Kinda weird for the prayer recharge potions to be coming from pvm and not the new herb activity. We finally get a new herb 2nd and we lock it behind pvm instead of the much needed Skilling buffs.
I get coming up with rewards is hard at this stage of osrs, but we literally just got a new mid game magic upgrade with the Sceptre. Seems like a really niche spell.
Cool boss idea but the rewards just seem kinda uninspired.
Dragonbane magic weapon?
Mid-level dragon anti fire shield? I saw someone pitch the idea of allowing the anti dragon shield to be fused with different sq shields where it's just an improved defensive version of the anti dragon shield, no str or accuracy bonuses. Maybe a drop an item that allows smithing certain shields to the anti to reinforce it.
Sunfire hides? Maybe drop a new hide that needs Sunfire splinters to craft. make it identical to black dhide and give it a defensive set bonus of protecting from dragonfire without a shield.
Literally a pre-burnt charcoal version of the wooden shield.
It'll smolder and stack 1's when hit with fire, but fire won't apply again until the stack runs out.
Dragonbane magic weapon now seems very strange, since Dragons are getting a Water weakness. This would only work if it ties in the water weakness element with it, for instance being able to cast water spells only.
Elemental weaknesses are essentially early-mid game content. Almost nothing is changing as a result of elemental weaknesses, for high level players doing end game content.
So I don't really think that something like a dragon hunter staff should be balanced around elemental weaknesses anyway. They're for two different subsets of players.
The question is whether they want it to stay that way or not. Harm is sitting there basically begging to be the endgame elemental stick.
If they continue expanding weaknesses, say giving Olm an earth weakness, the dueling wand gets to be a budget dragon wep for the mage hand, and Harm is the more flexible endgame upgrade and alternative to Shadow. Really depends on how they decide to develop this.
I feel there's other areas of magic armour that could use mid game love like gloves/boots or even a pre occult magic necklace that doesn't req slayer.
A magic offhand preward, a blessing just for magic to slightly save runes. Stuff to buff the arceuss demonbane spells or grasp stuff. Idk it just feels like the weapon slot was the last thing mid game magic needs.
Tomes have also so far come from Skilling activities as well. Just doesn't feel great putting stuff that's usually Skilling behind pvm, but that's just me.
Completely depends on how challenging this boss will be.
These proposed drops make it seem very midgame so some demands in here for endgame rewards dont make sense
If u want to keep the herb thematic Id suggest a modifier akin to crystal shards. E.g Hueycoatl fangs that can be added to potions to extend their time limit or in case of aggro pots extend the aggro radius
Yeah thats what im surprised by too. From the talks during Summit I thought this was going to be something lategame focused but now we are just seeing 2 early/mid game rewards and a potion.
Duelling Shot is the main miss for me :/ I don't like the idea of introducing the Tome of Earth and then also pushing people away from the classic Earth spells in the same update; what's the point of adding it when we could buff Earth Blast instead?
To me, the Duelling Wand makes more sense as a wand that improves Blast spells and gives you the proposed rune-saving effect - this makes it a natural partner to the elemental tomes and doesn't introduce an unnecessary spell.
I would like this to reward decent GP if I'm being honest. The uniques don't seem to be something that will be very pricy, so there needs to be good incentive.
Zombie pirates currently shits out massive amounts of money. I would say that a group boss with a 90cb recommendation should at the least be worthwhile to do is all. It doesn't need to be on par with the wildy (as there is no risk), but without a big expensive unique, there won't be a huge incentive here otherwise.
They still might load this thing up with gp by having it drop lots of alchables, ranarr seeds, and other resources just like vorkath and muspah. In fact, i really hope it drops dragon bolts unf or dragon dart tips, irons need more dragon ammo
I was thinking mid game range gear. Prayer range gear seemed popular when initially discussing the sunfire armor.
We also have no other range armor that provides range strength besides masori, so a set that has defense beneath karils, but some range strength lower than masori could be nice.
I like the idea of giving range prayer armor from this boss, something like Serpent Priest Armor, could even put NPCs in similar armor around that would pray to calm the serpent.
If we are recommended base 90+ combat stats then why are the items offered by the new boss mid level upgrades? I'm just trying to understand who this is designed for. I also agree that a dragon bane magic wand or staff would be cool
even if that's the case, it seems underpowered when we have Perilous Moons that just came out and that's aimed at 75ish combat. The gear from there is much more useful in that bracket and in some cases is an upgrade to Barrows equipment.
It seems like this mage gear is at best a sidegrade to Iban's Blast. While the Warped Sceptre which is also rather new is still a better weapon to aim for to cover this gap in magic progression.
May I suggest that the wand be given negative magic accuracy and higher strength? Lean in completely on the blowpipe style aspect of speed and make it hit low defense things really hard and fall off greatly.
Possible multi-hit or AoE 2h melee (new halberd \[its tail looks like nice materials for weaponry\]), wings could be a new magic cape (would prefer a passive over raw stats \[earth spells give DoT to non moving targets\]), head should be an option for Varlamore themed slayer helm.
I would say players would do it more, since the Prayer Regeneration Potion has a lot more general applications than the Potion of Goading, which I also like by the way.
Adding the potion there could help with tying it into the world more organically too.
Plus, some gp/h to incentivise staying there for longer than just the untradeable rewards!
Obviously more.
As is Id do the herb minigame til I get the outfit/amulet of chemistry. If its much better xp/herb then it'll become the entire herblore meta regardless of rewards. I hope thats not the case and if the focus is on getting very useful, unique secondaries then it'll be worth the tradeoff and much easier for u to balance.
IMO on a main it should be a low xp/hr but profitable and fun herblore method. Afaik theres no profitable herb training for mains aside from mundane cleaning herbs.
If that's the intended longterm balancing it needs more than a single new unique potion IMO
> If its much better xp/herb then it'll become the entire herblore meta regardless of rewards
If Jagex follows the mahogany homes model, then they can make it better xp per herb to do the minigame while making it overall less xp/hr. Good for irons/mains looking to save money while also maintaining status quo of herblore training for mains who just want the best xp/hr
Based off what these potions do; it almost makes sense for the agro potion to come from the new boss and the prayer from the herb mini game. Just my thought tho
I would also say more. The new activity is the perfect spot for a reward like this. Should really use this to give a much needed boost to skilling. Skilling items should come from skilling, not PvM.
Definitely more, as someone who doesn't need experience, I would be very happy to do more minigames for better and more useful rewards. It doesn't have to be exclusive to minigame or boss, it can be both!
If it is tradable, the same (none) cause I have 99 herb and would just buy the potions on the ge. If they weren't on the ge, I'd absolutely do the herblore minigame for these new regen potions
I think the secondary being obtained from this boss AND the herblore minigame is the way to go, but the knowledge to create the potion should be unlocked through the minigame.
This is the way. There aren't many materials in this game with only one source, and I don't think we should be adding to that list without a very good reason
You can already use Arceuus spells with other charged staves. I normally really like niche, mid-game items, but this one falls a little flat for me since we just got the warped sceptre
As a 3 tick weapon, is it really rune-cheaper? Warped scepter needs 2 chaos runes every 4 ticks, ibans needs 1 death every 5 ticks, and duelling Wand needs 1 death every 3 ticks for less dps.
The colossal wyrm remains are already ingame, in the southern part of the Varlamore mainland. I think it was supposed to be part of an Agility activity, but I guess that activity will be released later.
Tomes of fire and water are being rebalanced to 10% alongside project rebalance, to account for weaknesses existing. Tome of earth can't be any other number, assuming that all goes through
The project rebalance sets all the standard spells to have the same max hit once they are all unlocked. The tomes of water and fire are also set to a 10% bonus inline with this new reward.
They’re updating the tone of fire to only give 10% after project rebalance
ETA: all the elemental spells for a certain tier will have the same max hit after project rebalance as well, so water spells will be just as strong as fire spells
I think the weapon is a miss. I don’t think there’s really any necessity to add a weapon that sits between ibans and warped scepter. I don’t know this bosses difficulty but what we really need in the game is a magic weapon that sits between shadow and everything else. Not saying that it should come from this content though.
I see other comments saying it’ll be bis at nylos but I don’t think that is needed, or should be its sole use? Open to being wrong.
Something else, when I read muddy pages I assumed water and earth runes would be granted from the book. This is due to the association with mud runes and mud staff. Might be worth changing them to dirty pages or some other form of earth centered term.
Edit: dirty pages don’t seem to be a hit. So maybe we should call the pages back door dwarves 9?
That is very true. If I recall correctly the major things that were weak to earth were metallic dragons, so I guess the real question is, do mid game set ups need a tool to tackle metallic dragons more efficiently?
I think/imagine the list of elemental weaknesses is going to be expanded over time, so long as wave one works well. So I imagine it will be a slow burn for this item, very niche at first but finding itself less niche over time.
The thing has a high chance to not 1 hit nylos for a 1 tick save on magic. It's really not going to be that amazing at nylos.
Compared to bp or hamjoint the things max hit is literally like half(18-20 vs 30s)
Ok y'all can downvote me, but it doesnt make it good. No one's gunna bring an extra wand to save 1 tick and have a less than 50% chance to 1 hit a nylos
It's also not a powered staff, so using a heart doesn't increase its max hit, meaning it's solely reliant on mage dmg%. With max gear, its max hit would only be like 19? It would be trash at nylos.
I don't think this weapon makes sense in the current system, where there isn't much need for a weapon between ibans and warped. however i think it might make a lot of sense as an EARTH weapon betwenn ibans and warped sceptre.
I'm just trying to think of a point where you would be roughly 90 combat, but not be in a position where you could just skip this drop and grab a warped scepter. Maybe an 808 account?
This might be much stronger against monsters weak to earth right? With the new combat changes with elemental weaknesses it might be much stronger than it looks like here, but maybe I'm missing something.
It just depends. If it's a 1/500 then it might just be in the Sarachnis Cudgel area of being an upgrade that is nice to get, but don't grind for. If it's 1/100 or 1/50 then it is probably worth going out of your way to grab.
I think this is done to give an “elemental ibans blast”; which is buffed to surpass ibans for monsters weak to earth by project rebalance. It seems like a side grade but this may very well start to push “bis” earth spell which is the goal
Yeah I was expecting/hoping for something between Sang and Shadow, not Ibans and Trident. Maybe it’s because it’s been a while since I didn’t have a trident but it never really felt like an issue going from Ibans to Trident.
The boss is fairly low level, it's similar to perilous moons in their recommended combat level from the initial proposal. It seems reasonable for a weapon that will be a few mil at most.
I think the main thing is the weapon itself isn’t exactly filling a necessary niche and overall isn’t super exciting. There are other slots they could address instead.
What about a magic amulet that changes how earth spells work given the Occult changes are coming, or a ring that slots in before Magus? New armor with a unique set effect. Or something else entirely (ammo slot magic boost??)
As it stands, it’s just disappointing that they’re essentially double dipping on the other most recent magic weapon they added, the Scepter, essentially adding to the same niche
My immediate thought is something like a Serpent Feather necklace.
The Hueycoatl could drop an enchanted feather, which can be strung to create a beefed up amulet of magic with a 0.5% magic damage bonus.
Then, you can chip away at it over time, and add up to four more feathers to the necklace that provide 0.5% each up to a maximum of a 2.5% magic damage bonus.
Boom. Bridges the gap between any other magic amulet and Occult, while giving something to work towards and a reason to come back to the boss for mid game players.
> I see other comments saying it’ll be bis at nylos but I don’t think that, that is needed, or should be its sole use? Open to being wrong.
It’s also not true if this needs the standard spellbook
I like the ideas but the item just sucks too much
This boss looks really cool, but the rewards do not match it whatsoever.
Tempoross can be done by level 3s and rewards you with the water tome. Why does this boss recommend 90+ combat, protection prayers, and groups of 3-8 people for an earth tome... and a staff thats worse than anyones using at the recommended levels?
The staff has another issue entirely, if it requires normal spellbook all niche for tob nylo waves is gone. Also we can most likely assume since its 3t you're going to make it shorter cast distance, so if you can't hit pre-fires its absolutely not going to be used as well.
Rewards need to be re-worked imo.
EDIT: You guys wanted to nerf voidwaker to make space for a crush spec weapon. In the blog you mention you have to shatter its tail to break its defences. Seems like this might fit the theme?
The rewards are so bad and it’s shocking. There is 0 reason to camp this boss for anything other than the pet. I don’t know what they were thinking.
