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roofs, guards and the Shadow Realm

Home from above at dusk, the new slate roofs on the four plaza buildings around the Halloween gardens
Home from above at dusk, the new slate roofs on the four plaza buildings around the Halloween gardens

Umbra has been taken off the desert sand and put in the Shadow Realm, a walled arena built for the fight, and every world boss now splits its purse evenly between everyone who landed a hit. Home has roofs for the first time, its edges are finished with the Sanguine watch, and the server tour is a camera flythrough of the town rather than a walk.

Highlights

  • The Shadow Realm - Umbra fights in a walled arena of its own now, with 5,000 hitpoints and far less defence than it had on the sand.
  • Equal loot shares - every world boss but the Blood maledictus splits its coins and blood money evenly between everyone who landed a hit.
  • Roofs at home - slate roofs over the five roofed buildings and a cloister over Death's court, shown or hidden by the Hide roofs option.
  • The town's edges - Sanguine sentries walking the ditch line, the Ditch Watch yard, a rabbit hunter who walks his catch to the General Store, and the kennel in a dog run of its own.
  • The server tour - a camera flythrough from the south gates north through home, naming every landmark on the way.
  • Updates panel - every dev blog post now reads in the client, in a side panel that flashes when there is one you have not seen.

New content

  • The Shadow Realm - Umbra no longer stands on open sand beside the Ancient Pyramid. The six-hour clock raises it in a walled room of dark stone instead, 26 tiles square, with crystal-topped piers and buttresses round the walls, obelisks and braziers inside and a rift to step out through. The whole fight happens in there, the ground is still safe, and ::wb takes you to it as before. When the boss dies the realm begins to fade and nobody is moved, so your payout lands where you are standing.
  • Roofs at home - the bank, the shrine, the gambling hall and the two rooms on the west side of the plaza are roofed in slate, with an oxblood frieze and iron cresting, and Death's court has a cloister round three sides. They are hidden while the Hide roofs option is ticked, which is how an account starts; untick it to see them.
  • The Sanguine watch - home's edges are finished and they are ours rather than Edgeville's. Sentries in Sanguine armour walk a beat along the ditch, cannot be attacked, and stop and turn to whoever talks to them. A watch captain stands at the new guard post, a pair of guards spar in the yard, banner guards hold the shrine's north doorways and the blood arena's south door, and standards mark the walks and the dirt track into town. Edgeville's own attackable guards are retired from the edges.
  • The Ditch Watch - a walled, paved yard on a levelled terrace in the north-east field, with the guard post, a weapon rack and two archery targets in the corner.
  • The rabbit hunter - a camp in the meadow south-west of the south gate, with a drying rack and rabbits in the grass around it. He picks a rabbit, walks into crossbow range, shoots, kneels where it fell and walks home, and every few kills he carries the catch up through the gate to the General Store counter to sell it.
  • The dog run - the Crimson Kennel has moved out of the open and into a walled run of its own south of the Ditch Watch, with a trough, hay and bones.
  • Colonnade and arena roofs - a slate walk over the west colonnade's turn, and a gallery round the inside of the blood arena's wall that leaves the pit open to the sky.
  • Halloween map icon - a jack-o'-lantern on the map marks where Death is standing while the event is live.
Shadow General Umbra on the dark dais in the centre of its walled lair, purple crystals along the walls, with a player fighting it mid-arena
Shadow General Umbra on the dark dais in the centre of its walled lair, purple crystals along the walls, with a player fighting it mid-arena

