Soul Wars

Soul Wars is a members-only minigame that was released on 10 February 2009. Similar to Castle Wars, it is a safe team-based minigame that lasts twenty minutes per game and can be played on any world. In Soul Wars, the two opposing teams compete against each other to gather soul fragments and offer them to the Soul Obelisk in order to defeat each others' Avatars, using a combination of combat and Slayer skills.



Introduction
Far to the west, upon an island long isolated from the rest of RuneScape, two great creatures vie for control of a powerful obelisk but without any clear victor. Recently, a curious man upon a strange pilgrimage found the island and, for his own obscure purposes, has opened the field of battle to any who wish to pit their mettle against the smaller creatures of the island, other adventurers, or even the mighty avatars themselves...

Location
To get to the Soul Wars minigame, one must enter the portal in Edgeville. It is located south-west of the bank and west of the abandoned mausoleum. The portal looks similar to the Pest Control portal. After going through the portal, the player will arrive at the Nomad's camp, where players can exchange zeal for rewards, learn how to play Soul Wars, or join a team to play Soul Wars.

How to Get There

 * Glory Amulet- Teleports you outside Edgeville bank.
 * Combat Bracelet- Teleports you to the Monastery near Edgeville.
 * Canoe- Canoe from Lumbridge,Champions' Guild or Barbarian Village.
 * Edgeville Home Teleport - The Home Teleport from the Ancients spellbook will take you just outside Edgeville bank.
 * Skull sceptre - Teleports you inside Barbarian Village, just south of Edgeville, via the "Invoke" option.
 * Fairy ring - Code DKR gets you on the other side of the river, it's 15 seconds walk from there.

Requirements
Soul Wars does not require any levels or quests in order to be played. Players should note the following things, however:


 * You will need to battle other people and monsters so high Combat levels are recommended.
 * Many parts of the minigame require high Slayer levels, so a decent slayer level is recommended.
 * Players will be under attack by other players and NPCs, so a decent defence level allowing good armour to be worn is recommended.
 * Because this is a combat-based minigame, it would be a good idea to have 43 prayer for at least protection from melee.

Recommended Items
Note: Players are unable to take capes, food or non-combat items into any part of the minigame besides the central lobby.

Because this is a combat-based minigame, players should consider bringing the following:
 * The best armour that the player has and can wear. Players may consider bringing multiple sets, one with a high melee defence, another with a high mage defence, ect.
 * The best weapon that the player has and can use. Players again may want to bring a selection of weapons, some melee, some ranged, ect.
 * Players should note that runes and ranged ammunition used during game by range and magic weapons will not be returned to the player at the end of the game.


 * A Summoning familiar, if the player has the ability to summon one that could assist him or her in combat.

Items available during the game
Players will be able to obtain the following items during the game:
 * Bandages
 * Barricades
 * Explosive potion

Fighting for Souls
When you first arrive on the island, you will encounter Nomad and his imp familiar. Nomad will offer you a tour of the field of battle along with a short explanation, or a book that explains fighting in the Soul Wars.

When you feel you are ready to battle, you can enter one of the portals to the south of Nomad. The blue portal will align you with the Avatar of Creation, the red portal will align you with the Avatar of Destruction, and the green portal will attach you to the team with the fewest players.

Only one game can be played at any one time per world, but in theory every single player on that world could be taking part. Games last twenty minutes, with a minimum three minute waiting period in between, so you may have to wait for the previous game to end before you can get in. If you're keen to join in, however, you can enter a portal, and once per minute new soldiers can be added to the battle provided the number of adventurers on each team remains equal.

