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  • Quicksand Sucks:
    • Subverted in the "Diamond in the Rough" quest when you and Ozan find what appears to be quicksand. Ozan explains the correct way to escape from quicksand ... only to find it isn't really quicksand when neither he nor you can move, as it is actually just a deep sand pit.
    • In one of the Temple Trekking/Burgh de Rott minigame puzzles, the player is required to cross a bog using a stick to poke at the ground to determine where the firm bits are. Stepping elsewhere results in sinking and having to start over.
    • Played deadly straight in the raid boss fight against Yakamaru. One of the mechanics of the fight involves several players being trapped in quicksand, and requires other members of the raid to pull them out before they are killed instantly by it.
  • The Quisling: Gadderanks, a human who collects blood tithes for the vampires. He eventually decides to give the player a hand near the end of his life.
  • Rage Against the Heavens: Inevitably, given the number of self-serving, fallible, and outright Jerkass Gods there are.
    • The cave goblins' questline runs on this trope. Justified somewhat in that the cave goblins' former god falls somewhere between Blood Knight and God of Evil, although all of the other gods take a PR drubbing as well.
    • As a mortal, Guthix went into this mode after his daughter fell as collateral damage in a Divine Conflict. It worked and, in an act of cosmic irony, granted him divinity, making him the setting's only Nay-Theist god.
    • The player might be forced into this as part of the Elder Gods quest line, since it looks like their awakening will end the world. Xenia goes this route when she finds out, but is killed for her efforts.
      • Ultimately double subverted. The Elder Gods are awake, and Jas has decided to give mortal life a stay of execution to judge whether they should be allowed to remain—deliberately antagonizing her always goes badly. Several quests later, after Kerapac and Zaros endanger the Elder Gods' eggs via their actions and Jas starts to find mortal life wanting, mortals teleport the eggs to a fortified cathedral within a quarantined, hidden sector of the ancient city of Senntisten, trying to do whatever they can to stop the eggs from hatching and causing The End of the World as We Know It as the forces of each Elder God siege the cathedral—thus, the Elder God Wars.
    • In Desperate Measures, we learn Kerapac tried this, attempting to gain leverage over the Elder Gods with a device that generates Shadow Anima, which is toxic to them. The result was Jas cursing their entire civilization—they sought power, and she gave it to them. We also learn that each faction of the Dragonkin had different ideas of how to handle the Elder Gods—the Dactyl, Kerapac’s faction, played this straight, wishing to fight the Elder Gods, the Syrtes, who wanted to prove themselves to the Elder Gods and would later embrace the curse whole-heartedly as the Necrosyrtes, inverted the trope, while the Nodon and Aughra agreed that it was best to ignore the Elder Gods while repopulating and learning about the world, defying the trope.
  • Rainbow Pimp Gear:
    • You can equip any combination of clothes you want. Any. Keep in mind that the equipment in this game ranges from blue armor to magenta robes to mime costumes and everything in between. And this isn't even beginning to delve into the vast array of cosmetic outfits and weapon overrides available.
    • The Infinity mage robes play this trope very straight.
    • The fancy boots from the Stronghold of Security.
    • Players could obtain a bunch of rainbow-themed cosmetic items and overrides from the Rainbow's End promotion for Treasure Hunter.
    • Old School RuneScape players could obtain a rainbow scarf for completing the 2017 Pride event Gilbert's Colours.
    • Played with by the max cape and completionist cape variants, whose colours you can customise to match (or clash) with your outfit as you desire.
  • Raising the Steaks: Zombie cows, skeleton cows, zombie chickens, zombie monkeys, skeleton monkeys, ghost monkeys, zombie parrots, zombie pekins... subverted with corpse spiders, which are not undead spiders, but spider-shaped monsters made of human corpses.
  • Random Drop: Every attackable NPC generally drops a range of these, from bones or ashes or summoning charms to quantities of gold pieces and useful (or useless) and valuable items.
    • Rare Random Drop: The Draconic Visage from almost all high-level dragons, the godswords from the God Wars Dungeon, the components for noxious weaponry from Araxxi, and many more.
  • Randomly Generated Level: The premise of Daemonheim and the Dungeoneering skill. Shattered Worlds, Uncharted Islands, and Shifting Tombs also work like this.
  • Rate-Limited Perpetual Resource:
    • Mineral resources like coal and copper are infinite, but the rocks they are found in need a certain amount of time to replenish before the player can mine from them again.
    • This is how most of the gathering skills (Mining, Woodcutting, Fishing, Farming, Hunter and the Runescape 3 exclusive Divination and Archaeology) work; under most circumstances, you'll only ever get one resource at a time from each node you harvest per game action. Certain equipment (such as the Varrock Armor for mining) can double your resources for certain actions, but these require deep time investment into the game to unlock.
  • Reality Warper: Jagex moderators, within the game world. A few of their abilities:
    • Teleport anywhere on the map instantly
    • Be any combat level
    • Have infinite lifepoints
    • Instantly kill any monster (or certain rule-breaking players).
    • Spawn infinite amounts of any item
    • Float in midair
    • Walk on lava
  • Reality-Writing Book: In the quest Once Upon a Time in Gielinor, Closure, who resides in Death's office, writes biographies for every adventurer. Changes to the text in the stories will also change history and memories.
  • Recurring Riff: Dungeoneering areas. Some other areas too.
  • Recurring Traveller:
    • Bob the cat and his mate Neite.
    • Postie Pete.
    • Elfinlocks.
    • The Signature Heroes can be encountered in various areas like this.
    • Zanik (not even death has proven enough to prevent this).
    • Philippe Carnillean (after "Carnillean Rising").
  • Redemption Equals Death: Ga'al Xox dies reopening the lava passages that will bring life back to the Tz Haar City after killing an elder in "The Brink of Extinction".
    • In "Extinction" (no relation to the prior quest) Kerapac abuses the fact Jas hasn't given him commands for what to do after finding the Eggs in order to provide a final defiance against Jas, ultimately breaking the Needle by repeatedly time-looping to stall her. After the Needle breaks from overuse, he ends up being sucked into Erebus when the Shadow Leviathan grabs Jas and drags her into Erebus, noting through an echo that he's more than happy to share in whatever torments Jas finds there.
  • Red Herring:
    • Zig-zagged during the Fremennik Trials. A literal red herring appears during the quest, but it is actually crucial to solving a puzzle. Then again, it also turns out to be a regular herring covered in some kind of dye.
    • The diary found during the Rune Memories quest is written in a way to deceive players into thinking that Kelevan the Red Wizard Apprentice sabotaged the original transportation ritual to destroy the Old Wizards' Tower. However, it is actually the diary of Ellaron, detailing his plans to destroy the current tower.
  • Red Live Lobster: Lobsters were originally depicted as bright red when caught and brown when cooked, until a 2004 update swapped the colours.
  • Reference Overdosed: Plenty of them everywhere.
  • Relax-o-Vision: Parodied in the Pirate quest series, where scenes of horror and gratuitous violence are replaced with pictures of playing kittens.
  • Released to Elsewhere: An update in February 2019 added an NPC to the Player-Owned Farm that will take any animal for a flat fee of 10% of the beans that they would normally sell for, with the examine text of "The fabled 'other farm' where animals sometimes go". Said NPC is a baby troll. Trolls in Runescape get their names from the first thing they eat or try to eat. And when you sell them, the troll's name changes to one of the animals you sold to it.
  • Religion is Magic: Buffs come from prayers. And yes, they're called that.
    • In older lore (still present in Old School), prayer was granted by Saradomin as a favor for giving the dead an honorable burial in his name. One could also draw power from Zaros (and after The Light Within, Seren) to gain access to different ones called the Ancient Curses.
    • Post-Retcon, the Prayer skill is still wrapped in religion, but the Gods being the source of Prayer has been retconned to superstition. In actuality, it is a benign form of Necromancy in which you connect to the afterlife and call for aid from those passed on. How to do so is typically taught by different religions, hence the misunderstanding, and some religions offer access to different prayers due to their different mindsets.
  • Reliably Unreliable Guns: The Dwarven Handcannon is a hand-held cannon that has a chance of exploding and vanishing whenever it's fired, reduced based on the player's firemaking level. The self-destruction can fortunately be prevented by augmenting it with the Invention skill, but it can still explode in combat and will drain away some of your charge pack when it does.
  • Relocating the Explosion: In "Rune Memories", the power within the soul fragments of the wizards of the original Wizard's Tower are too powerful to contain and will cause their host, Ariana, to explode and destroy the new Wizard's Tower if they're not removed from her. After being removed from Ariana, the masters and apprentices of the first order tell the adventurer to make the traitorous Wizard Ellaron their new host and forcefully teleport him to the Abyss, where he will detonate without causing harm to the Wizard's Tower.
  • Remember the New Guy?: The "Signature Heroes" are this to any player who was around before they were introduced. It becomes particularly grating when they treat the player character as if they're new to the whole "adventuring" thing despite the player character often having been around before the signature heroes even existed.
  • Repetitive Name: One of the vampyre names you can choose for yourself in "Branches of Darkmeyer" is Von van Von.
  • Replacement Goldfish: In the quest The Knight's Sword, Squire Asrol loses Sir Vyvin's sword, a family heirloom, and tasks the player in creating a replica.
  • Reset Button:
    • Unless you want the entire world to be rebuilt from scratch, do not break the Edicts of Guthix...though more recent lore seems to suggest this is not what Guthix actually intended, and it acts more as a way to banish the gods from Gielinor than a check on their followers. The World Wakes revolves mostly around the followers of other Gods working together to remove this Reset Button by killing Guthix. One, the Mahjarrat Sliske, succeeds...though Guthix was actually planning on this.
    • One quest, Back to the Freezer, involves Time Travel. The Player Character indulges in some Breaking the Fourth Wall, Lampshading the fact that Time Travel being possible in Runescape also means that in theory, you could hit a reset switch, which is bad for storytelling.
  • Resurrective Immortality: Anyone important enough to Fate is blessed with this, which is the current In-Universe explanation for how you come back to life whenever you die. Characters canonically stated to have this trait include The Adventurer and the King Black Dragon. The first time you die in-game, you find yourself in Death's office, and he explains that it's not your time to die just yet and he'll keep resurrecting you until you fulfill your destiny.
  • Retirony:
    • Turael mentions during While Guthix Sleeps that he may retire soon. He dies during the quest.
    • Examining one of The Forgotten Warrior's allies during Vengeance results in the message "She was about to retire."
  • Revenant Zombie: The Barrows Brothers and Arrav all count as these, having far more individual personality than the standard wights and zombies that Sliske and Zemouregal raise, respectively.
  • Reverse Grip: The Keris dagger and Dragon dagger are held this way in Old School, as is the Old School-exclusive Abyssal dagger.
  • Revisiting the Roots: Sort of, after the Elder God Wars. While most of RS3 has seen Saradomin, Zamorak, and many of their followers portrayed as morally ambiguous, the Legacy of Zamorak storyline has seen them play roles more in line with the Old School dynamic of good Saradominists vs. evil Zamorakians. In the immediate aftermath of the wars, Zamorak opportunistically takes advantage of other gods' weakened forces to set Gielinor ablaze simply because he craves chaos and destruction. This leads to the player rebanishing him with the reestablishment of the Edicts of Guthix, and Zamorak's remaining forces then become the antagonists whose operations the player infiltrates to collect intel for Team Saradmin. Meanwhile, when Saradomin's adoptive human daughter Adrasteia takes over his Gielinorian empire in his absence, he notes that she has surpassed him "in courage, wisdom, and perhaps most importantly of all, empathy". Being strongest in the third of these allows her to be more of a benevolent ruler than Saradomin was, so it's likely that other Saradominists will follow in her positive example.
  • Rewards Pass: The Yak Tracks that appear for two-month periods at a time in RS3, offering cosmetics around a given theme.
  • Road Runner PC: Players can run, but most non-player characters cannot.
  • Rodents of Unusual Size: Giant rats. Big enough to get rat steaks from them.
  • Room Full of Crazy: A progressive example in Melzar's Maze, which has a number of cabinets that can be opened and searched. The first ones contain books, stacks of paper, and other mundane objects. As you progress, you start to uncover complete human skeletons, followed by stacks of loose bones, each one carefully labeled with a number. The last two merely contains piles of dead rats. Notes found in nearby bookshelves indicate Melzar was attempting to raise his countrymen from the dead, but was having trouble getting beyond ghosts and animated skeletons. The final record says he's selected two to try growing flesh on... one room before you encounter a pair of zombies.
  • Ruins for Ruins' Sake:
    • Zigzagged with Daemonheim. Many areas of it seem to have been designed to be lived in, such as barrack-like bedrooms, libraries, and dinner halls; the small fish ponds, lodestones, golem statues, and other puzzles in some rooms designed as a security system to keep the digger's enemies out. Many of the Daemonheim lore drops suggest actual reasons why each group of floors is the way it is, while the structure itself was likely built by the Dragonkin.
    • The Wilderness also has ruins abound. But then again, given that it was once like the rest of the world, this makes perfect sense...
  • Rule of Seven: The Signature Heroes are composed of Ariane, Ozan, Sir Owen, Xenia, Linza, The Raptor, and the player character.
  • Running Gag:
    • There are several references to the short lifespan of guards.
    • Cabbages. They have almighty power and are key points in a number of plotlines. They were also part of a few April Fool's Day updates, notably one where they all became quite lively and you met the God of Cabbages, Brassica Prime.
    • It's been quite well established that penguins are evil communist masterminds.
    • Heim Crabs are also developers' favorite target for running gags.
    • Anything about skeletons and their eating habits examine texts.
    • Horses being mythological creatures in the world of Runescape. And the idea of even thinking of riding some other creature instead is treated as absurd. (This even led to a retcon of the one case where horses WERE mentioned—with two characters named Theh Orses and Theho Rses.)
