Dragonwilds:Community Campfire/Episode 1 Transcript

The following is a transcript from a Q&A on 26 June 2025 on YouTube. The transcript is created using third-party software through YouTube and Riverside FM.

Question 1 (at 00:51)

Stirredeggs (on Reddit): Hi Mod Dutch, off-topic, but are you actually Netherlands?

Mod Dutch: Hey, that is actually really good enunciation Jake, well done. Yes, Indeed, I am from the Netherlands. I was born and raised in a stereotypical clogs, windmills, and cheese part of the Netherlands near Gouda. So, just like the cheese, and in fact, Old School RuneScape really always loved me delivering cheese to them, they really enjoyed that when I brought them Dutch cheeses and earned me the nickname "the cheese guy" as well. They still ask me— the Old School [RuneScape] team — "Jesse, when are you bringing more cheese?" But, yeah, I live in the UK now so I don't always bring that often cheese to the UK anymore, but yeah.

Mod Doom: Well, that'll be how you can ply those folks back on side if we need to make sure they're getting their support if we say, "Hey, we want everyone on side, we got to get the gouda moving." But that's really interesting, thank you.

Question 2 (at 02:14)

patrickstarbz (on Reddit): Would mod support through the Steam Workshop ever be considered?

Mod Dutch: Really good question, so I believe we got two questions about modding, right, Doom?

Mod Doom: Yes, that's correct. We also got a question from Dogsinthewind.

Question 3 (at 02:30)

Dogsinthewind (on Reddit): Are you guys open to allowing community modding?

Mod Dutch: Yeah, I'm super excited to be able to say that yes, we are considering modding Steam Workshop. In fact, you actually you were about to make an announcement about this, right Jake? We're — this week you were working on stuff around the legal bits, and you were going to bring out a statement to that effect, but this just goes out sooner— er, earlier. So, why don't you tell us what you've been up in this regard?

Mod Doom: Yes, unfortunately, I've been a pain in the legal team's business by constantly cajoling and asking them to update the fan content policy and the End User License Agreement, both the big legalese walls of text that you may have seen out and about in the gaming world across any project you've ever come across. But in our particular instance, both of those also now touch on community-created content or mods. The elevator pitch shorthand of it is, you can't monetise them, and ultimately, they can't contain any third-party IPs. I don't want any legal infractions, I don't want any lawyers from very big games, companies knocking on my door, asking why this has happened. But outside of that, we want you to feel like you're empowered to create the kind of mods that you want to see, and I'm hoping that we will be able to spotlight some of the best mods every month in This Month Of Ashenfall news posts going forwards. And I'm really excited to see the kind of stuff we've already seen because some folks took the initiative and made some really cool mods, and we love the potential for where that's going to take us in the future. So we think it's a great step towards awesome stuff in the future, across the whole game.

Mod Dutch: Absolutely, I look forward to the inevitable "Thomas the Tank Engine" mod for RuneScape: Dragonwilds. I'm sure that everybody will be okay with that, even the lawyers. But to be clear, work will be required to make Steam Workshop up and running, so we're still looking into that, and you know that we've got a lot of priorities that we need to focus on at the moment. There's a lot of stuff to do on the game, so that'll be subject to backlog prioritisation, but as far as the stance goes towards modding, this is our official stance; please do make sure that you play nice.

Question 4 (at 05:27)

FriZ the Great Wizard (on Discord): Building is a huge part of what keeps me engaged between the major content updates. Are there any plans to expand the building system in the near future?

Mod Dutch: We know how important the building system is to a large group of players, we see the awesome creations that get posted on Discord and on Reddit. Some of them really take our breath away, or at least that of the team in mind, because we see such creativity and on display, and it is amazing to see all of that stuff being built. We love watching what you guys get up to and what you create, and as we know that the building system needs to be expanded. And we are going to be expanding it. So, yes, we have plans to expand the building system in the near future, and we're going to act upon them.

