Hey folks. In case you missed it earlier, there was a three hour live stream over on the RuneScape Twitch which involved a ton of mods and developers.

They offered additional information on the recently revealed roadmap, answered some questions (including live, community submitted ones!) and more.

Below is a recap of the information revealed in bullet point form. While I'll try my best to include all the important details, I am narrowing down what are multi-sentence answers into shorter bullet points.

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Questions with Mod Markos - Executive Producer of RuneScape

• Markos looks forward to continuing to make sure players get more value for their membership with solid week to week updates, following a really good month of updates in July/August 2024.
• Long-term, Mod Markos would like to offer even more transparency. Specifically called out was roadmaps for TWO to THREE years in the future.
• MTX blog post coming next week from Mod Pips. This will start a dialogue about how MTX will function in RuneScape.
  • The survey from a few weeks ago was part of this dialogue starting.
• Avatar Rework is still on the shelf but it is something they are still interested in - specifically calls it out as being a big job.
• The development team is interested in plugin support for RuneScape. With the Old School game building their own, they will look at how it works for them and how well it will translate to RuneScape.
  • This is still a long ways off and there are no firm details. It's a big project if it comes to fruition.
• Mod Markos mentions that they have slightly restructured GameJams.
  • No specific details.
• Goal is to allow for more week to week content, even outside of the monthly big releases. This includes stuff like fixing more emergent bugs/issues, gamejam projects, etc
• The communication changes came directly from player and developer feedback. Developers had plenty of ideas on how to communicate with players and they are now allowed to do that.
• Clan updates are not off the table. Thinking about what they need to prioritize as they are usually a big undertaking.
  • Mod Markos calls out he was the lead on Clan Citadels when he joined Jagex.
• Markos says some of the lessons learned from Old School is things like not having large gaps between types of content (such as time between quests, PvM experiences, etc). The biggest being just more transparent about development.
• New Area Expansion is very early days. They are still working on high-level design elements. They will talk to players as development continues.

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Skilling Boss (Gate of Elidinis) and Ode of the Devourer Talk with Mod Ramen and Mod Shrike

• Quest coming September 16th. Skilling boss coming September 23rd.
• Originally planned to be one update but ended up splitting up as plans formed to bring it into a more on-going story of the Desert storyline.
• Quest will involve playing a tutorial version of the skilling boss, and when it releases on September 23rd, you'll be good to hop right in.
• Boss is moving away from stat drain/stat reduction like seen in Croesus and will instead utilize damage. Mod Ramen mentions that the player has so many opportunities for damage mitigation and healing, why not bring it into the boss? You will use skilling for it, though.
• The skills involved for the boss will be Crafting, Mining, Divination and Agility.
• Players will have a level of control over the level of intensity needed in the encounter.
  • You can choose a slightly easier route which is less intensive but it will take longer to kill.
• No new armour will drop from the skilling boss
• The boss will drop new skilling off-hands for both Runecrafting and Divination.
  • Ty u/HeyImCodyRS for the callout.
• The boss will drop a "couple" of new amulets, a new ring and a new Scripture.
• Each of the skilling outfits for the four skills will help with the boss but are not essential.
• XP rewarded from the encounter is not intended to shake up any existing training methods or skill bands. XP rewards will not be bad, in fact it might even be "juicy".
• Ode of the Devourer will develop Elidinis as a character. Shrike calls out how they are a major character in the desert storyline but they haven't gotten much lore to them. There will also be a lore book which will offer additional lore!
• Skilling boss supports both solo and group play. It was primarily designed as a solo boss but playtesting involved both group and solo play, in terms of design. Things designed with group in mind were looked at from a solo perspective and the thought was "well, does this work here or not?".
• Group size can go up to 10. Ramen says scaling will not make it unfair or feel like you are at a disadvantage for playing in group.
• Groups will need to be formed manually.
• There is no contribution system. If you are involved in the fight, you will get a fair reward. Although Ramen calls out that if you are trying to leech, that will not work.
• The boss will not feature a traditional hard mode. Ramen says that interacting with "nodes" will allow you to make the encounter more difficult.
• The boss will feel more like you are reacting to something happening, versus Croesus feeling like you're just following a pattern.
• Ode of the Devourer will require completion of Requiem of a Dragon. Access to the skilling boss will come from completion of Ode of the Devourer.
• Ode of the Devourer is a direct continuation of Requiem of a Dragon, and will be important for the future of the Desert storyline.

