Runescape Tips And Secrets

The evil tree event from Runescape came out a few days ago and Delarue64 and I tried it recently. Amazingly we had 2 Elder trees in a row. They are the toughest trees to kill.

You find out about the evil trees by talking to a spirit tree. They 1st tell you about a sappling and then give a clue to the whereabouts. For the 1st tree the clue was something like “the southern coast of a tropical island”. This turned out to be on Ape Atoll. The 2nd tree gave a clue something like “near a runecrafting altar”. This tree was near the body altar.

Here are some pictures Delarue64 took when a sapling was being nurtured at McGrubor’s woods, the sapling ended up being a willow tree. They show all the stages of a sapling. He didn’t nurture the sapling as he didn’t want to take the risk of getting a low tree, nurturing trees counts as one of your daily trees.

This is the first stage of the sapling, when you first find it.

This is the second stage of the sapling, before it turns into a young tree.

This is the first stage of a young tree, when it just transforms from a sapling.

This is the final stage for the sapling before it turns into an evil tree, this is the 2nd stage of a young tree.

After a couple of minutes or so, the sappling develops into an evil tree and the spirit tree then gives and option to teleport to it. Below is a picture of us at the Elder Evil tree at Ape Atoll.  In fact I was the 1st person to find it on this occasion. I was hoping for a reward similar to shooting stars, but that did not happen, lol.

If you try to cut the tree near the roots, then the roots will knock you away from it. So you either have to move away or chop the roots.

One thing to note about this location is that poisonous spiders possibly attack you if you do not wear the monkey gree gree. Delarue64 got attacked and had to come back with some anti-poison pots.  So one must be careful what you bring to an evil tree. It could possibly take you to a dangerous location.

This was the 1st Evil Tree that we found, which was located at Ape Atoll. It was an Elder Tree.

An Elder Tree requires 85 wood cutting and/or 85 firemaking.  That meant that I could not burn the tree, because I had less than 85 fire making, but Delarue64 could. Below is a picture of Delarue64 burning the tree at the 2nd location (near the mind altar).  In order to burn the tree, you need to have some kindling from chopping down one of the roots. You then click on “light fire” as shown below.  You can have up to 8 fires per Elder Tree and it gave Delarue64 about 16,000 fire experience for all 8 fires. I also got about 14,000 woodcutting xp from chopping the tree.

A ring of fire around the Evil Elder Tree

When the tree is dead, you can claim your rewards. The rewards differ for everyone, but I got 74 mahogany logs, 1 maple tree seed and some coins for the 1st tree and below is a picture of the rewards from the second tree.

Here is the rewards that I got from the Evil Elder Tree

On top of those rewards the leprechaun gives you a great bonus that can be seen below.

This bonus is pretty cool. You can keep cutting trees without having to bank.

Below is a picture of delarue64 and me cutting willows and taking advantage of the free banking time.

You can see stars above my bald head after a willow log gets sent directly to my bank. In the meantime, the bottom right hand side shows a burning log from Delarue64's inferno adze.

It seems like this is good experience and worth while. I got a further 21k xp from cutting willows in the 21 minutes. The bad news is that only 2 trees can be cut in a day. It might be worth joining a evil tree clan chat to alert you about upcoming evil trees. I did notice that there was a clan “tree find” that seemed to be active. Happy evil tree hunting.

Updates:

The spirit trees now give more information on the timing of the evil tree sprouting. The spirit tree now tells you the time it will take to sprout… over 1 hour, over half an hour, under half an hour, less than 15 minutes, about to sprout, a sappling has sprouted and the evil tree is ready to dispatch. The 2 most popular evil tree clans are “eviltreechat” and “treehunters”.

When  there a sappling has sprouted, the spirit tree will give you a clue to its whereabouts. After a while you will get used to the locations, although I tend to wait at the spirit tree for a free teleport most of the time.

Here is the other update. It’s about time we had something for people to check prices besides the grand exchange should be less pc please etc in banks now . Finally some more random events and decent rewards from them hopefully . The quest list filter might be good for some people, doesn’t really effect me though as I’ve done them all, wish they had it before I did them. That’s it for the updates that Jagex did tonight I think.

We have just completed a comprehensive rework of the random events system that will bring changes for members and non-members alike. We’ve retired some of the older random events from active service, overhauled others, and rewritten the rewards for almost every surviving event. We’ve also changed the rate at which you get random events, and made it possible for all players to get all the events even if they don’t do the activities that are typically associated with them. So maybe you’ll get to meet Cap’n Arnav or the Bee-keeper for the first time…

When you successfully complete a random event you will now be given a random event gift box, which will contain a selection of rewards to choose from. The reward options are randomised, but players with higher skill totals will generally be offered better rewards, especially if they have a record of passing random events. Any frog tokens you have will be replaced automatically with random event gift boxes, and your broken axes and pickaxes will be automatically repaired (unless you’ve only got the handle, in which case they’ll be deleted).

