Quest Month Kick Off, TFA Tweaks & More

A November to remember is here! In our RuneFest Summit poll, you voted yes for a November full of adventure, with at least one quest releasing every week! To catch up, check out the details in the dedicated blog post for the RuneFest Summit and its rewards poll, but for now, let's dive into week one of Quest Month. Drumroll please... Quests in Old School come in all shapes and sizes, and Quest Month is all about celebrating how varied questing often is. With that in mind, Quest Month kicks off with not one, but two new quests! One of these is a humorous early game quest focused on helping out newer players. The other quest couldn't be more the opposite, with it being a dark and serious story that takes a hands off approach, encouraging you to solve a grim mystery with little guidance - get ready to dust off your detective hats!

Given the whole point of Quest Month is surprise, we'll not share any more here. You'll have to hop in game and experience them for yourself. That said, what we can talk about, is rewards... The first quest will reward you with the following:

• •1 Quest Point
• •4 Combat Lamps each rewarding 500 XP, allowing you to choose whichever combat skill you want to progress at

And the second quest will grant:

• •1 Quest Points
• •2,500 Thieving XP
• •2,500 Agility XP
• •Amulet of Sight (see below)

With this new amulet, we wanted to bridge the gap at lower levels and give fresh-faced adventurers a little extra Ranged Attack bonus early on in their journey. The Amulet of Sight provides +10 Ranged Attack, is tradeable, and has no level requirements. This amulet is awarded for free upon quest completion, but you can also purchase more from Hudson himself if you wish. For new players, buying an amulet from the GE for a quick stat boost may not seem like an obvious early step. For iron players, reaching 55 Slayer and securing a Necklace of Fangs can take time. The Amulet of Sight offers a cheap (the first one's on us!) and accessible way to get a little extra Ranged Attack bonus while working toward bigger upgrades. That's a wrap for these two quests for now! We've never done something like Quest Month before, so this is an experimental experience. We hope you enjoy this week's quest offerings, and we can't wait to hear what you think of them. Overall, we hope Quest Month gives you that 2007 era feeling of logging in and finding new adventures to embark on! Now, let's move onto the questing improvements…

While we're at it, we've also made some questing-related Quality of Life improvements, especially for those just finding their feet in Gielinor! That said, the majority of these changes also benefit our more seasoned 'Scapers.

We've added two new options to the Settings menu for sorting quests:

• •Show quests in progress
• •Show completed quests

The "Show quests in progress" setting is set to "Always show first" by default, meaning your quests that are in progress will always be shown at the top of the quest list. These are shown in order of when they were last progressed, so the quest you're currently doing will always be shown first. Likewise, the "Show completed quests" setting is set to "Always show last" by default, displaying quests you've completed at the bottom of the list.

The "Use sort setting" toggle under "Show quests in progress" or "Show completed quests" will remove these sections from your quest list entirely, and instead sort any quests that are in those states into their respective categories (free/members/miniquests/completed) just like they did before this change. As before, there is also an option to "hide" any in-progress and completed quests from the list entirely, should you wish to.

Previously, some of the recommended quests (that you get when you sort the quest list by the 'Starter' option) weren't perfectly ideal for new adventurers of Gielinor. We've now improved the order of the recommended quests so that they are more fitting. Respectively, the Activity Advisor has also been changed to recommend these quests for beginners.

Previously a miniquest, Daddy's Home has been really useful for new players, introducing them to Construction. However, players often missed it because it lacked a minimap icon. We've now converted Daddy's Home into a fully fledged quest, so it has a minimap icon and is easier for new players to discover!

You can now also find it in the quest list, and it rewards 1 Quest Point upon completion. We'll be closely monitoring your response to the conversion of Daddy's Home, so let us know if you think other miniquests would benefit from this as well - particularly those that teach cute noobs important aspects of the game, or are part of a larger storyline, where ensuring players can easily find them becomes important.

