Exactly what has Jagex in store for us in 2010? No speculations in this post, just pure hard facts!

The new skill
First and foremost, the new skill! Promised on countless occasions and confirmed to difinitely be released in 2010, the new skill must be one of the main features to look forward to this year. The great thing about it, is that we have absolutely no idea what the skill will be called, or what it will be about. The only hint towards the gameplay of the skill is that ‘it has never been done in a game before’, as stated by Mod MMG. But what can we expect of it then, and how large – or small – should we take the word game? Nothing ever done before in an online game? In a console game? A pc game? Crazy idea’s have been spread around about personal training, assasination, morphing and engineering. But really, I’m quite confident that with the huge load of games around just about every possibility has been done before. Should we actually see this as a clue?
As quoted from an interview with Mod MMG, from MMO Hub.Org. The site is currently down, but once it will be relaunched, visit this page.

We are actually working on a whole new game mechanic. I can’t give much away, but it could be an entire game in its own right, or just a skill, or both, who knows [laughs]. That will be for free and members. But, yeah, that should be this year hopefully, needs to be awesome though. I don’t want to give it away though because it’s really exciting and no one has done it so we’re kind of keeping that one close to our chest. … But what I realised is that if we hide stuff and then say “Yeah we’re going to build this and it’s awesome and the most exciting thing we’ve ever done!” and then launch it and it’s like “Eh?,” we’ve almost set ourselves up to fail before we even started. So we don’t want to spin it; we want it to be a big surprise. So it will be a skill, and we will introduce a whole new type of gameplay as well, but you’ll see it when it’s ready.

 Another hint we have about the new skill is that it will be for free players and members alike. But does that actually say anything about the skill? We have a lot of different skills that are both free to play and members, but have added members-only features. Actually, do we have any free to play skill that doesn’t? So yeah, it’s a promise for free players but it doesn’t mean a thing.

A lot of players have been suggesting it would be Sailing, which now has been denied by both Andrew and Mod MMG on seperate occasions. However, later Mod MMG said he was only joking when he stated that Sailing would never be a skill while he was around. Does that mean that they’re not planning it as this skill, but will eventually use the idea?

Animation and Graphical Updates
In several of the development blogs plenty of animation updates have been promised. Blooming lightning effects, particle effects, sky boxes and water reflections, etc. Several Developers’ Blogs on the RuneScape website have discussed these updates, which really do seem very promising.  In a blog post from 26 August 2009, discussing RuneTek 5, Mod Chris E sais these graphics have allready been finished but are yet to be released , most likely in small amounts in coming months. We’re over 4 months further and since the first glimpse of particle effects (read this Developers’ blog for more) with the Christmas update, we have yet to see the majority of these new features.

Fairy Tale part 3 and Fairy’s grahpical update
Long suspected, hinted at and eventually openly talked about, fairy tale part 3 is definitely to be released within 2010, along with several graphical updates. The hype among the quest has settled down a bit, but it has yet to be released! The quest is fully developed allready and lays with the graphical team for the finishing touch. Fairy tale part 3 is discussed to have higher then average requirements, and would be quite challenging. The storyline would continue from part 2, involving the fairy Godfather and vicious orks.. And, perhaps,a mysterious Pink Fairy?

“Do I need to store all this information in so many variables, or can I just assume the player is going to do this specific thing?”
“We can never assume anything of our players! They’ll always do something slightly odd that we hadn’t expected.”
“Okay, so I have to use all these variables then? Seems like a bit of a waste for the end result?”
“Hmm, maybe you’re right; but what if you put a nice PINK FAIRY in that space there, wouldn’t it look nice?”
“Oh yeah! Yeah, it would… but hey, that’s not answering the question…”
“But it was a boring question, just store the information in another way!”
“Yeah, but what other way?”
“If you had a PINK FAIRY, right there, she could remind the player of all the stuff that you needed to store in those variables.”
“Oh yeah!”

Read up on the Developers’ Blogs about the Fairy project by visiting this list.

The Orb of Oculus
Fresh from the Jagex headquarters, news about the Orb of Oculus comes with a promise for video-makers. Allready an update was promised to help video-makers finish their projects within the game, but with the blog from 20 Januari 2010 this promise becomes touchable. It tells the story of a very unique orb that let’s you control all camera movement around your character ingame, and possibly a bit more? Read up on the blog here.

