Invention

Invention is a skill released on 25 January 2016. It is Runescape's 27th skill, as well as the first elite skill. It requires level 80 Divination, Crafting and Smithing to train; if the player does not meet these requirements, then the skill is greyed out. Invention's maximum level is level 120, similar to the Dungeoneering skill, making it the second skill to have a level cap higher than 99. It has both a cape of accomplishment and a master cape of accomplishment. These both feature emotes, which are slightly different from each other. A retro style cape of accomplishment will be released a week after the skill is released.

Invention will be released in batches. The first batch, released on January 25th 2016, included content for levels 1 to 99. A second batch will contain content for levels 100 to 120, and will include additional content such as machines and the Guild of Inventors. There will also be an Invention theme in other content released throughout 2016, including quest rewards. The skill is focused on the disassembly of items, the discovery of properties, the building of devices, the levelling of items, and the adding of perks to items.

Starting out
Players can start by going through a tutorial for Invention by speaking to Doc at the Invention Guild, north-east of the Falador lodestone. While working on the Invention skill players will be helping to develop the guild. During the tutorial the player's tool belt will be upgraded to include a charge pack, material pouch and inventor's tools.

Concept art from RuneFest 2015 suggested that Invention may include the ability for a player to become a guild master. The player could then be able to build machines and decorations in the guild, using a hotspot system similar to the one used in the player-owned houses system; build various workshops including cave goblin workshops, dwarven workshops and human Divination workshops; and be able to employ people to work in the build workshops. The examples of NPCs who could potentially be hired included Oldak and Professor Oddenstein.

Specialisation and tech trees
While levelling Invention players will be able to pursue specialisations by choosing different tech trees. The type of tech tree that the player selects will determine what items the player will have the ability to unlock and then create, by providing different sets of blueprints. Batch one of Invention will include 3 tech trees. All players will use the common/basic human tech tree when they begin training the skill. Once the player reaches level 40 they will be given the option to specialise with either the cave goblin tech tree or dwarven tech tree. Upon reaching level 60, the player will then be able to catch up on the tech tree that they did not choose initially, which ensures the player will not be locked out of any content.

Inspiration and discovery
From their current blueprints, the player will be able to unlock the ability to create new things by using inspiration in a process called discovery. Inspiration can be gained from both inside and outside of the invention skill. For example using an augmented item or crafting a device might give you inspiration, but so might Fishing. Players will need to use a workbench to discover new things. There will be Inventor's workbenches at the Inventor's Guild, Keldagrim, Dorgesh-Kaan, Seers' Village, Varrock, and Ardougne. The discovery process will involve a micropuzzle where the player can arrange modules to optimise the cost of discovering a new thing, so that less inspiration is used. Unlocking a new device or component will give a one time chunk of experience after which the player will be able to build and use the device or component. Building a component and through a process of switching components around will give the inventor a clue as to how well they're doing. The process indicates whether the items are in the maximum best order from Poor, Satisfactory, Good, Excellent or Perfect, with perfect using the least amount of inspiration.

Disassembly and materials
Players will be able to break down items by dragging them into their Invention pouch, which will be located in the inventory interface, next to the bonds pouch. This will give a small amount of Invention experience and produce materials. Each item will also have a junk chance, dependent on its tier. The materials produced will be a mixture of common materials, called parts, and rarer materials, called components. Components will have more powerful applications than parts. Some specific components may only be obtainable from particular items. Players will be able to obtain materials even if they do not have the Invention level required to use them. It is possible for an item to give up to 12 standard components as well as up to 7 rare components upon being dismantled. The number of materials given will depend on the value, nature and size of the item dismantled.

Obtained materials will be stored in the Weapon or armour gizmo shell interface, with the Tool gizmo shell interface available after release in a future update. Materials can be used to create devices or to augment weapons or armour, after the player has unlocked the ability to do so. There will be a disassemble X option and it will be possible to disassemble noted items.

Players will be able to use the Analyse ability to determine the materials that may be obtained from breaking down an item. This will open the Material Analysis interface which will display the junk chance rate for the item, as well as a list of the materials that may possibly be gained from it. Materials are rated as being obtained often, rarely or special.

Augmenting items
Players will be able to augment certain weapons, shields and torso and leg slot armours. To do so they will first have to build and apply an augmentor, or tinker, to the item. It will then become possible to apply perks to the augmented item and to level it up.

Perks are mechanical effects which may be positive or negative. Some perks are new, though most are generally already found elsewhere in the game e.g. the occasional damage reduction effect of Warpriest of Saradomin armour can be granted by a perk, though it is less effective than this armour's effect (equivalent to wearing around 3 pieces of the set).

To create perks, the player will have to craft and fill a gizmo shell with materials. Each gizmo shell will have 5 slots that can be filled. After filling the gizmo shell the player will be able to choose which perks that they wish to make out of the range of possible perks that can be made from the materials inserted. This will then create a gizmo with particular perks. Gizmos can be socketed onto an augmented item to impart its perks to the item. Creating a gizmo will grant Invention experience for each material which is used up. Using rarer materials grants more experience.

Each material will be able to create multiple types of perk. Additionally perks may be of different tiers, at least 4 ranks for certain perks, and materials will have a weighting for their likelihood of making different levels of that perk. Materials will be balanced so that adding the same material to all 5 slots of a gizmo shell will result in the creation of 1 slightly negative perk and 1 slightly positive perk, therefore players will need use a mixture of different materials with the ability to create the same positive perks and different negative perks in order to create good perks. The term prototyping refers to this process of trying to create different combinations of perks.

Two-handed weaponry will allow the attachment of two gizmos each with up to 4 perks, while one-handed weapons may only have one gizmo added to them.

