All the credits go to Svew & Kami
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Svew's Bug Abuse Notes
Version 1.3
-Added section on item smuggling and how-to smuggle barricades/bandages.
Version 1.2 Notes:
-Added Kami's Notes.
-Updated bugs and added new bugs.
-Fixed gramatical errors.
-Now contains twice as more information than the previous version.
Note that this document will likely apply to StellarDawn (Mechscape) as well as Runescape, as according to what I've seen, StellarDawn will seem to have very similar mechanics to Runescape.
1. Introduction
Bug abuse is its own area in Runescape cheating, seperate from the botters, scammers, etc. There are several things to know if you choose to be a bug abuser:
Leaching (asking for bugs) is generally looked down upon. Asking for help is not leaching, though some bug abusers look at it that way. Asking specifically how to do a certain bug is leaching.
Leaking (telling others how to bugs) is also looked down upon. As you will experience, when a bug is leaked to people outside of your “team” of bug abusers, every bug abuser will know how to do it within days. Selling bugs is also not a good idea for the same reasons.
Having partners is highly recommended, just make sure they are trustworthy (will not leak bugs your group discovers). It’s good to have someone that already has experience in bug abusing help you out as you learn different things.
Bug abuse is, in my opinion, the most enjoyable way to cheat and make a profit. With a good bug, you can easily make dozens of millions an hour and the bug could last for weeks without getting patched (maybe even months if your partners are REALLY good at keeping bugs to themselves). Take a look at the original noclip glitch for instance (the one I made a video of, had to do with the Fishing Trawler). That bug lasted for almost half a year because the 3 people who knew it (Champ7020, Roboreapper, and I) knew how to keep our mouths shut and keep it unleaked.
One of the most famous bug abuse groups, the Tainted Ones (now retired), made over 30 BILLION in Runescape gold from abusing bugs and made $30,000 in US currency from the cash the made from real world trading their profits! They split the cash evenly between each other (they each got about $5,000).
2. Abbreviations
Abbreviations commonly used by bug abusers (what they mean will be described later):
FT – Forced Teleport
CFT – Controlled Forced Teleport
UCFT – Uncontrollable Forced Teleport
RFT – Return Forced Teleport
LIFT – Log In Forced Teleport
LOFT – Log Out Forced Teleport
IFT – Interfaced Forced Teleport
TFT – Timed Forced Teleport
PAFT – Personalized Area Forced Teleport
IT – Invalid Teleport
RPAT – Random Personalized Area Teleport (Not an official name, using it just for this guide, though it may soon become one…)
FL – Forced Log or Fake Log (Same meaning)
IFL – Interacting Forced Log
NIFL – Non-Interfaced Forced Log
SI – Stackable Interface
SSI – Semi-Stackable Interface
PA – Personalized Area
DC – Disconnect
RSTU – Runescape Time Unit
NPC – Non-Player Character
POH – Player-Owned House
TO – Tainted Ones (an old bug abuse group, now retired)
3. Client Side vs. Server Side
An important concept you must understand when bug abusing is whether something is client side or server side. Client side bugs are bugs that only effect your client, so only you can see it, such as graphical bugs that occur when you try to play the game in HD with a bad graphics card. Anything that does not require communication with the server is client side, such as switching tabs, opening client side interfaces (explained later), and turning your screen. Server side bugs are bugs that can be seen by everyone, such as attacking players in non-PvP areas. Anything that requires communication with the server, such as walking, opening normal interfaces, and talking are server side.
Speaking of server side and client side actions, let's talk about Runescape Time Units (RSTUs). An RSTU is the smallest unit of time in Runescape. Your client receives data on every RSTU, but can send data at any time. Ever noticed how when you say something in-game, there's a small delay before it appears over your character? This is RSTUs at work. One RSTU is approximately 600 milliseconds and is the amount of time that passes between each time the server sends your client data.
4. Stalls
A stall is something that stalls/delays an action from occurring, or ignores the action all-together. Actions executed by you or the server can have 2 levels of priority: Low Priority and High Priority. There are 2 levels of stalls: Interfaces and cutscene stalls. The only way you can tell if an action is high priority or low priority is to open an interface and see if the interface closes when the action is issued. For example, an interface can stall a low priority action from occurring, but will not stop a high priority action where a cutscene stall could. There is an exception to this, which I will explain later in this section.
Interfaces are a huge part of bug abuse. There are two types of interfaces, client side and server side interfaces. Client side interfaces do nothing at all and in most cases will not help with bug abusing, such as the private message interface you open when you click on a friend in your friends list. Server side interfaces are what you're looking for, such as the interface opened when you click on a skill in your skill tab. There are several ways you can tell if an interface is server or client sided: If you can walk around with the interface open it's client side, as server side interfaces cannot stall high priority commands such as clicking on the minimap and will close. If the interface opens immediately after clicking on it, it's client side. Client side interfaces are already loaded on your client so no data is sent to the server you're on when you open one, whereas when you open a server side interface, there's a small delay (1 RSTU) where the server receives the data telling it which interface you want to open, then sends back data telling it to open the interface. Lastly, if players receive a message that looks something like “This player is busy.” when they try to trade with you while you have the interface open, it's server side.
Interfaces can stall any low priority action, such as the command that tells the game to take away a lent item after the loaner receives it. Examples of interfaces are the bank interface, skill interfaces, quest interfaces, and the interface that appears when you talk to an NPC.
A cutscene stall is a stall that can stall almost any action in the game. You are not able to walk, drop items, or even log out during a cutscene stall. Some of the only things you can do is talk, join clan chats, and do anything that does not involve any action from the server such as switching tabs and opening client side interfaces. They do not always involve cutscenes, as the name may lead you to believe. An example of a cutscene stall is the Dranor Bank cutscene featuring the Wise Old Man, and certain animations your character performs such as skill cape emotes.
Stackable interfaces are the exception to the “interfaces cannot stall high priority actions” rule. A stackable interface is an interface that can “stack” on top of itself, this is normally done by spam clicking the interface. Normal interfaces will close each other when you spam them, but stackable interfaces will instead stack on each other and close one by one every RSTU after you stop spamming. If a high priority action is issued by the server, such as getting teleported into the fishing trawler after waiting 60 seconds in the boat, while you spam a stackable interface, you will not be teleported until all the interfaces that were already open finish closing. It issues the commands in order. Let’s say you stack 50 interfaces then the server tries to teleport you into the fishing trawler and you continue to spam another 50 interfaces. You would be teleported into the boat after the first 50 interfaces closed since they were already opened when everyone else was teleported in, then the last 50 interfaces would continue to close. It takes 1 RSTU for each interface to close, so 50 stacked interfaces would take 50 RSTU to close.
Semi-stackable interfaces are interfaces that open immediately after a cutscene stall ends if you attempt to open it in the middle of one already occurring. Normal interfaces cannot open immediately after a cutscene stall ends, making these particularly useful. For example, let’s say you have an item you want to smuggle from an area but don’t know a CFT to use. Some items can be smuggled by using a normal teleport and clicking on a semi-stackable interface during the teleport animation (as the animation is a cutscene stall in most cases). The interface will open immediately and may stall the item from disappearing. Here you can simply drop the item and pick it back up (if you close the interface, the item will most likely disappear as the interface is only stalling it from disappearing. Dropping the item will most likely cancel the item from disappearing). Also, some normal stackable interfaces will only stack when spammed clicked during a cutscene stall, but semi-stackable interfaces will not stack.
5. Forced Teleports
Forced Teleports are a fundamental part of bug abuse. A forced teleport is a teleport that is unrecognized by the area you're in, allowing you to smuggle effects applied to your character and items that are meant to only be used in a certain area, such as barricades from castle wars. Imagine this scenario: You have successfully left your POH without losing the POH effects you keep in it, such as the ability to turn on building mode and be teleported the building mode version of your house. You will be able to turn on building mode and be teleported to your POH from anywhere. This teleport is not recognized by most mini-games and other areas where you're given special abilities or items, allowing you to force teleport out of the area and keep the items/effects.
