Bounty Hunter Changes | June 1st

This week’s update sees changes to Bounty Hunter and the Forestry Open Beta!

Bounty Hunter Changes

You may have already seen our mini-newspost last week about the upcoming changes to Bounty Hunter. This week, we’re enacting a bunch of improvements based on your feedback!

First up, those of you who just have to dash to the Bank mid-fight will be pleased to learn that we’ve increased the time added back to your 2:00 timer when re-entering the Crater from 6 seconds to 15 seconds. Grab your lobbies from the lobby and get back in plenty of time!

You’ll also get a whole 6 seconds of immunity from Rogues after spawning into the crater – although your target will still be able to attack you. Attacking another player will forfeit your immunity.

And for those of you who’d rather huddle in the lobby than fight your next target, rest assured that skipping an unskulled target no longer contributes to your ‘skip limit’ for the purpose of matchmaking penalties. We’ll be keeping a close eye on how this change plays out in-game over the next few weeks, so no messing about!

On the topic of penalties, you’ll now be informed that you have one on the UI – although you’ll need to speak to a Corrupted Warrior to learn how long your penalty timer will last.

There’s also a familiar new face in the lobby area – Perdu! This notable fellow will help you reclaim and repair your fanciest gear.

We’ve also changed the wander range and placement of the Corrupted Warriors so that they no longer interrupt players trying to use the Bank.

Lastly for the lobby changes, players are now able to use Blighted items there. Yum! And, Bounty Hunter World 541 (US West) has been replaced with World 573 (US East).

And to wrap things up, Esoteric Emblems now appear correctly when filtering the Bounty Hunter Store, and we’ve made a few price changes:

We also made a few changes last week. Firstly, weapon imbues and cosmetic kits are now kept on death, so you can consider them a permanent unlock. Be aware, though, that the base item will still be lost if unprotected.

If you managed to purchase one of these items and then lose them before we made this change on Friday last week, you can refund enough points for one copy of any of the items you’ve already obtained as compensation.

One last change – we’ve removed the 75 Attack requirement from Statius’s Warhammer, which now requires only 75 Strength to equip.

That’s our last change for now, but keep reading to learn our plans for the future of Bounty Hunter! In the meanwhile, though, we’ve got some exciting news about everyone’s favourite Woodcutting expansion…

Forestry Open Beta

The engine team have been tinkering away behind the scenes to improve our Beta worlds! Now, you may be wondering what that has to do with Forestry (unless you’ve already read the title of this section), and the answer is – it’s going into Open Beta!

On Monday 5th June you’ll be able to try Forestry for yourself. As usual, the Beta worlds will be highlighted in blue on the World Selection Interface, so they’re easy to spot!

For the best Forestry experience, we recommend making your way to a classic Woodcutting spot in Draynor Village, where you’ll find the Freaky Forester himself. Speak to him and he’ll tell you all you need to know about Forestry and the new events you can take part in. He’ll even give you a free sample of Anima-Infused Bark for you to spend on some rewards!

There’s quite a bit to try out in this Beta, so before you grab your axes and get stuck in, we recommend having a look at our previous Forestry newspost.

Meanwhile, here’s your ‘chopping list’ of activities to try!

New Tree Mechanics

To help support group play and reduce competition, trees will now despawn on a timer that activates after the first cut and regenerates if players stop cutting the tree before it’s fully chopped. A timer's length is based on the average time each different type of tree currently lasts.

In addition, players chopping the same tree get an invisible Woodcutting bonus that scales with the number of players, up to a maximum of 10.

Forestry Kit and New Currency

This new wearable item lets you store all kinds of useful gadgets from day one – but any good workman knows they must upgrade their tools! You can craft new additions to your Forestry Kit using existing materials, combined with items from the Freaky Forester’s Store. To get your hands on his wares, you’ll need to use an untradeable currency only found in Forestry: Anima Infused Bark.

During the Beta the Freaky Forester will provide you with some Anima Infused Bark to trade. You can earn more by participating in events!

Events

There are four events to test in this Beta, and they’ll appear whether you have the correct Forestry Kit items to summon them or not.

