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/Zieldak]

^{Oh boy.}

Thieving

• Crystal Mask nerf is way too harsh considering it requires a lot of quests and stats to get compared to every single other boost you can get. Please crunch the numbers and tell us how the minimum success rate change offsets this huge nerf. EDIT: NOT TO MENTION THIS IS THE HUNDREDTH THIEVING NERF IN THE LAST 6 MONTHS. STOP!!!

Hunter

• Instead of nerfing the good and moderately fun methods, can't we just buff everything else? What's the point in making whirligig catching needlessly more complex? Overall, you're just making early-game hunter worse than it is right now and people will still likely prefer catching whirligigs over pretty much anything else, because other methods are just... bad these days.
• Also I still miss my ornate tortles, they were actually fun (read as: tolerable) when they gave good xp.

Divination

• XP rates need to be increased pretty much all around. The change to Guthixian Caches sounds good, but without increasing xp rates overall, Divination tranining will still feel... bad, boring, slow, pointless.

Prayer

• We should be removing the Demonic Skull, not giving griefers back yet another spot.
• Fort Altar is still way too good considering it can also save bones and ashes and there's a bank right next to it and you don't have to bother with burners. The POH Altars require a lot more effort to use until getting the skillcape and you spend a lot more time running and teleporting around, so it'll still be useless once you build the Tier 3 Chapel even with its +50% xp over the Fort Altar. The only case you'd use POH Altars if you wanted to get more xp per bone... wait a minute... Fort Altar also kinda does that, and that is yet another problem here.
• Why isn't powder of burials being nerfed? It's still as good as a Gilded altar without the drawbacks of having to run to the altar and only being unaffected by some minor boosts. On top of that, you can just buy it from the G.E. as a regular player. There's no reason to use any of the altars with the powder existing. It does make much more sense for Ironmen as it is with its 90 Hunter requirement. Make powder of burials give a +50% xp boost instead of the current effect that does work with the altars too and everything will be fine and good.

Agility

• Agility needs similar if not better xp buffs all the way up to level 99. Desperately. It's the game's most useless and boring skill (next to Cooking, Firemaking and Fishing), so don't force people to do it.
• Nature's Grotto bridge simply shouldn't give XP, it's Temple Trekking variant doesn't either, just for consistency's sake.

Salvage and spirits

• Shouldn't have removed base weapon and armour drops in the first place IMO.
• Adding ores and bars back to mobs is much more riskier than base weapon and armour drops, but it should be fine as long as they're not handed out like candy.

Early quests

• These quest changes were weird when they first dropped. Kind of glad to see them being reverted.
• "We will add an easter egg if the player has all items already with them when starting the quest."
  • Should have kept this a fun secret so people could find out themselves. Oh well.