October Updates 1 -10/17/08

OMG! Runescape released PVP! It is awsome, however, you must have 20 combat to use it. Here’s a direct message from the main website.

“PvP worlds have arrived! Are you ready to pit your combat skills against other players in the halls of the White Knights’ Castle? Are you prepared to fight to the death in the fields of Lumbridge? Well, now is your chance.

To get started, load up the game like normal (click here to read about the changes to the log-in system we’ve also released today), and then choose ‘World Select’ on the title screen. Then pick a world which has a tick in the ’skull’ column to choose a PvP world. To avoid nasty accidents, if you let the game choose a world for you automatically it will never select a PvP world. Also note that you require a Combat level of at least 20 (not including Summoning) to get into a PvP world.

Before you are logged in, you will be warned that you are entering a PvP world which is a dangerous place: you will lose your items on death and you will not get a gravestone. Upon entering the world for the first time, you’ll be teleported to Lumbridge and given a manual to explain the finer points of PvP worlds.

Here’s a quick run-down of the features:

• Fight players (within your level range) anywhere on the map, except in a few safe areas.
• Safe areas include banks, respawn points and some guilds.
• Level ranges are 10% of your Combat level, plus 5 levels. If you are fighting inside the Wilderness, the Wilderness level is added to this total. Your current attack range is shown on your screen at all times. (The 10% is measured from the higher of the two combatants’ levels.)
• Skulling is back – same rules apply. If you initiate combat, you are skulled and on death you will lose all items, with the Protect Item prayer saving one item as normal.
• Teleport Block is back in the normal spellbook.
• Some minigames are available to play, others are not – please see the Game Guide for more details.
• Death drops are back – new rules apply. Drops will be a mixture of items from the defeated opponent’s inventory and items from drop tables specific to PvP worlds. See below for details.

The quality of the drops you get when you PK someone depends on several different factors:

• To get a reward from a kill, you also have to risk some items yourself!
• To accumulate a possible reward, you have to risk a minimum of 75k of items on a members’ world, or a minimum of 25k of items on a free world.
• Note that your three most valuable items won’t count as being risked unless you’ve been skulled, as you wouldn’t lose them.
• The longer you spend on a PvP world (outside a safe area) with the required amount of items at risk, the better your possible rewards might become, to reward you for your risk.
• The possible reward increases even faster and goes to a higher maximum if you go into a ‘hot zone’.
• Note, however, that risking more than the minimum won’t improve your rewards faster, so it’s a good idea to take relatively cheap and useful items that won’t cost you too much to replace if you die.

When you get a successful kill, the exact reward you can claim depends on a number of other factors, including the level difference between you and the value of the items lost by the dying player. Any unclaimed loot is saved for the next kills, so you don’t have to worry about it being lost if you kill a low level player.

Don’t despair if you are dying a lot and losing a lot of items. The game will detect this and improve your chance of getting decent rewards when you do eventually get a good kill.

The above is a simplified description of how it all works. To prevent cheating there are various other factors taken into account. We’ve calculated the rewards and rates very carefully, so that a successful PKer should be able to get a good income, and PKers who get lucky might find themselves with a good drop. Higher level players may also get higher rewards to reflect their increased earning ability when not PKing, such that PKing is still worthwhile for them. The aim is to make PKing a fun alternative (albeit very high risk) way of earning money in the game.”

So far, the PVP is going pretty good. Also there has been a update for the “log-in” system. Here’s a quick excerpt from the Runescape Database.

“Today we’ve streamlined the way you get into the game. The aim is to help you get playing more quickly with fewer pages to go through every time. To start the game, simply click one of the two new buttons on the front page (depending on whether you’re a free player or a member). You will then be taken straight into the game. Once the game has loaded, you will be able to (optionally) choose both your world and detail level directly from the title screen.

More details on the changes made:

• World selection has now been moved entirely in game, so there is one less page to go through to start the game and you can get playing faster.
• We’ve had a world switcher in-game for a while, but since it is now the main way of choosing your world, it was time for an upgrade. The in-game world switcher now shows lots of extra information, including suggested activities for various worlds.
• Automatic world selection. Just press ‘Log in’ on the title screen, and the game will automatically choose a suitable world for you. If you want to play on a specific world, just choose it from the world switcher first, and then press ‘Log in’.
• Favourite worlds. The in-game world switcher now lets you select up to 2 worlds as your favourites. For example, you could set one favourite as your non-PvP homeworld and one as your PvP battle world. Once you have set up your favourite worlds from the world switcher, you will see extra buttons for them directly on the title screen, you can then click on those buttons to go straight to your favourite world.
• Members see less adverts. Because of the above changes, we’ve been able to remove adverts for members playing on free worlds as long as you use the ‘Members’ button on the front page to log-in – we hope you enjoy the change!
• The detail selection option has also been moved into the game. Again, this means there is one less page to go through to start the game, and gets you playing faster. This also means that you can now switch modes more easily without having to reload the game. The game will remember your last selection, so you no longer have to keep making the same choice over and over again.
• The ’safe mode’ feature is now automatic. If your game fails to load for any reason, it will detect the failure the next time you load it, and automatically activate safe mode. If you want to force safe mode, then you can still do so by pressing the ’s’ key on your keyboard while the game is loading. Safe mode has also now been adjusted to only make the minimum changes needed to get the title screen to load: if you want to change any other options you should do so yourself from the ‘Graphics Options’ menu on the title screen before logging in. Your choices will then be remembered for next time.
• Unsigned mode is automatic. We’ve removed the ‘unsigned’ option from the Java options menu. Don’t worry, you can still access the unsigned applet if you need to. We’ve made the selection process for it automatic. If the game cannot load in signed mode (either because you didn’t grant it permission, or your security settings do not allow you to grant it permission) it will fall back to the unsigned version, you don’t need to do anything for this to happen.”

So that is a must to check out It does make your Runescape experiance a LOT better. Sadly, the updates make “Quick Serve” Disabled. It no longer works. So, remember all that. Also, Runescape has earned a lot more players back because of the updates.

~ by josepman on October 17, 2008.