Old School's most epic Grandmaster quest to date, Desert Treasure II - The Fallen Empire, is on the horizon. No quest is complete without some exciting rewards, and you've already had your say on handful of the offerings from the upcoming continuation of the Mahjarrat storyline.

This blog is dedicated to the most significant of all of those rewards - the Ruinous Powers, Old School's first ever new Prayer book.

A Brief History Lesson

Some of you might be wondering how we wound up in the middle of all this Mahjarrat mess in the first place, or whether the denizens of Gielinor know anything about the Ruinous Powers already. It's time for a history lesson - but we'll be brief, so don't go reaching for your space bar just yet!

 

Gielinor these days is a relatively peaceful place. Sure there's the odd incident of regicide and subsequently mobilising an entire army to revive a dark lord, or constructing a fleet of warships and hordes of Demonic gorillas, or laying waste to an entire navy using mind-controlled dragons, or the potential resurgence of an infamous historical mage who wields powers beyond our comprehension. Most of the time though - things are pretty quiet!

Things weren't always this way though, a long time ago during Gielinor's Second Age, war ravaged the lands. The Zarosian Empire's insatiable imperial ambition helped the Empty Lord and his followers spread their tendrils all over Gielinor, with seemingly no worldly match for the servants of the Ruinous Powers.

During Beneath Cursed Sands, Mehhar told us all about the 'great war' he lived to experience, also known as the Kharidian-Zarosian war. He spoke of how the Kharidian forces were utterly decimated by the servants of the Ruinous Powers - a force so insurmountable that demi-gods Icthlarin and Amascut (who wasn't always quite so bad!) sought help from a place beyond Gielinor. The Mahjarrat - Icthlarin's Stern Judges - were brought to Gielinor for the first time to try and turn the tides. For a while, it seemed the Khardians had found a match for the Ruinous Powers, until a snake in the Mahjarrat-shaped grass broke rank and convinced the other Mahjarrat to swap sides.

The rest, as they say, is history. Or it would be if there weren't quite so much miscellaneous Mahjarrat antics occurring in the Kharidian desert after all these years!

Now, that's all a little intense so let's lighten the mood by saying that these powers are soon to be yours for the taking - isn't that nice?!

Community Suggestions Summary

Since we put out our Rewards Greenlight Blog, you've come out in spades with all kinds of creative ideas for what the Ruinous Powers might look like - which is super handy because everybody we've reached out to for information on what they actually looked like has ghosted us.

We've had an absolute blast reading through your suggestions and combing through hundreds of potential prayers, and wanted to take a moment to talk through some of the more common themes we've seen popping up. Getting a sense of where your suggestions overlapping helps give us an idea of areas we can focus on when trying to put together a fancy new book. So here's a brief rundown on some of the main areas of overlap between your suggestions, starting with the most recognisable group of prayers in the game...

Protection Prayers

To the surprise of absolutely nobody, all of you were head over heels for overheads and the protection they provide. These popped up in some form in near enough every full book suggestion, and seemed primarily to take the approach of reducing damage by somewhere in the region of 80 to 90% - which is in line with the example we gave in our initial mention of the Ruinous Powers.

 

Some of you got a little more creative, including things like: 100% protection with a % of the mitigated damage being taken from Prayer points; hybrid protection (e.g. Protect from Magic & Ranged at reduced effectiveness); timed immunity overheads that you'd flick for a tick or two to mitigate any damage, but with its own cooldown; or even protection that scales with your defensive bonuses.

 

Recoil

This is something we'd been toying around with a little and were excited to see many of you toying around with too! We saw a handful of approaches on how to tackle these, but the general idea of using your Prayer to somehow buff recoiled/reflected damage seemed to be a popular one as many of you tried honing in on high-risk, high-reward elements for your proposals. We saw approaches as simple as 'turn prayer on, recoil more damage', overheads that increase your recoil damage (and in some cases increase the damage you take) or even ongoing 'thorns' effects overheads - where any target who damages you is returned a % of that damage as long as the Prayer is enabled.

