July has come and gone and with that normally one would expect a plethora of RuneScape updates. July was unique in that the entire month there wasn’t a single planned headlining RuneScape update. Jagex knows this, the players know that, and steps have been taken to rectify what happened. Instead the end of the month saw some much needed improvements to the clan system. July has also been one of the most tumultuous months that Jagex has had in a long while.

One of the factors that lead to this was Jagex’s released experiment of RunePass. RunePass took influence heavily from Fortnite’s battle pass where you complete specific challenges to unlock rewards. To progress against what was called the “gold track” you needed to purchase RunePass with bonds or real world currency. Tanis wrote about the ensuing community discussion that resulted from RunePass this month in an article entitled, Give Jagex a Pass.

This also raised many questions within the community about the value of membership and what exactly are we paying for today as RuneScape members. Cireon took a critical look at this issue in What is Membership Really? July was indeed a month of introspection for many RuneScape players as well as us on the content creation side of the community.

July wasn’t all doom and gloom though. The month Alex also took a step deep down into the Temple of Aminishi. We’ve previously talked about The Temple of Aminishi before from a Dungeoneering or combat perspective but there’s another: audio. As it would turn out and one would expect in 2018, the Seiyru boss fight is indeed enhanced by the music tracks that pay. Have a read to find out how in Alex’s Analysis: The Right Music. Also this month David begins the process of explaining how the tick system can be an advantage to combat rather than a detriment. Did you know you can cancel abilities by activating others? Or maybe that you can squeeze an extra tick of damage in? Find out exactly how that happens in Unlocking Full Manual: Taking Advantage of the Tick System, Part 1.

The month was rounded out with a couple of non-RuneScape themed articles as well. This month I also invited Choto from Clan Quest to write a guest article for us on gaming subgroups. Choto is the lead content editor at Clan Quest responsible for their monthly magazine. Choto is also credited with starting his clan subgroup, the Hoodian faith. This got us thinking, what exactly is a subgroup or sub-culture in the gaming community? Read about gaming subgroups and the Hoodian faith in The Hood to Rule Them All. I also wrote about recording RSBANDBUpdate! The RSBANDBUpdate! audio workflow has existed for years and has been refined to a point where it’s almost transferrable. Read this if you want an overview of how the audio of RSBANDBUpdate! comes to be.

July saw Sorensen57 run away with our Strength Skill of the Month. Sorensen gained 53,666,932 experience while Pyrnassius came in second with 28 million experience gained and Jhammo came in third with 3.8 million experience gained. Congratulations Sorsensen!

This month we also say goodbye to Colton, hopefully temporarily, as he takes an extended leave of absence from RSBANDBInformer! Colton has written on any number of subjects, most of them lore or story related. From meeting the Mahjarrat in Mahjarrat Lore Part 1
and Examine This, a rundown on the examine menu being both functional an providing a lore insight to the NPC Profiles series, including the much acclaimed Gnome Child. Give some of these past articles a read as they chronicle RuneScape history in a way that hasn’t been done before. And to that we owe it to Colton. Thank you.