Elite tasks
Mod Maz, aka the Queen of the Squirrels, has been tasked with the, er, task of developing elite, um, tasks for all existing Achievement Diaries… After the release of the Ardougne Achievement Diary, including a hidden list of Elite Tasks, Jagex responds to the positive feedback with the promise to release more of these challenging tasks! Read up on the story here.

Court Cases
With the release of the Kings Ransom quest, a very interesting aspect was added to Runescape: Courts. The playground of the law featured in a multiplayer game. Rule breakers and wrongdoers sued by Jagex Moderators? No not exactly. This future distraction and diversion sets the player as a barrister, or sollicitor, and challenges you to defend a criminal.. Well, at least someone suspected to have performed a crime. A future blog about the Distraction and Diversion has been promised, but yet to be released. Read up on it here.

With last tuesdays update a major change was made to one of the items especially more popular with old-school pkers: the fighter torso. Before the release of godwars and Bandos armour, it was the only chest-armour that offered a strength bonus. And the best thing even, it didn’t require what a lot of pkers hated: defence. Well, it did, but very little, only level 40. Combined with the best boots at the time; rune, and a zerker helm, firecape, berserker ring and barrows gloves you had the highest strength kit possible for a max defence requirement of 45. It was a rather popular set-up, often referred to as zerker-pures. Of course, the chest wasn’t only used by zerker pures. It had very little defence bonus, comparably to a rune chainbody, but still a lot of Slayers used it as their favourite equipment. Monster hunters alike, and strength geeks in general. Now why does this history lesson matter? That major change I talked about, was the removal of the strength bonus from fighter torso.

Within several minutes of the update the recent updates forum was filling up with people cursing, ranting, threatning to end subscriptions and what not, all that for the removal of a small strength-bonus. All the chest offered was a mere +4 strength, that’s all. Plenty of you would probably say ”what’s the big deal? just get a bandos chestplate!”. A lovely idea, but it’s aside the point. The point is not that the previous strenght bonus was unable to reach. The point isn’t that zerker pures are the way and the life, and nothing else can beat them. The point certainly is not that most zerker pures, slayers or monster hunters would be unable to afford a bandos chestplate – most would. The point here is that Jagex changes what they want, when then want, how they want.

A very popular reason to use the fighter torso instead of a bandos chestplate was the cost price. Yes, you have to invest plenty of green money to obtain one of those spiky shoulder-guards. But with that money also comes better bonusus. The same strength, but a hefty improved defence bonus and a cute little prayer add-on. Of course, not everyone can afford a chestplate and that was where the torso came in. Personally allthough I am high leveled, I never – or should I say hardly ever – save up far enough to obtain something valuable. I am a huge fan of mid-level welfare. I don’t need the best equipment, I just want the better. You wouldn’t see me sporting bandos and an elysian, but not just yet in plain rune armour either. The fighter torso, for me, was a way of getting that strength bonus at the sacrifice of some defence. But some rather cheap 200k torags legs used to make up for that. (yes, once in a blue moon they were that price.. honestly.) With the update, I can no longer use that set-up. Nothing to worry about there, I’ve been a huge fan of defence ever since I got it to 99, and I would never stop wearing my full guthans on slayer tasks to switch to mediocre bonusus, BUT +4 strength. That’s MY opinion, I know.

An argument used to cuss at Jagex for this update is that they took away a massive amount of time to get the torso. People making wild claims as ‘weeks of my life gone to waste!’. Weeks eh… A “massive amount of time” right? Are you tickling my feet? Cause if you aren’t I sure could think of a different reason why I am laughing right now. Getting the torso would take you several hours of playing Barbarian Assault MAX, unless you’re using a team filled with level 20 first-timers of course.

Yet another popular argument to rant and crucify Jagex for the change is zerker-peekayers claiming their accounts are ruined. Finally an argument I can settle for. Yes, your account IS ruined. But honestly, it has nothing to do with the torso update. It was ruined quite some time ago when you decided to stay a pure after the wilderness disappeared. Perhaps even before that when you decided to become a pure in the first place. With the wilderness gone, pvp deserted and bounty-hunter worlds a pj and trick fest, why are you even bothering with low defence? The only people you can fight with low defence are others with low defence, tanks and the very rare low leveled player who accidently wonders into a bounty hunter world carrying several million while ignoring all the warnings. From tanks and other pures you won’t or barely make any money since they often only use one expensive item or nothing at all, risking next to nothing, save as jack and probably try to lure you into multi where their boyfriends are waiting eagerly. In all honesty, pures are as dead as it can be. You have no benefit over other players anymore, so why not just train defence? And when you trained defence, why not use a Bandos chest instead of a fighter torso?
Ah right, because you can’t afford one? I suppose fighter torso would be a good item to use then? NO it wouldn’t! You can’t pick up the item if you die, and unless previous statements were indeed false, then it takes you weeks of minigaming to get the torso back! Worth the little strength? Your discision. On top of which you could most likely make the money for a Bandos chest in the mean time, pk in it, loose it, and wet your mum’s shoulders with tears. After all, who in earth would risk a 20m item for a mere +4 strength bonus?

