Legacy Beta - 16th June

Legacy Mode goes into open beta on Monday the 16th June!

Legacy Mode is way of playing the modern game but with a traditional look and feel, without the need to learn the new combat system. It’s an optional mode that you can switch on or off, so you can choose if and when you use it.

Legacy mode includes:

Traditional RuneScape combat, with no abilities.

Interfaces styled from the pre-RS3 - both resizable and fixed.

Old-style minimap icons.

Life points back to a max of 990.


Legacy Mode has a lot of other smaller tweaks to help give that traditional gameplay feel (many of which came from feedback during a recent player visit), and you can find out the details below, in our More Information section and FAQ.

Independent of Legacy Mode, we’re introducing some global changes to combat to make improvements for everyone, especially in PvP. These will also be available on Monday in the Combat Beta:

Reinstated '138' combat formula, tweaked to give melee, ranged and magic equal contribution.

Special attacks on weapons that had them before

Critical hit chance will be replaced by strength bonuses which give higher max hits.

Finally, there are some overall balancing changes: more of your life points will come from stats rather than armour, and the penalties and bonuses across the combat triangle will be slightly relaxed, and damage from abilities has been tweaked to even out imbalances (overall damage output remains the same).


Once Legacy Mode has hit beta and we’ve taken on your feedback, we'll be running a poll to determine whether it should be added to the live game.

Even if you don't intend to use Legacy, there'll be plenty of new content to try out: special attacks, the combat formula and balancing refinements. Be sure to give the beta a try!

Watch out for a Legacy-focused Behind the Scenes video on Friday, and full details along with the launch on Monday!

Mod Pips and the RuneScape Team

More Information


Player feedback & suggestions have been incredibly important to the development of Legacy Mode and the many other combat improvements we’ve been working on.

We’ve spent countless hours going through your forum posts, social media comments, videos and even letters to make sure we’re focusing our time on the things which matter most to you. We also took a lot of early feedback on from a player visit where a pre-beta version of Legacy was tested.

We’ve already talked about the major features of the upcoming combat beta: Legacy Mode combat & interfaces, 138 combat level formula, and the return of special attacks.

In this post, we’ll expand on the changes we’ve made to Legacy and also other global combat changes. As you’ll see, many are focused on improving PvP across the game, and almost all of the changes have come from suggestions and feedback from the community.


Legacy Mode features:

These are features specific to Legacy Mode.

Legacy Combat

Our primary aim with Legacy Mode was to bring back the old style of combat, focused around auto-attacks and special attacks. Legacy Mode strips out abilities and increases auto-attack damage to competitive levels.

Of course, this is still the modern game so the character graphics and animations are current, and newer equipment is - of course - available too.

Old Interfaces

Legacy Mode contains old-style fixed and resizable interfaces which bring back the old look and behavior from before the New Interface System was introduced.

You can still access the newer Hero, Gear, Adventures, Powers and Social interfaces through the Main Menu (esc).

Life points and damage

Legacy Mode scales down the visual representation of life points, effectively dividing it by 10 when it’s shown on your screen.

It’s still the same amount of damage actually being done under-the-hood, but the numbers are smaller and more comfortable for players who preferred it from before.

Hit Marks

We’ve also changed the visuals for the hit marks you see when giving or receiving damage so they are what you remember from pre-EoC.

Minimap Icons

Legacy Mode simply wouldn’t be so without the old minimap icons & map. You’ll feel right at home with the old style icons and images – we know this was a big one for many of you!

F Keys

Quick switch F-Key commands are back, allowing maximum efficiency when it comes to skilling and slaying. Switch between interface tabs with easy-to-reach F-Keys.

Shield provoke

Provoke is an important ability in EoC for tackling some of the newer bosses. We have added the provoke function to shields from level 80+.

Legacy Players can access this important combat feature, should they want try their skills in higher-end PvM.

Legacy-only game worlds

When Legacy is launched in the live game we will include Legacy-only game worlds, where players are locked in to using Legacy Mode.

This should be most useful for players who want a level playing field for PvP.


