EDIT - We'll communicate notable hotfixed content changes here. We'll edit the rest of the newspost to consolidate the hotfixes at a later date.

17:30pm BST: Players who die in the Wilderness, who had an existing gravestone outside of the Wilderness, will find that their new gravestone will be moved into the Wilderness. This behaviour is similar to the way gravestones on Entrana behave.If your gravestone was on Entrana, a new death will result in your grave being moved to the location of your new death

18:35pm BST: Players attempting to reclaim Amulets of Glory (6) (including the trimmed variant) from Death's Office will find that there's a small reclaim fee per amulet, when they have 10 or more of them stored.

18:50pm BST: We've resolved an issue which caused items in a gravestone to be deleted when dying in the Gauntlet.

26 June Changes

12:40pm BST:

• If a player dies while fighting Cerberus the gravestone will now appear outside of the boss room.
• Some items such as the Serpentine helm and Toxic Blowpipe will no longer become uncharged on PvM Death.
• We've resolved an issue where players were unable to access their gravestones if they die on the spike traps in Underground Pass.
• Existing gravestones will now only move to the new death location if the location is in 20+ Wilderness.

13:47pm BST:

• Supplies such as food and potions are no longer transferred to an existing gravestone on death, instead they will be dropped where you die.

14:44pm BST:

• Fixed an issue where food and potions were disappearing after a death in places where an Item Retrieval Service would normally hold them.

New Death Mechanics

Some years ago we made some unpolled changes to how your items behave when you die in Old School RuneScape. These were only ever meant to be temporary, since they made death a lot less risky. Back in February, we spoke about our plans to return that sense of excitement and danger to Old School RuneScape by improving the death system. This week, these new and improved death mechanics will go live.

Our survey found a wide range of opinions – some of you wanted to keep low-risk gameplay while some of you wanted to go back to the old, harsher system. But many players were supportive of a small increase in risk. The final design keeps the penalties very low for players who are still learning the ropes, while keeping things interesting for higher-level players. We hope the changes are an acceptable middle ground.

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at what the new death system entails:

PvM Death: Gravestones

When you die outside of PvP, your three most valuable items will remain in your Inventory when you respawn. The rest will be dropped near where you died, and the location will be marked with a Gravestone. You’ll also see it marked on the World Map. To get your items back, you can return to the Gravestone and click on it. You can loot your Gravestone from up to seven tiles away, so there’s no need to put yourself in danger while you look through the interface.

But beware – Graves don’t last forever! You’ll have 15 minutes to collect your stuff before it’s taken to Death’s Office (more on that shortly). This is ample time to reach most newbie areas, but getting to distant boss rooms could be a challenge.

A timer will appear on-screen to let you know how long your Grave will remain accessible. The timer will pause if you become inactive or if you log out, so those with poor internet connections won’t be punished should they drop offline.

Your Grave will give you some common items for free, but more valuable items will cost you. Fees start at 1,000 GP for an item worth 100,000 GP, rising to 100,000 GP for items worth 10 million GP. Iron players will get a 50% discount, since it’s much harder for them to obtain cash quickly. Should you forget the money – or simply not want to risk it on the way there – the Grave can use its mystical powers to take the fee straight from your Bank.

If all that maths sounds a bit intimidating, don’t panic – the Items Kept on Death screen has been updated to show you exactly what you’re risking and what Gravestone fees to expect.

Special Item Rules

Some items behave strangely on death; they might break or turn into something else, for example. The Items Kept on Death screen will tell you everything you need to know about this, but here are a few rules of thumb:

Charged Items

Items which require charges to use, such as the Toxic Blowpipe, will convert to their uncharged, tradeable version upon death. Outside PvP, they’ll go to your Gravestone. You’ll also get any leftover charges back. In the Toxic Blowpipe example, this would be an amount of Zul’rah scales equivalent to the charges remaining.

In a PvP death, of course, these items will just drop on the ground for your killer to loot.

