The Hunter Guild - Varlamore (2024)

We recently updated this newspost for a second time to reflect the information gathered from your feedback. Whilst we are showcasing the shortlist of changes here, you can head over to The Hunter Guild - Feedback newspost to check out the reasoning behind these changes and more!

Today we’re giving you a first look at the Hunter Guild!

Before we start, we're trying some new things with the Varlamore newsposts to allow for further accessibilty and versility when it comes to how you access its information. So if you try any of the new options, feel free to let us know what you think and any changes you'd like us to make!

• Audio Read: If you'd rather listen than read, this is a mostly verbatum narration of the newspost and give you all of the information.
• Video Summary: This shorter read of newspost gives you a snappy video that combines the core details of the newspost with the key visuals.
• Anchor Points: Wanting to know about something we're refering to, then simple click on some of the key words to jump you to the appropraite section.
• Glossary: At the bottom of the newspost, there's a small list of new and existing related content you should keep in mind.

PLEASE NOTE: THESE AUDIO/VIDEO SUMMARIES HAVE SOME OUTDATED INFORMATION

The vast lands of the Avium Savannah are home to all manner of creatures, from the elegant sunlight antelope to the adorable jerboa. Those seeking the bounties of this rich land settle at the Hunters Guild, a purpose-built shelter nestled just outside Civitas Illa Fortis.

Only the most experienced hunters can truly call the Guild home, but those who do use its old name: Cor Venationis, the Heart of the Hunt.

Those Varlamorians who have made hunting their vocation, believe firmly in the balance between the sun and moon – two concepts that any Varlamorian hunter must learn to work with, lest they come home empty handed… or not at all.

As previously discussed in our Varlamore: The Shining Kingdom newspost, the Hunter Guild is designed to breathe new life into underappreciated Hunter content all across Gielinor. It introduces new critters, new hunting grounds, and new rewards – and, of course, it introduces the Guild itself.

Once you’ve reached 46 Hunter you can follow the dirt roads from Civitas Illa Fortis into the heart of the Avium Savannah, where the Guild’s many amenities await you.

Today, though, we’ve managed to obtain exclusive access. Come, make your way down into the Burrow, have yourself a Trapper’s Tipple, and see all that this ancient Guild has to offer…

Slayer has Tasks, Farming has Contracts, and Hunter will soon have Rumours – whispers of creatures all across Gielinor that you’ll be tasked with tracking down and hunting. They may be the classic creatures you’ve come to know and love, or one of the many new Hunter creatures we plan to introduce with this update.

To obtain a Rumour, you’ll need to head to The Burrow, the Guild’s in-house pub, and have a word with one of the hunters there. While you’re at it, why not enjoy a pint of the barkeep’s specialty, the local Trapper’s Tipple brew?

You can only have one Rumour active at any one time. Just like the Slayer Masters you’re familiar with, each hunter at the bar will have a different Rumour, and they’ll be suitable for different Hunter levels. Don’t worry, they’ll make it clear if you’re not up to the challenge yet!

If you don’t like the look of your current Rumour, simply speak to another hunter – or, if none of their Rumours interest you, you can trade some of your spare creature parts for a low-tier hunt that will reset all the available Rumours.

The Rumour tiers are currently as follows:

• Tier 1: 46 Hunter
• Tier 2: 57 Hunter
• Tier 3: 72 Hunter
• Tier 4: 91 Hunter

When you’ve selected a rumour to investigate, set off and prepare to hunt! You job is to grab a special Rare Creature Part to complete your Rumour. We've estimated the Rumours to take an average of 8-10 minutes, but note you RNG will factor into this.

These Rare Creature Parts can be traded with the hunter you obtained the Rumour from for a bonus XP drop and a Loot Sack of useful Hunter goodies like meats, furs, and bones. If you’re lucky, you might also get some Varlamore-specific items you can use in other activities around the area.

