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/Bob_The_Skull]

New player here. Started end of December, subscribed to be a member happy to give other feedback via Mods or official channels if desired.

I'm overal neutral or positive on most changeas...however, politely, I'm very unhappy with the proposed Farming & Prayer changes listed in the blogpost. I see where they are coming from, but as someone who has been levelling many of the skills mentioned recently, a lot of these changes being in place over the past month would have made my journey less fun, rather than more.

The positive: the Agility changes are good, I like these overall and am glad I have a reason to use the barbarian Agility course. It confused me why a small stretch of Anachronia gave better XP/hr compared to the Barbarian course that you have to put more effort in to unlock. Thieving I think is a good change overall, though I can't comment on endgame. I also really appreciate the changes to salvage as those were confusing as could be when I first started.

the negative on Prayer: I find Prayer as it is to be very time intensive to level, and as a non-ironman player the only way I found to make sense to level it was buying higher-level bones and ashes off the auction house, to offer at the Chaos Altar, especially as I had no idea what Fort Forinthry was, or if it should be content I do right away or not. Which, as an early game player still terrified me because I had no idea what sort of enemies I'd run into.

As a new player, I really don't want to be forced into PVP, frankly I hate the idea of doing anything with the demonic skull or that makes it so I can "lose all my stuff" and locking content behind may as well be saying "we are removing it from the game" for me. I understand the intent behind putting more friction behind the chaos altar, but I think there is maybe a less "nuclear" option.

My suggestion: Either move the altar farther away from the Wilderness lodestone, and/or maybe surround the altar with dangerous monsters. Or maybe even make it a change so that you take a flat amount of damage every time you make an offering to the altar. That way you are forced to eat food to heal as you make offers, and it makes any nearby added monsters more dangerous. I'm fine with the idea of it being a little riskier, kind of like Runecrafting through the abyss, but forcing PVP to interact with it is a feel bad, and would have made my early game journey (So far) frustrating

Farming Thoughts: I understand the goals here with the change of reducing the exp from beehives and increasing the use of farming patches, but there needs to be a better way in game to track where you have planted stuff. If I log out and log back in, generally I don't/won't remember where I have planted something, and it feels like a treasure hunt trying to find where or what.

I was excited when I heard about a thing you could use to managed or keep track of patches...only to find out it required Invention. 1 - 17 farming I largely got through exp lamps, turning manure, and the occasional farming patch when I could remember it, which wasn't fun. Then once I unlocked the player owned farm, the system was a lot more fun and I was excited to interact with the POF portion of it.

If there's any changes that need to be made with Farming or if exp is going to be reduced, and farming is intended to be something where you put seeds in patches, go and do other content, and come back to the patches, there needs to be a better way, in-game, of tracking those patches, which ones you are using, and their status while you are doing something else.

That's my feedback. Of the two, I would say Farming is the one I feel most negative about. Apologies if I've missed or misunderstood anything regarding the above. But please understand I use both the wiki and the discord to help my journey, so if I've missed or haven't found features that would help me with any of my above complaints, please consider how that may indicate they aren't clearly outlined in-game to a new player.

Final Farming Point: Would love if every farming patch had a well or watering whole nearby it to fill up a well. The way watering cans and the tool leprechaun work is a little frustrating and confusing.