Rune Scape / Tropes A to G

aka: Tropes A-G

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#-A

• 20 Minutes into the Past: Numerous quests such as "River of Blood" and "'Phite Club" released after "The World Wakes" (which marked the start of the Sixth Age) are chronologically set in the Fifth Age.
• Abnormal Ammo:
  • The fixed device, which shoots dyed toads.
  • There are explosive squirrels called Chinchompas.
  • Salamanders that act as flamethrowers can be used, which use swamp tar mixed with herbs as fuel.
  • The Oddball aura lets the player's dwarven multicannon shoot things like beer, squid, and brains. However, the effect is purely cosmetic.
  • During the Rocking Out quest, part of your plan to escape the island prison you get sent to involves firing a seagull from an accordion that you've improvised into a makeshift air cannon.
• Aborted Arc:
  • The sequel to the Death of Chivalry. Sir Owen Lampshades it if the Player Character asks about it, saying that he sent an invitation, but the Player Character seemed to be busy with more important things like mahjarrat, dragonkin, and elder gods and explains what he and Saradomin did without you.
  • Old School has a few of these, and justifiably so. Many of the quests prior to the 2007 backup would be continued at a later date, but this led to some quests that end with cliffhangers (such as "A Forgettable Tale", "Devious Minds", and "Fairytale II") or open questions ("Another Slice of HAM" and "The Eyes of Glouphrie") that have yet to be resolved, partly (largely) due to Old School having a much smaller team with much more on their plates than to develop quests that ended a decade ago. Not to mention that many involve skills or features that aren't in Old School. That said, in 2022 Old School's developers showed interest in backporting RS2 quests that were released after the 2007 backup, starting with "Land of the Goblins."
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Under several cities, such as Varrock, Ardougne, Draynor village and Ashdale. Typically, they contain zombies and skeletons.
• Abusive Parents: Ormod Gulvas, the ghostly antagonist of the Broken Home quest, and all-around Jerkass Sadist. He had no time for his son, so after his wife died of a disease, he hired a nanny and locked him in a tower. And then he killed the nanny for damaging a relic that belonged to him, leaving his son unattended to starve to death. And that's not even getting into what he does to his other servants, magically sealing them in his mansion and hunting them down one by one, before killing himself.
• Accordion to Most Sailors: Accordions can be heard in the background music of many nautical- and pirate-themed locations. Examples include the Player Owned Port, Braindeath Island (also heard in the login screen for the Pirate questline finale, Pieces of Hate), Brimhaven, Mos'Le Harmless, and the Menaphos Ports district.
• Achievements in Ignorance:
  • The character TzHaar-Ga'al-Kot accidentally renders himself invisible with a miscast spell. The player can ask him what runes are used for the spell, only for him to comment that he doesn't use runes because he doesn't have pockets in which to store them. The player then calls him out on the impossibility of using magic without runes, at which point Kot states 'No one told TzHaar-Ga'al-Kot that.'
  • During the "Dragon Slayer" quest, an old man named Oziach sends you to kill the legendary dragon Elvarg in exchange for the secrets of smithing Rune Platebodies. The player is successful, and learns the secret, but later finds out in dialogue with a different character that Oziach never expected you to succeed - he just gave you what he thought was an impossible task so you would go away.
• Acid-Trip Dimension: The Cosmic Plane where starflowers grow, accessible through fairy rings. It looks like this.◊
• Actor Allusion: This wasn't the first time Zaros got stabbed in the back by someone before.
• Ad Reward: Players have the option to earn Treasure Hunter keys for Loot Boxes or RuneCoins for Microtransactions by engaging in some variety of advertising. Watching video ads tends to reward the least of either currency, while filling out surveys or subscribing to advertising mailing lists rewards more.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Many low-level items are rather inexpensive, but as one starts to reach higher tiers of gear (or just difficult-to-obtain or annoying ones), prices get exponentially higher, with the most demanded weapons having prices exceeding the maximum amount of cash you can hold at once. On the other hand, the game has a real living, breathing, player-run economy... so it's the community which isn't letting go of those rare items for a low price.
  • Sometimes subverted—deflation also occurs, as stronger items are released that reduce the demand for other items, or enough bossing leads to the supply of certain items (e.g. the God Wars Dungeon 1 armors) becoming high enough to make their cost manageable for players in the short term. Players can also buy certain items from NPC shops and sell them on the GE for a higher price to people who need lots of those items (e.g. feathers, which can be bought for cheap from various Non Player Characters daily and sold to players who need them to train Fletching for a higher price.)
    • However, the Invention skill actively encourages players to disassemble certain high-level items for unique components that can grant very valuable perks to their other weapons—the most desirable perks can only be obtained by disassembling some of the most expensive items or the most difficult-to-restore artefacts. As an example, the "Biting 4" perk, which increases the chance of a Critical Hit in combat, is obtainable only through the use of Noxious components, which in turn are only obtainable by disassembling Noxious weaponry dropped by Araxxi.
• Addressing the Player: Very occasionally, but some characters, usually tutorial NPCs, will refer to the player as an entity separate from their character.
• Adventurer Archaeologist: Downplayed by the Archaeology skill. While the core gameplay loop of the Archaeology skill is somewhat more like real-life archaeology than this trope (in that you're digging up materials to restore artefacts of past civilizations, often learning quite a bit about those past civilizations in the process), some of the archaeology mysteries see you doing acts of this—such as solving puzzles to find hidden troves, delving through hazardous tunnels, and even finding a lost city of gold. Additionally, all seven current sites have some level of importance: Kharid-Et is a Zarosian fortress that holds a hibernating Mahjarrat deep inside, Senntisten was the capital of the Zarosian Empire (and you're gathering while the Nodon Dragonkin lay siege to Azzanadra's Cathedral, in some places within 10 meters of you), the Infernal Source has a portal to the location where Zaros caged Loarnab in ice, using him as a living portal for 12 legions of Zarosian demons, the Everlight was where the Icyene Saradomin brough to Gielinor lived before Morytania was conquered by the Vampyres, the Stormguard Citadel is the place where the Godsword was developed by an ancient Aviansie inventor, the Warforge was where Bandos trained his goblin armies and housed a kidnapped Imcando dwarf, who built a massive furnace deep in its heart, and Orthen was the first city of the Dragonkin after the Great Revision that destroyed their homeworld.
• Adventurer's Club: The Quest guilds: Champions' Guild, Heroes' Guild, and Legends' Guild. Old School also has the Myths' Guild.
• Aerith and Bob: Bob the Jagex Cat, Bob's evil twin also named Bob, and Bob of Bob's Fabulous Axes all share a game with people called Zemouregal, Azzanadra and Zaros, although weirder names like those tend to pop up more with non-humans. Player characters' names can also have this effect.
  • The Goebies are a lampshade on player character names: their culture didn't invent individual names, so they've been taking names from the human explorers they meet (the players). The result is an eclectic mix of mundane names, bizarre names, and Jagex staff usernames and in-jokes.
• Air Guitar: On unlocking 500 songs, you unlock the Air Guitar emote, in which the player character rocks out on an air guitar, playing five notes.
• Alas, Poor Villain: At the end of "Song from the Depths", you find the Siren who's been causing the trouble...and she turns out to be trapped inside the belly of the Queen Black Dragon, subject to a powerful illusion that's making her believe she's back home on her island. When you break the illusion, she's horrified. She's killed shortly after, and the player character has a brief moment of mourning.
• Alcohol Hic: Found in the dialogue of many an inebriated character.
• Alien Sky: In "The Lord of Vampyrium", your allies' realization that they're not on Gielinor anymore comes with the dramatic reveal of a brilliant scarlet sky with two low-hanging moons and no sun.
• Aliens Never Invented the Wheel:
  • Several species in the Runescape multiverse never invented names. Some of them explicitly consider names useless, but the Goebies genuinely never thought of this before and start adopting names from the new explorers to their world.
  • Even among the humans of Gilenor, there are examples. Bacon wasn't invented until the 6th Age, and pigs are an endangered species until Eli Bacon discovers that pigs taste delicious.
  • The concept of Language never occurred to Zaros until he met demons.
• All Deserts Have Cacti:
  • The Kharidian Desert is indeed full of cacti.
  • As is Mazcab, though the cacti are pink.
  • The barren northern side of Anachronia also has cacti. Gigantic, primordial-looking cacti, but cacti nonetheless.
  • The three cactus farming patches in the game are in Al Kharid (at the north end of the Kharidian Desert), Menaphos (at the south end), and Anachronia's north side.
• All in a Row: There's an option to "Follow" another player. A group of players can follow each other in a chain, resulting in this.
• All Swords Are the Same: In Classic, all melee weapons have the exact same fighting animation: you just bash your opponent with it and that's that. The modern game has a wider variety of stances for different types of weapon, but there are still a limited number of animations for slashing, stabbing, or bludgeoning — the stabbing animations for a bronze dagger are the same as the ones for a pair of gardening secateurs.
• All-Powerful Bystander: The Tasakaal in Old School, a trio of TzHaar that defected from Mor Ul Rek to Mount Karuulm to serve a new master, who is heavily implied to be the Elder God Ful.
• All Trolls Are Different:
  • They're violent and warlike by nature, with thick, rocklike skin and low intelligence, and they're named after the first thing they try to eat (or, if they don't know what it's called, the sound it made), which leads to some unusual names like "My Arm".
    • "Dad" (At least two Dads, actually, the second one tried to eat the first.)
    • "Cliff"
    • "Lol"
    • Players can obtain a baby troll and feed it a significant number of items—including rare items like Treasure Trails dyes, Third Age armour, and even discontinued items such as party hats. If you're feeling particularly cruel you can even feed it other pets.
    • Player-Owned Farms has a nearby baby troll who will buy and eat animals you can't otherwise sell, and duly changes his name with each one.
  • Mountain Trolls are able to change their bodies to adapt to their surroundings. In Troll Invasion, they've shown the ability to summon monsters and cast magic by consuming the flesh of Summoners (druids) and Mages, respectively.
  • Other than the most common mountain trolls, there are aquatic varieties of troll that sports fins and gills, as well as extra vicious ice trolls with thick fur.
• All Your Powers Combined: The Overload is made with the extreme potions for all five core, boostable combat skills—Attack, Strength, Defence, Magic, and Ranged, and for 6 minutes grants the full effects of all five. The Overload Salve adds the effects of an Antipoison++, dragonfire and wyvernfire protection from the Antifire Potion and Super Antifire Potion, and prayer restoration from the Prayer Potion and Prayer Restoration potion.
• Alternate Continuity: Old School RuneScape is shaping up to be this, diverging after King's Ransom. Content that cements it as being in an alternate continuity include the presence of new types of runes, the quest "A Taste of Hope" having the player character kill Ranis Drakan, as opposed to his sister Vanescula doing the deed, the "Song of the Elves" quest giving access to the elven city of Prifddinas one quest earlier than the RS3 version, as well as two entirely new land masses called Zeah (a full continent) and Fossil Island (eventually added to RS3...in its original, pre-fossil form as Anachronia, the result of Elder Needle-induced time shenanigans). That being said, there are often echoes of the RS3 version in the OSRS version.
  • There are also examples of content from Old School appearing, and sometimes becoming prominent in RuneScape, such as the aforementioned Fossil Island, Zorgoth and Vorkath, and the boss of the Inferno TzKal-Zuk. In fact, Zuk's appearance in RuneScape was so well-received that the Old School team chose to Retcon his origin story to be more in-line with RS3's.
• Ambiguous Situation: Post-"Azzanadra's Quest", the only named Temple Knights who are confirmed to still be Saradominist loyalists are Sir Tiffy Cashien and Sir Owen. Everyone else the player has encountered up to then could secretly have been a Zaros devotee all along. Any one of them.
• Amnesia Loop: A major plot point in the "Rise of the Red Axe" quest series. At the end of "Forgettable Tale of a Drunken Dwarf"^note The name of the quest is a Stealth Pun, the Player Character stumbles upon the secret base of the Red Axe and learns about their plan to create an army of Chaos Dwarves to invade Keldagrim. However, thanks to an ogre shaman working for the Red Axe, instead of making it back to Keldagrim to warn the Consortium, all your memory of the event is scrambled and you're left with an irresistible craving for beer and kebabs. After the resulting drinking party, the vital information has become slurred, drunken ramblings. In between quests, the same thing happens to Commander Veldaban, and the subsequent "Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf" quest revolves around re-discovering everything that was forgotten.
  • In the finale, "Birthright of the Dwarves," you gain a device that lets you repair the altered/erased memories.
• Ammo-Using Melee Weapon: Augmented melee weapons drain charge from the character's Universal Charge Pack in combat. If the character's charge pack is completely drained then their augmented weapons have their stats reduced to those of level 1 weapons and don't give any bonuses for their perks.
• Ancient Artifact: The twelve Elder Artefacts, from which the young gods draw their power and which are a major plot element of recent main story quests. Each artefact is a source of power, and has a certain function. Unfortunately, they also have a downside to using them. The outstanding example is the Stone of Jas, the source of all runes and a Phlebotinum Battery for the energy of the Elder Gods that's coveted by just about everybody...and that's under guard by the Dragonkin, who are cursed to eventually get angry enough to murder anyone who tries to abuse it, wherever they are. Indeed, the strongest weapon in RuneScape 3, the Fractured Staff of Armadyl, is a broken and rebuilt version of one of these artifacts (the Staff of Armadyl, also known as the Siphon).
  • Archaeology lets you discover and/or recreate a number of lesser Ancient Artifacts. To use their powers, you offer them to a Mysterious Monolith that itself counts as this trope and is actually The Codex, an Elder Artifact both crucial to the World Guardian enchantment and to keeping Erebus from leaking into our reality.
• Anchors Away: The Barrelchest Anchor, which can be used as a weapon.
• And I Must Scream:
  • Poor Arrav; he was raised as a zombie by the very person he fought against. Said person also decided to keep him conscious, effectively forcing him to watch as his body fought his own people.
  • The Void Pest in A Void Dance was imprisoned by the Black Knights and used for gruesome experiments.
  • Akthanakos could be said to fit this role, since he was betrayed and turned into a guardian of his own imprisonment.
  • Pentyn in Enakhra's Temple has been trapped there for thousands of years in solitary isolation and was constantly tortured by Enakhra. To make it worse, he's been immortalized and can't move anything below the shoulder, meaning he can never leave the place.
  • Apmeken had her voice, sight, and hearing taken away, and she was forced to sit back and wait as her monkeys slowly died off and the people of the desert turned against one another and killed each other without her guidance.
  • The TzHaar, whose bodies are composed of rock and magma/lava, apparently remain fully self-aware as they harden into solid obsidian upon "death." Obsidian which is then broken up and made into TokKul, their currency. In The Elder Kiln, Ga'al-Xox is infused with the TokKul of a dead TzHaar champion, giving him all the memories of the dead champion. He reveals that turning into TokKul is crushing agony, unable to even think coherently through the pressure and the pain; Xox was nearly driven insane from being exposed to a few minutes of 'death'.
    • It should also be noted that unlike the other examples, these characters are killable in regular gameplay, and some players even use them for combat training.
  • Skaldrun: his identity and all memory of who he was was destroyed to make him a human library. He was then made immortal and frozen in a block of ice for several hundred years, fully aware of his surroundings.
  • Mother Mallum's host, Lucy, in "Salt in the Wound". Stated to have been only a child when the slug queen possessed her and forced to spend decades in a semi-conscious, waking nightmare of an existence before finally being granted a proper death at the end of the quest. Averted with her sea slug offspring since none of the hosts remember being possessed by a sea slug, though Bailey is shown to have an aching arm after he cut himself while he was possessed by one.
  • The severed, petrified head of Loarnab, the Hydra god, can be found in the New Varrock Museum during Dimension of Disaster. Next to it is a button which, when pressed, uses the Ancient Combat abilities (which are learned by the player from a lorebook detailing Loarnab's death) on the head, prompting it to shudder and a voice in your head (identifying itself as Loarnab) to express fear, pain, confusion, etc. Tormenting the head is in fact a vital part of the quest, as it can be used as a distraction to steal another artifact, while tormenting the head in every way possible nets you an achievement.
  • The zombie form of Sir Owen in "The Death of Chivalry" thanks you for killing him, implying that he was conscious and helpless as his own dead body was forced to attack you.
  • Incomitatus, the Spirit Tree of the Poison Waste. When you meet it in "The Path of Glouphrie", its senses, including its telepathic connection to other Spirit Trees, has been corroded by the black ichor of the Waste. You are the first living creature in contact with it for centuries. When Hazelmere uses you as a focus to scry on the damage, you're trapped in Incomitatus's (lack of) senses for a moment, represented by the tree in an otherwise all-black screen, completely unable to see or hear anything around it. Your character does scream.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes:
  • Reach level 99 in a skill? You get a cape. It has reasonable combat stats and special perks related to the skill, yes, but still a fancy cape with a special emoticon. Finishing achievement diaries and quests, as well as many minigames/activities gets you pieces of clothing and armor. Much of it is unique or otherwise useful, but most of it is strictly cosmetic.
  • Reaching 120. While the skills that *officially* go to 120 give capes that have a second perk on top of the level 99 version's perk, skills that only reach level 120 via virtual levels have no benefit over the standard skillcap (making them effectively cosmetic).
  • And then there's The World Wakes quest. Its rewards include eight experience lamps worth massive amounts of XP, access to a new mid-level slayer monster, use of the five highest-level combat abilities^note except for Ice Asylum, one of the most powerful rings in the game, and... a shirt.
  • A set of four very rare drops from Nex: Angel of Death are consumable items that unlock cosmetic outfits based on the appearances of Fumus, Umbra, Cruor, and Glacies in that fight. They're still worth lots of money on the Grand Exchange due to their rarity and good designs, though.
  • Holiday events reward festive items to wear, but they are strictly cosmetic items with no stats.
  • The "Forgotten Four" bosses unlocked after Desert Treasure II are some of the hardest solo PVM challenges in Old School, and have "Awakened" variants that are much harder than just about anything else in the game. The Awakened Leviathan in particular is considered about as hard as or harder than the Inferno. The reward for beating them all? A device that turns your Torva armour red, adding no statistical advantage to it.
• Angels, Devils and Squid: Recently, this might not apply as much with the morality of the different sides being less concretely good or evil. But nonetheless, there are:
  • Angels: Saradomin and his Icyene and knights. Armadyl and his Aviansie would also apply. Seren looks somewhat eldritch, but generally fits as well.
  • Devils: Zamorak and potentially Zaros, as well as the Avernic demons and Mahjarrat who follow the two mentioned gods.
  • Squid: Cthonian demons, especially Cacus; the goddess Tuska and her Airut; potentially the Elder Gods who plan to devour the World Soul of Gielinor, killing everything that lives there. DEFINITELY Xau-Tak, the Ambassador, and the Horrors.
• Animated Armor:
  • The best example is the Warriors' Guild, where you can have your suit of armor brought to life as part of a minigame. Animated suits of armor appear in other places, as well.
  • Animated floating axes inhabit part of the dungeon just south of Taverley. In addition, the old Druidic Ritual quest involved going to the Cauldron of Thunder therein, which was guarded by a pair of suits of armour which came to life and attacked the player when they tried to pass by.
  • Animated spades and pickaxes are also found in several dungeons. The pickaxes pack a surprising punch.
• Another Dimension: Lots, but notably:
  • Zanaris, a realm ruled by Fairies. The entire Fairy Ring infrastructure uses faint energy that was left from Guthix closing the Portal of Life for the purpose of transport to other realms. Zanaris has since been retconned into being Gielinor's moon.
  • Yu'biusk, the ancestral home of the goblin races, destroyed by Bandos long ago.
  • The Spirit Realm, a series of smaller pocket dimensions, with its only inhabitants terrorized by the Spirit Beast. The realm itself is a cross between Dark World, Mirror World, and Spirit World; doing one thing in this world affects the real world in the opposite way.
  • ScapeRune is rather similar to the Spirit Realm in this aspect, since the Falador Party Room has been replaced by a prison and Evil Bob prefers raw fish instead of cooked fish which were are normally found in rivers.
  • The Abyss, discovered when the ZMI had a teleportation accident and tried to replicate the effect, is used for fast Runecrafting altar travel. It is the dimension that connects all other dimensions.
  • Then there is the Void, which is a complete absence of anything, which connects the abyss to other planes, and parts of the Void is also created by a spirit beast tearing its way from the Spirit Realm to the real world.
  • Kethsi, a plane that was once a paradise but now a godforsaken wasteland after the residents unwittingly enraged the Dragonkin.
  • The Runespan.
  • Freneskae, former home of the Mahjarrat, and prior to that a world just like Gielinor, which was destroyed when the infant Elder Gods it was nursing awoke.
  • Vampyrium, former home of the Vampyres.
  • Although these are treated as 'other dimensions' by various characters, it's implied that many of them are actually other planets within the same universe.
• Anti-Debuff: The Freedom ability clears crowd control and bleed effects. Both the player and certain high-level enemies can use it. Aside from that, the Anticipation ability can be used ahead of time to prevent the player from being stunned in the first place.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • To avert Fetch Quest, quests will often provide some required items like spades or pickaxes or gems in the nearby vicinity, saving you the trouble of trekking away to find one yourself.
  • The Toolbelt provides you with pretty much every basic tool you'll need to do any skilling or quest task in the game, unless it is a very specific item needed for a quest. This saves players long treks or teleports back to the bank for a chisel. Even better, it holds everything without taking up an additional inventory space, which is a huge bonus in a game with only 28 spaces for non-equipment.
  • Quest items for newer quests have been made more clear with a small icon next to the name of the item. Prior to this point, it was hard to tell what was actually a quest item, especially once the quest was over.
  • Having trouble with the Sliding Puzzle in "Monkey Madness"? You can skip it by paying Glough a bribe.
  • Sometimes if a puzzle is annoying there's usually a way to just bludgeon your way through.
  • Hint arrows are present in the following:
    • In player-owned ports, if you take too long locating the assassins in the Black Marketeer's random event, a hint arrow appears to point you in the right direction.
    • Similarly, in "Diamond In The Rough", if you have trouble finding kalphites with gems, Ozan will shout and give you a hint arrow.
  • After the implementation of a patch, your run energy no longer depletes as you navigate through the cryptic labyrinths in "Sliske's Endgame".
  • During Song of the Elves, you'll be traveling to and from Lletya often. Eluned will hang around the town, which will make charging your teleport crystal easier. After the quest is completed, she stays in Prifddinas, eliminating the need to track her down.
  • After completing Dream Mentor, Bird's Eye Jack becomes a banker at the Lunar Isle bank. Since he doesn't require a seal of passage, this prevents you from getting locked out of your bank account while on the island should you forget to bring your seal.
  • While inside the Mysterious Old Man's maze, your run energy won't deplete. This prevents you from losing too much time while trying to get to the center.
  • Bosses in the Nightmare Zone don't require any special methods to defeat them, such as using a stake to finish off Count Draynor or using Excalibur for the Black Knight Titan.
  • RuneLite, one of the third party clients approved by Jagex, includes a plethora of helpful plug-ins that makes the game much less frustration. For example, while on a treasure trail, the client will tell you where to go and where exactly you need to dig for a coordinate clue. It will also help you solve puzzle boxes.
  • A long time ago, you had to carry a watch and a sextant to dig up a coordinate clue. Not having them in your inventory would result with nothing getting dug up, even if you were standing in the correct spot. Old School removed the need to carry them, so now you just need to simply dig in the correct spot. RS 3, on the other hand, introduced the aforementioned toolbelt.
• Anti-Grinding: To ensure that all clan members participate in the upkeep of the Clan Citadel there's a Cap; each individual player can only grind away at the resources until they hit the cap, after which it's impossible for them to continue.
• Anti Poopsocking:
