GamesLabs Season 8 - A new challenge

Hello everyone and welcome to season 8 of the GamesLabs network and Minescape! This season is once again a record-breaking one and brings players danger they have not felt before - the 4000-year-long war.

God Wars

It's been many years since the world of Minescape went silent. Since creatures once fighting all over the world have disappeared and peace took over.

Today, that changes. The Stellar Buddies have been exploring various areas around the map and have discovered something huge, something that brings danger to the entire world of Minescape - the God Wars Dungeon.

God wars dungeon

After safely descending into the dungeon buried under snow beside the Troll filled areas of the world, the Stellar buddies have discovered that the war has never truly ended: to this day, various Minescape monsters are fighting with each other.

The dungeon is filled to the brim with danger: creatures players have not seen to this day have been released to the dungeon, and now we're trying to keep them from expanding into the rest of the world.

Be cautious when entering the dungeon: the creatures are very protective of their Gods and will not tolerate anyone not wearing a piece of equipment of their God.

General's bases

The dungeon contains 5 different bases:

  • Armadyl's Eyrie - An area protected by a bridge. Make sure to bring a bow/crossbow with an arrow to enter. Requires level 70 Ranged to enter.
  • Bandos' Stronghold - An area protected by a huge door. Make sure to bring a hammer and bang the door to enter. Requires level 70 Strength to enter.
  • Saradomin's Encampment - An area protected by two waterfalls. Requires level 70 Agility to enter.
  • Zamorak's Fortress - An area protected by a bridge. Requires level 70 Constitution to enter. Careful: The area will drain your prayer and surround you with darkness! Only Saradomin's light can help you fight the darkness!
  • Ancient Prison - an ancient gateway to a long-forgotten God. Stellar buddies have not dared to explore that part of the dungeon, and neiter should you.

New monsters

Upon entering the dungeon, Stellar buddies have found some new creatures they have never seen before in the world of Minescape:

  • Aviansies
  • Ogres
  • Jogres
  • Knights of Saradomin
  • Saradomin priests
  • Zamorak / Saradomin spiritual mages, warriors, and rangers

The Gods

If you manage to survive the main room and the sub-sections of the dungeon, you may approach magical doors leading you to a room locked behind the magic, keeping God generals locked away from the world.

Armadyl

Requires level 70 ranged and 40 kills of armadylian supporters to enter. The room contains the following monsters:

  • Wingman Skree
  • Flockleader Geerin
  • Flight Kilisa

And the general itself - Kree'arra.

Minescape - Kree'arra

Bandos

Requires level 70 strength and 40 kills of bandosian supporters to enter. The room contains the following monsters:

  • Sergeant Strongstack
  • Sergeant Steelwill
  • Sergeant Grimspike

And the general itself - General Graardor.

Minescape - General Graardor

Zamorak

Requires level 70 constitution and 40 kills of zamorakian supporters to enter. The room contains the following monsters:

  • Balfrug Kreeyath
  • Tstanon Karlak
  • Zakl'n Gritch

And the general itself - K'ril Tsutsaroth.

Minescape - K'ril Tsutsaroth

Saradomin

Requires level 70 agility and 40 kills of saradomian supporters to enter. The room contains the following monsters:

  • Starlight
  • Growler
  • Bree

And the general itself - Commander Zilyana.

All of the rooms have both private and public instances.

Minescape - Commander Zilyana

New items & rewards from the Dungeon

With the discovery and release of the God Wars dungeon, the following new items, armor pieces, and weapons have been added:

  • Saradomin's light - An item used to craft Staff of the Light, and one-time-use item for fighting against darkness in the Zamorak faction.
  • Infernal ashes - A new type of prayer ashes giving you 60 experience points in prayer when buried.
  • Armadyl crossbow - A new powerful crossbow that requires level 80 to wield and provides base ranged damage of 95 at the speed of 1. The weapon has a special attack that doubles your accuracy for one shot, costing 50% special energy.
  • Staff of Light - A light version of the Staff of the Dead. The weapon requires level 85 in magic to be used and provides base magic damage of 85. It has a speed of 1.5 and a special attack that halves the melee damage taken from the currently attacked monster for 60 seconds (if the monster is still alive and the staff is held), costing you 100% special energy on use.
  • Staff of the Dead - A powerful staff. The staff has the same requirements and special abilities as the Staff of Light.
  • Steam staff - A new elemental staff. The staff requires level 30 in magic to be used and provides base magic damage of 30 on speed 1.5. It has no special attack but provides unlimited fire and water runes for combat spells.
  • Zamorakian spear - A powerful spear. Requires level 80 attack to be used, provides base damage of 165 at the speed of 1.8. Has a special attack costing 50% special energy and freezing the currently active enemy for 3 seconds.
  • Godsword shard I, II, III - Can be combined at an anvil with a hammer to get a Godsword blade.
  • Godsword blade - Can be combined with any God hilt and a hammer on an anvil to get a Godsword.
  • Armadyl, Bandos, Zamorak, and Saradomin hilts - Can be combined with a Godsword blade and a hammer on an anvil to get a Godsword.
  • Armadyl, Bandos, Zamorak, and Saradomin godswords.
  • Armadyl, Bandos, and Subjugation (Zamorak) armor sets.

Godswords

Upon obtaining any of the hilts, and a Godsword blade, players may craft a Godsword - the new most powerful special weapon in-game.

  • Armadyl Godsword - Requires level 85 attack to be used, provides 220 base damage at the speed of 2.2. Has a special attack, costing 50% of the special attack energy, that provides the player with a 40% damage boost for the next hit.
  • Bandos Godsword - Requires level 85 attack to be used, provides 220 base damage at the speed of 2.2. Has a special attack, costing 50% of the special attack energy, that provides the player with a +21% damage boost, improved accuracy, and drains opponents' combat stats equivalent to a quarter of the damage dealt in the following order: Defence, Strength, Attack, Magic, Ranged. (You must first drain the defence skill fully by dealing 1 or more special attacks and only then in moves to Strength.. etc. etc.. Once the monster dies / respawns, it once again has its full combat stats).
  • Saradomin Godsword - Requires level 85 attack to be used, provides 220 base damage at the speed of 2.2. Has a special attack, costing 50% of the special attack energy, that provides the player with a 10% damage boost for the next hit and a 50% restoration of hitpoints and 25% restoration of prayer points based on the damage dealt (50/25% of a hit/damage).
  • Zamorak Godsword - Requires level 85 attack to be used, provides 220 base damage at the speed of 2.2. Has a special attack, costing 50% of the special attack energy, that provides the player with a 10% damage boost for the next hit and freezes the hit monster for 20 seconds.

God armor sets

You may have noticed, that the bosses have brought us new powerful armor sets to the game, let's check them out:

  • Armadyl armor set: Requires level 80 defence, provides +5% ranged damage boost per piece.
  • Bandos armor set: Requires level 80 defence, provides +5% melee damage boost per piece.
  • Zamorak / Ā Subjugation armor set: Requires level 80 defence, provides +5% magic damage boost per piece.

Developers note

The God Wars dungeon was a huge project that took us a lot of time to build, design and develop. We have truly paid a lot of attention to it and try to make it an unforgettable experience for Minescape players. We are aware that such a huge project may not be perfect once masses of players explore different parts of it, and we thank you ahead for any possible bug/issue reports.

P.S. Thank you to the team for making this dungeon!

New Minescape areas

With the release of Minescape season 8, we are bringing 8 new accessible and 5 updated / not accesible areas to the game. We plan to slowly release those updated / inaccesible areas to the game across season 8. The new areas are:

  • The Godwars Dungeon
  • Cairn Isle
  • Troll Stronghold
  • Exam Centre
  • Ship yard
  • Kharazi Jungle
  • Necromancer tower
  • Corsair cove

The updated / not yet fully accesible areas are:

  • Mage training arena
  • Mage arena miniquest cape area
  • Kraken cove
  • Corporeal beast cave
  • Zanaris (part 2 area)

On top of that, a lot of various areas in the world of Minescape got updated with various bugfixes (like trees being not choppable), look improvements (paths, foliage) and other small changes.

New quests

New update - new quests! This season's release brings you 3 new quests:

Ernest the chicken

Draynor Village citizens have heard rumors about a missing person. Ernest had disappeared without a trace and everyone is worried, as Ernest had been working on a top-secret project that could change the course of scientific history!

