Indicators
We’ve made it easy to figure out which fish are bobbing about in your fave spots. When you have a relevant piece of fishing gear, spots corresponding to that item become highlighted. The indicator reacts to multiple pieces of equipment in your inventory, meaning you can see all available spots at once! Hover over the fish icon to reveal which slippery swimmers are up for grabs.
This option is on by default and should work for most fishing spots. You can also set the indicators to display at all times rather than being dependant on what gear you’ve got.
Tile Markers
Gielinor is massive, and sometimes you’ll want to revisit somewhere (or someone) cool. With the new tile markers, you can highlight key locations in red by holding shift, right-clicking any tile and selecting the ‘Mark Tile’ command. Easy! Only the player setting the markers will be able to see them, so go wild. There's also no limit to the number of markers you can place, and we are looking to include more options for them in the near future.
Chambers of Xeric Helper
Raiders rejoice! You now have the option to see useful information about your Chambers of Xeric raid with our new Helper. This handy feature will show you how much time has elapsed in your raid, your current points, and an ordered list of rooms to scour, including information about the contents of those rooms and scavenger and connection rooms.
You can view more or less information clicking the button on the bottom right of the Helper. Once again, the feature can be enabled and disabled – but it’s on by default.
Mouse-Over Tooltips
Before interacting with an NPC, object or item, you have the option to see a handy tooltip below your mouse pointer. This option is on by default.
You’ll also find tooltips for the Spellbook, but of course, you can disable them if you just want to see the spell icons and information on that screen.
You can also toggle the standard top-left option text on and off!
Chat
Within the Chat Settings, you can now include timestamps within your chat to see when messages were sent. These can be changed from server time (default) to your local time – or switched off altogether.
Your chat history will also be kept for up to 15 minutes after you log-out, and will be visible if you log-in within that time.
Other Features
Your Health and Special Attack Orbs will display a visual timer to indicate when the next HP and Special Attack will be restored.
You’re now able to apply anti-drag to the Settings, allowing you to hold shift and move multiple items in your Inventory.
On desktop, you can now control your FPS-limiting options! Choose between Uncapped, 15FPS, 20FPS, 30FPS & 60FPS.
You can keep your current combat style displayed on the screen without having to open the Combat Interface.
In PvP zones, you can now see the level ranges of the players you can attack.
For new players, the Settings menu will show less information by default. Keep it simple, eh?
The transparent chatbox will now appear the same in the C++ client as it does on the Java client.
The C++ client will remember your display settings the next time you log-in.
A Kingdom Divided
The Dark Lure spell has been changed slightly with regards to how it interacts with implings. Previously, the spell would cause an impling to briefly drift towards the player, before returning to their normal wandering routine. Now, lured implings will follow the player in a 2x2 area for 6 seconds, after which they will go back to wandering. This should make the spell more useful for this activity and alleviate some of the frustrations being expressed by players about how unreliable it was.
We've also made the following changes:
You can now add X amount of runes to the Ash Sanctifier (where X is the number input by the player).
Fiendish and Vile Ashes have been added to free-to-play, and Zalcano drops Infernal Ashes on death.
The Book of the Dead's left-click option has been changed to 'Equip'.
Thralls now give points for damage when used within the Chambers of Xeric.
Thralls will now aggro when a player splashes a monster using a Magic attack.
The north-western area of Piscarilius has reverted to multi-way combat.
The Quest Journal for A Kingdom Divided no longer cuts off when viewed.
The Chasm of Fire Cave shows up correctly on the minimap.
Boars now drop raw boar meat when killed.
Theatre of Blood Modes
You'll also find a few changes within Ver Sinhaza's very own Theatre of Blood:
Fixed a bug where Verzik's Nylocas explosion damage increased in lower scales.
Insulated boots now correctly reduce the damage from the lightning attack in Hard Mode.
We've fixed an issue where the non-melee Verzik Nylocas in Hard Mode could be damaged with any style - now they can only be damaged with their respective style.
The Duo Normal Global Bests will be reset, as they were displaying incorrectly.
We’ve fixed an incorrect Nylocas transition on Wave 20.
In all modes, the overall raid timer now starts after the team commences the Maiden fight.
Clans
Clans can now choose to receive automatic broadcasts when their members do any of the following:
Obtain valuable loot (the value at which notifications go out can be determined by senior Clan members, and must be done at least once to start this alert)
Obtain a Pet drop
Complete quests
Reach milestone skill levels
Join or leave the Clan
All active recruiters are now notified when applications are received or withdrawn.
We are currently aware that the broadcasts are using the default chat message colour. We're are working on a fix to have them look better than the default colour but felt broadcasts were more important to have than them looking their best.
Barbarian Assault has now been added as a social activity, so your Clan can run one as an event.
When resigning as a Clan Leader, you’ll now be told who else is eligible to become the new Leader in your stead. Make sure they’re big boots to fill!