For more information on the changes we’ve made, take a look at the forums, and for a full list of the events that have remained in the game, consult the Knowledge Base.

Price-checker

In any bank in RuneScape, you’ll eventually run into someone shouting “Pc please”, wishing to open a trade window so that they can check the Grand Exchange values of their tradeable items. It seemed a bit silly that you’d need a second player to let you look up that information, so we’ve added a simple new feature that lets you do it yourself. It’s next to the buttons that open your Equipment Stats screen and Items-kept-on-death display. Now you will be able to shift your tradeable items from your inventory into a central window, so that you can see the current price of each item and the total value of the whole “offer”.

Mod Ash
RuneScape Content Developer

Quest List Update

Last but not least, we have made a change to the way the quest list interface works. After all, with almost 150 quests in RuneScape it can be a challenge to find the perfect one to do next. From now on, the quest list will allow you to filter out those you can’t do, as well as sort quests by difficulty or keep those in progress at the top. Once you’ve chosen your quest, a right-click option can show you its start location on your world map.

Mod Hew
RuneScape Content Developer

This is just one of the updates for tonight, will post about the others after I finish with this one. The evil tree looks like it’s going to be good for woodcutters and fire makers, I was looking for a way to finish off these skills to 99 I’ll give this a try and see how it goes. I have tried this evil tree along with Crowlion and we have posted about it here.

Strange things are afoot in the woods around RuneScape. An unusual sapling has been seen sprouting among the trees, and it’s growing at an alarming rate. Aided by a familiar-looking farmer, you could help encourage this burgeoning seedling – but keep an axe and tinderbox handy because it could become…an evil tree!

For the lumberjacks and fire-starters among you, this distraction and diversion offers a new way of training your Firemaking and Woodcutting skills; and there are other rewards up for grabs, too, including seeds, logs, birds’ nests, and gold. Like the Shooting Star, evil trees will only stick around for a limited amount of time, so make sure you don’t miss them or you’ll be waiting a while for the next one.

…And if you find yourself face to face with an evil tree without your axe, miles from a bank, don’t worry! The helpful leprechaun has all the tools you’ll need. He might even bolster your rewards with a special ability that will automatically bank any logs you don’t have the space to carry. This perk will last for between five and thirty minutes, depending on your performance.

Mod Trick
RuneScape Developer

Summary:
How to find an evil tree:

Evil trees can appear in one of 26 forest locations; just keep an eye out for leprechauns and thrashing roots (which might try to grab you). If you have completed the Tree Gnome Village quest, spirit trees will offer you directions, clues and teleports.

Requirements to complete Evil Tree:

There are seven types of evil tree, of varying difficulty: normal, oak, willow, maple, yew, magic and elder.
Woodcutting and Firemaking requirements are the same as those required for normal trees, with a level requirement of 85 for the elder evil tree.
To nurture the sapling you will need a Farming level equal to half the Woodcutting requirement of the tree.

You can interact with the evil tree twice a day.

In Other News…

Some of you may have noticed that we are now asking for email addresses when a new account is created. This information may be used in the future to send you important service announcements, or to help recover a lost password (although we will NEVER contact you by email to ask you for your password).

A priority system has been added to the waiting rooms of Soul Wars. Now, players who have been waiting to join a game will be given priority over those who have not been waiting as long. Please note that the priority system does not override the balancing rules, so you will still not be added to a game if there is no room on your chosen team. If you see on the waiting room display that your current team already has too many people, try joining the other team.

Players who have completed the Animal Magnetism quest and have Ava’s Attractor or Accumulator can show it to Nomad to have him enchant their Soul Wars team capes for them. Once enchanted, your cape will return ammunition in much the same way that the Attractor or Accumulator would. Once your cape has been enchanted you don’t need to keep the Attractor or Accumulator with you for the effect to work in Soul Wars.

The Soul Wars avatars have been granted more power! Now, when the avatars make an attack against a player they will absorb some of that player’s Prayer points!

Players knowingly entering a game of Soul Wars that is more than half way through will no longer be awarded any Zeal for their participation in that game. Note that this will only occur if you deliberately enter a half-finished game – if you have been waiting to join a game and not yet been allowed in, you will not be affected. You will be informed of this when you enter a waiting room.

Players in Soul Wars can no longer pick up bandages from the supply areas while they are in combat.

It is no longer possible to cast the Alchemy or Hunter Kit spells in Soul Wars, or light fires in the waiting area.

Finally, in non-Soul Wars-related news, Lokar Searunner, Captain Bentley and Bill Teach now have right-click options so you can travel around a bit faster.