Levelling up items
Once a weapon, shield or piece of leg or torso armour has been augmented it will gain experience and advance levels when it is used in combat. Levelling up an item will give benefits such as allowing the player to put more perks in to the item and reducing the item's degrade change when using charge packs.

Levelling a piece of equipment from level 1–10 increases the amount of stored Invention experience that is contained within it each time that its level increases. Although items can be levelled up to a maximum of level 20 at 99 Invention, the maximum effects are at level 10 and work as follow:

There are also multiple options when claiming the XP from augmented items:
 * Fully disassemble both item and gizmo for full Invention experience and materials
 * At 8 Invention, reset the level of the item retaining both the item and perks for level (n-2) or approximately 50% worth of XP
 * At 8 Invention, remove the perks completely while keeping the item for lower XP
 * At 27 Invention, keep the gizmo with perks and resulting materials while disassembling the item for lower XP

Any augmented equipment that has the same level will give the same amount of Invention experience when disassembled. However, it should be faster to level higher tier equipment as equipment's experience gains are dependent on the amount of combat experience earned by the player. Additionally the rate of levelling will be balanced by number of slots; so a two handed weapon will level twice as fast as a one handed weapon and as fast as dual wielded weapons.

Players will need to use charge packs to run their augmented equipment. The player's charge pack will be stored on their character's tool belt and will be shared by all augmented equipment that the player uses. It will be powered by divine charges created from divine energy. The amount of divine charges used by a item will depend on its drain rate. Using higher level divine energy should be more economical for creating divine charges. It will cost 225 incandescent energy to create a divine charge, or larger quantities of lower-tier energy. If the player dies while using augmented equipment they will lose charges from their charge pack.

Devices
Materials can also be used to create devices which have an effect on the in game world. Devices will include:

There are plans to add machines that will allow players to gather resources over time, although at a slower rate than obtaining them manually. Managing the machines will be comparable to the Managing Miscellania Minigame. These will not be added with the first batch on Invention.
 * Augmented chinchompas which will do more damage than non-augmented counterparts.
 * Woodcutting, Mining and Fishing accumulators. This will work like urns that are charged up when the player fails to gain resources (as opposed to when resources are obtained) and which can be teleported away to gain experience when they are fully charged.
 * Devices to siphon stored Invention experience from levelled up equipment without destroying the item, instead causing its levels to be reset. This will give the player a lower amount of Invention experience than disassembly, equivalent to that which would have been gained from a piece of equipment 2 levels lower.

Experience-level relationship
Invention was originally planned to have a different experience-per-level relationship to previous skills; with the skill being slower to level at lower levels. It was mentioned that the new halfway to 99 level would have been level 77 and not 92. The maximum virtual level for this skill would have been level 150.

However in a Developer Q&A it was announced that the previously planned XP curve had been abandoned, due to play testers finding the "flatter" XP curve dissatisfying. Invention will now have a more "traditional curve" of XP gain. Invention will take around the same amount of time to level to 120 as previous skills. Just over 36,000,000 experience will be required for level 99 Invention, and 80,000,000 experience will be required for level 120. Level 84 will be halfway to 99 (as opposed to level 92 in other skills). Invention will be a little slower to level at early levels compared to other skills, but faster to level at higher levels.

Unlike other skills, the major aspects of Invention will be available from level 1, with higher levels unlocking extras such as rarer materials and passive upgrades.

History
Invention, along with Divination, was first mentioned by Mod Mark in the fourth live Q&A session. One, Divination, would be a gathering skill like Mining and Woodcutting. The other, Invention, would be a production skill like Crafting. In a November 2012 Behind the Scenes, the new skills were described as "designed to suit the old-school, yet complement the entire game" since they were modelled "on some of our oldest and dearest content." The August 2013 Behind the Scenes pushed the time for the second skill back to 2014.

During RuneFest 2013 the second skill was revealed to be the Invention skill.

In January, a Power to the Players Dragonstone poll included the Invention skill vs the elf city Prifddinas. The winner was the elf city (ETA July/August), resulting in the Invention skill to be developed at a later time.

At RuneFest 2014, it was mentioned that:

During March 2015, Invention was confirmed to soon be integrated in many skills instead of being a standalone skill, possibly with its own ranking highscores table. On 2 June 2015, Invention was again confirmed to be planned as a skill in a Twitch Q&A stream, but was referred to as an elite skill. This was confirmed in the official podcast of 11 June 2015.

During RuneFest 2015, it was revealed that Invention would allow for perks to be added to items. During this RuneFest a total of 187 perks were shown in a presentation slide.

Trivia

 * The level 90 weapons seen in the concept art are combinations of currently existing weapons in game, though they were scrapped later on.
 * The Magic weapon seems to be made from a Grifolic wand, Virtus wand, Seismic wand, Armadyl battlestaff, and a Mystic orb.
 * The melee weapon seems to be made from a Drygore longsword, Dharok's greataxe, Bandos godsword, Dominion sword and Dragon dagger.
 * The Ranged weapon seems to be made from a Ascension crossbow, Karil's crossbow, Royal crossbow, Zaryte bow and a Magic shieldbow.
 * The release priority of Invention was the subject of the first Dragonstone tier Power to the Players poll in 2014. It competed against Prifddinas for a July/August 2014 release with the losing option being released later. Invention subsequently lost the poll and has therefore been released after Prifddinas.
 * During Runefest 2015, it was stated that because Invention is aimed at high-level players, they would only allow higher-level equipment to be augmentable in order to prevent dead content. As a result, it was stated that it would only include tier 70+ weapons, armour, and tools, as well as fishing rods and some joke weapons.
 * The skill was stated by Mod Mark in Runefest 2014 to be mortals' defence against the gods.
 * The Godless were planned on being heavily featured towards the skill, but that idea was scrapped.