Let's talk about what's happening next with Forestry!

Before we begin, we'd like to finally announce the date Forestry will be going live! Get your axes ready, and iron your best plaid shirt for Wednesday 28th June!

We promised an update on what's happening with Forestry following unforeseen issues with recent Beta Worlds, so let's get straight into it. If you're missing any previous details, check out the previous Forestry newspost for more information on Events, the Forestry Kit and Rewards!

Although we won't be including details on what exactly happened with the Beta Worlds, we are going to give you more clarification on the bulk of feedback from the recent newspost and let you know what we're changing.

As a quick TL;DR:

• Forestry part one is still set to release later this month, with part two following in August.
• There will be no Beta for Forestry part one, but we will be discussing and showcasing Forestry in an upcoming livestream and Discord Stages event.
• New leaves, teas, campfires, tertiary effects and the 'bonfires' have been moved to part two, providing us with more time to discuss the details of them with you.
• We will be continuing to poll campfires and teas at a later date, once we have our second round of Community Consultation.

With this month's release of Forestry, you'll see the new tree spawn mechanics, group cutting bonuses, the Forestry Kit, four events and the Rewards Shop. The currently available leaves in-game (Normal, Oak, Willow, Maple, Yew and Magic) will be made tradeable on the Grand Exchange and have a 25% chance to drop from trees, as they are very handy for Forester's Rations!

Okay, let's take a look at what you wanted to know about Forestry!

Tree Timers

For those unfamiliar with the upcoming changes, trees will now despawn on a timer that activates after the first cut and regenerates if players stop cutting the tree before it’s fully chopped. If nobody is chopping the tree, then the tree's timer will slowly regenerate.

We based a timer's length on the average time each different type of tree currently lasts. Although the new mechanics will mean that each individual tree gets a buff in the XP per hour, one of them stuck out to us in terms of your feedback.

Teak trees are some of the fastest ways to get experience around the appropriate levels (35 - 50) and with the inclusion of tick-manipulation strategies, this becomes even faster. This means that the buff for Teak trees specifically is much more prominent than others.

Because of this, we've decided to reduce the respawn time to 30 seconds. This means that you can still benefit from the trees and tick manipulation with the improved buffs to trees in general, whilst keeping the relative experience rate of cutting them in check.

We've also tweaked the timings around all trees to be more in-line with current experience gain. Here's the average despawn timer.

• Oak: 27s
• Willow: 30s
• Teak: 30s
• Maple: 1m
• Hollow Trees: 36s
• Mahogany: 1m
• Arctic Pine: 1m 24s
• Yew: 1m 54s
• Magic: 3m 54s
• Redwood: 4m 24s

Please note Hollow Trees will not be able to spawn events!

These timers do affect every tree in the game outside of standard trees, meaning that the Redwoods in the Woodcutting Guild benefit from this change too! We'll be keeping close on these when Forestry launches!

Group Boosts

We've also spoken in both of the previous newsposts about the invisible Woodcutting bonus you'll receive when chopping with other players, but you rightly pointed out that there wasn't enough detail on how it worked.

With a minimum of two players chopping the same tree, up to a maximum of ten players, each player will receive a +1 invisible bonus to Woodcutting for each person at the tree. This means if 4 players are ganged up on one tree, you'll receive an invisible bonus of +4 to your Woodcutting.

We'd like to remind you that you won't receive the invisible bonus when cutting normal trees, or while you're within the Woodcutting Guild.

Even though a maximum of +10 is higher than that of the +7 you would receive in the Woodcutting Guild, we feel that the convenience that the Guild brings is enough of a benefit to allow the bonus to be higher in the rest of the world, as you would still need at least 8 players to make this more beneficial.

This does mean the invisible bonus can stack with your visible bonuses, whether they comes from Teas, campfires or your Dragon Axe special attack.

We'll also be looking to include some Woodcutting-focused worlds to help you find other players easier if you haven't already got a posse ready to chop!

Events

Now let's talk about leprechauns, bees and trees! Anytime an individual is cutting a tree with a Forestry Kit there is a chance for an event to spawn! As long there is no event happening within 10 tiles of the tree being chopped, players have the potential to spawn an event, which everyone can participate in! You'll see an estimate of 4-5 events per hour if you're chopping solo, whereas a group of 10 players chopping a single tree should expect an estimate of 7 - 9 events per hour.

But how do they spawn? Well, when a tree is first chopped the Events Table is rolled and an event is selected. If the event is set to happen during chopping, a random point during the tree's lifetime is selected to roll to spawn it. Otherwise, the event is rolled and executed when the tree falls.

Some events don't require any equipment aside from a Forestry Kit to spawn them, so you won't have to worry, but if an event does require an item, it will check every player chopping the tree for that item. If nobody has it, the event won't spawn. As long as one person chopping has the necessary item, it will appear if the roll has been successful!

That isn't the only benefit to having those items, as anyone chopping that tree with either a Bee on a Stick for the flowering tree event or a Leprechaun Charm for the leprechaun event will have one of their items consumed and gain bonus rewards and experience from the event!

