Question #1

What does ‘aspirational content’ mean to you? Who are these Awakened bosses targeted at, and what can we expect from them in terms of difficulty?

Question #2

I love the ideas, but why are the Orbs tradeable? It feels quite odd; if the boss is going to be locked behind something, it shouldn't be buyable on the GE.

Mod Arcane

I think it feels odd because it’s different. We’ve never really done this before - we’ve never really locked being able to do something behind a consumable object. The idea behind making it tradeable is that if a regular player is doing the regular bosses and either don’t have the gear or just aren’t interested and don’t want to do these bosses, they can just sell them.

It can become a lucrative venture where high-end players who want to get their Awakened KC and have to do 5 to 10 attempts, there ends up being this economy loop where lower-level players are fueling high-level players, allowing the high-level players to spend millions on these Orbs and attempt it over and over again without having to grind the boss out. That would just be tedious.

This way, low-level players benefit from it. I think that’s a really interesting economic incentive and is how most of our game works. How many regular mains are fishing for their Karambwans and their Manta Rays? Not very many - they’re benefitting from all the other people who are doing that content.

I know it’s slightly different for Ironmen. It’s going to be a lot harder, and you’ll have to go grind out your Orbs. I think this actually adds to the prestige of it, though. ToA is a good comparison for this.

On ToA’s release, there was a bit of disappointment that players could complete both Regular and Expert Mode within the first couple of hours on the first day. It wasn’t the same as Inferno or ToB, which took multiple days. People want that chase of struggling and being unable to complete something for a while.

I think the main reason why Inferno and ToB took so long to complete is that if you failed that content, you’re set back a considerable amount of time thanks to the wiping system in ToB, where you have to do the entire raid again, or in Inferno, you have to go through all 60 waves again.

If it wasn’t for that forced amount of time you had to put in to learn it, I don’t think it would have taken very long to clear at all if you could just jump to Zuk repeatedly. I don’t think Zuk’s fight is that hard; it’s just that you’ve spent two hours killing monsters and draining supplies, and then you get one attempt and accidentally mess up. Then you’ve got to do it all again. We’re basically gating your learning time via another mechanic in the rest of the raid or the rest of the waves.

While this isn’t the same, I think it has somewhat of a similar effect. Because you need a certain amount of Orbs, people can't just spam these over and over and over again like they need to go kill the targeted bosses and need to wait till they actually enter the economy. Then it adds to that little bit of hype, that bit of a race where it's like, “Oh god damn, I really want as many orbs as possible. I want to be the one with the first Awakened KC?”. I think that adds a lot of excitement. I think the economy benefits because the entire loop will make all the bosses more lucrative for most players.

It also adds to the day one, week one, hype of who can get the Awakened KC even more exciting because there will be a lot of forks in the economy; it just comes down to how much you are willing to pay. They're going to skyrocket very quickly if there's a lot of demand on day one.

I could just make all these bosses have 10 or 20 times the health and add 60 waves before them or something, and then as soon as you die, go do it all again. But I don't think we can really do that in a way that would feel very good or meaningful. So this is a different approach.

Mod Goblin

One of the things that I quite like about it, conceptually, is that, even for mains, there are stakes - which you don't usually have in, for example, the Inferno, especially if it's your first cape. You use some supplies, but then they're relatively inexpensive. If you're at the point where you care about the Inferno, you probably don't care that much about the supply cost; you just pot over and over and over and over again and learn so much in a short time.

It's cool in PvM, especially in a game like Old School in 2023, which is heavy on positive progression. There's not really that much risk unless you’re doing PvP. There are not really a lot of negative progression angles or anything like that or regression. I think it’s cool to add stakes like “I spent money on this” or “I spent time getting this”, and this is my one-shot, and if I mess it up, then I gotta get another one. I think that's exciting, and that makes it interesting, as opposed to just dying and running back in and learning everything instantly.

Mod Arcane

I completely agree. I think it has so much potential to add interesting dynamics to encounters like this. At the end of the day, if it comes in the game, and you guys try it out, you don't like it, and it's just annoying, and you don't really care for the benefits, then we just won't do it in the future. We're trying something new, and we think it might be really cool.