Previously, a very small number of quests didn't reward any XP, most of which were the free-to-play ones that new players could embark on. To help out beginners with little bits of extra XP, we've updated it so quests that previously didn't reward XP now do! This change also makes it consistent with the other quests, and better teaches fresh 'Scapers that quests are an important part of game progression. If you have already completed the quests listed below in the blog, you can claim these additional XP rewards through Perdu or the Lumbridge Guide. Likewise, the XP lamps can be claimed from the relevant NPCs giving the quests such as:

• •Shield of Arrav: King Roald
• •Romeo and Juliet: Romeo
• •Ernest the Chicken: Veronica
• •Demon Slayer: Aris
• •Demon Slayer — 2 Combat Lamps with each one giving 1,000 XP
• •Romeo & Juliet — A lamp giving 500 XP
• •Shield of Arrav — A lamp giving 500 XP
• •Ernest the Chicken — A lamp giving 500 XP
• •Prince Ali Rescue — 500 Smithing XP & 500 Crafting XP
• •Black Knights Fortress — 2 Combat Lamps, each one giving 1,000 XP
• •Pirate's Treasure — 800 Cooking XP
• •Rune Mysteries — 500 Runecraft XP
• •The Corsair Curse — 1,200 Firemaking XP
• •Below Ice Mountain — 1,200 Mining XP
• •Clock Tower — 1,000 Firemaking XP
• •Family Crest — 2,000 Mining XP, 2,000 Smithing XP & 2,000 Crafting XP
• •Lost City — 1,500 Woodcutting XP & 1,500 Crafting XP
• •Merlin's Crystal — 1,000 Firemaking XP
• •Sheep Herder — 1,000 Hunter XP
• •Tale of the Righteous — 1,500 Mining XP
• •Throne of Miscellania — 1,000 Woodcutting XP, 1,000 Mining XP, 1,000 Fishing XP & 1,000 Farming XP
• •Troll Stronghold — 2,000 Agility XP

All XP rewards are given on quest completion, except Demon Slayer, which you can claim later from Aris in Varrock Market.

To better understand which quests you love and don't love, we've introduced a setting that lets you rate a quest from 0 to 5 via a chatbox prompt when you complete it.

This is enabled by default, but you can disable it in the Settings menu if you'd rather not see this prompt.

We've standardised the wording of sword items to 'shortswords' for consistency. Previously, some items were referred to as swords while others were called shortswords, so we've made this change to avoid confusion and make things clearer for newer players.

One of the most important early-game areas is, without a doubt, Lumbridge. Your experience in Lumbridge also shapes the rest of your journey in Gielinor, making it essential for both new and experienced players alike. However, over the years, the area has been filled with tutors and other helper NPCs, and many of these updates could have meshed better with the guidance already available. In addition, most of these NPCs' dialogue needs updating to be more accurate, immersive, and in line with the universe. With this game update, we're restoring Lumbridge as a fun, immersive area for new players! As a fun side effect, this work should also make Lumbridge feel much closer to its pre-2007 era, delivering an even greater nostalgia hit. Here's a list of the improvements we've made:

• •We combined the three combat tutors into a single character, Harlan, and updated his dialogue to better fit Gielinor.
• •The following tutors are renamed, and their dialogue is updated to be more 2007scape:
• •The Woodsman tutor is renamed to Wilfred.
• •The Smithing apprentice is renamed to Feoras. He's also given a new shop that sells some low level combat equipment.
• •The Crafting tutor is renamed to Cadmus. Also, since he was previously set up in Sigmund’s bedroom, we've tweaked the upper level of the castle to give it more thematic coherence.
• •The Fishing tutor is renamed to Finlay.
• •The Mining tutor is renamed to Monlum.
• •The dialogue of the following NPCs is also updated to be more in-universe:
• •The Doomsayer
• •Count Check
• •The Lumbridge Guide
• •The following tutors are removed and replaced:
• •The Prayer tutor is removed. Instead, Father Aereck gives out some useful Prayer tips.
• •The Cooking tutor is removed. Instead, the Cook in the castle gives out some useful Cooking tips.
• •The Banking tutor is removed and replaced with a normal banker.
• •The following tutors are relocated:
• •Arthur the Clue Hunter is relocated to the Grand Exchange in Varrock.
• •Deadman Nigel moved to the Grand Exchange in Varrock on normal worlds, while staying in Lumbridge on Deadman worlds.
• •The Leagues tutor has also moved to the Grand Exchange in Varrock.
• •Hatius Cosantius has always been a bit out of place in Lumbridge. While OSRS has plenty of humorous characters, we feel Hatius isn't the best fit for the experience we're aiming to create for brand-new 'Scapers. To make Lumbridge more beginner-friendly, we've relocated him to the Falador pub, where he feels more at home. Mikasi, the former Magic tutor, is taking his place in Lumbridge and will now serve as the task master.
• •While our previous proposals to remove Hatius entirely did not pass, we feel that moving him to a more fitting location is the right decision to make here while respecting the past.
• •The Ironman tutor remains in Lumbridge but is no longer visible to non-Ironmen.