The POH forced teleport I described is an example of a Controlled Forced Teleport (CFT). CFTs are forced teleports that you have full or nearly full control over them, allowing you to easily get to wherever you want to force teleport out from. You may ask, how would you discover a forced teleport like that? One common way of finding a CFT is using minor forced teleports, such as a Return Forced Teleport (RFT). An RFT is a forced teleport that occurs immediately after using a normal teleport from an area. An example of this is the old Shantay Pass forced teleport discovered in 2007 by the Tainted Ones. This was done by teleporting using a normal teleport from your spellbook immediately after giving your shantay pass to the guard. You would teleport to the location you teleported to, then immediately be teleported back to shantay pass. This may sound insignificant, but TO expanded upon it: What if you were to teleport to your POH after giving your pass? They tried it and found that they were forced teleported out of their POH back to Shantay Pass and kept the POH effects. They could teleport to their building mode from anywhere in Runescape. This was one of the first CFTs.
Now, an RFT is an example of an Uncontrollable Forced Teleport (UFT). UCFTs are any forced teleport that cannot be easily controlled or used in most areas. A commonly used UCFT is an Interfaced Forced Teleport (IFT), these are done by stalling a low priority force teleport with an interface. When you close the interface, you will be force teleported. An example of a low priority forced teleport that can be stalled with an interface is the teleport that occurs when you enter your own POH using a portal. If you quickly open an interface immediately after clicking “Go to your house.”, you will not be teleported into your POH until you close it.
Other FTs include Timed Force Teleports (TFTs), Log In and Log Out Forced Teleports (LIFTs and LOFTs), and Personalized Area Forced Teleports (PAFTs). TFTs are timed forced teleports that can occur when you smuggle an effect like the Castle Wars waiting room timer. When it reaches 0, you'll be teleported from wherever you are to Castle Wars, though this example is impossible as that effect is area based, which I will explain in the next section.
LIFTs and LOFTs occur when you smuggle an effect that teleports you out of an area upon logging in/out. An example of this is the teleport that occurs when you log into Castle Wars after logging out in the middle of a game for a few minutes. You get FT'd into the lobby.
PAFTs are FTs that only work in personalized areas, which will be discussed later.
Death can also act like a FT. Sometimes, JaGeX will forget to make player based effects, minigame items, ect, disappear upon dying in an area, so you can smuggle abilities and items (normally with the help of stalls) by simply committing suicide.
6. Area Based Effects vs. Player Based Effects
Understanding Area and Player effects is another fundamental part of bug abuse. An area effect is an effect that works in a specific area, such as the ability to attack other players. A player effect is an effect that is applied to your account and can be smuggled outside of the area you receive it, such as the ability to keep items upon death in certain mini-games (sometimes that effect is area based, depends on which mini-game).
Attacking other players has always been an area based effect since 6/6/06. When you enter a PvP area you are given the attack option, a player based effect, but cannot attack others outside of the area even if you smuggle the option as that ability is area based. When JaGeX released POHs, they accidently made the ability to attack inside a POH completely player based, meaning it was possible to smuggle the effect. This was discovered on 6/6/06 in a house party hosted by Cursed You. A player, it’s unknown who, found out that if you used a scrying orb in the dungeon while PvP mode was on and were kicked out of the house, you’d keep the ability to attack. The bug was not discovered by Durial321 and was not caused by massive server lag, as many people believe. The ability to attack inside a POH was made area based afterwards and has not been smuggled ever since.
7. Smuggling Items
How you're going to go about smuggling an area specific item depends on several different factors. JaGex always seems to use different methods of protecting items from being smuggled out of areas each time they make an update. For example, some items may have special properties that protect them from being kept outside an area, such as disappearing upon logging out or when attempting to use the item. Others have no safeguards at all and anything can be done with them without any risk of them disappearing unexpectedly.
The act of smuggling an item can be simple or require many complicated bugs. Some very poorly protected quest items can be smuggled by ensuring the quest items are your 3 most valuable items and simply dying in the area (remember that even though quests will normally recognize you teleporting out of the area, JaGex often forgets to program them so they recognize death as well). Other items may be "area based" and recognize that you've left the area no matter how you leave it, even with a forced teleport. The act of an item being removed from your inventory is also a low priority/high priorty action. For example, some items, including area based items, can be temporarily stalled from disappearing by teleporting out of the area and immediately stalling with an interface. Others, being that they disappear on a high priority command, will close the interface and disappear anyways unless you're using a stackable interface. After stalling the item from disappearing, you will normally have to find a way to cancel it from disappearing completely. One common way of doing this is by simply dropping the item (note that the act of dropping is a high-priority command and will close the interface you have up, resulting in the rest of your smuggled items disappearing). Some items may not have a drop option and other techniques must be used to keep them, such as somehow managing to die on the spot while your stall is in effect so that they're forced to drop. And of course, some items will simply disappear upon dropping them no matter what you do.
Just imagine how difficult this would be if JaGex was smart and used the same measures to protect all area specific items from disappearing. Item smuggling would be impractical, requiring a plethora of forced teleports, stalls, and other explotation techniques to just smuggle a single item. This is the case with some recently released/updated items. However, many of the older area-specific items to this day still have weak safeguards, making them vulnerable to getting smuggled.
Note that area specific and area based are not the same thing in the context I use them. Area specific just refers to items that you are only meant to have in a specific area. Area based can refer to area based items or area based effects. Area based effects cannot be smuggled, whereas area based items can.
Lastly, keep in mind that all items can be smuggled, no matter how difficult it may seem. There's always a way, it's just a matter of whether you can figure it out.
8. Personalized Areas
Also known as instanced events or generated areas, personalized areas are another significant subject in the world of bug abuse. A personalized area is an area that is deleted from the server when there are no players in it, and will reform when a player tries to enter it. An example of a personalized area (which I will start calling “PA”s) is POHs. The servers cannot keep hundreds of thousands of players’ houses loaded at one time, so they are created from scratch when you enter a portal and are deleted when everyone has left the house. PAs are made in a general location in blackness far off the main map. A copy of a POH could be next to a copy of a cutscene from “While Guthix Sleeps” as all PAs are loaded near each other.
If a PA fails to load, you will experience an “invalid teleport” (IT). When ITs were first discovered, you would be teleported into the blackness the PA was supposed to load in with a message in your chatbox reading “Invalid teleport!”. They seemed to have patched that from occurring; now when an IT occurs you just receive the message in the chatbox without being teleported into blackness.
All PAs have certain common properties. Leaving or logging out of a PA will result in being teleported to the exact coordinates you loaded the PA from, as the PA will unload and being teleported to the same coordinates would result in an invalid teleport. You can see this by viewing the dranor bank cutscene with the Wise Old Man. Take note of where you are standing when you talk to the bank guard; you will spawn on that same spot when the cutscene is over. Some PAs apply player effects to your character to ensure you’re teleported to a specific spot instead of the spot you loaded it from. Smuggling that effect can result in a LIFT (log in forced teleport) or LOFT (log out forced teleport). LIFTs are considered more useful then LOFTs as you are teleported upon logging in rather than logging out, giving you time to stall any items or effects from disappearing. You normally cannot see yourself being teleported during a LIFT/LOFT as they occur too quick. Some PAs have exits with properties that spawn you to specific cooridinates rather than the area you loaded the PA from. If JaGeX does not implement this into the exit of a PA, you will by default appear where you loaded it from.
A couple years ago a discovery by bug abuser Fluid Karma(?) revealed that PAs seem to have more common area based effects than previously though. The first PAFT (Personalized Area Forced Teleport) was discovered: A forced teleport that works only in Personalized Areas. For some reason, certain properties that are meant to be used in a specific PA will work in any PA. There was also another major bug discovered alongside that bug which was not given an official name, but I’ll give it one right now for the sake of simplicity. It’s called the RPAT (Random Personalized Area Teleport). This bug allows the bug abuser to be teleported into ANY personalized area loaded by another player. Instead of being teleported into you POH for example, you could be teleported into any random PA such as the Tzhaar Fight Caves. This occurs when a player loads a bugged PA at the same time another player loads a normal PA. If performed correctly, the bugged PA will fail to load and the second PA will load on the cooridinates the bugged PA was supposed to load at. This causes the server to believe both PAs were loaded successfully and results in both players being teleported into the same PA.
