Just before the Poll goes live, we wanted to share with you some further feedback changes we've made from your feedback surrounding the Hunter Guild. If you want to read through what happened in our recent Hunter Guild themed livestream then head on over to the transcript newspost!
FEEDBACK SUMMARY - CLICK HERE TO SHOW
- The Sunlight Hunter's Crossbow will be a 4-tick weapon (3-tick on Rapid)
- The Sunlight Hunter's Crossbow will have a +79 Ranged Accuracy
- Sunlight Bolts will give +55 Ranged Strength & Moonlight Bolts +60 Ranged Strength
- We would like to increase the amount of Kebbit Bolts made by 2x
- Hunter's Spears will now boost teasing success chance by 5%
- Using Hunter's Spears against Chinchompas will consume no ammo
Sunlight Hunter's Crossbow
We saw a lot of feedback surrounding the upgrade Hunter's Crossbow and whilst we made some worthwhile changes during our first round of feedback, you definitely feel like something was still missing from this new weapon.
Where the upgraded Crossbow was placed it didn't really cover any areas considering the requirements and its stats made you feel like it wasn't worth spending the time acquiring one when there are other 'more accessible' weapons like the Magic Shortbow. Instead, we want to make sure we can continue to bridge gaps between content and give you alternative approaches to how you progress through the game.
So we're looking to give the upgraded version more of a punch by first changing the attack speed to 4-tick (3-tick on Rapid) to keep one of the more unique aspects of the Hunter's Crossbow and give it a more interesting use-case. This will come with a +79 Ranged Accuracy, which gives it a nice boost of power alongside the speedy fire rate. We've adjusted the new bolts to balance out alongside the speed changes by giving the Sunlight Bolts +55 Ranged Strength and the Moonlight Bolts +60 Ranged Strength.
Looking into the numbers (and depending on your gear) it's around 5-10% better DPS than the Magic Shortbow (i) when used against some common enemies like Lizardman Shamans & Demonic Gorillas. This is scaled more heavily with gear against the MSB so means you can still gain some benefits with later-game gear. This gives it a nice place to fit into Ranged gear without becoming more powerful than the Bow of Faerdhinen or Toxic Blowpipe.
To go alongside these changes and help make the Sunlight Hunter's Crossbow have some more usage, we would like to increase the number of Kebbit Bolts created per interaction by double (increasing it from 6 to 12).
Hunter's Spear
With the other new weapon from the Hunter Guild, we wanted to make sure it had some more utility with the Skill it is coming from. Firstly, you'll be able to use the spear as a teasing stick against creatures like the Kyatt, Ghaark and Larupia which would give you an additional 5% chance to successfully tease those creatures.
The second update to this weapon and something a little bit smaller is for the cutest and most boom-bastic creatures in Hunter, Chinchompas. If you're using the Hunter's Spear against these well-known weapons, you won't use any ammo, which gives you a nice cheap way to control your Chinchompa catches if they are straying too far from your traps.
We hope the additional changes to the new gear help make the Hunter Guild an even more exciting introduction to Varlamore. The poll will go live on Wednesday, September 27th and will feature questions from the Hunter Guild and a few miscellaneous activities we've spoken about over the last month.
Thanks for all your feedback regarding the Hunter Guild, our first chunk of Varlamore content. We won’t hold back – let’s dive right into the changes we’re making! We've also updated the main Hunter Guild newspost to check out the updated blog once you're done here!
FEEDBACK SUMMARY - CLICK HERE TO SHOW
- Hunters' Rumours will now be completed when you hand in a creature part - the average time to complete is around 8-10 minutes.
- Tiers for Hunters’ Rumours now go from Tier 1 to Tier 4.
- Hunter Meats can now be eaten one after the other, although you'll lose the additional healing from the first meat eaten.
- Hunter Meats have been rebalanced to a 60/40 healing split.
- Hunter Meat unlocks have been reduced.
- Moths’ AoE effect now works on up to three random players in a 3x3 area.
- The relevant poll question now includes clarification that Butterflies will be changed to have the same AoE effects as Moths.
- Irit Tar now has a Ranged strength of +60.
- Mountain Salamanders will have a fee attached to using them in PvP Combat.
- Mixed Hide Gear will need to be processed correctly in order to be made.
