Old School RuneScape — Summer Sweep Up - Hunter & Skilling | August 19th

We're continuing with the sweepin' up! This week brings improvements to Hunter, Guardians of the Rift, Tempoross, Coral and more!

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Changelog - August 19th

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Summer Sweep Up Changes

Hunter Improvements

• Birdhouses:

• Bird Nest Changes (buffs)

• Number of rolls for nests from all tiers of birdhouse lowered from 10 to 5.

• Success rate on any given roll for a nest is tripled.

• These changes amount to a ~50% increase in the number of nests obtained, and should make the quantity you obtain more consistent and less 'spiky' so that you're not overfilling your inventory on some runs but leaving empty-handed on others.

• XP Changes (nerfs)

• Regular birdhouse XP decreased by 60%.

• Oak birdhouse XP decreased by 60%.

• Willow birdhouse XP decreased by 60%.

• Teak birdhouse XP decreased by 60%.

• Maple birdhouse XP decreased by 55%.

• Mahogany birdhouse XP decreased by 50%.

• Yew birdhouse XP decreased by 40%.

• Magic birdhouse XP decreased by 15%.

• Redwood birdhouse XP unchanged.

• Falconry:

• You will no longer be held in place while the falcon is chasing a kebbit, meaning you can now reposition or walk around while the falcon chases its prey.

• You can now ask your falcon to catch a kebbit even if your inventory is full.

• Excess resources are discarded to avoid cluttering the floor, except Hunter Rumour items (these will go on the floor if your inventory is full).

• Furs will only be discarded if both your Fur pouch and inventory are full.

• If your inventory is full but you have a Bonecrusher or Bonecrusher necklace, bones will continue to be crushed for Prayer XP. If you're wearing a Bonecrusher necklace, your Prayer points will also continue to be restored.

• You'll no longer be interrupted while walking towards Matthias if he sends or receives his falcon.

• Aeriel Fishing:

• Increased the distance at which you're able to perform 'quick' catches from a 3x3 area to a 4x4 area. This means you're more likely to chain together back-to-back catches every tick if you'd like to play at this level of intensity.

• You can now unlock a toggle by speaking to Alry the Angler that allows your cormorant to eat fish in your inventory if you don't have any appropriate bait. This reduces the need for you to make fish offcuts as you go and makes the activity considerably less click-intensive.

• Occasionally, a larger fish pool will now spawn that your cormorant will travel back and forth to several times without additional interactions.

• Increased the chance of you obtaining Molch Pearls by ~50%.

• Lowered the Molch Pearl cost of some rewards (listed below). Those who already purchased these rewards before today's update will be refunded the difference of Molch Pearls.

• Fishing Sack from 1,000 down to 500.

• Angler's Outfit pieces from 100 down to 50.

• Added the Shark lure pack to Alry the Angler's shop, which contains 100 Shark lures inside and costs 1 Molch Pearl.

• Deadfall traps:

• Increased deadfall trap limit from 1 to 2, with the exception of Maniacal Monkeys which retain a one trap limit. (Kruk would never double trap, so you'd blow your cover otherwise!)

• Deadfall traps now have a 75% chance to preserve your log when placing a trap, so you can cut down on cutting down trees.

• Deadfall traps now begins catching 8 ticks (4.8s) after being placed, down from 15 ticks (9s).

• Significantly increased Wild and Prickly Kebbit catch rate.

• Lowered the XP given by Wild, Barbed, & Sabre-toothed Kebbits and Pyre Foxes by ~20%. Lowered the XP given by Prickly Kebbits by ~27%. Despite this, all the other changes here still math out to a significant increase in XP/hr from these creatures.

• Other:

• You can now place two traps starting at level 1 Hunter, rather than level 20.

• Killing a Chompy Bird now grants 30 Hunter XP.

• The Ring of pursuit is now able to reveal full tracks even after one's already been started.

• Improved the drop rate and pity rate for butterfly and moth Hunter Rumours.

• Drop rate from 1 in 75 to 1 in 40.