We're just one day away from the release of our toughest challenge yet! Death's been waiting to test your mettle and eagerly awaits your arrival... What's even better is that we're putting all of the preliminary features to make Hardcore Worlds work out with the release. This means that not only can you progress to Death's Office from Tutorial Island by speaking to Death's Delegate! Death's Delegate is how you become a part of Hardcore Worlds and is found by the Iron Tutor on Tutorial Island. After becoming a hardcore you can finish the tutorial like normal and wait in Death's Office until the worlds open tomorrow!

We'll activate the worlds at 11:00 UTC via a hotfix, which means if you've prepared ahead of time you'll be able to hop straight over once the challenge begins as there will be no additional downtime! A broadcast will be sent out confirming when the worlds have opened.

We've heard for a while now that transferring bonds to your other characters is a bit of a pain, and with the soon-to-be Jagex Account migration we've got a better way for you to self-gift your Bonds! With this update we've included a new option on the Bond Interface to allow you to easily send one of your character's bonds to any other character within your Jagex Account to give them membership. This process does not give the other character the bond itself, but applies the membership you would receive from redeeming that bond to the selected different character instead!

Simply select the name of the account from the dropdown menu on the top-right of the interface and select the membership you'd like to apply to it! This means you won't need to convert the Bond into the tradeable version for this particular transfer. This system will likely be down for around ~30 minutes after the game update while we do some final checks and testing. Mobile users will need to update their game in order to use this function correctly, which may take a little time for your device to register if the update is available!

It's been nearly ten years since our last name release and you could say that we're quite overdue another one, until this week that is! For those unfamiliar with a Name Release we essentially take a bunch of character names that aren't currently available and release them for you to claim for yourself. These names are taken from abandoned characters which must have been inactive for at least 2 years AND either been permanently banned, has never been a member or membership was only paid in bonds, which ended at least 5 years ago. To claim a name, you must be a RuneScape member, with a skill total of at least 800 in OSRS or 900 in RuneScape. We'll be releasing character names starting with the letter A and continuing to release batches with groups of letters in varied batches each weekday until all names have been released. Names starting with numbers will be released in groups across the final few batches. We'll be releasing a newspost on the first day to announce the official beginning of this year's name release and we'll keep that updated each time a new batch has been released. Check out the full newspost for more information!

We're headed back to The Fractured Archive with another set of fixes and a full run-down on loot mechanics. We're waiting until next week to make balancing changes, but we'll provide a bit of context on where our heads are at at the end of this segment. Before we get stuck into a bunch of numbers, let's take a look at the tweaks and fixes making their way into today's update!

