5-Feb-2013 - Sinkholes + EoC Improvements

[Saradomin_Mage]

Across Gielinor, sinkholes are opening up, revealing lost treasure caches once stored by Bilrach. The Gorajo hoardstalkers within have no love for their old master, and are more than happy for you to raid his vaults. It won't be an easy job, though - you'll be pitted against the clock to unlock the treasure room in time, and you'll need to ensure you're ahead of your team-mates to get the best rewards!

 

Enter a sinkhole, and you'll be sent to a lobby where you'll be placed into a group of five like-minded adventurers. You'll then be placed into a large, open-plan dungeon filled with monsters and resources. Your team will have seven minutes to complete up to three objectives, which will involve gathering resources, collecting totems from monster drops, and collecting exploration totems by discovering areas of the dungeon. While completion of these is a team-wide goal, each player's contribution will be tracked separately. The better your score, the more likely you'll place first, which will give you the best shot at the richest rewards.

 

To contribute to the goals, you'll need to deposit the resources or totems that you've gathered into chutes near the dungeon's entrance. Once each goal is met, you can no longer contribute to it (and - as such - be further credited for your contribution). Dumping in a big batch of resources or totems might bump up your score, but it'll do you no good if other players got there first. Winning first place is a balancing act of risk and reward!

 

Complete one or more of the objectives as a team, and you'll gain access to the sinkhole's treasure room. The more objectives complete, the better the rewards overall. Each player will be assigned a chest containing a reward. The highest-ranked player's chest will contain a huge Dungeoneering XP lamp, but the others will each be assigned a different prize from the following list at random:

 

A small Dungeoneering XP lamp.

A medium Dungeoneering XP lamp.

A large Dungeoneering XP lamp.

A huge stash of Dungeoneering tokens.

 

Once the chests have been assigned, each player has the opportunity to play a card, in order of last place to first place. These are picked up through activity within the dungeon, and the highest-ranked player gets an extra card to choose from. These cards - themed after summoned familiars - have a number of effects which will be played out in order of last to first. For example: the thieving locust card will swap your chest with that of the lowest ranked player; the protection titan card will block one attempt to move your chest; and the reversing phoenix card will cancel the effect of the previous player's card. You can see which cards are used by other players, so the higher you rank, the bigger your advantage. Once the round of cards is over, each player will be given their final prize.

 

As well as a healthy hoard of Dungeoneering XP and tokens, you can also obtain pieces of the Gorajo hoardstalker set - cosmetic versions of the gear you'll wear within the sinkhole dungeons. If you're collecting this outfit, look out for the preening ibis card, which will guarantee a piece of the set in your current chest.

 

Delve deeply, fight bravely and plan carefully - and may the fates favour you, naabe!

 

Mod Daze

 

How to start Sinkholes:

 

Speak to Talsar in the Fremennik camp on Daemonheim Peninsula for details, as well as a free teleport to open or emerging sinkholes. New sinkholes appear on a two-hourly basis. Note that you can re-enter a sinkhole that you have recently left.

 

Speak to the Gorajo hoardstalker within a sinkhole for a demonstration of how the D&D works.

 

Requirements:

 

You must be a RuneScape member.

 

In Other News

 

Tame yourself a ferocious Dragon Wolf premium pet - and perhaps even pick up a matching outfit - in Solomon's General Store now.

Solomon's General Store is now offering all RuneScape members a free +50 bank booster as a "thank you".

There's a Ramokee cosmetic outfit and D&D reset tokens coming to the Squeal of Fortune later this week. Keep an eye on the news for details!

 

Our latest batch of Evolution of Combat updates is here, in accordance the amazing feedback we've received from you on the forums. Thanks once again for your ongoing passion for the game, interest and willingness to offer us your ideas.

Today, we've released the following changes:

• Reduced armour rating of all Dungeoneering enemies
  We have reduced the armour rating on low-mid level Dungeoneering enemies. This means that even if you don' t have the best gear to fight every single monster you meet, you'll still be able to hit and damage them to make progress. You'll still need to stock up on good food for healing, though, as they'll do just as much damage as before.
  
• Dragon life point reduction:
  Green, blue, red, black, bronze, iron and steel dragons have had their life points reduced, so Slayer assignments for dragons won't take as long as they did.
  
