Thanks to choramizzu, toxicisjoe68, and Nasuul for The Giant Dwarf quest guide.

View it here

Thanks to Craig_Er, Im4eversmart, markusthaman, pj, and legolas_9950 for the Lost Tribe quest guide.

---

The following is a direct quotation from Runescape.com

31st May 2005 - New Female Bodykit

We are aware that everyone has different tastes and that while some might prefer the new female models, others might be equally disappointed with their new appearance.
As a result of these changes, we are allowing you to experiment with costume and female equipment by making the Makeover Mage (west of Falador), Hairdresser (Falador) and Thessalia (Varrock clothes shopkeeper) free for this week.

Hopefully this will give you time to play about with the new look, and find a combination you like.

All of the changes made were due to player feedback. As usual, if we find that we haven't got it perfect the first time we are prepared to change the models to meet popular opinion, so there may be some degree of change.

Please remember, if you are going to comment about the changes, please do so in a civil and constructive way.

We are always happy to hear your opinions about the game, as our goal here is as always to get graphics that everyone is happy with.

31st May 2005 - New Appointment in Lumbridge

The Duke of Lumbridge has appointed a new advisor, Sigmund, but is already ignoring his advice. Something strange has happened in the castle and Sigmund fears a monster attack.

But helping him is only the first step in a journey that will lead you to new emotes, a new mining area, new fishing spots with new things to catch and finally to the secret of The Lost Tribe.

31st May 2005 - Keldagrim - The Dwarven City

Long has the ancient dwarven capital of Keldagrim remained hidden beneath the mountains, away from the tumultuous wars of gods and humans, sheltered against the menace of the trolls. But for the past few centuries the dwarven economy has been flourishing under the guidance of the Consortium. Doing away with kings and monarchies, the Consortium is a group of mining companies that rules the dwarven realm. Now, Keldagrim even welcomes humans again!

Apart from the general hustle and bustle of the dwarven capital, you will find many of the things you would expect in a vast city like Keldagrim. New items in shops, new types of guards, new marketstalls to thieve from, and much more! The city also introduces the player to new minitasks. Either run errands for the different mining companies to earn their favour, or help out different citizens all around Keldagrim. Get them the items they need in time and they might even have a thing or two to teach you about them as well!

The city also introduces the first part of a new multipart quest, the Rise of the Red Axe! It kicks off with The Giant Dwarf... who, or indeed, what is The Giant Dwarf? Find out by going to the city, but make
sure you enter it on high-detail mode for full effect!

To see all of this, visit the boatman in the caves east of Rellekka and north of the mountain camp. Just follow the dwarven statues until you get to the underground river. Too far to walk every time? Don't worry, once you've visited the city you will be allowed to use the dwarves' steam powered cart network! That's right, apart from all of the above, Keldagrim also introduces ridable mine carts.

So hurry over right now and see everything the new dwarf city has to offer!

31st May 2005 - New Emotes And Other Tweaks

We've added a lot of new emotes to the game. Now you can express yourself with anything from a shrug to a jump for joy, or try out the new dancing moves like dance, spin and head bang. Two of the emotes are unlocked during the Lost Tribe quest, but the others are available immediately to everyone, including non-members.

The female models in the game have had a slight 'nip and tuck' to make the difference between male and female characters more obvious. The changes are subtle, but should help add a little more personal identity to your adventurer.


No new items have been created just for the female characters.

Due to popular demand, the "brown cavalier" hat has now become the "tanned cavalier" hat.

Again, this is just a renaming and is not a new item.

Additionally, the Mort'ton boat now has a faster "right-click" option.

31st May 2005 - 2 new RuneScape rules

We have added two new rules to the RuneScape Rules of Conduct today. They are:

Rule 13 Asking for personal details

For our players' privacy and safety, you must not ask for personal contact details such as full name, home address or telephone number from another player.

Our player's privacy and safety are extremely important to us and something we take very seriously. Of course we are not going to ban players if you ask, for example someone's first name and the country they live in. We fully understand this happens quite a lot in RuneScape and is part of making friends in the game.

This rule instead refers to not asking players for details sufficient to locate them in real-life. Understandably some people can be upset or feel threatened by this sort of questioning, so please don't do it.