We’ve also made a couple of rank and title amendments:
The Clan rank 'Peon' has been renamed to 'Pawn'.
The new rank 'Helper' has been added, using a smiley face icon. This is so you can use smiley face icons in the Clans channels like you could in the legacy Chat Channels.
The 'Ruby' rank icon is now a darker shade of red. Touch of class, that!
The Metal Bars have been recoloured to match their in-game counterparts.
While you’re here, look out for these features in the near future:
The ability to opt-out from your Clan's channel without leaving the Clan (for privacy).
The option to left-click Attack members of your Clan for a friendly battle!
New ways to sort the Clan lists by various criteria, beyond just alphabetically.
These features are currently in development with help from the Engine team, but they aren’t quite ready for launch this week. We’ll release these as soon as we can!
Looking for something to while away those long summer evenings? Look no further than the Map of Gielinor Puzzle! Featuring the iconic map design you know and love, this 1,000pcs brainteaser is sure to get you working those cognitive muscles.
We've also got new Angels Scapes lines! Feast your eyes on the gorgeous Dusk Variant Tutorial Island Pin, a sunset-toned version of the pin made to celebrate our 20th Anniversary.
Plus, there’s a new Fishing Skill Cape Keyring, and restocks of the trimmed Strength and HP Skillcape Keyrings. Check out the full collection here.
RuneScape: The First 20 Years
We’re very excited today because we can finally prise open the covers of our forthcoming book, RuneScape: The First 20 Years! Coming October 2021, the book is available for pre-order now, but if you can’t wait to get a gander at its hallowed pages, here’s your first look:
The book has 224 full-colour pages, including illustrations and exclusive interviews with J-Mods past and present!
And if that’s not enough, today we can also reveal the Deluxe Edition Cover Design and second folio print!
While the first folio print is an iconic Tim and Crunchy illustration, we can reveal that the second is a battle scene from the archives featuring the formidable General Graador! Created in 2012 for a series of prospective loading screens depicting the God Wars, the note on the illustration reads ‘The Lesser Gods opened gates between Gielinor and other neighbouring realms and brought into it new races to fight their battles.’ We think it makes a striking image for our second folio!
PvP World Rota
The PvP rota has moved to Period B:
560 - (UK) - PvP World
579 - (US) - High-Risk PvP World
561 - (UK) - Free-to-play PvP World
580 - (US) - LMS Competitive
Extras
Vanguards can no longer become immortal after reaching 0 HP.
The model of the Naval Shirts from Trouble Brewing have been edited/replaced to fit the female torso better. Now pose…
Models within Mushroom Meadows have been optimised to improve performance.
Ploughs in Hosidius will push any players who are standing in front of them.
The rocks that lead from the Kharidian Desert surface down to the Agility Pyramid will now walk you to the correct spot if you attempt to use them from the wrong sides.
Celestial rings and signets are now protected on death with higher priority.
The silver needle in Shayzien has been replaced with a normal one.
The new Antipoison potion can go in the shared storage at the Chambers of Xeric.
That's everything for this week's game update. As always, feedback is greatly appreciated, so please let us know what you think via our official forums, on the 2007Scape Reddit, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel.
[expand type="details"] [table] [tr][th]Issue Raised[/th][th]Current Progress[/th][/tr][tr][td]11:05 BST We've received reports of some players not being able to login.[/td][td]11:20 BST Players should now be able to login.[/td][/tr][tr][td]11:25 BST The values for greater ghost and skeleton are shown as 70 XP in the newspost[/td][td]11:35 BST This was incorrect and the values have now been updated to reflect the correct number (88 XP).[/td][/tr][tr][td]11:50 BST PvP Worlds are not appearing correctly.[/td][td]11:55 BST A 30-minute countdown timer is now activate across all PvP worlds in order to shutdown and convert them for their intended purposes.[/td][/tr] [/table] [/expand]
Can you believe it? We're officially 150 quests old! Read on for everything you need to know about the launch of A Kingdom Divided, including a deep dive into the brand new Arceuus Spellbook. We've also got the goss on our Shayzien rework, competition winners and changes to the Chambers of Xeric!
Before we start, a quick note: upon login, any players currently in Kourend will be teleported to the Castle, due to substantial mapping changes. More on that below…
A Kingdom Divided
Well, here we are. The next chapter in the Great Kourend storyline and the 150th Old School Runescape quest: A Kingdom Divided is out now!
A brief message from Mod Ed:
"We first announced this quest back at RuneFest 2019, but for me, the journey has been much longer. I wrote the first draft of A Kingdom Divided all the way back in mid-2017, alongside drafts for the five Kourend house quests. After four years of waiting, it’s a joy to finally share this story with you all. I hope you enjoy it as much as the team and I enjoyed creating it."
