Mining and Smithing rework

Mining and Smithing were expected to get an update in the second half of 2017. However Jagex found it difficult to produce a concept that could satisfy all players' expectations. An in-game poll was used to determine whether players would rather have an update to introduce new content at the higher levels of the skills, with a full rework being left to another future update. Players voted in favour of having a complete rework of the skills, and it was stated at RuneFest 2017 that development had started around mid-September. As part of the rework many pieces of content related to Mining and Smithing will be altered, including monster drop tables. Urns will likely be reworked to include a new decorated smelting urn, with strong smelting urns being changed to require level 70. A beta for the update was launched on 12 February 2018.

Mining rocks will no longer deplete and there will no longer be competition with other players for ores. When mining the player will receive experience every time that they "strike" a rock (every 5 ticks). The player's Mining level and pickaxe will affect how much experience is gained per strike. Mining experience rates are intended to be the same or slightly better, around 10% faster, than they are currently. For each strike the player will make progress towards gaining an ore, shown on a progress bar above the character's head. The amount of progress gained will depend on the player's Mining level and the tier of pickaxe that they use. Additionally, 1/10 of the player's Strength level will be added to the player's progress gains. Lower tier pickaxes will not be effective in mining higher tier rocks. All rocks will have a difficulty: which determines the amount of progress needed to get ore from the rock. Once the player has built up enough progress points to equal the rock's difficulty then they will gain ore and their progress will reset. The experience earned from each swing will be equal to the amount of progress made multiplied by a bonus for the rock type being mined; higher tier rocks will give better multipliers. However they also have a hardness value which reduces the amount of progress gained from mining them. Using a pickaxe of a tier equivalent to or better than the tier of rock being mined will eliminate the effect of hardness.

With at least level 15 Mining the player will have a stamina bar while mining. The bar is filled every time the player clicks on a rock; and when full the player will use a 4 cycle mining animation rather than a 5 cycle one. If the bar is not filled then the player has a scaling chance of using either the 4 or 5 cycle mining animation, with a 100% chance of using the longer animation at 0% stamina. Therefore, players can gain around 20% more experience and ore by actively maintaining stamina, clicking the rock once after each pickaxe swing. This is equivalent to a click once every 2.4 seconds. The player's Agility level will contribute to their stamina.

Rockertunities are another mechanic to encourage active gameplay. Whenever a rock is struck there is a chance that a nearby rock of the same type will become a highlighted "rockertunity". Clicking it will give 5 times the normal experience for that swing, and possibly an increased amount of ore gain.

Ores will be stored in an ore bag that will spawn automatically in the player's inventory when they are mining. The ore bag in untradeable and unbankable; it can be destroyed and reclaimed from the tool belt without losing the ores stored within it. Players can click the bag to fill it without interrupting mining. Higher tier ores take up more spaces in the bag. With this update the coal bag and similar rewards will be altered, by making them into upgrades to increase the capacity of the ore bag.

New tiers of ore will be added:

To preserve the value of dragon and crystal pickaxes, the tier 70 necrite pickaxe will be worse than them and will not be augmentable. Higher tier pickaxes will require the crystal pickaxe as part of their upgrade. The tier 90 pickaxe will be augmentable.



Smithing will gain a new hopper system for storing ores and bars. Ores and bars will be deposited directly from the inventory/ore bag into the hopper, which will be shared across all furnaces and anvils. When smelting bars will go into the player's inventory, but they may be deposited straight back into the hopper. Smithing will use materials directly from the hopper.

Smithing will initially involve the creation of unfinished items. As items will take longer to create, the unfinished item will allow the player's progress through the creation process to be saved. Similarly to the planned mechanics for Mining, Smithing experience will be gained per "strike" while smithing at item. Strikes will count towards a progress bar which grants an unfinished item upon completion. One strike is made every 2 ticks, and 10 progress is gained each strike. The total amount of progress needed to complete the item will depend on the item's tier and the number of bars required to make it. Experience per bar will be equivalent for all items: so making items that require a large number of bars will not grant the best experience per hour any more.