• Pity rate from 150 to 80.

Other Skilling-Related Changes

• Guardians of the Rift:

• You can now purchase the Abyssal Needle for 750 Abyss Pearls.

• The Abyssal Lantern now also functions _outside of GOTR _ if it's burning logs that provide some effect beyond the activity. This means Normal, Oak, Maple and Yew logs don't have any function outside of GOTR, but Willow, Blisterwood, Magic and Redwood will.

• The Abyssal Lantern is added to the Temple Supplies shop.

• The Guardian's Eye now unlocks a permanent metamorphosis on the Rift Guardian, rather than taking up space in your bank.

• If you already owned the Guardian's Eye before this update, this metamorphosis will be retroactively unlocked for you. So if you're wondering where your Guardian's Eye went, that's because the unlock has been activated!

• If you had any dupe Guardian's Eyes, you will be refunded their cost.

• You can also permanently unlock the other colours for the Rift Guardian by taking it to the respective Runecrafting altars.

• Tempoross:

• The Fish Barrel and the Tackle Box can now be bought for 6,000 Spirit Flakes each, from a Spirit Angler by the reward pool.

• Coral:

• Increased the harvest lives of Corals to 6, up from 4.

• Chance to obtain Coral frags from their associated Thieving chest reduced to 1 in 20, down from 1 in 15.

• The yield has been slightly increased at lower Farming levels, and reduced at higher Farming levels. You can check out the original blog for more detailed numbers.

• Other:

• Removed the Herblore level requirement on the Reagent Pouch.

• Buffed the Elite Clue rate from Heroes by 25%, from 1 in 1,200 to 1 in 900.

Gear Changes

• Updated the Venator Bow to take advantage of new engine capabilities, allowing it to find new targets more reliably. This is difficult for us to put into words, so if you notice anything feeling off or unusual then let us know, particularly in places where the Venator Bow enjoys current usage, such as the Fortis Colosseum.

Misc

• Early-game Run Energy improvements:

• Completing a quest now fully restores your Run Energy, and cure any damage-over-time effects like poison.

• Added 1- to 3-dose Energy potions to a variety of early game loot tables at a fairly common rate. These can drop from:

• Dark Wizards

• Goblins

• Molanisks

• Desert Lizards

• Banshees

• "Human" NPCs such as men, women, Al Kharid warriors, rogues, etc

• Cave Crawlers

• Cockatrice

• Crawling Hands

• Killerwatts

• Buffed the Energy potions to restore 15% Run Energy per dose.

• Giant Squirrel pet drop rate for the Colossal Wyrm Agility Course has now been increased to match the new course length.

Wyrmscraig Changes

• We've improved the Jeweller's Chisel to speed up bolt tip production, as polled:

• The Jeweller's Chisel now cuts bolt tips from gems in 2 ticks instead of 5.

• It also has a 1 in 10 chance of cutting 2 gems into bolt tips at once.

• Aggy & Mr McGroot will now follow you without getting stuck.

• Aggy no longer has a shadow underneath it.

• Alchemy spells can now be used on the Jeweller's Chisel. A high-alch value of 60,000 GP has also been introduced for the item.

• Fixed an issue where Hallowfell attacks could sometimes be treated as facing the wrong direction.

• Fixed a bug where the Wyrmscraig Cathedral staircase was easy to mis-click from outside the cathedral.

Additionally, we've identified some unintended interactions at Mortimer using Partner Slayer. With Partner Slayer, players used to be able to get more than 3 task choices from Mortimer between them and then share the most preferred one with each other. Also, players who had not unlocked Mortimer used to be able to get tasks with modifiers using this system. To address this, we've made the following changes:

• You can no longer partner with another player if you have 'rolled' tasks with Mortimer and have not selected one yet.
• If your Slayer Partner is offline when your tasks are 'rolled', they will no longer be considered your Slayer Partner.
• Mortimer tasks can no longer be shared with other players that haven't unlocked Mortimer.

