After removing its worst feature, Runescape just upended its entire combat system after only three months of player testing

Back in 2012, the controversial ‘Evolution of Combat’ patch hit the modern iteration of Runescape. Now, just a measly 14 years later, Jagex has just dropped the “combat style modernization” update as part of the game’s Road to Restoration effort, bringing sweeping changes to how you dispatch baddies going forward. A big part of that means an increase to the level cap of every other combat skill to match the 2023 arrival of the Necromancy combat style. Don’t worry, Jagex isn’t coming for your capes. Yet.

Yes, after just three months in the hands of avid beta testers (and just as many months after it shed its controversion MTX system)  Jagex has seemingly settled for a slew of combat changes for Runescape’s magic, melee, and ranged skillsets. First, it’s important to go over the hows and whys. After all, you can’t just change a decade-old MMORPG combat system overnight without a clear vision. “Over time, combat has evolved unevenly,” according to the Runescape team. “Layers of legacy mechanics” left its four pillars of combat feeling “unintuitive, cluttered, or difficult to understand.” The aim? To “raise the floor without lowering the ceiling.”

One obvious way to bring melee, ranged, and magic in line with the newer Necromancy combat system is to at least have them reach the same max level. For that reason, Attack, Strength, Ranged, and Magic can now hit the same level 120 ceiling as Necromancy. It’s a start. A rebalanced “damage per level curve” should help smooth out the difference between level 99 and 120 for those who need to raise those ranks again, but don’t worry: you have until November 20 to hit those highs before Jagex rips those Completionist capes off your back.

Speaking of which, if you do decide to grind hard to keep said cape on your back by Christmas, you’ll get some new boosts for doing so. For the warriors out there, the Attack cape gets you a 2% increased hit chance, while the Strength cape awards an additional 2% heal when using the gnarly-sounding Dismember, Slaughter, and Massacre abilities I feel I somehow back-ported to the new Oldschool Runescape cow boss. Poor Brutas had a rough old time over the weekend. Even gave up little Beef after 48 kills, making me part of the problem I wrote about last week.

For the ranged attackers who love to abuse a good safe spot, the Magic cape now lets Hex spells last twice as long. Steady on, now, that doesn’t apply to Entangle or Teleblock in PvP. Jagex said the 120 capes “should feel like a natural and satisfying choice, but not a mandatory one,” and a 100% increase to Entangle and Teleblock would certainly upset the status quo. That leaves the Robin Hood roleplayers. The Ranged cape is an economical choice. With it equipped, you’ll have a 10% chance to save any arrows fired. It’s like Ava’s Attractor in OSRS, but it isn’t entirely thrown off by a bit of chainmail.

On top of those high-end combat upgrades, there’s plenty at the lower end, too. Auto-attacks have been replaced by basic attacks that operate on a “fixed 1.8 second global cooldown.” Basic abilities generate slightly more Adrenaline to create “flexibility for future pacing adjustments,” Threshold abilities have been reworked, and Lesser Abilities have been removed entirely. Melee attackers have been given a new Bloodlust resource that can be spent on Enhanced abilities to “create a more deliberate gameplay loop.”

There’s a lot to it, and with the Aura overhaul blog set to surface tomorrow, there’s seemingly more to come from Jagex’s continued effort to show that modern Runescape is just as deserving of your time as Oldschool Runescape. And as someone who’s very much back on the grind of the latter, the growing list of seemingly positive changes to Runesape, on top of some stellar patches to Runescape Dragonwilds, really does have me itching to give it a proper go.