[Kimojuno]

Quick find code: 15-16-46-58537132

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 ('Submit a Bug Report' under the 'Help' drop-down menu of the website).

Graphical

* The dragon axe animations have been updated.
* Locations and NPCs should stop disappearing for a split second, such as the archery targets in Lumbridge.
* We have fixed an issue with a cutscene in While Guthix Sleeps.
* Pikkupstix is a little livelier when he's standing around.
* The floor in player-owned houses should no longer interfere with players’ feet.
* A few more interfaces have been converted to a new and improved format.
* The TzHaar pit entrance has been restored to its former glory.
* The Kudos interface should no longer be hidden by the minimap in High Detail mode.
* The Third Age shield's border will no longer render through .
* The height-mapping around Canafis bank has been evened out, due to subsidence.
* Lighting fires in certain areas of Dorgesh Kaan should no longer remove the roof above.
* Several locations in Mos Le'Harmless have had render issues removed.
* The boulder in Olaf's cave now correctly animates when rolling the correct way.
* Oldak's lightning machine no longer clips through the ceiling.
* A render issue has been fixed in the Varrock Sewers.
* A dry stone wall now better resembles a dry stone wall, and has fewer gaps.
* The Digsite pendant now has the correct teleport animation associated with it.



Quest

* An NPC involved in the Grand Tree quest can now fight properly.
* We have removed a discrepancy with the King's Ransom starting requirements.
* Prison Pete's chat now correctly refers to the door you need to unlock, rather than the old series of doors.
* Some of the scenery in Back to my Roots has been updated and animated in the boss fight.
* The Fremmenik Isles quest requires 40 Agility, and correctly enforces this requirement where necessary.
* We have ensured that the checks for the In Search of Myreque quest handle players in all situations.
* Some of the dialogue in Meeting History has been adjusted to make slightly more sense.
* We have fixed an issue in the Myths of the White Lands quest when sliding around in a cutscene.
* The Rocking Out quest’s final cutscene has been slightly adjusted to improve the graphics and general behaviour.
* The Summoning requirement for While Guthix Sleeps has been clarified and should definitely be 23.



Minigames

* The Fishing Trawler will now allow you to bank your fish rewards directly.
* The doors in the Castle Wars entrance area are now open by default.
* The Barbarian Assault fighter hat should no longer make male heads disappear in Low Detail.
* The water effect was missed from an area near Pest Control.
* We have made sure the minimap in Puro-Puro is still hidden, as was intended.
* We have fixed an arithmetic error in the PvP world code.
* Treasure Trail boxes are now destroyed on drop, but provide information about where to re-obtain them.



Miscellaneous

* The Party Room is now a familiar-free area.
* You can no longer have a familiar near the Grand Exchange.
* The Party Room chest now has a bank pin.
* Several items have had their market price reverted to what they were before the RWT fixes (while relaxing a restriction on the market price). The shop price will also be more consistent with player values of the item.
* Gnomes will now drop certain gnome cuisine items.
* Various NPCs around Lumbridge will occasionally drop grapes.
* Spirit trees will now give information regarding the next evil tree spawn.
* The god familiars (Zamorak hawk, etc) will now provide the same protection as god-related items while in God Wars.
* Typos and grammatical errors have been fixed in a few places.
* You should be able to store the Hallowe'en warlock outfit in your player-owned house. The costume room code was also reworked slightly.
* The sound for the Home Teleport spell correctly stops if you interrupt its casting.
* A pillar in Pollnivneach dungeon now blocks Ranged attacks.
* An issue has been fixed with trying to summon a familiar if you don't have one.
* We have updated some checks for when players are in costumes.
* The code that checks the Defence and Ranged requirements for items has been made more consistent.
* Tormented demons should now be considered demons by the Darklight weapon.
* We have updated some combat code for various Ranged items and some more unusual weapons like mud pies.
* Black spears were wrongly requiring an Attack level of 10 rather than Ranged to wield them.
* Dagon’hai robes are no longer allowed on Entrana.
* You will now have to wait a few seconds after combat before you can use emotes.
* Some item text is now clearer on the Grand Exchange expert interfaces.
* The player-owned house god banners have been moved together in the Construction guide, and the Guthix symbol now matches the correct colours (from green to red).
* The Statue of Saradomin in player-owned houses were slightly too tall for the room.
* You should now gain Crafting xp when the pyrelord familiar crafts gold bars into jewellery.
* Sacred and volatile pickaxes have been added to the Mining skill guide.
* We have adjusted the message you get when you run out of Prayer Points.
* The hints to penguin locations have been adjusted slightly, to help you catch the penguins in more cases.
* Zaff will now be more flexible when you're trying to request battlestaves.

