Upcoming updates

OS

This article contains information about an upcoming update. It should consist only of facts from official Jagex releases and not speculation or predictions. For further details, see our future content policy.

This page is a list of upcoming RuneScape updates.

Skilling

Elite dungeons

Main article: Elite dungeons

Elite dungeons 2 (Dragonkin Laboratory) and 3 are planned for release on 13 August 2018 and in December 2018, respectively. The 1st dungeon was Temple of Aminishi, released on 25 June. They are being developed by Mod Orion, Mod Sova, and Mod Chaose. Dragonkin Laboratory will award a full elite tectonic armour set, mutated versions of the Fury, Flurry, and Barge abilities, and rewards that improve Slayer and Shifting Tombs. An ‘Elite’ title, for those who complete all Elite Dungeon achievements. A pet purchasable with Dungeoneering tokens. The ability to create the gorajan trailblazer outfits will be released alongside Dragonkin Laboratory. Fragments for the outfit will be gained from completing Dungeoneering floors and elite dungeons.

Player-owned farm

Main article: Player-owned farm

The player-owned farm will be released in September 2018 and will feature players raising livestock. It will require level 17 Farming and level 20 Construction in return for Farming experience and special items that aid with Farming. Players will also be able to obtain items that grant benefits across RuneScape, such a boost when fighting spiders (including Araxxor/Araxxi).

Skillcape perks

Mod Daze and Mod Erator are planning an update to existing skillcape perks and an expansion of perks to master capes of accomplishment. Master capes for Slayer, Dungeoneering, and Invention will be given perks; virtual 120 capes will not have perks. This is intended to be released in Summer 2018.

Proposed master cape perks are:

• Dungeoneering - chance to choose which boss will be faced during a dungeon and increases the chance of receiving lore drops.
• Invention - chance of receiving components from disassembling items.
• Slayer - select 1 task of your choice, once daily.
• Master quest cape - teleports to a selection of locations including the Champions' Guild, Heroes' Guild, Legends' Guild, Wise Old Man's house, and Tears of Guthix.

Skill cape perks that will be adapted are:

• Agility - no failure on obstacles.
• Construction - chance to save planks when building in a player-owned house.
• Crafting - chance to cut all gems in an inventory at once.
• Divination - all wisps last a fixed amount of time.
• Firemaking - fire spirits give better rewards and cape acts as a light source.
• Fletching - chance to make extra bolts and arrows.
• Hunter - increased range for traps.
• Thieving - all pickpocketed drops are noted.

Mining and Smithing rework

Main article: /Mining and Smithing rework

A major rework to the Mining and Smithing skills is in development, originally slated for release in the second half of 2017. The rework will completely change the way that both skills work, introducing stamina, new tiers of ore, and a heat mechanic.

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.

Off-hand skilling items

File:Magical relics concept art.png

Concept art for the magical relics.

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 could potentially be released late 2018.

Combat

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

• An update to Shattered Worlds will make its gameplay more interesting and other improvements. There will be new objectives and maybe hiscores of different types. Mod Erator has finished his TAPP work and it has been on the QA backlog since March.
• Gizmos will be visible on augmented items when examining another player.
• 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.
• After RS Mobile is released, 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.
• 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.
• In his TAPP Mod Shauny is working on improving boss practice mode by allowing players to select different phases of a boss to start at.
• Reprisal ability's damage will be made to trigger on command.

Abyssal Slayer creatures

Concept art of the Abyssal creatures by Mod NicePants.

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:

• Abyssal savage (requiring level 95 Slayer to kill)
• Abyssal beast (requiring level 105 Slayer to kill)
• Abyssal lord (requiring level 115 Slayer to kill)

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.

Quests and events

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 in 2018.