    • The absence of toilets.
    • Your character really doesn't like the navigator of the Lady Zay.
    • Pirate Pete has a tendency to give concussions to those who travel with him. Flanderized during A Clockwork Syringe.
    • The censorship of "graphic" material in the game using a cute animal, usually a kitten. This is done a lot during the pirate quests.
  • Run the Gauntlet: The Fight Caves, as well as their Old School sequel, the Inferno, and their RS3 sequels, the Fight Kiln and TzekHaar Front, featuring wave after wave of enemies the player must defeat and culminating in a final boss encounter.
  • Russian Reversal: The examine text of the Spirit Jelly is "In Runescape, acid gets indigestion from YOU!"
  • Rustproof Blood: Present in some dungeons. Justified in the player owned house dungeon, where it's just red dye.

    S 
  • Sacrificial Lamb:
    • In In Search of the Myreque, you're introduced to several of the resistance group against Morytania's vampires, and all of them are given backstories and motivations for joining the resistance. And then two of them are killed when the villain of the quest shows up.
    • In Quiet Before the Swarm, you get introduced to eight of the Void Knights and a few other people at their outpost. You talk to all of them and learn some things about them. Six of them die shortly afterwards.
  • Sacrificial Lion:
    • In While Guthix Sleeps, NPCs that the player has probably spent a lot of time with during previous quests, slayer tasks, and so forth are killed by the Big Bad to let the player know just how serious this situation is.
    • In "The Lord of Vampyrium", all but four members of the Myreque die fighting Drakan, and then Vanescula betrays you and “kills” Safalaan Hallow, sending the three remaining survivors over the Despair Event Horizon as she prepares to invade Misthalin.
  • Sadistic Choice:
    • Choosing between saving Korasi and saving Jessika in The Void Stares Back.
    • Choosing between sparing or executing your friend Zanik to pacify the Bandosians in "The Mighty Fall".
  • Sand Worm: Strykewyrms, particularly the desert strykewyrm.
  • Sapient House: The Dominion Tower was once a young boy whose mind was sealed into the tower to escape his dying body.
  • Savage Wolves: Wolves appear as a common low-level enemy, ranging from weak Adolescent White Wolves all the way to seasonal boss monsters Hati and Skoll. There's even a wolf familiar.
  • Scaled Up: The Completionist cape emote briefly allows the player character to transform into a giant black dragon. (The trimmed version of the cape transforms you into a golden dragon instead.)
  • Scales of Justice: Several examples exist.
    • A pair of scales fused to a sword is apparently the symbol of the Seers' Village Courthouse.
    • Law Runes have a blue pair of scales painted on them.
  • Scary Impractical Armour: Black Knight Captain armour: while intimidating, it offers no protection in combat what-so-ever and is purely cosmetic, used to infiltrate the Black Knights' Fortress.
  • Scenery Gorn: After a certain quest, Edgeville gets utterly trashed by a savage attack by The Dragonkin. It's functionally identical to before, but there are enormous scorch marks and lots of eternal (but non-spreading or damaging) fire everywhere. You can restore it in a miniquest set afterwards.
  • Schmuck Bait:
    • In "Let Them Eat Pie", you feed someone a rancid pie, then listen from downstairs. You hear him begin to be violently sick, then the game tells you the sound effects only get worse, and asks if you're sure you want to hear the rest. The sound effects really do only get worse.
    • In Movario's base, there is a huge pile of gleaming treasure... with a trap that would hit you for massive damage. And if you investigate the treasure pile, the following message occurs:
      "After a quick search, your suspicions are confirmed... It was too good to be true; it's just worthless fakery, placed here to sucker someone."
    • Near the end of "Sliske's Endgame", you meet Jas the Elder God. She asks you to explain your actions. You can instead insult her if you are feeling particularly cruel, but she won't take it well and will proceed to smite you instantly. You're even given a confirmation message beforehand, so needless to say, if you do insult her anyway you deserve what's coming to you.
  • Screw Destiny: Happens in The Chosen Commander.
  • Sealed Badass in a Can: Azzanadra, the powerful mahjarrat who was sealed away in a pyramid by his enemies.
    • His fellow Mahjarrat Trindine, hibernating in stasis in the part of the Shadow Realm local to the Vault of Shadows may also count, although her talents lie more with espionage and subterfuge.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can:
    • This seems to have been the standard operating procedure for dealing with anything associated with Zaros, although technically speaking the "Evil" is in question.
      • Most notably, his strongest disciple Nex was seen as this by the other God Wars Dungeon factions. She has since escaped along with the other God Wars Dungeon generals.
    • Mother Mallum of the "Slug Menace" quest.
    • Dungeoneering was created by Bilrach, a Mahjarrat who wants to return Zamorak to the physical world.
    • The Queen Black Dragon, stowed away deep in a dungeon beneath Rimmington.
    • Guthix is known to have accidentally released one of these sealed in a planet while trying to destroy said abomination. Said entity, Mur, may or may not be Xau-Tak.
    • Raksha, the Shadow Colossus imprisoned in a complex on Orthen, who is implied to have given Kerapac the idea to try and gain leverage over the Elder Gods through a device to mass produce shadow anima and given Kranon his Start of Darkness (which would later lead to him becoming the Ambassador of Xau-Tak). While in the original timeline he died alongside his Keeper as a result of shadow anima starvation, as a result of Anachronia being brought forth from the past he's still alive. Zaros reawakens him while collecting part of its prison for his own purposes, and it's up to you to defeat him before he escapes.
  • Secret Room: The haunted mansion where the "Broken Home" quest takes place has three rooms, each hidden behind false walls or hidden trapdoors and requiring triggering hidden switches to activate, often requiring items from a different part of the mansion (one is triggered by fixing a piano by inserting a missing piano key then playing the piano revealing a chamber where a lot of the staff's corpses were hidden when the house became haunted, one is triggered by removing the head of a bust to find a hidden button revealing a room where one unfortunate servant was trapped inside until he starved to death, and one is revealed by replacing a statue's missing crystal eyes revealing a Shrine to the Fallen to the son of the mansion's former owner before he went mad.
  • Secret Test of Character: The Lady of the Lake secretly tests your generosity in the "Merlin's Crystal" quest by disguising herself as a beggar and asking you for food.
    • The elven hermit in the Poison Waste who preaches to you about Seren does this. The correct answer to "How does Seren show her humility?" is "I don't know"— it never came up in the sermon, and admitting to not knowing the answer shows your humility, proving to the hermit Lady Hefin that you are trustworthy.
  • Selective Condemnation: So prevalent that even Lampshade Hanging is done to that.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge:
    • Some players stay at combat level 3note  and only level up non-combat skills like cooking.
    • Officially supported with Ironman Mode, which prevents players from trading with others and picking up items dropped by others. Some players take it a step further by playing region-locked Ironman accounts.
  • Senseless Sacrifice:
    • Many characters in While Guthix Sleeps.
    • Arkisae's sacrifice in Ritual of the Mahjarrat is unnecessary to say the least, given how the player can respawn as fate decrees that they will not die unless Death says so. It's unknown whether he knew about this in advance.
  • Senseless Violins: Before the boss battle of "A Fairy Tale Part III - Battle at Ork's Rift", the Fairy Godfather pull out a wand out of a violin case.
  • Separated by a Common Language: Being developed in Britain and using British terms for items can and does confuse American players unfamiliar with the game and British terminlogy in general. Adding to some confusion, some "American" (or, rather, more easily recognizable internationally) symbols and terms are used, such as the American dollar sign symbol for banks on the minimap.
    • The official wikis use cookies and location services to avert this, given that the first floor in the UK is actually the second floor in the US, due to the first floor in the US being referred to as the Ground Floor in the UK. As such, depending on where you browse from, the wikis will display a [US] or [UK] superscript next to any reference to Xth Floor when describing a building.
  • Sequential Boss: A common mechanic in high-level boss fights.
    • The Kalphite Queen has two phases; the first beetle form is immune to magic and ranged attacks and the second wasp form is immune to melee attacks.
    • The Queen Black Dragon has four phases, with each one seeing increased and improved attacks. Between each phase the player must activate crystals, which restore her enchanted slumber.
    • Nex has five phases, the first four corresponding with the four Ancient Magicks (Smoke, Shadow, Blood, and Ice) and the fifth seeing her wield the power of her god Zaros directly.
      • Her Angel of Death fight, intended for entire teams of high-level players, has her own set of four phases—they aren't one to one replications of her original fight, though.
    • Araxxor has to be fought three times, with each phase having different mechanics depending on which paths through his lair are open. After he is defeated, he is replaced by his mate Araxxi, who fortunately is only fought once.
    • The boss of Dream Mentor has four forms representing different aspects of Cyrisus' fear of combat.
    • The final boss of The Lord of Vampyrium, Lord Drakan, refuses to die and needs to be defeated five times in succession. Fortunately, the player gets their health and prayer restored and more food between phases.
      • Also done with the final boss of River of Blood, The Wyrd. After depleting his health in the first and third phases, he's replaced with Wyrd venom-induced hallucinations of Vanstrom Klause and Lord Drakan, gaining new health bars when the hallucinations are defeated. However, his attacks in odd phases are identical, while he only uses one attack from the hallucinations in their respective phases.
    • Nomad in Nomad's Requiem, (especially) Nomad's Elegy, and the optional Memory of Nomad fight you can do after the latter. Nomad's Elegy in particular has *seven* phases—four against Nomad himself, based on his phases from Requiem, and three between them where Xenia, Death, and Icthlarin each work to destroy the god Nomad has forged from thousands upon thousands of souls harvested from the underworld, Gielinor.
    • Vindicta and her dragon mount who raised her, Gorvek—the first phase sees you face Vindicta alone while she dual wields swords (with Gorvek occasionally strafing with dragonfire), while the second phase sees her mount Gorvek and fight you with a lance. In Challenge Mode, there's a third phase where she falls off, defeated, but Gorvek remains and goes berserk.
    • Telos has four phases fought across multiple platforms in his chamber, each at a lower part, where the fourth phase happens at the bottom and ends with him stumbling into a pool of pure anima, defeated. If fought at 100% or more enrage, however, there's a fifth phase: he rises from the anima pool as a gigantic version of himself, with the player having to defeat him with mechanics from all four of the prior phases.
    • Vorago has five phases, seeing you face him deeper and deeper in the cavern he challenges you in. In Hard Mode, he has eleven.
    • Solak has four phases, as you first seek to weaken the Guardian of the Grove, before fighting him inside the mind of the corrupted elf controlling/influencing him, Erethdor, and finally working to subdue Solak to fully purge Erethdor before he destroys Solak's conscience permanently.
    • All three of the Elite Dungeon final bosses use this:
      • After depleting 10% of Seiryu's maximum health, he collapses. You then have a period to get on his back, destroy the three crystals corrupting him (while dealing with slimes that spawn that can potentially heal up any remaining crystals,) with Seiryu returning to full health if you don't manage to destroy all crystals in time (though damage remains on the crystals, letting you kill them over multiple phases).
      • The Black Stone Dragon has three phases, with a fourth phase midway through the third—a relatively simple phase where she can use the gemstone dragon special attacks, a phase where black hands appear and restrain her, a phase where, in addition to the first's abilities, she gains the ability to summon a spiral of dragonfire and summon shadow bombs, and a fourth phase that interrupts the third halfway, where she flies around the map and summons lines of dragonfire.
      • The Ambassador also has three phases. The first phase sees him summon corruption, black holes, and fragments that must be destroyed. The second phase sees him summon Crassian Ritual Keepers, while the third (after a restored Seiryu shows up to destroy the Ritual Keepers) sees The Ambassador summon a ring of Xau-Tak's black hands, which release smoke that can heal him before he launches waves of extremely potent magic at you that need to be blocked with defensive abilities.
    • Raksha has four phases. The first phase has him use a tail swipe (or charge, if you’re too far away), magic bomb (that leaves behind damaging miasma), and an attack that involves blasting you with five unavoidable magic hits. The second adds an attack where Raksha tries to inject horrible visions into your mind while extending the bomb attack into a barrage, while the third has Raksha summon shadow manifestations and draw energy from local Shadow Anima more often. The fourth and final phase sees him try to escape his prison, heal for 200k health, special attack more often (but be limited to just the magic bomb and tail swipe), and gain an instakill attack (that can be defused by destroying the shield he creates or countered by hiding behind pillars).
    • Kerapac has four phases in both normal and hard mode. Played with, however: the second and third phases use the same mechanics as the first, but also see time echoes of Kerapac repeat whatever he did in the previous phases of the fight.
    • TzKal-Zuk's fight in RS3 plays with this, with Waves 4, 9, and 14 giving you a chance to damage him early, and Wave 17 featuring a rematch with Har'Aken, though the final fight itself in Wave 18 doesn't have distinct phases. Hard Mode, however, adds a final phase at the end that requires damaging a conduit to Ful's power.
    • In the grandmaster quest Extinction, concluding the Elder God Wars storyline, the final fight to distract Seren during the evacuation of Iaia and slow the Elder eggs' hatching has three phases—first pitting you against aspects of her resembling the Dark Lord, then releasing a vestige of Mah that summons Muspah, and finally destroying aspects of her representing the remaining Elders while avoiding fire and energy pulses from the eggs.
    • Even some high-end Slayer monsters can get in on this—Rune Dragons have three phases as you deplete their health, for example.
  • Serial Escalation:
    1. The original achievement cape was the ordinary blue cape, which, in RuneScape Classic, was only available through the shop in the Champions' Guild, which required 33 quest points to enter. That was before capes could be dyed any colour, so wearing a blue cape was proof that you'd done (at the time) almost all of the quests in the game.
