This week sees a selection of changes to The Nightmare, Zalcano, and Last Man Standing.
Nightmare of Ashihama Feedback Changes
A big thanks to everyone who bravely fought The Nightmare of Ashihama and gave us their feedback. We salute your bravery and determination to save the poor people of Slepe! We’ve been carefully monitoring the state of play since the update and have picked out a few changes that will go live today. Let’s take a look:
A scoreboard has appeared near Shura, and shows personal kills, deaths, and fastest kill time as well as the global equivalents
Right-clicking on the entry portal will now allow you to spectate
Players may now collect multiple Drakan’s Medallions from Kael Forshaw after completing A Taste of Hope
The Nightmare has been added to the Boss Kill Count section of the HiScores page
The player’s Hitpoints Orb now changes pink to indicate a parasitic infection
Players can now pay Andras a one-time fee of 1 million coins to get unlimited free trips to Slepe
Pyrelords now have a superior version with a slightly enhanced drop table
The examine text for a certain coffin has been updated
Messages that appear during the boss fight are now different colours to improve readability
The volume of the Nightmare’s defend sound has been reduced (again)
Worlds 346 (US) and 514 (UK) have been marked as The Nightmare of Ashihama to help players find groups more easily
You can catch up on all of our other recent changes here.
We're also pondering the idea of removing the Ironman portal, thus allowing Iron players to fight The Nightmare alongside non-Iron players. We'd love to know what you think!
Zalcano's Loot Table
Protecting the in-game economy is of course a vital part of our ongoing work. After all, you don’t want your treasured Bank stash to suddenly plummet in value. As such, we can confirm some unpolled changes to Zalcano’s loot table:
Currently, Zalcano gives out a non-unique reward to everyone who contributed to the battle, and the MVP will get an additional non-unique reward. After today’s update, everyone will still get one non-unique reward, but it will scale based on the number of points accrued, and the MVP will get 10% extra, just like in The Nightmare boss fight.
We’ve also reduced the number of unique Zalcano drops. After this update, every kill will trigger a 1/500 roll which, if it passes, will add a unique to the drop table. A separate roll will then be made to decide which unique that will be. Finally, the unique is randomly given to an eligible player. As always, the more you’ve contributed to the fight the better your chances will be.
Pet-hunters will be glad to hear that this doesn’t apply to Smolcano – there are still plenty of those to go around. In fact, multiple pets can be obtained each fight! Never say we don’t spoil you.
Finally, the non-unique drop table for Zalcano has been rebalanced to include less valuable items.
These changes are expected to significantly increase the rarity of Onyx gems from Zalcano, addressing concerns around their pricing.
In other Zalcano news, we’ve fixed a bug where one of the rocks in the arena would never become active on spawn. Now, nowhere is safe!
Last Man Standing
Our efforts to rejuvenate Old School’s PvP scene continue. Part of this work involves ensuring that PvP activities have a positive impact on the wider Old School experience. As such, this week we’ve focused on Last Man Standing:
First of all, the entry fee for Competitive Mode has been changed back to 10,000 coins. For High Stakes Mode it has been raised to 500,000 coins.
Now for the big stuff: we’re aware that some unscrupulous types are using LMS to farm, so to combat this we’ve reduced the number of reward points awarded while playing LMS in F2P worlds. We’re hoping that this will put farmers off without affecting genuine players too much, and we’ll be keeping an eye on the situation as time goes on.
Iron players should know that from this update onwards, they will no longer be able to participate in High Stakes Mode. They will be able to play Competitive Mode, but will only get their entry fee back if they win.
Speaking of rewards, we’ve added a Tier-6 Cape to the LMS rewards shop that requires 1,000 wins to unlock. In addition, the cosmetic Deadman Armour, which has no stats, will no longer count as armour and is also less heavy.
Phishing
You might notice that some questions in the Stronghold of Security have been updated to remove references to the old ‘reportphishing’ email inbox. We are trying to phase out this method of reporting scams.
If you are unlucky enough to encounter a phishing scam, the best thing to do is to contact your email service provider. They will have a lot of experience in these matters and will almost certainly be able to help you. Remember – never click on a link from a sender you don’t recognise, and always check the URL of any link you do intend to click on. Spelling mistakes or unusual domains are a big red flag!
Remember, Jagex will never ask for your password, and will only use the email addresses listed on this page. Whenever possible, we try and let you know if an unexpected email is coming your way, and if you’re ever in doubt just ask us through the usual channels and we can help confirm the authenticity of any RuneScape email.
In Other News
Game world 538 has been opened for a Beta test of a new hardware setup. Players are invited to log in and play Clan Wars or Castle Wars with the items from the supply chests provided. Activity in the Beta will not affect your saved game profile.
A tile in the maniacal monkey caves has been prevented from eating any items dropped on it.
Players can now rearrange their Inventory while viewing their worn items in the Bank. They can also toggle the worn items view using the function key shortcuts.
The Varrock Herald now includes a scrollbar for ease of reading.
Players may no longer redeem bonds for membership on iOS devices if they already have an active membership.
The PJ timer in single-way areas of PvP worlds has returned to the usual 10 seconds.
A few squares of ocean near the Water Obelisk are now blocked correctly and can no longer be walked on.
The Locating Crystal from the Shilo Village quest no longer fails to respond for players who are a certain distance from the temple site.
All three colours of chinchompas now behave more consistently in PvP, meaning that they can't be dropped manually during combat, will appear on the ground instead of vanishing if dropped manually in a PvP area, and can be looted by PKers.
You will now be subject to the usual teleport ban for a short while after using the Eldritch and Volatile Nightmare Staff’s special attacks in PvP worlds.
The Eldritch Nightmare Staff’s special attack is now named ‘Invocate’ in the attack tooltip.
Ranalph Devere’s graphical issue has been fixed and he’s back to his handsome ghostly self.
A stray brown polygon has been removed from the dreadlocks hairstyle.
The dark blue version of the Graceful outfit can now again be stored in the POH wardrobe.
Discuss this update on our official forums, the community-led 2007Scape Reddit, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel. For reference on the above content, check out the official Wiki.
Mods Acorn, Archie, Ash, Banjo, Bonsai, Bruno, Curse, Ed, Errol, Fed, Flippy, Gambit, Gee, Ghost, Husky, John C, Kieren, Kristy, Lenny, Lottie, Mike D, Nasty, Oasis, Roq, Ry, Steve W, Sween, Tide, Weath & WestThe Old School Team
Nightmare of Ashihama Feedback Changes
