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Dev Blog: Blood & Soul Altars

Within the walls of the Arceuus in Great Kourend, shrouded in darkness, the blood and soul altars can be found.

With the release of Great Kourend in January we would like to include soul and blood rune altars as an addition to the Runecrafting skill. A poll will open this Thursday with two questions, asking you whether or not you would like to see the blood altar or soul altar introduced with Kourend.

Why now?

As a part of the release of Great Kourend in January we will be introducing a necromancy spell book, tying prayer and magic together. The primary runes used to cast spells from this spell book will be blood and soul runes.

With this new spell book on the horizon we expect the demand for blood and soul runes to increase and we believe that the supply to meet this demand should come from skilling rather than PvM or shops.

Crafting the runes

The process of crafting blood or soul runes will be slightly different to other runes in the game due to the effects of the Dark Altar. The evil emanating from the Dark Altar has infected magic allowing the reanimation of corpses. It has also opened a rift to the soul and blood altars so their power leaks onto the mortal plane within Kourend to aid the spread of this evil magic.

In order to utilise the leaking power player must use dark rune essence to craft blood and soul runes. Essence must first be taken to the dark altar in Great Kourend and imbued (creating untradeable dark essence) before being taken to the blood or soul altars to be crafted.

If you wish to have the ability to create dark essence you must first gain the favour of the Arceuus house. Similarly, the blood and soul altars can only be accessed through the Arceuus owned land within Kourend.

As the locations of the blood and soul altars are still a mystery and only their power is leaking through into the world you won’t be able to access them via the Abyss.

Crafting blood runes will require 77 Runecrafting and crafting soul runes will require 90 Runecrafting.

Balancing

One of our key goals with the introduction of blood and soul altars is keeping the price of souls and bloods stable.

The maximum experience rate possible when crafting blood runes will be 38,000 experience per hour and the maximum experience rate possible when crafting soul runes will be 45,000 experience per hour. Keep in mind that these rates are based on a high effort approach to Runecrafting. These numbers include time taken to create dark essence.


Another key goal with the addition of soul and blood runes is to make it more profitable to create blood and soul runes through Runecrafting than it currently is to get them through combat.

Question : Should the blood Runecrafting altar be included in the first batch of Zeah to come in January 2016? Level 77 Runecrafting would be required to craft blood runes. Crafting blood runes would provide a maximum of 38,000 Runecrafting experience per hour.

Question : Should the soul Runecrafting altar be included in the first batch of Zeah to come in January 2016? Level 90 Runecrafting would be required to craft soul runes. Crafting soul runes would provide a maximum of 45,000 Runecrafting experience per hour.

Mods Alfred, Archie, Ash, Ghost, Ian, John C, Kieren, Mat K, Maz, Ronan, Weath
The Old School Team