"Currently, the new types of armour will be categorized into 5 sections:
- HP armour
- Defence armour
- Damage armour
- Accuracy armour
- Prayer armour
These armour types will not only offer defence, but also an extra boost to the respective class you smith them into. The only exception is Defence armour, which will boost the defence rating it already posseses. It is presumed that the base defence is the same for all the other 4 classes.
In the case of Orichalkum, Necronium and future metal armour, Dragon and Barrows armour will be re-classed to become Artefact armour. Artefact items are items that are monster-dropped, such as Dragon, Barrows or Torva. They have slightly higher stats than a 5+ smithed item. Therefore, an Orichalkum platebody will be inferior to a Dragon platebody.
Making standard metal items (Bronze to Necronium) will begin at an armour piece of 0+. A 0+ armour piece will have base stats, without any further boosts. When smithing two pieces of 0+ armour together, one will obtain a 1+ item. By combining two pieces of 1+ armour, one will get a 2+ armour. This can go on until a 5+ piece of armour, with it gaining the maximum amount of stats for that tier.
Therefore, there are 6 kinds of stats an armour piece will have, ranging from 0+ to 5+. The table below will explain how many +0 pieces you need to create a 5+ piece.
A 5+ armour piece
= two 4+ armour pieces
= four 3+ armour pieces
= eight 2+ armour pieces
= sixteen 1+ armour pieces
= thirty two 0+ armour pieces
But, we can go a step further. Combining a type 5+ platebody with an artefact platebody results in a MASTERWORK platebody. This means that combining an Orichalkum 5+type platebody, and a Dragon platebody, will result in an Orichalkum masterwork platebody. This is the last and final upgrade, resulting in the best stats for that tier."
"A change in method will be introduced to help us into the new system.
For example, mining will become less competitive. This might mean that ores will become player-bound, and not global-bound. Mining an ore will exhaust it for you alone, not for everyone around you. This is done to make Mining a more social skill, rather than a competitive skill.
Mining will be made a lot more social by making rocks personal and adding a life point bar to every ore. The higher the level rock, the higher the life points. Every % of life points mined away will result an ore, until it is exhausted. Higher mining level, and pickaxe tier, will result in faster damage per second dealt, thus faster mining. Artefact pickaxes, such as Dragon, Imcando, Adze and Crystal, will boast much higher DPS than smithable pickaxes.
This is complemented by making lesser ores, such as Mithril, Adamantine and Runite, a lot more common. The Living Rock Cavern, for example, will now boast Adamantine and Runite deposits. This will drastically reduce the cost of the Runite ore, but so will be XP rates. It is a necessary loss to allow higher metals and ores to enter the game.
Ornamental armours, like Heraldry armour, will be turned into Ornamental kits, similiar to the Dragonbone kit. This will remove confusion as to what type of use these armours are meant to provide: purely cosmetic in this case.
The Miscellania Kingdom Management mini-game will possibly receive the new ''coal'' variants as a gathering product. These are: Imcandite, Dragonsblood and Thanous.
Black and White armour will not be removed, but will instead get an in-between class (possibly filling the level 25 tier). This will make the armours desirable for low level players that are involved in quests that deal with those armours."
"The new system will also make sure that creating a hundred useless platebodies will become a redundant necessity. Instead of making a hundred platebodies, you will now be encouraged to smith them together to create a stronger variant (the +type system). This will make sure that a lot less junk items will be pumped into the economy, making it less clogged. This, in turn, will make standard metal items more profitable, as more resources will be used to create the better items of said metal.
As an addition, it is being considered to make metal gloves and boots more available by making them smithable. A possible fix for replacing them from the drop tables and as a mini-game reward (Fist of Guthix) is to replace them as a power-up, in line with the Chaotic Remnant item to create stronger amulets from the Saradomin Whisper, Hiss and Murmer. This way, you can make empowered gloves and boots.
