Update 3.3: Dragons Breathe Fire

3.3 is out, and it’s the biggest update since Hunter and Agility. Dragons of every colour and the King Black Dragon, four new Slayer beasts with superior versions of twelve of them, journals that pay out in lamps and lasting perks, the rest of the Magic spell ladder, slayer trophies for your Holding, and a long list of smaller things you asked for.

Dragons

Three new dragons join the Green one: the Blue, the Red and the Black Dragon. Karst assigns them, none of them needs a Slayer level, and their hard scales make them weak to Magic.

And now every dragon breathes fire, the Green Dragon too (it used to only bite, even while it played its breath animation). One counterattack in four is a breath. It never misses and no prayer blocks it, and it hits for up to 20 on the Green Dragon and up to 50 on the Black. An Anti-dragon Shield or an antifire potion cuts a breath to a fifth. Both together, or a super antifire on its own, stops it. The first breath you take unprotected tells you what helps.

The dragons drop their scales, and you crush those into dust at Herblore 5 for the four new antifire potions, one per scale colour. The plain and extended ones cut a breath to a fifth, the super ones stop it, and they only wear down in combat. The Anti-dragon Shield is in the shop’s Production tab with no level needed.

The hides make three new sets of dragonhide armour (blue, red and black), crafted at Crafting 66 to 84 and worn at Defence and Ranged 50, 60 and 70. All the dragonhide, green included, shows its scales now, on your character and in the bank.

The King Black Dragon

The new boss. 5,400 HP, a hide that shrugs off Magic, and a breath of up to 60. Every kill drops dragon bones, black dragonhide and black dragon scales, with rune armour, bars and runes on top, and Karst can give it to you as a Boss Task.

It’s also the only place to get the Draconic Visage (1 in 5,000), the Dragon Helmet (1 in 10,000) and a new pet, the Prince Black Dragon (1 in 10,000). Smith the visage onto an Anti-dragon Shield with 5 rune bars at Smithing 90 and you have a Dragonfire Shield: +92 Defence, and it still holds back the fire.

Slayer: four beasts and their superiors

Four new things to kill on task:

• Crawling Hand (Slayer 5, from Brann).
• Thornback Brute (Slayer 70, from Karst). Only three things hurt it: a Leafbite Blade, Broadhead Arrows or the Magic Dart spell, and it tells you every way in if you bring the wrong thing. Against the Brute, the Magic Dart hits as hard as the strongest spell you can cast.
• Gravewing Fiend (Slayer 80, from Karst). When it strikes back, a death spawn sometimes joins in with a spell. Bladeguard stops the fiend and Spellguard stops the spawn, but not both, so you choose.
• Dark Beast (Slayer 90, from Karst). No tricks, a lot of HP, good loot, and a new drop: the Dark Bow (1 in 512), a two-handed bow just under the top one.

Then there’s Bigger and Badder, 50 Slayer points in the masters’ teaching. On a task, every kill has a 1 in 200 chance that the next one is a superior. Twelve Slayer monsters have one, each with its own name and art, from the Crushing Hand to the Night Beast. A superior has two to four times the HP and hits harder, but it pays Slayer XP worth a few dozen of its kind, drops its normal loot three times over, and counts as one kill of your task.

Superiors can also drop an Imbued Heart, a Dust Battlestaff or a Mist Battlestaff. The heart sits in your potion rack and is never used up: it lifts your Magic by up to 10, slowly fades, and comes back to full every so often. Wield a battlestaff in your Magic loadout and your spells (Spellcraft too) never use its runes: air and earth for Dust, air and water for Mist.

Journals

A new Journals tab in Stats: six journals (Forester’s, Smith’s, Angler’s, Warrior’s, Mage’s and Rogue’s), each with an Easy, Medium, Hard and Elite tier. The tasks are things you were going to do anyway, and levels and kills you already have count straight away.

Each tier you claim puts an Antique Lamp in your bank, from 140,000 XP up to 6,350,000 XP in any skill you pick, and a lasting perk that grows with the tier: more bird’s nests, coal saved on a smelt, fewer burnt fish, longer combat potions, runes kept on a cast, a longer Shadow Veil. The Elite tiers add one more on top each.

Magic, and what your armour does

Six new combat spells fill the gap between the bolts and Fire Wave, from Water Blast at Magic 47 to Earth Wave at 70, so your max hit now climbs with every spell. Four new Spellcraft spells give astral runes a job: Spin Flax, Superglass Make, Fertile Soil and Plank Make.

Armour does more now too. Robes add Magic accuracy (up to +30 for a full Archmage set), and leather and hide add Ranged accuracy (up to +30 for black dragonhide). That’s accuracy only, never max hit. Every piece of dragonhide also turns aside part of each spell thrown at you, and the Hunter hides make melee and ranged attackers a little less accurate.

Trophies and new builds

Twelve monsters now rarely drop a trophy head, the King Black Dragon included. Sell one for a small fortune, or mount it in your Holding: a mounted trophy makes that monster and its superior hit you 10% softer, dragonfire and death spawns included.

Construction also gets the Fancy Range (cooking fuel lasts longer, fewer burns) and the Apothecary Shelves (a finished potion sometimes leaves its secondary behind).

More to do

Tuna and monkfish to catch, two new Thieving marks (the Paladin and the Vyre), Shadow Veil to keep a caught pickpocket from being stunned, fly fishing with feathers, and a new Runecraft pet, the Rift Guardian, which takes the colour of the last rune you crafted.

Right-click the XP bar to set a goal level, and the new Plan tab in Stats holds a note and up to 20 steps that tick themselves off.

The bank, and things you asked for

The bank shows what everything in it is worth, gold included. Thanks to Mr Vorx for that one through the in-game feedback button! And selling now has its own Sell Mode: with it off, a click never sells, it opens, equips or uses the thing instead.

The recipe picker can hide what you can’t make yet and make a set number, new unlocks get a NEW dot in their picker, hovering a monster shows its best drops, and the global leaderboard goes past the top 100.

New animations

A new, snappier woodcutting chop with every hatchet redrawn for it, chips flying off the rock when you mine, enemies that flinch and fidget, new poses for fishing, cooking, gem cutting, sawing, fletching, Herblore and Prayer, and farm patches that sway in the wind.

Everything new is translated into all nine languages, and your save carries straight over. The full notes for 3.3 have every number, and the wiki already has every dragon, superior and journal task.

Keep the feedback coming. It’s in Settings > Feedback, and every message gets read.

— Vosk