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Kraken, the real OSRS bank and a gem stall

The Kraken surfaced in the middle of its pool in Kraken Cove, fought from the shore across the water while a tentacle lashes on the right and an undisturbed whirlpool still turns below
The Kraken surfaced in the middle of its pool in Kraken Cove, fought from the shore across the water while a tentacle lashes on the right and an undisturbed whirlpool still turns below

The Kraken is in, fought from the shore of its own instanced cove, and the bank you use every session is now modern OSRS's own interface rather than a port of somebody else's. Alongside them: a Thieving stall by the Edgeville bank that pays real coins from level 1, the rune pouch, three Wilderness key chests that finally open, and a beta drop rate boost that makes every chase ten times as likely.

Highlights

  • The Kraken - an 87 Slayer boss in a per-run instance of Kraken Cove, fought across open water. Disturb all four whirlpools, then the Kraken itself. ::kraken or the Bosses tab of ::teles.
  • The bank is OSRS's own interface - 1,410 slots, the tab strip, placeholders, fillers, the incinerator and its own search, all on the real modern bank.
  • The gem stall - a Thieving stall beside the Edgeville bank, open at level 1, paying about 496k coins an hour at level 1 rising to 1.48M at 99. It is the first coin income you can just sit down and work.
  • Ten times drop rates for the beta - every chase roll in the game, from boss uniques to raid purples to pets, is ten times more likely while the beta runs.
  • You can see further - render distance is now set per area instead of a flat 15 tiles, so instanced bosses, the God Wars Dungeon and home all show you more of what is going on.

New content

  • Kraken - 87 Slayer, and the level cannot be boosted. Magic is the only real option: ranged and melee deal a seventh of their damage, and neither side's protection prayers reduce anything, so the whole fight is about the four tentacles and your food. It drops the trident of the seas, a kraken tentacle at 1/399, the jar of dirt and Pet kraken, and it is an assignable Blood Slayer task.
  • The gem stall - one stall, no gates, and both the coins and the experience scale on your Thieving level and nothing else. Experience beats the Rest Yard at every level (107k an hour at level 1, 301k at 99), which is about 52 hours to 99. A Market guard turns up every so often with a question to answer; ignore him and the keeper will not serve you for three minutes.
  • Wilderness key chests - the Muddy chest in the Lava Maze now opens, so the Muddy key you have been collecting has a lock at last. Larran's small chest sits at about level 18 and the big one at about 57 in the far west, paying five times as much plus a second roll for the trek. They pay coins, blood money and supplies, never gear.
  • Larran's key - drops wherever the Blood key does and four times as often, so a Wilderness boss, a revenant, the gorilla camp, the demon camp and a matching Blood Slayer kill all feed the chests.
  • Rune pouch - three rune slots on OSRS's own pouch screen, 5,000 blood money from the Emblem Trader and the only source. The runes in it pay for your spells in every spellbook and light them up in the tab; death drops the runes and leaves you the bag.
  • Zulrah's scales in the Armoury - 100 coins each and bought in bulk, so the blowpipe the shop already sold you now has a charge you can buy.

Combat and balance

  • Beta drop rates - the boost applies to the special table, raid unique gates, Barrows sets, Blood keys and caskets, boss pets and skilling pets. Supply drops, quantities and the rare drop table are untouched, and three rolls that would otherwise become certainties take five times instead. ::drops shows you the boosted rate, not the authored one.
  • Alchemical Hydra reworked - twelve defects fixed in one pass against the wiki and Kronos. Her auto max hit is 35 rather than 17 and enraged is 55, the ranged style is the one that double-hits, empowerment now resets on every transform, specials come every fourth turn with the head-sway tell actually reaching you, and her death sequence plays out instead of being cut short.
  • Boss instances are no longer a Wilderness escape - every raid lobby, instanced lair and tournament signup now refuses to take you out of the Wilderness at any level, staff included. Previously ::cox at level 40 walked straight past the teleport caps and a tele-block.

Interface and quality of life

  • The modern bank - built on OSRS's own BANKMAIN and BANKSIDE, with the items and settings views, drag reordering, tab management and client-side search. "Show worn items" opens our Equipment Stats screen rather than the donor's, and right-clicking the wrench opens the Preset Manager without leaving the bank.
  • Looting bag - rebuilt onto OSRS's own bag panel beside the game rather than over it, with Check, Deposit, Settings and Destroy all behaving as they do in the live game. Opening the bag from the inventory works now; it used to do nothing at all.
  • The quest tab is now the journal - Character Summary, Features and Server info on OSRS's own journal screens. The summary carries your boss kills, player kills, achievements completed and collections logged, and clicking any of the four opens the window behind it.
  • Achievements on OSRS's own screens - ::ca opens the real Combat Achievements Overview, Tasks, Bosses and Rewards. Skilling tasks live there too, as a task type rather than a separate tab, so you can ask for every hard task on Mining or every incomplete elite task in two clicks. ::sa opens the list with that filter already set.
  • Collection log - the Bosses tab is the only one on for now, and the other four are hidden rather than drawing OSRS's own content over ours. The window's close button answers as well, which it never used to.
  • Teleports - the Bosses tab is up to 37 rows, with the Kraken added along with its Bestiary entry, its collection log page and its six achievement rungs.
  • Vote leaderboards - the weekly and monthly boards are re-posted under a result announcement instead of being stranded above it, and moderators are now eligible to appear on them.

Client and performance

  • Render distance is per area - a flat 15 tiles was baked into the protocol itself. Instances, the Ancient Prison, the God Wars Dungeon and home now set their own, and the crowded ones show you the nearest players and NPCs rather than an arbitrary selection.
  • A packet size crash is gone - the client's inbound buffer was a fixed 5,000 bytes, so a larger packet threw part way through and desynced everything after it, which surfaced as garbage and an unexplained error. It now sizes itself to what is being sent.
  • Update your client - this release changes the wire protocol in both directions, so an old client and a new server do not agree. The launcher handles it for you; if you run the jar directly, take a fresh copy.

Fixes

  • A kill drops one pile, not two - blood money, coins and both key types placed their own ground item at the boss's corner rather than under you, so a multi-tile boss scattered its loot across two tiles. At the Kraken that corner is open water, which would have stranded the lot.
  • Slayer credit for bosses that change form - a boss that dies as something other than what it spawned as never counted towards a Blood Slayer task. The Alchemical Hydra was the reported case; the fix is in the shared task code, so it covers every transforming boss.
  • Spells light up off the pouch - the spellbook checks your carried rune pouch as well as your inventory now, in every book, so a spell you can afford no longer looks greyed out.

Behind the scenes

  • The gem stall's rate is measured, not modelled - the test that pins its income actually plays the stall in a live world, because the row it replaced printed one number and paid a sixth of it.
  • The site counts visits - the website now records pageviews and the referral tag on a link, which is how we can tell whether an advert anybody paid for brought anyone in. It is cookieless.