Things are getting extra wild in the Wilderness! Read on to find out more…
Before we dive in to the Rewards side of things, here’s a tiny sneak peek from one of our test worlds. Shown below is a Pure making use of a Dwarven Multicannon to deliver swift justice to these pesky pirates. You’ll also notice that we’re looking to see how things play out with a southern land-bridge away from the Chaos Temple, allowing you and your friends to try your hand at pincering opponents in, or recreating a Medieval pitched battle against a team charging in from the opposite side and meeting in the middle – dramatic!
This time, we want to focus on the rewards you’ll get from this new content – although there are a few other Wilderness-related poll questions we’d like to hear your thoughts on. Let’s take a look!
We’re doing this because Wilderness Clue steps are risky enough as it is – and nobody dreams of filling their Bank with ill-gotten Shovels!
The image below shows the new location of the step:
For us, this change is primarily just maintaining the status quo – where we make changes to Wilderness content, we’d like to try and keep the associated risk for things like Clue scrolls about the same as before. Of course, some of you might relish the thought of wading through a lava-filled warzone in search of rewards, so we thought we’d ask just in case.
With that out the way, let’s see the rewards!
If you read the initial blog post, nothing in this section will be new to you – except the poll questions, of course!
You’ll also remember that these rewards have a bit of a theme – they’re all tradeable, and they’re all intended to be consumed. Long-term, this means that economically minded players will see consistent profits from this area, as these items remain desirable over time.
Chivalry Prayer Scroll
You’ll remember that one of our primary motives in fleshing out this low Wilderness level hotspot was to give Zerkers, Pures, and other PvP-focussed builds a place to hang out. This area is unique in that it sits between level 9 and 14 Wilderness – the perfect spot for builds like this to get their PvP on! This also means that if you’re still progressing your account and feel like a bit of risk for some juicy reward, you’re more likely to be attacked by players around your Combat level rather than far beyond.
Equally, this first reward is aimed at PvP builds. Chivalry isn’t a new Prayer, although you’d be forgiven for thinking it is, because you’ve probably never used it before!
Chivalry requires 60 Prayer, 65 Defence, and completion of the King’s Ransom Knight Waves. In return, it offers a boost to Defence, Strength and Attack. It’s essentially a weaker version of Piety… and thus, it remains unused.
But you know what they say… Chivalry’s not dead! This consumable Prayer Scroll gives lower-level players the option to use a Prayer they wouldn’t otherwise have access to. It also evens the odds between players with drastically different builds – although the effects of the Prayer are marginal, it makes fights between level 45 Defence Zerkers and 70 Defence Mid-Levels a bit less of a foregone conclusion.
Finally, Chivalry is mutually exclusive with Steel Skin, Ultimate Strength and Incredible Reflexes. Combining these three Prayers into one is a valuable learning tool for players who are still getting used to the Prayer-switching demands of alternative account builds, since they’ll only have to switch to one Prayer rather than two or three.
The one-use Scroll will unlock Chivalry permanently, so long as you have 60 Prayer to use it. Don’t worry – you can still unlock the Prayer the old-fashioned way if you prefer.
We’d also like to adjust some of Chivalry’s bonuses. As a team, we’re committed to giving this Prayer a little extra oomph, but we’re torn between two very different approaches.
Option A: Give Chivalry 15% Defence, 18% Strength, and 20% Attack.
This approach leans into Accuracy bonuses while lowering the usual Defence bonus. Higher Attack has more value against high Defence targets than low Defence ones, so its returns are greater when punching up.
While you lose some Defence in this scenario, we feel that players in the 60-69 Prayer space are usually fighting NPCs whose damage can be mitigated entirely by Protection Prayers, so Defence isn’t all that useful. On the other hand, players taking on the Inferno or the Theatre of Blood might want that extra Defence so they can tank hits from multiple combat styles.
Option B: 20% Defence, 18% Strength, and 18% Attack.
This approach simply buffs the attack boost, increasing it from 15% to 18% without altering Strength and Defence. This puts Chivalry above Incredible Reflexes while keeping it below Piety in terms of power.
While this won’t give you quite as much raw Accuracy versus high-defence enemies, it’s a more rounded approach to the Prayer and will ensure that players retain their all-important defensive stats.
Ultimately, we’re open to either approach, so we’d like you to help us make a decision!
Adamant Seeds
Sermon’s over, time for a spot of gardening! You’ll remember the 40 Mithril Seeds from the Waterfall Quest – but did you know that their uses go beyond growing pretty flowers?
