Upcoming updates

This page is a list of upcoming RuneScape updates.

Mining and Smithing rework
A rework of Mining and Smithing was planned for September 2016, however the rework was postponed to 2017 due to player feedback on the initially presented concepts. It is currently slated for release in the second half of 2017. On 4 August 2016 Mod Jack made a post on the RuneScape Official Forums and on Reddit to begin discussions about re-evaluating what players wanted to see in the Mining and Smithing rework. From this they hope to reuse acceptable elements of the pre-existing plans for the rework as well as create new designs or take suggestions to fully meet with requirements for the rework.

During the Future of RuneScape Skilling talk at RuneFest 2016 Jagex revealed some of the considerations for planning the new Mining and Smithing rework. There were:


 * Coal no longer being needed as a secondary material for high level Smithing, but instead being a universal catalyst - speeding up the speed of smithing rather than being required to smith.
 * The crystal pickaxe maintaining its status as being better than other pickaxes due to the difficulty involved in getting it. It may be required to create higher level pickaxes.
 * Crystallise not offering the best Mining training method, but still being worthwhile to obtain.

It is currently intended that the content added by the rework will be available to free-to-play players.

Mining
The basics of Mining will remain the same; with players using pickaxes to mine ore from rocks. Rocks will not be hard to find, but higher level rocks will be placed in less accessible locations. There will not be quest requirements to access any types of rock, though it is possible that more accessible locations may be unlocked as quest rewards. Rocks will no longer deplete: there will not be competition between players for obtaining ores.

While mining from a rock the player will automatically strike it with their pickaxe every 4 ticks. Mining experience will be gained on every strike at the rock while ore will be obtained less frequently. Experience drops will therefore be lower amounts but occur more frequent than they do currently. The mining animation and sound effect will be updated to make them correspond to ore being obtained.

Each strike that a player deals to a rock will accumulate progress points; which will be like damage dealt to the rock. The amount of progress points earned will depend on the player's Mining level (each level adding an additional 1 progress per strike) and pickaxe (better pickaxes will give more progress per strike). Each rock will have a difficulty; this will determine how many progress points the player will need to get ore from the rock. Each time that the player builds up enough progress points they will get a piece of ore and their progress points will be reset to 0. Progress points are stored for a type of rock, rather than each exact rock, and players can resume mining at the same progress if they continue mining the same type of rock at a later time; however mining a different type of rock resets progress. Experience gained on each strike is equivalent to the amount of progress earned multiplied by a bonus for the rock type, with higher level rocks giving a greater bonus. Mining experience rates will remain around the same or slightly faster.

While mining the player will occasionally tire and need a break to recover. The number of strikes that the player will be able to make before needing a break will be approximately the same as their Mining level divided by 10. A break will last 20 ticks, after which the character will automatically resume mining. Players will be able to click on a rock to interrupt their breaks and resume mining early. This mechanic will encourage active gameplay: at the highest (90+) tier of rocks not interrupting breaks at all will give around 30% less experience and ores.

Higher tier rocks will have an additional property called hardness, which will decrease the amount of progress gained per strike of the rock. For example, if your pick would normally strike for 11 progress and the rock has a hardness of 10, you actually only get 1 progress. Hardness will be counteracted by using better quality pickaxes, which have a greater penetration value. A pickaxe's penetration value will be the same as the hardness at that tier. For example, drakkurlith rocks will have a hardness of 60 and a drakkurlith or dragon pickaxe will have a penetration of 60. Pickaxe penetration will be subtracted from hardness before hardness is subtracted from progress. Players will need to use a pickaxe that is at least the same tier as the rock they are mining to remove the effect of hardness. The hardness mechanic will ensure that it remains difficult to mine higher tiers of ore with low level pickaxes.