Question 5 (at 06:29)

ComprehensiveBag5991 (on Reddit): What do you see as the key aspects that will keep players online and playing past their first completion of content (long term, not as the game is today)?

Mod Dutch: That's a really good question. So first of all, we really need to focus on the core co-op survival game and make that fun. That is key, playing together with your friends, having fun, the game being balanced, we need to ship more content, we need to create an end game — a survival end game that you can revisit. Once those things are in place, when I cast my eye out further— and I know that there's many talented players of the team who are also focused on this when I think longer term ahead— once nailed down, basically is that what we think is really important as we delve further into RuneScape roots are social systems and in-game community so that inside of the game, you can engage with other players and build those meaningful connections, that are aspects of competition in the game. And we can see that, of course, in the live MMOs that there are events and competitions in there that are hugely compelling to players and to viewers for streamers. We want to bring an evolving story to the game with RuneScape lore that connects back to the MMOs. We want there to be dynamic events in the game that change up to the way that the world sort of acts around you. We want there to be deep and rewarding progression systems. I mean, you know these from the MMOs from the live games, your progress needs to be rewarding, and there needs to be always lots to do to chase to grind for.

Mod Dutch: We want the game to have a real player creative expression angle, where, just as with the building system, there's loads of creativity and fun to be had in that regard for you. We want there to be, and this is really out there— this is really what we're talking about, a timeline where the game will further evolve and evolve closer to having these live components. But to have a compelling economy, crafting, trading, all of those really awesome bits that players enjoy— repeatable, exciting, rewarding challenges, is, of course, key, challenging and rewarding boss fights. And then, crucial to us is facilitating a heroic, mundane life next to the power fantasies, such as dragon slaying. So, not everything is about bringing down massive bosses or removing pesky reptiles from the skies, it's also about simply living your life in Ashenfall, building your little hub, skilling, chopping down trees, cooking food, crafting items, and having sort of that cozy life inside of the game, so that's really important.

Mod Doom: Yep, all the stuff that I know that the RuneScape communities love doing. You know, skilling and vibing, socializing, all these sorts of aspects are things that we can do. So, super exciting to look at that horizon, but, let's get that content out first and that's our aspirational goal for where we want to see ourselves going, so really exciting.

Question 6 (at 10:32)

WheredoesithurtRA (on Reddit): How many devs are actively working on this game? It was mentioned initially following EA release that it was a small team.

Mod Dutch: So if you take away all the people that don't touch pixels or don't touch code, so people from project management, marketing, community, QA, etc., it's roughly 30 people. I want to make clear that it doesn't mean that 30 people work on updates in leaps, basically, so 30 people working on 0.8, 30 people working on 0.9, no, that is not the case, that's not the way that it works. There will be a couple of people working on an update, a couple of people working on the next update, and there will be groups of people working on the bigger expansions, so Fellhollow, even the expansions beyond that, essentially delivering content and features, takes a lot of preparation, and it is a phased process. So, I think in the past, Jake, you've referred to it as leapfrogging, and that is what the various parts of the team do as they work on the game, yes, absolutely.

Mod Doom: So teams who work on something now may be working on the next update in a few months, and then it sort of moves along the conveyor belt to completion. So, there is a bit of a flow to it, so not everyone is working on an update at the same time, obviously. So, the environment artist can't work on something that hasn't been concepted yet, and the combat designer can't work on combat in an arena that hasn't been built yet, and all sorts of stuff like that. So, everyone is hard at work and I love seeing I know that both Mod Dutch and I sit down in our— we have fortnightly show and tells, where everyone can come together and show what they've been working on. There's so much awesome stuff going on to bring all of these updates to life, and not all of it is going to make it into the game at the same time. But, it all will make it to the game eventually, so we're going there.