• Rising Roots: Roots will suddenly appear, trying to protect their woody brethren. Cut them down for some experience and Anima Infused Bark.
• Flowering Tree: Bees will appear alongside new flowers that want to bloom. Find the right two flowers to move pollen between for experience, Anima Infused Bark and some seeds or treats!
• Struggling Sapling: Help the poor sapling grow big and strong! Create the right combination of Mulch to feed to the baby tree before it withers away. Get some experience and Anima Infused Bark in return!
• Leprechaun: A friendly Leprechaun has appeared! He’ll be able to take your Woodcutting resources straight to the Bank.

Leaves, Campfires and Tea Brewing

All trees now drop Leaves as well as Logs. Each type has its own associated buffs:

• Production: Boosts production skill level.
• Gathering: Boosts gathering skill level.
• Power: Boosts the power of other leaf effects. Adds no power to empty categories.
• Duration: Increases duration of the boost effect.

You can utilise Leaves in two ways: campfires and Tea brewing.

Create a campfire by lighting some Logs, and you’ll be able to burn Leaves to activate their respective buffs. Then, you and your lumberjack buddies can all gather around the fire and benefit from the leafy goodness!

Alternatively, you can brew Teas with your Leaves for a personal, portable buff. The great thing about Teas is that you can also use Tree Roots on your cuppa to give you one of these special tertiary bonuses:

• Increased Clue drop chance from monsters and skilling.
• Chance to save Ranged ammo and Magic Runes.
• Boosted minigame reward points.
• Boosted Slayer Points and superior monster spawn chance.

Forester's Shop and Rewards

The Freaky Forester has all kinds of goods that will help you on your Forestry journey:

• Log Basket
• Log Brace
• Forestry Outfit
• Lumberjack Outfit
• Funky-Shaped Log

Normally, you’d also be able to buy the 2-Handed Axe from here, but sadly it won’t be making an appearance in this Beta. We have to save some goodies for launch!

We can’t wait for you to get stuck into Forestry for the first time, and we look forward to hearing your feedback through all the usual channels.

TIMBERRRRRR!

Mobile Issue Update

We’ve seen multiple reports of players experiencing lag spikes, freezes and crashes on both iOS and Android since our latest mobile update. Players have also reported rendering and resolution issues with the latest C++ Milestone update.

Although our QA team is thorough, no amount of testing can ever compare to a live game with thousands of players all playing the game in different ways. The range of usable devices for the mobile client presents another challenge.

We’ve been investigating and have found the issue to be client-side. Unfortunately, this means the problem is bigger than what a simple hotfix can solve. That said, we’re currently working on two separate solutions which should resolve these issues.

The first is content-side optimisations, which will be released in an upcoming weekly update. Although we can’t give you an exact date just yet, rest assured that the team is working very hard to get this fix live as soon as possible.

In addition, after an Engine update on Wednesday June 7th the team will release an additional Client update which we believe will improve the rendering issues. This is currently scheduled for the following week, and we’ll confirm closer to the time that this schedule is still accurate.

We hope this gives you more clarity on the situation, and we’ll look to update you all further when the fixes are released.

Lastly, there has been a slight delay to our plans regarding the Mobile TLI from the end of last year. Although we haven’t been able to show you our work this month, you’ll be seeing a lot more from us in June, including demos, a more in-depth look, and even a way for you to get your hands on the new design!

The Future of Bounty Hunter

Oh, did you think we were done with Bounty Hunter? Oh no. Despite a fantastic launch week there are still a few exciting additions we’d like to make to this iconic PvP minigame – but we want to know your thoughts before we proceed. Let’s see the plans!

The Earning Potential System

Earning Potential (or EP, for short) is something we spoke about way back in February when we first outlined our plans for Bounty Hunter's return. For those not in the know, EP at a base level is a means for players to earn themselves extra loot while participating in an activity.

In this particular instance, EP is primarily a way for newer players to mitigate some of their losses inside of the Crater and encourage them to pick themselves up, get back in the fight, and keep at it until they secure a target kill and cash in for an extra chunk of loot. Effectively, it's an added layer of reward to soften the blow of lost supplies and gear.

Now, we’re well aware that GP generation from content like Bounty Hunter has proved… problematic in the past, and as such we’re being very cautious about how we handle EP. There’s a delicate line between giving struggling players a helping hand and making boosting for monetary gain an appealing option.

In short, any EP system needs to be free from the kind of loopholes we’ve seen exploited in the past - if ‘76k’ means anything to you, you’ll know exactly what we mean – but at the same time, we’re wary of being too cautious.