The battlefield is divided up into three main areas: Players on the blue team will begin here. None of the locations in this area can be captured by the red team. Players on the red team will begin here. None of the locations in this area can be captured by the blue team. There are a number of locations here, the most important of which are the Soul Obelisk and the two graveyards. These can be captured by having a greater number of your own team within their bounds for a short period of time. Jellies and pyrefiends can also be found wandering in the ruins around the battlefield.
 * The Avatar of Creation's Base
 * The Avatar of Destruction's Base
 * The Main Battlefield

Your base is composed of three main features: the avatar itself, a supply area and your team's graveyard. The avatar cannot leave its enclosure, but your enemies can enter it to attack the great beast (at their peril, it should be noted!). The supply area contains bandages, which you can use to heal yourself and your team-mates, barricades and explosives (more information in the 'Supply Areas' section below). The graveyard is the location you will be resurrected in when you die (see the section on graveyards below for more information about this).

The object of Soul Wars is to defeat your opponents' avatar as many times as you are able within the 20 minutes. The avatars begin each battle with a Slayer requirement of 100, making them impervious to everyone (because capes of accomplishment cannot be brought to the field of battle). In order to reduce their Slayer requirement, you will have to kill some of the smaller Slayer creatures to gather soul fragments and offer them to the Soul Obelisk, which can only be done if your team controls it.

Useful information: To help you keep track of all of the useful information, there is a display in the top-right corner of your screen.

The two grave symbols and the obelisk symbol indicate who (if anyone) has control over the graveyards and the Soul Obelisk.

The information on the right lets you know the current state of the avatars and how much time remains in the current battle.

Killing the Avatars
In order to kill your opponents' avatar, you must first weaken it to enable as many of your team-mates to fight it as possible. As noted above, this is done by killing the jellies and pyrefiends around the main battlefield and offering the resulting soul fragments to the Soul Obelisk. The more fragments you offer, the lower the Slayer requirement will be, as noted by the 'Avatar Level' entry in the top-right of your window.

You can attempt to restore your avatar's Slayer requirement by burying the bones of your defeated foes while in a graveyard your team controls. Each time you do this, there is a chance that your avatar's Slayer requirement will rise back up 1 level.

As if this wasn't enough, both avatars have a Combat level of 525 and should not be underestimated.

Note that Summoning familiars are unable to harm the avatars, but are useful for killing off the smaller Slayer creatures and opposing players.

Death and Graveyards
When you are killed in Soul Wars (either by one of the creatures of the battlefield or another player), Nomad will protect you from the hunger of the Soul Obelisk and ensure that you are resurrected in the graveyard closest to where you died, provided that your team controls it. For a few moments, you will be a purely spectral form and unable to interact with anything, but you'll soon be restored to your usual state, along with any equipment you were carrying, with the exception of bones and soul fragments.

Because the two graveyards in the main battlefield can be captured, they are especially valuable resources for getting access to the smaller Slayer monsters, the Soul Obelisk and your opponents' base.

Supply Areas
Your base's supply area contains bandages, barricades and explosive potions, all of which are useful for ensuring the battle favours your side.

You cannot trade in Soul Wars, but you can use bandages on your team-mates to heal some of their lost Hitpoints. Equally, you can use them yourself for the same benefit. You can carry as many bandages as you have inventory space. They also restore run energy which helps to get around the battlefield.

Along with the bandages, you'll discover that your base also has a table full of barricades. You can only carry one barricade at a time, and your team can only have ten barricades set up at once. You can set up a barricade in many places to hinder your opponents by simply clicking it in your inventory. If you find a barricade blocking your path, you can attack it or use explosives to remove the obstacle.

Explosive potions can be used on your enemies' barricades to destroy them in a single blast. You can carry as many explosive potions as you have inventory space.

You can also use the other team's supply area as well, which can help if you need to restock before fighting the avatar. This may be fixed in the near future though, similar to what happened with the bandage table in Castle Wars.

Winning the Game
Whichever team defeats their opponents' avatar the greatest number of times will be declared the victor, any other result will be declared a draw.



Leaving the game
Should you wish to leave the game you will not receive any Zeal points. Unlike Castle Wars, however, you will not be able to join a game until the current game has ended. This ensures that players on the losing team cannot swap team to receive more points.

