26 June 2007 - Game Engine Update

This week we've made another internal upgrade to the RuneScape game engine, which makes it possible for us to do more complex/varied updates in the future.

This time around the interface system has had another overhaul, with a large chunk of the system completely replaced with a more powerful version. We've then had to adjust and retest all the old interfaces to make sure they still work under the new system (a big job!).

One immediate improvement you'll notice with this update is some new 'hot keys' - much like the 'control' key can be used to run. Now, you can use F1 - F12 to open up most of your interfaces, and the 'escape' key will open your inventory. Once you get used to these, we're sure you'll find that it makes doing things much, much quicker.

The keys work like this:

Esc - Inventory F1 - Combat options F2 - Your statistics F3 - Quest Journal F4 - Equipped interface F5 - Prayer F6 - Spellbook F8 - Friends list F9 - Ignore list F10 - Options interface F11 - Emotes F12 - Music Player Control - Run

Most of the other changes that have been made aren't generally things that you'll notice immediately, but there's a surprisingly large amount of work involved in any engine upgrade. Admittedly, it's not the most exciting update in the short term, but it's definitely worth it in the long run!

All this frantic behind the scenes activity finally means we can now get started on some (much requested) updates to some of our main interfaces - updates which weren't previously possible, but now are! In the meantime, though, we've taken the opportunity to fix a few more bugs...

---

In other news...

The uncharged version of the new dragonfire shield has now been given a +7 strength bonus to match the charged version.

We've fixed the bug with POH costume rooms that was letting players store wizard boots in oak treasure chests even though they couldn't be taken out again. The boots are meant to be stored only in teak or mahogany treasure chests.

Over time, if your stats have been reduced or raised, most of them restore slowly back towards their default levels. However, if you opened an interface such as one of the skill guides or a shop, your stats used to stop restoring until you closed it again. We've now fixed it so that your stats will restore normally even if you have an interface open.

Finally, the pet rock from Fremennik Trials now has to be wielded in both hands, as if it were a two-handed sword. Some of its animations weren't looking very good if you wielded the rock and a shield at the same time.

26 June 2007 - Postbag from the Hedge

This month's Postbag from the Hedge brings you tales from the history of RuneScape... as well as the Mysterious Old Man's notes on some random events he never got round to making.

Whether you're interested in Duradel's love of claws as weapons, a demonic butler's remarkable manners or just what Azzanadra thinks of the other Mahjarrat, there's something in there for you.

You'll also find that Chieftain Brundt has supplied you with a painting of one of the Fremennik expeditions to Waterbirth Island, which you can download to use as a wallpaper.

26 June 2007 - Guaranteed Content - Halloween results

It went right up to the wire, but the winners have been chosen. As voted for by you, they are:

• Halloween event winner: The Grim Reaper owns a spooky House of Horror, in which he has placed you. Can you pass the traps and scares?
• Halloween reward winner: A Grim Reaper hood
• Halloween emote winner: A zombie hand coming out of the ground

Many thanks to all of you who voted - you have chosen some ghoulishly great options! We promise that the event will be just as exciting as the race for the winner has been.

There may have been two Guaranteed Content polls recently, but they will not be released this frequently in the future. It just happened to be that two subjects suitable for Guaranteed Content polls came up in quick succession.

21 June 2007 - Development Diary: Graphics Team

Due to the excellent response we received from the first diary, we thought you'd enjoy another Development Diary sooner rather than later. This second diary centres around our Graphics team and the work they've been doing on improving the monsters of RuneScape.

As the first diary showed, creating content can take a while, and that is true of content on the website and the Development Diaries themselves, so from now on we'll be aiming to release new diaries every two months.

We hope you enjoy the Graphics team's diary!

12 June 2007 - Guaranteed Content poll results

After over a week's voting, the next Achievement Diary has gone to... Varrock! It was the runaway winner, and we will begin work on it right away.

Those who have read our Development Diary will know that game additions can take a long time to brief, programme, test, and go through many other stages of development, so please be patient for its release.

