We have just completed a comprehensive rework of the random events system that will bring changes for members and non-members alike. We've retired some of the older random events from active service, overhauled others, and rewritten the rewards for almost every surviving event. We've also changed the rate at which you get random events, and made it possible for all players to get all the events even if they don't do the activities that are typically associated with them. So maybe you'll get to meet Cap’n Arnav or the Bee-keeper for the first time...
When you successfully complete a random event you will now be given a random event gift box, which will contain a selection of rewards to choose from. The reward options are randomised, but players with higher skill totals will generally be offered better rewards, especially if they have a record of passing random events. Any frog tokens you have will be replaced automatically with random event gift boxes, and your broken axes and pickaxes will be automatically repaired (unless you’ve only got the handle, in which case they’ll be deleted).
For more information on the changes we’ve made, take a look at the forums, and for a full list of the events that have remained in the game, consult the Knowledge Base.
Price-checker
In any bank in RuneScape, you'll eventually run into someone shouting "Pc please", wishing to open a trade window so that they can check the Grand Exchange values of their tradeable items. It seemed a bit silly that you'd need a second player to let you look up that information, so we've added a simple new feature that lets you do it yourself. It's next to the buttons that open your Equipment Stats screen and Items-kept-on-death display. Now you will be able to shift your tradeable items from your inventory into a central window, so that you can see the current price of each item and the total value of the whole "offer".
Mod Ash
RuneScape Content Developer
Quest List Update
Last but not least, we have made a change to the way the quest list interface works. After all, with almost 150 quests in RuneScape it can be a challenge to find the perfect one to do next. From now on, the quest list will allow you to filter out those you can’t do, as well as sort quests by difficulty or keep those in progress at the top. Once you’ve chosen your quest, a right-click option can show you its start location on your world map.
Mod Hew
RuneScape Content Developer
When you successfully complete a random event you will now be given a random event gift box, which will contain a selection of rewards to choose from. The reward options are randomised, but players with higher skill totals will generally be offered better rewards, especially if they have a record of passing random events. Any frog tokens you have will be replaced automatically with random event gift boxes, and your broken axes and pickaxes will be automatically repaired (unless you’ve only got the handle, in which case they’ll be deleted).
For more information on the changes we’ve made, take a look at the forums, and for a full list of the events that have remained in the game, consult the Knowledge Base.
Price-checker
In any bank in RuneScape, you'll eventually run into someone shouting "Pc please", wishing to open a trade window so that they can check the Grand Exchange values of their tradeable items. It seemed a bit silly that you'd need a second player to let you look up that information, so we've added a simple new feature that lets you do it yourself. It's next to the buttons that open your Equipment Stats screen and Items-kept-on-death display. Now you will be able to shift your tradeable items from your inventory into a central window, so that you can see the current price of each item and the total value of the whole "offer".
Mod Ash
RuneScape Content Developer
Quest List Update
Last but not least, we have made a change to the way the quest list interface works. After all, with almost 150 quests in RuneScape it can be a challenge to find the perfect one to do next. From now on, the quest list will allow you to filter out those you can’t do, as well as sort quests by difficulty or keep those in progress at the top. Once you’ve chosen your quest, a right-click option can show you its start location on your world map.
Mod Hew
RuneScape Content Developer
Mod Ash, QFC: 15-16-921-58444934
There's quite a lot of info about the Random Events update that we couldn't fit into the newspost without it becoming stupidly long, so here are a few more details...
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What are the rewards from the random events?
When you complete most random events, you'll be rewarded with a random event gift box. The gift box opens to reveal a list of things you can have, potentially including coins, a genie lamp, gems, essence, ore, bars, seeds, herbs and charms, plus the option to unlock emotes and claim costume rewards if the random event offered that sort of thing.
The reward item options are randomised, but players with higher skill totals will generally get offered significantly better rewards, especially if they have a good record of passing random events.
