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RuneScape Gold |
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01-Sep-2010 - Court Cases: Back in Session- Wednesday 01 September, 2010
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You may have proven yourself in arguing your case, be that for the Prosecution or the Defence, but now you have to do some real legwork. Interviewing witnesses in the field is now a key part of building a case; for example, how do you prove that Evil Dave is evil? Ask his mum! Or how about finding crucial evidence at a crime scene, which could make or break your case? Would finding chicken feathers in Professor Oddenstein’s lab prove he performed illegal transmogrification tests on Ernest?
Not all cases are so black and white either. Do the wizards of RuneScape deserve compensation from the barbarians for an invasion that happened over a century ago? Is the sawmill operator running an illegal monopoly or is he just protecting his intellectual property rights? Cases like these have no easy answers!
With more challenging cases come bigger rewards, including larger amounts of Attack and Defence XP and more items from grateful clients. Also, the Court House likes to reward you for your hard work too, so, once you've completed 10 and all 16 cases respectively, you'll receive a barrister's top and a gavel to match your barrister's wig.
Mod Nancy
Senior RuneScape Content Developer
Summary:
Where to start Court Cases:
Talk to the clerk at Seers' Village Courthouse for your first case.
Requirements to play Court Cases:
To begin, you must have completed the King's Ransom quest and have 65 Attack (to prosecute) or 65 Defence (to defend).
After completing your first case, you will also need a court summons to access further cases. These can be dropped by monsters; found on Treasure Trails; picked from certain pockets; and found in fishing caskets.
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In other news...
If you’ve got a keen eye, you’ll notice that players and other humanoid NPCs have gained some important facial features. That’s right, some character now have eyes!
We've streamlined the amount of effort it takes to get through Shantay Pass. Chatting to the guard is now quicker, right-clicking the guard can now pay him from your bank or inventory, and if you have a pass you can go through unobstructed or bribe the guard easily enough if you don't. The bribe amount has increased slightly to compensate for the ability to take payment from your bank.
The character rotate on Thessalia's clothing interface is now optional. Clicking on either side of the representation of your character to start spinning. Clicking again will stop the spinning and return the representation of your character to normal.
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01-Sep-2010 - Behind the Scenes – September- Wednesday 01 September, 2010
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Romance blossoms during September in a brand new free-to-play quest, coupled with some rather elite achievements for our most experienced of members. If you’re not busy planning for the Bonus XP Weekend, why not swat up on your legal drama, as we prepare for the latest batch of court cases?
Court Cases: Back in Session
It’s been busy recently at the Seers’ Village courthouse, with cases closed and wrongs righted by those of you skilled enough to argue, examine and accuse, all while wearing a stylish wig. The court case update will consist of 11 new cases (as mentioned in the Back in Session blog), each far more fiendish than those released earlier in the year. Interrogate witnesses in the field, use viewing orb magics to investigate crime scenes and discover incriminating fingerprints for yourself as you uncover the truth behind some of our most popular personalities.
Cases once again navigate through a wide range of issues and characters from Barbarians vs. Mages (looking at RuneScape history from two conflicting perspectives), round Evil Dave, past Professor Oddenstein vs. Ernest, and taking a sharp left turn at the Sandwich Lady. Rewards still focus around Attack and Defence XP, but also include a barrister’s top, and a judge’s gavel that comes with an appropriately themed emote to let you conduct your own brand of justice.
Bonus XP Weekend
As you know from the newspost last week, we’re planning a second Bonus XP Weekend to take place from 3-6th September. We’re taking a slightly different approach this time, though, so do read the newspost or the Second Helping FAQ blog to learn more about this update. It’s a great time to train up those skills you’ve been neglecting, as well as work on your main attributes, with plenty of time to mix and match between all sorts of content.
Elite Achievement Diaries
The Elite Achievement Diaries update is one we have been discussing in our blogs as early as November last year and, finally, we can talk about the release. We are adding some epically high-level diary tasks to all of the Achievement Diaries, and some new hard tasks to the Lumbridge diary. Requirements include stats as high as 95 Prayer, 96 Fishing, 93 Slayer and 92 Firemaking with an inferno adze.
With new challenges come new rewards, of course, and the elite clothing comes with some useful perks. The highlights are access to a new mining area where there’s an NPC who exchanges ores for certs, more Slayer points from Lapalok, High Alch spells for the explorer’s ring and log chests for the beacon network. Not only that, but there are also improvements to the existing diary rewards AND some huge XP lamps? FTW!