Many thanks go to those who voted. The feedback has been positive and the number of votes impressive, meaning we plan to do another Guaranteed Content poll in the near future.

11 June 2007 - Players' Gallery

Postie Pete has been feeling the artistic calling and has created another fine display of your artwork. This month sees some fearsome beasts: a dragon, a demon and ...a combat triangle...? To find out what's going on you'll just have to head on over to this month's edition of the Players' Gallery.

While Postie Pete was busy selecting artwork we've also been tinkering with the archive of old galleries to make it easier to find your favourites.

11 June 2007 - Impetuous Impulses

This week we are releasing dragon arrows and darts into the game. Yes, that's right, new dragon weaponry! Getting hold of them will be tricky, though: you will have to find and catch implings in a new Hunter mini-game, Impetuous Impulses. Chihiro has added a rabble of these naughty implings to the world.

Like their imp cousins, they are mischievous and can be found wandering around the oddest places. Implings like to collect things that people want, and if you learn how to hunt them down and capture them you will be able to pick up their loot. Of special interest will be the ultra-rare dragon implings that may be carrying the new dragon arrows and darts. But beware: only the most proficient hunters will be able to catch them.

To find the implings you can visit their home plane, Puro-Puro, by discovering the mysterious crops circles that will transport you there. You'll find many implings there, though most of them will be inexperienced implings who haven't learnt the best items to collect. You'll be able to run around their maze-like home with a butterfly net and try to catch them. They can fly over fences, though, so they may not be as easy to catch as you think.

You'll also find some of the implings wandering lost around the world. If you find a rare one, and are able to catch it, you'll get their loot without having to bother with cross-planar travel and crop circles. So keep your eyes peeled! Even if you can't catch a dragon impling yourself, maybe you can get a friend who can to help...

Summary

Requirements to play Impetuous Impulses

Level 17 Hunter High Strength and Thieving is an advantage Lost City is useful

11 June 2007 - The Dark Bow

A new bow has made its way to RuneScape from the shadowy dimension of the dark beasts. These dark bows are strange and dangerous weapons, designed to shoot two arrows at a time, even with the most powerful arrows. Its mysterious special attack deals massive damage, which is even more powerful if you use it with dragon arrows.

Dark bows can only be obtained from the dark beasts that lurk along the path to the Light Temple. Although it requires a level 90 Slayer to take on a dark beast, level 60 rangers can use these tradeable dark bows. The dark bow is also the only bow that can fire dragon arrows!

You also now have access to a new cavern where eight more dark beasts lurk, just at the start of the Light Temple path.

Summary

Requirements to use the dark bow

Level 60 Ranged

Requirements to kill dark beasts

Started Mourning's Ends Part II Level 90 Slayer

---

In other news...

H.A.M. clothing has been added to the items players can store in the armour case in their costume room. Players can now deposit their selection of H.A.M. clothes to free up some bank space.

Players can now see when they have achieved the maximum Kudos from helping out at the Varrock Museum.

The Fountain of Heroes in the Heroes' Guild will no longer recharge amulets of glory in their noted form.

Players can now move compost into all empty buckets in their inventory if they have sufficient compost in the bin. This is to allow players to more easily extract the compost for their Farming needs.

Players who've achieved a high enough Magic level to cast Ice Barrage from the Ancient Magick Spellbook will be interested to know that we've fixed the requirements for casting to allow for combination runes. All other Ancient Magick spells already allow players to use combination runes, but it seems this one was missed off.

Players who are short on inventory or bank space can now drop wound up toy mice on free worlds. Prior to this, players could only drop the unwound version.

4 June 2007 - Hair of the dog

Grrr....Growl....Woof! The Makeover Mage has been hard at work giving man's best (and sometimes not so best) friend a new look. The Makeover Mage paid a visit to Canifis and gave the werewolves a haircut and pedicure. Then off he/she went to the cold mountain ranges of RuneScape to smarten up the wolves. The Makeover Mage didn't stop there, he/she sent all the dogs of RuneScape to the dog groomer. Keep your eyes peeled for the new look for man's best friend.

