When levelling skills or trekking around RuneScape, you might want to keep an eye out for some unusual goings on. This is because the Distractions and Diversions (a new type of game feature in RuneScape) are cropping up randomly, offering you some interesting experiences. We think you'll enjoy being distracted by these new ways to train, as they can be fun and useful...

Balthazar Beauregard's Big Top Bonanza:

The circus offers more than entertainment: it gives you the chance to be a star. Perform on the tightrope and show off your Agility, test your aim at the Ranged event, or blow things up in the Magic performance! Every week you'll get the chance to show your stuff and earn great rewards in the process.

How to enter the circus: Speak to the Ticket Vendor, who moves randomly between twelve towns in RuneScape. Keep a note of where it is! Requirements to play in the circus: Members only Access to: Experience and costumes for your performances.

Penguin Hide and Seek:

What's black, white and covered in leaves? A penguin pretending to be a bush! It may sound crazy, but it's true. Ten penguins have gone incognito and infiltrated the lands of RuneScape. Your mission, should you choose to accept it (and who wouldn't?), is to track down these mischievous birds and report them to Larry in the Ardougne Zoo. He'll reward you handsomely with XP or gold coins; so, the more penguins you find, the greater your reward.

You'll need to keep your eyes peeled - the ten penguins will change location every seven days and have a tendency to wander about the place. Keep finding them to collect your reward.

Where to start Penguin Hide and Seek: Speak to Larry in Ardougne Zoo Then start searching RuneScape for the dastardly birds Requirements to play Penguin Hide and Seek: Members only Access to: Rewards every seven days: gold coins or XP!

Shooting Star:

Stars are falling from the sky, ripe with rewards! Mine the meteorite and you'll get up to 200 pieces of stardust. Manage to get to the middle of the star and you'll meet the star sprite, who will reward you according to the amount of stardust you have mined.

Watch out, though: there's a two hour gap between shooting stars, so you should take advantage of the stars when you see them. Get a better idea of when (and where) they'll fall by using your player-owned house telescope, but they'll still be hard to find. The stars are big and slow to mine through, so they're best mined by several people at once. Call on your friends to make your way to the middle with slightly more ease...

Where to find Shooting Star: Stars can land all over the place! Use your player-owned house telescopes to narrow down the landing location of the next star. Requirements to play Shooting Star: Members only Different layers require different Mining level requirements. Outer layers are tougher to mine. Stars will start off at a random size. Access to: Rewards from the star sprite include runes, coins, gold ore and a temporary bonus to your Mining, which will give you more ore from the rocks that you mine. Bonus Mining XP for the first person to discover a star. You can be rewarded by a sprite up to once each day.

In other news...

Many items that are frequently purchased on the Grand Exchange have had their purchase limits increased so you can buy more of them at once. These include bows, poisoned darts, several dragonhide items, poh teleport tablets, pyre logs, bones, fruit and more!

Certain searches in the in-game world map, like "fishing guild", wouldn't yield any results. I'm sure you're all angling to hear that the Fishing Guild is still in the same plaice, so you should sea that this problem has been e-ray-sed!

Two worlds (60 and 61) have been designated as suggested 'Great Orb Project' worlds. While we've noticed a fair amount of activity on worlds such as 1, 2, 6 and 9, these are the main trading worlds and are often near capacity or full. Therefore, we have selected 60 and 61 so that you'll be able to log in straight away and join others who're playing this minigame.