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Slayer, and combat measured against OSRS

Slayer is an ordinary skill here now: Nieve stands beside Blood Krystilia at home with a 101-task pool, ninety-four dungeons and camps have the right monsters standing in them, and the staircases, chains and vines that lead down to them open for the first time. Beside it, the combat engine has been checked swing by swing against OSRS itself and against your reports - from the eat animation that was cancelling your attacks to the dragon claws special that drew all four hitsplats on one tick.

Highlights

  • Normal Slayer - Nieve gives ordinary Slayer tasks at home, drawn from 101 categories, with ninety-four dungeons and camps populated and her own rewards screen. The walk from 1 to 99 is about 35 hours.
  • The doors down to the camps open - the Slayer Tower's staircases, its spikey chains, the cave mouths and the Catacombs vine were all baked, named, clickable and inert. Twenty-two of them work now, and the teleport window has a Slayer rail and a Cities rail beside it.
  • Eating no longer cancels your attack - the eat animation outranked the swing written after it, so the hit landed but you visibly ate instead of attacking. Both happen now.
  • Three bosses answered your reports - Bandos and his bodyguards no longer swing in lockstep on one tick, Tormented demons alternate ranged and magic so the swap can be read, and Vet'ion and Calvar'ion are no longer four times tankier than they should be.
  • The blood arena - a walled safe free-for-all west of the home blood quarry. Walk in with the gear you already own, fight whoever is standing there, lose nothing and win nothing but the number on the board.
  • The raids ask for nothing at the door - the Chambers, the Theatre, the Tombs and the Gauntlet no longer want a boss scroll, and the four scrolls have come off the counter.

New content

  • Normal Slayer - Nieve stands a tile north of Blood Krystilia and hands out ordinary tasks off the monster ladder, with her own unlocks and extensions on the shared rewards screen. Slayer experience had exactly one source before this, so a new account could not train the skill at all.
  • Ninety-four camps - twenty-seven of the old task categories had nothing standing in the world, and the ones that did were swept a whole region at a time, so kurask stood in the cave crawlers' corridor. A camp is a room now. The Wilderness Slayer Cave and the Catacombs of Kourend were missing entirely and are both in, twelve chambers and twenty-two.
  • The Slayer doors - twenty-two staircases, cave mouths, spikey chains and one vine are wired, each matched to its own tile. Nothing in the game climbed anything outside the King Black Dragon's two ladders before this.
  • Teleports: Cities - a sixth category on the teleport window, 24 towns tagged by kingdom. The Slayer rail's rows and arrival tiles are worked out from the camps themselves, so a task always has a door.
  • The blood arena - a lobby that banks, spawns and loads presets, a strip of red floor, and a sunken pit past it where everyone can attack everyone. You fight with what you walked in with, the lobby restocks and the pit does not, and a kill only counts against a real stranger. Reach it with ::arena or the new teleport row.
  • The Maggot King is a fight now - reported as "too fast, animations are off, no clear objective and you get melted on arrival", and every one of those was a separate defect. He has three named acts off his health bar, a briefing that tells you crush is the answer, one animation per turn instead of five in a tick, and an arrival tile thirteen tiles clear of his reach. The objective is the brood: a larva that reaches a carrion pile stands still for four ticks before it feeds, and killing it inside that window costs him the heal and leaves the pile standing.
  • Boss scrolls are retired - the four raid unlocks admit everybody, the shop rows are gone, and reading a scroll you already own is refused rather than wasting it.
  • The Tombs of Amascut has its own supplies - eight consumables bound to the raid, handed to you as a starting kit at the door.
  • Two new tournament brackets - Max Melee becomes Max no armour: every offensive bonus stays and the defence comes off, so a rooted bracket is settled on specs rather than on who brought more food. Spectral is new, the whole set on both fighters at once with the Spectral whip and an avernic defender.
  • Ten formerly free items now cost coins - the abyssal whip, dragon boots, the dark bow, Ava's accumulator, the Helm of Neitiznot and the five Infinity pieces are Armoury stock at 100,000 to 500,000, and Barrows gloves are 2,000 on the blood money counter. Both counters buy their own shelf back, and a dropped whip is worth something for the first time.
  • The server tour visits the blood arena - a tenth landmark, straight after the Tournament Manager.
The Controls tab, where both Attack options can be set to left-click before you step past the red line
The Controls tab, where both Attack options can be set to left-click before you step past the red line