In other news...

An issue with the Lunar Spellbook has been fixed for one specific spell. Players should now be able to temporarily swap spellbooks, cast a spell from a different book and then change back to the Lunar Spellbook once more.

Two songs from our wonderful collection have been renamed to better suit their uses. 'Gnome' has been renamed to 'Goblin Village' which certainly doesn't contain any gnomes! The other was 'Gnome Theme' which has been changed to 'Dwarf Theme' and reflects the nearby creatures that inhabit the area.

We've added a bracelet mould to the Crafting Guild. Players should now have everything at hand for all their Crafting needs.

Players should no longer get confused when talking to King Roald. He was acting a bit strange and sometimes greeted players twice. It would've been rude to mention, but he is a king after all!

We have also slightly adjusted the text colour on stacked items, making it easier to distinguish between a large and small number of objects.

4 June 2007 - Real world trading is against the rules!

We would like to remind everyone again that buying RuneScape gold/items for real world money is against the rules and will result in a permanent ban.

Trying to get ahead unfairly by breaking Rule 12 is unacceptable, and doing so also funds many other cheating problems, so we are taking a very strict stance on this now.

As we said we would, we've been working hard to ban players who play unfairly. Since we last posted about this we've banned another 4738 players for buying RuneScape items/gold for real money, which is in breach of rule 12. We don't like banning players, but when they try to spoil the game for everyone else we have no choice. We believe this is also the most effective way to combat the botting, which is a method used by the sellers.

The fact that some people still think they can get away with it and won't just get banned is quite surprising. We really do mean it when we say that buying gold for real-world money = a permanent ban. We have reliable ways to trace this now. It's a shame so many people have to find that out the hard way. (These are NOT people lending items to their friends, we really are sure they were genuinely buying gold for real world money.)

Finally, here are another 2 examples out of the 4738 players we just banned for real world trading:

Player X Total Level: Over 1440 Total time in-game: Over 92 days Status: Permanently banned for real-world trading

Player Y Total Level: Over 1500 Total time in-game: Over 113 days Status: Permanently banned for real-world trading

What a ridiculous waste! Why these players decided to try to cheat - in a way we can easily detect - and throw their accounts away is hard to comprehend. Don't make the same mistake. Don't buy items/gold for real-world money.

4 June 2007 - Grim Tales

"Once upon a time in a land far, far away..." Our latest quest takes you into the world of fairy tales, where you'll save a dwarf in distress, tell a bedtime story to a vicious beast and fight a monster so large, well, you'll have to find out...

In Grim Tales you take on Sylas's quest to find some of the most collectible items in RuneScape (well, they're collectible if you're odd like Sylas). Make incredible potions that will drastically change your perspective on the world. Explore your musical talents. Steal gold from the guardian in the sky and flee for your life!

The magic of the Brothers Grimm's tales is vividly brought to life for you to experience for yourself, but you may find that events differ from what you have been told! Be sure to wear your best armour and strongest weapons when you venture forth in search of treasures!

Magic beans, dear friends, magic beans.....

Summary

Requirements to begin Grim Tales

Witch's House Level 45 Farming Level 52 Herblore Level 58 Thieving Level 59 Agility Level 71 Woodcutting

1 June 2007 - Behind the Scenes - June

This month will see the first batch of something we are lovingly calling ‘Bits and Pieces’ projects. Basically, we’ve spent a great deal of time trawling through the Suggestions Forum and in-game comments, and then compiling a giant list of requests for small changes and improvements to the game, the first few on the list being launched this month. These will range from tiny additions like a right-click option to get to Entrana that doesn’t involve clicking through the text every time, all the way up to raising the power of crossbows.

The list continues to grow, and we will be releasing more ‘Bits and Pieces’ in the future, so please carry on posting your suggestions in the Suggestion Forum.

