Shattered Heart

Shattered Heart is a Distraction and Diversion centered around collecting strange rocks. It was first mentioned on 12 February 2010 in the developer blog "A History of Non-violence". Shattered Heart is linked to all non-combat skill and was released on 3 March, 2010.

Introduction
(Copied verbatim from Jagex's Shattered Heart Knowledge Base entry.)

The Second Age was a chaotic time when magic was largely unharnessed by the mortal races. The supply of runestones was limited to those created by Guthix himself, so for scholars engaged in magical study they were a valuable commodity over which wars were often waged.

The detritus of such battles can be found to this day; farmers may be heard to curse as yet another plough breaks upon shards of masonry lodged in a field, miners may unearth artefacts resonating with ancient power or runecrafters may find that runestones form into anomalous shapes, arcane echoes moulding the essence independently of the craftsman’s will.

More often than not these articles are discarded or left to gather dust on a mantelpiece, but there is knowledge to be gained from these remnants of a lost age. Such artefacts are steeped in history and the memory of stone is long; anyone wishing to learn more should present their findings to the archaeological team at Varrock Museum. They will gladly recount the tale of the hapless mage Dahmaroc; a worldly scholar and craftsman who had the misfortune to be born into an era of strife.

Requirements
Only members can find the rocks. There are no minimum level requirements. Players must wait one week between completing statues.

Getting started


Players occasionally receive a strange rock while training non-combat skills. Usually the rocks appear in the player's inventory, yet the Construction rock appears on the floor of a player-owned house, next to the entrance portal. Players can go to the Varrock Museum to add pairs of rock to an incomplete statue plinth located south of the Museum entrance.

Each time a player begins building a new statue, two (2) rocks can be gained from any particular skill. According to Jagex, after receiving the rock for a particular skill, the drop chance for the second will be reduced "by half". It is even possible to receive both rocks from a single action. Players do not have to bank the first rock to receive the second.

According to Jagex, having a rock in one skill does not change the odds of obtaining one in another skill. Players can have more than one type of rock at one time.

Rocks can potentially replace the item that the player was acquiring with his or her skill. A message such as "Something odd happens to the Yew longbow (u) and you are left with a strange rock." will appear. To prevent this, players can turn off the Shattered Heart feature entirely (by asking a museum archeologist) or players can make sure to simply have enough space for an extra Shattered Heart rock in their inventory.

The variation for receiving a Strange rock is high. For example, players have reported getting two strange rocks in less than five seconds, whilst others were skilling for five hours without getting one.

Players get a message for receiving a strange rock if their inventory is not full and with the exception of Construction rocks.

Rocks can be an excellent way of obtaining XP. If you only undertake an activity for the time required to obtain the two rocks, in many skills you will get more XP reward from the rocks than you have got from the time spent on the activity itself. This is especially useful on "slow" skills, e.g. Runecrafting, where (at approx Skill Level 70) it is possible to obtain 5000 XP from the rocks gained from the time taken to earn 500 XP actually runecrafting (death runes at 10 XP each). On the other hand, with skills that have a high XP per chance this situation can be reversed. For instance, at skill level 70 hunting it is quite possible to have to earn 25,000-50,000 XP (say hunting Carnivorous Chinchompas at 256 XP each) in order to get the 5000 XP rocks.

Hints and Tips
The reason this Distraction and Diversion was created was to add a little reward for players training their noncombat skills, so for those people who think of Shattered Heart in that way it is better to continue training their skills as normal rather than quickly making low experiences items. However, many activities that are valid training methods never have a chance of a rock (for instance fishing with any sort of rod, stringing bows, and cleaning herbs). Also some "power training" techniques, while delivering large XP, actually give comparatively few chances at a rock (for instance, farming trees).

To maximise the chance of getting strange rocks when training a skill, it is recommended to try the method that performs actions the fastest: for example, big net fishing gains strange rocks faster than caging because you fish more fish per hour. It has been confirmed that you can obtain strange rocks from Woodcutting, Fishing and Mining while gaining approval rating for the Managing Miscellania Minigame. It's also worth mentioning that failing to catch something, get a rock, catch a fish, etc. may also yield you a strange rock.

For for people who wish to complete the replica statue as quickly as possible, and for those who do not wish to spend time training a particular skill (for example, those who have level 99 in a skill and do not wish to devote time to further training) it may be more prudent to keep a store of cheap, low level items (willow logs, gold bars, uncooked shrimp, guam leaf and eye of newt, etc.) to quickly and efficiently obtain strange rocks without devoting undue time to the skill in question.

Some activities can be done together or sequentially linked. For instance, Fishing and Cooking. The odds of receiving a rock seem to be the same regardless of activity or difficulty, therefore over several weeks of rock collecting, fishes caught and cooked should even out. (More evidence needed). Other skills that can be linked are farming herbs and Herblore, smithing gold ore and Crafting, Woodcutting and Firemaking'''. '''

You can link more than two activities. Fishing, then cutting a log, lighting it, and then cooking your catch gives you chances at four different rocks.

Minimise your trips to bank items. It may be quicker to eat your (low value!) cooked fish than run to the bank.

