~ RuneScape Mysteries, Oddities, Rumors, Trivia, and Secrets by TimeLierG - 6/12/2023 ~
* A list of some of the things that fascinate me about RuneScape or video games as a whole, my favorite thing about a game will always be the intrigue and mysteries about them, the unused content, the strange easter eggs, the question of why a developer added something. I wrote these down as they came to my mind one at a time so there's no order to them. I hope you enjoy this kind of stuff as much as I do. It should be said that I apologize for any strange capitalization, I'm following how RuneScape does it with it's items. All images belong to their respective owners, RuneScape is owned by Jagex. I am not affiliated with Jagex or RuneScape.
~ The Golden Tools Mystery / Hidden Luck Stat Theory ~
Everyone knows about snagging the gold tools during the Priest in Peril quest (and how much it sucks that you can't use them), but I've always wondered if this has some kind of effect on the game. If you miss your chance to get the golden tools (if I am remembering properly you have a very small window to actually pick them up before you use your silver key) then your character will say something along the lines of "something bad will happen if I mess with these", or at least that's what I remember from 2006 and then from OSRS later on, I know they actually very weirdly changed dialogue during that quest after RS2. I remember the king of Varrock used to call you "mentally deficient" from 2004 to whatever year they changed it in, probably around 2016 in OSRS. Now he just calls you an imbecile. Supposedly according to Jagex mentally deficient people aren't allowed to exist in the world of Gielinor.
Anyway, as I was saying, I can't remember the dialogue exactly but your character implies bad things will happen if you take those tools. Why is it that they only programmed this line after the quest is complete and not during it when you have the silver key? Your character has no issue with taking the golden tools during the quest but afterwards? He refuses to take them. Also what bad things happen when taking them? I've always had the idea of a hidden "luck" stat in RuneScape when I was younger and I still do, I think it may have been a genuine possibility at the time. I'm not that familiar with how things work in online games when it comes to server sided code, but is it possible that something such as an invisible luck system could be in place without players being able to see it? I know Jagex was not very secure back in the day with their servers considering the item duplication / spawning bug happened from Kaitnieks but all that online stuff was pretty new.
If a hidden luck stat was / is possible what would it effect? I highly doubt they would implement something as severe as higher item drop rates just because you stole a quest item, RuneScape has always been a very forgiving MMO in comparison to other MMOs at the time. I have no theories on what it would effect, honestly. It's just strange that the game allows you to take the golden tools to begin with and even adds dialogue after the quest (technically just after that section of the quest) is completed. I can think of a few other examples of this like the Temple of Ikov and Hazeel Cult quests where you have decisions to make which effects the outcome and you receive different items depending on which sides you choose. Hooray... uh, Carnillean armor and an Armadyl Pendant... I suppose the pendant would kind of have a use years later for the GWD if you didn't have anything else. By the way, why was the Hazeel mark item red in the RS2 beta, yellow in 2004, and then white in OSRS? Also why is the Armadyl pendants gem white on male characters but red on female characters? The Lathas' amulet which was removed from the game in 2004 has the same model as the Armadyl pendant yet the gem is red for both male and females. This stuff fascinates me so much.
~ The Blurberry Badge / Gianne Badge ~
The Blurberry Badge, supposedly released in 2002 is an item that was found in the code of RuneScape but no reports of players obtaining it have surfaced. It's examine text says, "An official cocktail maker" and the item itself is not within the cache / code of RS2, RS3, or OSRS. It was only in RSC. It's the same deal with the Gianne Badge, except the description for this one says, "an official gianne chef", all lowercase, which most likely means it is unfinished and was not in the game. It's strange that the Blurberry badge has capitalization though. I'm interested to know if these are equipable or not, if so, what would be the point of wearing them? Cosmetics in RSC are non-existent for the most part outside of the holiday items for Christmas, Halloween, Easter so having another item that appears on your character would be interesting. The only thing you really would see people wear in RSC is a rune platebody, rune platelegs, dragon med, legends cape, dragon sq, etc. Or a rune chain if you wanted Klank's gaunts. That was your verity. The badges could of also been as simple as proving you were hired as a cook for the minigame, or maybe it would be mandatory to wear it during the minigame itself.
Not much else can be said about this.
~ Sweets ~
Why did Jagex choose purple sweets from all of the other colors of sweets from the 05 Halloween event? Purple is an excellent color but still, why not keep all of the sweets in the game instead of just the purple ones? They had green, pink, red, white, blue, dark blue, and then the purple ones. I also find it strange how it almost seemed like they were going with the same colors as party hats but then added an additional blue variant. And yes, I consider the "purple" phat in RSC to be pink. Did they keep the purple ones for the same reason as why the purple party hat has the lowest drop rate from a cracker, purple being a royal color and all. By the way, in more recent times I was hearing about a rumor of a "black partyhat" that was supposedly implemented in RSC at the same time as the others, you'd think the people behind the item creation / spawning / duping exploit would of seen it! Or you know, someone taking a screenshot of it. It is stated that Jagex turned these black partyhats into purple or white ones months after their release. I don't know why I decided to bring this rumor up, I just thought it was funny I suppose.
~ Ring of Wealth Hidden Effect / Clue Scroll Caskets ~
I've sometimes worn a ring of wealth when I was younger, I always thought about the ring of wealth giving an additional effect aside from what is already known such as it removing empty slots on the rare drop table and having that currency pick up effect (was that pick up toggle always on the ring? I don't remember that). It always seemed very suspicious to me that there would be a ring in the game with such a useless effect, if rings were enchantable in 2001-2003 during the RSC era it would be extremely useful as the rare drop table had more of a use in that version of the game since dragon med helms and dragon sq shield were best in slot. Maybe they had that effect in mind originally but delayed it to 2004. Do you know what else came out in 2004? Treasure trails. The ring of wealth and treasure trails were released one month a part from each other. Fast forward to around 2016-2017, I'm playing on my HCIM on OSRS while watching a recording of a jmod couch stream, this stream was an older one as if I'm remembering correctly it was before HCIM was released. I can't remember the date of the stream but it was a stream by jagex (OSRS team) about RuneScape (OSRS / RS2) myths and rumors and saying which ones are real and which ones aren't.
During this stream a jmod just casually mentions that the RoW effects clue scroll rewards, specifically the rarer clue loot tables (third age / gilded table). I've actually just found the stream now and it's just as I remember it, the jmods ask players to guess whether a myth is true or not and they correct the players who voted true or false if they are wrong. This specific question was, "wearing a ring of wealth upon completing a clue scroll will give you better loot". 82% of players guessed no out of 403 votes and then were corrected by the jmods on the couch who said it was true, there was no laughing or jokes, they said it honestly and proceeded to elaborate more which is when they mentioned that it effects the "rare drop clue table". It should be noted that the jmods were actually wrong on some of the other myths, so perhaps they are not a reliable source. The jmods said the chance increase is miniscule and then asked an rs3 developer who was in the room if it was the same in rs3 as well, to which, unsurprisingly, they said they don't know. At the end of the day, what do rs3 developers know? Anyway, there's no proof either way for this one but it is strange how almost all of the jmods agreed it did have an effect on clue scrolls.
~ The Spinach Roll ~
Even though I first played RuneScape in very late 2005 (I often say 2006 to keep it simple, I started so late in 2005 that it may as well be in 2006) I have still played RSC when they relaunched the servers and also in PS's later on as well, I also went back on when they officially closed for good and recorded footage of it closing for memories sake. I say this because I was not around for when the spinach roll gave a supposed 5+ strength boost before the first of December in 2001, it's not known when this boost was removed. They also supposedly stacked with strength potions and may have even stacked with other spinach rolls endlessly similar to the infinite beer strength boost. If you are wondering why I am writing about this item it's just due to the fact of how hard it is to come by and it's strange history, the first time it was introduced into the game seems to be through Traiborn as both Traiborn and the roll were added on January 4th 2001, then were added to moss giants, then Christmas crackers, then to the crystal chest when it was released in February 27th 2002 (not sure if spinach rolls were always a drop from the chest, being the RS archiver / historian that I am I should probably know this), and finally to the strange barrels in Legend's Quest from 20th of August in 2003.
~ Time, Reality, and Illusion Runes ~
There's a few unused runes in RSC that seem interesting, I'm obviously not going to mention every single piece of unused content in this post but I figure I'd just show these off cause they are intriguing. I won't mention the life rune because everyone knows about that one and how it was going to be used for a form of necromancy / summoning.
Time Rune - "An incredibly rare master rune!"
Reality Rune - "An incredibly rare master rune!"
Illusion Rune - "An incredibly rare master rune!"
These runes just have a blank rune essence sprite unlike the unused life rune which shows a sun and were removed from the game files in June 2001. I really want to know what these would have been used for, I assume the reality / illusion runes were connected in the same way other rune pairings go such as chaos / law and mind / body. I actually just had a thought as I am writing this, it seems if the life rune was added it would of fit well with the death rune. It's interesting that there is a "rune essence" sprite in RSC to begin with but it was most likely a placeholder when creating the designs for the runes themselves and the Gowers probably just placed the design on top of the blank one, I'm not sure if they planned to have runecrafting back then or not.
~ Bonzara the Monkey ~
I've never encountered this guy before, he is a monkey dressed in purple with what looks like a staff or crozier with the symbol of Marimbo on the top of it. He can only be encountered just at the end of Monkey Madness after you defeat the jungle demon and the gnomes leave the platform, after this you can enter a gorilla statue in which you are now in his domain. Unless my dates are wrong, Monkey Madness was released in December 6th of 2004 yet Bonzara was released in February 22nd 2005. Bonzara was also in the games cache on the same release date as Monkey Madness. It's a mystery as to why Jagex added him as all he does is teleport you to the northern woods of Ape Atoll if you tell him you need help. He has very interesting dialogue...
"It looks like you're trying to escape. Would you like some help?"
"No thank you. Who are you by the way?"
"Never mind that child. You should worry more about who you are and the nature of the forces that have driven you here."
"I'll ... keep that in mind, thanks."
"We WILL meet again, (says the players username)."
If you tell him that you would like to leave...
"I ... uh ... yes."
"Right you are."
It should be noted that you do not need a m'speak amulet to speak with him, nor do you need a greegree. His examine text says, "A small monkey dressed in purple clothes. He looks like a priest.". I just realized how funny it would be if a Marimbo general was a boss in the GWD, they would probably have a bunch of bonzaras running around.
~ Removed / Unused / Altered Content Oddities ~
It goes without saying that there is a lot of removed and altered content in the time RuneScape has been around, however there is very obscure things that not many know of. As it's been a while since I wrote the above posts I had forgotten if I mentioned this but when most players think of the original color of rune equipment, which was purple, they think of bright purple when it was originally a more brownish-purple color. It didn't look much different than iron which is most likely why they altered it for release. Speaking of drastic changes, the camo outfit which was released in October of 2005 used to be an actual bush the player would wear, there was still three pieces of the outfit though. This set had the same textures as most other bushes and regular trees in the game and lasted until April 10th 2006. I actually have no photos of this in my archives and I have never seen footage of this, I only know about it due to a recent cache discovery of an older version of the game.
Speaking of the recent cache discovery, the dragon full helm was going to be released in the same update as The Fremennik Isles, it's original look was completely different and jarring than what we received with the final version of the helm. It was also going to be like the dragon square shield where the player would require two parts of the helmet to assemble it. It's not known how it (the two pieces) would be obtained originally. The chewed bones thing has always stood out to me as being odd, so the fact there was another (most likely more fitting) way to obtain the helm makes sense. Saying the original vision for the helm is "jarring" is not to be understated, it looks like a character from NiGHTs into Dreams.
