Looking for Combat and PvM changes? That was the first Summer Sweep-Up blog! You might also want to check out the separate update which dealt with Tombs of Amascut Loot Changes.Today though, we’re kicking things off with a fan favourite: Slayer.
Once you get to grips with Slayer, you’ll unlock access to great training methods, lucrative loot tables, and exclusive bosses. But if you’ve ever introduced a friend to this iconic skill, you’ll know that actually understanding it is half the battle.
Today’s changes fix some long-standing issues with Slayer. We’re giving you more flexibility when setting up your Tasks and more time to actually slay things, instead of scheming up ways to scam Turael.
Block List Changes
Ever since Krystilia arrived, players have been begging for a Wilderness-specific block list. Who can blame them? It’s laborious, time-consuming and expensive to rejig your block list every time you want to dabble in Wilderness Slayer and then swap back to regular Slayer afterwards. We’ve been unable to deliver this in the past because it’s proved too technically challenging.
But now, we have the technology, and we want to go even bigger: give every Slayer master their very own block list. You won’t need to unset and reset your blocks as you progress, and you’ll be able to optimise your block list to achieve different goals. A Turael block list that gets rid of nuisance tasks while you’re boosting points, a Duradel block list set up for the best XP per hour, a Nieve list for maximum Inferno Tasks – the world’s your oyster!
But won’t this mean you’re throwing Points away? No! As of this update, different Slayer masters will have different prices for blocks:
- Turael/Aya and Spria: 40 Points
- Mazchna/Achtryn: 50 Points
- Vannaka: 60 Points
- Chaeldar: 70 Points
- Konar: 80 Points
- Nieve/Steve: 90 Points
- Duradel/Kuradal and Krystilia: 100 Points
When these changes go live, your current block list will be reset and any Points spent will be refunded. If you’re cringing at the thought of having to set up the entire list again while waiting for the worst Tasks to pop up, think again… we’re also doing a Slayer Master UI refresh!
Going forwards, every Slayer Master will be able to show you which Tasks they can currently assign, the % chance of them assigning each Task and the quantity of monsters you might be asked to slay on each Task. Best of all, you’ll be able to block all the Tasks you want from this same interface, without having to wait to receive the Task. If you really like doing things the old-fashioned way, you can still wait and block. It’s up to you.
Early-Game Point Changes
One of the issues facing new Slayers is that Slayer Points can be hard to come by if you’re engaging with the skill ‘as intended’. No new player wants to hear: “That Task sucks, what you should do is 49 Turael Tasks killing rats and birds, then a Konar Task, then do that again five times and then you can start playing.”
We’re counteracting this by giving Mazchna and Vannaka a little nudge. Slayer Points aren’t exactly a precious resource and we reckon these two are being a little stingy when it comes to appropriately rewarding newer players.
Currently, Mazchna gives 2 Points per Task and Vannaka gives 4 Points per Task. Here’s what we’re suggesting instead:
Mazchna
- 6 Points per Task.
- 30 Points every 10th Task.
- 90 Points every 50th Task.
- 150 Points every 100th Task.
- 210 Points every 250th Task.
- 300 Points every 1000th Task.
Vannaka
- 8 Points per Task.
- 40 Points every 10th Task.
- 120 Points every 50th Task.
- 200 Points every 100th Task.
- 280 Points every 250th Task.
- 400 Points every 1000th Task.
We’re not expecting players to spend too long with either of these Slayer Masters, but this change should mean they’re able to skip or block a Task from time to time without spoiling their overall progression.
Unlock Point Costs
Outside of skipping and blocking Tasks, you’ve also got the option to extend them, unlock new Tasks, add some QoL improvements to existing Tasks, or unlock new features like Superior Slayer creatures.
We’re making progression a bit more sensible:
- Reduce ‘Bigger and Badder’ from 150 Points to 50 Points. There are a lot of low-level Slayer monsters with Superior variants, but by the time most players unlock this perk they’re well past these and skip them entirely unless they wind up Turael-skipping in the future.
- Task Storage from 1,000 to 500 Points. This system’s pretty cool, but only sees niche usage. We’re hoping that bumping the initial unlock cost down (and refunding you the difference if you’ve already purchased this) should make it a more appealing unlock!
- Reduce ‘Ring Bling’ from 300 Points to 150 Points. There are so many higher-priority unlocks early-on that this one gets deprioritised. By the time you have enough spare Points to consider it, it’s barely even worth the unlock.
- ‘Slug Salter’ and ‘Reptile Freezer’ reduced to 10 Points. These cost far too many Points for where they’re actually relevant, especially considering how minor their impact is.
We initially considered Task unlocks like lizardmen or aviansies free to toggle, but we’re still on the fence. Mostly, we’re concerned about encouraging ‘unfun’ gameplay loops where players are sat around toggling things in the UI to try and game the chance for a better Task. We could circumvent this problem with a reduced cost to toggle something on or off after the initial unlock, but we want to hear your thoughts before we move forward.
Dragon Tasks
As part of Project Rebalance last year, we removed Dragons from the Task lists of some early-game Slayer Masters, which was well-received. The problem is that even later in the game, there are so many types of dragon Task that they still crop up more often than some of you would like.
While we think blue dragon Tasks have their place (either for Irons banking Prayer XP or players wanting to fight Vorkath) and Black Dragon Tasks are a quick couple of points at the Baby Black Dragons in Taverley, Metal Dragons are a different beast entirely.
We’d like to combine bronze, iron, steel, mithril, adamant and rune dragons into a single ‘metal dragons’ Task. We’d also bump the ‘default’ quantity to 20-40 and let you extend Metal Dragons Tasks up to ~150-200. This means in theory you could slay 200 rune dragons at a time, if you like.