    2. Of course, eventually the Legends' Guild was added to the game, and with it came the new, even more prestigious Cape of Legends, which could prove that you'd gained over 100 quest points to access the Legends' Guild.
    3. Then we got Skillcapes (requiring level 99 in one skill) and the Quest cape (all quests complete).
    4. Not enough? How about the Dungeoneering, Slayer, Farming, Herblore, or Invention Master Capes, for level 120? (Dungeoneering, Slayer, Farming, Herblore, and Invention are the only five skills that max out at level 120 rather than 99note .)
    5. Next up we have the Max cape, for all skills at level 99.
    6. But wait, there's more! The Completionist cape can be obtained after maxing out every skill, completing every quest, completing every miniquest, and completing every task.
    7. Thought we were done? Nope! If you want a trimmed Completionist cape, you also need to do all of this. For perspective, the Castle Wars requirement alone takes nearly two thousand hours to achieve. Minimum.
      • Thankfully, it's been reduced to "only" 760.8 hours, provided you win each and every match. Translated to days, that's nearly 32 days of only playing Castle Wars.
      • Even more thankfully, it has been removed from the Trimmed requirements. There's still achievements for getting it, though.
    8. Thought having a Skillcape showed off your mastery of a skill? Nah, that's just the start. If you're really a master of your skill, then you want a Master Skillcape, each which has the same XP requirements as level 120 Dungeoneering, Slayer, Herblore, or Farmingnote .
    • With bosses. Each new NPC boss brought out by Jagex is tougher, trickier and more powerful than the last, to the point that even the King and Queen Black Dragons are considered easy next to newer bosses like Araxxor and Vorago, some of which explicitly require multiple players to even confront, let alone defeat.
    • The Barrows Brothers themselves. As new features and items changed the combat system, the original six Brothers went from powerful bosses to a lesser challenge. "Ritual of the Mahjarrat" added a seventh Barrows Wight, Akrisae the Doomed, who uses hybrid combat styles and shifting protection prayers, making them a much more difficult battle. Then Evolution of Combat enabled players to mix-and-match their own combat abilities, reducing the challenge of the Barrows again. So "Kindred Spirits" added an eighth Wight, Linza the Disgraced, who is more powerful than all of the others put together.
  • Set Bonus:
    • Barrows armour is one of the most notable examples, with each set having its own bonus.
    • Penance armour gradually restores your prayer points if you wear the full set.
    • Lumberjack clothing (and its equivalents for other skills) gives a small additional xp bonus for wearing the full set. Various skilling sets can be crafted from fragments at high enough Invention, adding their own XP bonuses (that stack with the XP sets if you own them) along with a host of other abilities convenient to their respective skills.
    • The various warpriest armour sets provide special passive effects that increase in power as more pieces of the respective set are worn.
      • Anima Core of Sliske armour (and its refined counterpart) is a higher level version that can mimic any one of the aforementioned warpriest armour effects if you own the respective set.
    • The tank armours from Raids (Teralith, Primeval, and Tempest, along with their improved Achto counterparts) have a chance to reset the cooldowns of all defensive abilities when you're hit, with the chance rising with the number of pieces equipped. Their Achto forms also grant bonus damage based on the tier of shield or defender you have equipped.
    • Trimmed Masterwork Armour has a passive that converts a portion of damage taken to a bleed over time, based on the number of pieces worn.
    • Cryptbloom Armour has a variety of effects, such as melee and magic damage reduction, extra damage on enemies not facing the user, and a shield that activates at low health, with the amount of effects increasing based on how many pieces are equipped.
  • Shapeshifting:
    • Mahjarrat can change their forms to whatever they want, which ends badly for Jhallan in The Tale of the Muspah — he has a nightmare while he hibernates and transforms into a Muspah, a seemingly mythical beast in Mahjarrat culture, which takes most of his strength.
    • Various quests require the Player Character to turn into a goblin, a monkey, etc.
    • A demon in the quest "Broken Home" takes it one step further and shapeshifts into incorporeal ghosts.
  • Shared Family Quirks: Implied. Thurgo is an Imcando dwarf, and a big fan of redberry pie. Deep in the Warforge, where another Imcando dwarf was forced to make weapons for Bandosian forces during the Third Age, one of the Archaeology excavations is called a "Makeshift Pie Oven."
  • Shared Life-Meter: The Twin Furies have a shared pool of 200,000 life points. Once a total of 200,000 damage is dealt to either of them, then are both defeated.
  • Sherlock Scan: Played for Laughs in "What's Mine Is Yours".
    Player: Boric, tell Doric why you sleep with a teddy.
    Boric: What? How do you know about that?
    Player: Elementary! You see, I noticed on your fingers not just the dirt that comes from working as a smith but also the fibres that could have only come from a teddy bear. The fact that they are visible means you must regularly sleep with it - and grip it quite tightly at that.
    Doric: You still sleep with Terrence?
    Boric: No...maybe...I don't wannae talk about it!
  • Shifting Sand Land: The Kharidian desert.
  • Shoo Out the Clowns: With the advent of more effective means of finding and removing macros and bots, Jagex eventually resorted to discontinuing the various random events, coinciding with a more general shift to greater seriousness in the game. This is downplayed, however, as the characters from the random events may still be found in appropriate locations in-game. In Old School, the random events still occur, but only the harmless ones. Even ones where you used to get beaten to death by the NPC if you ignored them now just leave if the player decides not to talk to them.
  • Shoot the Messenger: Kal'Ger the Warmonger does it when he hears bad news.
  • Shout-Out: So many, we had to split off a separate subpage. See ShoutOut.RuneScape.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: Zaros, god of darkness, and Seren, goddess of light.
  • Significant Anagram:
    • Wahisietel is a mahjarrat who hasn't been seen in decades and is believed to be in hiding. Ali the Wise is a mysterious man who seems to be an expert on mahjarrat and is very interested in their goings-on. Jagex deliberately drew attention to this parallel by using the name as a word-scramble puzzle in a Chaos Elemental letter—some people solved it and got Ali the Wise, others solved it and got Wahisietel, and the fandom said, "Hey, wait a minute..."
    • Calsidiu, the supposed leader of the Myreque, is an anagram for "suicidal", highlighting the nature of the resistance's efforts against the vampyres.
  • "Simon Says" Mini-Game:
    • The first room in the 2010 Christmas event required players to tap the icicles in the order they light up.
    • The Artisan's Workshop in Falador and the Serenity Pillars in Prifddinas both work this way. You can still gain experience without doing what the leader says, but it's a much slower rate.
    • The Summer Beach Party seasonal event has two:
      • In the sandcastle activity, players must work on the highlighted sculpture to gain the maximum Construction experience.
      • In the bodybuilding activity, players must perform the correct exercuse to gain the maximum Strength experience.
    • In the Three's Company saga, Ariane must touch some magical crystals in the correct order to free Sir Owen and Ozan.
    • One puzzle in Dungeoneering requires the player to play "follow the leader" with a living statue to unlock the doors in that room. An incorrect action will cause the player to take damage and force them to start over.
    • Several random events had this mechanic. Random events were later removed from the main game but are still playable in Old School RuneScape.
  • Single-Use Shield: Certain items, like Portent of Life and Phoenix Necklace can only be used once for their special effect before they crumble to dust.
  • Sinister Scimitar: Scimitars are a popular weapon type in Old School and at low levels. Their popularity is attributed to the tradeoff of having lower damage than similarly levelled weapons, but a faster speed, and therefore more chances to attack, to make up for it. Monkeys also seem to be quite fond of them.
  • Sinister Scythe: A holiday item. An extremely rare golden one exists as well. There's also the Noxious Scythe, a halberd-class weapon which is made from Araxxi's leg and fang. Old School features the Scythe of Vitur, a reward from the Theatre of Blood.
  • Sink or Swim Mentor: Xenia. Though to her credit, it's worked both times so far:
    • In the Blood Pact quest, you have to do all the fighting because she says she's injured. She was lying to see how well you did.
    • In Carnillean Rising, she takes it a bit further by arranging for a powerful Wolf Matriarch to attack during the otherwise fake quest you've prepared for young Philipe. He does manage to kill it with your help, but he's still a teenage spoiled brat facing down a magically empowered Mama Wolf several times the size of the player character.
  • Skybox: This is a toggelable option. Used most notably in the Clan Citadels.
  • Skull for a Head: The Mahjarrat. Some of them, anyway. General Khazard is probably the best example. Averted after completing a Ritual—the skull heads are the result of their power depleting over centuries, and sacrificing one of their own to power the rest up rejuvenates them to a pale, but not quite skeletal appearance. After Children of Mah, they never have to worry about this again—with the exception of Trindine, stuck underneath Kharid-Et hibernating in the Shadow Realm. Even she gets temporarily better with an infusion of energy from Azzanadra.
  • Slasher Movie: The Old School quest Misthalin Mystery is a parody of the 1996 film Scream. Even the characters in the quest are the same as those in the movie.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World:
    • Trollweiss Mountain is covered with ice and snow all year.
    • The Iceberg where the penguin quest series takes place.
  • Smug Snake: Plenty of characters slide into this, from Knight Templars to outright villains, and even the Player Character can exhibit this though conversation choices where possible. The Ur-Example of this trope, though, has to be Sliske the Mahjarrat.
  • Snake Oil Salesman: Lampshaded.
    Musician: "Did you know music has curative properties? Music stimulates the healing humours in your body, so they say."
    Player: "Who says that, then?"
    Musician: "I was told by a traveling medical practitioner, selling oil extracted from snakes. It's a commonly known fact, so he said."
  • Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome: Kennith grows from about 10 to 21 or so in the 2 years between "Kennith's Concerns" and "Salt in the Wound", even though the in-game time hasn't changed. You can question Kennith about it, with the Hand Wave that "People grow up, right?"
  • Socialization Bonus: There are (at last count) two quests in which you must team up with other players. The first of these quests assigns you to a gang, so you have to find someone else who is in the opposite gang. You only really need the other player for a few minutes though.
    • Slight Subversion here as the quest required you to trade items, with one player only able to obtain one part of the pair. The subversion is that at one point, both of these items were sellable to the General Store, so a very lucky player could get the spare part without even talking to anyone else. Later events rectified this by having the items unsellable and only being able to trade for an equivalent item.
    • Averted for the Dimension of Disaster counterpart of one of the quests, which doesn’t require another player to complete.
  • Solid Gold Poop: Invoked by dragon manure piles from the Player Owned Farm, which are described as "Pure gold." Notably, dragon manure is used to make ultracompost, the best compost type in the game.
  • Some Dexterity Required: In the early days of RuneScape, things including but not limited to mining, smithing, and woodcutting required much more clicking than they do nowadays. This has been mostly toned down over the years, but came back into full effect with the launch of the Evolution of Combat in 2012. Full mastery of the overhauled combat system requires practically lightning fast reflexes, and most if not all endgame bosses released require quick reaction times to their battle mechanics on top of it. Usually averted when using Legacy or Revolution modes (which removes abilities/autocasts your abilities, respectively), however, outside of high-level bossing and other PvM.
    • Raksha in particular seems to require this, requiring both good knowledge of prayer flicking and managing other mechanics at the same time.
  • Sound of No Damage: If your enemy is hitting zeroes on you, there's a sound effect of stuff scraping off your armor (if you are wearing armor, that is).
  • Space Compression: Cities, towns and other settlements take almost as much space as forests, even though largest cities have the size of a medium-sized village. It takes only less than half an hour for a player to walk from one end of the mainland to another. Yet the manual, NPC stories and historic tales might leave the impression of large cities and vast lands. Very notable example is Burgh De Rott. Vampyres think that town is deserted, but it's less than 100 meters from the capital of Morytania where town should clearly be seen, especially for the fact that flying vyrewatch approaches very close to the settlement. Even more apparent with the NXT client (released in 2016) and its greater rendering distance, although content released after NXT's launch seems to do a better job actually using the draw distance available to it.
  • Space-Filling Path:
    • The Ourania Runecrafting Altar, the Ape Atoll tunnels, a road in Morytania, among others.
    • Anachronia or "Fossil Island", released in the modern version of the game in 2019, takes this up to eleven; essentially, it is a Space-Filling Path on a continental scale. The Agility course intended as a "shortcut" around the landmass generally takes at least nine minutes to complete if you're not spamming the Surge, Double Surge, and/or Bladed Dive abilities.
  • Special Attack: Present in multiple forms, and sometimes overlapping with Limit Break.
    • Both OSRS and RS3 have weapon special attacks, which consume the special attack energy bar (OSRS and Legacy mode of RS3) or adrenaline (RS3 Revolution and Full Manual). Any weapon special attacks that consume 100% of the special energy bar/adrenaline fall under Limit Break, though.
      • RS3 also has the Essence of Finality, an amulet that can store a weapon's special attack to be used by any other weapon of the same combat style (melee/ranged/magic).
    • RS3 also has threshold abilities, which consume 15% adrenaline and can only be used at 50% or more adrenaline. They're weaker than most ultimate abilities, but are stronger than most basic abilities.
    • Finally, some RS3 basic abilities are heavily cooldown-gated to the point of arguably fitting the trope. This includes most defensive basic abilities, most notably Resonance and Freedom.
  • Spikes of Doom: Present in some of the locations like agility courses. They won't kill you instantly though.
  • Spiritual Successor: The Rex Matriarchs are ones to the Dagannoth Kings, having the same mechanic of requiring specific combat styles to kill, being the most powerful of their kind, and being fought in an arena where all three are present at once. They even drop items that upgrade the rings the Kings drop!