And then, finally, the old money argument in general. People who are mad with Jagex because they don’t have the strength bonus anymore, and can’t afford to get it back. Poor you. Litterally. That’s all I can say.
Actually, why are you so in love with strenght anyway? It’s nice to hit more and all, but hitting more while also getting hit more to me seems exactly the same as hitting less and getting hit less..

What might have started out as yet another rant was surely never meant that way- unless you saw it as a rant against ranters. I completely agree with Jagex that they can do whatever they want – it’s their game. We’re just playing it. Yes we’re paying for it (a lot of us at least ), but they sure as hell are putting a lot more money in then we ever will, so where would that argument get you?

Allthough I still have no idea why Jagex chose to make the changes, I’m confident they made them for the best. Have they ever let you down? (brilliant question, because any argument you might have against them would probably be related towards pking. And would you to be a pker, I’d like to eagerly ask you to leave this blog RIGHT NOW, or never set foot in the wilderness again. Nothing personal. I swear. )

-Az

 19-Jan-2010 – Barbarian Assault Improvements   

Some time ago, we released the minigame Barbarian Assault. From your feedback (and from playing the game ourselves) it’s become clear that the rewards were not quite up to scratch, so we have devoted some time to improving them. Although our focus has mainly been on the rewards, we also took this opportunity to alter some small aspects of the minigame itself (though we do also have a long list of other ideas for potential future updates).

The list of changes is extensive, but here are some of the main ones to whet your appetite:

• New Penance horn that lets you gain double XP in Agility, Cooking and Mining (in a similar fashion to the tools from Stealing Creation).
• New colours of abyssal whips.
• New Penance trident weapon.
• Penance armour stat improvement and Prayer restoring set bonus.
• Penance gloves now reduce more weight.
• Gamble points rebalanced (they still include a rare chance for dragon armour).
• Ability to show off your achievements in the roles of attacker, defender, collector and healer.
• High score tables for the attacker, defender, collector and healer roles.
• Waiting rooms increased in size.
• Additional wave room ticket system for saving progress through battles.
• Blue penance eggs now reduce the target Penance’s stats and deal damage.

 

If you speak with Commander Connad at the Barbarian Outpost (you can teleport directly there with a games necklace) he’ll show you all the new rewards, which are also listed on the Barbarian Assault KB page.

Bring on the Penance!

Mod Tim
RuneScape Lead Content Developer

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In other news…

The various dwarves of RuneScape have had a visit from the Makeover Mage, who has given their chatheads a new look.

The Soul Wars cape from Nomad’s Requiem can now be stored in your POH costume room.

Activating your special attack bar will no longer interfere with auto-cast timing.

Players will no longer receive activity points in Soul Wars when bandaging players that are already at full health.

Because of the recent snow we’ve been having, snowballs have stayed frozen for a bit longer than usual. The snow has now gone, though, so you’ll find your snowballs will now melt, unless you have the snow globe from the Christmas 2008 holiday event.

Click here to read the story on RuneScape.com.
Visit this page for more information about Barbarian Assault and what has changed, or this page for the armour rewards.

19-Jan-2010 – Agility Benefits for Fishing, Hunter and Thieving   

Agility has long helped adventurers excel in other skills in subtle ways – e.g. letting them run for longer while crafting runes or letting them take shortcuts to get to resources faster. Today, Agility steps up in its role as a support skill in a more direct way.Adventurers keen on Fishing will be interested to know that a high Agility level now gives them a small chance to catch two tuna, swordfish or even sharks in one go. There’s no additional experience when this occurs, but who could say no to a free shark or two?Similarly, adventurers with high Agility and Thieving levels now stand a chance of pickpocketing double, triple or even quadruple the usual amount of loot from unsuspecting targets.Finally, those with exceptionally high Hunter and Agility levels can now return to the butterflies they once lumbered after with their big clumsy nets and show the amateurs how it’s really done, by catching butterflies in the palm of their hands before releasing them (just to prove they didn’t smush them). Such a display of skill and finesse will be rewarded with a large dose of Hunter experience and a little extra Agility experience too. 

