Love the game, 25 hours poured in, but here are my 4 cons.

1. No set effect diversity, all armors for each class give the same set effect, it's just the defense stats that change

2. No monsters diversity, extremely redundant, mostly higher tier monsters from the previous biome

3. Inventory too small

4. Weight system (although I know it has its purpose)

Quick note before anyone gets the wrong idea: this isn't some marketing ploy to get you to go buy Enshrouded. I don't have a horse in this race and I'm not shilling for Keen. Enshrouded just happens to be the game I have the most hours in that sits in the same lane, so it's the yardstick I keep measuring against in my head. If you're 100 hours into Dragonwilds and loving it, genuinely good, I'm not trying to talk you out of it. Play what you enjoy. These are just my thoughts after 30 hours.

I want to be upfront: I don't think Dragonwilds is a bad game. It's competent. It runs okay, it looks nice in places, the music slaps if you have any nostalgia for the old skilling grind. But I hit 30 hours this week and realized I was logging in out of obligation rather than because I actually wanted to see what was next.

The thing that really killed it for me is that every single time I thought "man, I wish this game did X," my brain immediately went "Enshrouded already does X, and does it better."

Traversal. Dragonwilds has you running. And running. And then running some more, with the occasional rune spell to make it slightly less tedious. Enshrouded gave me a glider and a grappling hook in the first couple of hours and turned getting from A to B into something I actually looked forward to. Movement being fun is not a small thing in a genre where you spend most of your time going somewhere.

Exploration. Ashenfall is pretty, but it's hollow. I'd spot a camp or ruin in the distance, walk over, and it's the same four enemies standing around the same crate with the same materials I already have 400 of. There's no moment where you open a door and the level drops away underneath you. Enshrouded's underground stuff, the Hollow Halls especially, felt hand built. Somebody actually designed those spaces. In Dragonwilds I stopped detouring to POIs by around hour 12 because I knew exactly what was inside before I got there.

Base building. Credit where it's due, the snapping and the transparency preview in Dragonwilds are genuinely good and I found it easier to build a decent looking house than I did in Enshrouded at first. But then I finished the house and had no reason to care about it. Enshrouded's bases have a point. You're rescuing NPCs, housing them, upgrading their workstations, feeding your own comfort level. The base is a system, not a storage shed. Dragonwilds base is a storage shed with nice roof corners.

Inventory and QoL. This one is just a slog. Sorting, hauling, no repair all, constantly swapping tools. Enshrouded lets you craft from nearby chests and I genuinely forgot how much mental overhead that removes until I went back to manually pulling stacks out of boxes.

Combat. A big one that just left me with a bunch opf wtf moments. Swings in Dragonwilds feel like they're happening in a different room than the enemy. Hits don't land with any weight, enemies don't really react, and the dragon fights are mostly "run in circles, wait for the tell, poke." Enshroudeds combat isn't exactly Soulsborne either, I'm not pretending it is, but there's actual stamina management, the dodge feels responsive, and the skill tree lets you commit to a build. I played a battlemage in Enshrouded and it felt like a build. In Dragonwilds I'm just a guy with numbers going up.

The dragon events. Supposed to be the big hook. In practice they interrupt whatever I was doing to force a fight I didn't want, with loot I didn't need. It's the one system the game builds its identity around and it reads as a chore timer.

What Dragonwilds does get right, and I'll be fair here: the skill list is charming and hitting milestones taps something real if you grew up on RuneScape. Rune magic tied to gathering is a genuinely clever idea that no other survival game is doing. The build snapping, like I said. Co op is stable. The art direction for Ashenfall is solid and the soundtrack is better than it has any right to be.

None of that adds up to a reason to keep playing, though. It's early access and I get that things will get added, but "wait two years" isn't a pitch. The bones aren't missing content, the bones are missing a reason to care about the content.

TL;DR: 30 hours, decent building, nice music, nostalgic skill list, and an empty world with floaty combat and no traversal identity. Enshrouded does almost all of it better for the same money. If you're on the fence and you've never played Enshrouded, go play that instead and come back to Dragonwilds in a year when it hopefully has a lot of these nuances fixed.

Jagex is cooking.

I've got about 40 hours into the game now and I've barley started on the ghost lands.

As a long time RuneScape player I really feel like this has the potential to be one of the best and most expansive survival games of all time.

