Intrigue, murder and devious plots! Things are afoot once again at the Sinclair Mansion. The family has vanished without a trace. None of their neighbours are very sorry to see them go, but suspicions are aroused when King Arthur and his knights disappear as well...

Your help is needed once again to unravel the Sinclair family's plots. Those of you who have solved the Murder Mystery will be called upon to put your Defence skill to the test: as you act as the defence attorney and disprove the case you built up against them in the first place. All is not as it seems, though, and more people are involved in the kidnapping of King Arthur than is at first apparent.

If you're successful, you'll be invited to train with the Knights of the Round Table. If you can keep up with them, you'll be well rewarded...

Will you be able to deliver a King's Ransom?

Summary

In other news...

Seers' Village has undergone a graphical rework and now looks more impressive than ever. If you're in the area, have a look to see the improvements to this thriving little village.

The Party Room previously in Seers' Village has moved to the north-east of Falador, which means all of our free players can now attend other players' parties or host their own! Stop by to celebrate with Party Pete and arrange a balloon drop, or perhaps dance the night away with our expert dancer Megan and dancing knight cabaret.

We've added a feature to the hiscores that you can read about in the Knowledge Base. This will let you extract your character's stats to use as a signature on other sites with much less effort than trying to link the "full" version of your stats.

If you're lucky enough to catch one, ninja implings can now drop certed dragonhides instead of filling your inventory with the uncerted version. Happy hunting!

We've just added a bunch of extra features to the game to make your lives a bit easier and much safer. These range from improving existing interfaces to changing the way magic logs look.

We've introduced a couple of changes that should make the trade system easier and safer to use. Firstly, the trade interface now shows you how many free inventory spaces your trade partner has. Secondly, the interface provides a visual warning when your partner removes an item from their offer. If you're worried about your trade partner suddenly changing their offer, this is certain to make it much more obvious.

Throughout various areas of the game we've added the ability to 'make-x' on some more items. This includes a lot of the areas of Cooking such as pie making, pizza making and potato making. It also includes making arrows, potion making, glassmaking, amulet stringing and a number of other areas. You might have noticed that 'make-x' for smithing is missing - do not fear! It is still being worked on and will be brought to you soon.

A new warning system has been unveiled, which will allow veteran players to mute those pesky warning messages that they see on a daily basis. Areas like the Shantay Pass and the Wilderness will no longer force you too see a long message explaining the dangers of the area, unless you want it to. Newer players, and those that have not been to the area enough times, will still see the messages and be safer for it, but those that are more familiar with the dangers will be able to toggle them on and off as they see fit, speeding up journeys through the desert and other dangerous areas. If you want to check out the new warning interface, head to Lumbridge and find the Doomsayer, who wanders around near the Lumbridge Guide.

We have added Town Criers to Varrock, Falador, Draynor, East Ardougne and Seers' Village. These knowledgeable men know all about the Rules of RuneScape as well as providing some handy information regarding Player Moderators and what they can and can't do. So, if you have a question regarding a Rule and don't want to look on the website, just talk to a Town Crier!

We've also updated the Duel Arena so that you'll get a warning if you try to take a double-handed weapon into a single-handed duel, kebabs can no longer reduce your Hitpoints and will affect a different skill instead, and magic logs now look properly magical and very different from other logs.

New Random Event

Just when you thought school was out...SURPRISE! It's an exam for you! Mr. Mordaut is going to put you on the spot and test your abilities at spotting patterns. Will you prove your worth or be sent to the back of the class?

Aside from the terrifying Mr. Mordaut, the class is full of delinquents and dunces: from the bored goblin and the zombies who want (to be) brains to the giant trying to better himself and the imp serving time in the corner. It's just like being back at school - well, it would be if your teacher was a dragon and you had a mummy for a classmate. To prove that you've learnt something in his class, Mr. Mordaut will grant you a tome of experience when you leave.

We like to keep a bit of variation in Random Events but without just adding new ones, so in order to keep the balance right, we've removed the Broken Axe event. We've also magically repaired any broken axes you have, and any handles missing a head have been whisked away to wherever it is that lonely axe handles go.

Click here to read about all the Random Events you might come across.

We've made some adjustments to the Pest Control minigame. The biggest change is to include the very heavily requested feature to have three different boats with three different level requirements. Boat 1 requires a combat level of 40+, boat 2 requires a combat level of 70+ and boat 3 requires a combat level of 100+.