Our only quest in June offers you an opportunity to take part in a rather odd story. Now, I’m sure that most of you have heard about the little boy who kicked his ball over the fence, only to find an evil witch decided to hide it in her garden shed. Some of you may have even snuck into the house and tried to rescue it… but what has the witch been up to since? To the untrained eye, it looks like she might have just been walking up and down her garden lobbing the odd teleport spell at a wandering adventurer… but in reality she has been deviously planning her next menacing experiment to throw at the unsuspecting (and a bit slow) druids nearby. In Grim Tales, you’ll be shouting through windows in tall towers, telling bedtime stories to griffins, climbing beanstalks, drinking shrinking potions and even battling the next of the witch’s creations. Don’t be fooled into thinking it will be a simple care-free journey, though: you should know by now that our fairy tales are anything but that.

While all this is happening, the baddies of the fairy tale world - wolves and werewolves - and all their family will be heading to the Makeover Mage for a bit of a polish. The wolves will look hungrier, the werewolves more brutal, the jackals more cunning and the hellhounds more hellish. On top of this, Canifis has called in the builders and will unveil what the decorators and landscapers have done.

Elsewhere in the world you’ll be noticing odd crop circles and strange imp-like creatures popping up all over the place. Implings like to collect things, especially things that humans want. When they’ve found something tasty, they take it back to their maze-like world of wheat, and fly about playing hide-and-seek.

You may be able to find these implings outside their extra-planar home, trying to cause trouble and collect yet more small interesting trinkets. Each type of impling likes to collect things based on a theme and require different Hunter levels to catch, starting at 17. The dragon implings, for example, like to collect objects that have the word 'dragon' in their name, including the new dragon arrows and darts. Of course, they will require an impressive Hunter level of 83 to catch...

Finding and catching the implings on the surface may be a tricky task, but if you follow them home to their maze you will have to contend with imp guardians that object to you catching their impling cousins, and a maze that keeps changing ... Just the sort of things you’d expect in an area filled with imps.

Of course, to fire dragon arrows you’ll need a new bow to shoot them from… which brings us on nicely to the lvl 60 dark bow. This new bow, complete with its own special attack, will be available by killing dark beasts (lvl 90 Slayer target).

We will also be working on other graphical improvements in the game, including Crandor, Melzar’s Maze and Crandor Dungeon. We even invited Elvarg herself to the makeover chair.

31 May 2007 - Website Login Update

Today we're upgrading the way website logins work. Building on our improvements yesterday, we're finishing our new-look login page which includes a new type of login form which is more secure.

31 May 2007 - Guaranteed Content poll

The first Guaranteed Content poll is here, and it focuses on the new Achievement Diaries. In particular, its aim is to find out which area should have a Diary next: whether that be the troll mountains, the Gnome Stronghold or the many human towns of Asgarnia, Misthalin and Kandarin. The places mentioned in the poll will include their surrounding areas and countryside, to add greater variety to the final Diary. Seers' Village will stretch to Catherby and Hemenster, for example, while the Fremennik regions will include Lunar Isle, Miscellania, Etceteria, etc.

We feel that the seven areas we have chosen would benefit from an Achievement Diary, and we would like you to choose your favourite. The winner WILL be our next Diary, and the poll results will be published on the 11th of June.

Note: This poll will be used to determine the next Achievement Diary we produce, but for subsequent diaries we may adjust the order, or approach areas not even mentioned in this poll. The third diary we do will probably be tied into content that we are currently producing.

30 May 2007 - Postbag from the Hedge

Postie Pete returns again with another batch of letters from Glough, the elves and Lord Drakan's secretary. To go with this, there's even a creepy new wallpaper of the Drakan Family portrait.

So if you've ever wanted to know what the difference is between a vampire and a vampyre, or what the elves think about each other, you should head over there now. There's even a crossword from the Wise Old Man...

Read the Postbag from the Hedge here.