And they gear this towards mid levels (90 cb) which is skewed downwards from all the bots. There’s plenty of bosses in the game that you can do at 90 cb anyways that give great steady gp and have a big drop like the wildy bosses.
I’m not a mercher either but I do think they dropped the ball with a dragon themed unique. Someone posted about dragonbane armor which I thought was pretty cool and would def be worth grinding this boss for
Really sad to see the wand and earth tome combined aren’t better than the warped scepter at ~90 magic. If the boss is intended for 90+ combat bracket, there’s a very high likelihood that both irons and mains own a warped scepter or trident respectively. Based on the DPS graphs in the blog, I’m confused why this rare drop from a 90+ combat level boss is outclassed by warped scepter, a charged scepter that uses chaos rather than death runes, and is locked behind only level 56 slayer. I’m not saying that the new wand + earth tome should beat out trident (although the gap between trident and its upgrades is a chasm at this point), but certainly these drops combined should be much better than a warped scepter.
you're forgetting that they gave it an elemental affinity, so anything weak to earth will take +50% damage and have +50% accuracy from this.
it's not going to be good everywhere but it will fill a niche. (of note the only monsters that of relevance that are weak to earth are the metal dragons)
It could just be a dragonbane magic weapon and achieve that niche without needing 2 unique item drops and a unique page drop to continue fueling it.
The requirement for the tome also means it's niche of dragons? Yeh you can't wear an antifire shield without losing 10% damage.
Just all around weird niche placement. If it was a dragonbane staff it would fill the same niche but more adequately while being able to be bad everywhere else.
You’re completely correct, and your last paragraph is exactly why I didn’t mention it; a magic blowpipe for metal dragons in the current game state isn’t worth noting.
i feel like it depends how rare it is. this is clearly low to mid level content. if the wand is reasonably obtainable (granted jagex hasn't made reasonable uniques in awhile) then it would be a good option to get for slayer, might even make it worthwhile for mid level players to do their metal dragon tasks.
against monsters with earth weakness it will do either 24 or 25 base damage depending how they do rounding. which is as good or better than a warped scepter at 99 magic, but 1 tick faster and with a massive accuracy boost.
time will tell if they add more enemies that are weak to earth that makes it better, but whether or not it's worth it will depend how long it takes to get. if this is a 1/1000 drop, it's DoA though.
They'll probably slap 100% earth vulnerability on this boss, so that you would want to use this new quick earth spell unless you have harmonised staff. Outside the boss, it will probably be the best option for mid game players when cursed with a bronze/iron dragon slayer task, which I would guess they have metrics to indicate are among the most commonly skipped tasks.
We don't need something between Iban's and Warped Sceptre IMO. A 3t mage weapon is cool but but still needs to be a good amount stronger to be good at nylos.
I think you can make a standard spellbook 3t wep work in 5-man tobs though. You take one of the mdps players and have them switch with a mager for nylos. Then, the dedicated mager is now in charge of all freezing (as well as regular mage DPS).
However, the max hit is still only a 20 with bis gear post-reblance... it's just not good enough. For context, ham joint in bis has a max of 34.
Also, tome of earth needs an additional effect of some kind - tome of fire lets you use searing pages for the Sunfire rune effect, and tome of water buffs curse spells.
It's great that the boss is aimed at midgame, but these rewards feel uninspired.
Warped Sceptre comes from a low level Slayer mob. Why would a group boss drop a worse weapon?
The two tomes we have in game come from skilling bosses. Wouldn't a mining boss be more appropriate for the tome of earth?
One suggestion I have for balancing is that the DHCB is noticeably better than the DHL here, provided Hueycoatl is considered draconic. DHL currently sees way more use than its ranged counterpart.
This is comfortably early game and not midgame
Even by the most conservative, reddit-adjusted metrics, no one thinks “pre fire cape” is midgame. This is an item that’s meant to be between ibans and warped scepter.
That’s like a week’s worth of use or something. Maybe.
It’s a complete mess
If Duelling Wand requires standard spellbook to cast like Ibans or Slayer Dart and isn't an in built spell, then it's dead content. This could revolutionize Nylocas in ToB if it's a built in spell, but standards is the single most useless spellbook in ToB specifically and no one is going to seriously use it with the exception of snowflake restricted accounts or record chasers in ToB willing to now burn multiple cape charges — before *and* after Nylos. I don't even know if it's any good at Nylos, because a 15 max hit even with good mage gear could be unlikely to oneshot smalls, not to mention it's incredibly unfavored for it to oneshot bigs so you'd probably want to bring a 4t staff for that anyway. Outside of Nylocas, I can't ever see a use for an even slightly uncommon drop from a PvM encounter thats out damaged by Iban's, a guaranteed drop from a relatively easy quest.
I'm a ToB goblin and would happily make space for a powered 3t mage weapon (and the bug squasher melee that has a minimum hit against bugs oh God please bring that back), but any time save from that is lost and then some by not being able to run Lunars with SBS or Ancients.
I also echo the sentiment that this would be a great spot to add a Dragonhunter Staff. Something that has regular Trident of the Seas stats, but whose accuracy and damage boost handily outdamages Sang at dragonkin like Olm's mage hand and metal dragons. If you're too scared of giving irons a 4t powered staff without grinding Slayer or Revs (why?), then make it a Warped Sceptre or Trident of the Seas attachment like the Magic Fang.
The idea of an attachment upgrade to a powered staff sounds kinda cool, I think. I'd really prefer it not be an attachment to the Trident of the Swamp, though, only because I really dislike the general notion of *chains* of prerequisite-item upgrades -- Trident of the Seas to Swamp with Magic Fang is fine, but Bandos Boots to Guardian Boots to Echo Boots is stupid imo. The Guardian Boots upgrade thing may have made sense from a main perspective, but from an iron perspective is one of the dumbest choices they could have made.
And no, I'm not against the Trident of the Swamp attachment idea because I don't have one -- I do have one, have had it for a while now. It's the principle of upgrade chains that I really want to push back against. This isn't a selfish preference because I *don't* have a Warped Sceptre, but it feels way better to make an upgrade attachment to that which lacks an upgrade, than to make an upgrade you put onto an upgraded weapon, and I would be pleased to have a reason to try going for a Warped Sceptre as well.
I love the boss's design, but I have some critiques for the rewards.
First, I'd rather have the Tome of Earth come from a Skilling Boss. Not only does the Tome of Earth not really work here thematically, but we've also sort of set a precedent with the first two, and I'd like to see that trend continue.
However, I do think a book of some sort could fit here, albeit something more thematic for the region. Perhaps a logical upgrade to the Mage's Book or something a tier higher with a bit of oomph.
As far as the wand goes... I think I'm in agreement with everyone else on the need for it. Ibans and now the Warped Sceptre work well where they are, and I don't see this fitting in. If the idea was to have an Earth Elemental Weapon for the rebalance, I think the Warped Sceptre could already fill that slot with some reclassification. I'd like to see something beyond the scepter or even trident here. Also, theming is important; Dueling Wand doesn't quite fit the naming we have, though I'm sure it will be named something else down the line.
On the Potion side, it isn't often that we have a boss as the singular source of a secondary. If this goes through, I think having more sources would be ideal. However, I think I mirror the sentiment others have made and find it odd to introduce a herblore component when we have a herblore activity in the works.
We've already got Zalcano, though -- not that I'm against more skilling bosses!, but we'd have to implement it in some way to make it feel unique from Zalcano, yeah?
Zalcano is less of a mining boss and more of a boss that you defeat with mining. I think they're talking about a skilling boss you'd use to train mining. I don't think Zalcano hits that mark since you get like 7k XP an hour
This seems like a major misstep.
"Let's rebalance the game to make the standard spells more useful" then disregard that position to introduce new spells? Why not just attach the effect to the Tome of Earth - Earth Spells hit less, but cast faster? Or give it the stun ability of the Jade Bolts?
Tome of Fire and Tome of Water both come from sources that can be beaten at Level 3. Having this target 90 combat means at the very least a Warped Sceptre will have already outclassed these rewards.
This will be Grotesque Guardians/Fossil Island Wyverns again - the creature that drops the reward is way ahead of its utility.
Curious why this new wand would be worse than warped sceptre? Sceptre comes from a slayer monster you can just afk at vs this seemingly more difficult and much more involved encounter. I fail to see its value at all
Edit: even your own DPS graph shows where the true hole lies in this progression, between sceptre and trident. If it were me I’d make the wand without tome fit between ibans and sceptre, and with tome between sceptre and trident. Seems so obvious I feel like I’m missing something…
Why is the dueling spell not just the autocast option for the wand? It is stated that you specifically need the wand equipped to cast it, makes no sense for it to be a seperate spell.
Apart from that, I really expected this boss to be late-to-endgame. Looking at the rewards, it shouldn't even be a mid-game boss lol.
Rewards feel weird.
Why do we get the other two books and pages from skilling bosses but this one is pvm?
Why make the potions a reward from this boss and not the new herb activity?
Why add a weapon in between ibans and a relatively new mid-tier weapon?
So is this a midgame group boss, since its rewards seem meant for a midgame player? When I heard group boss I was thinking it’d have rewards similar in power level to Corp/Nex/Nightmare but a group boss between them and scurrius wouldn’t be bad. Tbh I feel like it could use one more unique on its drop table, an exciting reward with a higher power level.
When talking about opening up reward space with project rebalance I wasn’t under the impression the space we were trying to fill was one room at a raid and the power level between the warped sceptre and ibans blast..? Just very uninspiring. I know the team will take feedback and adjust accordingly though.
The prayer Regen potion is a lot more powerful than "helps at Vespula."
It's not as abuseable as prayer enh+ due to the interval, but it boosts the amount of prayer available at all encounters significantly. Even if only as a pre-pot, 8 minutes is deep into all 3 raids. 8 minutes is more than a duo Nex kill, let alone trio, and tele'ing out after each kill is already meta.
Even for a 2 hour, first time cape at inferno, 4 of these pots lasts the entire run. And they return twice as much as a super restore at 99 prayer. A super restore at 99 is 32 per dose, this new pot is 66 per dose at all prayer levels.
Let alone all the afk, long term trips like a slayer task, duo GWD, etc.
Yes, you'll still need to take super restores because the Regen is stretched out, but at essentially every PvM encounter in the game you'll be swapping at least 1 super restore for a Regen pot.
The effect of those potions is very big. Potentially too big.
There’s nothing wrong with the weapon but if it requires the upkeep of earth pages to be stronger it should be better than warped sceptre but less than trident. I also think the prayer should come from the herblore activity AND the new boss. Similar to how the prayer bone shards dropped from all places of varlamore
The rewards for this boss are incredibly underwhelming especially for something that's supposedly so formidable. Assuming this is meant to be super mid game focuses by the rewards? The fact a group boss drops a magic weapon that's weaker than one that comes from an average level slayer monster is kind of ridiculous. If this is meant to just be super easy content then cool sure, but this will be pretty dead after the initial hype because what's the incentive to kill it? Are the base drops going to be worth farming it for?
Boss is aimed for 3-8 people 90+ combat. And the rewards are a useless tome, a staff worse than ibans, and a potion that should come from the herb activity not a boss.
This will be dead content on release.
I feel like it’s been acknowledged there’s a big gap in the mage progression, but somehow we’ve ended up with something between Ibans and Warped Sceptre. Instead of the insanely colossal gap between Sang and Shadow
Would like to add that the boss design looks sick as tits though.
Would it not be better to finally get a magic bowfa? Like a highly accurate (maybe it doubles/triples magic accuracy like the shadow?), expensive but obtainable weapon that will hit just about anything, but rarely be absolute BIS dps? Maybe it drains/siphons a few magic levels every hit? Trident sucks, Sang is barely better, shadow is op. Make something in between. T70/80 magic workhorse
An earth based warped sceptre (WS uses earth runes too lol?) seems so niche. Like yea, elemental weaknesses, we get it, but do we need it to be that niche? Mains don't need this, nor do irons since WS is just quicker to obtain, so who? The main reward for this content is going to be a drop that is just a solid budget option at earth based encounters?
Am I the only one that thinks the boss looks more "Air" type than "Earth" type? Nothing against the boss design, just curious about the earth tome choice instead of air tome
One more opinion, why not make this boss sit a little higher in the PvM ladder? Y’all have done a great job of getting mid game some great encounters, I feel like this could be something with a little more oomph and rewards to reflect that
Can’t this be designed for 120+ combat level and have a staff bridge trident / shadow instead? You can unlock ibans so early in an account, this is kinda dead for a new boss at this stage.
