GRIDMASTER: Was it RUSHED or better than LEAGUES? (OSRS)


Date	2025-10-22
Type	news-opinion
Video	youtu.be/i76LSxy7Hac

Summary

Gnomonkey gives his overall take on Gridmaster, the short bingo-grid mini Leagues event, after completing it in about 23 hours including a 24-hour stream. He recommends playing it and praises its fast pace, tile system and UI, but criticises bugs, inconsistent tile rules, RNG tiles combined with ranked rewards, useless late-grid rewards and nothing to do after completion, and hopes Jagex reuses the system in a full Leagues.

Outline

0:00 Introduction: what Gridmaster is and why he recommends playing it
0:58 Sponsor message (Raid: Shadow Legends)
1:56 Gameplay, pacing and how powerful you get
3:24 The tile system, variety of tasks, UI and no region locking
5:49 Rushing bosses with weak stats and speedrunning the grid
6:49 Bugs: recall, Slayer XP, gemstone crab, farming timers, Golden God
9:21 Launch experience and why bugs matter more in a fast event
10:20 Inconsistencies: XP lamps and teleport menu overload
13:00 Inventory management and the unchangeable skill linking
14:54 RNG tiles and the problem with ranked competition
18:18 Inconsistent unique-drop rules between bosses
19:48 Late-grid rewards becoming useless and nothing to do after completion
21:45 Reward aesthetics feedback
22:11 Future improvements: tiered boards and a post-grid bonus board
24:15 Group Ironman Gridmaster potential
25:13 Row and column reward balance
26:51 Final thoughts: comparison with RS3 Leagues and the clan bingo system

Topics covered

Gridmaster

(0:00) Gnomonkey says Gridmaster is worth playing, is very quick, and takes about a week at most even at a slow pace, with some people finishing on day one.
(0:00) Gnomonkey describes Gridmaster as a kind of mini Leagues made to break in Jagex's new bingo system for clans.
(0:30) Gridmaster is a grid of tiles where each tile unlocks a useful Leagues relic or item, and completing columns and rows of tiles gives further rewards on the outside of the grid.
(0:30) Gnomonkey says players get more powerful in Gridmaster than they ever do in Leagues, and that you have all three combat relics.
(1:56) Gnomonkey says Gridmaster is much, much faster paced than Leagues, with very basic tasks such as completing the stronghold, doable in the first three minutes, unlocking Fairies' Flight so you can teleport everywhere.
(1:56) In Gridmaster, throwing a gnome ball early gives Agility XP, and you get all three early pick tools (pickaxe, axe and harpoon) fairly quickly.
(2:30) In Gridmaster, Golden God can be obtained fairly easily at 50 Thieving, and reaching 99 Construction, which takes about an hour, gives the Kopesh, which Gnomonkey calls unbelievably strong for killing bosses with combat relics.
(2:57) Gnomonkey likes Gridmaster as a change of pace and is glad Jagex did not just run Leagues again, since there was not going to be a Leagues this year.
(2:57) Gnomonkey says Gridmaster may not suit players who want something that lasts, because you fly through it.
(3:24) Gnomonkey likes the tile system because larger individual tasks unlock something instantly rather than slowly accumulating points as in Leagues, and there is a good variety of tasks.
(3:24) The easiest Gridmaster tiles include equipping fancy boots, mining gold, throwing a gnome ball and stealing from a fruit stall, each giving a powerful relic that gets you started quickly.
(3:51) Tougher Gridmaster tiles include a sub-30 Inferno, a floor five Hallowed Sepulchre, getting Blorva, reaching 2k total level and obtaining a rare drop from Araxxor.
(3:51) Gnomonkey says a sub-30 Inferno tile is doable for anybody if you leave it towards the end of the grid, when you are incredibly powerful, though it may not be one and done.
(4:19) Gnomonkey says routing matters a lot in Gridmaster because harder tiles like the sub-30 Inferno require you to become powerful first.
(4:19) Gnomonkey really likes the Gridmaster UI, which has a flip button to compare the reward with the challenge, shows what each unlock does and what you need to do, and shows clearly when a tile is complete; he expects clans to use it a ton for bingos.
(4:48) Gnomonkey says Gridmaster did not use region locking, which he welcomes after RS3 Leagues, which also had no region locking but was bogged down by needing many quests.
(5:19) Gnomonkey says in Gridmaster he did not do a single quest because basic tasks unlock quest completions, for example Vampyre Slayer to unlock Sins of the Father and killing a Lizardman shaman to unlock Song of the Elves, and he calls this amazing for pacing.
(5:49) In Gridmaster you can rush bosses such as Scurrius with terrible gear for the first combat mastery, and many tiles only require killing a single boss, which is doable with almost nothing.
(5:49) Gnomonkey did a Corrupted Gauntlet in Gridmaster with 40 hitpoints, which was a challenge even with the combat masteries.
(6:22) Streamer Foe completed the whole Gridmaster grid in about 13 hours, while Gnomonkey's first completion took about 23 hours.
(6:49) Gnomonkey says Gridmaster's short pace lets people speedrun it by finding special routes, which he says never really happens with Leagues.
(9:21) Gnomonkey says the Gridmaster launch was a breath of fresh air: Jagex took the worlds down, put them back up, and launched Gridmaster an hour later with no downtime, unlike Leagues launches that have been delayed up to two hours, and he says Jagex should do this next time.
(9:54) Gnomonkey says bugs are a bigger problem in a fast-paced event like Gridmaster than in Leagues because players finishing in a day spend much of their playtime stuck on a bugged mechanic that will not be patched in time.
(10:20) Gnomonkey says he is giving full negative feedback on Gridmaster in case Jagex reuses the system, but acknowledges it was a slapped-together temporary thing that worked really well.