The "Elem longsword" in the RuneScape 2 Beta, short for elemental. Supposedly it was to be a reward in the Elemental Workshop quest. This weapon was deleted from the game just before the end of the RS2 beta and the elemental shield took it's place. It's examine text states, "A razor sharp elemental Longsword." and there are no stats for the weapon. Another note is that it was released on the first of December in 2003, supposedly removed somewhere around January to March of 2004. It could be seen in some screenshots taken by a Gower, I forgot which one, the screenshots I am thinking of, you could see the sword in his inventory. Also the sword is bright purple.
A Soul talisman was added during the RS2 Beta on December 1st, 2003 (the release of the RS2 Beta). It's obvious why this wasn't released but perhaps they intended for soul runes to be a part of Runecrafting back then which is interesting. There was no Blood talisman in RS2 to go along with this. A Soul tiara was added to the cache in the June 13, 2005 update which was an update about Runecrafting.
For the Death Plateau quest there were going to be colored pots instead of the stone balls which was an interesting choice. These were used in the RS2 Beta instead of the stone balls. There were two other items in this quest, the "Secret way map" which looks different than the standard RS2 one and the "Horse shoe" which appears as Desert boots. It is theorized that the Horse shoe was going to be used instead of the Spiked boots.
There's an unused "Farmer's fork" item added on March 29th, 2004. It's not very interesting though.
Enough of RuneScape 2 for now, let's look at RS1 / RSC. There are a few notable items that are unused in RuneScape 1, that being the "Present" and crowns. Crowns were to be a wearable item much like other pieces of jewelry and very similar in appearance to party hats, the item sprite for crowns are said to have existed on May 8th, 2001 (speculated by the writer on the RSC wiki), this is when jewelry crafting was released into the game. As with other jewelry the crowns had a single gem in the middle, the color of which depends on the gem used when crafting the crown, although it is said on the same wiki that the gem would have been "recolorable", although there is no source for this. It's not known what these crowns (crown?) would have been used for.
The Present is another unused item that has the appearance of a blue, square gift with red ribbons. It's examine text says, "Click to use this on a friend" and is speculated to have been used for a 2002 Christmas event, could have contained a Santa's hat, and perhaps was going to be used in 2003 before Andrew Gower made the news post about not wanting to make more holiday event drops due to folks missing out. I don't agree with the speculation of it containing a Santa's hat, there's no proof of this. The Present also has an "open" command which contradicts what it says in the examine text. Something of note is that the Present looks very similar both in shape and color to the Bauble Box from the 2005 Christmas event.
The Mace of Zamorak, it has eight aim and six power, truly a force to not mess with. The examine text is, "This mace gives me the creeps". If I don't have any information to go off of from my own archives I often consult the wiki for this but there is no information on this mace there either, none in my archives, so this is all speculation by myself personally. You may think this mace is a quest item, I would think so too, however it has an actual high alch value which for some reason is fairly high for RS1 standards, that being 2,700 while thee low alch is 1,800. It also says the item is tradeable, although that doesn't mean much since some quest items were indeed tradeable in RS1 / RSC such as Silverlight. The thing is, Silverlight has a high alch value of 30, and I'll be honest it has been a while since I played RSC and even then I don't think I checked if Silverlight can be alched, nor do I know if this mace can be alched. The Silverlight can be re-obtained though so perhaps that is the reason why one of these items is 30 and the other item is 2,700 if we assume the mace is a quest item. Points against my theory that it isn't a quest item can be the fact that the maces stats are so bad that there would be no point to add it but that might be why it was unobtainable. The Mace of Zamorak has the same stats as the iron mace, so this confuses me greatly. You know what, I'm starting to think it was a quest item now.
The Bloody axe of zamorak, honestly this is the same story as the mace although it does have a unique sprite not seen on any other item in RS1. It is different in appearance to all other axes and battle axes although it has 9 aim and 13 power which is the same as the iron battle axe but has a high alch value of 3,000. I'm fairly certain these two weapons are connected, perhaps the mace was an early version of this axe as the mace does not have a unique sprite. For some reason, unlike the mace, the Bloody axe of zamorak is not tradeable.
~ Test / Developer / Jmod Items ~
There have been many developer items in the history of RuneScape so let's start with RS1 / RSC.
The Superchisel is an assumed developer item that has the appearance of an unstrung diamond amulet, it also has the examine text of an unechanted amulet. It has the option to "twiddle" it and the high alch value is 2,115 which is the same as an unstrung diamond amulet. Aside from that there's nothing else I know about it. There's another item like this that is a blue sphere called a ResetCrystal, it has a darker blue sprite than the Locating Crystal. The ResetCrystal has an option called "activate" and the examine text says "Helps reset things in game". It has a high alch value of 60.
Moving onto RS2, the Crunchy staff. Named after the famous skeleton this staff could originally be seen in the 2003 detail select screen held by an unnamed wizard standing next to a knight, I'm not sure why it's named after the skeleton, perhaps he used to be the wizard in said select screen. The staff was added to the game in December of 2003 during the RS2 Beta and had the funny examine text of, "Avoid contact with eyes" and the options of, " 1-N, 1-E, 1-S, 1-W" along with a drop option. As you could guess this staff would teleport the user in any direction as they pleased, even to unreachable areas. It had the absurd high alch value of 600,000 and it's regular value of 1,000,000 made it the most valuable item in the game when it was added. The staff itself does not have a unique appearance, it looks the same as the staff of air. This staff could also be seen in some RS2 Beta screenshots I have in my archive.
I'm not going to mention the Rotten potato that was added on July 11th, 2005, everyone already knows about it.
"Ians helper" is another item used for testing, it has the appearance of the RS2 Beta Christmas cracker and it's examine text says, "Click for options!". This item had an "operate" option but it is unknown what exactly it did.
The ResetCrystal makes a return from RS1 / RSC to the RS2 Beta, this time it has the same exact appearance as the Locating crystal. Like most other developer items, what it did is unknown.
"Helpful device" is yet another RS2 Beta test item, you would think one universal item would do but I suppose not. This item looks exactly like the RS2 Beta skull item and the examine text says, "Not for children!". It's options are as follows, "Heal-me", "Kill-me", "Equip-me", and the drop option. It has no alch value and was added to the game in December 2003 and removed from the game somewhere in January 2004.
The last known RS2 test item was known as the "Crasher", it has the same appearance and examine text as the Gnomeball. I'm not sure if the name is just misleading or if it actually did crash worlds.
~ Ahab's Beer ~
Ahab is a unique NPC who sits at the Rusty Anchor Inn in Port Sarim, he is a sailor who seems to be in the game simply to make the world feel more lived in, he is obsessed with his one of a kind item which is named, "Ahab's beer". This beer is special in that it cannot be obtained, you can try to telegrab it and Ahab will yell at you for trying to do so and tell you to stop casting spells on his drink. After completing Dragon Slayer Ahab will ask you if you have a boat he can have to which your character will say no.
There's something extremely odd that happened in OSRS on February 26th, 2015. There was an update to the game on this date that added the Grand Exchange, I would have to assume every item value in the game was altered but there's no mention of that in the games update notes for this date. The reason I mention this is because the item value for Ahab's beer went from 2 to 1. This was either done to troll or it was a genuine change of the global item values which also effected this unobtainable item. I've looked into it further and there's no mention of other item values being changed after this update.
~ RS1 / RSC Display Tea ~
This is an interesting item from RS1 / RSC, the Display tea could only be obtained by using tele grab near the tea stall in east Varrock. This version of the tea cannot be consumed, along with this strangeness if the player drops the tea they cannot pick it up. The examine text says, " A nice cup of tea - for display only". Folks were using this tea in scams so Jagex renamed the tea to the regular "Cup of tea" and made the Display tea untradeable. Along with this the Display tea which rested on the tea stall was replaced with a normal Cup of tea. Oddly enough the examine text of the Display tea was changed as well, instead of the RS1 / RSC examine text it now says, "A refreshing cuppa.". I'm unsure if this tea still exists in RS3, if it does I am certain it's rare, perhaps not as rare as the Karamja war ship or Broken dragon plate but still fairly rare.
~ Karamja War Ship ~
In RS1 / RSC the model of a Karamjan war ship can be found on Ghlough's dresser in the Tree Gnome Stronghold, it was released on the 12th of December in 2002. The option on it is "play with" and when doing so you get this dialogue, "You pretend to sail the ship across the floor. You soon become very bored, and realise you look quite silly.". It's examine text says, "A model of a karamja warship". This item is considered one of the rarest items in all of RuneScape as it's spawn was removed during the transition from RS1 to RS2, the only way players could still have this is if they had the item before the transition. Also it looks kind of glitched in RS2 and RS3 when dropped on the ground, although the option to do so was removed and replaced with a "destroy" option. By the way, the model of the boat is the same one used when traveling by charter ships.
~ Mysterious Wilderness Ship and Volcano ~
There's not a lot to say on this one, there's a large metal ship with torn, white flags at the very end of the Wilderness near the volcano. The volcano itself is also a mystery, there's nothing to be seen there. Perhaps the ship and volcano were meant for yet another pirate related quest. On second inspection instead of it looking like a metal ship it seems it also could be covered in ash? The barrels and cannons on the ship are the same exact color as the ship itself, it's very unfinished looking, not from a lore perspective but from a development one. There are skeletons on the outside of the ship with examine text saying that, "A victim of war...looks like he's been dead for a while now.".
~ Hex Edit Detected ~
This is just hilarious, if I am remembering correctly this is an item that appeared as a trout, the name of said item is "Hex edit detected" and was given to players client side who attempted to use software to edit the game which, needless to say doesn't work. It's an MMO and you aren't Kaitnieks. Probably. When using a hex editor to try an change the amount of an item you have or view other items in the game this yellowish brown trout looking thing would replace what you were trying to look at. The funniest thing about it is the examine text which says, "Your IP has been logged and passed to Customer Support.", obviously this was to intimidate younger players, I'm not much of a tech kind of fox deer but I'm pretty sure there's no way of Jagex knowing what you did since it's client side. Also this item was added on the first of August, 2005. It was added to the game due to players trying to discover unreleased items, according to other sources the Abyssal whip and Granite maul before they were released were discovered by using hex editors.
~ Noted Item Replacements ~
A lot of nonsensical unused items were added to the RS2 cache around August of 2005, this was due to the fact that for some reason items could not be entirely removed from RuneScape in the files once they were implemented and these nonsensical items filled the spots of the items that had been removed from the game, so they are basically placeholders. Most of these take the appearance of pink skirts and have ridiculous names such as...
1. "Nezikchened's mum" with the examine text, "She wasn't pleased to see what her son did."
2. "Pretty girl".
3. "Weird snake" that takes on the appearance of a tomato with the examine text, "Slightly more spherical than most snakes".
4. "9mm revolver" with the examine text, "Kills people".
5. "Rotten net" with the examine text, "Pocketsized so it's handy when you're roving in the woods!".
~ Unused / Discontinued / General Random Events ~
There are two unused random events that everyone knows about at this point, the Speedy Gnome and Duke of Bridgelum events. The gnome one was cut due to bots being able to complete it easily and the Bridgelum event being cut due to it being too gruesome. There's also the discontinued random events such as the Ent, Whirlpool, Exploding Rock events which damaged your skilling tools and then the "Guardians", aggressive random events that would appear when training skills, these include the evil chicken (which appears when doing any skill), the zombie and shade (when burying bones), river troll for fishing, tree spirit when woodcutting, and rock golem when mining.
The Lost and Found Event: You would sometimes be teleported to the Abyss when casting a teleport spell, you couldn't move around but had to pull a lever without an eye on it (it was basically an eye stalk without the eye) to leave and you would be given one law rune and three air runes upon being teleported back out.
