We're super excited for the arrival of our 150th quest: A Kingdom Divided in June! With the release just around the corner, it's time to get hyped for the next chapter in the Kourend storyline. Read on for the trailer, lore and two (yes, TWO) competitions!
Watch The Trailer
[previewyoutube="CwHX321sTb0;full"]
We recently had a special A Kingdom Divided livestream which you can watch here where we cover design, lore and maybe even a teaser or two...
Introducing: A Kingdom Divided
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...
Requirements & Rewards [expand type="spoiler"]To complete A Kingdom Divided you'll need to have finished the following quests:
Client of Kourend
X Marks the Spot (This quest is now a requirement in order to start Client of Kourend)
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:
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 Experience Lamp
New Arceuus Spells
Kourend Castle Respawn Point
20 Additional Kharedst's Memoirs Charges
[/expand]
Two Competitions!
Competition #1 - Login Screen Design Challenge
For the first of our competitions, we want you artistic types to design something familiar to all 'Scapers... the Old School login screen! With the lore and background of Great Kourend as your inspiration, we'd like you to come up with a thematic login screen for when A Kingdom Divided arrives in June. If you win, every player that opens up Old School will see your design as they prepare to step into Gielinor! Here's everything you need to know:
The competition begins at 13:00 BST on May 13th and closes at 23:59 BST on May 24th.
The four finalists will be chosen by the Old School team and will feature in a poll starting on May 28th and closing on June 1st.
Dimensions & Display:
The image you submit must be 545x671 pixels exactly and either JPG/JPEG.
The login screen works by taking an image and mirroring it. When submitting, make sure that it's half of a login screen (see the examples below).
Remember that the flames and window boxes (where players enter their login details) will be placed on top of your image, in the same positions as where they currently sit. These cannot be moved.
Submissions:
Email oldschoolcommunity@jagex.com with the following:
Subject: A Kingdom Divided Login Screen
Your Login Screen design
Your RuneScape Username (RSN)
Your local currency (for prizes)
[/expand]
We want to make sure all the finalists are rewarded for making it to the top four. Here's what you could win:
1st Place - £200 Amazon voucher and 12 months of membership
2nd Place - £100 Amazon voucher and 6 months of membership
3rd & 4th Place - £50 Amazon voucher and 3 months of membership
If you need a little inspiration, look no further than the previous winners of our login screen competitions for the Song of the Elves and Kebos Lowlands! And there's always the classic, of course!
For more details and the full T&Cs, head over to the forum thread. We look forward to seeing all of your submissions!
Competition #2 - 'The Story So Far' Video Challenge
Calling all budding video-makers! Can you create a video that summarises the events leading up to A Kingdom Divided? Get your viewers up to speed with the lore of the Kourend storyline, and you could win some fabulous prizes.
It's up to you to decide what style of video you want to make. Documentary, parody... whatever tells the story best! The most important thing is to have fun, and create an informative and entertaining video.
To help you get creative, we will be making the Oculus Orb available to EVERYONE with the game update on May 19th! If you're not familiar with the orb, it's a device that gives players total control over the camera, making it easier for you to capture gameplay within Gielinor. Just head on over to Diango in Draynor Village to receive this fantastic item!
The quests you need to cover can be found in the Requirements & Rewards section above. Here's what else you need to know:
Competition Details - 'Story So Far' Video [expand type="spoiler"] Dates & Times:
The competition begins at 13:00 BST on May 19th and closes at 23:59 BST on June 4th.
The winner will be voted for by the Old School team between June 7th and June 11th.
Dimensions & Display:
Videos must be no longer than eight minutes.
Your video must be uploaded to YouTube, but can either be unlisted or public.
Videos are not limited to just gameplay clips – you can feature animation or other styles of presentation.
Submissions:
Email oldschoolcommunity@jagex.com with the following:
Subject: A Kingdom Divided Video Competition
The YouTube link to your video
Your RuneScape Username (RSN)
Your local currency (for prizes)
[/expand]
We want to make sure all the finalists are rewarded for making it to the top four. Here's what you could win:
1st Place - £200 Amazon voucher and 12 months of membership
2nd Place - £100 Amazon voucher and 6 months of membership
3rd & 4th Place - £50 Amazon voucher and 3 months of membership
For more details and the full T&Cs, head over to the forum thread. We look forward to seeing all of your submissions!
Kourend Chronicles
Uncover Kourend's murky past and see another side to your adventures in Kourend Chronicles, a six-part series packed with new lore from your favourite continent. Check back each week for more stories, and keep your eyes peeled - we've sprinkled in a few cheeky hints for Kourend's future...
Crikey... not long to go now! We hope you're as excited for the release of A Kingdom Divided as we are. If you have any questions or feedback 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.
That's it folks: pre-registration for Clan names are now closed. Thanks to everyone who took the time to request their marvellous moniker!
Let's talk about what happens next, including what you'll need to do if your application was successful.
First of all, there will be no game update this week. We'll be using this time to test and tweak the system to perfection, ready for the big launch. It's all hands on deck!
We expect next week's game update (May 19th) to be a soft launch, with successful applicants being assigned their Clan name through a manual process explained below. Throughout the week, all players will have access to the shiny new Clan side-panel, though all actual features of the system will be disabled. Tantalising!
Provided the names process runs smoothly, the Clans system will fully launch on May 26th. All of the features, interfaces and menu options of the Clans system will be accessible to everyone, and you can start having fun! If you didn't get the chance to pre-register your Clan name, or your reservation request was unsuccessful, this will be your moment. You'll be able to grab a name on a first-come, first-served basis.
Clans...coming soon.
Next Steps
If you've applied for a Clan name, you'll receive an Inbox message from us in the next week or so, letting you know if you've been successful. You will receive your answer by May 19th at the latest, so please be patient with us.
If your application has been accepted, congratulations! The Inbox message will include an invite link to a Discord server that we'll be using to arrange the registration of Clan names. The message will also give the Discord tag of the staff member leading the project. Discord tags are unique, so don't accept any messages or links from Discord tags other than the one named in the message.
You must join the Discord server and arrange a suitable time for us to meet you in-game. Since there are thousands of Clans to manually assign in a relatively short timeframe, we're going to be holding several drop-in sessions from May 19th onwards. Think of it as booking your appointment at the Clan clinic!
Once a Clan name has been assigned to you, the side-panel will tell you which Clan you're in, but all of the features from the menu will remain blocked until Clans is fully launched on May 26th. You can peek at your presents but you can't open them yet...
To recap:
Pre-registration for Clan Names is now closed.
There is no game update this week, but players who have pre-registered a name can expect an Inbox Message with news by May 19th.
If your application has been successful, the Inbox Message will contain a link to the Discord Server we're using for this process, and the Discord ID tag to verify that it's us.
You should join the Discord Server as soon as possible and sign up to an in-game drop-in session from May 19th onwards.
At the drop-in, we will create your Clan name and then transfer ownership over to you.
Those who have successfully been assigned their Clan name will see it on the Clan side-panel, but no one will be able to access the features of the Clans system until the full launch, expected on May 26th.
We're almost there, everyone! Thanks so much for your continued patience. We know that you've been eagerly awaiting the release of the Clans system and can't wait to see how creative you'll get with the new features. Clan-tastic!
PvP World Rota
With no game update this week, the PvP world rota will remain on the same rotation and will not move to Period B until next week's game update on May 19th.
After recently introducing the weekly change to the rota based on feedback from a player survey, we are currently investigating changing the system that handles this.
Rather than worlds constantly changing between regular and PvP, we'll look to add worlds dedicated to the PvP rota instead. These worlds would always be configured as PvP worlds, but they'd only be live when they're included within the active PvP world rota period at the time.
Games Room Tables & Fishing Skill Boss Improvements - Weekly Update (05/05/21)
Hotfixes and Issues (29th April)
[expand type="details"] [table] [tr][th]Issues Raised[/th][th]Current Progress[/th][/tr][tr][td]11:40 BST Arceuus Teleport spells are showing the incorrect icons in the Portal Nexus.[/td][td]11:52 BST [FIXED] There is no longer a cooldown on Heal Other. With this hotfix, the tooltip will still state there is a cooldown when there isn't, but this will be changed with the next game update.[/td][/tr] [/table] [/expand]
Games Room tables are popping up all over Gielinor this week – see you in the pub! We’ve also been tweaking the mechanics for Tempoross, the Spirit of the Sea, so you can have an even more splashing time sending it to a watery grave. Plus, spell tweaks, interface adjustments and more...
Minigame Madness
Fancy a pint and a game of Runelink? We've added Games Room tables to some of the most popular pubs in Gielinor, as well as the Grand Exchange! This means that both Members and Free-to-play adventurers alike can battle it out on the board.
One of The Golden Field's new tables.
Show off your tabletop tactics in the following locations:
The Blue Moon Inn (Varrock)
The Rising Sun (Falador)
Forester's Arms (Seers' Village)
The Golden Field (Hosidius)
South-West of the Grand Exchange (Varrock)
Each pub will have two tables for all the current games, while the Grand Exchange will have eight. All tables can be operating a game simultaneously, but if all the tables are taken, you can still spectate! Members have access to the Burthorpe Games Rooms if they can't find an available table.
Game in style at the Grand Exchange!
Two new NPCs have popped up in the Grand Exchange's Game Zone, representing Saradomin and Zamorak. Talking to them will allow you to change your current world to the Castle Wars designated world (344) and put you in the lobby of your chosen side! For beginners, friendly NPC Meredith is also hanging around the Grand Exchange, ready to teach you how to play any of the games on offer.
Which side are you on?
Board games are unavailable in Deadman Mode and on PvP worlds.
Oh, and talking of games, the grandmasters among you may have spotted an error in the layout of the display chessboard in the Varrock Palace. The board has been updated and now respects the actual rules of chess!
Fishing Skill Boss
After reviewing your feedback, we've made another wave of tweaks to the Tempoross mechanics:
The fire clickboxes are now slightly bigger, covering more of the 2x2 space they occupy. The height of the fire will no longer change as it animates.
The fire itself is now slightly less punishing and will remove resources every two game cycles (1.2 seconds) rather than every game cycle.
The wave attack won't disrupt as many actions when it's incoming, so you can try and cook an extra fish or two!
Reducing Tempoross' energy to 10% or lower will prevent it from attacking for a full 25 game cycles. If you don't continue to shoot fish within that time, it will begin to attack again.
Beyond the encounter itself, you'll be pleased to know that previously blocked Fishing spots south of the Ruins of Unkah are now accessible.
Also, both basic and recoloured versions of the Heron will now use the same placeholder slot in the Bank!
Heal Group Spell
Recently, the Heal Group & Heal Other spells have been seen to generate a method of "infinite" healing. For the cost of a few runes, you could scale one cast to hundreds, if not thousands of HP a cast.
If you combine this with multiple accounts spamming Heal Group, with no cooldown, it could trivialise a lot of content and reduce the need to bring or use healing supplies anywhere you could safely use this spell.
This spell is for healing, but was never envisioned to be this effective. As such, we think it's important to make it worthwhile whilst the reducing the possibility of abuse.
The Heal Group spell has been altered with the following changes:
The spell now functions by dividing up to 75% of the healer's health equally between up to five injured players in the immediate area, and throwing in an additional five points for healing.
Once the spell has been cast, it will update your attack delay by three game cycles, similar to eating food.
The Heal Group will now have a 90-second cooldown once cast.
We will be montioring feedback on these changes but hope they make the spell remain viable for legitimate use whilst not being easily abused.
PvP World Rota
The PvP rota has moved to Period A:
The host for the High-Risk PvP world will be W343 (Germany)
The Standard PvP world will be W324 (US West)
The free-to-play PvP world will be W417 (US East)
The members-only LMS world will be W333 (UK)
The free-to-play LMS world will be W469 (US East)
Other News
The Smithing XP gained from Barronite has been increased from 10 to 30.
Ahrim's staff can now auto-cast ancient spells again whilst wearing full Ahrim's and the Amulet of the Damned.
In Last Man Standing, ancient spells are no longer greyed out for players who have not completed Desert Treasure.
Last Man Standing spawn locations have been spread out.
Combat XP in the PoH has now returned back to normal.
We've tweaked the interface for choosing a display name so it's a little less confusing for newcomers.
The audio can get a little busy when chopping tentacles from the fearsome Kraken. The chopping sound effects are now slightly more spaced out.
The information interface provided at the start of Fishing Trawler can now be toggled off or on by talking to Murphy on the boat in Port Khazard. You can also switch it straight off just by clicking "Do not show this again" on the interface itself.
The Collection Log total value was showing a little higher than it should be! This has now been adjusted.
A stray bit of wall has been deleted from the area west of Ice Mountain.
The maximum quantities of fish you can select for processing in Camdozaal have been corrected.
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.
Phosani's Nightmare - Poll Blog (Updated - May 6th)
Hotfixes and Issues (May 6th)
[expand type="details"] [table] [tr][th]Player Feedback[/th][th]Our Response[/th][/tr][tr][td]You feel like the teleport should not be available on the regular Nightmare of Ashihama, and instead should be exclusive to Phosani's Nightmare.[/td][td]We've changed the blog to reflect that the teleport would only be available from Phosani's Nightmare.[/td][/tr][tr][td]Many of you would prefer that teleport use should not be tied to Drakan's Medallion, especially as it is related to a quest that is not required to fight the boss.[/td][td]We've added an additional poll question that offers a choice between the teleport being obtained via an upgrade to Drakan's Medallion or as an untradeable teleport scroll, similar to those that drop from Cerberus.[/td][/tr][tr][td]Some of you would prefer the teleport location to be the graveyard in Slepe, rather than the proposed Sisterhood Sanctuary.[/td][td]We've added an additional poll question that offers an alternate teleport location.[/td][/tr][tr][td]Some of you think Drakan's Medallion should be mountable in the Player Owned House.[/td][td]This is not something we're able to offer at the moment, but we'll consider it for the future. It is likely that any additional mounted amulets would require you to choose between which mounted amulet you have active, rather than adding additional hotspots.[/td][/tr][tr][td]Some players are unhappy that Phosani's Nightmare will be a solo-only boss.[/td][td]The Nightmare of Ashihama and Phosani's Nightmare are both very different encounters in how they play out. Balancing of both the mechanics and drops for Phosani's Nightmare is based around the encounter being solo-only. The Nightmare of Ashihama will remain as a group viable alternative for those not wanting to take on the more demanding Phosani's Nightmare encounter. In addition to this, lower geared and levelled players will likely continue fighting against the regular Nightmare in a group.[/td][/tr][tr][td]You have suggested we make these changes to the regular Nightmare of Ashihama, given they solve a lot of the problems with the encounter.[/td][td]We've added an additional poll question that offers changes to the rotations and damage through Protection Prayers for The Nightmare of Ashihama.[/td][/tr][tr][td]While not related to Phosani's Nightmare, in Poll 75 we offered a cosmetic upgrade to The Scythe of Vitur as a potential reward from Theatre of Blood Hard Mode.[/td][td]The poll question to add this into the game has passed, but we know not everyone was happy with the proposed design. We've added an additional poll question that allows you to choose your preferred design from a variety of options.[/td][/tr] [/table] [/expand]
Who remembers Phosani's Nightmare? Temporarily released in early 2020 to support the Nightmare of Ashihama launch, this was a more difficult version of the encounter for those of you who actually like waking up in a cold sweat! It was a pretty neat idea in theory, but as it could only be tackled as a solo encounter for one week, and with minimal differences from normal mode, it wasn't providing long-lasting, repeatable content.
