Hey, ‘Scapers! If you’re looking for a guide to the RuneScape Kingdoms board game, you’re in the right place.

RuneScape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg is a cooperative campaign board game, designed for 1-5 players, that aims to bring the rich worlds of RuneScape and Old School RuneScape to life in a new and engaging way. 

Let’s take a Tutorial-Island-style tour of the game, unraveling the intricacies of RuneScape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg. The game draws inspiration from both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape, incorporating familiar elements while adapting digital mechanics to the tabletop setting.

Before we get started, let’s choose our character!

Choose Your Character

Players will have the opportunity to choose between five different avatars, while they will also meet powerful allies who will help them along the way and encounter formidable foes. Let’s take a look at a few of them. 

Knight

A melee powerhouse clad in trusty bronze armour, the knight faces every challenge with brash determination. No problem can’t be solved with a swing of their scimitar. As voted for in the community survey, we armed the knight with melee equipment typically worn by players who are just starting out in RuneScape or Old School RuneScape: A bronze scimitar and shield, and bronze plate body, legs, and helm. Cheap and easy to acquire, it’s a straightforward route for getting to grips with melee combat.

Wizard

Through magic, all things are possible. Whether teleporting long distances, enchanting items with magical properties, or casting foes aside with elemental spells, the wizard is a blue-robed paragon of quick wit and explosions. Get your hands on one of the earliest pieces of magical equipment you can in RuneScape or Old School RuneScape, the Staff of Air, and wear the iconic blue wizard robes, and you are ready to be initiated into magic. 

Skiller

The Skiller pays homage to non-combat skills, featuring a mini equipped with a pickaxe and chef's hat. This nod to the hours spent and mining ore in the video games adds a unique touch to the tabletop experience. 

Archer

The Archer, on the other hand, completes the combat triangle, wielding a shortbow and bronze arrows, catering to players who prefer a combat-focused approach. Inspired by early-game archer gear from the video games, the Archer is ideal for someone just starting their RuneScape Kingdoms journey. 

Clue Hunter

On a different note, the Clue Hunter avatar caters to players attracted by rare gear, clue scrolls, and treasure trail rewards. Dressed in the iconic Sandwich Lady outfit and wielding the Staff of Bob the Cat, the Clue Hunter represents those drawn to the fashion aspect of RuneScape and Old School RuneScape. This avatar is an exciting addition for players seeking a unique and stylish journey through the game.

Count Draynor

Count Draynor, a supernatural terror in Draynor Manor, serves as a formidable boss in one of the four core box campaigns. Players must thwart his bloodthirsty rampage, and failure to act promptly allows him to roam freely, escalating the danger. Armed with a stake and knowledge of vampyre takedowns, players face a challenging campaign.

About the Game

Being a cooperative experience, RuneScape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg allows 1-5 players to operate as a team or clan, completing quests together and sharing resources. Staying true to the essence of RuneScape's player versus monster (PvM) experiences, the board game primarily focuses on cooperative play. Being a campaign game, it allows players to save their progress after each play session. The campaigns are themed around iconic RuneScape quests or bosses, providing a structured yet flexible gameplay experience

The game is an open-world, or 'sandbox' style, board game, offering players the freedom to explore and play in almost any way they choose. Much like RuneScape and Old School RuneScape, players can hone their adventurer's skills, experience side quests, or even embark on a quest to find all the cabbages in Gielinor. The decision to opt for an open-world, narrative adventure influenced the creation of a 'zoomed out' world map, reminiscent of a fast travel map in video games. The game board adopts a concept art style, introducing hand-drawn banners for different regions, highlighting capital and province locations. 

Skills

The importance of skilling in RuneScape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg is great, since the game's progression hinges on leveling up skills. The game features 8 different skills, drawn from both RuneScape and Old School RuneScape, with character sheets used to track the progress of individual skills. The character sheets serve both informational and organizational purposes, allowing players to monitor their adventurer's journey.

Skill tests play a central role in the game, requiring players to roll ten-sided dice to beat a target number. The higher the skill level, the more dice a player can roll, increasing the likelihood of success. 

Players can level up their skills through gaining experience, represented by XP tokens. Players accumulate tokens by taking skill tests, completing quests, advancing the main story, or engaging in skilling sessions. The game's classless character progression system offers players the freedom to choose their skill progression path, allowing for a diverse range of character builds.

Exploration

Exploration in the game involves moving adventurers between regions, with each province offering an exploration deck of randomly occurring encounters. These encounters include bonus tasks, rewards, enemy encounters, or interactions with non-player characters. Capital regions, characterized by more activities, allow players to collect resources, engage in skilling, and escalate the exploration track, introducing an element of risk.

Quests

There are two types of quests in RuneScape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg, campaign quests and side quests. Campaign quests form the main narrative, progressing through campaigns inspired by video game quests. Completing these quests unlocks subsequent campaigns and advances the overarching storyline. Side quests, on the other hand, provide optional distractions with opportunities for experience, coins, and tokens.

The exploration and quest mechanics are complemented by the introduction of the vault deck. This deck, containing numbered cards, remains unshuffled and unveils content progressively as players make discoveries, earn rewards, or unlock new elements. The vault deck introduces an episodic narrative style, evolving campaigns and creating a sense of suspense as players encounter new cards that shape their RuneScape Kingdoms experience.

Boss Encounters

The RuneScape Kingdoms core game features four campaigns, each concluding with a boss encounter, with unique mechanics of boss fights, and highlights of face-to-face showdowns on a 3x3 grid set on the boss's home turf. Boss encounters involve terrain cards specific to each boss, creating diverse challenges for players.

The boss phase introduces distinct player turns, where adventurers can move and use one skill. Skills play a pivotal role in defeating bosses, offering actions like inflicting damage, affecting terrain, or manipulating the boss's position on the board. 

During boss fights, players use initiative cards laid out randomly to determine their turn order. Understanding the boss's behavior patterns and strategically planning ahead becomes crucial, providing a unique board game experience akin to learning boss behaviors in video games. The thieving skill Sleight of Hand for example, if used in an encounter with Count Draynor, allows players to manipulate the initiative track, influencing the turn order to their advantage.

Where to Go Next

Hopefully, that’s given you a good idea of how RuneScape Kingdoms: Shadow of Elvarg works!

Want to grab a copy of the game? Pre-order here now!

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