Combat and balance

  • Dragon claws - the special drew all four hitsplats on one tick and played the ordinary claws swing. It now draws two, then two a tick later, which is the tick you get to eat or switch overhead, and it plays its own animation. Burning claws had copied the same wrong animation and the same single tick, and the Soulreaper axe was playing a generic blunt swing.
  • The order of a tick - every player's input is read before any player's turn, so an eat or a prayer sent on the tick a hit lands is applied before that hit, and a click on a target no longer swings the instant it arrives.
  • The eat animation - it wore a priority that refused every ordinary attack animation written after it, so the swing landed invisibly. A block animation is the one thing that never interrupts what you are already doing, which is what that priority had been protecting by accident.
  • God Wars Dungeon - reported as "attack speed on Bandos and minions is like 5 ticks too fast". Nothing was fast: all four Bandos attackers were handed the same target on the same tick and swung in lockstep for ever, so no prayer flick could split them. They take their first swing spread across the cycle now. Every one of the sixteen chamber monsters was then checked against its own page.
  • K'ril Tsutsaroth - his poison is 16 rather than 4 and no longer needs the hit to land damage, which is his documented value and the one change in the room you will feel. His two attacks are single target rather than room-wide, his magic and his prayer smash are split the way OSRS splits them, and the smash always lands for 35 to 49.
  • Kree'arra - his magic rolled against magic defence and his talon swipe against ranged. It is the other way round in OSRS, and both are now.
  • General attacks read your overhead when they land - a scripted hit from a God Wars general flies two or three ticks, and it was reading the prayer you had up when it was rolled. Raising an overhead mid-flight protects you and dropping one costs you.
  • Tormented demons - reported as "the attack swaps show no indication, so swapping correctly is impossible, and attacks are slightly fast". There was no pattern to read at all: every projectile turn re-rolled a fresh coin flip. Ranged and magic alternate now, and a demon that bombs while meleeing always changes style afterwards. The cadence was already right; what was wrong was a flat two-tick flight at every range, so a player at eight tiles had the same fraction of a second to answer as one standing against it.
  • A Tormented demon's shield is visible again - the flames that mark it played once and lasted two ticks, so the demon wore its shield invisibly for 34 of every 36 seconds and the whole mechanic had no tell. They burn steadily while the shield is up and stop when it breaks, and the free hit through the break finally pays a bonus: nothing for a 4-tick weapon, a fifth more for a 6-tick, a third more for a 7-tick.
  • Vet'ion and Calvar'ion - reported as twelve to fifteen minutes a kill, and it was the arithmetic rather than the gear. A whip landed one swing in ten on Vet'ion; his defence and his stab, slash, magic and ranged all come down by a third to a half, taking a whip kill from 13.8 minutes to 5.4 and a maul kill from 241 ticks to 141. Crush was already the answer and stays it.
  • The Corrupted Gauntlet - reported as chip damage too high through tier 2 armour. The damage was measured first and nothing was lowered; the supply side was what was wrong. Paddlefish healed the wrong way round, so a whole trip ran four hitpoints light on every bite. Crafting with a full inventory ate the materials, which is the "it made me a new tier 1 instead" report. The maze can no longer fail to feed you: the ring of rooms holds three of each material and a room next to the Hunllef holds three fishing spots. Six of the Hunllef's own rules match OSRS now.
  • Tombs of Amascut - the phase-1 hand-off played no destruction, its wreck went cold after three ticks and the survivor teleported rather than walked. A phase-2 orb spent half its flight invisible and arrived early. Phase 2 is also deliberately longer in every band and its relay pays seven times rather than five; a solo run is about 1,273 ticks against roughly 1,485, and no drop rate moved.
  • Theatre of Blood - reported as "in a 2-man, in phase 2 she is only sending a range projectile to 1 player". Verzik's spit is one projectile per raider now, each landing where that raider stood and rolled separately, and the healer wave is one Matomenos per raider. A raider who dies is caged at the north end of the chamber and can watch instead of being thrown out, and a completion pays a small premium per extra raider that a death forfeits.
  • A PvM death in the Wilderness costs nothing - item loss and untradeable breaking both need a player to have killed you, so a boss, a revenant or a poison tick now leaves everything where it is. A PKer takes the lot exactly as before.
  • Four attacks that beat every overhead - Spindel's whole moveset, both araxytes and the two Nightmare minions were unprayable by construction. They are prayable now.
  • Verac's set effect - fired one swing in five rather than one in four, and rolled 1 to max rather than 0 to max plus one.
  • Twenty-odd special attacks were re-columned - the dragon dagger, both godswords, the magic shortbow, the dark bow, the dragon halberd, the dragon longsword, the barrelchest anchor, the abyssal whip, the Saradomin sword and the abyssal bludgeon among them. The dragon longsword and the anchor had their two numbers transposed, the dark bow gave every arrow the dragon arrow floor, and the Saradomin sword's second splat is an independent 1 to 16 roll rather than the first splat plus a flat 16.
  • Seven damage formulas - magic prayers add magic damage, the elite void magic bonus is 5% and not the ranged 2.5%, a deflector can no longer stand in for void gloves, Salve (i) ranged is 7/6, Craw's with a slayer helm is one additive group rather than two multipliers, the obsidian set adds a tenth of the base max rather than multiplying, and Dharok's scales the rolled hit rather than the ceiling.
  • Noxious halberd - swung at 7 ticks in a family of halberds that really are 7. Measured off live OSRS at 5, and it is 5 here.
  • Autocast survives fewer switches - a staff that cannot cast your book drops the autocast and says so, and so does a switch within twelve seconds of swinging at another player.
  • PK rules - the Wilderness pile-jumping window is 20 ticks for player against player, a kill buys the killer the same 20, and an attacker who has not been hit back may switch targets.
  • Combat experience is solved for the hour - a Trained account that trains nothing but combat reaches 99 in a combat skill in about an hour, Realism takes two and Realism (Extreme) ten. The Rest Yard's credit pool is pinned against that so a boss kill cannot buy out the daily cap.
  • Freeze immunity - five ticks after any freeze, and two after an Arceuus grasp.
  • Special attack energy - the 10% cycle free-runs instead of restarting when you spend a bar, so the first tick back is 0 to 30 seconds away rather than always 30.
  • Rapid Restore - halves the time between restores rather than restoring two at a time, and the hold on the logout button after a fight is 16 ticks.

