Your New Secret Weapon: Clan Avatars! 14 Aug 2012

[Mercifull]

Any clan with a citadel can now create, customise and deploy clan avatars. Summoned and controlled by designated avatar wardens within your clan, these living embodiments of your citadel can accompany you to the surface world and support your clan with an array of buffs. These buffs affect every eligible clan member within the avatar's aura of influence. Whether you're a clan of legendary warriors or a collective of shrewd artisans, your avatar has your back.

 

Combat-focused clans will benefit from buffs that heal over time, randomly resurrect fallen clan members and redirect damage taken by clan members to the avatar.In times of peace, your avatar can increase the resource yield from citadel skill plots, double the duration of Summoning familiars, and can offer a healthy XP boost for any skill training, even outside of your citadel. Depending on the tier of your citadel, an avatar can have up to three slots for equipping these buffs, so they can be tailored to any task at hand.

 

For an avatar to take up residence, you'll first need to build a habitat within your clan citadel. Here, clan members with the necessary permissions can designate buffs to an avatar. Other permissions can enable you to customise its appearance, choosing from four styles for each of its nine components. Your clan logo and colours will also be proudly displayed on your avatar's body, so no two avatars need ever look the same.

 

 

Habitats come in three varieties, each with its own resource requirement:

• Basic: 3,000 timber.
  
• Medium: 30,000 timber, 30,000 precious bars.
  
• Grand: 30,000 timber, 30,000 precious bars, 30,000 rations.
  

The basic habitat houses one avatar, while the medium habitat holds two and the grand habitat three, so the extra investment is well worth it. While your clan can only summon one avatar at a time, you'll have up to three avatars ready and waiting to assist, whatever the situation.

 

To benefit from the clan avatar's buffs, each individual will need to pay 300 anagogic orts to the avatar, which will buy a week's access to its clan-boosting benefits. These items are non-tradable, but they can be gathered as drops from monsters throughout RuneScape, as well as during skill training - so long as you're a member of a clan. These are also used to heal your avatar when it takes damage in combat, so be sure to stock up if you're taking a clan avatar into multi-way combat or PvP!

 

Gather your resources, muster your clan mates and summon your new secret weapon. Your clan just got a whole lot bigger.

Mod Maz

Queen of the Squirrels

 

Getting Started with Clan Avatars:

 

See the master guard at the clan camp for full details of how to build, maintain and use your clan avatar.

 

Requirements

• To build a clan avatar, or benefit from its buffs, you must be a member.
  
• You must be part of a clan which owns a clan citadel.
  
• Your citadels must include a clan avatar habitat.
  
• You must pay fee of 300 anagogic orts to benefit from clan avatar buffs. This earns you a week's access to buff from avatars owned by your clan. These are non-tradable, and can be gathered from monster drops and skill training.
  

Patch notes

[hide]The following small fixes and adjustments have now been made to the game. If you spot any further bugs in-game, please use the Bug Report feature

 

Graphical:

• Players no longer rest in an inappropriate position whilst wearing the Gielinor Games skirts.
  
• The Solomon's General Store costumes now work correctly with green skin.
  
• Several more bows, daggers and axes can now be overridden using Solomon's General Store weapons.
  
• The Extreme ranging potion and Juju potion crafting animations now work correctly with the Solomon's General Store Herblore animation.
  
• The Cabaret costume's hat from Solomon's General Store now uses the correct recolours on the chathead.
  
• Weapons are now hidden when playing the Runecrafting animation.
  
• The exit portal on the Pirate random event has been made less bright with bloom enabled.
  
• The "picking herbs" Farming animation no longer jerks.
  
• Several force walking tiles have been removed around the Observatory.
  
• Ardougne Castle no longer has a random bed in the hallway with a Black scimitar on it.
  

Skills & Minigames:

• Food is now wiped on restarting any of the Fremmenik Sagas.
  
• Players who die in the Stealing Creation lobbies now have their bones appear outside the lobby.
  
• A typo on wave 20 of the Fight Kiln has been corrected.
  

Other:

• A warning message has been implemented when trying to cancel an upgrade in a Citadel.
  
• Hans will now talk to free players about how long they have to go until they can claim a Veteran cape (the cape can only be claimed should they become a member).
  
