The Castle Update: Rat King, Capture Castle and Honorable Kills

This update goes live on Friday 18 September at 2 PM Eastern (18:00 UTC).

This is one of the bigger wilderness updates RSCDynasty has had in a long time. Castle has been reworked: the main floor is more open, with more exits than before and fewer obstacles getting in the way of PvP. A new boss has moved in, clans can now fight for control of castle, and PvP gets a new stat that rewards fair fights. On top of that, the skilling side of the old hotspot has moved to its own Resource Area, a whole set of new pets has arrived, and the Game Shop and world map have both been upgraded.

Thank you to everyone who sent in ideas over the summer. A lot of this update started as your suggestions.

Castle Changes

Castle is now the dedicated home for PK action and NPC farming.

• Open main floor. The main area has been reworked and opened up, with multiple exits instead of one choke point. Getting in is easier, and so is getting out.
• The Rat King now sits in the middle of the main floor (more on him below).
• A second floor has been added, filled with farmable NPCs for both melee and ranged.
• Gorthrok is still around. He has moved to the second floor.
• Altar. Recharge your prayer without leaving castle.
• Bank chest. There is now a bank chest inside castle, with rules to keep it fair: you must be out of combat for 15 seconds (melee, ranged and magic all count), and opening it takes 10 seconds. Moving or taking any damage cancels it.

New boss: The Rat King

The Rat King has claimed the middle of castle as his throne room. He is a brand new, original boss.

He brings two new unique drops:

• Brawler's ring - +4 armour and +4 strength. This is the first in a new family of combat rings, with more to come from future bosses.
• Rat King staff - Rare item

Capture Castle

Castle is now something your clan can own.

• There is a flag in each corner of castle. Capturing a flag takes 10 seconds, and you must be in a clan.
• Capture all four flags and your clan controls castle. The whole server is told when control changes hands.
• To keep control you only need to hold three flags, so losing a single flag does not cost you the castle.
• While your clan is in control, members get +2 XP rate and 1.5x stackable drops. The bonus only works while you are inside castle, so holding it means being there to defend it.
• If nobody from the owning clan has been inside castle for a while, the flags go neutral.
• Winning Clan Wars captures castle for your clan automatically, with 30 minutes of flag protection.
• A new castle overlay UI shows the flags held and the owning clan. You can drag it by right-clicking its header, or turn it off in the settings menu.

We are releasing Capture Castle as it is and will tune it based on your feedback.

Honorable Kills

Many of you asked for a K/D reset because the numbers had been padded over the years. Instead of wiping anyone's history, we added something better: Honorable Kills (HK).

• Your Kills and Deaths are untouched. Nothing has been reset.
• An HK is a wilderness kill on a fair target: the victim must be close enough to your combat level. A level 123 gets HKs from level 107 and up, a level 60 from level 50 and up. Higher level victims always count.
• Every HK also awards pvp points, with more for tougher opponents.
• Everyone starts at 0 HK, so this is a fresh race for the top.

Diminishing returns

To stop kill farming, HK uses diminishing returns. Every time you kill the same player again on the same day, that kill is worth fewer pvp points than the one before. Keep going, and that player stops giving you pvp points and HKs for the rest of the day.

• It is tracked per opponent. If one player is worth nothing to you today, everyone else is still full value.
• It resets daily.
• A kill that gives no HK still counts as a normal Kill, and still counts for your killstreak.

So killing the same friend or alt over and over does not work, while normal PKing, where you fight many different people, is not affected at all.

The in-game hiscores now show Honorable Kills next to Kills and Deaths, and the PvP board is ranked on HK first.

What about pvp points? We have bigger plans for pvp points in the future. It is a work in progress and we will share more when it is ready, so they are worth collecting now.

The Resource Area

The hotspot has been removed. Its skilling side now lives in the new Resource Area, a fenced zone in the deep wilderness guarded by Teddy.

• Entering costs coins, and your Wilderness Diary lowers the price:
  • No diary or Easy: 30,000 coins
  • Medium: 24,000 coins
  • Hard: 15,000 coins
  • Elite: free
• The coins must be in your inventory. Leaving is always free.
• If you log out inside, Teddy moves you outside the gate, and you pay again to get back in.
• Inside you will find a range of skilling objects: ores, trees, fishing spots, a furnace, an anvil and a fire.
• Runite golems roam the area. Every Runite golem you kill drops a guaranteed runite ore. They respawn after 5 minutes.

It is still the wilderness. Other players can pay the fee too.

New pets

Skilling pets have been reworked. Your chance now depends on what you are gathering and improves with your level, and it is much higher at 200m XP.

New pets join the ones you already know:

• Rock golem (Mining) - use an ore on it to recolour it, from tin all the way to runite
• Beaver (Woodcutting) - can be recoloured with logs once you unlock it with a funky shaped log from the pet vendor
• Heron (Fishing)
• Giant squirrel (Agility)
• Rocky and the red panda (Thieving)
• Bob the cat - available only in the Game Shop (see below)

Skills that now have two pets will give you the one you do not own yet.

Game Shop

The Game Shop has been updated, with two new items:

• Bob the cat - a new pet that can only be found in the Game Shop. He cannot be obtained from skilling. 25 coins.
• Elixir of wisdom - a tradable potion that gives +50% of your account's XP rate for 6 hours of play time. 30 coins.
  • Your account rate is your normal rate including the Dragonfire+ bonus. For example, if your rate in a skill is 10x, the elixir adds +5x, so you train at 15x.
  • It works for both combat and skilling XP.
  • It stacks with everything else: skill and combat boosters, double XP events, the Clan Wars bonus and the castle bonus are all added on top. The elixir's own bonus is always based on your account rate, so it is not doubled during double XP. With a 10x rate during double XP you get 20x + 5x = 25x.
  • The timer only counts down while you are logged in, so nothing is wasted when you log out.
  • It has no effect on Slayer XP, or on Veteran and Hardcore accounts, which have fixed XP rates.

The shop itself also got an upgrade: a featured item at the top, NEW, LIMITED and SALE tags, sale prices shown next to the original price, and a countdown on items that are only available for a limited time.

World map

The world map has been rebuilt. It is now drawn directly from the game world, so it always matches what is actually in the game, including new areas like the reworked castle and the Resource Area.

• A new overview thumbnail shows the whole area at a glance (click the "OV" button), with your current view marked on it.

Other changes

• Dragonfire coins: using Dragonfire coins on another player now gives your whole stack at once, with a single confirmation. Before, you could only give them one at a time.
• Pet tasks removed from diaries. Pets are down to luck, and no diary should depend on a rare drop:
  • Ardougne Diary: the Thieving pet task is replaced with Defeat Zamorak, the god of chaos.
  • Wilderness Diary: the runite pet task is replaced with Defeat Bandos in the Wilderness.
  • Kandarin Diary and Varrock Diary: the pet tasks have been removed, with no replacement.

See you in castle

Log in, grab your clan and go take it. As always, tell us what you think on Discord at chat.dragonfire.gg.