Now, we know that many of you have been dreaming of new end-game content. We have some exciting plans in the works to address this, but in the meantime we thought the return of Phosani’s Nightmare could provide a worthy challenge for those of you who have grown accustomed to current PvM content!
As with the recent A Night At The Theatre additions, this is us adapting our schedule to add new challenges that will tide you over while we work on bigger changes. This isn’t our magic solution to the lack of end-game content, but it's something we can whip up within a short timeframe while working on the major updates we'll be announcing this summer.
With a more punishing encounter that includes harder to execute mechanics, brand new phases, more attack combos, new metas and a new loot table, Phosani's Nightmare is back for real, and she’s stronger than ever!
Now, close your eyes... Don't be scared...
The Changes
Phosani’s Nightmare is a solo-only encounter and will require at least one completion of The Nightmare of Ashihama.
We want this encounter to be faster paced, with more variation per fight, and more things happening simultaneously to keep the player engaged. We also want a significantly speedier kill than a regular Nightmare solo kill. Currently, it can feel like quite a drawn-out fight – more a test of stamina than skill!
This new encounter will be different from The Nightmare of Ashihama in all sorts of ways. We don’t want to reveal the full extent of the changes, as we’d like for some of them to come as a surprise. But here's a taste of what to expect this time around:
Increased damage dealt to players using incorrect Protection Prayers...
...But reduced damaged for those that use their Prayers correctly (Amen!)
Additional Shield and Totem phases...
...But with reduced Hitpoints of each phase.
Additional special attack combinations.
An increased rate of special attacks.
Changes to existing special attack mechanics.
Randomised phase rotations, making each fight feel a little different (and less predictable)!
A brand new phase that will overwhelm any unprepared adventurer. You have been warned...
Poll Question #1
Should Phosani’s Nightmare, a vastly different solo-only version of The Nightmare of Ashihama encounter, be added to the game? The boss fight mechanics would be updated to make the encounter more challenging and engaging. The rewards would be improved to match these changes.
Poll Question #2
Should the proposed randomised phase rotations and Protection Prayer changes for Phosani's Nightmare also be made for The Nightmare of Ashihama?
The Rewards
What would an additional challenge be without additional reward? Yeah, a bit of a swizz. Fortunately, we have plenty of extra goodies in store.
Very rare drops are okay. Low-value regular loot is okay. Long walks back after resupplying are... hmm, okay. But with The Nightmare of Ashihama you've got all three, and we understand the frustrations some players have. With Phosani's Nightmare, we're not looking to drastically change the available loot, but we think we can improve it.
Parasite Pet Metamorphosis
First up is a metamorphosis. Similar to Chambers of Xeric Challenge Mode, completing Phosani’s Nightmare would give a chance at an item that can be used on the Little Nightmare to unlock a Parasite variation of the pet. Creepy!
We’re not sure why you’d want to have this thing following you around, but here it is anyway.
Poll Question #3
If Phosani’s Nightmare is added to the game, should there be a chance to receive an item that transforms the Little Nightmare pet into a Parasite version?
Slepe Teleport
Sometimes in life, it's about the journey, not the destination. Yeah, we can get philosophical too, y'know.
But when it comes to The Nightmare, the trip back after resupplying is kind of long and arduous. It can even cause you to lose your world, or force you to use alternate accounts to resupply between kills. This extended schlep was an intentional design choice, and one we made quite clear leading up to the release, but the comments we've received have shown that this wasn't necessarily the best approach. We'd like to take this opportunity to improve the situation.
What if we allow players to teleport to Slepe via an upgrade to Drakan’s Medallion, the necklace rewarded after completion of A Taste of Hope? This upgrade would be made via an untradeable tablet that would be obtainable from both The Nightmare of Ashihama and Phosani’s Nightmare, with a higher chance of receiving it from the latter encounter.
The upgraded Drakan's Medallion would teleport players to the Sisterhood Sanctuary as shown below:
The proposed teleport location for the upgraded Drakan's Medallion.
Alternatively an untradeable teleport scroll could be added to the potential loot from Phosani's Nightmare, similar to the Key Master teleport from Cerberus. These stackable scrolls would teleport players to the same location as the Drakan's Medallion and could be added to the Master Scroll Book.
Poll Question #4
Should The Nightmare of Ashihama have a chance at dropping a tablet which allows players to upgrade their Drakan’s Medallion? this upgrade would allow players to teleport to the graveyard just next to the Slepe Church. If this question passes and Phosani’s Nightmare is added to the game, the tablet will also drop from Phosani’s Nightmare with a slighter better chance.
Poll Question #5
If Poll Question #4 passes and the teleport item is added to the game, how should this item be introduced? The highest voted option will win and be implemented into the game.
Option 1: The teleport should implemented via an upgrade to Drakan’s Medallion.
Option 2: The teleport should be implemented via untradeable teleport scrolls that drop from the encounter, similar to Key Master teleport from Cerberus.
Poll Question #6
If untradeable teleport scrolls are the preferred option in Poll Question #5, where should they take you? The highest voted option will win and be implemented into the game.
Option 1: The teleport location should be the Sisterhood Sanctuary as shown in the blog.
Option 2: The teleport location should be near the Slepe Graveyard.
Better Regular Loot
Given the increased difficulty of Phosani's Nightmare, we reckon it’s fitting to improve the regular loot you can swipe after each successful kill.
We propose to increase the quantity of normal loot drops from this particular encounter by 50% (when compared to the standard Nightmare of Ashihama).
Alongside this base increase in quantity, we’d also replace some of the less desirable drops from the loot table, such as Adamant arrows. With these changes, plus an increase in the kills per hour, this should not only increase the value from each kill, but also help offset the hefty resource cost of facing against this harder encounter in the long run.
This change will be made if Poll Question #1 passes, which can be seen earlier in this blog. We think these changes could be well suited to the regular Nightmare of Ashihama too, so we're polling that separately with the below question.
Poll Question #7
If Phosani’s Nightmare is added to the game, should we also replace some of the less useful drops from The Nightmare of Ashihama loot table, such as Adamant arrows, with more desirable items?
Different Unique Chances
Finally, we’d like to make sure that the chance of obtaining a unique item correctly reflects the increased difficulty of the encounter.
Obtaining uniques from Phosani's Nightmare will be around 20% faster than regular efficient Nightmare of Ashihama. This will take into account the faster kills per hour you'd expect to achieve, as well as the lessened downtime you'd incur after each fight, because of that lovely teleport we mentioned earlier.
This should make fighting Phosani’s Nightmare a viable and faster-paced alternative to The Nightmare of Ashihama, albeit one that will require more focus, and less reliance on potential teammates!
Poll Question #8
Should the chance of obtaining a unique item be adjusted for Phosani's Nightmare to reflect the increased difficulty of the encounter?
We’re really excited to hear what you think about this new and improved encounter with The Nightmare! With a teleport to reduce your resupply commute, an overall buff to the rate at which you can obtain unique items, and slight buffs to the regular loot, chasing these uniques should be much more enjoyable.
Additional Changes
While not related to Phosani's Nightmare, in the A Night At The Theatre blog we offered a cosmetic upgrade to The Scythe of Vitur as a potential reward from Theatre of Blood Hard Mode. The poll question to add this into the game has passed, but we know not everyone was happy with the proposed design.
As a team we always enjoy your concepts for weapons. It's enlightening to see what items resonate for players, especially when they've been brought to life by others in the community!
We'd like to offer some alternate designs alongside the poll for Phosani's Nightmare, giving you an opportunity to select your favourite from a variety of options.
Plus, it's important that we clarify briefly why the Scythe design remains Saradominist. In the Second Age, when Morytania was still known as Hallowvale and unblemished by the Vampyres, the castle atop The Theatre of Blood was home to a Saradominist queen. Following the God Wars, the Vampyres claimed many valuable Saradominist relics as their own. Some of the originals can still be found deep within Lady Verzik Virtur's vault!
Concept art of the various Scythe of Vitur cosmetic upgrade options, one of which will be added as a reward from Theatre of Blood Hard Mode.
Poll Question #9
Which cosmetic variation of the Scythe of Vitur should be added to the game alongside Theatre of Blood Hard Mode? The highest voted option will win and be implemented into the game.
Option A Option B Option C Option D
A Kingdom Divided & Arceuus Spellbook Rework
Following the recent Arceuus Spellbook rework beta, there are some additional changes that we'd like to make based on your feedback. We're included these questions in this poll to ensure we avoid any delay in development!
Poll Question #10
Should it be possible for the Master Wand to autocast the new spells coming alongside the Arceuus spellbook rework?
Poll Question #11
Should the Resurrection spells coming alongside the Arceuus spellbook rework be changed so that each tier of the spell has three individual spells instead? This would give players the ability to choose between summoning either a Magic, Melee or Ranged Thrall at each tier.
Arceuus Spellbook Beta and AKD Preparation - Weekly Update (28/04/21)
Hotfixes and Issues (29th April)
[expand type="details"] [table] [tr][th]Issues Raised[/th][th]Current Progress[/th][/tr][tr][td]11:50 BST Arceuus Teleport spells are showing the incorrect icons in the Portal Nexus.[/td][td]15:10 BST [FIXED] The correct icons should now appear.[/td][/tr][tr][td]11:52 BST The book on Tempoross in the PoH bookcase is currently displaying the wrong name.[/td][td]12:17 BST [FIXED] You should now see the correct name for the book.[/td][/tr][tr][td]12:05 BST The Theatre of Blood Rewards Chest is not showing up in it's usual spot.[/td][td]12:10 BST [FIXED] The chest has returned and been told to book official time off before disappearing again.[/td][/tr][tr][td]12:15 BST Players can create female body with male heads.[/td][td]12:40 BST [FIXED] This issue has been resolved.[/td][/tr][tr][td]12:22 BST Players are not receiving clue steps from Radimus.[/td][td]12:40 BST [FIXED] Clue steps can be received once again from Rasimus Erkle.[/td][/tr][tr][td]12:22 BST Players would like to have easy access to bones to test out Sinister Offering.[/td][td]12:40 BST [FIXED] 1,000 of each type of Bone can be found inside your bank in the Beta Worlds.[/td][/tr][tr][td]13:25 BST The interface for Hot Air Balloon travel cutscenes is missing.[/td][td]15:10 BST [FIXED] You can safely travel in Hot Air Balloons once again.[/td][/tr][tr][td]14:30 BST The Granite Hammer and Tzhaar-ket-em are now too strong.[/td][td]14:30 BST We've opted to revert both of these changes as they had an impact on the current meta that we didn't quite anticipate. We'll potentially revisit this again with the other upcoming Equipment Rebalance Changes, but we'll make sure to reach out to various communities first and present any potential changes in a future blog.[/td][/tr][tr][td]15:40 BST Players are reporting delays in movements when music tracks end.[/td][td]16:00 BST [FIXED] Music tracks ending will no longer cause delays[/td][/tr][tr][td]April 29th - 11:00 BST Combat experience in the PoH is giving less XP than normal.[/td][td]April 29th - 11:00 BST Last night we released a hotfix that reduces experience gained within the PoH by 90%. This is a temporary solution whilst we look into current methods being used to gain accelerated amounts of combat experience.[/td][/tr] [/table] [/expand]
Though we do say it ourselves, we reckon this update is truly spellbinding! We've opened a special Beta world for members to try out the new Arceuus Spellbook before the release of A Kingdom Divided and made some main game changes that set the stage for this exciting new chapter. We've also tweaked Below Ice Mountain, rebalanced some equipment and launched more 20th anniversary merch! Abracadabra, let's be 'aving ya...
A Kingdom Divided: Beta
The next chapter of the Great Kourend storyline is on the horizon – A Kingdom Divided. Ahead of its release, we've been working hard on one of the additional rewards for completing this continuation. Introducing: the Arceuus Spellbook!
We're giving you the chance to experience the reworked book and try out all of the new spells across Gielinor. As of today, members will be able to log-in to the special Beta-worlds and test all the new additions and changes!
How do I access the Beta worlds?
Only members can access the Beta. When the game has loaded, you can find the beta worlds W401 (US), W407 (UK) and W412 (AUS), which will be highlighted in blue within the World Selection screen.
What happens when I log in?
Choosing any of these worlds will load a separate profile to your main account. Once you've logged-in, you'll find yourself within Ferox Enclave, with max skills and suitable gear, along with an Inventory full of Runes! If you're wanting to try out some other gear or experiment with different stats, head to the rooms next to the Castle Wars and Free-For-All portals, and rummage in the Supply Chests on the tables. Here you can select your gear and set your stats accordingly.
What can I do in the Beta?
You’ll be able to take part in any content you could find on the main game worlds, apart from the Inferno.
Existing Spells
So, what's cookin' in the new spellbook? First, let's cast a glance over the already existing spells and any changes that may come with them:
Reanimation Spells
In the current Arceuus Spellbook, there is a reanimation spell for each relevant creature, making a grand total of 22 spells. With the rework, these will be replaced by four new reanimation spells. No changes will be made to the amount of experience granted from reanimating creatures.