Group Ironman talk with Mod Yuey and Mod Timbo

• Timbo says although it is cliche, their aim for Group Ironman is to appeal to everyone. This can be seen in the variety of Ironman mode offerings such as regular Group Ironman for more casual audiences, or competitive Group Ironman for more competitive focuses like folks who care about reaching worlds first, top high score placements, etc.
• Similar to Old School, Group Ironman will feature the Iron Enclave which is where you will form your group.
  • The island is not to subtlety shaped like an Ironman helmet and features a portal that is an ode to the original doorway seen in the Old School login background.
• The goal has been to have parity for Ironman options between both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape's.
  • RuneScape will feature additional options for group storage, and things like Journey achievements.
• Journey achievements serve as a subtle guide to what to do if you feel directionless.
• Journey achievements will reward things like increased group storage, titles, cosmetic armour, etc.
• Hardcore Group Ironman will likely not launch alongside Group Ironman later this year. They could have it there but some technical challenges to overcome first.
• Boss instances will be free for Group Ironman groups
  • This is to mitigate things like killing a boss that has been damaged by non-Group players and receiving no drop.
• Timbo talks about how the developers on Group Ironman are very much aware of community sentiment, feedback, etc on the mode. Specifically says how community folks will ask questions like "How will X, Y or Z function" and the developer will go "Oh yeah, you're right".
• Group Ironmen will have access to all auras without needing to to spend Loyalty Points. If a player leaves the Group Ironman group, they will lose access to these auras and have to unlock them traditionally. This is the case for both Competitive and Normal Group Ironmen.
  • The team is currently discussing potentially making this time limited for normal Group Ironmen but plans for it to be available permanently for Competitive Group Ironmen.
  • This decision was made three hours before the stream!
  • Thank you u/JagexTimbo for the clarity in the comments!
• Group Ironman-exclusive Milestones capes originally announced for Group Ironman have been cut due to player feedback. This will be replaced by something else - details coming in the future.
• Timbo says that people liked the idea of Milestone capes but it was more so the look of them that were mixed. This is why they will be replaced by something else.
• Certain minigames and Distractions and Diversions will see restriction removals for Group Ironman. Before launch, there will be a list of allowed and disallowed minigames available for different Ironman modes.
  • Calls out that minigames with less relevant rewards like Castle Wars are something that will likely be allowed. Essentially trying to stop people from "gaming" minigames for an advantage in a way that's either impossible or difficult for standard players.
• Wilderness Flash Events will not be available for competitive Group Ironmen
• Temporary events (Golden Party Hat Hunt, etc) will work exactly like they do for existing Ironmen, although *competitive will likely see some restrictions.
• Ironmen will be giving the chance to de-Iron by joining a non-Competitive group and leaving, as this will make them a non-Ironman.
• Overloads (and a lot of untradeable items) - all the way up to the Elder Overloads, will be available to place in group storage.
• Anything currently blocked or restricted for standard Ironmen in the game today will likely feature the same restrictions for Group Ironmen, with some exceptions.
• Group Ironman will release late October/early November.
  • Release date to be confirmed but expect it after October 14th, which is the date for the Halloween event.