In this week’s update, we’ve implemented an extremely frequently-requested improvement to route-finding. This should particularly improve the playability of the game in laggy situations.

For a long time (well, forever really) it has been the case that when you click to move somewhere, your character would occasionally run in the wrong direction for a few steps before turning around and going to the point you actually selected. Fixing this has been a popular request for a long time. It might sound like a simple task, but in fact it was very difficult, which is why we hadn’t managed it until now.

To fix the problem we have had to move the route-finding calculation onto our servers, so that the route is always calculated from the correct spot. However, before we could do that we had to upgrade all of our servers to be able to handle the extra computations required! We’ve finally made this investment, and have been able to update the route-finding accordingly.

We think this is a great example of a small change which should make a big difference to how the game feels to play.

Mod Michael
Game Engine Developer

Ever since Dorgesh-Kaan made contact with the surface, the cave goblin adventurer Zanik has helped to defend the city from Sigmund's villainous plots. Now Zanik has disappeared, her fate and whereabouts unknown, and Dorgesh-Kaan is more vulnerable than ever.

Captain Undak of the Dorgeshuun guard is responsible for the city's defences, and he needs your help to investigate a possible HAM attack - but this will only be the start of your adventure. The mystery of Zanik's disappearance will be resolved, and the truth behind a goblin prophecy will be revealed, as events move inexorably towards the realisation of Zanik's destiny. Your adventures will include the discovery of a new Agility course, learning more about the history of the Dorgeshuun, and uncovering the plots of the Big High War God.

The Chosen Commander is the conclusion of a quest series that began with The Lost Tribe. I've had enormous fun working on this storyline over the last few years, and I've tried to give what I think are the best elements of the previous quests a final outing here. I hope you enjoy it.

Mod John A
RuneScape Content Developer

Summary:
Where to start The Chosen Commander:
Speak to Captain Undak in Dorgesh-Kaan.

Requirements to complete The Chosen Commander:
Level 46 Agility
Level 46 Strength
Level 46 Thieving
Must have completed Land of the Goblins
Must be able to defeat several foes up to level 125

To be reminded of what’s happened so far in this quest series, start the quest and then log in to the QuestHelp system – you’ll find a complete summary of all the earlier quests, from The Lost Tribe to Land of the Goblins.

To go along with the quest we're releasing a new Knowledge Base article, History of the Goblins, which is in the Miscellaneous Guides section of the Knowledge Base. We're also releasing a developer forum post looking back over the quest series, which can be found in the forums under Recent Updates. If you enjoy the goblin quests you may also want to read the newest Lores and Histories story, The Chasm of Lights.

In Other News...

To mark the end of the Dorgeshuun quest series, we’re releasing a limited-edition zip-up hoodie on the Jagex store. It’s a limited run of only 2,000, so click here to get yours now!

If you’re logged in to RuneScape and navigate away from the game screen, you will now have to click on a confirmation box to confirm that you want to navigate away from the page. This is to make sure that you don’t accidentally lose your game window.

We've made a couple of changes to the party room due to concerns about abuse by real-world traders. Firstly, drop parties are now available only on two worlds (131 and 152). Secondly, players must now enter their bank PIN (if they have one) before putting items into the drop chest. We're sorry we have to do this, but we can't let real-world traders ruin the party.

We've added a wave-counter interface that will pop up at the start of each round in the TzHaar fight caves. This means you should now find it much easier to track which wave you're on.

Male ogres have been graphically reworked and improved to bring them in line with the recently-updated female ogres. They look tougher and stronger than ever, but don't worry; they're still not the smartest creatures around!

Players will no longer increase their drop-value potential on PvP worlds if they repeatedly cast the basic strike spells.

We've reduced the likelihood of your getting Random Events if you're burning incense in your house, or if you're in building mode. We've also reduced the likelihood that you’ll get Random Events in the Chaos Tunnels and on the Dorgesh-Kaan agility course.