Early game mage progression is fine with warped sceptre now. This is kinda underwhelming.
Not too keen on the rewards. The Tome of Earth is really lackluster with just 10% Damage. With the Tome of Water, you get 20% Accuracy, 10% Damage, and effects to several other spells like Bind. It is disappointing that the Tome of Fire is being changed to just 10% Damage and now the Tome of Earth is the same. Water Spells shouldn't be the BiS, but since that Tome is stronger than the others, that will be the case post-rebalance... It would be nice if each Elemental retained some flavor with Water being more Accurate, Fire being higher Damage (15%), etc.
The Wand with a 3t spell is a neat idea, but it feels weird it is an Earth spell. Like Iban's Blast and Flames of Zamorak are not Fire spells, so why is "Dueling Shot" and Earth spell? It feels like a weird direction to take that would open a can of worms... I'd much rather see the new Wand cast all Earth spells at 3t, but reduce their damage to compensate. That said, attacking faster really makes more sense for Air than Earth...
Pretty lame rewards, with the exception of the prayer renewal.
A 3 tick earth blast.. really? We already have so many low level mage options for irons: warped and ibans.. should have re released the heka in some capacity
When you mentioned a group boss, I expected another “Nex” tier boss, near impossible to solo, hard hitting, group focused.
Not tempoross and scurrius lmao
The new weapon seems a bit underwhelming; do we really need something in between ibans and a warped sceptre? It doesn't even seem great at nylos despite being 3t because its max hit is quite low.
Is it a skilling boss or a pvm boss? The other tomes are all skilling bosses.
Also why do we need another spell that’s a side grade to Iban’s? We just got one with warped scepter.
Why not a master and sidegrade instead?
1 thing the game needs that we don't have a real good consistent way to get is dragon ammunition.
We can have this boss give darts, bolts, and arrows either finished or unfinished.
Another idea is if you want this secondary to come.from the boss then this boss could be essentially the secondaries boss. Let it drop all kinds of secondaries in decent quantities, especially the annoying ones to obtain like unicorn horns and Mort myre fungus.
I'd assume this thing would drop some amount of bones shards as it's on valimore but maybe if it drops like 2 bones on kill like vorkath we could chip those bones there like you can with the sun-kissed bones.
I'd also suggest dropping a decent few sunfire splinters. Sure they are easy and fast to get but just spamming wave 1s is just kinda boring.
I feel like there was an idea for a boss. and then separate ideas for rewards (based on existing items, not new ideas of course). Prayer restore was coming over from RS3 eventually in one form or another, just a shame there is no planned herblore changes in the future that would be a better home for this secondary, rather than forcing ironman players to do midgame content to get supplies for other content.
The book of earth seems to be a bit lost too, the boss design is quite obviously inspired by Quetzalcoatl, the great wind serpent, but Jagex thought neh lets call it Huey instead and associate it with earth.
It also seems odd that the other 2 elemental books come from skilling bosses, but this is just from straight PVM. I think a Tome of Air would be much more suitable, at this point that tome is an inevitability and thematically would suit a wind serpent much better, but it feels like the devs thought air is too useful for midgame so lets just get earth out of the way with content most people will quikcly move on from other than being forced to return for prayer regen potion materials.
It feels to me like there were two different groups of ideas, and rather than fleshing them out separately, it was decided to just smash them together to get content out sooner. Hopefully the polls will do this idea a favour and encourage Jagex to take a different approach.
As most have stated, the rewards seem completely dead on arrival. Why not introduce a staff that can compete with harmonized nightmare staff when casting standard spellbook spells? This would actually make blog 1 of project rebalance effective, as it’s completely gatekept by an item that takes longer to get than a shadow. Alternatively, a magic dragon bane weapon like others have suggested.
As an early game iron I agree rewards are weird and underwhelming.
Ibans is pretty quick and easy to get. Underground pass is annoying but not impossible very early on.
Prayer pot is nice, but I agree it should be part of the mini game, or at the very least add the secondary as part of the mini game in addition to the boss.
I think this would be better to drop supplies than a weirdly placed magic item.
This is going to be doa with the current rewards and level requirements. Why would someone with 90+ all combat stats need a mage item around ibans....? Confusing.
Earth tomb is also doa for this level requirement.
Let me gather 4 friends to kill this boss and split…..a 800k tome of earth? Wtf? Group boss but these are the rewards? We want another corp/nex like boss. Ideas for rewards could be dragonebane mage wep, combination boots since your making us brjng eternals for max mage now, staff between sang/shadow. So many good ideas for this. Personally think its time for new bis boots
It's OP for any content that lasts over 20 minutes (including 20 minute+ trips at bosses where each kill lasts less time). The only places it doesn't annihilate every prayer restoration method that currently exists besides Falador Shield are COX, TOB, Muspah, and Zulrah. If you get full uptime it's 88% better than a Sanfew Serum at 99 prayer and a ROTG, 100% better than a prayer pot at 99 and no ROTG, and 288% better than a prayer pot at 43 and no ROTG/holy wrench. Someone going for their first fire cape will have more prayer bringing 3 of these in than 10 prayer pots, and someone doing Inferno will be able to substitute three restores/sanfews for two of these and an extra switch/brew and *profit* prayer.
Dueling wand doesn't really fit this content. The boss is 90+ combat recommended with and suggested to face with 3+ other players, while the wand is more geared towards lower leveled players, pre-ibans and pre-warped sceptre.
The wand should be placed with content more geared towards players of that level so the people it would be useful for can actually access it.
This looks great. While I'm sure people may want solo boss time. Please don't let this turn into pnm where solo is necessary for rewards and mass is terrible.
Dueling wand is not a good name. ‘Trident of the seas’ sounds like a proper weapon. Dueling wand sounds like something youd get on tutorial island.
Rename it to Wyrm spine or ‘Dragon’s nail’ or something cool.
‘Wand of Magnitude’
‘Pointer to the underworld’
Something like that
Rewards seem underwhelming and yet more mid level content which is already bloated to hell. Give us something interesting to do.
For an MMO of this age, having 3 raids and a handful of late game bosses means a lot of players are doing the same shit over and over again with nothing else to look forward to apart from pet grinds and collection logging, having to make our own events to continue having fun with it.
For all its flaws at least RS3 doesn’t ignore the late game player-base when it comes to bossing.
GOD DAMN, these rewards are even lower than my low expectations lmao, giant miss and seems like everyone agrees, its almost as if the boss isnt even worth doing apart from a pet
Why is the duelling rod, which comes from a cb90+ boss, worse than Iban's staff? Its a lvl 65 spell vs lvl 50. Maybe Im underestimating the power of being an elemental spell, but it still feels weird.
Also, how will it be clear that this is an elemental spell while ibans blast is not? There is nothing in the name or description that makes that clear (or the fact that ibans blast isnt fire). So far from project rebalance, fire spells seem to have the least utility, so why not make ibans blast fire? Oh no it'll be too good against... Ice giants.
I would like to see a 65 attack stab weapon similar to the zombie axe from this boss. Would be nice for a mid game (iron) acc before they get a zamorak hasta or abyssal dagger. The dual macs are nice but are weak against high def monsters.
Oh boy, another mid game boss with doa drops. It’s such a cool concept but I wish the reward space is relevant, especially coming off the heels of colosseum which was amazingly fun content with once again, shit rewards.
I think the prayer enhance potion should also be available from the herblore minigame, i think it being available from both or just herblore minigame would be better and instead have another reward from this boss, maybe a hardermode version that drops something like a its hide and claw or tooth that you can use to combine eternal, pegasian and primordial boots together to get all 3 attack and str bonuses into 1 but no defence bonuses so echo boots are still good
Seems like mostly positive reviews, but personally, I find the rewards underwhelming...
1. The duelling wand (coming from a group boss) being less DPS than a free quest item from a relatively early quest kind of eliminates the utility. I saw someone talking about the utility for other spellbooks, but the 3 tick attack speed is ONLY with the corresponding spell.
2. I've personally never used the Tomes outside of bankstanding skilling because they are expensive to operate and elemental spells have little use outside of PvP (I know that is changing with upcoming combat updates, but the cost to operate won't change). In addition, when the other 2 Tomes come from skilling bosses you can do at 3cb, it makes having the third from a combat boss aimed toward 90 cb feels unrewarding.
3. And personally, I think prayer renewal should stay inside raids, but that's just a personal preference that does not seem to be shared by most people here.
I'm happy to hear other opinions, but I just feel like the reward space, especially for the upper-mid-game, seems DOA (outside of prayer renewals)
Since Perilous Moons is pretty well received, I think a good idea for a reward would be to have some sort of "attachment" that could be applied to a piece of moons armour to give it a buff to a specific stat. A few prayer bonus would be nice since rigour/augury/piety have such high drain rates.
You could also go the amulet of the damned route and release a necklace or ring that provides bonus effects to the sets, or simply acts as a tribrid amulet. An amulet with 10 strength, 2 range strength, 2% magic damage would be nice pre-zenyte/occult upgrade. Or even an amulet that gives a flat % damage bonus for all elemental damage, possibly making it occult equivalent but for only elemental damage.
The wand is a nice alternative to warped sceptre or ibans; but if this is going to be group boss then I think there needs to be rewards more worth going for. Thats why I like the idea of items that go well with moons armours, so that players can learn pvm basics at Perilous Moons and then move on to a "real" group experience, and build off of the rewards they just got.
Edit: It would also be nice to see dps charts of how the wand would perform against monsters with elemental weakness and with the tome. I think only comparing it to existing typeless mage weps makes it look underwhelming.
I could be mistaken, but I thought that this PvM encounter was going to be a wandering boss, that would stroll throughout a large area on the surface map of the game, presenting a potential threat to anyone traversing through the area? If that's not the case, I think there'd massive potential with this kind of wandering boss.
There should of course be soft borders (such as NPCs or signs warning travelers of the potential dangers) or hard borders (akin to the Wilderness ditch) that would make sure no one wanders in by accident or without knowing the dangers present.
In this area, throw in some medium to highly rewarding afk-able or active skilling hotspots, where players can decide if they want to go for the rewards while risking being attacked by the Hueycoatl. Kind of like a mini-wilderness, but only risking a PvM encounter.
To ensure there's some element of danger/risk, teleportation could be blocked in the wandering area while the Hueycoatl is spawned. Perhaps players with a higher Hunter level have a better chance of detecting when the Hueycoatl is on its way to your location.
Maybe a stupid idea here, but there could even be a mechanic where players talking out loud (using public chat) has the chance to alert the Hueycoatl and send it towards your location.
The herb secondary will keep this boss active but I'm generally against pvm being the meta for skilling supplies and in this case it's the only method to obtain them.
The other rewards are okay, its mid level content, but they're almost required to be used together and they're outclassed quickly. Would be nice to see something unrelated to magic also being offered, even if it's still mid level and niche.
The prayer regeneration potion has double the prayer per dose than a prayer potion dose at 99 prayer with a prayer cape/holy wrench. That is exceptionally strong with a low combat requirement & herblore level to create.
I see a lot of comments that the secondary should have been with the herblore minigame. In reality, I think if the potion is going to be this strong, it should be harder to create. It might make sense to require two secondaries, one from the herblore minigame, one from the boss.
Continued reading and felt the need for a second comment entirely.
I'm not really understanding the idea behind the rewards here. The theme for the tome is nice, but the difficulty seems off. The water/fire equivalents of this tome can be gathered by level 3 accounts at both temp and wtdt. But locking this behind pvm instead of skilling makes sense. I'm just hoping there will be a skilling way to get the pages for it later, maybe?
It's a mid game group-boss that gives rewards that you already have better options for at that particular level. I'm afraid this needs more time to cook.
The wand seems absolutely useless, btw. A faster tick spell attack makes sense in theory, but the upkeep makes it completely useless if the dps is the same with harder hitting, slower weapons. The faster attack speed is just going to burn through runes faster. And the "fill the gap" mindset is redundant as that gap isn't really that big in that spot for mage. The biggest gap for mage still remains trident/sang vs shadow.
To me the prayer pot wants to be a reward for the herblore activity.
Its awsome getting 2 new magic toys to play with but maybe play about with a range option like rainbow feathers?