The Goldsmithing gauntlets, Varrock armour and Ring of Forging will be re-worked in use when concerning the failure rate of smelting Iron bars. This failure rate will be removed entirely, and instead, these boosting gears will be reworked to enhance the rate of level-up'ing your armour. When creating a class +1 armour piece, you need to combine two +0 armour pieces. When attempting that, and while wearing these boosting gears, you will have a chance of receiving a +2 armour piece instead. This will provide a shortcut when creating a class +5 armour."
FAQ (From post)
Q: Are these your idea's or suggestions?
A: NO! These are Mod Jack's idea's and suggestions, an official Jagex moderator. I have simply compiled his idea's in one neat thread.
Q: Is this a confirmed update?
A: No. Mod Jack suggested these changes in RuneFest 2013. Since then, they've changed opinion and now want to add the remains of the Invention skill to Smithing and call that a "rework".
Q: What's a "class"?
A: An armour class is an attribute a piece of armour receives. These can be HP boost, Prayer boost, Damage boost, Accuracy boost or Defence boost.
Q: What's a "plus type"?
A: A plus type, or +type, is used to describe the level of armour an item is in. A 0+type is the weakest, having the lowest statistics, whilst a 5+type is the highest, having the highest statistics.
Q: What are "artefact" items?
A: All equipment items dropped by monsters, not able to be made by players, are considered artefact items.
Q: What is a "masterwork" item?
A: Combining an artefact item with a 5+type item creates a masterwork item. This item will have the highest stats for that tier of item.
(I.E.: A masterwork Orichalkum platebody is a Dragon platebody + 5+Orichalkum platebody, it has the highest stats for a body-type armour in the level 60-tier.)
Q: Won't this render Dragon, Imcando, Adze and Crystal pickaxes redundant?
A: No. Mining will work with a hitpoint system. An ore will have a certain amount of lifepoints, and the better your mining and pickaxe, the more "damage" you do to the rock. Every so many hits to the ore, you receive an ore. Dragon and the rest, will have a stronger damage bonus than Orichalkum picks and higher.
Q: What about degradable items?
A: If you make a masterwork item, you can fix those items with either the metal bars or coins. Your choice!
Q: What about boots and gloves?
A: They would get taken off the current mini-game rewards table, and replaced by other desirable rewards.
Q: Won't this devalue rune items and monster drops?
A: No. Rune items are already at high alchemy price. Drops will be replaced with Orichalkum or Necronium, which will have higher high-alchemy value. This of cource means that rune items will receive a drop in high alchemy value.
"
and some suggestions from the post:
"The plan I am suggesting to introduce content past level 79 (Torva, Malevolent, etc...) is to:
A) Gate the content behind time, akin to Raids
B) Gate the content behind PvM, akin to strong mobs like Rune Dragons, Glacors and Tormented Demons.
Personally I'd like to see both. The ores could be gated behind dungeons that can be accessed if a key is obtained by killing its guardian. A new, strong mini-boss mob could protect this ore, and once killed, you can mine said ore once. This creature could perhaps be killed only so many times a day, which would allow the ore to be trade-able.
The secondary ores, which are the coal variants, could either be hard-to-reach mines, such as high level wilderness, or monster drops. I can imagine level 80+ bars to require 2 different coal-variants instead of only one.
Next, the ores can be smelted into bars by accessing high-level forges. These can be accessed when killing a Skilling Raids boss (Similiarly to Yakamaru or Beast Master Durzaq, only the skiller-versions). By killing them, you can access the forge they were protecting and smelt a certain amount of ores into bars. Making bars trade-able would make them very profitable as well.
By handling level 80+ metals in this manner, we could say it justifies the creation of self-made T80 or higher armor. However, I do not agree with this (yet). My current solution is to only allow players to make Masterwork items with the level 80+ metals, so a Torva platebody with a T80 metal called Divinium could be smithed into a Masterwork Divinium platebody.
If Jagex allows it, Divinium could even be created to allow +0 up to +5 armor, but I do not find this likely."
Finally, Speculate! Personally, I'm very excited to see what comes of it!