u/Aviarn

Barrows is an iconic piece of equipment. However, many of its effects are harshly predated. Verac's is only situationally usable since Protection Prayers work different now (except for Kalphite Queen), Ahrim and Karil don't work anymore due to how insanely high stats are on later stage monsters, Akrisae just never popped off, and Torag is just... Torag.

What's stranger was that upon the release of the EoC, many of these 'power bump' armours suddenly became... Tank armour? Time to get cracking. Here's my draft, centric around Powerful Abilities.

One slight change on the Amulet of the Forsaken;

• Rather than amplifying the Barrows Set effects, it instead counts as a wildcard equiment piece to gain a barrow's set effect while using a different weapon (or any other equipment piece). Its relic power remains unchanged.

Dharok

• Becomes t70 Melee Power Armour
• (3) Increases the damage of Powerful Melee Abilities by 5% for each 10% max health missing.
• (4) Increases the damage of Powerful Melee Abilities by 5% and the critical strike damage of Powerful Melee Abilities by 1% for each 10% max health missing.

Verac

• Becomes t70 Melee Power Armour
• (3) Powerful Melee Abilities deal full damage against enemies with less than 100% Damage Potential
• (4) Powerful Melee Abilities deal full damage as though you had 100% damage potential, and cannot be deflected, reduced or blocked by prayers or abilities.

Torag

• Stays t70 Melee Tank Armour
• (3) Powerful Abilities reduce the adrenaline of its target by 5% for each hit.
• (4) Powerful Abilities reduce the adrenaline of its target by 5% for each hit. If the target had Adrenaline left or uses no Adrenaline, instead returns 5% Adrenaline to you.

Guthan

• Stays t70 Melee Tank Armour
• (3) Damage from Powerful Abilities restore health equal to 5% of the dealt amount.
• (4) Damage from Powerful Abilities restore health (5%) and prayer (0.5%) based on the dealt.

Akrisae

• Becomes t70 Necromancy Tank Armour
• (3) Powerful Necromancy Abilities increases the damage reduction of your Protection prayers by 10% for 5s.
• (4) Powerful Necromancy Abilities increases the damage reduction of your Protection and Deflect prayers by 10%, and deflects 10% more damage for 5s.
• Akrisae's Warmace becomes changed and turns into an Akrisae's Rung (mainhand) and Akrisae's Censer (offhand)

Ahrim

• Becomes t70 Magic Power Armour
• (3) Powerful Magic Abilities curse a target, making them take 5% additional Magic fDamage for 5s.
• (4) Powerful Magic Abilities curse a target, making them take 5% additional Typal Damage for 5s.

Karil

• Becomes t70 Ranged Power Armour
• (3) Powerful Ranged Abilities refund a small portion of all Ranged Ultimate abilities currently on cooldown.
• (4) Powerful Ranged Abilities refund a small portion of all Ultimate abilities currently on cooldown.

These items may not provide the bonuses you'd expect in a late or endgame loadout, but that's fine- these still are f2p midgame items.

Tome of Frost:

• Becomes a Pocket Slot item that requires 48 Magic to wield.
• Grants 10.9 magic damage bonus when worn.
• Provides unlimited Water Runes for casting spells when worn, and immunity against Desert Heat.
• Can be charged with Frozen Pages (obtained as a drop from completing Frozen Floors)
• When activated, increases the damage of Water Spells by 5%.

>The Tome of Frost was a phenomenal design on release, because Staves were still 1-handed, and magic had little to no offhand items. Nowadays, the tome is in direct conflict with other, stronger or easier accessible gear, and better in-hand cost reducer items already existed.

Bow Sight:

• Becomes a Pocket Slot item that requires 48 Ranged to wield.
• Grants 10.9 ranged damage bonus and 23 ranged accuracy when worn.*
• Increases the Attack Range of Bows by 2 tiles, and Shieldbows by 4 tiles.
• Can be charged with Pristine Lenses (obtained as a drop from completing Furnished Floors)
• When activated, increases the damage of Bows by 5%.

>The bowsight similarly was a power bump for an item that used to be somewhat relevant before the EoC. However, with the significant role change of Shieldbows (what used to be Longbows), and now it just slightly raises the stats of a weapon type that just isn't desirable to use as main weapon by default.
In addition, regular Bows still fall in an odd relevancy gap in the mid or lategame when no access exists yet to the SGB or BOTLG as Crossbows dominate midgame ranged through their enchanted bolts. This midgame item is meant to bump those up a tad as you progress.

