NON-COMBAT SKILLING
Rituals are a core activity of Necromancy, producing resources that are used in combat, and narratively, attracting Um’s previous residents back to the Well of Souls.
Rituals form a crucial part of the Necromancy experience, interwoven with the narrative and your power growth amid your combat-driven adventures across Gielinor. They also offer an alternative way to earn XP in Necromancy outside Combat, with ways to customise the experience to focus more on resources you need, more intensive XP based Ritual Skilling or even a more AFK playstyle.
WHAT IS A RITUAL?
Rituals take place at the Ritual Site at the entrance of the City of Um, a place of power in front of the Well of Souls – the vessel that holds the resident souls of Um. This is a non-instanced area, so you’ll be surrounded by other Necromancers on their own journeys too!
You begin by selecting the Ritual you want to perform from your available roster. Each Ritual has requirements that must be met, which will generate an output of various rewards.
INPUT
The input is called a Focus, a unique centerpiece for each Ritual usually based on its intent (ie. bones to attract Souls). These can be stored in a box on the Ritual site.
RITUAL SITE SETUP
Along with the Focus, you’ll also need to set up the Ritual Site with two components:
- Glyph: Use Ghostly ink to write in the language of the dead. These can be functional, or later, be alteration glyphs that change elements of the Ritual (more on that later)
- Light Source: What Ritual would be complete without candles?
OUTPUTS
Each Ritual offers different potential rewards, but these are the core outputs that can come from completing a Ritual:
- XP: You know what this is! Complete the Ritual for XP gains.
- Reagents: These are resources used in Necromancy, such as Impure Essence for Necrotic Runecrafting or an equipment upgrade
- Souls: The number of Souls you will attract to the Well of Souls, which is needed to access more Talents
REQUIREMENTS
These are elements of the Ritual that require certain Necromancy levels or certain Quest completions.
PERFORMING RITUALS
Soul Attraction percentage is an indication of the chance and types of random events that could occur, housed at the top of your screen. These random events throughout your Ritual can be interacted with for a chance to gain extra rewards, from XP bonuses to additional resources. While we don’t want to spoil the experience of discovering these for yourself, these events are an optional way to boost your gains from Rituals.
While we’ve shown an example of a low-level Ritual above, more potent Rituals will be unlocked as you level Necromancy. Don’t fret about remembering all these Rituals though – the Ritual interface will highlight all the things you need to do.
CUSTOMISE TO YOUR PLAYSTYLE
- Multiply: Represents growth and expansion. Increase the items gained from the Ritual when completed.
- Speed: Represents speed and rapidity. Decreases the time it takes to complete the Ritual
- Attraction: Represents guidance and attraction. Increases the Soul Attraction percentage.
With these alteration glyphs unlocked, you’ll have more control over your Ritual experience – however, at a cost of more complex or rarer components. Do you focus on gaining more reagents at the cost of more XP potential, or do you ramp up the intensity of random events looking for maximum potential gains? The choice is yours.
REWARDS
Now you have the knowledge of how Rituals work, it’s time to tell you why they are important in your journey as a Necromancer.
One of the most critical parts of Rituals is to commune with the dead and return them to the Well of Souls. The number of Souls in the Well of Souls (which is permanent and does not deplete) is tied to accessing more potent Talents, which accelerate your Necromancy powers with new or upgraded abilities. As you venture across Gielinor growing your Necromantic power, you’ll want to regularly return to the Ritual site to bring more souls back to the City.
Rituals also have an important part to play in your Combat gameplay loop in a more direct fashion. For example, if you want to use Incantations – Necromancy spells outside your Core abilities that offer additional benefits such as accessing Shield Defensives without a Shield – you’ll need to convert Rune Essence into Impure Essence for use in creating Necrotic Runes.
And of course, for those times when engaging in Combat doesn’t fit around your schedule or you’re simply looking for a change of pace, Rituals are another route to levelling Necromancy in a way that works for you.
That’s all we’re revealing on Rituals today. Now it’ll be over to you to learn the potential of these Rituals and restore the City of Um to life once your Necromancy journey begins on August 7th!