Remember that upon leaving a personalized area, you will normally be placed at the cooridinates you originally loaded it from. Let's say you FT into a personalized area from a minigame that prevents players from equipping weapons. The PA may not have the same restrictions the minigame had, allowing you to equip a weapon of your choice. You can then leave the PA and be placed at the cooridinates you were forced teleported into the PA from, with the weapon still equipped. This is called a double LIFT. Double LIFTs do not have to do anything with LIFTs or LOFTs, though many past double LIFTs did require the use of LIFTs.
An example of a past double LIFT is the POH CFT used back in 06 (now patched, leaving the POH puts you at the house portal instead of the coordinates you FT’d from). You could CFT into your POH from, let’s say Castle Wars, and put on a cape and helmet. You could then leave via the portal and, since you loaded the PA from Castle Wars, you’d be placed back in the Castle Wars game with your own cape and hood on.
Also, there is one permanent copy of every personalized area that stays loaded on the map. You are never teleported into the permanent copy unless you find a noclip and stumble upon it while noclipping.
9. Examples of Past Bugs
Now that you know the basics, let’s see how the knowledge you have gained can be used to discover bugs. The following bug was discovered by the Tainted Ones some years ago, and is now patched.
In around 2006, a powerful CFT was discovered involving the Duel Arena. There were several ways found to do this, one way was stalling yourself from being teleported into a duel by using an interface, as the forced teleport into a duel is a low priority action. One way to get an interface to open immediately after accepting the challenge back then was to have someone use a tele-other spell on you while you had the duel interface open. The tele-other interface would stack on the duel interface, therefore it would immediately open after closing the duel interface and stall you from getting teleported. You would then equip a piece of armor (assuming you agreed to a no armor duel), which would cancel the forced teleport into the arena as the game would see you equipped a piece of armor. You’d then quickly accept another duel before the 3 second countdown finished (if it finished, the server would see that your friend is alone in the duel arena and kick him out). After you accepted the second duel, you’d be in a 3-way duel with the player who you canceled being teleported in with and the player who’s challenge you accepted immediately after the first player was teleported in. Both players could attack you. The player who was teleported into the duel alone before you accepted the second challenge could then leave and do whatever he wished. You would not be teleported out of the duel with him as you were in a duel with the second player as well. When he wished to be forced teleported, you’d simply leave the duel and he’d be teleported back to the duel arena lobby, as the game still thought you were his partner. The player who was forced teleported would keep any player effects or minigame items he had with him, such as barricades from Castle Wars.
Here’s another bug, this one was widely leaked and patched.
In 2008, a safety glitch (where you can die anywhere and keep all your items) was discovered with the Tzhaar Fight Caves. To do this you would first go to a certain personalized area in the quest Kennith’s Concerns and simply commit suicide. When you enter the area, you are given a player effect that LIFTs you back into the personalized area when you log out and in from the area. JaGeX made it so the effect is removed when you teleport out, but forgot to do the same when exiting the area via death. After dying and being teleported to your chosen spawn point (Lumbridge/Falador/Camelot), you could log out and in and be force teleported back to the personalized area. If you teleported while the LIFT was in effect, you’d lose it as that player effect was designed to disappear upon teleporting. What you would do is smuggle the LIFT effect, run all the way from your spawn point to Port Sarim and take a boat ride to Karamja. From there you’d get into Tzhaar and enter the Tzhaar Fight Caves. You would then log out and in, where you’d LIFT into the personalized area from Kennith’s Concern and keep the Tzhaar Fight Caves player effects. This means that when you died, you would spawn in front of the Tzhaar Fight Caves with all your items as if you died in the minigame. If you teleported you would lose the effect as, just like the LIFT effect, it is designed to disappear upon teleporting.
Here's an example on how-to smuggle items, using barricades/bandages in Castle Wars as our example.
Bandages and barricades have always been long sought after by bug abusers, either to sell, abuse, or show off. Back in the Tainted Ones days way back when, Kami discovered that by simply backing out of a castle wars game into the waiting room with explosives in your inventory, you could commit suicide with them and spawn in the lobby with all your Castle War items. Back then none of the items were area based and could be used anywhere you wanted, meaning it was possible to block off areas on the main map with barricades. After the dying-in-the-waiting-room method was patched, forced teleports had to be used to smuggle them. Kami discovered that if you waited for a random event to spawn and teleport you out of CWs by not responding to them, it would act as a forced teleport and you would keep your CWs items. JaGex responded by making CWs items area based, meaning that even a forced teleport could not smuggle them. In early 2008, another method was discovered by Champ7020. By using a LIFT (log in forced teleport) and a what is known as a "log in interface", you could keep the barricades and stall them from disappearing. A log in interface is basically a player effect that can be smuggled from certain areas that causes an interface to show up immediately after logging in. This can be very useful in some cases where you need to log out and in but need to immediately stall whatever item/effect you're trying to keep from disappearing. By LIFTing out of Castle Wars and using a log in interface to stall the items from disappearing, you could cancel them from disappearing by simply dropping each of them one by one then picking them up. The act of dropping is a high priority command which is supposed to close interfaces, so you may be wondering how you could keep all of the smuggled items without the interface closing and having all of them (discluding the one you dropped) disappear. You would do what was called "interface dropping", which is simply opening another interface immediately after dropping an item. At this time, there was no delay between the two interfaces while dropping the items, so you could repeat this with all the items until they were all on the floor (or until you messed up and didn't click on an interface fast enough after dropping one of them, causing the rest of them to disappear). Last time I checked, this wasn't possible anymore, so if you want to keep more than one item, you will need something that will drop them all at once, such as death, or a completely different method of canceling the items from disappearing.
Here’s one more bug. This one is the infamous noclip glitch discovered in 2008 by Roboreapper and Champ7020, who told I, Svew, how it was performed. The 3 of us abused it for many months until it was finally patched.
Recall stackable interfaces (SIs) and how they can stall high priority commands. Not too long after the first SI was discovered by Champ7020 and Roboreapper (it was done by spam clicking the quick chat help menu during a cutscene stall, recall that some stackable interfaces will only stack during cutscene stalls) and after I partnered up with them, another major bug was found. Roboreapper used their SI during a game in the Fishing Trawler, and realized you are teleported about 120 spaces west/east every time the boat floods or empties of water (120 spaces east when tele’d into the flooded boat, west when teleported back). If you stalled long enough to stack 2 teleports east from the empty boat, you’d be teleported into the flooded boat and teleported east AGAIN outside of the Fishing Trawler, into the cosmic altar. Areas off the map can be placed very close to each other; E.G. an underwater area from a quest who’s name I can't recall is less than 50 spaces south of the interior of the god wars dungeon. Anyways, let’s say you stacked 3 teleports east starting from the empty boat. You’d be teleported once into the flooded boat, a second time into the cosmic altar, then could teleport out (as the cosmic altar isn’t teleblocked [the Fishing Trawler’s teleblock effect is area based]), walk to the spot 120 spaces east of the area you desired to noclip into, and be teleported 120 spaces east into it. For example, if you wanted to get into the giant pillar the bankers at the grand exchange surround, I believe you had to stand a little west of the monastery near Edgeville and be teleported east. You could also stack, for example, 5 teleports east then 3 teleports west. The 5 teleports east would occur first as they’re executed in the order they were stacked, so you’d be teleported into the cosmic altar and would be able to teleport onto the main map and start noclipping with your stacked teleports.
If you understand how these bugs worked, you can go find yourself some partners and start finding bugs.
Pictures:
A client side bug, only the glitcher performing the glitch can see it:
A safety glitch, a bug that allows you to die anywhere and keep all your items, can act like a FT:
An invalid teleport, when a personalized area fails to load:
Barricades smuggled from Castle Wars by using a FT. Was showing them off in front of JMods lol...
Can you figure out how this was done?
Kami's Bug Abuse Notes
Historical notes on bug abuse written by one of the founders of RS bug abuse, Kami. THIS WAS NOT WRITTEN BY ME.
Note that all of the bugs he writes about were patched quite a long time ago.
Alright, this is a compilation of all of our bugs. I'm going to *try* to go in chronological order.
I don't have documentation for a lot of our bugs,like pictures, but ill still try to explain things accurately
These first few bugs i discovered before Tainted Ones was formed.
1. Armor on Entrana.
This was a very simple bug, and it was my first. Basically a player could bring armor on Entrana if he opened treasure tail caskets with rewards inside while on the island. I remember i used to range greater demons down their with a friend, and I'd have him hold armor while i did clues i got from greaters, we eventually had a few sets of rune up there. I don't have pictures, sorry.
