RuneScape: Dragonwilds has finally made me realise that, actually, maybe the skill grind isn't so bad

I was six years old when my brother started using our family PC to play Old School RuneScape. I'd sit and watch him play without ever understanding what was going on, but the little people wore funny hats which was enough to keep me captivated. It took a few years before I decided it was time for me to visit tutorial island myself, but I definitely got more satisfaction from watching my brother endlessly chopping trees or hitting rocks with a pickaxe than I did myself.

I never loved Old School RuneScape as much as I wanted to. It felt like too much of a commitment to me, and at the prime age where you could go outside and make your own games, I didn't feel the need to sit at the PC and play someone else's. As I've grown up, though, I've learned to love the grind that made OSRS so off-putting. And Jagex's newest endeavour in the world of RuneScape, RuneScape: Dragonwilds, has finally presented me with a grind that feels digestible.

Getting started in a survival game is what I would claim to be one of the biggest slogs in all of gaming. Even though I'm incredibly well versed in spending hours punching trees to get barely enough wood to make tools let alone a base—or making my poor character stuff berries into their mouth in a desperate attempt to get them to stop complaining about being hungry—it doesn't mean this process is something I particularly enjoy. I usually hate this sequence, and it's not something you can easily skip in survival games, because that's literally the whole point of them.

RuneScape: Dragonwilds is no exception to the rule. When you start your new life in Ashenfall, you have nothing to your name. It's the tradition of gathering water and berries, learning how to use an axe, and eventually hunting your first animal—which is a giant rat, in this case. But there are a few new elements Dragonwilds adds to this routine which made it more fun, and that's coming from a lifelong hater of anything vaguely grind-y.

For example, after you've chopped down a few trees and gathered a bundle of logs you unlock a spell to make this process more efficient. By conjuring up a magical pink axe which you can hurl at a line of trees, you'll chop them instantaneously. You don't have to rinse through your stamina bar going to each one and praying your stone axe has enough durability left to make it through. All you have to do is rely on magic to do the job for you.

As you do anything in Dragonwilds, like crafting runes or woodcutting, you level up at a rapid pace to begin with. The skills you unlock feel genuinely rewarding, especially at such an early stage. I can't say this speed is maintained later in the game, mostly because it hasn't been a week since its release and also I'm too busy picking flowers to really care about any of the quests I should probably do. So there's a good possibility this will slow down. But when unlocking things like Windstep, a spell that lets you jump incredibly high before floating gracefully back down to avoid taking fall damage, I actually found myself excited to keep working away at my skills to unlock the next stage.

I'd put around 10 hours into mastering my skills in Dragonwilds before realising I'd technically only just made it out of the starting area. As soon as I stuck my bedroll down in Bramblemead that was it. Quests meant nothing to me. I just wanted to walk around and take in the world while occasionally stopping to gather resources like flax or stone. It became my mission to craft the most incredible base, which definitely isn't a 4x4 log cabin with no windows, so slaying dragons had to take a backseat.

Plus, Ashenfall is just a very pretty continent to explore. Even though it's littered with bloodthirsty goblins and warbands who threaten to destroy my base almost every night, I’ve still found the time to stop and smell the roses. Though you could argue all my time has been spent doing that, since I still haven't actually progressed through the story at all. But that doesn't mean I haven't progressed full stop. I can conjure up a fire spirit to light my way, turn trees into animal bones, and make a mean rat roast. I just hope these skills are all transferable whenever I do finally make my way to the next quest.