Review for RuneScape: Dragonwilds (First 4 Hours of Gameplay)

[wei]

After spending around 4 hours in Dragonwilds, here are some major issues I ran into — and honestly, they killed the fun pretty fast.



1. Dragon in the Tutorial Area
The dragon somehow always knows where you are, no matter what. Even if you’re indoors or hidden behind multiple walls, his attacks still hit you — through floors and walls — like they completely ignore terrain or line of sight. It feels broken and unfair. What makes it worse is that his attacks don’t seem to affect other mobs, so while you’re dodging dragon fire, you’ve still got goblins chasing you nonstop. It's chaotic in the worst way.

2. Ambush System
I get the idea — surprise enemy encounters can be exciting — but the execution is a mess. Ambushers teleport directly to you regardless of where you are. There’s no real way to prepare or escape. You're just instantly surrounded and overwhelmed. I’m all for a challenge, but when enemies phase through everything and appear out of nowhere, it stops being fun and starts feeling cheap.

3. Base Attack Mechanic
In theory, this sounds great — defending your home from raids. But in practice? It’s a nightmare. The enemy goblins teleport an entire army right next to your tiny 2x2 block home. You can’t build real defenses, there’s no room to fight, and the best strategy seems to be unequipping your gear and letting them kill you so they eventually leave. That shouldn't be a valid tactic. It’s just bad design.

If we could actually build functional defenses, traps, or walls that enemies respected, this could be an amazing mechanic. But right now, as a solo player, you just get punished for trying to base build.

Final Thoughts:
I wouldn’t recommend this game to anyone who enjoys base building or structured survival mechanics. Enemies ignore terrain, teleport into your base, and the dragon punishes you constantly even when you’re not engaging him (It was cool at first but got repetitive as he kept knowing where i was and attacked). It feels like the game is actively working against any effort to create a safe or stable home or a way to counter it unless you drag yourself to do stuff you don't want to do.

I don’t mind a tough game — I actually enjoy a good challenge — but these events aren’t challenging, they’re just badly designed. Every 10 minutes or so, you're hit with an event that feels more like a punishment than gameplay. Either a dragon shows up and spawn-kills you repeatedly, blanketing your base in toxic sludge that lingers for what feels like an entire in-game day, or a warband appears and floods the area with endless enemy waves until you inevitably die. It’s not a test of skill or strategy — it’s a test of how long you can tolerate mechanics that ignore player agency. There’s no real counterplay, no way to prepare, and no sense of fairness. It’s not hard — it’s just frustrating.

There’s potential here, but the balance and mechanics desperately need fixing.

[loopa]

People saying this game is hard is wild. Game is super easy right now lol. What did you expect? Has a way better survival system than enshrouded and much better graphics than valheim off the rip. It's brand new as well, I am sure a company as massive as Jagex, will update this non-stop and hell, maybe even throw in MMO and PVP aspects based on player feedback. For $30 bucks its not bad. Not sure what everyone is complaining about lol. The survival aspects are fine, wish they were harder. I hope they had PVP with like 100 man servers so we can all kill eachother and destroy bases and ride dragons and stuff lol. Def worth the $30 for now, only going to get better. Or just wait untill it cooks a bit more and come back, but by no means is it bad lol. To me enshrouded was worse and valheim graphics killed it for me in long run (400 hours in it)

[PocketYoda]

loopa a écrit :

People saying this game is hard is wild. Game is super easy right now lol. What did you expect? Has a way better survival system than enshrouded and much better graphics than valheim off the rip. It's brand new as well, I am sure a company as massive as Jagex, will update this non-stop and hell, maybe even throw in MMO and PVP aspects based on player feedback. For $30 bucks its not bad. Not sure what everyone is complaining about lol. The survival aspects are fine, wish they were harder. I hope they had PVP with like 100 man servers so we can all kill eachother and destroy bases and ride dragons and stuff lol. Def worth the $30 for now, only going to get better. Or just wait untill it cooks a bit more and come back, but by no means is it bad lol. To me enshrouded was worse and valheim graphics killed it for me in long run (400 hours in it)

Enshrouded was top tier gaming.. Better than AAA imo.

[×STEEZUS×]

how do you set a spawn point???

[wei]

×STEEZUS× a écrit :

how do you set a spawn point???

Make a bed and press E on it.

[×STEEZUS×]

amazing game 10/10 20 year player of RS myself and this has me feeling some typa way, I really wish to see a possible MM0 Area / PK area, Perhaps a Trade Area? if possible Sailing would be heavy as well.

[PocketYoda]

griz a écrit :

×STEEZUS× a écrit :

how do you set a spawn point???

Make a bed and press E on it.

Annoyingly you need a roof over the bed.. No camping allowed!!!

