Defender of Varrock | February 21st

It’s time to see if the prophecy comes to pass, as we revisit a truly classic quest... Defender of Varrock!

Changelog February 21st

Defender of Varrock

The Mahjarrat storyline continues as darkness falls over Varrock – a foreboding gloom littered with the shambling undead, and permeated with an ancient evil. Has the fallen hero Arrav returned to bring about the city's demise, as foretold long ago? There's only one way to find out...

As it’s the next chapter of an influential questline – and because it’s a vital encounter before taking on While Guthix Sleeps – you might fancy a bit of a refresher for this quest. We’ve collaborated with PoisonedPotion to get you up to speed on the story so far! Check out their video here:

https://youtu.be/dhVTqPwHKb8

This quest is a remake of the 2008 original, with a little Old School flourish! While much of the quest will remain the same as you remember, there will be a few new additions to bring it up to modern OS standards. We don’t want to give too much away, but whether you remember the original or are stepping into it for the first time, get ready to meet new NPCs, face familiar foes and encounter a more challenging zombie type!

Oh, and if you remember the original quest and are sweating at the thought of a trip to the Wilderness, worry no longer! You’ll now begin the quest at the Jolly Boar Inn in Varrock, and won’t need to brave the terrors of the Wildy at all. So, head down to the pub and have a chat with Elias White to get started.

Of course, when taking on any adventure, preparation is key. Here's a reminder of the quest requirements:

New Enemies

While our main antagonists may have familiar faces, we've brought to life a new hoard of enemies just for this Old School reimagining. Lurching in stage left: The Armoured Zombies! These are a tougher, higher level zombie type, and they remain accessible once completed. As in the original quest, the base where you encounter them is multicombat, and the zombies are really packed in there, giving you the chance to unleash some very satisfying multi-target attacks.

New Weapon

Following discussion with players and a pass in the polls, we're extremely excited to bring the Zombie Axe to the game! Let's remind ourselves how this new weapon will function.

The Zombie Axe, as a 1h weapon, will sit as a nice upgrade for Dragon weaponry before you move on to the Abyssal Whip – although as previously stated, the Axe’s swift attack speed makes it an attractive option in its own right. It requires 65 Attack to wield and has a Crush bonus of 90, meaning the Axe sits nicely beside the Zamorakian Hasta and maintains its place in the meta.

The Zombie Axe will drop broken, and you’ll need 70 Smithing to repair it at an Anvil. This makes the Axe a little bit more challenging for Iron players to obtain, ensuring that it doesn’t crowd out the Dragon Scimitar too early on. Both broken and repaired versions will be tradeable for non-Iron players.

We’d also like to clarify that this weapon is not a direct reward from the quest. It’s obtainable afterwards, as a drop.

Okay, that's enough talking, it's time to gear up and investigate these rumours. Head to the Jolly Boar Inn in Varrock and have a chat with Elias White to begin. Good luck!

It's Our Birthday!

11 years of Old School RuneScape! Doesn't the time go so fast? It feels like just yesterday we stepped into the brand new chapter of RuneScape – a lovingly concocted blend of nostalgia and forward thinking with a uniquely community-led spirit. Here's to 11 more, and 11 after that, and... well, you know.

Although we won’t be running a specific in-game event this year, we’ve given our birthday decorations a refresh and kitted out the Falador Party Room so you can interact with the party table to unlock all previous Birthday Event rewards! If you're after your very own Gnome child plush for your character, or a giant cake to carry around, then you have until March 13th to take a trip to Fally and get your goodies.

But wait, there’s more… we’re hosting a Birthday Livestream, and you’re all invited! Join Mods Sween and Sarnie, plus a couple of J-Mod guests, on February 22nd, starting at 16:00 GMT! It’s going to be a jam-packed celebration, including an in-game fashion show, a J-Mod quiz, a handful of incredible giveaway prizes and more surprises we don't want to spoil! Believe us when we say it – you don't want to miss this one!

To strut your stuff in the fashion show, head to World 499 and pop down to the museum below the Falador Party Room. We'll start congregating around 16:30 GMT, with the aim to hit the catwalk from 16:45.

Want to be part of the Quiz segment of the stream? Let us know your answers by taking part in this survey and JMods will attempt to guess the most popular responses!

Giveaways

Well it wouldn’t be a birthday without presents. We’ll be giving away a total of nine prizes throughout the livestream, including three copies of the Original Soundtracks Classics double deluxe vinyl, three copies of the core set of our RuneScape Kingdoms board game made in collaboration with Steamforged, and three copies of the RuneScape TTRPG – two standard and one deluxe edition.

To enter, visit the #giveaways channel in the official OSRS Discord during the stream and react to the relevant giveaway posts as they go live. Winners will be announced by the giveaway bot in Discord during the stream.