We would also recommend to all of our players to that you read the Play Safely guide in the Rules and Security section of the website.

Rule 14 Misuse of Official forums

You must not misuse our Official RuneScape Forums. The forum code of conduct (linked at the top of the forums) clearly details what is, and is not, acceptable.

This particular rule is not actually totally new. We have always taken action against players who misuse our forums and clearly breach the forums code of conduct. By making it an official rule it should make it clearer for our players that being disruptive on the forums will mean that temporary action can be taken against your account and in extreme cases you could be banned from using the forums.

The "Rellekka City Guide" is now here. A big thanks to the_real_gte, for all the hard work that has gone into this. - View it here

-=DRAVAN=-

harry_clubbo has done some great work and created a guide that shows the skill experience received from quests. I'm sure this will be a huge benefit to all. - View it here

-=DRAVAN=-

A new guide for Creating Composite Ogre Bows and Brutal Arrows has been put up. A big thanks to bainsy44 for working very hard and providing this information for all of us. - View it here


The Magic Guild Guide is now updated. A big thanks to Chopsteeq for and providing this information for all of us. - View it here

-=DRAVAN=-

Dravan, apuredelite and graystar have been given site owner rank due to the amout of time and effort they put into helping us keep RuneHQ updated and running smoothly.

MrStormy and myself are still owners, so please do not think that we are done and giving the site over to them. They have just gained owner rank due to their dedication and will continue to help us maintain the website and forum the way they have been.

Congrats to you three and if you see them on the forum, send them a PM and congratulate them!! Your hard work is appreciated by the entire RuneHQ staff.

RuneHQ Owner,
Weezyrowe

The Zogre Flesh Eater Quest is now here. A big thanks to Im4eversmart, bainsy44, cactuar, Chopsteeq, and all those involved for gathering us the information. View it here.

-=DRAVAN=-

The following is a direct quotation from Runescape.com

17th May 2005 - Zogre Flesh Eaters

This week's update sees the release of the large ranger training area we promised a few months ago. Accompanying it is a significant update to the fletching skill which introduces several new arrow types and a new bow.

Adventurers brave enough to venture inside the Zogre Caves will have to face new challenges, but will be rewarded through a bunch of new bone types, some being greater than the fabled dragon bones.

Reports indicate that disease is rife in these tombs so be on the look-out for new orange "stat-based" damage splats. Opportunistic thieves will also notice several burial chambers ripe for robbing if they are prepared to face the consequences.

Expansion to the ogre areas also provides new chompy hunting spots and even more random ogre chat to confuse you (deys a bit fick u sees). Reldo, our friendly historian, recorded the following during his last visit to Gu'Tanoth:

"Night drew in around the Ogrish Ceremonial dance area of Jiggig. The heaving bodies of several ogres could be seen silhouetted against the fire around which they all danced. One of them fell over, but that was hardly surprising since even standing still is taxing for all but the most intelligent of ogres. Suddenly a huge explosion was heard that shook the ground on which they stood, but where did it come from? Grish, the leader of the dance, motioned for all to stop. The air was momentarily filled with grunts and thuds as more ogres fell down through the loss of momentum.

Grish looked to the tomb entrance, trying to pierce the darkness. Strange screaming and gurgling sounds could be heard coming from below, in the tombs, where the ancient ones rested. All eyes turned to Grish and then to the tomb entrance. Was it the remnants of Rantz's birthday party the night before... or was it something more sinister? They all waited there, in the darkness, looking towards the temple, sweaty ogrish brows raised higher than ever in a vain attempt to comprehend. Then, through the darkness could be seen the lifeless eyes, skeletal features and the twisted walks of ancient heroes and fallen brothers of yore as they searched for fresh flesh to feast on.

As a single body, all the dancing ogres moved in one direction, away from the zombie ogres. Once again the air was filled with grunts and thuds as many ogres hit the dirt. Thus started the night of the Zogre Flesh Eaters..."

17th May 2005 - Moving Worlds

We have moved some worlds around today to allow us to phase out some old obsolete hardware. This is in preparation for a members update we want to do later in the month which requires more memory on the server.

There is no change to the number of free and member's worlds, some are just in a different location. For those players worried about the lack of east coast US servers, be assured that we will be setting up some more soon.