Combat and balance

  • Equal loot shares at world bosses - land one hit and you are paid. Both purses are split evenly between everybody who did any damage, however the damage fell, and the share floor is gone. The extra rolls follow the same rule: Skotizo's unique slots and the Grim Reaper's restless spirits now go to contributors drawn at random instead of the top three by damage, so one landed hit is a ticket in Umbra's and Spectral Bandos's draws too. The Blood maledictus is left as it was and still pays by damage.
  • Umbra - 5,000 hitpoints rather than 8,000, and its defence is far lower, so spells land on it instead of splashing off. The Umbral shades heal it much less as well: 5 health every eight seconds each, rather than 10 every four, so a full wave can no longer out-heal a team.
  • Blood keys and caskets - all four world bosses now pay a Blood key at 1 in 5 and a Blood casket at 1 in 15, up from 1 in 20 and 1 in 40.
  • Donator mystery box from a world boss - Umbra and Spectral Bandos pay one at 1 in 40, down from 1 in 8.
  • Donator mystery box contents - the commonest rewards are gear rather than coin. An Abyssal whip, a packed Barrows set or an Abyssal bludgeon sit where the million coins, the 1,500 blood money, the hundred noted potions and the Pet booster were. Nothing at rare or above moved.
  • Slayer camp drop tables - the camp species the drop overhaul never reached are rebuilt from the wiki, 88 of them. Aberrant spectres, banshees, cave crawlers, rockslugs, jellies, harpie bug swarms and wall beasts were paying coins and nothing else, the Pyrelord had no table at all, and another forty-odd were down to one or two items. The dark bow and the granite maul now drop from their own monsters.
  • Nieve scales to your combat level - on an account that earns its combat stats, she sends you after monsters up to twice your own combat level rather than three and a half times it, so a combat-40 account gets ice warriors, ogres and skeletons instead of hellhounds. Her floor is open to a combat-3 account, boss tasks wait until combat 100 and she tells you so, and the whole board opens there. An account handed maxed stats at login sees no change.

Interface and quality of life

  • The server tour - the tour is a camera flythrough now. It opens at the south gates with the guards in shot, travels north up the spine past the Rest Yard, the gambling yard, the Portal Nexus, the trading hall, the fountain and the Blood Tournaments, then turns east to the bank, the Slayer masters and the events arena, and closes on the orb, the journal, the events tab and the Knowledge Centre before it asks you to vote and link. Your character is out of shot for the whole run, the camera is pulled back, there are no arrows on the landmarks, roofs lift off each building as it is shown, and every command in a line is written in blue. On a mandatory run the camera is already at the gates while you pick your account type. While Halloween is live it ends on Death in his court, with what the sweets and the cauldron are for.
  • Updates panel - a side panel in the client that reads every dev blog post, newest first, with its screenshots. The sidebar button flashes and a post is marked NEW until you have opened it.
  • Bestiary Monsters tab - ::drops now has Bosses and Monsters tabs over one search box. Monsters holds 113 entries, one for every Slayer task plus the Elder Chaos Druid and the eleven cave revenants, and examining any listed monster opens its page instead of printing a line.
  • Set drop rates read as any piece - a drop that rolls once and then picks a piece now shows the chance of getting any piece, and says "any piece" in the heading, rather than the three-times-rarer odds on one named piece. The Skotizo corrupted set, the Umbral vestments, the Bandos rares and the blood revenant weapons all read that way.
  • Shop commands are home only - ::shop, ::supplies, ::gstore, ::graceful, the skill shops and the tournament shop open at home and are refused anywhere else, the way your loadouts are. A shopkeeper's own Trade option is unchanged.
  • Stuck Slayer tasks - community managers and owners can cancel a Slayer or Blood Slayer task for you and grant Slayer points. A staff cancel is free and keeps your streak, you are told who did it, and every use is logged.
  • Loot races - a community loot race can be run on the Blood maledictus now that its Blood idol announces who took it.
  • World event line - the yellow line above the chatbox carries a countdown to the next world boss and drops off at zero, or a banner while a boss is standing.
  • Wiki box pages - every mystery box on the site lists what it can pay, and the spectral armour and Umbral vestments have pages of their own.
  • Reinforced goggles - on the Slayer shop's coin counter, for the sourhogs.
  • Slayer shop - its row sits with the kit-out shops in the shop list rather than further down.
The server tour opening at the south gates, the guide's dialogue over the two banner guards and the path north into home at dusk
The server tour opening at the south gates, the guide's dialogue over the two banner guards and the path north into home at dusk

Client and performance

  • Roof removal - with Hide roofs unticked, only the roof of the building you are standing under comes off, instead of every roof in view. It is on by default and stands aside while Hide roofs is ticked.
  • Launcher 1.0.13 - on macOS the launcher no longer leaves a second, idle Sanguine icon in the Dock beside the client's.

Fixes

  • Wiki table icons - item icons in the site's tables drew squashed to two thirds of their width and are full size again.
  • The server tour - waiting it out on the events tab no longer skips the Knowledge Centre, and the guide never presses Load for you. Open the loadouts orb mid-run and answer the offer and the tour picks up where it was.
  • Staff room statue - the S reads smooth with a gold bevel and a crimson shimmer, and its north face is no longer almost black.