• •Adjusted the loot room behaviour so that chests don't appear until the braziers are lit. No more spoiling your purples!
• •Added a circular clickbox underneath Archive Guardian and Ocellus P3. These aren't visually represented by a shadow for visibility purposes, but should make these bosses more consistent.
• •We know there's a lot of chatter around the clickbox on Ocellus' sword during P3 and P4, unfortunately our engine currently doesn't support is being able to make a clickbox that ignores parts of a model. If this ever becomes a technical possibility then we'll come back to address frustrations here.
• •Increased the immunity window after using an orange portal to teleport to another quadrant during Ocellus P2, which should prevent players from taking additional damage if they teleport very soon after the portal appears.
• •Made the navigators to take you out of rooms arrive slightly faster at Ezekiel, Xarth and the Dagon'hai trio.
• •Adjusted room completion behaviour so that your Prayer is turned off at the end of a room.
• •Fixed a bug where the Obligator wasn't treating Ezekiel as a 3x3 NPC during P2.
• •Fixed a bug where censers around Ocellus' arena could occasionally proc without applying their expected effect.
• •Fixed a bug where projectiles from a portal during Ocellus P2 could hit twice if you moved along their path as they travelled. Note that you'll still be hit twice if you're hit by both sets of portals, but shouldn't be able to take multiple instances of damage from the same axis.
• •Fixed a bug where Ocellus occasionally wasn't playing an animation before firing projectiles during P1.
• •Extended the duration of The Blade's clickbox during Ocellus P2 so that players no longer misclick and drag themselves into the middle of the room at the end of the phase.
• •Removed a 'loading line' from a mapsquare in Ocellus' arena.
• •Added a small delay after Ocellus' Void Spin (Prayer punish) attack before he can destroy a quadrant, since these could overlap a little and result in confusing visuals.
• •Prevented Ocellus from pushing you out from underneath him during his 'Untether' attack in P3, since this could push you into damaging attacks and prove quite annoying.
• •Prevented Ocellus from pushing you off of some tiles at the start of the fight. The affected tiles are those that are due to be destroyed in P3.
• •Fixed a bug where Moia's Magic attacks could be heard by other players in the raid, making them louder than intended for players in groups since you'd hear your own effect and then the effects of your teammates too.
• •Lowered the volume of Xarth's Ranged attack sound effect.
• •Added a sound effect for when Ascension rocks 'rotate' in the lobby area.
• •Prevented Ezekiel's enrage animation to start P2 from being overwritten by his stun animation if he's been hit by swords.
• •Fixed a bug where the Cauldron exploding at the end of the Dagon'hai trio could kill some of the trio. You should have the satisfaction of dealing those last hits for yourselves!
• •Fixed a bug where the bank in the lobby would re-open itself after closing if you'd dragged yourself to the bank from a short distance away.
• •Added a very rare (1 in 68,120) chance to obtain the Rock Golem from Ascension rocks.

Now let's talk loot! As is customary, we provide drop rates and loot mechanics two weeks after an update's released, so we'll take you on a deep-ish dive of what's going on beneath the hood in TFA. It's important to note that we are likely to make some tweaks here with next week's Game Update, so we're keen to see what you make of the numbers as-is to see whether or not it matches up with the conversations we're having behind the scenes. We'll start by saying that TFA is a little close to CoX or TOA in that it rewards individual performance a little more than somewhere like TOB. So, what does that look like?

