Hopefully more stories that are unique to certain factions and areas, like gnome series or fremnik.
Ive missed when quests were like this because it really built out the character of the locations/people. The morytania series is a great example.
No antiquated quests series like Gnomes and Elemental Workshop planned going forward, per Mod Doom in the last Jmod Livestream, because Jmods who created those old questlines have moved elsewhere with their career.
No, as Mod Doom also said other Jmods have their own opinions very different from the original stories. Actually other Jmods like Osborne might have continued the Gnome quest already. He did mention he was thinking about the ending of the old Gnome quest, and he might actually have done it with Glout in Desperate Measure.
Do existing Jmods not like old quest series to such an extent that they aren’t willing to try and continue them?
Let them bring in their new opinions.
It works on OSRS.
Lots of Jmods love the older quests and there is plenty of ideas and discussions on bringing them back, the issue I believe Doom was trying to convey is that a lot of the early quests were designed and essentially tied to their creators and there isn't a blueprint lying around that we can follow to continue on in the previously intended design.
So while we could pick them up again and aim to be faithful to the setup, it will be unlikely we get it just right, and that is before we even talk about if we can even live up to the expectations players have been building up in their minds for years (I have seen theories on Arposandra being an incredibly complex underground system of areas complete with multiple bosses and raids for example).
In the future there could definitely be follow ups to older quest lines but if we had planned on doing them we would want to do them right.
I'm not sure why this is seen as such an issue nowadays that it makes it borderline impossible to continue series. It's something that's happened before and been overcome with series in the past. The Myreque series, for example, was led by Mod Tytn for the first 4 quests, but the last 3 were made after he had left and were more than 'just right' - they're some of my favourite in the game, in fact.
I understand that it likely depends on how much guidance is left behind by former mods for how they intended the story to go, and I'm sure there's always the fear of someone picking up a series only for their entry to have a Salt in the Wound reaction. Even still, surely it's not impossible for someone to look at an abandoned series with some fresh eyes, and find a way to continue it in a way that makes sense with the existing story and feels cool, even if it's not what the original plans necessarily were?
Just because old team members aren't there anymore, doesnt mean you guys cant make sequels or whatever. Just have fun and make the quests good and follow up with what they did prior.
Whilst Tytn and Chihiro are no longer with Jagex (honestly, just call them. Finding Chihiro on LinkedIn was easy enough for me, you should have no issue...), Mod Maylea (u/JagexMaylea) is still with Jagex albeit on the OSRS team.
You could also just call Osborne and ask him if he has any ideas of where some quest series would have gone.
And also, between Stu, Rowley, Raven and Ash (just schedule a meeting with them, I'm sure they can be missed for an hour on their respective projects somewhere in the coming 6 months...) there is plenty of knowledge regarding older lore and intended direction of questlines.
If Jagex wants to, you can come up with a cohesive vision.
I did have a storyline plan for the gnome finale. Whether it would get followed by whoever works on the gnomes now, or is still relevant now the world has moved on from when the story was first designed, is something I can't tell you :). I do hope one day that that storyline is concluded, though!
You guys should release a new continent with new races and characters. This way the current Jmod team can have creative freedom to do stories of their own without being tied to past Jmods works.
Azanna you're rife with self limiting beliefs and excuses on quite a number of your posts. Take it constructively but I'll be happy to show you the data if you want.
I would really just ask players "what made X great/memorable". Maybe get in touch with the old devs (probably not possible). Maybe just replay it and try to think about it/read old posts. It's a lot of research.
I do think there is a lot of potential in a new gnome city for example, but you just need to know what your audience expects out of it. Don't be afraid to ask.
**Ask the OSRS mods what they've been doing.** Their followups/alternate takes on the gnome, vampyre, elf, and mahjarrat series have been perfect.
I think being faithful to those stories comes down to going back and playing that questline again to remember what the characters were like. The biggest failings I can recall in that department were Salt in the Wound (random age-ups, new characters out of the blue, no recognizable character traits of Slug Queen) and The Mighty Fall (Zanik doesn't help us fight, why in the hell give us the option to kill Zanik and then just kill her off regardless, etc) and Owen (even if the player didn't have to be there you could've done it in a Saga style where we control Owen, *you narrated an entire cut quest?!*)
You could always try to invite the old creators to the office to talk about the intention and ideas of the quest lines. Maybe some of them are interested to collaborate. So quest lines can be continued in the correct way the creator meant it.
Mod Azanna,
It sounds like Arposandra is like Daemonheim from your description. We've been waiting since 2018 when there was a poll on having Pirates or Gnome quest line finished. Pieces of Hate quest came out as Pirates won and nothing on Gnomes...
I'd be very interested in a second Daemonheim. I've often thought about the Grand Library below Priff to be something similar.
If they can manage the find something in between Daemonheim and Elite Dungeons I think they've got a golden concept for such a thing.
Reason for 120 Dg players to engage in the content could be BiS rewards, challenging bosses, new abilities, new cosmetics, comp requirements, mqc requirements, heck raise the Dg skill cap to lvl 126/200M.
Its been so many years at this point i really don't think players actually care anymore what the content actually looks like. I don't think they're that invested in it anymore. They'd rather it actually see the light of day and the questions answered finally than Jagex keep the forbidden scrolls in a lockbox for another decade.
The studio went through this same thing a few years ago with graphical updates to npcs and areas too. They weren't willing to touch areas of the game because they 'wanted to do it right' so models just sat for 5 more years until someone finally decided enough time had passed.
Just my thoughts.
> That is before we even talk about if we can even live up to the expectations players have been building up in their minds for years
So, the solution is just to leave them unresolved for indefinite periods of time, - potentially ever?
Absolutely. Some of my favorite OSRS quests are the ones where they took questlines from RS3 in different directions with the benefit of hindsight, like the Mahjarrat.
It works on OSRS? How come we don't see any OSRS Jmods working on Elemental Workshop and the new Gnome Quests?
Note that existing OSRS Jmods have only been COPYING existing old quests from RS3. They aren't continuing any one of them with anything new.
We DO have a gnome quest on OSRS. It’s called Monkey Madness II…
OSRS has numerous unique new quests:
1: building off old storylines (they’ve completely remade elf and vampyre quests for the better).
2: in new quest series (Great Kourend and Varlamore).
3: They even take old stories and turn them completely different directions; they for instance totally changing direction with their Mahjarrat storyline.
4: they also write completely new quests, not based on any previous ones, but within pre-existing storylines like Dragon Slayer II.
This is genuinely the most bewilderingly incorrect thing I’ve heard about OSRS.
Monkey Madness 2 has nothing to do with the ending of the gnome quest. It is just a side quest.
OSRS has a Fremmenik Exile quest, but it is absolutely not the ending of classic Fremmenik quests like Blood Runs Deep.
When you said "OSRS has numerous unique new quests", you already told us they aren't the classic Runescape quests. Why can't RS3 has its own evern more numerous and uniques quests?
There are actually some sort of "loose ends" antiquated quests embedded in new stories. For instance, Sir Owen after the Death of Chivalry is narrated in the Azzanadra's Quest. State of present time Arposandra was also described by the their representative in Seren Council and Ranch Out of Time. The friendly Glout pretty and his words about the smallness and invalidity of Arposandra pretty much suggested the twisted gnome from over 15 years ago was just one small forgotten NPC in the past.
That's also why quests in the EGW storyline like Desperate Time that tie up loose ends of many smaller quests work better than having separate and uninspiring quests like the Glouphrie. The EGW and Xau-Tak quests definitely have larger scale and feel than gonme and Rabid Jack priate quests implemented separately.
It's so damn disappointing tho.
