Hey there, everyone!

As we’d been ever not-so-subtly hinting towards, today’s large patch focus will be on skilling improvements to Herblore, Farming, and Runecrafting as a whole. Adjustments to a ton of their internal functions, alongside introducing outside elements, should help to alleviate and improve upon the otherwise fairly arduous, daunting process of having to level through these skills.

We’re hoping that by not only improving upon the experience of these skills making them significantly more approachable to members, it’s an inherent way of addressing numerous community concerns and pain points regarding economic improvements. Throughout these patch notes, we’ll be outlining the adjustments made to each of these three skills, alongside the other improvements that’re being introduced. As always, for a more thorough breakdown of everything coming this patch, please head towards the bottom of the page for an indepth patch summary.

Thanks!

Neox Staff

Many thanks to Reeke for helping with the quick rundown video! Expect more of these with upcoming patches!

Herblore

Herblore… definitely has some pain points. Community feedback had made it clear that the original stringent design on acquiring secondaries felt limited and perhaps a bit too restrictive, so a major focus when addressing those concerns were ways to both organically alleviate the strain, but also to build upon the identity of the skill and introduce some new, unique venues for members to venture through when looking to level it up. With these in mind, we’ve introduced a handful of quality of life improvements and a few new methods for secondary acquisition!

Alchemist Chest and Keys

A newly introduced method for gaining secondaries, the Alchemist Chest, can be located within Jatix’s store and requires a key to be opened (which will be consumed when used). This chest has 2 loot tables: one containing seeds for crops that are useful for Herblore, and the other contains a variety of Herblore secondary ingredients. Opening the chest will reward you with a roll on each table, and will utilize the loot interface for easy banking.

Obtaining keys can be done through a variety of activities: a large variety of slayer monsters, giants, and chaos druids will all drop keys, alongside a former and future boss for the majority of you: Me. Slaying Me, the gatekeeper of the Lunar Clan questline (as he is a repeatable/farmable boss), will guarantee a drop of the Alchemist’s Key, alongside the regular loot. Keys may also be obtained through pickpocketing Gnomes and Elves!

Alongside the addition of this chest and key, 7 new tasks have been introduced that are related to both! Good luck out there!

Item Modifications

Along with the introduction of the new chest, several items have been modified in a way that should drastically improve upon both their accessibility, ease of collection, and overall influence within the game. For ease of collection and storage, the following items are now stackable: Unicorn Horn Dust, Red Spiders’ Eggs, Chocolate Dust, Dragon Scale Dust, Crushed Bird Nests, and Crushed Superior Dragon Bones.

We have so much more room for activities!

Additionally, the following ingredients now yield multiple dust per item, rather than only one: Unicorn Horn Dust, Chocolate Dust, Goat Horn Dust, Dragon Scale Dust, and Crushed Bird Nests.

Achievement Rewards

Directly influencing Herblore can provide a ton of immediate results and direct influence surface level gameplay, but it wouldn’t be a proper Neox level overhaul if we weren’t continually building upon the interwoven systems of the game. Alongside the changes mentioned above, we’ve also expanded upon the achievement completion perks for finishing tasks with the Falador region. Now, members who work their way through the system will receive the following passive benefits for Herblore:

Falador Citizen

25% chance to receive double nests from trading in mole parts to Wyson the gardener

10% chance to save a key when opening the Alchemist’s chest

Falador Noble

25% chance to receive double nests from trading in mole parts to Wyson the gardener (additive with Citizen reward, to a total of 50%)

10% chance to save a key when opening the Alchemist’s chest (additive with Citizen reward, to a total of 20%)

Falador Ruler

50% chance to receive double nests from trading in mole parts to Wyson the gardener (additive with Citizen and Noble rewards, to a total of 100%)

10% chance to save a key when opening the Alchemist’s chest (additive with Citizen and Noble rewards, to a total of 30%)

Among these changes, many others have been made, but… we’re running a little bit out of room for this section! For a full review of the Herblore changes, please review the patch summary notes at the bottom of the page. We’re hoping these highlighted changes, among the others introduced, will truly lend in a beneficial manner to the skilling experience of Herblore.

