RuneScape: Dragonwilds Steam Charts & Stats

Aside the fact, that except for maybe on a very surface level, this game has nothing to do with the actual universe of RuneScape, at it's current stage (May 2025) there is no way I can recommend this game. People complain that there is no healing during combat, that is not correct. If you push a bit into the game, you will find recipe for Healing Potions within an hour or quicker. But god damn this game is FRUSTRATING on so many levels. The balance of damage dealt was stagger damage taken is ridiculous, especially when considering that for the most part you will be fighting vs multiple opponents at once. The game also makes the severe mistake, that in what ever region you are in, all you will be able to acquire is the resources that match that regions supposed difficulty level (and yet, with the respective armour and weapons from that difficulty level, you will still feel outmatched a lot of times, as far too many opponents have weirdly long detection ranges). So whenever you push into the next region, you are ridiculously underpowered and have to spend ages on farming/grinding, dying, respawning, eating, drinking, travelling, rinse and repeating. And then for way too long you don't get new blueprints for new stuff, and when you do, the game shits 5 or 10 on you at once, that you will struggle to acquire the necessary resources, for the required crafting stations, so that you can prepare FOR THE ZONE YOU HAVE JUST CURRENTLY DISCOVERED. Just to have to rinse and repeat the underpowered process again for the next zone. Combat is incredibly janky and at times feels really non-responsive. The game requires you to dodge and block, which is fine in theory, except your stamina drain rate on dodge is just... 3 dodge rolls and you are out of stamina, and when facing multiple opponents who attack within splitseeconds, you have to perform all dodgerolls to not get staggered. Blocking is only semi useful and the part that I am talking about with unresponsive. Happened way too often to me, that I pressed block, and just nothing happened. Attacks are janky and near impossible to adequately correct their direction when some opponents move or dodge. But god beware you dodge during their attack chain, they will very accurately tether and rubberband you and "dash" to your new location while performing their swings. And movement in this game, oh god don't even get me started.... Jumping is like kneehigh. You will rather early discover a spell, that has a brief cast time and then allow you to ONCE jump like 4 times your height. useful in some areas to explore, but not usable in combat whatsoever. Additionally, when running or walking up ramps or non level surface terrain, jumping my actually do absolutely nothing. This weird and unintuitive behaviour/mechanic cost me way too many respawns, because I succumbed solely to how unnatural and unintuitive movement in this game feels. Also, opening your map the first time after every launch, the game will legitimately freeze for 3 seconds, And I am running on a very good rig, 64GB DDR5 CL24, AM5 7900X3D, RTX 5080TI... The ingame tooltips are incredibly lack luster still in a lot of areas, so you will rarely know which item does what exactly, or rather which crafting station does what exactly, until you've built them. The game is a chore, politely put. It has tons of potential, and yes it is still in Early Access, but as of right now I can not under any circumstance recommend it at all. Mechanically and balance wise, the game is... not in a good state. If I remember, I will respectively update this review in a couple of months or weeks, when the new updates hit. But as of right now, I just feel utterly done with this experience. It feels almost like initially someone had the idea of making this a mobile game, that features micro transactions to raise your powerlevel, but when they slapped the RuneScape IP on it, they were not allowed to do that any more. Edit (still in May 2025!): After progressing into yet another area, grinding all the required materials for that areas appropriate gear level, I am once more flabbergasted at how unexceptionally terrible the balance in this game is. The best weapons for that gear level, and the best armor, hardly make any difference to the gear from the previos levels. Sure the numbers look a little bit higher, but you feel zero difference. The fact that I unlocked consumables to improve my stats is not helping at all, as 80% of these consumables require ingredients that are not even custom to the current unlocked areas, but require more progresison, some of which severly more progression. Pulling individual enemies is near impossible in most populated areas, as triggering aggro on one, will trigger aggro on ALL that are within aggro range of that one you triggered. So you will yet again quickly get overwhelmed. Retrieving your items post death likely leads to another death (if under such aforementioned circumstances) as you will just reinitiate that entire aggro chain again while trying to retrieve your items. You are REQUIRED to obtain and maintain all possible buffs through consumables and magic, to NOT BE OVERWHELMED by more than one not default enemy. Add hunts and raids to that mix, as well as how quickly food/water/energy/stamina drain, and the game is a 9/10 on a frustration scale. A mere 2 or 3/10 on a fun scale.

The "progression" of gear feels nearly nonexistent. You don't feel stronger, you don't feel like you've done anything to prepare against the harder enemies, it just feels like you grabbed some cooler pieces of cardboard. The stamina mechanic is brutal in combat because you already do so little damage and attacking, blocking, and dodging will just zap that bar to zero in the first 3 seconds whereas the enemy can just walk you down and curb stomp you while you're out of breath. Parrying is a god damn nightmare because not only do the inputs TO BLOCK not even register, but some attacks are just straight up faster than the animation of you trying to block. I know it's early access or that I'm just bad but it is just too frustrating to try and play right now.

