This week sees an Elite tier of tasks added to all existing Achievement Diaries (save for Ardougne, which already had Elite tasks, though there is now an Ardougne cloak 4 reward), plus a review of all the old rewards to make them work in a consistent way and be more user friendly. The Lumbridge/Draynor diary has had Hard tasks added instead, all of which are available to free players.

Should you rise to the challenge, you’ll be skilling your way around the world baking pies, fletching bows, manic mining, fighting some seriously dangerous critters and a lot more besides. Face some of the biggest challenges that exist in the world of RuneScape to complete these diaries and, if you succeed, you’ll find yourself worthy of receiving the Elite rewards!

Rewards, I hear you cry? Yes, in true Achievement Diary tradition, you’ll not only get experience lamps, but also some useful rewards to help in your everyday RuneScape life. These can range from the very generic, like teleports, to the very specific, like a handy shortcut in Brimhaven Dungeon.

You’ll also find that existing Achievement Diary rewards will have changed very slightly. Things like toggles for teleports, where possible, are now done by talking to NPCs rather than on the objects. If you have earned the ability to toggle the destination of the Watchtower or Varrock Teleport spells, you’ll find your POH portals will also take you and your friends to wherever you’ve toggled them to go!

Quite a lot of the existing rewards now no longer require the related diary clothing to be worn for you to benefit from them, but, to make sure you’re not missing out on your rewards, you’ll also receive a little message for those times when you would have received a benefit if you had been wearing some Achievement Diary clothing.

The Achievement Diary section of the Game Guide lists all of the new tasks and indicates which rewards require you to be wearing the reward clothing and which ones do not.

Good luck, elite adventurers!

Mod Maz
Senior RuneScape Content Developer
Queen of the Squirrels

As the depths of Daemonheim reach ever closer to the strange power at their end, its magic has begun to affect the inhabitants who stalk its halls. Those humans abandoned on the floors above are the lucky ones, as the ones driven further down by their master have…changed, and have been joined by the magically gifted and the undead.

Members who venture through the twelve occult floors will have to face these tainted foes, mostly in the form of six new boss monsters. One boss that requires some skill to defeat is the Grave Creeper, who hides in a series of tombs – if you don’t quickly bless the graves he taints, the room can become engulfed in flame…and you with it. Then, as mentioned in this month’s Behind the Scenes, there’s Yk’Lagor the Thunderous, so named because he’s a talkative guy (voice acting supplied by the developers). Heed his warnings or be the focus of a melee pummelling, but don’t stray too far away else his magic attack can quickly take out your whole group!

Before you get to face these new bosses, you’ll likely come across one of nine new challenge rooms. These are not all exclusive to the occult floors and will tax both members and free-players alike. Withstand the pain of deadly herbs (slaughtercress, papreaper and parslay came from player suggestions in the Aggressive Herbs – Name Ideas! forum thread), build bridges over bottomless pits, and perform last rites on a tormented spirit.

Traversing through the occult floors will allow you to increase your maximum prestige up to 47, with which you should be earning anywhere up to about 40% more XP than if your maximum prestige were 35 (depending upon your dungeon setup and how well you do). In turn, you’ll earn more Dungeoneering tokens – just the thing for buying some of the five new rewards. Free players can learn a technique to become more efficient at smithing and charge special boxes with spells to cast. Members can enjoy such delights as herbicide (an automatic herb burner) and Rigour, a new prayer for rangers, among other things.

Mod Mark, Mod Chris L, Mod Liono and Mod Trick
The Dungeoneering Team

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In other news…

As previously mentioned by Mod Trick, we’ve now implemented the feature to reset your Dungeoneering class rings. This is a one-time only option, so choose wisely this time.

We’ve added a useful new item to the Dungeoneering smuggler’s shop. The toolkit contains a selection of the more useful items used in most dungeons which should help speed up the start of your dungeons.

When progressing through dungeons, if you’ve purposefully selected a lower complexity, the complexity level will no longer increase as you progress through the floors.

