OSRS Halloween Event 2026 and Fractured Archive Tweaks: Vampyre Rewards, Emberlight Cap, Ocellus Tank Order and Loot Changes

Old School RuneScape's October 28 game update is a two-for-one. On the fun side, the 2026 Halloween event, All Trick, No Treats, is live in Rimmington with a full Vampyre costume set to earn before November 18. On the serious side, Jagex shipped the first real batch of post-launch tweaks for The Fractured Archive, the raid that opened on October 20, including a 50% cap on Offensive Stat reduction at three bosses, a smarter Ocellus tank order, and changes to how deaths affect your contribution and unique chances.

There is also a long list of smaller quality-of-life fixes, a Grand Exchange buy limit change for Ascension shards, the new PvP world rota, and a monthly anti-cheating report with some big numbers in it. This guide goes through all of it in plain terms, so you know what changed before your next raid and what you need to do to grab the Halloween cosmetics.

What Is in the October 28 OSRS Update?

The official post, Halloween Event 2026, TFA Tweaks & More!, covers five main areas:

• Halloween Event 2026: a short holiday event in Rimmington starring Angel and Henja, with a Vampyre costume reward set.
• The Fractured Archive post-release tweaks: one balance change, a contribution system fix, and around two dozen smaller fixes and quality-of-life changes.
• Other changes: fixes for Araxxor, Pete Kayer's storage, collection log entries, the Rune Pouch, Ironmen at Sunset Coast and more.
• PvP world rota: the rota moves to Period B.
• Player Support and Anti-Cheating statistics for September 2026, plus a phishing warning.

Jagex also used the post to congratulate the world first clears of the raid and to share a handful of community videos for budget setups. If you only care about one thing, skip ahead to the raid section, because the contribution change quietly affects every group that has been dying a lot.

Halloween Event 2026: All Trick, No Treats

The event's premise is simple and very on brand for Angel and Henja. The two kids were trusted with a big bowl of sweets to hand out to trick-or-treaters, and they get to keep whatever is left at the end of the night. So, naturally, they would rather hand out nothing at all. Your job is to help them protect the stash.

To start, go to Rimmington and talk to Angel or Henja in their parents' house. The holiday event icon on the world map and minimap points to the right spot.

How to Complete the Halloween Event

Based on the OSRS Wiki event page, which players filled in within hours of the update, the event runs like this:

• Smash the jack-o-lanterns. Angel and Henja ask you to break the jack-o-lanterns placed around Rimmington. There are eight in total. Return to the kids once they are all smashed.
• Scare off the child trick-or-treaters. You need a spooky costume from Diango in Draynor Village. Equip at least four Halloween event items, then use the left-click spook option on the trick-or-treaters. Only the children are scared by your outfit, the adults will ignore you.
• Get sugar from the chemist. The kids suggest candy onions for the adults. Head to the chemist west of Rimmington, who gives you a riddle about a "box of death" spelled out with atomic symbols. The word is COFFIN, and adding up the atomic numbers for C, O, F, F, I and N gives 92.
• Make molten sugar. Cook the sugar on the range in Angel and Henja's house or on the fireplace in the chemist's house.
• Grab old onions. They are in a crate outside the back door of the kids' house. Regular onions do not work, and you only need five.
• Coat the onions and hand them out. Use the molten sugar on the old onions to make candy onions, then give them to the adult trick-or-treaters. A cutscene plays, then talk to Angel or Henja to finish.

It is a short event, the kind you can clear in one sitting between raid attempts. If this is your first Halloween event on the account, talking to Diango for the costume step also opens up the rewards from previous Halloween events, which is a nice bonus for newer players.

Halloween 2026 Rewards

Jagex lists the headline rewards as:

• Vampyre costume top, bottom and cape
• Vampyre monocle and fangs

The OSRS Wiki reward list, written up by players on launch day, also shows two noted pumpkins and two noted each of the red, green and blue Halloween masks. Per the wiki, accounts with less than 24 hours of playtime do not get the tradeable rewards on completion and can claim them later once they pass that threshold. Halloween masks have long been treated as collector items, so new tradeable copies entering the game are the part to watch from an economy standpoint. The wiki page was only hours old at the time of writing, so treat its reward list as a snapshot rather than a final word.

The event ends on November 18, 2026. While it is running, you can also speak to Diango in Draynor Village Market to claim rewards from past Halloween events you missed.

