Further Project Rebalance: Skilling Tweaks & Minigame Improvements | May 23rd

This week’s update brings minigame improvements and some tweaks to recent Skilling changes from Project Rebalance.

Changelog

Project Rebalance: Skilling Tweaks

It’s been a couple of weeks since the first part of Project Rebalance went live, and we’re happy with where most of the changes are at. Even so, we have a few more tweaks for you this week.

First, an update on Expert Mining Gloves, which have been re-enabled for Sandstone with some minor balancing changes. Initially, players were able to mine a whopping three extra Sandstone before the rock depleted, which was a little stronger than we intended. As of today’s change, they’ll be able to mine one extra.

Sticking with the Mining theme, we also hotfixed a couple of Zalcano changes. To deter leeching, all players must now deal at least 5 armour damage to Zalcano, regardless of how much health damage they deal over the course of the fight. Additionally, the minimum contribution required has increased to 75, up from 50.

A third hotfix applies a delay when re-entering the Brimhaven Agility Dungeon after teleporting out. This prevents players using the Achievement Diary Cape to repeatedly teleport out, re-enter and tag a pillar close to the entry ladder, resulting in unexpectedly high XP rates.

Last week, we reduced fail rates when pickpocketing paladins, gnomes and heroes – but many of you still feel they don’t hit the mark. This week we’re improving their fail rate even more, and re-upping XP per pickpocket. Note that XP per hour for these NPCs does scale drastically with your Thieving level. Paladins, for example, ramp up from ~90,000 XP per hour at Level 70 to ~180,000 XP per hour at Level 99.

Along similar lines, we’re walking back a change we made to fever spiders loot table last week which turned them into powerful, risk-free AFK moneymakers. That’s another kind of spider altogether, so we’ve taken things down a notch by replacing the Rune Medium Helm and Battleaxe with their Adamant equivalents and swapping Water Battlestaves for Limpwurt Roots. We remain open to further changes following your feedback.

To round us off, we have two tiny tweaks:

• Corrected messaging that plays when the Ore Sack at Motherlode Mine is full.
• Efaritay’s Aid now correctly interacts with tier 1 and 2 vampyres, instead of reducing damage dealt to them.

Minigame Improvements

Today’s update also brings a selection of QoL changes to minigames all over Gielinor:

• Various skilling actions in Trouble Brewing now provide XP for the associated skill:
• Capturing a Monkey awards 15 Agility and 15 Hunter XP.
• Increasing the Boiler pressure awards 80 Strength XP.
• Lighting logs in the Boiler now awards 320 Firemaking XP, up from the 40 XP provided when adding logs to the Boiler.
• Obtaining a Bitternut awards 160 Hunter XP.
• Depositing a Bitternut into the Hopper awards 640 Cooking XP.
• Obtaining Scrapey Tree Bark from logs awards 160 Fletching XP.
• Depositing Scrapey Tree Bark into the Hopper awards 320 Cooking XP.
• Obtaining Sweetgrubs awards 160 Hunter XP.
• Depositing Sweetgrubs into the Hopper awards 320 Cooking XP.
• Adding your team's coloured water to the Hopper awards 320 Cooking XP.
• Figuring out how any of this results in ‘Rum’ earns you the gratitude of the entire Community Management team.
• The reward currency from Trouble Brewing, Pieces of Eight, have been converted into a variable stored on your account rather than a physical item. This brings them in line with other Minigame currencies.
• Added a new 'Classic F2P' option to the 'Magic' dropdown while setting up a Clan Wars game. This setting makes it so that Bind is the only 'freeze' spell available in a game with this setting enabled.
• Fully-grown plants in Tithe Farm will no longer decay.
• Tears of Guthix will now show your Personal Best while you're collecting tears.
• The Guardians of the Rift entry barrier has received some visual updates. It should be even more red when you're unable to enter the minigame, and we've added a new 'Red, Eye Open' variant for scenarios where the player count has reached 200 but the game has not yet started.