  • The game advises you to take a break after four hours of continuous play. It then automatically logs you out after 23 hours of logged-in time (6 in Old School), and prevents you from logging back in until you close and restart the client.
  • Double XP Live events are designed to make poopsocking unnecessary to make the most of them, unlike their predecessors, Double XP Weekends. Instead of granting double experience for a single weekend, players are granted 48 hours of double experience which they can use up over several (usually 10) days.
• Anti-Villain:
  • The Balance Elemental, whom you must kill to access the Stone of Jas. Which turns out to be a biiiig mistake. It was also created by Guthix from five of his most dedicated followers and friends, who willingly sacrificed themselves to form the amalgam—including the first World Guardian, Aeternam.
  • The Easter 2011 event gave The Queen Of Snow just a touch of this. After you help cut down an evil holly tree to obtain the Year, it quickly became apparent that what you've fetched for The Queen Of Sunshine wasn't real. Turns out Snowie, one of the most endearing holiday characters in the game, stole the real one because spring is so foreign to her that she literally can't see anything beautiful in it; despite knowing spring has to come to maintain order, she wanted winter to go on a little longer because she's perfectly in tune with it — but still felt mighty guilty about it.
  • "Some Like It Cold" reveals that the penguins in the Motherland are slaves and food to both the seals and polar bears, and the penguins on the iceberg were originally a group of penguins who just wanted to escape, even if Pescaling is now bent on taking over the world.
• Anthropomorphic Personifications:
  • The Queen of Snow and Queen of Sunrise are personifications of winter and spring respectively. The former once tried to make the world stay in winter because she cannot comprehend the beauty of spring.
  • The 2011 Halloween event the simply packed with these. Death apparently joined up with Pestilence, War, and Famine (along with a random man named Frank) to form a clan, and held the event involving Beauty and Famine, with Peace being mentioned during the event as well. The Horsemen have since found their way into the wider game—War now runs a bossing hub and Famine can be found at the Stormguard Citadel, with only Pestilence not having *some* presence outside of holiday events. All four reappeared for the 2018 and 2020 Halloween events.
  • The 20th Anniversary quest, Once Upon a Time in Gielinor, has the character of Closure, accessible from Death’s study—who seems to be concerned with keeping everyone's stories straight. In the first part, Closure helps resolve the paperwork to let the player get their identity back after Relomia literally stole it. In the second part, Closure calls on the player to repair the vandalizing edits Relomia made to his records of the World Guardian. In the third part, Closure calls on the player to come up with a quest for Relomia to help her regain a sense of agency. Finally, in the finale, he asks the player to help fix the stories of a future version of Relomia, who's become a full-fledged adventurer and "Time Guardian" herself...and still managed to screw up three future events.
  • In older lore, all of the gods served as this. Post-Retcon, this no longer applies to the younger gods, but still applies to the Elders to an extent.
• Apocalypse How:
  • There are many instances of it, including Class 0, Class 1 (sometime during the Fourth Age), and Class 2 (after the God Wars). Classes 3, 4 and 5 can be found in some of the realms, and X4 is subverted at the end of the Temple of Senntisten and Recipe for Disaster quests. The Elder Gods' life cycle sees them cause an X4, destroying everything except the Abyss upon hatching before creating new worlds until they develop a perfect world to lay their next generation of eggs on—indeed, the plot of the Elder Gods storyline involves finding a way to stop them from doing this once more.
  • Meta example: ClusterFlutterer (the so-called "bot nuke" of October 2011) was responsible for the deletion and banning of almost 40% of the player base over the course of a single weekend.
    • However, this was short-lived; Jagex wouldn't find a permanent solution to the bot plague until the release of Runescape 3—and even then, screen-reading bots remain at large.
• Apocalyptic Log: Used in several quests for exposition when live NPCs are unavailable.
  • You find one in the "Shades of Mort'ton" quest, where the writing gradually devolves into gibberish as the author slips into madness induced by Mort'ton's affliction.
  • You find one in "A Shadow Over Ashdale" which explains where the Crassian menace came from.
  • You find one in Melzar the Mad's mansion during "Dragon Slayer", which details his increasingly-depraved experiments with undeath.
  • The various diaries and letters in Daemonheim serve this purpose, though their creators are still about.
  • During "River of Blood," we obtain a journal written by Ivandis Seergaze, the Sole Survivor of the blood ritual that blessed the Salve. He develops symptoms of vampyrism, meeting a Guthixian nature spirit who helps him find a cure. As his Horror Hunger progresses, however, and their attempts to find a cure turn to a seemingly impossible ingredient (blisterwood ashes), Ivandis instead resolves to return to the Salve, with the intent of burning his corrupted body in Saradomin's light. It's implied that it wasn't enough to kill him, and that he's the vampyre locked in the coffin at the top of the Paterdomus.
  • The Elite Dungeons each have a set of collectible pages scattered throughout the area that can be combined into a lorebook. The Temple of Seiryu's book sees a young acolyte slowly be indoctrinated into the cult (who can later be fought as a miniboss in the Shadow Reef.) The Dragonkin Laboratory sees Kerapac, Kranon, and Vicendithas experiment with dragons in an attempt to solve the Curse, only for their experiments with black stone to go horribly awry at the end. The Shadow Reef's book seems to be an anthology: first it details the ritual that made the Ambassador the Ambassador, then the process of recreating the ritual (along with banter between the various factions that the Ambassador recruited to help) and trying to stop the World Guardian from interfering. It ends, cryptically, with a message to the player: "It does not matter what happens today. You have already failed them."
  • Some of the Archaeology mysteries involving collectible pages include this to varying extents. Some play with the trope.
    • The one page "Forge War!" mystery sees a goblin named Dumbface reckoning with Bandos's collapsing the Warforge with them inside (implied to have happened around the end of the Third Age.) The end reveals that the Forge War has gone into full swing—a final attempt by the goblins to gain Bandos's favor that they might be able to leave. The final page of the final Warforge collectible mystery, "Heart of the Forge," ultimately subverted this for the goblins as a whole: Thalmund, the Imcando dwarf Bandos kidnapped to make weapons who later came to see the goblins as his adoptive family, reveals that he's obtained enough peat to make enough blasting powder to free the goblins from their would-be tomb. It may or may not be a straight example for Thalmund himself, though, depending on whether he survived the blast.
    • Many of the Kharid-Et dig site's pages speak of the final days of the Zarosian fortress, as Zaros's "death" resonates throughout the empire, an odd cult starts to take control of the fort, and the forces of Zamorak and Saradomin approach to ransack the fortress.
    • The Vault of Shadows sees the Mahjarrat Trindine lock herself and part of the fortress away in the Shadow Realm to guard the secrets of the titular Vault. Subverted—while she missed out on the final Ritual of the Mahjarrat on Freneskae, she managed to survive in the Shadow Realm by staying in stasis for millennia, and the ending of The Vault of Shadows sees you rescue her.
    • The "Shadow Fall" mystery, meanwhile, sees Titus, a member of the Praetorian Guard, slowly fall victim to the corrupting effects of the Shadow Gem he was entrusted to guard, with the final page revealing his last name: Titus Damis, who you fought during Desert Treasure millennia later to reclaim said gem.
    • Most of the Dragonkin collectible page mysteries have elements of this on their final page, as the Curse of the Stone of Jas begins to destroy the Dragonkin civilization. Kranon resolves to seek out a force greater than the Elder Gods (which we already know will lead him to become the Ambassador of Xau-Tak), most of the Aughra Dragonkin return to the Abyss, Skeka's disciples throw themselves to the Raksha, while Skeka herself tried to possess the Raksha and ended up shattering her mind into a nearby salamander colony, where her attempts to rebuild a device to restore her mind resulted in the final sub-dig site of Orthen, Xolo City.
• April Fools' Day: There have been several.
  • 2004 saw the long-awaited introduction of horses to RuneScape — toy wooden horses, that is. Revisited in 2016 with terror bird mounts (costume legs that looked like you were riding a terror bird).
  • In 2007, there was a fake "Behind the Scenes" update announcing that every update that month would be heavily cabbage-based. A similar "Behind the Scenes" prank was the April Fool in 2011, with a plethora of Shout Outs.
  • In 2009, all the cabbages came to life and started bouncing around. Kicking one from one end of the map to the other resulted in the first appearance of Brassica Prime the Cabbage God.
  • On other occasions, April 1 heralded the fake release of new dragon items, including 2005's Dragon Plate (a toy spinning plate which you could spin and play with) and 2008's Dragon Kite (a toy kite that you can fly)^note The real anticipated items were the Dragon Platebody and the Dragon Kiteshield.
  • In 2010, they announced a RuneScape theme park.
  • For 2012, they proclaimed that "P-hats" would be dropped all around RuneScape for players to pick up for free. ("P-hat" traditionally refers to the ultra-rare party hats that are some of the most valuable items in the game.) True to their word, major cities were littered with Pea Hats: green peas that you can wear on your head.
  • In 2014 the animation for throwing logs into fire was changed to burning party hats and sailing skill (which was rumored to be added to the game in future) was added to skill interface. Additionally mock Jagex employee forums became visible due to a "technical glitch"; if you actually fell for the prank you would probably think that Runescape was going to jump the shark with all the bad ideas they talked about adding to the game.
  • In 2021, an army of inflatable balloons from Inflatus led by [[Pun K’ril Psssutaroth]] invade Gielinor after Party Pete started a balloon drop in the middle of a ritual to open a portal to Infernus. The player had to use a pointy stick to pop the balloons and use 100 of their scraps to upgrade the stick into a Stick of Power capable of popping K’ril.
• Arc Welding: So far, the storyline of the first three Elite Dungeons (and their associated quest, Curse of Black Stone) weld together elements from the Eastern Land's Cult of Seiryu, the Dragonkin quests (including their experiments with the Stone of Jas), the Pirate Quest series (namely the involvement of Xau-Tak, in the form of corrupting black stone which infects Seiryu and is the source of the eponymous Black Stone Dragon, and the Fremennik's involvement in Daemonheim.
  • Also done with Archaeology, which welds various Third Age stories together across its five dig sites.
  • The Gemstone Dragon Matriarch (created by Vicendithas) took supplementary lore from various places to plausibly explain how it was able to create the Gemstone Dragons overall. Prifddinas' gem rocks (as well as Crystal Geodes, which drops from crystal trees; which are said to be a part of Seren) initially were one of the only sources of gatherable Dragonstone and Onyx gems in-game (outside of drops). The Light Within quest had an entire remnant clan of Elves who remained on Tarddiad and resorted to melding Seren's affected crystals into themselves to stave off being apart from her, which gave them shapeshifting abilities; Angof mentions that she altered her own body using the abilities granted by the crystals. Vicendithas mentions that he fused Elven crystal into a dragon's egg. Combining these facts, the Gemstone Matriarch was able to inseminate herself, as well as alter the offspring in-vitro, spawning the Onyx, Hydrix and Dragonstone Dragons. (Vicendithas was the first to name the Dragonstone gemstone).
• Arm Cannon: The Barrelchest Mk II is equipped with a literal cannon on its left arm. Also a cosmetic event item.
• Armor and Magic Don't Mix: Wearing armor of a style not your own imposes an accuracy penalty, to the point where most offensive magics are nearly or completely useless if you're wearing full platemail or dragonhide. However the penalty only applies to Hit Point damage: other spells work fine, and prayers are completely unaffected. You can also use the (craftable and buyable) Ingenuity of the Humans ability to negate this effect for one attack, most commonly used to use the Seren Godbow's special with any combat style.
• Armor of Invincibility:
  • Torva, Pernix, and Virtus: once the most powerful armor in the game (now surpassed by several others but used as raw materials to craft the new most powerful), dropped only by one of the most difficult boss monsters in the game. They're tradable, but they'll set you back dozens of millions of gold.
  • It gets even worse with the t90 power armors in the game, Sirenic, Malevolent, and Tectonic (ranged, melee and magic respectively). They cost less than the items mentioned above but degrade to nothing - and the only way to keep them from breaking is to use dyes that can cost several billion gold. Ouch. Masterwork Armor doesn't degrade to dust, but it requires literal hours of effort to craft (and its use in repairing the t92 Trimmed Masterwork keeps its price high.)
  • Tier 92 power armors—Elite Sirenic, Trimmed Masterwork, and Elite Tectonic—take this even further. Trimmed Masterwork even has an effect that causes all damage to be dealt partially over time, making it easier to heal up as it ticks.
  • Cryptbloom armor, while lacking the damage boosts of the aforementioned armors, instead provides incredibly potent magic and melee damage reduction, the ability to boost the damage your allies deal (provided they're attacking your target from behind, and a shield at low health.
  • Achto armor is similar to Cryptbloom, but trades its unique perks for the ability to occasionally reset defensive ability cooldowns (and existing for all three combat styles).
  • Old School has Torva, Masori, and Ancestral armour being best-in-slot for the melee, range, and magic combat styles respectively. The former two can also be fortified by breaking down pieces of Bandos and Armadyl armour. The Justiciar armour is also the best set of defensive gear, being the only set of armour to reduce damage taken instead of reducing the chance of taking damage.
• Armor-Piercing Attack:
  • The enchanted diamond Bakriminel bolts have an "Armour Piercing" effect which has a 5% chance to inflict up to 15% more extra damage at 100% accuracy.
  • Verac the Defiled's set effect has a slight chance of ignoring defences, which will guarantee a hit if the effect kicks in.
• Armor-Piercing Question: 'But am I your enemy?' When the player character asks a mind controlled Zanik this question, it gives her the conviction she needs to break Bandos' control.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • Very few melee-based monsters can seem to figure out to just walk around the table from behind which the player is casting spells or shooting arrows at them. This was averted in later updates, as melee monsters from Dungeoneering, as well as a few more recently introduced monsters, will attempt to run or move around obstacles when they are attacked from a range. You can still pin an enemy into a corner with a little maneuvering, but at least the token effort is still there.
  • This is lampshaded in a rematch with the Tree Spirit, where the text before the fight mentions there are no mushrooms to hide behind.
  • If you have a protection prayer or deflection curse active, crystal shapeshifters will change form to counter the style you're praying against, rather than the style you're actually using.
  • If you don’t attack Nex during her siphon in Blood Phase and leave her line of sight (provided your familiar doesn't aggro her), she de-aggros you. This can make said phase much easier, letting you kill Blood Reavers at your leisure.
• Ascended Glitch:
  • Certain members-only items of clothing were made available. It was discovered that some of those items (the gloves) were actually usable on freeplay worlds (instead of being displayed as "member's objects" they were still wearable gloves). Because they could not be obtained on free worlds, some members would obtain them for low prices on their worlds and sell them to non-members for higher prices. They became a symbol of wealth on freeplay worlds, eventually forcing Jagex to keep it in.
  • An extremely early example (2001 or so) would be the now taken-for-granted feature that makes items only visible to the player who dropped them for about a minute before being visible to everyone else. It was originally a bug, but after it was removed, public demand brought it back.
  • The Falador Massacre, caused by an error causing kicked party-goers to still be flagged for PVP in non-PVP areas, became part of the game's lore during the 2015 Invasion of Falador event. In 2016, on the ten-year anniversary of the massacre, a reenactment occured, with Durial 321 himself as a boss.
• Ash Face: During the Recipe For Disaster quest, a goblin cook accidentally blows up his own cauldron and gets this.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership:
  • One quest lets you join the White Knights of Falador and be able to purchase their equipment. For the Master rank, you have to kill hundreds of black knights. And "Ritual of the Mahjarrat" lets you see Sir Tiffy in action, the old man is TOUGH.
  • The Void Knights have this system. The better a fighter you are, the higher your rank.
  • Ogres like this, the most powerful are the leaders.
  • If you speak to the goblin High Priest after "The Chosen Commander", he explains that the High Priest you met previously was killed by a human, and the junior priests all fought to the death to become the next High Priest. Justified because they're priests of "Big High War God" Bandos.
  • Sometimes justified in clans or minigames when individuals are chosen to be generals or other leaders just because they are the strongest and/or most skilled at the game.
• Asteroids Monster: Tz-Keks split in two once you kill one.
• Attack Reflector: One shield ability, aptly named Reflect, cuts any damage you take by half (25% in PvP) and reflects it back at the attacker, for ten seconds.
• The Atoner:
  • Dr. Fenkenstrain after the Great Brain Robbery quest.
  • Juna regrets her Jerkass fanaticism after "The World Wakes".
• Audience Shift: The demographic grew older with the game, resulting in quest storylines becoming more mature, deaths becoming more graphic, and the profanity filter becoming optional.
• Author Avatar: Several JMods have made ingame appearances, most notably in the form of 'Jmod Clones' that spawned during the Battle of Lumbridge to fight for their chosen god, though Mod Osborne ('Mod Elfborne') and Mod Stu appear as easter eggs in Prifddinas to players who, respectively, give chocolate, bacon, and bread to Seren or prepare a stew while holding a mud pie. You earn titles for finding either of them.
  • Avatars of the Gower Brothers, the trio behind the game in the first place, appear in the (likely) non-canon Gower Quest. They run a cabbage farm together.
• Awesome, but Temporary:
  • At the end of "While Guthix Sleeps", you get to use the Stone of Jas to boost all your stats to *255* during a boss battle, but Lucien steals the Stone and the boost wears off as soon as the fight ends.
  • In "Sliske's Endgame" you activate your powers as World Guardian in the climax of the final battle against Sliske, giving you infinite adrenaline to demolish him with.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The level 95 magic spell Fire Surge, despite being the highest-levelled combat spell in the standard spellbook, is an unfortunate victim of this trope. Due to the way magic damage works, your spell damage is capped by the level of your weapon. For instance, if you're using the level 95 Fire Surge with a tier 75 staff of light, you'd only get tier 75 damage output, exactly equivalent to the next-strongest fire spell, Fire Wave. In this particular example, you are wasting runes for literally no benefit at all.
    • Fire spells from the standard spellbook in general fit this trope, because all spells (air, water, earth, and fire) within a certain grouping of spells will scale their damage up to a certain level tier; for instance, Wave spells scale up to tier 80 damage, and Surge spells scale to tier 99. Because fire runes tend to cost considerably more than the other elemental runes, it's generally better to stick to the cheaper elements and save your fire spells for Glacors or other monsters with a fire weakness.
  • The Ancient Combat abilities (except Ice Asylum) summon vaguely Eldritch Abomination -like tentacles to harm your foe, in a display similar to that once used by Zaros himself to conquer and enslave a lesser god. These have the potential to be among the highest-damaging abilities in the game (up to 500% regular weapon damage)... but also among the lowest (66% regular weapon damage, for the same ability), completely at random. And they do (potentially heavy) recoil damage to their user as well, even if you completely miss your opponent. That being said, they downplay this trope: all three Tendrils abilities have uses in PvE, though Smoke Tendrils, the Magic ability, requires some Critical Hit synergies to get the most out of it.
  • The lava whip is another example. In addition to being one of the coolest-looking weapons in the game, it has a special attack that drags your opponent over to you in player versus player combat, even over obstacles they otherwise cannot traverse. The downsides? The special attack requires a whopping 75% of your adrenaline and has a completely different effect on monsters, merely stunning them instead of dragging them to you. On top of that, it costs almost as much as the stronger drygore weapons, and in order to recharge it, you have to either augment it using the Invention skill (see Breakable Weapons below), or sacrifice multiple abyssal whips, although those are pretty cheap nowadays.
  • Speaking of Drygore weaponry, a downplayed example can be seen in Drygore longswords. Although they are more expensive than the rapiers and maces, not as many high level monsters are weak to slashing weapons as to stabbing or crushing weapons, though bringing the Dragon scimitar for its special attack (which temporarily improves the accuracy of slashing weapons) can alleviate this somewhat. And even if your opponent is weak to slash (or if you brought said Dragon scimitar), you'd be better off saving up for a Noxious Scythe or an Abyssal Scourge anyways. In a nutshell, you're only really paying the extra premium for looks and Dragon scimitar synergy.
  • The Hexhunter Bow, while the strongest ranged weapon in the game against magic-class enemies, can't fire Enchanted Bakriminel bolts (unlike Ascension/Blightbound/Eldritch Crossbows, and even the Wyvern Crossbow), meaning even against magic-classed enemies you might be better off taking the latter due to the raw power of said bolts. Downplayed with the introduction of Croesus arrows and Elder God arrows, which have their own unique and powerful effects, but are still outclassed by Bakriminel bolts in most cases. Averted with the bow's magic counterpart, the Inquisitor Staff, due to the ridiculous number of melee-class enemies and bosses that exist.
  • Ancient Warriors' Equipment, rare, high-level degradeable weapons and armour dropped only by the very powerful Revenants, are a textbook example. Though they are among the most powerful items in the game (mainly due to some of the weapons' very useful special attacks), they are not practical to use for one main reason - they degrade to dust after a set period of time in combat unlike other items that only degrade to a repairable broken state. Worse yet, using the special attacks speeds up the rate at which they degrade. Granted, as of a recent update, they last slightly longer than standard degradeable items and can even be upgraded to level 88 stats (though only if unused), but it is still very dangerous to have them vanish right in the middle of a tough fight. There's a very good reason why they are only ever used for their special attacks, and never as an actual weapon.
    • This was even worse prior the aforementioned update that buffed them - not only would they last for just one hour (as opposed to the current ~16 hours), but they would degrade simply by being wielded, regardless of whether or not you were in combat. In other words, if you ran around with your obscenely expensive Statius' warhammer for an hour, it would be gone at the end of that hour, no matter how much combat you were in, if any.
  • Deathtouched darts are a single-use weapon that can One-Hit Kill almost any monster you throw it at, including most bosses. Sounds good on paper, but in the field it's anything but. For starters, the only way to obtain it outside of seasonal events and weeklies is to buy it for a whopping 5 million coins from a traveling merchant who only appears for a short time on certain worlds. Worse yet, only one is available at a time, and he only carries it on certain days, so if you miss out on buying the dart, it may be weeks or potentially months before he offers another. And when you do manage to get one, there are drawbacks to using it. For starters, it's a complete crapshoot whether or not you'll get a good enough drop to cover the dart's cost. Second, on some bosses, it will only skip one phase of the fight, while others are completely immune to it. Finally, killing a boss with the dart will make your kill not count towards your Soul Reaper task (if you are on one) or your total killcount, and prevent you from advancing either of those for fifteen minutes.
  • In Old School, battlestaves and Mystic staves originally had the same magic attack bonus as regular elemental staves. As such, there really wasn't much of a benefit of using a battlestaff or Mystic staff to cast magic aside from having higher melee stats, but even that was moot as most mages would be carrying a better melee weapon anyway, like a dragon dagger or dragon scimitar. Several years later, an update would finally increase their magic attack power which made using them worthwile.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: Veldaban reluctantly becomes the king of Keldagrim at the end of "King of the Dwarves" after he, Meike, and the player character foil Hreidmar's plans to become its king.
  • At the end of "A Kingdom Divided", King Kandur Hosidius throws a massive coronation party to celebrate the start of a new era for Kourend. Slightly less aweseome when he is almost immediately assassinated.
• A God Am I: Every so often, one of the deities in RuneScape will make an appearance. It is generally made clear that they are, indeed, a god, or at least very, very, powerful.
  • The quest called "Missing, Presumed Death" is made of this trope. After Sliske gathers most of the other gods (along with the player) in Armadyl's former fortress, the various gods quibble amongst themselves as to the purpose of the assembly - supposedly it is to announce that Sliske has become a god thanks to his recent activities. He subverts it, however, by announcing that the real reason he kidnapped Death was to start a free-for-all amongst the gods.