- Hunter's Bolas are now Hunter's Spears and have had their Special Attack removed.
- Requirements for making the new Crossbow Bolts and upgraded Hunter's Crossbow have changed - Sunlight Antelope Horn will create the Sunlight Hunter's Crossbow and Sunlight Bolts while the Moonlight Antelope Horns will make slightly stronger Bolts.
- Reduced the Damage Reduction on the Hunter Outfits to 20%, 40% & 60%
- Antelopes are now hunted using Pitfall Traps.
- There will now be an option to add the Whistle Blueprint to the Hunter Skill Cape.
- An option similar to the one on Fairy Rings will be added to Eagles, allowing you to fly straight to your desired location.
The Audio Read
We were happy to see an overwhelmingly positive response to this new system, but have noticed concerns that it may be too much like Farming Contracts and Slayer Tasks.
To clarify, Hunters’ Rumours will not give you X number of wild creatures to hunt, like a Slayer Task – instead, it will specify a creature, and you’ll hunt them until you find a Rare Creature Part to hand in. We estimate that this will take around 8-10 minutes on average.
You’ve also been clamouring for streaks, noting that without them we encourage a ‘skipping meta’. We feel that the design itself prevents this – if you want to skip a Rumour, you have to reset the whole lot by taking on and completing a low-tier Rumour first. This results in a less efficient training experience.
For the record, we’re aiming for a moderate amount of XP per hour, including the bonus XP for completing a Rumour – but the travel time required to switch creatures means it isn’t as efficient as, say, hunting Black Chinchompas consistently.
As a final note, the Rumours will now range from Tier 1 (easy) to Tier 4 (hard).
Many of you wanted to hear the rationale behind introducing yet another Hunter pet, this time earned through your Guild activities.
We look at Hunter a bit differently when it comes to pets. Most skills have skilling pets obtained from training, and perhaps an activity-specific pet from associated content. Hunter is unique in that its pets are obtained by hunting specific creatures, which we think fits the theme of the skill. In the case of the Quetzal Pet, you’ll obtain it as a gift for all your hard work supporting the Guild – which we feel is a suitable and thematic reward.
For those asking, we’d like to clarify that we don’t want the Quetzal Pet to be a reward from Birdhouses. Our design goal with this project was to breathe life into some of the less popular Hunter methods – Birdhouses already see plenty of use!
Meat’s back on the menu, boys – and your feedback tells us you’re really excited to chew on some new foodstuffs. However, one of the biggest asks we saw was to tweak the mechanics of how the delay on Hunter Meats works.
Now, you’ll be able to consume several Hunter Meats in a row, without needing to wait for the secondary heal. Crucially, however, this greedy gobbling will mean you miss out on that handy additional healing effect. This lets you heal up a bit faster in a pinch, at the cost of the main benefit to eating Hunter Meats. To take the sting out of this change, we’re also decreasing the difference between the heals from 85% upfront/15% delayed to 60% upfront/40% delayed.
We’ve reworked the healing table accordingly:
| Fish | HP | Meat | HP | Additional | Total HP |
| Trout | 7 | Wild Kebbit | 4 | 4 | 8 |
| Salmon | 9 | Larupia | 6 | 5 | 11 |
| Tuna | 10 | Barbed Kebbit | 7 | 5 | 12 |
| Lobster | 12 | Graahk | 8 | 6 | 14 |
| Swordfish | 14 | Kyatt | 9 | 8 | 17 |
| Monkfish | 16 | Fox Meat | 11 | 8 | 19 |
| Karambwan | 18 | Sunlight Antelope Meat | 12 | 9 | 21 |
| Shark | 20 | Dashing Kebbit | 13 | 11 + 10 Run Energy | 23 |
| Dark Crab/Manta Ray | 22 | Moonlight Antelope Meat | 14 | 12 + Cure 1 Poison | 26 |
Bear in mind that we’re still open to further feedback regarding Hunter Meats, and will look to continue this discussion if they pass the poll. We’ve also revamped how the Hunter Meats are unlocked:
- Access to Varlamore: Low Tier Meats (Wild Kebbit, Larupia and Barbed Kebbit)
- 25 Rumours: Mid Tier Meats (Graahk, Kyatt and Fox)
- 50 Rumours: High Tier Meats (Antelope and Dashing Kebbit)
These light-loving critters were some of the most talked about new additions!
