Today, we have made significant modifications to the Hitpoints skill, the most important of these being that all ‘hitpoints’ are now multiplied by 10 and renamed ‘life points’, and the name of the actual skill being changed to Constitution. The numbers you see will be bigger, but they will still affect things in the same way.

It’s important to note that this will not change standard combat or the way you play the game.

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Previously, when smelting iron ore, there was only a 50/50 chance that it would result in an iron bar (the rest of the time it would just be lost). Now, that success rate has changed so that, at level 15 Smithing, you will succeed 50% of the time, and from level 45 Smithing onwards, you will succeed 80% of the time (gaining an extra 1% chance of success per Smithing level earned in between).

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While you're out and about practising your non-combat skills or wandering around your house, keep an eye out for ‘strange rocks’. These will usually appear in your inventory and will be of interest to the archaeologists at Varrock Museum.

As you deliver each strange rock to the museum, your discovery will start to take shape; you’ll have the opportunity to gain a little more Kudos from your peers; and you’ll also get some extra knowledge in Agility, Construction, Cooking, Crafting, Farming, Firemaking, Fishing, Fletching, Herblore, Hunter, Mining, Runecrafting, Smithing, Thieving or Woodcutting (depending upon which skill you were training when you discovered the strange rock).

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From today, when logging into the game, you will notice that the Welcome Screen has been replaced with what we’re calling the RuneScape Lobby.

There are several things you can do in the lobby before you enter the game. You can see which worlds your friends are playing on; you can chat to friends or enter a Clan Chat; you can switch worlds and set your favourites; and you can change your display options. The lobby adds no additional clicks to getting into the game.

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There is a bit of hubbub in Puro-Puro, as implings with new tastes come and join the already unruly crowd. The spirit implings (level 54 Hunter) are keeping an eye out for those tasty charms, pouches and secondary Summoning ingredients; zombie implings (level 87 Hunter), despite claiming to be after braaains, seem to carry rather bonier loot; and the greatest of clamours is reserved for the very rare appearance of the rulers of them all, kingly implings (level 91 Hunter), who have a taste for all kinds of luxury and riches (including a fittingly regal new outfit).

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Ever had an out-of-body experience? Well, you will have after undergoing the process of ‘Familiarisation’, the act of mentally projecting yourself into the spirit plane. The druids of Taverley need people to undergo this process and then gather resources from the spirit plane (from which the druids create spirit shards), all the while avoiding the resident familiars. Summoning pouch components or (temporary) triple charm drops are up for grabs for any who lend their brain.

Like with other D&Ds, you’ll first need to find out where it is, for which your best bet is having a chat with Pikkupstix in Taverley. He’ll be able to give you some indication of the location of his new apprentice, Pikkenmix. This will typically be at whichever Summoning mini obelisk is currently ‘active’, through which you’ll be able to project your mind once per week.

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If you have recently visited Commander Connad in Barbarian Assault, you may be aware that he is willing to paint abyssal whips for a fee. This has proved popular, so he has expanded the enterprise to include one more item.

To decide what that item will be, vote in this week's guaranteed content poll, accessed from the left-hand side of the RuneScape front page. The winner will be announced on Monday, 22nd of February, and the recolouring option will be released in a future game update.

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The humungous and deathly strykewyrms are happy to harmlessly tunnel about RuneScape, but they have trained senses that can smell a slayer from a mile off. Those who are assigned a strykewyrm task will find that they lure strykewyrms from the ground, but they may wish they hadn’t; once roused, a strykewyrm will do their very best to take them down!

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Today we have launched an update to the Standard Detail graphics mode for players with the Windows operating system (Windows 2000 onwards) and with Sun Java 1.4.2 or higher. The new Standard Detail mode is faster than the previous version. It also has options to turn on textures, shadows and lighting, which can make it look very close to the quality of High Detail mode.

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