Farming

By far one of the strongest utility skills in the game, farming as a baseline can be an incredible skill to train up and take advantage of when leveling your account in others ways. As this skill is time based, the windows between crop rotations and completions can provide members ample opportunity to go and explore the world elsewhere, leaving their crops time to mature into fruition! With this skill, we’d really wanted to improve on quite a few of the feedback points provided by members throughout their experience training and engaging with it.

In this section, we’ll outline some of the changes made to farming that we believe should improve upon the skill.

Resource Bag Interactions

What better a way to weave in a little bit of the Neox identity besides incorporating one of the cornerstone unique features to our humble project, the Resource Bag? Following this patch, members will now be able to attach a Herb Sack to their Resource Bag. In doing so, it opens up the ability to store grimy and clean herbs within! It’s worth noting, however, that this process cannot be reversed and the herb sack will be consumed (it’s sort of like a permanent upgrade)! For those without a herb sack, all farming produce aside from those herbs can now be stored within the bag.

Baseline Improvements

Integrating the resource bag to alleviate a little of the burden is one thing, but what about the overall strength and feel of the skill? Well, thanks to quite a bit of community feedback, we’d landed on the following baseline improvements to the foundational rates and values:

Produce is now harvested 50% faster from the original base speed.

The 2x yield multiplier for herb patches now also applies to flower patches, with the exception of white lily crops as they do not use the lives mechanic.

The farming cape and its trimmed varient now also causes you to harvest one additional produce per action. This is the same effect as the farming outfit and will stack additively with it.

New Achievement

A new achievement encompassing farming content is also being introduced with this patch that will provide a ton of benefits for the day-to-day farmer! Completing the tasks required for this achievement will reward members with a handful of perks including increase farming experience gained, increased yield from farming patches, additional harvesting speed increases, and a chance to recover seeds from a patch. More information and specifics on this can be found below within the patch summary!

When addressing Farming and conceptualizing changes for the skill, we’d wanted to improve upon as many areas of concern without too drastically altering the fundamental identity of the skill. With these changes, our aim was to improve the overall quality of life and drastically increase the rewards for the time invested; by design, this should inherently address several other concerns within the community, such as the availability and price point of specific potions. We’ll be carefully monitoring the subsequent effects within the economy and making changes as necessary.

Runecrafting

Runecrafting, alternatively known as the running simulator skill, is definitely one of the lengthier and less interesting skills to train. With these adjustments, our intent was the improve quite drastically on the yield in an organic way that scales with long-term investment, as well as making the skill infinitely more accessible through introduction of some improved upon mechanics. The runecrafting quality of life improvements are as follows:

New Shop and Pouch

With the introduction of a new shop through the Mage of Zamorak, we’re adding a significantly more streamlined access to basic runes and all types of talismans. The plight of skiller inaccessibility and hardship for talismans has come to an end! Alternatively, this should provide a much needed boost in early game magic accessibility.

Talismans can be bought now? Rejoice!

Previously, the pouch system wasn’t the most ideal. You’d have to grind away at the abyss creatures until you’d slowly worked your way through the milestone drops… one at a time, kind of like with defenders but moderately less rewarding. Now, members will be able to purchase an improved essence pouch that will scale with their runecrafting level (1 essence per 2 levels), and will allow for a base holding of 5. Additionally, having a runecrafting skillcape equipped will add an extra 10 capacity to the pouch.

We've also introduced a new plugin to work with the new pouches! Now you'll always know how many you have.

With level 1 Runecrafting and without the completed achievement, a member will be able to hold an additional 5 essence within this pouch; at level 99 Runecrafting, with the complete achievement, and with the skillcape equipped, a member will be able to hold an additional 74 essence!