Opinion: Gridmaster bugs and design flaws

(6:49) Gnomonkey thought recall was broken in Gridmaster because it set his special attack energy and prayer to zero, but it was the save memory feature working; he thinks Jagex should make full stats the default and let players save a state instead, and says he wasted about two hours not spamming specials.
(7:46) Gnomonkey reports that with the Slayer Master relic in Gridmaster, which puts you on task everywhere, killing Zuk gave a 20k Slayer XP drop instead of the expected 1.5 million, because the game put him on a hard Slayer task rather than a Zuk task, wasting half an hour.
(8:20) Gnomonkey reports the gemstone crab boss tile was bugged at first so it could not be unlocked, but it was patched quickly, within about an hour.
(8:48) Gnomonkey reports that Gridmaster farming timers were not boosted at first, which hurt anyone rushing the fruit tree early.
(8:48) Gnomonkey reports that building marble fences for the Golden God tile pulled up the house loading screen every time, flashing every three ticks, which he found super frustrating.
(10:20) Gnomonkey says XP lamps in Gridmaster were inconsistent: only the Dragon Slayer 2 tile gave XP lamps (100k XP), not even Monkey Madness 2, but the combat achievements and achievement diary tiles gave full lamps, which he did not realise and which mattered for the 92 Agility tile.
(11:26) Gnomonkey says the many teleport relics in Gridmaster created a huge, overwhelming menu of every bank and teleport location, and he suggests letting players teleport by clicking an icon on the world map, such as a bank or fairy ring.
(12:28) Gnomonkey admits the world-map teleport idea may be impossible due to engine limits but says it would be much better if Jagex could do it before the next Leagues.
(13:00) Gnomonkey says 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 relics.
(13:27) Gnomonkey thinks Jagex should have let players combine relic items, and that things like Sage's Greaves, which give passive Agility XP, should have been a character effect rather than boots.
(13:27) Gnomonkey says the QA and blogs said players could change their choices later, but the new system linking three skills together for shared XP was permanently locked and had no confirmation prompt, so he chose wrongly.
(14:28) Gnomonkey says not linking Agility properly cost him about two extra hours on the 92 Agility tile, and he thinks Jagex should add a confirmation and a chance to change links, for example when a row is cleared.
(14:54) Gnomonkey says some Gridmaster 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 boss.
(14:54) Gnomonkey says the Whisperer in Gridmaster was genuinely hard because the sanity system still kills you, and he died several times.
(15:28) Gnomonkey needed about 40 kill count at Yama to get the required drop in Gridmaster, while he says some players needed over 100 kc at Yama and at Huey.
(15:54) Gnomonkey argues Jagex should have avoided RNG drop tiles because it encouraged racing with rewards for rank one, two and three, or else fully lean into a bingo style without encouraging competition.
(16:23) In Gridmaster Yama only dropped dossiers, with no other drops for flavour, so Gnomonkey, burnt out at the end of his stream, sat through kill after kill of useless drops until the tile drop arrived.
(16:51) Gnomonkey took about five raids to get a Chambers of Xeric purple in Gridmaster, where there are no guaranteed Challenge Mode purples, and says raids take 15 to 20 minutes even with the Leagues relics, so ten kc would be two and a half hours for one tile.
(17:22) Gnomonkey thinks Jagex should never add rewards for first clear in this kind of event, because it adds frustration from bugs and bad luck.
(17:22) Gnomonkey says 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 mistake.
(17:50) Gnomonkey says 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 Chambers.
(18:18) Gnomonkey says the unique-drop tiles in Gridmaster were inconsistent: 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 count.
(19:19) Gnomonkey says getting 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 the raids should have been equally consistent.
(19:48) Gnomonkey says the grid design means that eventually you are down to three or four tiles and the rewards are useless, noting he did not see anyone use the Sunlight Spear, which required a Yama tile and an Araxxor tile (92 Slayer and a Yama rare).
(20:19) Gnomonkey says the Kopesh, probably the best item in Gridmaster, is a reward for the easy 99 Construction tile when it would make more sense as a hard row reward, and that rewards behind hard tiles lock many items out of ever being used.
(20:49) Gnomonkey says once the grid is done you are done, with very little to do and no Echo bosses or hard-mode raid variants (which are 50% harder) to test your power on.
(21:45) Gnomonkey finds the Gridmaster rewards unattractive and says there was nothing to look forward to cosmetically, though he concedes Gridmaster is a hard theme to make look cool.