Here’s our proposal:

• To be eligible to earn EP, your ‘risked wealth’ must be above a minimum value. Currently, that value is 50,000 GP, although this is subject to change based on player feedback.
• If you’re eligible, your EP value will increase by 2% for every minute you spend in the Crater with a target assigned.
• Dying to your target will increase your EP by 10%. This can only happen every 15 minutes, and you may only accumulate a maximum of 40% EP in this manner.
• Successfully killing a target will cash in your EP and reward you with a Bounty Crate. Higher EP equals higher value Crates.
• Obtaining a Bounty Crate will reset your EP value to 0%.

In addition:

• Your EP value will not be reset on death or on leaving the Crater.
• You cannot gain EP value if you don't meet the minimum risk.
• You cannot gain EP value if you're currently on a matchmaking penalty.
• You cannot gain EP value if you're not in the Crater itself.
• You'll receive a notification in the Chat Box letting you know that you're eligible to earn EP when a target is assigned, or letting you know that you're not eligible for EP for any of the above reasons.

Bounty Crates contain a handful of Blighted supplies as well as some cold, hard cash. Again, the higher your EP value, the higher the reward will be. The table below shows the average values of different Bounty Crates:

We’ll most likely implement the EP system in next week’s update, so let us know any thoughts you have on it ASAP!

Boosting in Bounty Hunter

With the previous section in mind, this feels like an opportune moment to talk about boosting.

Although this iteration of the Bounty Hunter rewards are almost all untradeable, where there’s a will, there’s a way, and certain unscrupulous players have been bolstering their points by nefarious means over the last week.

Needless to say, we’re disappointed in these players. Exploiting the lower population of certain worlds to sell kills is diluting the matchmaking pool for players who want to enjoy Bounty Hunter legitimately, and ultimately griefing those who’ve been waiting for this minigame to return for a long time.

To make things clear, we know there’s a big difference between exploiting the game and helping your friend through a tough bit of content. The latter is a key part of the MMO experience, after all! The difference is that nobody’s ability to engage with and complete, say, Tombs of Amascut is impacted by a few friends agreeing to carry their mate through it so they can get the Grandmaster Speedrun Combat Achievement. However, someone’s ability to engage with Honour PvP in Bounty Hunter is massively impacted if most of their opponents are only there to sell kills and have no interest in properly engaging with the minigame.

Obviously, we could solve this issue by reducing the number of eligible worlds back down to two, but we don’t want to further diminish the experience of players outside the UK and US West regions.

Instead, we’re going to begin issuing punishments to players involved in boosting in Bounty Hunter. If we detect that you are buying kills, selling kills, or even participating in a boosting chat or clan, you will be banned.

This isn’t a decision we take lightly, but Old School RuneScape is a community-driven game, and Bounty Hunter has been seriously impacted by the actions of a few bad apples in the past. If you are actively undermining this experience for other players, you will be removed from the game.

Now, with that bit of unpleasantness out of the way, let’s take a look at the other changes we’d like to make!

Esoteric Emblem Adjustments

Our next suggestion is a tweak to the way Emblems and points work.

While we’ve seen absolutely loads of you getting stuck into PvP for the first time, we’ve also seen feedback from veteran players that the current implementation of Emblems might encourage kill streaks a little too much, which is offputting for players who can’t consistently rack up their numbers.

Currently, you need to score nine target kills in a row to secure a Tier 10 Emblem. Although you can hand them in sooner, it’s not always easy to step back from a winning streak – and losing it all at the last hurdle doesn’t feel great.

Our proposed changes will make the Emblem system less punishing while ensuring it still feels worthwhile. They are as follows:

• Killing your target will reward 2 BH points and level your Emblem up by a tier. This behaviour is unchanged.
• Kill milestones at 10, 50, 100 and 500 kill increments will also remain as they are.
• Killing a target with an Emblem of their own no longer rewards additional bonus points. Meaning if you kill a target who had a Tier 9 Emblem, you won't receive any extra points.
• Dying with an Emblem will reduce its tier by 1, rather than deleting it outright. This means that dying with a Tier 9 Emblem will downgrade it to a Tier 8 Emblem. If you have a Tier 1 Emblem, however, you will lose it – there’s nothing to downgrade it to!

Let us know what you think of this one – if it’s something that seems well-received then we’ll implement it in a future update!