But that’s not all. You can also obtain the new Hunter Skilling Outfit, which provides you with +2.5% catch rate and a 5% increased chance to obtain a Rare Creature Part when wearing the full set. Also on offer are recharges for the Quetzal Whistle, and your very own Quetzal Pet.

Of course, the higher your tier, the more likely it is you’ll obtain one of these unique items. Basic Rumours won’t roll on this table at all, so don’t be scared to challenge yourself!

These beautiful, graceful birds are native to Varlamore, and the citizens there have worked alongside these majestic beasts for centuries. Their powerful wings are capable of carrying their companions to destinations across the continent, and the Hunter Guild maintains their own stable as one of the many amenities available to Guild members.

Make your way to the Roost, sitting atop the Guild, to get a look at these stunning creatures yourself – and perhaps even get the chance to ride one! The Guild’s long-established nestwork has travel points all across Varlamore – and, if you have the right Hunter and Construction levels, you can even build your own.

Guild members are issued a Quetzal Whistle, which allows them to swiftly fly back to the Guild from anywhere in Gielinor – except the Wilderness, of course.

There are three tiers of Quetzal Whistle – Basic, Enhanced (made from Yew), and Perfected (made from Redwood). The Basic Quetzal Whistle can store up to five charges, the Enhanced version up to 20, and the Perfected version up to 50.

After completing 5 Rumours of any level, the Quetzal Master in The Roost will reward you with the Basic Whistle Blueprints. You’ll need this to obtain the Blueprints for the Enhanced and Perfected variants, which you’ll receive as a random drop from completing Rumours. We’re considering a 1/50 drop rate for these, with a guaranteed Torn Enhanced Blueprint at your 100th Rumour, and a Torn Perfected Blueprint on your 250th Rumour. If the dry streak is too much to bear, the Blueprints are also tradeable.

You’ll charge the Whistle by feeding Hunter Guild Quetzal’s their favourite snack – meats from Hunter creatures! The higher-level the meat, the more satisfied the quetzal will be, and the more charges you’ll receive. You also have the option to make the Perfected Quetzal Whistle hold unlimited charges by trading a hefty amount of Hunter meats.

You’ll be spending lots of time with these beautiful birds as you travel the world, so we want to give you the option to customise the quetzal that comes to pick you up! These options will slightly change the look of your feathered friend, and might even include design elements from other Varlamore content – how about a Colosseum-themed quetzal?

So… what about the eagles? These noble beasts have been Hunter’s only transport method since they were released with the launch of Eagle’s Peak, and we think it’d be a shame to sideline them now. The Hunter’s Guild agrees, and they’ve installed a special Eagle Nest, complete with their own Guild Eagle that you can use for fast transport to the Eagle's Peak nest where you use them to travel to the current locations. It will be fast, too, since we’re adding a quick-travel option to make this transport method a bit nicer to use.

Varlamore is home to all manner of creatures you’ve never seen before, and we can’t wait for you to meet them!

Moths

The scaly-winged brethren of the humble butterfly, these light-loving insects have been conspicuously missing from Old School’s menagerie. The Hunter Guild hopes to change that!

Just like Butterflies, these creatures are trapped using a Butterfly Net and Jar and allow you to bestow buffs upon other players. But we would like to give you the option to catch them both with your own hands, if you have the appropriate Hunter level.

You’ll buff yourself and up to a random three players in a 3x3 radius around you with one of the following effects:

• Sunlight Moth (65 Hunter to Catch/75 Hunter Barehand): These Moths love the sun and restore 6 + 20% of a player's reduced stats, as well as 8 Hitpoints.
• Moonlight Moth (75 Hunter to Catch/ 85 Hunter Barehand): Lover of the dark, these Moths would restore 5 + 10% of a player's level in Prayer Points.

You can also use these creatures in Hunter’s Mixes, a tradeable two-dose AoE potion that has the same effect as the Moths. Not only do we want to extend this option to Butterflies too, to give them a bit more utility but we'd like to also change their mechanics to work just like Moths!