Players will be encouraged to bank their ores through the addition of imcando pyxides, which will act as deposit points. Each mining spot will have at least one imcando pydis located within easy reach of the rocks. Each pydis stores a certain amount of ore: the number will depend on the type of ore but will correspond to 20-30 minutes worth of mining. Once the pydis is full the player can click on it to teleport themselves to the nearest bank, automatically depositing all stored ore into their bank at the same time. The player will then have to return to the mining spot using their own means. It is intended that Mining should be the best method of ores: to achieve this monsters' drops may be replaced with coins or protean-like items.

Jagex are also considering giving Strength and Agility effects on the mining progress. One tenth of Strength skill may be added to progress per pickaxe strike: this would be equivalent to around 5% of overall mining performance. One tenth of the Agility skill may be subtracted from the number of cycles the character stops for while having a break from mining: this could potentially improve experience rates while afk mining by up to 15%, but would not affect active mining.

Smithing
The tiers of existing equipment will be lowered and new equipment will be added at higher levels. Players will be able to smith gear up to tier 80, which will have slightly poorer stats than the equivalent tier gear obtained from monster drops. This gear will reuse models and concepts shown previously in the initial ideas for the rework. The Smithing process will remain similar to how it is currently, though Jagex intend to change the process in a way that allows more modifying reward items to be used with the skill. Jagex are also looking into removing unnecessary realism in the skill with the requirement of extra materials, such as wood for crossbow stocks, being moved from the smithing process. The significance of coal will be reduced; it will no longer be required for higher level Smithing, instead it may act as a non-essential catalyst to speed up smithing.

The basic mechanic of Smithing will be the same as the existing process of using anvil to make bars, though this process will typically take longer than it does currently. The length of time taken to smith items will scale with number of bars required: it will no longer be more rewarding to smith items that need more bars. The number of bars required to smith different types of items will be changed to be better reflect their value to players. A new mechanic called "The Forge" will encourage, but not require, active gameplay while smithing. Ore and bars may be used directly from the bank.

The regular smithing process will create "base items". These may then be upgraded using as many bars as were originally required to create the item. At higher tiers items may be upgraded more than once: the number of times an item can be upgraded will be half its tier, rounded down. Each upgrade will require double the bars used in the previous upgrade, with the experience given being equal to the number of bars used.

An item upgraded to its best upgrade level will be a "fine item". All upgraded items will be tradeable, but only base and fine items will be tradeable via the Grand Exchange. Fine items may be smithed into untradeable presentation items. These can be handed in to master smiths (Martin Steelweaver, Suak, or Lady Trahaearn) for extra experience, equivalent to that given by smithing half the total number of bars needed to make the fine item. Handing in presentation items will also award Artisans Workshop respect points, if there is not a rework of the activity as part of the Smithing update.

Proposed new Smithing levels:

With level 99 Smithing players will be able to create masterwork items out of aetherium items. Masterwork items will be level 90 tank items and will require level 90 Attack or Defence to use. They will be augmentable and will degrade into a broken state, requiring consumable smithing items to repair. Creating masterwork items will be a complex, time consuming and expensive process which awards only token experience. They will be created from a number of components, including glorious aetherium bars and aetherium filigree. The number of glorious bars needed will be the same as the number of bars needed to make that type of regular item, while 10 times as much filigree will be needed.

Glorious bars will be made through a process of "folding" which takes place through cycles upgrading the bar from enriched to folded to glorious. Enriched and glorious bars will be tradeable but folded bars will not be. Only one bar can be folded at a time, though making them will be queued to repeat through the make-x process. Making the initial enriched aetherium bars will require 10 immaculate alloy bars, which will each made from 10 concentrated alloy bars and 1 barrows bar. Barrows bars will be made by melting down barrows equipment at the dragon forge. Each concentrated alloy bar will be made from a variety of smithed bars, including a dragon bar made from melting down dragon items at the dragon force, and a purifying flux, which will be purchasable from Artisans Workshop for. Aetherium filigree will use cheap materials in a very time consuming process of converting aetherium bars to aetherium wire, to twisted aetherium wire, to aetherium filigree. Aetherium wire and filigree will be tradeable.