Other Sailing Changes

• The new fishing spots where you can fish from your boat now have map icons.
• Fixed a bug where Group Ironmen could use the facilities on other players’ boats without being subject to the usual Ironman restrictions.
• Criminal gangs of Kourend no longer violate physical laws by standing on the sea; in other regards they remain rule-breakers as before.

Other Changes

• The Slayer tasks interface will now automatically resize vertically, to eliminate the need for scrolling after Mortimer's addition. Note that your client window must be large enough to accommodate the resized interface.
• Increased the Vampyre Snail’s health scaling to better account for the additional damage dealt by larger groups. Good luck to any would-be snail masters.
• Various Hunter saplings around Nardah, Great Conch, Charred Island and Ourania have been adjusted to stop players standing inside the saplings (this incidentally stopped the player from catching anything in that trap).
• Fixed a bug where the Navigator track wasn't being unlocked after completing the Fremennik Trials in some niche cases. If you were affected by this, attempting to re-enter Swensen the Navigator's maze will now unlock the track for you.
• Charges are now correctly consumed from the Bottomless Milk Bucket when a follower cat drinks from it while fighting Hell-Rat Behemoths.
• Mahogany treasure chest is now listed in the Construction skill guide.
• Corrected the Herblore skill guide icon of the Extended stamina potion.
• To prevent accidental misclicks, the rocks around the Leprechaun near the Ardougne farming patch have now been made non-interactive.
• Fixed a graphical issue with the Clue Hunter Trousers.
• Fixed various steps across Gielinor from clipping with terrain.
• More item names have had their capitalisation corrected, following last week’s changes to god-themed items. This round includes the Scythe of Vitur, Helm of Neitiznot, and various books.

PvP Rota

The PvP rota has moved to Period B:

• 560 - (UK) - PvP World
• 319 - (US) - Bounty Hunter World
• 579 - (US) - High-Risk PvP World
• 561 - (UK) - Free-to-Play PvP World
• 580 - (US) - LMS Competitive

World 390 (AUS) for LMS Competitive has been de-activated with this rota.

World 569 (AUS) for Bounty Hunter has been de-activated with this rota.

The PvP Arena is using '1 Def Pure' loadouts in Ranked Duels and Tournaments this week.

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Summer Sweep Up

We're picking up where we left off with the Summer Sweep Up 2026! The first round and second round of changes have already been released, and this week brings the improvements to Hunter, Guardians of the Rift, Tempoross, Coral and more...

Hunter Improvements

Birdhouses

If you read our initial Sweep-Up blogs then you'll have been anxiously awaiting this one, but today marks a number of changes to Birdhouses to reduce their Hunter XP output and bolster their Bird nest output, in an effort to make them feel a little less mandatory for Hunter training.

The original blog contains a much more detailed rationale, but the headline here is that Birdhouse runs account for ~80% of all Hunter XP gained from level 30 to 80, one of the most skewed for any skill in Old School. When one method proves this dominant, it makes it harder for us to add new methods in the middle-ground or improve existing methods. This is particularly problematic for Birdhouses because they more closely resemble Farming than Hunter and strip the skill of its unique thematic and identity while reducing all of the methods that feel like Hunter to the 'dead content' pile for many players.

With improvements to other Hunter methods coming in today's blog, we think this is the perfect time to put Birdhouses into a healthier spot, where they're still decent XP but feel more like an activity that you might opt into for some passive Bird nests (which still sell for a pretty penny) rather than an activity that you have to do to level Hunter.

Enough talk, it's time for numbers, here's what's changing today!

• Bird Nest Changes (buffs)

• Number of rolls for nests from all tiers of birdhouse lowered from 10 to 5.

• Success rate on any given roll for a nest is tripled.

• These changes amount to a ~50% increase in the number of nests obtained, and should make the quantity you obtain more consistent and less 'spiky' so that you're not overfilling your inventory on some runs but leaving empty-handed on others.

• XP Changes (nerfs)

• Regular birdhouse XP decreased by 60%.

• Oak birdhouse XP decreased by 60%.

