Rubium Mining Nerf Incoming? Jagex Lays Out the Plan
Well, that didn't take long. A few days after The Red Reef dropped and everyone started mining Rubium and smithing fancy new cannonballs, Jagex has come out with a blog basically saying "yeah, that's a bit much, here's what we want to change." Nothing is live yet. These are proposals, and they're asking for feedback before anything gets finalised. But the direction is pretty clear, so here's what you actually need to know.
⛏️ Why Rubium Is Getting Looked At
Right now, tick manipulation at Rubium rocks pushes Mining XP to around 133k per hour when you stack mining enhancers. That's basically neck and neck with 3-tick Granite Mining (~134k), except Rubium also hands you more valuable rewards and is lower intensity since you're not dropping anything. Jagex's read is simple: if it stays like this, there's almost no reason to train Mining any other way, and Rubium Splinters would tank in value from the sheer volume flooding in.
They also straight up admitted they should have polled changes of this scale before shipping them. Credit where it's due, that's a better look than the usual silent nerf.
🪨 The Proposed Rubium Mining Changes
Tick manipulation removed: No more 1.5t cheese at Rubium rocks. This turns it into a more moderate XP method that still pays out a solid resource.
Base XP cut 20%: From 30 XP down to 24 XP per action, since the rates were still a touch high even without tick manip.
More AFK friendly: Rocks now last at least 3 successful mining attempts (up from 2) before the 1/6 depletion chance kicks in.
Splinters scale with Mining level: 1 Splinter at level 48, 2 at level 72, 3 at level 96, with a scaling chance for an extra one in between.
The net effect at level 96: active Dragon pickaxe mining drops from ~63k-75k XP/hr to ~51k-60k XP/hr, but Splinter output jumps massively to roughly 6,300-7,500 per hour. So less XP, way more Splinters. The focus shifts from "best Mining XP in the game" to "the place you go to stock up on cannonball fuel."
💥 Cannonball Smithing Is Also On the Chopping Block
Smithing Incendiary Rune cannonballs currently nets around 220k Smithing XP per hour, and since both Splinters and cannonballs stack, you never bank. That's an absurd amount of XP for an almost zero-intensity method. The catch Jagex flagged: you're effectively getting Smithing XP twice, once for the cannonballs and again for converting them.
The fix has a trade-off baked in:
Four times faster: Incendiary and Chainshot cannonballs would be made at one set of two per tick instead of one set every four ticks.
XP gutted to a token amount: The Smithing XP gets slashed hard, with Chainshot's banking factored in so both types end up roughly equal.
Translation: if you were treating cannonball smithing as a Smithing training method, that door is closing. If you just want cannonballs for actual boat combat, you'll churn them out a lot quicker.
📅 What's Coming June 3rd
Jagex also locked in some of the Sailing buffs from the earlier blog. On June 3rd you can expect Dragon Sheets added to more sea creature drop tables, Port Task XP buffed by 10-15%, the auto-retaliate delay on cannons removed, and a right-click "Last Boat" option on the Teleport to boat tablet. Loot Sacks for Courier Tasks are also in the works, but there's no date on those yet.
The Rubium and Smithing changes themselves could land as early as next week, so if you've been farming Splinters at the current rates, now's the time.
🤝 Need a Hand With This?
Whether you want to bank Mining and Smithing levels before the nerfs hit, or you're an Iron grinding Rubium the slow way, we've got you covered:
Power Leveling: Get those Mining and Smithing levels up fast, ideally before the XP rates drop.
Ironman Gathering: Stockpile Rubium Splinters and resources for your Iron without the grind.
Quest Services: Knock out The Red Reef and the rest of the Tortugan storyline.
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