Barnabas in Varrock Museum has noticed the popularity of the strange rocks and can now help you further by offering a bag to store them in. On a related note, the chance of getting a rock from Construction activities has been increased slightly.

The music interface now has a search feature so you can easily find the tracks you’re after, which should be useful when you’re creating a playlist or simply looking for those tracks you’ve just unlocked.

The update about scroll boxes looks good, as it was annoying accidently looting the rewards and having to fight off reverants or even pkers back in the old days.

Treasure Trails have been given an improvement today with fiendish new challenges to test even the mightiest adventurer, but also many new rewards to tempt them. You may find that the likes of Bork, the Corporeal Beast and the Skeletal Horror (among others) now have a rare chance of dropping an elite clue scroll.

These clues are a step beyond what has gone before, whether it’s a scanning orb that only highlights the next clue when you’re standing near it, or a simple compass showing the direction of the next clue but not the distance. Even finding your next clue might not be so easy, as you may disturb a powerful follower of Guthix or end up racking your brains over one of the tricky new Celtic knot puzzles.

Stick with it, though, and you may be lucky enough to receive one of the 150+ new reward items! There are new bows, Third Age druidic gear, dragon masks, animal staves, kits to improve the look of dragon armour, and items for followers of Armadyl, Bandos and even Zar- (shh!)

Many of the new reward items are for the elite trails, but easy, medium and hard trails have had some added too. We’ve also added a mechanism to ensure that each and every treasure trail completed will reward you with at least one treasure trail-specific item, by introducing new items common to all levels of trails.

The cross-trail items include Saradomin, Guthix and Zamorak arrows (which have a chance of causing elemental damage and vanish on impact); single-use teleport scrolls to out-of-the-way places like Nardah and Miscellania; stackable biscuits that each restore one Prayer Point (plus a few life points); and existing items like sweets, torn pages and firelighters. Oh, and let’s not forget the meerkat summoning pouches, which will bring a cute little treasure-hunting familiar to your side…

Finally, we’ve introduced scroll boxes, which look different from caskets. This way, you can know for certain that opening a scroll box will always lead you to another clue scroll, and that when you do finally get a casket, you’ll know not to open it in a dangerous area, because it will always contain…TREASURE!

Adventurers, the trails await!

Mod Maylea
RuneScape Content Developer

In other news…

Treasure Trails supplemental:

As part of the Treasure Trails update, some of the older clues and puzzles requiring specific items or combinations of items have been substituted with more suitable ones.

Demo mode removed:

This week sees the removal of the demo mode option for new players; existing demo mode users will be able to continue playing for the time being.

Dwarf cannon:

You can now have multiple parts of a dwarf cannon in your bank or inventory, but you may only set one cannon up at a time. This is a slight change: previously, you could only have one of each of the four dwarf cannon parts or one cannon on the ground.

Shattered Heart rocks:

You should now be able to get strange rocks from any Construction activity that would garner you Construction XP (building furniture, making flatpacks) while in your player owned house.

From what I’ve read it looks great especially the construction hotspots.

Off to try this update out.

This week we bring you extensive improvements and new rewards for our brand new skill, Dungeoneering!

Hidden Resource Dungeons
Experienced dungeoneers will now be able to locate secret dungeons scattered far and wide across the world of RuneScape. Not only will these dungeons give a one-off Dungeoneering XP reward for locating them, but they also contain extremely useful resources within. Each dungeon requires a specific Dungeoneering level to access, from level 10 up to level 85. Rewards include new rune rocks, greater numbers of ‘busy’ monster spawns, herb spawns and trees to name a few. For a full list of the reward dungeons, including four for the free game, check out this Knowledge Base page.

Construction Hotspots
Players will be able to use their Construction skill in a dungeon to build useful locations in the start room. Requiring a hammer and some of the logs and bars found within the dungeon, you’ll be able to make:

* A group gatestone portal
* A photo booth
* A farming patch
* A range
* A prayer altar
* A skillcape stand, to show off your mastery of Dungeoneering.

