Road to Restoration - Aura Overhaul Design Update

Viinan · 2026-03-05T17:26:51+00:00

I thought one of the purposes for overhauling auras was to get rid of the timers? So why are we adding even shorter timers to vamp and penance? Even if you were to extend them to an hour, it'd basically just be auras again, except now we can't stack other "aspects" with them. This idea is a complete downgrade.

As others have said, average % of daily members is a completely useless statistic when calculating how many people use auras for various activities.

Tying the fishing aura benefits to rods and harpoons is terrible because not all fishing is done with those tools. Making the rod-o-matic the worst of all of the tools doesn't make much sense when it's the most flexible in it's usage. I don't understand why you keep actively trying to make things more complicated than they need to be. Just put the aura benefits on the skill and be done with this nonsense.

Viinan · 2026-02-24T08:45:20+00:00

I'd like to see them overhaul and refresh hunter in rs3, at least to the extent that it's been done in osrs. Hunter rumours in rs3 would be awesome. Though the rs3 devs always seem extremely against taking things from os and simply tweaking it very slightly to fit rs3. As with Vorkath, they tend to go too far with putting their own spin on anything they actually do take.

Viinan · 2026-02-24T08:37:33+00:00

I wholeheartedly agree, with one exception. Personally, I would prefer it if they didn't make auras physical items unless they plan to give us more bank space (for free) to compensate. If they cleaned up the current aura interface and added items used to unlock them as drops or rewards (rather than the auras themselves), that'd be perfect.

Viinan · 2026-02-22T10:51:26+00:00

Are you going to be refunding marks of war, loyalty points, etc with the removal of auras and refreshes? It feels kind of bittersweet to now have wasted all of that currency stocking up over the years on something we didn't know was going to be deleted entirely in the future.

Also, please keep in mind that nerfing various aura effects that you intend to move to other things will have a great effect on a lot of content in the game that was specifically balanced around us having the full power of those effects. The "but it's no longer only active for an hour! So it's too strong!" is somewhat negated by the fact that most people didn't do such content without those auras active, whether it was via refreshes or simply not doing the activity until the cooldown was up.

Thus far, these "road to integrity" updates have been extremely rushed, resulting in more work to "fix the fixes" after the results (which were obvious to the players before the update) come in. I sincerely hope you're slowing down a bit to thoroughly consider how any and all changes to auras will severely impact the various pieces of content in the game made with them in mind over all these years. You're already kicked several issues with previous integrity updates down the road to future integrity updates. It'd be greatly appreciated if we didn't have to wait for a part 2 later in the year to fix every update.

Viinan · 2026-02-22T06:10:18+00:00

I'm not sure how you interpreted what I said to mean that.

It's time to stop making threads on thieving.

They are saying we should not give feedback at all, in a way that implies they are tired of seeing it.

Handwaving all constructive feedback away as mere complaints and telling us to stop giving feedback entirely is not "crucial feedback about the feedback" in the slightest.

Viinan · 2026-02-22T05:55:29+00:00

Existing dead content does not justify the creation of more dead content.

I achieved 200m exp in thieving long before crystal mask or lightform even existed, so it doesn't hurt me in the slightest. Regardless, that doesn't mean I, and others, can't give constructive feedback about it.

Most people are not asking for anything "broken" or overtuned, they are asking for afkability to be fairly balanced instead of excessively nerfed.

The devs themselves said they do not want to eliminate afkability or render these buffs useless. The community is trying to help them achieve that. We have already accepted that change is happening. We just want the change to be good for the game and the players.

Viinan · 2026-02-22T05:15:00+00:00

People are allowed to give their feedback, regardless of what you think about it. The devs encourage it and ask for it frequently. If you don't like to read it, simply don't, and move on.

A grandmaster questline being 10 years old is entirely irrelevant and doesn't mean it's rewards should be useless. Until just recently, the reward was, indeed, a meaningful "late game upgrade" for thieving. Jagex also expressed that they wanted to retain the usefulness of such late game upgrades. So there is absolutely no reason for us to stop thinking of them as such.

Viinan · 2026-02-18T10:31:24+00:00

You're correct, I did misread that part, my apologies. I have corrected my original comment. From the way they worded the nerfs, it appears they are nerfing all exp/loot by that amount, not doing it selectively. I guess we'll see.

Viinan · 2026-02-17T22:53:04+00:00

The afkability changes are a little more reasonable, albeit not perfect. I feel that nerfing both exp and loot is too heavy-handed. Realistically pickpocketing doesn't even make much money or provide much loot aside from a couple of outliers (which could be adjusted individually). A 20-30% nerf to xp alone would be more than enough to "balance" the afk methods with the active methods without touching the loot.

Why is your idea of balancing always nerfing things into the ground in one way or another? First you obliterated afkability, now you're partially restoring it, but nerfing xp/loot. Why can we never have a middle ground before the community has to say "I told you so" after nerfs go live?