Discovery Credit: Kami
2. Bandages at the Duel arena
Upon the release of Castle Wars, it was possible to take bandages and barricades out by dieing with them inside the waiting room. Jagex slipped up and forgot to count bandages as an item of food, and as a result you could use them to heal in no food duels. I scammed around 120M with this bug, which was worth a lot more back then. After a day or two others started catching on, but I'd stopped by then, content with my winnings.
Discovery Credit: Kami
3. Crystal Bows, banking unbankables.
These two bugs came handed in hand. Way back when, members items didn't retain certain properties while on free servers. using this method you could bank members objects that were unbankable, such as toads and lamps. This also applied to other things, such as alching or dropping items. Shortly after the release of crystal bows, they came out with the crystal seed which allowed you to obtain crystal bows for as cheap as 180k provided you had the seed. full charged crystal bows would alch for over 540k, however the game wouldn't let you alch them unless you went to f2p. Using this method i would buy seeds for 50-200k, and make profit buying the crystal bows for 180k, then alching them for 540k on f2p.
Discovery Credit: Kami
4. Bandages out of castle wars... Again.
Jagex released a few new random events at one point, one of which included Dr. ford, a woodcutting random event. The random operated on a series of interfaces, you could preform a few different tasks while still in the random, such as walking and teleporting, and logging out and in would restart it at the beginning. Using this, you could go into castle wars and take bandages, then have Dr. Ford teleport you out by purposely failing the random. We later discovered this would work with other teleport randoms as well, however this has since been fixed.
Unfortunately, The bandages no longer worked in the duel arena... the good news was, other people didn't know that, and bandages were still tradable. I used a couple noob accounts to sell bandages, they were both banned, but i was able to make some large sales. I sold 22 bandages for 44M to one staker, and 10 for 25M to another staker. They were both very prominent stakers, and chances are you've heard of them. I also sold a few singles on the side for 1-2m each.
Discovery Credit: Kami
After this point, Tainted Ones was founded.
5. Armor in no armor duels.
This is a bug in which you could keep armor on in no armor duels. During a series of experiments in the duel arena, we discovered that someone could accept a duel, but never go into the arena if they were able to make a menu, or interface pop up before their entrance. This was very hard to do at first, because you had to quickly press accept, then open up a quest journal or something, and the timing was difficult. Then we discovered that someone could cast a teleother spell on you while you had the duel screen up, and this would immediately bring up the teleother screen before going into the duel. If you did not close the screen within 3 seconds, the duel would be canceled. If you did close the screen within 3 seconds, you would arrive in the duel a few seconds late. We discovered that if you did something to fill up your inventory at the same time you closed the screen, for example, slicing a pineapple so it takes up more spaces, or emptying a rune essence pouch, then it would not leave room for any items to be unequipped, and as a result you would keep them on. This was known as the hope campaign, and we scammed over 300M using a staking pure named "o o hope 0 o".
Discovery Credit: Kami, Robert
6. Forced Teleports, Multi Dueling, Attacking people from inside the arena
these bugs came hand in hand. We mostly used the effects this bug produced to make the first tainted ones video, so check that out to see its effects in action. Basically, after jagex caught on to the hope bug, they made it so that if you made a change to your inventory before the duel started, you wouldn't go in the duel at all. However, when the duel timed out after waiting for you, you would be instantly teleported to the duel arena hospital. Normally it would only take about 3 seconds to time out, but using multiple teleothers you could rig it so that you could delay it infinitely. As a result, you could be in castle wars with say, an inventory of barricades, then trick the game into thinking you just ended a duel, and be teleported to the duel arena with barricades in tote. this concept could be applied in a lot of other places. Jagex eventually fixed this bug by making it impossible to delay entrance to duels. This bug also caused a long episode between my main (kamiccolo90, lvl 102) and jagex, and i was eventually banned. Robert and me had tried messing with stakes to find a dupe bug, but we found out that the stake window acts as a temporary bank, and therefore it is near impossible to dupe, since you cant take an item out that isn't there.
Pics (click to enlarge):
http://img207.images...1/tnbug1ky4.png
Discovery credit: Kami, Robert.
7. Invisibility and walking around with 0 HP
This bug occurred when you preformed an ancient teleport spell, or a dragon ammy teleport, right as you were brought down to 0 hp. Timing could be difficult, but wasn't impossible. This bug wasn't very useful, but had benefits. You could stay invisible and gain hp, and people wouldn't be able to see you. You could also cast a teleport spell without actually teleporting there, which made it easier to train magic in some instances. I had my noob banned (nub n champs, lvl 64, also held the record for lowest level to do DT at 34, and lowest legend at 46) for abusing this bug, after i attracted the attention of several player mods while invisible.
Discovery Credit: Hipi
After this point, i took a very long break from RS, then came back shortly after the release of POH, using a level 106 account a friend gave me.
8. Minor House Bugs
After a day or so of messing with POH, It became very clear the houses were very buggy. You could go into another players build mode by having them leave the house, then re-enter in build mode, then use their butler to take you to them. This ultimately did not have many benefits. We also found you could poison people and kick them out of the house before death, and they would die and lose items... these were both very small bugs, and other people noticed them as well, which is why they were fixed.
Discovery Credit: Hipi, Racer (Jon)
9. Minor GP Dupe.
Eventually we got around to experimenting with the chests in the game room that held gp. after a little experimentation, we found out you could duplicate the GP in the chest by having the owner leave his house, then log out, during which time a second person still in the house would take the money out. When the first person logged in, the money would still be in the chest. This could be repeated infinitely, and two people could make 3M an hour using a mahogony chest with 50k. Unfortunately, this was also a fairly simple bug, and it was fixed within a few days, and we only made about 20M off it.
Discovery Credit: Kami, Hipi
10. Forced Teles are back, and Unlimited Instant Mage Xp!
Hipi was kind enough to notice that if you were trying to enter the shanty pass, and you teleported somewhere right as the disclaimer was placed in your inventory, it would tele you there, then immediately teleport you back to the pass. This works in a few other situations as well, i don't want go into detail explaining why, so we'll just leave it at that. I had the bright idea that you could teleport to you house, then be transported back to the pass, tricking the game into thinking your still inside the house. It worked perfectly, and as a result whenever you turned on build mode, it would take you into the build mode of your house. And as an added bonus, exiting through the portal would take you back to where you teleported from. Using this feature, not only could we get barricades and all that fun stuff once again, but we could also get more magic xp then we could ever need. We would go into the alchemists playground at mage arena, then teleport into the build mode using the bug. a friend would then come in my house and trade me money, millions of gp at a time, then i would exit through the portal, and be back in the alchemists playground with a lot of GP. When you deposit coins into the box in the alchemists playground, you get 2 xp per gp. We got a lvl 10 account to 87 magic with 4M gp cash, and this boosted him to 46 combat. Unfortunately, a friend of mine freaked out when i told him and tipped off jagex. as a result they made it so if you try putting in more then 120k, it kicks you out of the playground, and takes your money with no xp received. one of our members lost a few mil this way.
Note: in tainted ones two, we have a scene with the lvl 10 getting 87 magic instantly. you can watch it once the videos released.
Discovery Credit: Kami, Hipi
11. Glory Amulet Dupe
Now then, with the exception of the mage portion of that last bug, the rest of it still worked. I was able to engineer it so that you could walk around runescape with build mode on. and go in other peoples houses that way. Unfortunately this didn't wield the benefits I'd hoped, you couldn't take other peoples furniture, or build in their house. However, Hipi discovered that if you tried to take an item that you normally get back, such as a legends cape, glory ammy, or set of armor, you would get the item back, but the display would still be up. And so it was, the glory campaign began. I got together some good friends, and we got to work duping glories. within just a couple days we had 10k glorys sold, and a good 500m between us. Unfortunately, jagex was still onto us from the magic bug, and they apparently did a little trade tracing and were able to ban all of us, including our mules. The thing is, Jagex still didn't have a clue how the hell we did it, so in order to save my friends account, since he had the most to lose, we allowed him to tell them how the bug was done. The rest of us were banned, and thats how most of the Tainted Ones Martyrs came to be.
