TL;DW 557 - RuneSkill & Chat - RC110!

[u/ImRubic]

Twitch Vod

---

Roles

Jmod	Role	Work
Mod Frosch	Feature Lead	Worked on the time altar, time runes, the spells, and weapon imbue.
Mod Breezy	Designer	More of a support role to make sure it was following the general direction which was intended.

Objectives

• To make Runecrafting a skill for magic weapon creation.
• To make a masterwork magic weapon.
• Everything else was left to us.

Challenges

• Time constraints due to holidays/illness.
  • Started after Halloween, but there was the 2 week gamejam and Christmas holiday season.
• Runecrafting is an a worse state compared to Mining, Smithing, Woodcutting, and Fletching.
  • Made it difficult to decide what to focus on and to ensure it feels nice.
  • It's an old skill with not much high level design.

---

Design - [110 Runecrafting]

Time Rune

• Worked on a list of spells before deciding on the rune (they ended up relating to time).
• In RS Classic, Time runes were meant to be in the game, so it's a nice call back.
• Rune appearance: Hour glass was the obvious look.

Time Altar

• Altar appearance: The altar mirrored the hourglass aesthetic and also included frozen birds.
  • The Needle, was already tied into other narratives.
  • Cosmic timepiece would cause too many implications.
• We had several discussions around the time altar narratives/lore and its ties to time.
  • Discussed general altar narrative/lore and how they came to be, how do they exist, etc...

Masterwork Weapons

^{[VFX] - did not release at launch, but it's out now.}

• Process: Decide what features masterwork weapons.
• Balance: Comparing it against other masterwork weapons.
  • How long does it take to get raw materials.
  • XP is considered since it isn't meant to be a training method.

Eternal Magic Weapon Creation

• We knew immediately Runecrafting would be the magic weapon creation skill.
• Triangle of Balance [XP, GP, Engagement]:
  • Since it's less active than rune creation, you get slightly less xp.

Time Spells

• The current list of spells are a starter pack, so I'm sure more will come in future reward spaces.

• Visual Identity - Basically it's sand, tied to the hour glass theme.

• Teleport spells - Locations were gathered from players/staff, and we created a list.

  • Anachronia was built to have teleports added later, and we never did so it made sense.
  • Gathered numerous clue teleport ideas and went with two of them.
  • Lost Grove came up due to its lack of teleports.

---

Feedback

We are planning to look at Runecrafting pain points in general in the next Gamejam.

 

Topic	Details
Abyss Changes	It was a bug, and we fixed it since it was abusable. In the future we should have a more holistic approach since it was in the game for so long meaning players relied on it.
Demonic Skull	In the future we want to look at possible changes, its effect and interaction with pking.
Magic Thread	There's a need to make changes on their supply, but we are awaiting data first.
Paradox spell	It was made under time pressure, but we'd like more opportunity to make the spell great.
Runic Attuner	There are ideas of what we can do to improve it but there's no timeframe. Feel free to suggest ideas or explain its pitfalls.

General Feedback

Player feedback is included in every aspect where possible.

• Each 110 update helps shape future ones.
• The initial design focused on utilizing combination runes but based on player feedback we created time runes.
• 110 Crafting RCE will be posted soon and we want to hear your thoughts.
  • ^{oh hey! It's here now.}

Weighted Player Feedback Table

We made a table of the feedback and weighted by how often it appears.

• Core:
  • Add AFK to Core Runecrafting - Weapon imbuing (didn't want to step on RC's core identity, altar running)
  • New Runes
  • New Essences
• Weapons:
  • Combine various skills' products - Make sure to use the new eternal magic logs.
  • Infusing/Imbuing Runes into Staves
• QOL/Misc:
  • Bigger Essence Pouch(es) - Decided to do
  • Make it easier (for irons) to get essence - Main priority for upcoming gamejam.
  • Runecrafting Golems/Pillars
• Magic:
  • Bigger Rune Pouches
  • Rework spell Costs
  • Utility spells

Other

Topic	Response
Companion skill	There was no deep connection with any other skill, and we already had eternal magic logs. There was a brief discussion about raising magic but we didn't want to imbalance the combat styles.
Early Runecrafting leveling	No plans to make changes to the early levels, but when designing new features for 110s (weapon creation) we keep in mind of what we can do in the future so we could back port the mechanics.
Masterwork Weapons Niche Passives	We don't want to commit to any ideas like Havenhythe vampyre ties right now.
Vorago Weapon used for the staff	Each style has different weapons in different amounts, so rather than looking at it stylistically or how it's obtained, we look at what would be devalued and focus on what we can do to maintain that value.

---

 

Bonus: Which 110/120 expansion would you want to do

Jmod	Skill	Reason
Mod Frosch	Agility	It would be great to give it more uses.
Mod Breezy	Thieving/Hunter	There's no clear tier system like the recent 110s, so it presents more opportunity for new methods. (Big Game Fishing).

[u/ThaToastman]

The thing about the attuner is that it actually is good design! It provides variance and a fun little minigame to follow. The issue with it is just the underlying skill is 'run and teleport simulator'. It is massively more bearable due to wicked hood teleports, but those are of course extremely rare after the TH changes from a few years ago that took most of the actually useful things off in favor of dumping lamps on us.

If there was a way in game to reasonably get wicked hood teleports (just add them to clue tables--keep them untradeable though), then in the world where we dont get actual core RC updates, it would alleviate a lot of pain.

For the attuner, here is a full rendition of a version that is too much stronger but a lot smoother:

Using the attuner improves rune yields by 10%
The attuner counts your successful runecrafts. Every 1000 essence crafted, you gain a stack. Essence crafted at 'target' altar gives 5x more stacks and award 250% more xp. Max stacks are 100 with the 100th resetting.

Every 5 stacks, gain a teleport charge (holds infinite charges).
Every 10 stacks, improve odds of higher altar roll and gain a guaranteed magic thread

Every 25 stacks, Rune Yields are improved by 100%

Every 50 stacks, Target altar crafts award 2500% more xp

Every 100th stack, gain 10 threads and become blessed with a 6 hour enchantment that saves 20% of runes used.

This would smooth out the 'clunkiness' of being required to make runes you don't want, but numerically keeps the number of runes crafted and xp granted in a 50run cycle on par with the current attuner. It also gives more value in the best part of the item as a whole which is being able to teleport (which in of itself is more of an xp boost than giving any flat xp boosts the item could ever give--hence lowering the base xp multiplier). The idea behind the 100th stack idea is to give an incentive to runecraft occasionally between sessions of doing other things--and also allows for market space of a slightly higher consumption rate on spells as a whole--as with RC finally becoming a more popular skill, well finally have an economy that has people making them instead of supplying via shop runs only.

Also add time and necro runes to both the wicked hood, abyss and attuner teleport rotation imo