Email registration for new accounts is now optional, although we would still advise you to enter your email address when registering, so that we can help you if you need to recover your password.

New hoodie:
Quick find code: 13-14-626-58537133

SPOILER alert. This article assumes you've played The Lost Tribe and Death to the Dorgeshuun.

The goblin quests: characters Quick find code: 15-16-681-58537124

Article saved below:


SPOILER alert. This article assumes you've played The Lost Tribe and Death to the Dorgeshuun.

The release of The Chosen Commander is the first time we've concluded a major, long-running quest series. As such, it's a great excuse to look back on the series and say a bit about how it was developed. I'm Mod John A, lead developer on the goblin quest series. In this article I'm going to be talking about the development of the two central characters in the quest series: Sigmund and Zanik.

Sigmund
The H.A.M. group was not created for the goblin quest series, but for the One Small Favour quest. Their role in One Small Favour is really just 'some guys who want chickens', and their role generally was 'some guys you can nick stuff from', but they had some lovely flavour about being a monster-hating religious group. When I wrote The Lost Tribe, I realised that the cave goblins would need an enemy, and the H.A.M. movement was the perfect choice. They would hate goblins without knowing anything about them—which was useful because I didn't want the player to know much about the cave goblins at the start of the quest series.

I couldn't just use the H.A.M. movement as a whole as the enemy, though, it needed a human face: one particular character to direct its efforts against the cave goblins. So the first character I created was the quest series' villain, Sigmund. I conceived him as a combination of two elements:

Firstly, he's an old-fashioned, over-the-top pantomime villain cliché. If there were a moustache-twirling animation in the game, he'd be playing it every time he spoke. He's the sort of villain who'd tie the heroine to railway tracks, which I couldn't resist doing in a later quest in the series. His dialogue was enormous fun to write. “Curse you, [player name]! You win this time—but we will meet again!”

Secondly, he's a racist and a religious fundamentalist. He believes in a twisted version of the Saradominist religion in which humans are the chosen people and other races are fit to be slaves at best. But he really, sincerely, powerfully believes in this, which makes him a very scary villain to think about, but is also meant to give him a certain nobility. He's not out for personal gain: he believes in something greater than himself, even if that belief is hateful. Sigmund is meant to be a 'worthy opponent', one who is evil but nevertheless demands a certain level of respect.

Zanik
The Lost Tribe introduced the cave goblins as a whole, but there were still no very well-developed cave goblin characters. For the next quest, Death to the Dorgeshuun, I wanted to remedy that, and to try something that RuneScape hadn't done before.

For the most part, RuneScape NPCs (Non-Player Characters) stay in one place, just wandering around within a small area. We had the ability to make an NPC follow the player around, but at the time the only NPCs that did so were cats; the Summoning skill was still a long way off. I decided to make a more developed NPC follower who could accompany the player throughout a quest.

The first part of Death to the Dorgeshuun explores the idea of having a character follow you around. You take Zanik on a tour of Lumbridge, and talking to practically anyone in the area will trigger a conversation between Zanik and that character. I had to limit Zanik to the Lumbridge area to keep things sane—there was no way I could write Zanik chat for every NPC in the world!

The core idea of Zanik is that she's an adventurer—basically, the cave goblin counterpart of the player character. As far as she's concerned, she's the one doing the quest and you're her sidekick. I tried to give her a distinctive voice and personality, and as the quest series has progressed I've tried to build on that.

I had always intended Zanik to be an important character, but it was only gradually that I realised how important she was.

The Compound Hero
One of the most effective ways to make a compelling story is to give it a compelling central character. In books and films, and even in most games, this is straightforward since the author has complete control over who the main character is. But in some games, such as RuneScape, it becomes more difficult. In RuneScape you don't control a character that the game writer invented; instead, you create your own character, pick their appearance, equip them however you like, and choose which skills they train.

Unfortunately for the writer, that means that a lot of storytelling devices are no longer available. I can't give the player character a tragic backstory, since you might not like to think of your character as having that tragedy in their past. I can't say much about the player character's motivations, since you might object to your character having those motivations. In particular I can't force your character to develop: I can't have them start cowardly and learn courage, or start selfish and learn to care about others. Whether your character is cowardly or brave, selfish or selfless, is up to you.