Organised Chaos: The Halloween Livestream

On Friday, October 30 at 11:00 AM CT (16:00 UTC), Mods Rach, Rice, Halo and Other are hosting a Halloween livestream in Varlamore. The plan is a mass session of Stealing Valuables on World 520: pickpocketing house keys from Wealthy Citizens, breaking into their homes and taking anything not nailed down, while chatting with the developers who built Varlamore.

To join in game you need:

• Level 50 Thieving
• Children of the Sun completed
• Your best Halloween outfit

Meet at Civitas illa Fortis on World 520 or watch on the official OSRS Twitch channel.

The Fractured Archive: Post-Release Tweaks

The Fractured Archive launched on October 20 as Old School's fourth raid and its hardest one yet. If you missed our launch coverage, the Fractured Archive raid launch guide covers the bosses, entry requirements and rewards. Jagex says the first week went well, with over a quarter of a million completions, over a million groups created and almost four million deaths. Ocellus in particular is getting a lot of praise from players.

The team is clear that it is holding off on big balance changes. Their reasoning is that raids need more time before anyone rushes in, especially now that more players are working out the left-side rooms and viable budget setups. So this week is mostly fixes and quality-of-life, with one notable balance exception.

The Big One: 50% Offensive Stat Reduction Cap

Jagex added a 50% cap on Offensive Stat reduction for Ocellus, Xarth and Dreadnoth. The reason is Emberlight. As more people moved to budget setups, spamming the Emberlight special attack proved too potent, to the point where groups could drain these bosses' offensive stats so much that they could stand still and facetank everything.

In practice, this means:

• You can still lower these bosses' offensive stats, just not past half.
• Budget teams leaning on Emberlight spam to make these rooms trivial will feel the change most.
• Mechanics at these three bosses matter again even in heavily drained runs, so expect your damage taken to go up if your group relied on facetanking.

This pairs with a hotfix from last week that put 60% Defence Reduction caps in place for Archive Guardian, Bork, Ezekiel, Moia, Xarth and Ocellus. Those caps were supposed to exist at launch and were missing. As a compromise, Jagex also removed Ocellus' defence restoration between quadrants during phase 3.

Ocellus Tank Order Now Respects Orb Order

Ocellus' tank selection was breaking when players died or were standing in the wrong quadrant. The new logic is:

• In the first quadrant, Ocellus focuses the party leader.
• In each later quadrant, he moves down the list in orb order.
• Dead players and players not in the quadrant are skipped.

Jagex also added a small sound effect that only the tank can hear when Ocellus focuses on them, plus a chat message naming who he is focusing. For pick-up groups this is a big deal. Half of the chaos in early Ocellus attempts came from nobody being sure whose turn it was.

On a related note, Jagex fixed Bork's overhead text overlapping with him calling the next tank, so tank announcements now take priority.

Contribution and Unique Chance Changes

This one is the most important change for anyone who cares about purples. Jagex fixed issues with the contribution system and made two adjustments:

• Individual deaths are a little less punishing for you personally. Jagex notes this is partly why it was so easy to get Cabbages, especially in larger teams.
• Team deaths now have a bigger effect on the group's unique rate. Before this fix, individual player deaths were not correctly reducing the group's chance at a unique, which meant teams that died a lot were getting a slightly higher unique chance than intended.

So if your group has been brute-forcing runs with a lot of deaths, expect your loot to line up more closely with how clean your runs actually are. Jagex says a detailed breakdown of how loot and contribution work is coming next week, which should clear up a lot of the guesswork in the community.

More Forgiving Damage at Ocellus Phase 2

The diminishing returns on damage dealt per quadrant to Ocellus (by the Blade) during phase 2 are now more forgiving. If your team routinely puts out a lot of damage per quadrant, especially in larger groups, you should deal a little more to Ocellus than before.

Party and Disconnect Fixes

These are small on paper but remove a lot of daily frustration:

• Parties no longer disband after a wipe inside The Fractured Archive.
• Logging out or disconnecting no longer kicks you from the party when you log back in.
• A hotfix last week already stopped players from losing food and potions on disconnect, including purple sweets.
• If you log out while in the loot room, you can now still loot your chest when you return.

