I’ve always been a huge fan of these, and providing transparency will give the community some insights into what currently is being worked on, and what to look forward to.
Feel free to leave your feedback on the highlighted content and design choices, we’d love to hear your input!
We will aim to write these on a regular basis. However, some weeks are filled with more available development time than other; and we don’t just want to have to post apologies for not being able to get work done.
So don’t hate us for not posting, just be happy when we do
Nonetheless, first and foremost a small disclaimer: the content highlighted in these blogs might not end up in the game.
They are a direct reflection of what we as developers are working on, although these might not be in line with what Rapsey and Mike think is good for the game.
After all, they get to decide which features end up in the game and which will not.
This (hopefully) will not always be the case though, and we aim to develop content that is in line with their vision.
Theatre of Blood
So, after quite a bit of discussion we have decided to start with developing Raids II first (the Theatre of Blood).
We are aware of the fact that the community is partially split on us starting with the Theatre instead of Raids I (Chambers of Xeric).
However, due to the required development time and skill-level for CoX, we decided to release the ToB first.
It would take us way longer to develop all of CoX’s features, while the ToB is more accessible for us newly-promoted developers.
Alongside that, some groundwork is required from Mike to provide the randomly generated CoX dungeons- which would only take more time.
Hopefully with the experience gained from the ToB we will be able to more efficiently tackle CoX.
While players would be enjoying the challenging Theatre of Blood, we will be working hard on creating the Chambers of Xeric.
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So, to get into our current progress: we recently got done with laying out (most of) the groundwork for the Theatre: Creating and managing parties, getting around, handling logging out, handling death (and the costs), handling spawning the bosses and npcs, etc. Might not be the most spectacular work, but it is required for us to properly start working on all the boss mechanics.
The biggest time-consumer is getting everything perfect.
We don’t want to release something that 'is like the Theatre of Blood', we want to develop a perfect copy.
From dialogue to mechanics, we want it to be perfectly in line with what OSRS has to offer.
Of course we’ll give it a twist where needed, to be more in line with our game and its contents. But these will be additions, not shortcuts.
One of the choices made for the death-mechanic is the following: instead of having the option to reclaim your lost items for 100k, we decided on having to pay a fee of 200m to re-enter the Theatre on death.
This would save us from a lot of weird mechanics that come with the reclaim-chests (such as completely losing items when dying while items are in the chest), and would make it so you can deposit coins in the chest to build a buffer.
Let me demonstrate:
Aside from that I sadly cannot really show you anything. Most of the work done up till now was mainly technical.
With this laid out, we’re able to start working on the boss mechanics though- so look forward to that!
The Catacombs of Kourend & Skotizo
In other news: work on the Catacombs of Kourend (and Skotizo, of course) has recently been finished.
It is currently being reviewed by Mike and is said to be released soon. To not spoil too much, here are some of the things that will be in this update:
- The fully filled Catacombs, overrun by all kinds of slayer creatures.
- The three demonbane weapons, with their effects and special attacks.
- New slayer creatures that can be slain both in the Catacombs and in already existing areas.
- Skotos, the tiny and adorable version of the scary Skotizo.
- We decided not to give out the demonbane weapons by completing quests. This would have been overkill. They are currently obtained from Lillia (at the Catacombs entrance).
- The Altar in the middle of the Catacombs can be used to teleport around the Catacombs, free of charge.
- Dying in Skotizo’s Lair will make your loot appear outside, but will NOT be considered a safe death. This is done so people will not lose their items, since entering the Lair would require another Dark Totem.
PvP Accessibility
We have heard the community and the desired changes to how people can get into PvP as quick as possible (alongside some rebalancing).
Most of these suggestions were communicated to Rapsey and Mike, who are deciding on which updates can actually be passed into the real game.
Some suggestions are about free / spawnable items, which is territory PkHonor hasn’t ventured into (yet). These need to carefully be taken into consideration, to prevent ways to abuse this.
However, to optimize implementation once a decision has been made, some preparations were laid out. For example, a redesigned shop for buying PvP equipment:
Alongside that, a new system for setting your combat-levels. The way it’s different from the old method of ::setlevel-ing your levels back down, is that this only masks your skill.
Your actual level (and its experience) will still remain the same. You will not lose your spot on the highscores or your comp-cape requirement when you want to pure-pk on your main for a bit.
Alongside that, some pre-set account builds have been added to quickly change your levels into a specific build. Take a look:
However, it’s decided that levels can only be lowered. You cannot surpass your current actual level in a specific skill. This is to secure game integrity.
Although, we can look into providing more rewarding experience lamps (for example). That is up to Rapsey and Mike.
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In other news
To give you some insight into the other developers: Andres has recently been around and given great input in developing the Theatre of Blood.
He has been quite busy with school and work, which is why he hasn’t developed content in a little while.
However, he said he would like to partner up in developing the Theatre of Blood. Which is amazing to hear!
Mike and Rapsey have had their hands full with maintaining the server and solving the issues with the DDoS-attacks we’ve been having.
I cannot really go into more detail than that though, but hopefully this will soon be fixed.
Alongside that, Mike has spent quite some time on reviewing our updates- which is why we had the most recent QoL update!
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And that’s all for today! If you have any questions, feedback or suggestions, let me know below.
I’d love to discuss ideas and input from you guys! Alternatively, feel free to shoot me a PM or a message through Discord.
Thanks, and have a wonderful day!
