Ranks, modes and what each gives up

An account wears up to three ranks at once, and they are three separate ladders that never look at each other: the game mode decides how the account may play, the donator tier decides what perks it carries, and a staff rank decides nothing a player needs to know about.

The account type ladder

Chosen once, on the window a new account is shown, or with ::gamemode. Every mode is a set of restrictions plus a payment, and the choice is one-way: a mode may only be exchanged for one that gives up more.

• Regular - no restrictions and no bonus. The default.
• Trained - the free combat levels are not granted, so the account starts at 1 and trains its way up at the ordinary experience rate. Pays +5% on every drop rate.
• Realism - the levels, and half the experience rate. Pays +10%.
• Realism (Extreme) - the levels, and a tenth of the experience rate. Pays +25%.
• Ironman - no player trading, no Grand Exchange, no staking, no picking up what another player dropped, no buying stock other players sold into a shop, and no loadout the server issues free. No drop bonus: the mode is its own reward.
• Hardcore Ironman - all of that, and one life. A death that loses items spends the rank and the account continues as an ordinary Ironman.

The experience rate is measured against the server's own dials rather than instead of them. A Regular account trains combat at 6x and everything else at 18x, so a Realism account is at 3x and 9x, and a Realism (Extreme) account at a fifth of that again.

Why the ladder only runs one way

Each rung trades a freedom for a payment, so climbing back up would mean keeping the payment and handing back the price. ::gamemode refuses any change that would take a restriction off or a drop bonus on, and it says which of the two it refused for.

Donator tiers

Seven tiers keyed on lifetime spend, running from Donator to the top of the ladder, each with a crown in chat and eight separate perk ladders behind it - blood money on kills, pet chance, bank space, noted gathering, repair discount, shop discount, Slayer task cancels and Rest tokens. ::perks prints the whole rank-by-perk table, and donator perks and the Crimson Court is the guide.

Skulls, and what a death costs

Three separate questions, and the answer to one never decides another:

• Items are only lost in the Wilderness. Everywhere else a death is safe, including every raid and every instanced lair.
• Breaking applies above Wilderness level 20, and only to the eleven untradeables that break rather than drop - see item repair.
• A one-life rank is spent by any death that loses items.

::kept shows exactly which items you would keep if you died where you are standing, and ::skull skulls you deliberately if you want the full-risk fight.