Upcoming updates

This page is a list of upcoming RuneScape updates.

Overgrown idols
Overgrown idols are a new Woodcutting training method that will require 81 Woodcutting. Players will have to clear overgrown jungle from idols located in Karamja. Woodcutting training boosts can then be activated by touching the cleared idols.

Elite dungeons
Elite dungeons are planned for release in June, July, and September 2018, if the initial release is received well. The first dungeon to be released will be Temple of Aminishi. They will involve gameplay similar to Raids but may be played in smaller groups or solo. Rewards will include Dungeoneering experience, tokens, equipment between tiers 82 and 92, and a Sakadagami cosmetic outfit. They are being developed by Mod Orion, Mod Sova, and Mod Chaose.

Player-owned farm
The Player-owned farm will be released in Summer 2018 and will feature players raising livestock and maintaining their own farm in return for experience rewards in Farming and Construction, and special items that aid with regular Farming.

Skillcape perks
Mod Daze and Mod Erator are planning an update to existing skillcape perks and an expansion of perks to master cape of accomplishments. This is intended to be released in Summer 2018.

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. Salvage will have 7 tiers corresponding to the different tiers of metals, affecting the alchemy value and amount of components gained from disassembling the item, and 4 types, affecting the type of components gained from disassembling the item. Current drop table items will be replaced with a corresponding salvage item:

Metal ore and bars will be replaced in drop tables by dragonscales; they will be dropped by a variety of monsters but most commonly by metallic dragons. Dragonscales will be tradeable and will stack with other scales of the same type. Mining while carrying dragonscales 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.

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.

Brimhaven Agility Arena
The Brimhaven Agility Arena will receive a high level addition which will involve players tagging pillars together. This is not currently in development, though Jagex want to release it during 2018, and is awaiting the developer who came up with the idea to be free.

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. This is currently not in development and perhaps will be release in later half of 2018.

Solak
Solak, the Grove Guardian is a new boss that will be located within The Lost Grove. It is intended for release in the last week of May 2018.

Hostilius
Mod Pi, in his TAPP time, 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 3 difficulty levels: casual, regular, and hardcore.

Combat fixes

 * Corrupted slayer helmet may be improved by Ninjas. One of the improvements is 5% higher capture rate of souls. This is planned for May release.
 * 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 other improvements. Mod Erator works on it in his 2 TAPP days per month if no other tasks demands his time. There will be new objectives and maybe 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.
 * Bounty Hunter rewards will be redistributed to other wilderness content by Mod Pi.
 * 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. 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.

Abyssal Slayer creatures
Three new Slayer monsters, originally created by Mod Shogun for Game Jam 2017, are being worked on in TAPP time. They will be Chthonian demons from the Abyss:

All of these will be options that players will be able to choose in place of an abyssal demons task. The new monsters will each have the same teleporting mechanic as abyssal demons, with the abyssal lord also dealing damage to the player while doing so. As with regular abyssal demons, the effects of darklight and abyssalbane ammunition will work against the new monsters. The abyssal savage will be a harder hitting version of an abyssal demon; though it will attack using magic. The abyssal savage will have a laser attack which the player must avoid by moving at least one step away from the savage. The abyssal lord will feature the most complex mechanics. Mod Shogun is aiming for them to have 2 special effects. One of these will be that, after the player has dealt a certain amount of damage to the abyssal lord, it can summon high-hitting minions which attack the player. Some of the minions' damage will be negated by Protect from Magic.
 * Abyssal savage (requiring level 95 Slayer to kill)
 * Abyssal beast (requiring level 105 Slayer to kill)
 * Abyssal lord (requiring level 115 Slayer to kill)

Parcels from the Hedges
During May an advent calendar-like event will take place. Players will receive daily packages from well-known characters. These will go to the players' inventories and may contain desirable items.

Mental Health Awareness Week
An event to promote awareness of mental health will take place in the week beginning 14 May.

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

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 2017 GameJam project. This is being tested and was 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.

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 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. This is not currently in development but Jagex hope to release it during 2018.

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 Q3 2018. OSRS Mobile 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:


 * Tears of Guthix will be improved; the tears will stay in place longer and character movement between streams will be made smoother. This will be released in May 2018.
 * A Prifddinas Waterfall Fishing teleport crystal will be released in May 2018.
 * A God Wars Dungeon soul store that stores kill count will be released in May 2018.


 * Mod Timbo's current long-term projects include increasing the value of seeds 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.
 * 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.
 * 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.
 * An option to sort alphabetically will be added to the emote interface.
 * More functionality will be added to NXT, such as depth field and volumetric lighting, like the lighting used in Menaphos.
 * 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.
 * Mod Daze has added a "flip" option for Araxxor slider puzzles.
 * Mod Edge has added a better interface for skyboxes and filters. The chosen skybox and filter will persist across log ins. He may also develop customisable skyboxes.