• No more instant adrenaline loss during actions, and a new way to stall adrenaline:
  You'll no longer find your adrenaline being instantly drained to 0 when performing actions that delay your character, such as opening doors in Dungeoneering or when exploring the Barrows. With this fix, you'll no longer be able to stall your adrenaline by talking to or interacting with an NPC such as a familiar, but you can still keep your adrenaline topped up by using combat abilities which do not require a target.
  
• Resonance:
  Resonance - while just as good at absorbing damage as it's always been - no longer heals you on special attacks from major bosses. Examples include Nomad's Disintegrate, or the Kalphite King's Burrow/Emerge attack. So, while it'll still help you avoid big hits from bosses, you won't be able to use it for healing, making food much more important (and valuable) for boss fights. Note that it still heals when fighting regular enemies.
  
• Berserk:
  Berserk now halves your effective armour rating for the duration, as well as doubling the damage you deal and receive. It's still a great way to boost your damage, but you'll need to be careful using it, even against weaker enemies!
  
• NPC vs NPC missed hitsplats:
  We've stopped the miss hit splats from displaying over familiars, when they miss with special attacks used against an NPC. This issue led some of you to believe that the steel titan familiar was attacking itself when it used a special attack.
  

In addition to the above, we're working on the following. Watch out for these awesome EoC updates, coming soon:

• Weapon style damage normalisation:
  Thanks to your feedback, we're now looking at bringing the dual-wielding and two-handed weapon styles onto the same level of power.
  
• Improved influence of combat stats on weapon accuracy:
  We are developing and testing a change which increases the effectiveness of a weapon beyond its level if you've levelled up beyond its requirement. This'll make levelling up a more noticeable improvement in these cases, and it'll prolong the life of your older weapons, in case you can't get hold of your next weapon upgrade as soon as you hit its level requirement.
  
• Dungeoneering boss selection tweaks:
  Alongside the change to bring the armour rating of Dungeoneering bosses, we are looking into the how the game chooses enemies for Dungeoneering and optimising the process, to ensure you get a challenge appropriate to your level every time.
  

All this is coming soon, but we still need to hear from you on what you want to see in the EoC. Please continue to give us your feedback on the forums!

The RuneScape Team

 

 

[spoiler=Patch Notes]

Graphical:

 

 

Player’s hands will no longer glow when crossing monkey bars with a Dragonfire shield equipped.

Stiles' animation has been fixed so that his head isn't trapped in a lobster cage.

A part of the roof in Sophanem is now removed when it is supposed to be.

The scimitars on the table of Al Kharids scimitar shop have been updated.

Some roof tiles have been fixed on the Exam Centre.

You will no longer be forced away from map squares in the Chaos Dwarf Room of Taverley Dungeon.

Some z-bias issues in the Chaos altar have been fixed.

We've removed the old lava texture from the Troll Stronghold exit.

Forgotten rangers now hold and fire their bows correctly.

A stretching issue with Royal dragonhide chaps has been fixed.

The animation has been changed for adding spider carcasses to sticks.

Necromancers should no longer have their face stretch upon death.

Tutorial island has been removed from the map in the Runecrafting Guild

Ozan now has some extra details on his hands.

The animation for planting seeds within the Troll Warzone area has been adjusted.

A new rake animation has been added.

Mieliki has been moved back from her counter slightly.

 

 

 

Quests, Challenges & Achievements:

 

 

The cutscene at the end of What's Mine is Yours no longer prevents you from using the XP counter.

The sick Spirit Tree in the Path of Glouphrie now heals correctly.

Eadgar will no longer return to the Troll's cell after completing Troll Stronghold.

An incorrect message about the ancestral door in Spirits of the Elid has been fixed.

A section of text has been changed to match the audio during Rune Memories.

An issue with the exit portal during the battle against Bork has been fixed.

Familiars will no longer interrupt the fight against the demon in Legends’ Quest

The demon in Legends’ Quest can now be defeated.

The Lost Tribe quest now filters correctly on the quest list when all requirements are met.

The Fremennik Sagas: Thok Your Block Off secret challenge has been made a bit easier.

Leaving a Fremennik Saga no longer deselects your combat XP preference resulting in no XP gains.

A formatting error in the Elder Kiln quest journal has been fixed.

The sundial interfaces in Diamond in the Rough should no longer suffer from inaccuracies.

The cooking stove in the Troll Warzone area now appears correctly during Let Them Eat Pie.

When a player uses a 'perfect' gold bar on a furnace, the text is now displayed correctly.

Grüfeld Bach will give Silverlight back to players who have completed Shadow of the Storm.

