Regions

Brynmoor is where every world starts: three regions at power level 1 to 2 on the south coast, with the Temple of Saradomin on the cliffs, the ruined village of Bramblemead in the valley below and the Whispering Swamp as the border with Ghornfell. Temple Woods is the safe ground. A trace of priestly magic keeps the worst of the wilds out of the temple, which is why the expedition camps there, and the haunted windmill to its north-west is the first place the night turns dangerous. Bramblemead Valley holds the village, the Keep of Blue Flames, the Runecrafting Guild to the north-west and the Adventurer's Guild to the east, all of it overrun by goblins and rats now. Whispering Swamp is where the resources are: herbs between the weeds, clay and stone, ore in the caves along its edges, and goblin hunters patrolling the whole of it.

Iron is the thing Brynmoor doesn't have. The village mined the region dry before its fall, which is the story behind half the journal entries you pick up here and the reason the main quests send you north. The creatures are goblins (warriors, archers, bruisers and runts), giant and putrid rats with their kings, kebbits, the occasional garou druid, and deer, cows, chickens and magpies for food and leather. General Velgar, the green dragon who burned Bramblemead, circles the region from his lair in Ghornfell and is the target of Dragon Slayer.

The quests that start here are First Steps, Getting Started, Ratcatcher, Rune Mysteries and Dragon Slayer on the main line, with Warding Off Danger, Growing Pains, Restless Ghosts, Goblin Diplomacy and Highlighting the Problem on the side.

Ghornfell is the garou's country north of the swamp, three regions at power level 3 to 4: the Fractured Plains in the middle, where unstable anima turns the plants the colour of dragonfire and Velgar lairs in the ruined tower a dragonkin built with garou slaves; the Stormtouched Highlands to the west, under a storm the necromancer Ravanna raised, whose lightning strikes anything on the ground and whose titan wyrm bones the garou camp beneath; and the Bloodblight Swamp to the east, wheat fields once, poisoned when Velgar spilled his own blood across them. The water and the air there both carry the toxin, so bring antipoison.

This is where metal starts. Copper, tin, iron, silver, gold and blurite nodes, dragon teeth, sandstone and granite, with anima-infused bark on the trees and onions, dwellberries, snapdragon and toadflax to gather. Anchovies, salmon and herring are in the water. The garou come as berserkers, hunters, druids, thanes, kings and exiles, and the rest of the roster is wolves and dire wolves, chinchompas, rams, terrorbirds and the Abyssal Demon. The garou keep the rites Lougrim taught them while serving the dragon queen who ate her, which is the long story the region's journal entries tell.

Velgar himself is the end of Dragon Slayer; the side quests here are Dog Days, Granite Mauled, Heartstrings, Cook's Assistant, Animal Magnetism, A Room With A Garou, A Melody Remembered and The Great Body Robbery. Base raids and hunted events are a Ghornfell feature: a goblin raid party can turn up at your base once the grace period runs out, so wall it.

Fellhollow is the undead region, power level 5 everywhere, reached from Ghornfell through a necromantically sealed door near Ashien's Watch once Dragon Slayer is done. Death meets you in the Forgotten Temple and the way in is soul rifting: spectral doors that only open while you carry the Wither. Bleakfields Valley is the first ground, with a withered village, a graveyard, willow groves and Ravanna's standing stones. Emberwood to the west is the settlers' village, sealed behind a prayer barrier with its withered population inside; Silverthorn Keep to the east is the Wild Knights' fortress and the gate down into Dowdun Reach; Coalridge Pass is where the coal is, in the ridge walls and caves; Hope's Fall holds Imaru's tower, shut until you carry all three curse shards. The Lake of Lost Souls and Witchwillow Range round it out, and the agility course Grave Run is in Dragons' Run.

Everything here is dead or feeding on the dead: lost souls, ghost wolves, nature spirits, skeletal archers, warriors, hoplites, marauders and necromancers, zombies, the rotsworn in every shape, zogres, dragon wolves and green dragons. Soul stone and iron are the new nodes, willow the new wood, irit, cadavaberries, corpse cotton and pumpkins the plants, and the fish are lobster, undead eel and undead bass. Purification Pools across the map are how you shed the Wither, so learn where the nearest one is before every rift.