  • Spiteful A.I.: The Chaos Dwarf Battlefield is a prime example. Attacking any chaos dwarf causes all of them to become aggressive towards you, ignoring the Black Guard that are attacking them—getting shot at by 5-6 chaos dwarf hand cannoneers at once can kill you pretty quickly, unless you have the Protect from Missiles prayer/Deflect Missiles curse on, in which case, they'll walk all the way across the battlefield to start bashing you with their hand cannon instead of firing at the Black Guard. This can be abused to lure them to the back of the battlefield, where Black Guard berserkers will make quick work of them, and they do go back to their normal routine of engaging the Black Guard after some time has passed, though.
  • Spooky Painting:
    • In the horror quest Broken Home, a servant is eaten by a painting.
    • In a more harmless example, the eyes of figures in paintings in Draynor Manor tend to follow your viewpoint wherever you decide to point your third-person camera.
  • Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Sliske the Mahjarrat. Originally he showed up briefly just before his fellow Mahjarrat Lucien was killed, but this really took off when he killed off Guthix in "The World Wakes" and then had one of the eight main god factions devoted to himnote . This has since ballooned into virtual Wolverine Publicity, as Sliske's storyline drives many of the recent Sixth Age quests to the extent that four of the five main major quests released throughout 2016 center on his "game" between gods for the Stone of Jas, with the final one seeing everyone play right into his maze. If that wasn't enough, Sliske also got his own year-long weekly Distraction and Diversion in the form of a giant sinister scoreboard for said game plunked down right in the middle of the Grand Exchange in Varrock, where he still gets to move the goalposts to keep himself in the lead regardless of whatever actually happens in the storyline. He's also been the sole focus of the 2016 Easter event, as well as at least one Treasure Hunter promotion centered on closing rifts that he and a minion have been summoning for unknown reasons. You could be forgiven for just wanting him dead already instead of constantly having to see his smug, smirking face seemingly everywhere you go. (Thankfully, after Sliske's Endgame he's dead...mostly.)
    • He also averted this in his posthumous "appearance" as fragments of his personality forming a personal Greek Chorus in Azzanadra's Quest and subsequent parts of the Elder God Wars questline. It's implied that it's not exactly Sliske anymore.
  • Sprint Meter: Run energy.
  • Squishy Wizard: In the Fight Cauldron minigame, guess which enemy has the lowest health? It's not the Tokhaar-Hur, who are technically craftsmen rather than warriors, but the Tokhaar-Mej, the magic users.
  • Stable Time Loop: During a conversation post-Meeting History, the player unintentionally gives Herblore its name by telling someone from the past that that's what it's called. This also ends up being the plot of Back to the Freezer.
  • Stalked by the Bell: In the Fight Pits, if players take too long to kill one another, volcanic creatures will show up to join the fight.
  • The Starscream:
    • Zamorak is a successful version of this to Zaros. Lucien doesn't fare too well.
    • Branches of Darkmeyer reveals that Vanescula Drakan serves as one to her brother Lord Drakan. She even kills her other brother Ranis during the quest.
  • Stat Grinding: Infamous for this. Both combat-related and non-combat skills are leveled up by gaining experience, either through repeatedly performing monotonous tasks or through rewards from completing quests. For scale, getting a single skill to level 99 requires the player to amass just over thirteen million experience points in that skill alone. The sheer length of this grind makes achieving level 99 in one or more skills a highly-regarded mark of prestige among the player community; conversely, it is also directly identifiable as the root cause of the game's never-ending bot/macro epidemic, especially for the more monotonous tasks.
    • Some skills are worse about this than others.
      • The quickest way to level Mining in Old School is to sit around three iron rocks and just mine and mine and mine and mine, drop the inventory, and repeat. 60,000 xp/hour is considered a good experience rate, which seems laughable compared to the over 400,000 that can be gained from skills such as Herblore or Cooking. Less prominent in Runescape 3 after the Mining and Smithing rework—higher level rocks are now much more worthwhile to mine, both in terms of xp and in resources.
      • Runecrafting in Old School is just run to the bank, grab the essence and pouches, head to an altar, and make the runes. Lather, rinse, repeat. The introduction of the Runespan in the main game made it far easier to level the skill.
      • Agility features the player running around various obstacle courses, over and over. Newer courses grant better xp/hour, but often require an already-high level to access them.
    • Some players take this up to eleven by raising skills to the outright experience cap of 200 million points — not for any additional levels beyond 99 (or 120 for Dungeoneering, Slayer, Invention, Herblore, Farming, and Archaeology), but solely for the prestige and bragging rights.note 
  • Stealth Pun:
    • Players with high enough dungeoneering can raise a smaller version of a Stalker (floating eyeball monsters that live in Daemonheim) as a pet. Speaking with the pet yields a variety of creepy dialogues in which the sneakerpeeper sings songs confessing its eternal love for you and claims to collect your hair, bellybutton lint, and dead skin to make hairbrushes, slippers, and hats. Well, that explains why they're called "Stalkers".
    • At first glance, the quest "A Tail of Two Cats" might look like it's already met its one-pun-per-title quota. But if you look a little closer, you'll notice that it's suspiciously close to "Kitties".
    • When you wear a Monkey Cape, you've got a monkey on your back.
    • One of the swamp birds the ogres hunt is called a Jubbly. Those who know that "jubbly" is British slang for a woman's breasts likely giggled. Those who know that there are real-world birds called "boobies" and "tits" likely giggled more.
  • Sticks to the Back: Sheathed weapons are depicted this way. Most smaller one-handed weapons are stored at the hip, while larger one-handed weapons, as well as two-handed weapons and shields, go on the back.
  • Stock Femur Bone: It's strange how the majority of creatures seem to drop these kind of bones.
  • Stock Lateral Thinking Puzzle: The 3 + 5 = 4 puzzle is used in the Fremennik Trials, the Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle is used in Recruitment Drive (as is No Man of Woman Born) and several others.
  • Stock Slasher: The unnamed Killer in the Old School quest Misthalin Mystery. They are later revealed to be Abigal and her boyfriend Hewey.
  • Story Difficulty Setting: The Elite Dungeons have a story mode setting which significantly reduces enemy damage and health but also prevents you from getting most drops and achievements. It does, however, count towards progression of the Curse of the Black Stone quest which requires you to complete them.
  • Straight Gay: Armadyl, God of Liberty and Justice, had two husbands before the God Wars, and adopted two children with the first one.
  • Stupidity Is the Only Option: Several of the quests.
    • In the Priest in Peril quest, the player is forced to kill a magically enhanced dog guarding the well at the head of the River Salve, causing it to be tainted by dark mages and necessitating a corresponding cleanup effort, as well as making King Roald chew you out hard.
    • In the elf quest series, the player is forced to serve King Lathas for the first several quests; you eventually get to escape being a completely gullible moron, but not before (apparently) killing his brother Tyras.
    • The Myreque quest series starts with the player leading Vanstrom Klause straight into the resistance fighters' hideout without a hint of suspicion or identity-checking.
      • An even worse example comes up in the Old School-exclusive A Taste of Hope. After overhearing a conversation between vampyres about a creature that can track anyone after it gets a taste of their blood, you journey to a house with a puzzle, whose hint is "Blood is the price of victory". Despite the connection being obvious, you have no choice but to ask your companion, Safalaan, for blood, which later leads a monster to your hideout.
    • Bringing Home the Bacon, while mostly a fairly comedic quest, forces the player to poison a number of "bacon addicts" on Eli's orders before he proceeds to feed their remains to the pigs.
  • Subbing for Santa: In the quest "Missing, Presumed Death," a Token Human member of the Four Horsemen clan named Frank takes Death's place when the latter is kidnapped.
  • Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: Bard Roberts' "The Great Brain Robbery" shanty ends with the lines "Mi-Gor tried to stop your heart's pace / Your foe's arm part anchor, part mace / Struck without delay / But him ye did slay / made him look a total...[beat]...moron."
  • Sucksessor: As far as Zanmaron the Red and his apprentice Kelavarn are concerned, Wizard Ellaron is not worthy of claiming the title of Red Wizard.
  • Summon Bigger Fish: In Extinction, a Grandmaster quest concluding the Elder God Wars storyline, [[the player manages to summon a Shadow Leviathan from Erebus through Freneskae's Shadow Breach, getting its attention as Kerapac spends the last of the Needle's power. The creature manages to drag Jas down into Erebus with it.]]
  • Summoning Ritual:
    • Some of the quests include this. "Shadow of the Storm", for example.
    • Bilrach intends to do this to Zamorak.
    • The Ambassador intends to do this to Xau-Tak.
  • Summon Magic: The Summoning skill, which was originally intended to be a part of the magic skill before being split off. Old School has the Arceuus spellbook, which allows you to summon undead minions, instead.
  • Super Smoke: Vanstrom Klause turns into a cloud of mist in the final stage of the boss fight in the quest "The Branches of Darkmeyer."
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
    • The Ironfist Smithing animation ends in the player nursing a hand injury. What else did you expect after shaping red-hot metal by punching it?
    • If you wander into the desert without water, you'll start to dehydrate from thirst which will gradually kill the player character. Depending on your health though, this might not be so lethal. This no longer becomes an issue altogether once you complete "Crocodile Tears", which grants you permanent desert heat immunity as a reward, and thus omits the need for water and the enchanted water tiara.
  • Survivor's Guilt: In "Birthright of the Dwarves", you learn that Colonel Grimmson was plagued by his memories of slaughtering allies, civilian dwarves, and surrendering trolls at the Battle of Barendir, and was working for the Red Axe to have his guilt brainwashed away by their enslaved ogre shaman.
    • In Player-Owned Ports, The Exile escaped from a massacre and consequently has a bad case of this.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Whitezag to Grayzag.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial:
    • During Nomad's Requiem, when you fight Nomad he screams 'You cannot hide from my wrath!' when he shoots of an attack which always does 7500 damage. Guess what? He's lying. He uses this attack again in the rematch at the end of Nomad's Elegy. He even says the same phrase prior to using it!
    • From the 2010 Christmas event:
      Player: You look familiar. Have I seen you before?
      Santa Claus: No! I am the mighty Fremennik, Thorvar Crittersmash! I do not know anything about this "Santa" you speak of!
      Player: I didn't say anything about Santa.
      Santa Claus: Oh, you didn't? Good, because he's not here, and I'm certainly not him.
    • From "A Clockwork Syringe":
      A parcel consisting of:

      1x large and totally inconspicuous crate assured to not contain anything dangerous at all

      Has been delivered to your player-owned house.
  • Suspicious Video-Game Generosity:
    • Funny how Nex seems to have a bank set up right before her chamber, isn't it?
    • Or how Vorago is located a stone's throw away from a Lodestone and major respawn hub?
  • Swallowed Whole: Jones in "Deadliest Catch". He gets better.
  • Swamps Are Evil: There's a swamp just south of the starting town that's populated by goblins and giant rats, but they won't attack you; in fact, several quests involve locations in this swamp itself, including one of the beginner quests in the starting town itself. Once you progress farther, though, you encounter the land of Morytania, which is arguably one big swamp full of werewolves, the Vyrewatch, and other restless dead, all out to kill you. Special mention goes to the Mort Myre, though, which is full not only of spooky pools and acid-spitting snails, but also Ghasts, which are intangible and sneak up behind you to spoil the food you're carrying. If, by chance, you don't have any food or a particular plot item, they'll instead spoil your own flesh (i.e., your hitpoints).
  • Sweeping Ashes: Happens to Hazelmere once. Fatally.
  • Swiss-Army Tears: Any adventurer that drinks from the Tears of Guthix will improve in the area that he/she is weakest in, because Guthix is the god of balance. Their crystallized form, created through interaction with runestones, is responsible for the Ascension Creatures—as well as the Ascension Crossbow.
  • Swiss-Army Weapon:
    • The Sacred Clay weapons can transform between the three different combat styles, and the tools can transform between many useful tools like needles, fletching knives, hatchets, and butterfly nets.
    • Members also have access to the Dwarven Army Axe, which combines the functions of a hatchet, pickaxe, needle, tinderbox and chisel into one item. While nowhere near as good as a specialty pick or hatchet, being able to cram five tool into one inventory slot is very useful when traversing dangerous areas of the world that need those sort of tools to get around. This is no longer necessary thanks to the toolbelt feature, which stores most useful equipment without using any inventory space or adding to your weight.
    • The reforged Sunspear obtained during River of Blood, which you can switch at will between a spear, a javelin, and a staff. The Vanquish weapon, obtained by earning enough quest points, behaves the same way.
  • Suicide Attack:
    • Acidic spiders summoned by Araxxor use this as their main method of attack, which will almost certainly kill you instantly if you get hit.
    • The Menaphite chief god Tumeken did this to the entire Mahjarrat tribe after they joined Zaros. They were reduced from 500 to a few dozen.
  • Super Wool Growth: Sheep regrow their wool within a couple minutes after being sheared.

    T-V 
  • Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Melee beats Ranged beats Magic beats Melee. This is commonly referred to as the Combat Triangle.
    • Prior to the Evolution of Combat update, ranged and magic armor had little to no negative effects on melee combat, and with the perceived over-poweredness of melee had some players complaining the combat triangle was skewed towards melee.
    • At the same time, virtually all Player Killers in the Wilderness generally use either Ranged or Magic attacks, due to fast damage, mobility and hammering opponents from a distance instead of having to catch up and smack them with a sword — that, and the fact that budget Ranged and Magic gear is generally less expensive to replace if lost on death.
    • The "combat triangle" weapons (Hexhunter Bow, Terrasaur Maul, and Inquisitor Staff) exaggerate this, having the best base damage and accuracy in the entire game against enemies that primarily use the combat style they're strong against.
  • Tailor-Made Prison: Raksha is trapped in one of these, using a carefully regulated flow of shadow anima monitored by an enigmatic Keeper to keep it pacified and dormant. Zaros steals the battery that manages the flow, awakening Raksha (who quickly shatters his dragon-metal chains) and forcing the World Guardian to clean up.