It will be possible to combine masterwork items with parts of level 80 and 90 drops from bosses to make even better level 92 power armour called energised armour. Energised armour will be augmentable and tradeable and will degrade to a broken state, repairable using repair kits which will also be created through smithing. The process of creating energised armour will require 99 Smithing and will be simpler and faster than creating masterwork items, though it be more costly. It will involve combining masterwork items with energised inlays. Each energised inlay will be made through combining an aetherium bar with 2 praesulic essence, from torva armour; 1 malevolent essence, from malevolent armour; and 2 kalphite essence, from drygore weapons. Creating energised armour will award only token experience. Jagex are also considering adding mastery, whereby the player would need to unlock the ability to make masterwork aetherium items. Unlocking the ability to work on mastery would require a special accomplishment such as earning a certain amount of experience by smithing a type of item at each tier. It is likely that the concept of unlocking masterwork items will now be incorporated into the masterwork system; rather than being a separate mastery system as was initially presented.

Invention batch 2
A second batch of content for Invention is planned to be released alongside the second in-game expansion in September 2017.

Skilling outfits
Mod Ryan is working on adding the artisan's outfit and fletcher's outfit to the rewards from Stealing Creation with a cost of 80 reward points per piece of the outfit.

Arc fixes
Mod Orion is working on fixes to The Arc:
 * Add shortcut keys to the travel interface.
 * Fix objects on uncharted isles not spawning and spawning on top of each other.
 * Investigate whether having multiple adjacent tortle spawns affects tortle respawn rate.
 * Investigate some spots not allowing traps to be placed on Uncharted Isles.
 * Investigate Uncharted Isles combat NPCs not scaling correctly when hit by a Summoning familiar.
 * Add "make-60" options to various craftables and transmutations e.g. tortle shell bowls.
 * Add a filterable chatbox message saying when a resource is 25%, 50%, 75% and nearly depleted.

Boss kill times hiscores
Players' boss kill times will be reset and a new system of kill time hiscores will be added in 2017.

New boss
A new boss currently called The Ambassador will be released in 2017. This was originally announced as a solo only boss at RuneFest 2016, however following player feedback Jagex have decided to lift this restriction. They are now considering a fight involving 1-5 players.

Giant Mimic
Mod Erator is working on making the Giant Mimic a permanent overworld boss.

Penguins in space: musical raids
Mods Deg and Raven are working on a fun practice-mode like Raids encounter. To enter the encounter players must board a space ship and then co-operate as a team to maintain their ship's wellbeing by following instructions which are given to them. If the team is able to successfully maintain ship wellbeing then they will arrive at the boss fight.

During the fight the players will fight in combat against Beatsmaster Zurgdag (Beastmaster Durzag) while music is played. Yamaharu (Yakamaru) will spectate the fight. Additional mechanics will involve maintaining the players' volume meter while decreasing the volume meter of the bosses.

Combat fixes

 * Mod Ramen is working on making damage dealt to minions in Nex: Angel of Death count towards the overall DPS drop.
 * Mod Harrison has started working on making tier 92 weapons dyable.

Overworld nature elemental boss
Mod Ramen is looking into adding a surface world nature elemental boss as a personal project.

New Slayer monsters
During GameJam Mod Shogun revealed that he is working on creating three new Slayer monsters: 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)

Elder Gods quest
A quest involving the Elder God Bik is an update intended for release in 2017.

Evil Dave quest
A quest involving Evil Dave is planned for release in 2017.

