Update Heart of Stone - Elder Gods Quest

[Youmu]

Obligatory "Defence xp?" Request

The combat lamps can be used towards any combat skill.

 

The quest in itself was fairly easy, although that power puzzle was slightly annoying.

[Yoko Kurama]

I did the quest and all I have to say is Ariane is a completely mindless idiot.

[strilmus]

 

Just in case you were wondering, the "Great Task" being referred to here is the same thing as the "Great Revision" that Zaros talks about.

 

[Urza285]

I did the quest and all I have to say is Ariane is a completely mindless idiot.

I actually agree... Why can't she accept that the world just needs to rely on nuclear and fossil fuel to get things done in the [fantasy] world now.

[strilmus]

 

Just in case you were wondering, the "Great Task" being referred to here is the same thing as the "Great Revision" that Zaros talks about.

 

 

 

[hide]

Can someone explain what to do with the JasKra puzzle?

[/hide]

 

 

In order to create a connection between points of data, sometimes the simplest approach is the best approach.

 

[Yoko Kurama]

 

I did the quest and all I have to say is Ariane is a completely mindless idiot.

I actually agree... Why can't she accept that the world just needs to rely on nuclear and fossil fuel to get things done in the [fantasy] world now.

 

 

Well I more upset with the fact that she would doom the entire world/universe for the sake of keeping magic for herself. Seems very selfish to me.

[strilmus]

 

 

I did the quest and all I have to say is Ariane is a completely mindless idiot.

I actually agree... Why can't she accept that the world just needs to rely on nuclear and fossil fuel to get things done in the [fantasy] world now.

 

 

Well I more upset with the fact that she would doom the entire world/universe for the sake of keeping magic for herself. Seems very selfish to me.

 

 

they're both stupid, the anima mundi is important for other reasons than having magic (pretty good chance that without it zanaris might just fall out of orbit), it's too bad they both decided to do dumb shit faster than the player, who knows about this crap more than either of them

 

this was a terrible introductory quest considering that it had to account for all of the stages of quest completion, which makes even less sense since if you do this first, zaros doesn't have to plan to wake them up since this already started it, and that it shouldn't be so easy to [bleep] the world up

 

there's no chronological consistency anywhere along the timeline for this quest, we asked for a lore thing, we got a bunch of teasers THAT WE ALREADY KNOW ABOUT, a few spots of unsorted information, and they killed somebody for a dumb reason, in an even dumber sequence of inconsequential events

 

runescape has the most pointless character deaths ever

 

[brunokiller]

I did the quest and all I have to say is Ariane is a completely mindless idiot.

I'm sure she has an amazing personality.

[Kimberly]

Spoilers for post quest discucssion

 

 

 

1) I don't think Xenia is dead. She fell into whatever that portal was attached to. We assumed it was the Abyss, but she had specifically used that researched magic to avoid the Abyss while interfering with the mouthpieces. And she was hit with one measly spell before falling into that portal. Still very likely she can appear later on.

 

2) So, the Stone of Jas. Definitely not an elder "egg". We know that the Elder Gods aren't dead, but resting/recuperating on Gielinor like they did in Freneskrae. We saw eggshell-like fragments where the Elder Gods re-emerged before moving on to continue the cycle of creation and destruction. So...does that mean the Stone of Jas is not an egg, but Jas herself in reverted form?

 

People who have prolonged use with the Stone grow vastly stronger. They evolve, a trait of Jas herself. She feeds off the Anima Mundi in this state, channeling that very force into her current form. If touching that stone-like surface somehow interrupts that channel of energy, redirects it into the user, wouldn't that account for the ascension we've seen with the Stone's users? And wouldn't this make more sense as to why the Dragonkin are bound to the stone itself? No other Elder Artifact is so protected. There are a lot of the Artifacts we don't know of, sure, but we know of the majority of them. Nothing else works like that.

 

3) Why is Mah flawed? The other Elder Gods emerged happy and healthy. Could Mah have been abused as Jas currently is being abused (assuming #2 is true) and that delayed emergence is really what caused the destruction of the planet? Or perhaps had the cycle of migrating life continued even then and whatever life colonized that world started siphoning away the energy being fed into the Elder Gods, causing an imbalanced destruction? Is the only answer to Gielinor's salvation to find these other Elder God stasis pod things and suck the life out of them so they don't emerge properly, just like Mah? I really don't know here.