• The Boogie bow can now be reclaimed from Diango and Toy Boxes correctly.
  
• A skillplot that was functioning incorrectly on one of the Citadel layouts when it reaches a certain tier will now teleport the player correctly.
  
• It is no longer possible to place a Hunting trap on top of Blink's pillars.
  
• Teleporting out of the God Wars Dungeon without killing anything no longer tells the player about their kills being cleared.
  
• Sumona no longer has a blank chat box when speaking to her.
  
• Tz-Kek now use the improved Tok-Kek sound effects.
  
• Freezy no longer has a typo when examined whilst underground.
  
• Wheelbarrow sound effects have been improved.
  
• The underwater noise is no longer played on the Squeal of Fortune.
  
• References to the "Overlordess" title have been removed.
  
• Player Owned House toy boxes now have a "Return to page 3" button.
  
• Dead Goutweed farming patches now have a "Clear" option.
  

[/hide]

[Mercifull]

Double Cash this Week on the Squeal of Fortune!

 

A brand new feature has been introduced to Squeal of Fortune – now you can turn any unwanted items into coins instead!

 

For even the luckiest spinners on the Squeal of Fortune there’s a chance you’ll win an item you don’t want to keep. Maybe you don’t have space in your inventory, or perhaps you don’t need it for the skill you’re currently working on. Now all you have to do is click the “convert to coin” button to instantly exchange the item for coins! You can hover your mouse cursor over the button to see how many coins you’ll receive before you click.

To coincide with this new feature, Yelps is feeling particularly generous. Doubly so, in fact: for the next week all coin prizes are doubled! Land on the 200 million coin box and you’ll take away a massive 400 million coins! Not only are all your coin prizes doubled, the value of every item you convert to coins is doubled too!

If that wasn’t enough, Yelps has greased the gears of the wheel, so when you win a double spin tickets it now gets automatically activated and added to your available spins, without the need to exit the Squeal of Fortune and locate it in your inventory.

What a doubly great week on the Squeal of Fortune!

 

Remember, during August’s Sizzling Summer, members receive three daily spins instead of one, so subscribe to increase your chances of amassing a fortune! Don’t forget to check out the Squeal of Fortune wiki page for ways of earning extra spins.

 

Solomon's Store

 

Six new titles are now available at Solomon’s General Store. Now you can be “The”, so there’s no mistaking you; let everyone know your potential with “Junior”; go formal with “Mr/Mrs”; demand a little respect as “Master/Miss”; add “Esquire/Ms” for an air of nobility; or announce that the “Doctor” is in! Remember that members receive a 10% discount on everything in the store, and for this week only everybody gets 25% off the Lumberjack Woodcutting and Pegasus Teleport animations!

 

 

The third part of the Tropical Islander outfit is now available as part of Sizzling Summer! To pick up the grass skirt for free, head over to Solomon’s General Store. Don’t forget to renew yourmembership to ensure you don’t miss out on this and all the other great items to come during Sizzling Summer!

[IridiumBunny]

_{How can they still dispute that SOF is not the direct sale of gold and xp now? Every spin guarantees gold or xp...}

[Baffler]

Patch notes:

 

The following small fixes and adjustments have now been made to the game. If you spot any further bugs in-game, please use the Bug Report feature.

 

Hans will now talk to free players about how long they have to go until they can claim a Veteran cape (the cape can only be claimed should they become a member).

 

*Goes check my oldest account.*

[Will H]

Interesting. I'm curious to see how common these Orts are, I hope they're not too restrictive. This might turn out to be a nice boost for clans.

[Mercifull]

Patch notes are posted in the topic post.

[Mercifull]

They still haven't fixed the laggy spinning animation on the wheel using DirectX and the Nav bar is still here. I am disappoint.

[Baffler]

Never missing a marketing opportunity, but at least it confirms when I made my old main:

 

[Fire_Hawk154]

I hope the Clan Avatar doesn't have any effect in F2P.

[Urza285]

What's the dungeoneering bonus for the avatar? Yeah I know... Just want to end the agony for Completionist cape.

[Mercifull]

I hope the Clan Avatar doesn't have any effect in F2P.

Citadels are p2p so there should be no effect.