The weightings of existing Tasks would be combined into metal dragons Tasks, but a little lower than the sum of their parts, meaning you’d see better Tasks more often.
Ultimately this means that rather than having multiple ‘feels-bad’ skip Tasks, you wind up with just the one – or you can block them out entirely if you’d like. It’s worth noting that with some of the Defence changes outlined in the first Summer Sweep-Up blog, they’ll likely be a little more appealing than they currently are – so maybe give a Task or two a go before blocking them forever!
If you’ve paid for something like ‘I hope you mith me’ then we’ll be able to refund you the Points, and all of your blocks are getting reset anyway so you can tweak those to your liking.
Herbs
This last change addresses a common point of frustration with loot from mid-game Tasks.
You’ve saved your Points, grabbed the elusive Herb Sack, set out on another Task and oops, suddenly your Inventory is full of noted herbs. The space-saving QoL unlock you worked hard for isn’t saving you much space at all!
We’d like to make low quantities of noted herb drops unnoted, so that they can easily be stacked in your trusty Sack. Here’s a full list of creatures whose noted herbs we’d like to convert to unnoted herb drops, keep in mind that they only drop 1-3 herbs at a time, so your Herb sack should prove pretty useful here!
- Adamant Dragons
- Basilisk Knights
- Fossil Island Wyverns
- Lobstrosities
- Ancient Zygomites
- Shayzien Criminals (found in the Intelligence Gathering activity on Kourend)
- Lizardman Shamans
- Drakes
Golembane and Gargoyles
This one is perhaps Slayer-adjacent, so it makes sense to start here.
If you’re wondering what on earth ‘Golembane’ is, take a look at the Barronite Mace, which boasts a Damage bonus against golems. Outside of free-to-play, it’s not all that useful.
We’re looking to give those same qualities to the Granite Hammer, a 30% increase in damage against stone-y enemies. Naturally you might be thinking “Okay cool, but when am I ever going to kill golems?” and you’re totally right, which is why we’re adding more enemies into this pool with the goal of giving the Granite Hammer a use beyond training Strength on a 50 Attack Pure.
This means we’d be giving the Granite Hammer a 30% damage increase against any gargoyle (by giving them the ‘golem’ tag), including Dusk, Dawn and Superiors. This should make it a super appealing option and less of a feels-bad drop from the Grotesque Guardians. It might even become your best option!
Mage Training Arena: Rune Pouch
Had enough of the Mage Training Arena? We didn’t think so! Especially with all the QoL improvements it received in 2024’s Poll 81.
If you’re dreading the thought of Last Man Standing, or if you don’t want to spend hours Slaying without a Rune Pouch, then boy have we got a thematically appropriate change for you!
For the low, low cost of 150 Telekinetic points, 150 Graveyard points, 1,500 Enchantment points and 200 Alchemy points, you could be the proud owner of a brand-new Rune Pouch. It’s the same as the existing Rune Pouch, but this should be a nice middle-ground in terms of ‘time to obtain’ between LMS and Slayer, while making a whole lot of sense – and banking you some handy Magic XP along the way.
Moon Keys
Before you say it: the rates on these are not bugged and have been working as intended. Now we’ll say it: what we intended here was absolutely miles off what’s reasonable for the Combat halves. Skilling halves were more common than intended on account of Shooting Stars providing them to players.
We’re adjusting the formula here to make the Tooth Half of (Moon) Key considerably more attainable. Here’s what that looks like from some common sources:
| NPC | Current Rate | Proposed Rate |
| Frost Crab | ~1/11,000 | ~1/1,400 |
| Blue Dragons (within the Ruins of Tapoyauik) | ~1/1,500 | ~1/250 |
| Amoxliatl | ~1/500 | ~1/125 |
| Hueycoatl | ~1/150 | ~1/75 |
Keep in mind that Varlamore: The Final Dawn will feature more sources of these key halves too, which should have drop rates in line with these adjusted offerings.
We’re also adding the Helmet of the Moon to the Collection Log. It’s tough to obtain but it is a collectible, and you have every right to flex it to your friends! If you’ve already got one, then you’ll be able to use it on the Collection Log item to update your log.
Arceuus Spell Tweaks
Sending us off are a few teeny tweaks to the rune costs of certain Arceuus spells.
We reduced the Fire Rune cost of Demonbane spells shortly after Yama’s release, since it was a tad overbearing on extended trips. We’re proposing a few more changes in a similar vein, where some rune costs are outliers in terms of progression.
We’re adjusting Dark Demonbane to cost 1 Soul Rune, 4 Chaos Runes and 7 Fire Runes. This means you’re swapping a Soul Rune for Chaos Runes. These spells shine a little earlier in your journey (or against Yama himself) and we felt that 2 Soul Runes was a bit much for the frequency with which you’re casting these spells, especially since they require 90 Runecraft to make yourself!
We’re also tweaking the rune cost for summoning Thralls. Our logic here is simplifying the number of different runes you’re required to bring to make the Arceuus spellbook work. We’re proposing that Greater Resurrection spells should have their 5 Blood Rune costs adjusted to 4 Soul Runes. While this feels a little at odds with the move away from high Soul Rune costs for Dark Demonbane, our rationale is that you’re casting these far less often than repeated Demonbane spells, and this alleviates some Inventory pressure for ‘proper’ Arceuus usage.
With that, you’re up to speed! Let us know what you make of this batch of proposals. It’s small, but mighty! If all goes smoothly, you’ll see them in-game later this summer.
Until next time!
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