News

Poll 83 is here, and this one’s a jumbo edition!

Quick Blog Update - Friday, December 6th

We're back with a brief update ahead of Polls opening on Monday, December 9th!

You've had a lot to say about Poll 83, most of it good! We'd like to take a quick moment to make clear that we're not expecting these changes to result in thousands of people playing Castle Wars every single day, but think that this set of simple-to-make changes could help it stick out as a fun activity for groups of friends or clans to mess around with on a laid-back weekend gaming session without breaking the bank or dealing with common frustrations!

With polls opening very soon, we're not looking to add a massive number of new questions to this one. Instead, we'll bring you a small follow-up blog later in the month with some questions for a mini-poll in January, containing some extra bits that we could feasibly develop alongside the changes listed here. Examples include things like the addition of Looting Bags or Imbuing Scrolls to Castle Wars' rewards or even some new, more 'early game' Crab locations.

In terms of what's relevant to the questions below, here's a quick rundown:

• We're adjusting our proposal for the Barricades cap changes, to prevent people flooding games with alts and popping Barricades everywhere. Instead, we're proposing a limit of 7 Barricades 'outside' the base and 10 Barricades 'inside' the base. This means you'll still have Barricades where you're most likely to need them, so won't be frustrated if people are placing them in useless locations, but also provides you more options for placing Barricades beyond your walls. We also think this might be a good bit easier to understand than the initial 'timer' system that we proposed. If this change still misses the mark, we'll keep an eye on things and make adjustments as necessary.
• Additionally, the Barricade Cap change has been adjusted to impact themed Castle Wars worlds only.
• We've adjusted the question around improved Bandage healing to reflect that it'll only be present on P2P Worlds. This is because F2P worlds haven't really been impacted by offensive powercreep over the years, and drastically increasing this healing is likely a detractor for the minigame's enjoyment in these worlds.
• While not a change, we'll be making sure that the 'Last-contract' option at Guildmaster Jane remembers the last contract you asked for rather than the tier of contract you might have ended up with via downgrading.
• While we're looking at the Explorer's Ring, we'll adjust the behaviour that prioritises the ring's charges instead of runes if you're casting High Alchemy.

We said we'd keep things brief, and we have! That's all we've got, we just wanted to make sure you were in the loop ahead of voting next week. Have a wonderful weekend and we'll see you at the polls!

Original Blog - Wednesday, December 4th

Welcome back, pollsters! Our last quality of life poll focused primarily on minigames. This time around we’re focusing on one minigame in particular – Castle Wars!

But that’s not all. We’re also asking you to vote for improvements to the new player experience, the default settings, and a whole bunch of other stuff.

We’ve got a lot of changes to get through, so let’s get started!

Castle Wars

This beloved minigame has seen livelier days, and so we’ve compiled a suite of changes that’ll see you and your mates longing to relive your glory days.

Naturally we’ve considered all you Castle Wars veterans as well, so we’re splitting these changes into two camps – changes to themed Castle Wars worlds, and changes to all other worlds.

Castle Wars-Themed World Changes

The key issue here is that unless you’re a 1 Defence Pure or a Collection Log enthusiast, there’s no real reason to hang out in Castle Wars these days. Hanging out with your mates in the Lobby after school might have been all you needed back in 2007, but in 2024 it’s just not your top priority.

To make Castle Wars a bit more attractive again, we’re adding Soul Wars-style Reward Crates to the mix. Make no mistake, this loot table will be much less powerful than the one at Soul Wars, focusing on Runes, ammo, and consumables (including Blighted supplies) rather than skilling supplies or alchables.

Should this change pass the poll, Reward Crates will be earned using a separate Points system from the existing Castle Wars Tickets, so you’ll still be able to fill out that Collection Log of yours.

The natural follow-up question here is "won't people just stack a bunch of players on one team to win and boost more crates?", and you're right, they likely will. To make things a bit fairer, we propose only offering the Guthixian Green Portal on Castle Wars themed worlds, so that teams can remain balanced.

This may result in players being split up from their friends, which we understand can be a dealbreaker – so we’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter.

