Why Jagex Abandoned RuneScape’s First Boss

Before Zuk, Raids, and The Fight Caves, RuneScape’s hardest boss was the King Black Dragon. This beast demanded the best gear, the highest skills, and a small army to take it down. But today, he’s barely even considered a boss. It seems as though Jagex has abandoned him. But how did we get here? Well the answer might not be as simple as you think.

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[ColonelloRS]

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[Intrepid_Explorer]

Honestly I really like the idea of introducing bosses and dungeons into the game without telling players exactly where and what they are, and just letting the players discover them on their own.

[theirishbear_osrs]

You’re the only content creator ive run into randomly in game. Both of us just training random skills. Colonello is a real one y’all. Has been for a long time, thanks for the years of vids and thanks for keepin em comin!

[platinumhunter]

Killing KBD in classic was extremely stressful. Even with the best gear and decent stats he could wreck you. Getting there was an entire process and by the time you go to him, you likely started using food already.

I wanna say on average I would be able to get around 2 kills solo (not maxed) before having to teleport out. It was worth it to chase that sweet dragon medium though!

[jammos]

Don't play Runescape, but I still watch Colonello anyways.

[chendz]

OG player here, this brings back a lot of memories lmao, and was very accurate in regards to players camping out to see if higher level players would die. There was a lot of dead time waiting for high level players, and a pretty common ‘minigame’ came about where we would challenge each other to run to the other end of the lair and back (it was a tight zone and avoiding the aggro or surviving 3 rounds of combat with the KBD was hard, but the first two rows of tiles after the lever were functionally a safe zone from aggro).

[JourneyMN]

I like the lore about early Runescape especially the classic era

[OtakuWrath]

In Final Fantasy 14 the trial/boss fights have harder versions and they do this by telling the story of how you heroically defeated the boss, the bard sings the tale of your heroic battle and you "relive the battle" but it's the more dramatic retelling of how the battle originally happened. Do this in Runescape and they could keep the old fight while introducing the new Ultimate Chaos King Black Dragon with some of the most intense mechanics.

[PaigieyPie]

That's it. I've watched over 100 of your videos, it's time for me to finally try out RuneScape.

[erickchristensen]

I say give us a OSRS version of the *Queen Black Dragon!* That was the last RS2 boss added prior to the RS3 transition. And the fight plays out very similar to how the newest boss fights in the last 5 years of osrs do today. Very little would need to be changed!(Minus the drops of course). Instead we got Huey which is a very "eh" dragon boss.

[PraetexDesign]

Easy way to update it: Add an ‘awakened’ version that sports higher stats and more modern mechanics, which in turn has a much better loot table.

To access the awakened version, you’d need to kill the OG one for an item akin to the DT2 boss orbs.

This way no real changes need to be made to the existing monster but he becomes relevant again.

[octothorpe]

Really glad Framed didn't find you while you made this video

[cyabits]

back in the days it was real mmo, no youtube no reddit no discord, counting on friends to find it.

[lofidante]

KBD should be updated, but to require that you use classic gear against him. Make only items available in Classic able to harm him or defend against his attacks.

[Salsmachev]

I absolutely think there should be some nice, simple oldfashioned runescape bosses. I like runescape because I can run it on a potato, I can play it casually with one hand, and I don't need any kind of manual dexterity or reflexes. It was a game for the casuals. Nowadays, every boss has to have fifteen mechanics to memorise, prayer switches, prayer flicks, equipment switches, movement mechanics... and it's just exhausting and overwhelming. It's especially annoying when it's in quests. I do quests for the story, not to get ganked by some overcomplicated ballet routine covered in mandatory tile markers. Some people seem to like that style of boss, and frankly I like watching other people do that content, but that's what raids are for. Don't push the sweaty shit on us casuals and give us some difficult but not demanding bosses so we can have fun bossing, too.

[yugiohfan]

This hits home. I’ve been playing RuneScape since 2005.

[IScreamedWolf]

In RS3 KBD is part of the wilderness flash events and he can hit hard if you’re not paying attention lol

[edaumaysol]

I don't mean to make it sound like you (video creator) don't know this (I don't know if you do or don't) but not telling players about content updates in MMOs was actually pretty common practice back in those days. MMOs weren't polished like they are now, and content didn't, at its core, take long to finish- so most of updates' appeal was part of the "hunting" for new locations, good training methods, creating player guides, etc. This made communities feel a lot more connected imo.

[AcesPrune]

This is why Echo bosses from Leagues should be in the main game. Obviously balanced and made appropriate for the main game, they could have, "Echo Of The King Black Dragon, " and bring back his old draining capabilities, as well as fix his 3 head animation, and some other new mechanics.

[RockBandRS]

I get OSRS is a game that exists purely because of nostalgia, but I don't think Jagex needs to go back and update old bosses purely because powercreep made them irrelevant. Just seems like a waste of dev time, and will set a precedent that all bosses should be updated as powercreep continues.