Mod Dutch: And even the teams work far ahead for even further than expansions. There's also always work being done about distant future updates and sort of evolutions of the product; they also need attention because you know the future is here. It seems sometimes that waiting around for content to arrive takes a long time, but before you know it, we're in December. And then, we're going to be in that beat of expansions hitting the game and hopefully being enjoyed by the players. So before we all realize it, the future will be here, and it's going to be hopefully very much to everybody's liking.

Mod Doom: I cannot believe it's been 15 months since I joined this project, it doesn't seem like it's flown by so fast, and even the small window since being ready to launch into early access and to now has gone so fast. So, we will be getting to those updates very soon because it's flying by, so I'm very excited for us to get everyone hands-on.

Question 7 (at 14:01)

Staccado (on Reddit): What's your response to the general feeling that the magic update was underwhelming? Is the scope of the September Ranged update similar, or should we be expecting more substantial changes? Would further magic changes be bundled together with these quarterly updates, or would you sprinkle in new functionality in between major patches, since the 'Magic Update' has already been rolled out?

Mod Dutch: Those are indeed a bundle of questions in one. So to be clear, we read the feedback, we see and read everything that you say online. Well, maybe not everything, but most of the stuff that gets expressed on Reddit, in Discord, on X, on various platforms, we read it. We are taking that into account; we catalog all of the stuff that we see/said online, also in reviews. We basically catalog them according to patterns and to what we're seeing, and we analyze all of that feedback. So my response would be: We hear you, we want to deliver content that excites you. It is hard for the team to hear that they missed the mark; they obviously want to create systems that are engaging and compelling, and if we ship something that misses the mark in a way, then we learn from it and we try to improve. Nothing is one and done, so nothing is ship and then forget about it. It doesn't work that way, things will be updated. So, you have our commitment that we take into account that there are things that we need to improve about stuff that we've shipped. I also want to say that yes, the September Ranged update is equal in size, similar in size, but we are taking learnings from what we did with magic and what your reaction was, and so we'll see how that goes. I myself am pretty excited about the Ranged update and the other stuff that comes with the update as well. We are definitely going to be looking into additional sprinklings to update stuff here and there because we will also be evolving these skills further during Early Access, because they've got skill caps at the moment— they are kept at 50. There are going to be 49 levels more to each skills with associated rewards and powers, and balancing/rebalancing. So yeah, we're going to update things, and we are learning from what you're telling us.

Question 8 (at 17:06)

Jamo_Z (on Reddit): How has the community feedback of wanting more RuneScape been taken on board? Has it changed any approach going forward to allow for more iconic RuneScape enemies/items/areas to be introduced that would have previously been overruled for not 'fitting' in RuneScape: Dragonwilds?

Mod Dutch: Okay, so it has been taken aboard in a good way, more RuneScape; there's no argument from the team there whatsoever, we've fully taken it on board, and it is clear to us that more is needed. This takes time, there's definitely a lot on our road map that has always been there, you've seen our sort of projected content schedule for Quarter 3 this year, then Quarter 1, Quarter 2, Quarter 3, the year thereafter—sorry, it was Quarter 4 this year, and then the following three quarters thereafter, and all of those expansions contain loads of RuneScape roots. RuneScape characters, music, bits of story gear— it's something that we are dedicated to and which we are going to be delivering, so we are fully aligned with the player base's desire to see more RuneScape.

Question 9 (at 18:37)

Aggressive-Humor-355 (on Reddit): Will you ease up on the water and food needs? Or at least have a solo server option for people who want a more cozy experience where they can adjust the intensity of needed food and water?

Mod Dutch: Yeah, understandable. Sometimes, a survival game can be really hard, and you just want to kick back and enjoy some of the more gentler elements of the game, whether that is creativity, or just vibing with the environment and a bit of skilling, getting your skill level up. We are going to be giving you the tools quite soon to customise the level of cosiness that you want. So we've got you, it is coming quite soon, and you will see it when we release it. But yeah, it will happen.