Ancient Warrior Armour Adjustments

Since release, more and more of you have started getting your hands on the iconic Ancient Warrior armour. It's been great to see more players zooming about in these offensive power armours, but we can also see that some choices remain significantly more popular than others.

In particular, Statius's and Zuriel's armour sets could use a little more love!

Status’s gear, in particular, falls south of Vesta’s equivalents in all offensive stats, and their tanky benefits don’t do much in a fast-paced environment like Daimon’s Crater. We’d like to tweak these sets so that they’re both appealing in different loadouts, rather than Vesta’s feeling like the obvious choice regardless of the circumstances.

Additionally, while it’s true that Magic doesn’t thrive inside the Crater, we feel like giving Zuriel’s set a little extra oomph might make this playstyle a little more appealing.

These are the changes we’re considering:

Note: any changes to bonuses apply to both the 'standard' and 'corrupt' versions of these armours unless otherwise specified.

Vesta's Chainbody

• Stab and Slash bonuses increased from +9 to +14.
• Crush bonus reduced from +9 to +4.

Vesta's Plateskirt

• Stab and Slash bonuses increased from +7 to +10.
• Crush bonus reduced from +7 to +3.

Statius's Full Helm

• Stab and Slash bonuses reduced from +3 to +1.
• Crush bonus increased from +5 to +6.

Statius's Platebody

• Stab and Slash bonuses reduced from +5 to +2.
• Crush bonus increased from +7 to +14.
• Prayer bonus increased from +1 to +3. This change does not apply to Corrupt Statius's Platebody.

Statius's Platelegs

• Stab and Slash bonuses reduced from +3 to +1.
• Crush bonus increased from +5 to +10.
• Prayer bonus increased from +1 to +3. This change does not apply to Corrupt Statius's Platelegs.

Zuriel's Hood

• Magic Damage increased from 0% to 1%.

Zuriel's Robe Top

• Magic Damage increased from 0% to 3%.

Zuriel's Robe Bottom

• Magic Damage increased from 0% to 2%.

We’d also like to propose some tweaks to Vesta’s Spear. Currently, this weapon’s special attack consumes 50% of your special attack energy, damages up to 16 targets within the 8 tiles around you and makes you immune to melee attacks for 4.8 seconds. That seems pretty cool on paper, but in a 1v1 environment like Bounty Hunter, it’s next to useless.

We suggest a reworked special attack that impales one enemy for up to 100% of your max hit, then performs a second hit for between 25-75% of the initial damage as you yank the spear back out. Ouch! While your opponent is reeling, you’ll enter a defensive stance and gain immunity to melee attacks for 4.8 seconds.

We know this is a little spicy for a special attack, but we thought it was a more interesting option than essentially not having one at all – so let us know what you think!

That’s a wrap on everything we’re thinking about for the future of Bounty Hunter. We’re still keeping a close eye on all your feedback following launch, including teleports within the crater, the Dark Bow imbue, the Voidwaker, minimum Coffer deposits and more. Stay tuned!

Other Changes

• The 'Release all placeholders' button in the Bank now has a confirmation warning.
• On a F2P world, players can now see the names of members' items, written like "Dragon dagger (Members)", rather than the item being named "Members item". The items are usable and tradeable only on members-only worlds, as before.
• The Amulet of Nature can now notify you about fully grown or diseased patches from your Inventory, rather than having to be worn.
• (C++ Client Only) Radimus Erkle is now correctly highlighted when using the Clue Scroll Helper.
• (C++ Client Only) The Clue Helper no longer thinks a Round Blue Snelm can be used for the clue that requires a Pointy Blue Snelm.
• (C++ Client Only) Morrigan's Throwing Axe (bh) and Morrigan's Javelin (bh) are no longer considered ammo.

Crack the Clue

Woox has provided us all with another cryptic clue this week. "No additional info will be required"... ominous!

PvP World Rota

The PvP rota has moved to Period B:

• 560 - (UK) - PvP World
• 579 - (US) - High-Risk PvP World
• 561 - (UK) - Free-to-Play PvP World
• 580 - (US) - LMS Competitive

World 390 (AUS) for LMS Competitive has been de-activated with this rota.

The PvP Arena is using '1 Def Pure' loadouts in Ranked Duels and Tournaments this week.

You can also discuss this update on our official forums, on the 2007Scape subreddit, the Steam forums, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel. For more info on the above content, check out the official Old School Wiki.

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