 

4) Are the mouthpieces sentient conduits for the Anima Mundi? Xenia siphoned some of it from them and sought to finish her ritual at the 5th marker. The Elder Gods were affected by what she did that day. We couldn't fully repair what she did. To force the Elder Gods back to sleep, we might have to find whatever plane she shifted that connective energy to retrieve it and repair it via Divination. After all, the whole art of Divination is collecting the leaked divine energy to repair the damaged Anima Mundi.

 

 

[Sy_Accursed]

It was sort of a nice story but also kinda annoying

 

 

 

As expected by trying to wedge a noob quest in to an already begun series it felt messy and wrong plot wise. We're meant to be all like amg elder gods what magic and oo a creepy ruined planet. Reality its more like oh look a guided tour of where we already know the elder gods are located and oh look theres freneskae.

 

Oh look there reveal exciting facts we already have known from ages.

 

Plus they didn't even make a passing attempt to explain how/why you could ask about Mah specifically at the end. Surely Arianne should only know that there is this 5th mouthpiece hall that seems to be unoccupied. How does she know Mah specifically?

 

Also isn't a lore mess up that the Ful one talks of being maintained by the Thzaar instead of the Tokhaar?

 

I dunno for me on the whole despite being a nice story it was just a bit of a train wreck by trying to be a introduction to this new concept type quest for an already well established concept.

 

You could've got away with a mid-level Bik or Wen quest since we know very little on them. A mid-high Jas one simply because of her power levels and all the stone stuff would work. Ful really needs high-end content since she is kinda the big reveal of thzaar story line and Mah of course can't really fit in pre-fotg.

 

But trying to wiggle all 5 into a nooby quest is just eh.

JasKra being creepy stalker and such low end content, for me, undermines the mythos of the stone and this powerful being we were slowly brought to know throuhg the mahjaratt line.

FulKra being hot headed seems like a cheap pun that undermines the nobility of the Tokhaar and the reveal kinda makes half the dramas of the Thzaar series pointless since you'd play that later on if you do quests at appropriate times.

BikKra and WenKra feel like they could've had so much more to them since they are essentially blank slates, though the unexplained moving of Wen from Ice mount to white wolf is a bit of a spanner in th works.

MahKra it'd be nice if existed as a sort of neutral prebuilt nameless entity that could either be both a nice little teaser towards Mah and something that could wake up once we get Mah going in fotg for some high level rewards.

 

Long story short this quest would've been miles better if they'd of just focused on Bik and Wen and left well enough alone with the Elder Gods already tied into higher level content

 

 

[strilmus]

 

if jaskra was keeping tabs on the player the entire time (or indeed, the entire world) it is sort of odd that it didn't already know about what was happening, even with the damage

 

i am not sure what they could have done to make this less stupid for a low level quest, but i feel like maybe they could have made a short story that was related to the elder gods to fill it out more in a lore way instead of hacking up npcs indiscriminately? the golem's plot arc was more interesting than the main one, and the talking heads seemed to have more to say, but they weren't given anything

 

they could also stop relying on the player base for the sole source of design choices and then taking them and filling up all of the gaps with sand but they're not going to stop doing that are they

 

side note: ffs are they using the same fist pounding animation five times in a row

 

jagex is probably getting the most money it has in years but it seems like more and more of it is ending up in their pockets and they're spending the rest of the budget all on expensive looking visual/audio stuff that is badly designed and hiring people who make games for children to pad it out after tying up most of the things we enjoy in content that will take years to see the light of day

 

[Kimberly]

 

 

it is sort of odd that it didn't already know about what was happening, even with the damage

 

 

I took it to mean that the siphoning Xenia did interfere with its intact memory. This is why I think the Observation ERROR is also combined with the other two humorous player observations - it was the fragment that made our helpful intentions crystal clear. Or at least damaged it to such an extent that it could no longer make that assumption safely.

