Run Energy Changes

We don’t call it ‘Run Escape’ for nothing...

Over the last few months, we’ve rolled out loads of Project Rebalance changes, and we’re over the moon with where they’re sitting at the moment. It’s time to tackle our final, and perhaps most-requested, change: Run Energy.

Before we start, it's important that we reiterate that we don’t plan to drip-feed changes every week so players struggle to keep up. We're looking to carve time out in the roadmap for future rebalancing projects, including touching up older content and further embedding the changes we've already made.

Additionally, if you'd rather get hands-on straight away then jump in to our Open Beta on Worlds 585 through 589 to try the changes out for yourself, though we'd recommend having a read through first so you know what to mess around with!

Old School's movement system is one of the things that sets it apart from other MMOs. At its core, the simplicity of 'click here to move here' keeps things easy and intuitive, but this point-and-click movement can be pushed to its limits through accurate clicks, stepping under enemies at the right time, toggling between running and walking, pathing through obstacles and managing your Run Energy effectively.

There's a lot of room for players to improve and master such a simple mechanic, but one of the foremost criticisms of Old School from new starters is that things feel slow. You find yourself walking after a light jog that wouldn't even count as part of an HIIT workout, then have to wait a really long time for your precious Run Energy to regenerate so that you can repeat the cycle again.

Fortunately, we have a whole skill (Agility, if it’s not obvious) dedicated to making Run Energy more manageable. The catch is that Agility levels only affect the rate at which your Run Energy restores, not the rate at which it drains. This means you only feel the benefit when you’re walking or stationary.

So, here’s our plan:

• Improve the experience for new players so that Old School feels less sluggish in the early stages.
• Improve the 'value-proposition' for Agility levels so that levelling the skill feels impactful in more scenarios.
• Consider the impact of these changes on activities where managing your Run Energy is a means of skill-expression or warrants resource usage, such as Blast Furnace, the Great Olm or various God Wars Dungeon methods.

These considerations are all closely linked, so we need to look at the options available and figure out a sweet spot that delivers. The levers we can pull are:

• Drain rate: the rate at which your Run Energy drains.
• Regen rate: the rate at which your Run Energy regenerates.
• Weight: the weight (in kg) of your equipped items and inventory, which influences drain rate for weight values between 0 and 64kg.
• Agility Level: the value of your Agility skill, which currently influences your regeneration rate.

The obvious starting point is to buff the rate at which Run Energy regenerates. This means you’re still rewarded for managing your Run Energy during encounters but spending less time waiting around for it to recharge. This helps out newer players, but doesn’t really improve the value of Agility levels, and significantly impacts specific activities.

That’s when we add drain rate to the mix, and adjust it to scale with your Agility level. This means that levelling the skill means you can run for longer, rather than just running more frequently.

In a vacuum, these two changes are a colossal buff. We’re reining them in by making drain rate scale harder with higher weight. This means that heavy, end-game gear setups will still see a small buff, but not so much that you can go run a marathon without the aid of some Stamina Potions.

To put it simply, our changes:

• Buff the regen rate of Run Energy.
• Change the drain rate of Run Energy so that it:
• Scales based on your Agility level.
• Scales harder with higher weights.

The table below compares various scenarios between the current Run Energy behaviour and our proposed changes. While you crunch the numbers, bear in mind the following:

• Regen rate and drain rate are guaranteed to be better if your weight is 1kg or lower, in any given scenario.
• Regen rate is unaffected by weight but improves as your Agility level increases.
• Drain rate is always the same if your weight is 1kg or lower, regardless of Agility level.
• Drain rate scales more with weight but is offset as your Agility level increases.
• While not shown on this table, players with 1 Agility will have a lower 'proposed drain rate' than 'live drain rate' if their weight is 36kg or below, which should cover even the busiest of early-game Inventories.
• At higher weights, proposed drain rate is often higher than the live drain rate. This is offset by a higher proposed regen rate, so you should 'profit' more Run Energy if you're toggling between running and walking or spending time standing still. Here are a few break-points where the proposed drain rate becomes higher than the live drain rate:
• 1 Agility: 37kg
• 20 Agility: 42kg
• 50 Agility: 50kg
• 70 Agility: 55kg
• 99 Agility: 57kg
• Higher Agility levels drastically increase your regen rate and lower your drain rate at higher weights.

