Games Room Tables & Fishing Skill Boss Improvements - Weekly Update (05/05/21)

Hotfixes and Issues (29th April)

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.

Mods Acorn, Arcane, Archie, Argo, Ash, Ayiza, Banjo, Boko, Bonsai, Brow, Bruno, Curse, Daizong, Deagle, Dibber, Ditto, Dylan, Ed, Elena, Errol, Fed, Flippy, Gecko, Grub, Halo, Husky, Jndr, John C, Kandosii, Katies, Kieren, Kirby, Lenny, Light, Lottie, Mack, Maylea, MikeD, Morty, Nasty, Nin, Oasis, Roq, Ry, Sarnie, Squid, Steve W, Sween, Tide, Vegard, West, Wolfy & Zuko

The Old School Team