DEAD AND BURIED QUEST – FORT FORINTHRY SEASON UPDATE
Zemouregal is up to something. While your newly arrived Guards – under the command of the Raptor – help keep his undead hordes at bay, it’s time to delve into the crypt and find out what he’s planning. Along the way, you’ll get to upgrade your Fort with a potent new Fletching building as you arm yourselves to better face this growing threat.
Here is what you can expect from Dead and Buried when it launches on July 17:
- Venture into the Wilderness Crypt and follow Zemouregal’s behind the mysterious dragonkin door.
- Add the new Ranger’s Workroom to your fort, and gain powerful new Fletching benefits.
- Learn more about the Raptor as you partner up together to face the forces of evil.
DEADLY PLANS
At the end of Unwelcome Guests, you encounter Zemouregal outside a mysterious dragonkin door in the newly-discovered Wilderness Crypt. With hordes of undead at his command harassing your fort, the Raptor deems it time to find a way through this mysterious door to uncover what Zemouregal is plotting.
BRING A CROSSBOW TO A MELEE FIGHT
Before you can leave, the Raptor wants to ensure the fort can safely be defended while you venture into the crypt. Not everyone is an ex-World Guardian, you know!
While your former dark warriors are formidable frontline warriors, this also puts them in a vulnerable position to face off against the unrelenting onslaught of the undead. It’s time to exploit their slow, lumbering nature by arming your guards with crossbows. Don’t forget to recruit a guard captain to command the defence, should Zemouregal take your absence as an opportunity to strike.
This will be your call to build the latest Fort Fortinthry upgrade – the Ranger’s Workroom – in order to arm your guards and gain some exciting Fletching benefits.
TAG TEAM
Once your fort’s defences are prepared, it’s time to venture into the crypt.
We’ll leave everything from this point for you to discover, but we’ll give you some hints. This is a classic RuneScape questing experience, with combat, puzzles and plenty of revelations. As you’re teaming up with the Raptor, you’ll get the opportunity to control the Raptor to progress through the crypt’s many puzzles and slay some enemies within. Where does it all lead? That’s for you to find out…
REWARDS
The Ranger’s Workroom is an expansion to the existing Guardhouse that you’ll build as part of the quest. It’s also the biggest reward of the update!
| Building | Tier 1 (Construction 50) | Tier 2 (Construction 65) | Tier 3 (Construction 80) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ranger’s Workroom | Fletching workbench, which can be used to make ammo, fletch unstrung bows and string them.
2% chance to save resources when Fletching. 1% chance to get an extra bundle of arrow shafts, including elder arrow shafts (does not include tempered fungal shaft made through zygomite carestyling). |
2% chance to produce a strung bow when Fletching unstrung bows.
1% chance for an extra bundle of arrows and headless arrows. |
Access the ability to unlock Wisdom of Anima Perks.
There are four Wisdom of Anima Perks – one for each of the Elder God arrow types. Having a perk unlocked allows you to imbue dinarrows into Elder God arrows of that type at a much faster rate, at the cost of XP gains. Imbuing dinarrows now takes 1.2s (2 ticks) per 15 arrows instead of 4.2s (7 ticks). Imbuing dinarrows now uses 1 anima per arrow instead of 3. Token experience is 1% of original experience. |
The quest will launch with some changes to fletching and how it functions around resource saving buffs, we have included an upcoming patch note to give some additional context to this update.
- Fletching buffs for saving resources and auto-stringing unstrung bows now have additive percentage chance when multiple buffs with the same effect are active, instead of rolling for each buff separately and choosing the first one to proc (e.g. Crystal knife + Wergali incense). This more accurately represents the desired outcome of stacking random chance buffs and provides an increased probability for the effect to proc.
Yes, you can finally make Elder God Arrows at a much quicker rate! While you’ll be trading off your XP gains for speed, the Wisdom of Anima perk provides a rapid way to arm up for your future battles.
The Ranger’s Workroom will also serve as a skilling hub for Fletching. There’s an area XP boost that stacks with similar benefits, like Portable Fletching Stations.
While that’s a nice beefy benefit of completing the quest, any good quest also needs a good XP reward or two! Here’s the full list of rewards for Dead and Buried:
- 1 Quest Point
- Construction XP Lamp
- Prismatic XP Lamp
- 2 Treasure Hunter keys (excluding Ironmen)
- Ability to build all three tiers of the Fort Forinthry Ranger’s Workroom