The long-running MMORPG RuneScape takes place in the world of Gielinor, a vast landscape filled with bustling cities, forbidding woods, dangerous deserts, and more. The upcoming survival game spinoff, RuneScape: Dragonwilds, introduces Ashenfall, a continent of Gielinor long thought to be permanently lost. Unlike the lands featured in RuneScape, Dragonwilds’ Ashenfall is a wild, untamed land where players must harness the ambient magic, build homes, cook, craft, and fight off numerous creatures to survive.
In a conversation with Game Rant, Dragonwilds executive producer Jesse America emphasized the importance of skills like cooking, crafting, and cutting wood in this open-world RuneScape survival spinoff. While Dragonwilds will feature combat and other “MMO-adjacent” elements, it is at its heart a survival game, and, as a result, the land of Ashenfall is far more wild and forbidding than RuneScape players may be familiar with.
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In Ashenfall, Wild Magic Is Everywhere
Long ago, the continent of Ashenfall underwent a mysterious event that caused wild magic, known as anima, to spread throughout the land. This anima forms the backbone of the game’s magic system, harnessed by players to cast magic spells in and out of combat. It is not entirely a friendly force — the anima has also twisted the appearance and behavior of many of the creatures who call Ashenfall home, making many of them more hostile towards the players and more likely to attack. America described how magic influences every aspect of life in Ashenfall:
“Creatures in this world have been affected by anima pouring out of the ground… It’s something that we call the “anima twist,” where, for instance, a regular animal in the starting area will look more like you would expect. And then, later on, as you encounter it deeper into Ashenfall, it will look and behave quite differently because of that “anima twist.”
Players can utilize this wild magic to help their lives in Ashenfall. Of course, it can be deployed in combat, with spells that conjure fire, wind, and many other effects. However, America explained, players can also learn spells by leveling up their survival-based skills. One example is woodcutting: “There are a couple of those spells where you just whirl down a couple of those trees and then convert them into wood with another spell,” America said. “It’s just the ease of life that we provide.”
Dragons Will Be A Constant Threat And A Challenge To Face
Life in Ashenfall isn’t just cutting down trees and building cozy homes as is typical of open-world survival games. The dragons, who claim the continent for themselves, are a constant threat that players must contend with. America explained that most dragon combat will be late-game challenges for players who feel ready to take it on, but that the presence of dragons will be consistently felt even in the early game:
“Dragons are there from the beginning of your play experience. They are present in the world, and they will harass you as well. By the time that you are powerful enough to start thinking about doing something about it, you will be sick to death of these dragons flying overhead and harassing you.”
The dragons of Ashenfall are led by the Dragon Queen, an epic boss-level threat who will challenge players far more than any of her underlings. However, America revealed that combat against the Dragon Queen will not be immediately available, but will be added at a later date. RuneScape: Dragonwilds plans to feature a robust update schedule with small updates coming each month and larger ones released quarterly and annually, so the ability to face the Dragon Queen will likely be added to the game in the near future.