Some time ago, we released the minigame Barbarian Assault. From your feedback (and from playing the game ourselves) it’s become clear that the rewards were not quite up to scratch, so we have devoted some time to improving them. Although our focus has mainly been on the rewards, we also took this opportunity to alter some small aspects of the minigame itself (though we do also have a long list of other ideas for potential future updates).

The list of changes is extensive, but here are some of the main ones to whet your appetite:

• New Penance horn that lets you gain double XP in Agility, Firemaking and Mining (in a similar fashion to the tools from Stealing Creation).
• New colours of abyssal whips.
• New Penance trident weapon.
• Penance armour stat improvement and Prayer restoring set bonus.
• Penance gloves now reduce more weight.
• Gamble points rebalanced (they still include a rare chance for dragon armour).
• Ability to show off your achievements in the roles of attacker, defender, collector and healer.
• High score tables for the attacker, defender, collector and healer roles.
• Waiting rooms increased in size.
• Additional wave room ticket system for saving progress through battles.
• Blue penance eggs now reduce the target Penance’s stats and deal damage.

If you speak with Commander Connad at the Barbarian Outpost (you can teleport directly there with a games necklace) he’ll show you all the new rewards, which are also listed on the Barbarian Assault KB page.

Bring on the Penance!

Mod Tim
RuneScape Lead Content Developer

In other news...

The various dwarves of RuneScape have had a visit from the Makeover Mage, who has given their chatheads a new look.

The Soul Wars cape from Nomad's Requiem can now be stored in your POH costume room.

Activating your special attack bar will no longer interfere with auto-cast timing.

Players will no longer receive activity points in Soul Wars when bandaging players that are already at full health.

Because of the recent snow we've been having, snowballs have stayed frozen for a bit longer than usual. The snow has now gone, though, so you'll find your snowballs will now melt, unless you have the snow globe from the Christmas 2007 holiday event.