Mod Doom: It's also worth noting at the time of this video going out, 0.8 has been released, which has the cosiness system. So while you are chilling in your humble abode, you'll already have some of that alleviated. But when you're out and about, if you want to do more and explore more without those pressures, we're hoping to give you some more options to twist some dials to make your experience a little bit more personal.

Question 10 (at 20:07)

Helicoly (on Reddit): Would rather fight 1 Abyssal Demon sized Kebit or 10 Kebit sized Abyssal Demons?

Mod Dutch: Right. Well, I would say that I know how to cheese an Abyssal Demon. And so I would, I think I would go for an Abyssal Demon-sized kebbits because actually 10 Kebbit-sized Abyssal Demons, that sounds horrific to me because they would, you know, crawl everywhere, get underfoot everywhere. You wouldn't know where they are, that actually, that idea freaks me out a whole lot more than a demon-sized Kebbit, which at least I would know where to punch and where to run away from. So yeah, the big one, please.

Mod Doom: I know they're small, they still have those really awful, sharp claws. So, I just feel like I'd be just poked to pieces, which would just be absolutely awful. Okay, well, that's good. We're learning. We're learning so much about you.

Question 11 (at 21:18)

mikerichh (on Reddit): Are there any plans to add skill level requirements for items?

Mod Dutch: A short answer, we have plans for that, yes, absolutely. It is always a matter of how do you prioritise versus all of the stuff that needs to be done. So, while actually if you were taking, if you would take a look at our backlog, there would probably be a lot in there that you would recognize and a lot of stuff that you would say, yes please, ship that now because we are a small team, and because we are focusing our attentions on updates but also on the expansions that we need to deliver to you. Everything is subject to ruthless prioritisation. So we have plans for that yet, yes, but most likely a little bit further out. And of course, and this is something that you have always been reminding of us of as well, Mod Doom, is that since we wanted to get the equipment out there first. We want to get the cool toys out there first. And then, as the rest of the levels, the level caps get raised, everything will find its place. And then we can look at stuff like skill level requirements for certain items, and then we balance everything. So yeah.

Mod Doom: Yeah, we wanted, I think I said this when we had our sort of panel at TwitchCon as well of what we want to do is get things like the Abyssal Whip in your hand so you could feel it. The whole point of early access, as we've always said, is we want you to give feedback on stuff. And at this point, nothing is sacred, nothing is off the table in terms of whether, you know, the Abyssal Whip is the perfect example of this. If we know there is a level of requirement and we know that we aren't there yet, but when we do get to that point, it is worth us having that conversation with the community to say, "should we put that level cap in place?" And if so, then we can. And that then gives us that motivation to approach things. But we want to have those conversations with you. But first, we wanted to show that we know what we're doing. We made an Abyssal Whip that looks and feels awesome. So, we did that first, and the feedback was great, but now we hear you, and let's have that conversation when we get to it.

Question 12 (at 23:43)

ConsiderationAny4205 (on Reddit): Can we expect water and earth combat to be added at some point?

Mod Dutch: Yes, you can. Magic, combat, and the magic skill is, as we've just talked about, it's nowhere near done yet. So we are going to be further evolving the skill, and you can expect additions to that. Yeah, absolutely.

Mod Doom: So this is one that I think has been sort of in the background of a lot of conversations a lot of the time. And it's one that I don't think we should shy away from, ever. Because I think that it's worth us acknowledging and answering this because there's a lot of valid context and reasoning behind this.

Question 13 (at 24:34)

Meckles94 (on Reddit): Realistically, how long till yall scrap this project?

Mod Dutch: Ah, okay. A serious question, then. Short answer, we won't. The long answer is that all of Jagex stands behind this project, and we are going to see it through. We are going to be delivering on the promise that we made when we launched this game into Early Access because while we have a lot of work to do, we also see that there's a lot of interest in the game as was showcased by the fact that there was such a big uptake of the game in a short time, people were really excited to get their hands on it. And that means that we've got the core of something that resonates. There just needs to be more of it, and it needs to be deeper. That is something that we are going to be working on in Early Access, and we're dedicated to it. We're in it for the long haul. We're not going to go anywhere. So no, we are not going to scrap this project.

