Jagex has recently uploaded “more than 50” new clue scrolls to baffle the people of Runescape. This update comes with the inevitable addition to the clue rewards, which were quite disappointing to say the least.

I don’t know if anyone else has had this, but the only “new” clue scrolls I’ve had so far are long anagrams sending me to odd places like the Piscatoris Fishing Colony and giving me a puzzle box. I’ve had no new map pieces or coordinates and no emote clues or challenge scrolls. The majority of people have received as rewards black, rune, or adamantite nails, low to high leveled construction pieces like opulent tables and gilded clocks, and let’s not forget the commonly received firelighters (I currently have over 100 of each colour) as well as other junk like magic longbows and black Dragonhide.

These construction rewards are very hard to get rid of. People can’t sell them because they’re very expensive to make and they’re practically useless. Even though I know I have built myself an Opulent Table, I’d never have bought one through the GE – simply because it’s very over priced. Rune Nails, along with Adamant and Black, appear fairly useless to a player training Construction as very few items require nails at all. I suspect the nails received through clues are likely to be used to make those brutal arrows more often than to make wooden chairs or shutters for a player’s chapel.

I’m beginning to think that clue scrolls have quite a lot of rewards now. They seem very bloated. While a wide variety of rewards are nice, the majority of them aren’t very popular. Most new items seem to be put in merely to serve as extra “junk” rewards. Has anyone else ever enjoyed getting a composite bow as a reward? Didn’t think so. In theory, I think that instead of another poorly attempted update on the rewards such as this, next time Jagex needs to think about a higher level of clue scrolls. “Level 4” I guess would be the best way to put it. They’d be dropped by monsters of a level higher than 175. The rewards could include obsidian armour and obsidian armour (t)/(g)/(b) (Bandos). Red Dragonhide could become much more easily accessible here as the hides have always been difficult to get, and gold/trimmed versions of it could quite easily be implemented. Other random items could be sweets, firelighters, dragon arrows/tips, and darts. Actual clue scrolls could go along the lines of; “Perform the Air Guitar emote in the Mourner’s dorm room and watch out for Double Agents” which would lead the player to the downstairs of the mourner’s hut in west Ardougne and into the bedrooms beneath. Double agents could be a good 70 levels higher and attack with more than their fists. Other clues could lead players into more dangerous and hard-to-get-to areas like The Temple of Light, Meiyerditch, and maybe even Trollweiss Mountain. I’ll be thinking about this a lot over the next few weeks, so expect a larger article on it soon.

Back onto the new rewards. The main update includes the Top Hat, Animal Masks, Spiked Helmet, Metal Canes, and a “Pith Helmet” (which by the looks of its inventory picture will look exactly like the alternate lunar helm). But even though there are a fair few new rewards, the majority look a little bit silly. Jagex has maxed the price for the “rarest” of the rewards, the Top Hat, at a measly 500K. Anyone with the new Hat would not sell for such a small price on the week of its release. That is never how the RuneScape economy has worked and it’s not working now. In fact, the demand for the new Top Hat has caused the Grand Exchange to boost the price of the item up by over 200% in the first few weeks. Now, either Jagex predicted that the Top Hat would be very popular and set a low starting price for the item so that after it rose in price it would still be at a respectable level, or they really don’t know what players want at all. Either way, the Top Hat is pretty useless, looks silly and will still probably rise all the way up to 2m and then begin to fall again as the lucky people with the hat finally put it on the GE.

Here’s the graph from the Top Hat’s release to 29th April:

“Top Hat – Skyrocketing”

As you can see, the demand for this item has shot the price up to 1.5m in just a few weeks. Perhaps people don’t realize that it’s actually quite a rubbish item. It’s comparable to the Black Cavalier only it looks a lot worse, isn’t as cool, and makes you bald. (Who’d want to be bald??)

Price issues aside, the rewards are somewhat refreshing to see and the new clue challenges are, I suppose, a nice change from the regular “blow a raspberry in the fishing guild.” Updates like these which improve on existing elements in the game are, in my opinion, a blessing compared to the junk which gets thrown in every few weeks. I’ve criticized this update quite a bit but overall it is a lot better than the regular quest updates. It is also a lot better than what I expect in the future will be a one-monster update to summoning, and although it would certainly be a lot worse than a new addition to the Achievement Dairies, this update was certainly one of the better we’ve had recently.

That is all:
Anubis.