Boss-Specific Fixes

• Moia: if several players stand under the same Undead Binder, they are pushed out and only take one instance of damage instead of one per player.
• Ezekiel: his swords no longer deal unavoidable damage when overlapping with his transition into phase 2. A previous hotfix also lets you dodge roll even if you were moving or attacking at range on the tick before.
• Ocellus: fixed a bug where your view could briefly jump to a spectator's view if a teammate died, and the warning before void bombs in phase 4 is louder so you can get straight into the cycle.
• Dreadnoth: small colour tweaks to the boss and the mini-jellies.
• Archive Guardian and Ocellus: last week's hotfix fixed both occasionally disappearing during phase transitions.

Reward and Item Changes

There are several changes to the raid's rewards, and a couple of them matter for the market:

• Ascension shards GE buy limit raised from 100 to 30,000. That is a huge jump and makes it far easier to buy shards in bulk for bolt making.
• The Jeweller's Chisel now works on Ascension shards.
• Ascension bolts no longer drop to the floor when made with a full inventory.
• The Infernal Pickaxe no longer tries to smelt Ascension shards, which, in Jagex's words, literally cannot be smelted.
• Rondache: its flat Armour and Magic Resistance is now applied after other damage mitigation, including Protection prayers. It is also now recognised as a Saradominist item.
• Obligator: updated drop model and inventory icon.
• Archivist's Folio: new unique teleport animation.
• Orion has been added to the All Pets collection log entry.
• Zorya's Tome: a hotfix last week stopped players from pre-stacking it to get extra boosted attacks before using any special attacks at an encounter.
• Regular raid loot no longer spams clan and friends chats with "very valuable" messages. The Cabbage is the one exception, which is a nice joke.

The Rondache change is worth a second look if you have been calculating its value against other shields. Moving the flat reduction after prayers means it interacts differently with Protection prayers than it did at launch, so any damage-taken numbers you saw in the first week may not hold.

Jagex also mentioned it is working on a delay for the sparkle effect on your personal loot chest, so the sparkles stop spoiling whether you got a unique. They are hoping to ship that within the next couple of weeks.

Should You Change Your Setup?

For most players, no big rework is needed. A few practical takeaways:

• If your team was using heavy Emberlight special attack spam to trivialise Ocellus, Xarth or Dreadnoth, plan for those rooms to hit harder now and bring supplies to match.
• Assign your party leader with care, since that player tanks the first Ocellus quadrant. Agree on orb order before you enter.
• Fewer deaths now matters more for the whole team's unique chance, not just your own share. Clean runs pay.
• If you were holding off on making Ascension bolts because of the buy limit, the 30,000 cap removes that bottleneck.

If you are still building toward a raid-ready account and short on time, AccountShark's OSRS accounts page lists accounts with combat stats and quests already in place, which can save weeks of prep. For most people, though, the budget setups Jagex highlighted are a good place to start.

World First Clears and Community Highlights

Jagex used the post to recognise the players who finished the raid first:

• World first TFA clear: Alcheimers, Creel, Defyin, Friend, HighNoobJhin
• World second: Magnautism, No1, Panties D0NE, Resk, VlVID
• World third: Dreamboats, FaustasYPP, Justlfied, Krame, Poshkii, embbu ssf, statistiques
• World first solo: Gnomonkey
• World first mobile: Spoon
• World first HCIM: Muts
• World first HCGIM: The Rizzly Bears, better known as Skill Specs, Dino, Sick Nerd, Alfie and PureSpam

Players in the first 50 completions, including names like B0aty, Woox and Gnomonkey, should watch their in-game message centre for instructions on claiming exclusive pins.

The post also links a set of community videos worth bookmarking, including Molgoatkirby's roughly 100m budget trio setup, Gnomonkey's roughly 100m budget setup, a 15m budget run, Gnomonkey's world first solo, and a 14:27 duo clear from Aurelify and Port Khazard. If you are just learning, Extile's "The Fractured Archive For Idiots" is the beginner-friendly pick.

Other Changes in the October 28 Update

Outside the raid, there is a long list of small fixes:

• Araxxor: the acid attack issues from last week's update are resolved.
• Rune Pouch: "Fractured Archive" is now a loadout name option.
• Pete Kayer: items in Pete Kayer's storage are now automatically returned when you are in a safe area and have inventory space.
• Last Man Standing on mobile: it is easier to select the Ancient Magicks spellbook when setting up a loadout.
• Collection Log: the Earthbound tecpatl, Antler guard, Alchemist's signet and Broken antler are now filed under the correct section.
• Ironmen can pick up the net at Sunset Coast again.
• Player-owned house: the Armour case and Toy box can be searched again, and the costume room furniture search functions are fixed.
• Tutorial Island: the Account Guide now tells new players they can play on both desktop and mobile.
• Login tips: more "Did you know?" tips have been added.
• Karamja Achievement Diary: the header now turns green when all tasks are done, like the other diaries.
• Slayer: Frost Dragons can no longer be assigned without completing Dragon Slayer I.
• Fixed broken dialogue lines with TzHaar-Ket-Rak after the Jad challenge, and corrected NPC chat in the Hallowed Sepulchre.

