Sunfire Splinters are NOT the Problem (OSRS)


Date	2025-10-01
Type	news-opinion
Video	youtu.be/ZB3ldcsIivg

Summary

Gnomonkey reacts to Jagex's announcement that Sunfire splinters are being removed from Doom of Mokhaiotl's loot table to protect the Colosseum. He argues the real causes of the price drop are wave 1 Colosseum farm bots and a badly designed Doom drop table (poor scaling of common loot and unique drops that come too early), and asks Jagex to fix the loot table and tackle bots instead.

Outline

0:00 Introduction: Jagex's UI uplift blog and the line about Sunfire splinters
0:27 Jagex's reasoning for removing Sunfire splinters from Doom, and the price history
1:25 The real cause: wave 1 Colosseum farm bots
2:27 Splinter drop rate and why removing it is the wrong fix
2:57 How Doom's loot quantity multiplier and rounding work per delve level
5:01 Why the scaling system is bad, and how early delves give more common loot per hour
6:32 Proposed fix for scaling the loot table
7:29 Rare drops dropping too early devalues items (Shadow, Torva, Eye of Ayak, treads)
8:54 Completion numbers show difficulty; unique drops should start on delve 5 or 6
10:32 Endgame moneymakers: Yama and Torva plate body, drop-before-completing trend
12:31 Fixing common loot and inflated junk drop values
13:31 Progression and value in OSRS
14:31 Botting and gear balance (Yama demon bane, Void)
17:03 Conclusion

Topics covered

Update: Sunfire splinters removed from Doom of Mokhaiotl

(0:00) Jagex's blog on the second round of its UI interface uplift included a line at the end announcing that Sunfire splinters are being removed from Doom of Mokhaiotl's loot table in that day's game update.
(0:27) Jagex's blog said Sunfire splinters fell from about 500 GP each to roughly 140 GP each since Doom's release, and that splinters gained per player at Doom were only about 400 an hour but the sheer number of players meant millions were entering the game passively.
(0:27) Jagex said removing splinters from Doom was meant so that Doom is about chasing its uniques while the Colosseum remains a rewarding and valuable endgame activity.
(0:27) Gnomonkey disputes Jagex's claim, pointing to the price chart where splinters were already around 235-242 GP in July 2025 before Doom's release on 23 July 2025, and says the decline began long before Doom.
(0:56) Gnomonkey says the Colosseum is now terrible money, roughly 6m per hour, because Sunfire splinter prices have dropped so low.
(1:58) Gnomonkey says he is not Jagex and does not have their data, but the price chart does not look to him like Doom is dropping splinters much faster than they were already falling, so he does not believe Doom is the cause.
(2:27) Gnomonkey says Sunfire splinters were about a 1 in 102 drop from Doom in quantities of 500 to 1500, so players do not get that many from the grind, especially when not claiming loot at each delve.
(2:27) Gnomonkey finds it mind-boggling that Jagex would remove an item from a drop table that already has many problems when there is an obvious alternative solution, and notes that the OSRS Wiki had already updated for the removal.
(17:03) Gnomonkey hopes Jagex walks back the removal and uses the opportunity to fix Doom's drop table, saying he does not buy that Doom is the cause of splinters dropping in price.

Sunfire splinter

(1:25) Colosseum wave 1 drops a guaranteed 80 Sunfire splinters and takes about 15 seconds to clear, for example by going in with a bulwark, killing the wave, ticking the splinters and leaving.
(1:25) Gnomonkey says wave 1 Colosseum farming has been a good money-making method for a long time with basically no requirements, and bots love it; he says bots are still doing it even with splinter prices very low.
(1:58) Gnomonkey concludes the main reason Sunfire splinters dropped in value is wave 1 Colosseum farm bots, and suggests Jagex could just patch that out.

Fortis Colosseum

(0:56) Gnomonkey says the Colosseum earns only about 6m per hour at the time of this video due to the low value of Sunfire splinters.
(1:25) Wave 1 of the Fortis Colosseum guarantees 80 Sunfire splinters and is cleared in about 15 seconds, which is why it is a very common farm for bots.