• •Each room inside TFA is 'normalised'. This means that every room awards a total of 100 contribution, but this 100 is split between all of the players in the room based on their damage.
• •Damage dealt to minions also counts towards this total damage number, but has soft caps in place to prevent people from farming Undead Binders to artificially inflate their damage vs. Moia, for example.
• •This means that if Player A does 60% of the damage in a room and Player B does 40% of the damage in a room, then Player A is awarded 60 contribution, and Player B is awarded 40.
• •Every room is worth 100 contribution except for Ocellus, who's worth 300 points split between his phases (the bulk of this is for P3).
• •At the end of the raid, your contribution is rolled against the base rate of 1 in 14 as a team.
• •Your contribution is rolled against this, so if you have 30% of the team's total contribution then you'll have a 30% chance at the unique being in your name.
• •As group sizes increase beyond 2, your team's chances at a unique increase by a multiplicative 4% per additional player. This means 3-man teams 1/14 x 1.04 extra unique chance, 5-man teams have 1/14 x 1.12, and 8-mans have 1/14 x 1.24. This is something we'll be looking at in next week's balancing changes..
• •In effect in a 2-man group, you have a flat 1 in 14 chance as a team to see a unique assuming no deaths, but each players' contribution will be used to determine who gets the purple
• •Deaths penalise you by 10% of your expected contribution. In a duo, your expected contribution is 350 out of 700, so a death would subtract 35 from your contribution.
• •This is slightly more punishing than a death at TOB, but less punishing than deaths in other raids. It also means that dying in an earlier room is roughly equivalent to dying at Ocellus, as opposed to dying at the end of Olm inside CoX for example.
• •This does mean that if you're underperforming your expected contributions then deaths are made a little more relatively punishing. Conversely, if you're taking learners or teaching people the raid then you're less punished as a carry and might see more purples in your name while your learners are finding their feet.
• •Unique weightings are as follows:
• •Rondache weighting: 5 in 15
• •Zorya's Tome weighting: 4 in 15
• •Horn of Bran weighting: 3 in 15
• •Ascension Crossbows weighting: 2 in 15
• •Obligator weighting: 1 in 15.
• •Orion (the pet) is awarded at a flat rate of 1 in 750. This isn't dependent on anything, so as long as you're not getting a cabbage, you'll have a 1 in 750 chance at the pet.
• •Elite Clue Scrolls are awarded at a base rate of 1 in 10. This can be improved by modifiers like the Elite Combat Achievement rewards. Similar to Orion, this rate isn't dependent on anything else in the raid, so long as you aren't receiving a cabbage.
• •Archivist's Folio has a flat rate of 1 in 15.
• •Elemental Fragments have a 1 in 20 rate with dupe protection. Meaning for any specific fragment your rates effectively move from 1 in 80, to 1 in 60, to 1 in 40, to 1 in 20 (assuming the specific fragment that you want is the last one left)

Next week we'll be making some balancing changes to both the encounters in the raid itself as well as some of the numbers above. While we're not going to detail all of our thoughts right now, we will say that we're expecting to be fairly 'light touch' - we can see that loads of you are loving your time inside The Fractured Archive and we're very happy with where things currently sit. Encounter-wise, we're planning to take some passes over Archive Guardian and Xarth in particular, with some smaller tweaks to some of the other rooms to better improve the balance between choices and just the general feel of the raid. We'll also be improving the availability and use-rate of Ascension shards since we know these are a pain point, and we'll make some tweaks to the numbers in the Loot Mechanics section just above. We cannot stress enough how happy we are with The Fractured Archive, it's surpassed so many of our expectations and we're glad to see so many of you having a blast in the raid! In the meantime, let us know what you think stands out in terms of the general balance so that we can see if we're on the same page or if we might need to re-evaluate some of our changes for next week.

• •Reduced the AOE radius for Thrall sound effects from 12 tiles down to 1 tile. In content where area sounds are relied on, this can make multiple Thralls a nuisance to listen to. We're open to reverting this change if necessary, but think this should be an improvement or an unnoticed change for most of you!
• •Adjusted minimenu behaviour so that any 1x1 NPCs options should always take priority over a thrall who's been spawned underneath them.
• •Adjusted the behaviour of Ice Barrage and the Blood Fury proc animation so that they no longer extend the hitbox of your target. Let us know how this one feels (particularly in PvP) since we're open to reverting this if necessary.
• •Added a new dialogue option to Auguste to pay respects to the man who inspired him, Sir Patrick Stewart who sadly passed on the 28th of October.
• •The rosewood blowpipe special attack now consumes darts as expected.
• •The text layout has been fixed on the recruitment board at the Emir's Arena. (A similar fix for the Clan recruitment board is underway.)
• •Cannons will no longer fire while inside one of Pete Kayer's challenges.
• •A typo has been fixed in the Halloween Event's dialogue.

Today we launch a host of product on the official merch store including popular ranges fresh from RuneFest and best sellers from our official partners. All product featured below will ship by December at the latest, and will make ideal holiday gifts! Available to order now from the online store.

Keep your desk or shelf safe from dragon attacks. Comes fully charged. This 2.5D display piece is crafted from antique nickel metal and coloured enamel. Examine the back to find a familiar hidden message, along with RS stones and Angels Scapes stamps.