Feels like an unrefined Valheim. The movement/combat is very clunky. The game gets stagnant fast. I have played OSRS since 2006. This game is not worth $30.

[b]Why I love the game:[/b] - The building is intuitive and creative with a lot of options - The gathering and other production skills are fun especially with the spellbook spells. - The small details from Runescape lore in a fresh new game is exciting and really enjoyable. [b]Why I hate the game:[/b] Combat sucks. -Every action locks you into long drawn out animations while enemies are free to do rapid attacks and movements -Blocking sometimes doesn't work even with full stamina, -Parrying just doesn't work 40% of the time, -Drinking a potion takes a couple of lifetimes more than it should after tier 2 enemies -And between the choice of finishing my meal or dodging just before a beefed up dire wolf with more health than every enemy in the Inferno combined wants to sneak attack me I want to dodge and not stand there like a pleb with a berry compote in my mouth. [b]Valheim without the balance[/b] Runescape: Dragonwilds clearly takes a lot of inspiration from Valheim but brought along a bunch of stuff that in my opinion does not belong in a Runescape game. It has a lot of the enjoyable parts of Valheim like the building, exploration, dungeons/vaults, and biome progression which are good but it brings with it an even more inconsistent version of Valheims frustrating combat mechanics without the balance of Valheims food system for extra Stamina and HP. It makes a very terrible and unfun experience which is even worse by no difficulty selection so if the darksouls-ish difficulty is too difficult well too bad your stuck fighting warbands and being hunted constantly as you kite them around your base until you run out of stamina with 0% chance to do anything about it. [b]In conclusion:[/b] Do NOT buy Runescape: Dragonwilds yet. this game is not ready in the slightest and has honestly ruined my opinion of Runescape as a whole. I'm no Darksouls speedrunning pro but 95% of games I have no issues with difficulty and I cannot express how frustrating the combat is in this game and how angry it makes me. Minus a couple at the start I haven't had a single death that made me think "Oh my bad", it's always inconsistency in the combat mechanics as mentioned at the start of the review. [b]EDIT:[/b] I have since tried the game again but moved to a melee build and my god is it OP compared to magic. A mage build suck so anyone having trouble try melee. However my review will not be changing since this is a clear balance issue. I have also found more issues primarily with progression, it's wacky.

I expected something a little different than Runescape. Instead I got something a little different than Valheim, but less good.

You don't need to know anything about Rune Scape to love this game I played 90% of it solo and enjoyed every min of it . I even got spoiled cause some friends gave me a whip , shield , and good armor when I was in lvl 2 gear. I though it might ruin the game for me but I still found myself crapping my pants on some battles . the building is awesome in this game . not much I can think of that I didnt enjoy . dont wait till you got the best armor to fight the dragon it was too easy . 9/10 cause its not a MMO

At this point game devs have been hiding behind early access for an easy buck. You had an Alpha and a Beta, yet you couldnt deliver a finished product when it came to something as simple as cooking or combat. we have been waiting for any additional update for months now. Any community I have found from this game is gone. The roadmap has zero updates to it. Literally the only thing they did was fix the dragon attacking, which modders did in 24 hours of the game coming out. zero transparency as to why the constant delays.

The game has great potential. After completing the story with all masterworks and dragon slayer there is simply not enough content. Warbands need to be harder if you aRE HIGHER LEVELS, mORE MOBS, more loot and more vaults. Great game just not worth 29.99 as is

I love the game but there are things to dislike, Iknow it is early release but just wanted to say, EATING AND DRINK ARE HORRIBLE, like I mean really bad I find every 2-3 minutes not even I am having to eat and since starting the game I have played for about 75 hours so far and the amount of food I have gone through is insane it is actually making me want to stop playing the game I have spent a good 10 hours+ now dealing with eating which is insane... there is no reason to have to eat or drink that much please change it so full bars at least last 20 mins or something or just get rid of the system entirely it is very frustrating and I do really enjoy the game that is the main thing making me want to stop playing, also having so many enemies spread across the place is crazy that also needs to be fixed at least make some enemies not aggro so easily, I have played Runescape in general for about 18 years now I am a massive fan of game both RS3 more so OSRS but I am not too keen on playing an eating simulator, it makes no sense to eat that much please fix. Also the flicker when moving indoors that seem to come from the walls/roofs/beams is also annoying. Also needs to make day time/night time cycles longer pls

Currently lacking content and QOL needs some work. melee is the only fighting style with a skill tree. nothing for ranged or magic. you have to eat and drink almost constantly. you can tell that this will be a great game but i would wait another year before buying it. just keep it on the wish list for now.