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Svew's Bug Abuse Notes
Version 1.3
-Added section on item smuggling and how-to smuggle barricades/bandages.
Version 1.2 Notes:
-Added Kami's Notes.
-Updated bugs and added new bugs.
-Fixed gramatical errors.
-Now contains twice as more information than the previous version.
Note that this document will likely apply to StellarDawn (Mechscape) as well as Runescape, as according to what I've seen, StellarDawn will seem to have very similar mechanics to Runescape.
1. Introduction
Bug abuse is its own area in Runescape cheating, seperate from the botters, scammers, etc. There are several things to know if you choose to be a bug abuser:
Leaching (asking for bugs) is generally looked down upon. Asking for help is not leaching, though some bug abusers look at it that way. Asking specifically how to do a certain bug is leaching.
Leaking (telling others how to bugs) is also looked down upon. As you will experience, when a bug is leaked to people outside of your “team” of bug abusers, every bug abuser will know how to do it within days. Selling bugs is also not a good idea for the same reasons.
Having partners is highly recommended, just make sure they are trustworthy (will not leak bugs your group discovers). It’s good to have someone that already has experience in bug abusing help you out as you learn different things.
Bug abuse is, in my opinion, the most enjoyable way to cheat and make a profit. With a good bug, you can easily make dozens of millions an hour and the bug could last for weeks without getting patched (maybe even months if your partners are REALLY good at keeping bugs to themselves). Take a look at the original noclip glitch for instance (the one I made a video of, had to do with the Fishing Trawler). That bug lasted for almost half a year because the 3 people who knew it (Champ7020, Roboreapper, and I) knew how to keep our mouths shut and keep it unleaked.
One of the most famous bug abuse groups, the Tainted Ones (now retired), made over 30 BILLION in Runescape gold from abusing bugs and made $30,000 in US currency from the cash the made from real world trading their profits! They split the cash evenly between each other (they each got about $5,000).
2. Abbreviations
Abbreviations commonly used by bug abusers (what they mean will be described later):
FT – Forced Teleport
CFT – Controlled Forced Teleport
UCFT – Uncontrollable Forced Teleport
RFT – Return Forced Teleport
LIFT – Log In Forced Teleport
LOFT – Log Out Forced Teleport
IFT – Interfaced Forced Teleport
TFT – Timed Forced Teleport
PAFT – Personalized Area Forced Teleport
IT – Invalid Teleport
RPAT – Random Personalized Area Teleport (Not an official name, using it just for this guide, though it may soon become one…)
FL – Forced Log or Fake Log (Same meaning)
IFL – Interacting Forced Log
NIFL – Non-Interfaced Forced Log
SI – Stackable Interface
SSI – Semi-Stackable Interface
PA – Personalized Area
DC – Disconnect
RSTU – Runescape Time Unit
NPC – Non-Player Character
POH – Player-Owned House
TO – Tainted Ones (an old bug abuse group, now retired)
3. Client Side vs. Server Side
An important concept you must understand when bug abusing is whether something is client side or server side. Client side bugs are bugs that only effect your client, so only you can see it, such as graphical bugs that occur when you try to play the game in HD with a bad graphics card. Anything that does not require communication with the server is client side, such as switching tabs, opening client side interfaces (explained later), and turning your screen. Server side bugs are bugs that can be seen by everyone, such as attacking players in non-PvP areas. Anything that requires communication with the server, such as walking, opening normal interfaces, and talking are server side.
Speaking of server side and client side actions, let's talk about Runescape Time Units (RSTUs). An RSTU is the smallest unit of time in Runescape. Your client receives data on every RSTU, but can send data at any time. Ever noticed how when you say something in-game, there's a small delay before it appears over your character? This is RSTUs at work. One RSTU is approximately 600 milliseconds and is the amount of time that passes between each time the server sends your client data.
4. Stalls
A stall is something that stalls/delays an action from occurring, or ignores the action all-together. Actions executed by you or the server can have 2 levels of priority: Low Priority and High Priority. There are 2 levels of stalls: Interfaces and cutscene stalls. The only way you can tell if an action is high priority or low priority is to open an interface and see if the interface closes when the action is issued. For example, an interface can stall a low priority action from occurring, but will not stop a high priority action where a cutscene stall could. There is an exception to this, which I will explain later in this section.
Interfaces are a huge part of bug abuse. There are two types of interfaces, client side and server side interfaces. Client side interfaces do nothing at all and in most cases will not help with bug abusing, such as the private message interface you open when you click on a friend in your friends list. Server side interfaces are what you're looking for, such as the interface opened when you click on a skill in your skill tab. There are several ways you can tell if an interface is server or client sided: If you can walk around with the interface open it's client side, as server side interfaces cannot stall high priority commands such as clicking on the minimap and will close. If the interface opens immediately after clicking on it, it's client side. Client side interfaces are already loaded on your client so no data is sent to the server you're on when you open one, whereas when you open a server side interface, there's a small delay (1 RSTU) where the server receives the data telling it which interface you want to open, then sends back data telling it to open the interface. Lastly, if players receive a message that looks something like “This player is busy.” when they try to trade with you while you have the interface open, it's server side.
Interfaces can stall any low priority action, such as the command that tells the game to take away a lent item after the loaner receives it. Examples of interfaces are the bank interface, skill interfaces, quest interfaces, and the interface that appears when you talk to an NPC.
A cutscene stall is a stall that can stall almost any action in the game. You are not able to walk, drop items, or even log out during a cutscene stall. Some of the only things you can do is talk, join clan chats, and do anything that does not involve any action from the server such as switching tabs and opening client side interfaces. They do not always involve cutscenes, as the name may lead you to believe. An example of a cutscene stall is the Dranor Bank cutscene featuring the Wise Old Man, and certain animations your character performs such as skill cape emotes.
Stackable interfaces are the exception to the “interfaces cannot stall high priority actions” rule. A stackable interface is an interface that can “stack” on top of itself, this is normally done by spam clicking the interface. Normal interfaces will close each other when you spam them, but stackable interfaces will instead stack on each other and close one by one every RSTU after you stop spamming. If a high priority action is issued by the server, such as getting teleported into the fishing trawler after waiting 60 seconds in the boat, while you spam a stackable interface, you will not be teleported until all the interfaces that were already open finish closing. It issues the commands in order. Let’s say you stack 50 interfaces then the server tries to teleport you into the fishing trawler and you continue to spam another 50 interfaces. You would be teleported into the boat after the first 50 interfaces closed since they were already opened when everyone else was teleported in, then the last 50 interfaces would continue to close. It takes 1 RSTU for each interface to close, so 50 stacked interfaces would take 50 RSTU to close.
Semi-stackable interfaces are interfaces that open immediately after a cutscene stall ends if you attempt to open it in the middle of one already occurring. Normal interfaces cannot open immediately after a cutscene stall ends, making these particularly useful. For example, let’s say you have an item you want to smuggle from an area but don’t know a CFT to use. Some items can be smuggled by using a normal teleport and clicking on a semi-stackable interface during the teleport animation (as the animation is a cutscene stall in most cases). The interface will open immediately and may stall the item from disappearing. Here you can simply drop the item and pick it back up (if you close the interface, the item will most likely disappear as the interface is only stalling it from disappearing. Dropping the item will most likely cancel the item from disappearing). Also, some normal stackable interfaces will only stack when spammed clicked during a cutscene stall, but semi-stackable interfaces will not stack.
5. Forced Teleports
Forced Teleports are a fundamental part of bug abuse. A forced teleport is a teleport that is unrecognized by the area you're in, allowing you to smuggle effects applied to your character and items that are meant to only be used in a certain area, such as barricades from castle wars. Imagine this scenario: You have successfully left your POH without losing the POH effects you keep in it, such as the ability to turn on building mode and be teleported the building mode version of your house. You will be able to turn on building mode and be teleported to your POH from anywhere. This teleport is not recognized by most mini-games and other areas where you're given special abilities or items, allowing you to force teleport out of the area and keep the items/effects.
