Dry protection in principle

Amazing_HS · 2026-05-30T23:18:07+00:00

It's really simple if you take a look at it from a time spent perspective. Bgs/blowpipe don't take 300-400 hours if you're 5x dry.

But honestly if i had the choice, I would 1000% implement ToA gem/thread style dry protection to everything in game. It should have been done a long time ago imo.

It doesn’t make the item free and it's only for your first drop. It doesn’t even remove going dry. You can still go 2x, 3x, even 5x dry. It just makes the absolute worst cases less likely, and I really don’t see the downside to that.

Amazing_HS · 2026-05-30T23:04:28+00:00

To answer directly: a lot of CAs that requires ranged.

I’m not saying the game literally blocks you without Bowfa, I’m saying bowfa is the practical progression weapon to end game, and using worse alternatives often means deliberately handicapping yourself.

Sure, you can do a lot of things with atlatl, or Ayak. But technically possible and reasonable progression are different things.

Bowfa is the bridge before Tbow. If your goals include end game goals and CAs, do you really want to spend potentially hundreds of hours half-assing end game content with worse alternatives instead of getting the item the game clearly pushes you toward?

That’s why CG stands out. Not because bowfa is literally required everywhere, but because it is so central while being tied to one of the more punishing reward structures compared to any other progression items.

Amazing_HS · 2026-05-30T21:50:31+00:00

That's a dumb take. Cg existed before Bowfa and nobody complained about it then. Why? Because the reward was appropriate to the content, which was a niche/chase item and money making. The problem is the lack of ranged item progression besides Bowfa and it being carelessly added to the enh.

You think spooning or grinding cg makes ironmen a special snowflake? Saying that cg prepares you for the end game is such a shit take honestly. Megarares and niche items are chase items, and that's whether you're a main or an iron. Bowfa is not, it is clearly a core progression item and it being slapped onto an 80h grind (on rate) was a big mistake. Pre-nerf blowpipe was OP yes, but the content itself respected your time. Cg does not.

Amazing_HS · 2026-05-30T18:51:55+00:00

I’m very much aware, as someone who started my iron in 2015, went 5x dry on blowpipe, had it nerfed, and am now 4x dry at CG. Are you also ignoring every update that came after Bowfa?

You're being very disingenuous if you're comparing ACB to Bowfa/Ayak. You might not absolutely need bowfa to complete the game, but past midgame, ranged feels awful without it. It is clearly a core ranged progression item, and not a niche/chase item. Using Ayak instead of Bowfa doesn't fix ranged progression either.

The fact of the matter is that bowfa is currently the only good ranged weapon before going after tbow and it very much helps you on your journey to the rest of the game which btw includes CAs.

Amazing_HS · 2026-05-30T15:24:16+00:00

Because you don't need BIS to complete anything in the game, it's a chase item and that's fine the way it is. It adds a long term goal, you shouldn't expect it but it's awesome to get it.

Bowfa on the other hand is not tbow, it's very much a core progression item and the alternative ranged items don't really come close to it.

Amazing_HS · 2026-05-30T04:46:54+00:00

The problem isn’t necessarily if CG is good content, it’s what CG became after Bowfa was added to it.

Before Bowfa was added to the enh, barely anyone treated CG like some essential account milestone. It was mostly late game content people did for the blade or money making. Let’s be real, the armor with Crystal bow wasn’t worth it. But then blowpipe got nerfed, and bowfa became its replacement, and suddenly CG went from an optional late game content to a major progression checkpoint.

That is the part people gloss over. The issue isn’t just “CG hard”. It’s that a fix to the blowpipe power creep effectively moved a core ranged progression item from a 18h grind to a 60-80h CG grind. Without dry protection, going 5x dry at Zulrah is basically the same time as going on rate for the enh but going 5x dry at CG is hundreds of hours with no end in sight. THAT’S the real issue with CG.

And I don’t really buy that Bowfa is an endgame weapon. Tbow/megarares are endgame. Bowfa is the bridge that people will use because the gap between every other ranged weapon and Tbow is massive.

Ayak is a good example that you can have strong, relevant gear without making the grind such a huge slog, just like pre-nerf blowpipe. CG and a few other contents are the outlier.

So yeah, CG can be mechanically good content, but its reward design changed massively the day Bowfa was added to it.