NPCs throughout the Clockwork Syringe quest are now aggressive again.

Players may no longer undertake Black Knights' Fortress without the level needed to equip the required armour.

The daily challenge 'Runes, Spice and Slice Stalls' will now update correctly when thieving from scimitar stalls.

The Challenge to create Studded Armour now also accepts Studded chaps.

 

 

 

Skills & Minigames:

 

 

Players now receive a ‘Nothing Interesting Happens’ message if they use a unicorn horn on a 1, 2 or 4 dose restore potion.

During the combat academy the momentum ability is now correctly described to last 20 minutes.

A spelling error on a Slayer tip from Turael has been fixed.

Dungeoneering parties can now only be formed within the walls of the castle.

Some text has been changed to match the audio in The Whaler's 'The Misguide' cutscene.

The Skill Advance Guide now has correct level requirements listed for Sacred and Volatile clay butterfly nets.

Teleporting out of Trouble Brewing will no longer show the pirate clothing to still be on the player.

Players can no longer try and create Serum 207 without being at the correct stage of the quest.

Music now fades out when a story cutscene happens in Player Owned Ports.

The miss-hit hits plats have been stopped from displaying over familiars, when their special attacks miss hitting on a target NPC.

Prayer icons will now be disabled when exiting a Castle Wars game.

Superior tetsu leggings are no longer providing more XP than they should when crafted

An issue with the Kalphite King and his freedom ability has been fixed.

A typo on the examine text for the evil symbols in Demon Flash Mobs has been fixed.

A couple of errors with 'trait' stats for crew members have been fixed in Player Owned Ports.

Followers will not be visible when viewing your ship with the customisation interface hidden in Player Owned Ports.

We've updated the adversity bar in Player Owned Ports for players with more than 3 special voyages.

Trying to do damage via auto attacks (i.e. left clicking) to the very first troll in the Troll Warzone does nothing until you use an ability.

Player will now automatically crush abominations when thy have low health as long as they have the spiked gauntlets equipped

The Make-X interface now shows the correct amount of XP for attaching feathers to bane bolts.

It is now conveyed more clearly that the "Leather Coif" is only able to be crafted by members.

Mages in the Mage Training Arena now animate correctly whilst attacking.

The Strength Skill Advance Guide now lists the granite mace as part of "granite weaponry".

Trimmed versions of the blue and green dragonhide armours now have the correct Dragon Slayer requirement.

The Skill Advance Guide has been updated in places to reflect more armour and weapon changes due to the Evolution of Combat.

Sawmill planks can no longer be taken out of the sawmill.

 

 

 

Other:

 

 

All Hellhounds (and normal dogs) now utilize the latest sound effects (thanks go to Rooh for pointing this out).

Minnie tells players what armour she is actually wearing.

Isold no longer mentions Major Corothers.

The Bronze claw and Off-hand bronze claw have been changed to require level 1 attack.

Entering your bank PIN at a shop no longer interrupts the flow of the purchase.

Bakriminel bolts now correctly state on the Grand Exchange that they require Chaotic crossbows to use.

The Scarecrow mask and Lightning staff will only be in Diango's Promotional items list, not his Holiday items selection.

A labelling issue with Saradomin's Whisper has been fixed.

An issue with the values of the Adamant defender has been fixed.

A prayer bonus has been added back to the Armadyl helmet.

The Fire cape is now removed from the players back while in the Fight Kiln

Some grammatical errors with Chieftain Brundt have been fixed.

Musicians no longer mention disease.

Players can no longer place flags and standards within the Runecrafting Guild.

Batwings are now dropped after a bat has died.

The Mud Pie is now a ranged weapon.

Grand Exchange pre-purchase information has been corrected for armour.

Guthix, Saradomin and Zamorak fruit now restore 100 prayer points instead of 10.

An issue with the binding shot not damaging stun immune enemies has been fixed.

Ganodermic beasts now use magic auto attacks when being attacked by melee.

An issue with implings getting overly aggressive at magic-using players has been fixed.

Blood reavers can no longer deal damage through the big door in the God Wars Dungeon.

An issue that allowed players to wield off-hand weapons with the Keenblade has been fixed.

The Bloodpouncer pet now has the correct icon when stored in a menagerie.

The new pets have been given some extra training on keeping up with their masters.

The quest cape and hood no longer appear greyed out on the customisation interface when used with a Dragon keepsake key.

A script crash when selecting a recolour in the customisation interface has been fixed.