[Quyneax]

I seriously doubt this will be 'my new secret weapon', or even 'secret' or 'weapon' or indeed 'mine'. Other than that, the picture looks plain lame, as does the orts mechanic.

 

Junk > gold conversion has roughly the same effect as free alchs, 1 per spin tops, so not too concerned with that.

[Den]

The junk sells for more on the GE than Jagex gives in SoF cash-out. (Even with the current double pay-out)

Got a Dragon Ceremonial Hat after waiting ages since my last one. It would've converted for 200k.

 

The 300 orts thing is going to be a true pain unless they're common. They drop underneath you while you skill and I haven't seen any yet. Sounds like a flop update to me so far.

[Tim]

Fact you can only summon ONE between ALL Clan members, makes it a waste in my opinion. :\

[Drazhor]

ATM I'm getting 1 Ort per 30 resources from T1 WC plot...ohmy.

[Estoc]

So after 9 weeks of resource gathering, if your clan is doing something that you also want to do you can get a small boost from what looks like a giant lava tree?

 

Secret weapon indeed.

[Ambler]

Now we just have to see how much a lucky divine cashes in for. :lol:

 

Also, isn't the economy wrecked enough from extra gp right now? :rolleyes:

[Arceus]

My friend had 200 orts almost immediately after the update, but I didn't ask how he was getting them. Maybe you guys should try killing things to get some.

[Makoto_the_Phoenix]

I see the need to put in new features for the clan citadels, but something that's this decorative could have served its place in a patch note. Not too much to write home about this week...

[HunterDexter]

Woot, more dead content! :D

[aerendil]

and not a single flying (bleep) was given... a no update week if ever i saw it.

[Platinum_Myr]

It could be interesting. Wonder how much the avatar can boost?

[Sy_Accursed]

I have to say reading the manual on what the buffs actually are it's like really?

1) There's like 6 of them, 6! What happened to the uber diverse something for everyone? Not even that of those 6, 4 are clearly predominantly combat related (take damage for you, periodic healing, double familar time, auto-resurect) and 1 is just like really? Auto org pick up; how about just don't get an avatar and leave the orgs on the floor?

 

2) The actually effects are kind piss-poor. I mean the heal one does very minor healing like so little you could take like tuna and heal more effectively. The resurrection one can only work 4 times a day, orly that's gonna turn the tide in a clan war when the first 4 noobs tht got slaughter respawn and then avatar is cuput. Damage taking? It only takes 'some' of it for you so probably like 1%.

Double familar time? only within the raidus around the avatar and resets if you leave. Yay I can have double time titan at lrc with clan oh no wait i banked and it despawned cause I left area.

[Randox]

It's one of those really awesome ideas (on paper or in someones head) that just dosen't survive that trip to becoming a reality. The worst part is, the person who thought it up is probably not the one who got to implement it, so they get to see their content fall short of what they thought it would be.

 

What might have made this great was rather than making on great big super sized avatar, allow everyone in the clan to summon a mini version that would be useful for their day to day lives, especially in skilling and pvm. This would be a reward for being part of a clan, and better clans get better avatars, so there is some incentive to not ditch it. Then also have the great big version that the leaders can bring out that can help out with some group skilling, pvming, or a nice big pvp war.

 

I think they did the big one to try and encourage group activity, but that is really up to the clan. All they need is a tool they can use as an incentive. I think if they had done mini ones with weaker bonuses (or rather, make the bigger one have stronger buffs) geared to some individual play, they would have been an incentive for people to work on the citidel.

 

Now, not sure how all that would work with summoning, since it would sort of be replacing it, but yeah. I see so much potential for this, so many ways this could have gone down, and they did not choose one of the paths to awesome content. Clan content is hard enough to try and keep alive, and this makes no effort to be really useful long term from what I have seen. It's simply afraid to be game changing, but without having game changing effects, it will never be more than another pretty thing that isn't worth the time, and wont bring people together, because why bother.

[Sy_Accursed]

Totally agree!

There should be a weak version of each buff and a strong version.

Weak for individual mini-avatar, strong for the overall clan avatar.

 

Heck even make it so that the buffs all start out cruddish and (as something for clans to do given many have run out of citadel stuff now) and we have to 'research' them using a mixture of resources and orts. Though mini-avatars would need some limits eg twice a day or w/e