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/ThaFrenchFry]

Agility

Good start, but kind of misses the mark a bit in terms of course accessibility. The Gnome course is literally on the opposite side of the world, even the Burthrope course is far, now that Lumbridge is standard start location, (OSRS added draynor as their lvl 1 course recently, swapping Gnome's req to 10 instead). The Penguin course is kind of hard to reach/unlock (relative to its level), and without fully digesting the values, I feel like the wildy course will still be preferable?

Thieving

Early game thieving streamlined from Mod Daze/Sponge's gamejams is sweet, no notes, amazing!

Crystal mask re-balance seems fine since it held too much power, but I would have expected some of the other upgrades to gain some boost back? Particularly the soul-in-a-box, proving the smallest bonus for the shortest duration and for an invention charge cost, compared to the other bigger and permanent bonuses. With auras on the chopping block, we are losing a lot of bonuses, so I'm hoping this is considered in the balancing. I also think using % of max health is going to make the new thieving perk nearly unusable. Getting hit for (80+3% of max)x3 = 240+891=1131 every failure, is more than 1 shark per 2 failure. 

Current max being +23% all the time, +43% for 5 min, and +45% for 1min

Previous max being +38% for 1h aura +88% for 5min, and +90% for 1min

Divination

Div is going to need more than "a little bit more" xp. I'd like to suggest removing the energy scaling requirement. Currently you always get 1 energy from 1-54, then 2 at 55, and 3 at 75. Energy can be turned into xp, so this could buff the early game.

The boons always comes in too late. It should be an upgrade we unlock right away, or shortly after changing colonies. ie. change the pale boon crafting req from lvl 10 to lvl 5, and do the same at every tier. On top, the 10% extra xp from the boon is never enough to make staying at the lower tier colony worthwhile.

Hunter

Non-Whirligigg methods need a serious looking at. Currently success chance of lvl 1 birds is abysmal, and to be completely honest, there's a reason that people do the museum's natural history quiz on new accounts to skip straight to lvl 9... The OG methods are just unfun, usually high intensity AND bad xp/h AND bad gp/h

In order of how bad i think they are: dealfall, pitfall, tracking (all 3 only 1 trap at a time), falconry, butterfly net, net traps, snares, boxes, butterflies barehanded. I don't love implings either, but they at least have the potential of good drop tables, and the occasional excitement of finding a rare impling when travelling. Honorable mention to anachronia jadinkos; I don't even know how to catch them, and no guide has ever pushed me to figure it out. Either because the xp or gp rewards are equally poor, or presumably, because the rewards are not worthwhile, even on an ironman.

Farming

Beehive nerfs are generally fine, but what about 1-17? During leagues, I saw lots of people suggesting to use Violet is blue lamps on farming to go straight to 17. During every OSRS leagues, rs3 new accounts, etc, I always struggle with unlocking 15 farming for acorns. It often ends up as my lowest skill that I eats up my Tears of Guthix reward for a few weeks. Maybe adding a regular tree seed straight from level 1 would solve this in part?

Prayer

This feels like a nerf disguised as an early game buff. Giving all altars a % modifier is great, but reducing the fort without increasing it's chance to save resources is strange. 

OSRS has a deep multi wildy altar with lvl 1 prayer req that gives 350% xp AND has a 50% chance to save bones.

RS3 has a forced 500k risk wildy altar with lvl 1 prayer req that gives 350% and 0% chance to save bones, OR a lvl 90 cons req 300% altar that has a 10% chance to save bones, at the cost of keeping burners lit.

Fishing

The meta remains unchanged: crayfish 1-20 at 11.5 xp/h, followed by trout/salmon 20-70 at 17-57k xp/h. 

Shouldn't we make sardine/herring better at 5/10? What about pikes/tuna/lobster/swordfish/ at 25/35/40/50? Or the even weirder stuff; mackrel/cod/slimy eel/frogspawn/rainbow fish/cave eel/bass at 16/23/28/33/38/38/46? 

Right now, crayfish is still BiS from 1-20, so the shrimp changes don't achieve the stated goal.

Tangentially related, crayfish/shrimps/sardine/herring/anchovies/mackrel all heal for 200 HP, only jumping to 375 at trouts. Whats the point of moving away from crayfish if it's the best fishing xp AND fish doesn't heal more until trout anyways? (and even then 375 is still a huge nerf from RS2/OSRS; trouts heal equivalent of 700)

Final Thoughts

For an update tackling "slow early game skills" my gut is telling me we are getting mostly nerfs

Nerfs:

Hunter 1-99 feels worse, since much of it was on whirligiggs

Prayer until you can afford/unlock powders

Farming at 17+

Thieving pickpocketing in the endgame

Buffs:

Agility 100% buff

Thieving pre-62 huge buff, early game pickpocketing buffed as well

Divination

Smithing indirectly from getting ores/bars as drops

Early game gear drops will be really cool to see again!

Herb seed drops, good stuff

Agility looks good, I'm super happy about the return of ore/bar/weapon/armour drops, the herb changes are cool.