RuneScape: Dragonwilds on the Steam Deck - Promising, But Not There Yet

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When you think of RuneScape, you might think of a grindy top-down MMO from the 1990s where people surround themselves with campfires in order to get that level 99 skill. But in RuneScape: Dragonwilds, the focus is more on progressing through a story and accomplishing a task than it is about grinding, now in a brand spanking new 3D environment! Plus, you get to do it all in a more tight-knit setting with friends.

RuneScape: Dragonwilds - Gameplay Impressions

Where Dragonwilds deviates from traditional RuneScape is in its gameplay, however. While there are elements of RuneScape present, such as gaining skill levels by doing the actions they are related to, the way you play the game is quite different.

If you've played Valheim, then RuneScape: Dragonwilds gives very similar vibes. The game is third-person, relies on evading/dodging in combat, and just has a very similar feel to it, although perhaps slightly less on the "creepy" side than Valheim. The combat is good fun, though, perhaps a tad on the easy side if you're used to this kind of thing, but fun nonetheless.

We have all the perks of a modern survival sandbox in Dragonwilds, resource gathering, skill obtaining, base building, the odd quest-giving NPC, a large world map filled with things trying to kill you, you know, the usual.

Also, I'm not exaggerating about things trying to kill you, literally anything will try it given the chance. Dragonwilds differs from Valheim in that there are plenty of what would normally be "ambient" creatures, the kind of thing you don't really pay attention to. But no, in Dragonwilds, even the rabbits and chickens will have a go at you if you wander too close. These creatures definitely make the world feel a bit more alive, and not just every creature you see is a monster.

The base-building is pretty solid. There are plenty of building blocks to choose from, and it's an easy-to-understand and use system, allowing you to first place "ghosted" blocks before spending the resources to actually construct them. This lets you easily plan a build before beginning it. There's even a spell you can cast that gives you a "free camera" so you can build without having to move your physical character.

As far as actual content goes, RuneScape: Dragonwilds is a little thin on the ground right now, while there are skills to upgrade, there's no reason to upgrade them beyond level 30-40 or so right now, as most skills offer no rewards beyond that point, even though you can level up to 99. There are also only 7 skills in the game right now, and I was beyond level 10 in each of them by the 2-hour mark. You could probably max out your skills in a little more than 5 hours.

There are 2 unused skills that are planned, Magic and Ranged weapons. Both of which are in the game already, but they don't have skills attached, so you're reliant on the strength of your weapon rather than any bonuses or abilities unlocked via skills.

RuneScape: Dragonwilds - Steam Deck Performance Tested

RuneScape: Dragonwilds has support for 16:10 resolutions, so we can avoid black bars. While the game does technically have controller support, I found it to be pretty mixed and inconsistent. Yes, you can control the game just with a controller (apart from naming your character and world, which you need to manually invoke the keyboard for), but their control scheme seems to be inconsistent, sometimes right analog is used for menus, other times the D-Pad is, LB/RB and LT/RT are used at different points to navigate tabs, A is confirm, but other times X is confirm. There's no agreed-upon control scheme for the game right now.

As for actual performance, right now, the game seems a bit unoptimized. Scalability probably isn't where it should be, as even on the lowest settings, it feels like the game looks better than it could get away with looking.

Performance depends on the time of day, with daytime (when the sun is casting shadows) performing much worse than nighttime. In the daytime, it's quite common to play the game with a framerate in the mid-20s. At night, you can get a stable 30 FPS a lot of the time.

I ran the settings pretty much as low as they would go, with Quality on Very Low, resolution set to 1152x720, and FSR3 set to Ultra Performance.

As the game is still in Early Access, and the performance is pretty close to a stable 30 FPS, I think we could see the game running well on the Steam Deck in the future; it just might take some time to optimize.

Final Thoughts

RuneScape: Dragonwilds has great potential. The base mechanics are in for a great survival adventure game. You have skills, plenty of abilities to unlock, lots of crafting opportunities for armor and weapons, a decent base-building system, and co-op play. Sadly, it's missing content right now, with a minimal amount of progression available.

Steam Deck performance is much the same boat; it has potential, but right now, performance is unoptimized, and controller support is buggy. I would say come back to this one towards the end of 2025 and see what they've done with it, because I think it'll be a solid title in the future.

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