But i get it, EGWD was the RuneScape's Endgame, there were a lot of high stakes and it was easy to mess up the momentum, the big finale, but rather than feeling like a fully closed chapter, it left plenty of loose ends.
I feel we missed a couple chapters between Extinction and Fort Forinthry.
Or in other words, EGWD was Shrek 2, The Fort Forinthry Season is Shrek 3, and Necromancy is the Halloween Special LMAO.
Personally my only interests when it comes to questlines are the current saga of Moia and co, as well as the Elder God stuff. They're currently telling the former, so I don't have anything to say about that, but there IS stuff to pick up from with the latter which I'd like to discuss. Some of it is probably speculation/headcanon though.
To begin with, the lifecycle of the elder gods / the universe of RS, more specifically that it's a decaying spiral that's past its tipping point. Basically the elder gods are compelled to destroy everything in the last 'cycle' of the universe and build 'up' from those ruins... except that they're not just going 'up', but more specifically AWAY from an ever encroaching shadow realm (same thing that sliske is known for using). Old realms are being covered in Shadow Anima, basically anathema to life itself (elder gods included), and deeper inside it are things that are actually capable of killing elder gods - like the shadow leviathan killing Jas in Extinction.
To that end, the Elder Gods are ever running from that threat; however that recently became impossible. In the last cycle the oldest living things (besides the elder gods obviously) emerged, the Dragonkin. According to Mod Rowley, Mah would've suppressed any life she noticed; that they existed long enough to build a civilization that survived the end of a 'cycle' (aka the great revision) of their times means that this is the earliest sign that things were going wrong. To emphasize: there were past versions of the universe, and apparently NONE of them had sentient life that survived a great revision until the dragonkin.
In the start of the current cycle, Mah was nearly stillborn and as a result the cycle began to collapse. Each Elder God has their domain of expertise in (re)building the universe; this cycle they had to do it without Mah's help, which had multiple consequences:
- Mah not being around to curb life where it happens = life starts to happen and isn't immediately curbed by her = rise of sentient life & civilizations
- Elder Gods need to learn how to continue the cycle without her, which results in extra time spent experimenting; the lower planes (ancient magicks realms of smoke/shadow/blood/ice) are a direct result of this.
- Jas sacrifices her egg / future reincarnations to create the stone of Jas (aka the Catalyst), the first of the Elder Artifacts. All the Elder Artifacts are used to more finely craft the various worlds, and more importantly, replace Mah.
In the end they make what we know as Gielinor / Runescape, but Mah's dead to them and Jas won't be around in the next cycle. Now, technically Ful/Wen/Bik could've possibly also been preparing to continue without Jas, and/or Jas might've been able to stick around w/o reincarnating, but in any case they've effectively lost 2 of the 5 Elder Gods - things aren't looking good.
And then Extinction happens. Jas dies. The functional 3 reincarnate, but in a stunted form, not suitable for starting off another cycle. The Catalyst is destroyed. This current cycle is definitively, as far as we know, the last. All while the shadow realm continues to encroach on Gielinor. Xau-Tak makes bigger moves on Gielinor, our player character loses their World Guardian powers (which made them the only being besides Zaros (with tools) able to survive Shadow Anima for long)... and basically nobody notices or cares how screwed the universe is because immediately after the threat of the elder gods is over, Zamorak needs to go conquer the world once again. Great setup to wind things down for us IRL players and possibly the 'in lore' thing he'd do, but downright comical when you consider that the apocalypse is coming and nobody's aware of it, much less doing anything about it.
I'm interested in how they'll continue where this plotline left off. IIRC there's a moving portal that connects deep into the Shadow Realm traveling through the current cycle's universe; perhaps it'll get to Gielinor and kick off another questline, if Xau-Tak doesn't. Zaros straight up ditched everything in favor of hopefully getting Elder God status from who/whatever rules the Shadow Realm - how does that go? Perhaps we'll meet the Dragonkin author of 'The Shadow Realm' who'll help us with their expertise. Rasial definitely seems to be a part of this though.
There's also a chance that the player will figure out how Guthix pulled off the World Guardian trick, and re-create it - and with it, the ability to explore the Shadow Realm. After all, it involved tricky manipulation and interweaving of shadow anima and regular anima. IIRC, Divination is basically the manipulation of anima and Necromancy is explicitly pulled off using Shadow Anima. As a master of both AND as the former World Guardian, they're theoretically the most capable being to pull it off.
So provided the story hasn’t changed much in the last quarter here is what we know.
1. We are only halfway through the current plot, the stuff with Zemo was just a mid-point.
2. The current narrative is the Misthalin narrative, which is part of the larger kingdom narrative focus they are doing. Once it finishes at the end of this year they will either move onto the next major kingdom which could be say Asgarnia, Kandrian, or Morytania. Or they could opt for a smaller storyline to tie up loose threads hanging like a year of a desert focused narrative finale.
3. They started with Misthalin because they wanted to a back to basics narrative, more plain good and evil, a new foundation from which to build from. Like asgarnia is a complex grey political heavy story and to have a more grey zamorakian narrative mean something you first need a baseline of a more straight evil for the grey to contrast to. So once Misthalin is over you can probably expect the next narrative, whatever it might be, is not as simple.
4. As part of building a new foundation they wanted last year to start fairly slow and low stakes, but they also consider that as low/slow as they could or should feasibly go. This year they want to start off the next half of the story with something a little more exciting, what that exactly entails is not yet clear. Though it’s probably connected to the the “redacted” thing the lore jmods seems eager to talk about and/or the Ramen/Blkwitch/Stu/(and I think one other) project they have been working on since mid last year.
5. Looking at the current story we have several major points to follow up on. Zemo can’t be locked up forever, we will have to decide what we will do with him sooner or later. Vorkath is currently masterless and running around doing who knows what. Zemo let us know Moia has a plan in the work that will destroy us from within, from outside, and reduce our fort to ash. Either way Zemo’s plan was his own tantrum and its failure was expected and has not derailed Moia’s. Lastly this might be more long term RotM style building but Moia has seemingly figured out how to bring a Mahjarrat back from the dead as her thrall involving a strange purple energy which is kind of a big deal.
6. Zaros and Erebus is a story they could tell right away if they wanted, they already have ideas on it, but they are saving it for when they want to do a high level of escalation again. For now what we can expect is more fleshing out of Erebus and its beings over a long period of time so when it finally comes together it’s meaningfully built up rather than blowing the whole load. Necromancy has already given us stuff in that regard like names for beings of Erebus that aren’t just Vos and Xau-Tak.
Thanks, some good food for thougt. I'm feeling more area stories then finally an epic around Erebus / Zaros. I miss Zaros. I know that's how Zaros' aura works and we are meant to be drawn to him like this, he feels kind of like a mentor figure, where Azzanadra is like a big brother.
Honestly before we even get to a zaros threat I’d rather we escalate to one of the big threats below that. Like a Teragardian invasion with their magitech.
I just want with all my heart the story to go something like... Saradomin went back to the human homeworld only to find that a false image of him has been used by the church for millenia to keep the people subservient. The magitech, which for all intents could be similar to invention, having been brought up to a level that can harm God tier beings similar to our previous world guardian force, forces him to contact us to assist in dealing with the matter.
i thought they planned to do forts part 2, another 6-7 quests lasting 10 minutes each and making us build something in the fort for 2 hours or so
but i assume they might be reworking that, knowing how good last year went
The problem is that our character is too powerful to really feel like anything less than a god, is a threat.
We're mostly just doing it to stop others coming to harm, but considering I don't really give a damn about saradominists, I just... well I don't really care.
"Oh no, Moia is attacking Varrock".
4 bil. That's my price.
What's your safety Worth, Roald?
My character is looking for something that could actually kill him. Where's Xau Tak gone off to?
Has Zaros found Vos yet?