Great Kourend: a land of wealth, comfort and security. Across its five cities, the people of this Kingdom work to bring peace and prosperity. However, all is not as it seems. Beneath this delicate façade lies an uncomfortable truth: the kingdom of Great Kourend is A Kingdom Divided.
Since the death of the last king, Great Kourend has been ruled by the Kourend Council. Under the watchful gaze of the Council, Kourend has enjoyed a golden age of progression. But not all of its citizens are happy, and, spurred by the recent arrest of Councillor Sophia Hughes, allegations of corruption are growing.
However, the political games of the Council may be the least of Kourend’s concerns. A darker power is gathering in the Kingdom - one that could change the face of Gielinor forever...
Start this quest by speaking to Martin Holt, who can be found protesting in Kingstown, near Kourend Castle.
Requirements & Rewards (SPOILER WARNING!)
[expand type="spoiler"] To complete A Kingdom Divided you'll need to have finished the following quests:
Client of Kourend
X Marks the Spot
The Depths of Despair
The Queen of Thieves
The Ascent of Arceuus
The Forsaken Tower
Tale of the Righteous
Architectural Alliance
You'll also need the following skill levels (cannot be boosted):
54 Agility
52 Thieving
52 Woodcutting
50 Herblore
42 Mining
38 Crafting
35 Magic
Upon completion of the quest you'll be rewarded with:
2 Quest Points
10,000 XP Lamp
New Arceuus spells
Kourend Castle respawn point
Your Kharedst's Memoirs changing into the Book of the Dead (+6 Magic attack & +3 Prayer bonus when equipped)
We'd like to give a big shoutout to Mods Grace, Slippers and Surma for their audio contributions to A Kingdom Divided, as we can't wait for you to hear the sweet sounds they included with quest 150.
You'll be able to get up to speed with all the Kourend lore by checking out our original newspost which features Postie Pete's return, the complete collection of Kourend Chronicles and more!
Arceuus Spells Rework
Complete A Kingdom Divided and you'll gain access to the full contents of the new Arceuus Spellbook. Whether you want to clean all your herbs in one swoop or raise the dead, this book has got it all! Just goes to show that reading really does broaden the mind...
Full list of spells - click to expand
[expand type="details"] As always, we refer to the in-game timings as cycles. Each cycle is equal to 0.6 seconds and is also commonly referred to as a 'tick' by the wider community.
Reanimation Spells
Teleport Spells
Grasp Spells
Demonbane Spells
Corruption Spells
Resurrection Spells
Marking Spells
Offering Spells
Other Spells
Corruption
When a player is corrupted, they will start to lose Prayer points over a short amount of time. After 10 cycles, 1 Prayer point is drained. After another 10 cycles, 2 Prayer points are drained. After a final 10 cycles, 3 Prayer points are drained. If a Mark of Darkness has also been cast, corruption will occur every 5 cycles instead. This new type of damage will be reflected with the new type of hitsplat icon.
Naturally, Corruption spells can only be cast on a player who is not already corrupted. However, there is no cooldown between Corruption expiring and a new Corruption spell being cast. It is not possible to stack multiple Corruption spells on a single player, even within multi-combat zones. [/expand]
Shayzien Rework
Working on the next chapter of the Kourend storyline was the perfect opportunity to give one area of Great Kourend a bit of a makeover. Here's a few words from Mod West:
"Back in 2016, one of our players posted their vision of what Great Kourend should have been, and it was met with a lot of praise in the community. Since then we’ve made various efforts in crafting a Great Kourend that players want, and one that holds true to the design philosophies behind the rest of Gielinor.
"Towards the end of 2016, we worked on the coastlines of Great Kourend to create a more natural silhouette, while also fixing the lack of in-land water and establishing a main castle in the center of the kingdom. These changes went a long way in improving the area, but failed to address the issues with its main cities. The crux of the problem was scale: every building was built with walls that were the thickness of a full game tile (~1 meter), which had adverse effects on the creation of buildings, as they now needed to be a lot bigger to accommodate for the larger walls. As a result, each city was far larger than it needed to be, and looked quite odd when compared to other places! To put this into perspective, some of the buildings in Great Kourend are the size of entire towns – that’s not ideal, and we were keen on fixing this issue as well.
"Changing the assets that make up the buildings and layouts of each city, and adding in some much-needed historical world-building (where are my ruins at?!) was a major undertaking, and we knew it would require much more than the handful of weeks we spent on the initial rework. In 2019, we made a start on addressing these issues with the Hosidius rework, which was received very positively by the players – and illustrated how important it was to rework the other four cities.
"Some major issues of the Shayzien area included:
Tents, tents, tents! How has a 1,000 year old city functioned in seemingly temporary accommodation all this time?
History? What history? While the area was updated a little with the Chasm of Fire back in 2017, it still had a distinct lack of background. Generally an area this old would have ruins of towns and fortifications, lost to war and time.