Lore Panel with Mod Yuey, Mod Jack, Mod Stu and Mod Zura

• Mentions that content usually starts to be developed around 3 months before its eventual release
• Bilrach being shown on the earlier roadmap was due to there only being a rough outline for the quest when this was made and the Lore team said that the quest will feature Bilrach. As it got closer to development and feedback came in from the survey, they decided to shift focus to the Desert storyline.
• Ode of the Devourer will require Requiem for a Dragon and Soul Searching and going forward, the Desert storyline will require Phite Club and Ode of the Devourer.
• Ode of the Devourer will not require Phite Club. Dialogue will vary slightly or offer additional dialogue chains depending on which quests you have previously completed, which will allow people who have been out of the loop on the Desert storyline to rejig their memory.
  • This is something that’s called out due to the Desert storyline being so old and having plot threads from over 10 years ago.
• Ode of the Devourer isn’t a hard pivot in the story. It will continue the previous story. Stu mentions that Bilrach’s story didn’t need an immediate ending so it was okay to go back to the prior storyline(s).
• Elemental Workshop storyline is waiting for a developer who really wants to do it. No interest in forcing themselves into it if no one has the passion for it.
• Mod Jack was proud of the A Broken Home quest, mentions how it’s split on if people love it or hate it which makes it tricky to do future quests like that.
• One of the big challenges for continuing such an old story is how the game has changed, people have changed, authors have changed or moved on, etc. It’s hard to take characters and stories from so long ago and bringing them forward while respecting the original work while expanding the lore.
• Intention is to try to keep the original vision for the Desert story in mind while also adding their own flavour to it.
• Mod Jack mentions that now the Gods are no longer around in Gilenor, it’s a lot easier to continue some storylines. Specifically uses an example that a Desert storyline where Saradomin is running around is a lot different than a Desert storyline where Saradomin is not running around. Says that with the banishment of the Gods from the game, the difference between the Fifth Age and the Sixth Age is not so large as it originally seemed.
• Since Ode of the Devourer requires Requiem for a Dragon, the eventual Desert finale quest will require a chunk of quests from the First Necromancer quest chain and the entire Fort Forinthry quest chain.
• Mod Jack says that continuing other older storylines is on the table. Some storylines require specific tones that need people who can deliver them well. Example given is that the Penguin storyline has a unique tone and they wouldn’t want to ruin that tone by putting the wrong person on it.
• Mod Jack says that for the Gnome questline to continue, the next logical step is developing Arposandra. It is up to circumstances if they have a gap of content where developing Arposandra would make sense instead of just making it because the quest needs it.
• No plans to retcon existing lore from the Desert story/lore with it tying into the on-going Underworld/Necromancy content. Mod Jack says that lore changes/evolves/gets expanded on over time, but they will not be going back and changing old content to make new lore work.
• There is a reasonably detailed idea of where Zaros is and what is going on with his character, but it is all subject to change. If and when they bring characters like Zaros back, these ideas would need to change to fit the game world at the time.
  • There are no immediate plans to bring the Zaros/Erebus storyline to the forefront, but they aren’t saying it’s never coming.
• Mod Jack cannot talk about what he’s working on but he’s starting early work on what is after the Desert storyline concludes.
• Mod Stu is excited to see the Desert storyline wraps up, says it feels good to see it conclude after so much time, as well as being a fan of Desert mythology.