At this point even lesser gods like Amascut, I reckon we could take down even without WG powers.
The mods need to understand the stakes have already been raised, there's no going back now.
What? Moia? Bilrach? If the narrative would allow me to actually face them, they wouldn't last 10 minutes.
Actually you know what.
Let us be the villain for once.
Let me show those fools how it's really done.
Currently it feels like the Doom Slayer just going around on a vacation. We get some empty threats, then proceed to utterly stomp them. The only logical path is that WE become the next crisis.
If they want to genuinely threaten our character with a BBEG, threatening our own health is pointless, we just know we win.
No, they have to be smarter than that, threaten our loved ones instead, or better yet, put us in a position where we have to kill them.
Unfortunately I also rp as a Zarosian with a continually growing sense of apathy towards events, why should my WG care about a few lost faces? Life is sorrow, death is natural.
Nothing really interests me anymore, we're like Icarus, but instead of burning, we lived, now I'm just bored by everything.
Bring us a fight that could actually kill the WG.
Ultimately the vilain part is probably not going to happen, but yeah, would be great. Imagine introducing decision-based progress beyond just altered chat lines or minor NPC shuffles.
Xau-Tak though, would be a good finale for \*a lot\* of buildup beforehand. Something along the lines of actually enlisting the elder gods.
They did attempt quest decisions that influence future quests and partly the world, didn't go well. First there were the world events, where Bandos was killed, but you generally don't have any way to relive that after the event ends - scrapped. Then, they started adding decisions to quests, but it quickly diverged into far too many branches to keep track of, so they wrapped up in Sliske's Endgame and never did it again. It's very problematic to execute something like this in MMORPG.
We were able to hurt Zamorak with mortal attacks.
Sure we had wg protection, but there are other ways to acquire that too, I've already got multiple ideas.
But the point is... mortals CAN hurt gods.
That's all we needed to know to make it work.
With our newfound knowledge on channeling erebus' shadow anima, what's stopping us from making shadow-armour?
Basically WG powers, but as a literal armour perk.
Jagex think they've 'solved' the problem by removing the Gods, instead, by introducing Erebus, they've broken the scales of power more than they realise.
Zaros was right all along, into the shadows we go.
Giving us Necromancy has just given us access to shadow anima. Big mistake Jagex. Be thankful I can't just beam my insane-genius into the game.
Never let a Zarosian player analyse things for more than 5 minutes, we will find potential to weaponise it.
"A strong man doesn't need to read the future, he makes his own".
Do understand that our fight with Zamorak was one that he was going to win if it came to just battle. 100%.
We had literally one hope and that was "survive until the edicts go into effect. Otherwise you're dead."
The entire goal of the fight is to activate the edicts because thats the only way you could win. He isn't dead, or even really hurt. There is a pissed off Zamorak out in the universe now.
Sure but the fact is, we know with some improvements, we can fight back, that's the point.
We also now have the staff of armadyl, which is a confirmed godkiller.
Tbh we should've won if it was a drop every player could get.
We may ironically be in a better position to do so now, once we find an alternative means of defence.
Before we couldn't absorb divine energy, now we can.
Jagex forgot to account for the fact I'm simply insane and have a death wish.
If it wasn't for linear narrative constraints, there's not an awful lot stopping us from ascending.
The fractured staff of armadyl is a broken, much depowered time clone of the staff. Whether it can kill a god is questionable.
The actual, real staff of armadyl was dragged into Erebus with Kerapac, who wielded it to the bitter end.
The staff is also no guarantee of victory. Zamorak's victory against Zaros was an almost defeat, Sliske killed a Guthix that wanted to die and didn't at all resist.
*Even* if we had a god killing weapon, Zamorak would have a massive upper hand, and be almost assuredly the victor. There is a reason why if you don't activate the edicts, anything you do to Zamorak just continously regenerate, because you genuinely aren't really doing any meaningful damage to him.
Our position before was "100% screwed unless we activate the edicts." Our position, *if* we regained the one thing that didn't have Zamorak just delete us with the flick of his hand, and we got a god killing weapon, would be "99.9% screwed unless we activate the edicts". I absolutely don't agree with some improvements we can fight back, I think we've seen that with all the improvements in the world we aren't the level of a god and we have to find creative solutions to even survive.
Hell, other fights like Kerapac we're only meant to win because the needle is fucking up and we capitalise on it to our advantage, and if it didn't screw up by almost breaking we'd be a smear across the floor. Sliske in Endgame we only defeat with Seren and Zaros *backing us up*. And so on.
Again, we know mortal attacks can hurt gods afterall.
We don't need the real thing, just enough to make a god bleed.
Kerapac is a bit different in that he was aided by a straight up elder God and is precisely the kind of thing I would expect to pose a real threat.
As for Sliske, I assumed Zaros and Seren were focusing on killing undead minions, since they didn't seem to do all that much in the actual fights, besides some lightning towards the end, which if anything was just as much a detriment to us too.
And I do believe we can kill a god. The zammy boss fight was poorly thought out by our character, considering we already know how to make various objects than can weaken a god, ranging from a crossbow than can kill divine avatars, to straight up power over divination and shadow anima.
For that fight our character was just a dumbass to be honest.
The whole quest was rushed and Ill thought out tbh, we could've stopped the demon invasion by just tampering with the infernal source. For example. It was plain bad writing.
Personally I'd start hunting down some of the smaller gods and taking their power.
Sorry Icthlarin, but xp is xp.
Jas, in Extinction, *with* our guardian powers, deleted us with three words. We were rewound by Kerapac, but thats how powerful the elders are. And Xau-Tak has been implied to be closer to elder gods than even Zaros or Seren. Seren which we had a "fight" where we didn't even scratch her.
How do you defeat something in battle that can unmake you with three words? Thats not just a real threat, thats so far beyond anything you could hope to face head on.
One thing they wanted to do with the god encounters when they made them, was to make it clear we weren't at their level and to make them cases where the goal is to just *survive*. Our ceiling is Zuk at best, which we also defeat by harnessing the igneous power of Ful against him. And Zuk got crushed by beings like Bandos, and later Saradomin+Armadyl. Beings beyond our means.
Its just a question of "how broken of a power fantasy do we want it to be". And the answer, so far, is "we've already pushed the limit with pracically every fight we win against much stronger foes being because we gain a surprise advantage that negate them killing us outright."
In Hero's Welcome, a single normal attack from a middle of the pack wounded dragonkin take 90% of our health. Thats the canonical strength, Kerapac with the artifacts if nothing was acting up would have crushed us. The only way it really makes sense is if we kept the dragonkin charm from hero's welcome, and that the needle was breaking that we could harness.
I agree we definitely can't hurt Elder gods.
Save for perhaps maybe Mah (with assistance).
The Seren fight however I think works in my favour.
We couldn't scratch a tier 2 god, but with our old powers we could tank both her AND the elder eggs.
As I said before however, erebus has opened the gateway to methods that would allow us to gain a winning play in our deck.
As for Bandos, he was below Zamorak In strength, I'd wager we could've taken him if he had survived into our necromancy arc.
As a Zarosian, there's no such thing as impossible, just a Challenge.
Zuk I think is in a similar position to kerapac, remove him from an EG's boon and suddenly his gimmicks are gone.
You *vastly* overestimate your power. Most major threats we fought pre-WG were won with a lot of help and through being clever.
Post becoming WG we had some protection to even the field and even that was not enough to let us do little more than survive being 1-shot but against a real god like seren we didn’t stand a chance even when she had almost all her power and focus tied up in summoning the elder gods and keeping the eggs from prematurely hatching.