Replayable Sliske's Endgame
Mod Raven is working on making Sliske's Endgame replayable. He has completed the following fixes:
 * Ability to play through a second time.
 * Adjust past choices on non-canon playthroughs.
 * Add a "lore maze" for non-canon playthroughs where players can go straight to the maze, skip solving it and just do the interaction parts. Players will be able to choose what interactions they will have in what order.
 * Fix clickout bug for interactions so players will be able to see if they missed interactions.
 * Change dialogue in final scene so that the player can pledge the stone to a god of their choice.
 * Adjust dialogue for Zaros, if you are loyal to him.
 * Added Akrisae to the final scene.
 * Updated model for Sliske to have the staff at the stone scene.
 * Other potential fixes are making shards augmentable; letting the player get Armadyl's feather if they are loyal to him throughout the quest; and making the maze interface show which rooms the player has already been through.

Murder Mystery quest
Mods Osborne and Krista have begun working on a murder mystery style quest as part of GameJam. It will involve only female characters, and will be based around discovering who has killed a beloved character. The quest will have a similar feel to One Piercing Note, with the player solving the murder mystery. The quest will have a unique mechanic where the player investigates the environment and enters text into a "search engine" interface to receive more clues; this will allow for its events to be played out of sequence.

Vorago backstory quest
Mods Ramen, Ryan and Ollie are working on a Vorago backstory quest. This is not intended to be a quest with high level requirements, though it may require completion of The Giant Dwarf quest.

One Small Favour sequel
A sequel to the One Small Favour quest was one of the projects mentioned during GameJam.

Summer Beach Party
The Summer Beach Party will return in 2017.

In-game events calendar
Mods Erator and Chaplain have been working on an in-game calendar as part of GameJam. The calendar will record events such as Treasure Hunter promotions, official livestreams and Jagex moderator events. They are also looking into adding 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.

Burthorpe Games Room update
Mod Tomb is working on an update to make it possible for players to play games from the Burthorpe Games Room while skilling across RuneScape. Initially it would only be possible for players on the same world to challenge each other.

Bank bidders
Bank bidders will be a two week event where players will be able to bet on and win the contents of a banned account's bank. It was planned for release in February 2017, but has been postponed for the foreseeable future.

Expansions
Three game world expansions are planned for June, September and December of 2017. Each expansion will introduce a new in-game area with a depth of content similar to that of Prifddinas and greater than the size of The Arc in its two collective batches.

Menaphos

 * The Magister will be released.

Seers' Village graphical update
The next in-game area to be graphically reworked will be Seers' Village and Camelot. The update will be developed by Mod AOB, after he has completed work on the Menaphos update. 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.

Karamja graphical update
During GameJam Mod Joe worked on a method to execute some low key graphical reworks by reusing existing graphical assets. The GameJam livestream showcased his application of this to a graphical update for Karamja.

Achievements system
A second update to the Achievements system is planned for July 2017.

Clue scroll rework
A rework for clue scrolls is being worked on by the ninja team. This is intended to make completing clue scrolls more rewarding and may allow the player to work on more than one clue of the same difficulty at the same time. Improved rewards may include new god birds, third-age armour, unique clue scroll gear, and footprint trails left as the player moves around the world.

Jagex are also looking into adding a new tier of clue called champion clue, which would include skilling clues. Champion clues could also have hiscores and competitive clues involving players racing to be the first to claim a single prize from completing a clue.

Bank rework
The ninja team is working on an update for banks that is aimed for release during the second half of 2017,

Weather system
A dynamic weather system which affects players' gameplay will be added in 2017.

Dailies and weeklies rework
Daily and weekly repeatable events will be reworked. Jagex will first be looking at dailies and the Challenge System. Challenges given will be made specific: for example, playing for a certain amount of time or gaining a certain amount of experience.

Clan avatar rework
Mod Moltare is planning changes to clan avatars:


 * Removing the anagogic orts system. Instead clan members will be able to attune to their clan's avatar habitat while visiting the citadel once a week.
 * Attuned clan members will be able to summon the clan avatar as a cosmetic companion pet.
 * Attuned clan members will receive an experience buff, regardless of whether or not the avatar pet is summoned.
 * Potential experience buffs may be: a flat 3% experience buff; a 3% buff plus 2% for having maximum clan fealty (total 5%); or 1% per tier of avatar habitat plus 2% for max fealty.
 * While in the citadel with the avatar pet summoned it will gather resources up to a cap shared across all clan avatars.
 * Clan members with admin+ rank may be given permissions to customise the avatars' appearance and set what they will gather at the citadel.

