In this week's newspost, we spoke about huge upgrades to our C++ client and asked you to help give us feedback on Jagex Accounts following several weeks of open beta.
We didn't want to take any of the focus away from the work we've been doing on our client and account systems in the game update newspost, but we'd like to spend a little time updating you on what we're working on in terms of game content at the minute!
Last month, we opened (and closed) the beta for the Ruinous Powers, a brand new prayer book proposed as a reward from what's sure to be Old School's most epic quest to date.
We shared some of our detailed thoughts in this blog but to sum up: you had a whole lot to say and we didn't feel we'd be able to properly address your feedback by making small changes week-by-week while staying on top of developing the rest of the content associated with Desert Treasure II.
With a Game Jam and external playtest in the past couple of weeks, we needed extra time before we could shift focus and revisit the balancing and our approach to these powerful prayers.
We've got a lot of ideas following the feedback you've given us so far, but there's always room for more! So we've put together a short survey to give you a chance to let us know how you felt about the Ruinous Powers in testing and give us some slightly more quantitative data that allows us to target specific prayers or types of prayers as those most in need of some TLC.
To fill out the survey, click the button below! It should take under 10 minutes and your feedback will prove absolutely invaluable to us in putting together a revised offering for a future beta, before giving you the opportunity to vote on whether they should come to the game or be left in a sandy tomb for the time being.
In other desert-themed news, we held an external playtest last week where we brought 6 players to our offices, plied them with food and drink and forced them to fight the four post-quest bosses for two full days. The bad news is that we only had two days (and were having so much fun!) but the good news is that the bosses are shaping up fantastically!
All four of them are super unique and challenging in different ways and we can't wait to show off more or to see you get stuck in to taking them on yourselves this summer!
We also strongarmed a couple of our playtesters into providing us some short quotes, here's what a couple of them had to say:
"The variety of the mechanics and difficulty of the bosses are going to have people pleasantly surprised!" - Thurco
"A lot of variety and engaging mechanics, team has outdone themselves and I cannot wait." - PureSpam
"Thanks Mod Ayiza for buying me dinner during the playtest" - Mod Goblin
"The DT2 bosses have been crafted by the team with attention to detail in mind! They're fun, intricate and all very unique. Exciting times are coming" - gunschilli
"The concepts for the bosses took me by surprise! Very excited to see players take on the unique mechanics they have to offer" - MMORPG
As you might have seen over on our YouTube channel, Bounty Hunter is a mere two weeks away. Following our recent rewards poll (where everything except for Minus XP passed!) we've seen more bits of feedback and a handful of questions about some of the mechanics of Bounty Hunter itself, since we've not spoken about the actual minigame for some time.
First up, we want to share a change we've made and make sure that you're all aware before you risk gaining any extra Combat levels: we've adjusted the level requirements of Ancient Warrior weapons (not armours) from tier 78 to tier 75. This is to bring them in line with the pre-existing Vesta's blighted longsword and avoid having effectively a duplicate item with different requirements.
So to reiterate: if you're building an account for Bounty Hunter, do not level your stats past 75 if Ancient Warrior weapons are your endgoal.
With that word of warning out of the way, let's break things up with a sneak peek of somewhere you'll be getting very familiar with in just a couple of weeks!
Here's a quick snap we took of the lobby area, featuring all the amenities you'll need to get in and out of the action quickly: a robed trader for you to exchange points and emblems with, a coffer for anybody choosing to remain unskulled, a chest for loot keys, a bank chest, and a pool to restore your Hitpoints, Prayer points, stats and Energy (but not your special attack energy!)
In the middle you'll see a portal for you to arrive at, surrounded by four ominous floating skulls to make sure the mood is right as soon as you enter. The red barrier you can see at the top of the image is what you'll interact with to be whisked away to the crater itself, appearing at one of the spawning areas dotted around the outside of the crater.
We've seen a number of you asking about the look of the crater itself, and while we've not gone capturing any epic drone footage just yet, we did manage to sneak in and snap a nice shot for all of you!
The spawns look an awful lot like this inviting runed circle on the floor, surrounded by blood, bones, and spooky curved horns! If you squint, you might make out another at the very top right of the image. You might also notice there's a little more going on than the iconic 'Wilderness Grey' paint job that was given to the craters of old.