  • Talk Like a Pirate: While some pirates mock players who speak in this manner, there are still a few who use this trope. There's even a book, in game, on pirate speak, explaining some of the terms.
  • Talking Weapon: One perk of the Invention skill is the ability to imbue your weapon with speech. Some of the personalities are humorous, some of them leave the disturbing implication that you are trapping actual souls of people in your blade.
  • Take That!: Some Jagex mods have shown that they don't like the recent turn towards microtransactions. Mod Ash had made a character say that she is "not some stupid goblin giving rewards for free", and when a player asks Mod Stu about finding a certain mysterious NPC:
    Player: Do the special conditions involve Solomon's General Store?
    Mod Stu: I'll answer that one for free: Heck no!
  • Take Your Time: Played straight, except for Shadow of the Storm (at a certain point, you'll take damage until you proceed).
  • Taking You with Me: Wizard Ellaron made it clear in "Rune Memories" that the tower was going to be destroyed, and made no attempt to escape himself, content to burn down with the tower to complete his masters' vengeance. When the fragments of the wizards of the old tower possess him instead, he accepts being the one to personally destroy the tower... only for the wizards to force him to teleport to the Abyss, where he will detonate without bringing harm to the tower.
  • Tap on the Head:
    • Citizens of Pollnivneach can be easily knocked out with blackjacks. Bizarrely, attempting to knock someone out with your bare fist gives the same message as trying to use any weapon besides a blackjack: "You need to find a different weapon. You want to knock him out, not kill him." Apparently, bare fists are deadlier than wooden clubs.
    • This is what happens to your character when you are transported or wish to go to places like Braindeath Island or "The Pit". Unfortunately, your character's Genre Blindness prevents them from catching on to the distraction tricks.
  • The Team Normal: The Horsemen of the Apocalypse wanted to start a clan called "The Horsemen", but War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death makes four...and you need five founders to start a clan. So they grabbed a random guy who happened to be nearby, and that's why The Horsemen is led by War, Famine, Pestilence, Death, and Frank.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: The Elder God Wars Dungeon. The forces of Saradomin, Armadyl, Zaros, Seren and Zamorak have come together to try to save Gielinor, but that doesn't mean they like each other. Zilyana hates the Temple Knights for turning on Saradomin, Nex's Praesul hate Zilyana and K'ril, Enakhra and Akthanakos still haven't stopped sniping at each other even while they're holding back the Arch-Glacor, and Armadyl, Saradomin and Zamorak spend a lot of time arguing. Zamorak eventually breaks the alliance, hoping to either force the other gods to come to a solution or die free if they can't. During Extinction, Seren ends up betraying the alliance when they suggest trying to kill the remaining Elder God eggs before they can hatch.
  • Temporal Paradox: Lampshaded in the Evil Dave part of "Recipe for Disaster", when you try to explain to Dave why you need to save him (he's in a time bubble).
  • Teleportation with Drawbacks: Warp Whistle Teleportation for the player comes in three flavours; teleportation spells, the Lodestone system, and enchanted items, each of which has its own upsides and downsides:
    • Teleportation spells work nearly instantly, and most towns and cities have an associated spell. The downside is that they require spending runes (and in at least one case, a secondary item) in order to use, which take up valuable inventory space when out in the field, and that several of the spells are locked to specific "spellbooks" which cannot be swapped between at will outside of specific areas, limiting what teleports are available at any given moment. Mostly averted if you have the Abyssal Link relic power, however, which makes teleportation spells cost no runes...at the cost of not gaining the negligible Magic XP teleportation spells usually grant.
    • Lodestones are free to use, don't require any sort of equipment or item to access, and most major towns and cities (albeit not as many as the aforementioned spells) are connected to the Lodestone networknote . However, they have a 17-second long casting time (in addition to needing complete concentration, meaning that, for instance, being attacked interrupts the teleport), and require the player to have previously physically interacted with the Lodestone on a previous visit to the destination. (Alternatively, you can spend Vis Wax to get a number of "quick teleports," up to a cap of 4000 uses.)
    • Enchanted items that provide teleportation typically allow quick access to specific points of interest, and can often be worn as jewelry instead of filling up an inventory slotnote . However, most of these items either have a limited number of uses before being destroyed, can only be used a few times per real-life day, teleport only to very specific locations, or have significant unlock requirements (such as quests and lengthy achievement lists, or requiring one of the most powerful gems in the game to craft) before they can be obtained.
  • Teleport Cloak: Several capes have teleports, notably the Dungeoneering, Slayer, and Master Quest skill capes in RS3.
  • Teleport Interdiction: There are all sorts of ways to block teleportation. The most obvious one is the "Teleblock" spell, which, when cast on another player, temporarily prevents them from teleporting. There's also some areas, notably the deep Wilderness and some boss arenas, where teleportation is either limited or completely disabled.
  • Temporary Online Content: Holiday item rewards, but every holiday event gives you the emote rewards from previous events. Early holiday items that can be traded such as the party hats are worth tens of billions of coins as a result, with the price always rising.
  • Terrible Trio: The Fairy Godfather, Slim Louise and Fat Rocco.
  • Terse Talker: Ocellus the Virius, The Raptor, and Jas.
  • Thanatos Gambit: A possible interpretation of Sliske's final plan in Sliske's Endgame is that he sought a sort of immortality by fusing with the player with the Staff of Armadyl—mortals have souls, Mahjarrat do not.
    • From Azzanadra's Quest, we learn: Guthix needed Sliske to kill him with the Staff of Armadyl as part of his plan to create the World Guardian—a living version of the Edicts of Guthix that would eventually grow more powerful still. Doing so transferred a substantial portion of his energy to Sliske...whose shadow magic would ultimately prove integral to completing the enchantment upon the World Guardian using the Staff on Sliske.
  • Theme-and-Variations Soundtrack: Themes for any agent of or event involving Zaros will inevitably sample "Zaros Stirs". The sole exception thus far is Nex's "Angel of Death" theme (but the Prelude version does use it), as well as "The Angel's Fury" in Old School.
  • Thieves' Guild: The Thieves' Guild in Lumbridge.
  • This Is Gonna Suck: Examining TzTok-Jad yields a discouraging “This is going to hurt…”
  • This Is My Human:
    • Bob the Cat has a pet human named Unferth. In the "A Tale of Two Cats" quest, Bob even asks the Player Character to look after Unferth while he's away.
    • The TzRek-Jad pet feels this way about its owner, in a rather adorable fashion.
      "Human pet, scratch my ears now; I command you!"
  • This Page Will Self-Destruct: A dossier from the White Knights did this in the former quest Black Knights' Fortress.
  • Those Two Guys: Ping and Pong, a pair of penguin bards who appear in the Penguin quest series.
  • The Three Trials: In the reworked version of the quest Demon Slayer, you have to complete the trials of Mind, Body and Faith to access the legendary sword Silverlight.
  • Thriving Ghost Town: All over the place.
  • Tile-Flipping Puzzle: One of the puzzles you can encounter in Dungeoneering is a 5x5 variation, where the tiles on the floor all have to be flipped to either green or yellow for doors to unlock. While flipping one tile will make up to four adjacent tiles around it flip in concert, players can force individual tiles to flip at the cost of some Life Points, as the magic of doing so causes a backlash.
  • Tilesweeper: The Vinesweeper minigame is essentially a more forgiving variation of Minesweeper. Players dig up patches of a farmer's field to learn how many seeds are buried in the adjacent tiles, but unlike the original Minesweeper, the goal is to place flags on the "mines" (in this case, buried potato seeds) instead of completely avoiding them, and instead of having to clear the entire boardnote  players are given reward points (which are traded for seeds that are used outside of the minigame) for every safe tile they dig up and for every "mine" they successfully flag. Points are deducted from the player's stockpile if they dig up a "mine", instead of losing the game, and a flag is lost (and needs to be bought back with coins) if a tile is incorrectly flagged.
  • Time Travel: Courtesy of the Meeting History quest, notably with the player character introducing the concept of Herblore to the Humans in the 1st Age!. note 
    • During The Light Within, using the same key from Making History and Meeting History, you go back in time and meet Guthix in person, to get information on how to properly restore Seren. It's heavily implied in a later piece of content (Memorial to Guthix) that going back in time in the first place is what not only informed Guthix of his impending death, but also inspired him to create a second World Guardian in the first place..
    • Happens again in "Back to the Freezer", when you complete a piece of prototype penguin technology that allows you to infiltrate and stop the penguins' latest plot. The entire quest is full of references to Doctor Who and Back to the Future. Once again, you create a Stable Time Loop, as you end up helping the penguins succeed with their mission so as not to ruin your own cover. Fortunately, your contact among the penguins was able to sabotage it because you warned him about it in the past.
    • The Elder Needle manipulates time, and is capable of creating these. In the Needle Skips, we learn that one character is the amnesiac result of binding another character to the Elder Needle as its guardian in order to save her life...and the quest ends with that character choosing to become the Needle's guardian.
    • Anachronia is an entire continent brought forward in time by Kerapac.
    • Used as a game mechanic in Kerapac's boss fight. The boss's second and third phases use the same mechanics as the first phase...except temporal echoes of the boss from the previous two phases appear, using the same abilities in the same places as the previous two phases. In hard mode, the player also has to deal with the boss summoning alternate timeline or past versions of the player the player has to protect...along with three temporal clones of the boss. The player, meanwhile, gets the Time Warp mechanic starting in Phase 2: they can call upon the Elder Needle using the splitting threads of time, setting a place to return to after 10 seconds with their health, cooldowns, and adrenaline set to what they were when activating the ability.
  • Timey-Wimey Ball:
    • The World Wakes opens a gigantic can of worms as all of the involved, "previous" quests are not requirements to it. Also, all of those quests, and The World Wakes itself, are now considered part of Runescape's past. What this means is, all future content will assume the events of those quests have already happened (or, in the case of Fifth Age quests, are a foregone conclusion), even for players who haven't completed them.
    • The 200th quest, Dimension of Disaster, takes it even further, revisiting Retconned aspects of quests and even Lampshading the changes, with Aris noting that you have defeated Delrith multiple times in different ways.
    • The city of Menaphos is the most egregious example yet of this. The city and everyone in it are part of the sixth age but the quests about saving the city are in the fifth age. So you are helping save people who have already been saved and their timeline only flashbacks during the instance they are needed, taking Timey Wimey Ball to outright Mind Screw levels. It doesn't help that a new player can just enter the city whenever they want while the plot a questline of far higher difficultly level was about breaking into the city, in defiance of almost literally every other questline in the game works.
    • The Elder Needle, being able to manipulate time, has elements of this. It gives Kerapac absolutely absurd powers over time, but doesn't seem to let him skip ahead to the end of his plot despite being able to call forth an entire island from a specific point in the past.
      • In his boss fight, Kerapac *does* use time as a weapon, summoning time duplicates of his past phases for phases 2 and 3...except the player also has some command over the threads of time in this encounter, being able to use them to warp back to where they were ten seconds ago, with cooldowns, adrenaline, and health reset to what they were at the time.
    • Kerapac ultimately ends up breaking the Needle through overuse after using Loophole Abuse to buy time for the player to find a solution in the Freneskae Shadow Breach to Jas being out to kill them all. Its fragments can still locally slow time when placed correctly, though.
    • This seems to be the case for recent quests. Presently justified by a desire to avoid Continuity Lockout.
    • In the Extinction quest, the finale of the Elder God questline, the World Guardian permanently deals with all of the bosses in Sennisten, with the exception of Zuk, who is eliminated by Armadyl and Saradomin. Despite this, you can fight them after the quest is completed.
  • Title Drop: Quite commonly in quests.
  • Tomboy and Girly Girl: Korasi and Jessika in the Void Knight quests.
  • Too Dumb to Live: Char during Battle Of The Monolith: Sure, use a power-amplifying artefact while standing next to an Elder Artefact that you've been told is actually a portal to a deadly shadow world. What did she think was going to happen? And since she's now in Erebus and the portal's closed, she's likely either dead or corrupted by Shadow Anima.
  • Took a Level in Badass: Many examples, exhibited in quest NPCs and monsters alike.
    • Philipe Carnillean in the quest Carnillean Rising, who goes from spoiled brat to being a respectable swordsman by the quest's end. After the quest, he goes journeying around Gielinor, and gets stronger every time you find him. According to Once Upon a Time in Gielinor: Finale, he'll grow into an adventurer in his own right, helping push back the Teragardian Crusade.
    • Give enough good advice to Meg in Ports, and she will start unlocking harder adventures and even join the Champions' Guild. She travels from Lumbridge to Morytania, and ultimately starts her own battle against the vampyres of Darkmeyer. According to Once Upon a Time in Gielinor: Finale, she'll grow into an adventurer in her own right, helping the Grey Knights on a mission to infiltrate the Black Knights' Fortress.
    • The followers whom you escort in the Temple Trekking/Burgh de Rott minigame gradually show signs of this as you level them up. In particular is Dean Vellio, who goes from rune armour and a dragon longsword at level 1, to Bandos armour and an abyssal whip at level 99.
    • Gnomes, both at the Gnome Stronghold and the Khazard Battlefield. Before the launch of the Evolution of Combat, they were level 1 monsters that would often be killed in one hit by just about anything. Nowadays, their combat levels are in the 40s and, while not overly dangerous, they can more than fend for themselves - this is most evident at the Khazard Battlefield, where they can be seen regularly putting up strong fights against the soldiers who used to curbstomp them left and right.
    • Deadly Red Spiders. Before the EoC launch, they were only medium-low levelled monsters at just level 34. Now, at level 95, they are some of the more dangerous foes in the game for low levels, and one of the strongest in the free-to-play game, truly living up to their namesake.