Rewards
You will receive a number of 'zeal points' based on your performance in Soul Wars, at the rate of 3 points for a victory, 2 for a draw, and 1 for a defeat. You can trade these in with the Nomad for a variety of rewards:
 * The max number of zeal points that can be banked is 50,000.

Experience
You can claim experience in Attack, Strength, Defence, Hitpoints, Ranged, Magic, Prayer or Slayer. One zeal point is worth a set amount of experience depending on your level in that skill.

Charms
Charms of any colour are available, the number you can claim depends on your combat skills' levels.

Charms cannot be obtained if under level 6 combat

Other
Most options here are new Slayer pets, resurrected from remains you bring along. If you bring a stuffed or unstuffed trophy of a crawling hand, cockatrice head, basilisk head, kurask head or abyssal demon head, Nomad will then supply you with a pet of that type. See Summoning pets for more information. The amount of points each summoning pet costs is equal to the slayer level required to kill the respective slayer creature (e.g. abyssal demon costs 85 points)


 * Players should note that if they have a mounted head in their player owned house, they CANNOT remove the mounted head and salvage it to turn into a pet. If they remove a mounted head, they will not receive it back in any form.

Gamble
Below is an unconfirmed list of possible rewards from the "Gamble" feature. The rewards are related to either Prayer or Summoning skills. Due to the fact that the Gamble rewards were not listed in any official form at the time of release, there were widespread rumors of players receiving valuable items such as Amulets of Fury and Elysian Spirit Shields. These rumors were later debunked by Jagex staff.


 * Babydragon bones (23) Value:
 * Wyvern bones (16-23) Value: to
 * Wolf Bones (39) Value:
 * Dagannoth hide (5) Value:
 * Big bones (60) Value:
 * Marigolds (6-8) Value: to
 * Larupia fur (4-12) Value: to
 * Bones (209-290) Value: to
 * Dragon bones (11) Value:
 * Coins (20,000-100,000) Value: 20,000 to 100,000
 * Unicorn horn (22) Value:
 * Kyatt fur (4-9) Value: to
 * Vampire dust (19-28) Value: to
 * Evil turnip (7) Value:
 * Carved evil turnip (7) Value:
 * Thin snail (20 raw and noted) Value:
 * Proboscis 12 Value:
 * Desert goat horn (6 noted) Value:
 * Dagannoth bones (3-5 noted) Value: to
 * Ogre coffin key (42 noted) Value: (although it should be noted that coffin rewards can be worth many times more than this)
 * Red Flowers (9 noted) Value:
 * Green dragonhide (10 noted) Value:
 * Potato cactus (18-19 noted) Value: to Value:
 * Bagged plant 1 (20 noted) Value:
 * Graahk fur (5) Value:
 * Snake hide (10 noted) Value:

Trivia

 * Summoning is the only combat related skill in which players cannot receive experience as a reward in Soul Wars. However, you can exchange Zeal points for charms for use in summoning.
 * If you try to do an emote or trade in the Graveyard, it will reply either "This is a battleground, not a circus." or "This is a battleground, not a marketplace." This could be a reference to the play Les Miserables in which the main character Jean Valjean makes a comment that this is a Factory and not a Circus
 * Upon release of this minigame, there was a glitch where if you were skulled in the minigame and died, you would lose your items.
 * The rectangular graveyard boxes and ghost wait time is a reference to the ghost villians of the classic arcade game Pac-Man.
 * A long time ago, there was a land mass west of Port Tyras that has been removed from the game. This is where Soul Wars is now located.
 * The jellies and pyrefiends count toward your slayer task.
 * The Avatar Of Destruction is very similar to General Graardor, as its Melee attack has the same animations that General Graardor uses in his Range attack.
 * Several people have tried to dig in the graveyards with a spade, rumoring they can get rune and dragon scimitars and other dragon items. This rumor is NOT true.