Those numbers are all well and good, but we think a change this fundamental is something you need to experience for yourselves – which is why we’re encouraging you to check it out in a Beta world! You’ll learn all about that in a moment, but first – how will this change affect your outfit?

Back in our day, FashionScape was far and wide. No ‘Scaper would be caught dead without a well-coordinated outfit, or at least a suit of their most expensive gear. The variety on show was astounding, and the options available have only increased over the years. Unfortunately, one useful gear set eclipses all the rest – Graceful.

Graceful is a full set of clothing with negative weight, and the full set provides a valuable 30% increased Run Energy regen rate, so it’s no surprise that this outfit is perfect for just about every non-combat scenario in the game. We’ve heard a lot of feedback surrounding this outfit, mostly suggesting that players would like more opportunities to express themselves, instead of feeling disadvantaged if they wear anything except this essential set.

The following changes are designed to make Graceful feel less like a soft-requirement, and bring it in-line with the other Skilling outfits. Here we go:

• Remove the 30% increased Run Energy regen rate set effect.
• Grant a 4% chance to receive an additional Mark of Grace, per piece. This means the full outfit grants a 24% chance to obtain an additional Mark of Grace, or roughly 12% extra Marks of Grace on any course that grants them.
• Add another effect which prevents failing on any Agility Course if the full set is equipped, indirectly buffing XP per hour.
• Retain the negative weight. This means that Graceful will still be a good choice for certain activities, but shouldn’t feel like you’re obligated to wear it everywhere.

These changes will be live in the Open Beta, so do kit up and give the new Graceful a go – as we’re about to explain, you won’t need to run a single lap to unlock full Graceful on the Beta worlds, so you can suit up and jump in!

The Open Beta for all these changes is open right now! This section will clue you in to all things Beta Worlds and provide some guidance as to what’s worth trying out in one.

Log in to Beta Worlds 585, 586, 587, 588 or 589, and you’ll find yourself on Tutorial Island. Be sure to skip the Tutorial so you can start testing – or use a more familiar profile to see how these changes impact the gear setups and activities you’re already familiar with.

To import your main game save to a Beta World, open the Settings menu while logged in to the main game and search for 'Beta', then tick the 'Convert save to Beta Worlds' button. From there, you can hop to any Beta World and should find yourself logging in at the same location, with the stats, gear and progress of whichever save you copied over! Please note, we recommend making sure you have some space in your Inventory before converting your save.

Once logged in, assuming you had space in your Inventory, you should notice a charming little egg brightening up your UI. Left-clicking on this egg, or 'Boss helper tool' to use its government name, brings up a Debug menu with a number of options.

'Teleports' brings up a list of - you won't believe it - teleport locations for most of the bosses in Old School. 'All Gear' brings up the Tournament Supplies interface (shown below) which you can use to grab any gear you fancy, including the Graceful Outfit. 'Gear Loadouts' provides you with some rudimentary setups if you're not sure where to start building out from. 'Swap Spellbook' does exactly what it says on the tin. 'Set Stats' lets you set the level of any skill, which will be handy for you to experiment at a variety of Agility levels. 'Unlock Everything' can be used to tick off all the Quests or Achievement Diaries you might need, in case you can't interact with a piece of content you’d like to test.

At this point, it's up to you what you want to try out in the Beta, but here are a few suggestions from the team:

• Try focusing on 'familiar' activities where you feel like Run Energy plays a role. This could mean a Chambers of Xeric solo, smelting bars at Blast Furnace, using the Ourania Altar, or completing an early-game quest in some representative gear. Consider how the activities feel, whether Stamina potions still feel relevant, and whether it still feels important to toggle between running and walking.
• Try adjusting your Agility level in the same setups to see how much better or worse something feels. Can you feel a difference after gaining more Agility levels, or taking some off?
• If you've got a friend, family member or partner who's played a little in the past or seen you play, consider letting them run around a little or try Cook's Assistant to see how they feel about running vs. walking!

That’s all we have to share today! Do give the Beta Worlds a go, and then fill in the survey below (or click here) to share your thoughts with us. Note that because of the style of question we're using, we'd strongly recommend opening the survey in a new tab with the link in the previous sentence.

You can also discuss this update 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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