Please bear with us whilst we complete this essential maintenance.

17th May 2005 - Barrows Changes + Other Tweaks

As mentioned last week, we have changed the nature of the durability of the barrows equipment. After 15 hours of use in combat your barrows equipment will have to be repaired. You can go and visit Dunstan (Burthorpe), Bob (Lumbridge) or Tindel Marchant (Port Khazard), who can make the necessary repairs. The important things to note are:

• Barrows equipment will last for 15 hours of solid combat before wearing out and requiring a repair



• It won't wear out at all unless actually being used to fight. And any use prior to today won't count against it.



• The stats of the equipment will not reduce while it is degrading. Until it reaches 0% it will still be as powerful as it was when it was new.



• Barrows equipment dropped from death will always appear as "broken" to other players scavenging the kill.



• Barrows equipment is only tradeable when either fully broken or fully fixed.



Barrows equipment costs the following to repair:


• Barrows weapons: 100k



• Barrows bodies: 90k



• Barrows legs: 80k



• Barrows helmets: 60k




• Equipment can be repaired at any time. You don't have to wait until the piece of equipment is broken. If you repair an item "early" it will cost you proportionally less to repair.

Please check the Barrows equipment sets page in the equipment section of the manual for more information.



Other Gameplay Tweaks,



Players can use the permanent serum on the Afflicted in Mort'ton in addition to the standard serum. Doing so will encourage a better response than before.



Black spears can now be found in the shade chests.



Headbands, halloween masks, berets and cavalier hats have had slight name changes so players can more easily identify the colour in a trade.



Please note that these are NOT new items, just renamed old items.



Unstrung bows now have a suffix of (u) to help identify the fact that they are unstrung.



Desert bandits now give thieving xp when non-coin items are pickpocketed.



Rangers can now target innocent werewolves over the bar tables in Canifis so they dont have to get their armour dirty.



All the spears in the game are now the same (faster) speed.



Have fun!!



RuneScape Content Team

The Barrows Guide is now here. A big thanks to all those involved for gathering us the information. View it here.

-=DRAVAN=-

---

The following is a direct quotation from Runescape.com

11th May 2005 - Changes to PayByPhone/SMS

You may not have noticed that we have recently changed payment provider on our PayByPhone and PayBySMS services.

Users from the United Kingdom and United States now buy PINs from surfpin.

Both services now operate on a new number, so those of you who have saved the PayByPhone and PayBySMS numbers in your phones should update to the latest numbers.

As well as changing providers, we are also happy to announce that the cost of the PayBySMS service is £1 cheaper! Now only GBP 5.00 per use.

Any players who still have unredeemed PINs from our previous provider should make sure that they redeem them as soon as possible.

Please note that legion|interactive are still running the PayByPhone service for Australian and New Zealand users.

10th May 2005 - Barrows Adjustments

Further to yesterday's news post, we thought we would explain the finer details of how we will balance the barrows equipment.

We're keen not to devalue dragon, but we also want to make sure the barrows equipment is a really powerful option for level 70+ players. We think it's possible to achieve both aims.

We've decided not to reduce the barrows equipment stats. It will still be super-duper powerful! Instead bearing in mind this equipment is very old and antique, (it has after all been lying in the ground for centuries!) it will require a bit of occasional servicing to keep it in tiptop condition.

The upkeep isn't too extreme, the equipment will last for 15 hours of solid combat before wearing out and requiring a repair. 15 hours might not sound long but you can actually kill a seriously large number of monsters and get a lot of loot in that time. Also the items won't wear out at all unless actually being used to fight.

The planned repair costs for a full repair from 0% are as follows:

Barrows Weapons: 100k

Barrows Bodies: 90k

Barrows Legs: 80k

Barrows Helmets: 60k

Unlike the crystal bow and shield, the barrows items last longer, and the effectiveness of the items will NOT reduce as it wears out. Until it reaches 0% it will still be as powerful as it was when it was new. When it gets to 0% you just pay to get it fixed up and carry on using it.

The equipment will only be tradable when it is at 100% condition so there won't be any problems regarding bartering for sub-standard equipment. There will also be a physical representation of how much it's degraded so you can work out when you will need to get it repaired.