Mod Edam
Runescape Content Developer

 Click here to read the story on runescape.com

Loooool, dyed whips? Catching butterflies bare handed? Prayer restoring armour? sounds like an update with something for everyone! The new two handed mage staff offers a hefty +17 mage attack and has a chance of saving you runes.. Hmm, sounds like an excellent weapon to train with.
However, the update didn’t only come with positive updates. The whole stats of the penance armour have been changed. Fighter torso for example, doesn’t give a strength bonus anymore…

-Az

Yush I r..

Seemingly all the more recent quests get me prayer xp, so I was going up fast in the ranks. After spending the zeal of Nomad’s requiem I noticed I was around rank 1100, and ~150k from 14m prayer xp. Soo, I decided to just go ahead and get it! Since my summoning rank’s long gone from the top 1k I at least have another one now.

14m prayer xp

Took me around 2.5m worth of dragon bones with Ecto Functus.. Actually took quite a lot longer then I estimated. Grinding the bones, even with the ‘new’ auto-grind option took a fair amount of time. Next time I sure won’t use ecto functus again.. Spend to much extra time for very little money saved. Would make a difference of around 50 dragon bones compared to using gilded altar.

top 1k prayer achieved

Ooh, and as a little bonus I also got 14m cooking xp since I was like 200 fishies away

14m cooking xp

-Az

 

Hooooowdy hey! Well let’s start out with me promising never to promise more frequent posts again. It seems that every time I do that, I run out of playtime thanks to other things and actually not post more frequent at all. So perhaps this different aproach will actually make me post more. I actually did not play from around december 18 till 3 days ago, aside from the occasional log in to say hi and do the christmas event. (which I’ll get to later!) Hmm, that means I haven’t even said happy new years to y’all! Happy new year!

On with the goodies…

First of on the schedule is the release of a new epic quest while I was away; Nomads requiem! Click here for the news post, and here for the knowledge base article with more information on it! Basically the quest evolves around nasty stuff happening below the area covered by Soulwars. The quest set-up makes you accidently (but not really) stumble upon a worried imp called Zimberfizz who runs business in Soulwars for his master, Nomad. His master had been up to no good and he asks you to secretly investigate. However, right after the first cutscene you settle your reputation as dumb adventurer straight away and betray your little fiendish friend. Perhaps it’s because in the very cutscene nomad kills 3 people in 4 hits, with a devastating blow doing 98 damage? Yes,  that’ll be the reason your courage slacked, right? RIGHT?!
Following up the cutscene you sneakily follow Nomad down the dungeon below his tent, but end up beeing blocked by a mysterious portal. The only way you see to get past is destroying the machines keeping the portal blocked. Now you might be a dumb adventurer, but you do realise the machines are electrical and water would probably destroy the lot of em. Again you settle your reputation as the previous mentioned no-brainer.. Instead of just fetching a few inventories of buckets of water, you have to solve a puzzle after which water flows under the machine and blasts it to pieces. The puzzle itself wasn’t to tricky, like a sliding puzzle with water instead of puzzle-pieces, and a few extra’s consisting of level 155 aggressive spirits trying to rip your head of.  A lesser man would be devasted. Yes, a lesser man would give up! But not us adventurers, we just trap all of the monsters in the room behind the machine we’re meaning to destroy and solve the puzzle untouched by spiritual claws. An attempt by Jagex to make it harder, epicly failed. When the water reaches the machine it goes up in light like a hairdryer in the bathtub.
Luckily for us, there’s a second machine powering the portal! D’oh. The second machine looks exactly like the first, but naturally, water won’t work this time as there’s non near. I’d have voted for fetching some buckets and replacing the water, but no. We have to use some sort of fuel to lure electric beasties looking a lot like, surprisngly, electic bolts. You lure them under a waterfall after which they blow up and stop powering the machine. Seriously, why couldn’t we just throw water on em right away? They set up a ‘maze’ the creatures had to go through, filled with plants and walls – and broken tiles on the floor. At first, I expected the broke tiles to be some sort of drain, where the elemental creature would be sucked into forcing you to start over. However, the broken tiles were just.. well.. broken tiles. Decoration to the environment so to speak.
With the second machine destroyed, the portal opens. However, after you take the portal the first thing you see is…. A second portal! Yippee!