Future of Skilling Panel with Mod Yuey, Mod Jack, Mod Stu and Mod Luma

• The choice to bring Runecrafting to 110, as well as Woodcutting and Fletching, was to sort of link each Combat skill to existing skills. Mining and Smithing has always been closely associated with Melee. Woodcutting and Fletching has always been associated with Range. Runecrafting was chosen as the skill to tie Magic too.
  • Crafting was mentioned as something that was considered but ultimately the skill is a lot more than that.
• Mod Jack says he can openly talk about designing the 110 skills now that the roadmap is revealed. Mentions how he randomly brought up a Fletching rebalance last year in Discord.
• Player survey was one of the reasons that skilling profitability became a focus. The outcome from the survey wasn’t that PvM profitability needed to be nerfed but that skilling needed to be brought up to a similar level.
• Mod Jack offers additional context on the skilling profitability talk. Essentially time has been set aside to discuss how to make skilling profitability work better and what form it might take. This includes maybe looking at old pieces of content which could be profitable but isn’t for X, Y or Z reason, developing new content entirely or something else.
• Mod Stu mentions the issues with the Fletching methods added in the past and how it was intended to be profitable for skillers but failed to consider that Ironmen won’t be interacting with the economy, making it more difficult to acquire for them. For something to be profitable, it naturally has to be in high-demand, and it tied back into things like consumption of arrows/ammunition – it ended up being a lot larger discussion.
• Skillers are the largest sub-group based on Jagex’s statistics, while social media is dominated by dedicated, high-end players who are likely to be more engaged the PvM aspect of the game.
• Raising skills to 110 is an attempt to bring skilling back to levelling up the skills. Acknowledges that after 110 Mining and Smithing, simply levelling up the skills isn’t enough. They plan to keep experimenting with how skills interact with the core game with the 110 updates.
• 110 Mining and Smithing was seen as a relative success, and added smaller overall goals to aim for to keep players engaged.
• Mod Jack mentions that part of the reason for choosing Daemonheim as the focus for the 110 Mining and Smithing update was in part due to the original intention being to lead into the Bilrach storyline. Mod Jack also likes to try and link upcoming content together if possible.
  • This is not to say that all upcoming content will or must tie into the desert but that if they can make it work, they will.
• Mod Stu mentions that when doing 110 Mining and Smithing, it was intended to have all the core tiers of Ores to be available in a location without requirements outside of the skill while a quest could unlock a better location. Mentions how you could have a narrative reason for Daemonheim ores suddenly being available on the overworld, but Mod Jack says that this is something that’s just nice to have and is not required.
• Mod Luma says that just because narrative is focused on Desert into mid-2025, they do not have to make skilling content for the Desert if it feels like it won’t fit there.
• Mod Luma says they really enjoyed creating the Crocodile Hunter method, and they enjoy creating content for the Hunter skill. Said the intention was to be a high-intensity method but still being relevant for less-intensive players.
• There isn’t much to say about 110 Runecrafting currently as its still in early stages. Mod Jack repeats that he’s happy to have discussions with players about expectations, design goals, etc.
• Mod Jack says that the base expectation is likely that there should be a new Rune tier (the Runecrafting Rune, not the metal!) with a Runecrafting expansion but he believes the game likely doesn’t need a new Rune right now.
• When asked about innovative ideas they have discussed for upcoming skill updates, Mod Jack says that he’s thought about stackable essence. A whacky one is Divination energy being used to make runes as Divination is in a weird place in terms of mechanical and lore, but he doesn’t think that huge changes like that are a good idea for the 110 updates.
• Mod Luma says they think that it’s important to keep in mind having options for high-intensity and low-intensity options for skilling updates.
• The decision to not include 110 Firemaking alongside Woodcutting is down to scope. Each update is 2-3 months of development time.
• Mod Jack says that would an eventual 110 Firemaking “fix” the skill? Says it would be easy to just… allow players to burn a new log from 110 Woodcutting and level the skill up but it wouldn’t really do anything for the skill or be interesting in anyway.
• It isn’t known if existing active skilling methods will be more rewarding after the upcoming rebalance project, as they haven’t begun having those discussions yet.
• Multiple questions in relation to how they plan to do the skilling profitability update which were met with no answers because they haven’t begun those discussions yet.
• There hasn’t been much talk of changes to Completionist Cape requirements with the maximum non-Virtual obtainable level moving from 99 to 110, in the sense that the Completionist Cape requires you to achieve the maximum obtainable level in all skills. Mod Jack says that they could make a decision that says that 99 is the baseline for Completionist Cape while 110 is not, but this has not been discussed since all skills being changed to 110 is a long-term project which will take years.
• The scope of the 110 updates is to simply add additional content to existing skills without huge reworks or new additions, similar to Mining simply adding new ores and Smithing adding new uses for those ores. They aren’t ruling out entirely new training methods but it simply isn’t in their base scope.
• Mod Jack mentions that they’ve been experimenting with moving skilling resources off PvM drop tables, with varying degrees of success (Stone Spirits replacing Ore and Salvage replacing armour drops), in response to a question about it. They’ve had some wins with it but ultimately, it’s usually more profitable to get these items through PvM instead of skilling.

Combat Panel with Mod Hooli, Mod Jack, Mod Ryan, Mod Sponge and Mod Ramen

• Combat Tasks will follow similar themes to existing Area Tasks, with the same difficulty tiers but they want to go beyond Elite.
  • An example given for Grandmaster would be something like 200 kill streak and 4000% Glacor. Players are already making their own challenges, this is about acknowledging them.
• An example given of some of the Combat Task is completing something like Elite Dungeon 3/The Shadow Reef in one run, without banking, in under 5 minutes.
  • Specifically calls out that this is absurd and the timer wouldn’t be that silly.
• Looking into whether they can categorise achievements. Things like Mechanical which would require you to master all the mechanics, or things like Time which would require you to master the entire encounter.
• Mod Ryan says that to be a Grandmaster, you will probably have to do every single boss at the absolute maximum. Getting all the kill time achievements, master them from a mechanics perspective, toolkit perspective.
  • An example given is defeating X boss without taking any damage. There are a lot of ways to mitigate damage but only some people will be able to understand how to dodge 3 attacks in a short period of time.

• The achievements will be top heavy, as in a large chunk of them will be something they expect only the top tier players to do.

• They currently do not expect Grandmaster achievements to be a requirement for the Completionist Cape. They see Grandmaster as standing out from the crowd and something very few people can do.

  • Mod Ryan calls out that the cosmetic rewards from Grandmaster will make you go “holy sh*t”.

• Mod Ramen is most excited about adding achievements for Solak.

• Mod Ryan says that an interesting idea would be to add an achievement that they personally consider not possible to encourage players to push the game, boss and encounters to the absolute limit. If the players manage to get it, great. If they don’t, they’ll tweak the achievement.

  • This was a hypothetical.

• In response to a concern about this being focused on the 0.01%, Mod Ryan says that they think it’s okay to have Grandmaster tasks focus on the few and not the many.

• The new Slayer monster mentioned on the roadmap will be a new Scabarite, which will tie into the Necromany Slayer Helmet upgrade.

