Araxxor Combat Achievements, Poll 82 & More

PSA: There will be no game update next week as the team is preparing for the launch of Varlamore: The Rising Darkness.

Araxxor Combat Achievements are here, bringing with them more Araxxor tweaks, Poll 82 updates, and the long-awaited Crystal Shard rates buff!

Changelog - September 11th

Araxxor Combat Achievements

Now that you’ve settled in with your arachnid pal, it’s time to take on some Combat Achievements!

We know there’s been some concern about last week’s debuff to Araxxor’s self-damage, and how this would affect Combat Achievements. Before we get started, we want to assure you that the Achievements were balanced around not using the step-under method, so this change shouldn’t affect them. We’ll be monitoring your feedback closely over time just in case there are changes to be made.

We’ve also heard your frustrations regarding RNG resets in speedrun tasks, so this time we’re trying something new. Our new approach encourages steady, repeated quick kills within a set time frame, rather than relying on a single lucky attempt. For example, instead of "Kill Araxxor in X minutes" which was the previous approach, we're now going with "Kill Araxxor 4 times in 10:00". This way, RNG balances out over multiple kills. Let us know how you get on!

Other Araxxor Fixes

Last week, you let us know that you really liked Araxxor's self-damage mechanic, but requested that it work on any tile underneath the boss and not just the South West corner. We’ve now made this change, so Araxxor had better watch where those eight limbs of his are flying from now on.

Following the changes to self-damage and the addition of Combat Achievements, we’re resetting the global times for Araxxor.

Here are a few smaller changes we've made:

• Nid and Rax pets no longer share the same Bank placeholder.
• Some players were still finding themselves stuck underneath Araxxor’s body after killing him, so a new safety measure will automatically push players out of his hitbox.
• The Ring of Recoil can now be used to kill Araxyte inside the Easter Egg cave, so accounts unable to equip the Noxious Halberd are now able to get the Rancour recolour. However, you can only progress past this point if you have a Noxious Halberd in your Inventory. Not having the halberd will result in being teleported back to the start of the cave.
• On DMM worlds, skulled players can no longer enter the Araxxor arena.
• Fixed a bug where players could kill Araxxor without a Slayer task.

We’d also like to address a couple of points of feedback from last week:

• Level 96 araxytes not spawning superiors: We aren't looking to change this as we think there's a good trade-off between killing the two types of araxytes, one for quick XP and points/hr, and the other for better XP/task and a chance for Slayer superior uniques.
• Araxxor overhangs his hitbox in some areas, while other areas of the hitbox feel too big: We can’t prevent certain parts of an NPC model from being clicked on, so our only option would be to shrink Araxxor by 30% to make him never come outside of his bounding box during animations. This would make Araxxor really small, and so unfortunately, it can’t be changed.
• Why are the araxyte Tasks counted as spider Tasks?: When we first pitched araxyte Tasks, players were clear that they wanted them to count as spider Tasks, so we made that change before launch.
• Issues with Coagulated Venom: Some players weren't able to obtain the Coagulated Venom as the timer included the time taken to loot Araxxor. This issue is now resolved but some players would like to have the venom retroactively given to them. Due to various complications in doing this, players will have to reachieve the 1:15 time to get the reward. We'd like to highlight that this task wasn't balanced around the recently discovered (and subsequently changed) step-under method.

Poll 82 Updates

We're continuing to roll out more updates from Poll 82: Minigame Makeover, with a particular focus on PvP this week.

Let's start with Last Man Standing! During the Poll 82 proposal, many of you requested that the Zerker bracket be adjusted to 50 Defence up from 45. While we were making this change, we took the opportunity to add Perilous Moons armour to the bracket, which will drop as a set including the weapons to ensure players can make full use of it.

Meanwhile, Blighted Supplies and Bounty Hunter Rewards can now be used in Clan Wars, Soul Wars, and Castle Wars, just as they were polled.

Crystal Shard Rates Buff

Some of you may remember our blog about Shooting Star changes, where we mentioned our plans to boost Crystal Shard gains from existing sources. Since then we’ve had a whirlwind of launches and updates which has delayed our progress on this front. Today, we’re happy to announce that Crystal Shards are now much easier to farm. Thank you for your patience – here’s what’s changed:

• Crystal Acorn: Quantity is now 28-32 shards, up from 14-16. Rate is unchanged.
• Superior Slayer Creatures: Quantity is now 6-10 shards, up from 1. Rate is unchanged.
• Regular Gauntlet: Quantity is now 5-9 shards, up from 3-7. Rate is unchanged.
• Corrupted Gauntlet: Quantity is now 7-12 shards, up from 5-9. Rate is unchanged.
• Zalcano: Both the quantity and rate are unchanged.
• Agility Course Portals: Quantity is unchanged. Rate is improved from 1 in 3 to 1 in 1, meaning you'll always receive a Shard.
• Crystal Chest: Buffed the quantity of Acorns to 4-6 and quantity of Shards by ~50%. This means you'll obtain more Shards on average and obtain more Acorns overall, which will lead to significantly more Shards if you plant them - especially with Acorns also giving more Shards than they used to.
• Slayer Dungeon: Quantity is now 3-5 Shards, up from 1. Rate is unchanged.
• Pickpocketing: Both the quantity and rate are unchanged.
• Mining: Quantity is unchanged. Rate is improved to 1/65 from 1/127.
• Crystal Impling: Quantity is now 30-40 Shards, up from 5-10. You’ll get ~2 Shards on average per impling. Rate is unchanged.
• Woodcutting: Quantity is unchanged. Rate is improved to 1/40 from 1/80.

Other Changes

• Wyrms are once again visible in the Slayer Log.
• Replanted some missing tree trunks in the Kharazi jungle.
• Restored Alina's missing jaw.
• Fixed a bug where live Implings could be indirectly traded via Imp Defenders releasing them.

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 'Zerker' 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, Criminal, Crystal, Curse, Daizong, Dylan, Ed, Elena, Enigma, Entropi, Errol, Gecko, Gengis, Gizmo, Goblin, Grub, Halo, Harold, Hend, Hooti, Hornet, Husky, Jalo, Jerv, Keyser, Kieren, Kirby, Kurotou, Leebleh, Lenny, Light, Liron, Lykos, Mack, Manked, Markos, Maylea, Moogle, Morty, Necro, Nin, Nox, Nylu, Other, Philomel, Pumpkin, Redfield, Regent, Rice, Roq, Ry, Saiyan, Sarnie, Shogun, Shroom, Sigma, Skylark, Smithy, Sova, Squid, Starry, Suharun, Surma, Sween, Tide, Titus, TJ, Tsourorf, Tyran, Veda, Vegard, West, Wolfy & Yume

The Old School Team.