We want to clarify how their AoE mechanic works. It covers a 3x3 radius around the player that uses the Moth (that’s you!) and randomly selects three players within that radius to receive the buff. You’ll have to time it carefully if you want your besties to benefit!
We also want to clarify that this content is not intended to compete with Brews, but to add a new vector for interesting mechanics that affect other players.
Lastly, after talking it through as a team, we’ve decided that Butterflies should have the same effects as Moths. The poll question has been adjusted accordingly.
Two big points here. Firstly, we neglected to mention that the new Irit Tar will have +60 Ranged strength. It’s heating up in here!
Secondly, we’ve seen concerns from the PvP community that this will serve as easy access for some of the Wilderness’ least appreciated combat methods. To rectify this, we’re exploring an upfront cost to using these creatures in PvP. Dying to another player would mean you have to pay this cost again. Narratively, we’re leaning into the theme that these powerful beasts will need to be trained for PvP combat, as they’re a bit shyer than their mainland cousins.
In the same vein, we know that this set could quickly become a go-to for griefers. To mitigate this, we want to make the process of making this gear a little bit trickier, by requiring players to make the armour ‘combat-ready’ with the help of an experienced hunter in the Guild. It will still be perfectly affordable to create one set but will be much more expensive to have multiple in case of unfortunate PvP ‘accidents’. We’ll have more on this topic after the poll.
Firstly, we incorrectly stated that the range of the Bolas would be 1, when it is in fact 5. Oops!
Secondly, let’s talk about the Bolas’ baggage. We were aware of the Bolas’ history when we first came up with the design, but thought that its suitability for the Hunter skill would outweigh negative sentiment.
We also noted that many of you were unhappy that the Bolas didn’t have a use in Hunter. We agree that it would be better to tie them in with the skill, so we’ll be taking a step back to rethink the design.
In the meantime, we’re transforming the Hunter’s Bolas into the Hunter’s Spear, which will have all the same stats but won’t include the controversial special attack.
We’ve heard from some of you that even with our extensive changes, Furs still won’t be worth holding onto.
We’d like to counter this by noting that crafting Hunter’s Pouches will provide a significant chunk of Crafting experience, which we hope makes the whole endeavour worthwhile.
We saw a lot of feedback regarding balancing – in particular, you thought the Moonlight Hunter Crossbow required too high a Hunter level to create. We agree – you’ll now craft the upgrade from Sunlight Antelope Horns instead.
Sunlight Antelope Horns will still be used to craft the Bolts, however – you'll now be able to craft Moonlight Horns into stronger bolts that are around +92 - +94 in strength.
This change also gives us room to explore different Bolts in the future, which can be used exclusively with the upgraded Crossbow.
Some of you also wondered why the upgraded version of the Crossbow loses its unique 3-tick attack feature. In short, balancing a weapon of that speed is a lot more difficult than balancing a 4-tick weapon. Given the time allocated to this project, we would rather focus on making sure the other Hunter Guild features are in a great place.
- Reduced the Damage Reduction on the Hunter Outfits to 20%, 40% & 60%
- Antelopes will now be hunted with Pitfall Traps.
- Added the option to add a Whistle Blueprint to your Hunter Skill Cape.
- Added a quick option on Eagles to let players fly straight to their desired location, similar to the option found on Fairy Rings.
Lastly, we’ve seen loads of feedback regarding other areas of Hunter we could look to improve. We feel that the Hunter’s Guild is the first step in that direction, and your survey responses have reassured us that it’s the right direction for the skill.
However, we’ve also seen comments from high-level Hunters who feel they’re missing out on loads of fun content at lower levels. While we could simply introduce higher-level creatures, we don’t feel like this is what you mean when you talk about improvements we could make to the skill.
So, while we can’t make any promises just yet, know that we’ve heard you loud and clear, and that we’ll look to bring more challenging Hunter content to the rest of Varlamore.
We’d like to thank everyone who took the time to fill out the survey and read through our proposal, and we look forward to talking more about the Hunter Guild when the poll has concluded. Until then, be sure to tune-in to our livestream today at 17:00 BST on Twitch, where Mods Other and Sarnie will be talking everything Hunter Guild.
You can also discuss this update on our official forums, 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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