    • Many of the low-leveled monsters in the God Wars Dungeon also Took a Level in Badass with the EoC update. Most notable are the goblins, hobgoblins, and fiends, who went from having combat levels in the low to mid teens pre-EoC, right to the 80s and 90s like the rest of the monsters in the dungeon.
    • The buff of the bandits in the Wilderness Bandit Camp is the one of the most recent examples, and probably the most extreme. The update increased their level from 18 to 118 with 50,000 life points. The three leaders in particular became Bosses in Mook Clothing, jumping all the way to level 138 and 100,000 LP, and gave them matching weapons to boot. On top of that, everyone in the camp can attack with all 3 styles, use abilities in combat, and will Zerg Rush anyone that dares to enter their camp without a PK skull. And yes, they can even do all of this in free-to-play.
  • Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth: In "Deadliest Catch", Thalassus spits Jones out after swallowing him whole when the Player Character feeds it some karambwan.
  • Tornado Move: Players may cast the spell "Storm of Armadyl" to conjure a tornado, which counts as a powerful air attack. There is also its weaker version "Divine Storm". The Armadyl god book will sometimes randomly summon a tornado over your current target while active. Kree'arra, the Armadylean general of the first God Wars Dungeon, also does this for some of his attacks.
  • Torture for Fun and Information: When you torture a severed zombie pirate head in "A Clockwork Syringe", your character appears to have a lot of fun figuring out creative methods.
  • Total Eclipse of the Plot: Sliske announces that he will hand the Stone of Jas to the being to kill the most gods when Gielinor's moon, Zanaris, blocks out the sun.
  • Touched by Vorlons: There are two known ways for a mortal to ascend to godhood: kill an existing god, or linger around artefacts created by the Elder Gods, thereby absorbing the magic they radiate.
  • Trailers Always Spoil: The quest "Hero's Welcome" initially focuses on the return of the Fremmenik hero-god V, before a Halfway Plot Switch changes the focus to pursuing the former dragonkin Tarshak. The release banner for the quest, however, prominently stated "Discover secrets of the dragonkin!", which somewhat ruined the twist.
    • Similarly, release ads for "Kindred Spirits" blurted out the creation of a new Barrows Wight and some even call the newcomer the "Barrows Sister".
  • Training Dummy: War's Retreat has training dummies for practicing combat, checking maximum hits, etc. The Thieves' Guild has a pickpocket training dummy. Combat training dummies in all three styles can be acquired from Treasure Hunter, as well as dummies for training Slayer (looks like a Ripper demon), Thieving (looks like one of Taverley's pompous merchants), Agility, and Hunter; unlike the stationary ones, the difficulty for these will scale to the level of the player setting them up. Invention lets you create a Combat Dummy Mk II, which can be used to build up adrenaline before a major fight or be used as a target for area of effect attacks/abilities.
  • Tranquillizer Dart: In the quest "A Clockwork Syringe", if you're spotted during a Stealth-Based Mission, a dart will be thrown at you, the screen will turn black, and you'll wake up unharmed in an unguarded jail cell which can be easily escaped.
  • Traveling-Pipe Bulge: Seen in the KGP Abduction home teleport animation when the player is sucked through the penguins' transport tube.
  • Treacherous Quest Giver: Happens very frequently.
    • "Regicide" has King Lathas send you to assassinate his evil brother King Tyras. After completing the assassination, it turns out that King Lathas is the real villain and all the stuff you heard about King Tyras being evil was lies. Players should have already figured this out because you never actually see King Tyras, and in a previous quest you find out that the plague affecting half of the capital is a hoax and King Lathas's explanation for why he created the fake plague was very weak and didn't explain what really happened to the people who supposedly died of the plague.
    • "Icthlarin's Little Helper" has the quest giver, who turns out to be the evil goddess Amascut, mind control the player character into robbing a tomb for her.
    • "Smoking Kills" has a strange woman named Sumona sends you on a quest to rescue her sister, Jesmona, from a dangerous dungeon. It turns out the Sumona and Jesmona are both Amascut in disguise and trying to get you killed. She still rewards you for completing the quest though.
    • "Temple of Ikov" has a strange man named Lucien send you on a quest to retrieve the staff of Armadyl. When you get to where the staff is kept and the guards explain that Lucien is a villain, you can choose to either turn on Lucien, or steal the staff for him anyway.
    • Part of the way through "Legends' Quest" a ghost asks you to kill an undead wizard that he claims is holding him prisoner. The ghost is pretty obviously the demon you have been fighting in disguise. You can choose to follow his instructions, which makes the following boss battles with the demon more difficult, or you can go back through the dungeon to get help from another NPC to reveal the demon's true form, which takes longer and requires you to make the payment to get into the deeper level of the dungeon a second time.
    • "Devious Minds" has a mysterious monk ask the player to make a special weapon for him and then smuggle a strange orb onto the holy island of Entrana, which he says is a surprise for the monks there. It turns out the guy is an assassin who uses the orb to teleport to Entrana, where he kills a bunch of the monks using the weapon you made and steals a relic from them. Although a later quest reveals he was actually working for an ally of the player.
    • "What Lies Below" has the wizard Surok Magis ask you to create a special wand which he says he will use to make gold. It turns out he is planning to use it to control King Roald's mind. The player should have figured out something was suspicious because he also gives the players directions on how to find a secret tunnel controlled by a Zamorakian Cult to reach the alter where the wand is made more easily.
    • "Rag and Bone Man" and "Fur 'n Seek" have an Odd Old Man carrying around a suspicious sack he sometimes talks to ask the player to collect bones and other items which he claims are for a museum. If you complete both quests and collect every bone and other items he requests, it turns out he is actually being mind controlled by a undead monster skull he carrying in his sack which is using him to collect bones to assemble a new body for itself.
    • "Kennith's Concerns" has a little boy named Kennith ask you to investigate what the slug-possessed villagers are up to but then strangely loses interest. It eventually turns out that Kennith has terrifying psychic powers and is using them to make the slug-possessed villagers do what he wants, all just so that he can get revenge on a girl for losing his favorite toy.
    • "Kindred Spirits" starts with Linza asking you to investigate some disappearances and suggests you ask Relomia, the emissary of the Big Bad Sliske. Relomia leads you into a trap by claiming Sliske has been kidnapped too. Sliske then puts the player and his other prisoners through a series of sadistic games. In the end it turns out Linza was also working for Sliske in exchange for protection.
    • "In Search of Myreque" has a mysterious man named Vanstrom Klause ask you to deliver weapons to a group of rebels fighting to free the nation of Morytania from its vampyre rulers. It turns out Vanstrom is a vampyre using you to find the rebels.
    • Parodied in "The Lost Toys" miniquest, which has a strange boy ask you to find several vampyre plush toys scattered all over Morytania. After returning all of the toys, he reveals he is a vampyre lord and the player character sarcastically pretends to be surprised. It should have been obvious since you meet him in the same bar as Vanstrom. The vampyre lord claims he has good intentions for collecting the toys, though the player character doesn't believe him.
    • "The General's Shadow" miniquest has the villain General Khazard send the player character, who is in disguise and not recognized by Khazard, on a quest to collect reports from his scouts. After doing this he sends you into a cave to get your reward and you get attacked by the ghost of his pet hellhound that you previously killed. It turns out Khazard recognized who you were the whole time and was trying to get you killed.
    • "Desperate Times" has the player helping the Kerapac take control of a time manipulating artifact as part of a plan to stop the rebirth of the elder gods. The player finds out too late that he intends to sacrifice the entire planet to kill the elder gods.
    • The developers must really like this trope. "Azzanadra's Quest" has Azzanadra send you along with his agent Trindine to look for clues about the location of the elder god's eggs. After finding the elder god eggs a strange voice in the player's head points out that Azzanadra found the location without the player's help and that it is suspicious that he sent you to a lot of dead ends with Trindine. It turns out Trindine was actually secretly looking for information about Saradomin's crown, and had used you to summon Saradomin back to Gielinor to steal the crown from him. When the player confronts Azzanadra and Trindine about manipulating them they can even Lampshade this trope.
  • T. Rexpy: Rex dinosaurs on Anachronia have the basic body plan of a T-Rex, though they also have other features depending on what specific type they are. Raksha and the Rex Matriarchs, being bosses modified from Rex dinosaurs (whether by exposure to concentrated Shadow Anima or by Kerapac's experimentation, respectively), also qualify for this trope.
  • Trial-and-Error Gameplay:
    • Underground Pass has a rather sadistic version of this, where you have to guess which panels are safe for you to walk on, and which aren't. You take 150 damage for each wrong guess, and the path is different for each person. And you have to pass through at least once or twice more before unlocking the shortcut. Hope you remember the correct path.
    • Dream Mentor has a similar version, except that you don't take damage when you fail. Here, the intent is to teach the message: "it's okay to try and fail sometimes".
    • Dungeoneering has a similar puzzle where you have to guess the correct path through 3 rows of spikes, which deal significant damage every time you hit them. Good thing the spikes have an Investigate option to help mitigate the problem...or you could just tank them.
  • Triumphant Reprise:
    • "But We Can Fight" to "Zanik's Theme"
    • "On The Up" to "Down and Out".
    • "Elven Elite" (The Max Guild theme) to "The Duke" (the theme that plays on the second and third floors of Lumbridge Castle).
    • "Arise Legend" to "Arise Hero".
    • "Outer Consciousness" to "Forgotten City Orthen".
  • Troll:
    • The baby troll pet was basically a pun on this. You can feed your baby troll an item, which it will then be named after. All pets have a pickup option, identical in spelling to the pickup item option. The pickup option was originally visible to all players, even those who didn't own the pet, though the option wouldn't do anything for them. Thus, you could feed your pet troll an expensive item and then "troll" people who tried to pick it up.
    • Sliske's fan club is basically a cult of crazy people dedicated to this. Sliske himself also qualifies.
    • Inevitably, the actual player base will have jerks among it, who will trouble other players not for any practical benefit, but just because they can.
  • True Sight: The ring of visibility allows players to see certain ghosts. The player can later gain the ability to see such things without the ring.
  • Turns Red: Some of the quest bosses; Nomad, for example. Also inverted with a couple bosses, such as the Skeletal Horror.
  • 20 Bear Asses: A few of the earlier quests. However, the developers realized how formulaic it was, and created a formula for making them. Hence—the Slayer skill.
  • Two Halves Make a Plot: There are a few.
    • The Shield of Arrav quest.
    • The crystal key (which can be used to obtain treasure from a chest) is usually dropped in halves. Averted to some extent by many recent bosses, which drop keys directly.
      • Triskelion keys and Tetracompasses, their successor item, are made using 3 and 4 pieces, respectively. Triskelion keys can be used to obtain loot from a hidden area south of the Fremmenik Slayer Cave, while Tetracompasses point to various locations where caskets containing Archaeology loot can be found.
  • Überwald: Morytania.
  • Ugly Cute: Sneakerpeepers, In-Universe. Their examine text is "Isn't it abhorable?"
  • Ultimate Blacksmith: Thurgo and Linza. This is also the hat of the Imcando Dwarves in general, Thurgo included.
  • Uncommon Time: Rammernaut's and Dreadnaut's theme.
  • Underdogs Never Lose:
  • The Unfought: The Mother Mallum and Lucien.
  • Unidentified Items:
    • The game used to have unidentified herbs which could only be identified with the proper Herblore level. This feature was patched away in 2007 because some players were abusing it in scams, offering the herbs in trades and claiming them to be more valuable than they really were.
    • Nitroglycerin, a quest item, is labeled "Unidentified liquid" until you bring it to an archaeologist who can tell you what it is (and scream at you not to drop it).
  • Unique Enemy: Has its own page
  • Un-person: Both Saradominists and Zamorakians tried (some try to this day) to erase the knowledge of Zaros' existence from the face of Gielinor.
  • Unstable Equilibrium: In the Agility Arena, one trap shoots poisoned darts at you that reduce your Agility skill. If you get hit by them, you're probably gonna keep getting hit.
  • Urban Segregation: Varrock, Ardougne, Menaphos, and Keldagrim. To some extent, Darkmeyer and Meiyerditch. Prifddinas has eight divisions, each inherited by a different, specialized elven clan.
  • Useless Accessory: Among the myriad of armor and weapons, several pieces of equipment offer no stat bonuses whatsoever, such as the Brass Necklace and Cyclopean Helmet, relegated to only serving cosmetic purposes.
  • Vader Breath: Mi-Gor, who coughs when he speaks.
  • Vampires Hate Garlic: Used in two quests: Vampire Slayer, in which holding garlic in your inventory weakens the vampire so he can be slain, and Fishing Contest, in which using garlic in a certain place will chase a vampire away from an ideal fishing spot that he is occupying. Its use is averted in the Vampyre quest series proper, though.
  • Vengeance Feels Empty: Defied by Kerapac, as his echo notes after he and Jas are dragged into Erebus by the Shadow Leviathan.
    Kerapac: It is done. For millennia my people have suffered in chains at Jas' whim. They were bound to her stone and forced to endure unending agony for every moment that someone other than her borrowed its power. Now, she is gone. At my hand. I am a scientist, a being of calm logic and reason. but I confess that vengeance has burned in my heart ever since she destroyed our cities and inflicted us with her vile curse. Some claim that revenge solves nothing and leaves you hollow and empty, but they are lying. I have never known a greater feeling of satisfaction.
  • Vicious Cycle: The Runescape universe revolves around the life cycle of the Elder Gods. The Elder Gods start off by practising their skill at creating perfect worlds for generating Anima. Eventually, Elder Gods are born from eggs on the final, perfect world, and drink its Anima Mundi dry. All existing worlds save the perfect one end up destroyed and the cycle begins anew. The Elder Gods are largely oblivious to the existence of sentient life, and only those who hide in the Abyss ever survive. Zaros claims his main goal is to put an end to this cycle, by ascending into Elder God status so that he can petition them on behalf of sentient life and open their eyes to its existence and value.