This sort of risky playstyle seemed to excite many of you - especially those looking forward to stepping up their abilities with well-timed and well-executed Vengeance casts as opposed to the more passive approach that something like Thralls provide.

 

Damage Prayers

No Prayer book is complete without some kind of damage buffs. As for exactly what those buffs look like, there were too many different approaches to properly capture and do justice in this short segment. We've tried baking some of our favourites into our initial proposal, but some examples of things we saw crop up a lot include: powerful offensive prayers without defence boosting components, prayers offering ranged strength or magic damage, tribrid prayers that are weaker than their style-specific counterparts, low-life/high-risk vs. high-reward options for bonus accuracy or damage, and loads more.

Run Energy

 

Something else that you were suggesting time and again were Prayers that affect Energy in some way. Some of you tackled this by wanting to reduce drain rate, others by draining Prayer instead of Energy while running, having Energy regen scale with Prayer bonus - loads of interesting and innovative approaches! In fact, we have a proposal for an Energy-affecting Prayer that came directly from a community suggestion, but more on that in just a moment!

Skilling Prayers

The Rewards Greenlight poll made it pretty clear that there's interest in Prayers that touch on Skilling. While we didn't see a lot of particularly distinct suggestions, the ones we did see focused pretty consistently on gathering skills. We've included some of your suggestions as well as some of our thoughts down below, so keep reading! There's so much more we could say about some of the fantastic ideas you shared, but we'd be here all day (and probably overshoot the character limit on newsposts). So, without further adieu, let's take a look at our first proposal for the Ruinous Powers and give you the chance to have your say!

The Ruinous Powers

Our task is simple. Make a new Prayer book that doesn't outright overpower the Prayers we all know and love, bake in the common themes from hundreds of community suggestions, make something that feels rewarding for skilling-focused and combat-focused content, and deliver on some elements of high-risk vs. high-reward without making the new set of Prayers inapproachable. Simple, really.

With all that said, let's dive in!