Broken Items

Some items, such as the Fire Cape, will break on death and must be repaired. How this works depends on where you are in the game, and how you died.

If you're in PvP combat when you die, one of the following two things will happen. At Wilderness Levels 20 and below, your item will break and the PKer will receive coins equal to the repair cost. In deeper Wilderness, the item will turn into a tiny pile of coins, which is dropped to the PKer. Using a Trouver Parchment on the item to lock it will return the normal variant of the item to you, and the PKer will receive 500,000 gp instead.

If you're in PvM combat and you die in Wilderness Levels under 20, the item will be sent to your Gravestone. In deeper levels, it will be turned into a pile of coins, which will then be sent to your Gravestone, unless you used a Trouver Parchment.

Tradeable Ornament Kits

A lot of ornament kits are tradeable, such as the Dragon Full Helm Ornament Kit, or the Dark Infinity Colour Kit. These now come with an extra perk outside PvP, in that they cause your item to be protected. So a Bandos Godsword (or) will usually stay in your inventory instead of going to your Gravestone - that's the fashionscape bonus!

In PvP, the item and its ornament kit will both be dropped for the PKer to loot. From now on, this will also happen to the Dark Bow paints and the Abyssal Whip mixes. Previously, they were deleted on death, but since they’re now tradeable they’ll show up for a PKer.

Bear in mind that this only applies to tradeable ornament kits. There are lots of items in the game with unusual behaviour, so you should always check the Items Kept on Death Screen to make sure you know what to expect.

Items That Turn Into Coins

Items that turn into coins if dropped during PvP (such as the Barrelchest Anchor) will continue to do so, but will usually remain in your Inventory if you die in PvM.

Specific Pouches

Pouch-type items such as the Rune Pouch, essence pouches, the Herb Sack and the Bolt Pouch, which store a quantity of resources, would previously lose their contents on death. After this update, on death these resources will fall out of the container and either go to the Gravestone or to a PKer’s loot pile, depending on how you died.

Again, do check the Items Kept on Death screen to see exactly how your stuff will behave. The options there will allow you to see what’ll happen in different situations, too – including being skulled, using Protect Item and venturing past Level 20 Wilderness.

PvP Death

This update hasn’t changed much for the PvP scene. If you’re killed by a PKer, your tradeable items will become lootable. Your untradeable items will either transform into something the PKer can pick up or be taken to your Gravestone for you to retrieve.

Other Notes on Gravestones

Before this update, your items would be lost if the game world rebooted, or if you logged back into the wrong game world. In this update, your items will stay in the Gravestone regardless of which world you're on, or even if the worlds reboot.

In instanced areas, the Gravestone will aim to appear outside the instance where its owner can loot it. Previously, items could be lost inside instances, which gave some players a nasty surprise when they died during a quest that worked this way. This does not affect the few special instances, like Vorkath or the Volcanic Mine, where NPCs can return your dropped items for a fee.

In a related change, if you die inside one of the four God Wars Dungeon boss rooms, your Grave will appear outside.

If you’re unlucky enough to die a second time on the way back to your Grave, any items you drop will usually be put in that same Grave, and its timer will reset.

Food and potions will not go to the Grave and will automatically be dropped on the ground under it, so it’s still possible to make a supply pile. They’ll stay on the ground for an hour, minus any time that has already ticked down from the Gravestone.

Death's Office

If you don’t get back to your Gravestone in time, it will collapse, and anything left in it will be sent to Death’s Office. It’s quite a hassle for him to traipse all over Gielinor collecting all those bits and pieces, so although you’ll have all the time in the world to get your stuff back, you can expect to pay a little more for the privilege.

Items valued at under 100,000 GP are returned for free, because Death has a soft spot for newbies – but anything more will cost you 5% of its current Grand Exchange value. Again, Iron players will get a 50% discount.