You'll also have the chance to win a set of Old School RuneScape Top Trumps via our Twitter and Instagram later today! These giveaways will close at 12:00 GMT midday tomorrow, February 22nd.

Good luck!

Rune Pouch

On the topic of birthdays, and in the giving spirit, this week we're gifting you another update from our recent Game Jam projects: some highly anticipated Rune Pouch improvements!

Have you ever gotten yourself psyched up for a General Graardor trip, gotten all the way there and realised you forgot to manually empty and refill your Rune Pouch with all the correct runes? Us neither, but it's happened to a friend of ours! While there's always some margin for user error, today's changes should make it easier than ever to quickly get your pouch prepared for any situation.

With today's Game Update, you'll be able to left-click 'Configure' your Rune Pouch (or Divine Rune Pouch) to set up four separate loadouts – and switch between them in an instant!

Upon clicking 'Configure' you'll be greeted with an interface much like the one above, and as long as that interface is open, any runes withdrawn from your Bank will attempt to go into the pouch, rather than into your inventory. At the very top, you'll see a 'Deposit' button that lets you empty your runes directly into the Bank and free up your pouch. Just below, you'll see whatever is currently in your pouch, which can be deposited by right-clicking for the usual Deposit 1, 5, 10, X, All options or by left-click (which will default to the Quantity that you've set at the bottom of the Bank interface). As a little bonus, these options also allow the runes to be deposited on a free-to-play world, so lapsed members can empty their pouches at last. Such a relief!

Keep moving down and we get to what you're all waiting for: Load-outs. Clicking any of the arrows (on the left of each row) will automatically replace whatever's in your pouch with whatever load-out you've selected. Any displaced runes will be moved into the Bank, while any runes 'added' to the pouch will be added in the following order of priority:

• If enough of those runes already exist in the pouch, they'll be moved to the correct space.
• Then, runes up to the total amount will be placed into the pouch from your Inventory.
• Then, runes up to the total amount will be placed into the pouch from your Bank.
• If you started with too many runes in the pouch for your desired 'Quantity', then excess runes will be moved to the Bank.

We won't get too far into the weeds of it all, but we can confirm the system works wonderfully and should feel really responsive. Perhaps the most important part is learning how to set up your Load-outs in the first place! Fortunately, it's extremely simple.

When you first open this interface, you'll notice that every slot for every Load-out is big ol' X. This X means 'keep this slot empty', but can be left-clicked to let you change what goes into that slot for that particular loadout.

Clicking on any given slot will bring up an interface just like this, allowing you to choose any rune you'd like. After you select a rune, you'll be able to define any quantity you'd like up to the pouch's 16,000 rune cap, or you can type '0' rather than 16,000 for 'no limit', which effectively means the pouch will pull as many runes as possible from your Bank to fill up the pouch, up to a cap of 16,000. You can do this for every slot in every load-out and then find yourself switching between them all with the click of a single button – nifty!

That's about all we've got – give it a go and let us know whether everything's working as you'd expect. When it comes to getting geared up: the future is now!

Quest Start Highlights

Defender of Varrock isn't the only quest-related update this week, as we also have a small but useful addition to our New Official Client (also known as the C++ Client). Within the Settings menu you'll find a new option to ‘enable quest start highlights.' Once enabled, these highlights will clearly mark the characters and/or scenery you need to interact with to start a quest. There are also additional options to show highlights based on requirements, and to only highlight the last quest viewed.

New Music Areas

This week sees a big expansion to the Modern Music Area Mode. If you’ve not tried it before, this mode offers two key features when compared to the classic music system:

• The boundaries where tracks change are more natural while in this mode, rather than being perfect squares. For example, when moving from Lumbridge to Al Kharid, the music changes as you pass through the gate.
• Where appropriate, some areas have a selection of thematic tracks that shuffle, rather than one single track looping.

This expansion covers the following areas:

• Karamja
• Morytania
• The Digsite
• Fossil Island
• Mos Le'Harmless
• Ape Atoll

Hopefully this update gives you some new ways to enjoy Old School's legendary soundtrack, but if you prefer you can always switch between Modern and Classic Music Area Modes at any time in your Settings menu.

Mods Sween & Ayiza Run a Half Marathon

On March 3rd, Mods Sween & Ayiza will be running the Cambridge Half Marathon in support of Safe In Our World.

Safe In Our World is an accredited charity supported by industry luminaries, veterans and ambassadors across the world, and its mission is to create an online destination where people can seek help, gain access to resources and information, and discover stories from real people within and surrounding the games industry.

With the kind donations already received, they smashed through their first fundraising goal, meaning we're being treated to a 24-hour livestream! This starts on February 23rd at 19:00 GMT, where they’ll take on community-chosen challenges – tune in over at Twitch.