While we’re adding a swanky new reward system, it’s only fair that we give Castle Wars tickets a little boost too. We're proposing that games on Castle Wars-themed worlds grant an additional ticket, win or lose. Our reasoning here is similar to the change we made to Trouble Brewing recently: we don't mind people AFKing their tickets if they'd like, but giving players a more active alternative for a quicker grind is always a good choice.

Non-Castle Wars-Themed World Changes

This is perhaps the most specific sub-heading that's ever featured in one of our blogs, and admittedly these changes are pretty niche.

For context: Castle Wars is twenty years old. The active Castle Wars community have been playing the minigame regularly for over a decade, meaning many players have a fondness for changes that happened just after our initial 2007 backup, or for specific functionalities that have changed in Old School. Before you decide your vote, we’d like to look at some of these asks in greater depth.

Remember, these changes will not apply to the themed Castle Wars worlds. They're intended for groups of players looking to run their own games.

Up first, we have a change that will allow players to place Barricades directly in front of respawn barriers, just like the old days. This sounds scary, but it’s not actually possible to lock someone into the spawn location – you can always make an escape by taking the longer route out. This change opens up opportunities to pressure a defending team when you’re on the attack, or limit mobility when you’re on the defence.

Similarly, we’d also like to make some mapping changes to mirror the terrain, which we originally made in 2008. In practice this means adding some tiny walls next to the ladder and staircase outside the spawn room. These add further tactical Barricade options, whether you’re blocking off a flag thief or holding off players chasing you down. You can still hit over these Barricades with Ranged, Magic or Halberds, but if you’re on the attack you’ll need to think carefully about whether blocking off pursuers is worth blocking yourself in.

This artfully assembled image shows off the Barricade placement from Question #4 (the pink-ish marked tiles) and the terrain adjustments from Question #5 (the garish, bright blue lines)

Lastly, we’re restoring the old functionality of Dragon Spear and Zamorakian Hasta specials, exclusively in Castle Wars, when you’re not playing on a themed world. To reiterate: we have no plans to change these weapons outside of this specific circumstance.

Some of you may be wondering what the old functionality actually was. In July 2016, we added a short stun and freeze immunity window to players who were hit by the Special Attacks of these weapons. While this change is healthier for multi-combat PvP out in the Wilderness, it limits some of your options as a co-ordinated team in Castle Wars, so we’d like to remove the immunity and let you freeze your opponents more freely.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this brief adventure into the minds of competitive Castle Wars players. Who’d have thought that adding eight short walls from 15 years ago would be so impactful?

There are yet more Castle Wars changes to talk through, but these ones will apply to all worlds, themed or not.

Other Castle Wars Changes

This next batch of changes are small, but mighty improvements to the entire Castle Wars experience.

Up first: helmets. You heard that right. Two decades on, we've reached new technological heights and believe that we can let you, wherever you are in the world, bring your own helmets into Castle Wars. Our radical proposal: remove the hoods, enter the helmets.

Yes – this means that set effects will finally be usable in Castle Wars. It’s what the Barrows Brothers would’ve wanted.

The downside is that it may be a little harder to spot which team someone’s on – but we think the capes should still make it clear who you should be fighting. If this change passes, we’ll also look into adding Soul Wars-style feet circles to further help with visibility.

We’ve covered the defence, but it’s safe to say that offensive power has crept up consistently over the last 20 years. Despite this, the Bandages in the spawn area still heal minimal amounts of HP, so we’d like to fix that. The new and improved bandages will heal equivalent to Anglerfish. Keep in mind that even when used with a Castle Wars Bracelet, we’ll cap overhealing at the usual value – no sitting around on 135 HP!

We’re also boosting the humble Castlewars Brew! These potent potions currently act as a Super Combat Potion, a Ranging Potion, and an Imbued Heart all at once, which is admittedly pretty good. However, when it comes to Run Energy or Prayer Points, you’re still relying on your own supply. We don’t want players burning through their cash stacks just to play a minigame, so we’d like the Castlewars Brew to give you the benefits of a Super Restore and a Stamina Potion on top of its existing effect. Bottoms up!