Head to Veronica near the entrance to the Draynor Manor to start this quest.

Minescape Ernest the chicken

Waterfall quest

Many of us try to seek various treasures in the world of Minescape, but only the strong ones can find the secret cave behind a waterfall!

Head to Almera in her house near the Coal Trucks to start this quest.

Minescape Baxtorian Falls

Troll stronghold

Help! Trolls! The great army leader of Burthrope is unrest as his friend's son got lost whilst exploring the dangerous mountains nearby. Can you find him?

Head to Denulth in Burthorpe to start this quest.

Minescape Troll Stronghold

Quest point cape

The first runescape in Minecraft server named Minescapeā„¢ came out at the end/beggining of 2011/2012. The server was created by what's currently known as the GamesLabs network by scipio3000 and other creators. Since then, the Minescape Network / GamesLabs network has had a lot of quests come and go as part of the network change. But there's always been one thing missing - the quest cape. A reward for players that chose to explore the lore of the original Minescape. Today - that changes!

We have added a quest point game to the game. It can be claimed for 99000 coins from the Wise Old Man in the Draynor village. It can only be equipped once a player has completed all finished quests in-game (soonTM quests are not counted/needed).

Once we add new quests, the cape will once more become locked, and players who have obtained it will have to complete the new quest(s) to make it valid again.

Minescape Quest point cape

Special attack energy bar

Upon joining the game after the update, you may notice that your HUD has changed a bit. The old stamina bar has been recolored to match the hitpoints & prayer bars and a new bar was added - the Special attack energy bar!

The bar displays how much special energy you've got. 1 bar equals 10% for a total of 10 bars / 100%. Special energy regenerates slowly, taking about 5 minutes to regenerate fully.

With the release of the special attack energy bar, we have reworked some of the previously released special attacks (like Dragonfire shield special, and Granite maul special) to use the special energy bar. This change brings more balance to special attacks and allows us to bring more special attacks in the future.

Minescape Special Attack Bar

Back-end changes

New season - new upgrades!

We upgraded our animation system at the end of the last season, but starting with this one, we've made some changes that should make ranged / magic against newly created creatures better. We have also started replacing some older models with new models, that have proper animations and hitboxes.

The biggest "back-end" change was a new feature for our design team allowing them to test their models without the need for developers. This change allowed us to speed up the GWD development process a lot.

We have also stopped generating the Minescape resourcepack for versions below 1.16 and this change allows us to update the game faster and saves us a bunch of time.

We have also fixed various issues from updating to 1.19.3.

Season 8: What's to come?

This season of Minescape and GamesLabs has been very big. With the help of you, the players, we've been able to release this update in just a couple of months of development, design, testing, and build work.

Starting with season 8, we have decided to start using an internal roadmap for future updates, to ease our work and allow us to do updates more smoothly. This change means, that updates will be pre-defined and user suggestions may not make it into the first update, but into later ones, as we go. We are taking this step, as we've realized over the years that having full creative freedom is the best step we can take to make our teams efforts better: once the team is not limited to working on the specific project(s), they are more likely to finish started projects sooner, as they do it with passion.

This change should hopefully allow us to publish updates more often, and bring more areas to the game faster, just like this update did.

Bugfixes & QoL Changes

Just like with any season release, we have fixed various issues in-game, made QoL and game-balance changes, and added some extra small features for everyone to enjoy:

  • Updated the online Minescape map to include the new locations.
  • Added the Gilded pickaxe to the Mining skill guide.
  • Added slayer optional creature tag: some entities will now not require slayer level to be attacked, but will continue requiring slayer level to be assigned for a slayer task.
  • Added frogs to the tree gnome stronghold area.
  • Added more sheep to various areas around the map.
  • Added Fletching and Hunter tasks to Jobs.
  • Added 3 new quests - Waterfall quest, Ernest the Chicken and the Troll Stronhold.
  • Added the Godwars dungeon.
  • Added missing items from the in-game Minescape wiki.
  • Added special attack bar and replaced old weapon specials to use the new special attack buffer.
  • Added Dragon Chain Boots item drop to more monsters.
  • Added more lighting to the top floor of the slayer tower.
  • Added bow to tutorial island fail-safe method.
  • Added Bryophyta to the boss slayer monster list.
  • Added an open rate limit to item boxes that can be bought using candies.
  • Changed dragon chain armor level requirement to level 60.
  • Changed dragon plate armor level requirement to level 70.
  • Changed the Exploration skill-cape perk: You will now only be able to teleport to the beacons you have visited before.
  • Fixed impling respawn timers in Puro-Puro.
  • Fixed a spelling error in the Clay ore description.
  • Fixed a spelling mistake in the descriptions of various jewelry items.
  • Fixed Jelly sounds.
  • Fixed the thieving in-game wiki showing wrong names for certain stalls.
  • Fixed the visual xp shown in herblore wiki for the extreme hunter potion.
  • Fixed a spelling mistake during Romeo and Juliet's quest.
  • Fixed the Dragonfire shield special attack.
  • Fixed a typo in the Cyclop mob title.
  • Fixed an issue allowing to put items into UI slots (skills / menu slots).
  • Fixed an issue not allowing players to bank certain transmogged items.
  • Fixed an issue allowing to trade imbued Dagganoth King rings.
  • Fixed an issue causing DXP not to trigger sometimes.
  • Fixed an issue with chin timers.
  • Fixed an issue locking the grave position to the Giant Mole.
  • Fixed an issue allowing to open chests / crates.
  • Fixed an issue making items not glow when selected.
  • Fixed an issue that sometimes prevented players from entering an instance.
  • Fixed an issue allowing you to take and put items into item frames.
  • Fixed an issue with Dagganoth King items not counting for the collection log.
  • Fixed an issue causing certain monsters to disapear.
  • Fixed an issue with Dagganoth King protective circles.
  • Fixed an issue causing players to get kicked whilst trying to re-join the network.
  • Fixed an issue with armor stands staying past entities death.
  • Fixed an issue causing entities to not respawn correctly.
  • Fixed an issue that prevented players from joining an instance correctly.
  • Fixed an issue causing certain entity nameplates to disapear.
  • Fixed an issue causing certain monsters to appear invisible.
  • Fixed an issue with balloons spawning in together with a slime attached to them.
  • Fixed an issue causing clue scrolls to have the most amount of steps most of the time.
  • Fixed an issue allowing players to instantly purchase items from certain NPCs without clicking "Continue".
  • Fixed an issue causing the "Back" and "Forward" buttons to be missing in the Grand Exchange Buy/Sell offer window.
  • Fixed the trees that were unchopable in various parts of the map.
  • Fixed the rate of fish pizzas.
  • Fixed /shout cooldown for staff members.
  • Increased the alch prices of the Dagganoth King rings.
  • Lost backpack NPC no longer exists. You may now reclaim your backpack from Diango in the Draynor village.
  • Made it so that bank tabs will now remember if they should be sorted or not upon relog.
  • Made Moss Giants less strong.
  • Made armor offensive stats to be locked behind the same level as the defence level of the type (e.g. Armor piece requiring level 50 defence, giving +2 magic bonus will now require level 50 magic to get that bonus).
  • Removed tens of thousands of client-side lag-causing blocks in various areas around the map.
  • Removed Earth warriors from non-wilderness dungeons.
  • Removed the Grand Exchange teleport from the Games Necklace.
  • Removed throwing knives from the "shiny" roll table.
  • Replaced "Middle click" with "Drop" in most scenarios.
  • Solved all of the open support tickets.
  • Updated dragon plate armor level requirements to match other sets.

Staff applications

GamesLabs is actively accepting Staff Applications! We are looking for players that are passionate about contributing to the GamesLabs Network, Minescape, and other exciting projects. The application forms were recently updated and it is easier than ever to apply! We are Ā looking for players to assist in all fields, but we currently lack on the following teams:

  • Build Team: Build team is responsible for bringing the Network to life! Builds include Minescape Points of Interest, Minigames, Network Lobby, Convention Booths, etc. Previous build experience is helpful and preferred.
  • Asset design team: We are looking for digital artists to create monster / item models, new UIs, icons, and more! Experience in all of the fields is not necessary!

If you are interested in joining our team, please apply on our website at the following link: https://www.gameslabs.net/apply
We look forward to reviewing your applications!

The end

That's all for the release of Season 8!
Make sure to join our Discord if you haven't already!