Mod Goblin

Yeah, it's nice to be able to experiment with stuff, right? It's cool to try new systems and see what sticks. Whether people like it or not, you can always take away learnings. Whether that's things like this or the invocation system from Raids 3, there are always bits we can plug in and take out or mess with and improve on in the future.

Mod Arcane

I covered this earlier, but just to be a bit more concise on it: As much as I completely sympathise or empathise with the idea of “Harder bosses should give better rewards”. Generally, our entire game translates this way; harder content, more rewards. I think this generally just comes down to the fact that we don't really have that much time to develop these.

What I was leaning on earlier is that to develop something that is a really big challenge, a one-off completion that is also fun to grind after 100, 200, and 300 KC, is very difficult. Just creating something fun to grind is hard in itself. Even ignoring the one-time KC challenge, creating something that's both is a lot more difficult. If Inferno was designed with the intent of it being grindable, I don't think it would have been anything like it is today. I don't think having to do two-hour or one-hour attempts is probably fun for most people.

If we look historically at some other pieces of content, you've got Phosani’s and regular Nightmare, and people doing original Nightmare solo a while ago wasn't particularly fun. Nightmare didn't really live up to that.

I think Gauntlet is a more controversial one, some people love Gauntlet, and some people really dislike it. I don't really enjoy cryptic long-term. I can do like three or four KC in a night, and then I don't really want to do anymore. And I do think there are a lot of people in that boat.

Making something that's fun to grind is really difficult. You guys just play this game so much. Most of the games don't have this problem - like Mythic Raids. As much as you repeatedly wipe against the same boss, you're moving on quickly in the grand scheme of things. In our game, though, you're killing Corporeal Beast for like 5000 KC - how do you make that fun long-term? Making it a non-grindable, meta thing for getting uniques and stuff means we don't have to worry about that as much. We can just lean in and really curate something that is a good challenge for one KC. And hopefully, that's more enjoyable. This basically sums it up.

Mod Goblin

There’s also the element that for the people who will most be interested in being able to repeat the bosses, it's the same as doing Inferno a second time. It’s pointless bar like CAs, but people do it; people push it. Or people in the game with 42-minute Inferno times and stuff… I don't think this will be on the same level of complexity because it's not as long, and there's not as much opportunity for time-saving. There are a lot of emergent opportunities for people to have fun repeating them, get better, push them and solve them differently.

I completely agree with the points that it is hard to make something fun to do, minute to minute, for hundreds of kills. Instead of fun on the promise of the eventual reward you're getting for having done the thing. It’s tricky.

Question #4

Pet?

Mod Arcane

Yep, all four bosses will have their own pet, individually rolled. The pets are a bit different this time as well. I know Mod Halo has done something quite cool with the pets this time. We added pathfinding to Nex for the first time when we released that pet that was something a bit different for a pet, and these pets also have something else a bit different, which I think is quite cool. So I'm excited to see whoever gets those first.

Question #5

Will these be post-launch content or available on release?

Mod Arcane

It will be post-launch. Assuming it passes the poll, we can make the Orb start dropping immediately, so you don't have any KC that's not tracked or anything or any regret from playing the content early. So assuming it passes the poll, you'll get Orbs on day one, and you can start hoarding them and manipulating the market, whatever you want. Then eventually, we'll launch the actual Awakened bosses for you to go crazy on!

Question #6

Are the four new bosses also instanced solo only like Zulrah, Vorkath, Muspah, Gauntlet, Sire, GG, Hydra etc? Or GWD style where you can play with friends/GIM?

Mod Arcane

Yeah, they are instanced solo-only content like Zulrah, Vorkath and Muspah. We did investigate the idea of maybe trying to have some of them as maybe duo bosses or group bosses. But it's just really awkward when it's in a quest - that means they have to work like a solo boss as well because we're not going to have group questing all of a sudden in that regard.

We were like, “Developing four bosses simultaneously is hard enough. Let's not make it more complicated’’. That's not to say we can't release more group content in the future! Obviously, it's balanced - we want to try and release bits of both. We had Muspah, we had ToA, we had Nex. I'm sure one of the future updates will be a group boss.