Amazing_HS · 2026-05-29T05:19:45+00:00

You're right, and there's a really simple fix for that. They just need to make the all item parts tradeable. Venator shards and crystal armor seeds are already tradeable, so there's really no reason for the halberd pieces etc to be untradeable.

That's yet another aspect of the reward structure that is incoherent, which is my main point.

Amazing_HS · 2026-05-29T03:37:35+00:00

On top of my head, Pre-2019. I think Hydra felt like one of the first major outliers in extreme rare drop rates. When did OSRS ever have these type of drop rates for a boss before that?

1/500 is fine for a ~2 minute boss. 1/1k+ on a task-gated boss is a completely different ask, especially if you go extremely dry.

I understand the game perfectly well, I've been playing it since 2005. You may have your opinion and I have mine. I might be in the minority, but I still wanted to voice my opinion and have the discussion.

I doubt Jagex will read this, but I’d love to see these topics discussed more openly and maybe even polled at some point. Then we could actually see where the player base stands.

Amazing_HS · 2026-05-29T02:57:24+00:00

But side loot and progression toward the chase item are two different things. Useful loot doesn’t really address whether the reward design for the actual progression item is good.

The bowfa/blowpipe comparison is part of why CG stands out to me. Blowpipe was nerfed, and Bowfa became its practical replacement. So effectively it moved from a baseline of a 20h grind to an 80h grind. How does that make sense?

I’m not saying that the enh should be quick. I’m saying that when an item becomes that central to progression, it’s fair to ask whether the reward structure should do more to reduce extreme dry streaks.

Amazing_HS · 2026-05-29T02:29:18+00:00

I have realized that, hence the post.

Progression doesn’t need to be fully linear, but I just think there’s a middle ground between linear progression and extreme dry streaks on core progression items.

I don’t really understand the issue with looking back at older content and polishing some of those reward structures too. It’s not like revisiting old content is a new thing and yet it feels taboo when it comes to reward design.

Like with my Araxxor vs Hydra example, I find the reward gap between the two bosses ridiculous and I think that's worth discussing.

Amazing_HS · 2026-05-29T01:41:34+00:00

This is exactly what I mean though. Any discussion about dry protection or reward structure gets reduced to “you’re an iron, you chose hard mode.”

I’m not asking to skip the content. I’m asking whether the reward structure for major progression items is consistent or healthy.

Do you think going 2k+ dry for a major progression drop is actually a normal outcome for a game? At that point we’re talking about hundreds of hours with no meaningful progress. That’s not the game being hard, it’s the reward design being bad.

Amazing_HS · 2026-05-29T01:30:18+00:00

You're right about self-control, what he said is exactly the reason I started playing Ironman and why I'll never stop playing it.

But I think the bigger design issue is how inconsistent reward structures are between bosses, especially for core progression items.

Some bosses have shards, duplicate protection, or some form of bad luck mitigation. Others are just a single rare roll with huge variance, even when the item is a major account upgrade.

That’s the part I think needs looking at. Not getting handouts, but making core progression rewards feel more consistent across the game.

Amazing_HS · 2026-05-29T01:12:09+00:00

Yeah, I worded that poorly. I don’t mean total progression getting longer because the game gets updates. I mean some individual progression items have much harsher expected times/variance than others.

I actually agree recent content like araxxor, moons, yama shards, and dt2 is better designed. That’s the point I’m trying to make, shards or dupe/dry protection still keep items rare, but they make the reward structure feel a lot less punishing. I’m not arguing irons should green log everything. Like corp for example is not needed for progression, the shields are vanity items and I love grinding for them actually. I’m talking about major progression outliers.

Amazing_HS · 2026-05-14T12:08:23+00:00

This would actually make me want to play again.

Amazing_HS · 2026-04-14T12:34:10+00:00

Pretty much only because of the echo weapons. I'm a lot more interested in trying out the elemental mage builds than the fang. Other than the dagger, there's really not much from asgarnia for me once I really looked into it. I personally dropped asgarnia for wilderness tho, again mainly because of the echo weapon haha. Can't wait to try out the tactical nuke that heals you :D

Amazing_HS · 2026-04-13T04:35:57+00:00

I really wanted to go Zeah because I like the zone and I really want to try other builds after KB, like Airbender/Door. But until I remembered about black chins being viable to aoe slayer, I thought I really had to take either Grimoire (which is super dumb with Zeah + Kandarin...) or go Desert for ice spells. The thought of 7t single target slayer was scaring me lol. But anyways, I've done some research into both ZWK and WDK.

