What You Need to Know About OSRS’ Guardians of the Rift

Guardians of the Rift is a new Runecraft minigame released by Jagex as part of the March 23rd OSRS update. Runecraft is the skill you need to use various types of essence on altars to obtain runes. It is one of the slowest and seriously tedious skills in OSRS.

So why should you level Runecraft? A lot of content is locked behind a certain level of Runecraft, but more specifically, there are three substantial account milestones you cannot reach without it. You’ll need level 55 Runecraft for the Quest Cape, 91 for the Achievement Diary Cape, and 99 for a max account. Even if you’re not interested in these milestones, you might want to do it for profit or for the slight chance to obtain that cute, super rare Runecraft pet.

Before the release of the Guardians of the Rift minigame, the main methods of obtaining Runecraft XP were the super-click intensive lava runes method, the AFK Ourania Altar method, the sporadic Tears of Guthix method, the unconventional Arceuus Library method, and the high-level blood, soul, and wrath runes. Guardians of the Rift comes as a fresh way of gaining Runecraft XP and, through its rewards, as a way to enhance the Runecraft skill altogether.

What Rewards Can You Get From the Guardians of the Rift Minigame?

Guardians of the Rift has a similar reward system to Tempoross. After the minigame, you will be awarded catalytic and elemental points based on how well you performed, similarly to the reward permits from Tempoross. You will be able to use these points to search the rift via the reward guardian to claim your rewards, in the same fashion as how you use your permits at the reward pool after defeating Tempoross.

The reward guardian can award you standard loot such as runes, talismans, and uniques. Unlike Tempoross, you can earn a new type of currency called Abyssal Pearls, which you can use to buy items from Apprentice Felix.

Most of the unique rewards from this minigame are fantastic! Whether you despise Runecraft or love it, the Guardians of the Rift rewards will make your life easier. Here’s what you can get:

• Abyssal Needle – The Abyssal Needle allows you to create a Colossal Pouch by combining all the smaller pouches with 85 Runecraft and 56 Crafting. The Colossal Pouch can hold up to 40 essences and degrades after eight uses.
• Elemental Talisman – The Elemental Talisman allows you to use all the elemental altars;
• Catalytic Talisman – The Catalytic Talisman is known as the counterpart of the Elemental Talisman, but you can only get it as a reward from the Guardians of the Rift.
• Abyssal Lantern – The Abyssal Lantern is a Guardians of the Rift-specific item that is only useful during the minigame. It will give you different effects based on the type of logs you use to charge it. It takes ten logs to charge it, and your Firemaking level will allow you to use higher-level logs.
• Abyssal Dye – The Abyssal Dye lets you recolor the Runecraft outfit.
• Intricate Pouch – The Intricate Pouch generally contains runes or a tarnished locket, which you can further use to obtain the Amulet of the Eye from the Lumbridge Guide,
• Abyssal Pearls – Abyssal Pearls are a currency that will give you access to fancy items by trading with Apprentice Felix.
• Atlax’s Diary – The Atlax’s Diary is a book you can later access via the bookcase in your house.
• Abyssal Protector – Known as the Guardians of the Rift pet.

Now, let’s see what you can spend your hard-earned Abyssal Pearls on:

• The Ring of the Elements – A teleportation item that you can use to teleport to the elemental altars. You’ll need to charge it with one of each type of elemental rune (fire, air, earth, and water) and one law rune for each charge. It costs 400 Abyssal Pearls.
• The Blood Talisman – This talisman gives you access to the Morytania Blood Altar. It costs 100 Abyssal Pearls.
• Raiments of the Eye – A Runecraft outfit. It’s composed of four pieces, and each of them will give you a 10 percent chance to craft additional runes. If you are wearing the entire outfit, you’ll get a 60 percent chance to craft additional runes (and get rich).
• Guardian’s Eye – The Guardian’s Eye is a transmogrification item that will change the appearance of your Runecraft pet to match that of the Great Guardian by turning it into a Greatish Guardian. It costs 3000 Abyssal Pearls.

If the rewards have convinced you to try out the Guardians of the Rift minigame, then you need to know that to be able to play the minigame, you need level 27 Runecraft and to have completed the quest Temple of the Eye.

How to Play

You’ll need to assist the Great Guardian in charging up power to close the rift in the abyss. You’ll have to use three primary skills: Runecraft, Mining, and Crafting. The minigame has three phases. Here are the main steps you need to do to help the Great Guardian:

1. Mine guardian remains to obtain guardian fragments (they are stackable).
2. Use weak, medium, strong, or overcharged cells to power up the shields. Note that you can only have one at a time in your inventory, and it’s crucial to make sure you power up the shields in the first phase.
3. Use weak, medium, strong, or overcharged cells to create Guardians.
4. Convert the Guardian Fragments into Guardian Essence (non-stackable) – this will yield small portions of crafting XP.
5. Fill up your pouches with the guardian essence, and convert some more.
6. Travel to the altars to imbue the guardian essence – you will obtain either Elemental or Catalytic Guardian Stone and runes according to the used portal.
7. Use the guardian stone to charge up the Great Guardian.
8. Ensure the Great Guardian has enough power to close the rift (keep charging him until he does).

Until you obtain the Raiments of the Eye, equip a combination of the Graceful Outfit, Varrock Armour, and a Pickaxe. Have a chisel and pouches in your inventory. You can deposit the runes every round inside the minigame.

If a game has already started on your server, you will need to wait for it to finish. The game is capped, so if too many players are already behind the barrier, you won’t be able to enter.

This is the basic gameplay, but you can optimize your strategy for better XP per hour at a lower profit (or higher profit at the cost of lower XP per hour).

Have Fun With Guardians of the Rift!

The Guardians of the Rift is a rewarding minigame. So much so that whoever played within the first hour of release even had the chance to grab their first infernal cape as a critical game bug allowed everyone to pick untradeable items from the ground before the servers got rerolled.