[2022] TOA Changes & Beta Tweaks

I meant what I wrote, nobody can stop me. Also I literally can't ride a bike.

You still can get an extra hit, but you need to click the tick before the light comes out of the statue. We were attempting to manually recreate the old behaviour but haven't been able to.

You should get pretty consistent 1-downs if you're 99 mining and using your pickaxe spec, but if you want to time-save then you can count ticks. Light comes out on a 9 tick cycle, keep a note of which number it comes out on and then click statue as before. Not as nice and 'visual' as before but still doable!

Kieren gave a pretty good rundown of server topics in a recent Q&A. Maintenance last week laid a good groundwork for us to start making much-needed tech upgrades.

Improvements are coming and ongoing, we know the servers are a huge source of frustration for players at the moment, but there isn't anything for me to report specifically this week.

I don't disagree at all! Personally using visual metronome set to 9 ticks on RL to still have something visual, but it's for sure less intuitive than before.

Still the tick before, we've not been able to manually recreate the same behaviour as before.

I've not seen many reports of this personally (and have been glued to the Dragon Slayer WR trading between Sick Nerd and Tannerdino recently). If it's something that becomes a large issue then we could perhaps do something, but it likely wouldn't be a quick & simple one, more along the lines of adjusting splashing behaviour entirely (and even then, people can still grief by chain-killing required NPCs in non-instanced areas)

Feels as though more of its value is tied up in its strength as a Crush weapon rather than a Str training option for accounts with limited defence? Since Dharok's (and I'm pretty sure Obsidian?) outperform it as a training option for accounts with Defence.

I could be very wrong but I think some of the recent decrease for Bludgeon is because PNM is a less desirable moneymaker, I don't think Voidwaker being on par for limited Def + 75 Att builds is likely to influence the price too heavily. Happy to be clowned on if this is a bad take, but I still don't think the Bludgeon will be in a bad place since Crush still has value (especially when the next step up that ladder is over 200m).

It's not me that gets stuff fixed! I'm just the monkey with the keyboard who lets you know what got fixed 1 in every 3 weeks.

I've not heard of any plans like that, though with the beautiful crowdsourcing effort put in by the Wiki team and Runelite, I'd imagine we'll likely release the 'correct' numbers soon at least.

Would recommend pushing to 85 Mining at the least! And snagging yourself a pickaxe (or waiting for safe alternative methods of obtaining with the Wildy Boss Rework)

Investigation is going well, we're waiting on some extra verification of any findings before we make a formal statement.

We'd rather wait a little while and make 100% certain that we're confident in our findings than cut corners to rush a statement out for the sake of it. We understand players want answers and that it's frustrating feeling in the dark, but as a reminder the issue was fixed on the same day it was reported to us - we just want to make sure our findings are correct.

There's a handful of feedback regarding it (though it's admittedly a pretty niche offering in the first place), we've not been able to get any changes made to beta but will likely make some changes before a full release. If they're significant, perhaps another beta might be something we could look at doing!

Have put this down as a feedback point for us to discuss tomorrow morning!

We've seen a few ideas juggled around but could use more feedback in honesty. At present the run drain effect is more or less countered by a single Stamina dose. Personally think it might make more sense for it to disable run for a few ticks to give you better odds at getting gap when escaping, but it still feels a little lacklustre compared to just catching a freeze/entangle (albeit likely with higher accuracy).

If you or your pals have any ideas, drop them here!

Have passed this on, sorry that you haven't heard anything back yet, hopefully able to get this sorted for you!

It was bugged and not functioning as intended, so we fixed the bug!

This one's on me, the ticket for the fix was reopened and I didn't realise it had been pushed back to next week. Will update the blog to remove this line once I get a sec, appreciate you raising!

The Speedrunning worlds are separate from maingame so they should be able to!

Rather than replying to individual comments about it I'll drop my own and hope people see:
I understand the frustration around Akkha's orb/enrage phase (though some players seem to have given it a slightly more colourful name), have raised this to the team and will talk about it tomorrow morning to see if there are any changes we'd like to make to address some of these concerns.

Cheers for the feedback all, hope everybody's having a good week. I'll try to keep replying where possible and in cases where I think I have something useful to say!

I'm like 80% certain that Ahrim's Robe top in general doesn't work alongside Ava's items? Could be wrong, but pretty sure that's a useless bit of trivia I have stored in my brain somewhere

Essentially, Special Attack energy is a resource same as HP, prayer points, run energy etc.

For people just trying to kill NPCs in the Wilderness, the idea of bringing a full set of gear to 'properly' anti-PK and perhaps bringing a whole KO weapon isn't something that appeals to them. The aim with these weapons is to let those people have a slightly easier way to get some value out of their Special Attack energy (rather than just leaving it at 100%) to put themselves in at least a little more favourable position.

In the case of the Accursed Sceptre, a well-timed Spec can prevent your opponent from casting a spell like Entangle or Ice Barrage, forcing them to drink a restore and potentially catching them off-guard, giving you a little more of a window to potentially slip around terrain (or even increasing your odds at catching a freeze yourself).

For the Ursine Chainmace (whose spec we'd like to change a little), we want players to be able to get some extra damage off and give themselves an opportunity to buy themselves a little bit of a gap to - again - maybe slip around terrain and manage to log out, or keep out of range from something like an AGS spec while they eat up.

The Webweaver Bow is a little different, since Craw's DPS is already pretty big compared to the other weapons in PvP, so its spec just puts a little more damage into your assailant and gives them poison to worry about if they weren't prepared enough to bring their own anti.

Nothing prevents PKers from using the weapons themselves, but most people looking to score KOs or secure kills are going to use their Special Attack energy on something else, with higher variance and reduced utility but improved KO potential (i.e. AGS, Claws, Volatile Staff, even the DDS or Gmaul).

Sorry for the wall, it's a project I'm passionate about and I love talking about it. Hopefully this answers some of your Qs at the least!

Also a really good point! But at least doesn't feel like I'm off-base in saying that limited Def builds training Strength aren't really a key component in the value of something like the Bludgeon

It's an in-world way of making sure the player bears the heavy burden of invading a tomb, destroying the essence of a long-buried hero and then looting his stuff with total disregard.

In beta worlds you should be able to yeah!

Feel free to pass on RSNs if you know people who abused the bug!