Group Gatestone
The group gatestone portal is the default location found in the Construction hotspot. A group gatestone is given to the party leader, and anyone using the group gatestone portal will be teleported to wherever the group gatestone is, or next to whoever is carrying it. We’ve also added a Group Gatestone Teleport spell to allow you to teleport directly to the group gatestone from anywhere in a dungeon, not just through a group gatestone portal in the start room. This is available in the free game. Also, the Gatestone Teleport spell now requires no runes to cast, and the Create Gatestone and Group Gatestone Teleport spells each only require one type of rune to cast.

Class Rings
Dungeoneers will now be able to upgrade their ring of kinship to help them adventure through Daemonheim. By simply right-clicking on the ring and spending a few Dungeoneering tokens within any dungeon, you’ll be able to improve your ring from Tier 1 through to Tier 10 in any of the ways noted below. For more information, visit this Knowledge Base page.

Melee rings:
Tank – Damage is reduced when wielding a shield
Tactician – Increases chance of hitting in accurate stance
Berserker – Increases Strength levels when calculating damage

Ranged rings:
Sniper – Increases chance of max-hit in long-range stance
Keen-eye – Chance of reducing target’s Defence when in accurate stance
Desperado – Increases Ranged levels when in rapid stance

Magic rings:
Blazer – Elemental spell damage is increased
Blaster – Chance to slow down your opponent’s attack speed and snare them
Blitzer – Increases the chance of casting elemental spells faster

Skiller:
Medic – Increases the amount you heal other players
Gatherer – Chance of extra resources and skill task damage reduction
Artisan – Chance of saving resources and increasing rune production

New Titles
You may have noticed the titles displayed on the dungeon completion interface (what we affectionately refer to as the WINterface) and likely have received some or all of the existing 32 titles that you can get. With this update we’re adding 18 brand new ones, which were inspired by our own playing styles during this year’s testing of the new skill. Good luck finding them all! For more information on titles and how to obtain them, check out the Dungeoneering FAQ.

Dungeon Instances
If you log out or lose connection, your dungeon will now persist for up to 10 minutes, which should give you plenty of time to get back into the game and dungeon. When you log back in, you’ll find yourself exactly where you left, not in the waiting room as before. This means you’ll be able to take a short break if in a single-player dungeon or rejoin a dungeon if you’ve been caught by a nasty bout of lag. Dungeon instances will not persist over a system reboot.

Dungeon Sizes
Solo dungeoneers are now able to select medium-sized dungeons, and parties of three or greater can now select large-sized dungeons.

The Grouping System
Autogrouping rooms will now allow a player to select a specific floor from those available in the selected theme, and you will only be grouped with 3-5 players who have also selected that floor, so you will not incur an XP penalty due to level differences.

Prayer Improvements
Players can now use bones found within Daemonheim directly on a prayer altar. Doing so will give 4x the usual Prayer XP for burying those bones.

Have fun!

Mod Mark, Mod Chris L, Mod Liono and Mod Trick
The Dungeoneering Team

In other news…

After some feedback about the World Map marker feature, we’ve implemented a couple of changes: their name has been changed to “Your Marker” to avoid confusion with quest start markers, and you can now right-click to remove them.

Hopefully the rewards are good, looking at the requirements it looks promising, and it’s good to see that the dragons get a makeover finally. P.S. kittykatiswaycuterthenme

Rumour has it that the rewards are:

Also get 100 house teleport tablets.

Prepare to take your place at the Wise Old Man’s side as he comes out of retirement to confront an extremely unpleasant figure from his past! If you can handle the combat, the puzzles, the vicious sarcasm and the romance, you could unlock some new Construction and Magic abilities for yourself.

The quest begins at a barn north-east of Draynor Village, where a damsel in distress is looking for an adventurer to help her. Sounds like a straightforward little quest, right? Before long you’ll find yourself chipping teleport tablets, solving puzzles and entering a deadly battle where you’ll be fighting not just for your life, but for the reputation of adventurers everywhere.

It’s time to discover whether the bank guard is coming down from his tree, what the Wise Old Man is planning for the Wizards’ Tower and what Traiborn means when he talks about thingummywuts.

