JagexHooli

Talked to the team about this.

As I suspected, similar to the philosophy I mentioned in my earlier post, this is due to the fact they can be used to make an output even if you don't get to keep it.

On top of that, it also meant Protean Planks could be earned to progress the Construction Contracts store which is in another sense an output. That's out of keeping with Protean Bars for example, which don't award Respect in the Artisan Workshop when used.

Do you have your setting in your Jagex Account enabled to allow Marketing emails? I believe that's the terminology. You may need to set that to On if you haven't already.

It's definitely a discussion we've paid attention to and thank you for the feedback.

The divisive opinions around Dead & Buried's story have been heard and it's definitely something the design team have absorbed.

Mod Jack touched on this really well in his latest Design stream last Wednesday in terms of their early thoughts. Worth a look if you want to hear more on what has been taken away from it in terms of lessons or considerations.

No Update next week. All final release (RC) testing is being poured into Necromancy from here on out.

For anyone who doesn't know, there has been plenty of testing and bug fixing before this point. RC is when you put a proposed 'final' build into a release candidate stage, and extra checks go on to spot last minute bugs or issues.

That is a very good catch. I'll catch up with that team about how we can address that for future emails with the timer.

I'd have to get that answer from dev - it's a good question. Will ask what the design intent was there.

Not an issue, more about bringing them in line with other Proteans.

When you use any other Protean - like Bars - you don't get a product at the end of it, it's just XP gains. That's the trade off for using them.

With Protean Planks, you did gain an output because you could use it to build things (such as the Fortinthry buildings) without needing actual in-game resources. They were also more intensive to use than the other Proteans to boot.

This is just about re-aligning them to operate more as a Protean should.

We want to let you discover it for yourselves though so going to keep this answer ambiguous - but there's a whole bunch of different things yes.

Mentioned this elsewhere - the Raptor's persona remains He/Him just like it was before. They haven't revealed their true identity to anyone else and are maintaining their persona.

Only you know differently from the Quest and we also don't want to spoil the Quest for anyone who hasn't gotten to it yet.

Intended.

The Raptor's persona remains He/Him any time we refer to them. They still present themselves this way in-game to everyone but you.

We do this partly for spoilers, partly because it's the correct reference for the Raptor given their true identity is secret to all others.

It's more about the audience here - and where most people here are as players - than anything.

Double XP: LIVE has a huge spike of players coming online and playing for longer over the 10 days it runs - and that hasn't diminished.

We aren't. We haven't got a confirmed time to share just yet - hope to do so next week - but it will be after DXP ends.

My Global Mute setting today has changed: ON [OFF] 👀

The Combat one will have some more actionable information for sure.

Beyond confirming items and useful requirements, I should stress we're trying not to give so much away that people have full, bullet proof game plans for Necromancy launch where they know exactly what to do, when to do it, and where to do it. The XP changes are excluded from this so you can theory-craft on what might be a good levelling route.

The reason for this is we're balancing being open about a lot of aspects of the skill with protecting the element of player discovery that we all love about skill launches. Hopefully once launch comes you'll feel we hit the mark on balancing the two.

We have explained this yes! Copying my last post that touched on this:

Necromancy is treated a little differently in the sense of comparing 99s to 120 across Combat Styles. It's one of those times we put the design of the experience first to make sure it had that lengthy, beefy levelling experience that people loved about Archaeology.

120 will be comparable to 99s in the other three Combat styles in many respects, though obviously it may be more or less optimal than other styles depending on the situation.

99 Necromancy will still be a powerful level to have, but 120 is more about peak potency.

It's been raised as a topic but I don't have anything to confirm right now. I'd say doubtful for release based on where we are in development, but potentially post release.

It will not.

Next week is about Combat and there will definitely be information on XP stuff on the way shortly. We're going to make sure that information gets out there.

This is correct. They are two separate fights.