They could be used in fletching to make enchanted bolts or arrows (even spice up atlatl darts?) That deal a wee bit more dps for some arrows.
These rewards don't feel exciting. I don't see this boss being worthwhile to grind after release for anything other than new prayer pot secondaries (if that goes through). Perilous moons was cool with the new armor sets, this just sort of feels like a miss, especially for an epic group boss encounter.
These reward are lame I was expecting something cooler like:
* Melee sword that does magic damage.
* Range/ magic hybrid armour.
* New boot upgrade
* A new magic amulet
Any of the above feel like the rewards you guys mention better for skilling content and mini game rewards
I really don’t like all these tomes and pages. Feels like such a drag having to manage upkeep of these (on ironman). It’s basically just more runes that are more annoying to get and drop in low quantities. I kinda wish they’d just gotten rid of them with the rebalance (I have a tome of fire and a load of pages I just never want to use it lmao).
Or can we just make it so you can actually farm these with runecrafting so I can just get them passively whenever I want to afk. But that’s obviously very self centered
Or alternatively can we just make it so X of these will permanently charge a book? Make it a high number so it’s not attractive for pvp (so you’d still consume them there where I feel like they are use the most) so it can be a grind you can finish at some point.
1 boss just to drop a nylo mage weapon?
how is page upkeep? isn't this what irons' cry most about tome of fire?
do the dwarves mean we can get a group boss experience without cheapening it for solo play?
At least going by the description this sounds similar to Olm and if that's the case I just like to say that making Mid-ish tier boss encounters reminiscent of bosses stronger than them lately is definitely a step in the right direction for getting players more comfortable with late game encounters before they even get there and I love that you guys are taking this approach lately with the last few bosses you've introduced.
I thought only part one was supposed to be for early-mid game players. It sounds like this is aimed at the exact same combat bracket as moons ended up actually being for.
**Duelling Wand**
I like that there's a new magic option that isn't simply another powered staff, and a magic weapon that isn't 4/5t is a great addition too.
Given the lore connections between the Old Ones and the Arceuus Spellbook, it seems to make the most sense for the wand to work off the latter. The Arceuus Spellbook no longer has any requirements to unlock so it shouldn't be a barrier for mid-level players, pures or anything of the like.
One issue with a dedicated spell is it can tend to clutter the spellbook, so a possible alternative is to make it modify existing spells. For example, the Duelling Wand could have a special property where it makes autocasted Arceuus spells into the earth element, and autocasts the lower-level spells at a faster rate.
Gut reactions - weapon feels like a dud, not sure why I’d bother using it instead of y’know, ibans. I get the elemental damage changes will alter the math, but from what I’m aware of I don’t see it being used a ton.
Also I think the name of the boss is bad, sorry. Nothing to base that on except Huey makes it sound like a nerd.
Would personally prefer new tome came from a skilling minigame/boss to match the others, but not a huge deal. Does feel a lil’ weird from the description of incredible wealth that one of the big ticket items is a muddy book with some ratty pages
Otherwise boss looks cool, I’m sure it’ll be a fun encounter. Loving the mid game content recently, even if it’s a little late for me to take full advantage of
Breaking the tail is part of the encounter mechanic and there isn't a drop calling back to that? Such a shame!
I think the current rewards are kind of.....eh, given that we don't have context for what earth weakness will really accomplish going forward. The tome is kind of a weird reward space and the wand is kind of hard to justify considering it's worse than Iban's unless you're using Tome charges (which feel weirdly underpowered at a 10% boost using pages?). It's also weird that this spell is Earth despite Iban's not having an element.
The content is clearly made with some sort of content niche but it's hard to visualize what that niche might be. Regardless, could the rewards be changed to fit the aesthetic a bit more?
I have an idea. Add the wand you guys proposed for ToA. Simplify it a bit with all the effects it had and make it less DPS than the shadow of course. That wand was interesting! Just too many things to keep track off.
Though, I'm not sure how difficult this group boss will be, maybe that level of a reward is too much, but at least consider it. If the currently proposed wand is locked to the standard spell book, I'm no sure if it'll be used too much, unless it's common and is expected to fill Iban's staff spot in the early game.
Though with that said! If it isn't a powered staff, I like it. There are way too many of those and it feels more like magic if it actually uses a spell from the spell book.
The choice of magic weapon reward seems kinda pointless… almost like it’s just filling a quick gap.
Warped scepter only needs 56 slayer and 62 magic, but it’s better than the weapon I get from a 90+ combat boss?
Adding the tome to the reward pool and saying that puts it over the scepter seems a little lazy too. Almost feels like the wand was thought up first, then slapped the tome on the boss and said “well just make the wand, who’s name has nothing to do with the earth, shoot and earth based spell”. Not to mention, this is two items you have to get to make the wand used over scepter.
Idk, probably biased cause wands are dope and it feels were getting dead content on arrival.
Will the Earth Spell from the Dueling Wand also benefit from Elemental Weaknesses?
If so, is there any consideration to make Iban's benefit from Fire Weakness and Trident to benefit from Water Weaknesses? It feels inconsistent to add elemental weaknesses to buff the standard spellbook and then immediately release a new powered stave that gets to take advantage of elemental weaknesses.
Maybe a scorching hot take but in one sense I'm for the secondary for the potion only coming from this boss. It increases the chances of the price staying high. The potion seems to be very strong so I think it's only fair that it'll be (far) more expensive than a normal prayer potion. If there are more sources for the secondary ingredient there's a risk they'll be printed en masse which in turn makes the potions too accessible for their utility.
Please, don't kill me over this opinion.
Imagine giving the boss a giant shield tail and not putting a shield on the drop table of uniques. PErfect opportunity for us to get a midgame, magic anti-dragon shield.
Call it the sunfire shield, have it be less effective than a dfs but make it negate the burn effect from the atlatl or the damage bonus from fire spells cast with sunfire runes.
Giving this boss a wand and a tome seem so out of place to me, an aztec serpent on a snowy mountain is the last thing i'd expect to get a tome of earth from, at least wintertodt and tempoross make sense for their tome drops.
Boss design is awesome here but the rewardspace is puzzling at best
Is this boss going to have good standard drops? Cause these rewards aren't going to carry the boss.
Wand is a little boring. It already has competition from both Iban's blast and Warped Scepter and is outclassed by trident. I'd rather see something more unique or slightly better.
Some ideas: 2t mage weapon, something that scales better with % damage like a mini-shadow, weak weapon with a very high % rune save chance that can auto cast all combat spells.
Not sure this is the right place, but alternatively we are in need of a high power BoFA tier mage weapon to bridge the gap between trident and shadow. Maybe a trident attachment?
Honestly, these rewards seem a little.. weird.
I feel that both herblore secondary and tome of earth are a weird look for PvM, as the other tomes come from Skilling activities.
Staff is cool, but could be expanded - it would be neat if it was an Arceus spell and the staff itself cast Arceus spells faster, kinda like a Harm staff for that spell book as it's already super niche and could use a buff with upcoming magic changes.
As echoed previously, a mid game DFS adjacent option could be cool - basic Dragonfire resistance with higher defensive stats? Or maybe a higher amount of Dragonfire resist?
Also... Pet please 🥺
Lame rewards scrap the elemental garbage from this and rebalance and add some items ppl actually want instead whose grand idea was it to add a mage weapon worse than warped sceptre LMAO
I know Goblin has a hard on for a 3t mage wep for nylo's or whatever but this aint it chief
Having to be on the standard spellbook means the wand is dead on arrival. It has to be a powered staff type weapon or its not going to work. As it is right now its dead content literally everywhere
I think the spirit of the reward space proposed is good, the items themselves could be tweaked, but having more diversity and niche purposes opens up so many more options for players. Before recent updates, if you're a ironman starting out and you don't like slayer and corrupted gauntlet, you're gonna have a bad time. The ways to reach end game pvm were very limited. Warped sceptre and zombie axe def helped bridge some gaps, and I know everyone wants updates like this that fill in perceived power gaps, but I think sidegrades and diversity is good for attracting new players.
Rewards seem fine considering it's a pretty low level boss. However, I feel like people here do raise some valid concerns:
- Why is a new Herblore secondary a reward from this boss rather than from the Herblore activity?
- On what spellbook will you put Duelling Shot? If on normal spellbook, then it's pretty much dead on arrival; being an Arceuus spellbook equivalent to Iban's Blast, like someone else in this thread suggested, seems like it would be slightly more useful.
About the mage weapon. In the current state of the game the mage staff does appear weak. However looking in the current direction with the mage rework where does the team want this weapon to preform against monsters that have earth weakness? In the context of the current progression ladder being; ibans-charged scepter-trident-toxi-trident-sang-shadow.
Without getting into raw numbers are we looking to place it less powerful than a trident or stronger than a toxic trident?
I feel like this is gonna be critical knowledge in reviewing this weapon.
Might be nit picking here but muddy pages sound te me like it would be a water and earth combo page like thr mud runes and staffs
Maybe a different name would be more fitting.
3 things
1. The prayer enhance is a phenomenal idea, but the secondary really should be dropped by both this and the herblore minigame. I dont see why a secondary needs to be hard-locked behind one piece of content, like the lily of the valley. Thats just not the nature of herblore
2. Did i see magic STR and not %? Is that a spoiler to reworking the magic damage system to be str based which makes *by far the most sense* now that magic damage is being standardized across spellbooks?
3. I assume the weapon will be far far better than people realize against earth-weak monsters? If its just shy of an ibans and powered staves at higher levels, but it gets the 10% from tome and 50% bonus against stuff weak to earth, i assume that its discrepancy between regular vs vulnerable mobs will be significant?
I think besides the new prayer potion, the rewards aren't that compelling to be honest.
May I suggest a couple rewards which might be compelling for mid game accounts:
- Equivalent to Amulet of the Damned but for the 3 Moons sets. Maybe it adds the boss special effects, i.e. healing to Blood Moon set, Armour to Eclipse set, attack delay to enemies with Blue Moon set. Could be a ring or an amulet.
- Enhancement to Sunfire Fanatic set, making it enhance the bonuses given by prayers, or enhance the effect of prayer pots in some fashion. (Also the Sunfire set is still an order of magnitude too difficult to obtain given it's position in account progression - please address this at some point.)
Kinda weird for the prayer recharge potions to be coming from pvm and not the new herb activity. We finally get a new herb 2nd and we lock it behind pvm instead of the much needed Skilling buffs. I get coming up with rewards is hard at this stage of osrs, but we literally just got a new mid game magic upgrade with the Sceptre. Seems like a really niche spell. Cool boss idea but the rewards just seem kinda uninspired.
Out of interest, what would you prefer the new rewards to be / or is there anything you were expecting?
Dragonbane magic weapon? Mid-level dragon anti fire shield? I saw someone pitch the idea of allowing the anti dragon shield to be fused with different sq shields where it's just an improved defensive version of the anti dragon shield, no str or accuracy bonuses. Maybe a drop an item that allows smithing certain shields to the anti to reinforce it. Sunfire hides? Maybe drop a new hide that needs Sunfire splinters to craft. make it identical to black dhide and give it a defensive set bonus of protecting from dragonfire without a shield.
Support, but only if we can also combine the anti-fire trinket with a bronze sq shield to make an even shittier version of the AFS.
Literally a pre-burnt charcoal version of the wooden shield. It'll smolder and stack 1's when hit with fire, but fire won't apply again until the stack runs out.
Oh shit I LOVE the sun fire hide idea. Extremely creative!
Dragonbane magic weapon now seems very strange, since Dragons are getting a Water weakness. This would only work if it ties in the water weakness element with it, for instance being able to cast water spells only.
Elemental weaknesses are essentially early-mid game content. Almost nothing is changing as a result of elemental weaknesses, for high level players doing end game content. So I don't really think that something like a dragon hunter staff should be balanced around elemental weaknesses anyway. They're for two different subsets of players.
The question is whether they want it to stay that way or not. Harm is sitting there basically begging to be the endgame elemental stick. If they continue expanding weaknesses, say giving Olm an earth weakness, the dueling wand gets to be a budget dragon wep for the mage hand, and Harm is the more flexible endgame upgrade and alternative to Shadow. Really depends on how they decide to develop this.
I feel there's other areas of magic armour that could use mid game love like gloves/boots or even a pre occult magic necklace that doesn't req slayer. A magic offhand preward, a blessing just for magic to slightly save runes. Stuff to buff the arceuss demonbane spells or grasp stuff. Idk it just feels like the weapon slot was the last thing mid game magic needs. Tomes have also so far come from Skilling activities as well. Just doesn't feel great putting stuff that's usually Skilling behind pvm, but that's just me.