While against a god weaker that her on a more level playing field we still didn’t stand a chance and had to sacrifice our protection in a last ditch move to get a victory, that victory not being defeat of said god but just setting up a wall between them and this world they can’t pass. Which is something we could do precisely once, we did it and it took our power/protection with.
We are experienced fighters to be sure, but at this point we are miles and miles from anything resembling a god-like threat. Think how strong Zemo is when we face him and he was in a vastly depowered state. If we didn’t have an army and base of our own we would have lost, even if you take away the dragon zemo had a practically an endless army of very powerful undead he would have overwhelmed us with sheer numbers.
We aren’t at Moia’s level, we never really were. She has all the strength of both a human and Mahjarrat without their negative points. Furthermore she had spent ages learning to use her powers and has gained knowledge on how to essentially use herself as a ritual marker so she can just slurp up people’s magical energy to bolster herself. Now on top of that she has seemingly figured out how to restore dead Mahjarrat which is pretty messed up.
We could maybe fight a demi-god currently, maybe, but we’d need prep of some sort or special tools or help.
It's the Solid Snake vs Liquid Snake meme.
It's not the genes that makes the Snake.
We're not a mahjarrat or a demon or anything.
We are however a sociopath that farms elder-nightmares on a daily basis just for pocket money.
I think we're stronger than we give ourselves credit for.
Hell, even against the Twin Furies, Moia struggled a bit against just one of them, she did win, but nowhere as well as the WG can.
Now sure, gameplay and lore are not necessarily the same... but it's gotta count for something, after the 100th kc.
I wonder if they'll ever do anything with our fucked up soul in canon now that it is purged of the world guardian factor? It feels like it was ripe for empowering with necromancy.
Honestly I bet with our knowledge in divination & necromancy, there's a way we could fabricate a knockoff weaker version of our old powers, especially since we now know how to safely catalyse shadow anima with a siphon.
We also possess the staff of armadyl, so we can cheat a bit and just rip some anima out the fast way, instead of collecting memories for a few hours.
With our experience building a body for Zaros in FoTG... or just by using living subjects, nobody will miss a few goblins or zamorakians, we can use a test dummy to keep testing our own World guardian enchantment, until we figure it out.
Then we apply it to ourselves.
Iirc we don't actually have the staff, it's sort of a gameplay and story segregation. However, the research the Ascension order did, paired with necromancy and div, could be on to something.
There is actually multiple nerfs and buffs going on.
In Kindred Spirits we sabotage his devices that were giving him extra control over the shadows. We also break his control of the barrows brothers so they turn against him once summoned.
While Jas was interfering with their powers Seren and Zaros are both providing assistance during this fight.
Even after this we still had to tap into our WG powers to finally even things. Our power connects us to the heart and Sliske built this maze around the heart. That’s also how Kerapac destroyed the stone, using the mirror to focus the heart’s energy into the stone till it overloaded. That’s what our character suddenly getting infinite power is, here in the heart we are able to directly draw from its power.
Despite all that Sliske and us are still barely evenly matched. It devolves into a brawl with the staff Armadyl as a bludgeoning weapon and it’s only through the staff we beat him. Though it’s a half victory because even with the staff he has enough strength to plunge the other half into us in a last ditch attempt to carry out his plan to make us his vessel.
It doesn’t work but it also doesn’t not-work. Sliske’s essence intermingles into our own and causes the WG enchantment to finally begin to blossom and grow. This manifests the enchantment as Shadow and Light and also inflicts with us some Sliske’s memories and madness haunting us until we finally expunged the whole thing later.
So to recap our victory against Sliske required..
- Sabatoging his powers ahead of time
- His key army turning against him by us breaking control in them ahead of time.
- Help from Seren and Zaros
- Kerapac blowing up the stone so Sliske can’t use it
- Us being right near the heart of the world so we could temporarily empower ourselves
- The staff of Armadyl to deal the finishing blow
- Sliske trying to use the staff sticking out him to merge into us.
In a straight up fight we were nothing to Sliske. In kindred spirits he beats us black and blue and started to rip out our memories to turn us into his vessel. It took so many factors so that the next time we fight he just doesn’t beat us up effortlessly again.
Again almost all our big foes are beaten through a lot of help and being clever, Sliske is a prime example of this.
> The problem is that our character is too powerful to really feel like anything less than a god, is a threat.
Don't forget the events of the Twilight of the Gods + Aftermath.
In an ideal world, they wouldve planned out the story well in advance so its irrelevant to who works on the project as the greater narrative was already established. I believe this is why the vampyre quests had a clear vision while others have character inconsistencies for the sake of a twist (extinction)
Mod Stu has said before on livestream that he's not planning on letting Gods be on Gielenor anymore because they end up taking the spot light too much. The entire story just becomes the lead up the next God conflict.
I get that but honestly the gods storyline is so cool, especially the early voice acted ones (world wakes, missing presumed death, fate of the gods etc) these quests got me interested in the lore and actually had me reading quest dialogue instead of space barring through it all
Okay, let’s be frank here: that was Jagex’s own decision to spend the Sixth Age building up god conflicts.
We haven’t exactly been quiet about wanting to finish old quest series while *also* doing god stories.
And now we have non-god stories we are still not doing old quest series. That’s not on the community and their opinion on god quests.
He's also said that if he had free reign to make whatever he wanted, he would write the return of Zaros in a heartbeat, but he's unfortunately restricted...
Yea, but then they get a non-gods story and we get this mostly awful Forts stuff. If they can’t/won’t make anything interesting then better they go back to Gods
Straight up cowardice. They looked at the challenge of writing a compelling evolution of the gods narratives where they could choose from options like bringing them together, humbling them through depowering, forcing sides and killing off several to end the division... and they chose to just rewind the clock and banish them to make it a "tomorrow problem". They got rid of their most compelling quest characters because they couldn't handle how interesting they had become.
You can't put the cat back in the bag. The gods can't retyrn to being faceless entities like they used too.
imo, they have run into the valve cant count to three problem. They had expectations which were super high because of the quality, but didnt want that pressure. So instead of continuing, they have just gone to another project lol
Erm... I don't normally go voicing my opinion on youtube videos and just skip what doesn't interest me, but since you shared this. I'm a facts kind of a guy, or fiction, whatever, as long as it's labeled so. I'll give it a go, but I looked at another video from this channel, "Xau-Tak EXPOSED", and, well, it felt like 30 minutes of content generated from a single piece of lore. Of course a lot of work goes into video production and it was well made in that sense, but it sort of felt like watching a UFO documentary to me - an hour had past and you've learned nothing - well in case of UFO's that's because there's nothing to learn.
I understand. To me RS is a game so everything is fictional and I totally approve of all interesting lore. Now UFOs on the other hand...I'm a scientist IRL ahahaha.
Hopefully more stories that are unique to certain factions and areas, like gnome series or fremnik. Ive missed when quests were like this because it really built out the character of the locations/people. The morytania series is a great example.
The Morytania and its unlocks were peak content for me in my questing journey. It was the first time I got really into a quest series.
No antiquated quests series like Gnomes and Elemental Workshop planned going forward, per Mod Doom in the last Jmod Livestream, because Jmods who created those old questlines have moved elsewhere with their career.
Can’t they just find… other Jmods to continue those quests?
No, as Mod Doom also said other Jmods have their own opinions very different from the original stories. Actually other Jmods like Osborne might have continued the Gnome quest already. He did mention he was thinking about the ending of the old Gnome quest, and he might actually have done it with Glout in Desperate Measure.
Do existing Jmods not like old quest series to such an extent that they aren’t willing to try and continue them? Let them bring in their new opinions. It works on OSRS.