Strange geography – what is this giant flat grassy plateau doing between farmland and swampland? It’s dull and lacks diversity. What are the local flora and fauna? Why do Giants roam outside the largest cemetery ever seen? So many questions that likely don't have answers, to be honest, as there was little thought put in during the initial crafting of Great Kourend.
"With the Shayzien rework, we hope we’ve solved these issues – and even more besides. We encourage you to explore the new city of Shayzien, the war camp and the surrounding outskirts, and we hope you like what you find!"
So what's changing? Firstly, Shayzien will be split in two. To the south, you'll find the city of Shayzien. To the north, the Shayzien Military Camp – both areas will feel very different from one another.
The camp to the north will have a more temporary, chaotic feel. The tents currently used throughout Shayzien will be used for the buildings here.
The city to the south has been given a more permanent and organised feel, to really bring the region to life. The tents have been removed from the city and replaced with brick buildings.
Here's how each piece of content has changed:
Full list of locations - click to expand
[expand type="details"]
Additions
With the remapping, the following content is now within Shayzien:
Shops
As detailed above, the rework will come with a new archery shop and an expanded clothes shop.
The stock for the archery shop will be:
Bronze, Iron, Steel, Mithril, Adamant and Rune Arrows
Bronze and Iron Bolts
Oak, Willow, Maple and the Standard Shortbow
Oak, Willow, Maple and the Standard Longbow
Crossbow
The stock for the clothes shop will be:
Leather body
Leather boots
Leather gloves
Black skirt
Blue skirt
White apron
Brown apron
Chef's hat
Black cape
Blue cape
Red cape
Yellow cape
[/expand]
Mobs
We've changed the mobs in the vicinity to better reflect their environment, and thrown in three brand new NPCs!
West of Kourend Castle
Giant Spiders (Level 2)
Giant Rats (Level 3)
NEW - Boar (Level 5)
North-east of Shayzien
Bandit (Level 22)
South of Graveyard of Heroes
Zombies (Level 34)
NEW - Necromancer (Level 54)
Ruins of Morra
NEW - Lynx (Level 64)
Further Changes
Ash and the Ash Sanctifier
We wanted to make demonic creatures a bit more beneficial, so they now drop different types of ash. You'll be able to scatter ashes to receive Prayer XP (similar to burying bones). Zealot Robes have no effect on demonic ashes, and the ash cannot be offered at Prayer Altars or used at the Ectofuntus. Please note that Superior Slayer will drop the same as their normal equivalent.
The Ash Sanctifier is an untradeable object that lets you automatically scatter ashes, similar to how you bury bones with the Bonecrusher. When scattering this way, you will receive half the amount of Prayer XP you would gain from manual scattering. To unlock this new item, you'll need to complete the Kourend and Kebos Hard Achievement Diary. After completing the Elite Diary, you'll be able to gain 100% of the Prayer XP you would normally.
In order to charge the new item, you'll need to use Death Runes, with each Rune giving you 100 charges (and with the maximum charges set at a memorable 2,147,483,622). Your runes can be returned to you if you uncharge or destroy the item. If this item is lost, you can reclaim it by speaking to Tyss by the Dark Altar.
Competition Winners
We ran two competitions to celebrate the launch of A Kingdom Divided, and the results are in. We're sure that you had as hard a time deciding the winner of the Login Screen Competition as we did choosing the winner of the Video competition! All of the entries were fantastic, and we'd like to extend our thanks to everyone who took part. Without further ado, let's reveal our winners:
Login Screen Competition
A massive congratulations to Need Plums, with the most voted entry through our in-game poll! Due to the technical constraints of the login screen, Need Plums kindly adapted their original image to include braziers, for the classic fire animation we all love so much:
The other finalists don't go home empty-handed. These talented folks will receive runner-up prizes:
2nd Place: Cherrycake4
3rd Place: Nancyy
4th Place: Parkshinhide
'The Story So Far' Video Competition
After some very close internal voting, the winner of our video competition is Evil Robert. Here's what some of the team said about the vid:
"Great voice acting. Very well presented and shot."
"Professionally made and very good quality. Your voice is amazing!"
Here's the full video, so you can see for yourself. It's a great way to refresh your knowledge of the events leading up to A Kingdom Divided:
Congratulations to the following runners-up for their sterling work:
2nd Place: Good6rief
3rd Place: 1yfe
4th Place: Wyzdum13
Once again, a huge thanks to everyone who took part in either (or both) competitions. You should be amazingly proud of your entries!
Chambers Of Xeric
Chambers of Xeric is getting even more love with this update, including a number of quality of life fixes from Poll 75 that will make your raiding experience all the richer:
You can now disable the level-scaling that happens if you have no players at or above 115 combat in Chambers of Xeric, by talking to Captain Rimor.