The Candlelight Event: In this event you were teleported to a church where you helped someone by the name of Pious Pete light candles inside of said church. The player would be given a lighter and be told to only light the candles that were already burnt down to the bases.
You of course had the less interesting events such as the strange box, swarm, poison gas, lost pirate, watchman, axe handle, Dr. Ford, and the infamous tangle vine which only lasted a few hours in the game if I remember correctly and can still be seen within the player owned house dungeon, but have you ever heard of the "worm" random event? I have heard of this long ago, supposedly a random event that would happen to the player when mining, a worm would come out of the ground but I do not remember what happens after this. This was a rumor back in the day and I can't recall where I read this from, I doubt this event existed but you never know.
The Savage bird... This is a thing of terrors and of nightmares. This is a random event that existed within the game cache from the 29th of March, 2004 and then removed on August 2nd, 2004. It would have shown up at random to attack players, I can't really describe this creature too well but it's a large beaked bird with no wings, completely red like it's missing it's feathers and flesh, orange eyes, and a thin neck and legs. What the hell was Jagex thinking, if I saw this damn thing in my slayer dungeon I would teleport to Camelot instantly and hide inside of the castle. Also, this event had the same model as the 2004 model of the Terrorbird just painted a dark crimson color.
Another piece of trivia would be that when Summoning was released some familiars could attack and even defeat aggressive random events similar to the situation back in RS1 / RSC where players were using third party software to defeat NPCs such as bankers. In both of these situations the NPCs wouldn't drop items.
~ The Feral Vampyre Count and Vampyric Hound ~
Two unused characters that would assumedly stalk the lands of Morytania, the Vampyric hound was put into the cache files on October 14th, 2004 while I am not sure of the Vampyre count. These two characters are only assumed to be related to one another, there's no evidence that shows they were a pair. For some reason on June 4th, 2007, the Vampyric hound was updated graphically despite still being unused, also it's examine information says, "And I shall call him Fang.". There's no information on the Count.
* An unrelated gif of a Hellhound because I love them.
~ Grayzag's Imps ~
Grayzag used to have a combat level of 41 in early RS2 and instead of talking with him he could be attacked, upon attacking him he would spawn (I think four?) dark colored imps to assist him. His examine text still refers to him as a "Master of imps" in OSRS, he still has dialogue regarding the Imp Catcher quest as well. In RSC / RS1 he was simply a nameless dark wizard with a combat level of 25, he did not have any unique examine text or dialogue but would still summon the dark imps. This is one of the only topics that I am not fully confident on, some information may be incorrect about the imps.
~ Necromancer ~
In RSC / RS1 the Necromancer inside of the Necromancer Tower was an attackable NPC with a combat level of 34 that transforms into a zombie when defeated and has a chance of dropping the Zamorak robe top, Zamorak robe bottom, Staff, Staff of Fire, and runes. This character was released on May 28th, 2002 and his examine text is, "A crazy evil necromancer", truly psychotic, wicked, and out of his mind to be sure. When fighting him he would summon zombies, in fact he would summon an unlimited amount of zombies due to the spaghetti code. There are two of these NPCs, one upstairs and one downstairs, something interested to note is that instead of the name "Necromancer" he was once named "Invrigar the necromancer" before the 10th of July, 2002. His name might have not been changed on this date but somewhere after it. There's an oversight where if you try talking with him after his name was changed it will still say his name, "Invrigar the necromancer is not interested in talking". It says this same dialogue for both of the necromancers, which isn't too odd considering RS1 / RSC had multiple NPCs to accommodate the amount of players playing and in the past it wasn't possible for two players to communicate with one NPC at a time, I have a few funny screenshots of players making lines when Dragon Slayer was released.
With the release of RS2 he was given his name back and now has the examine text, "An evil user of Magic powers". When fighting him he now only summons one zombie at a combat level of 13, it should also be said Invrigar now has a combat level of 20 and resides at the top of the Necromancer Tower. A new NPC was added downstairs which is oddly shorter than every other typical NPC but is not using a child model, his name is Irwin Feaselbaum and wears a unique red wizard hat. Irwin has dialogue for the Zogre Flesh Eaters quest when you use two specific quest items on him, the Necormancy book and Torn page, even though he is not involved in said quest. His examine text is, "A young assistant necromancer." A third character just being the Necromancer is also on the bottom floor and still drops Zamorak robes. On this bottom floor, behind the staircase, is a bookshelf with a search option but cannot be searched due to the stairs being in the way, how mysterious. Another bookshelf gives a hint about the Necromancy book.
There is nothing else to do in this tower, nor with these NPCs. I would assume Ivrigar was meant for a quest in RSC / RS1.
~ RSC / RS1 Extra Inventory Spaces ~
RuneScape used to have in-game notifications telling you to visit the advertisements on the top of the webpage before the release of membership, this wasn't very viable so the Gowers attempted to partner with a company named "Consodata" and utilize their "Yoptin" program where it would be inserted into RS1 / RSC, this program was a survey where players would fill out quite a lot of questions. If filled out this survey would give the player five additional inventory spaces. I have all of the graphics for this archived so I might show some. These inventory spaces were already programmed in the client since June 23, 2001 but went unused, the Yoptin deal never went through despite some folks thinking it did for a short time. All of the scripts / code relating to Yoptin was removed from the client around August and November 2001.
~ RSC / RS1 Glitches / Bugs / Oversights ~
The "Super strength Beer cheat". This was just a silly oversight where players could drink beer endlessly and the Strength boost would keep stacking up to 99. There's not much to be said on this one. The update post that mentioned this fix was on January 25th of 2001.
The knife glitch. This bug / glitch took place in 2002 and was caused by having a weapon in the first slot of your inventory and knives to the right of the weapon, you then need to be walking and click on the drop option on the weapon and then right click it again so the menu stays open. Your weapon should now be on the ground but the wield option will still be there, when selecting the wield option it would equip all knives you had within your inventory and for some reason the knives used to have stats which would stack with each knife in the inventory. I have no idea if this bug / glitch was always in the game or not, it would seem likely that it was, I also don't know what the max hit was should you have your entire inventory filled with knives. The maximum Weaponpower bonus was an 88 in RSC / RS1, due to me not knowing the exact date this was patched I'm not sure if Klank's / Steel gauntlets existed yet, dragon weapons may have been out at the time due to those being released very early in the year. I wish I knew the stats of the knife, if anyone has any information on this then send me a message.
Everybody knows about the Party hat duplication glitch that was caused by AutoRune so I won't bother mentioning it here, although some think that only Party hats were duped when any item could have been spawned with this "glitch" except stackable items. It also wasn't one player doing this but a few, as many of you know, Jagex were offering "life time membership" to those who explained how the glitch worked but when the players informed Jagex of this they were all supposedly banned. I don't think I even need to say anything about this, imagine being the player who knew how it technically worked but never used the program itself. AutoRune also allowed for attacking any unattackable NPCs as mentioned in other topics above on this post, allowed players to cast spells without runes or an NPC / player, have the player make themselves invisible at the make over mage (similar to making female characters have beards), and make players be able to kill themselves in the Wilderness.
- And now for a list of smaller, less note worthy glitches that have happened in the history of RS1 / RSC. The dates are when specific patch notes were released, not when the glitches were active. -
January 27th, 2001 - February 13th, 2001.
* An issue where players were able to shoot with range "super rapidly".
* An error was fixed in which a player could make double doors vanish by lighting a fire next to them, this would trap players inside buildings.
April 19th, 2001 - May 10th, 2001.
* Players seen in random areas such as out in the sea or on top of your own character. (A visual glitch, I suppose).
* The player would appear in the wrong area (perhaps when signing in or just teleporting randomly?).
* Some players not being able to use private messages.
* Shield and ore shop "didn't accept stock all of the time.".
* "Left side column of the inventory had a mouse focusing issue".
* An issue was fixed with range, when using ranged combat it would level other skills.
* Fixed an issue where it was not possible to mine gems.
* "Pottery menu wrong way around" was fixed. Whatever that means.
* "Server would sometimes send the wrong error message when logging in".
* The friends list would become blank during a lost connection.
June 12, 2001 - June 23, 2001.
* Making cakes no longer remove the flour pot.
* Food shops not working after completing pirate quest.
* Catching tuna didn't provide experience.
* A bug was fixed that caused a stack of zero coins to be spawned.
* A fix was implemented as it was not possible to pick up stackable items when the inventory was full.
* Balance was not shown correctly when leaving a bank.
* An issue was fixed when logging out while just being attacked.
* Another issue in which players would randomly appear on your friendslist.
* Lumbridge and Karamja shops would share the same stock, this was fixed.
August 13th, 2001 - August 18th, 2001.
* Low level archers were able to attack higher leveled players without being able to be attacked in return.
* Experience indicator would not update properly in the new stats menu.
* "Fixed seven minor bugs".
* A "kill stealing" issue was fixed and loot now goes to whoever did the most damage to an NPC instead of the person who got the last hit off, on top of this experience is split proportionally between everyone who helped defeat the NPC.
July 10th, 2002.
* An issue was present where players could teleport from the high level wilderness dungeon.
* Iron arrows were usable on free servers.
* You could get skulled by retaliating to a ranged attack.
* Shadow spiders wouldn't allow potions to run out.
* Arrows weren't stacking properly if players shot the same enemy at the same time.
* Recovery questions were shown as "not set".
* Attacking another player after a retreat caused an unspecified glitch.
* The player would randomly run in a random direction after a range kill.
November 6th, 2002.
* It was possible to get stuck behind a fence near the Dancing Donkey Inn, one of the Gowers told players in the update notes to stay away from it and that if you were already trapped to, "escape by clicking attack on an NPC on the opposite side of the fence, or by following another player on the other side of the fence". Any players that were trying to get others stuck in the fence were strangely banned as a punishment. A bit much, isn't it?
May 29th, 2003.
* "Seaweed works properly again." (Lol).
* Something with the Watchtower quest was fixed.
- Unknown dates, some were never fixed. -
* Players could go down the stairs and through the walls in the Legends' Guild.
* The underside of the bridge that leads to the Mage Arena was transparent.
* If an Eye patch is in the players inventory during the Watchtower quest it will provide more dialogue and the wizard will take the Eye patch, the issue is that there was a unique Eye patch made just for this quest that was supposed to be used instead but I assume the item IDs were mistakenly swapped with the quests script.
* This one actually some how exists in RS2 as well, the Khazard Bartender will give the player a beer for free if they do not have any coins.
* Jeremy Servil is unable to be spoken with after General Khazard is defeated. He's also very disrespectful and calls the player "sir" no matter what gender they are.
* There was a very well known bug after it was revealed involving the PID system, someone could sign out and have their PID be assigned to another player in the game and have them teleported to dangerous quest areas. Players could also receive experience at random due to this even if they never gained it themselves. I'm pretty sure this is a thing in RS2 and even still in OSRS, the experience part I mean.
* There's an issue with the Student wearing the pink clothing during the Digsite quest, talking to her after giving her an opal will reset the variable needed to progress and you will have to give her another opal to proceed.
* There were NPC duplication glitches that allowed NPCs to be spawned endlessly. I won't go into detail here on all of the instances.
* Players can tele from the strange barrels to the first room in the Legends Caverns by using a range weapon to attack Ungadulu.
* Absurdly high experience gained from Mourners.
* Magic spell casting was extremely quick before a patch added a timer.
* After a server maintenance all sleeping bags and beds would not work properly on all non-veteran servers.
* The well known Guthix claw oversight kept the spell animation on the ground where the player died, no players could pass this.
