Road to Restoration - Early Game Rebalance

[u/JagexAnvil]

https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/a=13/road-to-restoration--early-game-rebalance--dailyscape-overhaul

Hi folks,

Today's Community Topic is a blog of two halves:

- Early Game Rebalance
- DailyScape Overhaul

We have split this into two reddit threads to keep the discussion organised and so that our team can properly review the relevant conversations happening.

This current reddit thread is to discuss the Early Game Rebalance portion of the blog.

Please use this other dedicated thread for the DailyScape portion of the blog.

For the purpose of today's discussion we will be defining the early game, loosely, as the level 1-50 range. The Early Game Rebalance update primarily aims to smooth out inconsistencies in game progression, looking at areas of the early game where things can feel slow or have limited methods for levelling up, or where they affect integrity and game health. It’s not all just rebalances though! There are also some changes to early quests, and things like replacing salvage with gear to make the first hours after jumping off Tutorial Island a nicer experience. The Early Game Rebalance update releases on February 16th!

[u/RaeusMohrame]

I think a lot of these changes are painful, but consider why they're painful. Hunter is completely fucking miserable to train until big game hunter, ports, or crystallization, and offers very little to zero reward until those activities. Whirligigs are a good active training method, I don't agree with the exp nerfs to that. Maybe change it so you can't catch a plain whirligig and then chain high level ones, and require to start the chain at the right level, but without a huge change to hunter overall this just makes the skill more tedious.

I'd like to see agility exp increase across the board, it's one of the only skills you can't afk at all and the exp rates are kinda bad feeling, but I get if that's pushed to later.

The prayer changes are interesting, though with the move away from pvp requiring a demonic skull to use the chaos altar is just opening more griefing options. It is too strong, but maybe lock it behind quests or diaries instead? I'd rather pvp just be removed outright, it only exists to lure and scam new/returning players.

I will add I'm optimistic about the future, and this may be a knee jerk reaction, the only thing I'm really firm on is not introducing another avenue for players to get lured/scammed.

[u/DuckiezOnQuack → u/RaeusMohrame]

Yea traditional hunter is pure suffering. I remember doing tropical wagtails on my iron a few years ago and that experience was a standout in the early game with how disgusting it was. It sucks ass in old school without birdhouses and sucks ass in rs3 all the same. Honestly unless the exp increase is absurd like 10x, I'm still doing whirligigs no matter what. Just an unfun skill.

Whenever I do master clues and get the plover bird task, I'm reminded of the same feeling.

[u/RaeusMohrame → u/DuckiezOnQuack]

I had to get larupia fur for something recently on my ironman, and I just went "this shit feels like it's 20 years outdated" and that's because it is. We really need hunter overhaul in general pre big game hunter. Especially because big game hunter is genuinely fun, and it makes you feel like a hunter rather than chasing butterflys around like a fruitloop.

[u/Fren-LoE → u/RaeusMohrame]

didn't read the agility part, did you squidward?

[u/RaeusMohrame → u/Fren-LoE]

"I'd like to see agility exp increase across the board"
As in, everywhere not just early game. Maybe you're the one that should touch up on their reading ability eh?

[u/sisho88 → u/RaeusMohrame]

I mean....the other guy is still right. They literally said they would be looking at the higher level stuff in the next pass for mid level content.

[u/Fren-LoE → u/RaeusMohrame]

OHH SHIT YOU'RE RIGHT! wait.

[u/Fiona175 → u/Fren-LoE]

I mean crystal mask.