I never got into RuneScape in my younger years. I only had room in my life for one video game addiction, and World of Warcraft laid claim to that ages before I had even heard of RuneScape. Nevertheless, something about RuneScape: Dragonwilds caught my eye. RuneScape: Dragonwilds has just launched out of Early Access, so I decided to give it a proper look. I would rather not give the game away this early in my review, but something tells me Dragonwilds may yet earn the honor of filling the void whenever I take a break from World of Warcraft.

Though I went into Dragonwilds never having really played RuneScape, at least I didn’t have to go in totally blind. I know the absolute basics of RuneScape’s gameplay: Your character does not gain experience points to level up directly by doing things like slaying monsters and turning in completed quests. Rather, you have an array of twelve skills, many of which have little (if anything) to do with any form of direct combat. You gain experience in those twelve skills by actually using them; in turn, gaining skill points in those dozen areas is how you increase your overall character level.

You start with one point in all skills. Thus, even a brand-new character starts at level 12 rather than level 1, which I must admit briefly threw me off. Every character has permanent access to all twelve skills; that is, there are no designated character classes which dictate what a character can and cannot do. The more skill points you earn in each of those fields, the more related things you learn how to do. For example, once you reach a certain number of skill points in melee combat, you gain the ability to parry while using a shield rather than just blocking with it.

You automatically learn all the new techniques and crafting recipes as soon as you hit the required amount of skill points; no need to track down (or pay) any skill trainers or anything. Each of the twelve skills caps out at a maximum of 99 points. As you’d imagine, exponentially larger amounts of experience are required to level up a skill once you start getting into the higher double digits. Even without factoring that in, some players might find most of the available skills tedious to level up. Thankfully, I personally find the non-combat skills really enjoyable and relaxing to focus on.

There have been quite a few occasions during my time with Dragonwilds where I’ve gotten so absorbed in things like building a home base for myself and leveling skills like fishing, mining, woodcutting, construction, and artisan crafting that it’s always a jolt when I suddenly remember, “Oh, right, I have actual quests I should probably be doing right now.” Even though such occasions probably already number in the double digits at the time of writing, I’m sure that scenario will happen to me hundreds or even thousands of times more before I eventually put down RuneScape: Dragonwilds for a long period of time.

To be absolutely clear, I mean that as a particularly high compliment. I’ve really enjoyed every time I’ve gotten sucked into doing things other than fighting, and I genuinely look forward to each time it’ll probably happen again in the future. Since I keep specifying that the aspects of Dragonwilds that immerse me most often don’t involve battle, that might sound like I dislike the combat within RuneScape: Dragonwilds. That is true, but only to a rather minor extent. In most RPGs of this ilk, I’m used to just charging guns-blazing (or swords-blazing, as the case may be) into every fight.

However, the skill system in RuneScape: Dragonwilds has encouraged me to broaden my horizons quite a bit. There are the usual three “flavors” of combat available to players in Dragonwilds: melee, ranged, and magic. Since there are no restrictions or defined character classes, and all three types of combat are easy enough to try out so you can find what you like best, I’ve been dabbling in a little bit of everything. As far as I can tell, you can’t dual-wield one-handed weapons, but the robust combat and skill systems in RuneScape: Dragonwilds still give you plenty of options other than that.

For instance, if you want to try out magic combat while ensuring you can still capably defend yourself, you can use a one-handed wand and a shield at the same time. Keeping in mind that I come from a background in World of Warcraft, where that combination is basically unheard of, that’s a particularly pleasant bit of “culture shock” to me. There are also no restrictions on what type of armor you can wear in combination with your preferred approach to combat. If you want to be a spellcaster in a full set of heavy armor, you can freely do so.

As I said, Dragonwilds makes it a breeze to try out different play styles pretty much as often as you want. If you start as a caster with a two-handed staff and decide you don’t like that approach, you just say, “Okay, all I have to do is go back to my base, craft a bow and some arrows, and see what I think of that.” Of course, you can also carry different sets of gear for different play styles on your person if you wish, so long as you don’t exceed your maximum inventory space or carrying capacity.

Virtually everything involving magic to any extent, be it combat or otherwise, requires that you carry a certain amount of elemental runes. Magic ranged weapons use elemental runes as their equivalent of ammo. All the spells you will learn to cast as you progress through Dragonwilds also require these runes. You can craft lodestones that you can freely place and use to teleport, thus serving as customized fast travel points. These, too, require Astral Runes, specifically. You can create elemental runes at a Rune Altar, which you can also craft and place at your base or in the wild as needed.

When you do so, you have a choice: You can either play a mini-game that gets you additional experience in the Runecrafting skill and a chance at bonus runes, or you can sacrifice those bonuses and skip this mini-game if you would rather not deal with it. The mini-game involves circling your cursor around a rune and pressing a button to seal magical cracks as quickly as possible once they appear. Kind of like magical whack-a-mole, if you will. I’ve had some difficulty with this mini-game from an accessibility standpoint.

However, this may be because I have thus far insisted on playing Dragonwilds with a gamepad as much as possible. In fairness on that point, this mini-game may well be one of many things I would find easier if I weren’t too stubborn to use a mouse and keyboard. Speaking of accessibility issues, I have encountered several quests in Dragonwilds‘ campaign that gave me quite a bit of trouble on that front. The quest that springs to mind requires you to climb to slight elevations near dilapidated towers and cast the Windstep spell to jump atop said towers.

It seems like you’re required to get a good angle on your jumps to accomplish that; that’s what gave me trouble. Turns out, it’s not the easiest thing to calculate the proper jumping angle when you have no depth perception or spatial awareness. Even so, I managed it eventually, though not without making a note to mention it here. Another accessibility concern for me was building a semi-proper house for myself to use as my home base. More specifically, building a functional roof has been a nightmare due to the whole “total lack of depth perception and spatial awareness” thing.

However, on the other, much more positive side of that coin is something Dragonwilds does well: Dragonwilds allows you to create your own game worlds with few permanent restrictions. Each time you launch Dragonwilds, you choose which of your characters to play, which of your worlds to play within, and then whether you want to play solo, online exclusively with your friends, or online with anyone who happens to find your world. That allowed me to bring a close friend who also owns a copy of Dragonwilds along with me, who’s much more knowledgeable about RuneScape (and competent at architecture) than I am.

We agreed that I would gladly do anything he asked in terms of material gathering and crafting, so long as he handled all the actual base-building. Since we can both access that world while playing solo, one of us can tend to menial and time-consuming things like restocking on materials and crafting while the other is unavailable, and only actually progress on quests while playing together. You can also create custom worlds where tons of settings, like enemy damage, player experience gain, and all sorts of other things, can be adjusted to your heart’s content. That’s another aspect of Dragonwilds that I really like.

Rumor has it that a thirteenth skill, Prayer, is planned to be added to RuneScape: Dragonwilds in “a future update” that has no release window as of the time of writing. That leads me to excitedly wonder if any further skills might be added to Dragonwilds in the future, especially now that it’s fully out of Early Access. I went into RuneScape: Dragonwilds with one central question in mind: “Are you getting the real RuneScape experience if you can’t walk into a public marketplace and say in chat, ‘Buying girlfriend, 1 million GP’?” I don’t know, but I wholeheartedly recommend RuneScape: Dragonwilds either way.

A PC review copy of RuneScape: Dragonwilds was provided by Jagex for this review.

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RuneScape: Dragonwilds

$29.99

8.5

Score

8.5/10

Pros

• Multiple systems that allow players to meticulously customize their experience.
• Really immersive and addictive gameplay.
• Captivating story.

Cons

• Some gameplay mechanics may present serious accessibility issues.