Dead Content on Release (OSRS)


Date	2024-09-26
Type	news-opinion
Video	youtu.be/fLGVBOVJAqo

Summary

Gnomonkey criticises the Varlamore Part 2 release, mainly The Hueycoatl and the Herblore minigame, calling the update rushed, poorly designed and a waste of dev time. He argues the boss is a bad forced-group learner boss, its mechanics are poorly telegraphed, and the minigame rewards are scaled to an excessive grind.

Outline

0:00 Update overview: wants engaging content, not harder content
0:20 The Hueycoatl fight overview compared with Scurrius
1:04 Forced group size and the pillar mechanic
1:54 Tail phase damage cap complaints and Blood moon price spike
2:44 Boss design flaws: wave telegraphing and clickboxes
4:05 Perfect kill mechanic problems
5:39 Herblore minigame complexity and plugin reliance
6:23 Minigame reward grind
7:19 Final thoughts: rushed update and voting yes less

Topics covered

Update: Varlamore Part 2

(0:00) Gnomonkey understands Varlamore Part 2 content was intended for low to mid-level players per the polls, and says he does not want harder content but fun and engaging content, which he says this update is not.
(0:00) In the video description Gnomonkey asks where Endless Colosseum is and where the fight up a mountain that teaches prayers and gear swaps is, saying this was not what Varlamore Part 2 was supposed to be.
(7:00) Gnomonkey says he did not try the new ice boss but heard from others that it was better than The Hueycoatl and the herb minigame, though that is not saying much; from the mechanics it seems like a lower-level Cerberus equivalent.
(7:31) Gnomonkey says the Varlamore Part 2 update feels very rushed and not well tested or thought out, as if Jagex had a slot in the Summer Summit and slapped it in.
(7:31) Gnomonkey calls the update a waste of dev time, and says he voted yes to The Hueycoatl and the herb minigame but feels he should not be voting yes nearly as often.
(7:31) Gnomonkey hopes Jagex uses lower-level encounters to push people toward more interesting content, and says Scurrius was great and The Hueycoatl was not.

The Hueycoatl

(0:00) Gnomonkey says The Hueycoatl's mechanics are below those of Scurrius, whom he used to hate but came to see as great for teaching new players PvM.
(0:00) Gnomonkey says in the description that the loot is trash even for mid-level players, Huey offers no real entertainment even to mid-level players, and that unless you are pet hunting he recommends avoiding it and going to Scurrius or Moons instead.
(0:00) In the description Gnomonkey says the Dragon hunter wand is not good at Olm, is worse than Trident and cannot run the head with it, and that The Hueycoatl is not weak to magic so the wand is useless there.
(0:33) Gnomonkey describes the fight as AFK hitting the Hueycoatl's body segments while dodging extremely slow lightning, slower than Scurrius' rockfall, with a prayer projectile roughly every 20 seconds, then running up the mountain to the head.
(0:33) Gnomonkey says the XP from Scurrius lets players skip the early-game grind faster than AFKing crabs or Dew Slayer, which he says is awful for early combat XP.
(1:01) Gnomonkey says The Hueycoatl is designed for a trio or larger with no scaling options below that, and that you can technically solo it with 8-minute kills in full max.
(1:01) The Hueycoatl's pillar mechanic requires three protection prayers of different styles (mage, range and melee) active at all times for a damage buff Gnomonkey believes is 25%, which cannot be done solo or duo.
(1:31) Gnomonkey says The Hueycoatl's HP does not scale down for small teams, so you simply do 25% less damage, and he calls forced groups unnecessary at a learner boss like this for a boss with roughly three mechanics where you stand still most of the fight.
(2:34) Gnomonkey says The Hueycoatl's wave mechanic is poorly telegraphed because the waves do not align with where they actually are, is used nowhere else in the game, and should be scrapped.
(3:01) Gnomonkey says the pillar mechanic is a half-hearted attempt to encourage teamwork because everyone just prays something different with no communication, and it hard locks solos and duos.
(3:32) Gnomonkey says The Hueycoatl's click boxes are bad: the body segments are one big box that does not match the visuals and the flopping tail is hard to click, a problem he says is common in Varlamore including the Colosseum.
(4:05) Gnomonkey says the Hueycoatl has a killstreak mechanic whose effect on loot is unknown and says perfect kills seem bugged and fail for no apparent reason.
(4:31) Gnomonkey says Recoil is disabled at The Hueycoatl like at every other new boss and that he does not know why Jagex hates Vengeance so much.

Opinion: Perfect kill mechanics

(4:05) Gnomonkey questions why perfect killstreaks are being tried at a Moons-tier combat level boss, and notes Desert Treasure 2 already showed it did not work well.
(4:31) Gnomonkey says perfect kills fail for trivial things, such as getting hit by a random gas at Duke, which was changed to not be random for this reason, and that Jagex is notorious for calling something perfect that a good player would laugh at, such as tanking zero damage at Bloat and killing him in three downs.
(4:44) Gnomonkey argues perfect-kill rules punish players who tank a hit to push a boss down faster, tank lightning to save a tick, or Vengeance-bomb a boss and manage prayer, supplies and HP.
(5:01) Gnomonkey says the Hueycoatl perfect mechanic depends on the whole forced team, which he says encourages toxic behaviour when someone messes up, and likens it to a certain combat achievement at a certain theater.

Tail phase (The Hueycoatl)

(2:01) The Hueycoatl's tail phase caps your hit splat at 9 and guarantees you hit if crush is your highest style, similar to Araxxor.
(2:01) Gnomonkey says the tail phase's damage clamp purposely makes scythe and other high-priced items bad and made the Blood moon set rise in price because the Dual macuahuitl are crush and hit twice, which he says encourages merching by mid-level players.
(2:01) Gnomonkey says there is no way to speed up the tail phase other than having a lot of people.
(2:34) Gnomonkey says Scythe is not best in slot on the tail because it has a low crush bonus, which also affects weapons like Soul Reaper axe and Lance that crush with a higher stab or slash bonus.
(3:01) Gnomonkey says that instead of making the tail weak to Bopper maces, which already are good on the rest of the boss and roughly third best to camp, Jagex could have made it weak to earth spells to teach gear switching.

Mixology

(0:00) In the description Gnomonkey calls the herb minigame a joke even for ironmen, with terrible XP rates and rewards that take over 15 hours to get.
(5:39) Gnomonkey says the new Herblore minigame is very complicated, with many potion types and stations, and he decided to wait for a plugin before engaging further; he cannot imagine doing it as a mobile player.
(6:00) Gnomonkey says the Herblore minigame should have default highlights and arrows for which potion to make, which station to go to and the timing click speed-up bonus, like a Giants' Foundry plugin provides, and says relying on RuneLite plugins for indicators is becoming less acceptable to him.
(6:05) Gnomonkey says the minigame helps ironmen who do not want to get secondaries get XP, but that XP is not amazing and the rewards take an eternity to grind.
(6:32) Gnomonkey says the Herblore minigame rewards were so poorly scaled that the first pre-pot device was not yet obtained after an 8.5 hour stream that began an hour after the update, with an estimated 10 to 15 hours at max efficiency.
(6:32) Gnomonkey says the outfit is an even bigger grind per piece, so by the time you get it you will not be levelling Herblore any more.
(7:00) Gnomonkey says the minigame locks the secondary components of the Prayer enhance potion, the pre-pot device and potion storage behind countless hours of grinding, and that an ironman is better off getting secondaries and getting 50% more XP per hour.