Sneak peek: Herblore and Farming

RuneClick 2.5 is in its final stretch of testing, and it is the biggest thing to land since the Combat Update. Two brand new skills arrive together, they feed each other, and they drag a pile of new content in with them. No date, as always. When it is ready, it ships. Here is an early look.

Herblore

A brewer’s craft. Herbs come out of the ground unidentified, so the first step is sifting them: grind a pile of mystery leaves and each one resolves into a clean herb, with the rarest showing up about once in eighty thousand sifts. From there you brew, one clean herb plus a vial plus a secondary ingredient into a finished potion. Nineteen potions in all, from simple stat boosts up to a capstone brew, plus an apothecary bench you upgrade to squeeze more experience out of every batch.

Farming

Farming grows in the background while you do everything else. No babysitting and no timers to race, which should surprise nobody at this point. Seeds arrive unidentified the way herbs do. Assign a crop to a patch and it matures on its own, auto-harvesting to your bank and replanting from your seed stock. Thirty-four crops in all, from quick vegetables up to trees that take real patience and pay out a large lump of experience when they finally come in.

Every crop is drawn for each stage it grows through. Here is the whole set, from bare dirt up to a mature harvest.

The character finally looks busy

All of this needed motion, so the character now visibly brews, tends, sorts, pots saplings, and composts. Here is the new motion set, straight from the editor.

And because the character moves in new ways, every piece of jewelry in the game was repainted to follow along. Rings, necklaces, amulets, and bracelets now sit correctly on every new pose, frame by frame.

Two new pets, and a third I am not showing

Farming brings a Sproutling, Thieving finally pays out with a Magpie, and there is a third new pet whose owner you will have to beat first.

Something is waiting past the Abyssal Lord

There is a new fight at the very top of the roster, and it does not hold still. It answers with one combat style, then another, then a heavier third, and it drains you a little with every exchange while you figure that out. The new potions exist for a reason. More on it when the update lands.

The rest of it

There is more in this one than a teaser can hold: a reworked potion system where boosts decay as you spend them instead of sitting there switched on, the first non-fish cooking line, new achievements including a max-level cape for every skill in the game, two new leaderboards, and a long list of quality-of-life work. The full notes land on Steam with the update, and this devlog will get the complete breakdown.

It is close. The devlog and the newsletter will say so the moment it is out.

— Vosk