These creatures present a niche but varied approach to group content and opens up the opportunity for us to explore this reward space further in future – if that’s something you’re interested in, of course!

Antelope

Springy, agile and fast, these four-legged mammals can be found wandering the Avium Savannah and the Hunter Guild. Successfully hunting these creatures with a pitfall trap will provide you with meat and horns. These also have two variants:

• Sunlight Antelope (72 Hunter): Sunlight Horns and Sunlight Meat
• Moonlight Antelope (91 Hunter): Moonlight Horns and Moonlight Meat

Sunlight Horns can be used to upgrade the Hunter's Crossbow into the Sunlight Hunter's Crossbow and bolts for the upgraded version, while the Moonlight horns can be crafted into stronger ammunition specifically for the Sunlight Crossbow. More on that in a moment!

Jerboa

These bouncy little guys can be caught with a Box Trap. Successful catches reward you with Jerboa Tails, which can be crafted into theHunter's Spears or used as bait to trap foxes in deadfall traps. You’ll need 39 Hunter to trap them.

Fennec Foxes

What does the fox say? Well, it depends where they’re from! These particular fluffy fellows can be caught in Varlamore, using 57 Hunter and a baited deadfall trap. They drop Fox Fur, Meat, and Bones.

Mountain Salamander

A new tier of Salamander that can be caught with the usual net method. They'll require 79 Hunter to catch and use new Irit Tar as ammunition which will give an additional +60 Ranged Strength. You’ll need 80 Attack/Ranged/Magic to wield these fiesty little fiends effectively.

• Slash Attack: +77
• Ranged Attack: +87
• Strength Bonus: +91

In order to make these fantastic friends fit for battle against other players, you'll need to take them to a member of the guild which will train them up to be combat ready! If you die against another player with these, you'll need to revisit the Guild member to get some less scaredy Salamanders!

As we continue to expand Varlamore, we might look to include additional animals to hunt. These updates will be polled separately in each part of the area expansion.

Now, enough new stuff – let’s see how we plan to upgrade our current Hunter content!

They say you are what you eat, and if that were true in Old School RuneScape, most of you would be fish.

Fishing is the gathering skill of choice for hungry adventurers – but we think it’s high time you diversified your diets and started getting some hearty meat dishes down you!

The gourmets at the Hunter Guild have developed a cooking method that gives your typical, boring meats a bit of extra flavour – and a delayed healing over time effect that gives you more HP than fish over a longer period of time.

For example:

• Shark requires 76 Fishing and 80 Cooking, and can be cooked on any old Range or fire. They heal 20 Hitpoints in one bite (don’t ask us how you manage that) and can be caught en masse by harpooning the relevant Fishing spot.
• Dashing Kebbit, which would require 69 Hunter and 72 Cooking (although this is subject to balancing), could also be cooked at any Range or fire but would heal an initial 13 Hitpoints, and then a further 11 Hitpoints X number of ticks later. That’s 4 Hitpoints more than the Shark, at a lower skill threshold.

If you’re not in a situation where you need the extra Hitpoints urgently, Hunter meats will provide greater value overall. This system lets us push healing a little higher and gives you more options when preparing for combat encounters. Best of all, it doesn’t step on any toes – all your existing dietary choices will still have all the same benefits they did before.

If you’re wondering – yes, you can still combo-eat with these meats. Crunch a Karambwan or slurp a Saradomin Brew in conjunction with some tasty Hunter meats, and you’ll get the benefits of both. If you eat another piece of Hunter Meat before you've received the second lot of healing, it will be overrided with the new Hunter Meat and you won't receive the remainder of healing from the original meat.

We’re also considering adding a little extra flavour to the very highest tiers of meat that will give you extra variety, themed towards the type of creature you’ve cooked. These special effects won’t crowd out the current buffs available from potions and the like, but they might just be useful in situations where you can’t commit a slot to something as situational as a Stamina Potion, for example.