Mod Ash
RuneScape Content Developer

Summary:

Where to start Love Story:

Speak to Mabel at the barn north-east of Draynor Village, near the windmill.

Requirements to start Love Story:

Swan Song
Recipe for Disaster – Saving Sir Amik Varze
Level 77 Magic
Level 68 Construction
Level 68 Smithing
Level 67 Crafting

In other news…

As mentioned in this month’s Behind the Scenes, we’ve graphically updated some of the dragons in game. This includes, but is not excluded to, green, blue, red and black dragons (including baby variants), plus bronze, iron, steel and mithril dragons. Check them out if you can handle the heat!

It’s good to see that they are updating dungeoneering, maybe people will see it as a skill after this update rather then just as a mini game.

Another elite quest coming too, hopefully the rewards make the quest worth while. Also the update about treasure trails looks interesting can’t wait to see how it will turn out.

Our first launch this month is all about the past of one of our favourite characters, the enigmatic (and often suspicious) Dionysius, more commonly known as the Wise Old Man. Many of you have no doubt heard vicious rumours about party hats and rune heists, but only his most trusted friends know about his love life, specifically loves lost. In the new quest this month, you’ll witness first-hand what happens when someone’s burnt by an old flame. Quest through a mysterious NOH (that’s an NPC-owned house) that’s been twisted by the grudges of a scorned woman!

The quest requirements include the highest current quest levels for Magic (77), Construction (68) and Crafting (67), so get levelling now if you want to tackle Love Story when it’s launched. For more information, check the blog here. We are also improving the look of dragons in the game with this update, so look out for some scorching new graphics to accompany the summer heat.

The next update this month looks at new rewards to use outside of Daemonheim. Originally, the dungeon entrances just east of the Wilderness required vast amounts of resources to build, which were to be gathered in secret by the dungeon’s workers. To this end, the forces behind it created many resource dungeons around RuneScape, closed off and hidden from prying eyes. As adventurers become wiser regarding the mysteries of Daemonheim, they will find they are able to discover and enter these hidden resource dungeons scattered around the world. There are more than fifteen of these resource dungeons to be found in existing areas, such as Edgeville Dungeon (several being available in the free game), each of which requires a certain Dungeoneering level to enter. Each resource dungeon provides a one-off reward for finding it, plus resources such as new rune rocks or the lair of a mighty frost dragon (lvl 166)!

If that doesn’t float your Fremennik longboat, how about the new class ring rewards we’re introducing for use within Daemonheim. With three rings each for rangers, mages, warriors and skillers, we’re sure that everyone will find at least one class ring to suit their play style. Just choose your favourite ring ability and use your Dungeoneering tokens to upgrade it up to tier 10; you even can switch your ring’s class for ‘hybriding’ within a dungeon, so long as you’re not in combat. Perhaps you’re a skiller who wants higher returns from resource spots; maybe you’re a big melee tank who wants to be able to soak up even more damage; or you could be a ranger who needs to be able to snipe targets for even greater damage; and even mages can get huge boosts to elemental damage with the Blazer class ring.

We’re also adding the Construction skill to Dungeoneering in the form of a new building spot to the smuggler’s room. Players with the appropriate Construction level will be able to create their own locations in the start room, whether it’s a prayer altar or farming spot, or even the new group gatestone portal (fantastic for getting your team about within larger dungeons), there’s bound to be something useful you can build (assuming you have the appropriate materials, of course).

We also plan to have the work for single-player instance dungeons completed, so those solo Dungeoneers who need to log out for five minutes or who suffer some infernal disconnection issues will find their dungeon still remains when they come back. For more info on all of these Dungeoneering updates, check out this blog.

Our final update this month starts with a rework of our old treasure trails. We wanted to make sure that players felt more rewarded for doing every treasure trail and not just rely on blind luck to get a treasure trail-only reward or cool pieces of costume. So we’ve changed all of the existing trails to ensure that you’ll always get a unique, trail-specific reward every time you open the reward casket at the end! Naturally, to achieve this, we needed to add a plethora of new rewards and challenges, so this update will also introduce a brand new set of treasure trails – called the elite treasure trails – and new rewards.

