Update:PvP Worlds Improvements

This official news post is copyrighted by Jagex. It is a direct quote from the RuneScape website.
This update was added on 9 December 2008.

PvP Worlds Improvements.

This week, we have made some improvements to the amount of loot you can gain while fighting other players on PvP worlds.

We have noticed that many players on PvP worlds choose to leave some of their drops on the ground, rather than pick them up or bank them. This is because the drops are often too low in value to justify picking them up. We have, therefore, implemented two changes to the way drops work on PvP worlds:

1. Drops are now slightly more weighted towards a few, higher-value drops, rather than lots of low- or medium-value ones.
2. Overall, we have made the drops a bit more generous.

Note: there is no change in the frequency of 'useful' drops (e.g. food and potions).

We also wanted to take this opportunity to more clearly explain how drops are determined, to help you get better rewards. Broadly speaking, the drop system works as follows:

1. For each player, we store a 'drop potential'. Your drop potential gradually increases, the more time you spend risking items on a PvP world.
2. When you get a successful kill, a portion of the drop potential you have accumulated is used up to generate your drop. How much of your accumulated drop potential is used depends on the kill. Any unused drop potential is saved up and carried over to any future kills.
3. Finally, the portion of drop potential used determines which drop table is used to generate your drop. Generally, the higher your drop potential, the higher the AVERAGE value of the drop table your drop will be chosen from.

HOW TO MAXIMISE THE VALUE OF YOUR DROPS

In order to get a good drop on a PvP world, there are a few simple things that you must do to both build up a high drop potential and to claim that potential.

BUILDING UP YOUR DROP POTENTIAL

If you find that you continually only get drops of a lower value than you would like, it's almost certainly because you aren't building up enough drop potential. In this case, you need to spend more time building up your drop potential BEFORE making a PvP kill. To do this you must:

1. Spend time outside of safe zones.
   • For every 30 minutes you spend on a PvP world outside of a safe zone, your drop potential will increase. Those 30 minutes do NOT have to be all in one go - you can log out or visit safe zones - but the system only counts full minutes, so it will likely take longer to build up your drop potential if you do not spend 30 consecutive minutes outside of safe zones.
   • Note that your drop potential will increase by more if you spend time in hot zones (Ardougne, Varrock, Falador and the Wilderness).
2. Risk at least 75k coins' worth of items.
   • Your drop potential will ONLY increase if you are risking at least 75k coins' worth of items on a members' world, or 25k coins' worth of items on a free world. An item is considered to be at risk if it is something you would have lost if you were to die - i.e. it is not covered by the Protect Item prayer or the 'keep three items on death' rule. If you are not risking enough, then however long you spend outside of safe zones, your drop potential will not increase.
   • As an example, one way of doing this is to take 75k coins' worth of items, not protected by death or prayers, then go outside of a safe zone and train as normal (by training a skill of fighting NPCs), and avoid PvP combat. All the time you are doing this, not only are you earning XP from whatever activity you are doing, you are also increasing your drop potential. Once you have built up some drop potential in this way, you can get your PKing gear on and try to get a kill to claim your drop.

CLAIMING YOUR DROP POTENTIAL

1. Once you have built up some drop potential, you will need to find and defeat another player to get a drop. Don't forget that the player you defeat must be risking at least 25k coins' worth of items (on either a free or members' world) for you to receive a good drop. If the player you defeated was not risking that much, you will only receive a token drop, but, in this case, NONE of your drop potential will be used up to determine your drop.

There are some other, less important, rules to PvP worlds, but you should read about them on the Knowledge Base to learn more.

We're really interested in hearing your feedback on these changes, so please feel free to visit the Forums after trying them out.

Enjoy!

Mod Benny
RuneScape Developer