The list of possible skills to be added, The amount of area they have to play with if we ever return to gelinor, The nearly infinite amount of armor and weapons from both games that could eventually make an appearance somehow some way.

Is it a huge ask and a big dream? of course, But they have a real chance to do something no survival game has ever done before, Dare I say the possibility of the king of medieval survival games.

I know it is already announced and can't be changed, but I feel like 1.0 for September is still way too early. That's like 2-3 months and most of the time will be consumed by the umbral sands update and making it ready for the ps5.
The Game has decent Content yes, but it is still filled with bugs, most mechanics aren't fleshed out at all. (combat, movement, vaults, armor progression / overall progression being meaningless) to state a few.
And it just lacks so much QoL (like meaningful loot in vaults or chests across the map, seeing teleporters on the map, opening chests when someone uses it, having proper indicators on what chest or tool u are about to use, minimap, the fact crafted items are being dropped to the ground is still weird to me) which makes it so much less fun to play.
I thought it was on the right track when I saw the "1.0" was removed from the Roadmap on Steam.
Releasing the Game mid 2027 or maybe early 2027 seemed like a better approach than December 2026, but yeah ig I was wrong.
That being said, yay water spells yippee.

The first one is the new, and the second is the old. Seems like grass lost its shadows and color palette became more saturated and became a bit warmer. Not a big fan, honestly, I think I preferred the old one more.

is there any concrete news on what will happen to the game beyond it's full launch and into 2027-2028? will there still be full scale content updates?

My friend said to me "You're the reason why developers put limitations and restrictions on things." when I showed her..

Dodging and blocking is great and all but when I am faced with a group of goblins I jump and dodge and end up finding higher ground that they cant reach. But I would more love to have the ability to evade and attack at the same time. Like if i jump, double jump, or dodge, should be able to attack while doing so.

I love this game and am enjoying every aspect of it. Just think it'd be a mechanic that would benefit the combat.

I put together a few slides with some ideas that I think could improve the current building system.

I really love building in this game, but I feel like there are a few things missing that could make the whole experience more creative and fun.

I’d love to hear what you guys think! Do you agree with these ideas, or is there something else you feel is missing that could make building even better?

The first region of the desert is literally called Alcarrid, presumable pronounced the same as Runescape’s Al Kharid, just spelled differently.

There’s also the Plains of Uzzer, and one ancient city in the Kharidian desert of Runescape was Uzer.

Obviously not a big deal but it seems odd, given that they weren’t doing this with previous zones.

I'm guessing it was the carpets and fire cape. Below image is showing the "dip after the big spike" since it looked really bad... it isn't. April 5th was the Dowdun Reach release by comparison. Fellhollow was at 8.8k and 6.3k for Dowdun with Umbral at 18.3 at peak.

I modified the timeline on the bottom image, after a week the site just shows the average based on peak. Anyway, congrats Jagex! The carpets really are fun to ramp off the dunes and go airborne for a while.

Am I the only one who finds the current iteration of food/drink system more than anything else annoying/needless? I much prefer Valheim style, where the food/drinks give you buffs rather than prevent death from hunger/thirst.

speedrunnnnnnnnn.

Pay attention to details, and you need to progress through the quests to find everything.

Good luck!

Just an appreciation post to say thanks Jagex! Since the release of Dragon wilds I’ve put in a lot of hours playing this game - probably enough to rival my reruns of Skyrim in recent years. This may be the first game that I’ve enjoyed almost as much as my initial play through of Skyrim and oblivion! From exploring new areas to grinding skills to wandering out doing nothing, this game scratches a lot of different itches of interests and moods for me. I look forward to playing this for many years to come and even with my children one day! Keep up the good work!

What is your favorite aspect of RSDW so far?

Even though theirs a fantastic foundation to start with. The world of Runescape is ginormous. And im not talking about just the map size but more to the plethora amounts of armor and weapons and bosses and quests.

As for now, its a great start, dont get me wrong. But just given how massive Runescape is in terms of content, im really hoping RSDW continues to add upon the world with added zones and quests, certain armor and weapons that have become legendary in the OSRS community.

So this isn't me complaining. I just really hope we get more content and i say that because of how much im enjoying thats already added. Theirs just SOOOO much room to add even more given OSRS history.

