Old School Runescape has been a game that I played as a kid, and when the servers were rebooted to before the evolution of combat, I came back after learning about it. There have been multiple different temporary game modes, and I have taken part in Leagues and Gridmaster, but I have yet to take part in any of the Deadman game modes.
Deadman Mode
In Deadman mode, you can get attacked by other players anywhere outside of safe zones (specific cities or mini-games). As this is a temporary game mode, you get boosted XP rates on skills and combats. There are four different combat brackets: 3-60, 61-80, 81-95, and 96+. At the start of every bracket, you get 1 hour of PVP immunity, but you can remove that if you wish. This means you are safe from other players until that disappears. When you die from other players, all your items drop to the ground, and even under NPC death, your items show up on the ground instead of going to a gravestone. This means that you should only bring what you need before you die.
Why Deadman Annihilation?
Jagex decided to make a few changes to the game mode to make it easier for normal players to join. The first thing is the removal of loot keys. In the previous few Deadman modes, you would lose some of your most valuable items from your bank whenever you died. This meant that death was extremely punishing. With this change, you can safely leave your valuables in your bank and only risk what you bring with you. Also, sigils are now bought using your points instead of having to rely on random drops. This adds some certainty and allows you to plan how you want to improve your character.
What are the rewards, and how do I gain points?
The rewards are used for cosmetic items. It won't be anything that disrupts the balance of the game, and honestly, I wanted the weapon scroll so that I could have the cosmetic there.
Points can be gained through leveling up skills, killing bosses, breaches, quests, combat achievements, dairy tasks, clue scrolls, and the collection log. This means that there are plenty of options for players to pick from to gain the points they require. The total points you earn go towards what you can use for cosmetics, but you also get skull points that exist only in Deadman Mode. This allows you to buy sigils(buffs) and quest lamps to avoid some questing.
My Journey
I started my journey 4 days into the event because I wanted to avoid the rush of people during my one hour of protection. However, I think that next time, I should just do it on day 1. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and it gives me more time to flip or train skills. As you can see, I had more than enough cash, and all of that will disappear once the day ends. I even stopped flipping towards the end because I couldn't see myself using up all that money.
Breaches happen 3 times a day, and I am only able to make it to one or two of them. I stayed in the lowest level bracket because I thought it would be easier, and the cost of a set would be cheaper. I never tested how things are in the later brackets, so I am unsure if it would have been worse or not.
Above, you can see how things went for me. I originally only aimed for 37k points, as it would give me enough points to buy all the new cosmetics. However, as I started skilling and doing things, I decided to just aim for 100k points. I was able to reach that in the end, but I don't think I would do it again, as it took quite a while. There are a lot of new things that I learned, and if I had to do it again, I would approach things differently. There was no way for me to completely max because I was in bracket 1. I did manage to max most of my skulls outside of a few. Breaches made up for most of my points, and I didn't start going to them until after they fixed a bug where only the top 16 damage dealers got points to 100 people a week later. I could have earned 75k in total from breaches, and next deadman mode, I think I would just get my character ready for breaches. I can just flip for funds and make sure that I can make the most there.
Conclusion
I have always been thrown off by the PVP game mode because I am not that good at it. When I was a kid, I did take part in clans and did PVP then, but things have changed so much that what I did before was kids play. One of the reasons why I didn't want to play was the loot keys, but they removed that this time. I do think that next time, I would have an alt available to trade GP between the main game and Deadman. I could have earned quite a bit if I decided to sell my Deadman gold instead of letting it disappear. I would say it was enjoyable, but next time I think I would spend a bit less time and be more efficient.
Do you play Old School Runescape, and what do you think about Deadman Annihilation?