This time around we've spiced things up with grassy knolls, lava pools, icy inclines and even a precarious bridge or two surrounding the foreboding lobby at the crater's heart.
Now that we know exactly which rewards are coming to Bounty Hunter, some of you have been asking for an update on some of the reward systems to better understand exactly how you'll earn them and whether or not you'd be able to poke holes that nefarious individuals might exploit.
In a previous Bounty Hunter blog, we shared with you a fantastic player suggestion for an Earning Potential (or EP) system. Unfortunately, when we sat down to explore making an EP system as described, it became clear to us that it wasn't feasible if we wanted to incorporate it successfully alongside a solid foundation for Bounty Hunter's core. We're open to considering implementing a similar system in the future once the dust around BH has settled, but it won't be available on the release.
So, how exactly will you be able to earn points to get your hands on some Ancient Warrior equipment? The simplest means of earning points available is to just kill your target!
Each successful target kill earns you 2 points, with a couple of extra points up for grabs at various kill milestones (similar to Slayer tasks):
| Total Kill Count | BH Points |
| Per 10th | 3 |
| Per 50th | 5 |
| Per 100th | 10 |
| Per 500th | 25 |
On top of just scoring nice, clean kills on your Bounties, you'll also be able to streak kills together for added reward via the Emblem system. Any player will be able to hold one emblem at a time, starting at a measly tier 1. Killing a target while you've got your emblem with you will level your emblem up a tier, to a maximum of tier 10. You'll receive a handful of additional points for killing a target who had an emblem of their own, as outlined in this handy table:
| Emblem Tier | BH Point Value | Bonus BH Points for Target's Emblem |
| 1 | 2 | 1 |
| 2 | 4 | 2 |
| 3 | 7 | 4 |
| 4 | 11 | 6 |
| 5 | 16 | 8 |
| 6 | 22 | 10 |
| 7 | 29 | 12 |
| 8 | 37 | 14 |
| 9 | 46 | 16 |
| 10 | 56 | 18 |
Ultimately this means you'll see some additional points coming in for securing bigger killstreaks, or for killing other targets with high-tier emblems, but you won't be able to easily transfer high-tier emblems or large quantities of points to other players.
For securing kills, you'll have to reject modernity and embrace tradition as teleporting, protection prayers and entangling/binding effects are disabled inside the crater. We've seen a number of calls for a version of the crater where No Honour (NH), 'tribrid' PvP is able to flourish, while we remain open to the idea down the line, our aim is to empower players who are new to PvP to get involved, give it a go and build up a comfort level with Old School's high-risk PvP that might leave them wanting more.
We believe that Bounty Hunter has the potential to form a massive part of growing the PvP community and make future content like deep Wilderness updates (where NH PvP is best-suited) even more appealing for you as players and us as a team.
There's more we'd love to share but we don't want to spoil too much of the day 1 experience! We're beyond excited to see a place for simpler, Honour PvP and hope to see it absolutely packed with people looking to find fast fights with like-minded players around the clock!
We know this has been a little shorter of a read, but hope you enjoyed an impromptu update on where a couple of our upcoming content pieces are at alongside some answers to a couple of questions.
Please take the time to fill out the Ruinous Powers survey, and make sure to get in touch with us across all the usual channels if you've got any more questions about anything on the horizon for Old School!
That's everything for this small status update. We'd love to hear your feedback so please let us know what you think via our official forums, on the 2007Scape Reddit, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel.
Mods Arcane, Archie, Argo, Ash, Ayiza, Boko, Bruno, Chilly, Crystal, Curse, Daizong, Dylan, Ed, Elena, Errol, Fed, Gecko, Gizmo, Goblin, Grub, Halo, Hend, Hornet, Husky, Jalo, Jerv, Keyser, Kieren, Kirby, Kurotou, Lenny, Light, Mack, Manked, Markos, Maylea, Meat, Moogle, Morty, Nin, Nylu, Other, Pumpkin, Redfield, Regent, Roq, Ry, Sarnie, Shroom, Sigma, Skylark, Sova, Squid, Starry, Stevew, Surma, Sween, Tide, Titus, Torrance, Tyran, Veda, Vegard, West & Wolfy
The Old School Team.