Question 14 (at 25:54)

DividedStoryTime (on Reddit): How far in the future does this game take part?

Mod Dutch: It takes place in the sixth age after the RuneScape 3 quest aftermath, where the edicts of Guthix have been reinstated by the World Guardian, who banishes the gods from this realm after the events of the Elder God Wars. It's interesting. There have been so many plot lines that we sort of thought of when we— and timelines and locations where this game would take place over the years, as we first got sort of went through ideation for this game, and then started building it. There were moments in time where it was very niche, the game, and it was completely focused on a very distinct part of the lore from the Abyssal Knights, the Void Knights, that we deemed that a little bit, maybe a little bit too focused. And there have been a lot of sort of thoughts about where we would place it, and ultimately we decided to place it further into the future on a different continent so that we could expand the game in a way that would not restrict us and it will also wouldn't run up against stuff happening in the live games, right? They also need their place to do their thing, and yeah, we all need to exist, coexist shoulder to shoulder. So yeah, that's where the game takes place and that's the reason why.

Mod Doom: Great. I know that also to add to that, I know that our lore hounds out there, our community members who love their lore and want to know more about the narrative structure of the world of Gielinor. I know that Mod Raven, our narrative designer, has been working very closely with folks like Mod Shrike, Mod Rowley, and Mods on the Old School [RuneScape] team as well, who meet regularly. Goodness, I can't talk. I'm so excited about lore. They meet regularly and talk about the narrative timeline of the RuneScape universe. They talk about lore, they talk about where quests and narrative threads are going, and where characters are within the world so that no one's stepping on anyone's toes, and there's no, wait a minute, how is this character here when they're meant to be here? And if I'm in RuneScape, then where are you? So, there's a nice cohesive structure where we fit nicely alongside the existing RuneScape game, so that we're not overwriting anything. It's a new opportunity for us to tell a new story on a new continent, which is so cool. That, as a fan of that sort of stuff, it's great to see it.

Question 15 (at 28:43)

Chiru323 (on Reddit): Could we ever see utility pets? Not necessarily domestic animals we all know and love, but whatever is in universe. Also, what about the possibility of mounts for travel?

Mod Dutch: Right, good question. We're definitely thinking about that. For us, some sort of pet system seems like a no-brainer, absolutely. Mounts, definitely Ashenfall is only going to get bigger as we ship more expansions. And so we are going to need it. Actually, just last week we were looking at some early blockouts for Fellhollow. And together with Mod Rook, the creative director, we were just wandering around through the world, and it became obvious quite quickly that it was such a big place that actually sort of, well, he literally said, "oh, this means that we are going to need mounts, definitely sooner rather than later". And I think I actually agree. Yeah, mounts definitely, that is something that looks like we're gonna have to ship it in the game.

Mod Doom: Absolutely. And of course, don't worry, they won't be your conventional hornless unicorns as you may have envisioned once in a dream. If you're a RuneScape player, we'll come up with something creative to get you gadding about on it. It'll be something, and it won't be giraffes because I know there's one member of the community who loves asking for giraffes. I don't know what that is.

Question 16 (at 30:18)

Pieguy305 (on Discord): Is the team planning on charging for expansions after Version 1.0 is released?

Mod Dutch: So, for us, expansions are releases that are the size of Fellhollow, they take about three to six months to you build, you saw on our roadmap that we recently revealed to you that we've got four of them lined up until Quarter 3 of next year and We are not going to be charging for updates like that. If an update becomes bigger than that, so for instance, requiring maybe a year to build our stance might be different. But nothing's been written in stone in that regard, except that the four expansions that we've got planned are all part of the early access price. And if you've paid that price, you will get all of that content for free.