B

• Badass Bookworm: Lexicus Runewright in Dungeoneering. He summons books that hit you with all kinds of attacks, and some that explode that do an almost guaranteed 500 damage (back when 990 was the max HP a player could have, this was a BIG problem).
• Bad Boss: Kal'Ger the Warmonger, who opens every battle with a cutscene in which he kills one of the lower-level Kal'Gerion demons.
• Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: Subverted by Evil Dave, who tries to swap "bad" and "good" in his speeches, but ends up getting very confused.
• Bad Powers, Good People: The Zarosian Mahjarrat are a rather affable bunch, to the player at least. (aside from Sliske, who despite being Zarosian has a tendency to have his own agenda). The Ancient magicks that Zarosians use are quite dark, including spells that freeze opponents solid, steal their health, and drain their prayer. The Zarosian prayers (called "curses") are much more offensive than the other prayer sets, and drain your opponent's strength to enhance your own.
• Bad with the Bone: The Dorgeshuun goblins are pacifists, but when they have to fight, they use weapons made out of bone, including a bone club (which is just a large, heavy bone).
  • The Bone Blowpipe and Upgraded Bone Blowpipe are made of bones. Death Lotus Darts are made with Ancient Bones, while the Terrasaur Maul is made with a long bone from a dinosaur.
• Bag of Holding:
  • It is an adventure game with an inventory, after all. Also doubles as Hammerspace because you can hold large hammers, anchors, other weapons, and massive amounts of food and fish, all too huge to possibly keep within. At its most extreme, you can carry the components for seven full dwarf multicannons, each of which is twice as big as you are.
  • There's bags of holding for rune essence that you can place within the bag of holding, as well as a coal bag and gem bag available as Dungeoneering rewards.
  • The toolbelt enables you to store all kinds of tools without taking up inventory or bank space, while the money pouch keeps gold pieces safe even through death (though it becomes impossible to fill in the Wilderness).
  • When you need to carry a large quantity of soil to transport a Moai, which needs the soil of its island for sustenance, you are given a bag that is bigger on the inside.
  • Invention components have their own bag in your inventory. There’s also bags you can craft that hold gizmos.
• Bag of Spilling:
  • All but one (up to five with the required level) of the hard-won items found in the dungeons of Daemonheim will disappear into Saradomin-only-knows-where once the dungeon is completed.
  • You drop most of your items when you die. However, you can retrieve them by making a mad dash to the location of your demise before your gravestone expires and your stuff becomes free for the taking. In RS3, Death can also retrieve your belongings for a small fee. Averted if you’re wearing a Ring of Death when you die, which consumes a percent of its charge to respawn you at a respawn point.
• Baguette Beatdown:
  • The Sandwich Lady, formerly a random event and now an NPC in the Ardougne marketplace. Don't make her angry!
  • You can whack other players with the stale baguette, a Joke Item that's a rare reward from a mystery box.
• Bait-and-Switch Boss: A hybrid of this and Trick Boss can be found in Araxxor and Araxxi: You fight Araxxor for the first three phases of the fight, but then Araxxi shows up and kills Araxxor, and you have to defeat her for the rewards.
• Bank Robbery: The Wise Old Man pulled one of these in Draynor Village. He lives right across the street from the bank, but he's too dangerous to actually confront about it. The best the guards can do is keep an eye on him at all times.
  • You can actually pull one yourself, at least in OSRS, if you have access to the Telekinetic Grab spell and head to the lower level of a bank in Varrock, the one close to the Grand Exchange, but not IN grand exchange. Just open the door and go downstairs... Admittedly it's cleaner, if less profitable than what Wise Old Man did as you don't have to kill anyone and the only attention you'd get is maybe a curious player who wants to check out what you did.
• Barrier Change Boss:
  • Dagannoth and Gelatinnoth Mothers. They change colors depending on the type of attack you need to use.
  • Tormented demons, which change their protection prayer based on what you're hitting them with.
  • Astea Frostweb and the Skeletal Trio, who change their protection prayers randomly.
  • Some bosses invert this—the player puts up prayers to block or mitigate attacks, and the bosses change their attacks to hit around them.
  • In the Barbarian Assault minigame, every enemy except ironically the bosses uses barrier change mechanics. In the game, there are five players who each take on one of four roles. Each role has to tell a different role which weakness to target, and the weaknesses changes every thirty seconds. Collectors have to tell fighters what combat style to use against the fighter and ranger enemies, while attackers have to tell collectors which eggs are currently safe to pick up. Defenders tell healers which type of poisoned food to use against the enemy healers, while healers tell defenders which type of bait to use to trap the enemy runners.
• Basilisk and Cockatrice: Two different versions exist: the basilisk, which is a large multi legged lizard-like creature, and the cockatrice, which has traits from both chickens and snakes. Alternate versions of the cockatrice also exist like the chocatrice. All, though, have a deadly gaze. Anyone seeing a basilisk indirectly, as in a reflection or through something transparent, is petrified rather than killed, which can be cured with the right potion.
• Batman Gambit: The entire plot of "Hunt for Red Raktuber". Pescaling Pax anticipates your every move, and by the end of the quest, you're teleblocked and left for dead on a deserted island. Fortunately, the player gets the opportunity to join the PBJ, who ferry them off the island.
  • As of Azzanadra's Quest, we learn that Guthix deliberately appealed to Sliske's curiosity and duplicity to take an interest in the player, as well as to try and kill him with the Staff of Armadyl. Doing so made Sliske, a master of shadow magic Guthix needed who gained a substantial portion of Guthix's essence from killing him, the perfect vessel to complete the World Guardian enchantment.
• Bat Out of Hell: After a graphical update, now standard Vampires, angry Juvinates and Vyrewatch look like were-bats, the Vyrewatch having wings on their back and the other two having no wings to speak of.
• Beam-O-War:
  • Runescape 3 opened with one of these between Saradomin and Zamorak. Players could gather Divine Tears for either one, to help overpower the other (and earn loot).
  • In Beneath Cursed Tides, the battle between Myrtle and the dark wizard Vivian takes the form of this. The player has to fend off attacking Crassians and aid Myrtle with the beam in order to overpower Vivian and win.
• Beastly Bloodsports: Used to have a quest series about training your pet cat for a competitive rat-fighting minigame. This was removed in an update for hopefully self-evident reasons, and some of the NPCs involved were given angry dialogue about losing their jobs. You can still sicc your cat on normally-sized rats or Evil Dave's demon rats; the quest chain and minigame were the only things removed.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: In the lore, this is why General Viggora (similar to Lord Drakan defected from Zaros to Zamorak. After being recruited into Zaros' armies, all the other races mocked him and humans in general, no matter what they accomplished. Except for Zamorak, who at the time was another general. After he overbuilt his fortress until it sank into the swamp he built it on, he remembered Zamorak's silence while the others mocked him and joined him in his (successful) attempt at usurping Zaros.
• Becoming the Costume: In Some Like It Cold, a PBJ Agent named Teddy is captured by the seals and made to entertain them as a form of humilation by becoming a clown. However, he eventually becomes to enjoy being one and decides to join the circus, which incidentally allows the player to train their thieving exp there.
• Bedsheet Ghost:
  • Invoked in "Ghosts Ahoy", where you try to disguise yourself as a ghost by cutting holes in a bedsheet.
  • The reward for Old School’s 2019 Halloween event was a ghost costume made out of someone’s sheets.
• Belief Makes You Stupid:
  • It's hard to find any prominent Saradominist characters who aren't Knight Templars, Church Militants or Well Intentioned Extremists, and the other major gods' followers aren't far behind: Zamorakians are frequently Blood Knights, Bandosians are Always Chaotic Evil, Armadylians are constantly played as painfully naive, and Zaros' entire hierarchy demands Blind Obedience above all else. Downplayed over time, as the varies gods and followers get more nuanced portrayals over time.
  • The Stormguard Citadel reveals a clear aversion: Howl, the Armadylean aviansie who designed the Godsword and whose designs inspire Ancient Invention.
  • Meanwhile, the Naytheistic Dorgeshuun are the heroes of an entire quest series focusing on their resistance to Bandos' domination, the Godless faction are La Résistance playing David Versus Goliath, and the on-again-off-again God Wars seem to exist to showcase all the various ways in which Gielinor can suffer an Apocalypse How.
    • Inverted with the Cabbage Facepunch Bonanza event, where it's the *Godless* who consistently were regarded as idiots—after all, a joke fight between a cabbage god and a gorilla goddess of partying isn't exactly the place for serious diatribes about the gods.
• BFS: Old School's Colossal blade, earned as a reward for the Giants' Foundry minigame. It's so heavy that the player character just drags it on the ground behind them. Its examine text is even a reference to Berserk!
• Big Bad: Quest series tend to have main or overarching villains. For example:
  • For the Curse of Black Stone/Elite Dungeons storyline, it's the Ambassador/Kranon.
  • For the Desert quest series, it's Amascut. Anything involving Menaphos will also see the unnamed Pharaoh as a big bad.
  • For the Dwarf quest series, it's the Red Axe guild.
  • For the Elf quest series, it's the Dark Lord.
  • For the Fairy quest series, it's the Fairy Godfather.
  • For the God quest series, it's Sliske. Kerapac takes over for the Desperate Times/Desperate Measures duology, as Sliske subsumes himself into your soul via the Staff of Armadyl at the end of Sliske's Endgame. Zaros takes over this role as of Azzanadra’s Quest, while the Elders take over for the Elder God Wars storyline as a whole.
    • Sliske's herald, Relomia, began as this for the 20th anniversary quest, Once Upon a Time in Gielinor. Subverted in her case, though: during the third section of the quest, Fortunes, Closure and the player stage a miniquest for her to try and help her recover a sense of agency and become a hero herself. It turns out the player’s intervention and a look at her future self as the Time Guardian from Closure will actually give her the strength to become a hero in her own right—the final part of the quest, Finale, is more an accident on Relomia’s future self’s part that the player has to help her resolve.
  • For the Legacy of Zamorak series... well, the name is a dead giveaway. After the player fights and defeats Zamorak in his Undercity and reestablishes the Edicts of Guthix, re-banishing all the major gods, Zamorak's devout half-Mahjarrat general Moia takes over as the main antagonist.
  • For the Myreque quest series, it's Lord Lowerniel Drakan. His sister Vanescula takes over at the end of The Lord of Vampyrium and for the final quest, River of Blood.
  • For the Penguin quest series, it's the Pescallion, leader and founder of the KGP (Killer Gentoo Penguins).
  • For the Pirate quest series, it's Rabid Jack.
  • For the Sea Slug quest series, it's Mother Mallum.
  • For the Void Knight quest series, it's the Pest Queen.
  • In contrast, the quests of the Mahjarrat quest series tend to cycle among the various Mahjarrat.
• Big Boo's Haunt: Draynor Manor. Unsurprisingly, the citizens of Draynor Village stay well clear of it, as it is home to Count Draynor, one of Lord Drakan's siblings (albeit one far weakened by his time across the Salve).
  • Port Phasmatys also counts, being a literal ghost town in Morytania.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: There are more than 10 different types of giant spiders; the giant boss spiders Araxxor and Araxxi are the biggest attackable ones. The Stronghold of Safety is packed with Giant Roaches. Giant Ants and Giant Wasps can be found in the Jade Vine maze on Karamja. There are Cave Bugs and Cave Crawlers underground. The largest insects however, are the Kalphites, which are like beetle-scorpion hybrids that include the Kalphite Queen, Exiled Kalphite Queen, and Kalphite King.
• Big Damn Heroes: Played straight when you are the hero (usually in quests), averted when a group of heroes try to save you from Lucien, though fortunately the player still manages to escape.
• Bigger on the Inside: Everyone's Player Owned Houses and Balthazar Beauregard's Circus are these; the latter can move it's current location in a box, once a week.
• Big "NO!":
  • When the player is kidnapped to Evil Bob's island. "No... what? Nooooooooooooo!" If they are sent to his prison instead, they will scream "Aargh!".
  • These are Wizard Ellaron's last words in "Rune Memories" as he's forcibly teleported to the Abyss by the soul fragments of the wizards of the original Wizard's Tower, where he will inevitably explode from the raw magical power he's now containing.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • The Burthorpe Soldiers speak in Latin.
  • Latin appears to be the official language of Zaros. The book that teaches you the Ancient Curses is written in Latin, the Zaros area in the God Wars dungeon has Latin inscriptions, and several prominent Zarosian characters and items have Latin names:
    • Torva, Pernix, and Virtus armor are Latin for "fierce", "nimble", and "valor" respectively.
    • Nex, the Zaros boss, is Latin for "violent death".
    • Nex's generals Cruor, Fumus, Glacies, and Umbra are "blood", "smoke", "ice", and "shadow".
  • Daemonheim battle themes are also named Glacialis, Desolo, Adorno, Occulo, and Torqueo, translating to Glacial, Desolate, Adorned, Occult, and Twisted respectively.
  • The song called Norse Code includes a high flute. Its first series of notes is actually "RUNESCAPE" in Morse Code.
  • Welsh is the language of the elves:
    • Prifddinas means "the capital", and Tarddiad means "origin" or "source". Lletya can be translated to "lodge" or "barracks", and Isafdar means "lowest", roughly.
  • The Everlight digsite, being a pastiche of Ancient Greece, uses Greek names for various objects and military classifications.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • At the end of the Blood Runs Deep quest, you manage to trap the Dagganoth Mother inside of the cavern and protect Rellekka, at the cost of losing Prince Brand and Princess Astrid, who died fighting the Dagganoth Kings. It doesn't help that you married one of them only a few moments before.
  • At the end of Ritual of the Mahjarrat, Lucien is dead, the Staff of Armadyl has been broken and thus rendered unusable, and the Stone of Jas has been placed somewhere where it won't be abused again. Unfortunately, Jhallan was used for the Ritual due to him being weak compared to the rest of the Mahjarrat, effectively killing him, Idria was murdered by the Dragonkin, Akrisae changed into a Barrows wight, and the Dragonkin wish to soothe their rage from prolonged misuse from the Stone Of Jas (thanks to the aforementioned Lucien), wrecked Edgeville and intend to do the same to the rest of the world.
  • At the end of Children of Mah, The Mahjarrat are free. However, Mah has been rendered into a permanent coma, Seren has revealed that she tricked the Mahjarrat into their rituals in order to save her mother only to mercy kill her herself, and the relationship between her and Zaros has deteriorated even further.
  • At the end of Sliske's Endgame: You've managed to remove the threat of Sliske once and for all (probably), the Stone of Jas is destroyed and with it the curse on the Dragonkin, and the power struggle of the gods has subsided for now. However, you've awoken the Elder God Jas—who gives you and mortal life as a whole a final chance to prove their worth to live.
  • At the end of Desperate Measures: You've managed to stop Kerapac from causing the apocalypse on Gielinor to prevent the next Great Revision and put him in a positon for Jas to strip his control over the Elder Needle. However, a second Elder God, Ful, has awoken, and both Kerapac and the hibernating Nodon have been returned to Jas's shackles.
  • At the end of Extinction: The Elder God Wars are over, but Kerapac has been carried off into the Shadow Realm along with Jas, the Elder God eggs have destroyed Iaia, Seren remains on Iaia to care for the newly born Elder Gods and has permanently strained her relationship with the World Guardian due to her role in letting them hatch and them trying to stop it, and Zamorak and his forces prepare to conquer Gielinor now that everyone else has been weakened by the Elder God Wars.
• Black Comedy:
  • At the end of the 2011 Easter event, you have to carve an ice sculpture to show the Queen of Snow why spring is a just as good a thing as winter. Out of the options of what to carve ^note Including a stag, the Easter Bunny bringing eggs and cute baby animals, the one that sticks out the most is the last one: "Cute baby animals... impaled on swords." Choosing this choice works just as well as the others.
  • In "The Death of Chivalry", you are prompted to offer a eulogy for a fallen ally, the lines of which are multiple choice. The last option for every line is an insult.
• Bladder of Steel: When the Fight Caves minigame was first released, there was no way to save your progress midway through the fight. The only way to beat TzTok-Jad and earn the fire cape was to buckle up and sit at your computer for over an hour fighting your way through all 60+ waves of enemies. This was later remedied, and you can now save your progress by logging out in between waves.
• Bland-Name Product: In the 2014 Halloween event, you go into Death's mansion to fight ghosts, to which end he equips you with a Proto Pack.
• Blessed with Suck: Zanik. Chosen by the gods and raised from the dead to become a brainwashed slave-general of the war-god Bandos.
• Bling of War: Dragonstone armour: while the armour set is very fashionable and is the best hybrid armour available in free-to-play servers, it is very expensive and its stats aren't that good compared to other armour sets at its level.
• Blood Knight: Bandos is the "Big High War God" who teaches that fighting is the highest calling of all, and his followers are almost universally aggressive and love battle. He has specifically bred entire RACES for war.
  • TzKal-Zuk developed this tendency after gaining an undefeated record as a slave in Senntisten's collosseums, even defeating the tribune Torva in single combat. He then challenged the Fight Kiln in an attempt to find a worthy foe, becoming its first champion—and was eventually reborn there, managing to keep his individuality. He tried to go to the God Wars to challenge those that fought there, but was defeated and chained back in the Kiln by Bandos. Even after being freed, he seeks the thrill of combat against a worthy foe—indeed, if the player will not challenge him, he plans to challenge the gods siphoning the anima from the Elder Gods' eggs instead. He's happiest when he's faced with a foe that can finally defeat him.
• Bond One-Liner: Mr. Mordaut and his cheese-related puns in the Gielinor Games, when you fail in the Cheese Roll.
  • Thok delivers one after each boss.
• Bonsai Forest: The soil quality in Gielinor clearly isn't the best out there. Some graphics updates made the trees more reasonably sized, but many are still pretty small. In some areas, like the swamps south of Lumbridge and in Morytania or otherwise the various high mountain ranges, this is actually justified, of course.
  • Inverted in the Crwys district of Prifddinas; the Yew and Magic trees in the district are so large that they hold up a good eighth of the elven city, and cutting their branches is sufficient to yield whole logs.
• Boogie Knights: The dancing knights in the Party Room.
• Book Ends: In Old School: When you buy a max cape after reaching the max level in every skill, several NPCs telepathically contact you to congratulate you, one of them being the Gielinor Guide, the very first person you talk to on Tutorial Island.
  • In RS3, the Max Guild's theme, "Elven Elite", is a remix of "The Duke"—a theme from the castle in one of the earliest areas (and at one point *the* starting area for new players,) Lumbridge.
  • In the RS3 version of the Vamypre quest series, both the first and last quests (Priest in Peril and River of Blood) have a focus on the Paterdomus and the River Salve.
• Booze-Based Buff: Drinking certain types of beers will alter your stats, usually giving you a boost in one area and weakening you in another. Ordinary beer, for example, increases your Strength (attack power), but decreases your Attack (accuracy).
• Border Patrol: Try to enter a dark area without a light source and little bugs will swarm all over you, draining your health.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Pretty much all of the skills. Training skills usually consists of using it over and over and over again. But once you get it high enough, you'll be able to summon a Pack Yak with an inventory bigger than your own, or make the best healing items in the game, or even cheat death.
  • Low-level money-making tends to consist of laboriously collecting in-game commodities and selling them on the Exchange for a mark-up. Maybe it's picking sacks of potatoes in the field, maybe it's spinning cheap flax into valuable bowstrings, maybe it's buying out the Fremennik Isles' supply of yak hides. It's very tedious... but those activities can make hundreds of thousands, even millions, of gold.
  • Broad bolts are just as strong as adamant bolts, but cost half the price, so they’re useful for general use at low levels. Their only downside is that they can’t be tipped with gems, so they can’t be enchanted.
  • Elemental staves are dirt cheap and can be bought and wielded as soon as you start playing. While they eventually become obsolete for combat use, they're invaluable for skilling purposes.
• Boss Banter:
  • Nomad. Among others.
  • One of the more humorous examples is found at the end of the "Lunar Diplomacy" quest where players have to fight a copy of themselves (simply called "Me"). "Stop hitting yourself!" indeed.
• Boss Bonanza: The end of Recipe for Disaster involves fighting against five or so food-based bosses, culminating in a battle with the Culinaromancer himself. Since the bosses are food versions of previous quest bosses, it also overlaps with Boss Rush.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Several, but most notably the Rune Dragons, which despite not being a boss of any kind have a three-phase fight. In the first phase, they're nigh invulnerable to everything except one specific type of difficult-to-obtain ranged ammunition. in the second phase, they're invulnerable to melee attacks and gain an area-of-effect dragonfire attack that's only partially nullified by most anti-dragonfire items. In the third phase, they lose the enhanced dragonfire attack and are fully vulnerable to all damage types, but their damage increases exponentially the longer you take to defeat them to the point where if you dawdle too long they'll be able to take out even higher-levelled players in a single blow. And that's not even getting into the elite forms that have a chance to spawn every time you kill a lesser one.
• Boss Remix: Done at times.
  • “Zaros Zeitgeist” and “Dragon Rider” (played at Nex and Vindicta, both Zarosian bosses) are this to “Zaros Stirs.” “Angel of Death (Prelude)” is a downplayed example, being played in the boss room of Nex: Angel of Death (but not during the fight itself).
  • “Helwyr's Hymn” is this to “Elven Voice”.
  • “The Cursed Warrior” is one to “Kneel to Your God”.
  • "Family" is also a remix of Elven Voice/Seren's leitmotif in general..
• Boss Rush: The Dominion Tower, where you re-fight quest bosses you've already beaten. Also done at the end of Sliske’s Endgame and Recipe for Disaster.
• Both Sides Have a Point: The Runescape gods all have different, conflicting worldviews, but all of them are valid (though some are more valid than others—Bandos and his philosophy in particular are almost never portrayed sympathetically).
• Bottomless Bladder: Your character can eat all the food he or she wants, but never has to go to the bathroom. In fact, he/she has never seen a bathroom before, as a discussion with Ali the Barman reveals.
• Bragging Rights Reward: A lot of the rewards, though more so with Level Grinding and minigame-type stuff than for quests. Typically overlaps with And Your Reward Is Clothes. More recently, quests award titles for those with higher than necessary levels.
• Break the Haughty: The player transforms Philipe Carnillean from a spoiled brat into an adventurer in the quest Carnillean Rising.
• Breakable Weapons: All sorts of flavors:
  • Some weapons gradually degrade until they break, and you can repair them back to 100% by paying a fee depending on how degraded they are. Barrows and Chaotic gear are good examples.
  • PVP weapons such as Vesta's Longsword and Statius's Warhammer have a set lifespan: after a certain amount of time in combat, they crumble to dust. The same goes for "corrupt Dragon" equipment; it offers the stats of members-only Dragon equipment to non-members, but crumbles to dust after a set amount of time.
  • Crystal equipment degrades in a fashion similar to Barrows and Chaotic, except that when fully degraded, it reverts back to a crystal seed that can be shaped back into its more practical form for a fee or by gathering crystal dust in Prifddinas. In the older days of RuneScape, it also had a unique mechanic where it would gradually decrease in power as its charges depleted. They still work this way in Old School, but an option exists for you to imbue them, preventing their stats from decreasing over time.
  • Augmented weaponry and armour, created using the Invention skill, run off of a shared charge pack system. As you use your augmented gear, it will deplete charges from the charge pack — the more augmented equipment you use, the faster your charges deplete. Once the charge pack runs dry, all of your augmented items become unusable, although you can use Divine Charges to restore charges at any time.
  • The Hand Cannon has a rather annoying variant: it has a random chance of blowing up in your face, dealing you damage and destroying itself completely. Ouch. Fortunately, you can prevent it from destroying itself by augmenting it (see above), but it can still explode, and will drain some of your charges from your pack if it does.
  • Certain high-level armors like Sirenic and Tectonic degrade to dust after a set number of hits. You can combine partially-used ones, though.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • In the Runescape 2011 Easter event, a squirrel named the 'Antipodean Squirrel', is angry about how the Easter event is Northern-Hemisphere-Centric, and about how it is Spring in the northern hemisphere and how it is autumn in the southern hemisphere and it's not fair to have no autumn event. One response is to tell him to stop breaking the fourth wall; he replies, 'Yeah, like you stay in character all the time!'
  • Another example occurs when talking to the bartender in the Blue Moon Inn in Varrock. He states that Runescape is a computer game, but your character thinks that he is crazy.
  • You break the fourth wall in a way talking to the priest in Lumbridge, when you say that you are not from this world.
  • Examining Ozan: "The brave and magnificent Ozan, who writes his own examine text."
  • One possible find on the bookshelves of the Dimension of Disaster is "a walkthrough for the Dimension of Disaster quest". Sadly, you can't take it.
  • Exaggerated in Gower Quest: the player goes beyond RuneScape and enters the Behind the Scenes Pub, completely destroying the fourth wall. Not only is it a RuneScape quest, but it's also a quest about RuneScape itself!
• Breath Weapon:
  • Dragons have a deadly firebreathing attack that sticks to you like napalm, dealing lots of damage unless you have a special anti-dragon shield or anti-fire potion. Wyverns, close relatives of dragons, have a powerful ice breath attack that can freeze you for massive damage and requires an elemental shield or overload salve (made with an Anti-fire potion and a Super Anti-fire) to defend against.
  • "Dragon Breath" is a combat ability for the Magic skill, allowing you to spit out a cone of flame to damage enemies in front of you.
  • The King Black Dragon and Verak Lith have poison, ice, and lightning breath from each of their three heads, based on organs stolen from Raksha. You can also breed dragons on your Player Owned Farm to have those three special breath weapons, though it's mostly an Informed Attribute.
• Breather Episode: The Elf/Plague questline is known for its difficulty level roller coaster, but between the notorious Underground Pass and Wham Episode Regicide on one side, and the downright sadistic Mourning's End Parts I and II on the other, you have Roving Elves, a much shorter and less difficult (relatively-speaking, as you have to fight a level 84 enemy without runes, weapons, or armor) quest involving planting a crystal tree in a tomb you previously plundered in an unrelated quest.
• Breeding Cult: One of the guardians of Guthix, Ocellus, created The Order of Ascension, in an attempt to support Guthix's Naytheist philosophy. His first experiment was to create a race of highly independent humans, but the results were insolent and destructive. He eventually realized that worship was just a by-product of social order, so instead, he tried to close the gap between humans and the gods, using both breeding and magical augmentation.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Buying Spins on the Squeal of Fortune, which can give cash rewards, valuable items, or EXP lamps, giving you a leg up on other players whichever way. This has since expanded to include:
  • Solomon's General Store - cosmetic overrides, pets and auras for real world cash or Loyalty Points.
  • Treasure Hunter - an Updated Re-release of the Squeal of Fortune, after many complaints that it wasn't worth the time to buy the spins for useless items. In this version, almost every prize is of use; between bonus experience, helpful items, cosmetic outfits, seasonal or promotional items, and the cash prizes, such as Large Cash Bags containing 500k to 1m coins, or the Jackpot of 200m coins.
  • Bonds - Items which can be bought off Jagex, sold in-game for in-game cash, or used to credit either Treasure Hunter or Solomon with keys or Rune Coins respectively. These were created as a direct way to combat goldfarmers, and it worked.
  • The Yak Track battlepasses. While most of the rewards are cosmetic, even on the premium path, you do get a lot of non-cosmetic rewards from the premium path as well.
  • In Monkey Madness, you can directly bribe Glough in gold to solve the Sliding Puzzle holding the glider hangar closed.
  • Premier membership grants additional bonuses over normal membership, like extra daily Treasure Hunter keys, a once-per-day aura reset, and a free bossing instance once per week.
• Brick Joke:
  • A pretty grim one. After Sigmund uses a Ring of Life (an item which teleports the wearer to a spawn point when they're low on health) to escape death numerous times, Zanik finally cuts his hand off during The Chosen Commander to prevent him from leaving and kills him. After the quest is finished, if you go back to Lumbridge and talk to the Duke, he'll mention Sigmund's severed hand having teleported into the courtyard.
  • The pipe organ the late Archmage Perien, a music enthusiast, had installed in the New Wizards' Tower, and later use the pipe organ to distract the wizards from their spell until Ariane can complete hers. In "Rune Memories", the spirit of Perien as an Apprentice makes a brief appearance... and is distracted by the pipe organ.
• British Accents: Most characters speak using the Queen's English or regional English dialects like Cockney or West Country. Despite the fact that players around the world enjoy the game, it's implied that the player character would also speak with an English accent if they were voiced since they occasionally drop English slang like "Blimey!".
  • However, there are exceptions. For example, dwarves typically speak with Scottish accents when voice-acted; while the human archers of Burthorpe and Indiana Jones expy Orlando Smith speak with Australian Accents. If the player can talk to pet dogs, then the Labrador Retriever will speak with a Canadian accent (in reference to the province of Newfoundland and Labrador).
• Broken Bridge: See Missing Secret below.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: In Lord of Vampyrium, The Myreque manage to kill Lord Lowerniel Drakan. However, this comes at the loss of every Myreque member except Safalaan, Ivan, and Veliaf. Then, after the death of Drakan, Vanescula betrays the Myreque, abducts Safalaan, and announces her intent to invade Misthalin. This drives Veliaf across the Despair Event Horizon, and leads him to disband the Myreque in defeat.
• Brown Note: The Stalkers' natural language. A quote from an unknown mage:
  "It calls itself Plane-freezer Lakhrahnaz in our language. I regret asking it to say it in its own, for the combination of audible and inaudible sounds from its many lipless mouths caused me a pounding headache and blood to cascade from my nose, which Lakhrahnaz then froze."
• Bubble Gloop Swamp: Morytania, Lumbridge Swamp, Ullek ruins, Poison Waste, etc.
• Build Like an Egyptian: There are four pyramids and one mastaba in the Kharidian desert. Also present in the twin desert cities of Menaphos and Sophanem.
• Bullet Time: Seen in the Brimhaven agility dungeon when dodging the poison darts, as a Shout-Out to The Matrix.
• Butterfly of Doom: The Dimension of Disaster is an Alternate Timeline where you, the player character, was never born. As a result:
  • Delrith and Agrith-Naar were never defeated during the events of Demon Slayer and Shadow of the Storm, respectively. Delrith went on a rampage that destroyed Varrock (which by his own admission was disappointingly easy without a hero to stand in his way) until Zemouregal showed up and imprisoned him in an abandoned quarter of the city. Meanwhile, Agrith-Naar (as Denath) returned to Infernus and entertained himself by constantly making it rain on Delrith, who was powerless to stop him.
  • Hazeel rules over Ardougne and Kandarin, meaning that his cult managed to successfully revive him. Khazard remains his pupil and Philipe Carnillean is part of Hazeel's cult.
  • Zemouregal was able to take over Varrock during the events of Defender of Varrock, kill all of the Signature Heroes and most named Non Player Characters in Northern Misthalin and Northern Asgarnia; those who he didn't kill were made into undead thralls, with the sole exception of Reldo, who was deemed useful enough to keep around.
  • The Fremennik attempted to invade New Varrock, which resulted in the capture of Koschei the Deathless (really Kharshai the Mahjarrat).
  • Lucien massacred the Crux Eqal and Temple Knights with the Staff of Armadyl and the Stone of Jas, before being killed by the Dragonkin.
  • Azzanadra was never released from his pyramid at the end of Desert Treasure, meaning he's ripe for the picking when a new ritual of Rejuvenation comes around. The same goes for Akthanakos and Kharshai, both imprisoned, while Trindine is left in hibernation in Kharid-Et's Shadow Realm and is presumably forgotten and never woken up.
  • It's still the Fifth Age, meaning Guthix hasn't died. Understandable, as Orlando Smith, the archeologist that discovered Guthix's resting place can't do much in an undead state and without a mortal hero whose soul is strong enough to house the World Guardian enchantment, Guthix isn't going to manipulate Sliske into killing him to complete it. Because the Sixth Age hasn't started, there are still no gods on Gielinor, as the Edicts of Guthix still hold.
  • Though it's not shown, Bandos successfully made Zanik his war-hungry avatar and had her spread chaos. She got all the way to the God Wars Dungeon, where she led the Bandosian army to victory after reassembling the Godsword. Then she opened the door to Nex's prison...and was immediately killed as a result. Nex then stole the Godsword from Zanik's corpse and fled to parts unknown.
  • The player not being there to change the past during the quest "Meeting History" caused significant changes to the past, although many events took place In Spite of a Nail. Zaros never came to Gielinor, but Loarnab, who was killed by Zaros in the original timeline, ended up taking Zaros's place in history.
    • To elaborate further, because the player was never born, they never travelled to the past (as shown during Meeting History), and therefore did not influence a pre-teen Jack to become a druid. Instead, Jack grew up to become an Evil Sorcerer who terrorized the land until Guthix was forced to end his reign of terror by killing him. Seeing Guthix go against his moral code influenced Seren to withdraw from Gielinor and stay in Tarddiad with the elves, which means Zaros was never attracted to Gielinor by her presence and continued to aimlessly wander the universe. As a result, Loarnab grew in power until it gained sapience and took Zaros's place as the ruling god of the Second Age, becoming known as the Dark Imperator. The rest of the events in Gielinor's history mostly take place in the same way as the mainstream timeline afterwards: Zamorak usurps Loarnab, starts the God Wars and Guthix banishes the gods from Gielinor upon his awakening.

