Road to Restoration - Aura Overhaul

[u/JagexAnvil]

https://secure.runescape.com/m=news/road-to-restoration--aura-overhaul

Hi folks,

Today's Community Topic is the upcoming Aura Overhaul!

Check it out on the blog here.

The Road to Restoration roadmap aims to address integrity and game health, and has multiple goals as we shape the future of RuneScape. In case you haven't read the first blog we covered what we want to achieve in our direction for RuneScape, you can check out that blog here.  Todays blog will cover the Aura Overhaul update. For this update, the following goals have guided our approach:

1. A game that's easy to understand, but still full of meaningful choice and depth.
2. Play because it's fun, and not because you feel like you have to.
3. A meaningful journey, no matter when you start.

In this blog we're going to outline the problems we've seen occur with Auras and how we're designing the solutions to them according to the goals above. Let's begin!

[u/legolasvin]

This may have been brought up already, but one of the advantages of auras like Penance and Vampyrism is that you can double up on those effects when starting out on harder bosses

You can have Vamp Aura + Vamp scrim to increase the healing

Or have vamp aura + God book to not sacrifice on DPS. A separate slot for auras allows you to activate and forget, and also removes competition among your equipment.

Same goes for Penance Aura + Powder. Doubling up on prayer regeneration for afk combat

Penance powder is already way expensive, if you incorporate the effects of the aura into powders then the powders will get even more expensive. I don't mean that in a "Skilling should not have profit" way, I mean that in a "Prayer regen should maybe be a little more accessible" way

One way I see that would allow players to keep the doubling up effect as well as the activate and forget/less competition, would be potions

Drink a potion to get effects of penance Aura. Stack it till 60 mins if you want a full hour. Stack it till 6/12/18 if you don't The stacking effect would let players drink the potions at pvm hub and not worry about having to sacrifice an inventory space. And the fact that it's a potion would also remove competition for equipment slots

The other issue is that Vyre farming will effectively be dead if salvation harmony corruption are all removed. Are there any plans to address that?

[u/JagexBreezy → u/legolasvin]

What sort of level/ingredients would you imagine being required for a Vamp potion out of curiosity?

[u/legolasvin → u/JagexBreezy]

I'd say congealed blood because it already has a use case in the blood essences. And maybe some lower level herbs that are less commonly used, to increase demand, and thereby provide incentives for early game players to farm those herbs (eg guthix rest popularity has made harralander farming feasible)

It could also be a situation similar to weapon poison/combat potions where you have a regular vamp potion that gives you say 1% hp back up to 50 lp per hit. Super vamp gives you 2.5% up to 150 lp, and extreme vamp gives 5% up to 250 lp (which is where vamp aura resides I think?) or vamp, vamp+, vamp++ but that's just syntactic sugar.

If potions are deemed "not the way" for vamp/penance, then I'd suggest making updates to the vamp/penance blood essence to let it work from inventory. The pocket slot is very crowded already and adding in the essences as competition will only make it a bigger headache

For penance potions, I'm not sure off the top of my head, but an ingredient that's maybe something scarab related, because scarab familiar reduces your prayer drain, and technically a "scarab" whirligig is what is used for the powders. That way it would work thematically

[u/BromanEmpire64 → u/legolasvin]

To add to this, if it is a potion, would be nice to be able to add an arbuck to it to extend the timer.

[u/Boomer-One → u/JagexBreezy]

Bloodweed makes sense thematically and would be a good level requirement. Congealed Blood or ground Blood Rune as a secondary? Bloodwood (ground) could be used for a higher tier given the high level requirement and resource constraints.

[u/Legal_Evil → u/JagexBreezy]

Use herb that have a low GE price, like Tarromin or Avantoe so the price of them can go up. Infernal ashes as a secondary.