Now, this change makes a big impact on the game, so we've had to put a lot of thought into rebalancing other areas accordingly. We needed to make sure each boat provides a game which is correctly balanced for its level requirements. This means that in each boat we needed to determine such things as monster levels, Pest Control points given per game, experience given per Pest Control point, and make a change to the way killing portals works.

If you are interested in what these changes are and our decision process in coming to them, then this is detailed in the bottom section of this news story.

We have added an intermediate points-for-experience deal. Before, you could only trade in points for experience in batches of 1 or 100. You can now also trade 10 points for experience which will give you a 1% experience bonus.

We've slightly increased the stats of the Void Knight armour.

We've made some new things to buy with your Pest Control points, too. We've released 3 new helmets. One is for rangers, one is for mages and one is for meleers. When a helmet is worn with the top, robe and gloves you will receive a set bonus appropriate for the corresponding character class. You don't need to wield the mace to receive the set bonus. The player owned house costume room will store the new helmets.

Another new item to spend points on is the Void Knight seal, an item specifically for helping you in the Pest Control game. The seal has 8 charges and will deal 8-12 damage to all adjacent monsters. This can only be used within Pest Control, and it does not contribute towards the minimum 50 damage needed to earn points.

The squire now has a right-click "quick leave" option so you can now leave the island even when under attack.

Bottom section of this news story.

As outlined earlier, once we split the game into three boats, there were a lot of knock on effects we needed to address, which are explained in this section.

Firstly, we've had to adjust the strength of the monsters according to the boat you are on. A boat containing only level 40-70 players couldn't beat the game before. Now if the game is harder on a high level boat then it needs to give more points or it wouldn't be fair. Now, winning a game on boat 3 will give you 4 Pest Control points, winning on boat 2 will give you 3 Pest Control points and winning on boat 1 will give you 2 Pest Control points.

That's a lot more points per game! We obviously can't give as much experience per point if points are that easy to get, so the amount of experience you get per point is now 35% of what it used to be. You may be wondering what will happen to the Pest Control points you have collected already - we thought of that, and you will still get to cash in your old points at the old rate. (Phew!)

To do the maths for you, that means that on boat 2 you'll be getting just slightly more experience per game than previously and on boat 3 you will getting a lot more experience per game. This isn't as extreme as it sounds because games can take longer to complete now (more on that below). You'll be getting less experience per game on boat 1, but that's okay because low levels will probably be able to win more games than they could before. The experience you will receive per point if you choose Ranged and Magic has been reduced by a further ten percent as we felt receiving experience in those skills without using runes or arrows is rather generous anyway. Herbs, seeds and minerals have also had their point cost tripled to stay in line with the new point rewards. The Void Knight equipment has retained its old point value, effectively making it cheaper.

Pest Control has always given very generous combat experience. In a strange way, the main thing which kept the experience rate from reaching ludicrous levels was that the presence of enough people with low combat levels made the game hard to win quickly and consistently. Not the best balancing mechanism, I'm sure you'll agree! It was rather unreliable and could unfortunately even lead to verbal abuse of low level players who were doing no harm beyond wanting to play a minigame - not really the community building we'd hoped for from this minigame.

So, since that effect is now greatly reduced (low levels have their own boat), and since the high level boats now give more experience per game, we've had to compensate for that in some way too! The rate of experience is now kept in check by the fact that the portals will start the game being shielded and invulnerable. One portal will become unshielded 15 seconds after the game starts, then another every 30 seconds, until after 1 minute and 45 seconds every portal is unshielded. This actually brings about the strategy in game play that we had always intended as you actually have to put up a proper defence up for the Void Knight rather than simply relying on people killing the portals very quickly. Our general aims with rates of experience are to make features worthwhile training on while not being so good that they render other training methods obsolete and it is this balance that we have worked hard to achieve.

To further fine tune gameplay, the behaviour of a number of the npcs has changed. Most of the npcs now do not block players except for the brawlers and the portals, so it's much easier to move around the island now. Spinners will poison nearby players when a nearby portal is killed, portals can no longer be poisoned and shifters teleport around a lot more.

RuneScape's number one (self-appointed) art critic, Postie Pete, has thrown together a delightful collection of your finest works this month for the latest Players' Gallery. Postie Pete tells us this is some of the best work he's seen to date, with a marvellous use of light and shadow, and brush-work to die for! We're not sure Pete knows all that much about art, but he does seem to have an eye, or rather eye socket, for a great picture.

Check out this month's Players' Gallery, and who knows, perhaps you'll find some inspiration to create a masterpiece of your own.

