The Defense skill has always been playing catch-up with the other combat stats. It’s been too easy to ignore it and undervalue it. From the perspective of a designer, that’s bad, especially when people are deliberately avoiding content that could increase their Defense level. So, a big part of the challenge was about making the Defense skill more attractive for players to level up. We’ve solved this by adding a range of Defense-only abilities that give you more tactical choices, and tie many of those abilities to actually using a shield, or shield-like equivalent for mages and rangers. We have also given players a significant life point boost if they wear armour appropriate for their level. Wearing appropriate armour can contribute as much as 90% of your total life points; more so if you choose to wield a shield as well.

This means that a player with the right armour for their level will have ten to fifteen times the life points of someone wearing no armour at all. The lower the level of the armour, the fewer points it can give you. Allow players’ combat levels to truly represent their ability. With the strengthening of the Defense skill and more emphasis given to the abilities and equipment a player is using, rather than to skills like Prayer and Summoning, we hope this will give people a quicker and more accurate guide to the relative power of your opponent. While Prayer and Summoning will still be important, their contribution to the overall potential of your character will be reduced. This will generate more players with the highest possible Combat level.

Well, it’s only a few days now until the beta worlds ar