Spooky scary skeletons!
With this update, these changes to reanimation spells will also be available in the main game.
[table] [tr][th]Icon[/th][th]Spell Name[/th][th]Magic Requirement[/th][th]Runes Needed[/th][th]Magic Exp[/th][th]Description[/th][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Basic Reanimation[/td][td]16[/td][td]4 Body & 2 Nature[/td][td]32[/td][td]Can be used to reanimate the ensouled heads of Goblins, Monkeys, Imps, Minotaurs, Scorpions, Bears and Unicorns.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Adept Reanimation[/td][td]41[/td][td]4 Body, 3 Nature & 1 Soul[/td][td]80[/td][td]Can be used to reanimate the ensouled heads of Dogs, Chaos Druids, Ogres, Giants, Elves, Trolls and Horrors.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Expert Reanimation[/td][td]72[/td][td]1 Blood, 3 Nature & 2 Soul[/td][td]138[/td][td]Can be used to reanimate the ensouled heads of Kalphites, Dagannoth, Bloodvelds, TzHaar and Demons.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Master Reanimation[/td][td]90[/td][td]2 Blood, 4 Nature & 4 Soul[/td][td]170[/td][td]Can be used to reanimate the ensouled heads of Aviansie, Abyssal Creatures and Dragons.[/td][/tr] [/table]
Teleport Spells
Most of the teleport spells will be unchanged with this rework. However, the teleport to the Lumbridge Graveyard has been replaced with an Arceuus Library teleport. Handy!
Moving and grooving!
For any players currently with any Lumbridge Graveyard teleport tablets, these will be changed into Arceuus Library Teleport tablets.
With this update, the change to teleport spells will also be available in the main game.
[table] [tr][th]Icon[/th][th]Spell Name[/th][th]Magic Requirement[/th][th]Runes Needed[/th][th]Magic Exp[/th][th]Description[/th][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Arceuus Home Teleport[/td][td]1[/td][td]None[/td][td]0[/td][td]Teleports to the Dark Altar in Great Kourend.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Arceuus Library[/td][td]6[/td][td]2 Earth & 1 Law[/td][td]9[/td][td]Teleports north of theGrand Library in Arceuus (replaces the teleport to Lumbridge Graveyard).[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Draynor Manor[/td][td]17[/td][td]1 Earth, 1 Water & 1 Law[/td][td]16[/td][td]Teleports to Draynor Manor.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Battlefront[/td][td]23[/td][td]1 Earth, 1 Fire & 1 Law[/td][td]19[/td][td]Teleports to the tomb north-west of the Kebos battlefront.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Mind Altar[/td][td]28[/td][td]1 Law & 2 Mind[/td][td]22[/td][td]Teleports to the Mind Altar.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Respawn[/td][td]34[/td][td]1 Law & 1 Soul[/td][td]27[/td][td]Teleports to the player's respawn location.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Salve Graveyard[/td][td]40[/td][td]1 Law & 2 Soul[/td][td]30[/td][td]Teleports to the Salve graveyard.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Fenkenstrain's Castle[/td][td]48[/td][td]1 Earth, 1 Law & 1 Soul[/td][td]50[/td][td]Teleports to Fenkenstrain's Castle[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]West Ardougne[/td][td]61[/td][td]2 Law & 2 Soul[/td][td]68[/td][td]Teleports to West Ardougne[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Harmony Island[/td][td]65[/td][td]1 Law, 1 Nature & 1 Soul[/td][td]74[/td][td]Teleports to Harmony Island[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Cemetery[/td][td]71[/td][td]1 Blood, 1 Law & 1 Soul[/td][td]82[/td][td]Teleports to the Forgotten Cemetery in the Wilderness.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Barrows[/td][td]83[/td][td]1 Blood, 2 Law & 2 Soul[/td][td]90[/td][td]Teleports to the Barrows.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Ape Atoll[/td][td]90[/td][td]2 Blood, 2 Law & 2 Soul[/td][td]100[/td][td]Teleports to the Ape Atoll Dungeon(Requires completion of Monkey Madness I).[/td][/tr] [/table]
New Spells
And for our next trick... brand shiny new spells! To use these you will have to complete all of A Kingdom Divided, apart from Ghostly Grasp and Inferior Demonbane. Demonic Offering is the only spell we've left out from the Beta, as we've not added the Demonic Ash item yet. Other than that, you'll be free to wreak havoc with these excellent enchantments:
It's Degrime time!
[table] [tr][th]Icon[/th][th]Spell Name[/th][th]Magic Requirement[/th][th]Type[/th][th]Runes Needed[/th][th]Magic Exp[/th][th]Base Max Hit[/th][th]Description[/th][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Ghostly Grasp [/td][td]35[/td][td]Combat[/td][td]1 Chaos & 4 Air[/td][td]22.5+ Damage[/td][td]12[/td][td]10% chance to stop the enemy from moving for two cycles.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Resurrect Ghost[/td][td]38[/td][td]Resurrection[/td][td]5 Mind,10 Air & 1 Cosmic[/td][td]55[/td][td]-[/td][td]Resurrects a Ghost that will attack your enemies with magic damage at the cost of 2 Prayer points.It will remain alive a cycle for every Magic level the player had at the time and has a max hit of 1.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Inferior Demonbane[/td][td]44[/td][td]Combat[/td][td]1 Chaos & 4 Fire[/td][td]27+ Damage[/td][td]16[/td][td]Only works against demonic foes.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Shadow Veil[/td][td]47[/td][td]Skilling[/td][td]5 Earth, 5 Fire & 5 Cosmic[/td][td]58[/td][td]-[/td][td]15% chance to avoid Stun damage while thieving.It will remain active at one cycle for every Magic level the player has at the time (stacks with Dodgy Necklace).[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Dark Lure[/td][td]50[/td][td]Skilling[/td][td]1 Death & 1 Nature[/td][td]60[/td][td]-[/td][td]Attracts an enemy towards you and prevents fleeing. Doesn't work on foes who can't move.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Skeletal Grasp[/td][td]56[/td][td]Combat[/td][td]1 Death & 8 Earth[/td][td]33+ Damage[/td][td]18[/td][td]25% chance to stop the enemy from moving for four cycles.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Resurrect Skeleton[/td][td]57[/td][td]Resurrection[/td][td]5 Death, 10 Earth & 1 Cosmic[/td][td]70[/td][td]-[/td][td]Resurrects a Skeleton that will attack your enemies with Ranged Damage at the cost of 4 prayer points.It will remain alive a cycle for every Magic level the player had at the time and has a max hit of 2.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Mark of Darkness[/td][td]59[/td][td]Support[/td][td]1 Soul & 1 Cosmic[/td][td]70[/td][td]-[/td][td]An enemy with this spell cast upon them suffers an array of debuffs:
Corruption occurs twice as often.
Your grasping spells are twice as effective (both success % chance and the duration are doubled)
Demonbane spells deal an additional 25% damage against demonic enemies.
Demonbane spells have additional 25% accuracy against demonic enemies.
This spell will last a cycle for every Magic level the player has at the time.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Superior Demonbane[/td][td]62[/td][td]Combat[/td][td]1 Soul & 8 Fire[/td][td]36+ Damage[/td][td]23[/td][td]Only works against demonic foes.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Lesser Corruption[/td][td]64[/td][td]Support[/td][td]1 Death & 2 Soul[/td][td]75[/td][td]-[/td][td]33% chance to inflict corruption upon your target with your next damaging hit.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Vile Vigour[/td][td]66[/td][td]Prayer[/td][td]1 Soul & 3 Air[/td][td]76[/td][td]-[/td][td]Converts all Prayer points into run energy.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Degrime[/td][td]70[/td][td]Skilling[/td][td]4 Earth & 2 Nature[/td][td]83[/td][td]-[/td][td]Cleans all herbs in the Inventory (half the Herblore experience is given).[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Ward of Arceuus[/td][td]73[/td][td]Support[/td][td]4 Soul, 2 Nature & 1 Cosmic[/td][td]85[/td][td]-[/td][td]When this is cast, the player gains an array of buffs:
Immune to corruption.
Grasp spells only last for 0.6 seconds.
Damage from demonic foes is reduced by 10%.
This spell will last one cycle for every Magic level the player has at the time.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Resurrect Zombie[/td][td]76[/td][td]Resurrection[/td][td]5 Blood, 10 Fire & 1 Cosmic[/td][td]88[/td][td]-[/td][td]Resurrects a Zombie that will attack your enemies with melee damage at the cost of 6 Prayer points.It will remain alive one cycle for every Magic level the player had at the time and has a max hit of 3.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Undead Grasp[/td][td]79[/td][td]Combat[/td][td]1 Blood & 12 Fire[/td][td]46.5+ Damage[/td][td]24[/td][td]50% chance to stop the enemy from moving for four cycles.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Death Charge[/td][td]80[/td][td]Support[/td][td]1 Death, 1 Blood & 1 Soul[/td][td]90[/td][td]-[/td][td]When cast the next Slayer creature that the caster kills will recharge 15% of their special attack energy.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Dark Demonbane[/td][td]82[/td][td]Combat[/td][td]2 Soul & 12 Fire[/td][td]43.5+ Damage[/td][td]30[/td][td]Only works against demonic foes.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Greater Corruption[/td][td]85[/td][td]Support[/td][td]1 Blood & 3 Soul[/td][td]95[/td][td]-[/td][td]66% chance to inflict corruption upon your target with your next damaging hit.[/td][/tr][tr][td][/td][td]Sinister Offering[/td][td]92[/td][td]Prayer[/td][td]1 Blood & 1 Wrath[/td][td]180[/td][td]-[/td][td]Converts up to 3 sets of bones into Prayer points and gives 3 times the base experience.[/td][/tr][/table]
New Mechanics
Combat Spells
Some items can be used to auto-cast spells:
Slayer's Staff
Skull Sceptre (which has had its Attack bonus increased from +4 to +10)
With this update, the above change will also be available in the main game.
Ahrim's Staff
Staff of the Dead
Kodai Wand
The following spells from the Arceuus Spellbook can be auto-casted:
Inferior Demonbane
Superior Demonbane
Dark Demonbane
Ghostly Grasp
Skeletal Grasp
Undead Grasp
Arceuus Spellbook auto-cast spells.
Corruption
When a player is corrupted, they will start to lose Prayer points over a short amount of time. After six seconds, 1 Prayer point is drained. After another six seconds, 2 Prayer points are drained. After a final six seconds, 3 Prayer points are drained. If a Mark of Darkness has also been cast, corruption will occur every three seconds instead. This new type of damage will be reflected with a new type of hitsplat icon.
The animation for casting Greater Corruption.
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.
Resurrection
To perform a Resurrection spell, players will need to equip the Book of the Dead. This new magic book will be obtained as a reward from A Kingdom Divided, acting as an upgrade to the completed Kharedst's Memoirs!
Much nicer than the Necronomicon!
The Book of the Dead would provide +6 Magic attack and +3 Prayer bonus. Completion of A Kingdom Divided is required to equip the book.
Drawing upon the power of defeated creatures, Resurrection spells bring to life an undead thrall that will aid you in battle. Yikes! This will require runes and Prayer points, and only 1 thrall can exist at a time. Thralls will remain active for one game cycle (0.6 seconds) for every Magic level the caster has. For example, if a thrall is resurrected when your Magic level is 60, it will last for 36 seconds before dying. Hey, maths can be fun - and violent!
A resurrected thrall will not act like a typical follower. They will wander the area where they were created and attack anything the player attacks, provided the target is within range.
It's possible to resurrect a thrall throughout most of Gielinor, even if the undead creature being dragged from its grave is not present in that area at the time. Certain exceptions to this will apply where the aid of a thrall will not be possible – much like how setting up the Dwarf Multicannon is not possible in specific areas.
All resurrected thralls will attack at a rate of four game cycles (one attack every 2.4 seconds). Thralls cannot be damaged and their attacks ignore accuracy checks, but it will still be possible for them to hit 0 at times. While their damage ignores accuracy checks, Protection Prayers will reduce their damage accordingly.
Thralls will not aid you in PvP situations.
Main Game Changes
Along with this lovely new Beta, we've also made some changes to the main game. Some of these are made to allow for the Beta. Others are A Kingdom Divided-relevant changes we're intentionally launching early to help ensure the main release goes smoothly! The following changes will go live with this update:
Hitsplats
We've updated the appearance of some of the more unique hitsplats in the game, as the ones we had were not suitable for colour blind players. This doesn't impact the iconic hitsplats for things such as damage and poison, but lesser used ones for shields, armour, healing, charging and discharging.
Spell Filtering
With the slate of new spells being added to your Spellbook today, we've included an option to filter out the ones that you don't meet the requirements for yet. We're also planning to poll a visual indicator for these spells as part of Poll 75.
X Marks the Spot
From a timeline standpoint, X Marks The Spot is the first quest in the Great Kourend storyline. However, it actually came out long after the next quest in the series, Client of Kourend, and was not required for it. We want to make sure anyone new to the series has a clear understanding of the order of events, so we've made X Marks the Spot a requirement for Client of Kourend. For anyone who's already started Client of Kourend, X Marks the Spot will instead become a requirement for the Five House quests. If you've already started all five of those, X Marks the Spot will be a requirement for A Kingdom Divided when it launches.
What can we say? We're just maintaining lore and order...
Music
Listen up beat fiends, because we've made some behind the scenes improvements to our music system.
First, music tracks should now loop more reliably, rather than stopping half way through. Looping should occur even when music stops for a jingle or because it's been muted/unmuted.
Second, because we now have a better idea of when a music track ends, we're able to randomise the playing order! It will take a while for us to roll this out across the entire game, so we've started with the free-to-play area. Rather than the same track looping and then abruptly changing, music will now shuffle between suitable tracks when moving from one area to another.
The music in Old School is of course iconic, especially in the free-to-play area, so the track shuffling isn't totally random. Instead, different parts of the map have different sets of tracks assigned to them. This ensures each area of the world retains its musical identity. For example, there are six tracks that play in the Lumbridge area. Previously, each of these tracks would only play in a small part of Lumbridge. Now, they can play anywhere in and around the town. Once one finishes, a different Lumbridge track will kick in. Most importantly, the first track for any new arrival in Lumbridge will always be Harmony. Ahh, memories.