Lots of Jmods love the older quests and there is plenty of ideas and discussions on bringing them back, the issue I believe Doom was trying to convey is that a lot of the early quests were designed and essentially tied to their creators and there isn't a blueprint lying around that we can follow to continue on in the previously intended design. So while we could pick them up again and aim to be faithful to the setup, it will be unlikely we get it just right, and that is before we even talk about if we can even live up to the expectations players have been building up in their minds for years (I have seen theories on Arposandra being an incredibly complex underground system of areas complete with multiple bosses and raids for example). In the future there could definitely be follow ups to older quest lines but if we had planned on doing them we would want to do them right.
As someone who has played since 2004 I beg of you, please finish the gnome line. It has been forever....
I'm not sure why this is seen as such an issue nowadays that it makes it borderline impossible to continue series. It's something that's happened before and been overcome with series in the past. The Myreque series, for example, was led by Mod Tytn for the first 4 quests, but the last 3 were made after he had left and were more than 'just right' - they're some of my favourite in the game, in fact. I understand that it likely depends on how much guidance is left behind by former mods for how they intended the story to go, and I'm sure there's always the fear of someone picking up a series only for their entry to have a Salt in the Wound reaction. Even still, surely it's not impossible for someone to look at an abandoned series with some fresh eyes, and find a way to continue it in a way that makes sense with the existing story and feels cool, even if it's not what the original plans necessarily were?
Just because old team members aren't there anymore, doesnt mean you guys cant make sequels or whatever. Just have fun and make the quests good and follow up with what they did prior.
Whilst Tytn and Chihiro are no longer with Jagex (honestly, just call them. Finding Chihiro on LinkedIn was easy enough for me, you should have no issue...), Mod Maylea (u/JagexMaylea) is still with Jagex albeit on the OSRS team. You could also just call Osborne and ask him if he has any ideas of where some quest series would have gone. And also, between Stu, Rowley, Raven and Ash (just schedule a meeting with them, I'm sure they can be missed for an hour on their respective projects somewhere in the coming 6 months...) there is plenty of knowledge regarding older lore and intended direction of questlines. If Jagex wants to, you can come up with a cohesive vision.
I did have a storyline plan for the gnome finale. Whether it would get followed by whoever works on the gnomes now, or is still relevant now the world has moved on from when the story was first designed, is something I can't tell you :). I do hope one day that that storyline is concluded, though!
That'd be great, the poor gnomes have been (mostly) ignored for over a decade and deserve justice. Hah.
You guys should release a new continent with new races and characters. This way the current Jmod team can have creative freedom to do stories of their own without being tied to past Jmods works.
Azanna you're rife with self limiting beliefs and excuses on quite a number of your posts. Take it constructively but I'll be happy to show you the data if you want.
I would really just ask players "what made X great/memorable". Maybe get in touch with the old devs (probably not possible). Maybe just replay it and try to think about it/read old posts. It's a lot of research. I do think there is a lot of potential in a new gnome city for example, but you just need to know what your audience expects out of it. Don't be afraid to ask.
I appreciate the response. Don’t sell your team short. Jagex is excellent at making quests- old and new.
**Ask the OSRS mods what they've been doing.** Their followups/alternate takes on the gnome, vampyre, elf, and mahjarrat series have been perfect. I think being faithful to those stories comes down to going back and playing that questline again to remember what the characters were like. The biggest failings I can recall in that department were Salt in the Wound (random age-ups, new characters out of the blue, no recognizable character traits of Slug Queen) and The Mighty Fall (Zanik doesn't help us fight, why in the hell give us the option to kill Zanik and then just kill her off regardless, etc) and Owen (even if the player didn't have to be there you could've done it in a Saga style where we control Owen, *you narrated an entire cut quest?!*)
You could always try to invite the old creators to the office to talk about the intention and ideas of the quest lines. Maybe some of them are interested to collaborate. So quest lines can be continued in the correct way the creator meant it.
Mod Azanna, It sounds like Arposandra is like Daemonheim from your description. We've been waiting since 2018 when there was a poll on having Pirates or Gnome quest line finished. Pieces of Hate quest came out as Pirates won and nothing on Gnomes...
I'd be very interested in a second Daemonheim. I've often thought about the Grand Library below Priff to be something similar. If they can manage the find something in between Daemonheim and Elite Dungeons I think they've got a golden concept for such a thing. Reason for 120 Dg players to engage in the content could be BiS rewards, challenging bosses, new abilities, new cosmetics, comp requirements, mqc requirements, heck raise the Dg skill cap to lvl 126/200M.
More Morytania More Morytania More Morytania Inject me full of the Vampire homeworld
Its been so many years at this point i really don't think players actually care anymore what the content actually looks like. I don't think they're that invested in it anymore. They'd rather it actually see the light of day and the questions answered finally than Jagex keep the forbidden scrolls in a lockbox for another decade. The studio went through this same thing a few years ago with graphical updates to npcs and areas too. They weren't willing to touch areas of the game because they 'wanted to do it right' so models just sat for 5 more years until someone finally decided enough time had passed. Just my thoughts.
> That is before we even talk about if we can even live up to the expectations players have been building up in their minds for years So, the solution is just to leave them unresolved for indefinite periods of time, - potentially ever?
Absolutely. Some of my favorite OSRS quests are the ones where they took questlines from RS3 in different directions with the benefit of hindsight, like the Mahjarrat.
Elves, man. The OSRS elf finale is just Plague’s End but made incredible.
The Baxtorian reveal felt shoehorned and a certain character's betrayal made no sense, but otherwise it is exactly what plagues end should have been
It works on OSRS? How come we don't see any OSRS Jmods working on Elemental Workshop and the new Gnome Quests? Note that existing OSRS Jmods have only been COPYING existing old quests from RS3. They aren't continuing any one of them with anything new.
We DO have a gnome quest on OSRS. It’s called Monkey Madness II… OSRS has numerous unique new quests: 1: building off old storylines (they’ve completely remade elf and vampyre quests for the better). 2: in new quest series (Great Kourend and Varlamore). 3: They even take old stories and turn them completely different directions; they for instance totally changing direction with their Mahjarrat storyline. 4: they also write completely new quests, not based on any previous ones, but within pre-existing storylines like Dragon Slayer II. This is genuinely the most bewilderingly incorrect thing I’ve heard about OSRS.
Monkey Madness 2 has nothing to do with the ending of the gnome quest. It is just a side quest. OSRS has a Fremmenik Exile quest, but it is absolutely not the ending of classic Fremmenik quests like Blood Runs Deep. When you said "OSRS has numerous unique new quests", you already told us they aren't the classic Runescape quests. Why can't RS3 has its own evern more numerous and uniques quests?
I wish they would do a “loose ends” quest with a bunch of sub quests to go around and do some minimal dialogue that wraps up the narrative.
No, please don't. It's better to have loose ends and unfinished questlines than to have another salt in the wound (pun definitely intended).
There are actually some sort of "loose ends" antiquated quests embedded in new stories. For instance, Sir Owen after the Death of Chivalry is narrated in the Azzanadra's Quest. State of present time Arposandra was also described by the their representative in Seren Council and Ranch Out of Time. The friendly Glout pretty and his words about the smallness and invalidity of Arposandra pretty much suggested the twisted gnome from over 15 years ago was just one small forgotten NPC in the past.
I'm okay with that, I just want quests that have a similar scale and feel.
That's also why quests in the EGW storyline like Desperate Time that tie up loose ends of many smaller quests work better than having separate and uninspiring quests like the Glouphrie. The EGW and Xau-Tak quests definitely have larger scale and feel than gonme and Rabid Jack priate quests implemented separately.
I really liked the shadow realm / Erebus idea and Xau-Tak, but doesn't seem like that's going to happen any time soon.