Prayer	Prayer Type	Mechanics	Our Notes
Overprotection	Utility	Protect 2 Items on Death, but; Drains Prayer by 25% of damage taken while active	We saw a lot of people touching on Protect Item in general, and many suggestions seemed to lean in to a higher risk alternative for a potentially higher reward. This could be given an activation cost to prevent just flicking it on as you meet your untimely end.
Rejuvenation	Utility/Combat	While active, regenerate 1 HP every ~20 seconds	Rapid Heal wasn't quite rapid enough, so we thought we'd try upping the ante. This would likely have a hefty drain rate attached so that it's not worth just leaving on forever. Additionally, this would conserve the functionality that Rapid Heal has where flicking it on and off could conserve boosted HP, or prevent HP regeneration for all of you Dharok enjoyers out there!
Dampen (Melee/Magic/Ranged)	Overhead - Protection	Reduces damage from the appropriate style by 90%.	Just like the overheads you've come to know and love, but with slightly less defensive prowess. It's worth remembering that Old School tends to prefer rounding numbers down. Meaning it's possible to take 0 damage using this prayer. Effectively, if you would have been hit between 1 and 9 damage, you'll take 0 damage when using the appropriate Dampen prayer. Or, if you would have been hit a 29, you'll take 2 damage, since we round 2.9 down to 2.
Absorb (Melee/Magic/Range)	Overhead - Protection	Reduces damage from the appropriate style by 100%, but; Drains Prayer points by 10% of the mitigated damage (on top of typical Prayer drain). E.g. Mitigate 70 damage, lose 7 Prayer points but take 0 damage. This Prayer drain can round down to 0, meaning if you mitigate 9 damage, you'd lose 0 additional Prayer points.	Just like the overheads you've come to know and love, but with an increased cost. Two sets of protection prayers? That's crazy! The aim here is to provide overhead options that are both strictly worse than the Standard Prayer book, but that might see use in different types of content, or require on-the-spot decision-making. Perhaps you're running low on food but have a bunch of extra Prayer restore - you could opt into these to restore the balance before returning to 90% damage mitigation. It's definitely a little 'out there', so let us know your thoughts!
Ancient Precision	Offensive	+20% Attack	These are almost on par with the higher-level Prayers we're used to (and higher-tier Prayers in this book) but still not quite there, alongside a heftier Prayer point drain rate. We could merge Superior Attack/Strength to save some space in the book if absolutely needed, but a combination of the two would also have a higher drain rate to compensate!
Ancient Strength	Offensive	+20% Strength
Ancient Sight	Offensive	+20% Ranged Attack & Strength
Ancient Will	Offensive	+20% Magic Attack
Trinitas	Offensive	+15% Magic Attack ; +15% Ranged Attack & Strength; +15% Melee Attack & Strength	This one might be a little out of left field, but we saw a few suggestions for something like this and thought it worth exploring. Effectively, if you're still getting to grips with nailing your offensive prayer switches, this would enable you to trade some Prayer points and some reduced power (compared to the dedicated Prayers above) for a little less stress if you're still getting to grips with PvM. We're keen to hear your thoughts on this one! A lot of the Ruinous Powers reward players for riskier playstyles, this is an option we'd like to consider to make this fancy new Prayer book an enticing option even for players just dipping their toes in to more complex combat.
Ruinous Smite	Overhead - Offensive	Reduces your opponent's and your own Prayer points by 33% of damage dealt.	It's Smite, but with a higher drain rate (on both you and your opponent!)
Gambit	Overhead - Offensive	Increases your accuracy with all Combat styles by 1% per 3% missing HP	You wanted risk vs. reward? Try this one on for size! Gambit is an offensive overhead Prayer whose usefulness increases the lower HP you are. It's not too difficult to get a little boost from this Prayer, but for players willing to risk it all and flick this between defensive overheads, you stand to gain an accuracy increase over 30%. Flick it on at the wrong time? Good luck tanking boss hits with no protection and at low HP.
Rebuke	Overhead - Offensive	Reflects 15% of damage taken, but; Increases damage taken by 25% E.g. If a boss would hit you for a 60, instead it will deal 75 damage. You'll reflect 11 damage back to the boss.	Another offering on the risk vs. reward front, this time centered around recoil. First and foremost, this Prayer lets you passively recoil damage - great! On the other hand, you'll be taking extra damage and unable to use a Protection prayer. Alongside the passive recoil damage, increasing your incoming damage gives potential for some seriously hard-hitting Vegeance usage!
Decimate	Offensive	+20% Attack +30% Strength	Decimate, Annihilate and Vaporise all pack more of a punch than their counterparts (Piety, Rigour and Augury) but offer none of the Defensive bonuses to compensate, on top of the reduced durability offered by the rest of the Ruinous Powers. Prayers of this calibre are perfect candidates for post-quest boss drops, similar to the Prayer Scrolls you can obtain from the Chambers of Xeric.
Annihilate	Offensive	+20% Ranged Attack +30% Ranged Strength
Vaporise	Offensive	+25% Magic Attack +4% Magic Damage
Vindication	Utility/Combat	When reduced below 10% of your maximum HP (without taking lethal damage), Vindication will heal you for 15% of your Prayer level, draining 100% of your remaining Prayer points, and; Upon activation, grant 10% bonus damage on your next attack	The final card in the 'risk vs. reward' deck. A well-timed Redemption can sometimes be the difference between life and death. Vindication is no different, except you're healing less to gain an offensive component. Call an ambulance, but not for me!
Metabolise	Utility/Combat	Eating delay is reduced by 0.6s while active	Turn this bad-boy on and engorge yourself! When disabled, your action delay would be reset to your weapon's attack speed or left unchanged - whichever value is greater (to prevent you from quickly flicking this on to eat food and turn it back off again).
Wrath	Combat	While active, deal damage equal to 25% of your Prayer level in a 5x5 radius around you on death	Ever wished Retribution was bigger? Wish no more!
Ruinous Grace	Utility	While active, drain Prayer points instead of Run Energy. This drain rate is modified by Prayer bonus, and does not take into account effects like Stamina.	Have you ever gotten half-way through the Underground Pass before realising that you forgot your Stamina potions? Us neither, but it happened to a friend of ours. Ruinous Grace lets you keep on zooming, at the expense of your Prayer points - so make sure you've got some Prayer restore handy if you wind up charging headfirst into combat and get caught off-guard!
Conservation	Skilling	While active, you have a chance to prevent a resource from depleting when harvested.	Sacrifice a couple of inventory spaces for some Prayer restoring potions, have a small chance at preserving a resource node (such as a Runite rock). Simple!
Ancient Abundance	Skilling	While active, increases success chance while gathering.	This one offers a buff to activities like Hunter, Woodcutting, Fishing and Mining, similar to the invisible boosts you might find in some Skill Guilds.
Ancient Offering	Skilling	While active, you have a 75% chance to destroy a resource when obtaining it, but; Drains 1 additional Prayer point whenever a resource is destroyed.	If you're looking for a little more AFK time at resources that don't deplete (Fishing spots, for example) and don't mind drinking a couple of Prayer potions, this should be perfect for you!