A default chest has been added that can hold 25 items (in personal storage only).
Ironmen can now use the shared storage unit on solo raids; Ultimate Ironmen can deposit items to the shared storage, but can't take anything out.
The Olms Fire Wall special attack can now be extinguished using Ancient Ice spells.
Herb patches now yield more herbs in larger raids.
Vasa crystals no longer get the additional 50% defence and health modifier that Challenge Mode bosses gain.
A Raid Party can receive up to six unique rewards from a raid if they earn enough points.
The Challenge Mode Submerged Muttadile damage model has been altered. Minimum damage is now 20% to 80% of its previous max hit, leading to more consistent damage, but with less combo potential.
Points now scale more linearly with combat level, meaning people with certain combat levels no longer receive disproportionately fewer points than they should have.
A Pickaxe spawn has been added to all of the Stone Guardians room.
Vanguards will take pending damage during the transition phase.
Players can now make three tiers of antipoison potions inside of a raid with a Noxifer and a Cicely.
PvP World Rota
The PvP rota has moved to Period A:
539 - (US) - PvP World
548 - (Germany) - High-Risk PvP World
577 - (US) - Free-to-Play PvP World
559 - (UK) - LMS Competitive
Extras
Saradomin-themed Theatre of Blood weapons now provide protection from that faction within the God Wars Dungeon.
We've fixed an issue with the Saradomin Scythe visually stretching in some circumstances.
The look of the Saradomin Scythe inventory icon has been improved to better reflect the item itself.
Players can no longer accidentally cast alchemy spells on the XP lamp from A Night at the Theatre.
The quest journal for A Night at the Theatre now clarifies whether or not the player has received their reward.
The Gauntlet tile patterns have been adjusted, as there was a bug that prevented some patterns from ever appearing.
Players can now build cannons inside the Abyssal runecrafting area.
The Fight Pits Diary task can now be completed on Deadman Mode worlds by speaking to the Fight Pit master TzHaar- Mej-Kah.
The pillars at the Clan Hub no longer clip with the fence.
Players may now retrieve the Barrelchest's anchor from Perdu if they lose it after the Barrelchest battle – even if they have not fully completed The Great Brain Robbery.
Thorgel's shopping list now correctly states that he wants Pure Essence, not Rune Essence.
That's everything for this week's game update! We'd love to hear your feedback so please let us know what you think via our official forums, on the 2007Scape Reddit, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel.
Welcome to the Kourend Chronicles, a six-part series of tales from Kourend's murky past! You can see a full list of all the stories so far on our A Kingdom Divided round-up.
Since Thana’s death I have had much to think about. My usual research has lost its lustre – my every thought is of the Ascent, its mechanisms, and how suddenly it can be snatched away. When we gave up our mortal lives, all those years ago, we were promised forever – so what changed? All this time I believed our immortality was a result of our own ingenuity – and now I learn that we are all bound up with the whims of the Dark Altar and these mysterious ‘Tasakaal’.
The device the adventurer found is just one half of the puzzle. If there’s a chance – any chance – that what happened to Thana might happen again, then I have to know the whole story. And as any good researcher knows, the only way to discover the truth is to find the primary source.
It was with this in mind that I made the decision to climb Mount Karuulm and speak to these ‘Tasakaal’ myself. I knew the journey would not be without its dangers, but I felt myself prepared – it’s not as though I have feet to get tired!
In truth, however, I must report that what lurks upon that mountain is worse than anything I could have imagined – and the danger, I believe, is to everyone in Kourend, and possibly beyond.
The climb began easily enough. I quickly spotted a few well-worn shortcuts and having saved myself a significant chunk of time, decided to pause and admire the view from one of the stopping-points. I was recalling a line from Philophaire’s Philosophy of Darkness when I sensed that I was not alone. Some way up the path, a trader was making his way down from the summit.
I had no time for conversation, so I concealed myself behind a nearby outcrop, thinking I might wait until he’d passed. Instead, I found myself witness to a horrifying spectacle – something so terrible that I hardly know if I can describe it. I’ll do my best.
As the trader slipped behind the outcrop, I heard him greet someone else on the path. I thought for a second he’d seen me, and almost floated sheepishly out from my hiding place when I heard the trader scream. Of course, I immediately looked to see what was going on, and whether I could be of assistance.
Not even six feet away from me stood the most monstrous creature I have ever laid eyes on. I could not tell if it was human or some sort of ghast. Its skin was white as bone, as was its clothing – but its eyes were a piercing blue, and the way it looked at that poor trader… it seemed much like a cat, batting some helpless mouse between its paws.
I’m no brave warrior at the best of times, and my instincts told me to remain hidden at any cost. With regret in my heart, I resolved to stay behind the rock and wait for an opportunity to help – an opportunity, I am afraid to say, that never came.