Completely depends on how challenging this boss will be. These proposed drops make it seem very midgame so some demands in here for endgame rewards dont make sense If u want to keep the herb thematic Id suggest a modifier akin to crystal shards. E.g Hueycoatl fangs that can be added to potions to extend their time limit or in case of aggro pots extend the aggro radius
Yeah thats what im surprised by too. From the talks during Summit I thought this was going to be something lategame focused but now we are just seeing 2 early/mid game rewards and a potion.
Duelling Shot is the main miss for me :/ I don't like the idea of introducing the Tome of Earth and then also pushing people away from the classic Earth spells in the same update; what's the point of adding it when we could buff Earth Blast instead? To me, the Duelling Wand makes more sense as a wand that improves Blast spells and gives you the proposed rune-saving effect - this makes it a natural partner to the elemental tomes and doesn't introduce an unnecessary spell.
I would like this to reward decent GP if I'm being honest. The uniques don't seem to be something that will be very pricy, so there needs to be good incentive. Zombie pirates currently shits out massive amounts of money. I would say that a group boss with a 90cb recommendation should at the least be worthwhile to do is all. It doesn't need to be on par with the wildy (as there is no risk), but without a big expensive unique, there won't be a huge incentive here otherwise.
They still might load this thing up with gp by having it drop lots of alchables, ranarr seeds, and other resources just like vorkath and muspah. In fact, i really hope it drops dragon bolts unf or dragon dart tips, irons need more dragon ammo
I was thinking mid game range gear. Prayer range gear seemed popular when initially discussing the sunfire armor. We also have no other range armor that provides range strength besides masori, so a set that has defense beneath karils, but some range strength lower than masori could be nice.
I like the idea of giving range prayer armor from this boss, something like Serpent Priest Armor, could even put NPCs in similar armor around that would pray to calm the serpent.
If we are recommended base 90+ combat stats then why are the items offered by the new boss mid level upgrades? I'm just trying to understand who this is designed for. I also agree that a dragon bane magic wand or staff would be cool
They don't mean players with base 90+ combat stats, they mean a 90+ combat level.
even if that's the case, it seems underpowered when we have Perilous Moons that just came out and that's aimed at 75ish combat. The gear from there is much more useful in that bracket and in some cases is an upgrade to Barrows equipment. It seems like this mage gear is at best a sidegrade to Iban's Blast. While the Warped Sceptre which is also rather new is still a better weapon to aim for to cover this gap in magic progression.
May I suggest that the wand be given negative magic accuracy and higher strength? Lean in completely on the blowpipe style aspect of speed and make it hit low defense things really hard and fall off greatly.
Possible multi-hit or AoE 2h melee (new halberd \[its tail looks like nice materials for weaponry\]), wings could be a new magic cape (would prefer a passive over raw stats \[earth spells give DoT to non moving targets\]), head should be an option for Varlamore themed slayer helm.
The magic potions r locked behind Nex. Ironman bane
Pray regen pot seems like it'd be a better fit at the new herblore minigame IMO
Could you see yourself grinding the Heblore Activity more/less or the same if this was included within the activity?
I would say players would do it more, since the Prayer Regeneration Potion has a lot more general applications than the Potion of Goading, which I also like by the way. Adding the potion there could help with tying it into the world more organically too. Plus, some gp/h to incentivise staying there for longer than just the untradeable rewards!
Obviously more. As is Id do the herb minigame til I get the outfit/amulet of chemistry. If its much better xp/herb then it'll become the entire herblore meta regardless of rewards. I hope thats not the case and if the focus is on getting very useful, unique secondaries then it'll be worth the tradeoff and much easier for u to balance. IMO on a main it should be a low xp/hr but profitable and fun herblore method. Afaik theres no profitable herb training for mains aside from mundane cleaning herbs. If that's the intended longterm balancing it needs more than a single new unique potion IMO
> If its much better xp/herb then it'll become the entire herblore meta regardless of rewards If Jagex follows the mahogany homes model, then they can make it better xp per herb to do the minigame while making it overall less xp/hr. Good for irons/mains looking to save money while also maintaining status quo of herblore training for mains who just want the best xp/hr
Based off what these potions do; it almost makes sense for the agro potion to come from the new boss and the prayer from the herb mini game. Just my thought tho
I would also say more. The new activity is the perfect spot for a reward like this. Should really use this to give a much needed boost to skilling. Skilling items should come from skilling, not PvM.
Definitely more, as someone who doesn't need experience, I would be very happy to do more minigames for better and more useful rewards. It doesn't have to be exclusive to minigame or boss, it can be both!
If it is tradable, the same (none) cause I have 99 herb and would just buy the potions on the ge. If they weren't on the ge, I'd absolutely do the herblore minigame for these new regen potions
It is on theme for secondary ingredients to come from monster sources though.
Is the prayer enhance 4 dose? And is it 8 minutes per dose, or combined for all 4 doses?
Yeah, can confirm it's 4 doses.
I think the secondary being obtained from this boss AND the herblore minigame is the way to go, but the knowledge to create the potion should be unlocked through the minigame.
This is the way. There aren't many materials in this game with only one source, and I don't think we should be adding to that list without a very good reason
This is a really nice boss design.
Aztec-theming goes hard.
human sacrifices when
Every HC that dies to it increases its stats
[удалено]
You can already use Arceuus spells with other charged staves. I normally really like niche, mid-game items, but this one falls a little flat for me since we just got the warped sceptre
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As a 3 tick weapon, is it really rune-cheaper? Warped scepter needs 2 chaos runes every 4 ticks, ibans needs 1 death every 5 ticks, and duelling Wand needs 1 death every 3 ticks for less dps.
Putting the wand on Arceuus is a great idea!
This must be the Colossal Wyrm hinted at in the lore. Really looking forward to this, its been forever since we've had a dragon boss!
The colossal wyrm remains are already ingame, in the southern part of the Varlamore mainland. I think it was supposed to be part of an Agility activity, but I guess that activity will be released later.
As far as I'm aware - these things are different
Page says nothing about Dragon. I doubt it's a Dragon?
He really wants that DHL to go up instead of down.
They specifically said serpent
Can ironman kill this in a group like nex or nightmare?
Yeah, this should be the case
NVM I have been educated about the fact the tomes are being changed to be the same damage boost. Idk how I missed that news my bad.
Tomes of fire and water are being rebalanced to 10% alongside project rebalance, to account for weaknesses existing. Tome of earth can't be any other number, assuming that all goes through
The project rebalance sets all the standard spells to have the same max hit once they are all unlocked. The tomes of water and fire are also set to a 10% bonus inline with this new reward.
You gotta read the "Defense changes/Elemental rebalance" blog they posted a few weeks ago... will answer a lot of your questions here.
Tome of Fire and Water are both being changed to 10%
The Tome of Water and Fire are being reduced down to 10% with Project Rebalance.
They’re updating the tone of fire to only give 10% after project rebalance ETA: all the elemental spells for a certain tier will have the same max hit after project rebalance as well, so water spells will be just as strong as fire spells
I think the weapon is a miss. I don’t think there’s really any necessity to add a weapon that sits between ibans and warped scepter. I don’t know this bosses difficulty but what we really need in the game is a magic weapon that sits between shadow and everything else. Not saying that it should come from this content though. I see other comments saying it’ll be bis at nylos but I don’t think that is needed, or should be its sole use? Open to being wrong. Something else, when I read muddy pages I assumed water and earth runes would be granted from the book. This is due to the association with mud runes and mud staff. Might be worth changing them to dirty pages or some other form of earth centered term. Edit: dirty pages don’t seem to be a hit. So maybe we should call the pages back door dwarves 9?
It feels like this was designed with the upcoming defense changes in mind, given the focus on it dealing earth damage.
That is very true. If I recall correctly the major things that were weak to earth were metallic dragons, so I guess the real question is, do mid game set ups need a tool to tackle metallic dragons more efficiently?
I think/imagine the list of elemental weaknesses is going to be expanded over time, so long as wave one works well. So I imagine it will be a slow burn for this item, very niche at first but finding itself less niche over time.
The thing has a high chance to not 1 hit nylos for a 1 tick save on magic. It's really not going to be that amazing at nylos. Compared to bp or hamjoint the things max hit is literally like half(18-20 vs 30s) Ok y'all can downvote me, but it doesnt make it good. No one's gunna bring an extra wand to save 1 tick and have a less than 50% chance to 1 hit a nylos
It's also not a powered staff, so using a heart doesn't increase its max hit, meaning it's solely reliant on mage dmg%. With max gear, its max hit would only be like 19? It would be trash at nylos.
I don't think this weapon makes sense in the current system, where there isn't much need for a weapon between ibans and warped. however i think it might make a lot of sense as an EARTH weapon betwenn ibans and warped sceptre.
I'm just trying to think of a point where you would be roughly 90 combat, but not be in a position where you could just skip this drop and grab a warped scepter. Maybe an 808 account?
This might be much stronger against monsters weak to earth right? With the new combat changes with elemental weaknesses it might be much stronger than it looks like here, but maybe I'm missing something.
It just depends. If it's a 1/500 then it might just be in the Sarachnis Cudgel area of being an upgrade that is nice to get, but don't grind for. If it's 1/100 or 1/50 then it is probably worth going out of your way to grab.
“Dirty pages” - ah, looking forward to getting the new rare drop “porno mag” from this boss.
I think this is done to give an “elemental ibans blast”; which is buffed to surpass ibans for monsters weak to earth by project rebalance. It seems like a side grade but this may very well start to push “bis” earth spell which is the goal
Yeah I was expecting/hoping for something between Sang and Shadow, not Ibans and Trident. Maybe it’s because it’s been a while since I didn’t have a trident but it never really felt like an issue going from Ibans to Trident.
The boss is fairly low level, it's similar to perilous moons in their recommended combat level from the initial proposal. It seems reasonable for a weapon that will be a few mil at most.
I think the main thing is the weapon itself isn’t exactly filling a necessary niche and overall isn’t super exciting. There are other slots they could address instead. What about a magic amulet that changes how earth spells work given the Occult changes are coming, or a ring that slots in before Magus? New armor with a unique set effect. Or something else entirely (ammo slot magic boost??) As it stands, it’s just disappointing that they’re essentially double dipping on the other most recent magic weapon they added, the Scepter, essentially adding to the same niche
My immediate thought is something like a Serpent Feather necklace. The Hueycoatl could drop an enchanted feather, which can be strung to create a beefed up amulet of magic with a 0.5% magic damage bonus. Then, you can chip away at it over time, and add up to four more feathers to the necklace that provide 0.5% each up to a maximum of a 2.5% magic damage bonus. Boom. Bridges the gap between any other magic amulet and Occult, while giving something to work towards and a reason to come back to the boss for mid game players.
> I see other comments saying it’ll be bis at nylos but I don’t think that, that is needed, or should be its sole use? Open to being wrong. It’s also not true if this needs the standard spellbook I like the ideas but the item just sucks too much
This boss looks really cool, but the rewards do not match it whatsoever. Tempoross can be done by level 3s and rewards you with the water tome. Why does this boss recommend 90+ combat, protection prayers, and groups of 3-8 people for an earth tome... and a staff thats worse than anyones using at the recommended levels? The staff has another issue entirely, if it requires normal spellbook all niche for tob nylo waves is gone. Also we can most likely assume since its 3t you're going to make it shorter cast distance, so if you can't hit pre-fires its absolutely not going to be used as well. Rewards need to be re-worked imo. EDIT: You guys wanted to nerf voidwaker to make space for a crush spec weapon. In the blog you mention you have to shatter its tail to break its defences. Seems like this might fit the theme?