You may remember feeling awestruck at the sight of high-level players firing off Ice Barrages in the mid-2000s. These days it’s a bit less impressive, but still an extremely expensive way to play a minigame. We’re proposing an LMS-style Rune Pouch, provided on entry, with unlimited Runes.

To stop you using this for free Magic XP, we’ll be offering ‘fake XP drops’ within Castle Wars. You’ll be able to tell when a freeze hits, but you won’t gain XP for doing it. We’ll also look at allowing players to bring their own Rune Pouch and gain XP for making the extra effort, if you like.

Perhaps the most impactful change we're proposing here: more buckets!

The respawn timer for these all-important items means many Castle Wars players are left distraught and bucketless. We’d like to convert the traditional spawn to an unlimited pile o’ buckets, so everyone can have a bucket of their own. We’re sure this will lead to heated debate, so we’ll leave you to hash it out among yourselves.

Next up, the Castle Wars Bracelet. There’s every chance that you’ve never seen one of these enchanted emerald bracelets before, because their only use is to buff your Castle Wars performance. If you’re wearing one at the start of the game, you deal an extra 20% damage to any player carrying a flag, and receive 50% more healing from Bandages. Once the game starts you’re free to swap it out for another glove slot item, which means they often get destroyed immediately to make room for more Bandages, Brews, Barricades, Buckets, or other words beginning with the letter 'B'.

We're proposing a 'trade-in' option at Lanthas where you can store charges from your Castle Wars bracelets and gain the buff without ever equipping the Bracelet in the first place. Each bracelet is worth three games' worth of buffs - handy!

Finally, a proposal we’re really keen to hear feedback on, especially from the Castle Wars community. Currently, teams can have a maximum of 10 Barricades down at any time, which means mischievous (or misinformed) teammates can grief you by popping all 10 of them down in a useless location.

We'd like to experiment and allow each player to place up to seven Barricades outside of the base, and ten Barricades inside the base. We're really interested to hear thoughts on how best to implement this, but here’s what we’re thinking.

This makes it harder for trolls to waste all your Barricades, since it's hard to go too wrong with barricades inside the base. If this is something you’re informed on – reach out and let us know! In the meantime, here's our proposed poll question. Note that we might change this one or omit it entirely if there are significant issues with our proposal!

Hopefully these Castle Wars proposals capture your heart in the same way we'd love to see more of you capture the flag.

Up next is a selection of changes aimed at newer players.

New Player QoL and UX Improvements

Right, before you start rioting in Falador Square, we want you to know that these changes are almost entirely UI and Settings tweaks that will have no impact on your gameplay. What they will do is cut down on the amount of time new players have to spend trawling the OSRS wiki or fiddling with their Settings before they can actually play the game – which should make it easier for you to convince your friends to play. It’s a win-win!

There is one change here we’d like to poll, so please welcome to the stage our community’s favourite crustaceans: crabs!

Be they sand, swamp, rock or ammonite varieties, crabs are a staple of low-effort combat training. While word of mouth has done wonders for these shy shellfish, there’s no clear in-game introduction to this popular training method. We propose adding crabs to the Slayer Task lists of Mazchna, Vannaka and Chaeldar so that new players can receive handy tips and learn how efficient they are.

Turael is missing from this list, since we don’t want this change to impact Turael skipping and locking crabs behind Slayer Points would defeat the object. It’s fairly speedy to move up to other Slayer Masters, and giving players the opportunity to gear up should help them blitz through these Tasks.

Crab Tasks are non-specific, so you’ll be able to choose your favourite flavour – although Slayer Masters will share tips on where to find them and how they work.

Now we move on to some unpolled changes, though we're still eager to hear your thoughts and feedback on all of them.

Prayer Drain Rate Indicators

Prayers have been a hot topic following the release of the Royal Titans Reward Poll, but in all those chats about drain rates and numbers, it occurred to us that this information isn't displayed anywhere in-game. As you might have guessed, we'd like to add Drain Rate information to the tooltips on the Prayer interface - knowledge is just as strong as a stat boost!

Skill Interface Summaries

Another piece of missing information is what all those skills you’re training actually do. If you click your Stats tab and open up the Hitpoints interface, you learn what happens when you reach 0 Hitpoints and what all the different hitsplats mean – but there’s no information for other skills.