* Any players who some how got 2,147,483,647 of any item was disconnected and unable to sign in, it was patched on February 16th, 2015.
* Players some how were able to make mod crowns appear in the chat before a server reopening.
* For some reason some players have been sighted who had no names.
- Here's some that were never fixed. Thank you to the RuneScape Classic Wiki for compiling these so I don't have to go into my own archives again. -
* If an item / NPC is attacked or interacted with in any way, even examining after it is gone it will cause the game to crash. This was supposedly caused by a "rewrite of the action system" in 2009-2011.
* Some areas allow the player to go up ladders and the player will land out of bounds and can walk in the darkness before reaching an invisible wall.
* The Book of binding will still attempt to enchant vials despite what choice the player chooses.
* Scythes are allowed on Entrana.
* It's possible to gain melee experience without Hits experience due to an oversight with the fatigue system.
* Fishing Trawler has a few glitches, players disappearing at random (perhaps going into other instances), the ship never returning to the dock (lol), the east boat barely works with bailing buckets, the amount of work you do doesn't matter as the entire reward seems random.
* "Water world" glitch, while logging in sometimes all ground tiles are water tiles. Speculated to be caused by a bad connection.
* You can smuggle Gnome balls by teleporting out, telegrabbing, or by having a Gnome toss you the ball through the gate.
* Potion of Zamorak's last dose gives two more levels.
* As RSC was going near the end of it's lifespan the heat damage in the desert stopped working.
* You can remove scenery objects by using the charge spell, logging out and back in will fix this.
* Death messages sometimes appearing for no reason.
* Trade screen appearing for no reason, the user that requested the trade would always be listed as "null". Spooky.
* There's a small skip you can do in Legend's Quest that I won't go into detail with as it would take me a long time to explain.
* The infamous crystal chest bug.
* You can have two stacks of throwing darts if you equip some and then pick more off of the ground.
* NPCs sometimes respawn and have the text of other NPCs.
* Using 3rd party software you can request to duel someone in the Wilderness negating level requirements.
* The Golden bowl can be made successfully and fail at the same time.
* If you use bots to gain the "maximum experience" in a skill it will go into the negatives.
~ Statue of a Warrior ~
There are so many conflicting stories about this statue found in the Wilderness, north east of Edgeville. It's a lone, stone statue with green scenery around it and was added to the game on the 29th of March, 2004. Despite this date some say it was added in memory of The Old Nite after his passing which took place in 2006, there are multiple accounts of players and Jmods which contradict each other on this, sometimes even contradicting Jmod statements. Mod Osborne says and I quote, "The statue is indeed a reference to the Old Nite, not Camorra. There are a few other statues that mention her, but that one is not one of them.", to which my response to this is... Why and how? Obviously The Old Nite has been around for a very long time and was known as a great person but so were many other players, the statue itself simply says upon examining it, "This person was of great importance", it makes no mention of him. Why is it even in the Wilderness? He wasn't known for PKing.
This quote comes from a non-trustworthy Youtuber by the name of "rswillmissit" who also took footage from me and others without permission and without crediting us, he shows what looks like text messages between him and Osborne where Osborne supposedly said this quote, in rswillmissit's video he then says Osborne followed up with, "the statue was added after his passing". This is a blatant lie and I don't think it's coming from Mod Osborne, I think rswillmiss it made this up but that is speculation by me, all I know is someone is indeed not being honest for some reason which is shameful considering this is about a dead man who has done good for the RuneScape community. The Old Nite passed away in 2006, NOT in 2004 when the statue was added. I have a set of files from rswillmissit that supposedly belong to Rab, the first RuneScape player, I will talk about these files in the future as honestly, I don't know if they come from Rab or not it feels like they were made up by rswillmissit but that is just more speculation from me. There's absolutely no reason for a Jmod to lie about this specific situation but there would be value in doing so to a Youtuber who makes clickbait.
There's evidence that these chatlogs / messages between rswillmissit and Mod Osborne are entirely fabricated as well aside from the fact the statue existed before Nites passing. Postbag from the hedge, issue 20 mentions that Camorra defeated the dragon Garak who destroyed a number of villagers near the Wilderness. This statue model is the same one used for Camorra elsewhere such as inside the Heroes' Guild. The final nail in the coffin is that the statue was eventually graphically updated to be that of a woman warrior with a sword. So much for calling himself a "RuneScape historian", more like a RuneScape history rewriter.
~ Tarn's Lair ~
This is specifically about the zombies in Tarn's Lair and their strange drop tables. You can get drops such as fishing potions (one dose), pot lids, empty plant pots, oak planks, gold ore, unholy moulds, earth orbs, tiles, nails, pots of flour, bowls of water, cannonballs, and they have access to the rare drop table. These drops are from the level 40-56 zombies, I will list the others. Note, these are not all of the drops just some of the more noteworthy ones. Also all of these zombies drop combo runes.
Level 61-80 (Thank you, OSRS Wiki).
Willow shortbow, leather boots, rune warhammer, rune nails, ranging potion (3 dose), fire orb, magic logs, mithril bar, ring of dueling (3 charges), holy mould, 1/128 for garlic, cup of tea, adamant plateskirt, mithril full helm, mithril kiteshield, steel spear (p++), and more.
Level 81-100.
Black sq shield, black axe, rune battleaxe, leather gloves, mithril pickaxe, mithril 2h sword, 1/128 for 7 addy bolts, black nails, noted dwellberries, noted hard leather, pestle and mortar, white berries, 1/128 for adamant bar, and 1/128 for a pot of cream.
I may understand the reason for these strange drop tables as I have implemented something similar in my own game, Crescent Quest. In case I've made a mistake somewhere in the game, an oversight where the player cannot get an item or traps themselves some how, I have made certain foes drop obscure items that aren't obtainable almost anywhere else. There may be a time when I've accidentally made an item unobtainable otherwise so I threw a bunch of items on one drop table, on an obscure NPC. This is the same area where you can also get a granite helm from terror dogs so there may be some truth to this, the only other place to get a granite helm is from Barbarian Assault on a high gamble (I think you can also purchase it from there too?). This place is just filled with obscure items.
~ Strange Barrels ~
Strange barrels were released on August 20th, 2003 along with the Legend's Quest. During the Legend's Quest you navigate the Viyeldi Caves where these barrels can be found. These barrels are unique in that when interacting with them they can either spawn a randomly chosen monster or item, it can sometimes spawn both of these things as well. According to the RSC Wiki the player has a 20/30 chance to spawn a monster, a 27/30 chance to spawn an item, and a 3/30 chance for the barrel to explode causing 0-20 damage which does not spawn a monster or an item. The player also has a 7/8 chance of failing to open the barrel which decreases the players Attack by 1-3 levels.
7/30 chance to spawn nothing.
1/30 to spawn a Chaos Dwarf, Black Knight, Dark Warrior, Dark Wizard, Death Wing, Deadly Red Spider, Giant, Giant Bat, Hobgoblin, Giant Spider, Moss Giant, Rat (varying levels), Mugger, Scorpion, Skeleton (varying levels), and a Zombie (varying levels).
1/128 to spawn an adamant, bronze, iron, mithril, rune, and steel throwing knives and most dart versions of those.
3/512 chance of an air, water, earth, and fire runes.
1/128 chance for a snake weed.
1/128 for bread, cheese, half a meat pie, half a redberry pie, half an apple pie, pineapple, slice of cake, and a spinach roll.
1/128 for a one dose defense potion, prayer potion, and strength potion.
10/16,384 for many different kinds of certs.
37/128 for rocks.
1/128 for bow string, bronze pickaxe, casket, 100 coins, gold bar, logs, paramaya rest ticket, rope, ship ticket, steel pickaxe, tinderbox, and a torch.
It goes without saying but these are the drop rates for each specific item, obviously all of those don't drop at the same time. At a specific point in Legend's Quest if the player doesn't have a rope then there is a changed drop rare of 21/128 of receiving a rope. This reminds me of the drop rate increase in RS2 of getting a shield right half from Goraks. If you've never experienced the pleasure of resting at the Paramaya Inn then I feel sorry for you, bub.
~ Out of Bounds ~
There are many things that reside out of the playable map in RuneScape, one of the more well known ones is the unused section of the God Wars dungeon where the player would have had to navigate an underwater ravine filled with sunken ships, skeletons, and giant bones of various and unknown creatures to reach K'ril Tsutsaroth's room. I assume this was cut due to the amount of time it would take to get there as opposed to the other boss rooms. There's inaccessible areas in random event rooms as well such as the Drill Demon's event, however this was explorable at one point in time, or at least I remember it was, you could walk around and see a whole lot of tents with objects inside. There's some interesting things about Tutorial Island should you some how return there, a lot of fail safes. I do not know when these were added but if you return to Tutorial Island through glitches some characters there such as the ironman tutors in OSRS will have unique dialogue asking how you got back there.
There's other fail safes like this such as a few in Morytania if you some how get there as a level 3, the snails, a random NPC from Temple Trekking, and a feral vampyre will teleport you to the church just outside of Morytania at random intervals.
~ Monkey Skull ~
This is an item that was in the game itself from December 6th, 2004, with the release of Monkey Madness, it was never made obtainable but I wouldn't call it "unused" as the item itself could be seen behind one of those wooden (bamboo?) doors within the Temple of Marimbo Dungeon (Ape Atoll Dungeon). There was supposedly no way of opening this locked door, it's safe to say there was never a way to open it making it fairly mysterious, especially the item itself that rests beyond the door. This monkey skull was made obtainable on February 22nd, 2010, with the release of zombie implings which have a 1/3,000 chance of giving you the skull. The skull also became available in OSRS on March 5th, 2015. In both of these instances once the skull is obtained it can be taken to Zooknock to be turned into an Ancient gorilla greegree. This greegree always existed within the cache files on the release day of Monkey Madness, however even more interestingly, the examine text for this item was changed sometime between October 4th, 2005 to February 7th, 2006.
The examine text used to say, "A magical talisman in the shape of a monkey head. The eyes glow bright red!", this was changed to, "A magical talisman in the shape of a mysterious monkey head. The eyes glow bright red!". Was this Jagex messing with the players who were looking into the games internals? Funnily enough there were players talking about this item despite it not being in the game, I could find one forum post from 2007 on it. The form in which you take from this greegree is simply one of those gorilla guards but with a blue face which looks like a placeholder model, the color of blue and the shape around the model where the blue is, it's just unfinished but perhaps that's what it always looked like since 2004, I could probably check in my archives and see if this model existed back then whenever I have the time. Something to note though is that the greegree is indeed blue and even appears to have red eyes although the actual model you take on as a gorilla does not. Was the original intent really a blue faced gorilla or something else?
~ Unused 2007 Crystal Axe ~
There was another reward intended for The Eyes of Glouphrie quest instead of the Crystal saw, that being a Crystal axe. Sadly, I do not know if there are stats associated with this axe or if it would have been better than a Dragon axe regarding said stats. There is a model for the axe as well four sound effects relating to it, a recharge sound for the singing bowl, a slash attack sound effect, a crush attack sound effect, and a sound effect for using it on a tree. It also looks better than the OSRS version of the axe, this isn't an opinion from me either, a lot of new OSRS items don't fit the aesthetic of the old game, they lack detail and are cartoon-looking. I will provide screenshots here of both for comparison. I can't say if the one in RS3 is more tolerable or not. Anyway, a part of me thinks it would have been on par with the Dragon axe but offered something else in return. I just have that feeling.
~ Peach Dragon Square Shield ~
There's nothing really to be said about this one, during the RS2 beta the Dragon sq. shield was a peach color instead of red for some reason. It could have just been a placeholder until the non-beta release of RuneScape 2. Also the shield left half was sold by the Legends' Guild by accident around this time, just thought I'd point that out.
