Perhaps one of the updates with the biggest impact on RuneScape this year. Many, many people who love it yet there are tons of people who hate this update. A quick view of what have changed in this most loved/hated minigame. There’s a very simple reason why people don’t like this update. Some got really lazy to train the old way and they don’t want to get back to their original training spots. With less experience an hour gaining combat levels isn’t that easy anymore. This fast experience was the main reason to like the new update. The experience is slower and combat levels will start meaning a longer playing time.

But first of all one of the minor updates in this big update is that you can now walk through the monsters. So that a portal can still be reached when there are tons of monsters in front of it. This makes this game a lot less annoying to play. However they also updated the spinners, the monsters that repair the portals. You used to be able to attack a spinner so he went after you. In the mean time you could destroy the portal he was trying to rebuild. These days he goes back to the portal once it gets damaged. So even if you’re attacking it, it will continue repairing that portal. This makes much more sense for that monster. They’re getting smart!

Back to all different groups of people who played this minigame: The group of people that really got hurt by this update were the pures who were lifting on the strength of the high levelled players playing this game. This part is the introduction of 3 waiting boats designed for certain levels. The first boat has a requirement of 40+, the second one 70+ and the last boat has a 100+ requirement. Great news for the people in Pest Control Clans because they can play more efficient a round of pest control. No more low levelled players means more damage dealt on the portals. However that’s not all of it. Jagex knew that the 100+ boat will be playing even faster. So they removed all the weak monsters in the 100+ boat and replaced them with higher levelled monsters. It sure is a big difference between lvl 60 monsters hitting you and lvl 100 monsters hitting you. Also to make it harder to finish within a minute they changed the way how you attack the portals. The first 15 seconds all portals are shielded. After the first 15 seconds the Void Knight breaks the shield of a random portal. The next random portal get unshielded every next 30 seconds. So basically a minigame cannot be faster completed than 105 seconds.

So what did they change more? Well they released some new armour. Void knights get to wear helmets. And when wearing the top, bottom and gloves with it you can even get some set effects just like the barrows. The meleers with full Void Knight plus the melee helm gets +10% to attack and damage. Mages get with full plus mage helm a +30% Magic attack bonus. And finally the rangers get with their set +10% Attack and damage. Is it worth it? Well I’ve heard from many people and I’ve seen someone his data while testing it and they all say it’s not worth it. There’s better armour out there. However if you only have 42 defence and can’t wear Barrows Armour than this might be a nice thing for you.

Now the biggest update during this must be the experience change. A point only gets 35% of the previous experience. However you get more points depending on what boat you joined. First boat gets 2 points, second gives 3 points and the 100+ boat gives 4 points. According to Jagex this will balance well because games take longer and you get more points to compensate. So is that true? Well let’s see.

Imagine that you used to get 1,000 exp per point in a certain skill. You could do a game in let’s say an average of 75 seconds. This means that you get 800 exp a minute. That’s 48k an hour. With the new update you only get 350 exp per point. You beat a game in roughly 120 seconds. This is 175 exp a minute. But we must remember that if we play on the highest level we get 4 points every game. So that would be 175 times 4: 700 exp a minute. That’s 42k an hour. However games got harder. If you don’t have a good plan the Void Knight can get easily killed. So unless you’ve a good strategy plan everyone follows this game only got slightly less. But we all know how hard it is to tell people what to do.

So that’s it for the new pest control. I personally liked it. I hardly played Pest Control and I prefer training it the old way even if it’s slower and I’m sure that many of you will agree with that.

Some small facts:

• When this update came out they forgot to add field rations to the shops. Since you can trade them they were discontinued till the small update a couple of days later.
• Magic and ranged even got down to 25% of the original amount of experience since it’s a lot cheaper than actually using arrows and runes when training it.
• They tripled the amount of points needed for the several packs you can buy there. However they did not triple the amount of points needed to buy the Void Knight armour.