 

Also another line of observation that I didn't quite get until now:

 

 

One of the lorehounds on reddit corrected me in that it was 100% confirmed that Jas is an artifact. So, being a billion lightyears behind as usual, I wondered if the Elder Gods follow a similar extinction cycle similar to the nightmare of Mah, the Mahjarrat. This likely points to the fact that all 11 Elder Artifacts are actually dead/hibernating/whatever Elder Gods. Jas is the next one in the cycle to die, hence the stone of Jas.

 

Also what does this mean about Mah? She existed outside of her Elder proxy for longer than she should have, unless there are other weakened Elder Gods somehow clinging to existence out there. If Mah was the sacrifice of the last cycle, what did we fight before claiming the Measure? Was it just another nightmare of Mah's, an avatar/simulacrum?

 

[michel555555]

[hide]

More excited about the prehistoric abyssal titan then anything els in this quest tbh.

 

We know the kin survived the last rebirth by hiding in the abyss, but this is the first hint we have that there are other sentient races and worlds surviving in it as well.

 

And with the strength of the titan could there also be gods or god like beings surviving in the abyss as well. Feeding off the leftovers from each rebirth and growing stronger and one day hoping for revenge against the elders.

 

Would make sense then with the titan waking the gods early before they feed on enough anima and theoretically being weaker for it.

 

 

 

[/hide]

[strilmus]

[hide]

More excited about the prehistoric abyssal titan then anything els in this quest tbh.

 

We know the kin survived the last rebirth by hiding in the abyss, but this is the first hint we have that there are other sentient races and worlds surviving in it as well.

 

And with the strength of the titan could there also be gods or god like beings surviving in the abyss as well. Feeding off the leftovers from each rebirth and growing stronger and one day hoping for revenge against the elders.

 

Would make sense then with the titan waking the gods early before they feed on enough anima and theoretically being weaker for it.

 

 

 

[/hide]

 

 

i feel more like they're just things that have always lived in the void, but it is possible that they were just cast there from another shattered world

 

but i get the impression that the void does horribly wrong things to creatures

 

I also feel like they tricked xenia into doing something other than cutting the anima mundi like outright lying to forward a goal we don't know about a la dead space or mass effect, but it's hard to say

 

if xenia isn't dead this is really going to shit on our parade later

 

[Saradomin_Mage]

Any clue if Heart of Stone is supposed to fit in post-FOTG on the timeline, just that it doesn't have FOTG as a pre-requisite? This would mean that FOTG, like MPD, now occurs in the past.

[Wkw]

Does anyone have the dialogue after the final fight? Because I clicked and missed it :(

[strilmus]

Any clue if Heart of Stone is supposed to fit in post-FOTG on the timeline, just that it doesn't have FOTG as a pre-requisite? This would mean that FOTG, like MPD, now occurs in the past.

 

as I previously mentioned, if this happened after that quest, it wouldn't really make sense because the player would already know about this and even to some extent where everything is located, plus a few other elements in the story (like say, THE ENTIRE STORY) which would have heavily changed the outcome, but they have a dialogue option for people who already did FOTG too, but then Zaros would have had different dialogue if this happened first (he doesn't, this quest doesn't even register when I go back to talk to him), so really, they tried to split it both ways, and screwed up massively because there's contradictions for it happening IN EITHER DIRECTION

[helring]

 

Any clue if Heart of Stone is supposed to fit in post-FOTG on the timeline, just that it doesn't have FOTG as a pre-requisite? This would mean that FOTG, like MPD, now occurs in the past.

 

as I previously mentioned, if this happened after that quest, it wouldn't really make sense because the player would already know about this and even to some extent where everything is located, plus a few other elements in the story (like say, THE ENTIRE STORY) which would have heavily changed the outcome, but they have a dialogue option for people who already did FOTG too, but then Zaros would have had different dialogue if this happened first (he doesn't, this quest doesn't even register when I go back to talk to him), so really, they tried to split it both ways, and screwed up massively because there's contradictions for it happening IN EITHER DIRECTION

 

 

 

Post-quest dialogue with Azzy is coming, Mod Osborne just checked it over. It has to go through translation and coding in now.

