RuneScape: Dragonwilds Review
A New Take on the Fantasy World of RuneScape
WARNING: THIS ARTICLE MAY CONTAIN DISCUSSIONS involving SPOILERS FROM RuneScape: Dragonwilds. CONSIDER WHEN AND WHERE IT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE TO READ THIS PIECE.Platforms
We reviewed our copy of RuneScape: Dragonwilds on PC via Steam. RuneScape: Dragonwilds is also available on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC via Epic Games.RuneScape is a storied franchise with a rich history in the gaming industry. Developed by Jagex, the original RuneScape was released as an MMO in 2007 and almost immediately become extremely popular. To this day, millions of players still play the original RuneScape, which is now known as Old School RuneScape (OSRS). However, sequel MMOs to this franchise have not even come close to the level of success that OSRS still receives. That is until Jagex released RuneScape: Dragonwilds in early access in April 2025, and now fully released in September 2026. Dragonwilds is a crafting survival game that is Jagex’s first real step away from the MMO genre.
Despite this difference in genre, Dragonwilds shares many similarities with OSRS. From the rune and skill mechanics to the story and iconic damage display, Dragonwilds preserves the charms of the OSRS while adding mechanics and systems to make it a crafting survival game. At the same time, these “charms” of OSRS are polarizing. While it is nice that past RuneScape games are honored in Dragonwilds, the same long, grindy nature of these games are carried over as well. Thus, this game is absolutely not for everyone.
Next to MMOs like OSRS, crafting survival games are probably second most grindy genre in gaming, but Dragonwilds feels more grindy than most other games in the genre. I would know because I have played many survival crafting games in my day. Growing up on Minecraft, and more recently playing games like Palworld, Windrose, Hytale, V Rising, and more, I am a veteran of the genre and Dragonwilds just does not land the same as some of these other games. That is not to say that it is not a good game – it is – but there are more frustrating and time-consuming parts of the game than I think are necessary, which diminishes the experience. Not to mention that the game does not feel original, instead it is a generic survival crafting game with the iconic RuneScape theme. This has not stopped the game from being a success, selling over one million copies, but I think that has to do with the RuneScape name attached to it rather than the gameplay.
Story and Questlines
The RuneScape: Dragonwilds story is set in the same world as OSRS, Gielinor, but explores an entirely new continent, Ashenfall. As the story goes, adventurers from the main continent of OSRS journey to Ashenfall in search of riches, but are quickly overwhelmed by its dangerous, dragon-infested lands. These dragons are led by Queen Kuldra, a deadly five-headed dragon, that rules of Ashenfall like fiery tyrant. Unable to secure any riches, the adventurers call upon heroes to rid the land of Queen Kuldra and her dragon army. The player is one of those heroes.
A vault in Dragonwilds
The story is broken into five acts that each culminate in a boss. Of course, the fifth act has Queen Kuldra as the final boss. Each act takes place in different parts of the map, and the main quest guides the player into completing the act. Within each area, there are several side quests, a couple vaults (i.e. dungeons), and a variety of enemies to fight and resources to gather. The main questline is mandatory to complete and gives decent rewards at the end of it, but it takes several hours to complete. The boss fights at the end of each act are quite good. They have unique and interesting mechanics that keep the player guessing and supply a level of fun difficulty. These fights are by far the best part of the main story quests. Once the main quest is completed in an act, the player can then move onto the next act.
Each part of the map also holds side quests. Side quests are shorter but finding and completing them are difficult because, unlike the main quest, the game barely gives any guidance on how to complete them. That said, the rewards from the side quests tend to be much better than that of the main quest. However, questing in general touches on a key weakness of the game – needlessly time-consuming activities. The main quest takes time due to the need to get more powerful gear (more on this in the Exploration, Crafting, and Skills section), and side quests are time-consuming because there is very little direction on what is needed to complete them. While this is fun and encourages exploration at the beginning of the game, it becomes tedious and frustrating after many hours of gameplay.
Exploration, Crafting, and Skills
Speaking of exploration, Dragonwilds does it, crafting, and skills pretty well. Exploration is important because not only does it unlock more of the map, but it allows the player to find and harvest new items and materials. Finding new materials is basically the only way to unlock new crafting recipes. Exploration also facilitates leveling up skills. Skills work just like they do in OSRS - there are a variety of skills like Magic, Runecrafting, Agility, and more, and leveling them up unlocks quality-of-life spells that can be used by spending runes. These quality-of-life spells range from a super high air magic-assisted jump to summoning spirits to help find resources. Of course, different types of runes are found and collected through exploration or crafting too.
Moving onto crafting, this mechanic requires the materials gathered from exploration. The materials are then refined in different facilities (like a Kiln) that the player can build to create new materials that are used for crafting more powerful weapons and armor. Unfortunately, crafting is often expensive, meaning that crafting one piece of equipment you want often costs a lot of materials or rare items to craft. Once it is crafted, it feels really good and definitely makes your character more powerful but actually crafting it can be annoying. Crafting too falls into the trap of needlessly time-consuming gameplay.
Exploration and crafting are also heavily intertwined with questing because quests often give a recipe for rare equipment, not the equipment itself. No surprise, these quest recipes are the most expensive crafts and can take several hours of exploration just to find all the materials needed to craft that one piece of equipment. Also, several pieces of good equipment are basically required to take on the act boss. While you could technically beat it without the upgrades for an extra challenge, the newly unlocked area after the boss will now then immediately become extremely hard. This is because the new area assumes you have the best gear from that area, so if you do not even have the best gear from the previous area, your character is effectively two steps behind what the game expects.
All of this is made easier with the spells gained from skill level-ups, but skills also take a lot of time to level. The exploration, crafting, and skills are all cool systems that do add a level of OSRS nostalgia to Dragonwilds, but it is somewhat overshadowed by everything leading up to good crafts and high skill levels being so tedious.
A character’s stats and levels
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From my continuous harping on time-consuming gameplay, I probably sound like I really do not like this game. That is not entirely true though. Instead, I wanted to emphasize that time-consuming gameplay is not a mistake by the developers, but an intentional decision. I know this because OSRS is 10 times more time-consuming and grindy than Dragonwilds. Since Dragonwilds is a RuneScape franchise game, it only makes sense that they would try to have as many similarities as possible to OSRS, a game that millions of players still love and play today. The time-consuming nature of the game is part of that. The good parts of the game, like exploration, skills, and boss fights, are good enough to keep me interested in playing the game, but not enough to recommend this game to everyone.
For Jagex’s first real step away from the MMO genre, Dragonwilds is a good game that takes a lot of inspiration from its MMO counterparts. I genuinely think it is a good game and may even come back to play it again if it comes out with more content. Although it is not a great game crafting survival game like Minecraft or Palworld, it competes with some of the lesser-known good crafting games out there like V Rising and Hytale. If you do not want to invest the time into playing it, or you are not a big fan of crafting survival games, I would not recommend this game to you. However, if you do enjoy crafting survival games, or are a fan of the RuneScape games, you should totally give this game a try. At the $30 price point and many hours of gameplay, you will definitely get your money’s worth of entertainment out of this game.
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Matt
New video game, movie, or TV show? Matt probably has it on his radar, and he might even be in the middle of reviewing it. This digital entertainment enjoying dude is a Content Writer during work hours, then plays games, watches movies, binges shows, and writes about all of it in his free time.