* (in tandem with this one; change the bonuses from the Amulet Accuracy to be parallel with the Amulet of Strength + Amulet of Magic)

Here's a few problematic rewards that are in dire need for better relevancy;

• Shieldbow Sight. Who tf uses Shieldbows, let alone one often or powerful enough that's worth this investment?
• Tome of Frost. This item dates from an era where Staves were still a one-handed item. Some people use it for saving water runes (or desert heat reduction), but this item gets outpaced/outtiered very fast, being worse than a Mystic Orb in stats, or having access to better rune-preserving weapons.
• Arcane/Farsight/Brawler's necklace. A literal amulet of power already outperforms this, requiring 0 requirements at all.
• Mercenary's Gloves. A huge cost + requirement for an item that sits between Royal Vambraces and Dino Vambraces...
• Scroll of Daemonheim. This item actually absolutely does jack. (Edit; is already scheduled for removal)
• Scroll of Quick Teleportation. Way too steep of a cost for the tiny niche effect it does.

Earlier I made a post that the LRC was in need of a facelift. Main points being is that it's old (graphically, mechanically, but it's relevancy also predates the M&S rework). Minerals for fishing feels in an odd spot, LRC creatures just aren't worth it to kill, and coal isn't as foundational as it was before 2019 (demand decreased by 90% as Coal now mainly only finding use to min-max smithing speed efficiency, as it is no longer part of the actual smelting structure beyond mithril).

Thus, here is a draft I want to offer for reworking the LRC, with inspiration taken from the Motherlode Mine.

The Siftery

Through activities in the LRC, you can find Living Paydirt. Living Paydirt is initially obtained from mining Concentrated Deposits at lvl 50 mining, or killing Living Rock creatures. This means that Concentrated Gold and Concentrated Coal deposits disappear, and instead become one uniform node. This node does however drop Ign and Meta Geodes, despite being level 50 to mine.

This Living Paydirt can be delivered to the Siftery, in which it becomes processed and stored into a container. In a similar fashion to Swarm Fishing, Living Paydirt rolls random ores across all tiers of 40 and above, making it able to obtain ores normally not accessible to your mining level - however your mining level still contributes to which, or how often, you roll high ores. In addition, Living Paydirt always provides a small amount of Living Minerals, which is used for currency - or activities inside the LRC.

Living Minerals as Currency and Resource

Living Minerals can be used to purchase a variety of upgrades or items from the dwarf operating the Siftery. Rewards includes;

- A perk to remove aggression from LRC creatures (as replacement from when/if this retires from the mtx outfits)

- An upgrade to the Enhanced Autoheater, allowing it to consume other fuels (like luminite, drakolith and phasmatite) in different ratios

- A perk that allows the Baitless perk to also work on Living Minerals for Rocktails.

- An upgrade that increases the chance for Metamorphic Geodes to roll instead of Igneous Geodes (to replace the lost effect from the Resourceful Aura).

- An upgrade to the Superheat spell, that becomes auto-cast when mining Precious ores (silver, gold and platinum), converting mined ores into bars consuming 1 nature + 4 fire runes per mined ore.

- A bag of gold or coal ores.

In addition, Living Minerals is used as a resource for in-cave activities, such as;

- Living Minerals can be thrown into underground ponds to 'agitate' Cavefish and Rocktail, increasing the catch rates.

- As a new Hunter activity, Living Minerals is used as bait for two new Box Trap catches; Living Rock Critters (that always drop Geodes on catch) and Goldfish (as a play of words for 'silverfish', except they're golden) at higher levels.

Other brisk ideas that could be used in a LRC rework

- Living Rock Crab, a new type of crab with much higher health than its counterparts (as a mirror to Ammonite crabs on OSRS)

- Fossils, as a flex between Mining and Archaeology.

- Panning, as a flex between Mining and Fishing.

in the light of the midgame rebalance, this skilling area is seriously in need of a juice-up, rebalance or QoL rapidfire. just to adress a couple of pain points;

- Living Rock creatures have very low hp and are garbage slayer XP for the level you get them tasked on

- The separate interaction of killing and mining Rock creatures is very tedious and never worth it.

- level 80 mining for Coal and Gold btw.

- players don't use Coal in these mass quantities since the M&S rework.

- Who uses Cavefish even at this high level?

- Everyone already skips the minerals bait requirement for Rocktails

- In addition, too many alternate sources provide equal, if not better, methods to obtain rockfish.