- Release
- Early Access on Steam from 15 April 2025; the 1.0 release on 15 September 2026 on PC (Steam, Epic Games Store and the Jagex Launcher), PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2.
- Developer
- Jagex. Steam lists Jagex as developer, and Jagex, H2 Interactive and Graph as publishers.
- Genre
- Open-world survival crafting with RuneScape's skills, played alone or in online co-op, with crossplay since 1.0.
- Price
- $29.99 / £24.99, unchanged from Early Access; a Deluxe Edition is $39.99 on Steam.
- Story
- Kuldra's Saga, completed at 1.0 with the Scorned Wilderness raid and the Dragon Queen, Kuldra.
The game in brief
🏝️ A forgotten continent
Jagex's own pitch: on RuneScape's forgotten continent of Ashenfall, dragons have awoken, and you gather, build, skill and craft to survive until you can face the Dragon Queen. You arrive with an expedition that the dragons have already wrecked, and the survivors are RuneScape regulars: the Wise Old Man, Doric, Vannaka and Zanik.
📈 Skills, the RuneScape way
There is no point-buy skill tree. You raise a skill by doing it, up to level 99, and the levels unlock small bonuses and Skill Spells: a spectral axe that fells a row of trees, a tornado of fish pulled from a lake, ore veins that explode with a snap of the fingers.
🏠 Survival and building
Hunger, thirst and rest have to be managed, water has to be boiled before you drink it, and a base with a claimed bed is your respawn point. You can build almost anywhere, but enemies raid bases from time to time.
⚔️ Three combat styles
Melee, Ranged and Magic, fought in real time from a third-person camera with dodges, blocks and parries. Each region has a power level, and your armour sets yours.
From Early Access to 1.0
| When | Update | What it added |
|---|---|---|
| 15 April 2025 | Early Access on Steam | The first two regions, Brynmoor and Ghornfell; the first Dragon General, Velgar; nine skills; 12 armour sets across the three combat styles, up to Iron tier. |
| June 2025 | Update 1 | A bigger Magic skill tree and more building pieces, including Palisade Walls against base raids. Hard mode worlds arrived in the same update. |
| September 2025 | 0.9 | Ranged skill abilities (Hunter Sense, Spectral Arrow, Snare), poison, barbed and flaming arrows, enchanted crossbow bolts, and Custom and Creative worlds with over 50 settings. |
| 15 December 2025 | Fellhollow | The first major update: the Farming skill, Death and his shop for Soul Fragments, the Castle building kit, Steel tier gear, mounts (a Terrorbird) and Imaru, the second dragon. |
| 31 March 2026 | Dowdun Reach | A new region, four quests, the Black Knight Titan, dedicated servers and better controller support. Every skill's cap rose to 99, and the Fishing skill followed. |
| 23 June 2026 | Umbral Sands | The largest region so far, inspired by the Kharidian Desert: the Kalphite Queen, Fuzan the Fire Dragon, the Kot'Haar, the flying-carpet mount, the Nightmare Crucible, and Adamant, Red Dragonhide and Infinity gear. |
| 29 July 2026 | 0.12.1 | The Agility skill, with six courses, double jump, an aerial dash and the Recall spell. |
| 15 September 2026 | 1.0 | Consoles, crossplay, the Scorned Wilderness and Kuldra. Details below. |
What 1.0 added
- Launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch 2, plus the Epic Games Store and the Jagex Launcher on PC.
- Crossplay, switched on or off each time you host a world, and invite codes for joining a world. Dedicated servers can be crossplay too.
- The Scorned Wilderness region and its quest, Regicide, ending in the fight with Kuldra, the God-Eater. The region has a buildable hub and a raid area where you cannot build.
- Ten new enemy types, from the Goblin Thug to Black Dragons, and the Rune tier: Rune armour and weapons, Black Dragonhide, Magic bows, Ancestral robes and Dragon gear earned on repeat runs of the raid.
- Wands, a faster and more mobile magic weapon than the staff, and new spells: Vengeance, Enfeeble, Divine Rock, Overdrive and, at last, a Home Teleport.
- A combat overhaul: parries restore half your stamina and open a Visceral Attack, special attacks use their own recharging bar, and attacks, gathering and spellcasting can be cancelled with a dodge or a block.
- Faster loading for large bases, a looser camera, map improvements, a Storage Ledger that files your inventory into linked chests, and player and world reporting moderated by people.
What it is not
It is not an MMO. A world holds a small group, not a server of strangers. One review of the 1.0 release found that a character made on PlayStation 5 cannot be picked up on Switch 2, or the other way round: there is no cross-progression. And there is no Prayer skill yet: in May 2026 Jagex moved it to the winter update.
What comes next
Jagex calls 1.0 the start of a multi-year journey. Update 1.0.1 is due in October 2026, a free content update called Luminance is planned for winter, with a new building kit, and Jagex says it will keep shipping monthly updates. The plans for 2027 were shown at RuneFest on 3 October 2026; the Patches page has what is known.
Cross-checked
Cross-checked on 7 October 2026 against Jagex's Steam announcements (the 1.0 release notes, the price announcement of 3 September, the console announcement of 5 June, the roadmap update of 15 May, and the Fellhollow, Dowdun Reach and 0.12.1 notes), the official site, the Steam store page, the RuneScape: Dragonwilds Wiki (linked from the official site and written by players), and the 1.0 reviews of Game8, Pocket Tactics and Gfinity. Not from a playthrough: nobody here has played it.