Planting Mithril Seeds moves you one tile westward, even when frozen. In PvP, this unusual quirk becomes a great way to get yourself behind an obstacle and break line of sight so that you can log out – or stop a player logging out on top of you while you’re frozen. This… imaginative use of floral arrangements adds a little spice to PvP, but it can be a bit predictable.
That’s why Adamant Seeds are here to revolutionise Wilderness gardening. They are the same as Mithril Seeds in every respect, except that when planted they move players one tile east.
Like their Mithril counterparts, Adamant Seeds are consumed on use. They’re a useful tool for all kinds of PvP activities (or for circumnavigating Gielinor in the slowest way imaginable), so we expect them to become a consistent source of income for players daring enough to obtain them.
Who knows, by the time 2044 rolls around we might add Runite Seeds to the mix…
Blip Blocking Scroll
Those Elder Chaos Druids sure do love their teleports – although the same can’t be said for their unfortunate victims. If you’re sick of being teleported around all over the place, you’ll be glad to hear that this handy Scroll will put a stop to it.
Like the Chivalry Prayer Scroll, this is a one-time, tradeable unlock that will vastly improve players’ Pirate-slaying experience. Since it’s a reasonably rare drop, we’re also considering giving players the ability to block Abyssal Demons’ teleportation attacks. While this would make the Scroll a lot more useful, we’re concerned that it might buff Slayer too much. In times like these, we let you be the judge!
That’s all on the rewards front. We’re not looking to give the Undead Pirates a whole bunch of fancy uniques – we want them to provide consistent loot, with the odd rare tradeable to boost those profits. If that’s something you’re interested in, head to the polls and vote YES!
While it’s not strictly a reward, this cool-looking pirate ship that you’ll find slammed into the Wilderness’ eastern shore houses some chests which you’ll be able to open using Zombie pirate keys, an uncommon drop from Undead pirates. When unlocked using a key, these chests will give you an additional roll on their loot table and double any loot received – including uniques! The aim here is to spread a little bit of the action into Single-way combat zones for players who are so-inclined, but keep the heart of the update in a Multi-combat moshpit.
If you’ve been here a while, you might notice that the original poll for these features involved the Wilderness Resource Area. We’d actually like to revisit that separately for a more significant overhaul – especially having seen this fantastic suggestion from he box jonge!
In the meantime…
Fountain of Rune
This mysterious obelisk sprung into being almost ten years ago in March 2014!
If you don’t know, the Fountain of Rune provides unlimited Runes to anyone within its line of sight, which means that you can cast any spell you like indefinitely, so long as you don’t mind missing out on XP!
Luckily, players have decided to use these infinite powers responsibly, and the Fountain’s main use is as a hotspot for enchanting jewellery and Crossbow Bolts.
We’d like to increase its utility by allowing players to cast Alchemy spells on multiple items at once while at the Fountain of Rune. This buff will scale with Wilderness Diary tiers, and will let players mow through huge stacks of items, making rapid dents in the ol’ Slayer loot tab.
Here’s how we’d like this buff to scale:
- Easy: 5 of any given item alched at once.
- Medium: 10 of any given item alched at once.
- Hard: 20 of any given item alched at once.
- Elite: 30 of any given item alched at once.
To put that in perspective, let’s take the humble Rune Arrow. It’s a real chore to alchemize the huge stacks of Arrows you’ll accrue over your adventuring career, but they feel a bit too precious to just drop on the ground. At the time of writing, a single Rune Arrow is worth a meagre 83 GP on the Grand Exchange but can be alchemized into 240 GP. Take into account that 150 GP spent on the requisite Nature Rune, and you net a profit of just 7 GP. Not really worth it, is it?
Remove the cost of the Nature Runes from the equation, however, and you’re looking at some real profits – especially if you’ve diligently ticked off your Diary tasks and you can alchemize 30 Arrows at a time. We reckon a speedy speller could cast High Level Alchemy around 1,200 times an hour, which leaves you with – one moment while we do the maths – fat stacks of cash.
The catch, of course, is that the Fountain of Rune is in an extremely dangerous area, at the northernmost tip of the Wilderness, and you’ll have to bring the stack of whatever you’re looking to Alchemize in the first place! It’s multi-combat, and you receive a logout timer after casting any spell – so you’d better be ready to risk it all. One of the big reasons we’re buffing the area is that it already allows players to adjust their level of risk to their comfort levels. You don’t have to bring anything you aren’t willing to lose, but for the very brave, the rewards are well worth the risk.
Now, the numbers we quoted above are open to adjustments in line with player feedback, but before we decide on the nitty gritty we want to know if this is a change the community wants. You know what to do…
Wilderness Agility Course
This spooky course has seen better days, having declined in popularity somewhat since it was released over twenty years ago.
