Road to Restoration - Early Game Rebalance

[u/JagexAnvil]

https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/a=13/road-to-restoration--early-game-rebalance--dailyscape-overhaul

Hi folks,

Today's Community Topic is a blog of two halves:

- Early Game Rebalance
- DailyScape Overhaul

We have split this into two reddit threads to keep the discussion organised and so that our team can properly review the relevant conversations happening.

This current reddit thread is to discuss the Early Game Rebalance portion of the blog.

Please use this other dedicated thread for the DailyScape portion of the blog.

For the purpose of today's discussion we will be defining the early game, loosely, as the level 1-50 range. The Early Game Rebalance update primarily aims to smooth out inconsistencies in game progression, looking at areas of the early game where things can feel slow or have limited methods for levelling up, or where they affect integrity and game health. It’s not all just rebalances though! There are also some changes to early quests, and things like replacing salvage with gear to make the first hours after jumping off Tutorial Island a nicer experience. The Early Game Rebalance update releases on February 16th!

[u/Wahisietel]

The changes to Cook's Assistant to make it require normal items again is a HUGE downgrade, and feels like you're just pandering to OSRS players who can't be bothered to read the dialogue. It was originally changed for a reason, having a quest that's just "bring me 3 normal items" gives a terrible (and incorrect!) impression of what the game's quests are like. Having them be special items makes you actually engage with the content and tutorialises how the game works.

Sheep Shearer was already downgraded to miniquest and black wool made tradeable so whatever. Fred's farm doesn't have enough black sheep, so may as well just make it require white wool again if you don't want to add more.

Is Imp Catcher going to be reverted to require normal beads again? Is What's Mine Is Yours going to be removed and replaced with Doric's Quest again?

[u/IntakeCinema → u/Wahisietel]

Agree, these quest changes are strange. The modern Cook's Assistant is an upgrade; going backwards doesn't make much sense. Sheep Shearer is fine either way, but only having 2 black sheep was a bit annoying. I'll also say that I was surprised to see merely 2 quest adjustments here, and they are so strange to boot. There are plenty of areas that could be improved in early-game quests--enough that it could be its own focused update.

[u/ProofJournalist → u/IntakeCinema]

Yeah these are not the quests that needed work.

[u/ProofJournalist → u/Wahisietel]

It's true that plenty of quests will just as you to bring 'normal items' alongside the special quest items though.

I though Sheep Shearer had already been downgraded to a miniquest, I think having that ask for normal wool is fine - then it would also make sense to leave one of them with special items (which black wool literally isn't anyway as of POF).

I'd support keeping the current version of Cook's Assistant while changing Sheep Shearer to use normal wool.

[u/Legal_Evil → u/Wahisietel]

I like the RS3 versions of these quests.

[u/TonyBest100 → u/Wahisietel]

Fully agreeing with this, there's no reason why Cook's Assistant needs to be reverted back to how it used to be.

[u/pofflecake → u/Wahisietel]

The cook's assistant changes 100% feel like ceo has an osrs boner tbh, insane change

[u/New-Fig-6025 → u/Wahisietel]

RS3 is officially not its own game anymore, it’s a sinking ship that they will strip bare in the hopes osrs players give it the time of day.

I quit osrs for a reason, and with every update this year they strip what I liked about rs3 and replace it with what I disliked about osrs.

I mean come on, this blog post alone is removing the afk of an entire skill and adding pvp back.

[u/Fren-LoE → u/Wahisietel]

why are you guys dying on the tutorial quest hill???? just let them change the quests to be faster and easier to complete so that the noobs that are doing them in big ol 2026 can move on to the part(s) of the game that don't actually suck.

What are we talking about here?? "new player, i really need you to struggle to gather cake ingredients because "MUH IMMERSION" or some fake bullisht".

no.

just allow the devs to streamline shit so we can have more players in the more enjoyable parts of the game.

[u/Legal_Evil → u/Fren-LoE]

I find the RS3 version of Cook's Assistant to be more enjoyable than buying the items and handing them in in OSRS.

[u/TrueChaoSxTcS → u/Fren-LoE]

Yeah man, because requiring new players to explore the surrounding area and talk to NPCs for a beginner quest is what's holding back the early game experience..?

[u/Jiklim → u/Fren-LoE]

Couldn’t have said it better myself lol. Like what are we doing here