These trails (dropped only by high-level boss monsters like the Skeletal Horror and Bork) introduce a new puzzle known as the celtic knot. These knot puzzles are similar in style to the sliding tile puzzles, but with a whole new set of challenges to solve them. You may also be asked to fight a Guthix wizard while searching for the 150+ new rewards, many of which have been added to the existing trails in the game. Look out for dragon masks, 3rd Age prayer gear, holy ranger gear, treasure trail-specific familiars and animal staves to name just a few.

Also, for something a little different this summer, why not join in with the in-game RuneScape Summer Festival? Run entirely by our player support teams, the event will feature parades and the next round of the Clan Wars Triumvirate Challenge. For more information, read this news.
Have fun!

Mod Mark
RuneScape Lead Designer

The Elemental Workshop below Seers’ Village holds many secrets, long forgotten by the world above. Even as you read this, adventurers are scouring the world of RuneScape to find the means to pass through the body door, eager as they are to unlock more of this ancient forge’s mysteries.

Your efforts in the previous Elemental Workshop quest quite literally required a piece of your mind, but you’ll need it in a more typical, puzzle-solving capacity to get the contraption hidden behind the body door working again. Grasp the inner workings of this contraption, another of Vitruvius’s ingenious machines, and you will be able to show off your mental prowess with equipment made from the new body bar, and the ability to create body armour with elemental metals.

And for those adventurers who cannot master the puzzle, only insanity awaits…

Mod Dylan
RuneScape Content Developer

Summary:
Where to start The Elemental Workshop III:

Seers’ Village chapel.

Requirements to start The Elemental Workshop III:

Elemental Workshop II
Level 20 Mining
Level 33 Defence
Level 33 Smithing

In other news…

You can now right-click the ‘Now playing’ song to add it to your music playlist.

We’ve added three more areas where NPCs can now appear and offer to teleport you to the Fish Flingers D&D. These locations are Piscatoris, Shilo Village and Barbarian Village.

You can now choose the colour of your split chat. In the in-game options menu, click the Split Private Chat check box and select a colour.

We’ve overhauled a core part of our graphics engine to give it four times as much fidelity for modelling and animation; as a result you may notice that various aspects of the in-game graphics look smoother. Because this change has involved modifying many thousands of models and animations there’s a small chance certain combinations won’t look quite right. We encourage you to submit bug reports if you spot anything amiss. You may also find the game client takes slightly longer to update this week while it processes all the changes we’ve made.

The update about barrows puzzle doors is great as it was annoying to have to try click and get attacked all the time or end up clicking the wrong answer in the rush to click.

Good luck to all that try the quest.

Things look grim indeed for Zanaris and the fairy folk who live there, and it may already be too late. The Fairy Godfather’s little coup d’état worked, and he’s opened up a rift to an ork-filled realm to rally an army. In particularly, his personal retinue of ork generals have made him, how you say, untouchable.

Thanks to your efforts, the Fairy Queen managed to survive this coup, and since returning to active duty has built up a Fairy Resistance. Her chief military advisor, the Tooth Fairy, feels the time is right to mount a counter-offensive and neutralise the Godfather and his orks once and for all.

In a Fairy Tale Part III – Battle at Orks Rift, the third and final part of this fairy quest trilogy, you’ll be drafted to put the Tooth Fairy’s battle plan into action, preparing for the final push to take out the Fairy Godfather and his cronies. Dealing with him and his army of orks will take military precision, solid tactics…and more than a little bit of amateur dentistry. It will also test the combat skills of you and your allies in a fight to determine fate of Zanaris.

Your efforts to help the fairies will not go unrewarded; the spoils of this war include another magic farming tool and use of the fairy ring network without a staff. Maybe even Martin the Master Gardener will have some extra reward for you, seeing how it was he who set you on this path in the first place…

While carrying out the Tooth Fairy’s orders, you’ll probably notice that Zanaris has had a bit of sprucing up (as mentioned in these Developers’ Blogs), and that the orks are that little bit uglier. There’s never been a better time to set things right in the fairy kingdom – it’s time to fight for tooth, justice and the Zanarian way!