PvP World Rota: Period B

The PvP rota has moved to Period B. Jagex noted a known issue at launch where worlds were not respecting the new rota, which has since been marked as resolved.

World 390 (AUS) for LMS Competitive and World 569 (AUS) for Bounty Hunter have been deactivated with this rota. The PvP Arena is using Max/Med loadouts in Ranked Duels and Tournaments this week.

September 2026 Anti-Cheating Numbers and Phishing Warning

Jagex's monthly Player Support and Anti-Cheating snapshot for September 2026 includes:

• 96,051 macro bans in September (69,746 F2P and 26,305 P2P), and 7.57 million so far in 2026.
• 5.9 trillion GP of wealth removed in September, and 35.3 trillion year to date.
• 76,190 support queries resolved, with an average response time of 23 hours.

Jagex says rule-breaking activity is trending down overall, and that the average account age and level of detected bots is dropping, which suggests longer-standing, higher-level bots are being caught.

The more practical part is the phishing warning. Jagex says players have been hit by fake P-Mod application forms that ask for login details, and by fake Jagex Launcher downloads hosted on other sites. There are no P-Mod application forms, and anything you download for RuneScape should come from a jagex.com or runescape.com subdomain. Jagex will never ask for your password or verification codes by email or message. With Jagex Account migration starting November 17, expect scammers to lean on account-related messages even more, so be extra careful with anything asking you to "verify" or "migrate" through a link.

What Comes Next

The schedule for the next few weeks is busy:

• Next week: Jagex promises a detailed breakdown of Fractured Archive loot and contribution, plus more raid changes.
• November 4: Hardcore Worlds launch, with their own death ruleset and economy.
• November 17: Jagex Account migration begins.
• November 18: the Halloween event ends.
• Within a couple of weeks: the loot chest sparkle delay fix.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does the OSRS Halloween event 2026 end?

The All Trick, No Treats event ends on November 18, 2026. Jagex has not given an exact end time, so finish it a day or two early if you want to be safe.

How do I start the 2026 OSRS Halloween event?

Go to Rimmington and speak to Angel or Henja in their parents' house. The holiday event icon on the world map and minimap marks the location.

What are the rewards for the 2026 Halloween event?

Jagex lists the Vampyre costume top, bottom and cape, plus the Vampyre monocle and fangs. The OSRS Wiki also lists two noted pumpkins and two noted red, green and blue Halloween masks, which accounts under 24 hours of playtime can only claim later.

What is the answer to the chemist's riddle?

The answer is 92. The word is COFFIN, spelled with the atomic symbols C, O, F, F, I and N, and their atomic numbers add up to 92.

Can I still get past Halloween rewards?

Yes. While the event is active, talk to Diango in Draynor Village Market to claim rewards from previous Halloween events you missed.

What changed with Emberlight in The Fractured Archive?

Emberlight itself was not changed. Instead, Jagex added a 50% cap on Offensive Stat reduction at Ocellus, Xarth and Dreadnoth, so spamming its special attack can no longer drain those bosses enough to facetank them.

How does Ocellus choose a tank now?

Ocellus focuses the party leader in the first quadrant, then moves down the list in orb order, skipping dead players and players not in the quadrant. The chosen tank hears a sound effect and a chat message names who he is focusing.

Do deaths affect my unique chance in The Fractured Archive?

Yes. After this update, individual deaths are slightly less punishing for your own contribution, but team deaths have a bigger impact on the group's unique rate. Before the fix, individual deaths were not reducing the group's chance as intended.

What is the new Ascension shard buy limit?

The Grand Exchange buy limit for Ascension shards went from 100 to 30,000.

When is the OSRS Halloween livestream?

Friday, October 30 at 11:00 AM CT (16:00 UTC) on World 520 in Varlamore, also streamed on the official OSRS Twitch channel. You need 50 Thieving and Children of the Sun to take part in game.