* A list of some of the things that fascinate me about RuneScape or video games as a whole, my favorite thing about a game will always be the intrigue and mysteries about them, the unused content, the strange easter eggs, the question of why a developer added something. I wrote these down as they came to my mind one at a time so there's no order to them. I hope you enjoy this kind of stuff as much as I do. It should be said that I apologize for any strange capitalization, I'm following how RuneScape does it with it's items. All images belong to their respective owners, RuneScape is owned by Jagex. I am not affiliated with Jagex or RuneScape.
~ The Golden Tools Mystery / Hidden Luck Stat Theory ~
Everyone knows about snagging the gold tools during the Priest in Peril quest (and how much it sucks that you can't use them), but I've always wondered if this has some kind of effect on the game. If you miss your chance to get the golden tools (if I am remembering properly you have a very small window to actually pick them up before you use your silver key) then your character will say something along the lines of "something bad will happen if I mess with these", or at least that's what I remember from 2006 and then from OSRS later on, I know they actually very weirdly changed dialogue during that quest after RS2. I remember the king of Varrock used to call you "mentally deficient" from 2004 to whatever year they changed it in, probably around 2016 in OSRS. Now he just calls you an imbecile. Supposedly according to Jagex mentally deficient people aren't allowed to exist in the world of Gielinor.
Anyway, as I was saying, I can't remember the dialogue exactly but your character implies bad things will happen if you take those tools. Why is it that they only programmed this line after the quest is complete and not during it when you have the silver key? Your character has no issue with taking the golden tools during the quest but afterwards? He refuses to take them. Also what bad things happen when taking them? I've always had the idea of a hidden "luck" stat in RuneScape when I was younger and I still do, I think it may have been a genuine possibility at the time. I'm not that familiar with how things work in online games when it comes to server sided code, but is it possible that something such as an invisible luck system could be in place without players being able to see it? I know Jagex was not very secure back in the day with their servers considering the item duplication / spawning bug happened from Kaitnieks but all that online stuff was pretty new.
If a hidden luck stat was / is possible what would it effect? I highly doubt they would implement something as severe as higher item drop rates just because you stole a quest item, RuneScape has always been a very forgiving MMO in comparison to other MMOs at the time. I have no theories on what it would effect, honestly. It's just strange that the game allows you to take the golden tools to begin with and even adds dialogue after the quest (technically just after that section of the quest) is completed. I can think of a few other examples of this like the Temple of Ikov and Hazeel Cult quests where you have decisions to make which effects the outcome and you receive different items depending on which sides you choose. Hooray... uh, Carnillean armor and an Armadyl Pendant... I suppose the pendant would kind of have a use years later for the GWD if you didn't have anything else. By the way, why was the Hazeel mark item red in the RS2 beta, yellow in 2004, and then white in OSRS? Also why is the Armadyl pendants gem white on male characters but red on female characters? The Lathas' amulet which was removed from the game in 2004 has the same model as the Armadyl pendant yet the gem is red for both male and females. This stuff fascinates me so much.
~ The Blurberry Badge / Gianne Badge ~
The Blurberry Badge, supposedly released in 2002 is an item that was found in the code of RuneScape but no reports of players obtaining it have surfaced. It's examine text says, "An official cocktail maker" and the item itself is not within the cache / code of RS2, RS3, or OSRS. It was only in RSC. It's the same deal with the Gianne Badge, except the description for this one says, "an official gianne chef", all lowercase, which most likely means it is unfinished and was not in the game. It's strange that the Blurberry badge has capitalization though. I'm interested to know if these are equipable or not, if so, what would be the point of wearing them? Cosmetics in RSC are non-existent for the most part outside of the holiday items for Christmas, Halloween, Easter so having another item that appears on your character would be interesting. The only thing you really would see people wear in RSC is a rune platebody, rune platelegs, dragon med, legends cape, dragon sq, etc. Or a rune chain if you wanted Klank's gaunts. That was your verity. The badges could of also been as simple as proving you were hired as a cook for the minigame, or maybe it would be mandatory to wear it during the minigame itself.
Not much else can be said about this.
~ Sweets ~
Why did Jagex choose purple sweets from all of the other colors of sweets from the 05 Halloween event? Purple is an excellent color but still, why not keep all of the sweets in the game instead of just the purple ones? They had green, pink, red, white, blue, dark blue, and then the purple ones. I also find it strange how it almost seemed like they were going with the same colors as party hats but then added an additional blue variant. And yes, I consider the "purple" phat in RSC to be pink. Did they keep the purple ones for the same reason as why the purple party hat has the lowest drop rate from a cracker, purple being a royal color and all. By the way, in more recent times I was hearing about a rumor of a "black partyhat" that was supposedly implemented in RSC at the same time as the others, you'd think the people behind the item creation / spawning / duping exploit would of seen it! Or you know, someone taking a screenshot of it. It is stated that Jagex turned these black partyhats into purple or white ones months after their release. I don't know why I decided to bring this rumor up, I just thought it was funny I suppose.
~ Ring of Wealth Hidden Effect / Clue Scroll Caskets ~
I've sometimes worn a ring of wealth when I was younger, I always thought about the ring of wealth giving an additional effect aside from what is already known such as it removing empty slots on the rare drop table and having that currency pick up effect (was that pick up toggle always on the ring? I don't remember that). It always seemed very suspicious to me that there would be a ring in the game with such a useless effect, if rings were enchantable in 2001-2003 during the RSC era it would be extremely useful as the rare drop table had more of a use in that version of the game since dragon med helms and dragon sq shield were best in slot. Maybe they had that effect in mind originally but delayed it to 2004. Do you know what else came out in 2004? Treasure trails. The ring of wealth and treasure trails were released one month a part from each other. Fast forward to around 2016-2017, I'm playing on my HCIM on OSRS while watching a recording of a jmod couch stream, this stream was an older one as if I'm remembering correctly it was before HCIM was released. I can't remember the date of the stream but it was a stream by jagex (OSRS team) about RuneScape (OSRS / RS2) myths and rumors and saying which ones are real and which ones aren't.
During this stream a jmod just casually mentions that the RoW effects clue scroll rewards, specifically the rarer clue loot tables (third age / gilded table). I've actually just found the stream now and it's just as I remember it, the jmods ask players to guess whether a myth is true or not and they correct the players who voted true or false if they are wrong. This specific question was, "wearing a ring of wealth upon completing a clue scroll will give you better loot". 82% of players guessed no out of 403 votes and then were corrected by the jmods on the couch who said it was true, there was no laughing or jokes, they said it honestly and proceeded to elaborate more which is when they mentioned that it effects the "rare drop clue table". It should be noted that the jmods were actually wrong on some of the other myths, so perhaps they are not a reliable source. The jmods said the chance increase is miniscule and then asked an rs3 developer who was in the room if it was the same in rs3 as well, to which, unsurprisingly, they said they don't know. At the end of the day, what do rs3 developers know? Anyway, there's no proof either way for this one but it is strange how almost all of the jmods agreed it did have an effect on clue scrolls.
~ The Spinach Roll ~
Even though I first played RuneScape in very late 2005 (I often say 2006 to keep it simple, I started so late in 2005 that it may as well be in 2006) I have still played RSC when they relaunched the servers and also in PS's later on as well, I also went back on when they officially closed for good and recorded footage of it closing for memories sake. I say this because I was not around for when the spinach roll gave a supposed 5+ strength boost before the first of December in 2001, it's not known when this boost was removed. They also supposedly stacked with strength potions and may have even stacked with other spinach rolls endlessly similar to the infinite beer strength boost. If you are wondering why I am writing about this item it's just due to the fact of how hard it is to come by and it's strange history, the first time it was introduced into the game seems to be through Traiborn as both Traiborn and the roll were added on January 4th 2001, then were added to moss giants, then Christmas crackers, then to the crystal chest when it was released in February 27th 2002 (not sure if spinach rolls were always a drop from the chest, being the RS archiver / historian that I am I should probably know this), and finally to the strange barrels in Legend's Quest from 20th of August in 2003.
~ Time, Reality, and Illusion Runes ~
There's a few unused runes in RSC that seem interesting, I'm obviously not going to mention every single piece of unused content in this post but I figure I'd just show these off cause they are intriguing. I won't mention the life rune because everyone knows about that one and how it was going to be used for a form of necromancy / summoning.
Time Rune - "An incredibly rare master rune!"
Reality Rune - "An incredibly rare master rune!"
Illusion Rune - "An incredibly rare master rune!"
These runes just have a blank rune essence sprite unlike the unused life rune which shows a sun and were removed from the game files in June 2001. I really want to know what these would have been used for, I assume the reality / illusion runes were connected in the same way other rune pairings go such as chaos / law and mind / body. I actually just had a thought as I am writing this, it seems if the life rune was added it would of fit well with the death rune. It's interesting that there is a "rune essence" sprite in RSC to begin with but it was most likely a placeholder when creating the designs for the runes themselves and the Gowers probably just placed the design on top of the blank one, I'm not sure if they planned to have runecrafting back then or not.
~ Bonzara the Monkey ~
I've never encountered this guy before, he is a monkey dressed in purple with what looks like a staff or crozier with the symbol of Marimbo on the top of it. He can only be encountered just at the end of Monkey Madness after you defeat the jungle demon and the gnomes leave the platform, after this you can enter a gorilla statue in which you are now in his domain. Unless my dates are wrong, Monkey Madness was released in December 6th of 2004 yet Bonzara was released in February 22nd 2005. Bonzara was also in the games cache on the same release date as Monkey Madness. It's a mystery as to why Jagex added him as all he does is teleport you to the northern woods of Ape Atoll if you tell him you need help. He has very interesting dialogue...
"It looks like you're trying to escape. Would you like some help?"
"No thank you. Who are you by the way?"
"Never mind that child. You should worry more about who you are and the nature of the forces that have driven you here."
"I'll ... keep that in mind, thanks."
"We WILL meet again, (says the players username)."
If you tell him that you would like to leave...
"I ... uh ... yes."
"Right you are."
It should be noted that you do not need a m'speak amulet to speak with him, nor do you need a greegree. His examine text says, "A small monkey dressed in purple clothes. He looks like a priest.". I just realized how funny it would be if a Marimbo general was a boss in the GWD, they would probably have a bunch of bonzaras running around.
~ Removed / Unused / Altered Content Oddities ~
It goes without saying that there is a lot of removed and altered content in the time RuneScape has been around, however there is very obscure things that not many know of. As it's been a while since I wrote the above posts I had forgotten if I mentioned this but when most players think of the original color of rune equipment, which was purple, they think of bright purple when it was originally a more brownish-purple color. It didn't look much different than iron which is most likely why they altered it for release. Speaking of drastic changes, the camo outfit which was released in October of 2005 used to be an actual bush the player would wear, there was still three pieces of the outfit though. This set had the same textures as most other bushes and regular trees in the game and lasted until April 10th 2006. I actually have no photos of this in my archives and I have never seen footage of this, I only know about it due to a recent cache discovery of an older version of the game.
Speaking of the recent cache discovery, the dragon full helm was going to be released in the same update as The Fremennik Isles, it's original look was completely different and jarring than what we received with the final version of the helm. It was also going to be like the dragon square shield where the player would require two parts of the helmet to assemble it. It's not known how it (the two pieces) would be obtained originally. The chewed bones thing has always stood out to me as being odd, so the fact there was another (most likely more fitting) way to obtain the helm makes sense. Saying the original vision for the helm is "jarring" is not to be understated, it looks like a character from NiGHTs into Dreams.
