Runescape rejuvenating the Wilderness 2

Change log

21st January – The magic staff from the kraken has been tweaked again. A question has been added to ask whether the Graveyard of Shadows should be made a multi attack area.

20th January – A reduction in the magic defence for the ranged and mage shields. If lava dragons bones are buried on the Lava Dragon Isle, you will get three times the XP. The cost and effectiveness of the new staff has been altered. A question about revenants has also been added.

Introduction

Following on from last week’s blog, we have listened to all your feedback and created a list of questions we would like to poll to you. Please do read this blog carefully and give us any feedback you have.

What we have tried to do for these questions is to take all the ideas on which the community are almost unilaterally in agreement and offer them as a basic upgrade package. All the ideas which have caused some conversation will be polled as separate questions as will any ideas that have come about since the first developer blog.

Basic Level Upgrade

Question: Would you like us to upgrade the Wilderness to the basic level as featured in the latest developer blog called “Rejuvenating the wilderness 2”?

Below you will find a detailed description of what you can expect in the basic level upgrade.

Here is a map of how this would make the Wilderness look and what types of players or loot it would attract there. Below the map you will find more details on the individual updates

Monsters

Monsters are a great way to encourage players to risk their weapons & armour in the Wilderness, so we’d like to add a greater variety of useful monsters to the Wilderness. To make them a bit more exciting we would like to add some higher-level versions of existing creatures including chaos druids, bandits, dark warriors and rogues, with monsters that have high HP but low defence (similar to rock crabs).

New Bosses

The basic level of upgrade will include three new group bosses, a wandering bear, a spider and a skeletal warlord. Although the spider boss is in the single attack area, you and your friends will need to lure it to a multi-attack area in order to kill it. These bosses will have a chance of dropping the dragon pickaxe.

The dragon pickaxe will mine ore at an increased speed (15% faster than the rune pickaxe) and have a special attack which will add 3 temporarily to your mining level – which will be very useful on the runite golems (read more later).

We will also beef up the drop tables of the King Black Dragon and Chaos Elemental as well as adding the dragon Pickaxe.

Demi Bosses

You will also get three demi-bosses in the Wilderness who are vulnerable to a different attack style each. These bosses are designed to be soloable and have a chance of dropping one third of a mage shield or one third of a ranged shield. Once you have all three pieces of either the mage or ranged shield, you can craft them into a shield at the volcano at the North Eastern corner of the Wilderness. The pieces and shields would be tradeable.

Here are the images and stats of the new shields

These shields are designed to be mid level content, and useful in certain situations. For example the range shield would be a great help at the Dagannoth Kings. The negative attack bonuses for other classes are designed to limit their usability in hybrid situations while the lack of defence in one class on each will stop them being overpowered in the God Wars Dungeon for example.

Resources

We think any resources which are added to the Wilderness should be designed to encourage skillers to either bring armour and weapons with them or to collect large amounts of resources as that will encourage PKers to try and kill them.

Although you may be able to collect resources more efficiently in the wild, you will always run the risk of losing everything you have on you if you are killed. So, what ideas have we found?

Ents

The basic level upgrade will introduce a brand new creature to the Wilderness, ents. When you kill an ent, it will lie on the floor as a log and you will need to use your hatchet to cut up the log. You will receive noted logs in your inventory up to the level of logs you can usually chop. The type of hatchet you use increases the chances of getting the best logs you can.

In order to collect this resource you will need to bring armour and weapons to defeat the ents and any person doing this is likely to have a significant amount of noted logs on them.

New fish

We have had a lot of requests for a new fish to be introduced into the game which heals 22. So the basic level of upgrade will include a crab which you can catch from the two fishing spots in the Wilderness, requiring level 85 Fishing & 90 Cooking to cook them. As an extra twist, the bait needed to catch crab will only be available from a spawn of zombies at the ruins in the Wilderness. This will add two new profitable resources in the wilderness while limiting the impact on the shark market.

Red Chinchompas

The basic level of upgrade will also include a red chinchompa hunting ground where you can use an additional trap than you have the level to.

Since chinchompas currently run away when you die carrying them, they aren’t much good as a PK reward. We will change their behaviour so that chinchompas can be picked up by a successful PKer.

New activities

We think activity in the Wilderness will benefit from a few extra activities. So we have pulled together some more ideas here.

Resource Area

The basic level of upgrade will add a new fenced off resource area that contains many high level resources, such as magic trees, ores and fishing spots. In this resource area we would also like to add a Runite Golem. When you kill a Runite Golem it will leave behind a runite rock which can then be mined if you have the Mining level. A higher mining level will also aid in defeating the Runite Golem.

Each time you want to access the mining area you will need to pay a guardian at the gate a sum of money. The guardian is there to protect you from PKers… however there is nothing stopping a PKer from paying the guardian some money to come in and kill you. These guardians are not known for their moral fortitude.

Slow Prayer Recharger

The Demonic Ruins will receive an area effect which recharges your prayer if you are standing in it. This will help to add a focal point for group PvP action. Those that are in control of the ruins are going to have an advantage.

