The Fractured Archive - First Look
The Fractured Archive - First Look
Deep beneath Gielinor lies an ancient cave, carefully carved into the earth. Within this cave sit countless curios, books older than anybody living on Gielinor, and artifacts whose power dwarfs anything you could possibly imagine. Nothing about this cave is coincidental, this collection of curiosities is no accident...
Deep beneath Gielinor lies an archive, created by Guthix himself in order to house his most treasured and intriguing possessions: a cache of long lost loot that proved potent enough to inspire a god...
Deep beaneath Gielinor lies the Fractured Archive.
The Fractured Archive
It's finally time to talk about our toughest raid yet: The Fractured Archive, though we'll be keeping things brief for now!
Old School's fourth raid will see you venturing into the Fractured Archive, a veritable treasure trove that's full to the brim of powerful artifacts and ancient knowledge, assembled by Guthix himself over the course of millennia. Unfortunately for you - much like a line of fires snaking along Varrock - word spreads fast in Gielinor, meaning you're far from being the first to set foot in the archive.
As you journey throughout these ancient halls, you'll encounter agents of other gods, curious creatures, Guthixian guardians and more - it's up to you (and up to seven friends) to stop the contents of the archive from falling into the wrong hands. Simple!
Speaking of simple, we're taking a Theatre of Blood-styled approach this time around, meaning you'll face a bunch of demibosses, encounter no puzzle rooms, and have an epic showdown with a final boss: it's just you, your friends and the fight of your lives. While it's far too early to discuss things like difficulty, we're comfortable saying that our intent here - similar to the Theatre of Blood - is to make a group of bosses where the focus is on simple mechanics, leaving plenty of space for you to optimise and make the best players really stand out as a cut above the rest.
We'll be diving deeper into the details throughout the year, rather than trying to talk about one of the most anticipated updates of 2026 alongside everything else that we're showing off at the Summit. Having said that, we've got some things we'd like to share about our intent here that we imagine you'll have questions about:
- Players will be able to solo the raid, though our current plan (subject to change) is for the raid to scale between 2 and 8 players, meaning solo clears will be possible but difficult.
- There will be a practice mode which allows players to jump into any boss in the raid and practice killing it on the regular difficulty. However, this mode will not be available on release, and will instead launch in the weeks following the raid's release. This will help keep things competitive in the early days and add more excitement to every deep run until the raid has been 'figured out'.
- On release, a full team wipe will reset the raid. In the weeks following the release, we'll move to a TOA-style wipe system where you have infinite tries but reduced rewards and dwindling resources.
- Accessing the Fractured Archive will require completion of While Guthix Sleeps. We know that this would prohibit some builds from accessing the encounter, but we'll talk more about accommodating all players in a future blog, so we'd advise you not to worry!
That means that on release you'll need to form a team and complete the raid at a fixed difficulty with zero wipes to clear, not a single honey locust in sight - that means no brute forcing this time around like with TOA's release! As things settle down and you talented folks start figuring things out, we'll adjust so that more players get the chance to have a go at raiding the Fractured Archive, but we're hoping to see a full-throttle, maximum hype race to world first this time around!
We're not quite ready to talk about rewards yet, but we're very close to having a proposal put together that we can share with you in the coming months. Our plan this time around is to talk through rewards in smaller, more focused blogs, meaning we'll only chat about one or two rewards at a time. We'll then discuss them with you while they're in the spotlight before moving on to another reward. We'll then see how you feel about them as a complete offering. This is very different from our previous approaches, but we think that it will be helpful for everybody to avoid having one specific part of a rewards offering dominating the conversation.
Concept Art - Sneak Peek!
Before we sign off, we've got some concept art from the wonderful Mod Jerv and Mod Grub that we'd love to share with you!
If you can't see the image above, click here to view it in a separate tab
Here's a look at some environmental concept, showing that 'organic' side of Guthix that we're so used to seeing with greenery and tree roots encasing the area, while also demonstrating a reverence for the natural world - Guthix's designs are understated and draw a special focus towards the natural rock formations found beneath Gielinor.
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That's you for scale on the left, good luck getting through the Archive's bouncer. The Archive Guardian has lain dormant for thousands of years and is less than pleased to have been awoken from its long slumber. Now the Guardian has just one job: defend its domain.
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Unlike the peaceful priests you'll have encountered throughout your journey, Ezekiel metes out Saradomin's justice the old-fashioned way. He's here to find artifacts worthy of Saradomin himself, and any attempt to stop him will be met with ferocious resistance.
That's all you're getting for the time being, so make sure to keep an eye out throughout 2026 for more blogs, polls and sneak peeks at The Fractured Archive, releasing late 2026!
You can also discuss this update on the 2007Scape subreddit, the Steam forums, or the community-led OSRS Discord in the #gameupdate channel. For more info on the above content, check out the official Old School Wiki.
Mods Abe, Abyss, Acorn, Ape, Arcane, Archie, Argo, Ash, Asherz, Ayiza, BigRig, Blighted, Blossom, Boko, Brooksie, Bruno, Chilly, Criminal, Curse, Daizong, Ed, Elena, Enigma, Entropi, Freddie, Fuzz, Gecko, Gizmo, Goblin, Grace, Grub, Halo, Harold, Hend, Hornet, Husky, Ivory, Jalo, Jamesy, Jerv, Keyser, Kieren, Kirby, Kurotou, Leebleh, Lenny, Light, Liron, Lykos, Mack, Manked, Markos, Maylea, Mobius, Moogle, Morty, Moz, Necro, Nin, Nixon, Nox, Nylu, Ori, Other, Otter, Philomel, Pork, Pumpkin, Puppi, Rach, Redfield, Rice, Romy, Roq, Roy, Ry, Saiyan, Sarnie, Schmidt, Shogun, Shroom, Sigma, Skylark, Smithy, Sova, Spyro, Squid, Starry, Stilrush, Suharun, Surma, Sween, Tide, Titania, Titus, TJ, Tomb, Tsourorf, Tyran, Veda, Vegard, West, Wolfy, Yozora & Yume
The Old School Team.
