Alongside the Huey hotfixes, we've pushed a further hotfix to Mastering Mixology which reverts our earlier change where you'd refresh potion orders one-at-a-time. Instead, you'll be able to hand in multiple potions at once, but any potion hand-in will refresh all three orders. This should let you avoid bad orders but still focus in on potions offering Lye to chase rewards.
We'd like to apologise for the inconvenience from our earlier fix, we hope this leaves the activity in a more enjoyable spot ahead of the weekend. Thanks to all of you who pointed out the oversight we'd made with our initial change. It's likely that we'll take a deeper look at Orders and Reward Points distributions next week, but this feels like a good compromise for the time being!
It's been fantastic to see so many of you getting stuck in to everything that Varlamore: The Rising Darkness has to offer since its release earlier this week. Naturally, a huge number of intrepid explorers brings with it an equally massive number of feedback points for us to address, and it's clear that there's a lot of improvements needed to bring our new content offerings up to scratch, particularly when it comes to balancing.
We'll keep things brief so that you can get back to 'Scaping and split today's blog update into sections for hotfixes we'd like to make ahead of this weekend, and fixes we'd like to make but aren't hotfixable and will require a coldfix, meaning they will have to wait until next week's Game Update.
There are still further fixes we're considering but are waiting for more data (or scoping out the technical requirements for the change) before changing to avoid knee-jerk reactions. We will share more on these as and when we're able to!
Let's dive in!
Mastering Mixology - Fixes Live Now
- Players can now hand in multiple potion orders at once. Any potion hand-in will refresh all three available orders. This means you can stock up three-at-a-time and deposit all at once, which will likely increase XP and Points per hour somewhat, but ultimately improve the feel of the activity.
- Players will only receive orders that they have the Herblore requirement for, meaning you won't need to force a refresh. If you have an 'old' order that you can't fulfill, handing in an incorrect potion will still refresh all three orders, then you should only get orders that you're able to fulfil.
- Double the frequency of Digweed spawns and fix a bug where Digweed isn't spawning in the North-West corner.
- Increase the duration for Digweed once it's spawned from 6 seconds to 20 seconds.
- Add an extra tick of leniency to the Agitator's 'reaction' click when homogenising potions.
- Adjust Reagent Pouch so that players can only withdraw from it in banks. We'll look to whitelist other locations for this in the future, since it has neat applications for multi-skilling, but it shouldn't be the case that players can significantly increase their supply of potions in certain PvM scenarios.
Hueycoatl - Fixes Coming After Newspost
- The Prayer Pillar mechanic will remain active during the tail phase, giving you a little more to interact with and also not overly punishing you if this phase starts before you've triggered the pillars' damage buff.
- Group Iron Men will no longer lose their prestige for kills with players outside of their group.
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Loot improvements:
- Roughly doubling the quantity of all non-unique loot.
- Soiled Pages moved off of the unique loot table and into 'regular' loot.
- Low-tier loot (namely Guam and Pineapple seeds) removed, their weighting should be absorbed by Soiled Pages and some improved drops, including higher-tier seeds.
- Add messaging to let you know when your contribution is too low to obtain loot.
Some changes require a little more time for us to develop, or can't be made with a hotfix. With that in mind, here's the changes we're looking to make next week!
Mastering Mixology
- Increase the cap of 300 for Mox, Aga and Lye paste up to 3,000.
- Reduce the wander range of Supervisor Lalo so he stops getting in the way of the bank chest. Rename the Pre-pot Device, say hello to the Chugging Barrel!
- Fix a bug where Blighted Super Restores, Extended Anti-venom+ and unfinished 'blood' potions aren't working correctly with Potion Storage.
- Fix a bug where Extended Anti-venom+ potions aren't working correctly with the Pre-pot device (soon to be Chugging Barrel).
- Prevent UIMs from buying Potion Storage, since they can't use it.
- Add a toggle to the Potion Storage interface allowing players to set their potions to deposit into storage by default, even when the interface isn't open.
- Reduce the Points cost for various Rewards as follows. Note This is just the first change we're looking to make, we're considering further reductions and reductions to other rewards, but we're keen to see how other changes might adjust the Points earned per hour.
- Prepot Device (Chugging Barrel): 20,700 Mox, 13,450 Aga, 28,550 Lye reduced to 17,250 Mox, 11,200 Aga, 23,800 Lye. Approximately a 16% reduction in cost.
- Potion Storage: 10,350 Mox, 6,700 Aga, 14,250 Lye reduced to 7,750 Mox, 5,050 Aga, 10,700 Lye. Approximately a 25% reduction in cost.
- Reagent Pouch: 16,350 Mox, 10,650 Aga, 22,600 Lye reduced to 13,800 Mox, 8,950 Aga, 19,000 Lye. Approximately a 16% reduction in cost.
- Ensure that the Prepot Device (Chugging Barrel) functions at the Theatre of Blood and Mastering Mixology banks.
Hueycoatl
- Adjust blocking to prevent players from attacking the Eastern tail from the starting area.
Colossal Wyrm Agility Course
- Half the cost of Amylase packs, reducing it from 200 Termites to 100 Termites. This significantly increases the Amylase per hour obtained and puts it above similar courses in the level range.
- Increase the 'value' of termites so that players don't accidentally drop them as often.
Miscellaneous
- Add the new Varlamorean Graceful outfit and Alchemist's outfit to the POH Costume Room.
- Add S.T.A.S.H. units that were missed for three new Treasure Trail steps at the Twilight Temple, and where the River Ortus meets the Proudspire.
- Fix a bug where the Costume Needle doesn't work with Xerician Fabric.
- Fix a bug where players are unable to revert their Varlamorean Graceful at Osten.
We'll continue monitoring your feedback and you can expect further changes as we gather more information and data, paying close attention to the Hueycoatl fight itself and the XP rates for the Colossal Wyrm Agility course, so be sure to leave us any feedback you've got on those.
With Varlamore: The Rising Darkness we wanted to avoid the "abuse early and often" situation we've seen in past releases, so we were rather reserved in our balancing approach, allowing us room to improve specific areas as we felt confident - we'd much rather come back with further rounds of changes than do too much all at once and over-correct in the opposite direction.
That's all we've got for you today! Please continue to share your feedback with us and we'll see you all in Varlamore!
You can also discuss this update on the 2007Scape subreddit, the Steam forums, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel. For more info on the above content, check out the official Old School Wiki.
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