2 January 2015 - Behind the Scenes - January 2015

Happy New Year! Ports expansions, boss pets and the return of Hati and Sköll await!

Boss Pets

26 tiny versions of some of the game’s most fearsome creatures? Yes please! It’s the single biggest launch of pets we’ve ever made outside of the Summoning skill launch, but these bad boys and girls are far more exclusive than normal.

Each one is rare drop, obtainable by killing their larger, more dangerous counterparts around the game. There’s a huge range available, including a mini Nex and Araxxi and a fantastic-looking tiny QBD. Keep your eyes open for a few surprises too, sneaking in from the quack… I mean back.

This is another great project built on your feedback and ideas, from the forums and via our dev blog. If you’d like to see them in action, check out the RSTV ninja episode back in December.

The Ninja Team have also been trawling the forums, social pages, and more to find out what’s been bugging you before fixing your main gripes.

Elemental and Rare Drop Table Rework

We’ve also got a drop table rework planned, this time featuring elementals and the rare drop table, which is linked to hundreds of creatures around the game.

Lots of the old, weirder drops will be removed, replaced with far more useful items like bones, bars, uncut gems and potions. Creatures affected include jellies, dust devils and waterfiends.

Hati and Sköll

The wolf pack is back, plaguing the Fremennik tribes once again with pointed teeth and blood-curdling howls. They will only be here for a few weeks in January, so make sure you hunt them down, and retrieve Eir’s spear and helmet in the process.

Large amounts of XP in a wide range of skills await, plus some pretty cool cosmetic items, if you didn't pick them up previously.

Ports update – Guardians of the World

Our main update this month is a huge expansion to the Player-Owned Ports, determined by you in the hotly contested polls last year. Agility, Dungeoneering and Divination will be the dedicated skills, so you’ll need level 90 in one or more of those skills to take part.

Perhaps the best part of the update though is the ability to send voyages out without actually needing to return to your port, making it really easy to engage with ports whilst getting on with ‘Scapin’. There’s a bunch of other smaller improvements too that'll really float your boat!

We’re introducing 3 crazy new adventurers – a mask possessing an eyeless man, a girl made entirely of divination energy and an exiled gorajo weighed down by guilt, each with unique voyages and links to the strange sea monsters that swim the eastern seas.

New equipment available includes level 85 dual-wielding weapons: a katana and wakizashi for melee, and a seasinger wand and orb for magic. There are brand new scrimshaws too, focused around fishing.

We are also introducing new “clue voyages”, which give cryptic pointers to hidden islands. Once found, these can be regularly visited for stat boosts, captain’s trait removal and the chance to find Tengu cosmetic gear.

Plus, you’ll also gain access to even more building upgrades for the port itself, which look really awesome AND can change your success chances on voyages.

Solomon's Store

Keen to keep up with seasonal trends, Solomon’s got a huge January sale planned, clearing out lots of room for his 2015 range.

There’ll be plenty of bargains to pick up and it'll be your last chance to obtain some of his older offerings, as he will be removing them from his shop in February.

The first part of his brand new range is the “Warm Winter Outfit”, designed to help keep away nasty frosty chills.

Coming Soon – RuneLabs!

Finally, don’t forget that we will be launching RuneLabs early this year: our great new way to take Player Power to the next level.

You’ll submit ideas via a brand new system, and those that get enough support from your fellow players will be reviewed by us and then - potentially - turned into content in the game!

Start thinking now and when the system goes live you’ll be ready to blow everyone away with your awesome ideas. We know that you’ve got concepts even better than ours and we can’t wait to hear all about them.

Have fun!

Mod Mark

RuneScape Design Director

What is Behind the Scenes?

Behind the Scenes is a sneak peek at the planned game updates that we hope to launch in the coming month.

This, however, is only a plan - not a promise - that a particular update will be released in a particular way or at a particular time. To get you the highest quality updates as quickly as possible, we usually keep on tweaking and testing right up until the moment before release, so sometimes things change or take a bit longer than expected. We aren't afraid to change our plan if necessary, as we will never launch an update before it is ready.