SUMMER SWEEP-UP CHANGES ARE HERE (OSRS)


Date	2026-07-22
Type	news-opinion
Video	youtu.be/EPlArwCehYY

Summary

Gnomonkey goes through the live Summer Sweep-up PvM and gear changes, testing many of them himself: Corrupted Gauntlet prep, Sanguinesti staff, Soulreaper axe rework, weapon buffs and nerfs, the proposed Chambers of Xeric loot reweighting and the Maggot King combat achievements. His overall verdict is that the changes are very good, with the Soulreaper axe and the Gauntlet prep improvements the biggest wins, and that he hopes Jagex keeps doing a yearly sweep-up.

Outline

0:00 Introduction: Summer Sweep-up is live, recorded live and edited afterwards
0:29 Gauntlet prep and quality-of-life changes
1:30 Gravestone inventory sorting and autocast fix
2:15 Sanguinesti staff tweaks
3:27 Soulreaper axe rework
5:36 Weapon and gear balancing: Inquisitor's mace, rapier, Saeldor, ancient scepters, Master wand
7:18 Weapon nerfs and changes: Venator bow, Rosewood blowpipe, burning claws
8:54 Misc PvM and BMR changes
10:08 Chambers of Xeric loot weighting proposal
12:40 Maggot King combat achievements
15:33 Conclusion and upcoming Corrupted Gauntlet guide

Topics covered

Update: Summer Sweep-up

(0:00) The Summer Sweep-up PvM changes went live; Gnomonkey recorded this reaction video live and cut it down afterwards.
(0:00) Most of the Summer Sweep-up changes had already been discussed in Gnomonkey's previous video, but the live blog contained some slightly different details and mentioned some future changes that were not part of this update.
(15:33) Gnomonkey considers the Summer Sweep-up changes to be really good all around, apart from a couple of minor bugs he expects Jagex to fix fairly soon.
(15:33) Gnomonkey said he would make a new Corrupted Gauntlet guide very soon covering the changes, and that it would probably include tier two armor.

Corrupted Gauntlet

(0:30) The Summer Sweep-up gives the Corrupted Gauntlet a guaranteed random demi-boss spawn in the northmost, eastmost, southmost and westmost rooms from the centre, so there are four demi-bosses at fixed locations, although which demi-boss appears is still random.
(0:30) In the Summer Sweep-up, the Corrupted Gauntlet demi-bosses' attack range was reduced from 16 to 10, and non-demi-boss enemies now have standardised defensive stats.
(0:30) The biggest Corrupted Gauntlet change in the Summer Sweep-up is that ores are now stackable and crystal shards from kills are magnetised into the inventory, making shards much faster to gather and resources easier to stack.
(1:01) Gnomonkey's testing found a Corrupted Gauntlet run about 30 seconds to a minute faster after the Summer Sweep-up, and several minutes faster when preparing tier two or tier three armor.
(1:01) Gnomonkey considers the Summer Sweep-up Gauntlet prep changes a very big deal for tier two and tier three players (such as hardcore ironmen) because they are dramatically faster.
(1:01) The Summer Sweep-up increased the time requirements on the Corrupted Gauntlet combat achievements, which Gnomonkey called very fair because they are fairly easy compared to before given how much time prep now saves.

Gravestone

(1:30) Before the Summer Sweep-up, claiming a gravestone while holding a staff could equip it without autocast, causing players to staff-bash on their next kill (Gnomonkey notes this commonly happened at Yama); this was fixed.
(1:30) As of the Summer Sweep-up, looting your gravestone automatically sorts your whole inventory back into exactly the arrangement it had when you died.
(2:00) Ammo that was in the quiver when you die is still put into a random inventory slot when claiming a gravestone after the Summer Sweep-up; clicking claim again puts it in the correct spot.