Mod Goblin

I remember that in our on-site meeting with everyone to kick off, we spoke about making one or two of them like a duo scale. But it just feels weird - they need to be compelling to do solo and then also make them compelling to grind duo - it’s difficult to curate that kind of experience for a boss.

Mod Arcane

I'd love to do a proper duo boss! I had a lot of fun playing Runescape and doing Araxxor - that was quite a duo boss. I'd love to have something like that in the future.

Mod Goblin

Yeah, I think duo is just a cool scale that I'd love to see us do more than just forced two-person content; or if you solo it, it's twice as hard.

Question #7

I love the idea of Blood Torva, but why is it from this quest and not a future GWD expansion?

Mod Arcane

I think we're mainly looking at these bosses that we've been developing for the last six months. And it's like, we've got Goblin’s Blood Torva sitting around, and we'd like to release it. Would it fit in this update? Yeah, it fits really well. The entire quest is Zarosian themed, this is a Zarosian armour set, and it fits! I can see the comparisons to Nex, and obviously drops from Nex and God Wars in general, but this update fits, so why not put it in this update? It's not like we can't ever put anything on Nex, God Wars, or another God Wars expansion in the future. We'd rather just get you the reward you want when we can!

Mod Goblin

I get asked for Hard Mode Nex so often. But it feels kind of tricky because so much of what my Angel of Death did in Runescape is a lot of what went into Phosani’s Nightmare - at least, it feels that way on the surface. It's also a case of DT2 dev winding down; we had some extra time and four bosses. We felt like we could do this with the DT2 time to work on DT2 instead of doing a Nex Hard Mode. Because who’s to say we’ll actually get time assigned to release that or invest in it and get all the art and QA budget set aside actually to deliver something like that?

Question #8

For the Ancient Sceptre, will the imbued versions be tradeable or can we do something with the extra icons?

Mod Arcane

They're untradable, just like the original sceptre as well. I think it'd be pretty weird if you went from untradable to tradable like that. There's currently nothing to do with the extra icons on your additional sceptres after your fourth one. Because you will pretty much want four Ancient Sceptres, then you'll get the new four gems and make your four different sceptres with the gems inside of them. After all that, the duplicates are kind of useless. I would like to put a use for them in the game at some point. But as of right now, there is no plan to use them.

Question #9

Will the Blood Torva drop be guaranteed or RNG-based with a high drop chance?

Mod Arcane

The current plan is, assuming that all passes, you'll get one KC at each of the four Awakened bosses, and then once you've killed the fourth one - the final one - it’ll drop. So it will be a guaranteed drop, but you need to get one KC at each boss to get the kit.

Mod Goblin

When you say “the kit”, is that an item that can change the appearance of all three pieces of Torva? Or is that one kit per piece?

Mod Arcane

Yeah, it'll be one item to use on all your pieces; it doesn't consume itself or attach to it. The idea is that it's like a blood dyer or something like that; it’s like you're injecting blood essence into your Torva.

Question#10

My only concern is after a while, high-level players may want to just farm the harder bosses for enjoyment but would be gated behind Orb drops. What are your thoughts on this?

Question #11

For the Virtus Robes, each of the bosses has a chance to drop ‘a’ piece or ‘each’ piece? Each boss has a chance to drop all three pieces, correct?

Mod Goblin

I think this stems from an older blog where, really early on, we were saying you might have to get components and then assemble them into the Virtus pieces so that we had a decent split between four bosses and three pieces. But we changed that approach slightly. Please fill this player and give them some context.

Mod Arcane

Yeah, so there are no components or anything like that for Virtus. You will just get an entire piece of Virtus drop. Every boss has a chance of dropping any piece of Virtus. Therefore, if you get the rings for every single boss, you'll probably finish your full Virtus.

Question #12

Would we be able to swap out the sigils on the Ancient Sceptre like how you could swap out handles on the Godsword, or is it like a permanent upgrade thing like fortifying Masori?