Global Combat Changes

These are features which are present in both EoC and Legacy Modes.

Special Attacks

Special Attacks are back and are available in both EoC and Legacy modes. We’ve tried to make them as close to the originals as possible, both in look and in functionality.

In EoC you can think of them as weapon-specific abilities: a whole new layer of combat options now at your disposal. For Legacy players, we hope they are just as you remember them!

138 Combat Level Formula

As voted back in February, we are changing the combat level calculation so it is based on the earlier “138” formula. We‘ve tweaked it to give equal contribution to ranged and magic – these combat styles are now equally recognised in the combat formula.

Strength Bonuses

We are bringing back the pre-EoC system of strength bonuses, and this will replace the current critical hit chance feature.

We found that critical hits didn’t fit as naturally into the game as strength bonuses, and many players weren’t engaged with this aspect of combat and gear.

Life Points from Armour

This change means more of your life point total will come from your stats, rather than your armour. You’ll still have the same effective total health, but armour will be less of a contributing factor.

All low-to-mid level armours have had life point bonuses removed, with reduced bonuses on higher level armour and shields.

This will mean that the outcome of PvP is more influenced by your stats and skills than by armour – though of course, your gear is still very important!

Combat Triangle balance

EoC rebalanced and reinforced the combat triangle – the bonuses and penalties applies when fighting across the different styles of melee, ranged and magic.

We are slightly relaxing these bonuses and penalties. Again, the main benefit of this is for PvP, where players in the “wrong gear” will still have a competitive chance.

It is also useful when monster killing too, as players can feel they have more flexibility to pick and choose different combinations of gear, even if it’s not all in the matching combat style.

Armour Requirement Changes

For Evolution of Combat we wanted to make armour levels more consistent, but that had an unintended consequence on PvPers where it broke their specialist character builds.

We’re keen to revive an exciting PK community, so we’re returning the requirements for lower-level armours to their previous levels.

Rune will require level 40 Defence, adamant 30, mithril 20 and so on, all the way back down to iron with its level 1-Defence requirement.

Weapon Animation Changes

Looks aren’t everything, but some iconic animations which were lost with Evolution of Combat. Some of you felt these were more readable in fast-paced PvP situations, too.

While we are not able to make wholesale changes to combat animations, we have changed back a few specific animations for popular PK weapons, including the old maul, dragon 2H and whip, and also the old ancient magic animations.

Barrows Armour Visual Changes

Similar to the animation changes, some of the newer armour designs lost some of their iconic quantities, and became harder to recognise at a glance in PvP situations.

With that in mind, we’ve made tweaks to the modern Barrows gear so they bear greater resemblance to their original looks.

Your feedback said this was especially important for well-known PK equipment like Dharok’s set, but all Barrows gear has had these tweaks.

Prayer Icon Changes

Prayer Icons will now be visible above players so it is clearer what prayers they’re using. We’ve also made subtle changes to icons for protect and deflect prayers, so they are less likely to be misread.

We’ve achieved this by returning to elements of the previous icon design, so now they’re more distinct and more reminiscent of the earlier design.

Protection Prayers

Following your feedback, we have increased the protection prayers to 50% damage mitigation in PvP, up from 25%. However, we are not changing from the 50% already in place for protection from monsters.

Ability Balance Refinements

Careful tuning and tweaking has been done to address imbalances across the combat abilities. This is to ensure more of the abilities are useful, a wider range of rotations and tactics are viable, and so the different combat styles are equally good. Your damage output potential isn't being reduced, however.

Saradomin Brews

Improved healing will make Sara brews much more useful again, by improving the amount of life points they heal per dose - so you’ll want to take them to the toughest of boss fights once more!

Food

Food healing has changed slightly in light of your feedback… Food heal values have been increased slightly, and rather than using up adrenaline, eating food triggers a short single-cycle attack delay.

This means eating food doesn’t disrupt adrenaline building as much, but also isn’t completely free of consequences. It also adds more skill in to the mix, because a well-timed eat can bypass this one-cycle delay.