Have you ever lost your dwarven cannon before on Runescape? Well last night I lost mine for the 1st time when my Internet connection was lost for several minutes.

Although I know that it was only pixels and only a game, it was still a bit sad to know that I had lost about 600k due to a faulty Internet connection.  However, after telling Delarue64 about me losing the cannon, he told me how to get it back… and for free. Below is how you too can get your cannon back for free.

It is actually quite simple to get your cannon back. First you have to find Nulodion, who can be found in the western building to the north of the Dwarven Mines. He will then give you some options.

Here are the 1st questions that Nulodion asks

Obviously, you choose I’ve lost my cannon.

Nulodion shows some sympathy

So Nulodion shows some sympathy towards you losing the cannon.

Nulodion telling me to keep it quiet

Whoops, looks like I did not keep it quiet… I have put it on this blog post, lol.

Yay, I got my cannon back. Also shows the map where to find Nulodion.

So thanks Delarue64 for showing me how to get my cannon back for free.   I hope that others benefit from this post too.

Hi, we put the stealing creations guide up yesterday, just forgot to do a post bout it, click here if u wanna check it out, we will some pictures up shortly, that guide is just to give you a rough idea.

Jagex have just updated runescape and released soul wars, it looks like it will be good although I won’t know til tomorrow when I get a chance to check it out as I’m heading off to bed after this post. I like the mini updates as well, the timing with Bert use to get annoying when trying to get the daily sand from him. The free access to brimhaven dungeon for level 3 gloves looks good too, saves a inventory space per trip It will be interesting to see what else has been updated to the seers village diary rewards. I’m not all that interested in the quick chat update as I never use it anyway. I’ll let you guys know how I go tomorrow with soul wars. Have fun.

A mystical portal has opened in Edgeville, leading to the lands beyond Tirannwn’s western shore. Any players who venture through will find themselves at the site of Soul Wars – a new, members-only minigame involving fierce combat, territory control and your Slayer skills!

If you’ve played Castle Wars you will be on familiar ground with Soul Wars. Like Castle Wars it’s a quick, fun, team game that you can play on any server…but it’s three times the size! Soul Wars is also a safe game, so you don’t have to worry about losing any of your favourite gear.

Once you enter the Soul Wars area you will meet Nomad, who controls the battlefield with his unfortunate minion Zimberfizz. He will show you the workings of the Soul Obelisk, how the giant avatars function, and the basics of territorial domination. Being something of an adventurer, Nomad is prepared to give rewards to players who get involved: sharing his charm collection, offering combat and Slayer training, and even bringing back the souls of Slayer creatures you may have found on your travels.

Mod Rathe and Mod Chris L
RuneScape Developers

Summary:
Where to start Soul Wars: Enter the portal in Edgeville and speak to Nomad.

Requirements: None, but decent combat levels and Slayer are recommended!

In other news…

You can now collect sand from Bert at the same time every day. The 24-hour restriction has been shortened slightly so you won’t have to go later each time

The rewards for the Seers’ Village Achievement Diary have been tweaked and increased; for details, please read the original article.

The hard reward for the Karamja Achievement Diary will now grant free access (when worn) to the Brimhaven Dungeon.

Additions have been made to Quick Chat that should make it easier for players to converse with Player Moderators, and ask any questions they may have.

I just finished reading the behind the scenes update jagex has released and I figured I’d post it up here to see what everyone thinks of it. It looks good with the price check feature as it should stop all the noobs coming to you randomly asking for a price check. It’s about time we got an update for random events, seems like a great idea with the gift box instead of 20gp at times from the mysterious old man, aswell as the variety and the rate at which randoms will appear for higher skill total leveled players. It’s a pity about the drunken dwarf retiring as a random event, use to come in handy at times in slayer tasks when I was running low on food. The run energy drain in the maze looks like a good update aswell, use to get annoying not being able to run at times in it even when you had the energy up too. The sandwich lady and dr jekyll use to get annoying at the dark beasts as they never stop being aggressive you use to get caught or fail the random all the time, looks like they’re going to fix that finally.

Soul wars looks like a fun mini game, might be good for high slayer players hopefully, we’re over due for a decent update in monsters. I’m not all that interested in the quest interface update as I’ve done them all, but it might come in handy for other players. The evil tree update looks good I was wondering how I was gunna finish off woodcutting, firemaking and do some farming at the same time, hopefully it’s worth doing. Well that’s it from me, let us know what you think of the updates.

This month we welcome a few new faces to RuneScape’s “who’s who” list in the form of giant Slayer beasts. These avatars just happen to be the main focus of our new safe, conflict minigame…Soul Wars! We will also be waving goodbye to a few of our old random events, adding a new feature that will let you sort your quests, building price-checking inventory options for your items, and adding a new distraction and diversion (whose bark is far worse than his bite).