And that's it! We'll be keeping a close eye on your feedback over the Beta period and we look forward to hearing what you all think.
Equipment Rebalance: Part One – Feedback
Some items were missed in last week's first batch. They've now been added:
The Gilded Spear and Gilded Hasta have increased attack rate from 5 to 4, to match their Rune equivalents.
Guthan's, Verac's, Dharok's and Torag's legwear now have -11 ranged attack instead of -7 ranged attack, to match the change we made to other plate legwear.
Below Ice Mountain
Players can now exchange excess items for Barronite Shards:
Barronite Head - 100
Barronite Handle - 100
Barronite Guard - 100
Barronite Mace - 500
Imcando Hammer (Broken) - 350
Imcando Hammer - 500
Simply show the item to Ramarno and he'll offer to convert them into shards. Remember, any relics you find in the ruins can be traded at the Varrock Museum for extra change!
We've made some changes to the Vault beneath Ice Mountain:
The entry fee has been decreased to 750 Barronite Shards.
The drop table has been rebalanced, to reflect the difficulty/time spent.
Players can now interact directly with the forge to add/remove/check the amount of Barronite they have collected.
The Imcando Hammer has been updated to include some of the original Hammer's functions that were missing.
You can now store the Imcando Hammer in your Player Owned House.
Players looking for some extra Kudos will now see the Camdozaal Relics appear on the Kudos list in the Varrock Museum.
When preparing and offering fish in Camdozaal, the menu is now context-sensitive to which fish you have in your inventory.
One for the gym bunnies here: players can now replay Altas's workout cutscene (for a fee) and even keep track of how many times they do it.
The Barronite Mace now has a Strength bonus of +40 and an anti-Golem bonus of 15%, as mentioned in the original newspost.
Fishing Skill Boss
We're thrilled to see so many of you battling against the newly awakened Spirit of the Sea, Tempoross! We've made some small QoL changes to make an even bigger splash:
A new overlay has been added to the lobby and the surrounding area. This will show how many players are waiting in the lobby, and indicate how long until the next encounter.
Your Personal Bests and Time Taken stats are now displayed after successfully defeating the boss. They've also been added to the stats board in the Ruins of Unkah.
A quick-climb option has been added to the Tempoross lobby ladder, as well as a water pump aboard the ship.
UI on both mobile and PC has been moved to create more space on the screen.
Merch
We've added even more new lines to celebrate the 20th Anniversary year of RuneScape! You may have already spotted these in the Anniversary packs we sent out to content creators - well, now they're coming to the merch store for everyone to get their hands on!
Special Black and Gold Map of Gielinor Print
Commemorative Black and Gold Map of Gielinor Tee (with 20th Anniversary logo in neck)
The RuneScape anniversary is not the only milestone we're celebrating. Angels Scapes has now designed a whopping 200 official pins and keyrings for the merch store! You can grab the special commemorative Fire Cape, alongside other designs celebrating content over the past 20 years:
Angels Fire Cape - 200th Design Limited Edition
Void Sea Pin
Dugeoneering Mastercape Keyring
Thieving Skillcape Keyring
Restocks of Ice and Blood Barrage Pins and the popular Agility, Ranged, Firemaking Skillcape keyrings are also available.
Other News
It's Raining Cats and Dogs!
This one should make your tail wag: you can now interact with several cats and dogs across Gielinor! Address your pats and strokes to:
The Myths' Guild dog
The dog in the Falador chicken coop
The dog in the Museum Camp
Mark (Grace's dog, Rogues' Den)
The cat in the Farming Guild
PvP World Rota
The PvP world rota has moved to Period B.
The host for the High-Risk PvP world will be W337 (US East)
The host for the Standard PvP world will be W325 (UK)
The host for the free-to-play PvP world will be W371 (UK)
The members-only LMS world will be W492 (US East)
The free-to-play LMS world will be W326 (UK)
Extras
World 315 (US) has now become a designated Fishing Trawler activity world!
The trawler is now leakier when more players are on it. Stands to reason, right? However, more than one player can now fix a trawler railing at a time. Problem solved!
The stock of swamp paste in the Port Khazard general store has been increased. It also restocks faster.
Players will be prevented from accidentally clicking on Inventory items while using the Deposit Box or entering a Bank PIN.
Gravestone payment messages have been added to the game.
The Theatre of Blood is now a safe zone on PvP worlds.
The Serpentine Helm will no longer ask the player how many Scales you want to add to it, as long as no other Scale-using items are in the Inventory. This is in-line with similar items.
The Soul Wars shop has been updated to include a 'buy X' option for the XP rewards. We will look to do the same to other tabs of the shop at a later date.
Dragon Slayer II notes can now be combined into a book!
The Fight Cave leave timer has been reduced to three minutes.
Some new counters have been added to the Collection Log, including the number of Tempoross Reward Permits claimed, and Spoils Of War opened in Soul Wars!
Radimus Erkle's clone has been removed, meaning he will no longer appear in two places at once!
A toggle for the border setting has been added to the Settings menu.
The 20th Anniversary Cape no longer clips when you're carrying an Ale Of The Gods. Cheers to that!
Clearer messaging is now provided for players who are attempting to fight the Thermonuclear Smoke Devil off-task for the Achievement Diary but aren't yet at the required Slayer level.
Death in the Clan Wars free-for-all arena no longer removes PK skulls, for consistency with Clan Wars challenge battles.
The bankers in Mos Le'Harmless now face west by default.
Items no longer vanish when dropped at the top of some stairs in Dorgesh-Kaan.
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"] Thanks for all of your feedback on the blog! There was a lot of discussion around the item that changes the Justiciar Armour into a Vampyre-themed set.
Many of you felt that you don't use the Justiciar Armour as often as other Theatre of Blood rewards, and that you’d rather see more regularly used items receive a cosmetic change.
Here are the items that could change instead of the Justiciar Armour:
Ghrazi Rapier
Sanguinesti Staff
Scythe of Vitur
A collection of concepts for the Saradomin-themed weapons.
When used on any of the weapons, this reward would cosmetically transform it into a Saradomin-inspired version. It wouldn't change the stats or base functionality of the item. We opted not to include a reward for the Avernic Defender – it's too small to portray the right level of detail. Turns out size does matter when it comes to art!
As for the Vampyre-themed Justiciar Armour, we’ll be holding that back for a future poll. Until then, you can find the concept here.
We’ve updated the blog to highlight these changes, and the poll question regarding Hard Mode rewards now refers to the new cosmetic additions. [/expand]
Old School's approach to storytelling is one of its greatest strengths. We always aim to combine compelling gameplay with narrative depth, and to lead our players naturally towards more difficult content. With our new quest, A Night At The Theatre, we hope to introduce more players of different experience levels to the wicked delights of the infamous Theatre of Blood!
Along with this new quest, we're introducing two new difficulty settings for Theatre of Blood - Story Mode and Hard Mode. Read on to find out how we're helping guide mid-level players through end-game content, all while offering end-game players even tougher challenges to sink their teeth into!
Those of you who have been with us for a while may remember back in 2018, shortly after the release of Theatre of Blood, when we pitched the idea of an Entry Mode encounter. If we're brutally honest, it wasn't a strong pitch. It was a hasty response to feedback from a small number of players taking part in the Raid on launch. Our proposal for Story Mode is what that pitch should have been. And, in A Night At The Theatre, players will fight their way through a scaled-down version of the infamous Theatre, with greatly reduced rewards, but more accessible gameplay!
Hard Mode, meanwhile, is aimed at players who have comfortably mastered the mechanics of the regular Theatre of Blood and are looking to step up their game. And we're not just talking inflated stats here - we'll be changing the very mechanics of each fight to add additional complexity and really put you through your paces.
If both Story Mode and Hard Mode are added to the game, you'll make your selection from the notice board outside the Theatre (and you'll play on Normal Mode by default). Story Mode and Normal Mode will be available to anybody who has access to the Theatre, but Hard Mode will require at least one Normal Mode completion. Only the party leader can set the mode, but the board will show what mode has been selected for all recruiting parties. We'll add additional tracking variables so that completions, deaths and best times will be mode-specific, and the scoreboard outside will show statistics for all three modes.
Rest assured, we've heard your requests for new end-game content, and we have much greater plans in the works - we're simply adapting our schedule to add new challenges in the meantime. If you like this proposal, and it proves to be successful when added to the game, we will adopt a similar approach with future Raids.
And so, without further ado, let's pull back the curtain on A Night At The Theatre...
A Night At The Theatre
A Night at the Theatre will be many players' first experience of Theatre of Blood, so we want it to be a highly playable introduction to this fearsome locale. The quest can be tackled on any mode (Story, Normal, or Hard), but is primarily designed for Story Mode. First-time adventurers can also team up with players who have already completed the quest. You'll need to complete it for the finale of the Myreque series.
Requirements and Rewards
[expand type="spoiler"]A Night At The Theatre is a Master-level quest. As it takes you through a challenging (albeit scaled) Raid encounter, we'd recommend that you have 90 Combat before embarking. As it takes place in Morytania, Priest In Peril is required.
Upon completion you'll be rewarded:
2 Quest Points
40,000 XP in a Combat skill
You'll also be able to flex those muscles with a whole new emote courtesy of Checkal! Hwuargh! [/expand]
Story Mode
Story Mode is of similar difficulty to the current Theatre of Blood, but with the following changes:
All boss stats, including health and defences, are reduced – and all attacks deal less damage to the player.
Boss health will scale differently from Normal mode, where health scales down to 75% at three or fewer players. In Story Mode, it will continue scaling down to just 20% for a solo player. At this level of scaling we'd expect it to be similar (perhaps slightly harder) difficulty than our existing quest bosses, so it could be completed as a solo experience.
No unique rewards will be given (this includes Lil' Zik).
All other rewards will be reduced to 20% of their usual quantity.
As detailed above, separate tracking will be used from other modes.
Supplies can't be bought with points. Instead, players will be given untradeable Supply Packs which can only be used in the Story Mode Raid.
Death mechanics are different. If all party members die (and wipe), they'll respawn outside the challenge area, with the challenge reset. This respawn can happen up to three times. If the party all wipe for a fourth time, they will die as normal.
Poll Question #1 Would you like A Night At The Theatre, a new Master level quest, to be added to the game? Story Mode, a new difficulty level for Theatre of Blood, will also be added with the quest.
Hard Mode
Now it's time for the toughest cookies to step up to the plate! Hard Mode is aimed at players who have mastered the Theatre of Blood and are eager for a new challenge. This isn't like the Chambers of Xeric: Challenge Mode, where we inflated stats on an established and consistent path. Hard Mode will change the very mechanics of each boss fight, giving you a more gnarly and complex encounter. Crumbs!
In terms of scaling, Hard Mode will continue to scale for players in groups of 1-5 using the existing scaling system of 75% health at three (or fewer) players.
Similarly to the Chambers of Xeric: Challenge Mode, the content will carry target times, based on group size, which will affect your chances of acquiring new and unique rewards!
Rewards
Our plan is to improve existing rewards and offer some fresh cosmetic rewards:
The existing unique drop chances will be increased, and we will slightly lower the chance of any unique drop being an Avernic Defender. This means Hard Mode will be the best way for habitual players to obtain special Theatre of Blood loot.
Quantities of loot on the regular drop table will be increased by 25%.
Speeding through it? For players who finish within the target time, the following rewards await you:
A further increase to regular drop table loot.
The chance to score a unique untradeable item which can be used to metamorphise Lil' Zik into any of the Theatre of Blood bosses.
A chance at unique untradeable item which can change the following into Saradomin-themed weapons (see image below): - Ghrazi Rapier - Sanguinesti Staff - Scythe of Vitur
This item will function similarly to the Twisted Ancestral colour kit (one kit is required per weapon, the weapon will become untradeable, and it can be detached from the weapon).
A collection of concepts for the Saradomin-themed weapons.
Poll Question #2 Would you like a Hard Mode added to the Theatre of Blood? The boss fight mechanics will be updated to make each encounter more challenging, and rewards will be improved.
Poll Question #3 If Question #2 passes, would you like us to add an item which unlocks the ability to metamorphise Lil' Zik into any of the Theatre of Blood bosses?
Poll Question #4 If Question #2 passes, would you like us to add an item which can change the appearance of the Scythe of Vitur, Ghrazi Rapier, and Sanguinesti Staff into Saradominist-themed weapons?
This proposal represents a significant change of approach to end-game Raiding content, so we'd really love to hear your thoughts. Do you support our goal of helping new players get to grips with the Raid? Do you think it will work? What would you change? Share your feedback with us via our official forums, on the 2007Scape Reddit, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel.
Fishing Trawler & ERB: Part 1 - Old School RuneScape Weekly Update (21/04/21)
Ahoy there, salty sailors! We've cast our nets wide this week with Fishing Trawler improvements, plus the first wave of Equipment Rebalance changes. Let's dive in!
Fishing Trawler
There's a time and a plaice, but now seems like a cod moment to reveal changes to the classic Fishing Trawler minigame! Faster pacing, a new foe from the deep and some extra rewards? It's a net gain.
Game Time & Lobby
The first tweak you'll notice is the duration of the minigame – it's been halved, from 10 to 5 minutes. Snappy! This does mean that the rate of obtaining the Angler's Outfit has changed from 1/8 to 1/12 to reflect the shorter game times, which still makes it faster to obtain than before! Murphy's become more vocal too – he will bellow ship status updates, indicating how much time you have left. Heed his call and get cracking...
Murphy will let you know wherever you are!
Contribution Meter
Taking the place of the old Activity Meter is the shiny new Contribution Meter. You'll need to be actively participating in a game to reap the rewards of the sea, so get to work, landlubber.
Similar to the system in the Wintertodt minigame, the Contribution Meter will slowly fill up based on your actions. You'll need a certain amount of contributions to start earning rewards, but don't worry - you'll be notified when you hit the threshold! All activities onboard will give you some contribution, from bailing water to attacking the Kraken, and contribution does not deplete over time. At sea, hard work pays off.
Contribution means points, points mean prizes.
