Feedback Update: Rune Mechanics & Orb of Oculus

February 8th, 2010

Hi all! Last week, we brought in a brand new quest, Rune Mechanics, and a cool, new Machinima tool, the Orb of Oculus. Now it's time to make them even better! With the release of our new quest came a new pet - the Rune Guardian. The only problem is, the rune guardian looks a bit dull and grey at the moment - not any more! Depending on which altar you revitalize your pet depends on which colour it will become. You can stick with the air altar for the grey look or you could have a blue guardian from the water altar, green from the nature altar, black from the death altar etc... If you want to change the colour of your pet, simply revitalize it at a different altar. In order to get these new pets, you'll need to the Runecrafting level required to craft that type of rune and a Summoning level three more than that. As an added bonus, the higher leveled pets will require feeding less often.

Now, onto the second update of last week - our brand new Machinima tool: the Orb of Oculus. Due to your feedback, we've changed some of the controls when using the orb. W,S,A,D no longer always moves the camera north, south, west and east but up, down, left and right depending on which way you are facing. When in focus mode, right click or double left click on any point on the ground to focus there. To make it easier to see where you are focusing, an arrow has been added to wherever that maybe. This can be toggled off, like all other interfaces, by pressing space bar. F2 will open up the ability to talk on camera, normally or with quick chat. Speaking of quick chat, we've added in a couple of film making phrases like 'Go!' or 'Action' for all you budding directors out there. The F3 button now opens up a screen where you can change the angle of the camera using a pertractor like tool (Q and E will still give more simple and basic control over angles though). The F4 button now opens up the clan chat interface for the player.

To make filming by yourself easier, Faruq now sells the orb itself and an amulet enchanted with the same powers. When using the amulet, you can move about as normal while filming and still control the camera angle. You can also access all the emotes you usually could while wearing an Amulet of Oculus. However, the amulet has much worse defence than the orb so be careful going near combat areas. On top of all this, we've changed some mechanics with the orb, or amulet, so moving the camera about should be much smoother than before. Now that's over with, you've got absolutely no excuse to not get film making. So go out there and create some Machinima!

Rune Guardians


Depending on which altar is used to revitalize a Rune Guardian depends on the colour it will become. The altars, colours and levels required are listed in the table below:

When revitalizing at the Ourania Altar, the guardian received will be a random colour depending on your Runecrafting and Summoning levels. The higher these levels, the more likely you are to get a better guardian. This is currently the only way to get a white soul guardian. At level 99 Runecrafting and Summoning, you have a chance to receive a special guardian from the Ourania Altar. This guardian changes colour from time to time, much like a Chameleon, and has a special sparkly glow around it, to ensure it isn't confused with other guardians. It is currently the highest level pet, as it requires two level 99 skills.

Orb of Oculus
Prior to the feedback update, the controls for the Orb of Oculus looked like this:

Afterwards, they were changed and updated to this:

Following the update, players looking into the orb can now also move around and use the emotes screen. However, interaction with objects, NPCs and other players is still forbidden.

Amulet of Oculus
The Amulet of Oculus can be bought from Faruq in Al Kharid for exactly the same price as the orb - 20gp. It has all the same video making tolls as the orb but doesn't impede close-up shots as much due to its smaller size and also allows the weapons of the videomaker. However, in the interest of balance, the amulet has much worse defensive bonuses (-50) than the orb (-20).