It's worth noting that our next QoL Poll will see us focus on more significant changes to some minigames/activities, including Wintertodt and Guardians of the Rift.

Other Changes

Just like all good updates, we've got a scattering of smaller updates spread throughout a variety of content that's not easy to group up with everything else.

Up first is a change to the Grand Exchange interface, allowing you to set up your own +X% and -X% buttons when buying or selling - for the trader in a serious rush.

You can use these buttons to enter in any custom amount you'd like to strike the perfect balance between 'less spam clicking on the 5% button' and 'paying millions of GP for one niche Quest item'! Right-clicking on the button lets you customise this value at any time.

Next is a change to the Theatre of Blood, specifically to how Verzik scales to one remaining player in Normal mode Theatre of Blood. These changes were initially floated to you alongside Project Rebalance, but have been worked on by a different team - hence their slightly earlier release!

• If only one player remains during Normal Mode Verzik's P2, only one Nylocas Matomenos (the red one) will spawn, as in Hard Mode.
• If only one player remains during Normal Mode Verzik's P2, the Lightning Ball damage is capped, as in Hard Mode.

To round us off, here's a list of other tweaks - we're sure your favourite part of today's update is likely to be somewhere in here, as is tradition...

• A warning message has been added to prevent players from accidentally choosing to 'Release' a Mature Tecu Salamander.
• The Troll tunnels leading up to Trollweiss, encountered during the Troll Romance quest, have been restored to Single-way combat. This is to correct an error in a recent update where they'd accidentally been made Multi-combat.
• The Staff of the Dead's Special Attack effect is now cleared when using a Rejuvenation Pool inside your POH.
• A new option has been added to the Settings menu that allows you to pick your 'hit sounds'. This is the sound that your character makes when they're hit by an enemy.
• Elven Teleport Crystals now have a 'Toggle' option when right-clicked, which will allow you to set your left-click teleport to either Lletya or Prifddinas.
• Wyrms have had their animations adjusted to make them more accessible for players who are at risk of seizures.
• Fixed a bug where it was possible to skip Vet'ion's second phase.

This Week in Old School

Before we sign off, we’re trying out a new newspost feature where we summarise a selection of cool goings-on from the previous week.

Yesterday, we posted a first look at Deadman: Armageddon, the thrilling sequel to last year’s Deadman: Apocalypse. We’ve made a few gameplay changes which you can read all about in this blog. Deadman: Armageddon runs from July 19th to August 3rd, so get your holiday requests in ASAP – or you might be met with the same result we got in this video.

In other Deadman news, don’t forget to vote for Armageddon-themed tradeable cosmetic kits in next week’s in-game poll! Should they pass, you’ll be able to spend your hard-earned Deadman Points on some seriously cool Corrupted Weapon kits – or pick them up at the Grand Exchange, if that’s more your bag.

If you're looking for something to watch during your latest grind, check out this epic piece of investigative journalism, in which star reporter J1mmy delves deep into Neypotzli to document a man driven to madness by the Moons of Peril (spoiler alert, the man is talented community artist 8sat). That's two Golden Gnome winners working hand-in-hand - it doesn't get much better than that!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_o7gfDVw6E

If you can’t see the video above, click here to watch it.

After all that excitement, why not wind down with a copy of RuneScape: The Gift of Guthix?

This is the first of three new novels packed full of Scape-y goodness, written by Erin M Evans in partnership with Titan Books. It tells an epic tale of the origin of magic, the plight of civil war, and the crushing defeat of the Fremennik Great Invasion. If you'd like to snag a copy for yourself, you can grab one online or from local bookstores. Check out this handy page on the Titan Website for a full list of retailers around the world!

And that's a wrap! We'll see you next week for another action-packed Game Update. Good luck on the gains, and happy 'Scaping!

PvP World Rota

The PvP rota has moved to Period B:

• 560 - (UK) - PvP World
• 319 - (US) - Bounty Hunter 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.

World 569 (AUS) for Bounty Hunter has been de-activated with this rota.

The PvP Arena is using 'Max/Med' 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.

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The Old School Team.