Today we are increasing the number of rooms that high-level builders can build in their houses. The room cap still starts off at 20, but at level 50 Construction it starts rising, to a maximum of 30 rooms at level 99 Construction. With this new cap in place, you can start making your house into your castle!

The equipped interface also gets a useful update, with the addition of a new button. This button will bring up a display showing what you're carrying and which items you get to keep if you die, as well as noting what is affecting this. Hopefully you'll be able to use this to make sure you don't lose all your favourite items to some dastardly dragon.

In other news...

A problem has been fixed whereby players who were inserting or swapping items between their inventory and bank would see the item they're dragging disappear behind the bank interface; this issue has now been rectified.

The rock golem's boulder attack from one of the random events was previously being negated by Protect from Melee. This has been modified so now the boulders can only be stopped via Protect from Missiles instead. It's best to just run away though or the rock golem might just splat you!

The mithril dragons' breath attack is now more consistent with other dragons; previously, Protect from Magic was slightly reducing the damage taken by players.

The birds of RuneScape have been perched, sick as a parrot and grebe with envy over these graphical updates that have been higher in the pecking order. Well, now it's their tern; after all, "toucan play at that game".

That's right, those with eyes of a hawk will notice an upgrade to the plumage of our fowl friends. From the ducks and gulls to the more vicious terrorbirds and jubblies, there is plenty to gobble up.

So, swallow your pride and flock into game swiftly if you want a goosey gander at our eggs-ellent new bird update - there is certainly plenty to go cuckoo over.

Finally, mugger (level 6) has sneaked himself onto the graphical guestlist and also received a rework.

This week brings the arrival of many additions to your skills that are all barbaric in origin. Some of these new activities are easy for most players, others will test your survivability to the limits...

Otto Godblessed has been researching his history and training people in the ways of his ancestors, and now he's ready to teach you. From his hut on the banks of the lake at the top of Baxtorian Falls, you'll go Fishing with your bare hands, mix fish eggs into your potions, wield one-handed spears and, finally, go deep into the ancient cavern beneath the lake.

The new abilities you can learn from Otto have new things to do right up to level 95 Firemaking, 85 Crafting, 96 Fishing, 76 Strength, 85 Herblore and 90 Smithing. If you're keen to haul sharks from the sea bare-handed or to send ancient barbarian heroes to their rest in style, you'd best check out Otto's training. And then there's the cavern...

Once you gain access to the Ancient Cavern, you'll find some of the most dangerous beasts in all the lands of RuneScape, beasts that the barbarians have been fighting for centuries. Of course, danger comes with rewards, and there are rumours of a rather impressive-looking red helm sometimes dropped by the new mithril dragons.

Summary

As part of the Barbarian Training update we have reworked a number of skill sounds so they are timed more accurately. This means that when you swing your pick to mine, or cast your rod into a Fishing spot, you will hear the sound of the rock being hit exactly when it should happen, these changes may also very slightly reduce lag when you are involved in these skills. The skills with updated sounds are Firemaking, Fletching, Mining, Fishing and Woodcutting.

As a side effect of this, you'll notice that the Mining animation has changed. Getting the Mining sounds to match up was a bit of a tough job, so we put some work into the animation to iron out those problems. The result is a really nice bit of work from the Graphics team that should make Mining a bit more enjoyable.

In other news...

We've fixed a bug that was stopping the dragonfire shield from performing its special attack while you were autocasting spells. As a bonus, these shields can now be charged by the breath attack of skeletal wyverns.

The wyverns themselves have had a very old bug fixed that was allowing the Protect from Melee prayer to block damage from their ice breath. The ice breath isn't melee, so that prayer was never meant to have any effect on it. The wyverns' attacks are now as follows:

• Bite / Tail-lash - These are simple melee attacks. Their damage may be blocked completely by the Protect from Melee prayer.
• Ice Breath - This is an incredibly powerful middle-range attack. Its damage may be substantially reduced if you are wielding an elemental shield, elemental mind shield or dragonfire shield (because the dragonfire shield is now recharged by the breath), but NOT the anti-dragonbreath shield. If you didn't have an appropriate shield, the Protect from Magic prayer will also reduce the damage, although it is not as effective. The ice breath also has a chance of freezing you so that you cannot walk for a while.
• Iceball - This is a long-range attack. Its damage is prevented by the Protect from Missiles prayer.

Although Charlie the Tramp is described as a red-haired tramp in the Shield of Arrav quest, he's actually had grey hair ever since the Varrock update! The barber has now been brought in to work his magic, and Charlie is ginger once more.

Finally, we've fixed the bug that a few of you spotted that was causing the Blast Furnace pump to turn up in random events!