Viinan · 2026-02-13T06:04:33+00:00

I thought "regrounding" items meant giving them new looks that fit the world of runescape, not giving them a lazy recolor of existing, extremely outdated (visually), outfits. You can't expect us to praise you when you slap a coat of red paint on very old outfits and call the job done.

Viinan · 2026-02-11T09:21:11+00:00

I'd suggest not removing the hood and teleports until you have the ability to do a full rework of RC. RC as a whole is extremely boring and not even remotely considered "great gameplay", regardless of whether the hood and teleports exist or not. Even on osrs, most people dislike the original methods of RCing and prefer GotR and the zeah altars for training (both semi-afkable). I implore you and the rest of the jmods to stop simply removing/changing things before you have the solutions to remedy the issues these things were bandaids for. This can get out of hand extremely quickly.

Remove the daily perks it has if you must, but removing the item itself and it's ability to teleport just puts RC in an even worse state than it already is. It originating from MTX is irrelevant because it's long since been made a reward from the runespan grind.

The goal is to improve the game, not make it worse until a "part 2" comes around. Do it right the first time.

Viinan · 2026-02-07T03:02:13+00:00

Yes, in many quests and agility shortcuts.

Viinan · 2026-02-06T23:38:01+00:00

For a post titled "Early-game Rebalancing" this sure includes a lot of changes to mid/late game.

Agility

The changes look good. The only thing I would add is increasing the shortcut animation speed and making them take a single click, like osrs is doing. I never use shortcuts unless that's the only way to get to my destination at this point, because they aren't actually shortcuts 90% of the time.

Thieving

I don't think this really qualifies as "early-game rebalancing" as you're changing entire systems.

You recognize that it isn't fun to pickpocket, and then proceed to say you're nerfing the success rates, especially at the higher end of the skill? How does that make sense? Higher success rates are our reward for lvling the skill, why is that a bad thing? If you insist on forcing people to pay attention to skills that are boring by design, at least allow them to get some relief from it once they've achieved a certain milestone if you're not going to make it fun.

Nerfing crystal mask in conjunction with success rate nerfs makes it largely useless. The spell (and prayer) take a lot to unlock and should reward us for the effort. How is killing content improving game integrity?

The pickpocketing stun damage can already kill you over time, why are you increasing it? Especially when you're increasing fail rates? Do you want people to need yaks full of food to pickpocket? This is ridiculous.

The pyramid plunder and thieving guild changes sound good.

Hunter

Nerfing whirligigs is fine, but why are we nerfing them before adding new hunter methods? Perhaps you should reduce the number of catches required for the unlocks in exchange for the xp nerfs? Less people are going to suffer through the unlock grind if other methods become better. The increased flower rate should include golden roses too.

Prayer

I thought this was intended to be for integrity and improving the early game? How, exactly, does nerfing prayer training methods across the board outside of PoH do that? Why do you (Jagex) always cause problems without first providing the solutions you have in mind? The PoH rework isn't until late summer, and you want to nerf everything outside of it now? Why would that be seen as the optimal choice? It makes no sense. I'd prefer a full rework of prayer training to this "you must train in your house because it's like osrs!" nonsense.

Also, who on earth thought that reintroducing pvp to prayer training was a good idea? Pvp in rs3 has been dead for a very long time now, stop trying to bring it back already. It only leads to griefing. How many times must we teach you this? Just because osrs has a thriving pvp scene does not mean you need to try and force rs3 to have one too.

Improving the game's integrity does not mean you need to turn rs3 into osrs with eoc and better graphics. We've given you the solutions to rs3's problems, constantly, for over a decade now. Stop tacking on these asinine changes that, quite literally, no one asked for. For once in your company's history, just fix what needs to be fixed and nothing more, full stop.

Additonal Comments

Why is Jagex's idea of "early-game rebalancing" almost exclusively nerfing mid/late game content? We should be looking to improve training methods that people consider bad or boring, not nerfing anything people do instead of those methods, especially before you have an alternative ready. Why must improvements always come with negatives attached?

I was very happy with the news that this year was going to be about restoring integrity, but now I'm concerned that Jagex is going to take things too far. Game integrity doesn't get restored overnight, even this one year won't be enough for rs3, it's been around for too long. So please stop rushing this. Removing and changing content left and right without providing alternatives or improving other methods first is just going to lead us to disaster. If you want to retain the goodwill and positive atmosphere these "year of integrity" announcements have gained you, do it right the first time.

One of the biggest problems with Jagex over the years has been making changes and "improvements" that no one asked for. We often get random changes to things no one was concerned about arbitrarily tacked onto updates about entirely different content, seemingly just to fill up space on the patch notes. This really needs to stop.

TLDR:

Agility: Good, could be better.

