[Informer] April: Clue Scrolls Update Review

Jagex have recently uploaded “more than 50″ new clue scrolls to baffle the people of runescape. This update comes with the inevitable addition to the clue rewards which were quite disappointing to say the least.

I don’t know if anyone else had had this, but the only “new” clue scrolls I’ve had so far are long anagrams sending me to odd places like the Piscatoris Colony and giving me a puzzle box. I’ve had no new map peices or co-ordinates, no emote clues or challenge scrolls. The majority of people have recieved, as rewards, rune/adamantte or black nails, low to high levelled construction peices like opulent tables and gilded clocks and lets not forget the commonly recieved firelighters (I currently have over 100 of each colour) and other junk like magic longbows and black dragonhide.

These construction rewards are very hard to get rid of. People can’t sell them, because they’re very expensive to make and they’re practically useless. Even though I know I have built myself an Opulent Table, I’d never have bought one through the GE – simply because it’s very over priced. Rune Nails, along with Adamant and Black, appear fairly useless to a player training Construction as very few items require nails at all… I suspect the nails recieved through clues are likely to be used to make those brutal arrows more often than to make wooden chairs or shutters for a player’s chapel.

I’m begining to think that clue scrolls have quite a lot of rewards now. They seem very bloated. Whilst a wide variety of rewards are nice, the majority of them aren’t very popular and most new items which are put in merely serve as an extra “junk” rewards. Has anyone else ever enjoyed getting a composite bow as a reward? Didn’t think so. In theory, I think that instead of another poorly attempted update on the rewards such as this; next time Jagex needs to think about a higher level of clue scrolls. “Level 4″, i guess would be the best way to put it. They’d be dropped by monsters of a higher level than 175, and rewards would include obsidian armour, obsidian armour (t)/(g) and (b) (bandos). Red Dragonhide could become much more easily accessable here as the hides have always been difficult to get, and gold/trimmed versions of it could quite easily be implemented. Other random items could be sweets, firelighters – dragon arrows/tips and darts. Actual clue scrolls could go along the lines of; “Perform the Air Guitar emote in the mourner’s dorm room, watch out for Double Agents”, which would lead the player to the mourner’s hut in west ardougne, downstairs and into the bedrooms beneath. Double agents could be a good 70 levels higher and attack with more than their fists. Other clues could lead players into more dangerous and hard-to-get-to areas like once again, the Temple of Light, Meiyerditch and maybe even Trollweiss Mountain. I’ll be thinking about this a lot over the next few weeks so expect a larger article on it soon.

Back onto the new rewards, the main update includes the Top Hat; Animal Masks, Spiked Helmet, Metal Canes and a “Pith Helmet” (which by the looks of it’s inventory picture will look exactly like the alternate lunar helm). But even though there’re a fair few new rewards, the majority look a little bit silly and Jagex had maxed the price for the “rarest” of the rewards, the Top Hat, at a measly 500K. Anyone with the new Hat would not sell for such a small price on the week of it’s release. That is never how the RuneScape economy has worked and it’s not working now. In fact, the demand for the new Top Hat has caused the Grand Exchange to boost the price of the item up by over 200% in the first few weeks. Now either Jagex predicted that the Top Hat would be very popular and set a low starting price for the item so that after it rose in price, it would still be at a respectable level, or they really don’t know what players want at all. Either way, the top hat is pretty useless, looks silly and will still probably rise all the way up to 2m and then begin to fall again as the lucky people with the hat finally put it on the GE.

Here’s the graph from the Top Hat’s release to 29th April;

As you can see, the demand for this item has shot the price up to 1.5m in just a few weeks. Perhaps people don’t realise that it’s actually quite a rubbish item. It’s comparable to the black cavalier – only it looks a lot worse, isn’t as cool and makes you bald. (Who’d want to be bald??)

Price issues aside, the rewards are somewhat refreshing to see and the new clue challenges are, I suppose, a nice change from the regular “blow a raspberry in the fishing guild”. Updates like these which improve on existing elements in the game are, in my opinion, a blessing compared to the junk which gets thrown in every few weeks. I’ve criticized this update quite a bit but overall it is a lot better than the regular quest updates, it is a lot better than what I expect in the future will be a one-monster update to summoning and although it would certainly be a lot worse than a new addition to the acheievement dairies; this update was certainly one of the better we’ve had recently.

That is all;
Anubis.

~ by Anubis on May 1, 2008.