WE DID IT! Mokha Rewards Delayed (OSRS)


Date	2025-02-06
Type	news-opinion
Video	youtu.be/XBoGGoJS5k0

Summary

Jagex held off polling the Mokha (Delve boss) rewards after community backlash and said it would redesign them. Gnomonkey welcomes this, comments on each announced reward change, explains what he thinks the encounter is meant to be, and says he will pitch roughly six reward ideas to Jagex after testing them in calcs.

Outline

0:00 Response to community feedback: Jagex holds off polling the Delve boss rewards
0:27 Jagex announcement: two new items and one rework, rewards still tradable
1:03 Avernic Treads and the nine-way to eight-way gear switch
2:07 Eldritch necklace and Diabolical Aegis dropped
2:34 Gap between Sanguinesti staff and Shadow; Slayer Dungeon, Naga and other polls go ahead
3:07 Talking to a Jagex mod; what the community expects from this boss
3:37 Redefining the encounter goals and the Telos / Inferno comparison
4:32 Charge currency to keep drops profitable long term
6:22 Strategic reward development: reward ideas and calcs
7:27 Community impact, Golden Gnomes voting and closing

Topics covered

Doom of Mokhaiotl

(0:00) Jagex announced it would hold off on polling the Delve boss (Mokha) rewards, after community outrage over the previous update that said the rewards were good enough to poll as planned.
(0:27) Jagex said the Delve boss is a brand new encounter type and endgame content, so it must have rewards players are excited about, and it will redesign them to deliver two completely new items and a rework of another.
(0:27) Jagex said it is still aiming for three rewards from the Delve boss, all of which will be tradable, with the boss pet and other cosmetic or content-specific rewards on top of these.
(0:27) Jagex said the new Delve boss rewards would focus on solving commonly felt gaps in the game, with a particular focus on magic.
(2:34) Jagex said it would pitch its new reward ideas in a couple of weeks.
(3:37) Gnomonkey says there is a big disconnect between Jagex and the community about what the Delve boss is: Reddit thought it was a new Inferno, which Gnomonkey says he leaned into with the clickbait in his first video, but Jagex only called it Inferno-tier difficulty.
(3:37) Gnomonkey had pictured the boss as the infinite-scaling, ultra-hard Telos edition from RuneScape 3 that would push the best players to their limits, but Jagex has said it will not scale past Delve level 8, so he says his own guess is not accurate either.
(4:32) Gnomonkey says it is hard to judge rewards without knowing what the encounter is, and that Jagex laying out its design intent more clearly would help.
(4:32) Gnomonkey says players expecting a raid would be upset by only two rewards, but if the boss is meant to be like Nightmare or Nex then limited rewards work better.
(6:45) Gnomonkey says the Mokha encounter was a poorly handled design process: Jagex flailed around and only asked for help late, though he is glad they are asking now and believes they are heading the right direction.

Poll: Mokha rewards

(0:00) The previous Mokha rewards update from Jagex said the rewards were good enough and would be polled, which angered the community; Gnomonkey made a video telling people to vote no on the poll.
(0:27) The day before this video, Jagex announced it would hold off on polling the Delve boss rewards.
(0:27) Gnomonkey says he was going to vote no on the Mokha rewards poll, so he considers the delay good.
(2:34) Jagex said a poll would still go ahead from February 6th on the new melee weapon (the Antler Guard and the Earthbound Tecpatl), so that the Slayer Dungeon quest and new Naga rewards would be locked down, letting Jagex focus on the Delve boss.
(2:34) Gnomonkey says he had no issue with the other rewards in that poll and expects they will pass.
(7:27) Gnomonkey credits the community for getting Jagex to hit the brakes, saying everyone agreed the rewards were not right and it got changed, and that the developers are receptive to feedback.

Avernic Treads

(1:03) Jagex said it would still like to include a version of the Avernic Treads as a Delve boss reward, but will take another look at how to make them more exciting and how they sit economically.
(1:03) Gnomonkey says the Avernic Treads boots are fine and was never against them; his issue was that they were not enough on their own to draw players to endgame content, since a boot upgrade alone is not enough.
(1:03) Jagex said it had seen an appetite for moving from a nine-way gear switch to an eight-way switch and was confident it could rework the Treads to fill this desire.
(1:34) Gnomonkey says nine-way gear switches are very annoying, and he has had cases of needing 10-way switches with a shield on top of boots and rings, which gets cumbersome in the inventory.
(1:34) Gnomonkey says he does not think the Treads need reworking, but that other rewards need to be added, as the community mostly agreed the boots were good.

Eldritch necklace

(2:07) Jagex said the Eldritch necklace would be dropped as a Delve boss reward and replaced with a completely new reward.
(2:07) Gnomonkey says he did not mind the necklace as a reward slot, but it felt disingenuous because Jagex had just nerfed the Occult necklace and was immediately giving that power back.
(2:07) Gnomonkey says he had been thinking of a bracelet slot, such as the Tormented bracelet, as a reward slot instead, though he does not think the necklace was a huge deal.

Diabolical Aegis

(2:07) Jagex said it would remove the Diabolical Aegis and design a completely new reward in its place.
(2:07) Gnomonkey says he does not mind a side-grade reward like the Diabolical Aegis, but Mokha needs solid, hard-hitting items because it does not have enough of them.

Opinion: Mokha reward design

(2:34) Jagex said it was considering the gap between the Sanguinesti staff and the Shadow when redesigning the Delve boss rewards and had collated community suggestions.
(2:34) Gnomonkey says a mage main-hand weapon between the Sanguinesti staff and the Shadow could be the big-ticket item that is a real draw for Mokha.
(3:07) Gnomonkey says Mod Rice contacted him, and they will discuss what he and the community think about this kind of reward space and what players expect from a boss of this calibre.
(4:32) Gnomonkey says a next-tier-difficulty boss needs a few decent rewards plus a charge currency, similar to Sunfire splinters, so that it stays profitable long term and props up the drop table.
(4:32) Gnomonkey thinks the currency should be used to charge the new weapon and potentially multiple items from the encounter, and that having three solid rewards is fine as long as a charge currency backs them.
(5:01) Gnomonkey says currencies are annoying to get on Ironman accounts, so he thinks the boss should drop a large amount of the currency at Delve level 8, in addition to the drop, so repeated clears give enough currency to last hours.
(5:55) Gnomonkey hopes for something less weird than the Thrall upgrade, for example a special effect on the weapon when it is charged versus uncharged.
(6:45) Gnomonkey says he has roughly six reward ideas, which he plans to write down and run through calcs over the next day or two to see where they work or are broken, with basic rewards that have a slight twist such as extra damage plus a minor benefit when charged.
(7:27) Gnomonkey thinks Jagex is too far along to make completely game-changing rewards, and that Mokha needs simple, solid additions backed by a currency rather than mind-boggling ones.

Gnomonkey

(8:41) As of February 2025, Gnomonkey was nominated for best guide maker and best streamer at the Golden Gnomes awards and linked the voting page in the video description.
(8:41) Gnomonkey said that if he wins a Golden Gnome, he will do a stream painting his body gold.
(8:41) The video was recorded on the last day of Golden Gnomes voting.