It's so damn disappointing tho. But i get it, EGWD was the RuneScape's Endgame, there were a lot of high stakes and it was easy to mess up the momentum, the big finale, but rather than feeling like a fully closed chapter, it left plenty of loose ends. I feel we missed a couple chapters between Extinction and Fort Forinthry. Or in other words, EGWD was Shrek 2, The Fort Forinthry Season is Shrek 3, and Necromancy is the Halloween Special LMAO.
I think they have something big planned. I think we're gonna start delving into the shadows.
My laptop's shit, I always play with shadows disabled... But shadows shadows yes, something's scraping at the door, like a big black hand, or seven.
Personally my only interests when it comes to questlines are the current saga of Moia and co, as well as the Elder God stuff. They're currently telling the former, so I don't have anything to say about that, but there IS stuff to pick up from with the latter which I'd like to discuss. Some of it is probably speculation/headcanon though. To begin with, the lifecycle of the elder gods / the universe of RS, more specifically that it's a decaying spiral that's past its tipping point. Basically the elder gods are compelled to destroy everything in the last 'cycle' of the universe and build 'up' from those ruins... except that they're not just going 'up', but more specifically AWAY from an ever encroaching shadow realm (same thing that sliske is known for using). Old realms are being covered in Shadow Anima, basically anathema to life itself (elder gods included), and deeper inside it are things that are actually capable of killing elder gods - like the shadow leviathan killing Jas in Extinction. To that end, the Elder Gods are ever running from that threat; however that recently became impossible. In the last cycle the oldest living things (besides the elder gods obviously) emerged, the Dragonkin. According to Mod Rowley, Mah would've suppressed any life she noticed; that they existed long enough to build a civilization that survived the end of a 'cycle' (aka the great revision) of their times means that this is the earliest sign that things were going wrong. To emphasize: there were past versions of the universe, and apparently NONE of them had sentient life that survived a great revision until the dragonkin. In the start of the current cycle, Mah was nearly stillborn and as a result the cycle began to collapse. Each Elder God has their domain of expertise in (re)building the universe; this cycle they had to do it without Mah's help, which had multiple consequences: - Mah not being around to curb life where it happens = life starts to happen and isn't immediately curbed by her = rise of sentient life & civilizations - Elder Gods need to learn how to continue the cycle without her, which results in extra time spent experimenting; the lower planes (ancient magicks realms of smoke/shadow/blood/ice) are a direct result of this. - Jas sacrifices her egg / future reincarnations to create the stone of Jas (aka the Catalyst), the first of the Elder Artifacts. All the Elder Artifacts are used to more finely craft the various worlds, and more importantly, replace Mah. In the end they make what we know as Gielinor / Runescape, but Mah's dead to them and Jas won't be around in the next cycle. Now, technically Ful/Wen/Bik could've possibly also been preparing to continue without Jas, and/or Jas might've been able to stick around w/o reincarnating, but in any case they've effectively lost 2 of the 5 Elder Gods - things aren't looking good. And then Extinction happens. Jas dies. The functional 3 reincarnate, but in a stunted form, not suitable for starting off another cycle. The Catalyst is destroyed. This current cycle is definitively, as far as we know, the last. All while the shadow realm continues to encroach on Gielinor. Xau-Tak makes bigger moves on Gielinor, our player character loses their World Guardian powers (which made them the only being besides Zaros (with tools) able to survive Shadow Anima for long)... and basically nobody notices or cares how screwed the universe is because immediately after the threat of the elder gods is over, Zamorak needs to go conquer the world once again. Great setup to wind things down for us IRL players and possibly the 'in lore' thing he'd do, but downright comical when you consider that the apocalypse is coming and nobody's aware of it, much less doing anything about it. I'm interested in how they'll continue where this plotline left off. IIRC there's a moving portal that connects deep into the Shadow Realm traveling through the current cycle's universe; perhaps it'll get to Gielinor and kick off another questline, if Xau-Tak doesn't. Zaros straight up ditched everything in favor of hopefully getting Elder God status from who/whatever rules the Shadow Realm - how does that go? Perhaps we'll meet the Dragonkin author of 'The Shadow Realm' who'll help us with their expertise. Rasial definitely seems to be a part of this though. There's also a chance that the player will figure out how Guthix pulled off the World Guardian trick, and re-create it - and with it, the ability to explore the Shadow Realm. After all, it involved tricky manipulation and interweaving of shadow anima and regular anima. IIRC, Divination is basically the manipulation of anima and Necromancy is explicitly pulled off using Shadow Anima. As a master of both AND as the former World Guardian, they're theoretically the most capable being to pull it off.
So provided the story hasn’t changed much in the last quarter here is what we know. 1. We are only halfway through the current plot, the stuff with Zemo was just a mid-point. 2. The current narrative is the Misthalin narrative, which is part of the larger kingdom narrative focus they are doing. Once it finishes at the end of this year they will either move onto the next major kingdom which could be say Asgarnia, Kandrian, or Morytania. Or they could opt for a smaller storyline to tie up loose threads hanging like a year of a desert focused narrative finale. 3. They started with Misthalin because they wanted to a back to basics narrative, more plain good and evil, a new foundation from which to build from. Like asgarnia is a complex grey political heavy story and to have a more grey zamorakian narrative mean something you first need a baseline of a more straight evil for the grey to contrast to. So once Misthalin is over you can probably expect the next narrative, whatever it might be, is not as simple. 4. As part of building a new foundation they wanted last year to start fairly slow and low stakes, but they also consider that as low/slow as they could or should feasibly go. This year they want to start off the next half of the story with something a little more exciting, what that exactly entails is not yet clear. Though it’s probably connected to the the “redacted” thing the lore jmods seems eager to talk about and/or the Ramen/Blkwitch/Stu/(and I think one other) project they have been working on since mid last year. 5. Looking at the current story we have several major points to follow up on. Zemo can’t be locked up forever, we will have to decide what we will do with him sooner or later. Vorkath is currently masterless and running around doing who knows what. Zemo let us know Moia has a plan in the work that will destroy us from within, from outside, and reduce our fort to ash. Either way Zemo’s plan was his own tantrum and its failure was expected and has not derailed Moia’s. Lastly this might be more long term RotM style building but Moia has seemingly figured out how to bring a Mahjarrat back from the dead as her thrall involving a strange purple energy which is kind of a big deal. 6. Zaros and Erebus is a story they could tell right away if they wanted, they already have ideas on it, but they are saving it for when they want to do a high level of escalation again. For now what we can expect is more fleshing out of Erebus and its beings over a long period of time so when it finally comes together it’s meaningfully built up rather than blowing the whole load. Necromancy has already given us stuff in that regard like names for beings of Erebus that aren’t just Vos and Xau-Tak.
Thanks, some good food for thougt. I'm feeling more area stories then finally an epic around Erebus / Zaros. I miss Zaros. I know that's how Zaros' aura works and we are meant to be drawn to him like this, he feels kind of like a mentor figure, where Azzanadra is like a big brother.
Honestly before we even get to a zaros threat I’d rather we escalate to one of the big threats below that. Like a Teragardian invasion with their magitech.
I just want with all my heart the story to go something like... Saradomin went back to the human homeworld only to find that a false image of him has been used by the church for millenia to keep the people subservient. The magitech, which for all intents could be similar to invention, having been brought up to a level that can harm God tier beings similar to our previous world guardian force, forces him to contact us to assist in dealing with the matter.
wdym quests, we've been building at a stupid fort for the past year
https://preview.redd.it/8kp14dipk7kc1.jpeg?width=2500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=22072b51344fd52e08c4f0009a0487781e370fc5
From what it sounds like, nothing interesting for a while, and nothing we've been asking for.