Mod Doom: Amazing. And also, it's worth noting that if an update is going to be bigger in scale and it's going to take longer, we will be communicating with you the whole time. We'll be taking you along for the journey. You can expect that we'll be sharing what we can, when we can, because your feedback is still going to be so important. So don't expect radio silence on something like that. We will be very clear when we have an idea of how big an update is going to be. We will tell you. So, I hope that's a great answer.

Question 17 (at 31:48)

SpartanWarrior (on Discord): Will we see obtainable (not paid DLC) pets in the future? Be it be it standard obtainable (taming monsters/buting in game from npc after quest or something), and/or via random drop PVE/skilling like in OSRS?

Mod Dutch: Yeah, we are looking into this. Mounts seem like they would be the most needed at some point in the near future. But yeah, pets, definitely, like I said before, it seems like a no-brainer. Actually, chinchompa pets is very high on the list of internal requests. Quite often, it's brought up whenever I have meetings with other departments within the company. And interestingly enough, also, throwing Chimchompas, and that is actually something that some of the designers prototyped previously, a little while ago during a game jam. We have otherwise that we have no current plans to charge for pets. Most likely, if we ship them in the game, they will be part of an expansion, and they will just be part of that expansion. And if that expansion is part of the content that we've got scheduled to evolve early access into Version 1 of our game, then it's all going to be part of that price.

Question 18 (at 33:13)

Chilly (on Discord): New loading screen teases? Or just a tease? Saw what looks to be the ancient staff and dragon armor/weapon! Was wondering if that was just concept art or if it's intended to be in the game!

Mod Dutch: Right, and they are referring to the concept art of the multi-headed dragon that's in the game, I think. Yes, that's actually one of the very first key art pieces that we created for the game, which sort of illustrated that fantasy of fighting dragons with your team of players, and then specifically a multi-headed dragon, and that drawing later. It came the inspiration for the story about Cold Dry as well. But, Dragonhide armor is currently at concept art stage. The green variants, the green, blue, red, black variants are going to be coming with the expansions. They're currently being worked on. So you just have to wait, and they will appear in the game.

Question 19 (at 34:22)

Krotan (on Discord): Compared to the existing region of Ashenfall, how big will future releases be? Will they have multiple regions or with level progression between each? Or will they be one larger area?

Mod Dutch: Okay, so this is definitely heading into spoiler territory. So I am going to be very careful and thread a very fine line because otherwise I'm going to be mobbed by a horde of angry developers, I'm pretty sure. But I can say this, Fellhollow alone nearly— so the Fellhollow expansion coming at the end of this year, that expansion alone nearly doubles the size of the world. And so you can expect the expansions to add sizable landmass to the world. The world is going to be growing a lot. And that is all I'm going to say at the moment.

Mod Doom: No more spoilers. We've still got work to do. No more spoilers.

Mod Dutch: And it was also because of people revealed the map, right? The map in the game, they were able to strip the fog of war, very clever, very clever, strip the fog of war from the map. But that map that you see in the game is just basically the map of Ghornfell and Brynmoor. And then we had to make sure that the art for that didn't look unfinished. So we basically finished it up, but that is not actually the size or shape of the upcoming world expansions.

Question 20 (at 36:12)

One Penguin Army (on Discord): Will we get support for dual wielding? Daggers, swords, maces, basically anything that isn't a 2H; similar to RS3's dual wield support.

Mod Dutch: This is my standard answer for some of these questions. Yes, there are plans. They are all subject to feature prioritisation, the combat team people that inside the team work on skills and combat; they are amazing. There is a Mod Pointy, and Mod Pointy is very passionate about combat, and he is an avid RuneScape player and a RuneScape fan, and he's always pushing the envelope for what he wants to achieve with the combat system. But again, as the executive producer on the project, my answer is always, we need to have an order in what we ship, and what is most important to the players, goes first. What they are asking for the most is what goes first. And of course, what supports our ambition for how we expand the game goes first. Then, everything else finds its way on the release train, on the development train. And it will either exist in a backlog or it will be part of our sprints as we develop the game.

