Dev Blog: Seasonal Deadman Mode Changes

Since the release of seasonal Deadman Mode we have received a mountain of feedback from the Old School community. We've been listening closely and have a few changes in mind which we will be implementing, some into the ongoing season and some reserved for the next.

All changes discussed in this developer blog are being considered balancing changes and will not be polled. We are still, of course, open to feedback.

Current season

Please note: all changes to the current season will also carry over into the next season if they are still applicable.

Changes to experience lost on death

Dying to a player who is a much higher level than you in Deadman Mode currently comes with the same punishment that any death to a player does. We are going to change this.

We are going to be making the combat level of the person who kills you impact how much experience you lose when you die. This would mean that a death to a player who completely outmatches you will not be as severely punished as a death to someone of a similar level.

We have a very specific formula in mind for how we would want experience loss to scale.

Click here to see the exact formula we have in mind: http://i.imgur.com/Ht1Jd9H.png

The result of this is that experience loss will remain roughly the same when you die to players of a similar level to you. However, dying to a player who is a higher level than you gets less and less punishing as the difference between your combat levels increases.

For example, if a skulled level 80 with 5 million mining experience were to die to a level 126, they would lose 750k experience rather than 2.5 million. If the level 80 weren't skulled, they would lose 375k experience. We feel this is a much fairer system and will allow lower level players a fighting chance of keeping their stats long enough to progress.

Changes to items lost on death

One of the key pieces of feedback we've received is just how severe the punishment of a death can be in Deadman Mode. While we want death to be scary, we also want players to feel like they have a fighting chance at rebuilding following a death.



To make death as a whole less punishing, we will be reducing the number of items from your bank lost on death from 28 down to 10. We hope that this will keep the rewarding nature of killing players in tact while giving players who die a better starting point for rebuilding.

6 hour immunity & increased experience gain

The same 6 hour immunity which was previously introduced into the original Deadman servers will soon be implemented into seasonal Deadman Mode. In addition to immunity, we will also be giving brand new players a 10x experience multiplier for the duration of their immunity.

Joining the game late can make it very challenging to catch up. Our aim with immunity and increased experience gain is to give players who start playing Deadman quite a bit after the game mode was released a good chance to catch up and get to a point where they can defend themselves.

Teleporting when unskulled

With the way that teleporting works in Deadman Mode, if you are in combat you simply cannot teleport. This has caused a number of things to happen, such as teleblock being unnecessary and freeze spells, such as ice barrage, becoming much more useful.



We will be removing the teleport delay for unskulled players. This change will bring life back to teleblock and the normal spellbook, as well as giving unskulled players a better chance of survival when up against movement impairing spells.

Un-noting items

Un-noting items by using them on bank booths and chests has been a controversial feature in Deadman Mode. It allows players to stand in a bank un-noting food and potions while under attack in order to stay alive.

We have considered changing the feature so it can only un-note one item at a time, adding a charge, slowing the process down so it can be interrupted or just completely removing the feature. We want to hear more about what you would like to see.

Please let us know what you want to see done with this feature and we will see what we can do.

Next season

The Grand Exchange

Next season we will be introducing the Grand Exchange into Deadman Mode. We expect this to help the game mode in a number of ways:


More time spent training and PKing. Less time spent trying to buy and sell items.
More accurate prices for determining items lost from your bank on death.
As the hype of new servers die down it will still be just as easy to buy/sell items.

Overall, the Grand Exchange is an excellent quality of life feature and will allow you to get a more PvP oriented Deadman experience.

Experience rates depending on level

Experience rates in the next season of Deadman Mode will work quite differently to how they do now. Rather than using an experience multiplier of 5x for all skills at all times, the multiplier will depend on your level in a skill. The lower your level in a stat, the larger your experience multiplier will be.

We hope that limiting the speed at which people can hit very high levels, while simultaneously speeding up progression at lower levels, will cause fewer people to get stuck in the early stages of the game.

Deadman Invitational 2

In addition to changes to the main Deadman Mode seasonal servers, we will also be making some changes to how the final hour of the Deadman Invitational tournament works.

Changes to fog

One thing is very clear following the first Deadman Invitational: the fog was too slow at the start and far too fast at the end. For the next tournament we will be changing this. Fog will progress quicker at the start and will leave plenty of time for players still alive to fight it out.

In addition to this change, to prevent players 'tick eating' to stay alive within the fog the rate at which the fog deals damage will be increased.

And as a final, quality of life change to fog we are going to be investigating better ways of showing where the fog is in game. This will give participants a better idea of where is dangerous and where is safe.

Tie breaker - kills instead of total level

In the previous Deadman Invitational, if the final two players died at the same time or remained alive past the end of the tournament, the player with the highest total level would have been declared the winner. This will not be the case for the next tournament.

For the next Deadman Invitational, if the final two players die at the same time or remain alive past the end of the tournament, the player who achieved the most kills in the final hour will be declared the winner. We hope that this will encourage PKing in the earlier stages of the competition and will be more relevant to the game mode as a whole.

The number of kills a player has will be displayed, so towards the end participants will know who they need to kill for the best chance of winning.


We are very interested to hear your thoughts on the above changes, as well as Deadman Mode in general. Your feedback can help us improve the game mode and make it a long lasting success - if you have ideas, let us know!

Mods Archie, Ash, Ghost, Ian, Jed, John C, Kieren, Mat K, Maz, Ronan, Weath
The Old School Team

And some noobier bossing:

this is new and this is fantastic, also thanks guys