You can get it repaired at any time, instead of having to wait until it is at 0% to get it repaired. The cost is proportionally lower if you do (so if it's only half damaged the repair cost is also halved).

This means dragon equipment remains the best available "no-upkeep" equipment. And therefore it's still definitely worth having, but the new equipment is good too in a different way.

Consider this week a good chance to try out the new equipment without it wearing out, so you can experiment a bit and see what it's like without having to pay extra.

Regarding the "set bonuses", we would like to clarify that you only get this bonus if you are wearing the entire set. Carrying it in your inventory does not have the same effect.

We have also (already) reduced the likelihood of receiving a half key or a dragon helm from the barrows, because these were too common.

A big thanks goes to SlowFlight for providing us the new Canifis Slayer Mansion Map, to Smexy Julia for giving us the Puzzle Guide, Xtotre for creating The Barrows Map, greatgecko for the Ice Queen Caves Map, and a few new areas have had some other updates as well! Have fun with them you crazy kids....

-=DRAVAN=-

---

The following is a direct quotation from Runescape.com

9th May 2005 - Barrows

This weeks update isn't a quest, it's a huge new area full of equipment!

As the swamp waters of south-east Morytania recede further, adventurers can now visit the burial mounds of great heroes, and brave warriors may even wish to dig for what treasures they can find. But beware, sinister forces lurk beneath the surface, and ancient evils never like to be disturbed.

Do you dare to enter the Barrows?

This update features the biggest combat additions since the RS2 launch, with new ranger, melee and prayer equipment to help you vanquish your enemies. Each of the barrow warriors has "sets" of armour, where individual pieces of each set work better when used in tandem with the rest, so be prepared to see new items and tactics the next time you brave the Wilderness. The barrows themselves feature new challenges and monsters hidden within the earthen mounds, so be prepared for a hard fight. All of the barrows equipment requires a minimum of level 70 to equip, and can be considered as rare. See the new Equipment sets page in the combat section of our manual for more information.

Other Changes

The crystal bow has been given an adrenaline boost due to customer feedback and from extensive testing in relation to the new barrows equipment. It is now slightly faster than a standard longbow.

All spears in the game have also increased in speed. They now have the same attack rate as maces and longswords.

Thanks to Obi-Wan, R K O Orton, and Im4eversmart for writing the new Tears of Guthix Quest Guide. Click here to see the guide.

~Lewt04~

---

The following is a direct quotation from Runescape.com

4th May 2005 - Earthquake Rocks Lumbridge

Lumbridge residents were shaken earlier today by another earth tremor emanating from the geologically unstable region beneath the Lumbridge swamp.
Explorers report that a new tunnel has opened up, and tell tales of a huge chasm in the earth populated by floating creatures made out of living light.

A passing druid is reported as being very excited at the news, and claims that the caves contain a focus of mystical power, the fabled Tears of Guthix. He quoted from a druidic tome:

"But on his way into the depths of the earth, he sat and rested in this cave;
and, thinking of the battle-scarred desert that now stretched from one side of his world to the other, he wept.
And so great was his sorrow, and so great was his life-giving power, that the rocks themselves began to weep with him..."

As well as a new quest, this update includes a repeatable minigame that will give players XP in whichever skill is their weakest.

Players who have many quest points will find themselves at an advantage.

4th May 2005 - Behind The Scenes - May

Everyone get out your lanterns and digging tools, as May will see great developments to the underground network in RuneScape.

The first update this month features an area in the swamp caves which was visited by Guthix back at the end of the god wars. What secrets lie behind Juna the storysnake? A new minigame will be introduced giving players a new use for quest points and a new way of gaining xp.

Yet more forgotten stories from the god wars come back to the surface this month with the discovery of large burial mounds (or barrows) to the south-east of Morytania. Legend tells us that heros of great renown were buried here, yet their part in the wars is not clear. What is known is that they bore with them great weapons of destruction and equipment of such potency that the scars on the land are still visable.

A vast new training area in randomly shifting tombs filled with wights seems the perfect haunt for such things. Be aware that we have not had such a large release of new combat equipment since the launch of RS2 so be prepared to see some very interesting looking attire over the next few weeks.

May will also see the release of a massive new underground city. For years the humans have known of the dwarf city of Keldagrim but they have never been allowed through its gates. After the opening of Dondakan's goldmine (Between a Rock) the balance of power might never be the same again.