The best news (only marginally better than the concept of Sween and Ayiza running a half marathon in a Sandwich Lady and Cat Girl cosplay) is that Jagex will match any donation up to £5,000!

If you want to support a great cause, and encourage our brave J-Mods to achieve their goal, consider donating using the button below.

Year In Review Update

In January we shared an update about the Year In Review in which we described the technical issues preventing us from sending the email to approximately 1% of eligible players (who had opted in to receiving emails). We’ve made good progress with identifying and fixing these technical issues however it still isn't ready and we don't have a clear date when it will be resolved. As we move further and further into 2024, we’ve made the difficult decision that we will not be sending out more Year In Review emails from 2023. We know this will be disappointing to those of you who haven't yet received it, but we believe that focussing on resolving the issues for future sends will be more impactful. This was a new initiative for us, and we've learnt a lot from this first attempt. We're confident that we can take these learnings to ensure that everybody eligible will receive theirs for 2024. As we mentioned in the update from January, we're exploring how to make it even easier to access it (like adding it to the Launcher), seeing whether we can do similar for seasonal game-modes (like Deadman or Leagues), and will do a better job of communicating around the Year In Review generally.

Merch Update

OST Classics Gold Vinyl

As a special OSRS anniversary treat, Laced Records have bowed to multiple requests for a re-press of the OST Classics special gold disc variant, containing some absolute bangers from the OSRS soundtrack. The album went on pre-order today, available direct from Laced and at the Official Merch Store!

Fally Goodies and Anniversary DFS from Angels Scapes

Relive your travels through Falador over the years with this range of pins and keyrings by Angels Scapes, exclusively available on the official merch store.

• The Rising Sun Bottle Opener celebrates Falador's most popular pub – cheers!
• Dwarven Stout has been added to the beer opener fridge magnet range, so you always have the right equipment to hand to crack open your favourite tipple.
• The limited edition White Knight Pin will always fight for you!
• Holy (giant) moley, there’s even a Giant Mole Pin – with two mini baby moles escaped from beneath Falador park!
• And don’t forget our annual anniversary variant of the Dragonfire Shield Pin, which is also limited edition.

RuneScape Kingdoms Board Game – last chance for exclusive bundles!

Backers of the RuneScape Kingdoms Kickstarter have started receiving their pledges over the past few weeks, and we’ve been so excited to see pictures of their hauls! Check out the goods:

If you missed out on Steamforged Games’ Kickstarter back in 2022 and want to go all in, a Deluxe Edition Bundle and Expansions Bundle are currently available exclusively on Steamforged’s online store.

While not quite the early bird deal snapped up by Kickstarter backers, these are now the best value for getting your hands on an all-in pledge for the core game and expansions, and will only be available until next week! Once the core game and KBD expansion are released for retail on February 29th, the core game and all the other expansions will only be available individually.

If the Steamforged store doesn’t ship to you, you want to avoid shipping costs, or only want the core game, you'll be able to pick it up from retailers globally on February 29th.

Fallen out of the loop with RuneScape Kingdoms? We have more to share soon on the retail release for the board game and separate TTRPG, along with some videos of your favourite J-Mods getting hands on with both. Keep ‘em peeled!

Tune in to the OSRS anniversary stream tomorrow at 16:00 GMT for details on how to win copies of the vinyl, board game and TTRPG!

Other Changes

• When pouring buckets of water into the hopper in Trouble Brewing, your character will now use all your buckets one by one without you needing to click repeatedly.
• The 'Peek' option on the winches at Cerberus now gives the player count in all three caves. This information is also available from the Key Master, for convenience.
• The flickering that occurs when fighting Killerwatts has been toned down. As such, the epilepsy warning before fighting them has been removed.

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 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 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.

Mods Abe, Abyss, Arcane, Archie, Argo, Ash, Ayiza, BigRig, Blossom, Boko, Bruno, Chilly, Crystal, Curse, Daizong, Dylan, Ed, Elena, Enigma, Errol, Gecko, Gengis, Gizmo, Goblin, Grub, Halo, Harold, Hend, Hooti, Hornet, Husky, Jalo, Jerv, Keyser, Kieren, Kirby, Kurotou, Lenny, Light, Liron, Mack, Manked, Markos, Maylea, Meat, Moogle, Morty, Necro, Nox, Nylu, Other, Pumpkin, Redfield, Regent, Rice, Roq, Ry, Sarnie, Saiyan, Shogun, Shroom, Sigma, Skane, Skylark, Smithy, Sova, Squid, Starry, Suharun, Surma, Sween, Tide, Titus, Torrance, Tsourorf, Tyran, Veda, Vegard, West & Wolfy

The Old School Team.