I’ve been playingRuneScapesince 2007. I started as a child who constantly needed help completing quests and making money before jumping betweenOSRSandRuneScape 3years later. Fast-forward to 2024, and I’m now experiencingRuneScape: Dragonwilds’Early Access period as a young yet occasionally grumpy adult.
Dragonwildsis a wild ride. What initially presents as a base-building survival game becomes a blast from the past as it introduces you towell-knownRunescapequests, NPCs, and resources. Many moments made me smile upon seeing various references, alongside just as many flashes of frustration that have me sitting back in my chair and questioning whether it’s even worth it.
Dragonwildsisn’t a sequel toOld School RuneScapeorRuneScape 3. Nonetheless, frequent references to both games endearingly tug on nostalgic heartstrings before tossing that into the ground with some of its mechanics.
At its core,RuneScape: Dragonwildsthrows you into the world of Ashenfall, a forgotten continent that you won’t know anything about if you’ve only ventured around Gielinor. Immediately, you spawn into a mysterious temple with the Wise Old Man himself in front of you, waiting to tell you about your and the world’s circumstances. There’s a dragon on the loose, and Ashenfall needs your help to tackle it. What follows is a series of questing, resource gathering, and some of the most aggravating combat mechanics I’ve ever experienced.
Let’s start with the positives. Visually, Dragonwilds plays more into RuneScape 3’s cartoonish charm with a more polished and modern look than its predecessors. It feels like a RuneScape game, yet its clean and refined look helps it stand out against some of the large powerhouses in the survival game genre.
The gameplay is about what you would expect from a survival game. You start by gathering wood and stone, creating a crafting station for most of your early-game needs, and then venture off into the wilderness in search of more advanced materials. Along the way, you’ll make a base of operations, spanning from a tiny hut with only some essentials to an entire castle if that’s what you enjoy. While not necessarily revolutionary, it’s exactly what I expect from a game in this genre.
My feelings are mixed about the combat, though. At first, fighting a few animals or a goblin here and there isn’t a big deal, especially after you unlock a couple of weapons to pick from.
The real conflict comes a few hours into the story with the introduction of Hunts and Warband raids, causing swarms of goblins and late-game enemies to randomly teleport near your character and attack them as a group. What feels like a thrilling challenge for some quickly turns into a base-builder’s nightmare, with frequent attacks decimating your hard work in a matter of seconds and, at times, forcing you to fight them off until you inevitably die and teleport back to the game’s starting point or your bed. I even remember a moment of fighting six goblins at once, only for a random chicken to start chasing me, too. Where did it even come from? I still have no clue to this day.
That’s not to mention another obstacle, the aforementioned dragon terrorizing Ashenfall. It turns out this dragon is enough of a menace to fly around you, spew poison around you, and disregard nearby enemies. If you’re unlucky, you might have a Hunt active and this dragon attacking simultaneously, leading to unfortunate spawn-camping incidents. What felt like an interesting challenge in the first couple of hours turned into confusion and frustration over the frequency of these events.
There’s definitely something here, and it could be tweaked into a fun random event to tackle between quests and exploration, but its current state is hit or miss for anyone who enjoys spending time developing their base of operations and planning their future through careful resource management. Instead, it caters to those who prefer the thrill of combat strategy and overcoming impossible odds. That’s not to mention the basics of eating and drinking, which often feel like a chore with how rapidly both stats deplete throughout the day.
This scenario perfectly encapsulates my experience withRuneScape: Dragonwilds. It can potentially be among the greats in the survival game genre, using the decades-long development ofRuneScape’slore to build on another continent’s story. In its current Early Access state, the highs of exploring a new region and unlocking crafting recipes are satisfying and worthwhile. At the same time, the lows of endlessly dying because of an unlucky Hunt and dragon mix or running out of stamina mid-fight and going from 100 to zero health instantly drag it back to the crowd. With some potential balance tweaks and TLC from Jagex,Dragonwildscan easily become one of my top survival game recommendations recently, especially for those who are already fans ofRuneScapeand its story.