29 May 2007 - Varrock's New Look

This week's bumper update brings a completely new look to the bustling city of Varrock and the surrounding lands, so take a moment out of your training to admire the freshly restored grandeur of the palace of King Roald and his - ahem - charming Queen Ellamaria. Outside the palace, the artisans and merchants of the city have had their shops refitted, from the glowing warmth of Horvik's smithy to the unkempt mess of the sword shop (apparently some people would rather play with weapons than tidy their rooms). Even the Dancing Donkey Inn, that disreputable domain of dodgy delinquents, got its due decorations.

In the southern districts of the city, where thieves and muggers from the Black Arm and Phoenix gangs roam the streets, the renovation of Varrock has shown up the grit and grime that years of neglect have brought to this ancient city. Tatty clotheslines span the alleyways, derelict and ruined buildings approach collapse and flea-ridden dogs are poised with tails a-wag, ready to harass you (and your cat).

The update doesn't stop at the walls of Varrock. Further afield, there's a new look for the Jolly Boar Inn (your last chance for a pint before the Wilderness, but watch out for the astonishingly unpleasant cook), the Lumber Yard, the Cooking Guild and the Mining spots south of the city.

The sawing, hammering and general hubbub of construction has been affecting the Varrock Museum over the past few months. Strange crates have been turning up and lots of people going in and out muttering about display 20 or how that skeleton was so hard to rig together.

Finally, as the dust settles and the new museum is unveiled, you will be allowed to explore the mysteries of RuneScape's history. Find out things that have never been revealed before, earn more rewards for old quests, clean Dig Site finds and contribute to the displays in the museum or answer quizzes to learn about the beasts of RuneScape. Whatever you do in the museum you'll find lots of information is available from the information booth just inside the door.

The timeline section of the Museum should be of special interest, as for the first time it will present RuneScape's history in one location (not to mention all the pretty exhibits to keep you entertained). This will be updated regularly to keep the Museum the definitive location for knowledge about RuneScape's history.

Although non-members will be able to have a look around the display cases on the ground floor of the Museum, only members can take full advantage of the opportunities available.

So what are you waiting for? Explore and learn while having fun and still getting those levels! Visit the Varrock Museum today!

Note: If you were in Varrock before the update, you might find yourself teleported to a safe spot. Don't worry, this is just a precaution to make sure you don't find yourself embedded in a new wall.

---

In other news...

Due to competition from nearby sellers, Davon in Brimhaven is now more generous and will offer better prices to the players who've completed at least one set of tasks in the Karamja Achievement Diary.

A bug has been fixed in players' houses to stop the rune display case from appearing in the wrong place when a staircase was added. Also shades in Mort'ton can no longer attack players from a great distance.

The Ardougne Zoo fence has been repaired and some holes have been fixed to stop any animals escaping.

There has been a fix for players who've completed the Dream Mentor quest. The Dream spell in the Lunar Spellbook will now break when you auto-retaliate against a monster or another player. Previously, if you were having a quick nap and a foe attacked you, you would fight back but still be in a dreamy state.

Cows and calves nearby to the Crafting Guild are now closer to the ground and can happily munch on grass again instead of hovering around. In addition Captain Donnie's Eye has been relocated back in his head and an evergreen tree that previously defied gravity on Miscellania has now been firmly rooted.

The ring of life will no longer teleport you out of the TzHaar Fight Cave. As it's a safe minigame, there's no particular reason you should need to be saved by the ring of life.

Finally, we've updated the look of the secure login form to better fit in with the rest of the website.

29 May 2007 - Lores and Histories

Reldo has finally finished collecting the last few scraps of the Legend of Arrav, and he's decided to show them to all of you. Not only that, he's also had all the stories revamped and decorated, all to enhance your reading pleasure!

The newly renovated Lores and Histories section of the website now contains all of the old stories you might remember, as well as the final two chapters of the Legend of Arrav. If you don't know who Arrav was, or what he did that was so great (or even what his fabulous shield did), then this might be the time to get a bit of reading in. There are an awful lot of stories in RuneScape, and it can't hurt to know the background...

The Tales from the Tavern will also be getting a bit of a tidy up in the future - just as soon as Reldo can figure out how to make them look just as glamorous.