Activity doubling effects from Achievement Diary rewards (double ore smithing with Varrock Armour or double pickpocketing with Ardougne Cloak, etc.) give you two chances at a rock and this appears to be how people have reported getting two rocks with a single action.

Summary

 * Experience in a skill for each pair of stones added to the statue. The experience depends on the skill level and which skill you got the rocks from.
 * 10 Kudos when the statue is completed for the first time, bringing the maximum total possible to 183.
 * A Statue plinth for in a player's Study when completing the statue for the first time.
 * Replica statue piece for each time you complete the statue, which can be added in pairs to the plinth in your POH Study. This yields no bonuses. (see Mod Maz' post to the right)

Explained

 * By acquiring a pair of stones from a particular skill you may add a piece to the statue, which will grant additional experience in that skill. The higher your current level in the relevant skill, the more experience you will receive as a reward.


 * There is a piece of the statue for each of the non-combat skills mentioned above. Each one is made up of 2 strange rocks found while training. Once you have obtained a pair, you will receive no further strange rocks from that skill until you have collected the pieces from all other non-combat skills. It is not possible to add one rock to the statue, the rocks MUST be added in pairs. They can be stored in your bank, but do not stack.


 * After getting all of the pieces and assembling the statue, a cut-scene plays where the statue tries to come alive, but turns back to stone and explodes, as the curse is still active. You are then given a Statue plinth (only for the first time) and a Replica statue piece. The statue plinth can be placed in the study of your Player owned house, though the replica statue piece apparently needs its twin in order to be put onto the plinth in your house. There are 30 replica statue pieces required to fully build the statue in your study (15 'twins'); this indicates that the statue in the Varrock museum will need to be fully rebuilt 30 times (a total of 900 overall statue pieces found) in order to obtain all 30 replica statue pieces.


 * After the statue in the museum has exploded, you can immediately begin collecting strange rocks again in the same manner as before, and add pairs of stones to the now empty plinth. However if you try to add the last pair of rocks within a week of completing the previous statue, the archaeologist will get annoyed at you causing explosions and will stop you, saying one explosion a week is enough. The message 'You may complete the statue in another "x"days.' will show on chat log (in which X is the amount of days until the week is over). This means getting all 30 replica pieces and building a full statue in your house will take a minimum of 30 weeks.


 * You can finish the statue at 0:00 GMT one week from the day you built the statue. Meaning that if you built the statue at 5 PM on Sunday, you could rebuild it at 00:00:01 the next Sunday morning (if you live in the GMT zone), so you don't have to wait until 5 PM that Sunday.


 * It will take 30 weeks from 3 March 2010 to get all the replica stone pieces. This means that the fastest someone can complete this would be the 29 September 2010.


 * If the study is removed while the statue still stands in it, then when a new study is built and a new plinth is obtained and set up, the new statue should be as complete as the previous one. However, if the statue is removed from the study, all replica pieces added so far will be lost.


 * On 19 March 2010 in a recent updates thread, Mod Maz confirmed that the fully assembled statue in your POH will be a cosmetic reward only and thus won't serve any extra purposes.


 * On 25 March 2010, players with multiple statues in their house found the statues removed. When finishing their next statue, however, they could retrieve the plinth and all replica pieces they had added before the removal.

Experience reward formula
The formula for experience is $$y = x^2 - 2x + 100$$, where
 * y = Experience earned
 * x = Skill level

Think of the cumulative reward as this: Total Exp Gain After 30 Complete Replicas with Lvl 80 Non-combat Skills=2,853,000/15=190,200 exp per Skill


 * {| class="wikitable"

!Level !Experience gained !% of level


 * }

There appears to be no advantage to using the skill-cape boost to level 100.

Since the curve of the exponential experience curve is different from the parabolic curve of the reward formula, there are differing (decreasing) rewards measured in terms of current level.

Trivia



 * A bug on the release date allowed players to get multiple stones while fishing. This has now been fixed.
 * Smelting gold ore did not yield stones on the day of release.
 * In the early days of Shattered Heart, runecrafting was counted per use of altar, and not per essence. For the highest chance of getting a rock, you had to drop your essence and bind one piece at a time. Mod Maz confirmed this has been fixed.
 * In the first 2 weeks the fastest way of getting agility rocks was to repeat an obstacle. This wasn't how shattered hearts was intended to be played; Mod Maz changed this so that only completing whole courses has a chance of getting rocks.
 * The final reward for this Distraction and Diversion is by far the longest elapsed time get, as it takes a minimum of approximately 7.5 months (30 weeks) to complete.
 * The earliest that anyone can obtain the final reward is September 22, 2010.
 * If the player has a full inventory when training and they get the rock, the rock will be placed in the inventory and the made item will be deleted.
 * You can get stones while performing tasks for Kingdom ManagementPetrock.png
 * When you get a strange rock while having a pet rock in your inventory a message appears saying: "Your pet rock is so happy to have stone-based company that it jiggles about a little in your pack."
 * The advent of Shattered Heart meant that many players started gaining levels in little used skills, making the overall rankings table considerably more competitive.