Runecrafting Multipliers

Now, we’re going to get a little bit mathy. If you’ve got glasses by the wayside, it would absolutely be time to put them on! Within this patch, runecrafting multipliers have been absolutely overhauled. Now, rather than each rune type having specific breakpoints, they’ll have a set multiplier at level 99, and levels below and above that scale linearly as you level up beyond the base level required to craft the rune; for example, Death runes require 65 runecrafting to craft, and will now have a multiplier of 3x at 99 which means - math time - that for every level above 65, you will receive ~5.8% more runes from each essence. So, at level 85, you will receive 116% more death runes per essence, which translates to 2 runes per essence and an additional 16% chance at a third

Sorry, that was a lot, we know. In easier terms, the new formula makes it so that the higher your level above the required to make the rune, the more runes you’re going to get. This change, paired with being able to now carry more runes to the altar, means you’re going to level up significantly quicker and make significantly more runes whilst you’re doing so.

As a whole, there’s been quite a few adjustments made across the board regarding Runecrafting. Our biggest focus was to hone in on the values of the skill to make the juice a little more worth the squeeze. Now, we’re hoping for runes to be a little more abundant within the community, and dare we say… potentially making their way as a Grand Exchange listed addition? For more specific, please review the patch summary at the bottom of the page.

Patch Summary

Below will outline all changes found within this patch. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to share feedback within our Community Discord.

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Features

Herblore Focused

Added the Alchemist’s chest and keys.
- The chest is located in Taverley, inside Jatix’s store and can be opened with an Alchemist’s key. Keys are consumed on use.
- The chest has 2 loot tables, one containing seeds for crops that are useful for Herblore, and the other contains a variety of Herblore secondary ingredients.
- Opening the chest rewards you with one roll on each table. The loot interface is used for easy banking.
- Keys can be obtained from drops from many Slayer monsters, giants and chaos druids. For a full list and exact drops, check the Drop Viewer interface ingame.
- Defeating Me now grants a guaranteed Alchemist’s key, in addition to the regular loot.
- Keys can also be rarely obtained from pickpocketing Gnomes and Elves.
- Added 7 new tasks related to the chest and its keys.
The following items are now stackable:
- Unicorn horn dust
- Red spiders’ eggs
- Chocolate dust
- Dragon scale dust
- Crushed bird nest
- Crushed superior dragon bones
Crushing the following ingredients now yields multiple dust per item, rather than only one:
- Unicorn horn dust
- Chocolate dust
- Goat horn dust
- Dragon scale dust
- Crushed bird nest
Sarachnis now drops the giant egg sac, which can be cut open with a knife to obtain 100 red spiders’ eggs.
Increased the chance to receive bird nests from bird houses. The increase is larger for higher level bird houses.
The Falador area based achievements now have these additional rewards:
- Citizen: 25% chance to receive double nests from trading in mole parts to Wyson the gardener
- Citizen: 10% chance to save a key when opening the Alchemist’s chest
- Noble: 25% chance to receive double nests from trading in mole parts to Wyson the gardener (additive with Citizen reward, to a total of 50%)
- Noble: 10% chance to save a key when opening the Alchemist’s chest (additive with Citizen reward, to a total of 20%)
- Ruler: 50% chance to receive double nests from trading in mole parts to Wyson the gardener (additive with Citizen and Noble rewards, to a total of 100%)
- Ruler: 10% chance to save a key when opening the Alchemist’s chest (additive with Citizen and Noble rewards, to a total of 30%)
Baby blue dragons, blue dragons, brutal blue dragons and Vorkath now have a chance to drop a Scaly blue dragonhide, which can be crushed or cut to obtain 50 dragon scale dust.
Increased the chance for the amulet of chemistry to create a 4-dose potion to 15%, up from 5%. The amount of potions that can be created before the amulet degrades has also been increased to 15, from 5.