Thieving Chests

The Rogues Castle will receive a new level 84 thieving chest which gives out a selection of noted loot. There will be high level rogues protecting these chests so anyone wanting to get some loot will need to bring some food and armour to keep these rogues off their back… making them an even more appealing target for PKers. Unlike the chests around Ardougne, these chests would not teleport you away when you’ve got the loot.

Other changes to the Wilderness

Non tradeable items

There’s been a lot of discussion about how non-tradeable items are treated on death in PvP. There are many players who want to PK but not risk too much while still making a good fight of it, while there are those who feel frustrated that they can kill someone who is wearing good non-tradeable armour and profit very little from it. The basic level upgrade will change the behaviour of untradeable items so should you die in the Wilderness beyond level 20, any non-tradeable items you drop will appear to your killer as piles of gold.

Looting Bag

One limitation which has been raised for us is that if you kill a player carrying a whole load of resources it isn’t always profitable to pick up what they drop as the PKer will have to drop items from his inventory to do so. The basic level upgrade will introduce the ‘Looting Bag ’. This bag can be obtained as a common drop from monsters in the Wilderness. While you are in the Wilderness, you can store up to 28 tradeable items in this bag; you can’t add anything to the bag outside of the Wilderness. Stacked items will behave in the same way as they do in your inventory. However, you can only empty the bag when you are at a bank.

If you die while carrying a looting bag, it will disappear and the items it contains will drop on the floor for your PKer to loot. You can only carry one looting bag at a time in your inventory.

Edgeville Lever

A lever will appear in Edgeville that will teleport you to the Deserted Keep in the high level Wilderness. When you use the lever in the keep, you will still teleport to Ardougne.

Anti griefing mechanics

We recently have had a discussion about griefing in PvP areas and we believe the best solution is to encourage PKers to move away from the safe zones to PK. We think rejuvenating the Wilderness is a great start to that, but there are some smaller updates we can make to solve some of the common ways of griefing. The basic level of upgrade will revert a crystal bow to a seed should you die with one, and we will remove the spam created when you eat a rock cake.

Individual Wilderness Update questions

There has been a lot of discussion over some of the community’s ideas and this discussion has caused some new ideas to be posted. We felt that we should poll the following ideas individually as they are either new to the discussion or the community has a split opinion about them.

Here you will find a map of how each of these ideas plugs into the overall picture of the Wilderness and what benefits you can expect to get from them.

Teleporting from the KBD

To add some extra risk and to stop players using the KBD lair as a quick exit from the Wilderness, we would like to stop players from teleporting out of the KBD lair.

Question: Should we stop players from teleporting out of the KBD lair?

Rune rocks

The aggressive monsters near the Ice Plateau means adding some rune rocks there will encourage any rune miners to bring armour and weapons.

Question: Should we add three new rune rocks to the Ice Plateau?

Fountain of Rune

We liked the idea of a runic obelisk where you can cast any spell you like without using any runes. You won’t get any XP for the spells you use but we think it will encourage some players to do a bit of alching or super heat some ores when they have run out of nature runes or want to make a bit of extra cash, both are great targets for PKers.

Question: Should we add the Fountain of Rune to the maze area in the far East of level 50 Wilderness?

Wilderness Ditch

We know many of you want the Wilderness Ditch removed and we’d be happy to do it to. The one proviso is that we need to solve the problem which caused the ditch to be included in the first place, but we believe we can do this.

Question: Once we have solved the issue of luring players into the Wilderness using the trade windows, should we remove the Wilderness Ditch?

GWD Dungeon

We also think a new Wilderness dungeon would be a popular draw. In it, we could add God Wars creatures that are escaping up through a crevice from the main God Wars Dungeon west of the Wilderness. In this dungeon, aviansies would drop adamantite bars in banknote form.

Question: Should we add a dungeon of God Wars creatures to the Wilderness?

Kill statistics

We know you love statistics and we are able to offer you the ability to see how many times you have died in the Wilderness and how many players you have killed… and of course the ratio between them. We would need to add some protection to stop players farming alt accounts or friends. So, you will only be credited with a kill if the player dies above level 10 Wilderness.

Question: Should a player be able to see how many times they have been killed in the Wilderness, how many players they have killed in the Wilderness and the ratio between them?

Lava Dragons

There has been a suggestion to replace the red dragons with lava dragons in the Wilderness. Lava dragons will have a combat level of 252 and will drop the dragon visage. There will be a slight increase in the xp you get from lava dragon’s bones, you will get 85xp for burying them. In addition, if you bury the lava dragon’s bones in the Lava Dragon Isle, you will get 3 times the amount of XP you normally do.

Question: Should we replace red dragons with lava dragons in the Wilderness?
Question: If lava dragons enter the Wilderness, should you be able to get three times the amount of XP if you bury their bones in the Lava Dragon Isle?