C

• Call on Me: The "Path of Glouphrie" quest ends with the Player Character stuck in a Death Trap. As you start to collapse from the poison gas, you cry out mentally for help. Lo and behold, the telepathic gnome Hazelmere from earlier in the quest hears you and teleports in to rescue you just in time.
• Cannibalism Superpower: Cthonian demons are able to absorb the essence, and by extension, the power and cunning, of those they consume.
• Canon Discontinuity: The Romeo and Juliet quest, which has been so thoroughly removed that most of the Non Player Characters involved in the quest no longer exist in the game. They even deleted letters about it from the old Postbag from the Hedge archives. On the other hand, the quest still exists in Old School, and is even required for another quest. Romeo returns in the (probably) non-canon Gower Quest in the Behind-the-Scenes Pub, where he even discusses the reasons why his quest was removed in the first place.
• The Caper: Done in a few quests:
  • Played seriously in Dishonour Among Thieves, where the player and Zamorak gather a motley crew of various Zamorakian followers (and Nomad) to steal the Stone of Jas from Sliske. They don't succeed.
  • Played in a more lighthearted manner in the free to play quest Heartstealer, released for Valentine's Day 2021—where master thief Caelyn Kadaan tasks the player with helping her steal a massive, heart-shaped ruby from the Varrock Museum during a gala as an anniversary gift for her wife Annette—getting disguises, casing the museum, and making smoke bombs for getaways. It turns out to be a setup involving a fake gem on Annette's part, providing her own anniversary gift in the form of an irresistable heist for her wife.
• Captain Obvious: Most item examinations merely state "a(n) [insert item name here]".
• Capture the Flag: Castle Wars. Also available as part of the Clan Citadel's battlefield editor.
• Cardboard Prison: With rare exceptions, most prisons are not protected by Teleport Interdiction.
  • It isn't hard for the Player Character to pick the locks of the Port Sarim prison, and the guard is always asleep.
  • Lampshaded in the Rock Island prison, where the customs officials insist no one has ever broken out, and the Player Character asks whether or not they recognize them. Lampshaded again when you are locked in the same cell you already blew a massive hole in, and almost point out to the oblivious customs officials that you can escape through that hole whenever you want.
• Cassandra Truth: The terrified Prison Pete rambles about some evil cat that appears out of nowhere and kidnaps people to a room with alive balloon animals with keys in them. Sound crazy? It's the old "Evil Bob" random event.
• Cast from Hit Points:
  • The former Lunar spell Energy Transfer, which restores a friend's adrenaline at the cost of your Hit Points. There's also a set of Empathic Healer spells that are still around today.
  • The high-level Zarosian combat abilities Smoke, Shadow, and Blood Tendrils can deal a huge amount of damage, but also recoil on the user for a portion of that damage.
  • The Onslaught ultimate ability, which can be obtained from a Mazcab Ability Codex or from Raids, drains 25% adrenaline per second to deal a powerful damage-over-time attack. After that, it drains the player's hitpoints to continue channeling.
• Catching Some Z's: A side-effect of a dream spell, or bludgeoning someone unconscious.
• Censored for Comedy: Though changes of late have made this more of a Scunthorpe Problem, since definite "cuss words" are permitted more often, but certain others are not. (Example: "Phone") Of course, this may have been resolved, also.
  • A bit more of a subversion as what is being censored may have a reason other than the obvious, such as denying the ability to ask personal information.
• Cerebus Retcon: A minor example, which we learn during Azzanadra's Quest. Remember how most of the White Knight names are puns? (e.g. Sir Amik Varze (ceramic vase), Sir Vyvin (surviving), Sir Atcha (sriracha)) It turns out that inserting puns into the names of Asgarnian lineages was the hobby of a bored, millenia-old Zarosian sleeper agent involved in an ancient plot to steal Saradomin's Crown Archival that was derailed by the events of the Third Age.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The game has increasingly been said to exhibit this as Jagex has moved away from Lighter and Softer elements like the penguins' quest line and the wacky random events in favour of Darker and Edgier quest lines and remakes of or sequels to existing quests. This has proceeded to such an extent that "Bringing Home the Bacon" was specifically advertised by Jagex as being conceived as a more comedic quest — and even it had the player aiding a character in all-but-explicitly committing murder and concealing the evidence.
  • The Pirate questline is largely a fun swashbuckling romp, rife with on-the-nose humour, Laughably Evil villains, hair-pulling puzzles, and numerous references to the Monkey Island series. The finale, "Pieces of Hate" starts off much the same, but things soon start going off the rails, and the quest ends with hints towards a much more horrifying Greater-Scope Villain behind the zombie pirate menace: one that has had beef with the Player Character— and possibly even the player themself— for millennia.
  • Zigzagged in more recent times, though. While the main storyline remains rather dark and epic in scope most of the time, there's still recent Lighter and Softer content like Violet is Blue.
• Cessation of Existence: Runescape's actual afterlife is vague but existent, however this is implied to be the eventual fate of those whose souls are devoured by the Spirit Beast or Amascut, Goddess of Destruction. Fortunately, the former has been forced into the physical world where it can no longer do this. Unfortunately, the quest revolving around it had you planning to destroy it, as it had been feeding on the energy of the spirits of the deceased for years in order to build up enough power to claw its way into the physical world. That said, it wasn't a complete failure, because who knows how powerful it would have been if it had made its way over unhindered with all of the power it had consumed.
  • Also the fate of whichever Miscellania royal you wedded before they died in Blood Runs Deep, whose soul is annihilated by Nomad.
  • Gods are suggested to suffer this—indeed, becoming a god causes you to forfeit any right to an afterlife.
  • Zanik in "Death to the Dorgeshuun" is said to experience this fate, befitting the questline's Rage Against the Heavens narrative. Her assessment that cave goblins (and possibly everyone else) have no afterlife is later proven dramatically and horrifyingly wrong.
• Chained to a Railway: Zanik in Another Slice of H.A.M.. Done intentionally to complete Sigmund's persona as a Dastardly Whiplash. The music for the scene even references the use of this trope in silent pictures ("Slice of Silent Movie").
• Chain of Deals: One Small Favour, and a shorter version in The Fremmenik Trials. Done to a lesser extent in the One Small Favour callback in the temporary 20th Anniversary celebration quest.
• Characterization Marches On: In early quests and lore, Saradomin had a much more pleasant characterization and Zamorak and his followers were uniformly evil, effectively being the in-game equivalents to God and Satan respectively. In recent times, Jagex has put forward a lot of quests and lore that show Saradomin and his followers in a negative light, while playing up the positive aspects of Zamorak and his philosophies—if anything, their distinction is more of a Lawful vs. Chaotic one than the Good vs. Evil it was before. (More recently Saradomin has gotten some positive characterization again, though.)
• Charles Atlas Superpower: With enough skill in combat, you can punch through armor with your fists, kill people unarmed, and block weapons with your bare hands. And let's not get started with the Evolution of Combat.
• Charlie and the Chocolate Parody: the 2016 Easter event; Sliske and The Chocolate Factory, complete with Golden Tickets (from chocolate butterflies), Everlasting Gobstoppers and even the fact that there are 5 golden tickets. the punishments being Wendy falling down a pit (Veruca Salt), Farquie gets caked with chocolate (Augustus Gloop), Gilly Willikers folds on himself into nothing from eating spatially-folded chocolate (Violet Beauregarde eating experimental gum, however shrinking may partially be based on Mike Teevee shrinking). Farmer Jimbo floats up to the top of the room from drinking Eaglade. Best of all is the Oompa Loompas, portrayed by the Barrows Bobbleheads (here called the "Bobble-numbskulls") with a parody song. (they can't even allow the song to be permanently unlocked for free listening due to copyright issues.)
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The clock in "One Piercing Note" becomes important at the end.
  • Wolfbane, an anti-werewolf dagger received at the end of a novice quest, turns out to be the final piece of Queen Efaritay's Sunspear towards the end of River of Blood.
  • There is an eerie-looking out-of-place pillar located on Mos Le'Harmless that has seemingly been ignored in both versions of the game since the area was added in 2006. A focal point of Desert Treasure II is an identical-looking pillar and the mass psychosis it caused on the inhabitants of the Lassar Undercity.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Baron von Hattenkrapper, whom you first met as the seagull you fired out of a makeshift bellows in "Rocking Out", later becomes a significant character in the sequel, "A Clockwork Syringe", when he teams up with you to destroy the barrelchest army by air-dropping cannonballs on them.
  • Denath is first seen summoning Delrith along with a few other dark wizards in Demon Slayer. In Shadow Of The Storm, he's revealed to be Agrith-Naar, a demon roughly five times as powerful as Delrith was, easily 100 times more powerful when the player helped dismiss him back to his home dimension.
  • The little girl and the painting monster are the first spooks encountered in "Broken Home", but neither are mentioned in the writings of the mad murderous ghost and his ill-fated son. They belong to a completely unrelated second horror.
• Chekhov's Skill: Usually enforced in quests where something in a former quest is something you will need to know how to do. Having the skill levels required before a quest is released may also count.
• Cherry Blossoms: You can find permanently blooming cherry trees on Waiko and Uncharted Isles, where they serve as Scenery Porn. The arena where Telos is fought, while not containing actual cherry blossoms, features falling anima petals/leaves during the earlier phases that very much look the part.
• The Chosen One: Zanik, a cave goblin chosen by the gods for an unknown purpose. She was chosen to become the Avatar of Bandos; essentially, a slave-general with no free will.
  • The Warforge digsite reveals the *first* Chosen Commander—a Dorgeshuun goblin who Bandos tasked with developing war games for the Warforge. She wasn't particularly happy about it when she found out, either.
  • As it turns out, the player is Guthix's Chosen One: a hero Guthix either molded to have or chose for having a soul strong enough to accept an enchantment forged from the heart of the Edicts of Guthix. As of the Sixth Age, you're his World Guardian—resistant to the powers of gods, and tasked with keeping the balance in his stead.
• Church Militant:
  • Used to peaceful Saradominist priests and monks? Try visiting the God Wars Dungeon, where those priests are armed to the teeth.
  • The Temple Knights, who are Combat Pragmatist Knights with great magic knick-knacks, a huge information network and no qualms about doing whatever they think is necessary. Be glad they're on your side. Most of them are more loyal to the Temple Knights as an organization than to Saradomin, however—and seeing as they were started by an ancient Zarosian sleeper agent, they end up as militants for a very different church.
  • The Missionary from Player Owned Ports tries to invoke this image, but his personality and approach to gaining followers in the East ends up backfiring when Zamorakians exploit his bad first impression.
• Circling Birdies: Formerly used when anyone is stunned. Now represented by Circling Stars.
• City Guards: They exist, but because many low-level players train on them for combat experience, they usually don't have a very long lifespan. This gets lampshaded several times throughout the game.
  • Played very straight in Old School's Deadman Mode, where if you enter certain guarded zones with a PK skull, you get attacked by several level 1337 guards capable of hitting close to your full health in damage. Oh, and they freeze and teleblock you upon seeing you, so there's no escape once you enter a guarded zone. And when (not if, WHEN) they kill you? Say goodbye to 10% of your experience in your protected skills on top of the standard experience penalties.
• City of Gold: Xolo City, the final Orthen sub-digsite, is a miniature one, created by salamanders with pieces of Skeka's mind after her botched attempt at swapping minds with the Raksha. Notably, it's contained entirely in a single room Skeka had access to...with a tiny gold vein on one side and dragon-metal chains leading to Raksha's prison nearby.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Runecrafting altars (or at least the Astral one) were created by making dolmens out of Rune Essence, and then by using a lot of focus from a lot of people, convincing the stone that it was something that it was not.
• Clone Angst: In the Effigy Incubator monthly Distraction and Diversion lore, we learn that Kerapac's Project Phoenix (presumably an attempt to give the Ilujanka their fertility back) actually involved him attempting to make clones of himself. Vicendithas, who is attempting to give the Ilujanka back their fertility for real and stealing his father's memories for the research, is one of many, many attempts by Kerapac to clone himself—all the clones named Vicendithas, with Vicendithas seeing through his father's memories the ways each malformed prototype of him was incinerated. Vicendithas takes it poorly, though he later comes to the conclusion that he is more than his father and gains heightened resolve to solve the Ilujanka's fertility crisis—indeed, he ultimately succeeds in this endeavor.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Aside from combat skill levels, the attack and defense bonuses given by weapons and armor are a major factor in how well a player fares in combat. Some complete sets of armor also give additional increases to attack or defense alongside the normal bonuses, or even set bonuses.
  • Skilling outfits, obtained from fragments earned from skilling at high levels and combined using the Invention skill, grant some fairly significant bonuses relevant to training their respective skills (such as teleports to relevant locations, storing Rune Essence, having a chance to double gathered resources, or giving you the ability to lay a sixth Hunter trap at once). The Master Archaeologist outfit is needed to start the Writings on the Walls mystery.
• Cobweb Jungle: Enforced in the 2009 Halloween event. The rules of Halloween say that the Grim Reaper has to have cobwebs in his house, so it's the Player Character's job to negotiate with the Spider Queen (who lives in her own gigantic, over-the-top maze of cobwebs) to decorate Grim's mansion properly.
  • The Araxyte Lair, being the location where the spider boss Araxxor is fought, is a mix of this and an Acid Pool.
• Cognizant Limbs:
  • The Swamp Creature encountered during the Temple Trekking minigame is this. Poisoning one part effects all its limbs; however, you need to kill all 4 limbs and the head to continue.
  • Tolna is the quest boss of A Soul's Bane, who has 3 heads. Poisoning any of his heads poisons the rest; killing all 3 of them transforms him back to normal.
  • Har'Aken, the final boss of the Fight Kiln (and as TzekHaar-Aken, the penultimate boss of the TzekHaar Front), is submerged in magma and must have its tentacles damaged until it raises its head, giving you an opportunity to strike it before submerging again.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Player-owned port crew members are color-coded based on their stats. Blue clothes mean high seafaring; green, high morale; red, high combat.
  • All of the Archaeology cultures are color-coded, and their emblems, soil and mystery pages are in that color: Zaros- purple, Zamorak- red, Armadyl- yellow, Saradomin- blue, Bandos- green and the Dragonkin- black.
• Color-Coded Multiplayer: Seen in minigames like Trouble Brewing, Castle Wars, Soul Wars, and so on. Red team and blue team are the standard (to correspond with Zamorak and Saradomin), although the Great Orb Project uses yellow and green instead.
• Color-Coded Stones: There are blue sapphires, red rubies, green emeralds, white diamonds, black onyx, and gold-and-black hydrix. But there are also quest-related gems that are different in color (blood diamond is red, smoke diamond is gray, shadow diamond is black, ice diamond is light gray). Lastly, jade, opal and diamond are in ridiculously similar color. You can have a reference here.
  • In Old School, the hydrix counterpart is the orange zenyte gem.
• Colossus Climb: Involved in the boss fight against Vorago. Players need to climb onto him to retrieve the pieces of the Maul of Omens, and the final blow is struck by leaping up to his head and embedding it in his face. Solak has a similar mechanic at one point during his fight.
• Combo Platter Powers: Sufficiently advanced players have abilities that include, but are not limited to: Super-Strength, Super-Speed, super stamina, super endurance, control over air, water, earth, fire, smoke, ice, blood, shadow, and lightning, telepathy, telekinesis, Mass Teleportation, Resurrective Immortality, Improbable Aiming Skills, Green Thumb, and more.
• Comedic Sociopathy: The player character is an expert, when they're not being a total airhead or sassing everything in sight.
• Commonplace Rare:
  • An ordinary jug of wine is worth a small handful of gold if you're lucky. A half-full jug of wine is worth many millions of gp. This is because the ability to drink half a jug of wine was removed and wine jugs are now gulped down in one sip, so half-full wine jugs are no longer obtainable. Those that remain have become valuable collector's items.
  • Partyhats are some of the most expensive items in the game thanks to their rarity and iconic status among RuneScape players. They're little crown-shaped hats made out of paper. Even the 2021 Golden Partyhat sells for hundreds of millions of GP, despite literally everyone being able to obtain one over the course of six weeks with a bit of grinding.
  • Easter Eggs and Pumpkins are worth millions, and are still edible.
  • In Free-to-Play, there are exactly three places where you can find regular planks, which are needed in Dragon Slayer to reach Crandor. Two are in the Wilderness, and the third is on Crandor.
• Compelling Voice: Downplayed by Vos towards the end of the Secrets of the Inquisition Archaeology mystery. The player only hears random whispers, but the Mahjarrat Kolton's mind was broken and Aurelius almost began releasing Vos from the Monolith in the Shadow Realm before Zaros intervened, only to try to find Vos again in his old age. His ghost still wanders the Shadow Realm around Azzanadra's Cathedral to this day.
• Conflict Ball:
  • Almost any time you see an Enemy Mine situation develop during a quest, it will fall apart shortly thereafter.
  • Xenia and Ariane's involvement in the "Heart of Stone" quest can easily come across as an excuse to get the two Signature Heroines at each other's throats and, ultimately, to get Xenia killed off.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: In Old School, if you take too long to complete any step of the tutorial, a large arrow will appear telling you to follow the instructions in the chatbox.
• Continuing is Painful:
  • If you die, your items get sent to Death, and you'll have to pay him a fee equal to 0.1% of their total value (with a minimum cost of 100 coins per stack) in order to reclaim them. At lower levels, the fee is mostly a nuisance, rarely going over a hundred thousand coins, but at higher levels with best-in-slot gear, you may end up being charged millions to recover your stuff. Thankfully, Death will hold your items indefnitely, so there's no rush if you can't afford the fee, and you can work your way back up until you can pay him. However, if you die again before that happens, the items get moved to an overflow storage. Not only are items ten times more expensive to reclaim from overflow (1% of their GE value instead of 0.1%), but it has a limit of 50 item stacks — if you continue to die and have items sent to overflow, the least expensive items will be thrown out and lost forever once the 50 item limit is reached.
    • Alternatively, if you prefer not to pay Death, a gravestone will also appear where you died, allowing you to return to your death point to get your stuff back. However, you only have a short period of time to reach your gravestone, and if you don't make it in time, you're forced to cough up the money at Death's office. Even if you make it in time, any degradable and augmented items that you don't protect will lose 20% of their charges when you take them from your gravestone, effectively costing you money anyway in repair and divine charge costs, often more than what Death would have charged you.
    • Dying works differently in the Wilderness if you're skulled — if you die, your items are dropped instead, and none of them are kept unless you have an effect of item protection active, such as the Protect Item prayer. You can run back and reclaim them if you're quick, but you have much less time than if you died elsewhere, and your items will vanish permanently if you do not make it back in time. And of course, if you're killed by another player, they'll be able to take your stuff right off the bat.
    • Prior to January 2023, dying carried even harsher penalties. Not only were the reclaim costs much higher, but you only had 24 hours of in-game time to reclaim your lost items. If you didn't reclaim them in time, they were removed from the game permanently. Worse yet, dying prior to reclaiming your lost items would cause all of them, including your protected items, to be thrown out — this was known as "double graving". On the flip side, you could sacrifice some of your unwanted items to reduce the reclaim costs, which is no longer possible with the current system.
  • In Daemonheim, you do not lose any of your items, but each death carries a pretty sizable experience penalty. If you die enough times, you won't get any experience at all for completing the floor. Using a special card at the start of a floor allows you to cap the penalty at two deaths, regardless of how many times you die, and a special relic unlockable at level 91 Archaeology eliminates the penalty altogether.
• Control Room Puzzle: The "Ernest the Chicken" quest, which requires the pulling of six different levers to lock or unlock several different doors, ultimately leading to the oil can. Also, the latter two Elemental Workshop quests feature moments like this.
• Convection, Schmonvection: But actually falling into lava doesn't do much damage, either. Lampshaded and Handwaved by a dwarf miner when questioned about it, in a huge lava reactor where you have to mine away cooled lava—
  Lava Flow Miner Dwarf: Logically, convection should make the air in this chamber hotter than an oven, and we'd all roast alive. But for some reason that doesn't happen!
  • Averted big time when you visit Freneskae, where convection alone can and will kill you even if you manage to avoid getting hit by actual lava. Played straight in the Children of Mah Lava Surfing minigame. Also played straight when you revisit Freneskae in Azzanadra's Quest—with Mah's death, the world has started to stabilize.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Traditional methods of torture aren't working on the zombie pirate decapitated head in "A Clockwork Syringe". It's time to bust out the dreaded Twiblik Night Special. After much ceremony, you open the box and reveal...wigs, make-up, and women's clothing. O...kay? After being mercilessly dressed up in wigs, eye shadow, and lipstick, the distressed zombie finally tells you the location of the villains' secret island hideout.
• Cool Chair: Thrones in Construction, such as skeleton thrones and demonic thrones.
• Cool Helmet: The Helm of Neitiznot and The Relic Helm, just to name a few.
• Coordinated Clothes: "E-dating" players are typically seen dressed this way.
• Cordon Bleugh Chef: The Chef in Player-Owned Ports wants to try new flavors and textures in his cooking. Some of the ingredients he wants to use are... not actually meant for consumption. Between that and his forgetfulness, the Adventurer is worried that he'll accidentally poison someone. They're right.
• Corridor Cubbyhole Run: The Rogue's Den maze had a section like this. There's also one in the "Icthlarin's Little Helper" quest.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Subverted in "King of the Dwarves". The Consortium is accused of caring more about profits than the lives of their employees after several miners die in a collapse while rescue workers are instructed to repair the equipment. But it turns out, as the frustrated Consortium members later explain to you, if the equipment hadn't been repaired swiftly, it would have caused repercussions in the entire city's power supply, leading to even greater casualties, and the Consortium was only trying to control the greater damages.
• The Corruption: Multiple examples are known. Black Stone and the taint inside Daemonheim are both described this way.
• Cosmetic Award: Old School has a few construction items that can be built for an insanely high price tag. They don't do anything but show off wealth.
• Cosmic Horror Story: RuneScape sure seems to be shaping up into one of these in the latest "Elder Gods" storylines and lore that have come to dominate the Sixth Age.
  • Take, for instance, the revelations in "Fate of the Gods" and "Heart of Stone". In short, the Eldritch Abominations known as the Elder Gods have a Cradle of their young on Gielinor, and whenever it hatches it could easily invoke an Apocalypse How to turn Gielinor into a Death World much like Freneskae, followed by the destruction of the rest of the universe in an event called the Great Revision.
  • To make matters worse, the goddess Tuska, a mindless and Nigh-Invulnerable force of destruction, turned her sights on Gielinor in an attempt to wreck and devour it in much the same manner as she and her Mooks, the Airut, did to Guthix's homeworld of Naragun. Fortunately, in a World Event, the players averted this in dramatic fashion.
  • On top of all that, the returned gods are still using Gielinor as a battleground to obtain the Stone of Jas, the merest usage of which brings down the Unstoppable Rage of the borderline-godly Dragonkin on the user and anyone else unfortunate enough to be nearby, and Sliske is actively encouraging this destruction through the use of his "game" for the Stone.
  • The pirate quest series, believe it or not. A player created a thread on the official forums compiling all the evidence of the influence of an Eldritch Abomination (presumably a god) called Xau-Tak. In the thread Mod Wilson, curator of the pirate series, confirmed this was his intention. You even see one of Xau-Tak's hands during the final boss of Pieces of Hate!
    • The Elite Dungeons storyline (and associated quest, the Curse of Black Stone) sees the player narrowly thwart an attempt by Xau-Tak's servant Kranon to summon him to Gielinor. Recent lore also implies he might be a threat even to the Elder Gods, depending on if he uses shadow anima or not.
  • And now, even though the Stone of Jas has been destroyed, we have all life on trial courtesy of Jas herself. And you're speaking for the defence.
  • The Elder Gods storyline ultimately straddles the line between this and Lovecraft Lite, showing we have some ability to fight the Elder Gods and ending with a pyrhhic but definite victory. We were capable of holding out against the Elder Gods' forces for a time, and had Zamorak not sabotaged our alliance and the Eye of Het we could have held out indefinitely. In the end, however, we could not stop the rebirth of Wen, Bik, and Ful, or their waking consumption of a world. Jas was only defeated by guiding an even bigger threat, the Shadow Leviathan, into dragging her into Erebus. However, the reborn Elder Godlings, who hatched and consumed the imperfect world of Iaia rather than the perfect world of Gielinor, lack the strength to venture offworld—meaning that there will not be another Great Revision any time soon. The native Ilujanka who did not wish to share their planet's fate were able to evacuate in time, and thanks to Vicendithas's retrofitting of Nodon technology even Iaia lives on through a shared dream world.
• Cowardly Lion: Cyrisus, a fellow adventurer the player meets in Dream Mentor. He has maxed combat stats, despite being terribly afraid of fighting. He achieved his maxed stats by fighting nothing but 300 chickens a day for 30 years.
• Crazy-Prepared:
  • If you read the quest guide for "Love Story" and bring all of the required items needed to avoid banking in between parts, the Wise Old Man will note how it was rather convenient you had all the necessary items on you at hand the moment you two needed to create a device for that part of the quest.
  • Similarly, if you're already carrying all the rope you need for "The Fremennik Isles", the court of Neitiznot will worry that you're an untrustworthy seer or a witch.
• Creating Life Is Unforeseen: On a universal scale: the Elder Gods actively avoided creating conscious life in previous universal cycles, and the existence of the Dragonkin in the previous cycle and the various races of Gielinor in this one are the result of an issue that even the Elders don't entirely understand, likely related to the corruption that affected Mah's rebirth.
• Critical Existence Failure: All players and most monsters are not hampered by taking HP damage, but die instantly as soon as they lose their last hitpoint.
• Critical Failure: There's usually some chance of horribly failing something; for example, you could formerly lose the head of your hatchet or pickaxe by apparently swinging it too hard ...and then losing the valuable head and having to buy it back from someone^note This was a random event that has now been removed. You can also have some pretty silly accidents in Daemonheim:
  "You have a hilarious accident with the hammer and chisel, destroying the block in the process."
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: The 2012 Easter event. The Easter Bunny is out of action with an injury, so the player gets the choice of serving either the Evil Chicken or the Chocatrice (both villains). The task? Go around Gielinor using your newly-acquired "Eggsterminator" to break the Easter eggs and convert their fluffy contents into either chicken drumsticks or chocolate.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The books of law, war, and darkness specilize in one particular type of combat, but nothing else.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: If a vampyre betrays Lord Drakan, he takes them to the bloodletter chamber where their wings are broken and they slowly get the blood drained out of them.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: Saradomin — stained glass, monks, even church organs. Seren plays a similar role for the Elves.
• Crystalline Creature:
  • The elf goddess Seren is literally a living crystal.
  • Several golems, such as the Jade Golem, are made out of gemstone.
• Crystal Prison: The goal of the "Merlin's Crystal" quest is to rescue Merlin, who has been trapped inside a crystal◊ by Morgan le Faye.
• Crystal Spires and Togas: Crystal saws, chimes, seeds, and assorted weapons. Made by elves, of course. And formerly an enormous wall around the elven capital, Prifddinas.^note all that's left now of that wall is the main gate — the new city is full of literal crystal spires. No togas, though.
• Crystal Weapon: There's an entire set of crystal weapons and armor. They slowly degrade from taking hits, but wielding attuned ones in both hands means the player deals bonus damage. The Seren Godbow from God Wars Dungeon 2 also seems to be this.
• Culture Chop Suey: Old School's Kingdom of Varlamore is a mixture of Mayincatec and Ancient Grome.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Guthix is said to have once awoken from his slumber and soundly beaten all the other gods on Gielinor, ending the God Wars.
  • Lucien versus Hazelmere, Turael, Duradel, Mazchna, Ghommal, Sloane, Harrallak, and Cyrisus in "While Guthix Sleeps".
  • Properly trained and equipped players can slaughter anything in their path, which can be a little awkward when you accidentally click on a man and One-Hit Kill him in the middle of a city.
  • Some players may leave very easy quests very late into their game career, ends up having battles like level 34 Count Draynor vs level 138 N00b Destroyer.
  • The above becomes very noticable in the Dominion Tower, where you are given random selections of bosses to fight. If you're prepared to fight Nomad, but instead get the aformentioned Draynor, it's pretty obvious what the outcome will be...
  • In "Kindred Spirits", the Player Character enrages Sliske by finding out his true plans, resulting in Sliske very easily dealing the Player Character a thorough physical beatdown.
  • In "Children of Mah", when Zaros and Zamorak finally meet again on Freneskae, Zaros promply beats Zamorak down so badly that the latter all but gives up and starts channeling his energy into the nearby Mahjarrat in an attempt at a Heroic Sacrifice. Zaros stops the assault, however, as he does not wish to make Zamorak into a martyr, and the two enter into a Magically-Binding Contract for their mutual benefit.
  • In "Sliske's Endgame", you get to show Sliske your World Guardian powers in the final phase of the Final Boss battle. You are given infinite adrenaline to unleash all manner of torture against him with, and he doesn't even fight back. It is then followed by a cutscene of Sliske getting Impaled with Extreme Prejudice on the Staff of Armadyl by the Player Character.
    • Insulting the Elder God Jas during the end sequence can cause her to inflict this on *you*.
  • In "Extinction", Saradomin and Armadyl, now with a power boost thanks to all the anima they've absorbed from the Elder Gods' eggs (and no need to focus on absorbing said anima anymore), do this to the Elder God Wars Dungeon while you're busy locating Seren and evacuating Iaia—shoving the Glacors and Arch-Glacor back through portals to Leng, completely incinerating Croesus, and forcing the TzekHaar and TzKal-Zuk to return to the Elder Kiln. (The Nodon, freed from Jas after her demise, are spared.)
• Cute Monster Girl:
  • Zanik the cave goblin sniper, one of the few female goblins seen at all in the game.
  • The Gorajo females and males alike have attractive human-like faces and figures.
• Cutscene Drop: Formerly the case, which used to cause a glitch where players could see other players teleport into the same cutscene via their effects.
• Cutscene Incompetence: In the updated Wolf Whistle quest, your character runs from a group of trolls carrying a man hostage, and then goes on a Fetch Quest to turn the tables. If this quest is done when you are high level, running away makes your character look like the new Cyrisus.
• Cutting the Knot: In "A Clockwork Syringe", you use all the stealth and cunning available to you to quietly sabotage the barrelchest factory by smashing equipment with a giant anchor.
• Cutting Off the Branches: The "Temple of Ikov" quest has you choose whether to protect the Staff of Armadyl or steal it and give it to the bad guy. When the developers made the sequel quest, "While Guthix Sleeps", they realized the plot sort of hinged on the bad guy having the staff, so everyone who chose to protect it received a note from the guardians that it had been stolen by somebody else.

