Set deep in the desert near Sophanem, raids 3 sees you delving into the tomb of the pharaoh Osmumten, whose burial site is being invaded by minions of the minions of the demi-goddess of destruction, Amascut, who aims to use the artefacts within the tomb to ascend to full godhood. Aesthetically the raid is gorgeous. The bosses are well modelled and animated, the environment is epic and the soundtrack captures the idea of facing new challenges while also offering the nostalgic goodness that OSRS is known for. I particularly liked the music associated with Akkha’s fight, which is a remix of the classic Al Kharid music.
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Mechanics
The first thing any good gamer asks about when they see a new update is, “What are the mechanics?”. The Tombs of Amascut innovate mechanically in two major areas; invocations, and new boss fights.
Invocations
The Tombs of Amascut are both the most accessible and the most difficult raid to date because the invocation system.
Invocations add a way for players to customise the difficulty of the raid to their liking, with appropriate rewards of course!
Invocations allow the player to choose the difficulty of the raid. Rather than the simple easy/normal/hard toggle of theatre of blood, invocations allow you to make more granular changes to raid difficulty. You can choose to add time restrictions, additional boss mechanics, scaling difficulty as you defeat more bosses, or limits on the number of deaths allowed per raid. Each of these adds between 5 and 50 points to the raid level depending on the difficulty of the invocation you have chosen, but what is the point of raising the level you may ask? Every additional raid level gives a higher chance of getting loot with thresholds at 50, 150, and 300 raid level representing significant jumps in terms of both the drop rate of loot and the type of loot available. The raid level can go further than this and scales up to a potential maximum of 600, intended to be almost impossibly difficult.
This system allow the player to easily choose how difficult the raid should be, allowing for clears in even very low budget gear, but it also offers the opportunity for Jagex to potentially add new invocations in the future to offer further unique challenges to players that have already mastered those that currently exist.
Boss Fights
The mechanics of the bosses themselves are very well designed, featuring new mechanics unlike anything seen before in OSRS. I don’t want to spoil all of the mechanics, but Akkha is a good example of this.
The Akkha fight feels really unique for an OSRS boss.
His mechanics are a unique combination of previously existing and new mechanics. The fight features positioning the boss in specific areas of the platform determined by which adds you have killed, positioning yourself in a specific area of the platform based on a pattern shown on the floor, and moving in a specific pattern when you get a specific debuffs, all while prayer flicking depending on the bosses animations. It even features an unsuspected final phase similar to Phosani’s nightmare. These mechanics are not particularly demanding individually, however certain invocations can alter the rhythm and frequency of these mechanics. Some invocations even have two mechanics happening at the same time, which can make the fight incredibly chaotic.
The other bosses feature similar combinations of new and old mechanics, with the option to adjust their frequency using invocations. But I don’t want to spoil any more. You should play them for yourself!
Rewards
Any new piece of content in OSRS, especially blockbuster content like raids 3, has to offer some impactful rewards. Tombs of Amascut is no exception.
The Masori armour set
Masori armour is the new best in slot ranged armour coming from raids 3, replacing Armadyl which has occupied that niche in OSRS since 2014. This is a strict upgrade from its predecessor, with a total of 8 ranged strength across the set compared to Armadyl’s 0. To get the maximum bonuses, Masori has to be combined with Armadyl armour, which should prevent it from becoming devalued.
The non-upgraded (left) and upgraded (right) Masori armour alongside some new ornament kits for the Ava’s Assembler.
Tumeken’s Shadow
Tumeken’s shadow is a new powered staff designed to be the stand out item from Tombs of Amascut, the equivalent of the scythe or twisted bow from the other raids. The staff has a max hit of 41 with no mage strength bonus equipped, 2 higher than the max hit of the previous best in slot, the Sanguinesti staff. The Shadow also has a unique passive effect of tripling the effect of mage accuracy and damage from your equipment, meaning the staff will hit incredibly hard and often. This makes the staff useful at anywhere where mage is the current best-in-slot. Due to the overwhelming accuracy of the staff it is also best-in-slot in many other areas of the game, such as all 4 of the god wars dungeon bosses.
Tumeken’s shadow is the big ticket item for raids 3, and it looks the part.
Elidinis’ Ward
This is another strict upgrade. Elidinis’ ward can be combined with an arcane sigil to create a shield which gives 5% magic damage. This is a great item for use alongside a Sanguinesti staff or a Trident of the swamp.
Elidinis’ ward looks great and offers an upgrade in those situations where you will want to use either the Sanguinesti staff or the Trident of the swamp.
Osmumten’s Fang
Osmumten’s fang is the new one handed stab weapon coming to OSRS designed for use on high defence enemies. It has two unique passive effects:
- It has a max hit of between 15 and 85% of its “true max hit” using the standard in-game formula. This may sound complicated but what it means is that the damage from this weapon will be far more consistent than other weapons. Importantly this also removes the chance for a hit with 0 damage. In OSRS there are two ways to hit a 0, by missing the attack or by hitting the attack, but rolling 0 for the damage. This passive eliminates the 2nd possibility.
- It rolls twice when determining accuracy and takes the higher of the two rolls.
The combination of these two effects means that the fang will very rarely miss. This may sound insane as a weapon, but before release many argued the fang would be weak. Why? It has an attack speed of 5 ticks rather than the usual 4. In real terms this means that it attacks once every 3 seconds instead of once every 2.4 seconds. This has a significant effect on the DPS of the weapon, however initial testing seems to be positive. The weapon is fitting in to OSRS well and seems to be very effective on the bosses within raids 3. It is still worse than a Ghrazi rapier on targets with lower defence, but that was the intended niche. It also looks a bit underwhelming, but an ornament kit is in the works which significantly improves its appearance.
The base form of Osmumten’s fang (right) doesn’t look very powerful in my opinion. The upcoming addition of an ornament kit (left) makes the fang look significantly better.
Lightbearer
I left this one for last as its effect on the meta of the game is the least obvious. Lightbearer is a ring that causes your special attack energy to regenerate twice as fast as it normally would. The effectiveness of this is unclear. There are some some situations where this effect allows an extra special attack or two which could to be extremely good, however it is always a hard sell when the competition offers raw combat stats while this offers none. In situations where you are not using a special attack it is obviously not effective. I think with this one we will just have to wait and see where it goes. I doubt it will end up being completely useless, but I expect it to be a niche item.
More common items
These items seem to drop more commonly, and provide bonuses which are powerful, just less exciting.
Keris partisan jewels
The Keris partisan is an upgraded Keris that is obtained from Beneath cursed sands, the quest required to access the Tombs of Amascut. These jewels upgrade the Keris partisan giving it new effects, from a new special attack which increases damage done by allies, to generally increased damage to kalphites. The jewels aren’t super exiciting big ticket items, but I expect them to have their own niche uses.
Thread of Elidinis
The Thread of Elidinis allows you to upgrade your rune pouch to hold 4 types of runes instead of 3. This allows you to save an inventory spot in various locations, most commonly when using ancient magicks. Ice and blood is a common combination and a free inventory spot is beneficial in these cases.
Overall impressions, where does raids 3 stand relative to the other OSRS raids?
I think Jagex has really nailed it with this raid, and delivered everything that the players wanted. At the base level it is comparable to Chambers of Xeric and at the high level it is more difficult than Theatre of Blood. If you are considering coming back to OSRS to play raids 3, I would say do it! The raid is completable in any group size and approachable for most midgame players. It can also offer a challenge even to those in the extreme endgame with the right invocations. For those of you that have played the content, what do you think of it? Is it suitably challenging? Are the rewards exciting enough for a raid? I would love to hear your thoughts.
