Not often do we think of an MMO making a skill more friendly to being useable while you're not actively playing, yet it happens more often than we conciously think. RuneScape has announced it's reworking one of its least-trained skills, Divination, to make it both more interesting as well as more AFK-Friendly.
In a recent update to players, Jagex has announced its working on retooling Divination to make it a skill players are more likely to engage with. One way is actually by making it a skill that empowers more AFK gameplay, funnily enough. But it makes some sense. Skills like Mining and Archaeology are propped up as the target for how the team at Jagex are hoping to get Divination: something that allows for core gameplay to be essentially AFK'd, but "rewards deeper engagement."
"We want to bring Divination into the same realm as skills like Mining and Archaeology, with core training that can be AFKd but rewards deeper engagement. While the core of the skill has some fundamentals in place, we felt like the skill needed to really tone down the random parts of the experience and ensure a minimum level of guaranteed gathering per minute to lower the attention span the skill requires."
As such,the team is changing how Divination works, improving the core loop and changing some of the interactions with the skill, including causing Wisps to stay "within 5 tiles of a Crater at all times" as well as allowing memory springs to stay up for at least a minute.
Diviniation's transformation isn't the only thing being changed with next week's update, with RuneScape making changes to Transmutation and other rewards, such as the mechanics surrounding Divination capes and Divination outfits. Be sure to check out the full update notes ahead of their May 4th release. Also, if you're looking to dive into RuneScape on the go, the long-running MMORPG will be officially coming to iOS and Android this summer.