The Kraken
The infamously grumpy Kraken is not too happy about you disturbing its waters. Now players will have to deal with this slippery sea creature at the same time as maintaining their ship! The Kraken's creepy tentacles will pop up next to your net, preventing you from gathering any more fish until it has been dispatched and the net has been fixed. Players on the upper level of the ship can use their axe to cut the tentacles, receiving a little bit of tasty Woodcutting XP for every successful chop. Once they are subdued, you'll need to use a Hammer to fix the hole. Not fixing the rail will cause the next tentacle to spawn sooner, so be quick because the Kraken will be back twice as fast otherwise!
It's not all bad news, though - attacking those pesky tentacles and fixing the railing will grant a larger amount of contribution than other activities onboard.
Now, you will often climb the ladder to find the offending tentacle has mysteriously vanished. That's because the sun can be temporarily blinding. Be assured, the tentacle is coming – so get ready to chop!
It's well known that the trawler has some minor graphical issues that would require large sweeping changes to fix. Sadly the tentacles are affected, so don't panic if the tip of the tentacle sometimes doesn't appear. You can still chop it as long as it's not sweeping.
Obviously our smaller fishy friends are smart enough to steer clear of the monstrous Kraken, so keep attacking because he can drastically reduce the fish/XP you receive at the end of the game. He will also tear the net when he sees it's fixed. There'll be between three and six Kraken attacks per game, depending on how many people are on your boat. Players on the lower deck will be notified when an attack is underway. If you are in need of an axe you can purchase one from the shop in Port Khazard along with any other supplies you may need. In a pinch, some supplies will be found in crates at the front of the boat. You'll still have to bring your own Rope and Swamp Paste though, so make sure you're tooled up.
Come on Landlubber, let's get Kraken!
Rewards
Some other activities aboard the ship will earn you a little XP. Repairing the net will yield you a pinch of Crafting XP, while fixing those Kraken-made holes will yield a smidgen of Construction XP (as long as you have a Player Owned House to construct, of course).
Once you've completed your trawling adventure, you'll be rewarded as per usual with fish and any XP from your haul. At full contribution, you'll find 50% more fish in your net! On top of that, fish caught with the trawler will now give 50% more Fishing XP than before. Fish will also give approximately 50% more Fishing XP for each fish obtained during that game.
Since the mission takes half the time to complete, you'll get twice as many chances to snatch a Heron pet. The chances scale with contribution though, so fill that bar up for the best odds.
Bird up!
Equipment Rebalance: Part One
This update marks the beginning of the long-awaited Equipment Rebalance. These first changes are fairly small and were mostly welcomed by the community in our very first ERB news post.
Here's what's happened:
Medium Helmets - Ranged Attack stats have been increased from -1 to 0. This includes:
Bronze, Iron, Steel, Black, Mithril, Adamant, Rune, Dragon and White Medium Helmets (including the Gilded Rune Med Helm)
Full Helmets - Ranged Attack stats have been reduced from -2 to -3. This Includes:
Bronze, Iron, Steel, Black, Mithril, Adamant, Rune, Dragon, White and Decorative Full Helmets (including gold, trimmed and heraldic versions)
Initiate and Proselyte Sallets
Dragonstone, Ardougne Knight and Corrupted Helmets
Ironman, Ultimate Ironman, and Hardcore Ironman Helmets
Platelegs/Plateskirts - Ranged Attack stats have been reduced from -7 to -11. This includes:
Bronze, Iron, Steel, Black, Mithril, Adamant, Rune, Dragon, White and Decorative Platelegs/Plateskirts (including Gold, Trimmed and Heraldic versions)
Initiate and Proselyte Cuiss/Tassets
Corrupted Platelegs/Plateskirt
Dragonstone and Ardougne Knight Platelegs
Ironman, Ultimate Ironman, and Hardcore Ironman Platelegs
Platebodies - Ranged Attack stats have been reduced from -10 to -15. This includes:
Bronze, Iron, Steel, Black, Mithril, Adamant, Rune, Dragon, White and Decorative Platebodies (including Heraldic, Gold and Trimmed versions)
Initiate and Proselyte Hauberks
Dragonstone, Ardougne Knight and Corrupted Platebodies
Ironman, Ultimate Ironman, and Hardcore Ironman Platebodies
Squareshields - Ranged Attack stats have been increased from -2 to 0. This includes:
Bronze, Iron, Steel, Black, Mithril, Adamant, Rune, Dragon and White Squareshields (including Gold Rune Square Shield)
Kiteshields - Ranged Attack stats have been reduced from -2 to -3. This includes:
Bronze, Iron, Steel, Black, Mithril, Adamant, Rune, Dragon and White Kiteshields (including Gold Rune Kiteshield)
All versions of Steel, Adamant and Rune Heraldic Kiteshields
Corrupted Kiteshield
Decorative Shield
Spears - Attack rate has been decreased to 4. This includes:
Warhammers - All Warhammers (including Dragon Warhammer) now require Strength to wield instead of Attack.
The following have also increased in strength:
Bronze, Iron, Steel, Black, Mithril, Adamant, Rune and White Warhammers
If players no longer meet the requirements, the item will be un-equipped to your inventory (if not full), failing that your bank (if not full), and failing that it will drop to the floor. Players will receive an in game message if this occurs.
Maces - Attack rate has been decreased from 5 to 4. This includes:
Bronze, Iron, Steel, Black, Mithril, Adamant, Rune, Dragon and White Maces
Hastae - Attack rate has been decreased from 5 to 4. This includes:
Bronze, Iron, Steel, Black, Mithril, Adamant, Rune and Dragon Hastae (including all Poison variants)
The Twisted Bow Prayer bonus has been reduced from +4 to 0.
The Dragonstone Gauntlets Ranged Attack has been reduced from -2 to -3.
Both the Dragonbone and Bonecrusher Necklaces have had all Attack stats increased from 0 to 10. all Defence stats increased from 0 to 2 and their Melee Strength bonus increased from 0 to 2. They also now require 70 Prayer to wield instead of 80 and both necklaces' effects are activated immediately.
Basilisk Knights have lost their Special Attacks, although the Basilisk Superiors retain it. These Attacks can also no longer be fully broken by auto-retaliating with Ranged.
That's it for the first wave of ERB changes. If you've not had a chance, check out yesterday's blog and send us your feedback on the next stage!
Last Man Standing
Thanks for your helpful feedback on the latest Last Man Standing map. With today's update you'll see:
More chests have been added around the map, specifically to final zones
Chests are now more visible
The amount of scenery in certain areas makes the environments feel more 'open'
Spawn locations have been improved
Other News
Below Ice Mountain
We've made some smaller tweaks to Gielinor's latest dungeon:
Golems now drop Noted Rune Essence
The Camdozaal Collection Log tab will now turn green when the player has completed the collection
The Collection Log now displays totals correctly since new items within Camdozaal were added
Any text mentioning the Ancient Forge has been adjusted to refer to the Sacred Forge
A small typo has been fixed in the Below Ice Mountain buff interface
PvP World Rota
The PvP rota has moved to Period A:
The host for the High-Risk PvP world will be W343 (Germany)
The Standard PvP world will be W324 (US West)
The free-to-play PvP world will be W417 (US East)
A small fishing net has been placed within the ruins
The members-only LMS world will be W333 (UK)
The free-to-play LMS world will be W469 (US East)
Extras
Additional special characters, such as "—", can now be rendered in chat. Go on, express yourself!
Dialogue and quest progression in the Grand Tree quest has been improved.
The Skavid map now stays with the player upon death.
Amlodd's Magical Supplies has a slower price increase in Runes, to match other popular Rune stores.
The anti-alting mechanic implemented last week has now been applied to the Abyssal Demons in the Catacombs, Demonic Gorillas, and Warped Jellies. The Catacombs' Abyssal Demons have had their maximum walking range increased slightly too. This will allow people to group more easily between rooms.
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.
Equipment Rebalancing: Ranged Meta and High Level Concepts
In our last Equipment Rebalance blog, we discussed splitting the process into four releases. The idea is to start out on the simpler rebalancing, before moving on to tackle trickier subjects - such as changes to the Ranged meta - separately, giving everything the room it needs to breathe and be properly considered.
In this blog we're going to take a closer look at those Ranged meta changes, covering:
The current Ranged meta
Our previous proposal
Various top-level concepts for what we could change
Detailed DPS numbers
Our next steps - and a survey for you to fill in!
As a team, we believe a rebalance is clearly needed in order to curb any risk of powercreep and to ensure the long-term health of the game. It’s vital that we get this right, and we appreciate all of the support we’ve received so far.
A bit of a warning, though - this blog will contain a lot of information. But regardless, we strongly advise reading through all of it before providing any feedback. We also encourage you all to be constructive in your responses - if you're unhappy with an approach, consider offering an alternative suggestion or let us know which areas in particular need changing and why. This ensures that we’re able to action the changes that matter the most to you.
We should also note that the 'solution' to the Ranged Meta won't be found in this blog! We're going to continue working on it, and further down the road we'll be asking you to fill out a survey that will help shape our actual proposal. Together, we'll be able to find solution that we can all be happy with.
So, grab some water and stay hydrated as you traverse the desert of Equipment Rebalance...
The Current Ranged Meta
First, how do things currently stand?
Toxic Blowpipe
It’s no secret that the Toxic Blowpipe is strong. Here's why it's so popular:
It's never a bad weapon to use unless a monster is specifically invulnerable to Ranged, you’re forced to wear a shield, or you are attacking a creature that the Blowpipe cannot reach (such as TzKal-Zuk).
It has a very versatile special attack (when it hits).
It is very obtainable, costing anywhere from as little as 3m to 5m GP depending on the market.
It's among the fastest attacking weapons in the game, which drastically reduces its overkill potential (this also allows it to scale better than most Ranged items as max hit increases).
The upkeep cost isn't all that high unless using Rune/Dragon Darts, and the return on investment only provides marginal increases in damage.
It’s the only Ranged weapon which can compete with the Twisted Bow in terms of DPS output against lots of creatures.
The only Ranged weapons which out-perform the Blowpipe in places where Ranged is relevant are:
Dragonhunter Crossbow against high-defence dragons like Vorkath (but only if their Defence is not reduced)
Twisted Bow against creatures which have mid-high Defence and also a mid-high Magic level
Armadyl crossbow with Ruby Enchanted Bolts against creatures with exceptionally high Hitpoints, such as TzKal-Zuk
Chinchompas in places where creatures can be affected by Ranged AoE damage
Even against creatures it would not typically be match for, the Blowpipe will be a reasonably strong choice as long as the Defence can be reduced, making it fit to take on tough cookies such as:
Xarpus
Vorkath
Abyssal Sire
Sotetseg
Twisted Bow
When used against creatures with a high Magic level, the Twisted Bow is the strongest Ranged weapon in the game by a large margin. This is because of its unique effect; the higher the target's Magic level or Magic accuracy, the higher the Twisted Bow's accuracy and damage becomes!
It can be used to great effect against creatures including:
The Great Olm
Commander Zilyana
Dagannoth Prime
Alchemical Hydra
Skotizo
Vasa Nistirio
Most Chambers of Xeric: Challenge Mode creatures
TzTok-Jad
TzKal-Zuk
Zulrah
And, even if it isn't the strongest weapon, The Twisted Bow is still a reasonable choice against creatures such as:
Cerberus
Abyssal Sire
King Black Dragon
Maiden of Sugadinti
Sotetseg
Xarpus
However, The Twisted Bow is significantly worse than almost any other alternative Ranged weapon if the creature has a low Magic level, and is worse than almost every weapon in the game when the creature has no Magic level at all.
Because the Twisted Bow is a very rare drop from end-game content, it remains relatively exclusive and has held its position as one of the most expensive non-cosmetic items to obtain in the game.
Heavy Ballista
The Heavy Ballista sits within the Tier 75 Ranged weapons alongside the Twisted Bow and Toxic Blowpipe. Even though it is comparable in requirements, it sees next to no use in most PvM scenarios compared to its tier-mates because of its slow attack speed.
With the Ballista having such a slow attack speed, the potential for overkill becomes a much bigger issue.
It is, however, one of the best Ranged KO weapons in PvP due to its high hits and powerful special attack.
Crystal Bow
The Crystal Bow is an iconic Tier 70 Ranged weapon, known for having one of the longest attack ranges in the game - and not requiring arrows to shoot!
It can be used by players on a budget, and is great for those that cannot afford (or are yet to unlock) the Toxic Blowpipe. It also has some niche uses such as attacking the respiratory systems of the Abyssal Sire.
The strength of the Crystal Bow can be enhanced further by equipping a full set of the Crystal Armour. Each armour piece will give a 3% damage boost and 6% accuracy bonus to the bow. If all pieces are worn, the total set bonus is equal to a 15% damage and 30% accuracy boost.
This increase in power would suggest its effective strength should be higher than a Tier 70 item. However, it isn't all that useful because:
The set bonus require a head slot to be equipped, so it's often replaced by the Slayer helmet for better bonuses in many situations.
The set bonus is not strong enough to outdo the Toxic Blowpipe - even in situations where you cannot fight a creature on a Slayer task.
The armour set takes up a total of four worn equipment slots (including the bow), limiting its effectiveness where switching gear is favoured.
The Bow and its armour have a steep upkeep cost as they degrade in combat. They can only be recharged with Crystal Shards.
The armour is reasonably expensive/difficult to unlock, and the cost does not necessarily reflect its strength.
Standard Crossbows
The most commonly used standard Crossbows in game are Tier 61 for Rune, Tier 64 for Dragon and Tier 70 for Armadyl.
There is very little difference in power between them, with the best Tier (Armadyl) only providing +1 Prayer bonus alongside +10 Ranged accuracy over Rune and +6 Ranged accuracy over Dragon. However, Dragon and Armadyl crossbows are the only crossbows which can fire Dragon Bolts and their enchanted variants, which provides a substantial DPS increase over the Adamant enchanted Bolts used by the Rune Crossbow.
Crossbows allow a shield to be equipped at the same time making them a more defensive option, and in some specific encounters, this approach is forced by design. Some examples include:
Taking an Antifire Shield or a Dragonfire Ward against Dragons such as Vorkath
Taking a Crystal Shield or Dragonfire Shield into places where Defence matters
Taking a Mirror Shield or V's Shield against creatures such as Basilisks and Basilisk Knights
With Dragon Bolts equipped, the Armadyl Crossbow is the strongest Ranged weapon option against high Defence targets with high Hitpoints and a low Magic level. It's the second strongest weapon against creatures such as TzKal-Zuk.