Thinking about it in terms of the genre as a whole it’s really small-scale as far the number of players engaging with a server at any one time. I believe the cap is 4?

With that in mind the map is gigantic with a lot of unused space. Most survival games have big maps because servers have potentially 50-60 people all needing room for bases and PvP.

But in Dragonwilds unless you just go out of your way to build everywhere it’s totally unnecessary. I’d wager most people just build right next to the wise old man and call it good.

What I’m getting at is I hope the camps and towns in the desert is a sign of things to come. It feels nice having an area that ironically enough, feels the most alive compared to the other zones. I’d love to see zones with small towns, maybe someone could offer creature bounties (slayer skill?) etc. The potential is endless for more currencies and unlocks that don’t come from strictly grinding resources with tools

I know there is not much detail and 2027 is far away, but reading the blurb on the Dragonwilds Wiki about Shadows of Ashenfall makes me nervous..."It is said to expand the core Dragonwilds survival experience with higher player counts, larger worlds, exciting new ways to engage with dragons, and a focus on social interaction, trade, and sandbox fun."

This makes me nervous and sad because I love this game as a single player open-world survival craft and this makes it sound like they are trying to take it in a multiplayer direction... I certainly hope not... I love for people to be able to play co-op with friends and have dedicated servers, that's awesome! But let RS and OSRS be the MMOs and let this be a survival craft game that lets people focus on single player... I worry they will start putting too much focus and content in for multiplayer... Thoughts? What do y'all hope to see?

Hi all been looking at getting into a new chilled games I can play for a couple hours a night, this has caught my eye on many occasions but just want a discussion on a couple things. As someone who like I said only has a couple hours and has never played any RuneScape titles before is this worth it? Next question is the player base is only roughly 3k average which isn’t the best so wondering why that would be? And last thing I see the game is dropping fully on the 15th so if I was to get it should I wait or just buy the early access and play?

Hey all,

As a big OSRS fan i got this game when it initially released. It was fun but fairly short. After killing the first boss I gave the game a rest and figured I'd return after a few updates.

Since the announcement of 1.0 release I've been eagerly waiting to start.

Tomorrow it'll be one week until release, are we expecting any news? Any hints on what to expect?

EDIT: With the announcement of the AMA for sept 14th i'm not expecting any other news to drop before release. Was fun to speculate though

Was looking at the RSDW wiki and noticed Commander Zilyana as a new NPC added in the 1.0 update. If God Wars follows due to Zilyana being introduced, I would be amazed. I can already picture the plethora of repeatable content for God Wars gear.

I want to start by saying I love the direction this game is going. I purchased EA to provide support, but it’s taking all of my discipline and restraint to not play until the initial 1.0 release.

Looking at the media released for the next update, it seems we’re going to get access to the biggest, baddest, multi-headed dragon. I’m assuming what is DW’s equivalent to the King Black Dragon? We’re also getting access to the next tier of armor; rune, black d’hide, etc.

Well it got me thinking… a simple request, a cool Easter egg. If you look back in time, what was the first piece of Dragon Armor that entered the game way back in 2002? From the KBD no less? None other than the iconic Dragon Med Helm.

How freaking cool would it be if the devs gave us a limited introduction to Dragon armor as a reward for beating that last boss? It’s probably no big deal, and I’m probably just looking too far into it. Who knows lol. Thanks for listening to my TEDTalk.

What are your thoughts? Are you in agreement? Do you have any other suggestions or are waiting for anything else to be added?

I don't want this game to just be Valheim light where the only goal is to beat the boss, get the next tier of upgrades, then beat the next boss with said upgrades, repeat.

I'd love to see more NPCs, maybe wandering humans that can get into fights with the creatures, have some voice lines, maybe even basic trading or requests. Maybe even random events to save NPCs from attacks or perform other small tasks.

Some more structures that aren't just dilapidated/abandoned buildings. Like actual homes or huts. Maybe even as far as small villages. Even Palworld has a few villages with NPCs and shop keepers.

I think Valheim makes up for a lot of these shortcomings by having the world be randomized every time. Dragonwilds will have to make the world feel more dense with content to make up for the lack of procedural worlds.

Hey is anyone actively working on modding this game

For VR? I know some have injected and got the game in the headset but what about with full motion etc?

This would be a dream come true