While it may seem obvious what Woodcutting or Fishing do, the same isn’t true for Attack or Strength. Why don’t Ranged and Magic have their own Strength stat? How do you start Farming? You get the gist.

For each skill, we want to provide a brief breakdown of everything they do and cover all the fundamental information players need to get training. If you have any ideas about what we should include in these guides, feel free to let us know!

Fairy Ring Map Icons

Ever known there was a Fairy Ring near your activity of choice, but couldn’t remember the code? Obviously that’s never happened to us (how embarrassing!) but if it’s a concern for you, you’ll be happy to hear that we plan to update map icons for visited Fairy Rings so you can clearly see their code. That should save you an alt+tab or two.

Default Setting Adjustments

This one impacts new players slightly, but primarily targets those of you making new accounts. On Tutorial Island, there’s a step where you can let the Tutor know if you’re a new, returning or experienced player. We’d like to use your response to this question to tailor some default settings.

We don’t have a full list right now, but examples might include defaulting to the updated version of the Skill Guide interfaces for beginners or enabling ammo and Rune pick-up by default for experienced players.

If you think a particular option should be default for certain player groups, then let us know! We'll use your responses and our own analytics to determine the perfect blend of settings and cut down on time spent navigating menus on Tutorial Island.

Miscellaneous Changes

Last of all, everybody’s favourite: a massive collection of small, unrelated changes.

Forestry

Oi! Hatchets down, this isn’t another significant set of Forestry changes. Since the last set of changes we made, you’ve been pretty persistent in reminding us that events feel too infrequent, or you’re missing out on spawns while running to the Bank.

For now, we're proposing two adjustments. If it doesn't feel like we're going far enough, then we'll make further tweaks, but we believe the following changes combined should considerably improve your quality of life while hunting for Forestry events.

• Increase event frequency by 20%, by reducing the average time between event spawns from 100 ticks to 80 ticks.
• Increase the radius at which you're eligible for Forestry events by 50%, from 20 tiles to 30 tiles.

If we decide we haven’t gone far enough we’re open to further tweaks in future – but for now this should considerably improve your Forestry efforts.

Rune Pouch Adjustments

Next, some quick UI touch-ups for the Rune Pouch interface, which should dramatically reduce the need for right-clicking, long-pressing or setting up menu entry overrides.

If you can recreate this image (including the slight background) with your own Rune Pouch, we'll give you a gold star!

As you can see in the screenshot above, we've added a handy set of buttons for 1, 5, X and All at the bottom, alongside some changes to the colour scheme so that it's more in line with other interfaces. We know you'll miss that garish orange border, so make sure to pay your respects in the replies.

As a UI tweak, we won’t be polling this one.

Slayer Cape Effect at Konar

Another niche change!

Currently, if your Slayer Cape's effect procs at Konar, she’ll offer you the same Task but re-roll the location. This is a little silly, so we'd like to ensure that if you're lucky enough to have the Cape's effect proc, then you'll receive the exact same monster and location for your repeat Task.

Unfortunately, we can’t fix your awful RNG as a QoL change, so the Cape’s effect will still never proc on Tasks you actually want. Sorry!

Tithe Farm Shop and Farming Contract Improvements

In May of last year, we made a handful of changes to Tithe Farm as part of an older QoL poll, including the addition of Herb Boxes and more Bologa’s blessings. Two things stand out to us in light of these changes: Tithe Farm rewards Herbs but no Seeds, and the interface you use to purchase the rewards is a little quirky!

We’ll be modernising the interface and adding the option to buy Seed Packs using your Tithe Points. They’re equivalent to a Tier 3 Seed Pack from Farming Contracts, so you can check the loot table on this Wiki page. To spice things up, we'd also like to throw in a 1 in 90 chance at a White Lily Seed, giving you an alternative to Hespori if you're looking to stock up in a pinch.

In other Farming news, we’re adding a ‘Last-contract’ option to Guildmaster Jane in the Farming Guild so you can repeat the same tier of Contract you've just turned in. This means you’re spending slightly less time in dialogue boxes and more time zooming around the Farming Guild and getting annoyed that none of your pre-planted options have come up yet. Since this change is so minor and mirrors changes we've made recently to other content like Mahogany Homes, we'll be doing this one unpolled.