    • The cycle is paused by hatching the eggs on Iaia, a non-perfect world nonetheless destroyed by the eggs' first meal. Notably, due to Iaia's imperfect anima, the three reborn Elder Godlings lack the strength to continue the cycle, instead remaining with Seren on Iaia's husk.
  • Video Game Caring Potential: Most of the player character's interactions with Zanik in the Dorgeshuun questline, especially in the last couple quests.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential:
    • With the Burthorpe/Taverley regional update came a new pet, the Baby Troll, which (like the rest of its race) gets its name from the first thing it eats or attempts to eat. Yes, you can feed it a pet.
    • The 2012 Easter event asked the player to aid either the Evil Chicken or the Chocatrice in breaking Easter eggs across the land and converting the chicks inside to either chocolate or drumsticks.
  • Video Game Cruelty Punishment:
    • Killing or thieving from your subjects in Miscellania will result in your approval rating dropping. It's a downplayed example, though, as you can just help them out and they'll forget it even happened.
    • At the end of "Sliske's Endgame", you can actually taunt the Elder God Jas. She won't take it very well, and will proceed to smite you instantly.
  • Video Game Stealing: The Thieving skill.
  • Vigilante Execution: Zanik in the beginning of "The Chosen Commander", after the Dorgeshuun elders allow a poisoner to live.
  • Villainous Rescue: At the end of 'Ritual of the Mahjarrat', the ritual is carried out, and it magnifies Lucien's power so greatly that not even Azzanadra can harm him. Then the dragonkin arrive...
  • Villain World: The 200th quest, Dimension of Disaster, takes place in an Alternate Universe where the Player Character never existed. Without The Chosen One to intervene, all of the villains either won, or only were only stopped by other villains. Nearly all of Gielinor's heroes are dead and the surviving ones have crossed the Despair Event Horizon. Zemouregal is the strongest villain in Gielinor and has killed most of Varrock's populace, raising them as The Undead. The Dwarves are the only force for good left in Asgarnia, and they have become so desperate that they have started begging for help from other worlds and have been forced to resort to vile means to survive.
  • Violation of Common Sense: There's an achievement for using the Asphyxiate ability on Yakamaru at the north pool, triggering its counterattack ability.
  • Visible Silence: Parodied in one quest.
  • Visual Pun: You can build a literal gold sink in Old School. Its price tag? 100 million coins.
  • Vortex Barrier: The island of Anachronia is surrounded by a fierce, unending magical storm that, prior to an in-game event where players helped to build a specialized ship designed to survive the storm, made travel to the island nearly impossible.note 
  • Vulnerable Civilians: Depending on how powerful your character is, it can be easier to kill civilians than talking to them, since you have to right-click to talk to them, but the default left-click option is to attack. Fixed with the NXT engine; the left-click option is now to talk to them.

    W-Z 
  • War for Fun and Profit: Most of 'Royal Trouble'.
  • Wake-Up Call Boss: For aspiring Old School PvMers, you have Sarachnis. She's a mid-level boss, yet she swaps between Melee and Ranged regularly, and will heal very quickly if you don't adjust your prayer to match. Furthermore, she also summons minions when she gets to certain health thresholds. She's the first boss where the "gear up + boost + pray + eat" strategy won't work, and she will wax you if you try.
  • Walk It Off: But you'll be doing that for a long while, directly proportionate to your max Hit Points.
  • Walking Shirtless Scene: The Godless tend to wear very light clothing. Holstein wears almost nothing on his torso but a shoulder pad and a sash. Kara-Meir is even complete with a Chainmail Bikini. Word of God says that their clothing is light to imply guerilla warfare. Brassica Prime and Marimbo make fun of Holstein's outfit, with Brassica treating him like a homeless person and Marimbo mockingly flirting with him.
  • Warp Whistle: There's a huge variety of items and spells that can be used to teleport yourself to different places around the map. This is heavily exploited by people who grind Clue Scrolls, who will often fill their inventory with a variety of these to get to the various places clues can take you.
  • Weaksauce Weakness:
    • According to Postbag From The Hedge, TzTok-Jad (enormous boss monster capable of killing players with one attack) is allergic to chickens.
    • Thok of Daemonheim is deathly afraid of ferrets. During the "Thok Your Block Off" saga, the only impassable boss monster is the completely mundane ferret-chasing puzzle. In Player-Owned Ports, he tries to commission Meg to defeat the terrible Ferret Of Doom for him.
  • Weapon of X-Slaying: A number of variants are present, along with some armors and accessories that act as this through damage bonuses.
    • The "combat triangle" weapons combine this with Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors, offering best in slot damage and accuracy against enemies of the class their style is strong against:
      • Inquisitor Staff: Staff of Melee-User Slaying
      • Hexhunter Bow (and the OSRS Twisted Bow): Bow of Magic-User Slaying
      • Terrasaur Maul: Maul of Range-User Slaying
    • Blisterwood weaponry (especially the Sunspear) and the Ivandis Flail are Weapons of Vampyre Slaying.
    • Silverlight and its variants (Darklight and the Old School-exclusive Arclight) are the Sword of Demon Slaying. Demon Slayer armor (which increases damage against demons) is the Ranged Armor of Demon Slaying, with the associated Demon Slayer Crossbow being the Crossbow of Demon Slaying.
    • Keris is the Dagger of Kalphite Slaying, upgradeable in OSRS to the Keris Partisan (Spear of Kalphite Slaying).
    • The Salve Amulet and its enchanted variant, which increase damage to undead (Amulet of Undead Slaying).
    • Old School has the dragon hunter crossbow and lance, which, unsurprisingly, are Weapons of Dragon Slaying.
    • Bane weapons and ammunition can be attuned to a few different enemy types, such as dragons, abyssal demons, and basilisks, giving them damage and accuracy boosts against the enemy type in question. In lore, Balmung is a Bane weapon attuned to Dagannoths.
    • Any weapon or armor can be given this effect against certain enemy types if you have the right Invention perk (Dragon Slayer/Demon Slayer/Undead Slayer). Genocidal is a perk that increases your damage to your current Slayer target.
  • We Buy Anything: General stores usually buy any tradeable items from you.
  • We Need a Distraction: Done as part of the Heartstealer quest, where the player and master thief Caelyn Kadaan have to find a way to disrupt a gala at the Varrock Museum in order to distract the guards guarding the museum's basement. The Drunken Dwarf offers to provide a distraction if you obtain four drink tokens, since everyone's normally limited to one.
  • Weird Currency: The world's primary currency is gold coins, but many others exist, a few of which are rather unusual.
    • The currency used by animal farmers is beans. Lampshaded by a yak buyer, who was expecting to pay in gold, and by the currency's own description, which notes that animal farmers "trade in these for some reason".
    • The Tz'haar use Tokkul, a special form of obsidian left behind when they die. When they learn that their dead ancestors are still conscious in the Tokkul, suffering And I Must Scream, they gradually move towards ending the practice and encourage people to donate their Tokkul so that it can be dumped into the Elder Kiln from which they were once made.
    • Many minigames have their own currencies—usually a form of generic "points." Thaler is a cross-minigame currency that lets you buy certain items without having to play the exact minigames they originate from.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: Humans Against Monsters. Many of them have lost family to monsters and seek to protect their loved ones, but their definition of "monster" includes the entirely peaceful cave goblins.
    • Kerapac is also one, being willing to destroy all life on Gielinor if it means the Elder God eggs never hatch.
  • Wham Episode:
    • Grandmaster-level quests in general, but special mention goes to "While Guthix Sleeps", "Ritual of the Mahjarrat", "The World Wakes", "Fate of the Gods", "Children of Mah", and "Sliske's Endgame."
      • The World Wakes has some wham that's hard to top. Guthix is dead. The gods are coming back. Sliske may be ascending as Zamorak once did. And the only thing standing between the world and the next god wars is the player, who has been granted the ability to resist the power of gods in Guthix's dying moments.
    • Some Master-level quests get this as well, particularly "The Temple at Senntisten" with the return of Zaros.
    • Even the novice "Missing, Presumed Death" is quite whammy, where it's revealed that Sliske has obtained the Stone of Jas, kidnapped Death and a Dragonkin, and is hosting a contest between the gods with the Stone of Jas as its prize.
    • The Archaeology mystery and mini-quest "The Vault of Shadows" is one- at the end, it's revealed that one of the Zarosian Mahjarrat, Trindine, hid herself in the Shadow Realm when Kharid-et fell. The player retrieves her, bringing another Mahjarrat back.
    • "Desperate Measures" is a big one: The player and friends manage to stop Kerapac, but only by rebinding him and a previously-unknown faction of the Dragonkin to Jas. And while Kerapac's goals were prevented, the Elder Gods are awake- and Ful manifests in the Anachronia volcano and rips it apart in her rage. There's also the bit where the player's World Guardian abilities are caused by something called 'shadow anima', which seems to be toxic to normal anima.
    • For a miniquest, "Raksha, the Shadow Colossus" has a couple. Not only has Zaros let the Raksha loose and left the player to kill it, but it's revealed that the mysterious monolith is actually an Elder Artifact, the Codex, and the Dragonkin hunter Varanus never died, but was kept in stasis by Kerapac to maintain the Raksha's prison.
    • "Azzanadra's Quest": We've found the Elder Halls on Gielinor, the World Guardian enchantment was Guthix's way of creating a form of the Edicts of Guthix that didn't require his constant maintenance and could live on past his death (and Guthix deliberately led Sliske to kill him in order to make Sliske into a living catalyst for the World Guardian enchantment), Senntisten was built around the Codex, and Zaros has Saradomin's crown and plans for the Codex and Senntisten that are rapidly coming into fruition.
    • Following from Azzanadra's Quest is the miniquest Battle Of The Monolith: the Codex wasn't originally meant to be a store of information, it's a patch over a crack in reality that leads to a world of shadow monsters. Zaros goes in to find something he wants there, leaving the Zarosians, Saradominists, Serenists, Guthixians and TokHaar to fight off endless waves of shadow monsters... but the monsters are too much. Char is pulled into Erebus and may be dead. Azzanadra manages to close the portal, but Zaros and Char are stuck in Erebus (if the latter's even still alive) without a way back, and the backlash from closing the portal turns Azzanadra into a god. The TokHaar turn on the others for the destruction they've caused and become enemies, and worst of all, the release of shadow anima has triggered the imminent hatching of the Elder God eggs.
    • And in City of Senntisten, we turn against the Elder Gods, teleporting their eggs to a hidden, fortified cathedral deep in the ancient city of Senntisten in order to drain them of anima, before an image of Kerapac (now forcibly bound by Jas) announces that the army of Nodon she enslaved back in Desperate Measures is on their way to reclaim the eggs. The Elder God Wars have begun.
    • Despite being a miniquest, Eye of Het sees Zamorak destroy the one item that could have enabled the defenders at Senntisten to hold out indefinitely, call out Seren for not having any other real plan besides stalling forever, and leave, noting he'd rather die free than eternally be stuck at Senntisten with no hope of true victory. Without him helping siphon the anima from the Elder Gods' eggs, the eggs' hatching is inevitable.
    • Extinction, the first Grandmaster quest in over 5 years after Sliske's Endgame, concludes the Elder God Wars storyline. Seren betrays everyone and takes the eggs when it's proposed that the eggs be destroyed, Jas has been carried into Erebus by a Shadow Leviathan, with Kerapac being pulled in with her, Iaia has been destroyed by the Elder eggs hatching there, but (thanks to hatching on an imperfect planet that isn't Gielinor) are too weak to leave with Seren remaining to take care of them, and the Elder God Wars are over, with a freshly-empowered Saradomin and Armadyl curb stomping the remaining forces now that they no longer have to focus on the eggs. Zamorak also has renewed designs on Gielinor, designs that we stand in the way of.
    • Old School has A Kingdom Divided. The Council of Kourend is irreparably corrupt, and is working with Xamphur, one of Xeric's lieutenants, to keep Rose, the rightful heir to the throne of Kourend, locked up and hidden away. Xamphur is defeated and driven off, but Rose has been turned into an Empty Shell, meaning the line of succession is broken. The Five Houses of Kourend are persuaded to remove the Council and appoint Lord Kandur Hosidius as King of Kourend, only for him to be killed at his coronation by the same assassins that have been hounding you during the quest.
    • Twilight of the Gods and the sequel miniquest Aftermath: With all other threats out of the way, Zamorak stands posed to conquer Gielinor with his demonic legions with the other Gods only barely managing to hold them off. In order to stop him, the Gods and the World Guardian decide to re-establish the Edicts of Guthix. However, due to the ritual being channeled through the inexperienced World Guardian, the new Edicts will banish all the Gods permanently, which the Gods end up agreeing to if only to stop Zamorak. The ritual also removes the World Guardian powers as a cost, reducing them back into a normal human.
  • Wham Line: Oh, so many...
    • Way back in the day when the Ghostly Robes miniquest was first released, the final line was quite whammy:
    Player: But WHO was this 'Empty Lord'? WHAT was his NAME?
    General Viggora: You do not know? You have not guessed yet? He was Zaros.
    • As you battle the Dark Lord during Plague's End, it starts to talk about its past, and its association with the elves. Then you get the line that makes it all clear:
    Dark Lord: It was Seren! It was I!
    • Speaking of Plague's End, there's also the line: "large-scale conversion of quasi-elf resources into necromantic power". What's that mean? Kill everyone in West Ardougne.
    • "Old School"'s Song of the Elves has one during the first confrontation with Lord Iorwerth, telling players familiar with RuneScape that this is not going to be a re-hashing of Plague's End.
