Wintertodt Updates & Varlamore: The Rising Darkness Drop Rates | October 9th

PSA: You may have noticed that we've been doing a lot of maintenance recently. While we still have more work to do, thanks to our continued efforts in improving our infrastructure, starting this week and going forward, there will be NO downtime during game updates except for major content launches!

The game will reboot at 11:30am BST as usual, following a 45 minute timer. There will be no downtime, but please allow a minute or two for the servers to reboot and allow you to re-enter the game.

The wait is over - the highly anticipated Wintertodt updates are LIVE NOW! We've also got drop rate reveals for Hueycoatl and Amoxliatl along with further Varlamore: The Rising Darkness improvements.

Changelog - October 9th

Wintertodt Updates are Here!

We're excited to bring the chilling Wintertodt updates into the live game! Lots of you jumped in and helped us test out the new additions through our beta last week, and following your feedback, we're now able to take full advantage of the changes with your live game accounts.

Before diving into the specifics, we'd like draw your attention to a change on logging out inside Wintertodt: Once the update goes live, if you had logged out in the Wintertodt arena, you'll be moved outside to the Doors of Dinh - that is the case if you were on a normal world. For those in a Deadman world, they will be relocated to the nearby bank to ensure their safety. Just a quick heads up!

So wrap up in some Warm clothing and let's take a look at what to expect!

Warmth Meter

As a warm up, let's kick things off with the Warmth Meter. When you hop into the lobby, you’ll spot the new and eagerly-awaited Warmth Meter at the top left, displayed in orange matching your Pyromancer garb. Warmth effectively replaces Hitpoints as the resource you need to keep topped up if you'd like to avoid being frozen into an early grave. This means that the Wintertodt's basic and special attacks do damage to your Warmth instead of HP, but wearing Warm clothing or lighting more braziers will reduce the damage - essentially the same mechanics you’re used to, but with a fresh twist.

You’ll also find two new sets of Sprouting Roots (one on each side), which can be used to gather Bruma herbs and speaking of said herbs, picking these exclusive herbs in Wintertodt no longer grants Farming XP. The previous XP was minimal and the overwhelming majority of players weren't engaging with Rejuvenation Potions in the first place. The reason for this change is to avoid introducing extremely low-effort, on-demand Farming XP methods, helping to maintain consistency with current game mechanics.

Back to Warmth Meter! The key thing to remember is that decreases to Warmth are universal and apply to everybody in the same way. So whether you’ve got 10 Hitpoints or 99, you’ll take the same amount of damage to your Warmth and use the same resources to replenish it. In essence, 100% Warmth is equivalent to 10 Hitpoints before the change but with a little more granularity.

Regeneration

Over Time
Just like Hitpoints, Warmth naturally regenerates over time. You'll regenerate 8% Warmth every minute, plus an additional 1% for every piece of Warm clothing you wear. If you notice it randomly jumping up then don't report it as a bug - it's a feature!

Food
When it comes to replenishing your Warmth, it is simple and doesn't require a change in behaviour - you can just use food! So long as a piece of food provides at least 4 Hitpoints per bite, such as a Cake, you'll replenish 35% of your Warmth upon eating it. To stick with Cake as an example, each bite restores 35%, totaling 105% Warmth recovered for the entire sweet treat.

Rejuvenation Potion
Perhaps you don't want to use conventional food and you're all about self-sufficiency and sustainability. Luckily for you, we've added a 'Drink' option to the Rejuvenation potion (shown above) which will restore 30% of your Warmth per dose, totaling 120% for the full potion, meaning you'll be able to keep yourself topped up indefinitely if you'd like.

We know that swapping the left-click on these Rejuvenation potions could make healing the Pyromancers a bit trickier, and you might accidentally use supplies that could maximise your points. But don’t worry, we've got that covered! To prevent accidental potion-consumption, we've added a left-click 'Help' option to the Pyromancers. If you're not familiar with this, you can actually use Rejuvenation potions to heal the Pyromancers when they've taken damage or have fallen to the floor! With these changes to the potions we might see less players running from the South-East braizer to the South-West one after a Pyromancer goes down and calls for their mummy - especially since you earn points for helping them out!

Also in the screenshot above, you can see the new hitsplats for Warmth damage. This clearly separates them from direct damage to your Hitpoints and should make it crystal clear when you're taking a hit from the bitter cold. We've also popped a Warmth meter just below your usual Hitpoints bar so that you can keep your eyes on the action rather than UI elements at the top left.

