Upcoming updates

This page is a list of upcoming RuneScape updates.

Skilling diversity updates
Jagex are aiming to introduce more fun and sociable skilling methods, with more rewards being gained when they are used interactively with other players. The representative example is Deep Sea Fishing, which was released on 5 March 2018.

Safecracking will be an expansion to the Thieves' Guild aimed at players with level 65-95 Thieving. It is aimed for release in April 2018. It will involve the player looting from treasuries across RuneScape. Players will gain experience while trying to open a safe, with a larger experience drop when successfully opening the safe. Doing so will have the chance to gain legendary items, which will act as Thieving perks that grant the player experience and hanky points. New tiers of hanky point rewards will be added, allowing the player to unlock additional loot bags and safecracking techniques. Rewards will include the ability to put a lockpick and stethoscope on the tool belt, as well as stun protection to prevent being stunned while thieving.

Mod Timbo is also working on a design for Firemaking that will give the skill a key milestone.

Off-hand skilling items
Off-hand skilling items called magical relics will be added. The relics will have "themes" that grant benefits for skilling. Possible themes may be:


 * Sacrifice: damages or kills the player while giving more buffs
 * Restoration: buffs for skilling potions, regrowing locations
 * Time: makes complex training methods less intense
 * Elemental
 * Destruction: destroys resources for alternative rewards

Magical relics will give set effects when used with the associated regular experience-boosting set. Relics and the catalyst fragments will be made augmentable, allowing the player to use skilling perks with the items. A further off-hand skilling item may be a heroic, elven related item. This would be a rare crystal item with lore relating to Lady Trahaearn.

Mining and Smithing rework
Mining and Smithing was 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%)        = unable to 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.

Farming
Mod Easty is working on a rewrite of Farming code in RuneScape, including reworking how ticks work within the skill. This may allow for new quality of life features such as left-click planting (bypassing interfaces) and the previously scrapped Farming timer concept to be implemented.

Animal husbandry
Player owned farms will be released in 2018. It is being worked on by the 'Judges' team consisting of Mod Raven, Mod Rowley, and Mod Chaose.

Brimhaven Agility Arena
The Brimhaven Agility Arena will receive a high level addition which will involve players tagging pillars together. This is planned for release May 2018 or later.

Solak
Solak, the Grove Guardian is a new boss that will be located within The Lost Grove. It is intended for release in May 2018. The boss has 2 modes: 7-man and duo mode. Each body part will have its own health bar. The boss will be a product of the anima, similar to Telos and Vorago. It will drop tier 92 dual wield Ranged weapons.

Hostilius
Mod Pi is working on creating a new demon boss called Hostilius that players will have to kill "from the inside out". The fight will scale to the number of players in a group (or solo). It will have three difficulty levels: casual, regular, and hardcore.

Combat fixes

 * Specific numbers will be added for certain buffs/debuffs.
 * Gizmos will be visible on augmented items when examining another player.
 * An update to Shattered Worlds will make its gameplay more interesting and will be worked on after Invention batch 2. There will be new objectives and hiscores of different types.
 * Clan Wars' rule selection and wars in progress interfaces will be updated.
 * Raids will receive improvements, such as reasons to do Raids more often; a better grouping system; reducing the amount of players required; improving the jellyfish (e.g. by giving buffs from killing it); and a gold version of the Daredevil title. The title would require the player to complete all Raids feats in one run without dying.
 * Corrupted slayer helmet is being improved by Ninjas. One of the improvements is 5% higher capture rate of souls.
 * Tier 90 augmentable degrade to dust weapons and armours will be able to level up to level 20. Players will also be able to combine degraded items to combine their chargers, maintaining the item XP of the item with the most XP. Perks will also be maintained if one of the items has no perks. Dyed items will be recharged using the non-dyed equivalent. This will be released on 3 April.
 * Bounty Hunter will be fixed; this will involve useful rewards being redistributed to other content.
 * Mod Daze is working on making Telos more accessible for players who are colourblind.
 * Telos' "so much power" queue will correctly clear on phase transition.
 * Telos' anima bar will reset if using Immortality in phase 5.
 * When siphoning from fonts in a Telos fight, Telos will be untargeted so that golems take priority in the render order.
 * 4 tick auto attacking will be addressed:
 * Outside of Legacy Mode, the auto attack swing will not be reset/go backwards by changing weapons.
 * Performing an ability will delay auto attack swings by at least 5 ticks.
 * Add more interactivity to combat through other means to all combat styles. Current ideas are:
 * For Magic a new threshold, dual wield ability. This would cause basic abilities to reset the player's auto attack swing to allow spells to be cast in between using abilities. On top of this a bonus damage on would be gained on auto attacks for each unique damaging spell used during the buff. The passive effect would not be removed if switching to a staff.
 * For Ranged a new ultimate ability for all weapon types would be added as a drop from Solak. When activated global cooldown would be lowered from 1.8 seconds to 1.2 seconds for a short time. The cooldown of this ability would be longer than Death's Swiftness, as the player would be mobile during the ability being active, allowing adrenaline gain.
 * For Melee Bladed Dive would be able to damage an opponent while on global cooldown, potentially with a different amount of damage than when used off cooldown. Additionally, all stabbing weapons (daggers, swords. spears, and rapiers) may have a chance to not incur global cooldown when an ability is used. The Khopesh of the Kharidian would be converted to a stabbing weapon as part of this.
 * Mod Shauny is working on improving the Monster Examine spell to include detailed information about the player's chance to damage their target, and their chance of being damaged by their opponent.
 * An issue with Nex: Angel of Death becoming aggressive to different players will be fixed.
 * Enduring glacytes will be made aggressive.