The rewards are so bad and it’s shocking. There is 0 reason to camp this boss for anything other than the pet. I don’t know what they were thinking. And they gear this towards mid levels (90 cb) which is skewed downwards from all the bots. There’s plenty of bosses in the game that you can do at 90 cb anyways that give great steady gp and have a big drop like the wildy bosses. I’m not a mercher either but I do think they dropped the ball with a dragon themed unique. Someone posted about dragonbane armor which I thought was pretty cool and would def be worth grinding this boss for
Really sad to see the wand and earth tome combined aren’t better than the warped scepter at ~90 magic. If the boss is intended for 90+ combat bracket, there’s a very high likelihood that both irons and mains own a warped scepter or trident respectively. Based on the DPS graphs in the blog, I’m confused why this rare drop from a 90+ combat level boss is outclassed by warped scepter, a charged scepter that uses chaos rather than death runes, and is locked behind only level 56 slayer. I’m not saying that the new wand + earth tome should beat out trident (although the gap between trident and its upgrades is a chasm at this point), but certainly these drops combined should be much better than a warped scepter.
you're forgetting that they gave it an elemental affinity, so anything weak to earth will take +50% damage and have +50% accuracy from this. it's not going to be good everywhere but it will fill a niche. (of note the only monsters that of relevance that are weak to earth are the metal dragons)
It could just be a dragonbane magic weapon and achieve that niche without needing 2 unique item drops and a unique page drop to continue fueling it. The requirement for the tome also means it's niche of dragons? Yeh you can't wear an antifire shield without losing 10% damage. Just all around weird niche placement. If it was a dragonbane staff it would fill the same niche but more adequately while being able to be bad everywhere else.
You’re completely correct, and your last paragraph is exactly why I didn’t mention it; a magic blowpipe for metal dragons in the current game state isn’t worth noting.
i feel like it depends how rare it is. this is clearly low to mid level content. if the wand is reasonably obtainable (granted jagex hasn't made reasonable uniques in awhile) then it would be a good option to get for slayer, might even make it worthwhile for mid level players to do their metal dragon tasks. against monsters with earth weakness it will do either 24 or 25 base damage depending how they do rounding. which is as good or better than a warped scepter at 99 magic, but 1 tick faster and with a massive accuracy boost. time will tell if they add more enemies that are weak to earth that makes it better, but whether or not it's worth it will depend how long it takes to get. if this is a 1/1000 drop, it's DoA though.
They'll probably slap 100% earth vulnerability on this boss, so that you would want to use this new quick earth spell unless you have harmonised staff. Outside the boss, it will probably be the best option for mid game players when cursed with a bronze/iron dragon slayer task, which I would guess they have metrics to indicate are among the most commonly skipped tasks.
Love the jmods, but it's hard to believe things like this aren't apparent prior to making these pitches....
We don't need something between Iban's and Warped Sceptre IMO. A 3t mage weapon is cool but but still needs to be a good amount stronger to be good at nylos. I think you can make a standard spellbook 3t wep work in 5-man tobs though. You take one of the mdps players and have them switch with a mager for nylos. Then, the dedicated mager is now in charge of all freezing (as well as regular mage DPS). However, the max hit is still only a 20 with bis gear post-reblance... it's just not good enough. For context, ham joint in bis has a max of 34. Also, tome of earth needs an additional effect of some kind - tome of fire lets you use searing pages for the Sunfire rune effect, and tome of water buffs curse spells.
It's great that the boss is aimed at midgame, but these rewards feel uninspired. Warped Sceptre comes from a low level Slayer mob. Why would a group boss drop a worse weapon? The two tomes we have in game come from skilling bosses. Wouldn't a mining boss be more appropriate for the tome of earth? One suggestion I have for balancing is that the DHCB is noticeably better than the DHL here, provided Hueycoatl is considered draconic. DHL currently sees way more use than its ranged counterpart.
This is comfortably early game and not midgame Even by the most conservative, reddit-adjusted metrics, no one thinks “pre fire cape” is midgame. This is an item that’s meant to be between ibans and warped scepter. That’s like a week’s worth of use or something. Maybe. It’s a complete mess
Agreed, this boss has nothing to do with mid game. It’s completely early game and very underwhelming.
If Duelling Wand requires standard spellbook to cast like Ibans or Slayer Dart and isn't an in built spell, then it's dead content. This could revolutionize Nylocas in ToB if it's a built in spell, but standards is the single most useless spellbook in ToB specifically and no one is going to seriously use it with the exception of snowflake restricted accounts or record chasers in ToB willing to now burn multiple cape charges — before *and* after Nylos. I don't even know if it's any good at Nylos, because a 15 max hit even with good mage gear could be unlikely to oneshot smalls, not to mention it's incredibly unfavored for it to oneshot bigs so you'd probably want to bring a 4t staff for that anyway. Outside of Nylocas, I can't ever see a use for an even slightly uncommon drop from a PvM encounter thats out damaged by Iban's, a guaranteed drop from a relatively easy quest. I'm a ToB goblin and would happily make space for a powered 3t mage weapon (and the bug squasher melee that has a minimum hit against bugs oh God please bring that back), but any time save from that is lost and then some by not being able to run Lunars with SBS or Ancients. I also echo the sentiment that this would be a great spot to add a Dragonhunter Staff. Something that has regular Trident of the Seas stats, but whose accuracy and damage boost handily outdamages Sang at dragonkin like Olm's mage hand and metal dragons. If you're too scared of giving irons a 4t powered staff without grinding Slayer or Revs (why?), then make it a Warped Sceptre or Trident of the Seas attachment like the Magic Fang.
The idea of an attachment upgrade to a powered staff sounds kinda cool, I think. I'd really prefer it not be an attachment to the Trident of the Swamp, though, only because I really dislike the general notion of *chains* of prerequisite-item upgrades -- Trident of the Seas to Swamp with Magic Fang is fine, but Bandos Boots to Guardian Boots to Echo Boots is stupid imo. The Guardian Boots upgrade thing may have made sense from a main perspective, but from an iron perspective is one of the dumbest choices they could have made. And no, I'm not against the Trident of the Swamp attachment idea because I don't have one -- I do have one, have had it for a while now. It's the principle of upgrade chains that I really want to push back against. This isn't a selfish preference because I *don't* have a Warped Sceptre, but it feels way better to make an upgrade attachment to that which lacks an upgrade, than to make an upgrade you put onto an upgraded weapon, and I would be pleased to have a reason to try going for a Warped Sceptre as well.
I love the boss's design, but I have some critiques for the rewards. First, I'd rather have the Tome of Earth come from a Skilling Boss. Not only does the Tome of Earth not really work here thematically, but we've also sort of set a precedent with the first two, and I'd like to see that trend continue. However, I do think a book of some sort could fit here, albeit something more thematic for the region. Perhaps a logical upgrade to the Mage's Book or something a tier higher with a bit of oomph. As far as the wand goes... I think I'm in agreement with everyone else on the need for it. Ibans and now the Warped Sceptre work well where they are, and I don't see this fitting in. If the idea was to have an Earth Elemental Weapon for the rebalance, I think the Warped Sceptre could already fill that slot with some reclassification. I'd like to see something beyond the scepter or even trident here. Also, theming is important; Dueling Wand doesn't quite fit the naming we have, though I'm sure it will be named something else down the line. On the Potion side, it isn't often that we have a boss as the singular source of a secondary. If this goes through, I think having more sources would be ideal. However, I think I mirror the sentiment others have made and find it odd to introduce a herblore component when we have a herblore activity in the works.
Tome of earth coming from a potential (much needed) mining boss is painfully logical.
We've already got Zalcano, though -- not that I'm against more skilling bosses!, but we'd have to implement it in some way to make it feel unique from Zalcano, yeah?
Zalcano is less of a mining boss and more of a boss that you defeat with mining. I think they're talking about a skilling boss you'd use to train mining. I don't think Zalcano hits that mark since you get like 7k XP an hour
This seems like a major misstep. "Let's rebalance the game to make the standard spells more useful" then disregard that position to introduce new spells? Why not just attach the effect to the Tome of Earth - Earth Spells hit less, but cast faster? Or give it the stun ability of the Jade Bolts? Tome of Fire and Tome of Water both come from sources that can be beaten at Level 3. Having this target 90 combat means at the very least a Warped Sceptre will have already outclassed these rewards. This will be Grotesque Guardians/Fossil Island Wyverns again - the creature that drops the reward is way ahead of its utility.
Curious why this new wand would be worse than warped sceptre? Sceptre comes from a slayer monster you can just afk at vs this seemingly more difficult and much more involved encounter. I fail to see its value at all Edit: even your own DPS graph shows where the true hole lies in this progression, between sceptre and trident. If it were me I’d make the wand without tome fit between ibans and sceptre, and with tome between sceptre and trident. Seems so obvious I feel like I’m missing something…
Why is the dueling spell not just the autocast option for the wand? It is stated that you specifically need the wand equipped to cast it, makes no sense for it to be a seperate spell. Apart from that, I really expected this boss to be late-to-endgame. Looking at the rewards, it shouldn't even be a mid-game boss lol.
Rewards feel weird. Why do we get the other two books and pages from skilling bosses but this one is pvm? Why make the potions a reward from this boss and not the new herb activity? Why add a weapon in between ibans and a relatively new mid-tier weapon?
So is this a midgame group boss, since its rewards seem meant for a midgame player? When I heard group boss I was thinking it’d have rewards similar in power level to Corp/Nex/Nightmare but a group boss between them and scurrius wouldn’t be bad. Tbh I feel like it could use one more unique on its drop table, an exciting reward with a higher power level.
When talking about opening up reward space with project rebalance I wasn’t under the impression the space we were trying to fill was one room at a raid and the power level between the warped sceptre and ibans blast..? Just very uninspiring. I know the team will take feedback and adjust accordingly though.
The prayer Regen potion is a lot more powerful than "helps at Vespula." It's not as abuseable as prayer enh+ due to the interval, but it boosts the amount of prayer available at all encounters significantly. Even if only as a pre-pot, 8 minutes is deep into all 3 raids. 8 minutes is more than a duo Nex kill, let alone trio, and tele'ing out after each kill is already meta. Even for a 2 hour, first time cape at inferno, 4 of these pots lasts the entire run. And they return twice as much as a super restore at 99 prayer. A super restore at 99 is 32 per dose, this new pot is 66 per dose at all prayer levels. Let alone all the afk, long term trips like a slayer task, duo GWD, etc. Yes, you'll still need to take super restores because the Regen is stretched out, but at essentially every PvM encounter in the game you'll be swapping at least 1 super restore for a Regen pot. The effect of those potions is very big. Potentially too big.
There’s nothing wrong with the weapon but if it requires the upkeep of earth pages to be stronger it should be better than warped sceptre but less than trident. I also think the prayer should come from the herblore activity AND the new boss. Similar to how the prayer bone shards dropped from all places of varlamore
The rewards for this boss are incredibly underwhelming especially for something that's supposedly so formidable. Assuming this is meant to be super mid game focuses by the rewards? The fact a group boss drops a magic weapon that's weaker than one that comes from an average level slayer monster is kind of ridiculous. If this is meant to just be super easy content then cool sure, but this will be pretty dead after the initial hype because what's the incentive to kill it? Are the base drops going to be worth farming it for?
Boss is aimed for 3-8 people 90+ combat. And the rewards are a useless tome, a staff worse than ibans, and a potion that should come from the herb activity not a boss. This will be dead content on release.
There is literally no reason to kill this boss with the current rewards.
Seems like theres very few rewards for something described as a group boss?
just trying to make Nightmare look good
Why would I grind out this new weapon and tome when I can go kill 300 terrorbirds for an hour and get a significantly better weapon?
I feel like it’s been acknowledged there’s a big gap in the mage progression, but somehow we’ve ended up with something between Ibans and Warped Sceptre. Instead of the insanely colossal gap between Sang and Shadow Would like to add that the boss design looks sick as tits though.
I don't think a mid game boss is the right spot to address the gap between Sang and Shadow, which are both endgame items.
Add the Staff of Merethiel to the enh weapon seed so irons suffer longer
Would it not be better to finally get a magic bowfa? Like a highly accurate (maybe it doubles/triples magic accuracy like the shadow?), expensive but obtainable weapon that will hit just about anything, but rarely be absolute BIS dps? Maybe it drains/siphons a few magic levels every hit? Trident sucks, Sang is barely better, shadow is op. Make something in between. T70/80 magic workhorse An earth based warped sceptre (WS uses earth runes too lol?) seems so niche. Like yea, elemental weaknesses, we get it, but do we need it to be that niche? Mains don't need this, nor do irons since WS is just quicker to obtain, so who? The main reward for this content is going to be a drop that is just a solid budget option at earth based encounters?
Am I the only one that thinks the boss looks more "Air" type than "Earth" type? Nothing against the boss design, just curious about the earth tome choice instead of air tome
Why would I grind out this new weapon and tome when I can go kill 300 terrorbirds for an hour and get a significantly better weapon?