Opinion: Future of Gridmaster and Leagues

(22:11) Gnomonkey says the grid system is good and works well, with a great, responsive UI, but making it the only system hampered Gridmaster and he suggests adding Leagues points alongside it so some rewards come from the grid and some from points.
(22:42) Gnomonkey describes Hydron's mock-up for tiered grid progression: a small three-by-three starter board whose full clear gives something strong like the Kopesh, then a mid-tier board with weapons and combat relics, then a full main grid.
(23:11) Gnomonkey suggests a post-grid bonus board after completing Gridmaster, where all bosses become Echo bosses and all raids become hard mode, including something like solo hard mode Theatre of Blood, so players can use items like the Sunlight Spear.
(24:15) Gnomonkey desperately wants Jagex to run a Group Ironman Leagues, and says Gridmaster would suit it, with a group working together on the grid, one person completing a tile unlocking it for everyone, and members splitting up routing such as one rushing Agility for the Hallowed Sepulchre tile.
(25:13) Gnomonkey says the Gridmaster rewards for rows and columns were unbalanced: a long column with Araxxor or Yama tiles gave only a 200% XP multiplier, Sunlight Spear or shield, while the combat masteries were basically the only rewards that mattered.
(25:44) Gnomonkey says the only four rewards that really mattered in Gridmaster were the combat masteries, with the ring and amulet and the XP multiplier being kind of nice, and says a multiplier on a column with Araxxor or Yama tiles would never be bothered with.
(26:17) Gnomonkey says one of the weakest Leagues gear pieces was given for a row requiring a sub-30 Inferno, a Theatre of Blood tile, a Chambers item and the 92 Agility floor five Hallowed Sepulchre, which suggests little thought went into row and column rewards.
(26:51) Gnomonkey says Gridmaster is infinitely more fun than RS3 Leagues, being much more fast-paced and enjoyable, and calls it a nice appetizer for the real thing, a duct-tape-and-earwax temporary Leagues.
(27:17) Gnomonkey hopes Jagex uses the grid system again, possibly in a full Leagues alongside more systems, for example as combat masteries on a grid, with single impactful tasks in addition to points, and does not want points removed from Leagues.
(28:16) Gnomonkey says people are having a lot of fun with Gridmaster and that returning to a standard Leagues would be disappointing.
(28:16) Gnomonkey is curious how the clan bingo system will let clans build grids, since clans want customisable tiles like getting a particular drop or any Corporeal Beast drop, and he doubts it will be usable if it is not very customisable.

Gnomonkey

(0:00) Gnomonkey completed Gridmaster for the first time in about 23 hours.
(10:20) Gnomonkey did a 24-hour Gridmaster stream (for Subtember) and was burnt out by the end, and chat was making him want to pull out his hair, per the video description.
(16:23) At the end of his Gridmaster stream, Gnomonkey's last tile was Yama and he got burnt out and crashed out while sitting through kill count after kill count with no drop.