Here's a breakdown of how some of the meats we’ve designed so far stack up against their fishy equivalents:

There’s one catch – in order to unlock this new method of Cooking, you’ll have to complete Rumours and get the Guild’s residents to trust you with their favourite recipes. Here’s how that shakes out:

• Access to Varlamore: Low Tier Meats (Wild Kebbit, Larupia and Barbed Kebbit)
• 25 Rumours: Mid Tier Meats (Graahk, Kyatt and Fox)
• 50 Rumours: High Tier Meats (Antelope and Dashing Kebbit)

By the way, we’re really keen to hear what you think of tying these unlocks to the Rumour system, and whether you’d like to see this same approach in other Varlamore content.

In the meanwhile, we hope this new Cooking method will spice up your diet and give some much-needed love to some long-neglected resources.

What good are new creatures, new foodstuffs, and a new area to explore if you can’t do all of that while looking extremely fashionable? Fear not, the Hunter Guild comes with some fancy new equipment that’ll have you strutting your stuff all over the Savannah.

Mixed Hide Gear

As you’ve no doubt figured out, one of our goals for this content is to make the stuff you acquire from your hunts more useful. That’s why the secondary use for Hunting is Mixed Hide Armour, a new Ranged set that requires 50 Defence and 60 Ranged to equip. We're also thinking this set should be made from a combination of relatively high Hunter furs like Fox and Antelopes.

This set is a Ranged/Melee hybrid that gives you a welcome Defence advantage while offering some significant Strength-based Ranged gains. You’ll get a slight increase to Stab accuracy, but the larupia’s share of the bonus goes to Ranged attack. In order to create this set, you'll need to speak to someone within the Hunter Guild and get it tanned to be 'combat ready' before using it across the world!

We’ve designed the set to match Spiky Vambraces for an alternative mid-level option that focuses on both Ranged attack and Melee strength – incidentally, it goes nicely with the new weapon we’re planning to introduce…

Hunter's Spear

Designed specifically for use by Varlamore’s expert hunters, these spears utilise the physical strength of their wielder to weaken their prey on the hunt. These Ranged weapons are unique because they roll their damage based on your Melee Strength which the Mixed Hide Gear insinuated.

For those wondering, these would be consumable and would work with Ava's Equipment line. We want to explore more options for using the Spear and other new Ranged/Melee weapons as part of Hunter in the future, and we’d love to hear your ideas about new and exciting hunting methods we could try!

To give you more utility from using this weapon in Hunter, they'll give you an increased chance to successfully tease creatures like Kyatt, Ghaark and Larupia by 5%. They'll also not consume any ammo when being used against Chinchompas to give you a nice cheap way to control your Chinchompa catches if they are straying too far from your traps.

Even with all this new and exciting stuff to try, Hunter could use a little love. With that in mind, we’ve gone back to existing content and spiced it up a little. Take a look!

Hunter's Crossbow

This niche weapon offers greater range and faster shots than any other crossbow in the game – but it sits at a fairly low level, is pretty inaccurate, and the bolts you need to use it are harder to craft than the regular metal counterpart.

We want to breathe some life into this neglected weapon by allowing skilled hunters to upgrade it to the Hunter’s Sunlight Crossbow using Sunlight Horns from Sunlight Antelopes. The upgraded version will require 66 Ranged and 50 Hunter to use, and 74 Fletching to craft. It comes with +79 Ranged accuracy along with remaining a 4 attack speed weapon (3 on Rapid). It also lets you use new type of bolts crafted from Sunlight Antelope Horns, with a powerful +55 Ranged strength bonus and Moonlight Antelope Horns, with +60 Ranged strength bonus

This puts the mighty Sunlight Crossbow close to the Rune Crossbow in terms of raw power, with a slightly nicer attack speed to boost. We reckon this makes it well worth the effort of crafting the right ammunition! We'd also like to increase the amount of Kebbit Bolts crafted from 6 to 12 as a nice little QoL upgrade.