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• Dark Is Not Evil: Implied with the Black Knights (or, as they are formally known, the Kinshra), who have been known to perform nefarious deeds, but are also explained to be another political faction. Ditto with Red Wizards, who are claimed to be responsible of burning the First Wizard's Tower, even though other factions are just as much to blame.
• Darker and Edgier: As time went on, quests and storylines started getting heavier, with characters frequently Killed Off for Real, Sadistic Choices coming up frequently in quests, more war and bloodshed in lore, Black-and-Gray Morality coming to dominate, and Conflict Balls tossed everywhere for good measure, though some quests are lighter in tone than the quests that came before it, such as Prisoner Of Glouphrie being lighter in tone than Eyes Of Glouphrie and Path Of Glouphrie.
  • "One Piercing Note", for example, is a murder mystery where you end up seeing corpses covered in blood, corpses heavily mutilated and maimed, you end up helplessly watching a woman die, and the whole thing perpetrated by an insane woman who would never have done it had she realised what she was doing.
  • This has continued to the point that "Bringing Home The Bacon" was explicitly advertised as a "comedic" quest prior to its release, and even it was full of Black Comedy as the player does the bidding of a full-on Villain Protagonist who has you kill the "bacon addicts" and subsequently feeds their remains to his pigs (off-screen, mercifully).
  • "Fate of the Gods" and "Heart of Stone" shift RuneScape straight into being a Cosmic Horror Story, with the Elder Gods coming, slowly but surely, to consume the life-force of Gielinor itself, destroy the universe, and remake it anew. And they have, apparently, done this many times over already.
    • And now it's become a particularly nasty case of Humanity on Trial, with all life on trial for... not being part of The Elder Gods' plan. Selfish bastards.
  • The upcoming 200th quest, "Dimension of Disaster", centers on an Alternate Universe wherein the Player Character never existed, leading Gielinor (at least in that timeline) to become a Crapsack World with Mahjarrat and demons ruling supreme, multiple other characters dead or imprisoned, the population of Varrock slaughtered and zombified, and no indication that you'll even be able to do anything to improve it. Contrast that with the previous milestone 100th quest, "Recipe for Disaster", which was a generally lighthearted series of subquests to free several characters from a time-frozen room and then take down the boss who originally attacked them.
    • Now that the quest has been released, it's even more so. Among other things, you are explicitly told that Gertrude's four children are dead, you can see corpses hanging by the neck from clotheslines all across the city, and if you take a close enough look at Ambassador Ferrnook's corpse, you can see his severed eyeball lying in a pool of blood spreading from under his head.
  • Some recent quests and miniquests avert this, however, most notably the (extremely wholesome) Violet is Blue and Violet is Blue Too—both quests star the player helping out a small girl and her loving, adoptive yeti parents, and there's no catch to the wholesomeness at all.
  • Jagex's former alternate version of the game, DarkScape, owes its existence solely to this trope. Similar to the old PvP worlds, players are attackable anywhere, and banks and teleports have additional restrictions just to make things even trickier. On top of all that, the perpetual night-mode that usually shrouds Draynor Village now exists everywhere, in case anybody forgot they were in a Crapsack World in between repeated deaths to roving bands of PKers.
• Dark Reprise:
  • Shadow Forger Ihlakhizan's theme is that to Born To Do This track.
  • Temple of Tribes to the standard Goblin Village theme.
  • Creature Cruelty to Magic Magic Magic.
  • Demise of the Dorgeshuun to Dorgeshuun City.
  • Barb Wire to Barbarianism.
  • Return of Lucien to Temple Desecrated.
  • Slug Poison to A New Menace, which is itself a dark reprise of The Mollusc Menace. Also doubles as the boss music when you actually get to face the Slug Queen.
  • Fight of the Dwarves to Land of the Dwarves.
  • Elder Daughter to Elven Voice. It doubles as a Triumphant Reprise to the (normally dark) Freneskae theme, while also including elements of Zaros's Leitmotif.
  • Latent Menace to Scape Sad.
  • Lullaby for an Elder God to The Elder Halls.
  • Kerapac's Sacrifice and Sacrifice to The Cursed Warrior.
  • The Walking Dead to The Militia.
• Deadly Gas: In one of the Dungeoneering puzzle rooms, the player must make their way to the center of a maze within a certain time limit. Gas will start seeping out from the floor after the timer expires, and damage the player until they reach the center and unlock the chest.
• Deal with the Devil. What caused the current state of the Barrow Brothers was a deal with Sliske. Linza repeats the brothers' mistake in her pursuit of Dragonkin artifacts, paying exactly the same price in the end.
  • Meg the rookie adventurer can ask your advice about dealing with demons. If she's still considering it, the best advice for her is "don't risk it". If she's already stuck in a contract, the best advice is Loophole Abuse. During "Kindred Spirits" she wonders about bargaining with Sliske, and is warned off by Linza .
• Death from Above: Ripper demons, a high level Slayer monster, play this straight with their special attack. They leap into the air, then come back down soon after. If you are caught by this attack, you will take 32,000 damage, resulting in a One-Hit Kill. Thankfully, it is choreographed and can be avoided without too much trouble. Their familiar form uses a weaker version of this attack as their special move.
• A Death in the Limelight: Linza's role in "Kindred Spirits", after years upon years Out of Focus with only the occasional cameo, is to betray the Player Character on flimsy, Idiot Ball-level reasoning and get killed off by Sliske to add an eighth Barrows wight to his collection.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist:
  • In the Pest Control Minigame, death merely results in the player respawning at the entry lander of the Minigame, restoring their Life Points, Adrenaline, and Prayer at the mere cost of a bit of running to get back where they were. Similar things will happen if you die in any other "Safe" minigame or combat encounter, in which you keep all items on death.
  • The Death System in Runescape 3 has become this as of the Death Costs Rework in 2023. Death costs for high-tier items used to put players millions of GP in the hole and made learning high-level PVM a prospect too intimidating for many players. However, Jagex eventually decided these costs were too extreme of a Money Sink and reduced the amount of gold one has to pay Death by an average of about 89%, creating a Grand Exchange tax as an alternative Money Sink.
  • Funnily enough, two of the bosses in Senntisten have conditionally safe deaths; outside of Hard Mode, the Arch-Glacor doesn't trigger a death state, as a literal god intervenes to scoop the World Guardian out of harm's way, and Croseus's way of taking the player out of the fight involves draining their skills to 0, which causes Gorvek to get you out.
• Death Trap:
  • You get caught in one at the end of "Path of Glouphrie". Thick, sticky tar pours out onto the floor to stop you from moving. An enchantment prevents you from teleporting. Then comes the poison gas. And of course, at this point, the magical laser attacks start firing at you.
  • Most of the Brimhaven Agility Arena has these, including spikes, rocks, poison darts and spinning blades of doom. Since it's an agility course, it's not a big surprise.
• Death World:
  • Ape Atoll, if you're a human. The monkeys are not friendly. If you stick to the tall grass, you can hide from their archers, but that won't save you from the poisonous snakes, spiders, and scorpions lurking in the weeds. You can create a talisman that will turn you into a monkey, but only if you travel through a lengthy, spiraling cave full of zombies, traps (also poisonous), and falling rocks. It's not a good vacation spot. However, if you do succeed in becoming monkey, it suddenly becomes much less dangerous, and you can even buy dragon scimitars. Where the monkeys obtained them, you may never know.
  • The abyssal plane, where everything is trying to kill you or impede you.
  • The Gorak's Plane, which is filled with many (of the same) powerful creatures who just want to kill you.
  • Also the Mahjarrat's home plane, Freneskae. It wasn't always that way.
    • Presumably Iaia, after it met the same fate as Freneskae.
  • Cheiftain Brundt implies that Acheron, the Penguin Motherland, is this.
  • The Gorajo homeworld, judging by how they describe Daemonheim, an endless labyrinth of constantly-transforming, trap-laden, monster-infested dungeons, as being relatively straightforward and peaceful. Bilrach deliberately designed in this way so that nobody would be able to follow them, though the player is welcome to level up the Dungeoneering skill and continue delving into Daemonheim.
  • Jagex's former alternate version, DarkScape, was this, although in this case it wasn't the NPCs or the environment trying to kill you, but everybody else playing the game.
• Defeat Means Friendship: If you outwit the ghasts of Mort Myre enough via completing the Temple Trekking minigame, they will begin hiring themselves out to you as summoning familiars.
• Degraded Boss:
  • TokTz-Ket-Dill has it's own eponymous quest; however, you fight a number of TokHaar equivalents throughout The Elder Kiln as well.
  • Similarly, TzTok-Jad is the final boss of the Fight Caves and TokHaar versions appear as Elite Mooks in the Kiln. Even though they retain the notorious alternating-attack mechanic and even boast higher combat stats, they lack the ability to summon Yt-HurKot which makes them easier to deal with. JalTok-Jad in Old School’s Inferno and TzekHaar-Jad in RS3’s TzekHaar Front are similar.
  • Har’Aken, the final boss of the Fight Kiln, receives a downplayed version in the TzekHaar Front: TzekHaar-Aken is instead the penultimate wave of said fight.
• Deity of Human Origin: All gods bar the Elders (such as Jas or Ful), Zaros, and Seren are this, whether as a result of killing another god, passively absorbing a massive amount of local anima, or being exposed to an Elder Artifact for sufficient time.
  • Zamorak used to be a Mahjarrat, but gained godly power when he betrayed and defeated Zaros prior to the God Wars.
  • Guthix was a mortal Naragi, but gained his power when he slew the god Skargaroth, who had fallen on Guthix's home in the middle of a battle and killed his daughter Aagi.
  • Saradomin was formerly human, ascending as a result of exposure to the Locator—an Elder Artifact he came to use as his crown.
  • As of the Battle for the Monolith, the Mahjarrat Azzanadra has achieved godhood as a result of exposure to the shadow anima backlash of re-sealing the Codex. It had been previously implied that he was getting close to godhood on his own, however.
• Dem Bones: There are plenty of animated skeletons in the game.
• Department of Redundancy Department:
  • From Elemental Workshop III: Body body.
  • When you leap onto a stepping stone near Tears of Guthix: "You leap across with a mighty leap!"
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells:
  • Players who have progressed enough in Legends Quest can make vials of holy water, which they can throw at demons to do extra damage.
  • Players can also make bane metal weapons, which they can tune to do increased damage against specific monsters.
• Despair Event Horizon: After Guthix's death, his followers go in different directions. Some are encouraged and form the Godless faction as per his last request, and some merely continue to follow his teachings the way they had been. But others fall into despair and lose their path, seeking to recreate him.
• Desperation Attack: Dharok the Wretched's armor set effect. Many a player has died with a sudden 700 damage to the face thanks to this. The Berserker's Fury Archaeology relic power, obtained (appropriately) from the Dharok's Memento relic, gives the player a passive version of this regardless of what armor the player is wearing.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Aubury, the purveyor of the magic shop in Varrock, hands out freebies of the basic Wind and Mind Runes. The obvious scam is to take the freebies and sell them back to his shop, right?
    The shopkeeper thanks you for returning the samples.
    • Similarly, the leprechaun next to the Falador cabbage patch refuses to turn cabbages into banknotes, instead ranting that she hates the smell since she's around them all day.
  • If you talk to Xenia while wearing Dragith Nurn's mask, she'll praise you for finding the pieces and reassembling it ... and tell you how stupid you look in it.
  • There's surprisingly large amount of it when it comes to quests; if you use a walkthrough to obtain certain items necessary for progression, your character and/or an NPC in the quest might comment on how convenient it is that you already have those items. If you have a follower out in an area that you can't have one, there might be unique text or dialog Handwaving why it can't follow you in. Furthermore, if you complete quests in a certain order (without them being a prerequisite quest), you'll get some unique dialog in the form of a Continuity Nod.
  • Sorcerer Thormac offers to upgrade any battlestaves you show him. You can offer him the Armadyl Battlestaff for this service. He declines.
  • The "Crackling" perk from Invention doesn't affect vyres, since blisterwood weapons save for the refletched Sunspear can't be augmented.
  • There used to be a glitch where a player could enter the cutscene that shows the Wise Old Man robbing the bank in Draynor Village, and take items from it, including the blue party hat. Upon trying to wear it, it would vanish, and an error message would show up asking the player to send a bug report telling the developers how they got it.
  • If playing the Barmaid's minigame at Player-Owned Ports, you can offer beer to any Ports adventurers at the inn. Each of them has a unique line of dialogue to politely refuse.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Happens often.
  • You think you managed to keep the Staff of Armadyl in the safe hands of its Guardians? Too bad, Lucien steals it anyway to further his plans.
  • You think you managed to prevent Hazeel's revival at the hands of his cult? Too bad, he gets freed offscreen, if a little bit too late to be rejuvenated in "Ritual of the Mahjarrat".
  • Congratulations, you survived the Battle Royale at the end of "Ritual of the Mahjarrat"! Sliske promptly tries to murder the Player Character and turn them into a wight, and this only fails because Akrisae pulls a Heroic Sacrifice and is claimed instead.
  • You successfully managed to either defend or reach Guthix in his resting chamber and reason with him in person at the end of "The World Wakes"! Hooray! Sliske appears from nowhere with the suddenly reforged Staff of Armadyl, and wastes no time in murdering Guthix so that the Edicts will no longer protect Gielinor. It’s later stated that Guthix did this intentionally, however.
  • At the end of "Dishonour Among Thieves", you have just managed to help steal the Stone of Jas. Sliske arrives, and whatever side you take in the brief duel between him and Zamorak, Sliske steals the Stone back and gets away a Karma Houdini once again.
  • In "Sliske's Endgame", the race through Sliske's maze culminates in a boss fight against the eponymous Mahjarrat himself; just as you've beaten him, Sliske and the Player Character get mutually impaled upon the Staff of Armadyl and the dying Big Bad transfers at least some of his soul into the Player Character in a blatant Sequel Hook.
• Didn't Need Those Anyway!: The Skeletal Horror can keep fighting just fine with the loss of its limbs, though they'll hop around on the ground and heal it if they manage to get back on.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • In "The Chosen Commander", Zanik and the Player Character punch out The avatar of Bandos, god of war, although it helps that you have to disrupt its link with Bandos to be able to actually kill it. It has since been confirmed this boss is on the lowest tier of Godhood.
  • Especially appropriate in "Salt in the Wound", where the mind-controlling horror you defeat was directly inspired by the H. P. Lovecraft. The Slug Queen is killed by an average (although exceptionally skilled) woman by cutting a huge statue and having it fall on said queen.
• Dimensional Cutter: One of the uses for the Ancient Artifact known as the Elder Sword, which can be used to cut holes in space for travel. Notably, this wasn't the use that the Elder Gods had actually intended it for at all, and Guthix accidentally broke it from using it that way too hard.
  • Implied to be the case for the Subtle Knife Archaeology relic, created with a godsword prototype and a fragment of the Elder Sword. Its relic power, Abyssal Link, allows you to use teleports without needing runes.
• Disappeared Dad: Bolrie, Golrana's father, in The Prisoner of Glouphrie. He's been locked up in a cell in Arposandra for centuries.
• Disciplines of Magic: In both Runescape 3 and Old School Runescape, there are various "spellbooks" that focus on different types of magic. The Standard Spellbook has a mix of combat and skill-focused spells, while the Ancient Spellbook is more combat-focused with the ability to hit multiple targets, and the Lunar Spellbook is mainly focused on utility spells, such as baking pies and stringing jewelry. Exclusive to OSRS is the Arceuus Spellbook, which focuses on Necromancy, while RS3 has Necromancy as its own separate combat skill, introduced in 2023.
• Disconnected Side Area:
  • The island off the coast of Catherby where the obelisk of water is located. It looks like it's so close to the coastline that you could easily just swim to it, or even wade through the water to it. To get there, you have to travel across some mountains and then through the long and difficult Taverley Dungeon. You can get back to Catherby with a Grappling Hook Crossbow — but you can't get to the island from Catherby.
  • The same trope also applies to the obelisk of air. It is located in the middle of the wilderness but there is no way to reach it from the surface of the wilderness. It can only be accessed by going through Edgeville Dungeon, whose entrances are located outside of the wilderness. The game also treats the northern section of the dungeon as part of the wilderness, which allows other players to attack you, even though it isn't reachable from the surface (unless you have the Hard Wilderness Tasks done).
  • There are several small islands and enclosed areas that are visible from other areas of the game but can only be reached by teleporting there using a fairy ring.
  • Lucien's camp is visible from the wilderness near the chaos temple but can only be reached by teleporting there using a teleorb located in the black knight's catacombs.
• Disc-One Nuke: The Waterfall Quest is a short member's quest with no meaningful skill or combat challenges, other than sprinting through a couple rooms of high-level giants. It gives an enormous amount of Attack and Strength xp once completed, enough to jump a character from level 1 to level 30. New members can use this to skip the tedious early combat grind and jump straight to adamant weaponry.
  • Iban Blast is a spell unlocked by completing Underground Pass, requiring 50 Magic and Iban's Staff. It can hit up to 25 damage. For reference, Earth Blast is unlocked at level 53 and can hit up to 15.
• Discontinuity Nod: The Romeo & Juliet quest no longer exists, but you can still ask the Apothecary to make the potion used to put Juliet in a coma.
  • In the Dimension of Disaster, you find their reanimated heads strung on a chain in Zemouregal's castle, and can get an achievement by feeding them both the coma potion.
  • A lot of deleted, panned-in-development, or fan-speculated content shows up in "Gower Quest", including Romeo (who even discusses why his quest was removed).
• Divine Parentage: Iban from the Underground Pass claims to be the son of Zamorak, but this turns out to just be an empty boast or, at most, Metaphorically True. Players can eventually figure out that Zamorak's true son is Khazard.
• Divine Ranks: Past Word of God suggested there were seven "tiers" of godhood, which approximately measure how much raw power each god has in comparison with the others (though not necessarily the type of power they have):
  • Elder Gods^note Jas, Bik, Wen, Ful, and Mah are Tier 1, having the power to create life and worlds. It's implied that there are shadow beings with equivalent power, one of which may include Xau-Tak.
  • Transcendent Gods^note Guthix, Seren, and Zaros are Tier 2, having the power to manipulate life and anima.
  • Tiers 3-5 contain gods of varying power, with Tier 3 having the power to act on continent-wide scales and Tier 5 being the weakest that gods can normally get. Of these, only the Tier 5 Brassica Prime managed to avoid being exiled by the Edicts of Guthix, and that more due to his connection to Gielinor's anima than anything else.
  • Tiers 6 and 7 contain Demigods and aspects of gods, such as most of the Menaphite pantheon and the Bandos Avatar. Notably not exiled by the Edicts of Guthix.
  • Present Word of God seems to avert this to an extent, though the Elder Gods remain far above anyone else and Guthix, Seren, and Zaros all clearly display more power than the gods beneath them.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: You can learn this the hard way if you choose to verbally flip off Jas.
• Doomy Dooms of Doom: The Doomsayer in Lumbridge prophesies that The End Is Nigh whenever he isn't helping players toggle warnings for entering dangerous areas.
• Doppelgänger Attack: Combined with Doppelganger Spin in the fight against Nomad. Each of his clones is just as dangerous as the original ...
• Doppelgänger Spin: ... but damaging a copy makes Nomad lose focus and forces him to dismiss it, and damaging the real one breaks the spell completely.
• Double-Edged Buff: A variety of ales can be brewed via the Cooking skill. These provide temporary boosts to specific skills when drunk. However, alcohol of all types reduces your chance to hit in close combat and tends to sap their physical Strength as well. In addition, while the benefits of drinking multiple of the same beverage do not stack, the downsides do (in addition to typically lasting longer than the buffs) — to the point where excessive use can actually temporarily leave even a high-level player's combat skills weaker than someone just starting out.
• Downer Ending: Getting more and more common as Cerebus Syndrome makes RuneScape Darker and Edgier.
  • One Piercing Note. Anna had gone completely insane, believing herself to be guided by St. Elspeth. The first victim was someone else, mistaken for Anna due to having her face slashed off and being dressed in her robes. In the end, three innocent lives have been lost to her madness, and if you decide to spare her, she throws herself off the tower anyway, believing the Icyene are coming to take her to Saradomin, leaving behind an Abbey on the verge of collapsing.
  • The Tzhaar series ending starts off bittersweet, but turns into a downer if you take the time to do some talking afterwords. After finally finding the cause of why the Tzhaar are being born as the weaker, simple minded Ga'al and putting a stop to Tokhaar-hok's plans, you're forced to say goodbye to your friend Ga'al-Xox, as he can no longer live with the pain of knowing how it feels to be trapped in tokkul. You get to watch a surprisingly poignant cutscene, followed by a ceremony celebrating your triumph over the Tokhaar, and then the quest ends, and you're left to believe that you've saved the Tzhaar. However, if you take the time to go back to Tokhaar-hok, he'll begin to tell you his side of the story, and it isn't a pleasant one. The Tzhaar gradually lose the memories of their past with each generation, and, seeing this, Tokhaar-hok went out of his way to try to draw their attention to this problem, and possibly get them to return to the sacred lava as they were destined to in order to save them. Unfortunately, a certain adventurer came along and choose to aid the stubborn Tzhaar instead, foiling his plans. Tokhaar-hok flat out tells you that the Tzhaar are now destined for extinction, and that unless they willingly choose to be absorbed into the sacred lava, there isn't much of anything anyone can do about it.
  • "Heart of Stone" and "Fate of the Gods" end in large part with ominous warnings about the Elder Gods eventually coming to consume the life-force of Gielinor.
  • "Dimension of Disaster" has the Player Character and Arrav defeating Zemouregal ... but the death of alternate-Varrock's resident necromancer has done nothing to free the rest of the world, and now the population being sustained by Zemouregal's death magic will just crumble to dust.
  • "The Lord of Vampyrium" has most of the Myreque and the population of Burgh de Rott dying, and Vanescula immediately betrays and kills Safalaan Hallow, before taking over the vampyre hierarchy so that she can conquer Varrock and blood tithe its citizens. Veliaf Hurtz reveals that the unseen "Calsidiu" does not exist, and without an actual leader, the two or three remaining Myreque have no choice but to disband in defeat. However, it's not all bad, as Lord Drakan is ends up dying at the end of the quest, Queen Efaritay is now free, and Vanescula Drakan is not nearly as evil as Lord Drakan, as she is not planning to make Varrock a miserable excuse for a town like Meiyerditch. This is averted in the followup quest River Of Blood.
  • "Kindred Spirits" does have a hopeful note in that you at least get to weaken Sliske's hold over the Barrows Brothers, and you successfully save the lives of both Mary Rancour and Meg, but at the same time Sliske does manage to take a piece of the Player Character's soul, and summarily kills Linza (one of the Signature Heroes) to add her as an eighth Barrows wight. In the end, all this achieves is leaving a Sequel Hook to the rest of Sliske's quest series.
• Dragged Off to Hell: An alternate home teleport animation available in Solomon's General Store has a fiery pit open beneath the player so that hands can grab them by the ankles and drag them down.
• The Dragon: The leader of the Kal'Gerion demons, Kal'Ger the Warmonger, is this to the Mahjarrat Bilrach.
• Dinosaurs Are Dragons: The dragonkin created modern dragons by mutating dinosaurs. Their prototypes, the Rex Matriarchs, are referred to by Kerapac as dracosaurs.
• Dragon Hoard: Many dragon lairs are littered with piles of gold.
• Dramatic Wind: While holding a two-handed weapon.
• Dressed to Plunder: All of the stock traits appear on various pirate NPCs: bandanas, tricorner hats, eyepatches, a hook-hand, a captain's hat with a skull-and-crossbones on it, etc. Most of them are also available as wearable equipment, and there is a parrot...well, a zombie parrot ("ex-ex-parrot") available as a pet as a reward for a pirate-related quest.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • In one possible ending for the One Piercing Note quest, Anna throws herself off of the abbey's clock tower to her death. That is, if she isn't kicked off by the player first.
  • At the end of the TzHaar quest line, Ga'al-Xox deliberately sacrifices himself in the sacred lava after being infused with the Tokkul of a fallen TzHaar champion, unable to bear the pain of the champion's dying moments before being turned into Tokkul.
• Dropped a Bridge on Him:
  • Guthix's death at the end of "The World Wakes" at the hands of Sliske, a mortal Mahjarrat who just happened to have acquired the Staff of Armadyl — this after the Staff was shattered on-screen by the Dragonkin at the end of "Ritual of the Mahjarrat".
  • Akrisae's death and enslavement as a Barrows Brother, also via Sliske. Doubles as a Senseless Sacrifice in protecting the Player Character, who cannot truly die until their destiny says so.
  • Even if you let Zanik live at the end of "The Mighty Fall", she's dead anyway in "Fate of the Gods", and is quick to let you know that she died offscreen pretty quickly anyway. Fortunately, she returns in the afterlife in "Nomad's Elegy", and depending on the player's choices, she can return to life as the custodian of the Soul Obelisk.
  • After spending much of "Kindred Spirits" as a reasonably helpful ally of the Player Character, Linza (one of the Signature Heroes, no less) gets an eleventh-hour Plot Twist revealing her to have made a Deal with the Devil with Sliske for protection from the Dragonkin. Sliske then promply kills her off For the Evulz and, to add further insult to mortal injury, raises her as his eighth Barrows wight.
• Dual Boss: The Twin Furies, Avaryss and Nymora, who are fought as Zamorak's generals in the Heart of Gielinor. They can attack players at the same time and have a Combination Attack, and they share a health pool.
• Dual Wielding: Most one-handed weapons have offhand equivalents that allow two weapons to be wielded at once. Doing so allows the player to attack with both weapons for increased damage, even mixing and matching combat styles (e.g. dual-wielding a sword and a crossbow), and enables special dual-wield abilities like Havoc and Frenzy. In the case of ranged weapons, you can duel-wield crossbows, leading to a fantasy equivalent of Guns Akimbo.
• Dude, Where's My Respect??: Zigzagged; average citizens never say thanks for averting the latest doom on the land.
  • This was the Wise Old Man's motivation to ransack the Draynor Bank of its money, snatch up a Blue Partyhat, and attempt an assault on the Wizard's tower in "Love Story".
  • Sir Owen was nearly dishonorably discharged from the White Knights for breaking rank and sniping the enemy commander to death instead of following his own commander's battle plan.
  • You, the player character, by the end of "One Small Favor", after having trekked across five nations sorting out a chain of favors, are told by the quest-giver that he's angry with how late you are and you're lucky to get any reward at all from him. (He gives you a key ring. No, I'm serious. Admittedly, it does mean you can put keys on the toolbelt.)
• Due to the Dead: Not receiving their due is a common reason for the undead to torment the living.
  • The Restless Ghost just wants his head to be buried with the rest of his body. Once you do that for him, he happily departs for the afterlife.
  • Ormod Gulvas, the murderous madman haunting the Broken Home, can be put to rest by the son he mistakenly locked in the nursery to starve. Or by a demon impersonating said son. Or the demon can just eat him, too.
  • The Shades of Mort'ton and the higher-ranked Vampyres are tormented souls driven to evil. The only way to truly put their spirits to rest (and gain their worldly belongings) is to cremate their remains on a ceremonial pyre, with logs soaked in sacred oil.
  • In Zogre Flesh Eaters, a sacred Ogre burial ground has been cursed, and the dead Ogres are attacking the living. You can't remove the curse, so the Ogres have to seal Jig'ig and establish a new burial ground.
  • The "Fallen Angels" Archaeology mystery involves you disturbing the remains of an Icyene at Everlight and having to ask Vanescula for a place to rebury it, and suitable tribute. She condescendingly points out there's no reward, but your character insists it's the right thing to do.
• Dump Stat: The developers try to address these as they arise, with varying results.
  • Agility used to be way more useful, before faster run-energy recharge rates, slower run-energy drain rates, easier access to infinite run energy effects, and the Lodestone Network diminished its utility significantly. Various shortcuts are still somewhat useful or are required to complete local Achievement sets, and Crystal and Attuned Crystal equipment takes a certain level in Agility to equip, but otherwise the skill is now next to useless. With the release of the Anachronia Agility Course, which grants the players sellable ability codexes, high-level Agility is now a good money-maker.
  • Defence used to be treated as this by "combat pures", who leave it at Level 1 while other stats are raised towards the cap. However, this is a much worse strategy than it used to in the pre-EoC era, since armour now makes a big difference in defensive capabilities (though not Hit Points) and higher-level equipment can often grant offensive bonuses (to the point that people will take them over tank armour).
  • Zigzagged with Dungeoneering. On one hand, it's a minigame set in Daemonheim with little connection to the rest of RuneScape. However, the *unlockables* from Dungeoneering Tokens are quite powerful, with powerful utility items such as the Charming Imp, Advanced Gold Accumulator, and Demon Horn Necklace all coming from the token store. Resource Dungeons, which are unlocked at specific Dungeoneering levels, can also contain useful resources like Slayer mobs and a Bloodwood Tree.
  • Firemaking basically pertains solely to lighting various types of logs on fire. Two quests ("All Fired Up" and "The Firemaker's Curse") do directly involve Firemaking, as well as pyre ships in Barbarian firemaking and one ranged weapon ^note the Chaos Dwarf hand cannon. Otherwise, though, the choice of logs that you burn has no real effect on cooking on a fire (only its duration) and the skill gives no real rewards to speak of, aside from periodic low-value gifts from fire spirits released while burning logs one-by-one. Even Incense Sticks aren't useful enough to save it from this fate.
  • Woodcutting, like Firemaking, doesn't have that much. Aside from other Gathering skills getting quality of life updates, reworks, and proper item sinks, Woodcutting just doesn't give that much anymore.
  • Quest requirements can avert this, with 75 in a number of skills (Agility, Dungeoneering, and Woodcutting included) required to gain access to the endgame city of Prifddinas.
• Dungeon Bypass: The Tarn's Lair dungeon is a convoluted maze filled with traps and aggressive zombies. If you solve the maze and fight your way to the end, you can challenge Tarn for XP and a power-up to your Salve Amulet to make it more effective against the undead. Defeating Tarn allows you to fight his pet Terror Dogs in the final chamber. Of course, you'd have to go through the whole maze again to get there, so, as a convenience to Terror Dog slayers, Jagex released the Slayer Ring, which can teleport you back to the final chamber. However, an unintended consequence of this teleport was that it worked even for players who had never completed the maze in the first place, thus allowing savvy players to simply buy or make a Slayer Ring and waltz straight into the boss chamber, bypassing the entire dungeon.
  • In Sliske's Endgame, though you never see it on-screen, the Dragonkin apparently broke through parts of the maze instead of going through it properly.
  • The Temple of Light is a brutally difficult, multi-level light and mirrors puzzle that takes at least an hour to solve, even if you have a guide. When you finally complete it and reach the Death Altar...you meet Thorgel the dwarf, who just smashed open the back wall with a pickaxe.
• Dwindling Party:
  • The Signature Heroes, if you complete various Sixth Age quests; as of June 2016 they are down to four out of the original six.
    • Sir Owen gets killed off and raised improperly in "The Death of Chivalry", leading to a long-term retirement from adventuring. Ultimately averted, though: he comes back for Azzanadra's Quest, after the events of any hypothetical Death of Chivalry 2 that let him get his corruption from said improper raising under control.
    • Xenia gets killed in an explosion in "Heart of Stone", and even though she returns to help out in "Nomad's Elegy", she remains Killed Off for Real.
    • Linza gets A Death in the Limelight in "Kindred Spirits", and also Came Back Wrong as Sliske's eighth Barrows wight, now known as "Linza the Disgraced".
  • In "The Lord of Vampyrium", Drakan and his venators pick off the Myreque one by one, until all that remains are the Player Character, Veliaf Hurtz, Ivan Strom, and Safalaan Hallow. Vanescula also survives, but she betrays the group.
• Dying as Yourself:
  • During the quest The Ritual of the Mahjarrat, Arrav is finally freed from Zamouregal's mind control during the final battle by the player, and is able to turn on his master. After the quest is over, the player is given the task of finding Arrav, who is still on the battlefield. When the player finds him, he could die at any second as he body is thousands of years old. He asks you to free his soul so he can finally rest.
  • In the quest "Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf", Hilda, who was transformed into a chaos dwarf, is able to regain a bit of sanity and give the protagonists a package with items that will help them.
• Dying Curse: Zaros, in the events described in the Ghostly Robes miniquest.

