This official news post is copied verbatim from the Old School RuneScape website. It is copyrighted by Jagex. It was added on 17 September 2026.
Community Spotlight: Unpragmatic Covers
It's time for another Community Spotlight! Here we catch up with community space leaders, artists, and content creators that we think you need to know about! We'll learn all about the work they do, plus find out more about their time in Gielinor.
We'll also round up some of the latest news, events and content from across the month so you don't miss a thing.
Without further ado, let's meet this month's guests, the creatives behind Unpragmatic Covers!
Community Spotlight
I’m Sam, the musician for the channel, and I’ve spent the last two and a half years rearranging many of my favourite songs to fit the Old School RuneScape aesthetic. Rather than swapping instruments on pre-existing MIDI files, I record everything in Logic Pro X with my MIDI keyboard... ...while trying to emulate the decisions commonly made by RuneScape’s composers.
Ren
I’m Ren or Micromole, I excessively research fonts, recreate album covers in OSRS style and make unreasonable musical requests of Sam.
Lilly
I'm Lilly, or LillySad! I mostly work on art and occasionally throw dumb lyrics and unrealistic song ideas at Sam in the hopes that some stick!
**So, what got you into gaming? **
**Sam: **I started out playing Spy Fox, Putt Putt, and Pajama Sam games from cereal boxes my parents bought! From there, my brother and I played browser games until we eventually landed on RuneScape, and I’ve never looked back. Besides Guitar Hero and RuneScape I’ve always been terrible at video games so a lot of my gaming experiences growing up involved watching my friends play and occasionally embarrassing myself.
**Ren: **My grandad showed me Rescue Rover in MS-DOS. Later on, my uncle gave us his old Amiga 500, as well as The Settlers and Monkey Island.
**Lilly: **I’ve been a gamer my entire life, my obsession is survival horror games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil.
How did you discover RuneScape?
**Sam: **I used to make Club Penguin Music Videos and one day while scoping out my competition I stumbled across a video called “Club Penguin Meets RuneScape”. I got curious, created a RuneScape account, and that was the end of my Club Penguin journey, although my legacy lives on through music videos. My earliest memory is starting Ernest the Chicken, getting trapped in Draynor Manor, then purposefully dying to a ghost to get back to Lumbridge because I didn’t know about the home teleport. I realized I lost my tinderbox so I started a new account.
**Ren: **My younger sisters played and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. Eventually, my dad played too! I remember being on tutorial island in 2006, being unable to move, and thinking, “you have to click things to move?? What a terrible design!”
**Lilly: **My brother introduced me to RuneScape by simply stating "there’s a game where you get to talk to monkeys!"... Not the strongest advertisement for RuneScape but it’s what got me hooked. This would have been probably a year or so after RuneScape 2 was released, and he showed me it in the computer labs of my old juniors school during afterschool IT club.
Can you tell us about your biggest achievement or favourite moment from your time in Old School?
**Sam: **My Herbiboar pet grind is hilarious to look back on. At 2x pet-rate, our clan started a dedicated Discord channel for creating memes about me. Every 5,000 kills we wrote Herbiboar themed parody lyrics to songs and I’d film myself performing them. By 20,000 kills I decided I wanted to try my hand at making RuneScape soundfont covers on the side, which essentially kicked off the Unpragmatic Covers channel. I finally got the pet at 29,952 kills while working on a cover of Mad World. Also, an honourable mention to small team Nex where there are too many memories to even begin talking about.
Ren: I got 99 Ranged on my 18th birthday! Otherwise, there’s no big gamer moment, just a hundred little wins, mainly in the friends I’ve made. I feel really connected to the community. I love all the creativity people have.
Lilly: My friends and guildmembers peer pressuring me into trying Wilderness bossing on my Ironman account, which ended up being a months long journey to finally completing my Voidwaker!
How did you discover a love for music? What did that journey look like for you?
Sam: Music was always playing while I was growing up, and chances are I was singing along to it. In Grade 3, I starred in a musical at my school (and somehow forgot to tell my parents, who got a big shock on performance night). They saw how music obsessed I was and set me up with a keyboard and GarageBand. For the first few years I didn’t make much progress, but a rough patch when I was 15 changed everything. For 9 months I had a decreased need for sleep, an influx of creative ideas, and inflated self-esteem, which I channeled into music. I'd stay up half the night looking at film and video game scores for inspiration then composing my own songs in GarageBand. The songs I made were nothing special, but my artificial confidence convinced me they were great and I should keep going. Eventually the confidence wore off but the progress I made was permanent and I’ve tried to absorb as much information as possible ever since, including studying music in university.