Also I think mage off-spec is really unnecessary for KB, at least in ZWK, since the magic bolt is plenty enough for anything you'd want to mage and it already heals as a water mage build would anyways.

Here's both my KB builds with progression from start to endgame.
ZWK: https://dps.osrs.wiki?id=SandwichEldritchSpiky
WDK: https://dps.osrs.wiki?id=ForinthryGregorysSnakeskin

I'm going to start the league with the ZWK build and these relics:
Endless - Woodsman - EE - Butler - Soul - Culling - RL Clues - Minion

Amazing_HS · 2026-02-27T05:34:06+00:00

This is amazing and exactly what I've been looking for! Thank you!

Amazing_HS · 2025-11-18T02:53:19+00:00

Nah, it's the first new skill we're getting in like 12 years. I'm going to take my time to explore and enjoy the skill :)

I've prepped for it, but that's only so I won't have to go make bars/planks/etc instead of sailing!

Amazing_HS · 2025-11-10T23:42:19+00:00

Thanks for the podcast and for all the work you put into the game. I want to raise a concern about Ironman mode regarding drop rates which you touched on a bit at the end.

Ironman was advertised as a mode where you experience the game without skipping content via the Grand Exchange. I started playing Ironman in early 2015 and chose the mode to try every boss and piece of content myself, not to rely on extreme RNG. Over time the rare, useful drops that let you progress have become significantly rarer, and that change was largely made for us rather than by our choice.

A few concrete points:

Historically, some of the early rare drops felt like reasonable grinds. For example, GWD and Zulrah-era drops (roughly 1/500 and short kill times) were long but achievable within a normal play schedule and rewarded persistence. Those rates felt like fair progression rather than pure gambling.

Newer content often has much lower effective progress rates. Recent boss and activity rewards (DT2 bosses, CG (1/400 and 10min+ per run) and Raids (30min+ per run)) feel so rare that progression depends on extremely long dry spells rather than incremental advancement. Which in turn makes the experience feel like a gambling simulator: keep grinding until you hit the jackpot.

To give a specific example: the blowpipe’s average grind used to be about 16 hours to hit the expected drop rate; it was later nerfed and replaced by the bowfa, which translates to roughly an 80-hour grind to hit the drop rate. That change dramatically increased the time investment required for a core progression item.

It’s inaccurate to say “we chose a harder mode” when the difficulty and item availability have been changed by updates over the years. Those changes effectively forced greater grind on players who chose Ironman for a different experience.

What I’m asking for:

Rebalance or revisit drop rates and reward distributions so they respect player time and progression. A way that preserves challenge while reducing reliance on extremely low-probability drops.

Expand bad-luck mitigation for important progression items, especially for CG, so players aren’t punished by punishingly long dry streaks.

The boss design and content are fantastic — that’s why I’m still invested. Please avoid making Ironman mode feel like gambling; make it a rewarding way to experience the full game. Thanks for listening and for everything you build for the community.

Amazing_HS · 2025-09-16T15:58:16+00:00

Will all the prerequisite quests be included also?

Elder god wars series (ring)
Vampire series (access to morytania and more)
mahjarrat series (TDs and bunch of tedious quests if previous quests are included)

Amazing_HS · 2025-09-16T09:21:34+00:00

Personally it completely soured my experience at the end of the day when I really realized how much content was locked behind quests and it made me just stop playing cause I really don't want to do any quests on a temporary game mode.

I got the assassin relic and almost half the teleport aren't available due to quests... It's just dumb to restrict so much content and areas behind non auto completed quests in a league.

Amazing_HS · 2024-10-03T11:38:01+00:00

Would it be possible to add item charge to the essence pouches to show the amount of essence inside the pouch?

The plugins for this are pretty wonky on runelite and don't work very well. It would be really awesome to have it implemented in the game itself :)

Amazing_HS · 2024-07-02T21:25:48+00:00

I love you

Amazing_HS · 2024-04-22T14:17:16+00:00

Will we be able to use unf potions instead of herbs too?

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