The figure used some sort of spell. I heard the incantation and smelled the tell-tale whiff of magic in the air, but it was a spell the kind of which I'd never seen before. The poor trader fell to his knees – almost as if pushed by an invisible hand – as a green light enveloped him. Then, almost as soon as it began, it was over.
I peered out, hoping that the monster was gone. To my shock, it was looking right at me. Just thinking about it makes me shudder. I think I caught it by surprise. I immediately readied a counterspell to defend myself, but no sooner had I raised my arms than it vanished with a blue flash of light. A teleportation spell, presumably, although I didn’t believe such a thing to be possible.
Now that the danger had passed, I immediately rushed to help the poor trader, who was lying prone in the centre of the path, but he was quite obviously dead. For a moment I was reminded of poor Thana. I hesitated, thank goodness, because then the body twitched. As I looked on in horror, it stood up and began to stumble down the path toward me.
I have seen reanimated monsters before, of course – but this was entirely different. I swear on the Dark Altar itself, I have never seen magic like it. It was abhorrent. Bizarre. Dangerous. All my instincts told me to turn and run – and so I did just that.
I’m sorry, Thana. I’m no closer to understanding what happened to you – but something tells me that what I saw today must be another piece of the puzzle. Whatever or whoever that monster was, it was a darkness I'd never before witnessed and hope never to do so again.
Good news for all Old School ‘Scapers today, as we begin talking about one of the projects that we’ve been working on in the background, and alluding to in our livestreams and blogs.
When we released Old School on Steam a few months ago, it came with a C++ client, GPU support and vastly improved performance. Since that release – and for many years! - you’ve been telling us that’s not enough. You want us to implement some of the features you’ve grown to love. You’ve wanted us to expand those features onto mobile too.
Well, we’ve been listening and that’s exactly what we’ve been working on. Development on the features is relatively new, beginning in earnest towards the end of last year, but this project will be the fruition of significant time and investment. In addition to our own content and engine teams (which we’ve expanded!) we have built a fantastic relationship with an external development team who are working with us to make this a reality even sooner. Whilst the project is still relatively early in its development, and we have a lot of work ahead, we feel that now is the right time to ask for your help. In just eight days’ time we’ll be adding the first milestone drop of additional features to the game on Steam. We want you to try using them, test them out, and give us your feedback!
This is an exciting moment for us as a team. But maybe we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves here. The work going on behind the scenes began over 12 months ago and, to say it again, we’re still fairly early in the feature development phase. Of course, this is just the first step in what will be a long process. This is a project we’re committed to for the long-term. Implementing all the changes you’ve asked for will take time. This blog will tell you everything you need to know at this stage, and we'll be covering any initial questions on Thursday's livestream, as well as adding to the FAQ.
Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of the how, what and when.
Let’s Talk Testing
To begin with, Steam will be our initial testing platform. We’re choosing to do it this way because it will allow us to streamline and manage initial feature updates and testing via just one platform more effectively. It also means that it's going to be really simple for you - our existing players – to pick up and help test the added features. Plus, we think it will be useful to see how the new players coming through Steam use the features.
Going forward we’ll be expanding the test by bringing these features to the mobile version of the game in the near future. You won’t need to do anything special to get them – they’ll be a part of the normal mobile updates. We are considering some opt-in testing, and if we decide on this we will of course update you accordingly.
Over time, and when we have a fuller feature set to offer (all of which have been tested and improved with your help) we’ll ensure that the C++ client is packed up separately outside of Steam for other desktop players to use!
We know that we’re being fairly loose with timeframes here, and that’s deliberate. We want to focus on the quality of the features with a smaller testing base before we distribute the new features more widely.
About The Features
We know this is what you’re most keen to find out! It’s no secret that most of the Old School team are avid players of the game, and have deep experience of third-party clients. We leant on our own experience to identify what we felt was important. This has been coupled with your suggestions over the years. But that’s not all. We’d also like to use this opportunity to say a big thank you to Adam, of RuneLite, who has been really supportive in helping us to assess which features we should prioritise.
We want to focus on feature quality and ample testing rather than quantity. To that end, we're going to batch features into milestone releases and we’ll be releasing these incrementally for the duration of the project. This will allow us to engage with feedback and make changes whilst working on the next milestone, with the ability to refine features in parallel with a steady release schedule.
As for the features themselves, we’re not thinking of them as plugins in the traditional sense. They’re part of the game and you’ll find most of them within game settings. This is a big part of why we updated the settings menu! We’re thinking of the future, years ahead, and doing it this way means we have flexibility over the design of the features and menus. More importantly it will let us tie the features directly into the game content and game systems with all information to hand. This means that the features will be highly integrated and responsive, and can use contextually driven information. There will still be a side panel for the stuff that doesn’t fit or makes more sense to be adjusted outside of the game, however.
Building all of this directly into the game means most of it will be present on mobile too. We know this will make a huge difference to those of you who spend a lot of time playing away from your desktop.