The Armadyl Crossbow also has a special attack that doubles the accuracy of the next attack by 40%. However, this attack has no effect if the next move triggers the special effect of a Bolt, as this is checked before accuracy rolls occur.
Against the vast majority of creatures, a Toxic Blowpipe will always be better DPS than any Crossbow.
Karil’s Crossbow
Karil’s Crossbow is another Tier 70 Ranged weapon, though it sees much less use due to its high upkeep cost.
As it is a part of the Barrows set, it degrades during combat, and after 15 hours of use it will need repairing before it can be used again. In addition to this, the crossbow uses unique ammunition that is consumed with every shot fired.
Other noteworthy points about Karil's Crossbow include:
It has higher DPS than a Rune Crossbow against low-mid Defence targets, unless the Rune Crossbow is used with enchanted Ruby Bolts against creatures with high Hitpoints.
It attacks from a significantly shorter range than a Rune Crossbow.
A shield cannot be equipped at the same time as it is two-handed.
When worn with a full set of Karil the Tainted's armour, shots from the Crossbow benefit from a special effect that gives a chance to reduce the agility level of an opposing player by 25%
But... this has little to no significance even in PvP combat
When worn with a full set of Karil the Tainted's armour and an Amulet of the Damned, there is also a 25% chance for each attack to deal a second hit for half the damage of the first.
This set effect does provide a slight DPS increase and can find uses in PvP for certain players, but it does requires 5 items to be worn, all of which will degrade over time.
Magic bows
The Magic Shortbow and Magic Longbow are Tier 50 Ranged weapons, though Longbows are mostly considered irrelevant due to their slow attack speed. However, this doesn’t outweigh the benefits of having an increased attack distance!
Magic Shortbows can have comparable DPS to a Rune Crossbow, depending on the Defence of the creature and the quality of ammunition used. But a shield cannot be equipped at the same time, as they are two-handed weapons.
Even when using Amethyst arrows, the Magic Shortbow is weaker than using Karil’s Crossbow. However, the cost of upkeep is severely reduced as it doesn't degrade and any ammunition used benefits from the ammunition-saving effect of Ava's devices.
The Magic Shortbow can be imbued, increasing its base Ranged accuracy from +69 to +75 and lowering the special attack energy used from 55% to 50%.
But, imbued or not, you're always better off using a Rune Crossbow against targets with Hitpoints high enough to take full advantage of Ruby Bolt special attacks.
Room for Growth
The Tier 70 Ranged meta has lots of options, with plenty of ways for lower-tier items to be improved, increasing the available variety. However, the Tier 75 Ranged meta only has four options:
Twisted Bow against specific bosses (for those who can afford it)
Toxic Blowpipe for everything else, unless there's a significant drawback/reason why it can't be used
Armadyl Crossbow for the few occasions where the Toxic Blowpipe isn't the right choice
Crystal Bow with Crystal Armour... trying to be relevant and failing spectacularly!
The solution to the current meta isn't as simple as just introducing more Ranged items at Tier 75 either. Simply put, the Toxic Blowpipe is just too strong everywhere it is used. Its damage per tick ratio (see further down for more info) is too high for where it sits. This leaves us with the following options:
Nerf the Toxic Blowpipe so we can introduce more Ranged items at Tier 75. These would fill in places where the Blowpipe was previously used, and might be even better in some circumstances.
Create a new Tier above the Toxic Blowpipe. This would unavoidably result in powercreep for what one is one of the most dominant playing styles.
Our Previous Proposal
What was it?
These are the changes we had suggested for the charged Toxic Blowpipe:
100% increased accuracy added to the special attack
Toxic Blowpipe base Ranged accuracy reduced from +60 to +30
Toxic Blowpipe base Ranged strength reduced from +40 to +25
All Dart variants' accuracy and strength reduced (see table below)
Ranged level requirement increased from 75 to 78
The intention was to make Dart choice more important, with cheaper ones being notably weaker than the more expensive options. In addition to reducing the base stats of the Toxic Blowpipe, this would bring its overall power more in line with where we considered it to be as a Tier 75/78 Ranged weapon.
Space would have been created for new items in the Tier 75/78 bracket, leading to increased diversity of options for Ranged combat.
These changes would also have helped to overcome the balancing hurdle we face currently when designing new PvM content. The Toxic Blowpipe would have a new identity as the best Ranged weapon to use against low Defence targets.
We then looked to offset the nerf of the Toxic Blowpipe by increasing the damage and accuracy bonus of Crystal Armour set. Unfortunately, our previously proposed buffs weren’t enough to make a sufficient difference and failed to bridge the gap that would have been left behind.
You can find the original details of the Toxic Blowpipe changes and more in this newspost.
What worked?
Darts became a more important factor, emphasising that higher DPS should have an appropriately higher cost.
It created a larger gap between the Toxic Blowpipe and the Twisted Bow, allowing us to fill that space over time with future rewards.
It created space for diversity in the Ranged meta and made existing items better in various situations.
It gave the Toxic Blowpipe a clear identity - the best weapon against low Defence targets.
What didn’t work?
The power level between those who owned a Twisted Bow and those who didn't was widened considerably, resulting in players feeling like more content would be locked behind an incredibly expensive item.
Despite its identity as the best weapon against low Defence targets, the Toxic Blowpipe would still be the best weapon against medium Defence targets too, unless they were specifically susceptible to the Twisted Bow.
With the power level of the Toxic Blowpipe being balanced more around Rune and Dragon Darts, players with limited access to these Darts (especially those playing an Iron account) felt like the nerf impacted them more than others.
Whilst the Ranged meta changed, it didn't really change by enough to make a noticeable immediate impact, especially towards end-game content. It still mostly revolved around using either the Toxic Blowpipe or the Twisted Bow, with the Toxic Blowpipe just being weaker than it was before. This went against our goal of increasing diversity in viable Ranged weapons, and relied too heavily on new items being added in the future.
The changes essentially nerfed the player rather than the weapon, as there were no immediate replacements for the Toxic Blowpipe. With no publicly available schedule for releases of new items, this undermined player confidence in the changes.
Many felt like those who had used the Toxic Blowpipe pre-nerf had achieved things more easily than players attempting the same tasks post-nerf.
Even after buffing the Crystal Armour, the Crystal Bow would remain uncompetitive. After testing various stat changes, we determined that we'd have to increase the set bonus accuracy and damage to 40% accuracy and 50% damage for the Crystal Bow to be better against the Ket-Zek in the Inferno. That's quite a substantial increase over our proposal, and something we were not comfortable doing given the Crystal Bow is still a Tier 70 item!
The Crystal Armour was still less viable against creatures where getting a Slayer task is possible.
Is This REALLY Needed?
The game has been just fine for the last six years with the Toxic Blowpipe in its current form, so why change it now? Does it even need to be changed at all?
No it doesn’t.
There is almost certainly a scenario where the Toxic Blowpipe could remain in-game just the same. However, we’d be left in a situation where adding new Ranged gear from future pieces of content would result in blatant powercreep. The gap between Melee/Magic and one Ranged item would continue to grow.
We believe that making changes now is in the best interest of the long-term health of the game. We still want the Toxic Blowpipe to remain viable, but for it to be a tool in your arsenal rather than the entire army!
Top Level Concepts
Since first suggesting Equipment Rebalancing we’ve received an overwhelming amount of feedback. We’ve listened to it all, and here are some of your suggestions.
Ranged Damage Types
One popular suggestion was to separate Ranged accuracy and strength into different styles, similar to how Melee works with Stab, Slash and Crush. Our internal discussions proposed:
Piercing (Arrows/Bows)
Bludgeoning (Bolts/Crossbows)
Magical/Special (Crystal Bow)
A change like this would definitely help to fix the issue with diversity in Ranged equipment, although it's arguably a bit extreme considering the issue only really exists because of one Ranged weapon.
Implementing the fundamentals of this would require an incredibly large amount of dev work. First we’d need to completely re-write almost all existing NPCs defensive stats and respective Ranged weapon offensive stats. Then, a similar amount of time would be needed to calculate the shift in DPS values for each Ranged weapon to ensure each one was correctly balanced.
With something of this scale, it’s likely a lot of existing metas would change (potentially for the worse) and the reality is that no matter how much time we spent balancing things internally, it would take several iterations to get right. This would have huge implications on the work done for Combat Achievements and potentially delay the project even further.
It’s also a huge shift in how Ranged combat works across Old School, and might not be a universally accepted direction for the game to take. This level of change needs serious thought, and isn’t something we’d approach without first fully investigating alternative options.
Special Boss Mechanics
Another suggestion was to introduce unique mechanics for bosses and creatures that would limit the effectiveness of the Toxic Blowpipe against them.
This is something we’ve done in the past and continue to keep in mind with new content releases. For example, Basilisk Knights require a shield and TzKal-Zuk is intentionally placed out of range for the Blowpipe.
Alternate ways of achieving this could involve:
Mechanics such as damage reflection, making the use of a fast attacking weapon much more punishing.
Mechanics that require the player to move around a lot so there are fewer opportunities to attack.
Drastically increasing the Defence/Ranged Defence of bosses and creatures to combat the Toxic Blowpipe. However:
This would however impact the viability of Melee
Increasing Ranged defence makes all Ranged weapons weaker, not just the Toxic Blowpipe
Landing special attacks with the Dragon Warhammer still has the potential to undo any high Defence stats we apply unless we specifically limit the amount of Defence that can be reduced like we have at Sotetseg
Ultimately we still feel like these solutions don't fix the underlying problem. Whilst we’re able to design new content with the current Toxic Blowpipe in mind, all existing content would remain susceptible to powercreep as and when new Ranged items become available. There’s also the potential for any changes having an unintended negative impact on other weapons.
Rebalancing Old Content
One of the most common concerns was that existing content would become much harder, or that some PvM goals would take longer to achieve. For example:
Lizardman Shamans would be impacted significantly due to the low Ranged accuracy of the Shayzien armour, which is required to fight them effectively.
The Inferno would become slightly harder. If the Blowpipe is dealing less damage, then monsters are taking longer to die. This would become a problem when reaching TzKal-Zukm, as taking down the Jal-MejJak’s quickly is very beneficial. There were also concerns raised about the increased difficulty of defeating sets of Jal-Xil and Jal-Zek during the TzKal-Zuk phase, and that the triple JalTok-Jads taking longer to kill.
Vasa Nistiro becomes even more reliant on having fellow raiders with a Twisted Bow, especially in Challenge Mode.
It was suggested that we could reduce the stats of affected creatures accordingly. But again, applying this kind of change across the entire game is something we’d like to avoid. However, we can certainly look case-by-case and adjust bosses and creatures where necessary.
Why don't we just ban the bots?
“The Toxic Blowpipe is only a problem because it's cheap. It's only cheap because Jagex haven't banned bots/goldfarmers. It's not our fault and we shouldn’t suffer because of this.”
Whilst the affordability and upkeep costs of the Toxic Blowpipe are an issue, they’re only contributing to the bigger problem of how crazy powerful the weapon is. By just making it more expensive to purchase and use, we'd still face the following snags:
A single Tier 75/78 weapon being the meta.
Continued issues with powercreep whenever new Ranged strength and accuracy items are introduced.
Dart scaling issues, with extremely accessible and affordable Darts out-DPS-ing some of the best-in-slot alternatives.
We don't disagree that the Toxic Blowpipe is cheaper than we’d like. And yes, that is partially due to the amount of them available because of accounts farming Zulrah.
We asked our Anti-Cheating Team to provide some insight into the situation:
"We have multiple BotWatch heuristics specifically looking at bosses such as Zulrah. These are frequently updated to remain as accurate and informative as possible. However, with the vast amount of scripts and bots out there, we simply can't catch every one of them, all of the time. This is an ongoing battle between the Anti-Cheating Team and people abusing our system.
"The number of botted accounts that the team remove on a weekly basis fluctuates, but is usually in the low thousands. A lot of these accounts are played manually, just as a normal player would do, but their intention is purely around Gold farming.
"This is an issue because players seek to make a living from converting in-game items to real-world currencies. So long as our games provide these players with a real-world financial incentive to play, then they'll do so at all costs. These type of accounts aren't easily identifiable via BotWatch - they require a mixture of data analysis, profiling and manual tracking.
"Over the last year, the team has been working to improve our arsenal with new talent, fresh ideas, and innovative ways of working. One example we can give is the implementation of Machine Learning models and analysis to help flag any suspicious accounts for manual review!
"We're happy to report early success with this. Through these additional analysis methods we're now seeing on average of 600 to 2,500 additional Real World Trading bans applied daily.
"We're aware that there is more work to do, and we can be doing better. Over the coming months we are actively going to be working on developing new systems to aid in the fight against cheating in our games. We can't go into detail about these new systems for obvious reasons, but alongside hiring more staff it's been a main focus of the team's planning and strategy over the past year."
Damage Per Tick - Accuracy Is Our Friend
One of the fundamental issues with the Toxic Blowpipe is its potential damage output is far higher than its competition.
By working out the raw potential damage output of an item, we can focus purely on the figures when comparing them. We don’t need to worry about various different stats, if a weapon is one-handed or two-handed, or things like attack range. In its simplest form, our calculations take a weapon's max hit and attack speed, and then output a simple figure that we can refer to.
The below table is based on the following:
Maximum Ranged gear available
A boosted Ranged level of 112
Rigour active
No Slayer Helmet
We've used three different Magic levels for the Twisted Bow to show how the Magic level really affects its raw damage output
We've ignored the Bolt effect chance of Crossbows
Naturally this doesn't take into account any upkeep costs, which we'd normally consider during balancing
We assume that you have 100% accuracy and will never miss, which is a good way for us to actually show the potential DPS output of a weapon
*The Twisted Bow only scales past 250 Magic inside the Chambers of Xeric, where its cap becomes 350 Magic.
Accuracy Matters, So Why Are We Ignoring It?
Accuracy is a very important metric in Old School combat. It controls how often you’re going to hit with a weapon, which directly impacts to the amount of damage you can output over a period of time. As a monster's Defence value increases, accuracy against that same creature decreases, and therefore the overall DPS typically goes down.