GameJam
GameJam will take place on the weekend beginning 13 April. This year Mod Timbo wants there to be a focus on player originated ideas for small/medium sized updates. Mod Timbo will be developing alchemical onyx jewellery during GameJam - he will be posting his designs before GameJam for player feedback.

Needle Skips
Mod Osborne and Mod Krista are working on a murder mystery style quest called Needle Skips. It is aimed for release some time after April 2018.

In-game events calendar
Mods Erator and Chaplain have been working on an in-game calendar as part of a GameJam project. This is being tested and is intended for release in April. The calendar will record events such as Treasure Hunter promotions, official livestreams and Jagex moderator events. There may also be support for showing when an account's membership expires and for "super events" which would take over the square for an entire day to notify the player of important updates. The calendar has been developed and is awaiting QA testing.

Rebuilding Edgeville
An update planned for April 2018 will see the player repairing the dragonkin's destruction of Edgeville from Ritual of the Mahjarrat. Players will be able to begin the clean up by speaking to Mandrith in Edgeville to gain a to-do list. Completing all the tasks will award a dragonkin lamp and the chance to gain the Effy pet when using dragonkin lamps.

Players will be able to get experience in Farming, Construction, Magic, Prayer, and Mining by taking part in the activity.

Unannounced quest
A quest that has not yet been formally announced is due for release in May 2018.

Banks


The ninja team have been working on an update for banks that was aimed for release during the second half of 2017. However, due to the larger than anticipated amount of work on the game engine, this update is currently on hold while the engine team finishes work on RuneScape Mobile.

Clans
Jagex have plans to update clans in 2018, however development will not begin until RuneScape Mobile is released. Potential updates include making clans easier to manage, introducing new players to clans earlier in the game, and having more competition between clans.

Clan avatars
Mod Moltare was working on changes to clan avatars, however he has since left Jagex. The project has since been finished by Mod Shauny and is now going through code review and QA:


 * The anagogic orts system will be removed: clan members will not need to pay orts to receive avatar buffs. Instead, clan members will be able to activate their weekly buff using the avatar control stone which will be located next to the avatar habitat.
 * Clan members can choose between a buff of having 10% increased resource gain from clan skill plots (increased up to 50% with fealty) or base XP boost of 3% (increased up to an additional 3% with rank 1, 2, or 3 clan fealty).
 * The buff will work in places where familiars are disallowed, e.g. Runespan.
 * The avatar warden clan job will no longer be required to summon an avatar.
 * The heal over time, familiar faces, auto ort, random resurrection, and protector avatar buffs will be removed.
 * Each clan member can summon a clan avatar via the follower pets section of the pets interface, if they are in a clan with an active avatar habitat and have activated their weekly buff.
 * Ironmen will be able to take out the clan avatar but will not receive bonuses from it.
 * Avatars' gather resources while in citadel action will be accessible via the avatar control stone. Avatars will gather resources while summoned as pets up to a weekly maximum that is shared by the clan, scaling based on habitat tier.
 * Avatar customisation will be accessible via the avatar control stone for clan admins.
 * The clan XP buff icon will only show one icon which will display the total % of additional experience being gained by the player.
 * A buff icon will be added for the skill plot bonus buff.
 * The Clan Noticeboard will no longer show statuses of avatars.
 * The Clan Settings interface will be graphically updated and it will be possible to alter Clan Settings while skilling and during combat.
 * The clan avatar will have a special appearance when stored in a menagerie.
 * The Woodcutting, Mining, and Firemaking skill plots will grant more clan resources when used.
 * The Crafting, Mining, Smithing, Firemaking, and Woodcutting skill plots experience will be increased by 20% between level 80 and 99.
 * Urns will be filled by skilling at skill plots.
 * The active obelisk at the Summoning skill plot will change every 30 seconds, instead of every 17.
 * The chance to break a root while training at the Woodcutting skill plot will be reduced.

Mod Moltare had been working with Mod Asherz to make changes to the game engine to allow clan avatars to work with familiar overrides, before he left his job.

Clan broadcasts
An engine code review is currently being undertaken to allow the ninja team to begin development of clan broadcasts.