So, without further ado, here's a look at the first milestone we have planned already. And the good news is that it will be with you on Wednesday June 23rd! If all goes well, you can expect the second milestone in late July/early August, and the third milestone in late August/early September.
Here's a look at what will be coming next week. Note: TLI = Top Level Interface. HUD = Heads-up Display
Future milestones contain things like ground item identifiers, loot trackers, HiScores panels, Bank tags, and a lot more! We’ll be sharing the next stage of the roadmap as the project unfolds.
A look at some of the upcoming features. We'll share more with next week's release!
What’s Next?
You’ll be able to start using the first milestone of features when they arrive on Thursday, June 23rd. All you need to do is link your Old School RuneScape account on Steam and download the update. It’s that easy! As with the Steam Beta we ran at the end of last year, we’d love it if you would join our dedicated Discord server to share your feedback with us. Once the features are out, we'll share the Discord server widely. Everybody is welcome!
We know you’ve probably got a lot of questions about these features and what it might mean in the future. There are a lot of different routes we could take, and we'll do what makes the most sense for the game and for you, the community. Right now, our focus is purely on working hard to give players the security and reassurance of an official alternative to existing third-party clients. Beyond that? Let’s work together to find out, but we’re confident that the future holds seriously exciting opportunities which will be unlocked by the work we’re doing.
We can’t wait for you to get stuck in and test the features!
The Old School Team
FAQ
Why did the project come about? We know that our official Old School RuneScape game clients lack modern quality-of-life features. Things like visual and audio aids, tracking tools and additional accessibility options. Third-party game clients emerged to offer such things and it’s these clients, particularly RuneLite, that you find yourselves playing on. We want to give you an official alternative, one that can reach mobile and be ready for future projects.
How can I use the new features? To begin with, you’ll only be able to try it on Steam. Eventually the features will make their way to mobile, and then later to desktop outside of Steam.
Why isn't there a poll for the features? We’ve decided not poll the features because, well… we know that players have been using them for years. Many of you can’t imagine playing without them at this point! We think the need for these options is clear. In future, additional bespoke features could absolutely be polled.
What does this mean for other third-party clients? Nothing! You can continue to use third-party clients that adhere to our guidelines.
If you’ve been working on this project for so long, why have you waited to tell us about the project? We wanted to make sure it was deliverable. We don’t want to make promises and then fail to make good on them. You all remember early August and Winter 2017… And anyway, it’s the perfect time now that the first milestone is ready.
Why are you favouring RuneLite? RuneLite is the most popular third-party client, so it made sense for us to speak with its developers for a broad insight into what features our players are looking for.
I want to test the features. How can I give feedback? Once the features are out, we'll be welcoming everybody to our dedicated Discord server to share any thoughts on the new features and how they’ve been implemented. Naturally we’ll be keeping an eye everywhere else, like Reddit, Twitter and the forums!
Kourend Chronicles: The Man In The Tower
Welcome to the Kourend Chronicles, a six-part series of tales from Kourend's murky past! You can see a full list of all the stories so far on our A Kingdom Divided round-up.
The man in the tower had been there a long while, or so he’d been told, and yet Eek C'ho had never seen him before now. He looked much like any other human – dry, delicate skin, about six feet tall, and with a crop of untidy white hair atop his head.
Eek C'ho’s job was to bring the man food, once in the morning and then again as the sun went down, and then leave him alone. He was not supposed to wait while the man finished eating. He was definitely not supposed to talk to him.
But some two weeks into Eek C'ho’s new role as the man’s sole guard, he spoke. And Eek C'ho spoke back.
The man said:
“Have you ever heard of a journal?”
And Eek C'ho replied:
“No.”
Remembering he wasn’t supposed to speak, he snatched up the empty tray and scuttled back to his assigned dwelling, where he spent the rest of the day cringing whenever someone said his name in case it was followed by ‘the Yo’kal ahk wants to see you’.
But nothing happened. When Eek C'ho returned in the evening with the usual meal of greenish potatoes, all the man said was “thank you”.
Things continued that way for a while – the food arrived, the man said “thank you”, and the empty tray was taken away. If the Yo’kal ahk knew of Eek C'ho’s transgression – and he surely did, for the Yo’kal ahk knew everything that happened in this tower – then nothing came of it. So, one evening, Eek C'ho decided he’d try talking some more.
“What isss a journal?” he asked, as the man dug into his meal with his funny little pink claws.
Swallowing the mouthful of potato and wiping his mouth, he answered: “A journal is a sort of book.”
Eek C'ho pondered this for a moment.
“Do you know what a book is?” the man asked.
Eek C'ho couldn’t help but laugh, loud and crunchy, and the man started back. Of course Eek C'ho knew what a book was – the tower was full of them.
