Behind the Scenes - April

Easter 2012: Evil Chicken vs Chocatrice

Rumours are rife that the Easter Bunny has met with a nasty accident, and the Evil Chicken and Chocatrice will be facing off in the most deliciously wicked Easter egg hunt ever. If you’ve no qualms about getting your hands greasy or chocolatey, you’ll be able to take charge of an Eggsterminator and eggsplode a reign of eggy terror (or batter them- fried chicken style) during the Easter period. Come out of your shell and work with your friends to hunt down Easter eggs in the name of your eggstremely evil Easter mastermind! Free players and members alike will have the chance to pick up some shame-faced eggy masks, and members can grab XP lamps and a permanent version of the Eggsterminator for performing particularly well.

There’ll be plenty of community-led events based around Easter this year, so keep an eye on the news and the forums for further details.

Dungeoneering Improvements & Other Fixes

We’re releasing a bunch of much-requested updates and fixes this month, most of which relate to Dungeoneering.

First up, we’ve added a tool belt for use in Dungeoneering. Much like its surface world counterpart, this will automatically be filled with all basic tools, as well as a novite pickaxe and hatchet. You’ll also be able to add higher-level tools to your Dungeoneering tool belt when you find them, effectively allowing you to carry around the best pickaxes and hatchets you can without costing you inventory space.

Keys will be automatically shared between all party members. When any player picks up a key, everyone else in their party will have access to it through a new “keys” category in their Dungeoneering tool belt. Gone will be the days where a key gets lost in your teammate’s inventory, because as long as someone’s picked it up, everyone will be able to use it.

Basic resources found in Dungeoneering, such as ore, logs and raw food, will stack, meaning more capacity for the eager artisans in your party. All stackable resources, as well as coins, will also have a “Drop-X” option, allowing stacks to be split.

Finally, we’re making some other non-Dungeoneering improvements, such as allowing additional Crafting and Fishing activities the chance to drop Shattered Heart rocks, and allowing for vampyric names earned during The Branches of Darkmeyer to be changed.

Fremennik Sagas II

We’ll also be releasing two new, exciting Fremennik Sagas. The first carries on from where Thok and Marmaros’s adventures in Daemonheim left off. Thok’s left his favourite sword lodged in the face of a bony bad-guy who won’t stay dead. To make matters worse, he’s just been challenged by Marmaros to a battle of brawn, with kill-counts the deciding factor. THOK SMASH! Step into Thok’s boots and battle your way through the dungeon fists-first, meeting old friends and enemies on your quest to prove Thok the best brother. THOKTACULAR!

The second saga follows the mysterious Moia as she infiltrates Daemonheim in search of the elusive “Bill”. You’ll use her unique powers to masquerade as dungeon denizens, from a necrolord to an honest-hearted mercenary captain, and to delve deep into the secrets of Daemonheim’s origins.

The Runespan

Finally, we’ll be introducing a fun new Runecrafting training method, allowing training all the way from 1-99!

Wizard Finix has been hard at his research investigating a plane discovered by the Runecrafting Guild – called the Runespan - where runes can be pulled from wild, elemental nodes, or even from the native wildlife. You’ll be able to traverse the floating network of islands that make up the Runespan with magical platforms installed by Runecrafting Guild pioneers, collecting runes and helping hapless wizards who’ve become stuck, all for bags of Runecrafting XP.

Members have access to three separate areas within the Runespan, each aimed at an increasing level range. Free players only have access to the lower level area, but it’s still a great place to train up.

The Runecrafting Guild will lay claim to any runes you earn in the Runespan, but – for members - they’ll convert them to points which can be exchanged for some fantastic rewards. These will include a set of wicked robes, which will permanently increase the capabilities of the wicked hood when purchased; some new, magical staves; and a pouch with a huge capacity of 18 essence!

Squeal of Fortune – Extra Spins

We’ll be adding some ways to get extra spins on Squeal of Fortune simply by playing RuneScape, including some opportunities exclusive to members. You'll be able to get them as monster drops, through non-combat skilling, through D&Ds, as quest rewards, and more!

Have fun!

Mod Mark

What is a 'Behind the Scenes' article?

Behind the scenes is a sneak peek at the planned game updates which we hope to launch in the coming month.

This is, however, only a plan, not a promise that a particular update will be released in a particular way or at a particular time. To get you the highest quality updates as quickly as possible, we usually keep on tweaking and testing right up until the moment before release, so, sometimes, things change or take a bit longer than expected. We aren’t afraid to change our plan if necessary, as we will never launch an update before it is ready.

Looking forward to the new Runecrafting mini game, hopefully the Exp is quite good and the mini game is worth while.

SOF was just a retarded move by Jagex, but i guess it just sums it all up that they only care about how much money we can give them.

The RC minigame and the Dung update I am looking forward to. But nothing will make up for the fact that Jagx have sold out and violated their own rules and legalized RWT.