Sanguinesti staff

(2:15) The Summer Sweep-up increased the Sanguinesti staff's heal chance to 1 in 5, up from 1 in 6.
(2:15) After the Summer Sweep-up, the Sanguinesti staff deals 8 additional damage whenever its heal procs, which Gnomonkey says averages out to +1.6 damage per hit; its base max hit also increased by 1.
(2:30) Gnomonkey says the Sanguinesti staff's +1 base max hit can equate to +2 damage with a lot of gear, so at minimum he counts about +2.6 damage per cast.
(2:30) The Summer Sweep-up reduced the Sanguinesti staff's charge cost from 3 to 2.
(2:30) Gnomonkey considers the buffed Sanguinesti staff to sit between the trident and Eye of Ayak, and says it will never compete with Eye of Ayak.
(2:30) Gnomonkey thinks players learning Ulm could bank their Eye of Ayak and use the buffed Sanguinesti staff for easy kills, and that it is better in places where healing matters such as the Akkha room.

Soulreaper axe

(3:27) The Summer Sweep-up gave the Soulreaper axe +4 strength bonus; its stack limit stays at five with 6% damage bonus per stack.
(3:32) Soulreaper axe stacks now take 50 ticks to start decrementing, up from 20 ticks, which Gnomonkey describes as slightly longer than a Bloat down.
(3:32) Gnomonkey says the slower stack decay means Soulreaper axe stacks are not lost in Theatre of Blood Sote maze phases, Bloat downs or between Colosseum waves.
(4:01) Gnomonkey says the Soulreaper axe's stacks will probably still be lost between phases on Ulm's melee hand, but quick-switching to melee between mage hits on the next mage hand can maintain them.
(4:01) Soulreaper axe stacks no longer drain HP after the Summer Sweep-up; as a trade-off the special attack does not give health back.
(4:29) The Soulreaper axe special attack now gains 12% accuracy per stack (up from 6%), reaching 60% accuracy at full stacks instead of 30%, and gains a 6% minimum hit per stack.
(4:29) With five stacks the Soulreaper axe special guarantees a hit of 30% of your max hit, which Gnomonkey says makes it a very good finisher on Vardorvis; if the spec fails to kill, the next hit builds a new stack that can be used immediately for a guaranteed 6% minimum hit.
(5:03) Gnomonkey considers the reworked Soulreaper axe far better and mainly much more usable; he says the best places to use it are the Maggot King and now also Theatre of Blood and the Colosseum, where it was questionable before.

Inquisitor's mace

(5:36) The Summer Sweep-up buffed many Inquisitor's pieces; the Inquisitor's mace gained 7 strength and 7 crush accuracy and still benefits from the Inquisitor's set boost.
(5:36) Gnomonkey says the Inquisitor's mace is now officially the strongest of the buffed weapons (compared with the rapier and the Blade of Saeldor) on neutral styles, which he considers fair because it is rarer and drops from Phosani's Nightmare.

Blade of Saeldor

(5:36) The Blade of Saeldor and the rapier both got buffs in the Summer Sweep-up.
(6:33) Gnomonkey says the Blade of Saeldor's buff makes it guaranteed to beat 'Nox' in all situations, including without a Vernic, whereas before the two were very close.

Ancient sceptre

(6:08) The Summer Sweep-up raised the ancient sceptres' damage bonus to 10%, up from 5%.
(6:08) Gnomonkey considers the Blood sceptre objectively the best staff option for a first cape over Kodai wand and Nightmare Staff, because it is only 5% less damage than a Kodai and can overheal; he says it is also really good for the Inferno.

Master wand

(6:37) The Master wand gets a 10% mage damage bonus in the Summer Sweep-up.
(6:37) Gnomonkey says the Master wand buff gives early ironmen a new way to get a strong early mage weapon by doing the Mage Training Arena rush, instead of grinding another early mage weapon.

Venator bow

(7:04) The blog's mention of a Venator bow target-finding change was included in error; Jagex clarified there were no changes to its target finding in this update and expect to make the change in a future batch.
(7:34) Gnomonkey says he tested the Venator bow and it did not feel different, because it was not changed.