Oh crap...

Yes, that’s right! There’s another puzzle for you to enjoy!  This time jagex really outdid themselfs.  Instead of more water, we have to chop a few roots around the huge room while beeing attacked by more spiritual menaces. Because we’re such brave adventurers, just those ghostly beasties are in no way enough to stop us. Nomad, tricky as he is, realised that and left for us a ’small’ chalenge. A level 525 decaying avatar. A typical quest boss, only using one combat style. However, the bugger doesn’t only have 1k hp, he also heals 3 times to full hp unless you beat him running to more roots. And to make it all even more fun, his defence is high enough to make the fight last… well.. 15-20 minutes. 15 minutes of you just standing there hitting the mongrel while he’s trying to slam your protect prayer. Yes, very fun indeed. Some of my friends allready mockingly refer to it as ‘the endurance test’. Either way, when the big boy dies, he surprisingly doesn’t drop anything decent.. and you thinking this must’ve been the end boss allready left out quite upset.
After slaying the avatar the machine breaks… but, this wasn’t the end yet! When you attempt to enter the room with the fourth machine, a dieing knight calls you. He tells you something about only the most pieous of warriors beeing able to enter the room, and wave-on-wave of fire have to destroy the machine. As clever as your dumb adventurer can get, you decide to bank for prayer potions and some fire-wave runes.
You enter a dark-room filled with nasty creatures that all look like miniature versions of dark beasts. And while you still admire their amazing teeth snapping near you, you take repeative damage from the room itself. Just like that. -brainflash: “only the most pieou’s”… pray piety!- Running around the room you soon discover that the various piles of rubble have an option to take ’slabs’. Collecting them all let’s you build a bridge across some little river-thingie and there you see the last machine to destroy the second portal. Barrels of some sort standing around it… Boom baby, firewave at it and the whole machine explodes.

Mhuahahaha

Finally, the second portal opens. You enter and Nomad starts talking to you, accusing you of beeing an assasin. No matter how you deny, he will attack you. He rapidly hits high 20’s, throws around mines like a maniac, occasionally splits himself into four, charges up to hit 75 at once and freezes you after which he hits you for one less then your hp level.. A tasty monster. On top of the hits, he heals twice to full hp AND has around 1k hp to begin with. Fancy eh.
Jagex moderators have admitted there’s no special trick to killing him. You just have to know the tactics - which summarized are beeing lucky and spamclicking sara brews. Of course, I didn’t know those amazing tactics. However, my friends had warned me, mentioned he was a mage/melee and that he could hit extremely high. So, with him beeing a mage and all, the logical choice was to range the bastard and hope he’s weak to it. I came with a yak filled with brews, and more in my inventory and ended up with the potions you see in the picture. Yak completely emptied. However, I did kill it first try! YEAH!
Nomad’s allready beeind discussed as not only the hardest quest-boss ever released and ever to be released, but also to be the hardest boss in general. Good stuff, thanks Jagex for the challenge!

All together my summarized opinion of the quest would be that it’s a rather short quest, without challenging puzzles but leading to the biggest challenge in the game yet: killing nomad. The quest could’ve really been improved a lot. The puzzles don’t really make sense and a much simpler solution then actually solving them would’ve been usuable. Regardless of which, I enjoyed the quest.

Now, for those nosy few: the reward.

Nomad's Requiem reward

The cape mentioned in the reward can be claimed from Zimberfizz. The cape offers +8 in all defence stats and +12 prayer. You can drop the cape and claim a second (or third, or fourth, etc) from him for the price of 150k. Zimberfizz also let’s you spend the zeal for around 400k in an offensive skill or 250-300k in prayer. I haven’t heard of anyone trying slayer yet, so no idea of that. Sorry.

I will post some achievements and other new releases later on!

-Az

So, an update on what I’ve been doing, summarized in 3 screenies ;P Nah just kidding, it could be summarized in that, but I’ll be a little more describing. First of, what most of you will be here for: the quest and it’s reward! I also planned on adding herblore screenies on here, but ran out of time to write something nice to them, so expect a post about those tomorow!

