Ancient Warriors' equipment

Ancient Warriors' Equipment are sets of ancient armour and weaponry previously used by the Ancient Warriors, meant for use in player-versus-player combat activities.

Multiple variants exist of each equipment set: two can be earned by participating in the Bounty Hunter minigame and can only be used within Daimon's Crater, Castle Wars, Clan Wars, Soul Wars, the TzHaar Fight Pit, and both the player-owned house and Clan Hall combat rings, while the third set is exclusive to Deadman Mode.

Attempting to use the Bounty Hunter versions of the weapons outside of the aforementioned areas displays the message This weapon can only be used in the Wilderness and Bounty Hunter on Bounty Hunter worlds, and in Clan Wars, Soul Wars, Castle Wars, Tzhaar Fight Pit, the player-owned house and the Clan Hall combat ri.

The variants exclusive to Bounty Hunter can be recognised by the (bh) item suffix, and must be charged with a fixed sum of coins in order to be activated. On death, the activation fee is lost and paid out to one's opponent, while the player is left with the inactive form of the item. The equipment sets bought from the Bounty Hunter Store require level 78 Defence to wear, although they can be converted to their corrupted variant by speaking to a Corrupted Warrior, allowing players with only level 20 Defence to equip them. The weapons meanwhile sit at tier 75 of their respective skill: requiring 75 Attack for weapons that belonged to Vesta, 75 Strength for Statius, 75 Ranged for Morrigan, and 75 Magic for Zuriel.

Both the standard and the corrupted Bounty Hunter armour sets provide a passive effect when all pieces are worn, increasing the accuracy of special attacks in their style by 15%: melee for Vesta's and Statius' sets, Ranged for Morrigan's set, and Magic for Zuriel's set. At the same time, equipping a mix of standard and corrupted armour pieces will not grant this set effect.^[1]

The Deadman Mode variant of the Ancient Warriors' armour sets can be obtained exclusively during Seasonal events, while the weapons can be obtained in Seasonal events as well as on the permanent Deadman Mode world as part of the global Wilderness loot table. These variants have different requirements to equip from the Bounty Hunter ones, as well as different stats, and no corrupted versions of the armour exist in Deadman Mode. They also do not have a set effect like the Bounty Hunter versions.

Statius's equipment is primarily a defensive melee armour set. It provides higher defensive bonuses than Vesta's equipment set as well as a small Prayer bonus, at the cost of lower offensive bonuses.

Vesta's equipment is a melee armour set focused on offensive bonuses. It does not have a helmet, allowing for different more defensive or offensive capabilities to be added.

Zuriel's equipment is a set of magic robes. Its magic bonuses are similar to that of ancestral robes, although they provide slightly higher defensive bonuses instead of additional Magic damage. Zuriel's staff gives a 10% bonus to Magic damage, and also enhances the secondary effects of Ancient Magicks. The Bounty Hunter version also has an attack speed of 4 when casting offensive spells on the standard spellbook or the Ancient Magicks spellbook, similar to the harmonised nightmare staff.

Morrigan's equipment is a ranged armour set with high Ranged attack bonuses and some Ranged Strength bonus.

Ancient Warriors' equipment (excluding weapons) was first offered in the Wilderness Rejuvenation II Developer's Blog on 25 October 2017 as a drop from revenants. The armours would have the same bonuses and equipping requirements as they did originally when they were released in RuneScape 3 on 15 October 2008, and would retain the original degrading mechanic in which they become untradeable upon equipping them and degrade to dust after one hour of continuous combat. This raised questions on why the weapons or their corrupt variants were not included in the Developer's Blog.

Two days after the Blog's released, Jagex addressed the question, stating that while they both were great in many ways, it also brought a lot of negatives into the player-versus-player (PvP) scene and the game in general, and that the amount of time spent to balance them would be far too much for this project. However, they would reconsider offering them in the future should community reactions to the regular equipment be positive.

Players continued raising their concerns about the introduction of the armours to the game; by switching to the armours for a single tick simply to perform a special attack or tank a hit, the armours can potentially last far longer than an hour. On October 30, Jagex made another change to the Developer's Blog, adding a fee that must be paid in order to equip the armours; once this fee is paid, the item will instantly become wearable, but is no longer tradeable. A headgear would cost 250,000 coins to become equipable, a body would cost 500,000 and leg wear would cost 400,000.