• Willow birdhouse XP decreased by 60%.

• Teak birdhouse XP decreased by 60%.

• Maple birdhouse XP decreased by 55%.

• Mahogany birdhouse XP decreased by 50%.

• Yew birdhouse XP decreased by 40%.

• Magic birdhouse XP decreased by 15%.

• Redwood birdhouse XP unchanged.

Let's take a look at how we're improving other Hunter methods to compensate.

Falconry

Engaging in falconry through Matthias has just got smoother:

• You will no longer be held in place while the falcon is chasing a kebbit, meaning you can now reposition or walk around while the falcon chases its prey.

• You can now ask your falcon to catch a kebbit even if your inventory is full.

• Excess resources are discarded to avoid cluttering the floor, except Hunter Rumour items (these will go on the floor if your inventory is full).

• Furs will only be discarded if both your Fur pouch and inventory are full.

• If your inventory is full but you have a Bonecrusher or Bonecrusher necklace, bones will continue to be crushed for Prayer XP. If you're wearing a Bonecrusher necklace, your Prayer points will also continue to be restored.

• You'll no longer be interrupted while walking towards Matthias if he sends or receives his falcon.

Aerial Fishing

We've streamlined Aerial Fishing to allow for lower click intensity while allowing more downtime and making interactions feel smoother. If you're a player who enjoys high-intensity Aerial Fishing, then the first change on our list should make that rapid-fire catching more reliable to keep chaining together!

• Increased the distance at which you're able to perform 'quick' catches from a 3x3 area to a 4x4 area. In effect, this means you're more likely to chain together back-to-back catches every tick if you'd like to play at this level of intensity.

• You can now unlock a toggle by speaking to Alry the Angler that allows your cormorant to eat fish in your inventory if you don't have any appropriate bait. This reduces the need for you to make fish offcuts as you go and makes the activity considerably less click-intensive.

• Occasionally, a larger fish pool will now spawn that your cormorant will travel back and forth to several times without additional interactions. This adds a little downtime or periods of lower intensity to break up the rapid pace.

• Increased the chance of you obtaining Molch Pearls by ~50%.

• Lowered the Molch Pearl cost of some rewards (listed below). Those who already purchased these rewards before today's update will be refunded the difference of Molch Pearls.

• Fishing Sack from 1,000 down to 500.

• Angler's Outfit pieces from 100 down to 50.

• Added the Shark lure pack to Alry the Angler's shop, which contains 100 Shark lures inside and costs 1 Molch Pearl.

Deadfall Traps

• Increased deadfall trap limit from 1 to 2, with the exception of Maniacal Monkeys which retain a one trap limit. (Kruk would never double trap, so you'd blow your cover otherwise!)
• Deadfall traps now have a 75% chance to preserve your log when placing a trap, so you can cut down on cutting down trees.
• Deadfall traps now begins catching 8 ticks (4.8s) after being placed, down from 15 ticks (9s).
• Significantly increased Wild and Prickly Kebbit catch rate.
• Lowered the XP given by Wild, Barbed, & Sabre-toothed Kebbits and Pyre Foxes by ~20%. Lowered the XP given by Prickly Kebbits by ~27%. Despite this, all the other changes here still math out to a significant increase in XP/hr from these creatures.

Other Hunter Changes

• You can now place two traps starting at level 1 Hunter, rather than level 20.

• Killing a Chompy Bird now grants 30 Hunter XP.

• The Ring of pursuit is now able to reveal full tracks even after one's already been started.

• Improved the drop rate and pity rate for butterfly and moth Hunter Rumours.

• Drop rate from 1 in 75 to 1 in 40.

• Pity rate from 150 to 80.

Other Skilling-Related Improvements

Guardians of the Rift

• You can now purchase the Abyssal Needle for 750 Abyss Pearls.
• The Abyssal Lantern now also functions _outside of GOTR _ if it's burning logs that provide some effect beyond the activity. This means Normal, Oak, Maple and Yew logs doesn't have any function outside of GOTR, but Willow, Blis