Wilderness Ninja Strike! - This Week In RuneScape

13 March 2023 Game Updates

We�ve got major changes to the Wilderness this week, as the Ninjas swoop in to remove the Threat system - plus some other tweaks and enhancements!

Ninja Strike: Wilderness Refresh
Threat extinguished!

The Ninjas have been scouring the Wilderness in force to bring about some massive changes, including the wholesale removal of the Threat system!

Alongside removing Threat and reworking gameplay elements that worked in tandem with it (we�re looking at you, Obsidian Palmstone) the Ninjas are also taking out Cursed Wisps and making changes to the mob density in some areas. This should breathe new life into the Wildy and open up many new paths to progress!

Read a full list of the changes in the Patch Notes section below.

Developer AMA: Animate Dead & FSOA
Let's chat about balance changes

Update: Our post detailing the changes is live now! Read all the details and drop your feedback in the Reddit thread here.

Upcoming balance changes are in the works for Animated Dead & Fractured Staff of Armadyl next month, and we want to talk to you about it!

On Thursday at 4pm Game Time, we'll be dropping a detailed post on Reddit outlining these changes, why we're making them and where we're trying to go. We're inviting all players to join us in the thread to ask Mod Sponge your questions on these changes and get your initial thoughts on where we're going with them.

Mod Sponge will be joining us from 4pm - 5pm Game Time to answer your questions. Can't make it? Don't worry - we'll be responding to questions periodically throughout the rest of Thursday and on Friday too! Check back in on this Newspost for a link once we go live.

Livestream Calendar
Mod Hooli and Mod Jack discuss the upcoming Murder on the Border quest!

Wednesday March 15th | 17:00 Game Time | Murder on the Border Stream

Join our intrepid J-Mod detectives as they discuss the next upcoming quest, Murder On The Border. We'll also introduce you to RuneScape's newest CM - Mod Doom! Watch the show live at Twitch.TV/RuneScape.

Treasure Hunter Calendar
The Hall of Heralds is soon to open!

Starts March 14th | Ends March 15th | Mysteria

Mystery is the name of the game - this Treasure Hunter will keep changing throughout each day, so check back regularly for new challenges and sur(prizes)...

Starts March 16th | Ends March 22nd | Hall of Heralds

Step into the Hall of Heralds, assemble crests and obtain marvellous prizes - including the new Herald's outfit!

Patch Notes
Fixes and improvements in this week's game update

Ninja Strike Wilderness Refresh

The Threat system has been removed from the Wilderness

Dev Note: The Wilderness was always intended as a high-risk, high-reward area. When we removed PVP, we wanted to keep that element of danger to justify the more rewarding activities found there. It was an experiment in whether PVM could achieve the same feeling of unpredictable risk, and the answer, at least for this version, has turned out to be no. It's possible a different implementation could have different results, but we've seen very little interest from players in actually wanting that kind of gameplay, with most either treating it as a nuisance, or just an opportunity for even faster, more aggressive spawns to kill.

With issues still outstanding, we've made the decision to remove the threat system entirely rather than devote more dev time to fixing it up or starting from scratch with a different system. We think we can make better use of the same time on upcoming content or features that are more important to you. We want to seriously consider removing content which is doing more harm than good from the game, but we always have to be conscious that older content does have dedicated fans. The threat system is new enough that it hasn't had time to build up much love, so we don't expect the removal to be very controversial.

The Cursed Wisp system has been removed

Cursed energy will be automatically converted on June 5th and is untradeable.
Dev Note: As mentioned above, we've chosen to remove the threat system from the Wilderness rather than continue trying to force the zone to be dangerous.

A lot of content in the Wilderness is overly rewarding because of the danger that's supposed to be there. Most of this content is fairly easy to fix, but Cursed Wisps are an important exception for two reasons. The first is that they *only* exist as an intentionally overpowered option to incentivise PVP. Without PVP, they don't otherwise enrich the game's mechanics or enable more diverse training. The second is that they remain a luring tool, used to trick other players into enabling PVP. For these two reasons, we've decided to remove Cursed Wisps entirely.