E

• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Runescape Classic has many differences. See the trope page for a detailed explanation.
  • In the Goblin quest series, Juna, one of the Guardians of Guthix, helped bring Zanik back to life because her destiny given to her by Bandos wasn't complete, and later on when Zanik decided that she wasn't going to be Bandos' puppet, Juna told her that she should return to her destiny as the Chosen Commander.
• Easter Bunny: Played around with. In the 2009 Easter event, it turned out that the Easter Bunny was actually a rabbit wearing a rabbit costume.
• Easter Egg:
  • Using a herring on a tree will yield a message that says that tree isn't the mighiest tree in the forest.
  • During Carinellian Rising, attempting to use an abyssal whip or a feather on Sarasaphilla while she's tied up will yield a message that says RuneScape isn't "that sort of fantasy game".
  • If you're wielding a Saradomin Godsword while talking to the pet version of Zilyana, your character will tell her that they've found the Godsword.
  • In Song of the Elves, you must dress up as a knight of Ardounge in order to go into the prison underneath Ardounge Castle. If you talk to the knight guarding the stairs while dressed up as a knight, a humourous bit of dialouge will occur.
    Player: Good day.
    Knight: Hello there, fellow knight. Isn't today a wonderful day to be a Knight of Ardougne?
    Player: I mean, it's okay I suppose. The constant fear of some random adventurer murdering you and the fact that people are constantly picking your pockets isn't great. But hey ho, at least the benefits are good.
    Knight: That they are fellow knight, that they are.
    Player: Anyway, can I go down these stairs?
    Knight: Of course you can! You're a Knight of Ardougne! There is no place where you can't go.
    Player: Yeah... Thanks.
  • There are a few in Desert Treasure II:
    • The Mysterious Figure can ambush you anywhere at anytime, including within the comfort of your own home. Should she pop up in your house, she'll have unique dialogue for the occasion. She can also disguise herself as the Sandwich Lady, and will follow you into random event instances.
    "Nice house, [player name]. Now give me the medallions!"
    "Welcome home, [player name]. Now give me the medallions!"
    • During the quest, you gain access to a Zarosian intelligence golem that you can input search terms into. Putting in "cats" results in some humorous dialogue, and "horses" causes it to bug out. There are also some search terms that the golem will refuse you access to, such as "Zaros", "Stone of Jas", and "Romily Weaklax" (the pie merchant in the Cooks' Guild).
  • Casting the Dream spell with a Jar of Dreams in your inventory will cause an image of The Nightmare to flash on your screen. Casting the spell while inside the Nightmare Zone will yield a message that says you can’t perform Inception.
• Eldritch Abomination: Enough to warrant their own page.
• Eldritch Location:
  • Daemonheim, an immense, random dungeon complex that came into existence out of nowhere, is filled with horrific extradimensional monsters (see Eldritch Abomination), and has a 'taint' within that could irreparably damage the world should it escape. Bilrach himself planted them there to make sure that nobody could pursue him as he heads to the bottom of Daemonheim, though he made the mistake of also sending the Gorajo to Daemonheim, who can be summoned if the player wishes.
  • The Abyssal plane, where everything seems to have eyes or tentacles, or both.
  • The Runespan, a maze of floating islands filled with nodes and creatures of elemental energy.
  • The currently-unreleased (and likely cancelled) Underwater City is implied to be one of these, filled with giant stone hands and buildings made of obsidian slabs.
  • (Elder God Wars storyline spoilers): Erebus is a reality entirely separate from our own, one dominated by shadow anima and containing many eldritch horrors. The Codex was originally built to contain a shadow breach leading to it. It's also the Zarosian "afterlife." Zaros notes that it would be fatal even for Azzanadra to enter it. The player character, who thanks to the World Guardian enchantment has a soul that can withstand and resist shadow anima, ultimately visits there during "Extinction," eventually summoning a Shadow Leviathan from there to defeat Jas.
• Eldritch Ocean Abyss: The setting of the third Elite Dungeon, the Shadow Reef. It starts in bright surface water, and as you progress downward things get deeper and darker, while the background music tracks outside of boss fights progress from "Epipelagic" (the name of the ocean zone closest to the surface) to "Bathypelagic" (the name of the shallowest ocean zone where light doesn't penetrate from the surface at all) all the way down to "Hadalpelagic" (the deepest depths of the ocean, located in trenches.)
  • A similar location, though not going down quite as deep, serves as the end location of Pieces of Hate—a submerged Dragonkin ruin where the player confronts Rabid Jack. Both this and the third Elite Dungeon are tied with attempts to summon Xau-Tak to Gielinor properly.
• Elemental Embodiment: There are plenty of elementals in Runescape: the regular fire/water/air/earth found in the Elemental Workshop, ice elementals found in Daemonheim and Chaos Elemental, a high-level boss in the Wilderness. The strongest elemental is however Balance Elemental, a quest boss fought during While Guthix Sleeps forged from four elementally-aligned druids who volunteered for the role, alongside the first World Guardian Aeternam.
• Elemental Crafting: Each combat school has elements of this, though melee has the most progression in this regard:
  • Melee (pre-rework) - Bronze < Iron < Steel < Black/White < Mithril < Adamantite < Runite < Granite < Dragon, and from there everything splits.
  • Melee (post-mining and smithing overhaul) - Bronze < Iron < Steel < Mithril < Adamantite < Runite < Orikalkum < Necrite < Bane < Elder Rune < Masterwork < Trimmed Masterwork.
  • Ranged - Leather < Hard Leather < Studded Leather < Carapace < Green dragonhide < Blue d'hide < red d'hide < black d'hide < Royal d'hide < Dinosaur hide < several lategame armors.
  • Magic - Imphide < Spider Silk < Fungal < Batwing < Splitbark < Skeletal/Mystic < Lunar/Grifolic < Ganodermic < several lategame armors.
• Elite Mooks: Some monsters have an "elite" version that can randomly spawn when the player kills said monster. They have somewhat higher stats but drop three times as much loot on death. A similar feature exists in Old School RuneScape for certain Slayer monsters once the player has unlocked the required upgrade.
• Emote Animation: Naturally. Some of them are even used for quests, and others are used by the Mime random event in Old School.
• Empathic Environment:
  • Morytania is a dank, hazy, diseased-looking swamp, in keeping with its status as a realm corrupted by Lord Drakan and his allies.
  • Draynor Village and its eponymous manor are constantly shrouded in night and darkness, given that they are blighted by a resident vampire (until he gets slain), Death's office, War's Retreat, and dubious strangers all over the place.
  • Taken up to eleven in the now-defunct spin-off game DarkScape, where everywhere is night or at least twilight, in case you forgot the whole point is to be Darker and Edgier.
• Encyclopedia Exposita: The Slayer Codex, a book which keeps a record of 150+ different Slayer monsters, and displays their examine text (and kill count for certain groups of monsters). You need at least 117 Slayer and 115 Dungeoneering to complete the entire book, and is a requirement to trim the Completionist Cape; the process involves having ushabtis (which cost 20 Slayer points each) in your inventory while slaying said monsters until the ushabtis capture their souls, which are then turned in to the Chest of Souls in Menaphos's Sunken Pyramid to fill up your book, and also grants you Slayer experience.
• Endless Game: Though if the player wishes, they can get a Completionist Cape once they've completed everything. And then a Trimmed Completionist Cape once they've really completed everything.
• End of an Age: "The World Wakes" marks the literal end of the Fifth Age. Guthix is killed, and with his death, the Edicts of Guthix are broken, allowing the other Gods to once more walk Gelinor and wage war against each other once more.
  • "Twilight of the Gods" and it's associated miniquest "Aftermath" marks another pivotal moment. The Edicts of Guthix are restablished, banishing all Gods without exception.
• Enemy Mine:
  • Saradomin and Zamorak are arch-enemies; Armadyl doesn't trust Saradomin and has a strong grudge against Zamorak for wiping out so many of his fellow Aviansie; The Godless hate all of the above. Nevertheless, all four factions agreed to cooperate against the world-ending threat that is Tuska.
  • Though Saradomin, Armadyl, Zamorak, and Bandos all fought each other over the Godsword, they all agreed that they should seal away Nex as they were all terrified of her, and for good reason as she was one of Zaros' mightiest followers.
  • "Dishonour among Thieves" runs on this premise, where the player, by Zamorak's orders, assembles a group of Zamorakians who set aside their differences to stage a heist in Sliske's hideout and steal the Stone of Jas from him.
  • The Battle for the Monolith sees the Zarosian forces and the armies of Seren, Crux Eqal, and Saradomin temporarily uniting to attempt to close the Codex.
  • In the quest Ghosts Ahoy, the player stopped Necrovarus' plan to prevent the ghosts of Port Phasmatys from being able to move on to the afterlife. Later, in the quest Vessel of the Harbinger, the player and Necrovarus work together to try to stop Rasial from attacking the surface world.
• Enemy Scan: The Monster Examine spell from the Lunar Spellbook, which lists the name of the target monster, its combat level, maximum life points, and maximum hit.
• Enemy Summoner:
  • Quite a few monsters, such as Nechryael.
  • Vanstrom Klause can do this during the boss fight. He uses it to heal himself, as one of the Myreque members warns you about.
• Energy Beings: Light Creatures and Killerwatts.
• Energy Bow: The Crystal, Zaryte, Hellfire, and Seren bows do not require separate ammunition to attack with, though they can fire such ammunition if equipped.
• Enough to Go Around: You can see multiple people walking around with one-of-a-kind weapons that are the rewards from different quests. Plus, any item you need in a quest that is given to you can be destroyed and reobtained, usually at no cost. For instance, if you're given the only existing copy of an important diary, you can destroy it somewhere in the middle of nowhere or on an entirely separate plane of reality. When you go back to the person who gave you the item, they claim to have either had another copy all along, or even more improbably, claim that somebody else saw you drop it (In a deserted alternate universe?) and returned it to them. Perhaps this is just because they are Clingy MacGuffins.
• Epic Fail: General Viggora wanted to prove to the world that humans could achieve greatness. So he built a massive fortress. That only caused the other races to nickname it "Viggora's Folly", so he kept adding on to it. Eventually, it sank into the swamp he built it on, which convinced him that the nickname was, in fact, accurate.
• Epic Flail:
  • Verac's flail is a powerful weapon used by one of the Barrows Brothers. It has an effect when the armour is worn with it that allows it to occasionally ignore enemy defences.
  • The Ivandis flail is basically an Ivandis rod with a silver sickle attached with a chain. It is completely impractical and unwieldy, but until you get blisterwood weapons, it's the only thing that can hurt Vyrewatch and Vyrelords. In OSRS, you instead upgrade the Ivandis Flail to a Blisterwood Flail.
  • One of the signature heroes, The Raptor, wields a massive, heavy, spiked flail.
• Escort Mission:
  • The Temple Trekking/Burgh de Rott Ramble minigame involves protecting refugees on their journey from Burgh de Rott north to the safety of the temple at Paterdomus and escorting mercenary adventurers on the opposite route to battle evil. Should be noted as being different than other escort missions, as your companions can level up, some of them could probably do the trek themselves with sufficient leveling.
  • Blood Runs Deep has the Player Character escort King Vargas through the Waterbirth Island dungeon. He's wounded and moves slower than walking speed, and the dungeon is filled with high-level aggressive monsters that pummel you with all attack styles, although no explanation is given as to why you can't just teleport out.
  • Inverted in Within the Light, where Arianwyn escorts you through the Temple of Light, killing any shadows that attack you.
  • Played for Drama with Zanik, according to the 45th Postbag from the Hedge.
    "It's like... all the time we were adventuring together, it was all about you, you know? You were the hero, and I was the sidekick. I kept getting into trouble and you kept rescuing me. Even at the end, when we defeated Bandos, I got knocked out and you finished it alone. And in a way, I kind of resent that. I wish I'd done it myself. I don't want my whole life to be like that. I want to prove to myself that I can be an adventurer in my own right, be a hero, not just someone's sidekick, not even yours."
• Even Evil Has Standards: Inverted in the Cave Goblin quest series; Sigmund says Screw This, I'm Outta Here to his boss, Johannes, essentially because Johannes has too many standards.
  • Played straight with Lord Drakan, who found the feeding habits of the vampyres of House Pyrah appalling. House Pyrah would imprison their prey and leave them to rot, collecting their congealed blood for later consumption. Despite enjoying the taste of this blood to some extent, Drakan had the both stores of blood destroyed and the entire tribe along with it.
• Everyone Has Standards: Part of the quest Grim Tales involves the player rescuing a dwarf named Rupert who has been held captive by a princess. The player has the option to offer to kill the princess, but Rupert rejects the idea.
• Every Proper Lady Should Curtsy: The standard bow emote for girl players. Males can also use it by right clicking.
• Evil Chef: The Culinaromancer from "Recipe for Disaster".
• Eviler than Thou: After seeing the horrible acts the demon Agrith-Naar is capable of in Shadow of the Storm once he successfully tricks Zamorak cultists into sending him back to his home plane, Evil Dave decides that it's too evil even for him.
• Evil Tower of Ominousness: This is a High Fantasy setting, what did you expect?
  • There's the low levelled Dark Wizard's tower filled with Dark Wizards.
  • There's the Slayer Tower, while this is a Non-Indicative Name the portal to the abyss spewing out demons does not bode well.
  • Finally there's Castle Drakan, the central tower looms over Darkmeyer and the surrounding region as a reminder of vampyres' domination. Home to Lord Drakan and family, it's also one of the tallest buildings in Gielinor. It also has a counterpart on the Vampyre homeworld of Vampyrium.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Kerapac downplays this—he's more interested in trying to find ways to break the Dragonkin curse and solve the Ilujanka's fertility problem than create perfect beings, but his methods often lean towards the biological and he certainly has the attitude of one. He actively allowed the Raksha to remain alive in order to study it and harvest its organs to help create prototype dragons. His son, Vicendithas, was his final attempt at creating many, many, many clones of himself—apparently as part of his project to cure the Ilujanka's fertility issues.
  • Vicendithas averts this, having much higher ethical standards than his father while still ultimately managing to cure the Ilujanka's fertility problem where both his father and Zaros failed.
• Evil Versus Evil:
  • The Godless faction have shown up at both god battles in the Sixth Age, and have taken enthusiastically to describing the warfare as this — not that they're any less dogmatic and warlike than anyone else, mind you.
  • The Menaphites fight against the Bandits in Pollnivneach. When the player kills the Menaphite Champion, the residents get angry at you for giving the Bandits an advantage in the conflict and the player kills the Bandits' champion as well.
  • Both Zamorak and Bandos have fought each other over the godsword, though one could also say it's a battle of Intelligence vs. Strength or Brain vs. Brawn considering Zamorak's minions are typically much smarter (though no less aggressive) than Bandos's minions. More recent lore would suggest it's more Chaos vs Evil, as unlike Bandos Zamorak and his followers have been given (some) redeeming traits.
• Evolving Weapon:
  • The Flail of Ivandis, weapons crafted from the branches of the Blisterwood tree, and Sunspear gain power as you cremate Vyrewatch corpses. OSRS lets you upgrade the Flail into a Blisterwood Flail instead.
  • Silverlight: originally an iron sword blessed by Guthix, later becoming Darklight after imbibing the blood of the defeated Agrith Naar in "Shadow of the Storm". In OSRS, it can be transformed into the even more powerful Arclight, while completing the Dimension of Disaster quest in RS3 lets you upgrade Darklight into a viable endgame weapon against demons.
  • Excalibur and Ancient Staff can be upgraded to Enhanced versions with the completion of Hard Seers' Village Tasks and Elite Desert Tasks, respectively.
  • Multiple weapons from the Squeal of Fortune/Treasure Hunter, such as Starfury weapons and Shark Fists can be upgraded to a higher tier once you have the levels to wield the upgraded version.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin:
  • If you hold you mouse cursor over the achievements at the end of a Dungeoneering run, a small tooltip pops up, telling you what you need to do in order to get that achievement. The tooltip for "Most Deaths" reads, "Exactly what it says on the tin."
  • One quest's MacGuffin is the "Idol of Many Heads". Examining the idol gives this text: "An idol. It has many heads."
  • A lot of examine texts end up as this.
• Exact Words:
  • In "Thok Your Block Off", Thok decides to spare "Boney Face" and mentions he'd kill him if he saw him again. Unfortunately for Boney, that included going into a dead-end room and coming out again to see him walking about.
  • In "Missing, Presumed Death", Sliske invites the Runescape pantheon to an event he calls his "Grand Ascendancy". Most of them show up, expecting to find out whether he has achieved ascension to godhood (a reasonable expectation since Sliske had just acquired an Elder Artifact and killed Guthix). However, he then refuses to answer any questions and instead demonstrates his ability to manipulate them into doing exactly what he wants ... thus "proving" his "ascendancy".
• Excuse Plot: "Birthright of the Dwarves", the finale of the Red Axe quest series. Veldaban grows concerned about another attack from the Red Axe, and enlists help from the World Guardian to take them down once and for all.
• Experience Booster: Lots. The Runescape Wiki has a list.
• Expy: Jagex says Zanik is essentially Starbuck, and her voice is that of Regina Spektor.
• Extreme Omnivore:
  • Trolls, who are usually even named after the first thing they tried to eat (or the sound that thing makes, in case they don't know what it is). Can be amusing as 'My Arm' to as foreboding as 'Cliff' to as frustrating as 'Blood Dye' or 'Santa Hat' (for the baby troll pet).
  • Ernie the Urn Enthusiast apparently eats the debris from those skill urns you send him.
• The Extremist Was Right: During the TzHaar quest series, you find out that the reason the Ga'al are being born instead of proper TzHaar is because the TokHaar have cut off the flow of sacred lava to the city, thus dooming the TzHaar to extinction. What a bunch of jerks, right? Well, it turns out this would have happened anyway. When TzHaar are born, they don't inherit all of their memories, as you discover during the quest. What the TokHaar did was speed up the process of extinction in the TzHaar, thus spurring them to take action. The TokHaar also wanted their former bretheren to return to the Elder Kiln as TokHaar.
• Eye of Newt: An item with few uses, most notably in the Recipe for Disaster and Witch's Potion miniquest (full quest in OSRS).

F

• Face-Design Shield: Dragonfire shield. The Malevolent, Merciless, and Vengeful Kiteshields have skulls on the front.