The POH forced teleport I described is an example of a Controlled Forced Teleport (CFT). CFTs are forced teleports that you have full or nearly full control over them, allowing you to easily get to wherever you want to force teleport out from. You may ask, how would you discover a forced teleport like that? One common way of finding a CFT is using minor forced teleports, such as a Return Forced Teleport (RFT). An RFT is a forced teleport that occurs immediately after using a normal teleport from an area. An example of this is the old Shantay Pass forced teleport discovered in 2007 by the Tainted Ones. This was done by teleporting using a normal teleport from your spellbook immediately after giving your shantay pass to the guard. You would teleport to the location you teleported to, then immediately be teleported back to shantay pass. This may sound insignificant, but TO expanded upon it: What if you were to teleport to your POH after giving your pass? They tried it and found that they were forced teleported out of their POH back to Shantay Pass and kept the POH effects. They could teleport to their building mode from anywhere in Runescape. This was one of the first CFTs.
Now, an RFT is an example of an Uncontrollable Forced Teleport (UFT). UCFTs are any forced teleport that cannot be easily controlled or used in most areas. A commonly used UCFT is an Interfaced Forced Teleport (IFT), these are done by stalling a low priority force teleport with an interface. When you close the interface, you will be force teleported. An example of a low priority forced teleport that can be stalled with an interface is the teleport that occurs when you enter your own POH using a portal. If you quickly open an interface immediately after clicking “Go to your house.”, you will not be teleported into your POH until you close it.
Other FTs include Timed Force Teleports (TFTs), Log In and Log Out Forced Teleports (LIFTs and LOFTs), and Personalized Area Forced Teleports (PAFTs). TFTs are timed forced teleports that can occur when you smuggle an effect like the Castle Wars waiting room timer. When it reaches 0, you'll be teleported from wherever you are to Castle Wars, though this example is impossible as that effect is area based, which I will explain in the next section.
LIFTs and LOFTs occur when you smuggle an effect that teleports you out of an area upon logging in/out. An example of this is the teleport that occurs when you log into Castle Wars after logging out in the middle of a game for a few minutes. You get FT'd into the lobby.
PAFTs are FTs that only work in personalized areas, which will be discussed later.
Death can also act like a FT. Sometimes, JaGeX will forget to make player based effects, minigame items, ect, disappear upon dying in an area, so you can smuggle abilities and items (normally with the help of stalls) by simply committing suicide.
6. Area Based Effects vs. Player Based Effects
Understanding Area and Player effects is another fundamental part of bug abuse. An area effect is an effect that works in a specific area, such as the ability to attack other players. A player effect is an effect that is applied to your account and can be smuggled outside of the area you receive it, such as the ability to keep items upon death in certain mini-games (sometimes that effect is area based, depends on which mini-game).
Attacking other players has always been an area based effect since 6/6/06. When you enter a PvP area you are given the attack option, a player based effect, but cannot attack others outside of the area even if you smuggle the option as that ability is area based. When JaGeX released POHs, they accidently made the ability to attack inside a POH completely player based, meaning it was possible to smuggle the effect. This was discovered on 6/6/06 in a house party hosted by Cursed You. A player, it’s unknown who, found out that if you used a scrying orb in the dungeon while PvP mode was on and were kicked out of the house, you’d keep the ability to attack. The bug was not discovered by Durial321 and was not caused by massive server lag, as many people believe. The ability to attack inside a POH was made area based afterwards and has not been smuggled ever since.
7. Smuggling Items
How you're going to go about smuggling an area specific item depends on several different factors. JaGex always seems to use different methods of protecting items from being smuggled out of areas each time they make an update. For example, some items may have special properties that protect them from being kept outside an area, such as disappearing upon logging out or when attempting to use the item. Others have no safeguards at all and anything can be done with them without any risk of them disappearing unexpectedly.
The act of smuggling an item can be simple or require many complicated bugs. Some very poorly protected quest items can be smuggled by ensuring the quest items are your 3 most valuable items and simply dying in the area (remember that even though quests will normally recognize you teleporting out of the area, JaGex often forgets to program them so they recognize death as well). Other items may be "area based" and recognize that you've left the area no matter how you leave it, even with a forced teleport. The act of an item being removed from your inventory is also a low priority/high priorty action. For example, some items, including area based items, can be temporarily stalled from disappearing by teleporting out of the area and immediately stalling with an interface. Others, being that they disappear on a high priority command, will close the interface and disappear anyways unless you're using a stackable interface. After stalling the item from disappearing, you will normally have to find a way to cancel it from disappearing completely. One common way of doing this is by simply dropping the item (note that the act of dropping is a high-priority command and will close the interface you have up, resulting in the rest of your smuggled items disappearing). Some items may not have a drop option and other techniques must be used to keep them, such as somehow managing to die on the spot while your stall is in effect so that they're forced to drop. And of course, some items will simply disappear upon dropping them no matter what you do.
Just imagine how difficult this would be if JaGex was smart and used the same measures to protect all area specific items from disappearing. Item smuggling would be impractical, requiring a plethora of forced teleports, stalls, and other explotation techniques to just smuggle a single item. This is the case with some recently released/updated items. However, many of the older area-specific items to this day still have weak safeguards, making them vulnerable to getting smuggled.
Note that area specific and area based are not the same thing in the context I use them. Area specific just refers to items that you are only meant to have in a specific area. Area based can refer to area based items or area based effects. Area based effects cannot be smuggled, whereas area based items can.
Lastly, keep in mind that all items can be smuggled, no matter how difficult it may seem. There's always a way, it's just a matter of whether you can figure it out.
8. Personalized Areas
Also known as instanced events or generated areas, personalized areas are another significant subject in the world of bug abuse. A personalized area is an area that is deleted from the server when there are no players in it, and will reform when a player tries to enter it. An example of a personalized area (which I will start calling “PA”s) is POHs. The servers cannot keep hundreds of thousands of players’ houses loaded at one time, so they are created from scratch when you enter a portal and are deleted when everyone has left the house. PAs are made in a general location in blackness far off the main map. A copy of a POH could be next to a copy of a cutscene from “While Guthix Sleeps” as all PAs are loaded near each other.
If a PA fails to load, you will experience an “invalid teleport” (IT). When ITs were first discovered, you would be teleported into the blackness the PA was supposed to load in with a message in your chatbox reading “Invalid teleport!”. They seemed to have patched that from occurring; now when an IT occurs you just receive the message in the chatbox without being teleported into blackness.
All PAs have certain common properties. Leaving or logging out of a PA will result in being teleported to the exact coordinates you loaded the PA from, as the PA will unload and being teleported to the same coordinates would result in an invalid teleport. You can see this by viewing the dranor bank cutscene with the Wise Old Man. Take note of where you are standing when you talk to the bank guard; you will spawn on that same spot when the cutscene is over. Some PAs apply player effects to your character to ensure you’re teleported to a specific spot instead of the spot you loaded it from. Smuggling that effect can result in a LIFT (log in forced teleport) or LOFT (log out forced teleport). LIFTs are considered more useful then LOFTs as you are teleported upon logging in rather than logging out, giving you time to stall any items or effects from disappearing. You normally cannot see yourself being teleported during a LIFT/LOFT as they occur too quick. Some PAs have exits with properties that spawn you to specific cooridinates rather than the area you loaded the PA from. If JaGeX does not implement this into the exit of a PA, you will by default appear where you loaded it from.
A couple years ago a discovery by bug abuser Fluid Karma(?) revealed that PAs seem to have more common area based effects than previously though. The first PAFT (Personalized Area Forced Teleport) was discovered: A forced teleport that works only in Personalized Areas. For some reason, certain properties that are meant to be used in a specific PA will work in any PA. There was also another major bug discovered alongside that bug which was not given an official name, but I’ll give it one right now for the sake of simplicity. It’s called the RPAT (Random Personalized Area Teleport). This bug allows the bug abuser to be teleported into ANY personalized area loaded by another player. Instead of being teleported into you POH for example, you could be teleported into any random PA such as the Tzhaar Fight Caves. This occurs when a player loads a bugged PA at the same time another player loads a normal PA. If performed correctly, the bugged PA will fail to load and the second PA will load on the cooridinates the bugged PA was supposed to load at. This causes the server to believe both PAs were loaded successfully and results in both players being teleported into the same PA.
Remember that upon leaving a personalized area, you will normally be placed at the cooridinates you originally loaded it from. Let's say you FT into a personalized area from a minigame that prevents players from equipping weapons. The PA may not have the same restrictions the minigame had, allowing you to equip a weapon of your choice. You can then leave the PA and be placed at the cooridinates you were forced teleported into the PA from, with the weapon still equipped. This is called a double LIFT. Double LIFTs do not have to do anything with LIFTs or LOFTs, though many past double LIFTs did require the use of LIFTs.