[FishOn93]

Way too many ignorant complaints in this thread about small things that will be fixed. The game is not even remotely complete. It’s an early release you are testing. I can’t think of any survival games out there that will come close to this twist in the genre. 30-40 hours total between a small group of friends and we have had no real issues.

For $30 it’s well worth it to grab now in my opinion.

[Pyro3000]

I couldn't agree more with OP. The hunts, base attacks, and dragon is too much. I'm trying to nab one enemy at a time to slowly progress through an area so I can try to get level 3 gear, and I'm getting hunting parties spawning behind me at the SAME TIME as the dragon pelts poison everywhere. All that to respawn at my home base and have a warband come instantly and then my whole corpse is at risk. The dragon's poison also loves to go through ceilings and floors. By the time it's over, my stamina is drained if I manged to survive, and it's too early in the day to sleep.

I just want some tin ore

[wei]

FishOn93 a écrit :

Way too many ignorant complaints in this thread about small things that will be fixed. The game is not even remotely complete. It’s an early release you are testing. I can’t think of any survival games out there that will come close to this twist in the genre. 30-40 hours total between a small group of friends and we have had no real issues.

For $30 it’s well worth it to grab now in my opinion.

It’s not ‘complaining’ to give valid feedback on the current state of a game — especially one they chose to release publicly. Early access or not, this is the version people are paying $30 for, and it’s the experience being judged. You don’t get to put out a messy build and then act surprised when players point out the mess.

And I’m not nitpicking ‘small things.’ Teleporting enemies, wall-ignoring attacks, and unbalanced, non-interactive raid systems aren’t minor bugs — they’re core mechanical issues. Saying ‘just wait, it'll be fixed eventually’ doesn’t change the fact that these problems are ruining early impressions right now.

Glad it’s working for you and your friends, genuinely — but pretending others are just being ignorant because they had a different experience? That’s not helpful. If anything, honest feedback like mine is how these games actually get better before 1.0.

[Ivins]

loopa a écrit :

People saying this game is hard is wild. Game is super easy right now lol. What did you expect? Has a way better survival system than enshrouded and much better graphics than valheim off the rip. It's brand new as well, I am sure a company as massive as Jagex, will update this non-stop and hell, maybe even throw in MMO and PVP aspects based on player feedback. For $30 bucks its not bad. Not sure what everyone is complaining about lol. The survival aspects are fine, wish they were harder. I hope they had PVP with like 100 man servers so we can all kill eachother and destroy bases and ride dragons and stuff lol. Def worth the $30 for now, only going to get better. Or just wait untill it cooks a bit more and come back, but by no means is it bad lol. To me enshrouded was worse and valheim graphics killed it for me in long run (400 hours in it)

You think Jagex is a massive company? LOL

[Oldy]

Ivins a écrit :

loopa a écrit :

People saying this game is hard is wild. Game is super easy right now lol. What did you expect? Has a way better survival system than enshrouded and much better graphics than valheim off the rip. It's brand new as well, I am sure a company as massive as Jagex, will update this non-stop and hell, maybe even throw in MMO and PVP aspects based on player feedback. For $30 bucks its not bad. Not sure what everyone is complaining about lol. The survival aspects are fine, wish they were harder. I hope they had PVP with like 100 man servers so we can all kill eachother and destroy bases and ride dragons and stuff lol. Def worth the $30 for now, only going to get better. Or just wait untill it cooks a bit more and come back, but by no means is it bad lol. To me enshrouded was worse and valheim graphics killed it for me in long run (400 hours in it)

You think Jagex is a massive company? LOL

Idk , 450 employees , 1bn lifetime frenchise revenue , 300 million players accounts and the studio was sold for 900 million a year ago.

[CakeNbake27]

The amount of whining here is insane, the difficulty is fine just play with a friend or something

[RustyFC]

How much classic Runescape music is in the game? Honestly the survival theme is whatever, but if I'm not jamming out to bangers, then there's no point.

[xTharros]

oliverisshak a écrit :

Completely agree with everything you said. To make matters worse, a warband spawned in my base (which was a massive base btw) and completely destroyed 6 storage chests which most of the material is destroyed and gone. They need to fix some major issues but it could have potential

Whenever I get raided I just go out of my base and fight them on and open field. That way they dont go indoors and destroy anything to get to me. I've never had any structure broken.
The stun mechanic is easy to abuse and timing the dodge is easy to avoid the archers. I hate to say it, but its a skill issue. Get better gear and learn the mechanics before building a huge base.

[xTharros]

CakeNbake27 a écrit :

The amount of whining here is insane, the difficulty is fine just play with a friend or something

Its a skill issue. I had no trouble tbh
they die once, and cry forever