See moving city life, dwarf business mechanics and even a steam powered underground railway, not to mention the huge map area the city will occcupy. Several of the shops may ask you to run short errands for them, or even commission you to complete orders for them, making use of existing skills such as mining, smithing and crafting.

Keep those eyes peeled for the first part of a multiple stage quest campaign to accompany this giant update... just expect to duck under doorframes and dont rely on the local clothes to fit.

New ranger training areas will also be released this month with some brand new ancestral bones to help get those tricky prayer levels up. Accompanying that are fletching and smithing additions adding more potency to the underused ogre bow.

Finally, this month will see the next expansion to the Lumbridge swamp caves. Who are these mysterious creatures and are they really part of the goblin family? We know their tunnels run close to some of the bigger and more popular areas of RuneScape but do the locals have anything to fear from these wide-eyed timid things?

Expect expansions in low lvl combat equipment, more mining areas, new fishing and further development to the HAM plot towards the end of the month

Site Update:

We have some new maps ready for all you adventure seekers out there, aspecial thanks goes out to SlowFlight for these. And to greatgreko for the Phasmatys Map

The new maps are: Ardounge east dungeon, Draynor Sewer, H.A.M. Dungeon, Jorge Caves & Entrana Caves

-=DRAVAN=-

The Icthlarin's Little Helper quest guide is complete. View it here.


Thanks to Im4eversmart, Draco951, and evildemon86 for this guide.

The new worldmap released by Jagex has been added to the site. You can view it by clicking on the worldmap link to the left. We have also added a Lost City map created by Budmash to the More Maps page.

---

With great thanks to alex201285 for the Desert Quest guide. Sorry it has taken so long but this one was quite a pain to code.

Click here to see the new quest guide.

---

The following is a direct quotation from Runescape.com

26th April 2005 - Desert Month Finale

A bridge across the River Elid has recently been constructed, yet another signal of the warming relations between the Kharidians and the Menaphites, opening up even more areas in our huge desert expansion.

Although idyllic-looking, the banks of the river are dangerous. Adventurers should beware of man-eating crocodiles who lurk in the cool shade and water.

Care must also be taken of jackals who lie in wait for unsuspecting travellers.

On the west of the river is Menaphos, the Menaphite capital, purported to be a city of great wealth, knowledge and culture.

Adjoining Menaphos on the eastern side of the river is Sophanem, the city of the dead, where the Menaphites erect great pyramids in honour of their dead.

Breaking news that the Menaphite cities have barred their gates to all has confounded political commentators who have reassured all that a lasting peace will embrace the area.

Getting into Menaphos may have to wait as the city is very heavily guarded, but perhaps a wily adventurer may find a way to sneak into Sophanem. A wanderer to the North-east of the cities claims to know of a secret entrance, but beware! You may unwittingly end up as Icthlarin's Little Helper...

The Menaphites are said to treat their cats with near veneration. Could the "new cat-based activities" mentioned earlier in the month come into play here?

26th April 2005 - King Black Dragon

All things move with the times. The fearsome King Black Dragon, in particular, has developed some slightly different attack styles. He's had his cave enlarged, too. Why not make a journey to his lair, deep in the Wilderness, to see for yourself...?

Adventurers are warned that the King Black Dragon may give you a warm welcome, (extremely warm in fact...) so don't forget your anti-dragonbreath shield!

26th April 2005 - World Map updated

Players will be glad to know that we have just updated our game world map to reflect all of the extra land that has been recently added in our updates, including the massive expansion recently in the desert.

26th April 2005 - New London servers

We've just finished another round of upgrades on our servers to keep up with the number of people playing RuneScape. Last weekend saw a record 132,000 players enjoying RuneScape at the same time!

We've put 5 new servers online in London, UK. These servers are at a different facility to our other UK ones, so will work better for different people to the other set. There are 3 new servers for free players and 2 for members. This extra capacity should ensure that everyone can find a place to play at the weekends.

26th April 2005 - New Wallpaper

We have added a brand new wallpaper for your computer desktop, showing the infamous Bob the cat in a precarious situation...

Head on over to our Extra Files section on the website to download it in the resolution of your choice.