Soul Wars

On the deepest, darkest, most mysterious of our backwater islands, an eternal struggle rages, unknown to the residents of RuneScape until now. Structured much like Castle Wars, this will be a “quick to access, tough to master” conflict-based minigame. The avatars of Destruction and Creation vie for control of the Soul Obelisk, an ancient and powerful artefact used to harvest the souls of the weak and unready. Get ready to grab your blade, staff or bow and battle through Slayer creatures, collecting fragments of their souls to feed to the ever-hungry obelisk. Rewards include combat XP while playing the game, Pest Control-style XP rewards and a few new pets for you to lead.

Random event update

Over the last year we’ve been very keen to make changes to RuneScape’s system of random events. After all, no one likes being forced through a long dialogue with a desperate doctor or an over-enthusiastic security guard while they’re surrounded by aggressive monsters.

The most obvious change in the update will be to the rewards. At the end of most random events, you’ll be handed a random event gift box. When you open the box, you’ll get the chance to choose a reward from a selection of items including coins, runes, ore, seeds, charms and perhaps even a genie lamp. If the random event previously offered emotes or costumes, you’ll be able to choose those from the random event gift box’s menu. So whatever kind of reward you want, there should be something in there for you.

We’re also making a major change to the rate at which random events appear, basing it on your skill total and your record of successfully passing random events. So, if you correctly solve every event you encounter, you’ll experience fewer events in the future. On a related topic, the game will remember which random events you get, so it can aim to give you a greater variety of events, rather than always giving you the same random events over and over again.

Some random events will be removed from the game. Poison-gas chests, smoking rocks, broken pickaxes and ents will become things of the past. The Drunken Dwarf will be retired as a random event, but he’ll still be free to roam the world, handing out kebabs to his mateys. You’ll still be able to obtain shade robes, strange fruit and security books; we do not intend to discontinue any existing rewards.

Other improvements include allowing you to have more than one set of costumes, giving value to old frog tokens (so don’t throw them away!), stopping run energy from draining in the maze and even giving the Sandwich Lady her own café!

Price check

Ever found yourself at the bottom of a lonely, dark, depressing dungeon, with only the sound of your Summoning beast to keep you company, when suddenly out of the bleakness come the infamous words ”price check plz”?. Quite often you’ll want to know how much something is worth, even if you are holding back the forces of darkness at the same time. Because of this often-heard request, we have decided to add it as a permanent feature. So you’ll be able to click on a button beneath your worn items to open a new price-check interface, into which you’ll be able to place objects from your inventory (including stacks) to see their trade value.

Quest list interface

This month we will also be adding a new filtering option to the quest list in game. This means that you will be able to filter out all the quests you don’t yet have the level to do, or filter the list so it displays all your completed quests last – to name just a few options.

Evil Tree

Also this month we will be bringing you a new distraction and diversion affectionately known as the Evil Tree. This twice-a-day event will focus on providing an alternative to your Woodcutting, Firemaking and Farming training. During this event, a small, innocent leprechaun will be appearing in a variety of locations, using his magical divining rod to try to discover the whereabouts of an exciting new species of plant. He knows that the plant grows into a tree at an alarmingly fast rate, and that budding farmers will be able to use their skills to coax it out even faster; but Farming’s not the only skill you will be using…since this tree is EVIL!

Well, perhaps for us that twist wasn’t so surprising (the name kind of gives it away) but for anyone who hasn’t read this it will be quite a shock to see the innocent, naive sapling turn into a menacing and malevolent fiend! Prepare to grab your tinderboxes and axes (the leprechaun has spares), and go toe-to-branch with this new challenge. Evil trees will come with similar level requirements to their less evil counterparts, and will range from normal, simple trees all the way up to elder trees…evil elder trees, of course. Rewards include generous XP in the aforementioned skills, and access to some unique services to complement your Woodcutting training.

Future Content

Mobilising Armies

Work continues on this tactical minigame, and we’ve been busily adding new features and continuously developing the game engine to support this new content. Recent additions include:

Altering the effect that different races of troops can have on your rewards.

Changing the way in which catapults are loaded.

Improving the way in which the camera moves around the battlefield.

Improving the on-screen information so you know what all of your troops are doing.

Updating the tutorial to be more interactive and straightforward.

Changing one of the scenarios to feature TzHaar.

As we have said before, this minigame is different from anything ever seen before in RuneScape. The more we test and play through the content, the more features we know we need to add to make the game work the way we want it to. This means that we’ve not been able to launch it as early in the year as we had initially hoped, but we will give you more news as soon as it is available.

Have fun!

Mod Mark

Lead Designer – RuneScape