Bounty Hunter came live in beta worlds on March 29, allowing anyone interested to join and test the new rewards firsthand. Jagex opened five beta worlds, one for the UK, Australia, and Germany, and two for the US. They are all marked with a blue star, and to join any of them, you have to hop worlds to one of them.
Overview of Bounty Hunter
The Bounty Hunter minigame was first introduced to RuneScape in 2007. The introduction didn’t go well since it also involved removing PvP from the Wilderness. 2014 marked the second failed attempt to have Bounty Hunter in the game, but that didn’t go well because of botting, gold farming, and other suspicious behavior. In 2020 the minigame was disabled for a few months so that Jagex could investigate some of this. Later that year, Jagex renamed the Bounty Hunter worlds to target worlds, and in 2021 the reward shop was removed, ending the popular PvP minigame.
After announcing that Bounty Hunter would return to Old School RuneScape in 2023 back in December 2022, Jagex finally made a more detailed statement in February and asked the community to complete a survey. Jagex came back on March 10th with another blog post concerning the Bounty Hunter rewards, which also included a survey that could help them better understand whether they were on the right path with the rewards or not.
Beta Launch
This time, Jagex is bringing Bounty Hunter to Old School RuneScape in a failproof, contained way that will allow you to enjoy the minigame without having any negative consequences on the game’s economy or the PvP outside of the crates. This is monumentally reflected by the rewards Jagex is proposing for participation in the minigame and successfully killing your targets, and most of them are available in the beta worlds.
How to Test the Beta Rewards
After you hop to the beta world, you need to click on the supply table near the spawn location to pick the weapons and armours you want to try and also pick your skills since your combat levels will restrict some of the items.
Get some food and pots and head to the free-for-all portal where you can safely die and keep the gear setup you chose since if you die an unsafe death, you will have to pick the items back from the supply table manually. The new rewards you might want to test are at the top, so you can easily spot and take them to try them out and see whether you think they are worth it.
Also, you don’t need to worry about spending GP in the beta worlds. While Jagex intends to make some of this gear chargeable with gold so that you lose the gold instead of the item when you die while using it, in the beta worlds, you’ll get to enjoy the stats ad visuals of the items without having to worry about your GP.
Rewards
Ancient Warriors Armours
There are four types of Ancient Warriors’ armours, and each comes into a corrupted and uncorrupted form. While you’ll need your stats in their 78s for the uncorrupted version, the corrupted version is meant for level 20. Except for Vesta’s set, all other sets contain a head, body, and leg armour, while the Vesta only has items that will fit into the body and legs slots. They cover all three combat styles; however, while the melee and range gear provide accuracy for the special attack, the magic armour provides accuracy for the regular attacks.
Statius’ Armor
The Statius’ armour is the melee defensive pick, so you could use it with a Maul. However, the popular opinion is that Jagex has currently underpowered the items, especially the corrupted version.
Vesta’s Armour
Vesta’s armour is the offensive melee variant, which also feels underwhelming and could make you wonder about Jagex’s statement regarding bringing a lot of power at a cheaper cost into the Bounty Hunter minigame.
Morrigan’s Armour
Similarly, the ranged armour pieces that make Morrigan’s armour set also feel weak in comparison to the already existing ranged gear and have already disappointed many who tried them.
Zuriel’s Armour
The magic set, Zuriel’s armour set, also lacks power in its current form and with the current stats. It has also been a rather disappointing experience for beta enthusiasts.
Imbued Weapons
Jagex is testing five imbued weapons with this week’s beta, but from their statements, it is clear that they want to bring more soon. Imbued weapons have increased accuracy, and their special attacks cost less than their non-imbued variants. Since they are better variants of already popular weapons, many voices of the community want to see them in PvM, not only locked inside the Bounty Hunter crates.
Imbued Dark Bow
The imbued dark bow has a special attack that only costs 45 percent of the special attack energy and 10 more accuracy than the regular Dark bow. You’ll also hit more with the special attack because the roll is calculated slightly differently than the regular one.
Imbued Barrelchest Anchor
With this imbue, the 60 attack weapon receives a +10 crush and strength bonus in addition to the regular variant. The special attack is also buffed with an extra 15 percent.
Imbued Dragon Longsword
This weapon does not receive a heavy boost on the stats, with just a +4 stab bonus and a +6 slash bonus over the regular dragon longsword. However, the significant change comes from the imbued sword’s slight delay between the special attacks. It could be used similarly as a community favorite: the dragon dagger. This is because you’ll be able to use a series of special attacks on your target relatively quickly. On top of this, the special attack will also give you 25 percent more accuracy.
Imbued Dragon Mace
The imbued dragon mace also has slightly higher stats than the dragon mace, but when you use its special attack, you’ll roll against only 60 percent of your opponent’s defense, so you are way more likely to hit.
Imbued Abyssal Dagger
The Imbued Abyssal Dagger has a +10 stab bonus on top of the regular Abyssal dagger, and you won’t see any damage reduction on the special attack as with the regular one. Since Jagex has already decreased the cost of the Abyssal Dagger’s special attack too 25 percent, they made no additional adjustments.
Verdict
So are any of these rewards worth grinding for? As of now, they’re currently in the first beta. The armours lack a lot of power so it’s not likely that many players would opt for using them in actual combat. However, the imbued weapons are so popular and well-received that they could be polled for entering a game-wide use rather than being exclusive to Bounty Hunter.