Foreword from Mod bitf0x, Product Director
[p]First, I want to thank all of you who have made their thoughts known, in our Discord, in Reviews, Reddit, Steam Forums, and Socials. As our Product Director, myself and my team (Mod Doom, Bakes, Kamon, Stitches, Rose, and Renzum) are responsible for asking, collecting, reading, reporting on, and advocating for what our community feels is important and ensuring that the game team is aware -- and helps to steer our future development.
For this post, I wanted us to give an idea of the next few months as we go from 0.9 and the introduction of the Ranged Skill all the way through to 0.10 and the release of Fellhollow.
I want to mention something you’ve likely already keyed into from 0.8 -- that we’ve been doing ‘Minor’ patches of 0.8.1, 0.8.2, and 0.8.3. These have been relatively small, AND we’ve worked behind the scenes to spin up a strike team to make these monthly updates more impactful and bring more content in between the major releases. That team is in its infancy, but we are building them up – some of the job listings on the Jagex website are for them!
The reason we’re sharing this with you at this stage is because we want to truly deliver on Early Access as a feature of our game, and bring you, the players into the process. We know that RuneScape games are at their best when we’re player-driven, and getting your thoughts on how we’re doing has been a critical part of our approach from the very beginning of this games’ development. We’ve taken note that when asking players their opinions on content (as through polls and similar) we often get questions like:
“Why are you asking us? Don’t you have a plan?”
We always have a plan. We also want to make sure that we have room to change, iterate and improve with our community; we believe it is a crucial part of the RuneScape ethos. While we continue to build up ideas on how we can better involve player feedback in our development processes, we’re always listening. If you’re keen to be a part of that conversation, then please feel free to join our Discord Community.
All said, I don’t just want to talk about what we do, let’s show you where we’re going. Over to Mod Doom.
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0.9: Releasing Early September.
[p]Hello everyone! Mod Doom here. As you've probably noticed, we've been sharing quite a bit of news about what's coming in 0.9. It's a lot, and we'd probably go so far as to classify it as a major update. In case you missed it, this update is coming with the Ranged Skill tree, skill spells, a new weapon type, and more. This also comes with Creative Mode (which we covered in more detail here) and the World Custom Settings and Sliders which will allow you to customise your world to your preferences.
After our last internal review of the controller implementation, we still feel like there’s more for us to do to make it feel better on the sticks. We are still delivering some of the controller updates for 0.9, however we would still want to consider this to be a beta test – bringing in functionality but with a clear need to continue for polish. We're committed, as controller fans ourselves, to iterate and continue to improve the experience as we progress. For now, what should you expect to see? A lock on function for enemy targeting, all inputs for navigating menus and actions being in place, and some input bindings reshuffled / reoptimized. This will allow you to play on controller, however we still feel it can be better and we want to deliver an updated version in November. Please give us feedback. The team will be listening!
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0.9.1 will release End of September
[p] After 0.9 releases, as with our previous updates, we're going to be releasing a 0.9.1 update which is going to include Cooking 3.0 (which you can find out more about here!) as well as Hitsplats. These are something we've been tinkering with in the background based on player feedback since launch, and we've been keeping in the background until we're happy with them, and we're very excited to show you where we've got to with them. [/p][p]Additionally, we're very excited to confirm that we are planning to localise the game into both Português Brasileiro and Español (Latin American, not Castellano)! This has been a hugely requested localisation in our comments on socials, and we've been hearing you. This will be rolling out as soon as our Localisation team give this the thumbs-up and we’re all set to introduce this. Stay tuned for more news when it’s out. [/p][p]With 0.9.1, we're also adding between 30-45 minutes of brand new music to the game, including a range of classic RuneScape songs, some of which were voted on by you, our community! Expect to hear Goblin Village, Morytania, Goblin Game and FIVE other classic RuneScape songs that we've reorchestrated and translated into Dragonwilds, as well as more original music throughout the continent.[/p]0.9.2 will release Mid / End of October
[p]In 0.9.2, we're planning to bring the Coziness system up to 1.0. At present, proximity to your bed reduces Hunger, Thirst and Fatigue reduction. We want to expand this out to decorative items, enhancing the system to more generally make being back at base feel better. The Design team are still exploring how the full picture will look - but rest assured, we will be adding new decorations to the game with this update.
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0.9.3 will release Early / Mid November
[p]One last update before Fellhollow - we'll be focusing on the fact that Fellhollow will require you to overcome the Fractured Plains. We've been looking at player feedback, behaviour, data and analytics and we're conscious that emerging from the swamps means you're running in to the danger zone. We want to review how much of a source of friction that is - we're a survival game, not a walking sim, but there's room for us to adjust this. We'll take the time to sit down with the designers to discuss this in a future blog when we're solidifying the changes.
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0.10.0 will release Early / Mid December
[p]Finally, Fellhollow, at last. It's got soul, that's for sure. Fellhollow is a region teeming with undead, souls and sufficiently spooky shenanigans as you progress in your journey for survival in Ashenfall, and the next step to dethrone the Dragon Queen. We'll be introducing Steel weaponry with the update, as well as the Farming skill. This region will come with a range of new enemy types, new resource nodes, new NPCs, new quests and a few new Vaults for you to plunder as well.
We had provisionally earmarked Dedicated Servers as a feature we would want to focus in on around our 1.0 release in September 2026. We've heard loud and clear from you that you're very excited about this feature. As of this week, earlier than we initially planned, work is underway. We'll share more news on this when we have updates, and a clearer picture of exactly when this feature will be landing.
These updates are going to be arriving at a consistent cadence with our commitment to ensuring meaningful content every quarter. We’re also trying to work closely with a dedicated team to deliver more in those intermediary spots. We're moving fast and listening close as we iterate and progress. If you want to see what we're working on early, then make sure you're following our socials, and joining our community spaces - Discord, and Reddit. This means that there will also be chances that there will be more bugs that arise with the releases coming out faster. While our QA team is consistently on it when it comes to isolating and fixing bugs before release, you may encounter some around release, but we're committed to fixing any and all issues we can track down.
For now, we hope you're excited by what's on display. We're very keen to hear your feedback - in both our channels, but also in Steam Reviews. Mod bitf0x personally reads literally every single one of them, and we take them seriously. We really appreciate folks taking the time to tell us how they feel about the game, and what they want to see.[/p]