Hunter's Pouches

One of the biggest issues with Hunter at the moment is how quickly you can fill up your Inventory. Funnily enough, the wild corners of the world don’t have great Bank access, and this incentivises hunters to drop their hard-earned furs on the ground. What a waste of kebbits!

Alongside making furs and meats worth keeping in the first place, we’d also like to give you the option to craft Hunter’s Pouches which will store up to 28 of these core Hunting resources. The Pouches work much like the Rune Pouches – you’ll need the previous version to upgrade to the next.

• Larupia Fur Pouch: 35 Crafting, 4x Larupia Fur, Needle, Thread. Stores up to 14 furs. Gives 100 Crafting XP.
• Graahk Fur Pouch: 50 Crafting, Larupia Fur Pouch, 3x Graahk Fur, Needle, Thread. Stores up to 21 furs. Gives 200 Crafting XP.
• Kyatt Fur Pouch: 65 Crafting, Graahk Fur Pouch, 3x Kyatt Fur, Needle, Thread. Stores up to 28 furs. Gives 300 Crafting XP.

Meat Sacks work similarly, but (as the name suggests) only store meat.

• Fennec Meat Pouch: 35 Crafting, 4x Fennec Fox Fur, Needle, Thread. Stores up to 14 raw Hunter meats. Gives 200 Crafting XP.
• Antelope Meat Pouch: 65 Crafting, Fennec Meat Pouch, 3x Antelope Fur, Needle, Thread. Stores up to 28 raw Hunter meats. Gives 300 Crafting XP.

Hunter Outfits

Aside from being pretty gnarly FashionScape, the Hunter outfits made from Larupia, Graahk and Kyatt fur are basically useless. We want to give them a purpose – a damage reduction bonus only against Hunter creatures that applies when wearing the full set:

• Larupia Hunter Gear: 20% damage reduction
• Graahk Hunter Gear: 40% damage reduction
• Kyatt Hunter Gear: 60% damage reduction

This would let you spend more time hunting the most dangerous beasts, racking up the XP while avoiding taking too much damage.

Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten the Hunter Camouflage Gear. We’re giving all Camouflage Tops and Legs a weight reduction bonus, for a more thematic lighter step.

• All Tops: 3kg Weight Reduction
• All Legs: 2kg Weight Reduction

Trap Storage

Let’s talk traps. Hunter has a variety of training methods, but they all need their own set of tools. If you’re making multiple trips, you have to return to the Bank each time and regear. To save you time and Run Energy, we’d like to introduce a form of Trap Storage, much like the Tackle Box for Fishing, which would let you store all your Hunter tools ready for the next hunt.

The Trap Storage would only be for traps – you’ll still need to bring your own Knives, Axes, etc. To put it simply, it will store everything created by the Lunar Spell Hunter Kit.

Implings

Finally, during our recent feedback discussions we wondered why you could catch Implings barehanded without a Jar, but when using a Butterfly Net you need a Butterfly Jar. By the time you've got an Impling in the net they are already at a point of bargaining for release, so why not give you the option to catch them without the use of a Jar? We would like to clarify this wouldn't replace using Jars, but just give you a nice alternative.

That’s a wrap! We hope you’ve enjoyed this look at the first big content piece from Varlamore – and we hope you all agree that bringing life and variety to the Hunter skill is a project worth pursuing. We look forward to hearing your feedback through all the usual channels and will be back soon with an updated version of this blog addressing all your burning questions.

In the meantime, we would like to thank everyone for completing the survey about the current proposal of the Hunter Guild! We'll also have a livestream later this week (Thursday 14th @ 5pm) to discuss your feedback, any planned changes and talk about the Hunter Guild as a whole, so if you have any questions, feel free to let us know!

Until then, happy ‘Scaping!

You can also discuss this update on our official forums, on the 2007Scape subreddit, the Steam forums, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel. For more info on the above content, check out the official Old School Wiki.

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