Ren: I grew up with E.L.O., Madness and the rock/electronic supergroup Sky. In the late 90s I would listen to the radio late at night, when there was this weird music that never stopped, it sounded like aliens. It was Techno. I felt like the only kid in the universe who knew about this music. In my teens I started to align with the alternative crowd and became a metal enjoyer. I continue to enjoy all forms of alternative and electronic music. This gives me a lot of overlap with Sam, Lilly and Sick Love.
Lilly: I grew up in a household with a massive variety of genres. My dad listened to reggae and punk, my mum listened to ABBA and hair metal, and my sisters usually rap/hiphop. My taste in music comes from a mixture of that and I love to explore most genres because of this.
What inspires you to create?
Sam: So many things! Every time I look back on an arrangement from months ago and nitpick it, it makes me excited for future discoveries. Secondly, there is always more to do! I view Unpragmatic Covers as a vessel for music appreciation above all else, and there are still so many genres for me to appreciate and explore. Thirdly, soundfont covers are my favourite thing to do and strengthen my relationship with music. I work as a Music Therapist with neurodivergent kids and seniors with dementia where I use music to help others accomplish non-musical goal areas. To do that effectively, I need to make sure my own musical needs are being met and that I don’t damage my own relationship with music, which I cherish more than anything. The most important influence in my life has been the How to Train Your Dragon soundtrack, and my three favourite bands are Black Dresses, Tool, and KMFDM.
Ren: I’m a designer in my offline life, but I don’t get to make slightly silly things as much as I want to. It’s been fun working with friends!
Lilly: I would probably say an overactive imagination. Creating silly album covers is a good output for that, but I’m constantly doodling or looking into other art mediums.
Tell us about Unpragmatic Covers! How did it get started? What was the vision behind it?
Sam: Lilly had a one-off idea for a post called “Where Is My Mind Rune?”. She applied the soundfont to a MIDI file, showed me how terrible it was, and asked if I could recompose it to sound “more RuneScapey”. A few of us sat in voice chat while I played a bunch of songs on piano using soundfont instruments and Lilly made art. We had some laughs, posted two short snippets to Reddit, then moved on.
20,000 Herbiboars later I needed a distraction, so I asked Lilly if she could make more art for me and if we could start posting to YouTube. She quickly realised how obsessive I can get so we recruited Ren to help keep up. When we started getting traction, we viewed it as a sign to keep improving and pushing ourselves and we’ve been going with the flow ever since. We’ve recently invited some other friends to create art, and our friend Sick Love has made multiple 2007-era RuneScape Music Videos for us.
Our initial channel vision was to make satirical guides from the perspective of an out of touch maxed main. Our first video was a Blast Furnace guide with a Max Cape requirement to bypass any need to switch gloves. It would be extremely unpragmatic to get 99 Smithing just to be more efficient at Blast Furnace, so we called our channel “Unpragmatic”, and Ren made a logo. When we started uploading covers to YouTube, we figured we’d use Ren’s logo and call the channel “Unpragmatic Covers”, which was ironically a perfect way to describe someone using their classical music education to make RuneScape soundfont covers.
Can you share any stand-out moments that have happened since creating Unpragmatic Covers? This could be achievements, community interactions, surprising interactions or anything really!
Sam: All of us would agree that the craziest moment was when Pixies left a confused, yet supportive comment on our cover of their song.
Can you share some of your favourite Unpragmatic Covers tracks?
Sam: The upload I’m most proud of is my first (and so far, only) original soundfont song, which was a boss theme for the Royal Titans. I’ve learned so much about music theory tendencies in the RuneScape OST, so finding a compromise between those “guidelines” and my own habits was a blast. Bouncing between fire and ice meant using a lot of different funky scales while simultaneously trying to make the whole thing cohesive. The support it received was incredible and meant the world to me.
The cover I’m most proud of is CASH by Brockhampton. The instrumental gave me a lot to work with whereas the vocals were mostly spoken, which meant coming up with my own melodies over an ethereal version of my favourite chord progression. It’s an example of a cover where I took a lot of creative liberties while remaining faithful to an incredible, incredible piece of music that isn’t an obvious choice for a soundfont cover. It was also done entirely by ear, which feels more rewarding!
Lilly: I will probably only pick the artwork that I like, but if I had to say it would be "Death Grips - Money Store" just because I'm quite proud of it.