Z-buffering
Improvements to our engine will bring a major graphical improvement to the game in the form of z-buffering. This means you will experience less 'clipping' issues (objects/scenery cutting other objects in half or sticking through each other) and find that scenery 'layers' on top of each other in a more predictable way. This will see improvements to high-paced game content like PKing and allow players to better see the threats around them.
Upon release, the end result will be fewer graphical glitches in software mode and we get faster OpenGL! This also bodes well for the future, as we can now design even more impressive areas and characters, particularly for OpenGL. It also allows us to improve the interaction between players in the future, such as multi-player emotes.
Gunnar’s Ground
Love is in the air in this month’s planned quest: Gunnar’s Ground. What can happen when a dwarf poet is rendered speechless by his love for a Fremennik chieftain’s daughter? You’ll face RuneScape’s first poetry composition puzzle and learn about the history of how the Barbarian Village came to be.
This is a brand new quest for the free-to-play game and will be replacing the old Romeo and Juliet quest. As we have often said in the past, we’re always trying to improve our existing content, but some elements just don’t age well and are often best removed entirely from the game; we feel that’s the case with Romeo and Juliet. Don’t worry, though: nobody will lose out on Quest Points or rewards.
In other news...
We also plan to speed up the Shantay Pass, give compost bins the ability to tell you how full they are, increase the clickable area of rope swings and allow you to define the colour of your Clan Chat.
Have fun!
Mod Mark
RuneScape Lead Designer
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27-Aug-2010 - RuneScape Game Bar- Wednesday 01 September, 2010
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We’ve recently released the RuneScape Game Bar, which is a toolbar for your web browser that gives you up to date RuneScape information. The main features of the Game Bar are:
Information about any Grand Exchange offers you have running.
Reminders about repeatable content, including when you can next play Tears of Guthix, redo the Phoenix Lair, fight Bork and the Skeletal Horror, and when you can earn more Thieves’ Guild Hanky Points.
Quick links to the RuneScape forums, game guide and Adventurer’s Log, among others.
An RSS feed of recent newsposts on the RuneScape website.
A ‘Play Now’ button to quickly load up RuneScape.
A search bar.
We are also working on additional features, including seeing which of your friends is online. If you have any suggestions for other things we can add to the Game Bar, visit the RS Game Bar - Try it Out! forum thread.
To install the Game Bar, simply click this link and follow the instructions. Currently, the Game Bar only supports Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Safari. There is an FAQ about the Game Bar here.
Mod Oliver K
Head of Online Strategy
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27-Aug-2010 - Jagex Clan Cup Winners’ Plaque- Wednesday 01 September, 2010
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The dwarven smiths have finally finished their masterpiece in honour of the Jagex Clan Cup winners. These magnificent pieces of art can now be viewed across RuneScape:
Just outside Lumbridge Castle’s main gate
Behind the purple portal at Clan Wars
Between the portal to Soul Wars and the entrance to Edgeville Dungeon.
On the plaque you’ll see the names of the current winners of the Jagex Clan Cup, as well as the names of those who won last year. It displays the victors of all of the Combat, Skilling and Combined Cups from both 2009 and 2010, meaning that no one will be forgotten when they win the prestigious title.
Congratulations again to the winners of the Jagex Clan Cup 2010. We’re all really excited for future clan competitions and, of course, the new and improved Jagex Clan Cup 2011.
Don’t forget to check out July’s Clan Submissions Page. August's edition (due in early September) will be themed with all of the awesome action from the Jagex Cup 2010 and clans at RuneFest!
Mod Timbo
Community Management
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27-Aug-2010 - Triumvirate Summer Send-off 2010- Wednesday 01 September, 2010
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Join Lord Orion and the rest of the Triumvirate this weekend in a massive two day party. The party is to celebrate the hard work of all the Triumvirate members as well as the few remaining days of summer. You can take part in some Clan Wars battles, hunt specific individuals in a PvP World and enjoy the party to end all parties.
You don’t have to be a member of the Triumvirate to enjoy this party, but if you’ve ever been curious about it, now is your chance to hang out with its members and see what it’s all about! This event will be taking place on various different worlds on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th August.
If you’d like to learn more, check out the Summer Send-off 2010 forum thread.
Mod Crow
Community Management
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25-Aug-2010 - Conquest- Wednesday 01 September, 2010
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Due to recent casualties suffered during the events of Quiet Before the Swarm and A Void Dance, the Void Knights have an urgent need for new commanders to lead them into battle. Such is their need that even the un-enlisted, such as yourself, are welcome to take part in their Conquest training program.
Conquest puts you in command of a squad of Void Knights in a turn-based, player-vs-player, tactical war game. Every budding commander begins with an equal number of resources with which to build their squad – choose your troops and set their starting formation, then pick a number of game-changing special Commands to help turn the battle in your favour.