Seers' Village
The next in-game area to be graphically reworked will be Seers' Village and Camelot. Mod AoB is working on the update in between other projects. Currently the rework is at the stage of moving buildings around and blocking them out. Jagex are planning to make Camelot castle larger and built into the mountainside. Some unnecessary things, such as the estate agent, will be removed from the village. The Seers' Village Courthouse will be moved into Camelot castle and the coal truck mining site will be moved closer to Seers' Village furnace.

Dailies
The number of daily repeatable events will be addressed; several design options are being discussed.

Minigame hub
A hub for minigames will be added. Alongside this, unused minigames may be removed from the game.

RuneScape Mobile
RuneScape Mobile is an upcoming version of RuneScape and Old School RuneScape announced on 17 July 2017. The tentative release date is around 2018 Q3 at the moment for Runescape 3. Old School RuneScape was originally planned for release in Winter 2017, but has been delayed until early 2018.

Group Ironman
An update for Ironman Mode players, which will allow linked Ironman players to interact freely with each other and participate in group bosses and Dungeoneering, was announced at RuneFest 2017. Mod Ramen is working on this as TAPP. Features this may include are a group banking system, leaderboards, and a guild including Mr Ex and other ironman related content. On 26 March Mod Ramen held a Twitter poll for potential group size between 2 and 5; the winning response was a group size of 5.

Microtransactions
The Live Events team are currently working on updating the Members Loyalty Programme; this will include a review of current loyalty store items. Treasure Hunter will also be reworked. During the 2018 Year Ahead Q&A Mod Osborne stated that any new skilling outfits released would be added via game play.

Miscellaneous
The following fixes are planned for future updates:


 * Mod Timbo's current long-term projects include increasing the value of seeds; increasing ghostly essence drops; and removing resources from PvM.
 * Mod Edge is working on improving the skill guide:
 * Better navigating.
 * Toggle to hide members items.
 * Mod Osborne and Mod Ramen are working on adding examine texts to The Lost Grove.
 * More tier 92 weapons will be made dyable, this was initially planned for December 2017.
 * Optimisations will be made to the game including FPS improvements, fixing the camera at Barrows, and targeting for monsters which will allow the players to begin attacking using abilities rather than auto-attacks.
 * Potion tooltips will be made more informative. They will display what is being boosted and the amount being boosted.
 * Teleporting and creating teleports in Dungeoneering will be taken off the global cooldown.
 * The beasts interface will be improved in legacy mode; the interface will be grey like other legacy interfaces.
 * The follower information interface will be grey in legacy interface mode.
 * Tool tips will be added for all potions. These may be toggle on and off in settings.
 * Mod Daze has created familiar overrides for all colours of the Bombi pet and has added a right-click recolour option for Bombi in the pet interface.
 * Mod Edge is planning on adding options to display a message when an aura is ready to use and to automatically extend favourite or non-favourite auras by 50 or 100% using vis wax to aura management.
 * Energy rifts will have a right-click configure option to set which energy/experience conversion option is the default for left-clicking the rift.
 * Item examines will have Grand Exchange prices and alchemy values added to them.
 * The Prifddinas clan teleports of the master camouflage outfit will show how many strikes the player has gained from each clan while thieving.
 * An option to sort alphabetically will be added to the emote interface.
 * Information about an auras' effect will displayed on hover-over if they are placed on the action bar.
 * More functionality will be added to NXT, such as depth field and volumetric lighting, like the lighting used in Menaphos.
 * A tree will be removed from the incandescent wisp colony.
 * A Spin Flax spell will be added to the lunar spellbook. It will convert 5 flax at a time.
 * Tasks set reward items will unlock cosmetic override equivalents. Keepsake keys will be refunded to players who have used them to keepsake these items.
 * A progress indicator will be added for the I'm Forever Washing Shadows achievement.
 * Keybinds will be added to the Grand Exchange interface.
 * Mod Maylea has completed an update for the tool belt. Loading times will be decreased, clicking on items will be display more information and settings for items like the charming imp, and clicking a category will scroll the interface to the item. This update may allow new items like the key ring to be added to the tool belt in future. It will be released in April 2018.
 * Menaphos tweaks:
 * Menaphite gift offerings will be made stackable.
 * Menaphite gift offerings will be made stackable and bankable and will have a right-click redeem X option added.
 * It will be possible to gain reputation by playing Pyramid Plunder.
 * Basic reputation ticks will be taken a look at.
 * City quests will have their cooldown removed.
 * Sirenic armour and tectonic armour will be graphically updated. The dyed armour versions will also be updated.
 * Traditional line firemaking will be improved in April 2018. At level 70 Firemaking, players will be able to light fires quicker. The firemaking minigame by Char after The Firemaker's Curse will become a repeatable training method, with a chance of dropping a tradeable pitch can which speeds up all methods of firemaking.
 * The Combat Academy will be improved in April 2018, introducing players to Revolution rather than the Full Manual combat mode.