• The Fourth Conjure will be the Phantom Guardian. Mod Ryan says it is focused on being more defensive and offers no more specifics on it.

• Things like the Necromancy Slayer Helmet upgrade, new Slayer monster and the Fourth Conjure are things that they’re trying to make more common as smaller updates inbetween larger content updates, seen in the RuneScape of the past, to keep players engaged with meaningful weekly updates.

• An example given for some of those smaller updates are things like potentially reworking auras or making fixes to the Revolution bar.

  • These were purely examples and not indicative of any future content plans, per Mod Ryan.

• The Phantom Guardian is going to follow the same sort of rules that the existing conjures already do. You summon it, it does its thing, and it will be obvious how to unlock it via the skill tree.

• Elite Tectonic set effects is something the Combat team would like to add, and this is something that they’d class as a smaller update similar to the Necromancy Slayer Helmet upgrade, etc.

• Mod Jack makes a joke about not talking much, jokingly says he’s only here to make sure Mod Ryan doesn’t leak the Aura Rework.

  • It’s a joke. Right? RIGHT?

• Mod Ramen says that they try to design around the players toolkit, such as how they have defensives. Zamorak was listed as an example of how a single defensive wasn’t an immediate negation of damage and this led to players stacking multiple defensives. Kerapac was another example with the Time Warp ability giving player their adrenaline back and seeing how they use that.

• Mod Ramen says that going forward (with the Amascut boss, too), you can expect much better telegraphing after the success of it trialed in Sanctum of Rebirth.

• Mod Ryan says that while they love making truly endgame bosses, it doesn’t make much business sense to make extremely difficult bosses with little accessibility.

• Mod Ryan says that they’re considering launching future bosses with limitations, similar to how Destiny 2 has a Contest Mode for their newly released raids. These limitations could include increasing boss health, disabling specific items like Vulnerability bombs, etc. This would be a time-limited mode that would last around a week.

• Mod Ramen says imagining Zamorak launching as his 2000% engrage encounter, as an example of the sort of difficulty they would like to introduce with things like this.

  • Calls out how with the launch of Inferno, players would hop between streams when news spread that players like Woox had gotten to Zuk.
    

• Mod Ryan says Beginner tier for Combat Tasks was dropped because they don’t feel it is needed.

• The Combat team says that they’d like to add telegraphing to older bosses but it’s not a simple task.

• Combat team would like to revitalize Tank armour more in the future.

• In response to a question about Primal feeling like it exists solely for Smithing training, Mod Ryan sees augmentable armour as something that you should have to put a lot of work into to augment. An example used is the Deathwarden/Deathdealer armour in Necromancy – something you ultimately only make a couple of times and not make hundreds of and throw away.

• Mod Sponge thinks the simplicity of Necromancy is good and thinks the other three combat styles could learn a lot from it further, but he also thinks that power creep is a concern and that it likely needs to brought down a touch. Outside of that, he thinks combat is in a good state.

• Mod Ramen says they’re making great strides in simplification for Combat. Says RuneScape has a lot of ‘isms’ where the player needs to understand weird quirks to the RuneScape combat system – they’d like to fix this in the long-term. He’d also like to see unification for things like animations lining up with actual hit times.

• Mod Ryan says that Necromancy allowed way more players to engage with combat, simply due to how they took the learnings from years and years of knowledge from the other combat styles. Says Sanctum of Rebirth is one of the most engaged with PvM content to date, even weeks after launch.

• Mod Ryan says that the Combat team would like to make some changes to the Vorkath encounter, and has asked for time to do this in the future but it needs to be approved. It’s described as a quick pass for more critical issues people have rather than a large scale rework.

  • An example about Kalphite King was brought up that it may need a change to make solo more viable and less painful due to Drygores being introduced as something more relevant with the 110 Mining and Smithing update.

• Mod Jack’s phone goes off and he is unable to put it on silent.

  • He apologizes.

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That's a wrap.

I haven't given this nearly as long as a read over to ensure I haven't hilariously misquoted or misunderstood some of the developer comments on the stream, so please let me know if I have missed anything. I cannot stress enough that I am just one person who is trying to condense an entire three hour stream, so I will have no doubt missed some additional context. I encourage everyone to watch the stream here if they have the time.

A massive thank you to Mods Yuey, Hooli, Markos, Ramen, Shrike, Timbo, Jack, Stu, Zura, Luma, Ryan, Sponge and Mod Jack's phone for taking the time to answer questions and offer additional information.

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