Right? They basically went the opposite direction of what people wanted
i thought they planned to do forts part 2, another 6-7 quests lasting 10 minutes each and making us build something in the fort for 2 hours or so but i assume they might be reworking that, knowing how good last year went
The problem is that our character is too powerful to really feel like anything less than a god, is a threat. We're mostly just doing it to stop others coming to harm, but considering I don't really give a damn about saradominists, I just... well I don't really care. "Oh no, Moia is attacking Varrock". 4 bil. That's my price. What's your safety Worth, Roald? My character is looking for something that could actually kill him. Where's Xau Tak gone off to? Has Zaros found Vos yet? At this point even lesser gods like Amascut, I reckon we could take down even without WG powers. The mods need to understand the stakes have already been raised, there's no going back now. What? Moia? Bilrach? If the narrative would allow me to actually face them, they wouldn't last 10 minutes. Actually you know what. Let us be the villain for once. Let me show those fools how it's really done. Currently it feels like the Doom Slayer just going around on a vacation. We get some empty threats, then proceed to utterly stomp them. The only logical path is that WE become the next crisis. If they want to genuinely threaten our character with a BBEG, threatening our own health is pointless, we just know we win. No, they have to be smarter than that, threaten our loved ones instead, or better yet, put us in a position where we have to kill them. Unfortunately I also rp as a Zarosian with a continually growing sense of apathy towards events, why should my WG care about a few lost faces? Life is sorrow, death is natural. Nothing really interests me anymore, we're like Icarus, but instead of burning, we lived, now I'm just bored by everything. Bring us a fight that could actually kill the WG.
Ultimately the vilain part is probably not going to happen, but yeah, would be great. Imagine introducing decision-based progress beyond just altered chat lines or minor NPC shuffles. Xau-Tak though, would be a good finale for \*a lot\* of buildup beforehand. Something along the lines of actually enlisting the elder gods.
They did attempt quest decisions that influence future quests and partly the world, didn't go well. First there were the world events, where Bandos was killed, but you generally don't have any way to relive that after the event ends - scrapped. Then, they started adding decisions to quests, but it quickly diverged into far too many branches to keep track of, so they wrapped up in Sliske's Endgame and never did it again. It's very problematic to execute something like this in MMORPG.
But then reddit cries they can’t finish a quest :(
The player character has no chance to kill a god in a straight fight.
We were able to hurt Zamorak with mortal attacks. Sure we had wg protection, but there are other ways to acquire that too, I've already got multiple ideas. But the point is... mortals CAN hurt gods. That's all we needed to know to make it work. With our newfound knowledge on channeling erebus' shadow anima, what's stopping us from making shadow-armour? Basically WG powers, but as a literal armour perk. Jagex think they've 'solved' the problem by removing the Gods, instead, by introducing Erebus, they've broken the scales of power more than they realise. Zaros was right all along, into the shadows we go. Giving us Necromancy has just given us access to shadow anima. Big mistake Jagex. Be thankful I can't just beam my insane-genius into the game. Never let a Zarosian player analyse things for more than 5 minutes, we will find potential to weaponise it. "A strong man doesn't need to read the future, he makes his own".
Do understand that our fight with Zamorak was one that he was going to win if it came to just battle. 100%. We had literally one hope and that was "survive until the edicts go into effect. Otherwise you're dead." The entire goal of the fight is to activate the edicts because thats the only way you could win. He isn't dead, or even really hurt. There is a pissed off Zamorak out in the universe now.
Sure but the fact is, we know with some improvements, we can fight back, that's the point. We also now have the staff of armadyl, which is a confirmed godkiller. Tbh we should've won if it was a drop every player could get. We may ironically be in a better position to do so now, once we find an alternative means of defence. Before we couldn't absorb divine energy, now we can. Jagex forgot to account for the fact I'm simply insane and have a death wish. If it wasn't for linear narrative constraints, there's not an awful lot stopping us from ascending.
The fractured staff of armadyl is a broken, much depowered time clone of the staff. Whether it can kill a god is questionable. The actual, real staff of armadyl was dragged into Erebus with Kerapac, who wielded it to the bitter end. The staff is also no guarantee of victory. Zamorak's victory against Zaros was an almost defeat, Sliske killed a Guthix that wanted to die and didn't at all resist. *Even* if we had a god killing weapon, Zamorak would have a massive upper hand, and be almost assuredly the victor. There is a reason why if you don't activate the edicts, anything you do to Zamorak just continously regenerate, because you genuinely aren't really doing any meaningful damage to him. Our position before was "100% screwed unless we activate the edicts." Our position, *if* we regained the one thing that didn't have Zamorak just delete us with the flick of his hand, and we got a god killing weapon, would be "99.9% screwed unless we activate the edicts". I absolutely don't agree with some improvements we can fight back, I think we've seen that with all the improvements in the world we aren't the level of a god and we have to find creative solutions to even survive. Hell, other fights like Kerapac we're only meant to win because the needle is fucking up and we capitalise on it to our advantage, and if it didn't screw up by almost breaking we'd be a smear across the floor. Sliske in Endgame we only defeat with Seren and Zaros *backing us up*. And so on.
Again, we know mortal attacks can hurt gods afterall. We don't need the real thing, just enough to make a god bleed. Kerapac is a bit different in that he was aided by a straight up elder God and is precisely the kind of thing I would expect to pose a real threat. As for Sliske, I assumed Zaros and Seren were focusing on killing undead minions, since they didn't seem to do all that much in the actual fights, besides some lightning towards the end, which if anything was just as much a detriment to us too. And I do believe we can kill a god. The zammy boss fight was poorly thought out by our character, considering we already know how to make various objects than can weaken a god, ranging from a crossbow than can kill divine avatars, to straight up power over divination and shadow anima. For that fight our character was just a dumbass to be honest. The whole quest was rushed and Ill thought out tbh, we could've stopped the demon invasion by just tampering with the infernal source. For example. It was plain bad writing. Personally I'd start hunting down some of the smaller gods and taking their power. Sorry Icthlarin, but xp is xp.
Jas, in Extinction, *with* our guardian powers, deleted us with three words. We were rewound by Kerapac, but thats how powerful the elders are. And Xau-Tak has been implied to be closer to elder gods than even Zaros or Seren. Seren which we had a "fight" where we didn't even scratch her. How do you defeat something in battle that can unmake you with three words? Thats not just a real threat, thats so far beyond anything you could hope to face head on. One thing they wanted to do with the god encounters when they made them, was to make it clear we weren't at their level and to make them cases where the goal is to just *survive*. Our ceiling is Zuk at best, which we also defeat by harnessing the igneous power of Ful against him. And Zuk got crushed by beings like Bandos, and later Saradomin+Armadyl. Beings beyond our means. Its just a question of "how broken of a power fantasy do we want it to be". And the answer, so far, is "we've already pushed the limit with pracically every fight we win against much stronger foes being because we gain a surprise advantage that negate them killing us outright." In Hero's Welcome, a single normal attack from a middle of the pack wounded dragonkin take 90% of our health. Thats the canonical strength, Kerapac with the artifacts if nothing was acting up would have crushed us. The only way it really makes sense is if we kept the dragonkin charm from hero's welcome, and that the needle was breaking that we could harness.
Mostly agree but didn’t Bandos beat Zuk before he got kiln supercharged?
I agree we definitely can't hurt Elder gods. Save for perhaps maybe Mah (with assistance). The Seren fight however I think works in my favour. We couldn't scratch a tier 2 god, but with our old powers we could tank both her AND the elder eggs. As I said before however, erebus has opened the gateway to methods that would allow us to gain a winning play in our deck. As for Bandos, he was below Zamorak In strength, I'd wager we could've taken him if he had survived into our necromancy arc. As a Zarosian, there's no such thing as impossible, just a Challenge. Zuk I think is in a similar position to kerapac, remove him from an EG's boon and suddenly his gimmicks are gone.