Added a 15 minute world lock to receiving a reward bag from Wilderness Flash Events.

Generic bags now give out reduced Necronium salvage.
Special bags have had a major overhaul when it comes to rewards. This includes less chance of Dragonrider boots/gloves, reduced salvage and vastly increased chance of getting Dark Cores.

Completing a Wilderness event with a full Inventory and Bank will now store the rewards in a temporary Inventory with the Wilderness event host NPCs. These rewards are lost if not claimed before logging out, and can't be recovered.
Updated the map area names within the Wilderness Dungeon.
Erskine will no longer offer Slayer Contracts for the Fire Giants.
Campfires are now present in the Wyvern area south of the Frozen Waste Plateau.
Chronozon now has a proper defeat animation when killed inside the Dominion Tower.
Ripper Demons will now correctly use their special attack.
Various monsters have changed location in the Wilderness.
You can now only interact with warbands and related content if you have PvP toggled on.
Items related to the Threat system have lost their effect, become untradeable and can now be high alched.
Mandrith's completion reward box has been reduced in value.
The Task weightings of Mandrith have been changed to favour Berserk/Ash demons.
Brawling Gloves no longer function based on the Wilderness level you are in, and now just boost the XP rate by the base amount.

Brawling Gloves are no longer obtainable outside of the Wilderness.

Charming Moths' Hunter and Agility XP have been reduced but the Demonic Skull bonus to Charming Moths have been increased from 20% to 40%.
The safes found in the Rogue Castle have had the cooldown period increased from 5 minutes to 10 minutes.
Bloodwood Trees in the Wilderness now offer no additional benefit compared to Bloodwood Trees outside the Wilderness.

All Bloodwood trees are now buffed by upgrading the infernal puzzle box.

The Demonic Skull now works from the Inventory.
Kal'gerions in the Wilderness are now aggressive.

General

Before the fight with Gadderanks during In the Aid of Myreque, players with the NPC attack option set to 'hidden' will receive a reminder to change it.
Players opening their Bank while it contains a lot of farm animals will no longer crash their client. Instead, players in this state will have additional tooltip information disabled in their Bank until they reduce the number of stored animals.
Added a warning box explaining why you can't equip a particular title on mobile.
Footprints during Tourist Trap are now clearly visible.
Fixed an issue causing Helwyr's drops to disappear under the grassy area.
Improved the lighting in the Rogue's Castle safecracking room.
Players can now toggle whether targeted movement abilities target scenery - this can be done in the Targeting section under the Combat & Action Bar category of the settings. This currently applies to Bladed Dive and Dive.
Players will receive Super Restores once more whenever K'ril Tsutsaroth drops Zamorak brews.
An issue arose where players could become invisible when using Dive with certain rest animations. As a result, players can no longer use Dive or Bladed Dive when resting.
Players will now be collecting multiple resources during the Effigy Incubator activity, both while collecting items by clicking on them or by using the looting interface.
Lighting in the Ripper Demon cave was adjusted so players can notice hostile NPCs without issues.
Improved lighting within the Sophanem Slayer Dungeon.
Improved the colours of the Pirates' Hideout building when textures are turned off.
Improved the colours of the Rogue Castle building when textures are turned off.
The wiki search command now works with both upper and lower-case letters.
Fixed an issue where the Wilderness Chaos Altar in the southern part of the Wilderness was missing its offer bones/ashes option.
Clarified the wording of Aftermath's start point and quest journal objectives to make it clearer you need to speak to Adrasteia in the White Knights' Castle library. This is to accommodate players who completed Succession prior to completing Aftermath.
Fixed an issue where one of the 'Driven, Underground' achievement requirements was not visible on mobile devices.
Players can no longer unlock pet variants in the Yak Coin Shop for pets they don't own yet.
Azzanadra's Quest is now one of the City of Senntisten quest requirements.
Bill can now tell players which tier each of the Fort Forinthry buildings is currently at.