We're continuing to listen to player feedback around our future updates - weigh in on Player Polls in our Reddit the Official RuneScape: Dragonwilds Discord! Ok, back to the content.

Skeletons!

"Skeletons. Everybody has one. Nobody seems to know what to do with them once they've used theirs up. You can get so much done with an extra pair of hands at your beck and call."

- Ravanna

We've all got 'em. We recently grabbed another skeleton, belonging to Mod Aaart, Art Director of RuneScape: Dragonwilds, to learn more about OTHER skeletons, namely ones we're adding as part of our upcoming update: Fellhollow.

From Mod Aaart: 

I’m very happy to lift the curtain and offer a peek at what the art team are up to as we build our newest region Fellhollow.  It’s described as a land suspended between life and death where beauty and death intertwine. The challenge for art was to deliver visuals that support those creative pillars. We took inspiration from infrared photography, which is a technique used by photographers and filmmakers to deliver dreamlike environments and ‘haunting’ portraiture.

This otherworldly inspiration has allowed us to build out a backdrop that players will hopefully appreciate as it offers a new visual landscape to explore.We are of course populating this new region with lots of undead creatures / zombies / skeletons and zogres! We also introduce players to Imaru, our soul eating Dragon, who will be doing all in their power to ruin your day and steal your soul. There will be other familiar RuneScape NPCs popping up to help you on your way.

A new enemy players will face in Fellhollow are skeletons. These are the undead remains of former residents of Fellhollow / farmers and soldiers alike. As with the Goblin and Garou faction enemies, these too will bring a different challenge for players to overcome. 

When it came to designing how they would look and behave we follow our tried and trusted formula to guide our visual decisions. We start by looking at how they were represented in RuneScape3 / Oldschool RS, taking great care to lock in on key visuals we should maintain in their new iterations. Colour palette is important to ensure they don’t disappear into the background elements in Fellhollow both in daytime / nighttime.

Many skeletons will have different abilities and colour is a great tool for us to help communicate to players what they are up against, especially at a distance. For clothing / armour, again we gauge how basic / advanced they should look in terms of quality / protection level. We look closely at shape language of the forms too to help players spot what they are facing so they are not frustrated or confused telling the skeleton archetypes apart. A good example of shape language feeling distinct is our heavy melee skeleton enemy. Their armour is robust / extensive making them tougher to fight and hurt. Looking at their helmet / armour and weapons, you can see we tried repeating a certain shape language. The three spiked elements on the helmet link with the shield and that three-pronged spear. We always try to bring visual logic to our designs as it helps with a feeling of cohesion. Sometimes these kinds of visual choices are linked to architecture / furniture as it helps tie together a believable culture through consistent shape language, material choice and colour palette.

We hope you're excited about our awesome ossuary assembly - we can't wait to get them into your hands soon. Look forward to seeing them in action in the near future, and getting hands on with them when Fellhollow releases at the end of this year!

To see more of these folks in action, amongst many other awesome things we're sharing early (including polls to help our team shape the future of the entire game!!), please check out our socials - We're on Twitter, BSky, Reddit, Instagram, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube and TikTok! And, of course, please join the Official RuneScape: Dragonwilds Discord.

Thanks so much for reading - we'll see you in Ashenfall!