Hunter Changes

Moving us from flora to fauna are a pair of Hunter tweaks aimed to make trap resetting more consistent:

• Automatically reset net traps (used to catch Salamanders and Lizards) similar to the auto-reset behaviour of box traps. Traps reset automatically would reset a tick slower than doing it manually, similar to how box traps work.
• Automatically rebuild birdhouses on Fossil Island if you've already got all the necessary items.

Now, what better excuse to catch some Salamanders than a salacious Hunter Rumour? Nothing beats turning in a special item at the Hunter Guild, but the moment's undercut by obtaining one of those pesky duplicate uniques. We’d like to let you trade in excess uniques for additional rolls – handy if you’re after something in particular, or if you want extra Bird Nests for those Nex trips your pals have roped you into!

Enchant Jewellery Improvement

Recently, we've been making behaviour more consistent with regards to where in your Inventory items are used. For example, offering Bones at altars now always pulls from the top of your Inventory rather than the slot that you actually used. We'd like to give Enchant Jewellery the same treatment! Of course, if you're taking a more relaxed approach then you can just let the spell work its magic, but this should make manual casting a little quicker.

Explorer's Ring Alchemy Improvements

The Explorer’s Ring is a nifty little tool, offering a daily handful of alchs no matter which spellbook you’re using. Despite this usefulness, it’s a bit difficult to use – navigating menus in the heat of combat is always annoying! This simple change proposes allowing players to simply use items on the Ring to alchemise them, cutting the need for menu navigation entirely. This will respect any value warnings you have set up already, so no need to worry about liquidating those megarares!

Chromium Ingot Smelting Pathway

A long-awaited change – a way to obtain Chromium Ingots that far exceeds their Grand Exchange value, so that Iron players aren’t forced to grind so hard.

When we last spoke about this, we proposed a process where you’d pay an NPC to smelt you a Chromium Ingot. Some of you have pointed out that just paying a lump sum to an NPC didn't feel particularly thematic, especially when we've got a whole skill dedicated to smelting metals, so we've cooked up something else…

• Learn about the secrets of Chromium Ingot Smelting from a ghost somewhere in the Lassar Undercity.
• Bring 40 Adamant and 40 Runite bars to the Blast Furnace Foreman, who will give you private access for 170,000 GP, so long as you have Level 85 Smithing.
• If you'd like to make multiple Ingots, you can bring multiple sets of resources and make private use of the Blast Furnace.
• Once you've got everything in the melting pot, you can sit back and enjoy your Chromium Ingots and a chunk of Smithing XP.

This method has an effective floor value of about 750,000 GP. That’s far beyond the GE price, but within reach if you’re an Iron player desperate to get your rings made. Once you have the Ingots, you can craft them as normal!

Weapon-specific Prayer Penetration Adjustments

We’ll finish with an interesting one! Some weapons and set effects come with the promise of ignoring your opponent’s Prayer, allowing to cut down even the most devout foes.

In actually, this doesn’t happen often in PvM scenarios and hasn’t been possible to implement due to technical restraints. While we were developing While Guthix Sleeps, we took the opportunity to refactor some of our script to make Prayer penetration feasible.

This means that the Dragon Sword, the Ancient Mace, and the complete Verac’s set can finally actually do what they claim. You can find a full list of affected NPCs here.

In the long-term this change could open up new reward space and opportunities to add new layers to PvM encounters. With that in mind, we’d like to run it by you all first. Please welcome our final question for Poll 83:

And TIME! Hands off those scroll wheels, we’re done.

If you click the button below or click here, you'll be able to participate in a survey and pick your five highest-priority changes so that we can prioritise appropriately and get you the most important bits from Poll 83 ASAP - assuming they pass the polls next week!

We can’t wait to hear what you think of everything we’ve proposed today! The polls will open on next week although if your feedback leads to any particularly massive changes, we may look to push that back.

Until then, happy ‘Scaping – and don’t forget to carve out some time in your busy Leagues schedule to vote.

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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