Having Zanik go through the quests with the player character solves that problem, because I can transfer a lot of that characterisation onto her. In this sense, Zanik and the player character make up a kind of compound hero. Your character has the agency: it is your actions that drive the plot forward and your efforts that solve the problems; but Zanik provides the emotional hook of a strong central character. Zanik should be compelling, but she shouldn't steal the limelight.

I hope you've enjoyed adventuring with Zanik and fighting against Sigmund during the quest series, and I've tried to give both their stories a good conclusion in the final episode.

[x..]

hot.

[Kimojuno]

As regards where the red flag gets put when you click on the minimap, a little explanation is in order:

The flag now always appears where you click, be it somewhere your character can walk to, cannot walk to, or even black/empty space. This is because the client is simply telling you where you clicked - it is now completely up to the server whether you can get there.

We talked about this issue in our team quite a bit before finally settling upon the idea that this was the most user-friendly and, above all, simple behaviour, as opposed to:

a) Moving the flag AFTER you clicked (i.e. the flag jumps erratically)
b) Not displaying the flag UNTIL your route was confirmed (i.e. with lag)

Both of these were less desirable than simply letting the flag be where it started and moving you to the best possible place, because the other two options were deemed more confusing.

Note that the route-finding should NOT be trying to put you anywhere it didn't used to - if you weren't able to reach a spot before, you still won't be able to - likewise if you could reach a spot happily from where you were standing, you should still be able to!

The difference is that the flag now shows you where you clicked in ALL cases, not where you're going to end up.

If you're having problems with OPEN doors and not being able to click through them, then we need to know about this as it should not be happening!

However where you are in a room with a CLOSED door and you try to click outside of the room - your character will simply move to the side of the room nearest the spot you clicked - this is no different to how it was before! Just that your flag may suggest otherwise!

Cheers,

Mod Michael
Game Engine Developer

Quick find code: 15-16-483-58537129

( 18th page )

Hi everyone,

Unfortunately, we are still experiencing some difficulty with some of our servers.

If the server error kicked you out of the game, it is possible that your account may appear to have someone other than yourself logged into your account. This will just be a side-effect of the server being down so please do not panic, once things are fixed you will be able to log in again as normal.

Don't worry, during this time your character will not be in the game so you need have no fear of dying or losing items from this server problem.

We apologise for the inconvenience and hope to get you back in the game as soon as possible.

Server Issue: Still Logged In?

Quick find code: 15-16-387-58538563

We have fixed a recent issue where players were losing pets on login (if they logged out with them active at the Grand Exchange).

This occurred because a safety net that some old code relied on was removed. The code has been re-written to not require this safety net.

We are conducting further investigations into this issue. I would like to apologise to those players affected by this, and also for the delay in communicating this information – I have been working on a fix as quickly as I possibly could!

Mod_Liono

Quick find code: 15-16-881-58538873

As some players have noticed, there was a bug with the instance of killing the wild jade vine after the Back to My Roots quest, however we have found the bug and applied liberal amounts of pesticide and it is no more!

Remember if you should spot a bug in the future, please use our bug report system so we can squash them without any getting away.

Mod Maz
Queen of the Squirrels
(and squashing vine eating bugs)

Quick find code: 15-16-633-58538918

[Kimojuno]

Tech reason for todays crashes

The cause of this afternoons server instability has now been identified and is being fixed.

The problem was caused by a change we made in this update to make the game load faster. Unfortunately whilst the changed worked fine when we were it testing it, it didn't work once it was opened up to thousands of people.

For the technically minded, the problem was as follows:

We made a small change to our code to increase the size of the network buffers the game server uses (to allow the updates to load faster and reducing map loading times).

We calculated that our servers had enough spare memory and bandwidth to support the increase, and it also worked fine in testing so we went ahead and launched it.

However it turns out that network buffers sit in kernel memory, and furthermore there is a limit to how much memory the kernel can address (which isn't related to the amount of physical memory in the machine.). This means even though the machine had plenty of spare RAM once we hit about 10,000 concurrent connections on a single server, we ran out of kernel memory and the servers started breaking horribly. Worse still it turns out if that happens it doesn't just refuse to open a new connection, it starts randomly killing processes or crashes the whole machine.

We've put the network buffers back to their old size now, and are rebooting the dead servers so everything should be back to normal shortly. We'll try again with this improvement once we've worked out how to sort out the kernel memory limitation, it probably means moving to a 64-bit kernel.

