January 2023 OSRS QoL Update

January 2023 brings a lot of unexpected quality-of-life improvements to the scene of Old School RuneScape. Besides the new quest (Secrets of the North) and its repeatable boss (Phantom Muspah), January made many adjustments, varying significantly from Combat achievements to fairy rings, bringing small chunks of happiness to players who were struggling with the game for a while.

Combat Achievements

Combat achievements are new to the game since Jagex introduced them within the last couple of years. Some of the new content introduced to the game ever since combat achievements received their very own tasks on the completion list. Even though it is rumored that Jagex will rework the combat achievements, for now, they brought a few changes to some of the Tombs of Amascut combat achievements tasks which were not acting as intended.

For example, the “Perfect Wardens” task will no longer get bugged, and the “Tombs speed runner” task won’t fail on death. Other combat achievement tasks that require a specific raid level will only be completed when entering the loot room to prevent players who pick a time restriction invocation from unlocking the task even if they fail the time challenge.

Gold and Item Sinks

For the gold sinks, Jagex is adjusting the ore prices at the Blast Furnace ore shop for everyone, even though the change was initially thought for ironman alone and brought more items to the Grand Exchange gold sink list.

The Blast Furnace store could not be considered an actual gold sink as most ironman players were using it as an alternative to mining coal, especially. Now the prices are static for everyone, which means that a lower stock in the shop will not imply higher prices. This could encourage certain adventurers to deplete the Blast Furnace store to compete on the GE for selling specific resources. Still, it will also ensure that ore will have a specific value. It is, however, a small gold sink.

Over a year ago, Jagex introduced the Grand Exchange tax to take a 1 percent fee for most trades out of the game. Part of this tax is used for an inherent item sink that will buy certain rare items from players, provided that no one is offering more than this system for that item. Only a few rare items made it to the initial list, but with January 2023, the list is expanding, and the system will buy more item types from the players. The following have been added to the list:

• Zaryte Vambraces
• Zaryte Crossbow
• Torva Helm
• Torva Chest
• Torva Legs
• Ancient Godsword
• Osmumten’s Fang
• Masori Mask (f)
• Masori Body (f)
• Masori Chaps (f)
• Tumeken’s Shadow
• Lightbearer
• Elidinis’ Ward

Ironman Accounts Get Some Love

Ironman accounts will get some love with this quality of life improvements set. Group ironman formed of two players will not require the “personal space” task from the combat achievements because it requires three players. The Kalphite Queen ironman chamber also has a potato cactus that you can pick and drop for the Achievement Diary task.

Fairy Rings

One of the most apparent quality-of-life upgrades brought in January this year is in the form of fairy rings. Jagex had not only improved the clickbox of fairy rings to make miss clicks less likely to happen, but they have also visually updated the most used alternative transportation system.

Attack Speed

Attack speed is a crucial aspect of the game in some combat scenarios. Before, you could only Google the attack speed of any weapon and use plug-ins to determine the attack speed. A massive improvement for when the game ticks matter is changing the equipment interface so that it displays both the base attack speed of the weapon you are using and the actual attack speed of the weapon.

Pures

Even though the official account builds poll has failed, Jagex is sneaking in a quality-of-life improvement for defence pures. When mounting stuffed heads inside your player-owned house, you can refuse to receive Defence XP.

PvP

A quality of life that comes in anticipation of the Bounty Hunter minigame. The crowd control spells have received an audio cue and a message that will tell you when the spell’s effect is about to end, similar to how the ice spells from the ancient spellbook already had. This will be useful in both PvP and PvE scenarios.

Regarding PvP, remember that you will no longer be able to hide your skull with the fight pit scrying orb in high-risk worlds, as this was never intended.