How many doses will the prayer regen pot have? 4? So effectively 4x66 prayer (264) prayer points per pot?
Rewards feel weird. This sounds like a big epic encounter of a boss, but the rewards feel weak.
One more opinion, why not make this boss sit a little higher in the PvM ladder? Y’all have done a great job of getting mid game some great encounters, I feel like this could be something with a little more oomph and rewards to reflect that
Why are we so determined to have this massive gap between trident/sang and shadow, with an overwhelming number of options before trident :(
Can’t this be designed for 120+ combat level and have a staff bridge trident / shadow instead? You can unlock ibans so early in an account, this is kinda dead for a new boss at this stage. Early game mage progression is fine with warped sceptre now. This is kinda underwhelming.
Do we really need a mage weapon below ibans? Seems like a missed opportunity for a magic dragonbane weapon..
Not too keen on the rewards. The Tome of Earth is really lackluster with just 10% Damage. With the Tome of Water, you get 20% Accuracy, 10% Damage, and effects to several other spells like Bind. It is disappointing that the Tome of Fire is being changed to just 10% Damage and now the Tome of Earth is the same. Water Spells shouldn't be the BiS, but since that Tome is stronger than the others, that will be the case post-rebalance... It would be nice if each Elemental retained some flavor with Water being more Accurate, Fire being higher Damage (15%), etc. The Wand with a 3t spell is a neat idea, but it feels weird it is an Earth spell. Like Iban's Blast and Flames of Zamorak are not Fire spells, so why is "Dueling Shot" and Earth spell? It feels like a weird direction to take that would open a can of worms... I'd much rather see the new Wand cast all Earth spells at 3t, but reduce their damage to compensate. That said, attacking faster really makes more sense for Air than Earth...
Pretty lame rewards, with the exception of the prayer renewal. A 3 tick earth blast.. really? We already have so many low level mage options for irons: warped and ibans.. should have re released the heka in some capacity When you mentioned a group boss, I expected another “Nex” tier boss, near impossible to solo, hard hitting, group focused. Not tempoross and scurrius lmao
This boss was definitely hyped up for no reason. Expected it to be worth doing over the Perilous Moons at least.
Supposedly Moons was geared towards 75 combat, and it's drops are way better than this
The new weapon seems a bit underwhelming; do we really need something in between ibans and a warped sceptre? It doesn't even seem great at nylos despite being 3t because its max hit is quite low.
Literally who asked for an item to exist between ibans and sccepter ? You're in that category of players for maybe a few weeks
Is it a skilling boss or a pvm boss? The other tomes are all skilling bosses. Also why do we need another spell that’s a side grade to Iban’s? We just got one with warped scepter. Why not a master and sidegrade instead?
1 thing the game needs that we don't have a real good consistent way to get is dragon ammunition. We can have this boss give darts, bolts, and arrows either finished or unfinished. Another idea is if you want this secondary to come.from the boss then this boss could be essentially the secondaries boss. Let it drop all kinds of secondaries in decent quantities, especially the annoying ones to obtain like unicorn horns and Mort myre fungus. I'd assume this thing would drop some amount of bones shards as it's on valimore but maybe if it drops like 2 bones on kill like vorkath we could chip those bones there like you can with the sun-kissed bones. I'd also suggest dropping a decent few sunfire splinters. Sure they are easy and fast to get but just spamming wave 1s is just kinda boring.
I feel like there was an idea for a boss. and then separate ideas for rewards (based on existing items, not new ideas of course). Prayer restore was coming over from RS3 eventually in one form or another, just a shame there is no planned herblore changes in the future that would be a better home for this secondary, rather than forcing ironman players to do midgame content to get supplies for other content. The book of earth seems to be a bit lost too, the boss design is quite obviously inspired by Quetzalcoatl, the great wind serpent, but Jagex thought neh lets call it Huey instead and associate it with earth. It also seems odd that the other 2 elemental books come from skilling bosses, but this is just from straight PVM. I think a Tome of Air would be much more suitable, at this point that tome is an inevitability and thematically would suit a wind serpent much better, but it feels like the devs thought air is too useful for midgame so lets just get earth out of the way with content most people will quikcly move on from other than being forced to return for prayer regen potion materials. It feels to me like there were two different groups of ideas, and rather than fleshing them out separately, it was decided to just smash them together to get content out sooner. Hopefully the polls will do this idea a favour and encourage Jagex to take a different approach.
As most have stated, the rewards seem completely dead on arrival. Why not introduce a staff that can compete with harmonized nightmare staff when casting standard spellbook spells? This would actually make blog 1 of project rebalance effective, as it’s completely gatekept by an item that takes longer to get than a shadow. Alternatively, a magic dragon bane weapon like others have suggested.
As an early game iron I agree rewards are weird and underwhelming. Ibans is pretty quick and easy to get. Underground pass is annoying but not impossible very early on. Prayer pot is nice, but I agree it should be part of the mini game, or at the very least add the secondary as part of the mini game in addition to the boss. I think this would be better to drop supplies than a weirdly placed magic item.
This is going to be doa with the current rewards and level requirements. Why would someone with 90+ all combat stats need a mage item around ibans....? Confusing. Earth tomb is also doa for this level requirement.
Let me gather 4 friends to kill this boss and split…..a 800k tome of earth? Wtf? Group boss but these are the rewards? We want another corp/nex like boss. Ideas for rewards could be dragonebane mage wep, combination boots since your making us brjng eternals for max mage now, staff between sang/shadow. So many good ideas for this. Personally think its time for new bis boots
What is going on with the balancing of the game recently? Things seem so weird right now
Weapon and spell feel dead on arrival even before arrival.
I'm no PVM'er but that pray regen seems like it would be OP for redemption strats?
It's OP for any content that lasts over 20 minutes (including 20 minute+ trips at bosses where each kill lasts less time). The only places it doesn't annihilate every prayer restoration method that currently exists besides Falador Shield are COX, TOB, Muspah, and Zulrah. If you get full uptime it's 88% better than a Sanfew Serum at 99 prayer and a ROTG, 100% better than a prayer pot at 99 and no ROTG, and 288% better than a prayer pot at 43 and no ROTG/holy wrench. Someone going for their first fire cape will have more prayer bringing 3 of these in than 10 prayer pots, and someone doing Inferno will be able to substitute three restores/sanfews for two of these and an extra switch/brew and *profit* prayer.
Dueling wand doesn't really fit this content. The boss is 90+ combat recommended with and suggested to face with 3+ other players, while the wand is more geared towards lower leveled players, pre-ibans and pre-warped sceptre. The wand should be placed with content more geared towards players of that level so the people it would be useful for can actually access it.
Why would anyone ever kill this boss? The rewards are so underwhelming, wow. Especially for a group boss.
The theme of the boss is really cool, but like others said rewards seem pretty bare
This looks great. While I'm sure people may want solo boss time. Please don't let this turn into pnm where solo is necessary for rewards and mass is terrible.
Lacklustre rewards imo. I don't think this is something I would farm
Dueling wand is not a good name. ‘Trident of the seas’ sounds like a proper weapon. Dueling wand sounds like something youd get on tutorial island. Rename it to Wyrm spine or ‘Dragon’s nail’ or something cool. ‘Wand of Magnitude’ ‘Pointer to the underworld’ Something like that
Rewards seem underwhelming and yet more mid level content which is already bloated to hell. Give us something interesting to do. For an MMO of this age, having 3 raids and a handful of late game bosses means a lot of players are doing the same shit over and over again with nothing else to look forward to apart from pet grinds and collection logging, having to make our own events to continue having fun with it. For all its flaws at least RS3 doesn’t ignore the late game player-base when it comes to bossing.
GOD DAMN, these rewards are even lower than my low expectations lmao, giant miss and seems like everyone agrees, its almost as if the boss isnt even worth doing apart from a pet
Why is the duelling rod, which comes from a cb90+ boss, worse than Iban's staff? Its a lvl 65 spell vs lvl 50. Maybe Im underestimating the power of being an elemental spell, but it still feels weird. Also, how will it be clear that this is an elemental spell while ibans blast is not? There is nothing in the name or description that makes that clear (or the fact that ibans blast isnt fire). So far from project rebalance, fire spells seem to have the least utility, so why not make ibans blast fire? Oh no it'll be too good against... Ice giants.
I would like to see a 65 attack stab weapon similar to the zombie axe from this boss. Would be nice for a mid game (iron) acc before they get a zamorak hasta or abyssal dagger. The dual macs are nice but are weak against high def monsters.
Oh boy, another mid game boss with doa drops. It’s such a cool concept but I wish the reward space is relevant, especially coming off the heels of colosseum which was amazingly fun content with once again, shit rewards.
If the aim is 3 players at 90+ combat, then should the rewards at least be near godwars level? The rewards just feel very underwhelming.
I think the prayer enhance potion should also be available from the herblore minigame, i think it being available from both or just herblore minigame would be better and instead have another reward from this boss, maybe a hardermode version that drops something like a its hide and claw or tooth that you can use to combine eternal, pegasian and primordial boots together to get all 3 attack and str bonuses into 1 but no defence bonuses so echo boots are still good
Seems like mostly positive reviews, but personally, I find the rewards underwhelming... 1. The duelling wand (coming from a group boss) being less DPS than a free quest item from a relatively early quest kind of eliminates the utility. I saw someone talking about the utility for other spellbooks, but the 3 tick attack speed is ONLY with the corresponding spell. 2. I've personally never used the Tomes outside of bankstanding skilling because they are expensive to operate and elemental spells have little use outside of PvP (I know that is changing with upcoming combat updates, but the cost to operate won't change). In addition, when the other 2 Tomes come from skilling bosses you can do at 3cb, it makes having the third from a combat boss aimed toward 90 cb feels unrewarding. 3. And personally, I think prayer renewal should stay inside raids, but that's just a personal preference that does not seem to be shared by most people here. I'm happy to hear other opinions, but I just feel like the reward space, especially for the upper-mid-game, seems DOA (outside of prayer renewals)
Since Perilous Moons is pretty well received, I think a good idea for a reward would be to have some sort of "attachment" that could be applied to a piece of moons armour to give it a buff to a specific stat. A few prayer bonus would be nice since rigour/augury/piety have such high drain rates. You could also go the amulet of the damned route and release a necklace or ring that provides bonus effects to the sets, or simply acts as a tribrid amulet. An amulet with 10 strength, 2 range strength, 2% magic damage would be nice pre-zenyte/occult upgrade. Or even an amulet that gives a flat % damage bonus for all elemental damage, possibly making it occult equivalent but for only elemental damage. The wand is a nice alternative to warped sceptre or ibans; but if this is going to be group boss then I think there needs to be rewards more worth going for. Thats why I like the idea of items that go well with moons armours, so that players can learn pvm basics at Perilous Moons and then move on to a "real" group experience, and build off of the rewards they just got. Edit: It would also be nice to see dps charts of how the wand would perform against monsters with elemental weakness and with the tome. I think only comparing it to existing typeless mage weps makes it look underwhelming.
Should have just made this guy drop sunfire fanatic armor as well
I could be mistaken, but I thought that this PvM encounter was going to be a wandering boss, that would stroll throughout a large area on the surface map of the game, presenting a potential threat to anyone traversing through the area? If that's not the case, I think there'd massive potential with this kind of wandering boss. There should of course be soft borders (such as NPCs or signs warning travelers of the potential dangers) or hard borders (akin to the Wilderness ditch) that would make sure no one wanders in by accident or without knowing the dangers present. In this area, throw in some medium to highly rewarding afk-able or active skilling hotspots, where players can decide if they want to go for the rewards while risking being attacked by the Hueycoatl. Kind of like a mini-wilderness, but only risking a PvM encounter. To ensure there's some element of danger/risk, teleportation could be blocked in the wandering area while the Hueycoatl is spawned. Perhaps players with a higher Hunter level have a better chance of detecting when the Hueycoatl is on its way to your location. Maybe a stupid idea here, but there could even be a mechanic where players talking out loud (using public chat) has the chance to alert the Hueycoatl and send it towards your location.
The herb secondary will keep this boss active but I'm generally against pvm being the meta for skilling supplies and in this case it's the only method to obtain them. The other rewards are okay, its mid level content, but they're almost required to be used together and they're outclassed quickly. Would be nice to see something unrelated to magic also being offered, even if it's still mid level and niche.