If you select the costume option, you'll get points saved up towards that costume set. These points may be exchanged for the costume items by talking to Iffie, the old lady in Thessalia's clothes shop in Varrock. Members might prefer not to exchange their points for costume items until they have enough points to claim the entire costume at once, which they can then store in their house's costume room without using up bank space.
The Maze event doesn't give a random event gift box. We've left its rewards unchanged. Interestingly, the Maze's rewards already did depend on your skill total. The Surprise Exam random event remains the only event to offer a book of knowledge.
How often will I get random events now?
That's rather hard to say. It'll depend on your skill total and the kind of training you're doing. We'll be tracking your record of passing and failing random events, too; players who have a good record of passing will be interrupted by random events less frequently.
What about the events that got deleted?
Although we've retired many of the events from active service, we've left a few traces of them behind. For example, the Drunken Dwarf, although he's no longer a random event, will occasionally be seen wandering the world offering kebabs to his mateys. Strange plants will still appear from time to time near Brimhaven; no longer poisonous, they remain a source of strange fruit. Shades may be found in the lowest region of the Stronghold of Security, randomly dropping their shade robes to all players. You might encounter other relics of various retired random events in your travels.
Certain items will no longer be available in game now that their random events have changed.
Your frog tokens are being replaced automatically with random event gift boxes.
Broken axes and pickaxes have been automatically repaired (if you had the complete broken axe or the head) or deleted (if you just had the handle).
Broken rakes are left for you to fix yourselves. Broken rake parts are still obtained during a certain quest.
We've aimed not to discontinue any reward items, especially tradeable ones. A list of the remaining random events is available in the Knowledge Base.
You might be wondering why we chose to delete popular events like the genie while leaving less popular ones like the Gravedigger. While we'd prefer not to have events that are too trivially easy to solve, we've aimed to keep the useful rewards such as the genie lamp.
What else has changed?
We've taken the opportunity to overhaul a lot of our old random event code. Our in-house scripting language has evolved over the years, and some of the older random events weren't working as reliably or efficiently as possible. So a lot of the work in this update is behind-the-scenes stuff that hopefully won't affect you directly.
Nevertheless, while we were in there, we've tweaked a few things. In particular, Molly's evil twin and her associated victims have become easier to catch, you get infinite run energy in the Maze, the Sandwich Lady has her own cafe with a music track to unlock, and 4 events have had bank deposit features installed.
The penalties for failing events have been changed, too. Players failing a random event will be teleported to a random (safe) location with their Home Teleport spells temporarily deactivated and may have their stats drained by a certain amount (not including Hitpoints or Defence) depending on the event. On that topic, most random events will now kick you out with these penalties if you keep failing to solve their puzzles; we thought this would be better than leaving confused players stuck in a random event for all eternity.
Hunter traps were a common casualty of random events, since they'd tend to despawn if you were away for too long. We now attempt to look after your trap, bait and any captured creature while you're in a random event, returning them to you when you come out of it.
Finally, you'll find that specific events are no longer triggered directly from specific activities. For example, it was well known that you could be whisked off to the Gravedigger by burying bones, which meant you could never get its costume or emotes if you didn't bury bones much. It's now possible to get every single event regardless of what kind of activities you train, and we're aiming to give you each event with roughly equal frequency.
Speaking of bones, it was really inconvenient to get a random event from burying bones before you had a chance to pick up other dropped loot. We've aimed to reduce the likelihood of that happening.
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We know there are many other things players would like to see changed about RuneScape's random events. As always, it's a real shame we can't do everything you ask, but I hope this update will be a big improvement for you. Reworking the entire random event system of RuneScape has been a vast project, and there are bound to be rough patches here and there; we'll be keeping an eye out for that sort of thing over the coming weeks to see what needs adjusting.
Mod Ash
RuneScape Developer
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What are the rewards from the random events?
When you complete most random events, you'll be rewarded with a random event gift box. The gift box opens to reveal a list of things you can have, potentially including coins, a genie lamp, gems, essence, ore, bars, seeds, herbs and charms, plus the option to unlock emotes and claim costume rewards if the random event offered that sort of thing.
