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Dev blog: K'ril's Magic Weapon
When we offered to bring back the God Wars Dungeon, you voted for the Zamorak boss, K'ril Tsutsaroth, to have a magic weapon added to his drop list. At the time we didn't specify anything about the appearance of the weapon, so players have obligingly posted a whole bunch of suggestions about how it should look.

Tech stuff
Staff of Light
Staff of Darkness
Staff of Wrath
Staff of the Dead
Staff of the Damned
Wand of Darkness
Survey

Tech stuff

The most obvious idea was that it should use the Staff of Light model from the Other RuneScape, since the weapon's stats and behaviour are also based off that item. Unfortunately we can't take models from the other game's repository because their model file format doesn't match ours.

RuneScape's graphics have changed drastically in the last 6 years, with the addition of textures, an increase in the model resolution and various redesigns of the human form. Even if our model compiler could be persuaded to read their model files, stripping out the textures and reducing the resolution, humans in Old School RuneScape just aren't the same shape as humans in RS3. We're just not going to be able to use their models. Instead we'll be re-using an existing model from Old School RuneScape, and players have shared quite a few ideas about which ones they'd like to see.

Some of RuneScape's items were designed to be recoloured. For example, the same model is used for all the platebody armour, from bronze to rune. The actual model is grey, recoloured to blue for the mithril platebody, green for the adamant platebody, etc.

Not all models can be recoloured in this way. If the original artists didn't expect that the model would ever need to be recoloured, they might have used a variety of different colours across the polygons; we can replace only six colours per item.

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Staff of Light


This version uses the model of the Ivandis staff from the Myreque quest series, now recoloured to give it a mysterious glow.

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Staff of Darkness


This is the Ivandis staff again, now in the colours of Zamorak. After all, it's being dropped by a giant demon; it can be an evil staff.

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Staff of Wrath


This is actually the Anger spear from the Soul's Bane quest. We haven't been able to recolour this one, but it actually looks quite fitting already for an evil staff. People don't use the Anger spear for combat outside that quest, so the identical graphic shouldn't cause confusion.

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Staff of the Dead


Necrovarus may have one of the fanciest staffs in RuneScape. We've found that we can recolour the stick, but not the top. However, since the stick is semi-transparent, it looks a bit silly if it doesn't match the top, so we've left the colours alone.

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Staff of the Damned


It's Ahrim's staff, recoloured from its original green/grey to the colours of Zamorak. Do bear in mind that it might become confusing to have two high-profile magic weapons using the same model, especially in the trade window.

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Wand of Darkness


Finally, as shown before, here's a Wand of Darkness. In What Lies Below you take a wand to the Chaos Altar to imbue it with magic power, after which it's supposed to glow. When we were first looking for a Staff of Light substitute, we thought a glowing wand might do. On the other hand, it does look somewhat like a flaming marshmallow...

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Survey

We'd like to leave the choice up to you. Please log in and complete this survey form , selecting your preferred version of the weapon, and we'll use whichever one gets the most support.

• Staff of Light
• Staff of Darkness
• Staff of Wrath
• Staff of the Dead
• Staff of the Damned
• Wand of Darkness

The stats and abilities of the weapon will not be affected by your choice; you've already agreed on those details in the formal Content Polls where over 75% of you voted for the weapon to be created and given a magic damage bonus. This survey is just an opportunity for you to choose the appearance and name of the weapon.

After the weekend, we'll need to get on with implementing the staff so that it can be ready for the GWD launch on 17th October, so we'll close the survey on Tuesday 1st October.

Mods Ash & Nexus
Content Developers

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