The Treasure Hunter lootbox monetization scheme in RuneScape is going to be seeing some changes very soon. Starting tomorrow, August 26th, Jagex will be trialing a Gifts of the Creator promotion, which will let players who spend a Key choose from one of three goodies: a Medium Lamp, a Medium Star, or 3 Mini Protean Packs. In addition, there will be a reward track that hands out additional rare items when players spend certain numbers of Keys.
In light of this new selective Treasure Hunter system, which effectively does away with lootbox RNG, Jagex also announced that it will be phasing out the Hearts of Ice currency over the next few months. This currency was originally meant to let players freeze out items they didn’t want from Treasure Hunter, but according to the devs, the currency is now becoming redundant. Players who already have Hearts of Ice will be able to turn the currency into Oddments at a 5:1 ratio.
“Hearts of Ice were originally intended to provide players more control over their potential rewards. However, with the changes we’ve already made and those outlined above, Hearts of Ice have become increasingly redundant and – for many – a very low value currency compared to something like Oddments. For these reasons, we feel it’s best to streamline Treasure Hunter by removing Hearts of Ice and instead focusing squarely on Oddments.”
The response appears to be mostly positive on Reddit, where some are approving (or at lest shrugging indifferently) at the Hearts of Ice changes, while others are saying the conversion ratio is too low. Still others, however, note they have rather sizeable stockpiles of the currency just sitting in their digital pockets.
Meanwhile in Old School RuneScape, today marks the start of the Deadman: Reborn PvP tournament. This version of Deadman includes some changes like the replacement of XP loss on death with a three lives system, which prevents XP loss on the first two deaths but removes all combat XP and 10% of Skill XP on the third death. The mode also introduces a system to stop high-level players from slaughtering low-level characters and adds Deadman Sigils that provide various buffs.
The tournament runs from now until Friday, September 17th, when the top 2,000 players will duke it out in 1v1 combat to find out the top players who will get their share of a $32K prize pool.
