RuneScape Desert Treasure II – The Fallen Empire patch notes

Table of Contents Table of Contents

RuneScape: The Dessert Treasure II is an interesting game that might look a bit older-fashioned to some, but it exactly is quite fun. It is a squeal to RuneScape: The Desert Treasure quest from back in 2005, now the latest one, RuneScape: Desert Treasure 2 – The Fallen Empire, will be sending players back into what is called Kharidian Desert, where a mysterious quest will unfold.

Recently, Desert Treasure II received an update, and this article will go over the patch notes for everything included in the update.

RuneScape Desert Treasure II – The Fallen Empire Patch Notes, July 27, 2023

Below is the list of patch notes from the official website.

Thursday, July 27th – Initial Changes & Clarification

In case you’ve been living inside an ancient vault deep in the desert, we released Old School’s biggest quest so far yesterday: Desert Treasure II – The Fallen Empire. 

We’ve got a couple of updates for you on some small tweaks and quality of life changes based on your initial feedback, plus a clarification of how the vestige drops work for each of the bosses.

We’ll kick things off with the hottest topic so far…

Vestige Drop Mechanics

We’ve seen a whole lot of speculation about exactly what’s going on with these, so we’d like to provide some extra clarity on things. We’ll use Vardorvis as an example since he’s shaping up to be pretty popular, especially with the allure of the Ultor ring.

• Vardorvis has a 1 in x chance to roll onto his unique table.
• Unique table contains Executioner’s Axe head, Virtus pieces, Chromium ingot and the Ultor vestige.
  • Awakener’s orbs, Blood Quartz and the pet sit on a separate table from this one.
• Player has a chance to roll onto the Ultor vestige.
• After hitting this roll 3 times, player receives an Ultor vestige drop.
  • When hitting this roll, if you’re not due to receive a vestige, you’ll be given a drop that isn’t on the unique table (outlined above) instead.

In essence, it’s a similar system to the Venator shards obtained from the Phantom Muspah, where players hit the shard drop 5 times to assemble a Venator bow. Part of what this system achieves is preventing players from going too dry, because nobody likes going excessively dry. Conversely, it does also remove the chance to score the most sought-after drop on 1kc. In a sense, the randomness for obtaining a vestige is clamped so that the extremely dry and extremely ‘spooned’ players are a little closer to the average expected rate.

While the number of kills overall at each boss is high, a lot of these are made up of players having secured one kill for the quest itself, or from players hopping around between bosses to figure out which is their favourite. This drop system means the lowest theoretical killcount for obtaining an Ultor vestige from Vardorvis is 3, though this remains highly improbable.

In this case, the first two ‘shards’ are invisible, we opted for this approach so that eventually obtaining the vestige feels like a huge moment rather than feeling like incremental progress towards obtaining one (like with the Venator shards and eventual Venator bow. Sometimes it’s nice to break big ticket items up into smaller, tangible pieces, but on the flip side it’s much more exciting to just see a big drop all at once! We do want to experiment more with drops and how players obtain them to see what works well and what works less well and do feel that this is an approach that has potential. However we also appreciate that many players speculate the vestiges aren’t working as intended or that they feel astronomically rare to the point of some choosing not to engage with the bosses until we explain further.

Hopefully this clears things up a little, we meant it when we said that you don’t need to do anything special! If you’re chasing a drop, you’ll have a better chance of seeing your first vestige as your killcount climbs a little higher, and we expect to see a much more significant influx of vestiges as more players start racking up the kills!

With that clarified, we’ve got a few very small tweaks we’ll be making tomorrow via coldfix, at the usual time of 11:30am BST (with the standard 45 minute timer at 10:45am BST). Read on for more info!

Area Access & Transportation

Desert Treasure II introduces a handful of new areas alongside its new bosses. While these areas are expansive and full of detail, a couple in particular can feel a little rough to get back to if you’re trying to collect your gear from your gravestone while learning the bosses.

For the approach to Vardorvis, we’d like to add two alternate methods of getting to the rowboat at the south of the Kebos Lowlands, since for those of you who haven’t unlocked the Xeric’s Honour teleport on Xeric’s talisman, it can be a pretty cumbersome return journey:

• Add an extra transport location for the Mountain Guide who can currently take you between Mount Quidamortem and the western side of Shayzien. We’d like to give him the option to transport you to the crossroads due east of the rowboat, west of the quest start location for Garden of Death.
• Add a fairy ring in the small clearing northwest of the quest start location for Garden of Death.

While you might still need to dash through a few foes on your way back, these should make getting back on track after a respawn feel faster, and let you spend more time learning how to tackle Vardorvis as opposed to making your way back.

For the approach to the Whisperer, we’d like to make two small terrain changes to cut down on some of the frustrations that players have expressed at making their way back to Camdozaal:

• Add an Agility handhold (requires 68 Agility) to the western side of Ice Mountain, allowing quicker access for those of you using the Lassar teleport spell.
• Smooth out the steep drop to the southeast of the Mind altar, so that players using the Mind altar teleport can easily walk from there straight into Camdozaal.

We hope these little tweaks might make getting around during the quest (or while chasing the teleport-unlocking tablets for each boss) more enjoyable and let you focus on what’s new rather than trekking through places you’re already familiar with.

Beyond these, we’ve got a selection of smaller changes that we’ll be delivering via coldfix tomorrow, Friday, July 28th!

Other Changes – Friday, July 28th (PENDING COLDFIX)

• Fix a bug where the Whisperer fires more attacks in a row than intended
• Increase the number of Combat XP lamps rewarded by the quest from 1 to 3. from an NPC at the Ancient Vault after the quest, take a look around, you can’t miss him!
• Reduce the maximum wander range of the foes in the post-quest version of Vardorvis’ area, to prevent them from forming a violent welcoming party outside his boss lair.
• Players will no longer be able to see the shelved Ruinous Powers in the Prayer skill guide.

We want to say a huge thank you to everybody who’s played and shared their thoughts on Desert Treasure II so far, it’s been an absolute blast to watch you tackle the quest and our four new bosses! 

Keep giving us your thoughts and feedback, and expect to hear more from us in the coming weeks about any more substantial changes we might be making, the changes above are intended to be small changes for a little QoL while people get to grips with everything new. 

Oh, one more thing! You might want to keep a close eye on any Awakener’s orbs you’ve accumulated, because tomorrow (Friday, July 28th), the Awakened variants of Vardorvis, Duke Sucellus, the Leviathan and the Whisperer will be waking up… Keep an eye out on our socials to figure out exactly when they’ll be waking up – good luck, have fun!