 

This quest is supposed to be an introduction to the Elder Gods for lower level players. I'd prefer they made FOTG require it, but I doubt they'll go back and mess with requirements. Considering how much a a wreck the requirements are after the 5th/6th age split, I don't think this is that much of an issue.

[strilmus]

they could have just sidestepped all of this! they could have made it more about the void creatures, and then stick in vague hints of elder god meddling here and there. who were these immense beings which left their mark so many worlds? why are there so many ruined civilizations in the void, and what of these creatures who speak of the Great Task? that would have been a way cooler teaser, while showing players who already know something different (more stuff about the void) while still touching on elder god lore. instead of an old lady going mad and falling into a hole because a big ol gremlin told her to do it, why not shove the player into the void and have them poke around instead, and they could have reused void assets (which have some pretty cool details already made) instead of four nearly nondescript caves of different colors

 

they put the player into the quest AFTER the cool thing happens, and then they tell us about all of these cool things while we deal with some fussy stone heads and their stone minions while kipple, the most interesting character in the quest, does all of the important stuff, and the only time you get a real feel for his personality is if you initiate it yourself, and then at the end, after the second cool thing happens, he just shouts some generic crap about being too late and explodes, instead of anything about the void that we could have rubbed our brains on (i mean, we already know there are void creatures)

 

runescape always hints at cool things happening, but rarely delivers, and then by the time they do put some up, we find out that they just kept smokescreening because they had no idea how to make cool stuff because they spent so much time hinting at it instead of actually making it and getting practice to do it faster and more efficiently by figuring out how to make nicer things with less assets, instead of just wasting assets everywhere and dragging the graphical speed down on things that people only look at just a few times, with their concept of saving on time limited to putting up terrible looking things they've already made

[stealthchris117]

Am I the only one who thinks we should have gotten some new teleports or teleport animation from this quest?

 

The quest was all about teleporting and magic and the rewards had nothing to do with that.

I was a little disappointed in both the quest and the rewards, but they can't all be home runs.

[strilmus]

they're probably planning to do that in another quest, but by that time they'll also figure out how to disappoint us in an entirely new way

[Alg]

 

i feel more like they're just things that have always lived in the void, but it is possible that they were just cast there from another shattered world

 

but i get the impression that the void does horribly wrong things to creatures

 

I also feel like they tricked xenia into doing something other than cutting the anima mundi like outright lying to forward a goal we don't know about a la dead space or mass effect, but it's hard to say

 

if xenia isn't dead this is really going to shit on our parade later

 

 

 

That's the really annoying thing about the quest, to be honest. Apparently none of them saw fit to tell you what was actually going on until the very end, when everything was already set in stone? I know Xenia's whole character is built around being a mentor that hides important details for no real reason, but this really isn't the time for poor communication.

 

Also I really need that bolded stuff to happen later in the series.

"Elder gods, regular gods, horrible monsters, could our lives get any worse?"

"SURPRISE, DICKBAGS. HAVE SOME VOID ABOMINATIONS, HOPE YOU LIKE TENTACLES AND FIRE. WHO WANTS A HUG"

 

 

[Steph]

 

 

 

i feel more like they're just things that have always lived in the void, but it is possible that they were just cast there from another shattered world

 

but i get the impression that the void does horribly wrong things to creatures

 

I also feel like they tricked xenia into doing something other than cutting the anima mundi like outright lying to forward a goal we don't know about a la dead space or mass effect, but it's hard to say

 

if xenia isn't dead this is really going to shit on our parade later

 

 

That's the really annoying thing about the quest, to be honest. Apparently none of them saw fit to tell you what was actually going on until the very end, when everything was already set in stone? I know Xenia's whole character is built around being a mentor that hides important details for no real reason, but this really isn't the time for poor communication.

 

Also I really need that bolded stuff to happen later in the series.

"Elder gods, regular gods, horrible monsters, could our lives get any worse?"

"SURPRISE, DICKBAGS. HAVE SOME VOID ABOMINATIONS, HOPE YOU LIKE TENTACLES AND FIRE. WHO WANTS A HUG"

 

I would

 

[Youmu]

Turkey locations are up: 259-260-549-65525318

 

Or just ask in Minigames fc, on w123.

[strilmus]

There was no other place Timbo would be, really