Mod Tytn

Lead RuneScape Content Developer

Summary:
Where to start A Fairy Tale Part III – Battle at Orks Rift:

Speak to the Fairy Queen at Fairy Resistance HQ
(you’ll need Fairy Nuff’s certificate to travel there; you can get a replacement from Fairy Nuff’s grotto north of Zanaris bank if you no longer have it).

Requirements to start A Fairy Tale Part III – Battle at Orks Rift:

A Fairy Tale Part II – Cure a Queen
Wolf Whistle
Level 59 Magic
Level 54 Farming
Level 51 Thieving
Level 37 Summoning
Level 36 Crafting
Ability to survive a battle against the equivalent of a level 180 foe

In other news…

Picking flowers as part of the Lily of the Valley holiday event has now been removed.

You can now obtain Shattered Heart’s strange rocks from mining gold and coal in the Living Rock Caverns, stealing from chests and stalls, making molten glass and throwing pottery, and from smithing cannonballs.

The Barrows has been adjusted so that when stood next to a puzzle door, you will no longer be interrupted by nearby NPCs attacking you.

EDIT: I have now reached 50 dungeoneering, the second binded item helps alot but this seems more of a mini game then a skill. It’s still a fun way to have a break from normal skills.

Dungeoneering Skill!

“As my foot touched the first icy cobblestone, a sense of dread flowed through my already shivering limbs. I could feel a presence, powerful and malevolent, hidden in the darkness before me. Cautiously, I rounded the corner, and was hit by a blast of hot, sulphur-smelling air. There was a sound of cracking bone and gristle that turned my stomach. Then my eyes adjusted and I saw it: a hulking demon, sitting before a blood-spattered stone door and feasting on the bodies of my fallen brothers. It was in that moment, as I raised my axe and prepared to charge for vengeance or death, that I gave the place the name it now bears…the Dungeons of Daemonheim.”

It’s out! The new skill is here and it’s available on free-to-play! You’ll receive all the equipment you need to train the skill when you arrive, so catch a boat to Daemonheim from behind the Al Kharid bank to start your new adventures!

Within each dungeon, the adventuring party is asked to solve puzzles and fight monsters, while using their skills to overcome the fiendish challenges that stand in their way. Use your skills to equip your party members, search for loot and keys and explore the floor until you find the epic boss monster at the end.

The environment contains hundreds of new objects, NPCs, rooms and locations covering an area more than 60 times the size of Falador – more than any single update ever has!

After adventuring (with a group of up to 4 other players), you’ll be able to access a wealth of new skill upgrades and reward items, including new weapons and armour for both the free and members’ game.

If you have any questions, please use the dedicated forums (Adventuring Parties, Dungeoneering Feedback and Dungeoneering Help) and read the associated KB articles.

Mod Mark
Lead Designer – RuneScape

Mod Trick, Mod Liono, Mod Chris L and Mod Benny
Principal Dungeoneering Developers

In other news…

The 2010 Easter event has been removed with this update.

We’ve added a button left of the minimap which you can toggle to show the total XP you have gained during your login session. After your feedback of this feature from the Bonus XP Weekend, this XP counter is here to stay!

I achievied 93-96 summoning within an hour last night when it was released, and am now a proud owner of a blue/white baby monkey. Many people got 99 summoning or close to it last night while I was training. It was fun seeing 50+ spirit kyatts swarm castle wars and edgeville banks, as well as the obelisk of course. There was plenty of random events to deal with during this time, because of the experience rate.

In a way I was disappointed about not getting 137 combat with 96 summoning, but it isn’t really that important I guess. It’s a pity that the gilded altar bonus experience doesn’t count this weekend, although it does make sense.

I would like to know what other people are using the bonus experience for, some other ideas that crossed my mind was doing herblore but I’ve been wanting the pack yak to help with slayer for a long time so chose that. Now to power through the last 1.4m experience so we can all go boss hunting Good luck to all that are still going for their wanted levels from this weekend and for those that are not using this experience, you don’t know what you are missing out on.