CHARGEEE!!!! (For Relleka!!!)

All together, the quest was a little repeatative coming to the combat aspect. And, it was a lot of combat, so actually that was rahter disapointing. The whole storyline, with it’s subtile humour and internet meme’s [after Baba Yaga tricks you into getting kicked of Lunar island, your character replies with "aaaah, I see what you did there" ] was amazing. Great cutscenes’s, well thought out conversations which you have a huge influence on by making different choices… You can even chose to marry Astrid or the prince, depending on your gender, but not doing so does not change the outcome – it just changes the conversations. Another fantastic option was making up a wedding speach bit by bit to wed King Vargas and Queen something-something. Finally a great dialogue between you and the Dagannoth Mother in which you can chose to get a typical bad-guy-faces-hero type of speech, or just say “whatever” and get on with the fight.

I allready mentioned it has a lot of combat in it, so if you’re going to do it, prepare for a lot. You will have to take up monsters reaching up to level 149, using all combat styles in all sorts of multi combat dungeons. And finally, the Dagannoth mother from Horror from the Deep will be back for you to fight. My friend had mentioned we had to defeat the Dagannoth Mother again, so I brought the appropriate runes and such. I would recommend bringing plenty food, and some alternative healing like guthans, and of course a few prayer potions. You will have to give food away at a certain point, so make sure you have plenty spare. Keep an inventory spot or two open for items to pick up during the quest, but it won’t be much.

Nearing the end of the quest you will first fight 2 Dagannoth Sentinels. They use range and mage, and heal eachother. The best way to fight this is using the Big axe, Balmung, and hitting them each ones, switching between the two. That way, neither of them seem to heal eachother much. If you hit a 0 they might heal a bit tho. Another way my friend used was standing under one of them and ranging the other. Right after the two Sentinels you will have to defeat the Mother. I really, really, recommend bringing Karils/ahrims or some other hybrid combo for them, and bring 4 different elemental spells, range AND melee. I maged in guthans, but didn’t really do well.

Blood Runs Deep quest reward

Really, really well put together with an absolutele epic reward.  I started the quest a little late so I won’t be among the first to finish it and show you the reward, but I’ll post it anyway. Coming to that, I must admit it was a little much… yes.. actually, it was massive. 450k prayer xp for me, that got me 5k prayer ranks up, from 6k-something to 1k-something. Sh-weet.

All together, an amazing quest. Big fat Kudo’s to Jagex for this one!

-Az

  15-Dec-2009 – Blood Runs Deep   

The mysterious Lunar Isle rarely gets many visitors, and especially not of the ‘washed up on the shore unconscious, battling hidden demons’ kind. Eminent lunatic Baba Yaga requires your help in answering just one question: who is this stranger?

Finding the answer to this question will prove to be just the beginning of a journey that will see you delving back into the dream world, rescuing old friends and rallying the Fremennik of all isles, leading them to war against their deadliest and toughest foe – a new breed of horror from the deep.

Dust off your armour, weapons and runes – and we do mean ALL of them – and ready yourself for battle, Farstrider. This day, death (and glory) is upon all who call themselves Fremennik. And to the victor, the spoils, for any adventurer brave enough to succeed will be rewarded with hundreds of thousands of XP, new equipment and much respect.

“I’m glad to be continuing the Fremennik quest series and carrying on the prophecy storyline set up in Glorious Memories. This quest has proven to be a different challenge from that quest, though, with a much heavier focus on combat, as befits the Fremennik people.”

“I’m also happy to be furthering the Princess Astrid/Prince Brand thread from Throne of Miscellania. To get the most out of the storyline, your character must be as they were during that quest, so some players may wish to visit the Makeover Mage before starting this quest. I hope you enjoy it.”

Mod Hew
RuneScape Content Developer

Summary:

Where to start Blood Runs Deep: Speak to Baba Yaga in her walking house on Lunar Isle. Requirements to complete Blood Runs Deep: 75 Attack 75 Strength 65 Slayer High Magic and Ranged levels are also recommended Dream Mentor Glorious Memories Horror from the Deep Completed all easy, medium and hard tasks in the Fremennik Achievement Diary

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In other news…

We’ve made some necessary changes to how shops in TzHaar work. For full details, please read this forum thread.