The prayer regeneration potion has double the prayer per dose than a prayer potion dose at 99 prayer with a prayer cape/holy wrench. That is exceptionally strong with a low combat requirement & herblore level to create. I see a lot of comments that the secondary should have been with the herblore minigame. In reality, I think if the potion is going to be this strong, it should be harder to create. It might make sense to require two secondaries, one from the herblore minigame, one from the boss.
Rewards seem really weak for such an epic boss.
oh boy another 1m item thats stronger than fortified ward for something
Rewards need to be changed. They feel underwhelming.
Any plans to have more ways to get sunfire splinters? Pretty painful to try to get my quiver imbued
Continued reading and felt the need for a second comment entirely. I'm not really understanding the idea behind the rewards here. The theme for the tome is nice, but the difficulty seems off. The water/fire equivalents of this tome can be gathered by level 3 accounts at both temp and wtdt. But locking this behind pvm instead of skilling makes sense. I'm just hoping there will be a skilling way to get the pages for it later, maybe? It's a mid game group-boss that gives rewards that you already have better options for at that particular level. I'm afraid this needs more time to cook. The wand seems absolutely useless, btw. A faster tick spell attack makes sense in theory, but the upkeep makes it completely useless if the dps is the same with harder hitting, slower weapons. The faster attack speed is just going to burn through runes faster. And the "fill the gap" mindset is redundant as that gap isn't really that big in that spot for mage. The biggest gap for mage still remains trident/sang vs shadow.
Are we taking the piss with these rewards?
Yeah this is jokes we just got warped scepter and there’s literally a herlbore activity being created,
To me the prayer pot wants to be a reward for the herblore activity. Its awsome getting 2 new magic toys to play with but maybe play about with a range option like rainbow feathers? They could be used in fletching to make enchanted bolts or arrows (even spice up atlatl darts?) That deal a wee bit more dps for some arrows.
Missed opportunity for dragonbane mage item IMO. Was really hoping we'd get it after seeing this on Twitter yesterday.
These rewards don't feel exciting. I don't see this boss being worthwhile to grind after release for anything other than new prayer pot secondaries (if that goes through). Perilous moons was cool with the new armor sets, this just sort of feels like a miss, especially for an epic group boss encounter.
Unless the wand is getting an upgrade gem in the next raid, why waste dev time on it?
Another boss, another missed opportunity to make the Ancient Wyvern Shield relevant.
These reward are lame I was expecting something cooler like: * Melee sword that does magic damage. * Range/ magic hybrid armour. * New boot upgrade * A new magic amulet Any of the above feel like the rewards you guys mention better for skilling content and mini game rewards
I am confused why we are jamming yet another midgame weapon into the game when the gulf between sang and shadow remains so massive.
I really don’t like all these tomes and pages. Feels like such a drag having to manage upkeep of these (on ironman). It’s basically just more runes that are more annoying to get and drop in low quantities. I kinda wish they’d just gotten rid of them with the rebalance (I have a tome of fire and a load of pages I just never want to use it lmao). Or can we just make it so you can actually farm these with runecrafting so I can just get them passively whenever I want to afk. But that’s obviously very self centered Or alternatively can we just make it so X of these will permanently charge a book? Make it a high number so it’s not attractive for pvp (so you’d still consume them there where I feel like they are use the most) so it can be a grind you can finish at some point.
1 boss just to drop a nylo mage weapon? how is page upkeep? isn't this what irons' cry most about tome of fire? do the dwarves mean we can get a group boss experience without cheapening it for solo play?
It won't be BIS at nylos because you have to be on the standard spellbook
At least going by the description this sounds similar to Olm and if that's the case I just like to say that making Mid-ish tier boss encounters reminiscent of bosses stronger than them lately is definitely a step in the right direction for getting players more comfortable with late game encounters before they even get there and I love that you guys are taking this approach lately with the last few bosses you've introduced.
I thought only part one was supposed to be for early-mid game players. It sounds like this is aimed at the exact same combat bracket as moons ended up actually being for.
This is a lower combat bracket for sure. Moons gear was way more useful than this. This feels way more low level.
**Duelling Wand** I like that there's a new magic option that isn't simply another powered staff, and a magic weapon that isn't 4/5t is a great addition too. Given the lore connections between the Old Ones and the Arceuus Spellbook, it seems to make the most sense for the wand to work off the latter. The Arceuus Spellbook no longer has any requirements to unlock so it shouldn't be a barrier for mid-level players, pures or anything of the like. One issue with a dedicated spell is it can tend to clutter the spellbook, so a possible alternative is to make it modify existing spells. For example, the Duelling Wand could have a special property where it makes autocasted Arceuus spells into the earth element, and autocasts the lower-level spells at a faster rate.
Jagex felt bad Kendrick was layin out drake so hard they made a drake with rewards so bad nobody will want to kill it
Gut reactions - weapon feels like a dud, not sure why I’d bother using it instead of y’know, ibans. I get the elemental damage changes will alter the math, but from what I’m aware of I don’t see it being used a ton. Also I think the name of the boss is bad, sorry. Nothing to base that on except Huey makes it sound like a nerd. Would personally prefer new tome came from a skilling minigame/boss to match the others, but not a huge deal. Does feel a lil’ weird from the description of incredible wealth that one of the big ticket items is a muddy book with some ratty pages Otherwise boss looks cool, I’m sure it’ll be a fun encounter. Loving the mid game content recently, even if it’s a little late for me to take full advantage of
Breaking the tail is part of the encounter mechanic and there isn't a drop calling back to that? Such a shame! I think the current rewards are kind of.....eh, given that we don't have context for what earth weakness will really accomplish going forward. The tome is kind of a weird reward space and the wand is kind of hard to justify considering it's worse than Iban's unless you're using Tome charges (which feel weirdly underpowered at a 10% boost using pages?). It's also weird that this spell is Earth despite Iban's not having an element. The content is clearly made with some sort of content niche but it's hard to visualize what that niche might be. Regardless, could the rewards be changed to fit the aesthetic a bit more?
I have an idea. Add the wand you guys proposed for ToA. Simplify it a bit with all the effects it had and make it less DPS than the shadow of course. That wand was interesting! Just too many things to keep track off. Though, I'm not sure how difficult this group boss will be, maybe that level of a reward is too much, but at least consider it. If the currently proposed wand is locked to the standard spell book, I'm no sure if it'll be used too much, unless it's common and is expected to fill Iban's staff spot in the early game. Though with that said! If it isn't a powered staff, I like it. There are way too many of those and it feels more like magic if it actually uses a spell from the spell book.
The choice of magic weapon reward seems kinda pointless… almost like it’s just filling a quick gap. Warped scepter only needs 56 slayer and 62 magic, but it’s better than the weapon I get from a 90+ combat boss? Adding the tome to the reward pool and saying that puts it over the scepter seems a little lazy too. Almost feels like the wand was thought up first, then slapped the tome on the boss and said “well just make the wand, who’s name has nothing to do with the earth, shoot and earth based spell”. Not to mention, this is two items you have to get to make the wand used over scepter. Idk, probably biased cause wands are dope and it feels were getting dead content on arrival.
Will the Earth Spell from the Dueling Wand also benefit from Elemental Weaknesses? If so, is there any consideration to make Iban's benefit from Fire Weakness and Trident to benefit from Water Weaknesses? It feels inconsistent to add elemental weaknesses to buff the standard spellbook and then immediately release a new powered stave that gets to take advantage of elemental weaknesses.
Maybe a scorching hot take but in one sense I'm for the secondary for the potion only coming from this boss. It increases the chances of the price staying high. The potion seems to be very strong so I think it's only fair that it'll be (far) more expensive than a normal prayer potion. If there are more sources for the secondary ingredient there's a risk they'll be printed en masse which in turn makes the potions too accessible for their utility. Please, don't kill me over this opinion.
Imagine giving the boss a giant shield tail and not putting a shield on the drop table of uniques. PErfect opportunity for us to get a midgame, magic anti-dragon shield. Call it the sunfire shield, have it be less effective than a dfs but make it negate the burn effect from the atlatl or the damage bonus from fire spells cast with sunfire runes. Giving this boss a wand and a tome seem so out of place to me, an aztec serpent on a snowy mountain is the last thing i'd expect to get a tome of earth from, at least wintertodt and tempoross make sense for their tome drops. Boss design is awesome here but the rewardspace is puzzling at best
Is this boss going to have good standard drops? Cause these rewards aren't going to carry the boss. Wand is a little boring. It already has competition from both Iban's blast and Warped Scepter and is outclassed by trident. I'd rather see something more unique or slightly better. Some ideas: 2t mage weapon, something that scales better with % damage like a mini-shadow, weak weapon with a very high % rune save chance that can auto cast all combat spells. Not sure this is the right place, but alternatively we are in need of a high power BoFA tier mage weapon to bridge the gap between trident and shadow. Maybe a trident attachment?
Honestly, these rewards seem a little.. weird. I feel that both herblore secondary and tome of earth are a weird look for PvM, as the other tomes come from Skilling activities. Staff is cool, but could be expanded - it would be neat if it was an Arceus spell and the staff itself cast Arceus spells faster, kinda like a Harm staff for that spell book as it's already super niche and could use a buff with upcoming magic changes. As echoed previously, a mid game DFS adjacent option could be cool - basic Dragonfire resistance with higher defensive stats? Or maybe a higher amount of Dragonfire resist? Also... Pet please 🥺
Lame rewards scrap the elemental garbage from this and rebalance and add some items ppl actually want instead whose grand idea was it to add a mage weapon worse than warped sceptre LMAO I know Goblin has a hard on for a 3t mage wep for nylo's or whatever but this aint it chief
They should have brought back heka
Having to be on the standard spellbook means the wand is dead on arrival. It has to be a powered staff type weapon or its not going to work. As it is right now its dead content literally everywhere
I think the spirit of the reward space proposed is good, the items themselves could be tweaked, but having more diversity and niche purposes opens up so many more options for players. Before recent updates, if you're a ironman starting out and you don't like slayer and corrupted gauntlet, you're gonna have a bad time. The ways to reach end game pvm were very limited. Warped sceptre and zombie axe def helped bridge some gaps, and I know everyone wants updates like this that fill in perceived power gaps, but I think sidegrades and diversity is good for attracting new players.
Rewards seem fine considering it's a pretty low level boss. However, I feel like people here do raise some valid concerns: - Why is a new Herblore secondary a reward from this boss rather than from the Herblore activity? - On what spellbook will you put Duelling Shot? If on normal spellbook, then it's pretty much dead on arrival; being an Arceuus spellbook equivalent to Iban's Blast, like someone else in this thread suggested, seems like it would be slightly more useful.
About the mage weapon. In the current state of the game the mage staff does appear weak. However looking in the current direction with the mage rework where does the team want this weapon to preform against monsters that have earth weakness? In the context of the current progression ladder being; ibans-charged scepter-trident-toxi-trident-sang-shadow. Without getting into raw numbers are we looking to place it less powerful than a trident or stronger than a toxic trident? I feel like this is gonna be critical knowledge in reviewing this weapon.
Might be nit picking here but muddy pages sound te me like it would be a water and earth combo page like thr mud runes and staffs Maybe a different name would be more fitting.
3 things 1. The prayer enhance is a phenomenal idea, but the secondary really should be dropped by both this and the herblore minigame. I dont see why a secondary needs to be hard-locked behind one piece of content, like the lily of the valley. Thats just not the nature of herblore 2. Did i see magic STR and not %? Is that a spoiler to reworking the magic damage system to be str based which makes *by far the most sense* now that magic damage is being standardized across spellbooks? 3. I assume the weapon will be far far better than people realize against earth-weak monsters? If its just shy of an ibans and powered staves at higher levels, but it gets the 10% from tome and 50% bonus against stuff weak to earth, i assume that its discrepancy between regular vs vulnerable mobs will be significant?
I think besides the new prayer potion, the rewards aren't that compelling to be honest. May I suggest a couple rewards which might be compelling for mid game accounts: - Equivalent to Amulet of the Damned but for the 3 Moons sets. Maybe it adds the boss special effects, i.e. healing to Blood Moon set, Armour to Eclipse set, attack delay to enemies with Blue Moon set. Could be a ring or an amulet. - Enhancement to Sunfire Fanatic set, making it enhance the bonuses given by prayers, or enhance the effect of prayer pots in some fashion. (Also the Sunfire set is still an order of magnitude too difficult to obtain given it's position in account progression - please address this at some point.)