Question 21 (at 37:40)

psdboi (on Discord): From a standpoint of creative game design, can you explain your ideal vision for Velgar and the other bosses to follow? Also, from a technical standpoint, what are some immediate limitations that may keep your team from achieving that ideal vision? Lastly, how do you plan to overcome these to deliver a much more impactful bossing experience for the players?

Mod Dutch: Yeah, so the context here obviously was because this was part of a much longer write-up from that player, for which we thank them, that the player was disappointed with the mechanics and the emotional impact of the Velgar fight. So I'm just going to what we— I'm going to be sitting here a little bit on the seat of Mod Rook, the team's creative director and he will be in one of these chats in the future or he will have his own chat, and he will talk at length about his amazing vision for the game. But in answering this question, it needs to be one of the biggest challenges in the game, and it needs to feel after you've killed Velgar, damn, I just killed a dragon, and that will have to feel amazing. And we have work to do on giving you that feeling after you've slain Velgar. We need to lean more into the dragon-slaying fantasy of it being a massive obstacle, a huge challenge that ultimately is very rewarding.

Mod Dutch: Slaying Velgar at that point in your journey as you've gone from a nobody to an adventurer that can take on a creature like Velgar needs to be a payoff for the time that you spent in the game, all of the resources that you gathered or made in order to get there, all of the actions that you took to survive to be able to get to that fight. It needs to be rewarding, it needs to be compelling. The technical considerations for making the fights as good as it can be are basically enshrined within the fact that it is a co-op game with four players. We are working on expanding the player count as well. So you have to take into account that a dragon fight with a big 3D mesh, it is a big 3D model in the world and it's got collision detection, and it's got animation, and it needs to respond to multiple players who are encircling it and who are doing actions, triggering skills, attacking the creature, that it needs to register the hits and all of that needs to feel realistic in order to get that sort of the fantasy across of, "I'm fighting this massive boss".

Mod Dutch: And so we have work to do there on all of those technical aspects to make that work in a way that doesn't break the game, or that doesn't cause desyncs, or where simply the illusion breaks. Then, but I can tell you that right now the team is prototyping technology in order to get us there. I have seen recent prototypes. It is looking promising. Of course, it's all subject to: Will we be able to make it, to have— will we be able to get it to work in the game in a way that doesn't break everything? It's always the question. Nobody likes half-baked prototypes in the game that don't go anywhere. So there is some consideration to like, how are we going to change things around? But we are working on this. It is top of mind, the dragon slaying fantasy is really important to us. It is in the name of our game. It is part of the entire storyline of the game. We are going to be working on this for a long time. And there are examples out there of games that do that well. Some of them are single-player games. Some of them have sort of different power fantasies that they chase. But yeah, there's obvious inspiration out there that we are looking at all the time. But, it is a big question that you're asking. This was a big answer, but trust us, we are working on it. It is important to us.

Question 22 (at 42:20)

An Aviansie (on Discord): With Dragonwilds (presumably) getting more character customization updates in the future (such as eye color, hair style, etc.), could you give us the ability to modify the physical appearance of the player character?

Mod Dutch: Yeah, absolutely. So we gave you the initial starter kit for doing so, for customising your body shape, hair colour, skin colour, eye colour, facial hair, all that sort of stuff. Basically the basics, right? We gave you the basics. And I think that we are in an excellent place to expand upon that system. And that is something that we want to because we know how important it is that you can express yourself in the game especially when it is a third-person game where you see your character walking around all the time and you want to have a sense of: this is the character that I want to play for a long time, or this represents me. And while again it is subject to prioritisation versus all of the other stuff that we need to do; we know that it is important. So undoubtedly, we will be shipping more options in the future.

Question 23 (at 43:43)

Avernic (on Discord): How do you see quests playing out as the game progresses? Are we looking to see lots of scattered stories, or perhaps some larger growing plots?