Kuradal’s Dungeon Improvements

After some of your feedback about last week’s Slayer dungeon update:

• Kuradal can now assign dagannoths.
• Murky Matt can now combine ferocious ring charges.
• Hellhounds should now respawn at their normal rate.
• We’ve squeezed in a couple of extra creatures.
• You won’t get any Random Events while in Kuradal’s Dungeon.

From Runescape.com’s News Post.

Next week in #RuneScape:This is a time of year for bringing families together and seeing old friends. Perhaps a walk, by the sea. Em(RSDev)

Taken from the Jagex RuneScape twitter.

Doesn’t need much speculation: Christmas! Probably released around thursday to make a nice week before christmas.

If you’re not afraid of a stiff breeze and fancy a read, head over to RuneScape.com and read the developers blog on the Christmas Event, by Mod Edam. (Found here.) The storyline seems fun, and beeing his first event made we might be able to expect something nicely fresh and brand new.

Happy hollidays!

-Az

15m Slayer xp <3

I got this a few days ago but completely forgot to post it. 15m slayer xp! A short term goal reached! Now onwards to 30m def/hp xp, and 90 herblore for extreme sets.

-Az

Okay guys, first of my apologies for not having posted in a while yet again. I’ve been busy reworking my clan’s forums, and it was actually a lot more work then estimated. On top of that I have college, work, a social life (no, really, I do) and I’ve been studying pretty bad for upcoming exams. So yes, I have been playing runescape – mostly slaying as much as I can. I just haven’t done any effort to think of something to write for on here. However, with the recent slayer and prayer update and me adooooring slayer and combat just alike, I can’t not post.

Hmm, let’s start out with a brief overview of what I’ve been doing ingame. I posted a gallery of my drops last time, and I plan on doing that again. That way I can fit more screens into one post without cluttering it to much hehe. I’ve been mostly slaying, but also took some time to do the new quests. I love quests, I loved most recent quests, and this was absolutely no exception.

The storyline was absolutely great. I wasn’t expecting the barrows-task. I hadn’t done barrows in a while, so this was an excellent opportunity to refresh my ancient knowledge of what to do, where to go, etc. I utterly overprepared, took a super set, range potion, karils/guthans/veracs… and a whole lot of prayer potions that went back into my bank completely untouched haha. After entering the first grave, I was pleasantly surprised by the new add to the area: not only does it keep killcount now, but it also remembers which brother you have allready slain and which you haven’t! Lovely! I completed the task rather quickly, and then had my friend PM me that the barrows part was by far the easiest and shortest part of the quest, so I prepared for the worst.
Azzandra had mentioned dragons, dangerous area’s and other fun scary stuff for the Frostenhorn task. As a result, i brought plenty super antifire’s, prayer potions, sharks and rocktails and my trusty old guthans set, determined to finish the task without having to bank. Running up there I noticed I forgot my law and air runes for telegrab, so I straight away failed by goal with that. Second trip down there tho, I got inside and ran straight into the fortress, taking just one hit from the dragons.. oookaaay? I appreciated the warning, but I was expecting a dangerous cave filled with dragons – not just having to run past 2 irons? Regardless of that, it took me a while inside the fortress to even find out what to do. Eventually I discovered the wall-climb, not even mentioned on the minimap as a passable object..
After that it was just lovely puzzling combined with waterfiends popping up around me, out of the thawing ice.. A very nice area I might add – I love frozen stuff and puzzles so I felt completely at home. Nearing the end I finally figured out what the tubes were for, since up to that all my attempts to put an orb in them resulted in me having to pick it up again – without results.
Eventually I got to the ice demon, got hit hard, prayed mage and then easily hitted it down without even getting hit a second time. Rather disapointing, but a typical quest boss. Tally ho, frostenhorn there we go! Back to Azzandra to witness the strangest quest cut scene I’d ever seen. But, with an epic reward. New prayers! Finally!

Beside the quest, basically all I did was slaying till the new master, Kuradal, came out. And after that all I did was, well, more slayer.

So, err, I suppose you should check out the screenies in the gallery below, and stay tuned till the next post. I promise it won’t take as long this time.

(Ooh, on a side note: I changed my screen name back to Azzator <3)

-Az

Temple at Sennisten reward

Dragon boots #1

Dragon boots #2

Dragon boots #3

29m hp xp :D

Rune skirt (g)

Whip! :D

Zamorak page 2

Dark bow <3

Dragon boots #4

Dragon boots #5

Blue dragon egg – yet another? :P

Glory t and sara page 1 :)