Feedback Additions
Based on your feedback, we've incorporated various additional sources of regeneration into the Warmth system, such as Heal Other, Redemption, the Regen Bracelet and the Hitpoints cape. This should reduce any disruption to established metas for more experienced players who often make use of these. It's worth noting for Redemption in particular that it might be a little trickier than before to reliably dip below 10% of your Warmth if you're used to using Redemption on an account with high Hitpoints, but it's useable and we have no doubt that you'll figure it out!

Fatal Cold
Keep in mind that while the Wintertodt won't be attacking your lifeforce directly, running completely out of Warmth will kill you. Wintertodt remains a dangerous activity, HCIM are not safe here - keep yourself warm or somebody will bury your bones for Prayer XP while the masses laugh at you.

Ring of Life, Defence Cape and Phoenix Necklace can save you though! If your Warmth Meter gets under 10%, then the Ring of Life automatically will activate and save you. Same goes with Defence Cape, if you have activated the Ring of Life effect on it. Likewise, your Warmth dropping below 20% will also trigger Phoenix Necklace's effect to restore Warmth.

Other Wintertodt Changes

Next up, we've got further additions to the CosyScape list! The following items now all count as Warm clothing:

• Wolf Mask
• Earmuffs
• Cap and Goggles
• Woolly Hat
• Bobble Hat
• Jester Hat
• Tri-Jester Hat

One extra bit of QoL we've added is a slightly longer cooldown on being interrupted by the Wintertodt's basic attacks while fletching your Bruma roots into kindling, so that you'll be guaranteed to fit a few fletches in before being interrupted, and not have to deal with a string of interruptions that do little beyond frustrate you.

Another change we're making here ties into that point around 'keeping yourself topped up indefinitely'. If you're already familiar with the Wintertodt then this may sound a little counter-intuitive because your Inventory is likely to fill up with Supply crates and hamper your points-earning potential in the next round. Introducing: the Reward Pile!

Gone are the days of Supply Crates bloating out your bank. Instead, for every crate you would have earned or every roll you would have gotten (in cases where you might obtain a significant number of points and therefore have a crate with multiple loot rolls), you'll get another search added to the Reward Pile. It's right next to the bank so that things are kept convenient, and you can even use the 'Big-search' option to loot 5 times at once! This should alleviate bank space issues and make Wintertodt a little more appealing for any Ultimate Irons out there.

Continuing on the topic of rewards; you can now track how many rewards you’ve claimed from Wintertodt directly in the Collection Log under the Wintertodt tab.

Last but not least, when you enter Wintertodt, a Warm Clothing indicator message will appear in chat, notifying you if you're below the four-piece Warm Clothing cap. This should clarify how many pieces of Warm Clothing you're wearing, as what counts as Warm Clothing may not be immediately obvious.

And that's a wrap for Wintertodt changes! Now hop on to Wintertodt and chill!

Further Varlamore: The Rising Darkness Improvements

Drop Rates

It's been two weeks since you began exploring what Varlamore: The Rising Darkness has to offer, which means it's now time to shed some light on the highly-anticipated drop rates! We've got a lot to share with you, so without further ado, let's get into it...

Hueycoatl Drop Rates

Before we start sharing any numbers, we'd like to mention the improvements we made to some of the drop rates from Hueycoatl. Ever since the launch of Varlamore: The Rising Darkness, we had the chance to monitor your feedback closely, and now that we have more information, we've tweaked the drop rates for Soiled Pages and Hueycoatl Hide:

• Soiled Page drop rate has been increased slightly and the quantity has been increased from 30 to 80.
• Hueycoatl Hide drop rate has been significantly increased and now also drops 2 - 3 instead of 1.

The following drop rates apply after increasing the drop rates for these. For your information, the Base Chance to roll on the uniques table is 1/23, and this is scaled by your contribution and is individual to each player. Items with increased drop rates or quantities as mentioned above will be marked with a * in the table below.

For those of you who want a bit more information, the chance to roll on the unique table is modified by your contribution percentage, i.e. percentage of total damage dealt. For example:

• In a solo encounter you'd do 100% of the damage, so your base rate is 1/23.
• In a 5 man where all players did equal damage, your drop rate would be 1/5th = 1/115. This caps out at 1/20th of the base drop rate.

The MVP also gets a 10% increase to their rate.

Amoxliatl Drop Rates

Next up, we have the drop rates for the powerful Frost Nagua of The Heart of Darkness, the Amoxliatl:

• Glacial Temotli: 1/100
• Pendant of Ates: 1/25
• Moxi: 1/3000

Wyrm Agility Course

Finally, the Wyrm Agility Course can give you the wonderful Squirrel Pet and here's what you can expect at a base rate:

• Basic Course: 1/28,503
• Advanced Course: 1/25,406

Hueycoatl Changes

Aside from the improvements to Hueycoatl drop rates, we've also managed to do some fixes for Varlamore's ancient serpent:

• Empty and Charged Tome of Earth versions now share a placeholder in the bank interface, like other tomes do.
• Fixed an issue where the personal best time broadcast for killing Hueycoatl wasn't showing in the clan channel.
• Players can no longer prevent being kicked down the mountain when the Hueycoatl fight restarts.