    Lord Iorwerth: I have no more love for Zamorak than you do. I've only ever served one god, the same one as you, Seren.
    Zanik: Shut up, [Player]! You're next!
  • Whatevermancy:
    • The Culinaromancer, a mage who draws his power from food.
    • Lexicus Runewright, who is referred to as a Libaromancer (i.e., using books as his power) by another adventurer's Apocalyptic Log. Also, hobgoblin geomancer.
    • The Oneiromancer. Given the nature of her abilities, it would seem likely that her title fits best to the suffix -mancy.
    • Wizard Mizgog, who mentions that he's working on Beadromancy during the 3rd Cryptic Clue Fest.
  • What Measure Is a Mook?: Used in the Vengeance! saga, to an extremely depressing effect— players are put in control of a Forgotten Warrior who's almost killed by adventurers in Daemonheim, and she has to make her way through the dungeon, seeing visions of her dead brother, and choosing how to take revenge on the adventurers that slaughterd her people. This warrior ends up taking up the name Vengeance and working for Blirach during the Zamorakian Civil War, though it's revealed in the Remains of the Necrolord quest that this is actually a phantom of some form, and the actual Vengeance died during the events of the saga.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?:
    • Akrisae the Doomed, a major Kick the Dog moment for Sliske, plays no role whatsoever during the remainder of Sliskes's Countdown.note  This was rectified in an update which added quest replayability for "Sliske's Endgame", slightly over a year after the quest was initially released.
    • What becomes of the Staff of Armadyl after the events of "Sliske's Endgame" is not explained by the quest itself; it was last seen in the hands of the player character, who used it to skewer Sliske to death. (Kerapac eventually picked it up, as seen by his boss fight in the Elder God Wars Dungeon.)
    • In Runescape 3, several questlines have just fallen by the wayside over the years; the gnome quests haven't seen an update since 2011, while Mazcab had all of one quest set on it with absolutely zero follow-up.
  • What the Hell, Hero?:
    • The player calls out Xenia after the quest 'The Blood Pact' when it's revealed that Xenia was faking being injured and used the rescue mission to test the player, putting Ilona's life at stake in the process. The player is not amused. The same happens after 'Carnillean Rising' when it turns out Xenia set up the mother wolf's attack.
    • If your decisions in "The Mighty Fall" included siding with the Bandos followers and killing Zanik, she's quite furious with you in "Nomad's Elegy".
  • When Trees Attack:
    • Ents (before they were discontinued), evil trees, undead trees, tree spirits in the Enchanted Valley, Bulbous Crawlers, Vinecrawlers, and the Jade Vine if left too long untrimmed. Ironically, the latter were almost driven to extinction because of the amount of slayer experience they give upon death.
    • Solak is a gigantic version of this, though he's not the one in control when you fight him....
  • "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: After completing "Plague's End," you can check up on your old allies from throughout the series and learn what they plan on doing with the Mourners and Dark Elves gone:
    • General Hining decides to stay in Tirannwn, with the blessing of both the Ardougne and Prifddinas governments.
    • The Catapult Guard manages to convince Hining to let him keep his beloved catapult, even though the war's over.
    • Elena plans to travel to Prifddinas to learn the ways of Elven science.
    • Jethick is annoyed by the sudden influx of people to West Ardougne, making him almost miss the plague.
    • Dr. Orbon is ashamed of himself that with all his medical knowledge, he couldn't tell the plague was fake.
    • The Rehnisons tell the story of the Revolution to their children. Ted has apparently told them he, not you, was the leader.
    • Nurse Sarah continues tirelessly at her work, since even though there was no plague, West Ardougne is still an unsanitary slum with a lot of actual sick people.
    • Farmer Brumty mourns his beloved sheep, lamenting the fact that they were killed (by you) to uphold King Lathas's lies.
    • Koftik, the Underground Pass guide, is attempting to open the dungeon up as a tourist attraction. Unsurprisingly, there have been few takers.
    • Omart and Kilron finally take down the rope ladder that was your only way into West Ardougne so long ago.
    • Bravek resolves to kick alcohol and redouble his efforts at running the city, now that he no longer has anything to hide.
    • And the Recruiter keeps on trying to gather conscripts for the new king's army. He still gets pelted with vegetables because the citizens are sick of kings and war, period.
  • White Void Room: The White Hole, which the player visits during the Gower Quest.
  • Who Dares?:
    • Yk'Lagor the Thunderous: "YOU DARE STEAL MY POWER?"
    • Kal'Ger the Warmonger : "YOU DARE FAIL ME?"
    • This exchange from "Ritual of the Mahjarrat":
      Lucien: "You dare mock the power of Lucien?"
      Sithaph: "We dare."
    • Lucien's example is spoofed by the Tiny Lucien pet, description and dialogue.
      You dare mock the tiny power of Lucien?
      You dare address a god?
      You dare make a bobblehead out of a god?
    • The Barrows brothers will all say "You dare disturb my rest?" before attacking you when you search their tombs, and "You dare steal from me/us?" if you search the chest with one or more of the Brothers still intact.
  • Who's Laughing Now?: Referenced in the Mysterious Chronicles from Dungeoneering.
  • Who You Gonna Call?: "Big High War God!"
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?
    • Thok has an unnatural fear of ferrets.
    • It was revealed during the Mega May event that Mandrith, normally a tough warrior, is scared of skeletons.
  • Will-o'-the-Wisp:
    • There is a type of monster outside the Wizard's Tower called a spellwisp.
    • When Anima leaks, it usually takes the form of wisps. They can be harvested using the Divination skill.
  • Winged Humanoid: The Icyene, Vyrewatch, Aviansie, Nihil, and Dragonkin.
  • With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Solus Dellagar and Melzar the Mad, among others.
  • Wise Serpent: After the devastation brought on by the God Wars, Guthix retreated to a cave and wept. His divine power imbued the rocks with his power, causing them to weep along with him. Guthix appointed Juna, a giant serpent, to guard these rocks, where she has watched over them for thousands of years. Each week, you can visit Juna and tell her stories of your adventures, on which she will sometimes offer words of wisdom.
  • Wise Tree: The Spirit trees.
  • A Wizard Did It:
    People who have never met him have his image transferred into their minds by those that have by, erm, magic and wizards.
    • In "Beneath Cursed Tides": "How are the chickens breathing underwater?" "Sorcelations!"
    • The pet "Bubbles" the rocktail insists that his ability to swim through air in a magic bubble of water is his own doing, and not that of any strange hat-wearing human, honest!
  • Wolfpack Boss:
    • The Dagannoth Kings, three powerful boss monsters who live in the same chamber and, between them, use all three combat styles.
      • The Rex Matriarchs, being higher-level counterparts of the Dagannoth Kings, share the same setup—Orikalka uses melee, Rathis uses ranged, and Phrentraken uses magic. Downplayed in that the chamber is large enough to be able to comfortably fight just one of them at a time, though if you want you can use buffs from each one to help you against the others.
    • The Fairy Godfather and his three ork generals, Bre'egth, Shredflesh, and Gromblod, are fought as a group at the end of "Fairy Tale III — Battle at Orks Rift". In an interesting twist, killing each of the ork generals gives the Fairy Godfather and the orks a disadvantage.
    • The Nihil fight during Fate of the Gods. Specifically, the extra level of difficulty required to obtain the 'Annihilator' titlenote .
    • "Barrows: Rise of the Six" features Sliske powering up the original six Barrows Brothers into a single, much harder fight.
    • The penultimate fight of Sliske's Endgame features three champions of Sliske: Gregorovic, Nomad, and Linza the Disgraced. When one dies, the remaining members get new attacks.
  • Womb Level:
    • The Body Altar.
    • The Abyss.
    • The final sequence of "Song from the Depths" has the Player Character swallowed by the Queen Black Dragon, and subsequently escaping from a fleshy dungeon filled with acid pools and teeth.
  • World of Pun:
    The Weird Old Man—you know, the one who's fascinated by the kalphites—once told me that 'All you need is love'. Well, I tried that for a week and let me tell you what happened: I got 173 complaints from postal customers, a few bodily dysfunctions that I didn't know I was capable of, and irate letters from my mum, asking why I've not been visiting her. So, what have I learned? Never listen to weird old men in the desert, especially if they are beetle fans — PP
    • Most of the Tasks have punny names. For example, a mining task is named "Take Your Pick". Another task requires killing a zombie in a sewer; its name is "Draaaaaiiiiiins..." And so on. Doubles as Reference Overdosed.
  • Worthless Yellow Rocks:
    • Trolls discard some valuable stuff.
    • Often seen literally in the in-game economy; gold ore and gold bars (among others) are not particularly valuable, sometimes being less expensive than herbs.
    • Also inverted by the in-game economy; the Noxious Scythe, one of the most powerful weapons in the game, is currently hanging around about 300 million gp in value. Blue Party Hats, which give no sort of combat bonus are were introduced as a holiday item, are worth over 200 billion gp.
  • Wrecked Weapon: The Elder Sword, the Godsword, the Maul of Omens, the Ek-Zekkil, and the Staff of Armadyl temporarily between Ritual of the Mahjarrat and The World Wakes (then again when obtained as pieces of the Fractured Staff of Armadyl from Kerapac's hard mode). The Inquisitor Staff and Spear of Annihilation are obtained as pieces and a speartip, respectively, and have to be recombined/reforged into their full forms. Laniakea’s spear is obtained in four pieces dropped by the Rex Matriarchs—apparently, they were too much for even her to fight, and forced her to leave her spear behind.
  • Written by the Winners:
    • Take a look at the Siege of Falador. Basically caused because the White Knights drove out their rivals, the Kinshra (who were at that time important cofounders of Falador), thus splintering Falador and ticking the hell off the Black Knights. Why would they do this? Because the king was sick, thus giving the opportunity. But you ask any Saradominist, they'll tell you the Kinshra just 'relocated' and then attacked a year later, 'completely unprovoked'.
    • The forces of Saradomin and Zamorak actually put aside their eternal rivalry for a concerted campaign to wipe all memory of Zaros off of the face of Gielinor, and the few who were allowed to remember spread propaganda that Zaros and his followers were the height of all evil. Contrary to this, most of the loyalist Zarosians that the player meets in-game are generally decent and honourable, particularly Azzanadra and Wahisietel.
  • Wutai: It's hard not to see how the Arc (and by extension the rest of the Eastern Isles) is heavily inspired by Japanese and Chinese culture, especially with the names of the characters who live there.
  • "X" Marks the Spot:
    • In the Treasure Trails mini-game, many clue scrolls have an "X" showing the player the spot to dig.
    • X Marks the Spot is actualy the name of a quest in Old School RuneScape.
  • Yet Another Christmas Carol: The 2009 Christmas Event had the players take the role of the ghosts trying to scare the Scrooge Expy.
  • Yet Another Stupid Death:
  • You Bastard!:
    • A humorous answer to a player's comment:
    Balustan: Don't we have blood on our hands. We are criminals. We stole stuff from museums, helped assassinate priests, have murdered countless lives and have no regard for the law. Nobody seems to care either...
    Mod Stu: Yes. Yes, you do, and yes you are. You're a bad person, Balustan.
    • In "Pieces of Hate," the player is insulted by the narrator for unleashing a horde of 'Rum'-pumped crabs on Rabid Jack's men. The actual scenes are so horrific they're censored with pictures of fluffy kittens, but the crabs reduce Mi-gor to a head, while 50% Luke, Captain Donnie, Mechanical Murphy, and the Barrelchests are strongly implied to be straight-up Eaten Alive.
  • You Have to Burn the Web: How you proceed between phase 1 and 2 of the Araxxor/Araxxi fight.
  • You Wouldn't Like Me When I'm Angry!: The angry giant Glod bellows the Stock Phrase when you fight him in "Grim Tales". And indeed, he is very unlikable when he is angry.
  • Your Brain Won't Be Much of a Meal: In the "Thok Your Block Off" Fremennik Saga, a brain-eating zombie wanders towards Thok, pauses...then wanders away and starts eating a Forgotten Mage instead.
  • Your Mom: One of the insults you can use while interrogating a zombie pirate in "A Clockwork Syringe" is "Yo momma has enough chins for 99 ranged!"
  • Your Costume Needs Work: Your character will try and tell two children, Amelia and Rory, that you are the hero in the Myreque quests. Rory insists that if that was the case, you would be taller, stronger, and wear a bow tie. Telling him that you would never wear such a thing convinces him that you are definitely not the hero.
  • Your Mind Makes It Real: In the quest Dream Mentor, dying during the boss fight in the dream world results in a real death for the player.
  • Your Soul Is Mine!:
    • The Spirit Beast, Cthonian demons, and a few of the gods are able to devour souls to increase their own power. The Queen Black Dragon has a whole collection of souls she has enslaved to increase her power. Necromancers cannot typically consume them, but they will often bind souls into slavery. It is rumored that the late and former Lord Iorwerth might have prolonged his life by devouring human souls. Nomad is known for manipulating souls as well.
    • Sliske attempts to do this to the Player Character in "Kindred Spirits" and partially succeeds, taking a piece of the Player Character's soul before encountering their memories coming with it — which reveals that the player has glimpsed Sliske's plans, leading to Sliske having a rare Villainous Breakdown while dealing the player a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in response.
    • The specialty of the Magister, an ancient necromancer from a disgraced house on humanity’s original home world Teragard and mentor of Nomad. He later offers his services to the Ambassador, who plans to work tens of thousands of souls into blades to cut away the walls of the universe between Xau-Tak and Gielinor.
  • Zerg Rush: The Rorarius enemy in the Monastery of Ascension has a telepathic "distress call" when attacked that will cause all other Rorarii in the area to become aggressive and swarm the attacker. You can invoke this in certain areas with other enemies by using an Aggression Potion.

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