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| - So there’s been a bit of buzz around what’s happening in the Lumbridge crater this summer – with bosses being teased and sand being shown - so we wanted to give a bit of behind the scenes info into the development process, and how things look! Working on bringing you the beach is our very own Team Omega, made up of Mods Daze, Mohawk, Dolan, Obeith and Krista (before she headed over to the OSRS team). Over the past few months they’ve been working on transforming the Lumbridge Crater into the most sought-after holiday hotspot of this year. The beach started out as a simple summer party pack that contained summer-themed items, similar to those in Solomon’s Store. The more we designed and conversed about the party pack, the more we realised it had the potential to be something so much bigger – and it grew in size. From small party pack to fully fledged beach, we realised that we were able to create a hub in which people could spend time in and experience in full, that would also be thematically pleasing over the summer months. What emerged from that is an easily accessible summer getaway in Gielinor itself, allowing both veterans, returners and new players alike to really spend their summer with RuneScape. It was important to ensure everyone was involved and could take part - there’s enough for everyone to get involved in, from brand new, low-level players to maxed-out veterans. File:Blog - Beach Party 1.jpg The first part of the update will involve you – quite literally – bringing the beach to Lumbridge. Bring buckets of sand to Reyna – the beach coordinator –and fill up the crater, ready to hit the beach! Once completed, Lumbridge Crater will be made over – the centre will be full of water, the usual gloomy landscape will be changed to a bright, sunny hot spot and all sorts of beach activities will spring up. Lots! We’ve worked hard to make the beach one of the central places to be, initially acting as your go-to hangout point during the summer months. Each beach activity will act as a great way to train specific skills – there’s a coconut shy that will help train your Ranged skills, sandcastle building that ups your Construction, beach BBQs to train your Cooking and more! File:Blog - Beach Party 2.jpg We wanted to ensure that the beach was a desirable place to be – both thematically and artistically appealing as well as being a competitive place to make some strong gains. Simultaneously, it needed to be a place that didn’t diminish or take away from the other skilling locations in the game, so we’ve capped the amount you can skill at the beach, while still letting you enjoy everything it has to offer. Keep in mind that every 15 minutes the sun will shine a little brighter on certain events around the beach. When such an area is blessed by this spotlight, it will grant you extra XP, so be sure you’re keeping an eye on the events you want to take advantage of most. Indeed! Essentially we wanted to create something for everyone on the beach – skillers and combat lovers alike. While there is a large variety of combat-oriented events coming over the summer, it felt right to make sure the beach catered to all. With the middle being relatively free, it felt natural to focus around putting in a repeatable boss that erupts from the middle. File:Blog - Beach Party 3.jpg With some effort, you’ll be able to send the beast back into the crater, and doing so will earn you some awesome rewards, such as ice creams to reset your skilling cap, cocktails that grant you XP buffs that can be used anywhere in the world, anti-sun potions that give you XP buffs when you’re on the beach, as well as the chance of some awesome new beach rares. We know that people love rewards, and wanted to make sure the beach was full of them. In many past events, we knew that not everyone had the time to or ability to complete the sets and rewards that were on offer, before being removed from the game. Taking that into consideration, we’ve created an abundance of beach themed items, emotes and titles, but focused on the way you can obtain them. Primarily, they’re available through beach events. All the skilling locations - as well as defeating the boss - will give you a chance of winning these items. Understandably, people may not have the time, or may be unlucky. As such, we made the decision to make all the items tradeable before they are consumed. This means you can find any items you didn’t manage to get on the GE, or by trading with others who may have got doubles. And on top of that, we dotted vendors around the beach that allow players to purchase any of these items for a small amount of RuneCoins. There are a fair few extra things happening around the beach – you’ll be able to easily access a variety of DnDs through handy bamboo portals. There will be a stage where JMods can hold events and showcases, and some beach-themed takes on classic Gielinor sports. File:Blog - Beach Party 4.jpg --- We’re really looking forward to opening the beach up, and we hope you’re excited for it as well. Let us know what your thoughts are towards the above, and we look forward to sharing more with you closer to release! Team Omega
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