“We have lotsss of booksss,” Eek C'ho said, once he’d managed to control his laughing fit. Perhaps books were very rare in the human’s dwelling. After all, they looked very delicate compared to the stone tablets the shamans had taught him to read from.
“Could you get one for me?” the man asked. His voice was very quiet. “And something to write with?”
Eek C'ho thought for a moment.
“I can try,” he said, although in truth he had no idea if he was allowed to do any such thing. The Yo’kal ahk had been very clear that he didn’t want any more tomes getting covered in slime. There’d been a whole announcement about it. But Eek C'ho had been instructed to bring the man food, water, and ‘whatever else he required’. Did humans need books?
In the end he chose a battered looking volume from the bottom of one of the shelves near the kitchen. It was nothing of value, and the pages were already wrinkled and yellow, so he reasoned it wouldn’t be missed.
Finding something to write with was a little trickier – Eek C'ho had observed the human closely enough to figure out that he couldn’t possibly be using those pathetic little claws to carve out letters, and the pages of the book he’d found were so thin and fragile that he was sure something light must have been used to write on them.
But Eek C'ho’s dwellingmate, Ekr’a, was assigned to cleaning duty. He picked up all kinds of interesting things. So when Eek C'ho asked him how human books were written, he produced the right tool straight away – a feather! Ekr’a showed Eek C'ho how the humans – and even the Yo’kal ahk – would dip the feather into some black, wet substance and then use it to make words on all sorts of things. It was just what the human was looking for, and Eek C'ho wasn’t even angry when Ekr’a made him promise to trade him all his chilli potatoes at dinner – he was just excited to see what the man in the cell would do with it.
As Eek C'ho had expected, the man was delighted with his book. He could be seen scribbling in it at all hours of the day. Eek C'ho even began visiting outside of his designated feeding times to see him writing and hear his stories. At first the man didn’t much like talking, but as Eek C'ho’s visits became more frequent and his questions bolder, he began telling all kinds of tales about the outside world. Mountains where blue flames burned. A terrifying monster that froze everyone who came near. Red trees that grew so high you couldn’t see the top.
“Isss that what’sss in your journal?” Eek C'ho asked him, after one particularly interesting description of a place where enormous trees reached up into the sky. “The placesss you’ve been?”
The man – Eek C'ho had learned that his name was Magnus – shook his head and closed the book.
“No son,” he said. “It’s a warning.”
Eek C'ho nodded, although he didn’t completely understand. Magnus often said strange things.
The fateful day came some months later. Eek C'ho had noticed, over his last few visits, that Magnus had been more subdued than usual. His eyes were red and bleary, and his skin was so pale that in the light from the crystal beside his cell it seemed to glow an eerie blue.
Eek C'ho waited patiently as Magnus chewed his potatoes and eventually handed them back only half-finished. He suspected there would be no stories today, so he nodded and turned to leave, only for Magnus to reach out through the bars and grab him by the arm.
“I need your help,” he hissed, handing Eek C'ho the journal. The months of wear and tear had made it even shabbier than before, and several pages had come loose from the binding.
“I need you to get this outside,” Magnus said. “To the rest of Kourend. They have to know …” He began to wheeze and cough.
“They have to stop him.” Magnus finished, when his coughing fit had subsided. Eek C'ho wordlessly handed him a cup of water, Eek C'ho hesitating before he answered.
“I can try,” he said. He wished he could say more, but that seemed good enough for Magnus. The man let go of the journal and sat back down on the patterned flagstones of his cell.
“Thank you,” he croaked.
Eek C'ho scurried out of the prison clutching the journal tight to his chest.
What was he supposed to do? No lizardman had ever left the tower – it was a warzone out there, fit for only the strongest warriors. If the humans caught any one of them off-guard it could spell disaster. And surely the Yo’kal ahk would not approve.
But Magnus was his friend.
“I’ll take that, please.”
Eek C'ho froze. Stood on the steps before him was the Yo’kal ahk himself. He reached out a bony claw for the journal. For a wild moment Eek C'ho thought about keeping hold of it, but then the treasonous thought was gone. What was he thinking? The Yo’kal ahk snatched up the book and opened it, turning his cold blue eyes over Magnus’ work.
“Hm. Yes, this will do nicely,” The Yo’kal ahk said. He snapped the book shut with a dull thud, turned, and stalked back up the stairs. Eek C'ho’s heart sank. The figure paused and looked back towards him.
“Excellent work getting him to talk, by the way. You’ve been most useful.”
Then, with a laugh that echoed around the tower’s walls, the Yo’kal ahk left, taking the journal with him.
The next day, Eek C'ho found himself promoted to the Yo’kal ahk’s personal guard. He never did see the man in the cell again. But every so often, when he looked out the tower window at the sprawling human settlements in the distance, he wondered what ever had become of Magnus’ journal – and what terrible danger he was trying to warn them about.