An example of a past double LIFT is the POH CFT used back in 06 (now patched, leaving the POH puts you at the house portal instead of the coordinates you FT’d from). You could CFT into your POH from, let’s say Castle Wars, and put on a cape and helmet. You could then leave via the portal and, since you loaded the PA from Castle Wars, you’d be placed back in the Castle Wars game with your own cape and hood on.
Also, there is one permanent copy of every personalized area that stays loaded on the map. You are never teleported into the permanent copy unless you find a noclip and stumble upon it while noclipping.
9. Examples of Past Bugs
Now that you know the basics, let’s see how the knowledge you have gained can be used to discover bugs. The following bug was discovered by the Tainted Ones some years ago, and is now patched.
In around 2006, a powerful CFT was discovered involving the Duel Arena. There were several ways found to do this, one way was stalling yourself from being teleported into a duel by using an interface, as the forced teleport into a duel is a low priority action. One way to get an interface to open immediately after accepting the challenge back then was to have someone use a tele-other spell on you while you had the duel interface open. The tele-other interface would stack on the duel interface, therefore it would immediately open after closing the duel interface and stall you from getting teleported. You would then equip a piece of armor (assuming you agreed to a no armor duel), which would cancel the forced teleport into the arena as the game would see you equipped a piece of armor. You’d then quickly accept another duel before the 3 second countdown finished (if it finished, the server would see that your friend is alone in the duel arena and kick him out). After you accepted the second duel, you’d be in a 3-way duel with the player who you canceled being teleported in with and the player who’s challenge you accepted immediately after the first player was teleported in. Both players could attack you. The player who was teleported into the duel alone before you accepted the second challenge could then leave and do whatever he wished. You would not be teleported out of the duel with him as you were in a duel with the second player as well. When he wished to be forced teleported, you’d simply leave the duel and he’d be teleported back to the duel arena lobby, as the game still thought you were his partner. The player who was forced teleported would keep any player effects or minigame items he had with him, such as barricades from Castle Wars.
Here’s another bug, this one was widely leaked and patched.
In 2008, a safety glitch (where you can die anywhere and keep all your items) was discovered with the Tzhaar Fight Caves. To do this you would first go to a certain personalized area in the quest Kennith’s Concerns and simply commit suicide. When you enter the area, you are given a player effect that LIFTs you back into the personalized area when you log out and in from the area. JaGeX made it so the effect is removed when you teleport out, but forgot to do the same when exiting the area via death. After dying and being teleported to your chosen spawn point (Lumbridge/Falador/Camelot), you could log out and in and be force teleported back to the personalized area. If you teleported while the LIFT was in effect, you’d lose it as that player effect was designed to disappear upon teleporting. What you would do is smuggle the LIFT effect, run all the way from your spawn point to Port Sarim and take a boat ride to Karamja. From there you’d get into Tzhaar and enter the Tzhaar Fight Caves. You would then log out and in, where you’d LIFT into the personalized area from Kennith’s Concern and keep the Tzhaar Fight Caves player effects. This means that when you died, you would spawn in front of the Tzhaar Fight Caves with all your items as if you died in the minigame. If you teleported you would lose the effect as, just like the LIFT effect, it is designed to disappear upon teleporting.
Here's an example on how-to smuggle items, using barricades/bandages in Castle Wars as our example.
Bandages and barricades have always been long sought after by bug abusers, either to sell, abuse, or show off. Back in the Tainted Ones days way back when, Kami discovered that by simply backing out of a castle wars game into the waiting room with explosives in your inventory, you could commit suicide with them and spawn in the lobby with all your Castle War items. Back then none of the items were area based and could be used anywhere you wanted, meaning it was possible to block off areas on the main map with barricades. After the dying-in-the-waiting-room method was patched, forced teleports had to be used to smuggle them. Kami discovered that if you waited for a random event to spawn and teleport you out of CWs by not responding to them, it would act as a forced teleport and you would keep your CWs items. JaGex responded by making CWs items area based, meaning that even a forced teleport could not smuggle them. In early 2008, another method was discovered by Champ7020. By using a LIFT (log in forced teleport) and a what is known as a "log in interface", you could keep the barricades and stall them from disappearing. A log in interface is basically a player effect that can be smuggled from certain areas that causes an interface to show up immediately after logging in. This can be very useful in some cases where you need to log out and in but need to immediately stall whatever item/effect you're trying to keep from disappearing. By LIFTing out of Castle Wars and using a log in interface to stall the items from disappearing, you could cancel them from disappearing by simply dropping each of them one by one then picking them up. The act of dropping is a high priority command which is supposed to close interfaces, so you may be wondering how you could keep all of the smuggled items without the interface closing and having all of them (discluding the one you dropped) disappear. You would do what was called "interface dropping", which is simply opening another interface immediately after dropping an item. At this time, there was no delay between the two interfaces while dropping the items, so you could repeat this with all the items until they were all on the floor (or until you messed up and didn't click on an interface fast enough after dropping one of them, causing the rest of them to disappear). Last time I checked, this wasn't possible anymore, so if you want to keep more than one item, you will need something that will drop them all at once, such as death, or a completely different method of canceling the items from disappearing.
Here’s one more bug. This one is the infamous noclip glitch discovered in 2008 by Roboreapper and Champ7020, who told I, Svew, how it was performed. The 3 of us abused it for many months until it was finally patched.
Recall stackable interfaces (SIs) and how they can stall high priority commands. Not too long after the first SI was discovered by Champ7020 and Roboreapper (it was done by spam clicking the quick chat help menu during a cutscene stall, recall that some stackable interfaces will only stack during cutscene stalls) and after I partnered up with them, another major bug was found. Roboreapper used their SI during a game in the Fishing Trawler, and realized you are teleported about 120 spaces west/east every time the boat floods or empties of water (120 spaces east when tele’d into the flooded boat, west when teleported back). If you stalled long enough to stack 2 teleports east from the empty boat, you’d be teleported into the flooded boat and teleported east AGAIN outside of the Fishing Trawler, into the cosmic altar. Areas off the map can be placed very close to each other; E.G. an underwater area from a quest who’s name I can't recall is less than 50 spaces south of the interior of the god wars dungeon. Anyways, let’s say you stacked 3 teleports east starting from the empty boat. You’d be teleported once into the flooded boat, a second time into the cosmic altar, then could teleport out (as the cosmic altar isn’t teleblocked [the Fishing Trawler’s teleblock effect is area based]), walk to the spot 120 spaces east of the area you desired to noclip into, and be teleported 120 spaces east into it. For example, if you wanted to get into the giant pillar the bankers at the grand exchange surround, I believe you had to stand a little west of the monastery near Edgeville and be teleported east. You could also stack, for example, 5 teleports east then 3 teleports west. The 5 teleports east would occur first as they’re executed in the order they were stacked, so you’d be teleported into the cosmic altar and would be able to teleport onto the main map and start noclipping with your stacked teleports.
If you understand how these bugs worked, you can go find yourself some partners and start finding bugs.
Pictures:
A client side bug, only the glitcher performing the glitch can see it:
A safety glitch, a bug that allows you to die anywhere and keep all your items, can act like a FT:
An invalid teleport, when a personalized area fails to load:
Barricades smuggled from Castle Wars by using a FT. Was showing them off in front of JMods lol...
Can you figure out how this was done?
Kami's Bug Abuse Notes
Historical notes on bug abuse written by one of the founders of RS bug abuse, Kami. THIS WAS NOT WRITTEN BY ME.
Note that all of the bugs he writes about were patched quite a long time ago.
Alright, this is a compilation of all of our bugs. I'm going to *try* to go in chronological order.
I don't have documentation for a lot of our bugs,like pictures, but ill still try to explain things accurately
These first few bugs i discovered before Tainted Ones was formed.
1. Armor on Entrana.
This was a very simple bug, and it was my first. Basically a player could bring armor on Entrana if he opened treasure tail caskets with rewards inside while on the island. I remember i used to range greater demons down their with a friend, and I'd have him hold armor while i did clues i got from greaters, we eventually had a few sets of rune up there. I don't have pictures, sorry.