A second progress bar will show how much "heat" that the item has. The heat mechanic will encourage active participation in smithing. While smithing an unfinished item it will lose heat; if heat reaches 0 then the player must re-heat the item before being able to smith it again. To do this the player must use the item on a forge. Forges will be added next to all anvils. When used on a forge the item will heat up rapidly; with increased heat giving a progress multiplier on completing the item:

Additionally, it will be possible to get upgraded versions of "base" equipment. +X items will have the same level requirement to smith and equip as base versions, but will have +X tier stats. The process for creating these items will be the same as for creating base items. Players will be be able to create +1, +2, +3, +4 and +5 versions of base equipment: with the tier of equipment determining the maximum number of times that it can be upgraded. Each upgrade will double the number of bars required. While the experience per bar used remains the same the upgrading process is faster, resulting in more experience per bar being gained. The new tiers for base items and the number of items they can be upgraded will be:
 * No heat (0%)        = 0.5x progress
 * Low heat (0-33%)    = 1x/regular progress
 * Medium heat (33-66%) = 1.5x progress
 * High heat (66%+)    = 2x progress

Base and upgraded base items will be tradeable. When an item is upgraded the maximum number of times the player will be able to convert it into an untradeable decorated version. This will require no additional bars. It will be possible to give decorated items to NPC to gain more experience. The amount of experience given will be equivalent to the experience gained from half the number of bars used to create and upgrade the item. This will provide fast but expensive methods for training the skill.

With level 99 Smithing players will be able to create masterwork armour using the dragonkin forge. Masterwork armour will be tier 90 and will require level 90 Defence to wear. It will consist of a helmet, platebody, platelegs, gauntlets, and boots. The platebody and platelegs will be augmentable. The ability to create each piece of masterwork armour will be unlocked when the player creates a piece of elder rune armour of the equivalent slot from scratch. The process of creating masterwork armour will be complex, time consuming, and expensive. It will give poor experience rates: the armour is intended to be a way to make money from Smithing.

Masterwork items are made from glorious bars; which are created in a process involving cycles and folding. The process is:

Partially folded bars are not tradeable; but complete enriched alloy bars, concentrated alloy bars, immaculate alloy bars, and glorious bars are tradeable.

Once the player has the required glorious bars the masterwork item can be prepared:

Lined masterwork armour pieces can then be combined with masterwork rivets to create different masterwork armour pieces. 10 masterwork rivets can be created from 1 steel bar after 20 progress.

Creating a complete armour set from scratch will take a total of around 11 hours 40 minutes.

Masterwork armour can be further upgraded using parts of tier 80 and tier 90 PvM drop armour to create upgraded masterwork armour. This will be the only tier 92 power armour available in game. It will degrade to dust, starting with 100,000 charges, and will not be repairable. It will be tradeable and augmentable.

Praesulic essence will be created from fully repaired torva equipment at the dragon forge:

Malevolent essence will be obtained from melting down malevolent armour at the dragon forge. Proportionally less essence is given when using armour which is partially degraded. This is rounded down to the nearest whole number of essence, e.g. platelegs with 100% charge would give 3 essence, while platelegs with 99% charge would give 2 essence.

1 elder rune bar, 1 praesulic essence, and 1 malevolent essence can be used to create 1 energised inlay in 100 cycles. Energised inlays will be combined with masterwork items to upgrade them:

Upgrading masterwork items will be a faster process than creating the masterwork items. It will require 99 Smithing and give poor experience rates. It is intended to give a sustainable use for masterwork items.

Dropped smithable equipment will be removed from monster drop tables and will be replaced by salvage. Current drop table items will be replaced with a corresponding salvage item. Salvage is not stackable but can be traded. Salvage will have 6 tiers corresponding to the different tiers of metals, affecting the alchemy value and amount of components gained from disassembling the item; 4 types, affecting the type of components gained from disassembling the item; and 5 sizes, affecting the alchemy value and amount of components gained from disassembling the salvage. The sizes of salvage will be tiny, small, medium, large, and huge; each size increase will increase the alchemy value and component number multiplier by 1.

Tiers of salvage will be:

Types of salvage will be:

Metal ore and bars will be replaced in drop tables by stone spirit; they will be dropped by a variety of monsters but most commonly by metallic dragons. Stone spirits will be tradeable and will stack with other scales of the same type. Mining while carrying stone spirits will cause them to oxidise into their corresponding type of ore. No additional experience will gained for the extra ores created.

The spring cleaner dismantle mode will not work on salvage items, but will continue to work on other, non-smithing related items. A new alch mode will be added for spring cleaner 3000 and better; it will only work on salvage items and will convert them into the number of coins equivalent to their high alchemy value. One charge of the spring cleaner will be used each time. Disassembly mode will be a new mode for spring cleaner 5000 and better. It will only work on salvage items; automatically disassembling them using no charges.