Jagex revised the Developer's Blog once again on 2 November after further feedback, increasing the equipping requirement from level 78 to 80 Defence as well as doubling the equipping fee for each piece. In addition, they clarified the mechanics of the armour when a player dies. If a player is killed by another player whilst wearing a piece of armour, the killer would receive 80% of the equipping fee, regardless of how degraded the armour is. For example, the killer would receive 640,000 coins if they killed another player wearing leg wear, removing 160,000 coins from the game from the initial payment of equipping fee. Further, all the Ancient Warriors' equipment were now polled separately, as they previously were all lumped into one poll question.

The armours were put into the Wilderness Rejuvenation II poll on 2 November 2017, with all of them failing around 69%.

A day before the first poll ended on 8 November, Jagex published a blog stating their intention to repoll the armours once more, with some revisions based on player feedback. The armours would now only have their offensive bonuses apply in PvP encounters, meaning that when players are fighting NPCs, only the defence bonuses would apply.

In addition, the armours have been coded in a way that stops players from being able to artificially extend the duration of their armours. Now, each piece of armour lasts for 60 degradation cycles (which occur every 60 seconds) when in combat. A degradation cycle is also added any time the armours are switched to during combat. Thus, the armours would last much less than an hour if the wearer is repeatedly switching between it and another piece of equipment. After player feedback, this was changed on 10 November in the blog's revision so that the armour will degrade every tick (0.6 seconds) whilst in combat, regardless of gear swaps.

The armours were put into the Wilderness Rejuvenation II: Revenant Caves poll, this time with all the armours polled into one question. It failed at 67.3%.

Regardless of the poll's result, the armours, along with the weapons, were fully developed (with graphics made by Mod West), keeping all of their stats, equipping requirements and special attack the same as they did originally when they were released in RuneScape 3, with their degradation mechanic removed.

The equipment themselves were released on 6 September 2018, but was exclusive to the seasonal Deadman Mode server for the Autumn 2018 Finals, with only the weapons being available for week-long tournament. These were dropped by any NPC in the Wilderness, which can access a global loot table that contained the weapons. Once the tournament was over on 15 September, the armours were made available as well for the Winter 2018 Deadman Seasonal in the same manner.

The equipment was made temporarily available in an unrestricted world accessible only by RuneFest 2018 attendees in computers found in the event area as well as in the LAN room. Here, players could test the weapons against various bosses spawning around the world, as well as using them against other players in Clan Wars.

With the end of the Winter 2018 Seasonal on 11 October 2018, Ancient Warriors' equipment became unavailable until its addition to unrestricted worlds, where all players can use it for as long the server stays open. That being said, the Ancient Warriors' weapons became available in the permanent Deadman Mode world on 27 October 2021, as they were added to a global Wilderness loot table accessed at a lower rate than its seasonal counterpart.

Along with the announcement of the latest iteration of Bounty Hunter in 2022's Winter Summit, the development team announced their intention to poll Ancient Warriors' equipment as a potential reward for the reimagined minigame. Following two smaller design blogs on the activity, the individual items were given a more detailed description in the update post for the rewards beta. The Bounty Hunter rewards beta ran from 29 March until 18 April 2023, and allowed players to try out the new kit. Soon after the beta worlds were closed, a poll was held to decide on the addition of the proposed Bounty Hunter rewards. All questions relating to Ancient Warriors' equipment crossed the new polling threshold of 70% in favour, as the proposals received between 72.4% and 74.5% of votes. Consequently, the Ancient Warriors' weapons and armour sets released together with the return of Bounty Hunter on 24 May 2023, as untradeable reward items exclusively available from, and useable in, the newly remastered Bounty Hunter activity.

v t e Ancient Warriors' equipment
Bounty Hunter (standard)	Statius's equipment Full helm Platebody Platelegs Warhammer Vesta's equipment Chainbody Plateskirt Longsword (blighted) Spear Zuriel's equipment Hood Robe top Robe bottom Staff Morrigan's equipment Coif Leather body Leather chaps Javelin Throwing axe
Bounty Hunter (corrupted)	Statius's equipment Full helm Platebody Platelegs Vesta's equipment Chainbody Plateskirt Zuriel's equipment Hood Robe top Robe bottom Morrigan's equipment Coif Leather body Leather chaps
Deadman Mode	Statius's equipment Full helm Platebody Platelegs Warhammer Vesta's equipment Chainbody Plateskirt Longsword Spear Zuriel's equipment Hood Robe top Robe bottom Staff Morrigan's equipment Coif Leather body Leather chaps Javelin Throwing axe