Alex

From Runescape.com:

“Quester, skiller, or killer? Today it doesn’t matter, because this Patch Week features the heftiest collection of game-wide quality-of-life fixes we’ve seen all year… The behemoth-of-a-list left our forum post bursting at the seams, so much that it now spans two gargantuan forum posts.”

…

Alright, then.

This week’s update hosted a whole bunch of those little conveniences and player opinions made reality that we call Ninja Fixes. Ninja, which I’m led to believe stands for Nothing Insanely New, Just Additions, is the team that go through player comments and their own in-game experiences, and just tweak and modify little bits and pieces here and there to help make the play experience smoother, easier, and generally all-around better.

Rarely do we get new dialogue or quest-related features from there, which is a real shame because I would like Zamorak and the Mahjarrat to remember that Zaros had returned because, well, they were all together during the Endgame and all. Nevertheless, they’re still great. Aside from quests, I much prefer them over other kinds of updates like new bosses and slayer monsters. Rather than being driven to do something new and different for the early-bird benefits, we instead get little improvements to help with our daily routines that we already have cemented down to a science.

Now, I like to go through updates and offer my analysis on how I believe they will affect the game through my years of experience. However, this time, there are… quite a lot of them. Just a whole bunch of ninja updates, fixes, and simple improvements. It would take paragraphs to go through each one individually.

Instead, let’s go over everything in general, highlighting the bigger, more interesting ones along the way. So, without further ado, the simplified version:

GRAPHICAL

Crystal chimes got their animation fixed. Yay. No more disconnecting from reality when fighting giant warped tortoises.

INTERFACES

The majority of these are the bank now reliably showing icons and options, as well as settings and preferences remembering what they were set to. Not much to read into for these ones; a UI that now works as expected as opposed to earlier is always a good thing. Unless the UI is intentionally glitchy due to the game mechanics. Seriously, don’t you find those kinds of games creepy after a while?

SKILLS, D&Ds, AND MINIGAMES

Couple tweaks to Kuradel’s dungeon, New Varrock, and black wool. A good one here is the extra increased chance of an Ushabti working from 200m exp to 120 slayer. Pretty big for those struggling to complete their slayer codexes.

QUESTS

How about that; there actually was more dialogue added this time. Doris talks about a Court Case. … that’s it. Please let there be more in the future!

Not much else here to concern yourself with if you already have your quest cape and nearly all achievements unlocked. Several requirements have been updated, several achievements have been tweaked, and a couple of rather obsolete bugs here and there have been fixed. Otherwise it’s just listing and stuff.

TOOL-TIPS

This was a great idea. A really great idea. Hover mouse over an item, and it will show you all the affiliated stats rather than you right-clicking, selecting an option, and praying it didn’t make the item explode on you. Since there already are so many items in Runescape, it came as no surprise that a few were missed. Reckon there are still a couple out there missing complete tool-tips, so folks, kindly get your suggestions out there if you find one that could really use a more conveniently accessible stat!

BUFF-BAR

The buff bar now tracks cannon ammo! Now isn’t that awesome? Also, you can now directly see prayer drain as a buff bar icon. And the Vengeance spell. And the Fight Kiln crystals. And even Onslaught! Wow, this was a good one.

The others are extras like D&D buffs, Blackhole from the Zaros Godsword, an enemy’s poison immunity (because who uses poison, right?), and various others. You’ll see them.

F2P CHANGES

Yup. Just when you thought F2P were getting spoiled with a whole new skill, here are a bunch of additions to F2P. Namely, F2P got every single achievement that can be done in an F2P location. The wilderness, Karamja, desert, Daemonheim, and even some in Varrock. They also got a bunch of new Daily Challenge tasks, monster drops, daemonheim fixes, and member/non-member differentiations. They even can now get the ever-popular Robes of Zamorak from the monks now. Some of the uses F2P stuff, like marrentil, evil elder trees, and Bounty Hunter rewards became members items in exchange.

SHOP STOCK

In a nutshell, nearly every store in Runescape now stocks up to runite from adamantite, as well as tier 50 mage and ranged armor. In other words, every shop now has an increased tier of stock. I would imagine this may have something to do with the upcoming Smithing update. Or it could just be making it easier for newer players to have access to higher level gear without resorting to negotiating the Grand Exchange. Either way, it feels a bit unnecessary, and the only real practical use I can imagine out of this is both stabilizing the mid-tier economy and having more stuff available for invention disassembly.

Many stores also now sell off-hand versions of their equipment. That’s got a bit more practical use.

OTHER

Going to be honest; didn’t know you could set up a cannon in a citadel until they blocked it. Come on, you guys! Cannons are my livelihood here! Stop making things difficult for me!

Linza armor drop rate has been significantly increased (forgot what they even do…), Seren Godbow’s special has been slightly reworked, and now nearly all monsters that drop one-hand weapons now drop their off-hand variants (in separate drops, of course). Epic. Though to be fair, I like it a bit better when one-hand weapons come with the right-click-to-generate-offhand option like the Treasure Hunter rewards have. That probably would’ve been a lot easier to implement and work with, but I’m glad they went the extra mile with that.

Alright, almost done! One thing left to-

NINJA FIXES

Wait, what? We never even touched the Ninja Fixes after all that? They weren’t kidding, were they?

Ho boy, where to start? Well, I reckon I’ll point out the more interesting ones.

First, the elite Varrock armor makes Chaos Tunnel random teleports less frequent, which is a shame because elite clue scrolls no longer take you there anymore.

Second, the Price Checker will now tell you the price of any item in the Grand Exchange, so you no longer have to actually go there for that. Sweet.

Player-Owned-Ports will show you your ship’s equipped parts directly, making it much easier to customize them for particular missions.

Revolution is now the default combat style when starting Runescape. Hopefully that will not scare new players off.

You can buy the Ring of Stone in the TzHaar city for 303,000 Tokkul. Which, nowadays, is relatively easier to obtain compared to what I went through to get my first Onyx. Let’s just say I got and sold nearly 100k chaos runes from the Barrows. … yeah, it was a busy year.

The Music Playlist now has a Repeat-One toggle. Woo!

You can swap the default skill used when clicking a permanent bonfire. Very nice.

You can combine the monkey gree-grees into one. Saves you a bunch of bank space.

The rest of them are quest reward lamp updates and requirement classifications. Again, when you own a Quest Point Cape, really doesn’t affect you much. Though I am still waiting on the Sliske’s Endgame boss rematch on the Stone of Jas platform.

CONCLUSION

So, there you have it. You can read up on all these changes yourself here if you want. Again, nothing game changing or super-dynamic; just a bunch of quality-of-life tweaks that make an already great game even better.

Now, if only the Sonic Team did this with their games…

Until next time,

Cheers, cannoneers!