• Fairy Ring: There exists a fairy ring teleportation network that the Fairy Godfather can grant access to. Each ring is made of concentric circles of mushrooms; high-level Inventors can craft a temporary, portable version.
• Fake Difficulty: Invoked with Dungeoneering's "Hard Mode" setting, which is a reward for completing the Daemonheim Elite task set. To wit:
  • Soloing a Dungeon automatically causes the first floor spawned to be large-sized. All subsequent floors are forced to medium-sized.
  • All doors, whether they are puzzle doors or skill doors, act as Guardian Doors.
  • All monster spawns do so at maximum possible combat level.
  • All skill doors have a base level requirement of 90. Out of a possible 99...or more. ^note It is possible to boost skills to 99 and beyond via potions and portents of passage, and skills that go to 120 can let you get these more easily.
  • Teleportation out of the boss fight is disabled.
  • Food is harder to come by.
• Falling-in-Love Montage: "Love Story" has one between Zenevivia and the Wise Old Man. Then they proceed to invade the Wizard's Tower and fail.
• Fan Fiction: The Runescape Fanfiction Wiki, consisting of mostly Crossovers. Runescape's own Stories forum also contains a lot of fanfiction.
• Fantastic Caste System: The TzHaar are divided into four castes: hunters, guardians, scholars and mages, and workers and architects.
• Fantastic Racism: H.A.M., oh so much. Humans are also considered little more than food to Vampyres.
• Fantastic Slurs: The Bandosian epithet for Armadylians is "Bird Lover". Some Bandosians have gone so far as to call the aforementioned god Armadyl "Big High War Chicken" after he killed Bandos in the second World Event.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Several of the non-Gielinor cultures. In particular, the Zarosian Empire is based off ancient Rome, the Icyene culture is based off Greece, and the Aviansie culture is based off Mongolia. All three use words and objects from their respective languages, most commonly seen in Archaeology.
• Fantasy Landmark Equivalent: The Everlight dig site, visited as part of the Archaeology skill is basically a Runescape take on the Lighthouse of Alexandria, being a massive lighthouse that once sank into the sea, with elements of Atlantis and the Olympic Games mixed in.
• Fantasy Gun Control: Zig-zagged. Dwarves have the multicannon, and a variant produced by the Chaos Dwarves called the Handcannon is introduced about halfway through the quest series, but more traditional guns, such as rifles, are not present. Even the Imcando Pistol, an item obtained from Treasure Hunter, is functionally a crossbow.
• Fantasy Pantheon: Present in both Old School and Runescape 3, but especially so in the latter.
  • In Old School, Saradomin, Guthix, and Zamorak are the main gods. Armadyl, Bandos, and Zaros are obscure. There's also the Menaphite pantheon of desert gods, the elves' crystal nature god Seren, and the monkeys of Ape Atoll worship a monkey god named Marimbo. As a joke, there's also a God of Cabbage named Brassica Prime.
  • In Runescape 3, all of those gods exist. However, Guthix, Seren, and Zaros play outsized roles, while Armadyl and Bandos are raised to about the level of Saradomin and Zamorak in terms of importance. There are also the Elder Gods who created the universe and whose children/reincarnations will destroy it for sustenance: Jas, Bik, Wen, Ful, and Mah. Finally, there are a few other gods: V (a Fremmenik hero who attained godhood), Tuska (a mindless beast that devours worlds), the Karamjan gods, Azzanadra (after the Battle for the Monolith, as a result of exposure to the energy backlash of closing the Codex's breach), the Queen of Ashes (an enigma that V interacted with and who seems to have some connection with fire), and possibly Xau-Tak (an eldritch abomination known for having many, many, many dark hands).
    • The Horrors on Mos'Le Harmless have their own set: Nyarlahydra, Texcasathla, Yogsathla, and Uvhastur. It's speculated that they're fictional, with the exception of Texcasathla (which is heavily implied to be Xau-Tak.)
• Fate Worse than Death:
  • Summer and her family, who were busy having their souls devoured by the Spirit Beast up until the point the player killed it.
  • Arrav, who is now Zemouregal's undead slave and who has almost no control over himself, forced to slaughter the people he once protected. Eventually does get some peace, but his wounds are too severe and when he has no more magic to sustain him, he dies.
  • Becoming a Barrows Brother is also rather unpleasant, the originals becoming deathly ill, then dying, then having their spirits wrenched from wherever they were to fight again for their new master. Now you just get hit with an incorporeal maroon skull and die in horrible agony.
• Feathered Fiend: The Evil Chicken. There's also a giant Roc that attacks you in the "My Arm's Big Adventure" quest.
• Feathered Serpent: The Cockatrice and its variants.
• Festering Fungus: Croesus is an entire boss that uses this trope, and its front of the Elder God Wars also qualifies (being an area infested with creeping fungi that cannot be killed—only harvested with Gathering skills relevant to the given type of fungus). Notably, Croesus cannot be killed with standard combat—you must instead use various Gathering skills (Fishing, Mining, Woodcutting, and Hunter) to collect its fungus, use it as raw material to restore the statues of four ancient, unconventional Zarosian heroes, then awaken their spirits to open Croesus's core (which is harvested to return it to dormancy.)
  • The Polypore Slayer Dungeon, created by a Ramokee Skinweaver to experiment with fungi on living hosts. The resulting mutant symbiotes will try to infest you, dealing damage over time.
• Fetch Quest: Occasionally Played With:
  • Exaggerated in One Small Favour, in which you are asked something of the typical fetch quest, to get logs from a forester... who then asks you to get his axe sharpened at an axe store, and the owner asks you to ask a favor from a witch, who in turn asks something else of you, and so on. The quest ends up having you traverse almost the entire continent that the game takes place on.
  • Lampshaded in Rune Mechanics, where the characters make disdainful remarks about fetch quests.
  • The 20th Anniversary event had a miniquest based on One Small Favour. Luckily, it’s far shorter.
• Fictional Disability: The volcano-dwelling TzHaar sometimes hatch stunted "Ga'al" when their eggs become too cool: lacking TzHaar Genetic Memories, they have no caste and cannot communicate, so the TzHaar send them to die in honourable combat to speed them to their next reincarnation. One quest reveals, to some TzHaar's horror, that the Ga'al are actually very precocious learners if anyone bothers to teach them.
• 15 Puzzle: A Treasure Trail puzzle, usually. Also used in the Monkey Madness quest (though you can bribe Glough to solve it for you).
• Final Boss: While the game itself doesn't have one, being an MMORPG and all (and neither does Old School), several questlines have boss-type enemies that serve as the culmination of their questline.
  • In both RS3 and Old School:
    • The Elf questline has the Dark Lord/Fragment of Seren.
    • Agrith-Naar, which finishes the "Demon Slayer" questline.
    • The Culinaromancer, at the end of Recipe for Disaster.
    • Elvarg, at the end of Dragon Slayer (considered by the fandom to be the final boss of free-to-play, as she is the most powerful quest-boss a non-member can face).
  • In RS3 only:
    • Sliske, capping off the Sliske/Stone of Jas and Mahjarrat series.
    • Rabid Jack, capping off the Pirate series.
    • The Wyrd, capping off the Vampyre series.
    • The Pharaoh of Menaphos, capping off the Desert series (though it's heavily implied to not be the true finale.)
    • The Pest Queen, capping off the Void Knight series.
    • Nomad, in both Nomad's Requiem and Nomad's Elegy.
    • The assault on the Harbinger and the fight with Captain Cora, capping off the Tales of the Arc miniquest series.
    • Seiryu, final boss of the Temple of Aminishi (or Elite Dungeon 1).
    • The Black Stone Dragon, final boss of the Dragonkin Laboratory (or Elite Dungeon 2).
    • The Ambassador, final boss of the Shadow Reef (or Elite Dungeon 3), capping off the Elite Dungeon arc and its framing quest, Curse of Black Stone.
    • The final boss of Extinction and as such the Elder Gods/Elder God Wars storyline, Seren—who you fight in a desperate attempt to stall for time to evacuate Iaia before the remaining Elders arrive.
  • In OSRS only:
    • Glough in "Monkey Madness II".
    • Galvek in "Dragon Slayer II".
    • The Jormungand at the end of the Fremennik series.
  • There are at least five regular bosses in RS3 that might qualify:
    • TzTok-Jad, the final boss of the Fight Caves in both RS3 and Old School. He’s a Degraded Boss in the Fight Kiln, Inferno, and TzekHaar Front, though.
    • Har’Aken, the final boss of the Fight Kiln in RS3. A variant acts as the penultimate boss of the TzekHaar Front.
    • TzKal-Zuk, the final boss of the Inferno in Old School and the TzekHaar Front in RS3. Each version plays differently, though, and the RS3 version plays with this by letting you deal some damage to Zuk before the final wave against him.
    • Nex, a hidden encounter at the bottom of the God Wars Dungeon.
    • Telos, a hidden encounter at the bottom of the Heart of Gielinor. Both Nex and Telos require drops from all four factions to obtain a way to where they spawn, and they're harder than any other encounter in their respective dungeons (with the exception of Nex's "hard mode" fight, Angel of Death.)
• Final Boss, New Dimension: Several:
  • The Culinaromancer of "Recipe for Disaster" can only be fought in his private dimension.
  • The Spirit Beast in "Summer's End" is fought in its Spirit Realm.
  • "Dream Mentor" has you enter the dream world to battle Cyrisus's inner demons.
  • "Extinction" sees the final part of the quest take place on Iaia, where Seren brings the eggs to hatch—where your fight is to stall for time in order for the planet's evacuation to take place.
• Final Death Mode: Hardcore Ironman mode was originally like this on RS3. In addition to the standard Ironman restrictions (no trading or using the Grand Exchange), dying meant the account became unusable^note On RS3 anyway; you could still use that same account to play Old School.... unless you purchase a specific item beforehand that converts you to a standard Ironman on death. The permadeath mechanic was removed on July 2020, and Hardcore Ironmen are now downgraded to standard Ironmen on death by default, including those that were previously locked out of the game due to dying, though they can no longer advance on the Hardcore Ironman high scores table.
• Fireballs: Several versions, ranging from little fire spits to huge inferno blasts.
  • Dragons, at least the higher levelled ones, use these to attack the player on occasion. It doesn't typically end well if said player isn't using some form of protection from them.
  • Avernic Demons, when they respawn, have a fiery-explosion-y animation announcing their return from the dead.
  • Also, the various fire-based Magic spells available to the player for combat take on this form.
• Firewood Resources: All logs are shown to be a bundle of three logs in their inventory.
• Fishbowl Helmet: The quest "Recipe for Disaster" has the player turn a glass fishbowl into a diving helmet for an extended dive.
• Fisher King: The Fisher King from "Holy Grail".
• Fishing for Sole: Boots and gloves can be caught while fishing with a big net.
• Fishing Minigame: In addition to fishing as a skill, there's also the Fish Flingers minigame, where you use trial and error to determine the correct hook, bait, and weight to catch different types of fish.
• Flame Spewer Obstacle: In Hallowed Sepulchre, there are statues that shoot flames that need to be dodged with timing.
• Flaming Sword: One possible reward from Treasure Trails is a "flaming sword enchantment" that gives bladed weapons a flaming appearance. However, this is only cosmetic and does not give them any special abilities.
• Flat-Earth Atheist: A short story in the Grand Library of Menaphos, Aragyna's Tale, sees a member of an extinct species of sapient spiders apparently cut off from other civilizations who prize their abilities of logic and reason—and according to the archeologists at the dig, had "a ludicrous belief that the universe formed over millennia as a result of rapid heat expansion." The story itself features a grieving Elidinis visiting one of their number, 0078, in search of an artifact woven by one of their kind, Aragyna's Veil. After learning that its creator and all thousands of her children were killed for their crippled genes and use of the Veil to deceive others into mating with her despite being a cripple, and the spiders as a whole were not only alright with this but saw it as necessary for their survival, Elidinis gives 0078 the gift of a chance to say goodbye to her loved ones before frying them all for their actions—the story ends with her revealing that Elidinis is moving from web to web, frying them all with electricity, coming closer and closer to her before arriving.
• Flunky Boss: Quite a few instances:
  • TzTok-Jad summons four healers when he reaches half his life. If you don't kill or distract the healers, they heal him.
  • The pest queen from "The Void Stares Back" summons healers to restore her health and defilers to attack you and your NPC allies.
  • Eruni from "Do No Evil" summons demons to attack you and draws on their power to make herself invincible.
  • In Dungeoneering, Astea Frostweb summons ice spiders. Lexicus Runewright summons animated books.
  • Bork summons Ork Legions.
  • This will often be a mechanic in certain high-level boss fights. Telos in particular summons multiple minions at a time during his fourth and fifth phases, while The Ambassador has an entire phase where he summons more and more Crassians to overwhelm the player.
• Floating Continent: Clan Citadels. Avalani mentions that they're "bastions of Armadylian power from an era long lost to us". Stormguard Citadel is a broken one.
• Flower from the Mountaintop: In the quest Troll Romance, the player must help Ug obtain a rare flower from Trollweiss Mountain so he can give it to Aga.
• Flying Books: Found in Daemonheim as minions of the wizard Lexicus Runewright. Some also appear as regular enemies on Occult and Warped floors, as well as enemies in the Dragonkin Laboratory Elite Dungeon.
• Food God: Brassica Prime, the god of cabbages and deliciousness.
• Four-Temperament Ensemble: The four beads in the Imp Catcher quest represent the temperaments as of a recent rework. Even the imps that stole them have names to match.
• Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle: In the Recruitment Drive quest.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: The quest Evil Dave's Big Day Out has you switching bodies with Evil Dave after a ritual gone awry. Dave goes on to abuse your role as World Guardian to try and work for Zamorak, and you spend the quest trying to track him down and undo the damage. At the end of the quest, the flip becomes all too similar to the Trope Namer, with Dave switching bodies with his own mum!
  • The Moksha Device in the Orthen Digsite was meant to do this. A professor who volunteers as a test dummy for the device has this happen with him and a salamander, while its creator, Skeka, tried to do this to the Raksha in order to escape Jas's curse. Subverted in her case, though: she instead had her mind fragmented across a nearby colony of salamanders.
• Freemium: Many skills, quests, and runes are only available to those who pay; actually, "many" would be the understatement of the year. The free part of the game is probably less than 5% of the total game, and free players have severely limited options when it comes to training and bank space, and they get an update once in a blue moon. On the upside, Jagex is a lot better than most games. There's still a fair bit to do in the free game, and they've started doing a lot more free content than they used to. They also advertise free-to-play content as an entire free game, with the pay-to-play content as a super expansion pack.
• Frictionless Ice:
  • "Myths of the White Lands" uses it for puzzles.
  • It's also a stage hazard when fighting the Dungeoneering boss Plane-Freezer Lakhrahnaz and as a random room puzzle on Frozen floors. However, obtaining a full gorajan trailblazer outfit allows the player to walk normally on the ice.
  • The player must guide Ozan through a similar puzzle in the saga Three's Company.
• Friendly Enemy: While humans and werewolves were frequently killing each other, and there is now an uneasy truce between the kingdoms of Misthalin and Morytania, the human and werewolf guards stationed at the border are very friendly with each other. The human guard is scared of how the werewolf looks at first, but is now teasing him for having a crush on another werewolf, and offering him bacon (since werewolves traditionally eat meat raw). The werewolf guard is learning baking with the help of the human guard's girlfriend, and is hoping that human fashion would catch on.
• Friendly War: The king and queen of the neigboring island nations of Miscellania and Etceteria amuse themselves by constantly declaring war on each other (neither nation has any soldiers to speak of, let alone an army). It's also a case of Belligerent Sexual Tension: they eventually get married in "Blood Runs Deep".
  • The Framing Device of the 2014 Spring event and its associated Cabbage Facepunch Bonanza minigame: Brassica Prime and Marimbo thought it would be fun to have a fight akin to the fights the other gods were having...except one is a sentient cabbage god of deliciousness and the other is a gorilla goddess of partying, their fight is a minigame with no death risk, and neither particularly dislikes the other.
• Full-Circle Revolution:
  • Osman starts out as a Well-Intentioned Extremist who wants to bring peace to the desert. After confirming that he is the rightful heir to the throne of Menaphos, which was long ago taken by usurpers, he organizes a revolution. He promises a bloodless one that will spare the life of the current Pharaoh and set the citizens of Menaphos free. But when you actually defeat the Pharaoh for him, he will ignore any decision to spare the Pharaoh and stab him, insisting that the Pharaoh's fate is his to decide. One Menaphite citizen says that nothing has changed under Osman, and even the gates remain closed.
  • Another one happens in the Myreque quest storyline. A small group of human rebels are fighting a seemingly Hopeless War to try to free the nation of Morytania from its vampyre rulers. They end up successfully assassinating Morytania's ruler Lord Drakan, with the help of his sister Vanesculla, as Lord Drakan had become a terrible ruler even to the vampyres, but she immediately betrays the Myreque and kills their leader Safalaan to use his blood to make vampyres immune to the barrier keeping them trapped in Morytania so they can invade Misthalin. It turns into a subversion when the player successfully stops Vanescula's plan by modifying the barrier to keep the vampyres in and providing them with a cure for their thirst for blood, and Vanescula agrees to rule Morytania with Safalaan (who turns out to still be alive) and the former Queen Efaritay (who had been imprisoned by Lord Drakan all along) as advisors, so things finally start improving for the humans of Morytania.
• Fungus Humongous: Croesus is a gigantic fungus monster with gigantic mushrooms on the back of its central body. Downplayed, however: the mushrooms are hardly the only part of its design, and their appearance is different from the standard "flat caps" that normally appear in this trope. The skilling nodes in Croesus's boss fight and front of the Elder God Wars Dungeon avert this trope—while there is a massive amount of fungus present, most of it takes forms that, while large, hardly reach fantastic sizes.
• Fun with Acronyms: A few, including:
  • The Humans Against Monsters association. (Their logo is a ham.)
  • The Livid Vine, or "Lokar's Infernal Vine of Incredible Death"
  • Ladies Of Lumbridge
  • New Order Occult Bookists
• Future Badass: From Once Upon a Time in Gielinor: Relomia’s future self comes back to the player as the Time Guardian in the final section of the quest, Finale, having screwed up three events in the future somehow. Her memories reveal that Meg, Philippe Carnillean, Bosun Higgs (later Captain Higgs), Eva Cashien, and Kami will go on to become the next generation of great adventurers in the player’s stead.