The "Elem longsword" in the RuneScape 2 Beta, short for elemental. Supposedly it was to be a reward in the Elemental Workshop quest. This weapon was deleted from the game just before the end of the RS2 beta and the elemental shield took it's place. It's examine text states, "A razor sharp elemental Longsword." and there are no stats for the weapon. Another note is that it was released on the first of December in 2003, supposedly removed somewhere around January to March of 2004. It could be seen in some screenshots taken by a Gower, I forgot which one, the screenshots I am thinking of, you could see the sword in his inventory. Also the sword is bright purple.
A Soul talisman was added during the RS2 Beta on December 1st, 2003 (the release of the RS2 Beta). It's obvious why this wasn't released but perhaps they intended for soul runes to be a part of Runecrafting back then which is interesting. There was no Blood talisman in RS2 to go along with this. A Soul tiara was added to the cache in the June 13, 2005 update which was an update about Runecrafting.
For the Death Plateau quest there were going to be colored pots instead of the stone balls which was an interesting choice. These were used in the RS2 Beta instead of the stone balls. There were two other items in this quest, the "Secret way map" which looks different than the standard RS2 one and the "Horse shoe" which appears as Desert boots. It is theorized that the Horse shoe was going to be used instead of the Spiked boots.
There's an unused "Farmer's fork" item added on March 29th, 2004. It's not very interesting though.
Enough of RuneScape 2 for now, let's look at RS1 / RSC. There are a few notable items that are unused in RuneScape 1, that being the "Present" and crowns. Crowns were to be a wearable item much like other pieces of jewelry and very similar in appearance to party hats, the item sprite for crowns are said to have existed on May 8th, 2001 (speculated by the writer on the RSC wiki), this is when jewelry crafting was released into the game. As with other jewelry the crowns had a single gem in the middle, the color of which depends on the gem used when crafting the crown, although it is said on the same wiki that the gem would have been "recolorable", although there is no source for this. It's not known what these crowns (crown?) would have been used for.
The Present is another unused item that has the appearance of a blue, square gift with red ribbons. It's examine text says, "Click to use this on a friend" and is speculated to have been used for a 2002 Christmas event, could have contained a Santa's hat, and perhaps was going to be used in 2003 before Andrew Gower made the news post about not wanting to make more holiday event drops due to folks missing out. I don't agree with the speculation of it containing a Santa's hat, there's no proof of this. The Present also has an "open" command which contradicts what it says in the examine text. Something of note is that the Present looks very similar both in shape and color to the Bauble Box from the 2005 Christmas event.
The Mace of Zamorak, it has eight aim and six power, truly a force to not mess with. The examine text is, "This mace gives me the creeps". If I don't have any information to go off of from my own archives I often consult the wiki for this but there is no information on this mace there either, none in my archives, so this is all speculation by myself personally. You may think this mace is a quest item, I would think so too, however it has an actual high alch value which for some reason is fairly high for RS1 standards, that being 2,700 while thee low alch is 1,800. It also says the item is tradeable, although that doesn't mean much since some quest items were indeed tradeable in RS1 / RSC such as Silverlight. The thing is, Silverlight has a high alch value of 30, and I'll be honest it has been a while since I played RSC and even then I don't think I checked if Silverlight can be alched, nor do I know if this mace can be alched. The Silverlight can be re-obtained though so perhaps that is the reason why one of these items is 30 and the other item is 2,700 if we assume the mace is a quest item. Points against my theory that it isn't a quest item can be the fact that the maces stats are so bad that there would be no point to add it but that might be why it was unobtainable. The Mace of Zamorak has the same stats as the iron mace, so this confuses me greatly. You know what, I'm starting to think it was a quest item now.
The Bloody axe of zamorak, honestly this is the same story as the mace although it does have a unique sprite not seen on any other item in RS1. It is different in appearance to all other axes and battle axes although it has 9 aim and 13 power which is the same as the iron battle axe but has a high alch value of 3,000. I'm fairly certain these two weapons are connected, perhaps the mace was an early version of this axe as the mace does not have a unique sprite. For some reason, unlike the mace, the Bloody axe of zamorak is not tradeable.
~ Test / Developer / Jmod Items ~
There have been many developer items in the history of RuneScape so let's start with RS1 / RSC.
The Superchisel is an assumed developer item that has the appearance of an unstrung diamond amulet, it also has the examine text of an unechanted amulet. It has the option to "twiddle" it and the high alch value is 2,115 which is the same as an unstrung diamond amulet. Aside from that there's nothing else I know about it. There's another item like this that is a blue sphere called a ResetCrystal, it has a darker blue sprite than the Locating Crystal. The ResetCrystal has an option called "activate" and the examine text says "Helps reset things in game". It has a high alch value of 60.
Moving onto RS2, the Crunchy staff. Named after the famous skeleton this staff could originally be seen in the 2003 detail select screen held by an unnamed wizard standing next to a knight, I'm not sure why it's named after the skeleton, perhaps he used to be the wizard in said select screen. The staff was added to the game in December of 2003 during the RS2 Beta and had the funny examine text of, "Avoid contact with eyes" and the options of, " 1-N, 1-E, 1-S, 1-W" along with a drop option. As you could guess this staff would teleport the user in any direction as they pleased, even to unreachable areas. It had the absurd high alch value of 600,000 and it's regular value of 1,000,000 made it the most valuable item in the game when it was added. The staff itself does not have a unique appearance, it looks the same as the staff of air. This staff could also be seen in some RS2 Beta screenshots I have in my archive.
I'm not going to mention the Rotten potato that was added on July 11th, 2005, everyone already knows about it.
"Ians helper" is another item used for testing, it has the appearance of the RS2 Beta Christmas cracker and it's examine text says, "Click for options!". This item had an "operate" option but it is unknown what exactly it did.
The ResetCrystal makes a return from RS1 / RSC to the RS2 Beta, this time it has the same exact appearance as the Locating crystal. Like most other developer items, what it did is unknown.
"Helpful device" is yet another RS2 Beta test item, you would think one universal item would do but I suppose not. This item looks exactly like the RS2 Beta skull item and the examine text says, "Not for children!". It's options are as follows, "Heal-me", "Kill-me", "Equip-me", and the drop option. It has no alch value and was added to the game in December 2003 and removed from the game somewhere in January 2004.
The last known RS2 test item was known as the "Crasher", it has the same appearance and examine text as the Gnomeball. I'm not sure if the name is just misleading or if it actually did crash worlds.
~ Ahab's Beer ~
Ahab is a unique NPC who sits at the Rusty Anchor Inn in Port Sarim, he is a sailor who seems to be in the game simply to make the world feel more lived in, he is obsessed with his one of a kind item which is named, "Ahab's beer". This beer is special in that it cannot be obtained, you can try to telegrab it and Ahab will yell at you for trying to do so and tell you to stop casting spells on his drink. After completing Dragon Slayer Ahab will ask you if you have a boat he can have to which your character will say no.
There's something extremely odd that happened in OSRS on February 26th, 2015. There was an update to the game on this date that added the Grand Exchange, I would have to assume every item value in the game was altered but there's no mention of that in the games update notes for this date. The reason I mention this is because the item value for Ahab's beer went from 2 to 1. This was either done to troll or it was a genuine change of the global item values which also effected this unobtainable item. I've looked into it further and there's no mention of other item values being changed after this update.
~ RS1 / RSC Display Tea ~
This is an interesting item from RS1 / RSC, the Display tea could only be obtained by using tele grab near the tea stall in east Varrock. This version of the tea cannot be consumed, along with this strangeness if the player drops the tea they cannot pick it up. The examine text says, " A nice cup of tea - for display only". Folks were using this tea in scams so Jagex renamed the tea to the regular "Cup of tea" and made the Display tea untradeable. Along with this the Display tea which rested on the tea stall was replaced with a normal Cup of tea. Oddly enough the examine text of the Display tea was changed as well, instead of the RS1 / RSC examine text it now says, "A refreshing cuppa.". I'm unsure if this tea still exists in RS3, if it does I am certain it's rare, perhaps not as rare as the Karamja war ship or Broken dragon plate but still fairly rare.
~ Karamja War Ship ~
In RS1 / RSC the model of a Karamjan war ship can be found on Ghlough's dresser in the Tree Gnome Stronghold, it was released on the 12th of December in 2002. The option on it is "play with" and when doing so you get this dialogue, "You pretend to sail the ship across the floor. You soon become very bored, and realise you look quite silly.". It's examine text says, "A model of a karamja warship". This item is considered one of the rarest items in all of RuneScape as it's spawn was removed during the transition from RS1 to RS2, the only way players could still have this is if they had the item before the transition. Also it looks kind of glitched in RS2 and RS3 when dropped on the ground, although the option to do so was removed and replaced with a "destroy" option. By the way, the model of the boat is the same one used when traveling by charter ships.
~ Mysterious Wilderness Ship and Volcano ~
There's not a lot to say on this one, there's a large metal ship with torn, white flags at the very end of the Wilderness near the volcano. The volcano itself is also a mystery, there's nothing to be seen there. Perhaps the ship and volcano were meant for yet another pirate related quest. On second inspection instead of it looking like a metal ship it seems it also could be covered in ash? The barrels and cannons on the ship are the same exact color as the ship itself, it's very unfinished looking, not from a lore perspective but from a development one. There are skeletons on the outside of the ship with examine text saying that, "A victim of war...looks like he's been dead for a while now.".
~ Hex Edit Detected ~
This is just hilarious, if I am remembering correctly this is an item that appeared as a trout, the name of said item is "Hex edit detected" and was given to players client side who attempted to use software to edit the game which, needless to say doesn't work. It's an MMO and you aren't Kaitnieks. Probably. When using a hex editor to try an change the amount of an item you have or view other items in the game this yellowish brown trout looking thing would replace what you were trying to look at. The funniest thing about it is the examine text which says, "Your IP has been logged and passed to Customer Support.", obviously this was to intimidate younger players, I'm not much of a tech kind of fox deer but I'm pretty sure there's no way of Jagex knowing what you did since it's client side. Also this item was added on the first of August, 2005. It was added to the game due to players trying to discover unreleased items, according to other sources the Abyssal whip and Granite maul before they were released were discovered by using hex editors.
~ Noted Item Replacements ~
A lot of nonsensical unused items were added to the RS2 cache around August of 2005, this was due to the fact that for some reason items could not be entirely removed from RuneScape in the files once they were implemented and these nonsensical items filled the spots of the items that had been removed from the game, so they are basically placeholders. Most of these take the appearance of pink skirts and have ridiculous names such as...
1. "Nezikchened's mum" with the examine text, "She wasn't pleased to see what her son did."
2. "Pretty girl".
3. "Weird snake" that takes on the appearance of a tomato with the examine text, "Slightly more spherical than most snakes".
4. "9mm revolver" with the examine text, "Kills people".
5. "Rotten net" with the examine text, "Pocketsized so it's handy when you're roving in the woods!".
~ Unused / Discontinued / General Random Events ~
There are two unused random events that everyone knows about at this point, the Speedy Gnome and Duke of Bridgelum events. The gnome one was cut due to bots being able to complete it easily and the Bridgelum event being cut due to it being too gruesome. There's also the discontinued random events such as the Ent, Whirlpool, Exploding Rock events which damaged your skilling tools and then the "Guardians", aggressive random events that would appear when training skills, these include the evil chicken (which appears when doing any skill), the zombie and shade (when burying bones), river troll for fishing, tree spirit when woodcutting, and rock golem when mining.
The Lost and Found Event: You would sometimes be teleported to the Abyss when casting a teleport spell, you couldn't move around but had to pull a lever without an eye on it (it was basically an eye stalk without the eye) to leave and you would be given one law rune and three air runes upon being teleported back out.