Quest point shop

Mod Kylar is gathering player suggestions for a quest point shop. There will be a quest points shop hub in the north-west corner of the Grand Exchange, this location is not final though. The hub will feature an NPC which has not been revealed yet. The shop will have 3 different reward tracks. Players will be able to allocate quest points to those reward tracks. Players with a quest point cape will be able to unlock around 2.5 reward tracks upon release of the shop. Players can change the allocation to another track to gain access to the rewards of that track, but they will lose access to the rewards of the track the quest points were previously allocated to. Rewards will include a tribrid weapon, a hybrid quest armour set which references the helmet of trials, and a lorehound pet (for which the player can also unlock the quest armour). The armour set will also aid players who struggle with quest bosses, making the fights easier with each attempt. The armour will only work on quest bosses, excluding the Dominion Tower quest bosses as the Dominion Tower already provides weapons that can be used within the tower against those bosses. The shop will also include fixed rewards (not part of the reward tracks) which are obtained/unlocked at certain quest point milestones, e.g. helmet of trials, Rover the red dragon, Spot the black dragon, and including some new rewards. The shop will not be a master quest cape requirement nor will it be a completionist cape requirement.

Reworks

Banks

Concept for the bank rework

Main article: Bank § Bank rework

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.

Seers' Village

Concept map of the Seers Village graphical rework.

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.

Other

RuneScape Mobile

Main article: 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 sometime in late 2018.

Interface scaling

The interface will be made scalable as part of the upcoming Mobile client, and it will work also on the PC client.

Group Ironman

An update for Ironman Mode players by Mod Ramen, which will allow linked Ironman players to interact freely with each other and participate in group bosses and Dungeoneering, was announced at RuneFest 2017. Features this may include are a group banking system, leaderboards, and a guild including Mr Ex and other ironman related content. Group ironman is currently on hold since engine work is needed (group banking, other features) and the engine team is completely dedicated to RS Mobile.

The 1st Developer Blog for the update was posted on 15 June and revealed the following plans for the mode:

• Players will be able to form groups of 2-5 ironman players. Groups will be classified according to size, with each size having a different chat badge and Ironman Armour icon, and potentially different hiscores.
• Leaving a group will result in a group ironman account being downgraded to a regular account.
• If a player leaves a group then the group will be able to recruit a freshly created group ironman account only.

Microtransactions

The Live Events team are currently working on updating Treasure Hunter with the following changes:

• Oddments system becoming a permanent feature.
• Re-balancing base reward table to provide more valuable items.
• Rework hearts of ice to make them more beneficial.
• Add lifecycle system for new and existing Treasure Hunter items to be repeatedly available, and eventually freely available. The current plan is for Treasure Hunter exclusive items to become available through Solomon's General Store or time-limited events after 1 year; available through Thaler/a fragment system similar to elite skilling outfits another year later; and become freely available some time after that.

Miscellaneous

The following fixes are planned for future updates:

• "Buy X" will be added for the Arc reward shops.
• 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.
• Mod Timbo's current long-term projects include increasing the value of seeds and removing resources from PvM. https://www.reddit.com/r/runescape/comments/8zjd3c/any_update_on_the_new_alchemical_onyx_jewellery/e2jg9sp/?context=10000
• Rare drop table is being reworked to make it more rewarding.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Summoning stores' interfaces will be graphically updated.
• Red and celestial dragons will be graphically updated.
• Spellbook Swap will be improved with the ability to right-click which book to change to.
• The steel key ring will be added to the tool belt.
• Mod Shauny is working on an update to player examine during his TAPP time. This would allow a player's inventory and Beast of Burden inventory to be viewed on the examine. This would update in real-time and would be affected by privacy settings.
• The bug report interface's messages about already known bugs will be improved to include more known live issues.
• Dave's spellbook will be updated to allow the player to store up to 1000 'chipped' teleports in July 2018.
• Summoning points will be updated to show out of 990 rather than 99 in July 2018.
• An Agility shortcut will be added to the eastern wall of the first island of The Islands That Once Were Turtles to allow easier access to clue scroll locations.