Note: At this stage we're looking to understand how you feel about the concepts proposed, so we haven't included specific level requirements yet. We're anticipating the Prayers on offer to range from 50 to somewhere in the 80s (or even 90s), but that's a detail level for a later stage.

Just like opening a brand new box of Celebrations and removing all the Bounty bars (sorry, not sorry) - there's a lot to unpack here and we can't wait to read your thoughts! But first, a little note from us!

Like we said earlier in the blog, it's clear there's an interest in Prayers that touch on skilling in a meaningful way, but when looking over hundreds of suggestions from all of you we struggled to pull out many that tied in to the wider themes we saw while being both interesting and balanced. We've included some of the more common suggestions to see how you feel, but we think we could likely do better.

We're still on the look out for some more exciting skilling-focused prayers that tie into the themings of sacrificing something to gain something else, so if you have anything cool in mind then make sure to let us know so we can try to improve the balance here! Otherwise, perhaps there's scope for a third, skilling-focused Prayer book some day...

For now though, all that's left for us to do is ask you how you feel about what we've presented so far. These questions are advisory questions so that we can get a clear sense of where you stand on various groups of prayers above.

We'd like to remind all of you that there will be a beta before we lock-in the final version of the Ruinous Powers - these questions are to give us the go-ahead to develop the prayers you'll be experimenting with in the beta. If anything is clearly unpopular then we'll likely aim to replace it with something different before the beta, for things that are generally positive but could be better - we'll make some minor tweaks using your feedback, and for things that seem super popular - we'll be over the moon!

Enough jabbering, it's question time!

You can also discuss this update on our official forums, on the 2007Scape subreddit, the Steam forums, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel. For more info on the above content, check out the official Old School Wiki.

Mods Arcane, Archie, Argo, Ash, Ayiza, Boko, Bruno, Chilly, Crystal, Curse, Daizong, Dylan, Ed, Elena, Errol, Fed, Gecko, Gizmo, Goblin, Grub, Halo, Hend, Hornet, Husky, Jalo, Jerv, Keyser, Kieren, Kirby, Kurotou, Lenny, Light, Mack, Manked, Markos, Maylea, Meat, Moogle, Morty, Nin, Nylu, Other, Pumpkin, Redfield, Regent, Roq, Ry, Sarnie, Shroom, Sigma, Skylark, Sova, Squid, Starry, Stevew, Surma, Sween, Tide, Titus, Torrance, Tyran, Veda, Vegard, West & Wolfy

The Old School Team.