Monster Aggression

We have changed the behaviour of many monsters to make them aggressive to players that get in close proximity. This makes the game world less inert and also means combat skill training can be slightly lower-intensity.

There’s really only one way to find out what Legacy Mode offers in full, and that’s by logging in and participating in our beta, which goes live on Monday the 16th of June. Keep your eyes peeled for a news post from Community Management too, detailing loads of beta-specific game events and competitions.

FAQ


Which combat mode will get the best XP per hour?

We’re balancing all of the combat modes - both Legacy and EoC modes - to be more effective the more input and skill you have.

An experienced player who uses abilities effectively in Full Manual will get the best damage rates, and therefore best XP per hour.

We’ve balanced Legacy to be similar to Revolution, but we still anticipate that skilled players actively using Revolution with smart use of threshold and ultimate abilities will have the edge on Legacy Mode.

We want Legacy Mode to be a choice in your play style, not another method of skill training. That said, we’re confident we’ve found the sweet spot where Legacy rates are good and feel competitive, but don’t outstrip those players who have mastered manual EoC.

Can players in Legacy Mode fight those in EoC?

Yes, but we don’t realistically expect cross-mode combat to be a major part of the game. They have fundamental differences – primarily EoC’s access to a big range of combat abilities – and we are not aiming to balance this out entirely.

We anticipate that Legacy Mode will be popular for PKing, which is why we’re introducing a few Legacy-only game worlds. That way, we can provide a level PvP playing field for those of you who prefer Legacy.

I want all of the old combat animations!

We have brought back a few iconic weapon animations, which should help make Legacy PKing feel more authentic, but it is not feasible for us to make wholesale changes to combat animations.

We have changed our player-character models and rigs, and re-creating a large suite of old animations and re-coding it to work in parallel is a massive task.

This is something we will look in to long-term, but it is not something we can ship with Legacy Mode this summer.

I want 100% protection prayers in Legacy!

Sorry, but this isn’t a change we’re going to make. We definitely think the game is better without persistent 100% protection prayers, which effectively overrode other key combat mechanics.

Are you allowing pures to roll back stats?

Yes, we’re currently investigating a very limited set of rollback packages. This will not be a rollback free-for-all however! We’re looking at allowing skill pures to reset their Constitution and Prayer, and defense pures to roll back their Defence.

These will be controlled rollbacks, only available in certain conditions. We have more investigation to do, but we hope to have something available shortly after Legacy Mode launches.

How does Legacy Mode affect EoC?

Our aim is for Legacy Mode to have as little impact on EoC gameplay as possible. EoC is still the “main combat system” and we aren’t going to jeopardise it. Almost all of the global combat changes are things we feel are improvements to EoC - especially around PvP - and are needed in any case.

Overall, we think Legacy Mode will significantly improve the health of the game, because players who didn’t get on with EoC now don’t have to avoid combat, and players who left because of EoC now have a way of playing comfortably again.

The more players we have, and the more players happy with the content, the better it is for RuneScape in the long term.

Are you adapting “EoC bosses” for Legacy players?

No, these are newer pieces of content designed specifically for the EoC system, and we intend to continue building content around the new combat system.

However, we are considering how we can provide Legacy players with the tools to participate in higher-end PvM, such as by adding the Provoke function to level 80+ shields.

Legacy Mode players can try out EoC bosses, but it will probably be a tougher challenge for them!

What does Legacy Mode mean for Old School RuneScape?

We don’t think it will have a significant impact, especially in the long term. Old School players have invested a lot of time in their progress, they have their own community with a distinct identity, and the game is being driven in its own direction by the players.

Old School RuneScape is a healthy and vibrant community. We’ve grown the Old School team here at Jagex to reflect that, and we are committed to supporting Old School in the long term.

Can I use the old interfaces but with EoC?

Not for the moment, but it is something we'll look in to post launch - it's a surprising amount of additional work and testing!


When will Legacy Mode be released in to the main game?

At some point following the Legacy Mode beta launch, we will have a poll to determine whether you want Legacy to the added in to the main game. We will judge when the poll should be, based on your initial feedback.