Mod Moltare is currently working with Mod Asherz to make changes to the game engine to allow clan avatars to work with familiar overrides.

Aura bag
Mod Harrison is working on creating an aura bag to store auras. Auras will no longer be objects: instead the player will equip their aura bag to use an aura.

Permanent ban appeal system
Reinstatement of a system to allow permanently banned players to appeal their bans is planned for early 2017. This system will be available to pay-to-play players.

Live chat
Introduction of the ability to have live text-based conversations about limited customer support related issues with Jagex Moderators in the customer support team is planned, following successful trial of the feature.

New game guide
The Jagex-run RuneScape Wiki will be removed from the website and will be replaced with a smaller game guide section.

Ninja team
Mod Maylea is currently working on splitting the Attack/Strength and Defence/Constitution tabs. After this she will be working on the top 10 most wanted quick ninja fixes, as voted for on the Ninja Backlog Prioritisation thread on Reddit. These were:
 * 1) Crystal teleport seeds having too few charges (this was fixed in an update on 13 March 2017)
 * 2) Lots of effects not appearing on the buff bar (these were added on 4 April 2017)
 * 3) Difficulty selecting bats and Animated pickaxes in Dungeoneering (this was fixed in an update on 13 March 2017)
 * 4) Lack of option to deposit inventory into a beast of burden.
 * 5) Familiars not being forced called when teleporting to some areas
 * 6) World 48 having an outdated total level (this was changed on 4 April 2017)
 * 7) Prayer potions not being available to F2P (this was fixed on 13 March 2017)
 * 8) Many buffs/debuffs lacking specific numbers
 * 9) Too small of a character limit in friend and clan chat channels
 * 10) Installed gizmos not being visible on augmented items when examining another player

God books cosmetic overrides
Mod Orion is working on making cosmetic overrides for god books during his personal project time. Players will be able to use different recolours if they have created the corresponding god books. Additional colours will be available if the player has all other recolours unlocked. These features were expected to appear in-game in late February, but have yet to be released.

Pets
In 2017, skilling pets will be added for combat skills (including Attack, Constitution, Defence, Magic, Summoning, Strength, Ranged and Prayer). Players will be able to submit concepts for the combat skilling pets as part of a competition. The ninja team will select their top 5 concepts for each skilling pet and players will be able to vote for their favourite concept via an in-game poll.

There may additionally be pets for clue scroll and minigame completion. There will also be the pet park, a place to store pets and potentially unlock hidden rewards for collecting different groups of pets. Players may also be able to customise their pet park and command their pets to work for them, similar to in Managing Miscellania.

Miscellaneous fixes

 * The currency pouch interface will be streamlined.
 * Mod Timbo's current projects include increasing the value of seeds; increasing ghostly essence drops; and removing resources from PvM.
 * In Search of the Myreque and In Aid of the Myreque will give their experience rewards as lamps rather than direct experience.
 * A bug that prevents players from being able to choose their interactions while replaying Sliske's Endgame will be fixed.
 * A tool tip for Summoning familiars' pouches will be added to show the player the abilities of the familiar that they contain.
 * Mod Stu is working on adding a quest accept interfaces to all quests: currently he has done this for 75 quests and has 50 left to go.
 * Mod Ryan is making unused runed urns stack in the player's inventory.
 * Luck of the dwarves will get an option to teleport to Keldagrim. Hazelmere's signet ring will gain the luck of the dwarves' teleports. Both tier 4 rings will inherit all the abilities of the lower-tier rings.
 * Carapace armour and Batwing robes will be made craftable by free players.
 * Volumetric lighting will be added to the skybox tool.