August News

4th August Treasure Trails
Treasure Trails
have been given an improvement today with fiendish new challenges to
test even the mightiest adventurer, but also many new rewards to tempt
them. You may find that the likes of Bork, the Corporeal Beast and the Skeletal Horror (among others) now have a rare chance of dropping an elite clue scroll.

These clues are a step beyond what has gone before, whether it’s a
scanning orb that only highlights the next clue when you’re standing
near it, or a simple compass showing the direction of the next clue but
not the distance. Even finding your next clue might not be so easy, as
you may disturb a powerful follower of Guthix or end up racking your
brains over one of the tricky new Celtic knot puzzles.

Stick with it, though, and you may be lucky enough to receive one of the 150+ new reward items!
There are new bows, Third Age druidic gear, dragon masks, animal
staves, kits to improve the look of dragon armour, and items for
followers of Armadyl, Bandos and even Zar- (shh!)

Many of the new reward items are for the elite trails, but easy,
medium and hard trails have had some added too. We’ve also added a
mechanism to ensure that each and every treasure trail completed will
reward you with at least one treasure trail-specific item, by
introducing new items common to all levels of trails.

The cross-trail items
include Saradomin, Guthix and Zamorak arrows (which have a chance of
causing elemental damage and vanish on impact); single-use teleport
scrolls to out-of-the-way places like Nardah and Miscellania; stackable
biscuits that each restore one Prayer Point (plus a few life points);
and existing items like sweets, torn pages and firelighters. Oh, and
let’s not forget the meerkat summoning pouches, which will bring a cute
little treasure-hunting familiar to your side...

Finally, we’ve introduced scroll boxes, which look different from
caskets. This way, you can know for certain that opening a scroll box
will always lead you to another clue scroll, and that when you do
finally get a casket, you’ll know not to open it in a dangerous area,
because it will always contain...TREASURE!

Adventurers, the trails await!

5th August Art
Greetings, art fans! It’s a new month and that means a new Gallery
packed full of creative genius. We don’t know how worldwide production
of new paintbrushes has kept up with your efforts, but, my word, you
have been busy!

The quality of artwork submitted this month has again been incredibly
high and we had a really tough time deciding which pictures captured
that something special we were looking for. We hope you’ll agree that
we’ve ended up with an impressive selection of brilliantly realised
clothing concepts created by some of our most talented RuneScape
artists. We have some real treats for fans of attractive attire and
resilient raiment, including some tough mercenary armour, a
fearsome-looking Abyssal armour set and the garb of a deadly Kharidian
assassin. Make sure you pay a visit to Players’ Gallery 10 so you can marvel at all the finery on offer.

Don’t just take our word for it, as it wasn’t just us Gallery
curators who were impressed. We showed these works of wonder to our
friends over in RuneScape Development and they were kind enough to
comment upon this month’s offerings. You can see what they said below
each image. They also helped us to pick out this month’s ‘Featured
Artist’, who receives a month of RuneScape membership! Congratulations
go to Mr Daedalus for their ‘Daedalean Armour’
design. We’ll be in touch via your message inbox to arrange which
account you want your free membership applied to. In the meantime,
congratulations, and thanks for your brilliant submission!

The next Players’ Gallery will be in about three weeks, when we will
have some RuneFest-related images to put on display. In the meantime, we
hope you’ll continue to send us your high quality artwork in time for
the September Players’ Gallery. And don’t forget, we have Halloween
coming up in October, so if you want to do something special for that,
you should start planning now!

As always, you can get details of the submission process and discuss the gallery on the Feedback & Ideas forum thread. Until next month, enjoy the game and keep that creative genius flowing!

Mod Emilee & Mod Howes
RuneScape Community Management
6th August Void Knight
The plan for a series of content updates based around the Void Knights was first announced in a developer blog from Mod Moltare. Since that blog, the first quest in this series – Quiet Before the Swarm – has been released.

In this developer video, Mod Nancy talks a little about Quiet Before the Swarm and Mod Moltare
about the upcoming sequel quest, A Void Dance. It’s good timing too, as
A Void Dance and a new Void Knight activity (a turn-based ‘training
exercise’ for budding Void Knight officers called Conquest) are both on
the cards for a release in August (barring any unforeseen acts of pest).

Click here
to go to our official YouTube channel where we’re hosting the video
Q&A. You’ll also find stacks of other videos there, created by our
talented video-making community. While you’re there, please do subscribe
if you haven’t done so already.

Mod Moltare and Mod Nancy
RuneScape Content Developers
6th August Video COmpetitionWith two full weeks of competition left, now seems as good a time as
any to have a recap of the rules, so if you’re still a little unsure
what they are (or would just like to stare at Mod Mark G for two minutes), check out the latest Community Management video on our official RuneScape YouTube channel.

Here’s a quick reminder of the prizes up for grabs:

• Big Tickets (all-expense-paid trips to the UK, during which you’ll visit Jagex Games Studio)
  
• A goody bag packed with RuneFest goodies (including autographed memorabilia)
  
• Lifetime RuneScape membership
  
• A coveted Golden Gnome Award (yes, a Golden Gnome that you can call your own)
  

Don’t forget, this video competition is open to everyone, not just those players coming to RuneFest! If you’re still hungry for more details, check out the Golden Gnomes Competition forum thread.

While visiting our YouTube channel, you might also want to check out machinima-guru-and-previous-competition-winner Excl’s own rundown of the competition. It’s an incredibly informative piece of work, not least because of Excl’s amazing use of socks.

If after those visual delights you’ve still got a question about the
video competition, then you can catch our RuneScape channel masters –
Community Management’s Mod Paul M and Mod MattyC
– for a live Q&A session on Saturday evening at 9pm BST/forum time.
It’ll be held simultaneously on the RuneScape forums and our YouTube
channel, so take your pick! More information about this Q&A session
can be found on the Video Competition Live Q&A forum thread.

Mod MattyC
Community Management
6th August Dutch Summer EventsIn light of the summer holidays, we have organised an exciting week
full of events specifically for the Dutch-speaking community, running
from Sunday 8th August to Saturday 14th August. We decided to call it
the Het Nederlandse Zomer Festival 2010 (Dutch Summer Events
2010). The event week will not only take place in RuneScape, but also on
the forums, the Dutch fansites and on our social networks.

But there’s more! During this week, The Dutch Jagex Mods – Mod Max W and Mod Davo
– will be awarding ’Zomer Tokens’ to players for attending events,
winning mini-competitions or completing special achievements. We have
some awesome prizes for those who manage to collect the most Zomer Tokens. Of course, they’ll also be there to simply join in with the fun.

Don’t worry if you don’t speak Dutch, as although you won’t be able
to collect Zomer Tokens, you can always join in and meet up with some of
the Dutch players. They might even be willing to teach you a Dutch word
or two.

For more information, check out the Het Nederlandse Zomer Festival 2010 forum thread on the Dutch forums.

"Tot ziens op de events!"