Mod Arcane

It’s a permanent upgrade, so you're able to put your gem in your sceptre, and if you want to get all four, then you'll want to have four icons from Muspah. But I think that's well within your reach - if you can get all the gems for all four of these bosses, you can go send a couple of hundred Muspah.

Question #13

So what happens to the imbue on the rings after you break them down? Is that time in NMZ wasted, and are those points lost?

Mod Arcane

You can un-imbue your rings and get your points back, so, no change.

Mod Goblin

It's probably also worth saying that the new rings can’t be imbued. The stats that they have are the stats that they’ll have; you don't need to imbue them. So there’s no need to worry about losing the imbue in PvP and all that stuff. Maybe it diminishes the value of Nightmare Zone points a little bit, but no time in NMZ is wasted! You have fun, and you get combat XP as well. So I don’t think it’s wasted; you can get the points back, and you can spend them on something else.

Question #14

Will you release drop rates on release this time or are they delayed?

Mod Arcane

It won't be on the release day, but it will be within a week or two. I think that's what we agreed on after Tombs of Amascut.

Mod Goblin

It was within two weeks.

Mod Arcane

We might need to make some changes on release day. If a boss is being killed twice as fast as they should be, then we don't want all of a sudden, a unique just to be completely tanked in value, right?

We want everything to be in a good place, including any resources coming in.

With Muspah, we changed how many resources came in. Players were killing that boss faster than we expected. We didn't change any unique rates for the boss, but we did change other resources, such as Snapdragons etc. We’re going to have the right to change those things, and then we'll release the rates once we’re happy.

Question #15

Are the quest versions still doable for questers/non-aspirational gamers?

Question #16

Are there one-shot mechanics in the new bosses?

Mod Arcane

I don't think there is anything that straight up just does 99 damage or anything; there's a lot of mechanics that will hit very hard if you mess them up. The Muspah can hit you for around 68 or thereabouts with his magic attack or just a basic flick, so there are definitely things that can do a lot of damage.

There is one mechanic - it’s not really a one-shot mechanic - if you mess up enough times, then you die. You can only make a finite amount of mistakes.

Mod Goblin

I will say that anyone doing a blind run of DT2 on a Hardcore on day one is much braver than I would be. I would not advise it!

Question #17

What does the loot table look like? Is it more like God Wars or Muspah?

Mod Arcane

It’s more like God Wars. I know; there was an era where everyone was asking for God Wars-style drop tables for ages. We then released Nightmare, and players screamed.

I'm not saying we delivered it accurately back then. We took that feedback on board and tried to deliver something like that then. I think Nightmare succeeded in the regard of having a fairly pitiful loot table, weighting it towards higher uniques.

It failed in the regard of those uniques being really, really rare. The boss kills took quite a long time, the walk also took a long time; re-gearing was a bit of a pain due to Relicym's Balm and Sanfew Serum. There were a lot of individual things that made the Nightmare grind a bit of a pain. I don't think these bosses have any of that. They just have low resource drops and reasonable unique rates, but also, the uniques, I'm going to assume, will be really expensive.

Everyone's going to want the new Berserker Ring, right? The Berserker Ring is owned by almost everyone watching this stream. I'd like to think everyone will also want this new ring. They might not be able to afford it, but they will want it, so the demand should be high for many of these rings. It's behind the Grandmaster quest, I’d imagine the supply is not going to be as high as ToA or something like that. Anyone can do ToA; it doesn't really have many requirements.

These uniques will be worth a lot of money. They're not ridiculously rare or anything like that, but the regular resources will be pretty low. Expect to make less than 3 mil an hour passively like Muspah or Vorkath.

Question #18

How long will the quest take?

Mod Arcane

I honestly don't know. We've done a lot of playtests. We held an all-day playtest, and no one actually completed it. This is probably going to be a full-day quest for some people, which might be six or seven hours for others. Once a quest guide comes out, it may take three or four hours.

The vast majority of the stream will probably wait, but there are four bosses and four areas with their own individual puzzles and cutscenes. There’s a lot - it's a really good quest!

