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Araxxor, the Whisperer and the Corporeal Beast

Araxxor closing in across the lair, with an araxyte already on the player and acid spreading over the east half of the floor
Araxxor closing in across the lair, with an araxyte already on the player and acid spreading over the east half of the floor

Three bosses land together: Araxxor and his hive off the Morytania spider cave, the Whisperer opening up to everyone, and the Corporeal Beast with the whole spirit shield line behind it. Smithing works for the first time, the Teleports window has been rebuilt from scratch, and every boss you kill is now timed against your own best and against the server record.

Highlights

  • Araxxor - A 92 Slayer boss in his own private lair, with hatching eggs, three kinds of araxyte, acid across the floor and an enrage at 255 hitpoints. He pays the noxious halberd, the amulet of rancour, the araxyte slayer helmet, Aranea boots and the pet, Nid.
  • The Whisperer - The third of the Forgotten Four is open to everyone. Vardorvis, the Leviathan and the Whisperer are all live, and their rings can finally be made.
  • The Corporeal Beast - 2,000 hitpoints in its lair beneath the southern Wilderness, and with it the spirit shields: the plain one it drops, the elixir that blesses it, and the three sigils that finish it.
  • Smithing - The whole skill, at every furnace and every anvil in the game. It was drawing a screen that answered nothing before, so nobody had ever smithed a bar here.
  • A new Teleports window - Categories down the left, filters under whichever one you pick, a search box, a live view of what you are about to travel to, and a favourite star on every row.
  • Kill times - Every boss fight with a real starting gun is now timed. You get a personal best per boss, the server keeps one record per boss, and the site's five hiscore boards became about 120.

New content

  • Araxxor - In through the web tunnel at the back of the spider cave, the Teleports window or ::araxxor, at 92 Slayer. Eggs hatch around him through the fight and the colour of the south-eastern one tells you which special he will use all fight; when he dies you harvest the corpse for the loot rather than picking it off the floor.
  • The Corporeal Beast - Its lair sits under level 20 Wilderness and is not itself Wilderness, so the trip in is safe and the fight is not. Only spears and halberds on the stab style and Osmumten's fang do full damage to it, everything else is halved, and it summons a dark energy core that drains you while you work.
  • Spirit shields - A spirit shield and a holy elixir make a blessed shield at 85 Prayer, and a sigil on top of that at an anvil makes the arcane, elysian or spectral. Both passives work, and the plain and blessed shields are no longer spawnable, so the chain is worth walking.
  • The ancient rings - Ultor, Bellator, Magus and Venator can be made now, and could not before. A vestige and 500 blood runes make the icon, then three chromium ingots at any furnace at 90 Magic and 80 Smithing finish the ring. Three of the four came off the blood money counter in the same change: a boss unique a shop also sells is not a chase.
  • Smithing - All eight bars at all 22 furnaces, all 139 items at all 13 anvils, in ones, fives, tens, all or a number you type, plus cannonballs from a steel bar and an ammo mould. No recipe takes coal, and Horvik stocks the ore ladder. It is the fastest skill in the game.
  • Mystery boxes - Four boxes, one per reward lane: tournament, Slayer, donator and Wilderness. Each has its own table, each stacks, and each opens one at a time or all at once. The Wilderness one is the only one that trades, and it only comes off a kill in the wild.
  • The Christmas cracker - The 2001 original. Pull it with another player and a coin flip decides which of you walks away with the partyhat and which gets the junk. Red is three times as likely as purple, and it is the only source of a partyhat in the game.
  • Realism - A third account type that earns half experience and has to train its own combat levels rather than being handed them, in exchange for 10% better odds on every chase drop.
Three tentacles converging on the player in the Whisperer's arena, with the Whisperer herself drifting a few tiles north
Three tentacles converging on the player in the Whisperer's arena, with the Whisperer herself drifting a few tiles north
The Corporeal Beast mid-fight in its lair, its area attack landing on the tiles around the player for 28
The Corporeal Beast mid-fight in its lair, its area attack landing on the tiles around the player for 28

Combat and balance

  • Kree'arra - His barrage knocked you back with a stun that locked your food and your attacks for three ticks, which is not a thing he does in the real game. He now shoves you one tile away instead, and standing in a corner of the chamber means the shove does nothing at all.
  • God Wars chambers - You could spec a general, teleport home, wait for the bar and walk back in to find it exactly as you left it. An empty room now puts its occupants back to full health on their spawn tiles and clears the damage you did, so nobody can bank half a kill and come back for it later.
  • Firemaking - The first log of a run is the slow one and every log after it lights much faster, which is what makes the skill worth training rather than a fixed slog per tier.
  • Vote streaks - A streak now breaks when you miss a day. It used to only ever go up, so nine votes spread over a year read as a nine day streak.