The main line is Withering Heights; the side quests are The Wild Hunt, Even More Restless Ghosts, Seeking Salvation, Things That Go Boom In The Night, Doric's Quest, Letters for the Dead, Mirror, Mirror, What Remains is Written and X Marks the Spot.

Dowdun Reach is a mountain fortress rather than a landscape: ten power level 6 regions stacked inside and around the Black Knights' keep, entered through the gatehouse south of Silverthorn Keep once Withering Heights is finished. The Approach leads to the courtyard; The Library, The Grand Hall, The Garrison, The Cathedral and The Nexus are the halls of the keep itself; The Pastures and The Menagerie are its farms and beast pens; The Bastion at the bottom holds the Black Knight Titan and, beyond him, the door to the Umbral Sands. You can't cast Summon Shelter in the Bastion, so unlock its lodestone early.

This is the mithril tier. Mithril, coal, gold, silver, limestone, sandstone and granite are all mined here, maple is the wood, and the fish are giant krill, armoured catfish and infernal eel. The garrison is Black Knight warriors, snipers, guardians and elites with named sergeants and houndmasters; the magi are Zamorakian acolytes and Mages of Zamorak; the beasts are hellhounds, hellrats and carnivorous chinchompas, with pressed goblins, undead in the crypt, lesser and shardbound demons and the odd lesser blue dragon. The thirteen shards of the Dreaming Stone scattered through the keep are the spine of the main quest, Black Knight's Fortress, and the madness the stone caused is what the journal entries here are about.

Side quests: Biohazard, Wanted! and What's Theirs is Mine!, the last of which reopens the keep's sealed nodestone portals.

The Umbral Sands are the desert, power level 7, opened by the door in the Bastion at the end of Black Knight's Fortress. The sun is the first enemy: in direct light you take Scorch, so by day you keep to shade or build it, and by night Fuzan and his red dragons hunt the open sand. A magic carpet, earned once a garou clan trusts you, is how you cross it. Alcarrid Oasis in the north is where you arrive, home to the Alcarrid clan and to Icthlarin; the Dunes of Uzzer to the north-east belong to the weaving Uzzer clan and the archaeologist Lehran; the Manafem Plains to the west are the Manafem clan's, hunted at night by a red dragon called The Radiant; and The Burning Spire in the south is Fuzan's volcano, with the corrupted Lens inside it and the Cave of Screams where the KotHaar are forged.

Adamantite and yew are the tier materials, with coal, gypsum, rune essence and sandstone to mine and barrel, bunny and fibrous pipe cactus to harvest. The three Moon Garou clans are the first garou that don't attack on sight. What does: kalphite workers, soldiers and guardians with their queen below the sand, the KotHaar in four forms, red dragons, goats, and the wild jade and ruby vines. Vultures and desert devil kebbits leave you alone.

Mapping the Sands I and II, Contact! and Brink of Extinction lead up to Icthlarin's Little Helper, which ends in the fight cave against Fuzan and unlocks the way to the Scorned Wilderness.

The Scorned Wilderness is the raid, not a region to settle: floating islands of shattered land held up by wild anima, entered from the north-west of the Fractured Plains once Icthlarin's Little Helper is complete and Regicide has begun. Rasthin's Rest is the only buildable ground and the safe hub: a bed here is never raided, Commander Zilyana starts or resumes a run, and a death inside the raid puts your gravestone beside her rather than where you fell, so there are no corpse runs.

A run goes through five areas in order. Dragontail Vines opens with a black dragon, zombies and elementally infused skeletons, and the first runite, luminite and magic trees, so mine as you go. Fragments of Ghornfell is garou hunters, berserkers and thanes with goblins, a skeletal necromancer, the plague king and an Abyssal Demon, with two sanguine urns and a Zilyana teleporter at the start to leave and craft. The Shattered Stronghold adds another teleporter, more berserkers and infused giant rats; Cataclysm Keep a second black dragon, wild jade vines, a hunter and two vault guardians with a third urn; and Kuldra's Sanctum has the last runite and luminite before the Dragon Gate and the queen herself.

Everything in here drops discordant residue, the material for power level 8 gear, which is the point of running it more than once.