There are a lot of demi-bosses as well. It's not full, like Vardorvis or Duke, but you have these individual bosses who take up a bit of time. It will depend on how much you fail as well; if you really struggle with one of the bosses, that will make the quest a lot longer.

Same with the puzzles. If you really struggled with the Secrets of the North puzzles, you'll probably need help with the Gorak puzzle. I'm sure the quest guide will solve all your problems!

Mod Goblin

On release day, don’t spacebar it! The dialogue is really good, the worldbuilding is good, and the lore is good. Old School has really good lore and really cool world-building.

Quests are one of the things that makes Old School stand out versus other MMOs in this space because we do quests so differently to a lot of other games where quests are basically just the Slayer skill in different settings.

Many people view quests as a vehicle to obtain rewards, power and content. They don't care about the quest themselves, but so much time and love has been put into the quest and it's really cool, it’s really good!

If you can stomach it, don't spacebar it. Don’t use a guide; it's a cool quest. You'll feel good.

Mod Arcane

For context, the most fun I’ve ever had in this game was Song of the Elves on release day. I had no idea what was happening, and figuring out the puzzles was so fun! I love that so much, and I’ve never experienced that same magic since I work here now and know all the answers to every quest - it’s spoiled for me. So please, enjoy them!

Question #19

How do the Ring Upgrades work? Is it 1 to 1? Do they need to be imbued?

Mod Arcane

Question #20

Will there be Awakened Pet Transmogs?

Mod Arcane

This almost feels like a spoiler, but no?

Mod Goblin

We’ll find out - again, we haven’t started to do anything with them; they haven’t been polled.

Question #21

Are the Orbs to fight the Awakened bosses going to be unique for each boss or can you use one Orb for any of them?

Mod Arcane

The latter. They will all drop the same type.

Question #22

Will the harder versions have a higher pet chance?

Mod Arcane

They probably should. Again, I don't really want to make them efficient. I just don't want to make them pitiful. If the fight takes three times as long, I don't want it to be the same drop rate because that feels rude almost, but I don't want this to be the efficient method of doing any of these.

Question #23

How long is each boss fight on average?

Mod Goblin

The answer is: it varies.

Mod Arcane

There are four different bosses. Some of them are 90 seconds, while some are two or three minutes and some are closer to three or four minutes. They’re all within that range, unlike Phosani's or regular Nightmare.

Question #24

What combat stats would you recommend for these bosses?

Mod Arcane

Maxed!

Mod Goblin

(Laughs) I’d say mid-to-high 80s to be comfortable in the post-quest versions, and if you're doing the Awakened versions, then max.

Mod Arcane

It's weird because our game is so skewed towards higher stats - stats matter so much. I know you've shared around the picture a lot where it's “Oh, yeah, Ahrim's with 99 Mage is better than Ancestral with 90 Mage”.

Therefore, if you're not doing anything for the next two weeks, AFK your combat - I highly recommend it; it'll give you any advantage you need. You can deal with them with a Rune Crossbow or Dragon Scimitar if you're really good. It’s like the ToA meme on release; people doing it in things like Iban Blast to RCB and D Scim. The worse you are at the game, the better stats you will want to at least give you that leverage.

Question #25

What would be the ETA for Combat Achievements on new bosses?

Mod Arcane

Question #26

Can we get Clue Scroll drop rates confirmed along with the unique drop rates?

Mod Goblin

I’ll ask about that when we release them.

Question #27

Do you think the new rings will be able to compete with the Lightbearer?

Mod Goblin

Situationally, yes.

Mod Arcane

If you don't care about your max hits in whatever regard, the Lightbearer is still good. It will probably hurt the demand for Lightbearer somewhat since, right now, Lightbearer is really good if you’re not using melee. For example, you were just gonna use an Archers Ring, and you don't care about the accuracy rate. Obviously, with the new ring, it has ranged strength, which may give you a max hit or two. It’s situational.

Question #28

Are the bosses in the quest easier than the bosses after the quest?

Mod Goblin

Yes. The quest versions are challenging but doable for people that have already done Grandmaster quests. The post-quest bosses are fine but hard, and Awakened variants, should they pass, will be really rough.

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