Interface and quality of life

  • The effect timers are one strip along the bottom - the buff countdowns marched up the bottom-right of the screen straight through the Wilderness level box and the multi-way sign, and with three running you could read neither. They are one horizontal plate anchored bottom-right now, growing leftwards, with a collapse handle on its right edge that remembers your choice.
  • The Gauntlet's singing bowl is a window - the whole crafting ladder on one screen, showing what you can make, what is blocked and what you already hold, and staying open across nine songs. It was three levels of menu that closed after every craft.
  • The Bestiary opens with a Combat block - hitpoints, max hit, attack speed, what a monster attacks with and what it is weakest to, which is the answer to not knowing what to pray.
  • The Armoury and the blood money counter read as groups - a set is one block in slot order rather than scattered down the table by price, so the five Infinity pieces sit together and the three upgrade bases sit with the boots they exist for.

Client and performance

  • A long session stops growing - both GPU render paths made four handles a frame and released none of them, so a client left running for fifteen hours had gigabytes of memory behind it that no amount of tidying could reclaim. Released now, in the GPU renderer and in 117HD. The launcher will pull client build 51.

Fixes

  • Accounts created after the launch were emptied at their second login - five of them in the first twelve hours. A new account is stamped at creation now, the sweep can tell a new save from a beta one, and the guard that did it is off. Don Diablo's account was restored from a backup.
  • The World bosses screen's Teleport button - printed "You cannot do that right now" and moved nobody, with a boss standing in the arena. The window was refusing its own button; it closes first now.
  • Duke Sucellus - his portrait is drawn, so he no longer shows up blank in the hiscore panel.
  • The Alchemical Hydra's later phases - were paying a drop table they should never have had.
  • Two Slayer camps had no drop table at all - both have one now, converted from the monster's own page, and Hydra's eye is at its real rate rather than 1 in 79.
  • The blood arena's lanterns - eighteen of them, several two tiles apart and two stacked in the same corner. Eight now, in symmetric pairs along the long walls.