Skip to content

Opinion: Gridmaster bugs and design flaws

This article is compiled from the videos of GnomonkeyRS. It records what Gnomonkey said, with sources, not verified game fact. See About.

Opinion: Gridmaster bugs and design flaws

Opinion: Gridmaster bugs and design flaws
Type Opinion
Event Gridmaster (Leagues-style grid event)12
Date October 20251
Main complaints RNG drop tiles, permanent skill links, relic overload345
Suggested fix Remove first-clear competition56
Videos 1 (first 2025-10-22, latest 2025-10-22)
Main source GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS)

Gridmaster bugs and design flaws is Gnomonkey's list of problems with the Gridmaster event, based on his own run. He sorts them into bugs that cost him time, relic and interface design, tile balance, and a reward and competition structure that he thinks should be avoided in future events. His central argument is that rewards for rank one, two and three encourage racing and make bugs and bad luck frustrating, so Jagex should either avoid RNG drop tiles or lean fully into a bingo style without competition56.

Contents

Bugs and incidents

  • Recall: He thought recall was broken because it set his special attack energy and prayer to zero, but it was the save memory feature working. He thinks full stats should be the default with saved states optional, and says he wasted about two hours not spamming specials1.
  • Slayer Master relic: The relic puts the player on task everywhere, but killing Zuk gave a 20k Slayer XP drop instead of the expected 1.5 million, because the game had put him on a hard Slayer task rather than a Zuk task, wasting half an hour2.
  • Gemstone crab tile: The boss tile was bugged at first and could not be unlocked, but was patched within about an hour7.
  • Farming: Timers were not boosted at first, which hurt anyone rushing the fruit tree early8.
  • Golden God tile: Building marble fences pulled up the house loading screen every time, flashing every three ticks, which he found super frustrating8.
  • XP lamps: They were inconsistent. Only the Dragon Slayer 2 tile gave XP lamps (100k XP), not even Monkey Madness 2, but combat achievements and achievement diary tiles gave full lamps, which he did not realise and which mattered for the 92 Agility tile9.
  • Unique drop tiles: An Araxxor head drop did not count but a Vorkath head did, and a Yama dossier, a Radiant contract purifying sigil and a Desert Treasure 2 kit did not count10. A single kit at Tombs of Amascut, such as a gem or thread, instantly counted as a mega rare tile, while the other two raids needed much longer grinds, and he thinks all raids should have been equally consistent11.
  • Yama: Yama only dropped dossiers, with no other flavour drops, so he sat through kill after kill of useless drops until the tile drop arrived at the end of a burnt-out stream12.

Relic and interface design

The many teleport relics created a huge, overwhelming menu of every bank and teleport location. He suggests letting players teleport by clicking an icon on the world map, such as a bank or fairy ring. He admits this may be impossible due to engine limits but says Jagex should try before the next Leagues1314.

So many utility relics filled his inventory that he played like an Ultimate Ironman, never banking because every item would be important within 30 seconds, with about 12 slots locked by important relics3. He thinks Jagex should have let players combine relic items, and that effects such as Sage's Greaves, which give passive Agility XP, should have been a character effect rather than boots4.

The new system linking three skills together for shared XP was permanently locked with no confirmation prompt, although QA and blogs said choices could be changed later, so he chose wrongly4. Not linking Agility properly cost him about two extra hours on the 92 Agility tile. He thinks Jagex should add a confirmation and a chance to change links, for example when a row is cleared15.

Tile balance and difficulty

Some tiles take ten times longer than others, such as the 92 Agility tile and obtaining Blorva, which requires getting orbs and then successfully clearing the boss16. The Whisperer was genuinely hard because the sanity system still kills you, and he died several times16.

Drop tiles were heavily luck-dependent. He needed about 40 kill count at Yama for the required drop, while he says some players needed over 100 kc at Yama and at Huey17. He took about five raids to get a Chambers of Xeric purple, where there are no guaranteed Challenge Mode purples, and raids take 15 to 20 minutes even with the Leagues relics, so ten kc would be two and a half hours for one tile18. He did an Inferno for no reason and got no XP, having made an earlier bad choice that stopped him training Slayer quickly, and felt he should have been able to skill his way around the mistake6.

Competition and rewards

He argues Jagex should never add rewards for first clear in this kind of event, because it adds frustration from bugs and bad luck6. Leaving out competition would make Gridmaster more fun, since winning the top three, who get to design a relic, mostly came down to routing efficiently and then getting lucky at Huey, Yama and Chambers19.

On rewards, he says the grid design means that eventually only three or four tiles remain and their rewards are useless; he did not see anyone use the Sunlight Spear, which required a Yama tile and an Araxxor tile (92 Slayer and a Yama rare)20. The Kopesh, probably the best item in Gridmaster, is the reward for the easy 99 Construction tile, when it would make more sense as a hard row reward, and rewards behind hard tiles lock many items out of ever being used21. Once the grid is done there is very little to do and no Echo bosses or hard-mode raid variants (which are 50% harder) to test power on22. He finds the rewards unattractive with nothing to look forward to cosmetically, though he concedes Gridmaster is a hard theme to make look cool23.

References

  1. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 6:49 ↩↩↩

  2. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 7:46 ↩↩

  3. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 13:00 ↩↩

  4. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 13:27 ↩↩↩

  5. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 15:54 ↩↩↩

  6. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 17:22 ↩↩↩↩

  7. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 8:20 ↩

  8. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 8:48 ↩↩

  9. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 10:20 ↩

  10. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 18:18 ↩

  11. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 19:19 ↩

  12. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 16:23 ↩

  13. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 11:26 ↩

  14. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 12:28 ↩

  15. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 14:28 ↩

  16. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 14:54 ↩↩

  17. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 15:28 ↩

  18. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 16:51 ↩

  19. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 17:50 ↩

  20. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 19:48 ↩

  21. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 20:19 ↩

  22. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 20:49 ↩

  23. GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS), 2025-10-22. ▶ 21:45 ↩

Opinions

Opinion: Gridmaster bugs and design flaws • Opinion: Quality-of-life updates • Opinion: Old School RuneScape membership value • Opinion: Sailing community discourse • Slayer task blocking • Deadman: Annihilation • Opinion: Combat Achievement rewards rework • Opinion: Combat Achievements should be fun • Opinion: Magic gear for Slayer bursting • Opinion: Power creep in OSRS • Opinion: Chambers prayer scroll weighting • Opinion: Update quality and QA • Reward scaling in high-level content • Opinion: Mokha reward design • Opinion: New prayer book design • Opinion: Wealth redistribution through content gating • Opinion: Jagex CEO survey apology • Opinion: Rubium mining design • Opinion: Yama contract system and tradable contracts • Opinion: 2025 Annual Survey • Opinion: Colosseum invocation overhaul • Opinion: Community modding tools for Project Zanaris • Wiki gear setup template • Opinion: Magic gear for bossing • Opinion: Minigame rewards and bots • Opinion: Ranged gear upgrade order • Opinion: Bad Combat Achievements • Opinion: Conjoint membership survey • Opinion: Developer communication and polls • Opinion: Future of Gridmaster and Leagues • Opinion: Ironman identity • Opinion: Lack of high-level content • Opinion: OSRS Wiki downgrade gear charts • Opinion: Rendy Slayer rollback • Opinion: Sailing combat • Opinion: Tombs of Amascut lacks depth • Opinion: Araxxor Slayer boss design • Opinion: Leagues ideas • Opinion: PvM boss tier list • Opinion: Skills most in need of updates

Category: Opinions