We've also balanced events across all trees so that something like an Oak tree that has a shorter timer will have a lower chance to spawn, but will allow for more rolls to see if it's successful. The higher-end trees like Magic work the opposite way!

2-Handed Axes

Although we spoke about the majority of the rewards in the previous newspost, one we didn't talk about was the 2-Handed Axes! This is something that wasn't going to be included in the Beta, but since that isn't happening yet, let's talk about how they work!

These 2-handed beasts will act as an upgrade to the following axes: Bronze, Iron, Steel, Black, Mithril, Adamant, Rune, Dragon, Crystal and 3rd Age. They will require the same Woodcutting level to use.

To get them to their two-handed variant, purchase the exclusive Axe Handle from the Forestry Shop and simply attach the handle to your current axe to make the 2-Handed version. This process is irreversible. In addition both the Axe Handle and 2-Handed Axes will be tradeable on the Grand Exchange!

This axe will chop at the same speed as your regular one, with a funky added benefit of gaining extra experience in exchange for getting fewer logs. This benefit uses your run energy at the cost of 40 points per swing, and you'll receive 18% more experience for each 'successful' hit of the tree, with a 20% chance not to gain a log.

Now, 40 points of Run Energy seems like a lot. Normally, you'd only get two proper swings in - is it worth it? Well, that's where our old friend the Forester's Ration comes in! Originally, this handy snack would restore 3 points of Run Energy per hit of a tree, instead, we've increased this to 30 points, which makes using a 2-Handed Axe feel much better.

So let's give you a little example of how it would work with a good amount of Forester's Ration in your Kit!

For the first seven swings, you'll lose 40 points of Energy for each swing, but restore 30 with the Foresters Ration, which would take you down to 0 Energy. You'll then take two non-boosted swings which will get your energy up to 60 and another three boosted swings back to 0 Run Energy. Continue this cycle until the tree is chopped or your inventory is full!

While various other energy restore effects will also work, we want to highlight that the reduced energy drain effect from Stamina Potions won't.

We estimated that although your resources gathered will be significantly less, it will be around a maximum of 10% XP/HR when being the most efficient with a bunch of Forester's Rations!

Ultimate Iron Players

The final thing we want to discuss for this initial release is to do with Ultimate Iron players. We previously said we were going to poll whether the Freaky Forester should be able to note logs. After reviewing your feedback, we feel like this is not the correct path to take.

The beauty of the gamemode is the problem-solving aspect! Especially when it comes to seemingly straightforward actions that regular players can do, instead for UIM these become a lot more challenging, which is where a lot of the fun stems from! In terms of logs specifically, there are already plenty of ways to gather noted logs as Ultimate Iron Player, aside from the Artic Pine Logs, which we are considering adding to a creature's drop table, like the Mammoth.

You'll still be able to enjoy all the content other players will, but the journey might take a bit more effort and brainstorming!

Forestry: Part Two

Now, let's briefly talk about the content we've moved into part two!

Where the initial plan was to include more detailed explanations for you all, we'd instead like to discuss these ideas in the near future, when they're better refined.

To clarify some of the biggest parts of your early feedback, the 'Bonfire' effect would have given approximately 25% XP per hour compared to lighting fires the classic way, and around 50% XP less than Wintertodt. This would give you three routes to train Firemaking, all with their own levels of experience and intensity!

It's also completely fair to say we missed the mark on our initial ideas for tertiary effects. We've seen your feedback including:

• Feeling like you need to do Forestry in order to benefit from maximum efficiency in other areas of the game.
• It's a slippery slope towards efficiency-scape.
• The tertiary effects not being linked to Forestry, Woodcutting or any other gathering and production skill.
• These new effects took away from the player perception of a 'chill' and 'social' focus for the update.
• The effects are seemingly too powerful and out of place for the content.

We'll be kicking off our second round of Community Consultation to further refine the details behind campfires and tea brewing.

We can't help but agree that the original tertiary effects don't reflect the content they are coming from, and so we've brainstormed some brand new ones that match the 'chill and chop' vibe we're going for.

Although we only presented four effects in the previous newspost, Willow Roots are also a current in-game item, so we'd like to give that an effect to the round of all current roots!

Very early brainstorms include:

• Increased chance to not burn food whilst Cooking on a fire.
• Increased chance of Birds Nests whilst Woodcutting.
• Fires burn for longer.
• Fletch X% more Arrow Shafts per log.
• Increased chance to receive Clues from skilling.

These are not final in any way, and your feedback will be crucial to locking in their final effects.

So, if all goes well with our second round of Community Consultation you'll be seeing:

• Campfires
• Leaf Effects
• Tea Brewing
• Tertiary Effects
• 'Bonfire' Training
• More Events
• More Rewards
• Balancing and Tweaks

We hope that this provides a clearer vision of the direction of the content and affirms that we want to work with you in order to make this Woodcutting expansion a successful new part of Old School! Let us know your thoughts about this new information through the usual channels.

on't forget to tune into our livestream today from 17:00 BST over on Twitch, and Discord Stages on Wednesday 14th at 17:00 BST!

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.

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