This week’s update takes us to the depths of the Scar Essence Mine!
The Scar Essence Mine
Our old friend Aubury has had some bad news this week – it seems that there’s a new source of Runes in town!
The upkeep of high-level items like the Scythe of Vitur and the Sanguinesti Staff can be a real hassle – especially when you’re about to set off for a nice PvM session! Many an aspiring boss slayer has been forced into ShopScape – the practice of hopping worlds, searching for a store where the coveted goods are in stock – and in general, we want that to stop as much as you do. So, in line with that policy, today’s update introduces a more engaging way to grab the Runes you need!
The Scar Essence mine integrates with Runecraft to let players craft the game’s most useful Runes in a more exciting way – and the best part is, it won’t mess up the economy!
Shall we find out more?
Requirements
To get started in the Scar Essence Mine, you'll need to meet the following requirements:
- Partial completion of Desert Treasure II, to the point of unlocking the Abyssal Scar.
- Defeating any of the Desert Treasure II bosses is not required – the Scar is accessible just after the beginning of the quest.
- The requisite Runecraft level for the Runes you plan to craft.
- Level 66 Mining – don’t forget your Pickaxe!
The Abyssal Extractor
The Abyssal Extractor, known to its friends as Ventriculus, can be found in the Abyssal Scar. It has two functions: creating Pure Essence and creating Extracts – and thanks to an enterprising member of the ZMI, anyone can now take advantage of this magnificent… thing. We thought it best not to ask too many questions.
To make it work, you’ll need to feed it Tainted Essence. Tainted Essence is a lot like Pure Essence, with the notable difference that the abyssal energies of the Scar have warped it beyond all recognition. Instead of a lump of cool, malleable rock, it’s a twisted amalgamation of Runes, raw Essence, and abyssal flesh. Delightful! As gross as it is, it’s going to come in handy.
Firstly, you can stick your Tainted Essence into the Extractor. In exchange for a bit of GP, it’ll suck out all the wrong types of runic energy and compress the rest, leaving you with stackable Extracts that serve as catalysts for Runecraft. This will let you craft significantly more of the corresponding Runes!
Alternatively, you can clean your Tainted Essence to turn it back into Pure Essence. This method will create up to 10,000 Pure Essence per hour. It’s a faster (and free!) way to get your hands on this vital Runecraft component.
We’ve put together this handy flowchart to make the process clear:
Further information about costs, balancing and general design can be found in this newspost.
Other Changes
Poll 80
Today’s Poll 80 update introduces the new-and-improved Skill Guide!
- Opening the Skill Guide no longer pauses actions.
- On PC, the Skill Guide can now be moved around and resized by clicking and dragging the title bar.
- The position will be remembered next time you open the window.
- The new Skill Guide style can be selected from the Settings menu.
Other Improvements
- A common type of tree stump found around Falador, Varrock and the Pest Control minigame no longer blocks players from ranging over it.
- Some of the Pest Control towers may be a little better for snipers now.
- Fixed a bug where Player-Owned House dungeons in the 'Basic wood', 'Basic stone', 'Whitewashed stone' and 'Fremennik-style wood' house styles didn’t permit multi-way combat, despite having a multi-way combat icon.
- The 3-tick teleport delay in the single-way Wilderness Boss lairs now only applies if you have recently attacked the bosses.
- On the Permanent Deadman world, PK skulls obtained from combat are now only 5 minutes long, as they were in the Apocalypse seasonal worlds, rather than lasting between 15 and 30 minutes.
- The opponent's combat level no longer affects their duration.
- Attacking any skulled player now gives a PK skull on the Permanent Deadman World.
- Once the Beta Worlds open, players will now be able to reset their saved game profiles via a new option on the Settings menu.
Note that we’re hard at work implementing further changes to the Permanent Deadman World, including removing XP loss on death and giving XP multipliers for quest rewards. Keep your eyes peeled for these improvements in coming weeks!
Leagues IV Home Teleport Animation
Our wonderfully talented Art Team has been hard at work getting the cosmetics ready in time for Leagues IV: Trailblazer Reloaded!
Today we’d like to show off a new concept for the Home Teleport we initially showcased in the Leagues IV blog. The original looked a bit too similar to the one awarded through Quest Speedrunning, so here’s something different!
Fun fact: the reason we’re able to show you a full animation instead of just concept art is that this Home Teleport was developed for the original Trailblazer League! Originally, we wanted the cosmetics to use a ‘blazing’ theme – like Trailblazer, get it? We eventually went with a ‘travel’ theme instead – but now that we’re ‘firing up’ Trailblazer again, we think it’s the perfect time to let this fiery animation fly.
What do you think? Are you a fan of the flames, or do we need to cool off? Let us know your thoughts!
Community Feedback Request: Shooting Stars
After a somewhat rocky start, we’re happy to see the community enjoying the latest Shooting Stars update. We’d especially like to congratulate the Starminers Discord for bringing the Old School community together.
The sheer number of players engaging with this update tells us we’re on the right track when it comes to our Mining improvements – although there’s one slight problem we need to address.
You see, Shooting Stars has become so popular that worlds are now experiencing unexpected lag due to the number of players logging on to mine Stars. The sudden uptick in logins causes a lag spike, which persists until the Star is depleted and everyone logs off to find the next one.
The below graph illustrates the tick time increase relative to the life cycle of a Star on September 25th. As you can see, tick time gradually increases as more players log on, and drops drastically when the Star is depleted.
Unfortunately, this is a big problem for the game. If we don’t take action to protect our servers, these lag spikes could become even more serious down the road. That said, we really want to keep the positivity going – so we’re keeping the changes to Shooting Stars while encouraging you all to spread out just a little more.
As always, we’re committed to working with you all on this issue – and we’ve already seen some fantastic suggestions from the community.
We’ve seen players call for Stars to be ringfenced to certain worlds, in the hope that they won’t affect the rest. However, this still means that these worlds will be extra affected – so we’re doing you one better. As well as creating designated ‘Star worlds’, we plan to have identical stars of the same tier and location fall at the same time across every designated world, thereby encouraging players to spread between them.
We’re aware that some of you prefer big Stars to small ones, and vice versa. We’re considering implementing two sets of Star worlds, with big Stars in one set and small Stars in the other.
After considering several options, we think that this is the best solution we have right now – but we’re aware it isn’t perfect. For one thing, these identical Stars would all land and deplete at the same time, so it will be harder to jump to another Star immediately afterwards. Secondly, if the Stars all land in the same place, there may be players who can't yet access that area and will have to twiddle their thumbs until the next set of Stars land. We want to work with you to figure out how best to approach this problem.
If you have strong feelings about the solution we’ve pitched above, click the button below to complete a survey on the matter. We’re also looking for alternative ideas, so let us know your thoughts!
In the meantime, it’s clear that the community wants Mining improvements sooner rather than later. This is something we’re actively looking into, so stay tuned, and keep sending your feedback!
Merch Store Update
Angels Scapes’ iconic Skill Cape Keyrings are now back in stock!
Grab them from our Merch store while you can!
PvP World Rota
The PvP rota has moved to Period A:
- 539 - (US) - PvP World
- 318 - (UK) - Bounty Hunter world
- 548 - (Germany) - High-Risk PvP World
- 577 - (US) - Free-to-Play PvP World
- 559 - (UK) - LMS Competitive
World 390 (AUS) for LMS Competitive has been activated with this rota.
World 569 (AUS) for Bounty Hunter has been activated with this rota.
The PvP Arena is using 'Zerker' 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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