Luckily everyone knows cats have 9 lives, so he's sure to get out of it ok.

---

Enjoy the Updates and the New Quest Guide will be uploaded soon,

~Lewt04~

As many of you know, we recently moved the site to new servers hosted by our friends and saviours at Ethical Tools.

This was a major effort and required a lot of changes. As a result, there were some nagging issues that took some time to fix. I am home this weekend from my job in Nashville and had some time to assist in getting these issues resolved.

1. The Site Skins are now hopefully working correctly and will not keep changing back to blue when you go to various areas of the site.


2. The RSBANDB Calculators are now fixed and should work correctly.


3. The Dynamic Sig is fixed. We still need to update this to add the slayer skill and we are working on that, but have not had the time to accomplish the redesign. I am going to put forth a concerted effort to get this done in the very near future.


4. The Treasure Trail Coordinates Map should now also work.


5. I corrected the code for the Monsters and other pages so that the centering works with Firefox and other Mozilla based browsers and also removed some image borders that were causing some of the images to look unprofessional. There may be still more work needed in this area, and if you see something that needs fixed, please let us know.


6. The flashchat has been removed. We have purchased Sigmachat and will be adding it to the site once we get the license all taken care of and they update our account. This will hopefully work better and make it easier on us to administer. Sorry for the change and we know it will take some getting used to, but we hope you all can at least give it a chance before criticizing the change.


7. We have added back some of the right side menus that were removed due to server performance issues. These should help you navigate the site better and we hope to add more useful right side menus as the time goes on.


8. We added a google search to the top of the site news page to allow you to search RuneHQ or the web for things you need. We hope this helps you find what you are looking for.


9. We have temporarily removed the Clicksor ad that was below the menu on the right side. It was causing issues with pages loading as it was trying to create hyperlinks for text on the page that were relevant to ads. We have a support ticket open with clicksor for this issue. We are sorry for any performance issues this caused you in navigating the site.

The only remaining issue that we know of at this time that was caused by the site move is that the RuneHQ email is not working. The guys from Ethical are working on correcting this and hopefully will have it corrected soon.

If you see anything that is broke or not working correctly, please let us know. We will try to address it and make sure the site is performing at the best possible level it can. We thank you all for your patience in this move and we apologize it took a while to correct some of these issues.

~MrStormy~

RuneHQ is safe. No users from RuneHQ have reported to us any problems regarding the news posted on Runescape.



We do not allow users to post in HTML and this would be about the only possible way that a user could do a keylogger/virus through an image. We do not allow links to be posted on this forum for this very reason.



All posts are moderated real close and all images ARE looked at. If someone was to attept to post something like this on our forum, we would know about it right away because we moderate the forum and we would have possible gotten it already ourselves and taken action to prevent it. RuneHQ is and always will be dedicated to protecting our community and users from events such as this. We have had our account hacked before, so we know how it feels to loose all your possessions you worked hard to obtain. We do our best to make this site safe and we take security very seriuosly here.



We do not allow advertising of any sort on this forum so links to websites with keyloggers/viruses would be sported immediately and the correct action would be taken.



And as people have asked before, looking at people's passwords on the forum is impossible, since the passwords are encrypted and we cannot decrypt them, so even if you unwisely used the same runescape password, there is no way we or anyone hacking the site, if that ever happened, could look at your password. All passwords are encrypted on forums and no one can view the correct password. It is just a bunch of numbers and letters stored in the database so there is NO way of telling what your password is. The only thing we can do is change your password on the forum, that's it.



Anyone talking bad about RuneHQ regarding this whole situation and accusing us of doing this, will be dealt with as would any RuneHQ disrespectful remarks.



All I can say is if you come to our forums or any other forums, you should ALWAYS have a virus scanner running to catch things like this and spyware programs. Keep yourself protected and if you don't, you have no one to blame but yourself.



Check our download page for some great programs to use.



If you are worried about being hacked, I suggest you stay off of help site forums until this all dies down. Give it a couple of weeks.



Any topics regarding this situation will be locked, especially ones being direspectful to any help site. We are sorry this happened to one of our fellow help sites and we wish them the best in cleaning this up. Being disrespectful to them or us will not be tolerated here. We all work very hard to make your runescape experience a fun and pleasurable one.



RuneHQ Staff