You can find an entrance to Death’s Office near all the major respawn points. There’s one in Lumbridge Graveyard, another in the coffin room in Edgeville plus an especially ornate one under the White Knights’ Castle in Falador, accessed via their sparkly new crypt. In all cases, we’ve aimed to minimise the visual impact on the surface world.

After this update, the first time you die you’ll be taken to Death’s Office and get a Gravestone after this update. He’ll walk you through the basic mechanics, and set you loose before the 15 minute timer starts.

If you’re feeling exceptionally fancy – or if you die a lot and would like something nice to look at while you’re doing it – you can purchase the cosmetic Angel of Death Gravestone from Death. Since players seldom see each other’s Graves, we haven’t offered a wider variety of options for now.

Death's Coffer

Suppose for a moment that you didn’t have the cash on hand to pay the Gravestone fees or retrieve your items from Death’s Office. If you have any items you don’t really want, you can offer them up as collateral to Death’s Coffer, which you can find in the Office.

105% of the cost of the items you sacrifice will be stored in the Coffer and can be used to pay any future fees you might incur. So if you’ve got a lot of unwanted alchables, and a chronic lack of nature runes, you could stick them in the Coffer instead.

However, Death only accepts the good stuff. Each individual item you place in the Coffer must be worth at least 10,000 GP, or he’ll reject it (and you can’t just deposit lots of cheaper items at once).

We might reduce this threshold in future updates, but for now we want to start with more valuable items to limit the scope for manipulation. 10,000 GP should cover most of the commonly alchemised drops and has the bonus effect of taking a wider variety of items out of the game economy over long periods of time.

Ultimate Iron accounts

Ultimate Iron accounts won’t have Gravestones, and their items will never go to Death’s Office. Their items (including untradeable items) will drop and remain on the ground for an hour, on the game world where they died. That hour is still ‘real time’, so the items will vanish after 60 minutes whether they’re logged in or not.

The items will also vanish if the game world reboots, or if too many other items are dropped in the same area.

This all sounds very harsh, but it’s actually no different to how Ultimate Iron accounts have played for the last five years. In taking on the Ultimate Iron challenge, they accepted a higher level of difficulty across the game, and that’s reflected with these death mechanics.

One change that will affect Ultimate Iron players, though, is the way dropped items behave in instanced areas without a retrieval feature. Following this update, dying in an instance will cause your items to be dropped outside the instance – where a non-Ultimate Iron player might find their Gravestone – so that they can be retrieved.

Special Death Situations

Some parts of the game have had custom rules for death since they were released. Examples include Torfinn retrieving items dropped at Vorkath, Petrified Pete retrieving items from the Volcanic Mine, and the priestess retrieving items at Zul-Andra. For the most part, these mechanics have been left unchanged.

As before, if you die again before retrieving your items from these NPCs, they will be deleted immediately. This might sound excessive given the new death system, but the truth is that these mechanics are some of the few direct item sinks that death has had in recent years, and we’re reluctant to make them more generous in this update.

One major change affects the priestess at Zul-Andra. She previously offered her services for free, but we no longer feel that’s appropriate, since Zulrah is so generous with its loot. Once a non-Ultimate Iron player has a Zulrah kill count of 50 or more, she will start charging 100,000 coins to return your items, matching Torfinn’s fee. This charge will not apply to Ultimate Iron players.

The Future of Death

It’s inevitable that there’ll be aspects of the new death system that don’t suit all situations – particular items will be at greater risk, and certain areas will be too risky. We urge you to plan your strategy accordingly. For example, if you don’t like the idea of losing high-end items, maybe practice a boss with something cheaper.

We do, however, expect to make changes to this system in future updates, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on your feedback. With that in mind, please be patient while sharing your suggestions, and remember that this is a happy medium between the low-risk mechanics of the last five years and the high-risk mechanics of the original game.

Here's something to think about: back in February we offered to move Graves to the outsides of the four God Wars Dungeon boss rooms, since getting in there could take so much longer. If players like, we would be willing to offer similar changes for more places, such as the Barrows or Pyramid Plunder.