Discovery Credit: Kami
2. Bandages at the Duel arena
Upon the release of Castle Wars, it was possible to take bandages and barricades out by dieing with them inside the waiting room. Jagex slipped up and forgot to count bandages as an item of food, and as a result you could use them to heal in no food duels. I scammed around 120M with this bug, which was worth a lot more back then. After a day or two others started catching on, but I'd stopped by then, content with my winnings.
Discovery Credit: Kami
3. Crystal Bows, banking unbankables.
These two bugs came handed in hand. Way back when, members items didn't retain certain properties while on free servers. using this method you could bank members objects that were unbankable, such as toads and lamps. This also applied to other things, such as alching or dropping items. Shortly after the release of crystal bows, they came out with the crystal seed which allowed you to obtain crystal bows for as cheap as 180k provided you had the seed. full charged crystal bows would alch for over 540k, however the game wouldn't let you alch them unless you went to f2p. Using this method i would buy seeds for 50-200k, and make profit buying the crystal bows for 180k, then alching them for 540k on f2p.
Discovery Credit: Kami
4. Bandages out of castle wars... Again.
Jagex released a few new random events at one point, one of which included Dr. ford, a woodcutting random event. The random operated on a series of interfaces, you could preform a few different tasks while still in the random, such as walking and teleporting, and logging out and in would restart it at the beginning. Using this, you could go into castle wars and take bandages, then have Dr. Ford teleport you out by purposely failing the random. We later discovered this would work with other teleport randoms as well, however this has since been fixed.
Unfortunately, The bandages no longer worked in the duel arena... the good news was, other people didn't know that, and bandages were still tradable. I used a couple noob accounts to sell bandages, they were both banned, but i was able to make some large sales. I sold 22 bandages for 44M to one staker, and 10 for 25M to another staker. They were both very prominent stakers, and chances are you've heard of them. I also sold a few singles on the side for 1-2m each.
Discovery Credit: Kami
After this point, Tainted Ones was founded.
5. Armor in no armor duels.
This is a bug in which you could keep armor on in no armor duels. During a series of experiments in the duel arena, we discovered that someone could accept a duel, but never go into the arena if they were able to make a menu, or interface pop up before their entrance. This was very hard to do at first, because you had to quickly press accept, then open up a quest journal or something, and the timing was difficult. Then we discovered that someone could cast a teleother spell on you while you had the duel screen up, and this would immediately bring up the teleother screen before going into the duel. If you did not close the screen within 3 seconds, the duel would be canceled. If you did close the screen within 3 seconds, you would arrive in the duel a few seconds late. We discovered that if you did something to fill up your inventory at the same time you closed the screen, for example, slicing a pineapple so it takes up more spaces, or emptying a rune essence pouch, then it would not leave room for any items to be unequipped, and as a result you would keep them on. This was known as the hope campaign, and we scammed over 300M using a staking pure named "o o hope 0 o".
Discovery Credit: Kami, Robert
6. Forced Teleports, Multi Dueling, Attacking people from inside the arena
these bugs came hand in hand. We mostly used the effects this bug produced to make the first tainted ones video, so check that out to see its effects in action. Basically, after jagex caught on to the hope bug, they made it so that if you made a change to your inventory before the duel started, you wouldn't go in the duel at all. However, when the duel timed out after waiting for you, you would be instantly teleported to the duel arena hospital. Normally it would only take about 3 seconds to time out, but using multiple teleothers you could rig it so that you could delay it infinitely. As a result, you could be in castle wars with say, an inventory of barricades, then trick the game into thinking you just ended a duel, and be teleported to the duel arena with barricades in tote. this concept could be applied in a lot of other places. Jagex eventually fixed this bug by making it impossible to delay entrance to duels. This bug also caused a long episode between my main (kamiccolo90, lvl 102) and jagex, and i was eventually banned. Robert and me had tried messing with stakes to find a dupe bug, but we found out that the stake window acts as a temporary bank, and therefore it is near impossible to dupe, since you cant take an item out that isn't there.
Pics (click to enlarge):
http://img207.images...1/tnbug1ky4.png
Discovery credit: Kami, Robert.
7. Invisibility and walking around with 0 HP
This bug occurred when you preformed an ancient teleport spell, or a dragon ammy teleport, right as you were brought down to 0 hp. Timing could be difficult, but wasn't impossible. This bug wasn't very useful, but had benefits. You could stay invisible and gain hp, and people wouldn't be able to see you. You could also cast a teleport spell without actually teleporting there, which made it easier to train magic in some instances. I had my noob banned (nub n champs, lvl 64, also held the record for lowest level to do DT at 34, and lowest legend at 46) for abusing this bug, after i attracted the attention of several player mods while invisible.
Discovery Credit: Hipi
After this point, i took a very long break from RS, then came back shortly after the release of POH, using a level 106 account a friend gave me.
8. Minor House Bugs
After a day or so of messing with POH, It became very clear the houses were very buggy. You could go into another players build mode by having them leave the house, then re-enter in build mode, then use their butler to take you to them. This ultimately did not have many benefits. We also found you could poison people and kick them out of the house before death, and they would die and lose items... these were both very small bugs, and other people noticed them as well, which is why they were fixed.
Discovery Credit: Hipi, Racer (Jon)
9. Minor GP Dupe.
Eventually we got around to experimenting with the chests in the game room that held gp. after a little experimentation, we found out you could duplicate the GP in the chest by having the owner leave his house, then log out, during which time a second person still in the house would take the money out. When the first person logged in, the money would still be in the chest. This could be repeated infinitely, and two people could make 3M an hour using a mahogony chest with 50k. Unfortunately, this was also a fairly simple bug, and it was fixed within a few days, and we only made about 20M off it.
Discovery Credit: Kami, Hipi
10. Forced Teles are back, and Unlimited Instant Mage Xp!
Hipi was kind enough to notice that if you were trying to enter the shanty pass, and you teleported somewhere right as the disclaimer was placed in your inventory, it would tele you there, then immediately teleport you back to the pass. This works in a few other situations as well, i don't want go into detail explaining why, so we'll just leave it at that. I had the bright idea that you could teleport to you house, then be transported back to the pass, tricking the game into thinking your still inside the house. It worked perfectly, and as a result whenever you turned on build mode, it would take you into the build mode of your house. And as an added bonus, exiting through the portal would take you back to where you teleported from. Using this feature, not only could we get barricades and all that fun stuff once again, but we could also get more magic xp then we could ever need. We would go into the alchemists playground at mage arena, then teleport into the build mode using the bug. a friend would then come in my house and trade me money, millions of gp at a time, then i would exit through the portal, and be back in the alchemists playground with a lot of GP. When you deposit coins into the box in the alchemists playground, you get 2 xp per gp. We got a lvl 10 account to 87 magic with 4M gp cash, and this boosted him to 46 combat. Unfortunately, a friend of mine freaked out when i told him and tipped off jagex. as a result they made it so if you try putting in more then 120k, it kicks you out of the playground, and takes your money with no xp received. one of our members lost a few mil this way.
Note: in tainted ones two, we have a scene with the lvl 10 getting 87 magic instantly. you can watch it once the videos released.
Discovery Credit: Kami, Hipi
11. Glory Amulet Dupe
Now then, with the exception of the mage portion of that last bug, the rest of it still worked. I was able to engineer it so that you could walk around runescape with build mode on. and go in other peoples houses that way. Unfortunately this didn't wield the benefits I'd hoped, you couldn't take other peoples furniture, or build in their house. However, Hipi discovered that if you tried to take an item that you normally get back, such as a legends cape, glory ammy, or set of armor, you would get the item back, but the display would still be up. And so it was, the glory campaign began. I got together some good friends, and we got to work duping glories. within just a couple days we had 10k glorys sold, and a good 500m between us. Unfortunately, jagex was still onto us from the magic bug, and they apparently did a little trade tracing and were able to ban all of us, including our mules. The thing is, Jagex still didn't have a clue how the hell we did it, so in order to save my friends account, since he had the most to lose, we allowed him to tell them how the bug was done. The rest of us were banned, and thats how most of the Tainted Ones Martyrs came to be.
I've always been intrested in bug abuse, only did some minor bugs. Was a nice read ^^