The Candlelight Event: In this event you were teleported to a church where you helped someone by the name of Pious Pete light candles inside of said church. The player would be given a lighter and be told to only light the candles that were already burnt down to the bases.
You of course had the less interesting events such as the strange box, swarm, poison gas, lost pirate, watchman, axe handle, Dr. Ford, and the infamous tangle vine which only lasted a few hours in the game if I remember correctly and can still be seen within the player owned house dungeon, but have you ever heard of the "worm" random event? I have heard of this long ago, supposedly a random event that would happen to the player when mining, a worm would come out of the ground but I do not remember what happens after this. This was a rumor back in the day and I can't recall where I read this from, I doubt this event existed but you never know.
The Savage bird... This is a thing of terrors and of nightmares. This is a random event that existed within the game cache from the 29th of March, 2004 and then removed on August 2nd, 2004. It would have shown up at random to attack players, I can't really describe this creature too well but it's a large beaked bird with no wings, completely red like it's missing it's feathers and flesh, orange eyes, and a thin neck and legs. What the hell was Jagex thinking, if I saw this damn thing in my slayer dungeon I would teleport to Camelot instantly and hide inside of the castle. Also, this event had the same model as the 2004 model of the Terrorbird just painted a dark crimson color.
Another piece of trivia would be that when Summoning was released some familiars could attack and even defeat aggressive random events similar to the situation back in RS1 / RSC where players were using third party software to defeat NPCs such as bankers. In both of these situations the NPCs wouldn't drop items.
~ The Feral Vampyre Count and Vampyric Hound ~
Two unused characters that would assumedly stalk the lands of Morytania, the Vampyric hound was put into the cache files on October 14th, 2004 while I am not sure of the Vampyre count. These two characters are only assumed to be related to one another, there's no evidence that shows they were a pair. For some reason on June 4th, 2007, the Vampyric hound was updated graphically despite still being unused, also it's examine information says, "And I shall call him Fang.". There's no information on the Count.
* An unrelated gif of a Hellhound because I love them.
~ Grayzag's Imps ~
Grayzag used to have a combat level of 41 in early RS2 and instead of talking with him he could be attacked, upon attacking him he would spawn (I think four?) dark colored imps to assist him. His examine text still refers to him as a "Master of imps" in OSRS, he still has dialogue regarding the Imp Catcher quest as well. In RSC / RS1 he was simply a nameless dark wizard with a combat level of 25, he did not have any unique examine text or dialogue but would still summon the dark imps. This is one of the only topics that I am not fully confident on, some information may be incorrect about the imps.
~ Necromancer ~
In RSC / RS1 the Necromancer inside of the Necromancer Tower was an attackable NPC with a combat level of 34 that transforms into a zombie when defeated and has a chance of dropping the Zamorak robe top, Zamorak robe bottom, Staff, Staff of Fire, and runes. This character was released on May 28th, 2002 and his examine text is, "A crazy evil necromancer", truly psychotic, wicked, and out of his mind to be sure. When fighting him he would summon zombies, in fact he would summon an unlimited amount of zombies due to the spaghetti code. There are two of these NPCs, one upstairs and one downstairs, something interested to note is that instead of the name "Necromancer" he was once named "Invrigar the necromancer" before the 10th of July, 2002. His name might have not been changed on this date but somewhere after it. There's an oversight where if you try talking with him after his name was changed it will still say his name, "Invrigar the necromancer is not interested in talking". It says this same dialogue for both of the necromancers, which isn't too odd considering RS1 / RSC had multiple NPCs to accommodate the amount of players playing and in the past it wasn't possible for two players to communicate with one NPC at a time, I have a few funny screenshots of players making lines when Dragon Slayer was released.
With the release of RS2 he was given his name back and now has the examine text, "An evil user of Magic powers". When fighting him he now only summons one zombie at a combat level of 13, it should also be said Invrigar now has a combat level of 20 and resides at the top of the Necromancer Tower. A new NPC was added downstairs which is oddly shorter than every other typical NPC but is not using a child model, his name is Irwin Feaselbaum and wears a unique red wizard hat. Irwin has dialogue for the Zogre Flesh Eaters quest when you use two specific quest items on him, the Necormancy book and Torn page, even though he is not involved in said quest. His examine text is, "A young assistant necromancer." A third character just being the Necromancer is also on the bottom floor and still drops Zamorak robes. On this bottom floor, behind the staircase, is a bookshelf with a search option but cannot be searched due to the stairs being in the way, how mysterious. Another bookshelf gives a hint about the Necromancy book.
There is nothing else to do in this tower, nor with these NPCs. I would assume Ivrigar was meant for a quest in RSC / RS1.
~ RSC / RS1 Extra Inventory Spaces ~
RuneScape used to have in-game notifications telling you to visit the advertisements on the top of the webpage before the release of membership, this wasn't very viable so the Gowers attempted to partner with a company named "Consodata" and utilize their "Yoptin" program where it would be inserted into RS1 / RSC, this program was a survey where players would fill out quite a lot of questions. If filled out this survey would give the player five additional inventory spaces. I have all of the graphics for this archived so I might show some. These inventory spaces were already programmed in the client since June 23, 2001 but went unused, the Yoptin deal never went through despite some folks thinking it did for a short time. All of the scripts / code relating to Yoptin was removed from the client around August and November 2001.
~ RSC / RS1 Glitches / Bugs / Oversights ~
The "Super strength Beer cheat". This was just a silly oversight where players could drink beer endlessly and the Strength boost would keep stacking up to 99. There's not much to be said on this one. The update post that mentioned this fix was on January 25th of 2001.
The knife glitch. This bug / glitch took place in 2002 and was caused by having a weapon in the first slot of your inventory and knives to the right of the weapon, you then need to be walking and click on the drop option on the weapon and then right click it again so the menu stays open. Your weapon should now be on the ground but the wield option will still be there, when selecting the wield option it would equip all knives you had within your inventory and for some reason the knives used to have stats which would stack with each knife in the inventory. I have no idea if this bug / glitch was always in the game or not, it would seem likely that it was, I also don't know what the max hit was should you have your entire inventory filled with knives. The maximum Weaponpower bonus was an 88 in RSC / RS1, due to me not knowing the exact date this was patched I'm not sure if Klank's / Steel gauntlets existed yet, dragon weapons may have been out at the time due to those being released very early in the year. I wish I knew the stats of the knife, if anyone has any information on this then send me a message.
Everybody knows about the Party hat duplication glitch that was caused by AutoRune so I won't bother mentioning it here, although some think that only Party hats were duped when any item could have been spawned with this "glitch" except stackable items. It also wasn't one player doing this but a few, as many of you know, Jagex were offering "life time membership" to those who explained how the glitch worked but when the players informed Jagex of this they were all supposedly banned. I don't think I even need to say anything about this, imagine being the player who knew how it technically worked but never used the program itself. AutoRune also allowed for attacking any unattackable NPCs as mentioned in other topics above on this post, allowed players to cast spells without runes or an NPC / player, have the player make themselves invisible at the make over mage (similar to making female characters have beards), and make players be able to kill themselves in the Wilderness.
- And now for a list of smaller, less note worthy glitches that have happened in the history of RS1 / RSC. The dates are when specific patch notes were released, not when the glitches were active. -
January 27th, 2001 - February 13th, 2001.
* An issue where players were able to shoot with range "super rapidly".
* An error was fixed in which a player could make double doors vanish by lighting a fire next to them, this would trap players inside buildings.
April 19th, 2001 - May 10th, 2001.
* Players seen in random areas such as out in the sea or on top of your own character. (A visual glitch, I suppose).
* The player would appear in the wrong area (perhaps when signing in or just teleporting randomly?).
* Some players not being able to use private messages.
* Shield and ore shop "didn't accept stock all of the time.".
* "Left side column of the inventory had a mouse focusing issue".
* An issue was fixed with range, when using ranged combat it would level other skills.
* Fixed an issue where it was not possible to mine gems.
* "Pottery menu wrong way around" was fixed. Whatever that means.
* "Server would sometimes send the wrong error message when logging in".
* The friends list would become blank during a lost connection.
June 12, 2001 - June 23, 2001.
* Making cakes no longer remove the flour pot.
* Food shops not working after completing pirate quest.
* Catching tuna didn't provide experience.
* A bug was fixed that caused a stack of zero coins to be spawned.
* A fix was implemented as it was not possible to pick up stackable items when the inventory was full.
* Balance was not shown correctly when leaving a bank.
* An issue was fixed when logging out while just being attacked.
* Another issue in which players would randomly appear on your friendslist.
* Lumbridge and Karamja shops would share the same stock, this was fixed.
August 13th, 2001 - August 18th, 2001.
* Low level archers were able to attack higher leveled players without being able to be attacked in return.
* Experience indicator would not update properly in the new stats menu.
* "Fixed seven minor bugs".
* A "kill stealing" issue was fixed and loot now goes to whoever did the most damage to an NPC instead of the person who got the last hit off, on top of this experience is split proportionally between everyone who helped defeat the NPC.
July 10th, 2002.
* An issue was present where players could teleport from the high level wilderness dungeon.
* Iron arrows were usable on free servers.
* You could get skulled by retaliating to a ranged attack.
* Shadow spiders wouldn't allow potions to run out.
* Arrows weren't stacking properly if players shot the same enemy at the same time.
* Recovery questions were shown as "not set".
* Attacking another player after a retreat caused an unspecified glitch.
* The player would randomly run in a random direction after a range kill.
November 6th, 2002.
* It was possible to get stuck behind a fence near the Dancing Donkey Inn, one of the Gowers told players in the update notes to stay away from it and that if you were already trapped to, "escape by clicking attack on an NPC on the opposite side of the fence, or by following another player on the other side of the fence". Any players that were trying to get others stuck in the fence were strangely banned as a punishment. A bit much, isn't it?
May 29th, 2003.
* "Seaweed works properly again." (Lol).
* Something with the Watchtower quest was fixed.
- Unknown dates, some were never fixed. -
* Players could go down the stairs and through the walls in the Legends' Guild.
* The underside of the bridge that leads to the Mage Arena was transparent.
* If an Eye patch is in the players inventory during the Watchtower quest it will provide more dialogue and the wizard will take the Eye patch, the issue is that there was a unique Eye patch made just for this quest that was supposed to be used instead but I assume the item IDs were mistakenly swapped with the quests script.
* This one actually some how exists in RS2 as well, the Khazard Bartender will give the player a beer for free if they do not have any coins.
* Jeremy Servil is unable to be spoken with after General Khazard is defeated. He's also very disrespectful and calls the player "sir" no matter what gender they are.
* There was a very well known bug after it was revealed involving the PID system, someone could sign out and have their PID be assigned to another player in the game and have them teleported to dangerous quest areas. Players could also receive experience at random due to this even if they never gained it themselves. I'm pretty sure this is a thing in RS2 and even still in OSRS, the experience part I mean.
* There's an issue with the Student wearing the pink clothing during the Digsite quest, talking to her after giving her an opal will reset the variable needed to progress and you will have to give her another opal to proceed.
* There were NPC duplication glitches that allowed NPCs to be spawned endlessly. I won't go into detail here on all of the instances.
* Players can tele from the strange barrels to the first room in the Legends Caverns by using a range weapon to attack Ungadulu.
* Absurdly high experience gained from Mourners.
* Magic spell casting was extremely quick before a patch added a timer.
* After a server maintenance all sleeping bags and beds would not work properly on all non-veteran servers.
* The well known Guthix claw oversight kept the spell animation on the ground where the player died, no players could pass this.
* Any players who some how got 2,147,483,647 of any item was disconnected and unable to sign in, it was patched on February 16th, 2015.