However, accuracy is not a very reliable stat, especially given how a lot of existing encounters involve using Defence-reducing special attacks to get as close to 100% accuracy as possible.
So in general, this is a good way to show the potential power level of items. You can clearly see from the table above just how far ahead the Toxic Blowpipe is against low Defence targets, even with low-tier Darts being used! This method also emphasises the non-existent gap between the Toxic Blowpipe and the Twisted Bow - something we should certainly work on filling with other items or future rewards.
Let’s take a look at how things are when we bring Effective Defence into the mix…
The below graph is based on the following:
Effective Defence is calculated by the formula Effective Ranged Defence = (Ranged Defence + 64)
(Defence + 9)
The benchmarks in order of effective Ranged Defence: Lizardman Shamans, Jal-Zek, Jaltok-Jad, Tzkal-Zuk, Sarachnis
Twisted Bow: The Accuracy/Damage of Twisted Bow assumes a creature with a Magic level of 250
Creatures are shown in this graph only to highlight Effective Defence - this is not the DPS against these specific creatures (they are placed approximately where their Effective Defence level lies)
Armadyl Crossbow and Dragon Bolts with procs assumes that the max hit of the special attack is always 100
The true DPS value will be somewhere between the 'with procs' and 'no procs' lines, though this would entirely depend on the creature being killed at the time
By looking at the graph, it’s very clear that the Toxic Blowpipe is strong against more than just low Defence creatures, which is really limiting the Ranged design space.
In our eyes, a healthy meta would look something like this:
Weapon A = 12 DPS against 0 Defence and 4 DPS against 30,000 effective Defence
Weapon B = 9 DPS against 0 Defence and 6 DPS against 30,000 effective Defence
This allows for a clearly identifiable breakpoint where you choose to use weapon A over weapon B. Obviously this is just an example of how it would look, and a rather simple one at that! We'd expect the actual meta to be much more diverse, factoring in one-handed vs two-handed weapons, attack range, bane effects against specific monsters, special attacks etc.
Moving Forward
If you’re still with us after all this information, then very well done - you most certainly command the power of armies, and could probably punch a horse to the ground? Which is why we need your help!
We've been working on a new proposal for the Ranged portion of Equipment Rebalancing, but before we share that, we’d really appreciate some additional guidance from you all.
Some of the questions in the survey should give you some insight into our current thinking. While we will not be polling all of these changes, we do want you as a community to help us shape a healthy Ranged meta that will keep us playing happily for years to come!
Once we’ve processed your feedback from both this post and the survey, we'll come back to you with some new proposals. We expect that there will be several rounds of feedback required, so don’t worry - we won't rush this!
As Combat Achievements is close to completion, it’s important we make these changes soon, and that we get them right. We'd like to give ourselves an opportunity to evaluate any immediate changes to the meta too, so this time has been factored in.
As always, thank you for your continued support and we'll see you next blog with our shiny new Ranged meta proposal!
We're really excited about the upcoming release of the Clans system - it's getting so close we can almost taste it! With that in mind, it's now time to think about reserving your unique Clan name. Handily, we've put together a Clan Reservation form so you can easily submit all the information we need.
As there are many potential claimants for any name, we don't want to run this on a first-come-first-served basis. We want to make sure that long-established Clans can bag their rightful name without fear of losing out to some cheeky chancers! To ensure fairness, this will be a manual process. We therefore greatly appreciate your patience as we try to allocate names as best we can.
Before we get into the specifics of the form, some guidelines:
The form should only be submitted by the owner/leader of the Clan. Sending us multiple requests from the same Clan won't improve your chances of reserving the name, but is likely to slow down our process as we try to validate the information.
On a similar note, please be patient with your request. We will review all requests before the release of the Clans system, and you will receive a response. Do not send us multiple requests if you haven't yet received a response.
As this is a manual process, please don't misuse this form. This will take time away from us assisting people who genuinely need our help.
Misusing this form to do something that you might think is funny, like requesting rude words or falsely trying to claim a rival Clan's name, may result in action being taken against you/your Clan, and you may lose your Clan's name as a result.
Here's a breakdown of what we ask for, and why we're asking for it.
Your email address: This is the email address where you'd like to hear back from us, and does not have to be your usual login email.
Subject: Simply put Clan, Clan Reservation or Clan Name.
Clan Name: The name you'd like to reserve. The limit is 12 characters, the same as display names.
Clan Creation Date: The approximate date your Clan was created (we invite you to offer proof of this date later in the form).
Clan Size: The approximate size of your Clan (again, proof can be provided further down).
Current Friends Chat: We're going to assume that you use a Friends Chat Channel (also referred to as a Clan Chat Channel).Telling us this will help to inform our decision-making if we're faced with similar name requests.
Proof of Clan Existing: Here's where you can submit screenshots, videos etc to support your reservation request. For example, you can include proof of the Clan creation date or number of members.
Discord Tag: As we mentioned earlier, the reservation process is a manual affair and requires realtime in-game interaction between leaders and J-Mods. We'll use Discord to arrange meeting dates and times. Let us know where to find you!
Description: This is an area for you to include any other information that you think is relevant to your name reservation request.
Thank you for following the guidelines. We look forward to receiving your Clan Reservation form!
The Old School Team
Below Ice Mountain
Hotfix Changes - April 16th
After reviewing the effects of yesterday's hotfix and reading your feedback, some of the changed XP rates are going to be re-adjusted.
Our goal for the new dungeon Below Ice Mountain was to create a place where low-leveled, non-members get the chance to experience other types of Mining found in Gielinor (such as in the Motherlode Mine).
In line with that aim, the following will be implemented via hotfix today at approximately 14:15 BST:
The Mining XP when receiving a deposit is increasing from 24 to 32.
The Mining XP when receiving a shard is increasing from 12 to 16.
The chance of successfully mining Barronite at high Mining levels as been decreased, but the chance at low Mining levels as been increased.
The Mining buff has been increased from a 5% chance to 10% (the interface will be updated with our next game update).
All the feedback you've given is massively appreciated and we'll continue to monitor the changes and review any other suggestions you might have.
Hotfix Changes - April 15th
It's been amazing to see so many of you delve Below Ice Mountain! There's been a lot of feedback, and we've got some changes we'll be making based on what you've been saying.
The following will be implemented via hotfix today, at approximately 14:15 BST:
The base chance of getting a Barronite deposit when mining is increasing from 3% to 24%.
Unique items from Barronite are now 8x rarer to receive, with the Broken hammer being 3x rarer.
Relics within the ruins are becoming slightly rarer as well.
The Mining XP you receive from the deposits will decrease from 250 to 28.
The Smithing XP you receive from the deposits will decrease from 37.5 to 10.
The Mining XP you receive from shards will decrease from 25 to 12.
The Mining buff now gives a 5% chance of success when Mining, rather than 5% additional deposits.
The team hope you continue to enjoy the content in our newest game update. We'll keep on monitoring activity in the ruins and adjust issues accordingly as per feedback.
Issues and Hotfixes (April 15th)
[expand type="details"] [table] [tr][th]Issues Raised[/th][th]Current Progress[/th][/tr] [tr][td](12:50 BST) World 345 is currently offline.[/td][td](April 15th - 13:30 BST)World 345 is now back online. We're sorry for any inconvenience, and we'll continue to monitor the game world for any further issues.[/td][/tr] [tr][td](12:50 BST) Players interacting with the same inactive Golem will cause the NPC disappear.[/td][td](14:00 BST) This issue is has now been resolved[/td][/tr] [tr][td](12:50 BST) Players are receiving a game message upon login about obtaining Graceful items even if they haven't got any.[/td][td](13:50 BST) This issue is has now been resolved[/td][/tr] [tr][td](12:55 BST) Some held items are not appearing correctly within the Below Ice Mountain cutscenes.[/td][td](13:30 BST) This issue is has now been resolved.[/td][/tr] [tr][td](14:55 BST) Some relics from the Ice Mountain dungeon are not unlocking as intended within the Collection Log.[/td][td](16:20 BST) This has been fixed for anyone that now unlocks the relic pieces. For players that have already received a relic piece, you can now speak to Ramarno to update your Collection Log.[/td][/tr] [tr][td](15:10 BST) Clicking out of the cutscene with Burntof will not allow players to progress with the quest.[/td][td](15:40 BST) This issue is has now been resolved.[/td][/tr] [tr][td](15:10 BST) Traps in the Vault within the Ice Mountain dungeon will block all players from walking once it spawns.[/td][td](15:40 BST) This issue is currently being investigated[/td][/tr] [tr][td](15:30 BST) Players Brimhaven Graceful items are still not appearing correctly in the Collection Log. [/td][td](17:00 BST) This issue should now be resolved. For any players that are still having issues, speak to Pirate Jackie to update your Collection Log correctly.[/td][/tr] [/table] [/expand]
It's time to uncover the secrets of Ice Mountain in our new free-to-play quest! We've also tweaked Tempoross and souped-up the seedbox. Read on for more!
Below Ice Mountain
Willow, an energetic archaeologist (perhaps suspiciously so) is hunting for her next big discovery. She believes she has found the entrance to ancient underground ruins just to the west of Ice Mountain. There's a catch though - it's sealed tight and she needs to re-unite her old crew to help her break in.
Naturally, she has to stay close to the ruins (south of Ice Mountain, near the Dwarven Mines) in order to lay claim to the find. It therefore falls to you to bring her rag-tag group back together for one last caper and a final big pay-off!
Willow waiting for a gullib... err, we mean a brave adventurer!
Burntof is an old dwarf with a penchant for demolition, Checkal is a well-built lifter of heavy things and Marley is a cunning thief with a knack for disarming traps.
A lifter, a thief and a dwarf walk into a bar...
Together, they have the talents it will take to gain entry to the secret ruins. But persuading them might not be easy. See, the gang aren't all too keen on working with Willow again, and her intentions might not be as honourable as she claims...
Requirements and Rewards
[expand type="spoiler"]This is a novice quest aimed at free-to-play adventurers, so there aren't many requirements. You'll need 16 Quest Points to get started, and 10 Mining will definitely come in handy for a tricky encounter, but is by no means necessary. Completing the quest will yield the following rewards:
1 Quest Point
2,000 Coins
Access to the Ice Mountain Dungeon
You'll also be able to flex those muscles with a whole new emote courtesy of Checkal! Hwuargh! [/expand]
Ice Mountain Dungeon
Once the quest is complete, you'll have access to the dungeon below Ice Mountain. These ruins are packed with lore, but we're keeping those cards very close to our chest for the moment. Read on for a spoiler-free guide to what awaits:
Activities In The Ruins
Within the ruins is a great forge powered using Barronite, a unique material that can only found there. Somebody within the ruins believes it is their duty to keep the forge lit, lest the flame be diminished forever. This somebody is perhaps a few years past their prime and, with failing eyesight, will reward anybody who helps to gather vital Barronite...
There are a range of rewards for handing over the Barronite, most notable of which is access to the Vault. What's so exciting about this Vault? Well, it contains many treasures belonging to the old inhabits of the ruins, and they are all yours for the taking! However, to get the lock open you'll need to offer Barronite every time you want to enter.
Barronite can be gathered while skilling within the ruins, so you'll be gaining XP as you go. The activities available are primarily aimed at low-ish level free-to-play adventurers with the intention of filling notable gaps in free-to-play skilling. Let's take a look at some of them:
Religious Offerings (Prayer)
The caves deep below Ice Mountain are home to various rare cave fish. In ancient times, it was tradition for these fish to be used as religious offerings.
Here cave fishy fishy!
Players can offer cave fish within the ruins to train their Prayer skill. You'll need to perform the same ritual used by the long-departed inhabitants of the ruins:
Step 1: Fishing Players will either need a small net, big net or fishing rod to catch cave fish within the ruins.
[table] [tr][th]Fish[/th][th]Fishing Level[/th][th]Equipment[/th][th]Free-to-play[/th][/tr][tr][td]Raw Guppy[/td][td]7[/td][td]A small net[/td][td]YES[/td][/tr][tr][td]Raw Cavefish[/td][td]20[/td][td]A small net[/td][td]YES[/td][/tr][tr][td]Raw Tetra[/td][td]33[/td][td]A small or big net[/td][td]YES[/td][/tr][tr][td]Raw Catfish[/td][td]46[/td][td]A big net[/td][td]NO[/td][/tr][/table]
Players will also sometimes find Barronite when fishing. Plus, there's a rare chance of catching a Barronite Handle (see below). The fish caught here cannot be traded.
There are a few cave eel to be found (members only). They can't be used as an offering, but are a source of food. You'll also have a chance to receive the Heron pet when fishing for cave eels.
Step 2: Cooking With fish in your net, players will need to head to one of the old preparation tables with a knife. But be careful how you cook, budding chefs - it's possible to mess up and ruin the fish. The chance of failure is dependent on your Cooking level, so bring your culinary A-game!
Step 3: Prayer With your fish prepared, it's time to make an offering at an ancient altar and train that Prayer skill!
Golem Cores
The old inhabitants of the ruins controlled Golems, programming them to do many tasks. The Golems were fuelled by runic energies and imbued with the power of the Body and Mind altars. It was hoped that they would one day become more self-sufficient and be freed of the requirement for programming - but the magical arts are never predictable. The unstable energies of the nearby Chaos altar slowly seeped in the Golem Cores, corrupting them and filling them with uncontrollable power. The dangerous Golems were sealed away in the ruins for good.
These look tougher than a Graveler!
Players can hunt and kill Golems within the ruins. When defeated, they will sometimes drop their corrupted Cores, which can be used at the relevant Runecraft altar to gain XP and runes.
Step 1: Combat Players can find the following golems in the ruins:
Killing golems will sometimes yield Barronite, too, and there's a rare chance they'll drop a Barronite Guard (see below). Golem cores cannot be traded.
Step 2: Runecrafting Players can use the Cores to train their Runecraft skill, offering them at the relevant Runecraft altar for XP and runes. Each Core offers more XP and runes than a single essence, meaning fewer trips to the altar. However, this benefit is offset by the time it takes to obtain the Cores.