Ren: Adding on to that, Sam’s arrangement of Death Grips - Hacker is a standout. I didn’t know the original at all. This version gives me that feeling of intense pressure and danger, like those dreams you have when you’re in your best gear in the wilderness for some reason.
Can you share any insight into the work that goes into creating a track?
Sam: First I listen to the song and map it out on a piece of paper, while marking down everything important. Then, I’ll analyse the song’s music theory and decide which game region it’d be best suited for. After hours combing through the RuneScape OST, I have an idea of how each region’s songs are composed. For example, if a song uses a Phrygian or harmonic minor scale, it’ll sound perfect for Al Kharid. Then I look for tabs, sheet music, and piano covers of the song, though sometimes they need to be done by ear
From there it’s like putting together a puzzle with pieces I’ve chosen and understanding how to navigate the limitations of MIDI instruments. For example, my biggest pet peeve is that playing one note repeatedly is incredibly grating, so if I’m interpreting something like metalcore guitar chugging I can use a tonal percussion instrument (like a marimba), break the chugging into octaves, then pan each octave to a different speaker. I genuinely believe that with the right strategy any song can translate, but sometimes they require more creative freedom on my part. Funnily enough, when songs translate naturally, I spend the entire time second guessing if I’m doing enough.
Sometimes I’ll add silly Easter Eggs if I feel they’ll benefit the cover, whether it’s leitmotifs from the RuneScape OST or SFX. After hours of editing my sloppy piano recordings, I polish the mix. On average, a song will take between 4-10 hours, though I’m consistently getting more efficient!
This is the Logic Pro File for Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden, which is one of my longest projects to date. Each green box is a piano recording from my tiny, basic, and very cherished MIDI keyboard.
These were my particularly esoteric notes for “The Only Thing They Fear Is You” by Mick Gordon. As you can see, they’re a mess. Sometimes I find old notes and can’t even tell what song they were for until checking our upload history.
Ren: Every image is a collage of fonts, hand-drawn painted and vector elements and screenshots from OSRS. A lot of time is spent trying to remember things that exist in OSRS that can go into the image or be part of the band and album name puns.
Lilly: For me, it is mostly finding album art that can easily be translated into recognisable RuneScape models/items, then trying to make it actually look good. Sometimes it is like a jigsaw puzzle and you find funky ways of making other items, like how I used a stretched out Onyx amulet and a cannonball to create a microphone for the MFDOOM cover art.
What do you enjoy most about being part of Unpragmatic Covers?
Sam: We all have the same answer. Seeing our covers lead to further creativity in the community is easily the best part, whether that’s watching how creative other video creators get while using songs, seeing people say they were inspired to make their own covers, and especially the absolutely hilarious lyric parodies in every comment section.
How can others best keep up with yourselves and your work?
Sam: Your best bet is our YouTube channel, we aren’t very active on other social media platforms!
Do you have any music or work outside of Unpragmatic Covers that you’d like to share?
Sam: This is an old GarageBand file from 2010, right at the start of my 9-month composing frenzy. It was called “Scapisj” and was my attempt at creating a song inspired by RuneScape. It’s an amateurish rip-off of Borderland from Rellekka complete with clashing notes and awkward transitions. I wanted to share it to show people that we all have to start somewhere, and to save your early work so you can track your own growth, you won’t regret it! I would give anything to tell that 2010 version of me that 16 years later I’d have done multiple collabs with Jagex and that all the hard work paid off.
Is there anything else you'd like the community to know?
Sam: This is Ren’s cat Willow going feral over her medicine. Also, Ren and I will be attending RuneFest this year! If you see us in our Unpragmatic T-Shirts, feel free to say hi! I’m always eager to talk about music and quinoa salad recipes.
Ren: Yes, I want to be embarrassing and share how I met Lilly. We are both irons (btw) and we were in the metal dragons Slayer task cave killing Steel dragons. My Slayer level was too low for Rune or Dragon boots so I was wearing Spiked manacles. Lilly started making fun of me for having no shoes on. Eventually she joined the clan me and Sam were in.
Lilly: Yeah, look at my cat.
A massive thank you to Unpragmatic Covers for chatting to us and sharing their musical methods! Remember you can find them over on YouTube.
Creative Corner
In honour of our guests Unpragmatic Covers, we're filling our Creative Corner with the melodies heard across the community. Enjoy this very musical moment!
Ruben Lievens released an epic piano rendition of Amascut's Promise!