The reward item options are randomised, but players with higher skill totals will generally get offered significantly better rewards, especially if they have a good record of passing random events.
If you select the costume option, you'll get points saved up towards that costume set. These points may be exchanged for the costume items by talking to Iffie, the old lady in Thessalia's clothes shop in Varrock. Members might prefer not to exchange their points for costume items until they have enough points to claim the entire costume at once, which they can then store in their house's costume room without using up bank space.
The Maze event doesn't give a random event gift box. We've left its rewards unchanged. Interestingly, the Maze's rewards already did depend on your skill total. The Surprise Exam random event remains the only event to offer a book of knowledge.
How often will I get random events now?
That's rather hard to say. It'll depend on your skill total and the kind of training you're doing. We'll be tracking your record of passing and failing random events, too; players who have a good record of passing will be interrupted by random events less frequently.
What about the events that got deleted?
Although we've retired many of the events from active service, we've left a few traces of them behind. For example, the Drunken Dwarf, although he's no longer a random event, will occasionally be seen wandering the world offering kebabs to his mateys. Strange plants will still appear from time to time near Brimhaven; no longer poisonous, they remain a source of strange fruit. Shades may be found in the lowest region of the Stronghold of Security, randomly dropping their shade robes to all players. You might encounter other relics of various retired random events in your travels.
Certain items will no longer be available in game now that their random events have changed.
Your frog tokens are being replaced automatically with random event gift boxes.
Broken axes and pickaxes have been automatically repaired (if you had the complete broken axe or the head) or deleted (if you just had the handle).
Broken rakes are left for you to fix yourselves. Broken rake parts are still obtained during a certain quest.
We've aimed not to discontinue any reward items, especially tradeable ones. A list of the remaining random events is available in the Knowledge Base.
You might be wondering why we chose to delete popular events like the genie while leaving less popular ones like the Gravedigger. While we'd prefer not to have events that are too trivially easy to solve, we've aimed to keep the useful rewards such as the genie lamp.
What else has changed?
We've taken the opportunity to overhaul a lot of our old random event code. Our in-house scripting language has evolved over the years, and some of the older random events weren't working as reliably or efficiently as possible. So a lot of the work in this update is behind-the-scenes stuff that hopefully won't affect you directly.
Nevertheless, while we were in there, we've tweaked a few things. In particular, Molly's evil twin and her associated victims have become easier to catch, you get infinite run energy in the Maze, the Sandwich Lady has her own cafe with a music track to unlock, and 4 events have had bank deposit features installed.
The penalties for failing events have been changed, too. Players failing a random event will be teleported to a random (safe) location with their Home Teleport spells temporarily deactivated and may have their stats drained by a certain amount (not including Hitpoints or Defence) depending on the event. On that topic, most random events will now kick you out with these penalties if you keep failing to solve their puzzles; we thought this would be better than leaving confused players stuck in a random event for all eternity.
Hunter traps were a common casualty of random events, since they'd tend to despawn if you were away for too long. We now attempt to look after your trap, bait and any captured creature while you're in a random event, returning them to you when you come out of it.
Finally, you'll find that specific events are no longer triggered directly from specific activities. For example, it was well known that you could be whisked off to the Gravedigger by burying bones, which meant you could never get its costume or emotes if you didn't bury bones much. It's now possible to get every single event regardless of what kind of activities you train, and we're aiming to give you each event with roughly equal frequency.
Speaking of bones, it was really inconvenient to get a random event from burying bones before you had a chance to pick up other dropped loot. We've aimed to reduce the likelihood of that happening.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
We know there are many other things players would like to see changed about RuneScape's random events. As always, it's a real shame we can't do everything you ask, but I hope this update will be a big improvement for you. Reworking the entire random event system of RuneScape has been a vast project, and there are bound to be rough patches here and there; we'll be keeping an eye out for that sort of thing over the coming weeks to see what needs adjusting.
Mod Ash
RuneScape Developer