Mastering Mixology Changes

We're rebalancing Mastering Mixology to better reflect the time and effort involved. You'll now get bonus points for submitting multiple potions at the same time. Here's how it works:

• An extra 20% bonus for submitting 2 potion orders at one go
• An extra 40% bonus for submitting 3 potion orders at one go

For example, if you deposit LLL, AAA and MMA at one go, instead of 20/30/20, you'll receive 28/42/28 with the added 40% bonus:

• 40%x20 = +8M so 28M
• 40%x30 = +12A so 42A
• 40%x20 = +8L so 28L

Previously, we announced plans to add a toggle to the Potion Storage interface allowing players to set their potions to deposit into storage by default, even when the interface isn't open. This particular feature is launching today, and thanks for your patience! To clarify, a new toggle button, 'Always deposit to potion store,' has been added to the bank options view. This toggle has two settings:

• Enabled - Potions will always get deposited to the Potion Storage regardless of which tab is open.
• Disabled - Potions will be deposited into whichever tab the player has open.

We hope you'll enjoy these changes, but as always, let us know your thoughts. Now, for some smaller fixes and changes:

• Fixed an issue where the scroll down of the Chugging Barrel wasn't working as intended to view the loadouts at the bottom of the configuration page.
• Updated the loadouts interface to show the availability of doses in the Potion Storage. This can be seen by a red circle near the potion, indicating that it is not found neither in Potion Storage nor in the bank.
• Goading Potions are now correctly mentioned under the Harralander section of the Gielinor's flora - herbs book.
• Fixed an issue where closing the bank with the Potion Storage tab open prevented item deposit elsewhere.
• Potion Storage now expands in height correctly when tabs are hidden.
• Updated tab style selection to a dropdown input in the options menu.
• Reorganized toggle buttons in the options menu for better clarity.
• Vials are no longer consumed when withdrawing potions directly to the Chugging Barrel.
• Increased the clickbox of the Aga lever to make it easier to interact with.

We really appreciate all 'Scapers who have shared their feedback around Mastering Mixology so far. We hope these changes better align with your expectations and we'll continue to keep an eye on your thoughts.

Colossal Wyrm Agility Course Changes

Over the last two weeks, we’ve been closely monitoring your feedback on the XP rates for the Colossal Wyrm Agility Course and have adjusted them to better align with other courses at a similar level. Based on your input, we’ve made the following changes to the Advanced Colossal Wyrm Agility Course:

• Increased obstacle XP from 62 to 70.
• Increased XP on completion from 325 to 358.

This should increase XP/hr from the Advanced Course from ~40k XP/hr to ~44k XP/hr.

Another concern you've raised with us was that Amylase rates were still too low compared to Ardougne, and this was especially notable for the Advanced Course. To amend this, we've increased the Termites gained on Advanced Course obstacles, from '8 to 10' to '12 to 15'.

To clarify, Basic Course obstacles and obstacles shared between both courses retain a Termite quantity between 8 to 10, so if you receive Termites on those obstacles you will receive that amount. However, any Termites received on an Advanced Course obstacle will be between the new 12 to 15 value, meaning you should see a noticeable increase to Termites gained when repeatedly doing the Advanced Course.

We hope these two buffs bring the Colossal Wyrm Agility Course more in line with your feedback. We'll pay close attention to your thoughts, so let us know what you think!

Miscellaneous Varlamore Changes

• Brutal Blue Dragon, Baby Blue Dragon and Blue Dragon in the Ruins of Tapoyauik, are now all consistently weak to fire as intended.
• In the Heart of Darkness, we've added a different dialogue to make it clearer when the trial is being reset upon failing to pick the traitor.
• Fixed a bug where players were able to teleport to Cam Torum before meeting the requirement.
• Fixed a bug where players could finish the Witch's Potion quest with the cauldron on Aldarin.
• Fixed a bug where clicking the CKQ code on the Fairy Ring Travel Log wasn't automatically inputting the code.

Other Changes

• Mort Myre fungi will now go into an open Reagent Pouch automatically as you pick them from a log in Mort Myre.
• Ancient Brews and Menaphite Remedies are now correctly mentioned under the Dwarf Weed section of the Gielinor's flora - herbs book.

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 '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.

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