Project Rebalance
Project Rebalance is long-term, multi-update project that aims to rebalance and rework multiple older game systems for both combat and skilling, including many features that have been unchanged since before 2007.
Project Rebalance was first announced as a project in Game Jam IV led by Mods Arcane, Halo, Husky, and Kieren. At the time, the project had a smaller scope, mainly around "making under-utilised content a little less obsolete" and "making early-game content a little bit more intuitive." Afterwards, the project expanded to include concerns about "power-creep" and high-level reward space.[1]
Balance Changes
A complete list of every change that was made as part of Project Rebalance would be exhaustively long, but the following section highlights the most significant changes made, especially where a single skill saw dramatic overhaul.
Combat Changes
Combat
For all combat styles, players having landed a successful hit would no longer roll a 0, with the minimum hit for successful attacks being 1. Players can still roll 0's if they fail the Accuracy roll or intentionally lower accuracy, such as splashing.
Melee
Changes to melee combat primarily came in the form of adjustments to weapons. The Scythe of Vitur was made more accurate and less expensive to charge. Osmumten's fang was made less accurate when slashing. The elder maul gained a special attack which surpassed the dragon warhammer's special attack.
Magic
Elemental spells on the standard spellbook were reworked to have the max hit scale based on the highest spell within a spell tier unlocked. Additionally, the one tick delay when entering combat with an autocasted spell was removed.
Magic damage was also rebalanced, with the occult necklace Magic damage bonus being reduced to 5%, and being redistributed to other Magic armour, and to the Augury Prayer.
Defence
The defence of monsters was reworked, with monsters now having Magic elemental weaknesses, and weaknesses for "Light", "Medium", and "Heavy" Ranged attacks.
Skilling Changes
Agility
XP rates for almost all agility courses were adjusted to create a more linear path from course to course. Notably, the Draynor Village Rooftop Course and Shayzien Basic Course both had their Agility requirement reduced to level 1, to give players training options at level 1 without travelling to the Gnome Stronghold. Additionally, Marks of Grace were added to most non-rooftop agility courses, and many frustrating fail points were removed or adjusted from a number of agility courses.
11 new agility shortcuts were added, and over 20 other shortcuts were rebalanced, either by making them faster to use, moving them to a more convenient location, reducing their level requirement, or removing achievement diary requirements.
Lastly, the Brimhaven Agility Dungeon was reworked, with adjustments to how XP is collected and rewards are collected.
Mining
Mining was adjusted for a wide range of skilling activities. Changes were made to amethyst crystals and mining gloves to make training with them less intensive and require less attention.
Motherlode Mine saw several changes, including the addition of a hopper on the upper floor and extra XP rewards for getting coal from pay dirt.
Volcanic Mine was adjusted to make solo gameplay more viable and consistent, as well as adding the prospector kit to Petrified Pete's Ore Shop.
Blast Mine saw multiple changes, including a flat XP increase of '~10%'.
Finally, Zalcano was given an option for players to earn XP, rather than item rewards, and was changed to allow players to defeat her in a single rotation, thereby making Zalcano a more reasonable training method for groups of larger sizes in more diverse numbers.
Slayer
A number of changes were made to Slayer, especially 'mid-level' Slayer, including significant reductions to the number of tasks offered by Vannaka and Chaeldar.
Among other changes, storing tasks was made free, assuming the player has unlocked the feature for 1000 Slayer reward points, and new dialogue was added to allow players to skip a task as it's given to them, even when using NPC Contact, which reduces the number of interfaces with which a player must interact. It was also made possible to swap an active task with a stored task without cancelling the current task.
Thieving
Thieving was primarily adjusted to allow for a wider variety of viable training methods. This included lowering the fail rate when pickpocketing Gnomes, Paladins, and Heroes, which were also given a chance to drop Medium, Hard, and Elite clue scrolls, respectively.
Respawn timers and XP rates for a wide range of stalls were also improved.
Timeline of Events
Blogs
| Date | Update | Proposed changes |
|---|---|---|
| 10 November 2023 | Game Jam IV Overview - October 2023 | N/A |
| 7 December 2023 | Project Rebalance: Overview, Scythe & Fang | Agility, Slayer, Thieving and Miscellaneous Skilling Tweaks Mining Run Energy Changes NPC Defence Changes Combat Item Adjustments Osmumten's Fang Scythe of Vitur |
| 13 March 2024 | Project Rebalance Part One - Skilling | Agility Courses Brimhaven Agility Arena Agility Shortcuts Pickpocketing Stalls Slayer Task List Changes Slayer Monster Changes Mining Minigames and Activities Zalcano Miscellaneous Skilling Improvements |
| 26 March 2024 | UPDATED - Project Rebalance: Skilling | Agility Thieving Slayer Mining |
| 3 April 2024 | Project Rebalance - NPC Defence Changes | NPC Defence Changes Elemental Spells Ranged Defence Types |
| 16 April 2024 | Project Rebalance - Item & Combat Adjustments | Item Adjustments Other Combat-Adjacent Changes |
| 27 June 2024 | Run Energy Changes | Run energy Graceful outfit |