Multiple Corporal Beasts were harmed in the making of these display miniatures. You probably don’t want to bring this to his cave, but it makes a great display piece for a desk or shelf! Features translucent “stained glass” effect enamel, shiny nickel metal, jelly enamel detailing, and glow in the dark sigil. To activate the glow effect, expose it to light for 30 seconds.

A unique illustration of the world of Gielinor as described by Saradomin: the 'precious jewel in the looted treasure of the Cosmos' now available as a premium woven tapestry blanket. The map illustration features iconic locations from both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape.

Jagex & Laced Records invite you to celebrate 25 years of RuneScape music with this collector’s vinyl set. Commemorating a quarter of a century’s Scaping, this box set captures the atmosphere, emotion, and unmistakable character of RuneScape and Old School RuneScape.

• •Laced Records/Online Merch Store Exclusive Edition with gold heavyweight LPs
• •50 specially mastered tracks
• •Music by a range of composers who’ve worked on RuneScape over 25 years
• •Rigid Box with gold foiling.
• •Printed inner sleeves with full wrap artwork from community artist Enkoro.

This carefully curated tracklist feels archival and timeless, offering a sonic journey through Gielinor that reflects the many adventures experienced by millions of players. It was no small task given that RuneScape holds the Guinness World Record for Most Original Pieces of Music in a video game. Across five LPs, the collection traces RuneScape’s musical evolution from its earliest, indelible, MIDI-based themes to the instrumentally richer, more expansive compositions of later years. From the iconic opening bars of the RuneScape theme to the unmistakable cheer of Sea Shanty 2, these tracks have soundtracked first logins, early quests, voyages from Port Sarim to Karamja, and victories over some of the game’s toughest bosses. The collection concludes with music that transcends the different versions of the game, highlighting the connection between RuneScape’s eras, and reinforcing a coherent, long-running musical identity. The set’s artwork draws from the iconic visual language of RuneScape, including detailed cartographic elements of Gielinor and inner sleeves celebrating iconic bosses with original artwork from community artist Enkoro.

Escape the Inferno!

Hand-moulded, hand-painted and masterfully crafted, the Zuk keycap from Starforge Systems in collaboration with Lethal Shadows is the hottest thing since the Inferno. This artisanal keycap is perfect for dedicated Slayers and N00bs alike. We cannot think of a better way for RuneScape fans to put an exclamation point on their new favourite keyboard.

Congratulations, you have now successfully completed Tutorial Island! Get ready to level up your construction skill, one block at a time, with this expertly crafted brickset of Lumbridge Castle from Old School RuneScape! Towering over a grassy courtyard with blue flags and shields adorning the grey stone walls of its imposing three levels as a pair of statues guard either side of the brown front door, a series of black cannons line its blocky battlements with barrels and cannonballs littering the floor behind them as two brown staircases descend from the back of its second floor. Consisting of 3787 pieces and measuring in at 9.9” x 16.7” x 5.2” inches with instruction booklet to help you build your very own piece of the Old School RuneScape, this brickset is an ideal gift for any gamer’s shelf or desk. The perfect backdrop to grinding out levels!

We've also added some new Angels Scapes collections to the store now, including the Imbued God Cape Keyrings collection, Imbued God Staffs collection, Elder Maul Keyring, Eldritch Nightmare Staff Pin and Dinh’s Bulwark Pin. We're also offering 15% off when you buy 6 or more selected Angels Scapes pins and keyrings for a limited time only! Check out all these lines and more on the official store.

The PvP rota has moved to Period A:

• •539 - (US) - PvP World
• •318 - (UK) - Bounty Hunter World
• •548 - (Germany) - High-Risk PvP World
• •577 - (US) - Free-to-Play PvP World
• •559 - (UK) - LMS Competitive

World 390 (AUS) for LMS Competitive has been activated with this rota. World 569 (AUS) for Bounty Hunter has been activated with this rota. The PvP Arena is using 'Zerker' loadouts in Ranked Duels and Tournaments this week.