It provides some solid XP rates for Level 52 Agility but comes with some heavy caveats. It’s hard to get to, you miss out on Marks of Grace while you’re there, and alternatives in this level range like Hallowed Sepulchre Floor 1 give you comparable XP rates with more lucrative rewards.
It’s time we showed the Wilderness Agility Course some love with a fully opt-in system that gives slightly boosted XP rates and leaves you with some spending cash.
To opt-in, you’ll need to deposit 100,000 GP into a pillar (or chest, we’re not sure yet) located at the end of the course – which is conveniently also the start of the course! Unlike other Wilderness deposits, if you die to another player within the course, this fee is removed from the game completely – presumably collected by the dreaded Wilderness Bankers – instead shifting the focus to the loot that you’ve accumulated by engaging with the content itself. This also includes deaths in the ‘underground’ areas reached by, er, falling off the course. Embarrassing…
After opting-in, you’ll receive loot every time you complete a full lap and slap that pillar (or chest). This loot embiggens (real word) with every lap you complete without logging out or leaving the area. The loot in question is made up of delicious alchables and Blighted items – so you’re free to go and do a bit of PKing after your workout.
Here’s how the loot scales up:
- 1-10 laps – roughly 10,000 GP worth of loot per lap.
- 11-30 laps – roughly 20,000 GP worth of loot per lap.
- 31- 60 laps – roughly 30,000 GP worth of loot per lap.
- 61+ laps – roughly 40,000 GP worth of loot per lap.
At current rates (about 80 laps per hour) you’ll get about 2.2 million GP worth of loot in your first hour, and 3.2 million GP for every hour beyond that. Assuming you’re not interrupted, of course…
Touching the pillar (or chest!) will also restore your Run Energy, so you can indulge in some heavier gear and fight back against anyone causing trouble – and free up some Inventory slots you would otherwise spend on Stamina Potions!
Independently, we also plan to give players tokens at the end of each lap. Each one grants 200 XP (subject to change following feedback, of course), but stacking them up grants additional XP multipliers in the manner of Pest Control or Bounty Hunter’s rewards:
- 1-10 tokens grants the usual XP (200 XP per token).
- 11-50 tokens grants an additional 5% XP (210 XP per token).
- 51 – 100 tokens grants an additional 10% XP (220 XP per token).
- 101+ tokens grants an additional 15% XP (230 XP per token).
Assuming you trade all your tokens in at once, this means that your first hour nets around 17,000 bonus XP, your second hour nets 18,200 XP, and every hour beyond that gets you 18,400 XP. That’s on top of the XP you earn from actually doing the course, by the way. Stack your tokens and stick it out, and you could earn a whopping 65,900 XP per hour if left uninterrupted – about the same as you’d get from the Prifddinas Agility Course.
The catch is that these tokens are untradeable and lost on death – so you’ll need to carefully manage your tolerance for risk.
Speaking of risk, our final change is to add more skeletons (alive ones, obviously) around the course to make insta-logging less prevalent. Plus, those boney fellows could stand to build some muscle!
Other Improvements
Finally, we have a rapid-fire list of minor tweaks to Wilderness content. Okay. Deep breath…
- Make the respawn timer of most Wilderness NPCs 9 seconds to reduce downtime on Wilderness Slayer Tasks.
- Add more of the following NPCs:
- Bandits at the Wilderness Bandit Camp.
- Dark Warriors at the Dark Warriors’ Fortress.
- Rogues at Rogues’ Castle.
- Ankou, Hellhounds, Ice Giants and Jellies in the Wilderness Slayer Caves.
- Shift the furniture in the Pirates’ Hideout so players can place a cannon.
- Add Rune Full Helmets, Medium Helmets and Scimitars and Dragon Longswords to the loot table for members-only high-level Bandits.
- Add more frequent coin drops to the high-level Rogue variants.
- Increase Superior monster spawn rate by 10% while on a Wilderness Slayer Task.
- Allow players to purchase multiple imbued God Capes for a cost of 500,000 GP. The current method of obtaining more capes will remain unchanged.
Aaaaand breathe. Oops, deep breath again for the poll questions –
EXHALE.
That’s a wrap on this poll! We don’t anticipate any of these changes to be absolute game-changers but keeping up the momentum with these kinds of quick, scattershot improvements helps us breathe new life into areas across the game, without impacting the development teams’ other work.
The poll for all of the above questions will open on Friday, March 1st and closes on Friday, March 8th. In the meantime, stay safe out there – and remember to Protect Item!
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The Old School Team.