The Deadman Summer Invitational draws ever closer. The top ranked 2,000 players have received their invitations, and are ready to compete between June 26th - July 1st.

$20,000 awaits the victor. The conditions for the Final Hour are the most ambitious and punishing so far. This is going to be the best finale yet. Continue reading to see the host of changes we're making to Season 6, which will launch on the Invitational's close.

Summer Invitational

July 1st's Summer Invitational is our first Old School-exclusive event in the United States, and we're intent on making this Final Hour the best we've seen. We listened to the feedback the last Invitational and we have made a number of changes to guarantee an intense finish.

Barbarian Village will play host to the Final Hour. The shortage of choke points will ensure a repeat of the furious battles of previous events.

The final safety area will consist of a 9x9 grid in the centre of the village. The shrinking of the map will be done over the course of 6 evenly spaced phases. A timer will appear in the top-right corner of your screen to indicate whether you are in an area which will remain safe or will kill you.

Be sure to lock in to the RuneScape Twitch channel at 9pm BST/4pm EST/1pm PDT on July 1st and witness the slaughter of the final hour and to see who takes home the $20,000 prize.

Season 6 changes

An array of changes are being made for Season 6 of Deadman, all are detailed below, read on to learn more!

Changes to combat

There is now a skull penalty for all players attacking a skulled player. The skull penalty will last for 5 minutes. If you previously had a skull with less than 5 minutes remaining it will revert to 5 minutes. If you previously had a skull with longer than 5 minutes remaining it will remain unchanged.

There is now a 1 minute grace period for reasonable kills. This grace period will be a temporary status of immunity the attacks of other players. A reasonable kill can be defined as killing a player within 30 combat levels of yourself. If killing a combat level higher than yourself you will always receive this grace period of immunity (e.g. a level 90 killing a level 126 will receive the grace period). If you die or attack another player within this minute then you will lose the remaining grace period. The grace period will be lost upon logging out.

The Protect Magic protection prayer will no longer halve the duration of the Bind, Snare, and Entangle spells. This change will make the Normal spellbook a viable alternative to Ancient Magicks and encourage a different play style.

Barrows

Barrows will be inaccessible for the entirety of Season 6. It's a contentious issue, but feedback you has led to the conclusion that access to Barrows equipment creates too much of a divide in parity of equipment and is detrimental to the ongoing competitive aspect of the Season. This limitation will ensure that skill, rather than gear, reigns supreme!

One week in

The progress made within the first week can prove to be an invaluable advantage. To ensure the season remains competitive we'll be reintroducing the 6 hour Immunity status for all players beginning the season after the first week.

All quests will again be automatically completed after one week has passed. Automatic completion will yield access to all post-quest content but will not be accompanied with the experience or item rewards. Completing the quests within the first week will be rewarded with experience and items as per usual, and access to post-quest content earlier than others could allow you to establish a crucial foothold.

Death & Gains

We're implementing a number of changes to encourage the rebuild after dying. Rest assured that skulled deaths are still just as brutally punishing, and the combat changes above will make certain that it isn't possible to safe whilst unskulled.

Unskulled players will now protect all XP lost on death.

The rate of rebuild XP gain (the gain on skills with XP already lost) will increase 10x to 50x.

A lot of the feedback we've received in past seasons was pertaining to players who were unable to play as often as others, and so were unable to sustain a prolonged level grind and engage in the beautiful art of killing. To address this we're going to implement a cumulative cap on combat XP gained per day.

There will be a cap of 1 million combat XP gained per day. This is shared across all combat stats: Attack/Strength (averaged), Defence, Ranged, and Magic. XP rewards quest completion do not contribute towards this cap.

This stacks cumulatively .e.g. if a player hadn't earned any combat XP by day 6 there would be the capacity to earn 6 million combat XP.

If you gained 300k Defence XP you would then have the capacity to earn only 700k XP in another stat.

Attack and Strength are averaged; gaining 400k Attack XP and 300k Strength XP would count for 350k XP gained according to the cap, and would allow for another 650k XP to be gained before capping.

XP gained the rebuild XP rates (detailed above) is exempt the daily cap.

Safezones & content changes

Thievable NPCs in safezones will no longer yield loot when pickpocketed.

The Castle of Great Kourend is now a guarded safezone.

Turael will no longer assign Kalphites as a Slayer assignment.

The above changes are intended to ensure game integrity and quality of life. For example, The Kalphite assignment Turael has historically been notoriously difficult for solo players. This change will ensure that lower level players are able to progress with Slayer and gain access to content which will allow them to remain competitive in the latter stages of the season.

As always we welcome any feedback you might have, and we look forward to seeing the discussion unfold. Watch the exciting climax of the Summer Invitational and the launch of Deadman Season 6 live on the RuneScape Twitch channel on July 1st at 9pm BST/4pm EST/1pm PDT.