With the composition of your squad decided, lead it into battle against other commanders to prove your leadership skills. Conquer your opponents and you will make your mark on the high score table and earn Commendations, which you can trade in for combat skill experience and Void Knight equipment. There’s even a new Void Knight shield called the deflector, which is unique to Conquest. As you only need to wear three pieces of Void armour and one of the helms to get the set effect, this new shield gives you more options to mix and match your Void Knight gear.
Mod Rathe
RuneScape Content Developer
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23-Aug-2010 - Bonus XP Weekend - 3rd to 6th September- Wednesday 01 September, 2010
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We’re happy to announce that an extended Bonus XP Weekend will be running from the 3rd to the 6th of September 2010! Members should prepare their potion ingredients, stock up on planks and build up a strong Dungeoneering prestige to get the most from the four days.
Once the Bonus XP Weekend begins on Friday 3rd September, the XP modifier will come into effect for all members. The modifier will begin at x2.7 the rate of XP you would earn from standard training activities, and will drop to a new multiplier every 30 minutes of game time. The table below should help with any preparations you want to make!:
Game time (mins) XP Multiplier
Up to 30 x 2.7
30-60 x 2.55
60-90 x 2.4
90-120 x 2.25
120-150 x 2.1
150-180 x 2.0
180-210 x 1.9
210-240 x 1.8
240-270 x 1.7
270-300 x 1.6
300-330 x 1.5
330-360 x 1.45
360-390 x 1.4
390-420 x 1.35
420-450 x 1.3
450-480 x 1.25
480-510 x 1.2
510-540 x 1.175
540-570 x 1.15
570-600 x 1.125
600+ x 1.1
The ‘XP’ button will change to ‘XP+’ when the weekend begins, tracking how much XP you rack up over the course of the weekend and it will have a tooltip to show you what your current XP modifier is.
Following feedback from March’s Bonus XP Weekend, Summoning XP will be boosted by a set percentage of 10% over the course of the four days. All other skills will follow the schedule noted in the table.
To get a clearer idea of what actions will and will not be modified by the Bonus XP Weekend, and for more information in general, please read this developer blog or the Second Helping forum thread.
Mod Fetzki
Head of RuneScape
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23-Aug-2010 - RuneFest Gallery Competition Results- Wednesday 01 September, 2010
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It’s been barely a month since we launched our RuneFest Gallery Competition, but just in that short amount of time we’ve been inundated with entries. From perfectly realised watercolour landscapes to cutting edge computer rendered scenes of carnage – we’ve seen a wonderful spectrum of artistic styles and a range of approaches to the subject matter.
The subject in question, if you missed the competition launch, was to draw us a scene involving a golden gnome, Bob the Cat (or Evil Bob, if you were so inclined) and a Flagstaff of Festivities. We’ve seen all kinds of takes on this now infamous combination, including some really comedic, beautiful, terrifying and bleak scenes. It’s been such a diverse and impressive collection of entries to review – many thanks to all of you who sent stuff in.
By the end of the competition, we’d identified a whopping 14 pictures that simply had to be awarded a place among the winning selection. Each of the following will receive their artwork on canvas (signed by some of our J-Mods), a RuneFest goody bag and lifetime RuneScape membership:
"Arrival” by Burvite
“Evil Bob Homebound” by Apricotius
“Festive Spirit” by Deazee
“No! What? Noooo!” by Ozfiz Face
“RuneFest” by Zarethegreat
“Two Warriors” by Misterxman
“Untitled” by Dark Demesne
“Untitled” by Fugaz-Star
“Untitled” by Kweetvannix
“Untitled” by Leonive
“Untitled” by Mino-Tauros
“Untitled” by PAWWWWL
“Wild Wilderness” by Vytautas
“Wise Old Man” by Lord Mar I
At RuneFest, we will have a Gallery Wall, upon which these 14 winning images will be on display. They will be joined by 16 ‘Best of Gallery’ images taken from previous Players’ Galleries and a range of official RuneScape concept art. All 35+ of these images will be reproduced in stunning detail on real canvas to give them that authentic art gallery feel. If you want to see the RuneFest Gallery Wall line-up for yourself, keep an eye on our Official RuneScape Facebook fan page.
Well, that’s all the arty news we have for you this month, so all that’s left for you to do is to have a good old browse in our two new official player galleries: RuneFest Gallery 1 and RuneFest Gallery 2. There you’ll see a selection of our favourite entries, including s selection of the winners noted above.
Enjoy!
Mod Howes & Mod Emilee
Community Management
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Specials
Thomas Nguyen