Doom of Mokhaiotl

(2:57) Doom of Mokhaiotl's loot has a quantity multiplier that increases per delve level: delve 1 gives half loot, delve 2 about one third less, delve 3 is the base loot shown on the OSRS Wiki, and after that it rises slightly up to 1.2 times the delve 3 loot at delve 9.
(3:30) Gnomonkey says Doom rounds item quantities down, so a 1.2 multiplier on one Dragon med helm still gives one; any drop that rolls a quantity under five (such as seeds, Rune ore, Rune pickaxes, Dragon platelegs rolling up to four) gives the same quantity on delve 3 as on delve 9.
(4:30) Gnomonkey says the only good drops whose quantity increases with delve level are cannonballs, Onyx bolts, Dragon dart tips and Aether catalysts; seeds, dragon items, platelegs and other good rolls do not increase.
(5:01) Gnomonkey calls Doom's loot scaling dumb, saying it was copied from Tombs of Amascut, where large quantities scale linearly with raid level (for example 5 dragon stones at raid level 0 versus about 50 at 500), which makes sense there but not in Doom.
(5:31) Gnomonkey says Doom's early delves are extremely top heavy: because delve 3 clears are so fast, delve 3 gives more common loot per hour than grinding delve 9 and beyond.
(5:31) On delve 1 and 2 Doom rounds loot up when the multiplier would otherwise round a drop to zero, while at higher delves it rounds down.
(6:32) Gnomonkey notes that even on delve 1 with the half multiplier you can receive up to 800 Sunfire splinters, and many people are doing delve 1.
(6:32) Gnomonkey would fix Doom by making the early-delve multipliers much lower (delve 3 currently gives almost Vorkath-level loot for a much easier boss) and scaling up much faster, for example about double or two and a half times the delve 3 loot at delve 9, since delve 9 is far harder and slower.
(7:57) In Doom, the gauntlets (an insane upgrade to Tormented bracelets) drop from delve 2, the Eye of Ayak (slightly worse than a Tumeken's shadow) from delve 3, and the treads (described as the best gear upgrade ever added for DPS and switches) from delve 4.
(9:27) Doom completion numbers cited by Gnomonkey: about 16 million delve 1 clears and 15.3 million delve 2 clears, with each higher delve level having about 1.5 to 2 million fewer completions.
(9:59) Gnomonkey thinks Doom's unique drops should start at delve 5 or 6, because the boss has its full mechanics around then (a car phase on 5, and on 6 triple dash and hiding behind rocks), and all uniques should start on the same delve rather than staggered.
(10:32) Gnomonkey says anyone can get the boots from delves 1 to 4 without experiencing the boss's mechanics, and says that drops before completing content are a trend he is sick of.
(10:58) Gnomonkey notes you do not have to clear Doom to get its drops: you can get all the drops by going about half of the delves needed for the high scores, which start at delve 8.
(12:31) Gnomonkey says Jagex does not need to change Doom's loot roles, just give proper common-loot quantities on delve 9 and above, and accept trash drops such as fire runes.
(13:04) Gnomonkey asks Jagex to make junk drops like bones worth nothing, saying 100 bones should not show an 800K loot value, since bones are not worth 8K each.

Opinion: Drop-before-completion and endgame moneymakers

(7:29) Gnomonkey argues that dropping rare items early in Doom devalues items like the Tumeken's shadow, citing the shadow's price falling from about 960m to 930m after a week and continuing down after Doom's release.
(10:32) Gnomonkey compares Doom with other content: a scythe cannot drop if you leave Theatre of Blood at Bloat, a shadow needs a Warden kill, and you must clear a Tombs of Amascut room, yet Doom drops uniques before the boss is cleared.
(11:28) Gnomonkey says the problem predates Doom: he points to the Torva platebody price falling around Yama's release on 14 May, and says Torva platebody is much rarer per kill and requires a harder boss than Yama but is objectively worse than Oathplate.
(11:28) Gnomonkey says Oathplate is always better than Torva except with a Osmumten's fang, and even then Oathplate has arguments because it boosts the BGS.
(11:57) Gnomonkey says he cares about endgame moneymakers, that hard bosses should be rewarding, and that there is no reason endgame bosses should make less money than Hydra.
(12:31) Gnomonkey points out that Jagex said it does not want the Colosseum to give super good common loot, so he argues they should stop rewarding people on delve 3 with common loot, saying they are failing their own objective of chasing uniques when uniques drop on delve 2.
(13:31) Gnomonkey says he loves OSRS progression of early, mid and endgame bosses, and fears that making endgame bosses feel nice for mid-level players will leave all mega rares under a bill and everything being as good as Hydra.
(13:58) Gnomonkey wants bosses that are super difficult to be super rewarding, citing a boss like Phosani's Nightmare at about 3m an hour as sad to see, and says hard bosses should typically be better than other options.

Botting

(14:31) Gnomonkey says bots are the root of the problem and the biggest issue bringing bosses down; they go to delve 8 regardless, so placing uniques at delve 6 will not stop them bringing items in.
(14:31) Gnomonkey asks Jagex to devote more resources to fighting bots and to publish a news post about what it is doing, noting they have been doing extra ban waves and he believes they hired a new anti-cheat specialist.
(15:04) Gnomonkey asks Jagex to anticipate bot behaviour when designing content; with Yama's 1.2 times demon bane weakness, bots use a staff of the dead casting demon bane with about a 10m setup, and he has seen bots with 150m Magic XP from this.
(16:05) Gnomonkey says Void is incredibly good at Doom because you have 100% accuracy most of the time, Void is easy to get (bots can do Pest Control or chompy hunting), and Void with a Scorching bow is within 15% of the Twisted bow.
(16:31) Gnomonkey says there should be a decent gap between the cheap option and the best-in-slot option for bosses, and that Ember light being complete best-in-slot at Yama or Demon bane being very strong allows super cheap options that let bots thrive.

Yama

(11:28) Gnomonkey cites Yama's release on 14 May (2025) as devaluing the Torva platebody, and says accessible bosses with pretty good drop rates keep devaluing other items.
(11:57) Gnomonkey points to the price chart of the Basilisk jaw (used to make a Neitiznot faceguard) as another item whose price fell around Yama's release.
(15:04) Gnomonkey says Yama is 1.2 times weak to demon bane and has an easy cheap setup so bots use a staff of the dead and demon bane there to train mage XP.
(16:31) Gnomonkey says Ember light being complete best-in-slot at Yama is part of the problem and that gear gaps should be larger.