Interface and quality of life

  • The Teleports window - Rebuilt. Bosses, Raids, Wilderness and Skilling down the left with sub-filters indented under whichever you pick, a search box that filters as you type, the boss's own icon on every row, a live view of the destination on the right, and a one-click star to keep your favourites at the top.
  • Slayer Rewards - Fourteen content unlocks, so Blood Krystilia will not send you at a boss you have not bought the row for, and every one of them can be switched back off for free. Three more block slots take the ceiling to six, each asking for something the account has already done rather than just points. The Slayer ring (eternal) is on the counter and is the only teleport straight to your task.
  • Kill times and the hiscores - ::pb shows your best time for every boss you have killed. Beating the server record is announced to the world and relayed to Discord, and the website now carries a board for every skill, every boss kill count and every boss time.
  • Rewards land in your bag - A casket, a mystery box or a chest now pays into your inventory first and only uses the bank for what will not fit. Opening twenty boxes is no longer a bank trip to find out what you won. Tournaments and the Gauntlet still bank, because they hand your real inventory back at the door, and the Wilderness never banks.
  • New milestones on the task list - Six lifetime rows for voting and for time played, paying coins, blood money, mystery boxes and boosters. None of them is capped, because none is reachable inside the hour a throwaway account lives for.
  • The lunar spellbook - Rebuilt slot for slot against the live game: 44 buttons in the right order with the right icons and the right rune costs. Eight of its teleports used to be the old teleport panel's category buttons, so clicking "Moonclan Teleport" opened a menu.
  • The space bar - Continues any click-to-continue box, including all 23 level-up boxes. A level up arrives in the middle of a skilling run, which is exactly when your hand is not on the mouse.
  • Items Kept on Death - Now lists your untradeables under what you keep. A fire cape, a rune pouch, a looting bag or barrows gloves appeared nowhere on that screen before, even though death keeps every one of them and costs you none of your protected slots.
  • Home - The AFK yard has been walled off properly and rearranged, and there is a fishing spot by the bank now.
The Unlock tab of the Slayer Rewards screen, scrolled to the content unlocks for Raids II and III, Vardorvis, the Leviathan and the Whisperer with their point costs
The Unlock tab of the Slayer Rewards screen, scrolled to the content unlocks for Raids II and III, Vardorvis, the Leviathan and the Whisperer with their point costs
The Teleports window on the Bosses category, each row wearing a favourite star and the boss's own icon, with the Leviathan in the preview panel
The Teleports window on the Bosses category, each row wearing a favourite star and the boss's own icon, with the Leviathan in the preview panel

Client and performance

  • Item dragging - There was a window on every single click where letting go swapped two inventory slots while the icon had not moved a pixel, so a click that looked like it did nothing quietly rearranged your bag. Fixed, and the Anti Drag plugin is in the pack if you want a longer hold on top.
  • Item icons in the sidebar - Every item picture a plugin asked for came back blank, so the loot tracker was a list of empty boxes. They draw now.
  • Previews in a window - A model drawn inside an interface was discarded before it reached the screen for anyone running the GPU renderer, which is most people. It draws for everyone now, which is what makes the new Teleports preview worth having.

Fixes

  • Artio's orb - The shove read whether a tile was occupied but not whether there was a wall between you and it, so it could throw you straight through the side of the den. It now uses the same rule your own steps do. Alongside it, ::stuck will get you home if you are ever genuinely rooted to the spot, and a teleport refused for that reason now says so instead of failing silently.
  • Wilderness upper floors - Climbing a ladder took you out of the Wilderness entirely: the level vanished, PvP stopped, and the deck above the level 55 chest was a safe zone with a working bank on it. Every Wilderness boundary now covers all its floors.
  • The skills tab - Hunter experience was landing in the Construction box and Construction in the Hunter box. The two now read the skill their labels name.
  • Presets - A preset wrote gear straight into your worn slots without ever asking whether you could wear it, so a Realism account could stand in full rune at 1 Defence. Levels apply first now, anything you cannot wear is skipped and left in the bank, and two of the shipped loadouts were themselves wearing gear their own stats did not allow.
  • Protected items on death - If you carried more than one of something protected, only one of them was actually kept and the rest were destroyed rather than dropped. Five godswords with three protected slots lost two of them to nobody.
  • The games necklace - Its "Corporeal Beast" option pointed at a tile in the Ancient Cavern with no Corporeal Beast within a thousand tiles. It goes to the lair now.