The phoenix, an ancient creature from RuneScape’s distant past, is in need of your help. While flying to her roost she was injured, and now she lies wounded and dying in the depths of her fiery cave. By chance, a knowledgeable priest has discovered her home, and now he waits for an adventurer with the necessary skill and courage to aid the phoenix in her hour of need. Perhaps that adventurer will be you! Or are you...chicken?

In this quest you will navigate lava-filled caverns, learn the secrets of an ancient ritual and, if all goes well, save the phoenix from certain death.

Once you’ve completed the quest, you will be able to return to the phoenix’s cave for a repeatable distraction and diversion reward that you can claim once a day. You will also gain the ability to summon a phoenix familiar to aid you in your battles – something that many of you voted for in April’s Guaranteed Content poll. Sorry that you’ve had to wait a while for this!

Mod Liono
RuneScape Developer


In other news...

The skeletons in Olaf's Quest tunnels have been changed to make it easier for you to attack at range. These piles of bones will no longer interfere with you when you’re ranging, or at any other time for that matter, as they're long dead!

You can no longer attack another player's familiar in single-way combat on a PvP world. This was never intended, and so should no longer be a problem.

There is a newly installed “make-x” feature for filleting fish such as sturgeon, salmon or trout that should make it easier for you to obtain the materials for making barbarian potions. Also, the barbarian super-restore potion will now correctly restore your Summoning points, just like other restore potions.

One of the changes made to While Guthix Sleeps meant you could no longer cast Ice Barrage on the barriers in Castle Wars. This has been rectified so that the spell now works as it previously did.

In response to your suggestions, a second world for Stealing Creation has been added, as the current one can get a bit busy at times!

A handful of songs (Garden, Still Night, Medieval, Adventure and Expanse) have been updated to sound better than ever. So tune in, and listen out for your favourite!

Finally, the Christmas holiday event has now been removed, but you can still enjoy the Myths of the White Lands quest.

So, the first post of the New Year and you’ll be wondering what the next 12 months in RuneScape will bring. The past year saw the introduction of PvP Worlds, RuneScape High Detail, Summoning, our first Grandmaster quest, combat minigames, and Distractions and Diversions. What can we do to top 2008?

Well, this is the challenge that we’ve set ourselves: 2009 has become our official Upgrade Year! So, what does that mean? It means our New Year's resolution is to tweak and polish what we've already got in the game alongside creating new content. For example:

• Doing the 'little' jobs that make a big difference (e.g. a 'You are here' arrow on the world map) and basically fixing all the annoying little niggles the game has. Things that may be the least glamorous to work on and talk about, but which really add up.
• Updating some of the earliest content/quests to bring it up to date, and take advantage of all the features we have added to the game engine since it was originally created. Also, reworking old clues that no longer work now the game is bigger (e.g. 'Look west of the mountains' was fine when there was only one mountain, but not now).
• Making the interfaces as intuitive, flexible and user-friendly as possible.
• Then, after all that, we’ll start looking into abandoned and barely used areas/features of the game, and breathing new life into them.

Of course, we don't want to JUST do upgrades, so we're planning to do a mix of upgrades and new content. To achieve this we are planning on going back to releasing approximately four updates per month, which will alternate between upgrades and new content.

We’ve been trawling the forums, pooling opinions from our game teams and inviting everyone at Jagex HQ to voice their opinions on what they’d like to see in an upgraded RuneScape. As a regular player, there will no doubt be at least one feature you’ve always wanted to see introduced, to make your time in RuneScape even better. Chances are that it’s already on our list, but to be on the safe side, why not let us know? We’ll be monitoring the forums, so please tell us what you want to see. We can’t promise we'll do everything, but we’ll try to incorporate any particular trends we see into our plans, and let you know.

Well, at the end of my first newspost, I just want to thank you all for your continued support through 2008, and I look forward to seeing you all in Gielinor in 2009.

Happy New Year!

Mod Vince
Head of RuneScape