Barbarian Assault Redux Barbarian Assault is brought bang up to date in today's RuneScape update – inspired by PrimalMoose's winning pitch at RuneFest 2013. There's an all-new hard mode, where you'll rally your friends to take down the terrifying Penance King. Existing rewards that you know and love have been revitalised, and we’ve added some new rewards into the mix. The new rewards include four pocket-slot insignias - granting benefits to combat, gathering and healing - and a lore book revealing the origins of the Penance and their king. There are also charged versions of the insignias which are even more powerful, but must be kept charged with an insignia recharge – a rare reward from the Penance Queen, or looted from the Penance King. Finally, there's a graphical rework of the Penance creatures, plus countless fixes, tweaks and quality-of-life improvements. Read on for further details, or log in now and head over to the Barbarian Assault HQ, far north of Ardougne. What's Barbarian Assault? Barbarian Assault is a safe, team-based minigame where you'll help the Fremennik hold back an onslaught of extra-dimensional horrors: the Penance. You'll take on one of four roles - Attacker, Defender, Collector or Healer - and work with your teammates to survive ten waves - facing the deadly Penance Queen at the end. Succeed, and you'll receive honour points to spend on rewards. These include Penance-themed armour and weapons, plenty of bonus XP, and a whole host of new rewards released today. If you've never given Barbarian Assault a go, now's the time. The best way to get into the game is to head over to the Barbarian Assault HQ - accessible with a games necklace, or a walk north of Ardougne - and speak to Captain Cain for a full tutorial. Hard Mode The core element of the pitch was a hard mode, aimed at challenging high-level players with top-end gear, where you'd encounter the mighty Penance King. That's exactly what we've brought you today. While setting up, the group leader can switch between normal and hard mode on the Recruitment interface, or through a right-click option on the recruitment scroll – you can only access this by right-clicking on the recruitment scroll. Everyone in the team must have defeated the Penance Queen since the rework to be eligible for Hard Mode. The first nine waves will be significantly more difficult than before, with larger swarms of Penance creatures, all with upgraded abilities and stats improved over their normal-mode counterparts. If it gets too difficult, you can switch back to normal mode during any wave. However, you forfeit the option to fight the Penance King in the final wave. Please note: we will not be publishing any information on the Penance King's mechanics on our wiki until Thursday the 28th of August. New Rewards This rework wouldn't be complete without some sweet new rewards: Penance insignias are powerful pocket-slot items that provide benefits related to the Barbarian Assault player roles outside the minigame. Each has a permanent passive benefit, which can be temporarily increased by applying insignia recharge tokens.Attacker's insignia: gives a chance to apply a damage-over-time effect in combat.Defender's insignia: increases your armour bonus.Collector's insignia: increases your luck with drops, as well as Agility and Barbarian Firemaking XPHealer's insignia: increases your prayer bonus and health restored by food.New titles, including 'the Penance Slayer' - for defeating the Penance King - and one for mastering each of the roles. We now have two tiers of role titles; a basic version and a mastered role.The Account of Aesa Fellsdottir is a lore book chronicling the fevered dreams of its author, in which she discovers the origin of the Penance and their king. You can purchase it from the reward shop alongside other rewards.We've also updated many of the existing rewards: The Penance trident still has a chance of saving at least one rune when casting spells, and the Penance master trident has a greater chance. The tridents now also act as water staffs and possess a special attack called reap which does up to 200% damage of your active spell.The Penance horn and master horn are now just cosmetic items, as the double XP they used to give is now given through the bonus XP system. Other Improvements Barbarian Assault is one of RuneScape's longest-standing minigames, and it was important to bring it in-line with today's game: All Penance creatures have received a gloriously slimy graphical update.Shout actions previously performed from the Penance horn are now abilities, and can be activated in the action bar.Penance combat stats are buffed to make them a challenge appropriate for today's game.The green and blue eggs have been made more usefulAction bars can be set up in the waiting room.Poison food and lures now stack in the inventory.The hammer from the tool belt now works within the minigame.Wave tickets now stack, grant access to lower-numbered wave rooms, and are tradeable.Interfaces have been polished to make them clearer and easier to use. Have Fun! After a great player pitch and a ton of your feedback, Barbarian Assault's back with a vengeance. We can't wait to hear all about