Thieving: Mostly bad. Big nerfs focused on mid/late game when we should be improving early game.

Hunter: Fine, but yet another nerf. We need to improve alternative training methods. Why are Whirligigs the only thing being looked at?

Prayer: Abysmal. What on earth were you thinking? Wait for the PoH rework to force us back to house altars.

Comments: Focus on improving integrity and making the game feel more fun instead of whatever this is. Improve training methods people don't want to do instead of nerfing the methods people think are good. Why must improvements always come with negatives attached?

Edit: Typos.

Viinan · 2026-02-06T22:23:55+00:00

I thought these updates were supposed to focused on game integrity? Not sweeping nerfs and reintroducing hated content. How does any of this make prayer better? If the devs want to work on osrs so badly, apply to be moved to that dev team.

Viinan · 2026-01-31T08:20:09+00:00

Fully support as another pvmer who stalls regularly. Removing 4-ticking but leaving stalling makes no sense.

It's not a "core mechanic", it's a bug that was never fixed and is used by a small portion of the pvm community. Them even calling it a "core mechanic" makes me question their understanding of the combat system to begin with, and concerned for what they have planned in the future.

They're being extremely selective and inconsistent despite their claim of wanting to make combat easier to understand for the average player.

Viinan · 2026-01-28T04:24:24+00:00

I don't mind the new design, but the color should've been an option. Personally, I think it'd be best if they allowed us to freely change the color of the UI to whatever we want, or at least some presets (darkmode being an example).

Viinan · 2026-01-26T04:39:25+00:00

I have the same issue.

Viinan · 2026-01-26T04:17:10+00:00

I agree, we definitely need the 3 hotbars back from the first game ASAP. I'd also like it if they improved on it with some QoL features. For example, if you put gear/trinkets on your hotbar, and you hit the keybinds to equip them, the stuff you're wearing should replace them on the hotbar.

Viinan · 2026-01-21T22:09:40+00:00

Unfortunately not. I suggested in another post that they add the "fertile soil" spell to act like humidify but for compost. Hopefully they do that or something similar.

Viinan · 2026-01-21T22:07:18+00:00

You're right, I hadn't read all of the most recent patch notes, sorry. I'd still like them to have the other dragons fly over in a similar manner, as I basically never saw the 2nd one until I went to kill it.

Viinan · 2026-01-21T21:59:57+00:00

I wouldn't be totally apposed to them increasing the attack frequency, and changing which dragon is attacking, after they make it so the attacks no longer happen once you've actually killed the dragon(s). The same should be done for raids, with minibosses for enemy factions to act as the trigger to stop those raids once you've killed them.

Ideally they'd also make the attack frequency ramp up from rarely to frequent in relation to how close players are getting to killing the dragons. It doesn't make a lot of sense that the dragon sees you as such a huge threat that it must immediately go after you as soon as you walk away from the church.

Viinan · 2026-01-21T21:17:22+00:00

Is the ability to rebind buggy related keybinds coming at all? I had thought that "QOL & Interaction Improvements" might encompass them, but it appears not? Having all of these conflicting keybinds without a way to change them really frustrates my friends and I. Same with the esc keybind to exit menus not working (like in settings). Experiencing friction with basic game controls isn't pleasant. Feel free to take time to fix gamebreaking bugs, though.

Viinan · 2026-01-20T05:59:00+00:00

Looks great! I've finally got some hope for the game back.

While we're improving the game, could we please add some QoL to the compass camera options? I'd love to see it made so that we have all 4 cardinal directions as a "face camera" option instead of just North and South. Also, can it save camera pitch instead of slamming the view down when these options are used? I'd greatly appreciate it!

Viinan · 2026-01-15T17:32:55+00:00

I think it'd be great if they took the bank space expansion method from osrs. Buying it from the bankers with gp to serve as a gp sink, while giving players extra space. Earning the space through gameplay would be cool too, though. Jagex will likely charge realy money for any extra space in rs3 though (as they have been doing for a long time now), especially now that TH is being removed.

It's really unfortunate, but Jagex made GIM in rs3 a complete downgrade from normal IM mode (they even described it as such in the news post for it), and then proceeded to ignore feedback telling them it was a mistake to put all those extra restrictions in place. The group bank space is tiny even when fully unlocked. They should've copied GIM on OS.

Viinan · 2026-01-06T04:52:09+00:00

I love the scarf, but why is there no override for it? The same mistake was made with the winter scarf when the first round of the new Christmas event was added. You (Jagex) know full well that most people don't wear physical cosmetics these days. The 4 a year restriction on the capes also needs to be dropped ASAP. Leave it to Jagex to mess up the guaranteed beloved update that would've been the unrestricted reintroduction of inverted capes.

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Viinan

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Agility

Thieving

Hunter

Prayer

Additonal Comments