Rosewood blowpipe

(8:03) The Rosewood blowpipe can now fire darts up to rune in the Summer Sweep-up, and in exchange its special attack no longer grants +10% increased damage and -20% decreased accuracy.
(8:03) Gnomonkey considers the Rosewood blowpipe change objectively a nerf, saying the only use it had was a good special attack with adamant darts at Mocha, which now needs rune darts for the same damage; he says players will never really use it, and notes Reddit asked for the change.

Burning claws

(8:35) The Summer Sweep-up increased the burning claws' special attack energy cost to 35%, up from 30%.
(8:35) Gnomonkey had said burning claws were a little overpowered on release since they beat regular claws in a lot of places, and considers the nerf fair; he says regular claws, and probably Voidwaker, will now be better nearly all the time.
(8:35) Gnomonkey enjoyed using burning claws everywhere as a strong spec weapon, for example super good for early Tombs of Amascut, and says they are now an early spec weapon that gets outclassed by other spec weapons.

Raulos

(7:36) The blog says the 'Raulos' special attack reduces opponent's defence by 12.5% of its mage level per hit, up from 10%, but Gnomonkey tested it and says it is actually 12.5% on the first splat and 10% on the second, which he assumes is a bug that will be fixed soon.

Chambers of Xeric

(10:08) Jagex proposed a loot reweighting for Chambers of Xeric uniques; the proposed regular raid total weighting dropped from 69 to 60 and the weight of each ancestral piece rises from 3 to 4, a 33% increase in chance.
(10:08) Jagex said it expects individual item prices might shift but that the gp per hour of the raid should not drastically reduce under the proposed Chambers of Xeric weighting.
(11:08) Under the proposal the Arcane and Dexterous prayer scroll weighting falls from 20 to 14 in regular raids and to 12 in Challenge Mode, while Gnomonkey notes the old weighting meant finding about five prayer scrolls per ancestral piece.
(11:34) Gnomonkey says ancestral pieces were far too rare, with the average time to complete ancestral definitely longer than a Twisted bow, and that on most ironmen the last item they chase is an ancestral piece over hundreds of raids, so the change makes sense to him.
(11:34) Gnomonkey says the best change for Challenge Mode would be a larger completion bonus, currently 5k bonus points for making the time, ideally 10k to 20k; he still thinks the reweighting is enough that Challenge Mode may now be better than regular raids if you already have a Twisted bow.
(11:34) Gnomonkey agrees that hard mode content should always be better than the normal mode, and is okay with the proposal as a way to make Challenge Mode better.

Maggot King

(12:37) Jagex chose not to add any Grandmaster combat achievements to the Maggot King, saying it could not find a task that added challenge without feeling contrived.
(12:37) Gnomonkey strongly appreciates the decision not to add a Grandmaster combat achievement when no good idea exists, saying he has long asked Jagex to cut down on the bulk of combat achievements; the only idea he had was a very fast speed time, which would just require killing without dying.
(13:48) The Maggot King's combat achievements: hard is simply Kill the Maggot King; elites are kill 25 times, kill using only weapons found in Vampyrium, kill without moving more than 40 tiles, and kill without moving beyond the back row of tiles; further tasks listed include kill five times in nine minutes, kill 12 times without leaving the arena, kill without missing a single melee punish, and a perfect kill (no avoidable damage and never healed), plus a perfect kill 12 times in a row without leaving.
(14:40) Gnomonkey says the Maggot King five kills in nine minutes combat achievement, a little under two minutes per kill, is definitely doable and could probably be done with the Soulreaper axe.
(14:40) Gnomonkey considers the Maggot King's nine combat achievements reasonable and far from the worst batch he has seen, noting there did not need to be 20 to 30 of them.

Fred rewards

(15:11) Jagex said a blog polling the Fred rewards was penciled in for July 30th, a week after this video; Gnomonkey said he would probably vote yes to everything.