your exploits over on the forums. Mod Wilson, Mod Ollie, Mod Nexus, and the RuneScape Team In Other News Two new seasonal hiscores start today: Total Penance Queens Killed and Total Penance Kings Killed. [hide=Patch Notes] The following fixes and tweaks have now been implemented. If you believe a change has not been documented, either in the patch notes or the news posts for this week’s update, please detail the change so that it may be added. As always, be sure to submit a bug report should you encounter a gameplay bug or graphical glitch in-game. Graphical: The icon for the mourner gear in the Player-Owned House armour case has been updated. Some world map icons in Legacy mode have been corrected.Players will no longer slide if they click 'Listen-to Musician' from a distance. The preview animations for Heart of Autumn and Heart of Spring now have a fixed angle. Cosmetic overrides will no longer be removed when a PK skull expires. The chi-blast mining override now plays correctly in the Lava Flow Mine. Eluned's chathead in the NPC Contact Lunar spell interface has been updated. Closing an interface tab no longer causes a different tab to be highlighted. An issue with the NPC chat overlay using the wrong graphical skin has been fixed. Skills, D&Ds & Minigames: Weapons are now always sheathed when tending a bonfire. Quests, Challenges and Achievements: The Dagannoth Mother can once again only be killed with the balmung weapon. The scrolling position of the quest journal interface now resets when switching quests to ensure the journal doesn't appear to be blank.The combat level for the Skeleton Warlock in The Restless Ghost quest overview has been updated. A typo in examiner's dialogue during Digsite quest has been updated. Pinning tasks will no longer display a different task than the one selected. Other: Killing Commander Zilyana in hard mode will now count towards Soul Reaper assignments correctly. The Armadyl crossbow has been removed from Kree'arra's reward list in the beasts tab of the adventures interface. A typo on the Beasts interface has been corrected.Any remaining spiders in the Araxxor boss fight will no longer get stuck in the phase 3 area during the Araxxi fight.Players will no longer be moved to a blocked tile when entering the Araxxor fight which was causing them to not be visible to the boss when it spawns. The ‘deposit beast of burden’ option from the bank will now deposit all of the BoB items correctly. Meat from large animals other than cows can now be dried to extract sinew for crossbow strings. Players can once again claim multiple Clan cloaks and Clan vexillums Barrows armour set effects are now displayed correctly if using armour pieces of different charges. An issue with players having a Completionist cape (t) and Completionist cape being keepsaked at the same time has been fixed. The songs "Hot'n'Bothered" and "On the Wing" no longer play in unsuitable areas. Clearing several items in turn in the wardrobe interface no longer resets slots to their old override. Pickaxe overrides will be correctly cleared when removing items from the keepsake box. Raw monkfish now required 62 cooking to cook and not 64. The click area on the Wilderness canoe station interface has been corrected to prevent players getting lured to the non-existent "Treasure Island".Attempting to unequip an activated aura to the bank will now give a confirmation message. The size of the Options Menu has been increased to allow space for the Facebook logout check box.The chat tabs in Legacy will now flash blue for a short period and remain blue until the appropriate tab or the all tab is selected. Ninja Fixes: Abyssal demons have had their models and animations updated. Pyrefiend and icefiend models and animations have been updated to use the God Wars models and animations. All Kurask models and animations have been updated. The animations for alchemy, super heat, enchant, charge orb, bones to bananas, and bones peaches have all been updated.The stunned animation has been updated. Players are now able to retrieve seeds from multiple plants pots containing saplings of the same variety. Snowy knight butterflies now heal 975 life points. Players will no longer get over-excited when bloating or releasing toads. More messages have been added to the spam filter for when withdrawing items using a bank preset.An Araxxor preset name has been added to the bank preset system.Selecting the assemble option on crystal key parts will now auto assemble all key halves in a player's inventory. Mobilising Armies minigame dwarf models and animations have been updated to those that are used outside of the minigame.Engine Fixes: A fix has been applied to stop players from being able to cause client disconnects via their pets.A couple of small performance improvements have been made.A fix to the interface scripts that were causing a client crash has been implemented.A change to the text cursor has been made to prevent it not being able to go to the start or end of a line in certain circumstances.HTML5 Engine Fixes: An error with the HTML5 camera that was spamming errors has been fixed.Recolouring items from Solomon’s General Store now works correctly in HTML5.[/hide]