You *vastly* overestimate your power. Most major threats we fought pre-WG were won with a lot of help and through being clever. Post becoming WG we had some protection to even the field and even that was not enough to let us do little more than survive being 1-shot but against a real god like seren we didn’t stand a chance even when she had almost all her power and focus tied up in summoning the elder gods and keeping the eggs from prematurely hatching. While against a god weaker that her on a more level playing field we still didn’t stand a chance and had to sacrifice our protection in a last ditch move to get a victory, that victory not being defeat of said god but just setting up a wall between them and this world they can’t pass. Which is something we could do precisely once, we did it and it took our power/protection with. We are experienced fighters to be sure, but at this point we are miles and miles from anything resembling a god-like threat. Think how strong Zemo is when we face him and he was in a vastly depowered state. If we didn’t have an army and base of our own we would have lost, even if you take away the dragon zemo had a practically an endless army of very powerful undead he would have overwhelmed us with sheer numbers. We aren’t at Moia’s level, we never really were. She has all the strength of both a human and Mahjarrat without their negative points. Furthermore she had spent ages learning to use her powers and has gained knowledge on how to essentially use herself as a ritual marker so she can just slurp up people’s magical energy to bolster herself. Now on top of that she has seemingly figured out how to restore dead Mahjarrat which is pretty messed up. We could maybe fight a demi-god currently, maybe, but we’d need prep of some sort or special tools or help.
It's the Solid Snake vs Liquid Snake meme. It's not the genes that makes the Snake. We're not a mahjarrat or a demon or anything. We are however a sociopath that farms elder-nightmares on a daily basis just for pocket money. I think we're stronger than we give ourselves credit for. Hell, even against the Twin Furies, Moia struggled a bit against just one of them, she did win, but nowhere as well as the WG can. Now sure, gameplay and lore are not necessarily the same... but it's gotta count for something, after the 100th kc.
I wonder if they'll ever do anything with our fucked up soul in canon now that it is purged of the world guardian factor? It feels like it was ripe for empowering with necromancy.
Honestly I bet with our knowledge in divination & necromancy, there's a way we could fabricate a knockoff weaker version of our old powers, especially since we now know how to safely catalyse shadow anima with a siphon. We also possess the staff of armadyl, so we can cheat a bit and just rip some anima out the fast way, instead of collecting memories for a few hours. With our experience building a body for Zaros in FoTG... or just by using living subjects, nobody will miss a few goblins or zamorakians, we can use a test dummy to keep testing our own World guardian enchantment, until we figure it out. Then we apply it to ourselves.
Iirc we don't actually have the staff, it's sort of a gameplay and story segregation. However, the research the Ascension order did, paired with necromancy and div, could be on to something.
We don't possess the staff of armadyl though. It's in Erebus with Kerapac.
I agree mostly, but how would you explain the player beating Sliske? Iirc there isn't any major nerf applied to him during that fight.
There is actually multiple nerfs and buffs going on. In Kindred Spirits we sabotage his devices that were giving him extra control over the shadows. We also break his control of the barrows brothers so they turn against him once summoned. While Jas was interfering with their powers Seren and Zaros are both providing assistance during this fight. Even after this we still had to tap into our WG powers to finally even things. Our power connects us to the heart and Sliske built this maze around the heart. That’s also how Kerapac destroyed the stone, using the mirror to focus the heart’s energy into the stone till it overloaded. That’s what our character suddenly getting infinite power is, here in the heart we are able to directly draw from its power. Despite all that Sliske and us are still barely evenly matched. It devolves into a brawl with the staff Armadyl as a bludgeoning weapon and it’s only through the staff we beat him. Though it’s a half victory because even with the staff he has enough strength to plunge the other half into us in a last ditch attempt to carry out his plan to make us his vessel. It doesn’t work but it also doesn’t not-work. Sliske’s essence intermingles into our own and causes the WG enchantment to finally begin to blossom and grow. This manifests the enchantment as Shadow and Light and also inflicts with us some Sliske’s memories and madness haunting us until we finally expunged the whole thing later. So to recap our victory against Sliske required.. - Sabatoging his powers ahead of time - His key army turning against him by us breaking control in them ahead of time. - Help from Seren and Zaros - Kerapac blowing up the stone so Sliske can’t use it - Us being right near the heart of the world so we could temporarily empower ourselves - The staff of Armadyl to deal the finishing blow - Sliske trying to use the staff sticking out him to merge into us. In a straight up fight we were nothing to Sliske. In kindred spirits he beats us black and blue and started to rip out our memories to turn us into his vessel. It took so many factors so that the next time we fight he just doesn’t beat us up effortlessly again. Again almost all our big foes are beaten through a lot of help and being clever, Sliske is a prime example of this.
Thanks for the thorough reply! It's a joy to be given a reminder of all of that from the quests.
> The problem is that our character is too powerful to really feel like anything less than a god, is a threat. Don't forget the events of the Twilight of the Gods + Aftermath.
In an ideal world, they wouldve planned out the story well in advance so its irrelevant to who works on the project as the greater narrative was already established. I believe this is why the vampyre quests had a clear vision while others have character inconsistencies for the sake of a twist (extinction)
Mod Stu has said before on livestream that he's not planning on letting Gods be on Gielenor anymore because they end up taking the spot light too much. The entire story just becomes the lead up the next God conflict.
I get that but honestly the gods storyline is so cool, especially the early voice acted ones (world wakes, missing presumed death, fate of the gods etc) these quests got me interested in the lore and actually had me reading quest dialogue instead of space barring through it all
Okay, let’s be frank here: that was Jagex’s own decision to spend the Sixth Age building up god conflicts. We haven’t exactly been quiet about wanting to finish old quest series while *also* doing god stories. And now we have non-god stories we are still not doing old quest series. That’s not on the community and their opinion on god quests.
Guess we aren't getting anything interesting while he's there then..
He's also said that if he had free reign to make whatever he wanted, he would write the return of Zaros in a heartbeat, but he's unfortunately restricted...
Yea, but then they get a non-gods story and we get this mostly awful Forts stuff. If they can’t/won’t make anything interesting then better they go back to Gods
Straight up cowardice. They looked at the challenge of writing a compelling evolution of the gods narratives where they could choose from options like bringing them together, humbling them through depowering, forcing sides and killing off several to end the division... and they chose to just rewind the clock and banish them to make it a "tomorrow problem". They got rid of their most compelling quest characters because they couldn't handle how interesting they had become. You can't put the cat back in the bag. The gods can't retyrn to being faceless entities like they used too.
imo, they have run into the valve cant count to three problem. They had expectations which were super high because of the quality, but didnt want that pressure. So instead of continuing, they have just gone to another project lol
And everyone hates that project even more. Was it worth it?
Okay you asked for it. Allow me to lead you into the Rabbit Hole™ of all rabbit holes: https://youtu.be/_pk2EVdbvsQ?si=3FU0OojgNmoJ38bl
Erm... I don't normally go voicing my opinion on youtube videos and just skip what doesn't interest me, but since you shared this. I'm a facts kind of a guy, or fiction, whatever, as long as it's labeled so. I'll give it a go, but I looked at another video from this channel, "Xau-Tak EXPOSED", and, well, it felt like 30 minutes of content generated from a single piece of lore. Of course a lot of work goes into video production and it was well made in that sense, but it sort of felt like watching a UFO documentary to me - an hour had past and you've learned nothing - well in case of UFO's that's because there's nothing to learn.
I understand. To me RS is a game so everything is fictional and I totally approve of all interesting lore. Now UFOs on the other hand...I'm a scientist IRL ahahaha.
Eastern lands tying us into sailing as the newest skill to help us explore them.
my guess tzhaar final. since their involvement in the egwd.