* Players some how were able to make mod crowns appear in the chat before a server reopening.
* For some reason some players have been sighted who had no names.
- Here's some that were never fixed. Thank you to the RuneScape Classic Wiki for compiling these so I don't have to go into my own archives again. -
* If an item / NPC is attacked or interacted with in any way, even examining after it is gone it will cause the game to crash. This was supposedly caused by a "rewrite of the action system" in 2009-2011.
* Some areas allow the player to go up ladders and the player will land out of bounds and can walk in the darkness before reaching an invisible wall.
* The Book of binding will still attempt to enchant vials despite what choice the player chooses.
* Scythes are allowed on Entrana.
* It's possible to gain melee experience without Hits experience due to an oversight with the fatigue system.
* Fishing Trawler has a few glitches, players disappearing at random (perhaps going into other instances), the ship never returning to the dock (lol), the east boat barely works with bailing buckets, the amount of work you do doesn't matter as the entire reward seems random.
* "Water world" glitch, while logging in sometimes all ground tiles are water tiles. Speculated to be caused by a bad connection.
* You can smuggle Gnome balls by teleporting out, telegrabbing, or by having a Gnome toss you the ball through the gate.
* Potion of Zamorak's last dose gives two more levels.
* As RSC was going near the end of it's lifespan the heat damage in the desert stopped working.
* You can remove scenery objects by using the charge spell, logging out and back in will fix this.
* Death messages sometimes appearing for no reason.
* Trade screen appearing for no reason, the user that requested the trade would always be listed as "null". Spooky.
* There's a small skip you can do in Legend's Quest that I won't go into detail with as it would take me a long time to explain.
* The infamous crystal chest bug.
* You can have two stacks of throwing darts if you equip some and then pick more off of the ground.
* NPCs sometimes respawn and have the text of other NPCs.
* Using 3rd party software you can request to duel someone in the Wilderness negating level requirements.
* The Golden bowl can be made successfully and fail at the same time.
* If you use bots to gain the "maximum experience" in a skill it will go into the negatives.
~ Statue of a Warrior ~
There are so many conflicting stories about this statue found in the Wilderness, north east of Edgeville. It's a lone, stone statue with green scenery around it and was added to the game on the 29th of March, 2004. Despite this date some say it was added in memory of The Old Nite after his passing which took place in 2006, there are multiple accounts of players and Jmods which contradict each other on this, sometimes even contradicting Jmod statements. Mod Osborne says and I quote, "The statue is indeed a reference to the Old Nite, not Camorra. There are a few other statues that mention her, but that one is not one of them.", to which my response to this is... Why and how? Obviously The Old Nite has been around for a very long time and was known as a great person but so were many other players, the statue itself simply says upon examining it, "This person was of great importance", it makes no mention of him. Why is it even in the Wilderness? He wasn't known for PKing.
This quote comes from a non-trustworthy Youtuber by the name of "rswillmissit" who also took footage from me and others without permission and without crediting us, he shows what looks like text messages between him and Osborne where Osborne supposedly said this quote, in rswillmissit's video he then says Osborne followed up with, "the statue was added after his passing". This is a blatant lie and I don't think it's coming from Mod Osborne, I think rswillmiss it made this up but that is speculation by me, all I know is someone is indeed not being honest for some reason which is shameful considering this is about a dead man who has done good for the RuneScape community. The Old Nite passed away in 2006, NOT in 2004 when the statue was added. I have a set of files from rswillmissit that supposedly belong to Rab, the first RuneScape player, I will talk about these files in the future as honestly, I don't know if they come from Rab or not it feels like they were made up by rswillmissit but that is just more speculation from me. There's absolutely no reason for a Jmod to lie about this specific situation but there would be value in doing so to a Youtuber who makes clickbait.
There's evidence that these chatlogs / messages between rswillmissit and Mod Osborne are entirely fabricated as well aside from the fact the statue existed before Nites passing. Postbag from the hedge, issue 20 mentions that Camorra defeated the dragon Garak who destroyed a number of villagers near the Wilderness. This statue model is the same one used for Camorra elsewhere such as inside the Heroes' Guild. The final nail in the coffin is that the statue was eventually graphically updated to be that of a woman warrior with a sword. So much for calling himself a "RuneScape historian", more like a RuneScape history rewriter.
~ Tarn's Lair ~
This is specifically about the zombies in Tarn's Lair and their strange drop tables. You can get drops such as fishing potions (one dose), pot lids, empty plant pots, oak planks, gold ore, unholy moulds, earth orbs, tiles, nails, pots of flour, bowls of water, cannonballs, and they have access to the rare drop table. These drops are from the level 40-56 zombies, I will list the others. Note, these are not all of the drops just some of the more noteworthy ones. Also all of these zombies drop combo runes.
Level 61-80 (Thank you, OSRS Wiki).
Willow shortbow, leather boots, rune warhammer, rune nails, ranging potion (3 dose), fire orb, magic logs, mithril bar, ring of dueling (3 charges), holy mould, 1/128 for garlic, cup of tea, adamant plateskirt, mithril full helm, mithril kiteshield, steel spear (p++), and more.
Level 81-100.
Black sq shield, black axe, rune battleaxe, leather gloves, mithril pickaxe, mithril 2h sword, 1/128 for 7 addy bolts, black nails, noted dwellberries, noted hard leather, pestle and mortar, white berries, 1/128 for adamant bar, and 1/128 for a pot of cream.
I may understand the reason for these strange drop tables as I have implemented something similar in my own game, Crescent Quest. In case I've made a mistake somewhere in the game, an oversight where the player cannot get an item or traps themselves some how, I have made certain foes drop obscure items that aren't obtainable almost anywhere else. There may be a time when I've accidentally made an item unobtainable otherwise so I threw a bunch of items on one drop table, on an obscure NPC. This is the same area where you can also get a granite helm from terror dogs so there may be some truth to this, the only other place to get a granite helm is from Barbarian Assault on a high gamble (I think you can also purchase it from there too?). This place is just filled with obscure items.
~ Strange Barrels ~
Strange barrels were released on August 20th, 2003 along with the Legend's Quest. During the Legend's Quest you navigate the Viyeldi Caves where these barrels can be found. These barrels are unique in that when interacting with them they can either spawn a randomly chosen monster or item, it can sometimes spawn both of these things as well. According to the RSC Wiki the player has a 20/30 chance to spawn a monster, a 27/30 chance to spawn an item, and a 3/30 chance for the barrel to explode causing 0-20 damage which does not spawn a monster or an item. The player also has a 7/8 chance of failing to open the barrel which decreases the players Attack by 1-3 levels.
7/30 chance to spawn nothing.
1/30 to spawn a Chaos Dwarf, Black Knight, Dark Warrior, Dark Wizard, Death Wing, Deadly Red Spider, Giant, Giant Bat, Hobgoblin, Giant Spider, Moss Giant, Rat (varying levels), Mugger, Scorpion, Skeleton (varying levels), and a Zombie (varying levels).
1/128 to spawn an adamant, bronze, iron, mithril, rune, and steel throwing knives and most dart versions of those.
3/512 chance of an air, water, earth, and fire runes.
1/128 chance for a snake weed.
1/128 for bread, cheese, half a meat pie, half a redberry pie, half an apple pie, pineapple, slice of cake, and a spinach roll.
1/128 for a one dose defense potion, prayer potion, and strength potion.
10/16,384 for many different kinds of certs.
37/128 for rocks.
1/128 for bow string, bronze pickaxe, casket, 100 coins, gold bar, logs, paramaya rest ticket, rope, ship ticket, steel pickaxe, tinderbox, and a torch.
It goes without saying but these are the drop rates for each specific item, obviously all of those don't drop at the same time. At a specific point in Legend's Quest if the player doesn't have a rope then there is a changed drop rare of 21/128 of receiving a rope. This reminds me of the drop rate increase in RS2 of getting a shield right half from Goraks. If you've never experienced the pleasure of resting at the Paramaya Inn then I feel sorry for you, bub.
~ Out of Bounds ~
There are many things that reside out of the playable map in RuneScape, one of the more well known ones is the unused section of the God Wars dungeon where the player would have had to navigate an underwater ravine filled with sunken ships, skeletons, and giant bones of various and unknown creatures to reach K'ril Tsutsaroth's room. I assume this was cut due to the amount of time it would take to get there as opposed to the other boss rooms. There's inaccessible areas in random event rooms as well such as the Drill Demon's event, however this was explorable at one point in time, or at least I remember it was, you could walk around and see a whole lot of tents with objects inside. There's some interesting things about Tutorial Island should you some how return there, a lot of fail safes. I do not know when these were added but if you return to Tutorial Island through glitches some characters there such as the ironman tutors in OSRS will have unique dialogue asking how you got back there.
There's other fail safes like this such as a few in Morytania if you some how get there as a level 3, the snails, a random NPC from Temple Trekking, and a feral vampyre will teleport you to the church just outside of Morytania at random intervals.
~ Monkey Skull ~
This is an item that was in the game itself from December 6th, 2004, with the release of Monkey Madness, it was never made obtainable but I wouldn't call it "unused" as the item itself could be seen behind one of those wooden (bamboo?) doors within the Temple of Marimbo Dungeon (Ape Atoll Dungeon). There was supposedly no way of opening this locked door, it's safe to say there was never a way to open it making it fairly mysterious, especially the item itself that rests beyond the door. This monkey skull was made obtainable on February 22nd, 2010, with the release of zombie implings which have a 1/3,000 chance of giving you the skull. The skull also became available in OSRS on March 5th, 2015. In both of these instances once the skull is obtained it can be taken to Zooknock to be turned into an Ancient gorilla greegree. This greegree always existed within the cache files on the release day of Monkey Madness, however even more interestingly, the examine text for this item was changed sometime between October 4th, 2005 to February 7th, 2006.
The examine text used to say, "A magical talisman in the shape of a monkey head. The eyes glow bright red!", this was changed to, "A magical talisman in the shape of a mysterious monkey head. The eyes glow bright red!". Was this Jagex messing with the players who were looking into the games internals? Funnily enough there were players talking about this item despite it not being in the game, I could find one forum post from 2007 on it. The form in which you take from this greegree is simply one of those gorilla guards but with a blue face which looks like a placeholder model, the color of blue and the shape around the model where the blue is, it's just unfinished but perhaps that's what it always looked like since 2004, I could probably check in my archives and see if this model existed back then whenever I have the time. Something to note though is that the greegree is indeed blue and even appears to have red eyes although the actual model you take on as a gorilla does not. Was the original intent really a blue faced gorilla or something else?
~ Unused 2007 Crystal Axe ~
There was another reward intended for The Eyes of Glouphrie quest instead of the Crystal saw, that being a Crystal axe. Sadly, I do not know if there are stats associated with this axe or if it would have been better than a Dragon axe regarding said stats. There is a model for the axe as well four sound effects relating to it, a recharge sound for the singing bowl, a slash attack sound effect, a crush attack sound effect, and a sound effect for using it on a tree. It also looks better than the OSRS version of the axe, this isn't an opinion from me either, a lot of new OSRS items don't fit the aesthetic of the old game, they lack detail and are cartoon-looking. I will provide screenshots here of both for comparison. I can't say if the one in RS3 is more tolerable or not. Anyway, a part of me thinks it would have been on par with the Dragon axe but offered something else in return. I just have that feeling.
~ Peach Dragon Square Shield ~
There's nothing really to be said about this one, during the RS2 beta the Dragon sq. shield was a peach color instead of red for some reason. It could have just been a placeholder until the non-beta release of RuneScape 2. Also the shield left half was sold by the Legends' Guild by accident around this time, just thought I'd point that out.