Some tweaks to the task side panels have been made for numbering and formatting.

The armour value of the mercenary gloves in the Daemonheim reward shop have been updated.

The stats for the Lucky Saradomin Sword should now match the stats of the normal Saradomin Sword

Battleaxes now play a sound effect when the fury ability is used

 

 

[fishy227]

The Fremennik Sagas: Thok Your Block Off secret challenge has been made a bit easier.

 

If they truly made a difference, then this is the best update!

[kamil1210]

No fix for firemakers curse in path notes. I hope they will fix Char before new grandmaster quest.

[Sylpheed]

Free bank space = best part of this update.

[Flyingjj]

The slayer trait finally actually raises combat instead of morale.

[Drazhor]

Wanna see a pic of this Dragonwolf pet...sounds nice! :P

[decebal]

Our latest batch of Evolution of Combat updates is here, in accordance the amazing feedback we've received from you on the forums. Thanks once again for your ongoing passion for the game, interest and willingness to offer us your ideas.

Today, we've released the following changes:

• Reduced armour rating of all Dungeoneering enemies
  We have reduced the armour rating on low-mid level Dungeoneering enemies. This means that even if you don' t have the best gear to fight every single monster you meet, you'll still be able to hit and damage them to make progress. You'll still need to stock up on good food for healing, though, as they'll do just as much damage as before.
  
• Dragon life point reduction:
  Green, blue, red, black, bronze, iron and steel dragons have had their life points reduced, so Slayer assignments for dragons won't take as long as they did.
  
• No more instant adrenaline loss during actions, and a new way to stall adrenaline:
  You'll no longer find your adrenaline being instantly drained to 0 when performing actions that delay your character, such as opening doors in Dungeoneering or when exploring the Barrows. With this fix, you'll no longer be able to stall your adrenaline by talking to or interacting with an NPC such as a familiar, but you can still keep your adrenaline topped up by using combat abilities which do not require a target.
  
• Resonance:
  Resonance - while just as good at absorbing damage as it's always been - no longer heals you on special attacks from major bosses. Examples include Nomad's Disintegrate, or the Kalphite King's Burrow/Emerge attack. So, while it'll still help you avoid big hits from bosses, you won't be able to use it for healing, making food much more important (and valuable) for boss fights. Note that it still heals when fighting regular enemies.
  
• Berserk:
  Berserk now halves your effective armour rating for the duration, as well as doubling the damage you deal and receive. It's still a great way to boost your damage, but you'll need to be careful using it, even against weaker enemies!
  
• NPC vs NPC missed hitsplats:
  We've stopped the miss hit splats from displaying over familiars, when they miss with special attacks used against an NPC. This issue led some of you to believe that the steel titan familiar was attacking itself when it used a special attack.
  

In addition to the above, we're working on the following. Watch out for these awesome EoC updates, coming soon:

• Weapon style damage normalisation:
  Thanks to your feedback, we're now looking at bringing the dual-wielding and two-handed weapon styles onto the same level of power.
  
• Improved influence of combat stats on weapon accuracy:
  We are developing and testing a change which increases the effectiveness of a weapon beyond its level if you've levelled up beyond its requirement. This'll make levelling up a more noticeable improvement in these cases, and it'll prolong the life of your older weapons, in case you can't get hold of your next weapon upgrade as soon as you hit its level requirement.
  
• Dungeoneering boss selection tweaks:
  Alongside the change to bring the armour rating of Dungeoneering bosses, we are looking into the how the game chooses enemies for Dungeoneering and optimising the process, to ensure you get a challenge appropriate to your level every time.
  

All this is coming soon, but we still need to hear from you on what you want to see in the EoC. Please continue to give us your feedback on the forums!

The RuneScape Team

Discuss this here.

 

They're upping the power of DW weapons, by the looks of it.

[Unknown_Warrior]

They're upping the power of DW weapons, by the looks of it.

 

...

Or lowering the power of 2H weapons.

[Estoc]

Wanna see a pic of this Dragonwolf pet...sounds nice! :P

 

[Urza285]

They're upping the power of DW weapons, by the looks of it.

 

...

Or lowering the power of 2H weapons.

Sounds like a case of "the glass is half empty" mentality.

[Drazhor]

6546 DG tokens at 99 Dg...490 score (Came in 2nd to some Comp caper)

[Sy_Accursed]

They're upping the power of DW weapons, by the looks of it.

 

...

Or lowering the power of 2H weapons.