The problem is we make hundreds of changes to our product every month to improve it for you, and despite testing sometimes things slip through. For example for this particular change we were just changing one number in our code, and it didn't seem complicated or dangerous, but it had significant unexpected knock on consequences.

I'm really sorry about this happening. I know this is a bit technical but I thought I should at least explain what went wrong.

Quick find code: 15-16-757-58538736

[Kimojuno]

Hi,

The recent System Update consisted of some alterations that we have made to the new Bandos agility course.

With a requirement of level 60 Agility, we intended it to be a great course for players around and just above this level. At higher levels, we'd hope that people would then consider other courses, as after all, no-one wants to run around the same course for too long and it's always nice to have a change of scenery.

Our intention was that at level 60, this course would be just slightly underneath the existing Werewolf course, and at level 65, this course would excel, giving you a better rate of XP than the popular Ape Atoll course. However, that benefit is capped, as once you're an expert at the course, you can't get any better than perfection. Once you reach slightly higher levels such as 70, you'll find the Ape Atoll course is once again the best in terms of rate of XP. Obviously, which course is best for you also depends a little on your relative skill on each course and your preference for which environment you enjoy.

We tested all the courses to see how fast they can be completed and calculated the XP which we would need to give to achieve this band within which the new Bandos course is the best. Unfortunately, the change from the original development value to the new calculated value was missed, resulting in the course being the best in the game from level 60 onwards.

We don't want to make all the other great courses redundant, so we have corrected the value. We are sorry for this oversight and apologise for any disappointment caused.

Finally, we would like to thank you all for your awesome feedback regarding The Chosen Commander. As always, we take your feedback very seriously and are pleased that the majority of you enjoyed the quest.

Quick find code: 15-16-546-58542959

We have identified a few issues with yesterday's update that have been affecting some of you playing the game. These include:

* Erratic camera movement

We received reports that some of you have been experiencing jerky camera movement (lurching in different directions, 'sea-sickness' motion). This was caused by a bug in an update designed to make camera movement smoother than before, which produced exactly the opposite for a few of you! This will be fixed.

* NPC retaliation

A few of you told us that there were some instances where an NPC was failing to retaliate when attacked. This will be fixed.

* Fire capes flashing in Standard Detail mode

Some of you with lava capes reported a rather strange bug. When performing certain actions such as casting spells or jumping over stiles, if you were wearing your cape it would start flashing. We've identified this issue and soon your capes will be back to normal!

We will be launching an update this afternoon to fix these bugs!

I'd like to apologise to those of you who have been affected by these bugs, and to take this opportunity to thank all the dedicated players who have provided us with feedback. With your help and input we can get to these problems faster than ever, and make your gaming experience even better as a result!

Some of you have also expressed an issue with route-finding, regarding where the red flag gets placed when you click on the mini-map. This is not actually a bug, but rather a side-effect due to the route-finding code being moved to the server. We will be looking to see if there is a better way we can show where your player is walking to, under the new system. There will be no changes to this in this afternoon's update. However, we will keep you posted on future developments!

Cheers,

Mod Michael
Game Engine Developer

Quick find code: 15-16-854-58543000

[Ratty]

Wow.

I loved that post about kernel memory. *is learning about OSs now*

[Kimojuno]

Wow.

I loved that post about kernel memory. *is learning about OSs now*

Heh, always good to find out about things.

If you are still having problems with jerky camera movement after this afternoon's bug fix, please could you post in this thread with:

- Details of what kind of problem you are experiencing (is the stuttering at a constant rate or is it going smooth-slow-smooth-slow, or something similar)

- Your machine spec: Processor make (e.g. Intel Pentium 4) and speed (e.g. 2Ghz), memory (e.g. 1GB) , graphics card (e.g. ATI Radeon X800, nVidia GeForce 9600 GT), operating system (e.g. Windows)

- Whether your PC's main processor is dual core, quad core, Hyper-Threaded, etc. - this is particularly important as we are aware of a very isolated issue with a certain kind of dual core processor that we are hoping to fix that MAY solve issues with the camera

Thanks in advance, and hopefully we can nail this problem once and for all!

Cheers,

Mod Michael
Game Engine Developer

Quick find code: 15-16-422-58543984