Mod Dutch: Yeah, an amazing question. Yeah, I love story. I'm an avid reader of fantasy. I think it's hugely important in games, whether they are co-op or single-player. It is a really important aspect of a game like this. And it is, of course, a crucial aspect of any RuneScape game because there's so much RuneScape lore, such a deep, deep universe to use. So, the way that we see quests playing out and a story playing out is that there are going to be more quests in the game. Some of them are the type of quests that we're always going to be adding, that is, stuff for you to do as you traverse the lands and you overcome its challenges. And some of it are going to be quest lines that tie into each other. So longer quest lines that as the world expands and more lands get revealed and more mysteries get revealed, those quest change[s] will connect to each other to basically form the entire story of Kuldra Saga, the epic of how the God-Eatered Dragon Queen is brought down by the players. And it will also set up future stories. And it will be connected to stuff that has happened or connecting back to stuff that is happening inside of the live games.

Mod Dutch: And as far as lore goes, we will see that in scattered snippets throughout the world in item descriptions and as part of stuff that you discover, journals, and it will form one big interwoven, big grand story from small and the mundane to epic and large. And of course, the story of Ashenfall is going to be evolving as we release more expansions, and every expansion is going to have its own theme. And with that, mean like literal theme as in a story theme, but also of course, there's going to be more RuneScape music, there's going to be more RuneScape characters. We are also striving to release more inkblot cutscenes because we know that the initial one that we shipped the game with went over really well, both the music and the sort of the story that are told, and that is our ambition.

Question 24 (at 46:28)

FoxyRoyalty (on Discord): There's been a healthy amount of suggestions with upvotes requesting NPC settlements as the story goes on. Are NPC settlements something you're completely opposed to or something you're willing to consider given the desire for it from fans?

Mod Dutch: Yes, it's theoretically abandoned, or at least that's the way that it looks like upon first landing on the continent, of course, before you run into goblins and a dragon flying overhead that basically tries to poison you at each and every turn and get you out of there again. But you know, in short, to answer the question, we are not opposed to players, to NPC settlements at all. To the contrary, we know it would add a lot, and they are part of our future plans. Though those plans are a little bit further out than the core stuff that we need to take care of. You will potentially, this is again spoiler stuff, yeah, you will potentially see some initial small steps towards that in doubt and reach. No guarantees, but we know it is important and it is going to be part of the game and the world in the future.

Closing remarks (at 47:53)

Mod Doom: That's exciting. don't know what to say to that. Excellent. All right. Well, I've got through the list of questions that I was able to collate. Of course, if your question wasn't answered, I apologize. There were lots of awesome questions, and I want us to be able to answer as many of them as we can. I'm hoping that we can do these as a regular recurring feature. As Mod Dutch said earlier, it would be awesome to have people like Mod Rook also be in here to answer some of your questions, so you can grill them as well. But also just keep asking those questions. We're going to try and keep doing check-ins every month to make sure that we're in touch at least, maybe more. I don't know how often Mod Dutch wants to be stuck in a room listening to me grilling him with the questions, but, as often as we can do these, want to make sure we're doing them and checking in with you folks to let you know our intentions, what news we've got and how we're doing. And just also hearing from you. I think it's also really important to hear the questions that you're asking as well, just to make sure that we know that what's still top of mind for you.

Mod Doom: So, thank you to everyone who submitted questions. Thank you to Mod Dutch for taking time out of your busy schedule to have a chat with us. And thank you to everyone who's joined the Discord and joined the Subreddit, follow us on all of our socials, and checking out the RuneScape: Dragonwilds website for news updates as well. As always, it has been an absolute pleasure to have you all with us, so thank you so much for tuning in. Have a beautiful morning, afternoon, or evening wherever you are in the world, and we will see you in the next RuneScape: Dragonwilds video. Until then, we'll see you in Ashenfall. Bye adventurers!