G

• Gaiden Game:
  • Armies of Gielinor, a Turn-Based Strategy game that takes place during the God Wars.
  • And now, Chronicle: Runescape Legends, a virtual strategy card game.
  • Also, RuneScape Idle Adventures, an Idle Game.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Quite a few, although they're generally fixed within a day at most, and intentionally exploiting a bug usually earns you a permanent ban:
  • One infamous bug allowed some players to kill other players outside of normal PvP zones. This led to the Falador Massacre, wherein hundreds of players were killed; many of them lost millions of coins' worth of items.
  • When the Hand Cannon was first introduced, it was possible for multiple people to attack the same person in one-on-one PvP areas, resulting in instant death for that player.
  • An update to the game engine made it possible to attack monsters without being attacked back, allowing lots of players to solo the Corporeal Beast (strongest monster in the game, had never been killed by a single person before up to that point) and other normally Nintendo Hard boss monsters.
  • An update to the Dungeoneering skill briefly caused runecrafting to give 1,000 times as much experience as intended.
  • An update in March 2021 caused a huge number of players to be locked out of the game and lose substantial progress on their characters—which took multiple months to completely solve.
• Game-Over Man: During the Halloween season, Death will make personal appearances to collect your soul whenever you die.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: The Gunnar's Ground quest ends with the Barbarian Village's chief officially rename the village into Gunnarsgrunn. This change is then reflected in the in-game map, which will change the name of the location from "Barbarian Village" to "Gunnarsgrunn (Barbarian Village)"
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: Often played straight.
• Gargle Blaster: Anything labeled 'Rum'. Drinking it can have your character exclaim "My liver is melting!" and then mysteriously wind up on Mos Le'Harmless. Normal 'Rum' just gets you a message in the game log stating "You try very hard not to die."
  • The "Pub Crawl" miniquest to get into the Barbarian Agility Course involves traveling to almost every pub on the mainland and ordering barbarian-only specialty drinks that are... not exactly on the menu. In some pubs, you have to sign a waiver before they'll let you have the house special. These drinks are described in gruesome detail, wreak havoc on your stats, lead to much hilarity ensuing, and since the barbarians are illiterate, they judge whether you've completed the pub crawl based on how wasted your character is, rather than on the signatures on your receipt.
  • Asgarnian Ale, despite being a pretty normal beer by all appearances, can dissolve gold.
• Gas Mask Mooks: Mourners, eventually revealed to be elves affiliated with the Iorwerth Clan during "Plague's End".
• Gemstone Assault: Crossbow bolts can be tipped with gems and then enchanted for varying special effects. In RS3, there are also gemstone dragons, high level Slayer monsters with special attacks that summon gemstone spikes beneath you to weaken you.
• Gender Bender: The Makeover Mage magically changes his/her gender every minute or so. He/she will offer the same service to you for free. This gets lampshaded if you made the change between finishing "Throne of Miscellania" and starting "Royal Trouble." The Makeover Mage also ends up being a plot point when Evil Dave switches bodies with you in Evil Dave's Big Day Out.
• Genie in a Bottle: A random event. Seen also as a villain in the "Spirits of the Elid" quest.
• Genius Ditz: How much of each varies between quests, but overall this is how the Player Character is presented.
• Genius Loci: Every planet has an Anima Mundi, a world soul. The Anima Mundi manifests itself into living things which produce Life Energy as a byproduct of their experiences, strengthening the Anima Mundi further. On some worlds, the Anima Mundi is also known to manifest into elemental guardians. The Anima Mundi of Chantil has demonstrated outright sapience, and briefly speaks to you through an elemental during a quest. It is also possible for islands to have spirits and minds of their own. In the eastern lands, they can speak with people via animated Moai statues.
• Gentle Giant: Mr. Mordaut was the result of an attempt by a Dactyl Dragonkin, Taraket, to create an intelligent, yet savage creature by fusing an egg from the Queen Black Dragon with a fairy dragon, but he lacks the aggression exhibited by other dragons, and thus was deemed a failure and discarded by his creator.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: The Giant Mole. Fortunately, it has been altered to still target you after it burrows. This still doesn't make it simple to find, though.
• Get on the Boat: Want to visit Daemonheim? Take a boat from Al-Kharid or Taverley. Want to visit Karamja, the Void Knight Outpost, or Entrana? Take a boat from Port Sarim. (And to actually participate in the Void Knight activity you have to get on another boat.) Want to visit Braindeath Island, Dragontooth Island, or Mos Le'Harmless? Take a boat from Port Phasmatys. And so on.
• The Ghost:
  • The gods of Gielinor were this until The World Wakes, with the player only dealing with their remnants and the effects of their actions until Guthix's assassination dispelled the Edicts of Guthix.
    • This trope was discussed by Old School's writing team, who tentatively have no plans to add the gods except possibly in flashbacks.
  • Asgarnia's ruling family, King Vallance and Prince Anlaf, never make an appearance (outside of the novel "Betrayal at Falador"). Both are implied to be in hiding and ruling from the shadows, delegating a lot of day-to-day administration to the White Knights and Imperial Guard.
• Ghostly Wail: Mortals perceive ghosts' speech as incoherent wailing unless they have a Ghostspeak amulet (or the Hard Morytania Tasks, in the player’s case) to translate it into ordinary dialogue. Interestingly, this goes the opposite way too; any human without said amulet/tasks is mumbling unintelligibly to the ghost.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Some of the boss fights are rather unexpected. For example, at the end of the "My Arm's Big Adventure" quest (where you have to teach agriculture to a troll), you're attacked out of nowhere by a giant roc who randomly happens to be nearby.
• Giant Spider:
  • Several variations of giant spiders appear, the largest one at one point being Kalrag in Underground Pass.
  • Kalrag relinquished this title to Araxxor and Araxxi, who are MANY times larger. And stronger.
  • Old School throws in the massive Wilderness spider Venenatis, and the mother Temple Spider Sarachnis.
• Giant Squid: Five examples are known, and all are fought:
  • Agoroth, the final boss of the novice quest A Shadow Over Ashdale. You can fight him again twice per week for bonus experience.
  • Zoggoth, a zombie version of what seems to be Agoroth's species fought during Pieces of Hate.
  • Boggoth, a boss of Agoroth's species fought as a miniboss near the end of the Shadow Reef.
  • Har'Aken, a lava squid that serves as the final boss of the Fight Kiln with no connection to Agoroth and its variants.
  • TzekHaar-Aken, Har’Aken’s powered up form in the TzekHaar Front.
• Glass Cannon:
  • Generally, a combat setup involving two-handed or dual-wielded weapons can enable you to inflict higher damage (and subsequently achieve faster kills, especially for long and tough slayer tasks) at the cost of taking increased damage and not being able to use most defensive abilities. You can downplay this by bringing a shield to switch to for defensives, though.
  • Berserk, an ultimate Strength ability, increases the amount of melee damage you inflict by 100% at the cost of taking 50% increased damage for 20 seconds.
  • The corruption mechanic in the Sophanem Slayer Dungeon, which increases as you kill corrupted creatures or soul devourers (and caps at 25%, increased to a 50% cap during the fight with The Magister), enables you to inflict bonus damage per percentage on monsters within the dungeon at the cost of taking increased damage per percentage (though this can be negated with the Unsullied ability).
  • The Berserker, Reckless, and Maniacal Auras increase damage and accuracy for their respective combat style (Melee, Ranged, and Magic) by 10%, but reduce your defence by 15%.
  • The Scripture of Ful’s proc gives 20% increased damage while active, at the cost of taking 10% increased damage.
  • The tier-95 vestments of havoc has been specifically described by Jagex as a "glass cannon" set because it offers tier-100 damage bonus but only tier-75 protection.
• Glass Weapon: An obsidian sword, knife, and mace are found and used to unlock a door in one of the quests. They aren't, however, used to fight. Obsidian also forms the TzHaar weapons, including the Ek-ZekKil, the most powerful two-handed sword in the game.
• Global Currency Exception: There are many examples, including Tokkul in the Tz-haar caves, Trading sticks in Tai Bwo Wannai village, Beans in the Player-Owned Farm, Chronotes in Archaeology, etc.
• Go Digging with Bowser: Vanescula (the villain of River of Blood) and Movario (who was a villain during While Guthix Sleeps) are the site managers for the Everlight and Infernal Source digsites. Once you complete their sites' mysteries, you can invite them to help do research for you anywhere. Downplayed, however: Movario has no personal quarrel with you, while Vanescula ( who's already agreed to have Safalaan and Queen Efaritay rule alongside her) just wants to find a way to shut off the Everlight again (as a lighthouse meant to provide artificial day for the Icyene is hell for her and other Vampyres).
• God of the Dead: Icthlarin, from the Menaphite pantheon, is Gielinor's god of the dead, protecting their spirits through The Underworld so they can reach the peace of the afterlife. Getting souls into the Underworld is the business of Death, who's a Psychopomp rather than a deity.
• God Mode:
  • After touching the Stone of Jas in "While Guthix Sleeps", all your stats are boosted to 255.
  • In Sliske's Endgame, upon the commencement of the final phase of the final boss, you're given unlimited HP and Adrenaline, as well as a 50% cooldown reduction on all abilities.
  • Collecting Shadow Anima during the final phase of the fight against Raksha lets you use the Inner Power ability, drastically increasing your damage dealt.
  • Jmods have almost unlimited power in-game through use of the Rotten Potato item, including the ability to spawn monsters and items, teleport to anywhere in-game, boost or reduce stats, and even change character models into NPCs.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: It was once stated that depending on their domain, most of the gods gained strength from the prayers of their followers. This seems to have been Retconed with the revelation of the Elder Artifacts, which bestow godhood on those who linger near them or their artifacts for long enough. Averted completely in recent lore.
• Golem: Clay golems, rock golems and golems made of rune essence called 'rune guardians' exist, but the knowledge to make clay and rock golems has been lost, while the ways of constructing Rune Guardians are rediscovered during the quest Rune Mechanics. There are also obsidian golem familiars and multiple types of golems that can be hired as crewmembers in Player-Owned Ports, as well as archaeological remnants of golems you can restore from the Stormguard Citadel.
• Gold Makes Everything Shiny:
  • Gilded armor is rune armor, but golden in colour.
  • You can also upgrade your dwarven multicannon to a golden version, which is definitely shinier, but also practical since the upgrade doubles its cannonball capacity.
  • The golden miner's outfit is a practical version (it grants 6% bonus mining experience). However, the gold nymph who gives you the outfit has this trope as her motivation—she wants everything to be beautiful and golden, just like her.
  • Some events can give you golden versions of existing armors and weapons (such as the Barrows armors.)
  • 2021 saw the release of the Golden Partyhat in RS3 as part of the 20th Anniversary celebrations.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Xenia did not take well to learning that the universe was created by uncaring, utterly alien Elder Gods for no other purpose than to serve as fuel to power their reproductive cycle. The existence of mortal life is just a meaningless accident, and all of the alleged gods that human beings are aware of are just enhanced mortals who drew a pitiful fraction of the Elder Gods' power from their cast-off tools, which the Elder Gods can easily take away whenever they want. When the Elder Gods' next cycle starts, Gielinor will become a barren, lifeless hell like Freneskae and everything and everyone in the universe will either die horribly or be flushed into the Abyss. The Elder Gods are completely immortal and nothing else that exists even approaches the level of power that it would take to stop them...with any possible exceptions learned about after the quest being worse. Amascut took it even worse, eventually going from a goddess of reincarnation to the soul devourer she is now.
• Gotta Kill 'Em All:
  • The "cute critters" in "The Eyes of Glouphrie". It turns out they're secretly evil, and you have to find and kill them all.
  • A pair of quests involve killing many varied creatures and collecting their bones for an odd old man.
  • A more literal case with the Slayer Codex, which requires you to kill every single Slayer monster in the game — 162 in total — and capture their souls in urn-like objects called ushabtis.
• Gradual Regeneration: You have ordinary Regenerating Health (approximately 1 life points per 1000 max life points every six seconds). Additionaly, there are also items and prayers that can increase your health regeneration rate.
• Grappling Hook Crossbow: Used for various Agility shortcuts.
• Gratuitous Japanese: The Kodai wand in Old School. "Kodai" is the Japanese word for "ancient".
• Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: In one possible ending to the One Piercing Note quest, Anna jumps off of the abbey's clock tower, believing that she has been redeemed and can fly with the Icyene. Unsurprisingly, she dies.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Xau-Tak (or possibly Vos) are shaping up to be one, given their implied connection to Shadow Anima and implied role of one of the two in the stillbirth of Mah.
• Great Offscreen War: There's several, but by far the most prominent is the God Wars.
• Greek Chorus: During Azzanadra's Quest: Sliske's essence in the player, lingering as light and dark sides that communicate with the player from inside their head and offer commentary on their situation at times. They end up being plot-relevant: the dark side ends up helping the player figure out that Trindine and Azzanadra had a second goal besides discovering the Elder Gods' eggs. They show up again in City of Senntisten, optional post-quest dialogue after Once Upon a Time in Gielinor with Relomia, the Eye of Het II minquest, and Extinction, growing increasingly aware of their role over time.
• Green Aesop: "Perils Of Ice Mountain"
• Green-Eyed Monster: The Do No Evil boss Ayuni is a literal example. What this implies of Amascut is unclear.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Since the release of RuneScape 3, it has seen multiple major characters' backgrounds fleshed out, as opposed to the Black-and-White Morality established during the game's earlier years.
  • Saradomin's followers revere him as a god of good, but his past history brings his morality into question, including his actions during the Naragi God Wars and the Battle of Lumbridge.
  • Although commonly referred to as the "god of evil" by his detractors, Zamorak insinuates he is a god of chaos whose philosophy revolves around driving people out of their comfort zones and forcing them to adapt, and cares little for the concept of evilness itself.
    "Truth to be told I do not consider evil a worthwhile pursuit, but neither do I consider it relevant. It is a term given by the closed-minded to label a world in shades of black and white, right and wrong. But you and I both know that the world is more than that. It isn't black and white, nor even shades of grey. Morality, like the world, is a myriad of colours in a vast array of shades and hues. My philosophy is 'strength from chaos and adversity'. It is about improving oneself by overcoming obstacles. The other gods would have you follow static rules and live a life as unchanging as stone. My way is better."
  • Armadyl upholds justice and peace, and thus abhors war, but is not above going against his personal beliefs to battle Bandos, if only to stop him from getting closer to the Stone of Jas. He also wasn't a useless pacifist during the God Wars, either—after all, Stormguard Citadel *was* a military base, and you can even find prototypes of the Godsword there at higher Archaeology levels. It's still downplayed in his case, though, as he's generally regarded as one of the few consistently good gods.
  • Averted with Bandos, who is consistently depicted as evil and whose characterization is almost never sympathetic—even his Archaeology dig site, the Warforge, fails to offer a different story, with him literally burying the Warforge goblins alive, saved only by Thalmund blasting them out of the caverns. His only remotely redeeming accomplishment was stopping a rampaging TzKal-Zuk and chaining him to the Elder Kiln.
• Grievous Harm with a Body:
  • Drygore weaponry, dropped by the Kalphite King, is made from parts of his body. The longswords are made out of his mandibles, the maces from his leg joints, and the rapiers from his stinger.
  • The noxious weapons dropped by Araxxi are similar, except you build them yourself by first reconstructing a spider leg from three parts, then adding Araxxi's eye (for a staff), her web (for a longbow), or her fang (for a scythe).
  • The Dark Ice Shard and Dark Ice Sliver are constructed from shards of Glacors and Dark Nilas, black ice harvested from the Arch-Glacor's heart. The intact heart of the Arch-Glacor, the Frozen Core of Leng, empowers them to the Tier 95 Dark Shard of Leng and Dark Sliver of Leng, at present the most powerful one-handed mainhand and offhand melee weapons, respectively.
• The Grim Reaper: Death appears in-game and is a central figure in several quests and the Soul Reaper activity.
• Grim Up North: "The North" is referenced in several quests. Not to mention the Wilderness, formerly the most dangerous area in the game, and still pretty frightening. In the days when Runescape was entirely free, the instructions to reach the Wilderness were simply "go north". Averted by Anachronia, which is green and lush as the result of it being a region brought to the present by time travel, despite being even further north on the map than the Wilderness.
• Grows on Trees: At Level 119 Farming, you can grow a literal money tree, with a fruit being three bags of gold with a combined value between 999,999 gp and 1.5 million gp. Justified for a few reasons:
  • The tree seeds are rare and untradeable, only obtainable randomly through training Farming at Level 99 and higher.
  • There is no way to speed up the growth of the money tree. Additionally, the trees disappear after being harvested (i.e. they're only a one-time harvest.)
  • The ability to grow them is the final unlock from Farming before reaching true skill mastery, requiring over seven times the experience needed to reach Level 99. Seeing as the player can raise/grow dinosaurs, dragons, trees made of crystals, and primal fruit trees by then, having the sheer farming skill to grow a literal money tree isn't that implausible.
  • At high levels, 1.5 million GP isn't actually that much.
• The Guards Must Be Crazy: This is acknowledged during a cut-scene in the "Garden of Tranquillity" Quest, where a "veteran" guard explains to a new recruit that the life expectancy for a Falador guard is about 30 seconds. Right on cue, a high-levelled "player" comes and slaughters both of them.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • In order to read a bookcase near the Fight Cauldron, players must find a Ga'al known as TzHaar-Ga'al-Kot, which requires them to donate TokKul to a coffer outside the Fight Cauldron, and then use a Ring of Visibility on a Ring of Stone while wearing an uncharged Tokkul-Zo with a seemingly arbitrary amount of obsidian shards in their inventory^note The current RuneDate (shown in the Player-Owned Ports logbook) divided by 10.. None of this is even hinted at in game, and he was only found after 5 months thanks to hints from a Jagex Moderator.
  • The sliding block puzzle in "Elemental Workshop III". Your objectives are unclear, and you have a limited number of moves before the machine stops working and you have to reset the puzzle and start over completely. (It is possible to maneuver the puzzle to "checkpoints" that grant additional tries on a further reset and remove the move limit entirely.)
  • The colored light puzzle in "Mourning's End II", where you have to direct beams of light with mirrors through prisms to change their color, then to magical barriers disabled only by the correct color of light. While similar light puzzles also occur later in the Elf quests, "Mourning's End II" is the only part that features a light puzzle in three dimensions.
  • The latest target for this reaction is the maze in "Sliske's Endgame". Even with a guide, completing it can take hours, to say nothing of the clipping glitch that can get you stuck in the walls and force you to start the whole thing over.
  • Lampshaded in an Easter Egg in the Dimension of Darkness: You can find a walkthrough for Dimension of Darkness by searching the bookshelves. You can't take or read it, though, so back to the Wiki!
• Guns Akimbo: Achieved by dual-wielding two crossbows. Wielding ranged weapons in both hands enables the "Unload" ability, which can deal massive damage against an unwary opponent.
• Guns in Church: Defied with Entrana, where weapons and armour (and any equipment that boosts stats) are banned.^note There is a slight loophole; you can bring supplies to make the weapons onto the island, but actually making them outside of the dungeon on the north-western part of the island will result in you getting booted back to the mainland.

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