Farming Focused

Increased the base speed at which produce is harvested by 50%
The 2x yield multiplier for herb patches now also applies to flower patches, except for white lily crops, as they do not use the lives mechanic.
Harvesting items from a farming patch will now attempt to deposit the items directly into the resource bag, if possible.
All Farming produce, except for herbs, can now be stored in the Resource bag.
It is now possible to attach a Herb sack to your Resource bag, allowing it to store grimy and clean herbs. This process cannot be reversed and the Herb sack will be consumed.
Added a new achievement, ‘One With Nature’
- Requires 2,000 Farming task points and a few specific tasks to be completed
- Rewards the Farmer’s Outfit, which grants the following benefits when worn:
  - 7% increased Farming experience gained
  - 10% increased yield from Farming patches
  - Harvest one additional produce per action. To clarify, this effect causes you to perform an additional harvest per action, which effectively doubles harvesting speed. Yield is not affected.
  - 15% chance to recover a seed when you finish harvesting a patch. For tree patches, this is rolled when you check-health a healthy tree. The seed recovered is of the same type as the patch cleared.
The Farming cape and its trimmed variant now also causes you to harvest one additional produce per action. This is the same effect as the farming outfit, and stacks additively with it.
Fixed an issue where Kourend Ruler’s farming guild patch disease immunity effect was not applying correctly.

Runecrafting Focused

Added a few new basic tasks for Runecrafting.
The Zamorak mage located in Neox Island now has a store, which sells a basic stock of runes and all types of talismans.
Added a new essence pouch item meant to replace the existing essence pouches.
- Can be purchased in the Skilling shop on Neox Island.
- Has a base carrying capacity of 5 essences, plus one additional essence per 2 Runecrafting levels.
- Having a Runecrafting skillcape equipped adds an extra 10 capacity to the pouch.
- Essences from this pouch are automatically used when Runecrafting at an altar, without having to be withdrawn first.
Added a new custom-made RuneLite plugin, “Essence pouch”, which renders a text overlay over the essence pouch in your inventory displaying how many essences it is currently holding.
Added a new Achievement, ‘Essence Extractor’
- Requires completing the ‘Mine 5,000 Pure essence’ and ‘Craft 5,000 Pure essence into runes’ tasks.
- Reward: increases essence pouch capacity by 10.
Runecrafting multipliers have been completely overhauled.
- Rather than each rune type having specific breakpoints, they now have a set multiplier at level 99, and levels below and above that scale linearly as you level up beyond the base level required to craft the rune.
- For example, Death runes require 65 Runecrafting to craft, and have a multiplier of 3x at level 99.
- This means that for every level above 65, you will receive ~5.8% more Death runes from each essence. So at level 85, you will receive 116% more Death runes per essence, which translates to 2 runes per essence and an additional 16% chance at a third rune.
- The new multipliers (at level 99) are as follows:
  - Elemental runes: 20x
  - Mind runes: 10x
  - Body runes: 5x
  - Cosmic runes: 3x
  - Law runes: 3x
  - Nature runes: 3x
  - Chaos runes: 4x
  - Astral runes: 3x
  - Death runes: 3x
  - Blood runes: 2.5x
  - Soul runes: 2x
  - Wrath runes: 2x
- This change, combined with the significantly increased amount of essence you can now carry to the altar with the new essence pouch, as well as the faster trip times due to only need one interaction with the altar per trip, should result in vastly improved rune production and experience rates.
The rune multiplier now applies to runes crafted at the Ourania altar.
The ingame Runecrafting guide has been updated to reflect the essence pouch and rune multiplier changes.
Previously existing essence pouches are no longer obtainable, and can no longer be used.
Tasks that require you to craft over a specific amount of runes at once have had their required values increased to compensate for the much higher rune count per action. In general, they still require around the same Runecrafting level as before, with the possibility of completing them at lower levels than before with lucky rolls or achievement completions.
- If you had already completed any of these tasks before this update, you will NOT have to complete them again.
Tasks that required you to craft Blood or Soul runes have been changed to progress based on the amount of essence fragments used, rather than the amount of runes crafted. Their names and descriptions have been updated to reflect this change.
- This is to compensate for the increased rune output, as these tasks would have become much faster to complete otherwise due to the increased rune output.
- As with the previous change, this will not reset your current progress towards these tasks.
Slightly increased the price of higher level runes in the Neox Island magic shop.