Gathering Relics (Mining and Smithing)
Players can mine Barronite rocks to find (you guessed it) Barronite and (you guessed it again) Barronite deposits. These deposits can be smelted down to gain additional Barronite and Ancient Relics.
C'ore blimey... how long has this been here?!
Step 1 - Mining Barronite rocks can be tackled at 15 Mining. Mining here will work similarly to the upper-level ore veins in Motherlode Mine (ensuring the rocks can be worked in groups). Players will get around 25 XP per Barronite mined, and finding a deposit will yield some additional XP.
Step 2 - Smithing Players with 15 Smithing can break down Barronite deposits with a hammer at anvil within the dungeon, and obtain various items:
Barronite (common)
Ancient Relic (uncommon)
Barronite Head (rare)
Broken Barronite Hammer (rare + members-only)
Ancient Relics can be handed in at the Varrock Museum for coins. In addition, members also get Kudos for the first Relic they hand in! The Barronite Head and Broken Barronite Hammer, meanwhile, can be made into new items (see below).
When Smithing, players will get around 37.5 XP per deposit.
The Vault
The Vault is buried deep within the ruins - just hand in your Barronite to gain access! As we mentioned above, it was used by the ancient inhabitants of the ruins to store treasure, so it's well worth a gander. But there's a catch. Each payment of Barronite allows just one entry, and players only get a limited time inside before they are forced out by the ancient security systems.
Simply a-MAZE-ing!
The Vault itself is maze-like, and home to many chests. Players have one minute to loot as many chests as possible and then reach the exit. If the player doesn't make it out in time, all the precious bounty will be lost!
Making things even more challenging, the locations of chests - and the loot within them - will be randomised. Similarly, doors will at times be blocked off, forcing the player to think fast and dash down alternative paths.
Players will be able to stack Barronite payments to make Vault entry more convenient. For example, a player could pay for 20 entries in a single transaction. Smooth.
Other Rewards
In addition to all of the above, the ruins offer new and unique rewards! Snag yourself one of these: Barronite Mace An untradeable mace that was once used by the ancient inhabitants of the ruins. Players need to find three components:
Barronite Handle - found while hunting for cave fish
Barronite Guard - dropped by Golems when killed
Barronite Head - found while breaking down Barronite deposits
Smash your way through golems with the Barronite Mace!
Once you have all three components, a character within the ruins will tell you how to combine them to finish the Barronite Mace (you'll also need some Barronite, obviously - the clue's in the name!). The Mace is positioned slightly below the Rune Scimitar. It's a useful crush weapon for low to mid levels, and requires 40 Attack.
This Mace also comes with a unique effect - it's a golembane weapon. That means it will provide extra accuracy and damage when fighting Golems!
As the item is untradeable it will behave similarly to items like the Fire Cape on death.
Dwarven Hammer This is a members-only, untradeable hammer that was once used as Smithing equipment by ancient dwarves. It's been a while since it's been much use to anyone, so you will first need to find the busted version while breaking down Barronite deposits. A character within the ruins will tell you how to repair it.
Stop, hammer time!
It will function as a normal hammer when skilling, but because it can be equipped in the main-hand, it frees up an inventory slot. Note that the hammer has no combat stats when equipped.
Ruins Area Buffs Players will also be able to spend Barronite to unlock various buffs and effects that work only within the ruins:
Increased catch rate for fishing
Decreased failure chance when preparing fish
Reduced damage from golem attacks
Increased chance of obtaining Barronite deposits
Increased chance of finding mace components and the broken hammer
A one hour buff to the dungeon that increases the success chance of all activities
Frog... that is all.
And that's everything for Below Ice Mountain and our new free-to-play dungeon area. We can't wait for you to delve deep into the mysteries of these strange and wonderful ruins. What will you uncover?
Tempoross Updates
Items that require setting up (e.g. Dwarf Cannon, Mithril seeds, Hunting Box, etc) can no longer be used on the Tempoross lobby ship. You can no longer light fires here either.
Fishing XP may now be gained in Tempoross encounters on W45.
Players can no longer stall to run through fires.
Points from dousing fires and fixing totem poles have doubled from 20 to 40. Get splashing!
The tackle box can now be used to store the Pearl Barbarian Rod, Tiny Net, Molch Pearls, Merfolk Trident, Dark Flippers and all variants of the Trailblazer Harpoon.
Stackable fish can no longer be stored in the fish barrel.
Angler and Spirit Angler outfits are now separated in Player Owned Houses.
The messaging when subduing Tempoross has been slightly tweaked.
Other News
Seedbox Improvements While we were discussing the bolt pouch design, the team noted that the seedbox isn't behaving right on death in the Wilderness. Upon death to an NPC, the seed box would drop to the ground with all of its contents still stored. If the player died below level 20 Wilderness, it would drop to the ground, along with all of its contents. If the player died above level 20 Wilderness, it would be dropped as 1 coin and all of its contents would be destroyed.
It will now behave as follows:
PVM death below 20 in Wilderness: the container and contents go to the gravestone.
PVM death above 20 in Wilderness: the container is destroyed but the contents can be preserved within the next container acquired.
PvP deaths act the same way regardless of location. The pouch is destroyed and its contents awarded to the PKer.
PvP World Rota The PvP world rota has moved to Period B.
The host for the High-Risk PvP world will be W337 (US East)
The host for the Standard PvP world will be W325 (UK)
The host for the free-to-play PvP world will be W371 (UK)
The members-only LMS world will be W492 (US East)
The free-to-play LMS world will be W326 (UK)
Extras
For Ironmen, certain slayer monsters' loot and XP will be discredited if a player hits a 0. This is to discourage the use of alternate accounts to speed up the efficiency of certain tasks.
Nightmare drop calculations will now factor in the total contribution that is present when the boss dies. This is to prevent boosting of drops.
After an egg-ventful Eastdoor, Gregg has returned to doing... whatever it is that human-sized rabbits do.
You can now use the Twisted or Trailblazer Cane emotes directly from the emotes interface (as long as you have a set of tier 3 relic hunter on your Leaguehall's outfit stand in your Player Owned House).
The Iron Dragon in the Soul Wars dungeon has been moved closer to the rune ore spot to prevent botters from getting there without a fight.
Brimhaven graceful pieces will now be counted within the Collection Log.
Players can now search for all boss categories in the Collection Log.
The Dragon Harpoon will now always consume 100% of the special attack power.
Zuriel's staff now gives its Ancient Magicks buffs in Last Man Standing.
The Undead Zealot in Mort'ton has more cosmetic variation.
Some more shields have been updated to prevent them from disrupting players' walking animations.
A typo has been fixed in the Settings menu.
A typo has been fixed in Istoria's dialogue.
Some grammatical errors have been corrected in drake combat messages.
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 [url=https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/comments/mqnl0s/below_ice_mountain_game_update_140421/, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel.
[/td][td]Basic Reanimation[/td][td]16[/td][td]4 Body & 2 Nature[/td][td]32[/td][td]Can be used to reanimate the ensouled heads of 
[/td][td]Adept Reanimation[/td][td]41[/td][td]4 Body, 3 Nature & 1 Soul[/td][td]80[/td][td]Can be used to reanimate the ensouled heads of 
[/td][td]Expert Reanimation[/td][td]72[/td][td]1 Blood, 3 Nature & 2 Soul[/td][td]138[/td][td]Can be used to reanimate the ensouled heads of 
[/td][td]Master Reanimation[/td][td]90[/td][td]2 Blood, 4 Nature & 4 Soul[/td][td]170[/td][td]Can be used to reanimate the ensouled heads of 
[/td][td]Arceuus Home Teleport[/td][td]1[/td][td]None[/td][td]0[/td][td]Teleports to the 
[/td][td]Arceuus Library[/td][td]6[/td][td]2 Earth & 1 Law[/td][td]9[/td][td]Teleports 
[/td][td]Draynor Manor[/td][td]17[/td][td]1 Earth, 1 Water & 1 Law[/td][td]16[/td][td]Teleports to 
[/td][td]Battlefront[/td][td]23[/td][td]1 Earth, 1 Fire & 1 Law[/td][td]19[/td][td]Teleports to the 
[/td][td]Mind Altar[/td][td]28[/td][td]1 Law & 2 Mind[/td][td]22[/td][td]Teleports to the 
[/td][td]Respawn[/td][td]34[/td][td]1 Law & 1 Soul[/td][td]27[/td][td]Teleports to the 
[/td][td]Salve Graveyard[/td][td]40[/td][td]1 Law & 2 Soul[/td][td]30[/td][td]Teleports to the 
[/td][td]Fenkenstrain's Castle[/td][td]48[/td][td]1 Earth, 1 Law & 1 Soul[/td][td]50[/td][td]Teleports to 
[/td][td]West Ardougne[/td][td]61[/td][td]2 Law & 2 Soul[/td][td]68[/td][td]Teleports to 
[/td][td]Harmony Island[/td][td]65[/td][td]1 Law, 1 Nature & 1 Soul[/td][td]74[/td][td]Teleports to 
[/td][td]Cemetery[/td][td]71[/td][td]1 Blood, 1 Law & 1 Soul[/td][td]82[/td][td]Teleports to the 
[/td][td]Barrows[/td][td]83[/td][td]1 Blood, 2 Law & 2 Soul[/td][td]90[/td][td]Teleports to the 
[/td][td]Ape Atoll[/td][td]90[/td][td]2 Blood, 2 Law & 2 Soul[/td][td]100[/td][td]Teleports to the 
[/td][td]Ghostly Grasp [/td][td]35[/td][td]Combat[/td][td]1 Chaos & 4 Air[/td][td]22.5+ Damage[/td][td]12[/td][td]10% chance to stop the enemy from moving for two cycles.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
[/td][td]Resurrect Ghost[/td][td]38[/td][td]Resurrection[/td][td]5 Mind,10 Air & 1 Cosmic[/td][td]55[/td][td]-[/td][td]Resurrects a Ghost that will attack your enemies with magic damage at the cost of 2 Prayer points.It will remain alive a cycle for every Magic level the player had at the time and has a max hit of 1.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
[/td][td]Inferior Demonbane[/td][td]44[/td][td]Combat[/td][td]1 Chaos & 4 Fire[/td][td]27+ Damage[/td][td]16[/td][td]Only works against demonic foes.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
[/td][td]Shadow Veil[/td][td]47[/td][td]Skilling[/td][td]5 Earth, 5 Fire & 5 Cosmic[/td][td]58[/td][td]-[/td][td]15% chance to avoid Stun damage while thieving.It will remain active at one cycle for every Magic level the player has at the time
[/td][td]Dark Lure[/td][td]50[/td][td]Skilling[/td][td]1 Death & 1 Nature[/td][td]60[/td][td]-[/td][td]Attracts an enemy towards you and prevents fleeing. Doesn't work on foes who can't move.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
[/td][td]Skeletal Grasp[/td][td]56[/td][td]Combat[/td][td]1 Death & 8 Earth[/td][td]33+ Damage[/td][td]18[/td][td]25% chance to stop the enemy from moving for four cycles.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
[/td][td]Resurrect Skeleton[/td][td]57[/td][td]Resurrection[/td][td]5 Death, 10 Earth & 1 Cosmic[/td][td]70[/td][td]-[/td][td]Resurrects a Skeleton that will attack your enemies with Ranged Damage at the cost of 4 prayer points.It will remain alive a cycle for every Magic level the player had at the time and has a max hit of 2.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
[/td][td]Mark of Darkness[/td][td]59[/td][td]Support[/td][td]1 Soul & 1 Cosmic[/td][td]70[/td][td]-[/td][td]An enemy with this spell cast upon them suffers an array of debuffs:
[/td][td]Superior Demonbane[/td][td]62[/td][td]Combat[/td][td]1 Soul & 8 Fire[/td][td]36+ Damage[/td][td]23[/td][td]Only works against demonic foes.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
[/td][td]Lesser Corruption[/td][td]64[/td][td]Support[/td][td]1 Death & 2 Soul[/td][td]75[/td][td]-[/td][td]33% chance to inflict corruption upon your target with your next damaging hit.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
[/td][td]Vile Vigour[/td][td]66[/td][td]Prayer[/td][td]1 Soul & 3 Air[/td][td]76[/td][td]-[/td][td]Converts all Prayer points into run energy.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
[/td][td]Degrime[/td][td]70[/td][td]Skilling[/td][td]4 Earth & 2 Nature[/td][td]83[/td][td]-[/td][td]Cleans all herbs in the Inventory 
[/td][td]Ward of Arceuus[/td][td]73[/td][td]Support[/td][td]4 Soul, 2 Nature & 1 Cosmic[/td][td]85[/td][td]-[/td][td]When this is cast, the player gains an array of buffs:
[/td][td]Resurrect Zombie[/td][td]76[/td][td]Resurrection[/td][td]5 Blood, 10 Fire & 1 Cosmic[/td][td]88[/td][td]-[/td][td]Resurrects a Zombie that will attack your enemies with melee damage at the cost of 6 Prayer points.It will remain alive one cycle for every Magic level the player had at the time and has a max hit of 3.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
[/td][td]Undead Grasp[/td][td]79[/td][td]Combat[/td][td]1 Blood & 12 Fire[/td][td]46.5+ Damage[/td][td]24[/td][td]50% chance to stop the enemy from moving for four cycles.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
[/td][td]Death Charge[/td][td]80[/td][td]Support[/td][td]1 Death, 1 Blood & 1 Soul[/td][td]90[/td][td]-[/td][td]When cast the next Slayer creature that the caster kills will recharge 15% of their special attack energy.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
[/td][td]Dark Demonbane[/td][td]82[/td][td]Combat[/td][td]2 Soul & 12 Fire[/td][td]43.5+ Damage[/td][td]30[/td][td]Only works against demonic foes.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
[/td][td]Greater Corruption[/td][td]85[/td][td]Support[/td][td]1 Blood & 3 Soul[/td][td]95[/td][td]-[/td][td]66% chance to inflict corruption upon your target with your next damaging hit.[/td][/tr][tr][td]
[/td][td]Sinister Offering[/td][td]92[/td][td]Prayer[/td][td]1 Blood & 1 Wrath[/td][td]180[/td][td]-[/td][td]Converts up to 3 sets of bones into Prayer points and gives 3 times the base experience.[/td][/tr][/table]