Sounds like a case of "the glass is half empty" mentality.

 

Or a realistic outlook. They said they are looking at bringing them to the same power level.

This certainly does not guarantee DW going up or 2h coming down; mostly likely I'd think they both shift to meet in the middle.

But in terms of not being rage-faced best bet is to assume 2h will come down to match dw - that way at worst you got what you expected at best you got something better.

[Estoc]

• Resonance:
  Resonance - while just as good at absorbing damage as it's always been - no longer heals you on special attacks from major bosses. Examples include Nomad's Disintegrate, or the Kalphite King's Burrow/Emerge attack. So, while it'll still help you avoid big hits from bosses, you won't be able to use it for healing, making food much more important (and valuable) for boss fights. Note that it still heals when fighting regular enemies.
  

 

So much for using it strategically. Also inb4 it doesn't work on KK's 1hko attack.

[Octarine]

6546 DG tokens at 99 Dg...490 score (Came in 2nd to some Comp caper)

10,333 at 120. Doesn't seem many

[Saradomin_Mage]

1st place with 750 pts, got a huge lamp initially but bunyip card ended up swapping it for the token pile ... which came to 10333 tokens L.

[Flyingjj]

2k some odd tokens for completing the sinkhole and 43591 exp from huge lamp at lvl 84 dungeoneering.

[Urza285]

All I care for is the cosmetics for now... I always thought the gorajo looked bad-ass. If I could have an edimmu pet I would be ecstatic. Hell I might even be surprised and joyful to see an 'addon' to make a grown sneakerpeeper 'evolve' into several other pets. They could even do a spinoff and let people have 'baby' versions of the behemoths or daemonhiem demon general themed imps.

[Unknown_Warrior]

They're upping the power of DW weapons, by the looks of it.

 

...

Or lowering the power of 2H weapons.

Sounds like a case of "the glass is half empty" mentality.

 

So far these EoC updates haven't exactly improved anything, last one and this one have just lowered effects of existing abilties, armour or weaponry.

[Urza285]

So the cosmetic set is most likely the hoardstalker set you get to wear as armour in the D&D. Can someone try and get a picture of the whole set? If not just the head, top and bottom will suffice.

[Saradomin_Mage]

Top and bottom.

 

[aerendil]

more dead content to bee, as far as i can see

 

Wish they would stop screwing with things, jesus...........

 

fix-nerf-nerf-nerf-nerf-fix, ohwait we dont want t85 being better than t80, quick nerf

 

and dual drygores are already op as (bleep) and dont need fixing, i think a good fix would be just to make most/all abilities take your offhand weapon into account also... instead of nerfing specific gear.

[Golvellius]

rf-nerf-fix, ohwait we dont want t85 being better than t80, quick nerf

 

and dual drygores are already op as (bleep) and dont need fixing, i think a good fix would be just to make most/all abilities take your offhand weapon into account also... instead of nerfing specific gear.

Wands need fixing.

I hope this planned accuracy update does something about them.

My master wand can't hit jack, ahrim's is too new and hoarded, and virtus is well... RWT fodder.

 

All being said, Jagex seems to be in the mood to nerf monster defense, up monster offense.

I guess they want that image of the dude in torva with dual rune scimitars to be an effective setup.

[Estoc]

Top and bottom.

 

 

It looks more insect-like than his Kalphite armor.

 

They're upping the power of DW weapons, by the looks of it.

 

...

Or lowering the power of 2H weapons.

Sounds like a case of "the glass is half empty" mentality.

 

So far these EoC updates haven't exactly improved anything, last one and this one have just lowered effects of existing abilties, armour or weaponry.

 

While true to some extent, none of those things have been outright broken like dual wielding is.

 

more dead content to bee, as far as i can see

 

Wish they would stop screwing with things, jesus...........

 

fix-nerf-nerf-nerf-nerf-fix, ohwait we dont want t85 being better than t80, quick nerf

 

and dual drygores are already op as (bleep) and dont need fixing, i think a good fix would be just to make most/all abilities take your offhand weapon into account also... instead of nerfing specific gear.

 

It's only op because there are no other t90 items. Once there are more t90 armor and weapons in game it will be as op as chaotics were albeit with the problem of being extremely expensive.

[Minz]

Came first, had outfit card so ended up with 10k tokens (120 dg) + hood

 

 

Not such an exciting cosmetic xD

[muggiwhplar]

sinkholes will now spawn every 30 minutes instead of 2 hours