RuneScape: 900 RuneCoins · published
This is a bit of a technical week!
For real this time, Mod Fable will gives us another update and some insights into the upcoming API project and some of the Plugins our community developers are working on!
We're also hoping to share a bit more insight into what exactly goes into an Engine update like today. If all goes to plan, we'll share this blog on Friday.
Last week we shared a preview of the changes that introduction of Vulkan enables for RuneScape. Check it out here!
We also shared our Month Ahead for September - you can read the blog here or check out the schedule below.
Today we will be beginning our beta of Vulkan!Vulkan is a modern graphics technology that will help RuneScape communicate with your computer's graphics hardware. You can think of it as the bridge between the game engine and your GPU, telling your device how to draw everything you see on screen.RuneScape has historically used a rendering technology called OpenGL. While OpenGL has served us well for many years, Vulkan is its modern successor and is designed to take better advantage of today's hardware. It gives our engineers much greater control over how the game renders graphics, allowing us to optimize performance more effectively and build a stronger foundation for future improvements.Moving to Vulkan will help reduce CPU overhead, improve support for modern multi-core processors, and gives us access to newer graphics technologies that aren't available through older rendering systems. For players, this means the potential for smoother performance, fewer bottlenecks in demanding situations, faster loading and shader compilation, and better support for future graphical enhancements.While the transition to Vulkan is a long-term investment in RuneScape's technology, it lays the groundwork for continued performance improvements and enables us to take advantage of modern graphics features and platforms for years to come. You can read more about why we chose Vulkan and more of its benefits in our recent blog post here!
Introducing a new rendering backend is one of the most significant technical changes we can make to RuneScape, so we're taking a careful, phased approach to ensure the experience remains as stable as possible for players. Our rollout will begin with an optional open beta for Windows players, launching today.This beta period will allow us to gather valuable feedback and data on stability, visual fidelity, hardware compatibility, and performance across a wide range of systems. Once we're confident that any major issues have been identified and addressed, we'll begin rolling Vulkan out as the default rendering option through the RuneScape Launcher.You will be able to access the Vulkan open beta build of RuneScape via the Graphics Mode setting in the startup options menu: just switch it to "Vulkan". You can access this menu at startup by clicking on the options button in the bottom left corner, or via the RuneScape → Options shortcut from the menu bar at the login screen. You’ll have to restart your client after making the change so that the launcher can download the new executable.
For Steam, you would also need to do this prior to launching the client:
Right-click 'RuneScape' in your games library
Select 'Properties'
Select 'Game Versions & Betas'
Select 'Vulkan'
Once you're playing on Vulkan, we'd love to hear about your experience. As with any major technical update, feedback from players is invaluable in helping us identify issues across the huge variety of hardware and system configurations used to play RuneScape.If you encounter any issues or other unexpected behaviour, please submit an in-game bug report whenever possible. These reports provide us with additional diagnostic information that helps our developers investigate and resolve issues more quickly.We'll also be opening a dedicated Vulkan feedback and bug-reporting channel on the Official RuneScape Discord!This project has been years in the making, and we're incredibly excited to finally get it into players' hands. Vulkan represents a huge step forward for the future of RuneScape's technology. Your feedback will play a vital role in helping us refine the experience, improve performance, and shape the future of RuneScape's graphics and engine technology.
This week as part of our engine up we're rolling out Auto Dormancy for eligible NPCs, this will help improve game performance! This system allows NPCs that aren't near any players to temporarily enter a dormant state, reducing the amount of server processing they require while they're not actively being interacted with.When a player enters the area, the NPC will automatically become active again, ensuring the experience remains seamless. By reducing unnecessary background processing across the game world, Auto Dormancy helps free up server resources and improve overall performance and efficiency. As we continue to expand the use of this system to appropriate NPCs, players should benefit from a smoother, more responsive game experience, while also helping us support the long-term health and scalability of the game.As with all large scale changes you may find some oddities in an NPCs behaviour and if so please do send us a bug report via the in game system, this will help us track any and all issues that arise!
Our good friends over at Dragonwilds are preparing for their 1.0 launch in just a few days!On RuneScape's forgotten continent of Ashenfall, dragons have awoken. Gather, build, skill and craft in this co-operative survival adventure. Only by mastering survival and uncovering ancient secrets can you hope to face the ferocious Dragon Queen.RuneScape: Dragonwilds will be available September 15, 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC!
One of our upstream providers has been and will be working on maintenance in a variety of areas over the course of September, We're aware that this will cause some players increased ping during these times and we apologize for any and all disruption caused. Thank you for your patience and understanding at this time.
Location
Date
Expected Time Frame
Los Angeles, USA
5th September
1 hour > From 06:00am to 07:00am UTC
Frankfurt, Germany
12th of September
1 hour > From 00:00am to 01:00am UTC
Paris, France
12th of September
1 hour > From 02:00am to 03:00am UTC
Washington, United States
12th of September
1 hour > From 04:00am to 05:00am UTC
Dallas/Fort Worth, USA
12th of September
1 hour > From 05:00am to 06:00am UTC
Los Angeles, USA
12th of September
1 hour > From 06:00am to 07:00am UTC
Melbourne, Australia
12th of September
1 hour > From 12:00pm to 13:00pm UTC
Osaka, Japan
12th of September
1 hour > From 13:00pm to 14:00pm UTC
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
15th of September
3 hours 30 minutes > From 20:15pm to 23:45pm UTC
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
17th of September
3 hours 30 minutes > From 02:15am to 05:45am UTC
Frankfurt, Germany
19th of September
1 hour > From 00:00am to 01:00am UTC
Paris, France
19th of September
1 hour > From 02:00am to 03:00am UTC
Washington, United States
19th of September
1 hour > From 04:00am to 05:00am UTC
Dallas/Fort Worth, USA
19th of September
1 hour > From 05:00am to 06:00am UTC
Melbourne, Australia
19th of September
1 hour > From 12:00pm to 13:00pm UTC
Osaka, Japan
19th of September
1 hour > From 13:00pm to 14:00pm UTC
Milan, Italy
21st of September
3 hours 30 minutes > From 21:15pm to 00:45am UTC
Zurich, Switzerland
22nd of September
3 hours 30 minutes > From 21:15pm to 00:45am UTC
Mexico City, Mexico
24th of September
3 hours 30 minutes > From 05:15am to 08:45am UTC
Some clickboxes across the game have been updated to be more precise following the engine update.
Rooms in POH should now appear on the minimap regardless of selected rendering distance.
Fixed Clear headed invention perk not working when put inside the Automaton control bot.
Leagues character voices and player models were unintentionally mismatched in some cases and have been realigned with the player model.
Fixed an issue that prevented loading custom presets from slots 2 to 4.
Fixed an issue causing semi-transparent dialog boxes to appear in the RS Bootstrap Launcher on macOS.
Fixed a rare crash that could occur in Meiyerditch under specific circumstances.
Fixed a desync issue causing movement abilities to incorrectly align with the player's orientation.
Fixed an issue where the target cycling system could occasionally fail to find a valid new target.
Added a clearer launcher error message when attempting to start the game while another client is already running.
Added ARM64 support to the RS Bootstrap Launcher and RS Client.
Improved performance in large Player-Owned Houses.
Added support for the upcoming Vulkan Open Beta.
The 'Stranger and Stranger' achievement is now automatically completed if the Tirannwn region is unlocked.
Fixed an issue that prevented the "Defeat a boss in the Dominion Tower" task from completing.
Anachronia's base camp tutorial is now auto-completed when unlocking the region.