There was a video/short going around recently where a bunch of OSRS creators mentioned they thought Run Energy should be killed off bc its a dated mechanic. For me, in a game titled "Old School" it makes perfect sense though.
But when I thought about it, most games have some sort of stamina meter if they're true RPGs. So I thought I'd ask someone else (and chose yall) what are your thoughts?
I think run energy quite a bit, I think there's certain situations where it can force you to choose if you want to bring less gear, or maybe you need to bring a stamina potion instead of an extra piece of food in some situations which I think is a nice layer of choice to give players when deciding their loadouts for raids and other bossing activities.
I didn't really have an opinion until Deadman Annihilation where you can just run forever, and I gotta say, I now like it quite a bit. Having a finite amount of run energy keeps things a little more engaging because it makes you keep an eye on the meter, and you have to strategically decide when to conserve energy and toggle run on/off depending on the situation. It also brings more incentive to use teleports and grind for graceful, and on top of that stamina potions are a hot commodity still.
Also it's relatable that the player can get tired like anyone else lmao
OSRS is a resource management game, and run energy is just one of those resources. I get the impulse to sand away friction, especially from content creators who are spending far more time in game than any normal player, but that friction is an important part of the game's appeal. Yeah, training agility is a slog, but that's also how it works in real life. And the way OSRS' skill levelling curve feels true to life is a flavour I love.
When I tried RS3 I felt how little run energy mattered, like it was a wholly depreciated mechanic. I think there's some similarity to HMs in early gens of Pokemon. When the games were very self-contained, then composing your party around needing to have certain moves on hand in order to move about the world was a good part of the mechanics. As the focus moved away from that self-containment with stuff like online battling and trading, and the composition of the maps changed with the move to 3D, then it made sense to change HMs into permanent unlocks. RS3 has equipment on the toolbelt in a similar way, and movement is much freer instead of being locked to tiles, so it makes sense that run energy is also less restrictive.
I think the OSRS agility rebalance left it in a pretty good place- if nothing else, explorable Gielinor being so much bigger than it once was warranted a reassessment. There's room to improve on training methods, though. (I like the gameshow feeling of Pyramid and Brimhaven much more than rooftops, and would like some more variety in that direction.) I'm interested to see what RS3 does with Agility and run energy in its overhaul as well.
I go back and forth on this a lot but, since the re-scaling, I think I prefer it being in the main game for the same reasons other people have already mentioned.
That being said, I think they should make agility a F2P skill. Being stuck at level one and not being able to use any shortcuts must be miserable...
Quote from: Maus on Feb 15, 2026, 04:04 AMThat being said, I think they should make agility a F2P skill. Being stuck at level one and not being able to use any shortcuts must be miserable...
I can see the vision on this, especially if they also rebalance some of the level unlocks for shortcuts. There's a darn good few that'd be a godsend to access in f2p that are
juuuuust out of range of where they'd realistically be useful that can be swapped for some lower unlocks that are placed in members locations.
Maybe even allow mith grapples to be bought in f2p just for that one Al Kharid River Lum hop or the Fally grapple wall, if that route is taken? It's not like the precedent doesn't already exist for f2p to have items they can't actually get themselves.
I just think both Fletching and Agility should be made into F2P skills.
+1 to Agility being a free-to-play skill, while still really liking Agility. The concept of keeping Old School "Old School" is always a complicated topic, and I'm all for a certain amount of QoL but like... idk I feel like run energy is "dated" in the same way something like clue scrolls are "dated" or some of the puzzle-based quest design is "dated". It's "dated" in that it is reminiscent of a much older design philosophy and isn't really in line with modern game design philosophy, at least in MMOs, but like that's the entire point of Old School to me.
God, I'll admit that run energy is the bane of my existence in OSRS (probably my own fault because I never turn it off and I also hate training agility, hence why I'm only level 62 in that skill) but, at the same time, removing run energy as a mechanic entirely would just feel wrong to do because it's part of what makes Old School RuneScape, well, Old School RuneScape?
Do agree that agility should be made a F2P skill, though.