I was asked this on Discord, and here's an off the cuff lore answer for you (as always out of game answers are not technically "canon" but if I get a chance and it doesn't cause a conflict I'll try to stick it in a lore book):

It was the Staff of Office of the High Priest of Loarnab during the late First Age before Zaros's invasion. After Zaros conquered the area, he set up his own priesthood. While he had a few specific commandments (like "worship no other god but me"), he didn't provide any aesthetics or iconography for this new religion.

The human priests largely incorporated their existing cult practices. Zarosianism initially had no equivalent of a "high priest". A council of cardinals were responsible for divining Zaros's will, and the office of Pontifex Maximus was not created until later. Because Zaros was humanoid (unlike Loarnab) they could depict him as carrying the Staff of Office, which communicated his authority effectively.

The actual staff may have been preserved as...

Cris290810

Cool, where in the several planes of existence is Zaros though?

Erebus

SIR

THIS IS RUNESCAPE

UPDATE: I've updated the Mining balancing spreadsheet to reflect the new mechanics.

UPDATE: We've made some major changes to the mechanics! Details here.

It's finally here! The Mining & Smithing rework beta is now live and we need your feedback!

You can launch the beta by pasting this into your browser:

rs-launch://www.runescape.com/jav_config_beta.ws

You can log in using your existing account. The beta is free to play for all players (even brand new accounts) but once you're in the beta, everyone counts as a member. Progress on the beta worlds is completely separate to progress on your real account. We've also turned on the in-game features of Runemetrics so you can easily track your XP/hour.

While you're on the beta world, you can set your stats and give yourself items using the NPCs so you can test out every level. You can also DIY to get that realistic levelling experience. Talk to Doric to learn more about the mechanics.

For the duration of the beta you'll be locked to on...

Finished designs for

• Masterwork Armour (T90)

• Upgraded Masterwork Armour (T92)

I've also updated the document on metals with proposed changes from the beta. This is still subject to change and we're considering polling it.

A proposed design for the Artisan's Workshop in the rework, which will be reimagined as a Smithing Guild:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pysGiuVFvd05zNJncg1P6hz5Yzi4ea7fN5c25gkxrcs/edit?usp=sharing

This is the only large area we're planning on making major changes to. We are not intending to make major changes to other areas (like the blast furnace orlava flow mine) in order to make them relevant again. However, the AW is so significant that we wanted to keep it at the centre of the smithing skill.

If you're wondering about the state of feedback on the Masterwork and Upgraded Masterwork design, by far the most raised point was about it degrading to dust. This issue is still being discussed by the combat council as it has potentially far reaching consequences on high level PVM and the economy. I'll give you an update as soon as I can.

While we're happy with the overall direction of the project, we've made a lot of changes to the design based on feedback from the beta and the previously shown design docs.

There are other smaller changes (primarily usability and QOL fixes) but these are the biggest ones.

Ore Box

The ore bag, which was created and destroyed automatically, has been re-imagined as the ore box which you make using Smithing (or buy from the GE) and have to remember to take with you.

Full design here.

Upgraded Masterwork Armour Degrading

Based on substantial amounts of feedback on the subject, upgraded masterwork armour now degrades to broken rather than to dust. The repair cost is a piece of masterwork armour of the same type.

Revised design here.

Artisan's Workshop

Ceremonial swords are back, as an optional D&D which can occur while Smithing in the same manner as the Pit.

Revised design here.

Low Heat Smithing

After the beta, we've changed the core mechanics of Smithing so that you can conti...

Today we've got a special, highly anticipated treat - it's the design for what we're going to do with drop tables and the spring cleaner.

Full design here

I know this is going to be a contentious one and we'll do our best to take feedback into account and update the design accordingly. (We already made pretty significant changes to earlier designs which are explained here.)

The key here is compromise between skilling and PVM and that's a very difficult line to walk without annoying pretty much everybody.

Let me know what you think!

Updated version of the drop table design. The changes are:

• Salvage now drops in five sizes to better match existing alch values.
• Dragonscales renamed to Stone Spirits (but the function is the same).

Full design here.

The triple threat!

Very simple pickaxe and toolbelt design. It covers what can be augmented, what can be put in and taken out of the toolbelt, and what the 'special' picks will do in the rework. Full design here.

Updated XP rate spreadsheets for both Mining and Smithing. These are very much still subject to feedback and playtesting, but basically represent where we want the numbers to be. The smithing spreadsheet in particular is pretty complex and requires a good understanding of the new mechanics to really make sense of.

Full mining XP rates spreadsheet.

Full smithing XP rates spreadsheet.

As promised in the livestream you didn't watch yesterday because of some nonsense about Smash Bros, here's a simple design for the "smithing overload" we've been talking about for quite a while now without saying what it is.

• TLDR you make armour spikes which damage enemies that attack you.

Full design here.

At the moment we haven't specified how much damage the spikes will do per hit. (I have a number in mind but we need to playtest it first.) I'd be very interested in your opinion of how much damage would make it "worth it". (Note: the damage would be a flat number (or some multiple of your smithing level) - it doesn't scale with the enemy damage.)

(If you're wondering how much an elder rune bar will cost, with current balancing you can mine enough ore for 30-40 bars per hour.)

EDIT

Document updated with changes.

Months ago I showed a huge document with all of the miscellaneous broken things that needed fixing with the rework. Since then we've been busy designing and implementing all those things.

Although there are a few things we still don't have final designs for, I wanted to share the finished designs now so we can get feedback sooner. There's a *huge* amount of material (20 pages) and we're not going to be able to change everything, but please do give me your opinions, especially on things you feel very strongly about.

Full 'other content' design here.

One of the most important pieces of other content is invention, which I separated out into another document explaining how augmentation, disassembly and perks are going to work.

Full invention design here.

Finally there's a mining mechanic which I just never got around to making a public document for. Geodes are an occasional mining reward which replace gems. They usually contain gems, but very occasionally you'll get a very rare one w...

At RuneFest this year we're planning a short Q&A at the end of our main stage lore talk. For technical simplicity we're not going to be taking questions live on stage. Instead we're going to gather some questions in advance and answer as many as we have time for.

If you have a lore question you'd like answered, please post it in this thread.

• They need to be lore questions, i.e. regarding quests and story. (As much as I'd love to answer questions about M&S, I can't do that in the lore talk.)
• We'll be picking questions which have interesting answers worth discussing on the stage. If it's too obscure, or the answer is something like "we can't discuss that right now" then we probably won't use it.
• If there aren't enough questions that fit what we need, we'll look through old lore questions that have been answered but not to a very wide audience (such as on discord).
• On that note, if you do have obscure lore questions you want answers to, do drop by the lore discord channels and ask t...