General Features

Kill count for the Abyssal sire boss is now tracked. Also, its drop table can now be viewed in the drop viewer.

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Improvements

Adjusted death protection values for upgraded revenant weapons, barrows items, black masks, barrows gloves and Fremennik rings. This should result in higher-value items being protected more consistently.
K’ril Tsutsaroth’s unique drop distribution has been adjusted. The Staff of the dead is now rarer, while the Steam battlestaff and Zamorak spear are more common.
Significantly reworked the implementation for Reanimation spells and ensouled heads. This will result in several issues being resolved, including the inability to reanimate an ensouled head after picking it up, even if you haven’t left the area.
Simon templeton no longer talks incessantly when using the quick-sell option.
Increased the price of several items from the Blood Money Exchange Shop: Fighter Torso, Void Knight Armour Pieces, Dragon Defender, Rune Pouch, Magic Shortbow Upgrade Ccroll, Ring of Wealth Scroll, and Scroll of Imbuing.
Increased the chance to receive a clue scroll from Eclectic imps from 1/25 to 1/8.
Doubled the chance to receive clue scrolls from Mining, Woodcutting and Fishing.

handyman

Fixed

PvP items can now correctly be used while inside instanced Wilderness areas, such as Artio, Calvar’ion or Spindel’s lairs.
The staff of light now counts as both a Zamorak and a Saradomin item in the God Wars dungeon.
The Webweaver bow now counts as an Armadyl item in the God Wars dungeon.
Bandos, Armadyl and Ancient halos now count as their respective God’s items in the God Wars dungeon.
Fixed the hard tier ‘Kill 50 Lizardmen’ task incorrectly stating that only one kill was required.
The Ancient crozier now counts as an Ancient item in the God Wars dungeon.
Fixed a bug causing players to get stuck when dying in the non-instanced Nex encounter area.
Fixed a bug causing resource items with zero weight to be deleted when obtained with an open resource bag in your inventory.
Fixed Abyssal demons in the Slayer Tower basement not counting towards the ‘Kill 200 Abyssal demons in the Slayer Tower’ task.
Fixed Drakes not dropping their unique items.
Fixed the spawn location of a Troll stuck in a wall in the tunnel leading to Keldagrim.
The visually upgraded Dragon pickaxe now correctly has an Attack level requirement to equip.
Dragon harpoons now correctly have an Attack level requirement to equip.
Fixed a typo and the functionality for a clue scroll step which requires you to search a bookcase in the Monastery.
Fixed being able to attack with invalid weapons, such as crystal seeds.
Fixed the ‘Reanimate a Chaos Druid in the Edgeville Dungeon’ task not completing correctly.
Fixed a specific layout of the Jewelled Crabs room in the Chambers of Xeric not being able to be progressed correctly.
The Amulet of avarice now correctly counts as a Salve amulet, granting damage and accuracy bonuses against undead and ghostly monsters.
Fixed a lift in the Chasm of Fire taking players to an incorrect location.
Fixed a bug causing onions and cabbages to transform into potatoes when added to a sack.
Fixed a bug causing the ‘Deal a total of 5,000 damage using resurrected thralls’ task to not progress correctly.
Fixed tasks related to selling artefacts to Simon Templeton not progressing correctly if the item was sold to him individually.
Fixed a bug causing blighted vengeance sacks to not function correctly.
Fixed the ‘Cook 100 Lobsters’ task only requiring 50 lobsters to be completed, rather than 100.
Fixed a typo in the Brimstone key’s drop description.
Fixed a bug causing Teleblock effects to be cleared when exiting from an instanced Wilderness area to the non-instanced Wilderness.

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Removed

Removed mentions of Membership requirement for many entries in the ingame skill guides.