Revenants

Many of you have asked for revenants to return. The revenants we could add would be localised around the Graveyard of Shadows rather than across the entire Wilderness. Revenants would have a drop table of useful drops but would not drop any items that do not yet exist, such as PvP armour and weaponry or brawler gloves.

Question: Should revenants be added to the Wilderness in the Graveyard of Shadows?

Question: If revenants are added should the Graveyard of Shadows become a multi combat zone?

Single Way Combat

Some players use combat with monsters to avoid combat with players in the Wilderness. Some of you feel this unfair and have asked us to change this. We are able to allow players to interrupt another player’s combat with a monster by attacking the player.

Question: Should we allow players to be able to attack other players in a single way combat area even if either are currently in combat with an NPC?

Limiting the worlds

Many of you have asked us to limit the amount of worlds available to Old School to boost activity on some of the quieter worlds. This is particularly relevant to the Wilderness as increasing activity there is a big aim.

Question: Should we remove 10 worlds from the world list to boost activity on the other worlds?

Dropping tradeable items

If a player thinks they’re about to be killed by a PKer, they might decide to drop their items on the floor to make it harder for the PKer to get the loot. We could make tradeable items visible immediately to all players when they’re manually dropped in the Wilderness, so that PKers could claim them more easily.

Question: Should tradeable items become visible immediately to all players if their owner chooses to drop them on the ground in the Wilderness?

Other questions

In the near future we’ll be launching the new Cave Kraken monster with a level 87 Slayer requirement. We’d like to create a new magic-themed weapon as a drop from this creature. After all, melee has the whip and rangers have the dark bow. Magic isn’t a particularly convenient form of combat for training Slayer, especially as many players use the Lunar spellbook. So we’re considering a new kind of staff that contains its own spell, requiring level 75 Magic to wield. By equipping the staff, you’d automatically be set to autocast this spell; the staff wouldn’t do melee at all, and would have no melee stat requirements. Having received the staff as a drop from the cave kraken, you’d charge it up by feeding it runes. As it casts its spell, it would consume the runes with which you’ve charged it, until it runs out and needs recharging.

Each charge would require 1 death runes, 1 chaos runes, 5 fire runes and 10 coins; elemental staffs could not be used to supply the fire runes. For a player with a Magic level of 75, which is the minimum for wielding the staff, the spell’s max hit would be 20, increasing to 28 as the player’s level rises to 99. Stat-boosts and stat-reduction effects would modify the max hit.

Such a weapon would enable players to switch combat styles to Magic very conveniently, which might be a bit too much for PvP. We’d therefore make the spell work only on monsters. If the PvP community turns out to want a staff like this, we could offer to enable the spell in PvP in a future poll.

The staff would be tradeable. Its casting rate would be 20% faster than for normal spells. It would give +15 bonus to magic attack and magic defence. It would have no melee attack bonuses, but would offer the same melee defence bonuses as a basic staff, i.e. +2 stab defence, +3 slash defence and +1 crush defence.

Question: Should the cave kraken Slayer creature drop a new level 75 staff with a built-in spell for use against monsters? The spell is cast 20% faster than normal spells, with a max hit of 20 at Magic level 75, rising to 28 at level 99. Check the blog for full details.

Question: Should we increase the alch value of Bandos armour very slightly to make it protect on death over crystal equipment and Barrows equipment?

Question: Should we add a level 10 Agility shortcut to shorten the route from Varrock’s west bank to the spirit tree?

Now that we’ve got those little orbs next to the minimap showing your current health, prayer points and run energy, players have asked if they could be made to work like they did in RuneScape before, for toggling Run Mode, toggling some preset ‘quick prayers’, etc.

Question: Should the run energy icon near the minimap toggle your Run Mode setting when you click it?

Question: Should the prayer points icon near the minimap allow you to select some ‘quick prayers’ and toggle them on and off when you click it?

Question: Should the health icon near the minimap allow you to cure poison or cure disease when you click it, provided you have suitable items in your inventory?

Question: Should we increase the cool-down time on the minigame teleports to 1 hour?

Question: Should the God Wars Dungeon altars give a message stating how long before you’ll next be able to use them?

Question: If you are in a chat-channel when you log out, should you automatically attempt to re-join it on login?

Question: Should you have the option to pay some Slayer points to unlock mithril dragons as a new task from Duradel and Nieve?

Question: Should you have the option to pay some Slayer points to unlock aviansies as a new task from Duradel, Chaeldar and Nieve?

Question: Should we add new channels to the minigame grouping panel for finding Black Arm / Phoenix Gang members, finding God Wars Dungeon parties and finding Waterbirth Island parties? These channels would not have teleports associated with them.

Question: Should we add loot broadcasts to the Kalphite Queen, the King Black Dragon, the Dagannoth Kings and the Chaos Elemental?

Question: Should watered saplings have a (w) appended to their names?

Question: Should the Total Level box on the stats interface have a tooltip that shows your total XP?

Question: Should we add 24 more bank spaces to everyone’s bank?

Mods Ash, John C, Mat K and Reach