Looking forward to Dungeoneering and the Rcing updates ofcourse, both sound amazing. Although I probably won't touch the rcing update except for getting the pouch and any special items it provides. Curious to see what the xp rate will be with it and if it'll make rcing enjoyable now =o

The dungeoneering sounds sick, just during the dg event the other day I think I missed every call that Dreggstar made about picking up a key lol, so it's going to be good, but I don't know how it works yet. You're still going to need to know you have the keys to use them so it'll still be more efficient to have one keyer hold onto all of them, but will allow much quicker floors. Plus with the toolbelt, I'm interested in seeing if you actually keep the better tools eg prom pickaxe, in your toolkit for future dg floors or not, probably not, but I'm also interested in seeing if it means we'll have to still buy the toolkit at the start of every dg and it just allows the benefit of having more inventory space or what.

Should be good either way, the easter event is meh. I'll do that soon and umm yeah. I don't see the buying rolls as big as an issue as most have blown it up to be, the rarity of anything good is silly, it's a bad thing that shouldn't have been implemented, but I won't go wasting cash on it. I guess it's either this or keeping bots around, they need to make cash somehow.
Looking like there'll be plenty of SOF rolls now 0.0

Saw the RC update, and I squeeled. Also the DG update will be nice.

RC = 4/5..hopefully it is fun and good xp!
DG = 4/5..helpful and nice, love updates like this.
SOF = 1/5..not something I am a fan off, but not raging on Jagex or anything, just don't like the update.
Easter Event = 2/5..just not interested by holiday events anymore.

Overall this month looks ok, probably around 3/5 for me..unless the RC update is as good as I hope.

RC = 2/5, more silliness and minigames to get fast xp instead of boosting the usefulness of a skill
DG = 4/5 very nice
SOF = 0/5 Sadly, RS is devalued a bit too far for my taste atm *
Easter = 1/5 another ridiculous chapter in the holiday saga, idk why they can't be bothered to write content that makes any sense with respect to the idea of gielinor, etc

* Jagex recent quote:
What is real-world trading?

Real-world trading is the term used for the real-world purchase of services with the intention of advancing your Jagex character. This includes, but is not limited to: purchasing gold or items in RuneScape, buying a RuneScape account as well as paying someone to increase your account's experience (XP) in a skill or for them to complete quests and activities on your behalf.

Why do we have this rule?

We have this rule for two reasons:

1. We don’t want players to be able to buy their way to success in RuneScape. If we let players start doing this, it devalues RuneScape for others. We feel your status in real-life shouldn’t affect your ability to be successful in RuneScape.

The dungeoneering sounds sick, just during the dg event the other day I think I missed every call that Dreggstar made about picking up a key lol, so it's going to be good, but I don't know how it works yet. You're still going to need to know you have the keys to use them so it'll still be more efficient to have one keyer hold onto all of them, but will allow much quicker floors. Plus with the toolbelt, I'm interested in seeing if you actually keep the better tools eg prom pickaxe, in your toolkit for future dg floors or not, probably not, but I'm also interested in seeing if it means we'll have to still buy the toolkit at the start of every dg and it just allows the benefit of having more inventory space or what.

It says the keys are connected to the dungeoneering toolbelt. Presumably you pick up a key and it goes right to the toolbelt and from there anyone can use it when they find the door it goes to. It would be ideal if everyone got a game message that the key is available, but otherwise you'll just have to call what you find.

I am also wondering whether or not items added to the toolbelt would persist in between dungeons, but I honestly don't think it makes a difference either way. The tools are all easily obtainable from the start, and nobody cares to use a higher level tool when they don't get to keep it. Letting you keep the tools permanently streamline the beginning of a dungeon a little, and we would all grab a promethium hatchet/pickaxe if they were permanent, but that's about it.

Anyway, I think it looks like a good solid month, ignoring the SoF update which I abhor. Dungeoneering and runecrafting are my two least favorite skills, so anything that might improve them is fine with me. I don't think we get nearly enough quests, but Fremennik Sagas are close enough to satisfy me, plus they're replayable if I wish.

If the RC "mini-game" is any good I will be all over that for training my RC, I would hope all the way to 99 DDDD I needed something other than traditional RCing for me to ever get 99 so my hopes are high, hopefully they don't get crushed

As for DGing, still not a big fan of the skill itself so anything to make it easier/better is a 5/5 from me.

Holiday events - haven't done one in over a year now so I won't be starting with this one, I'm honestly done with holiday events and won't bother doing them anymore unless they release a quest with it like they have a few times and I would only do it for the quest point.

SoF - I like it, it doesn't bother me one bit that someone could spin a wheel and "win" a divine sigil, it really doesn't bother me either that people can buy rolls and whatnot.

Overall 4/5 - Nothing worth complaining about and everything looks pretty darn good.

The RC update, as long as it's fun, will make me a happy camper. GOP is a pretty broken minigame, so it'll be nice to hopefully have a good RC minigame.

Updates to one of the best skills in RS, Dungeoneering, can't be a bad thing! Plus, I need to raise the skill more so I can only benefit.

The SOF update doesn't upset me at all, just kinda of a "whatever" thing. People keep saying it devalues everything and yadda yadda, but right now skills don't really have any value at all besides in a personal manner, and this doesn't change that.

Looking forward to Easter, the updates are always a nice fun little distraction, hopefully the items are worth it!

Overall 4/5 for anticipation.