Matt Majic's acoustic cover of Sea Shanty is a vibe. Created using saxaphone, guitar, drums, bongos, xylophone, and put together with a "dance" from sailing gameplay!
Dennis Koornstra serenaded his cat Lilou with an enchanting cover of Harmony on acoustic guitar.
There aren't enough words for how cool this RuneScape Medley Cover from My homemade crank organ "Das Orgelinchen" is! We can't even pick a favourite of the four here!
Skylar shared a beautiful cover of one of our newest tracks, Blood Moon Rises Home.
Creator News
Katerena's PvP Bootcamp is already well under way, training up a troupe of 10 noobs (their words not ours) in the fundamentals of PvP.
We shared a full breakdown of the event in our recent blog, here, where you'll find the full schedule, the full list of creators involved including coaches, and a peek at what challenges are in store for the recruits.
While training has started, the action is still on our screens as the Bootcamp runs until the grand finale on September 26th. Katerena will be streaming every Bootcamp session live on her channel, and many of the creators taking part will also be streaming their own perspectives, so you’ll have plenty of channels to choose from and we’ll link them all below.
You can also find Katerena on Kick and YouTube.
We caught up with Katerena herself to find out more about the event and see how it's all going!
Katerena:
“I wanted to see more new players get into PvP! I've also not seen many women in the PKing scene before and I wanted to try to change that. The skill gap with PKing is so high, and i think that deters people from wanting to try. So I want to show that learning the basics and getting out there is super fun; you don't have to be the best at PvP! I'm also hoping that one of the recruits gets super into PKing after the bootcamp and gets good enough to get invited in future PvP events. I want to see some new creators in there, especially women!
There have been so many stand-out moments! A few of the girls are addicted to PKing now and send multi PKing trips outside of the bootcamp everyday!
Some funny clips from multi PKing:
I really just want players to know to not be scared to go to the Wilderness and just give it a go, because it can be some of the most fun content to do in game, especially with friends.
You can catch all the highlights from the whole event on my YouTube channel.”
The Finale
The final showdown on September 26th is an OSRS Battle Royale, where our recruits will team up with their coaches for one last challenge. From there, they’re on their own.
The format is simple: start with nothing, build yourself up, survive, and be the last team standing.
The finale will feature duo teams, each made up of one recruit and one experienced coach. After weeks of training, the recruits will have to put everything they’ve learned to the test as they fight to survive alongside their coaches.
How the Battle Royale Works
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Teams will choose to begin from a list of starting locations.
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For the first 15 minutes, teleporting will not be allowed, forcing teams to run (or sail!) to traverse the world.
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Until the 30-minute mark, PvP will not be allowed. Teams will need to race to gather weapons, armour, food and supplies while it’s safe to do so.
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Once the timer hits 30 minutes, from that point onwards PvP is enabled, meaning teams can attack anyone they encounter.
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After 60 minutes, the playable area will begin to shrink, forcing the remaining teams closer and closer together until there’s nowhere left to run!
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As the battlefield gets smaller and the surviving players are pushed towards one another, every decision could be the difference between death and victory!
Who will become our Battle Royale champions?
Tune in for the PvP finale on 26 September 2026 | 19:00 UTC and watch the chaos unfold live at twitch.tv/Katerena.
We’re expecting plenty of action, chaos and unforgettable moments as our recruits face their final test.
Who do you think will be the last duo standing?
Katerena has rallied 10 creators to form her team of trainees, each bringing a different level of PvP to the table. Check out the line up:
EllieDD Jessy Potatohime Eltk ItsIvy
Poco Megan BunnyBop Jillyfish Vallie
Make sure to head over to their channels and cheer them on!
Organised Chaos
Nightmare Mass
Join us on 25 September 2026 | 15:00 UTC for a Nightmare Mass with endgame PvM creator Widega_!
The event will be streamed on Twitch and span across worlds 505 - 525, with up to 80 players battling in each encounter.
Widega is also a bit of a gamer; their achievements include reaching Delve wave 221, defeating Awakened Vardorvis with only 1 prayer point, using only thrawls and recoils for damage, and completing Awakend Leviathan with only 1 pray point and no stuns!
Alongside the mass, we’ll be speaking to Widega about their route into high-level PvM, the mindset behind their unusual challenges, and how they keep going when a single completion takes hundreds of deaths.
Bring suitable Nightmare gear and supplies - and make sure you've got access to Slepe!
RuneFest on Discord
With RuneFest just around the corner, we have a whole host of ways to celebrate over on our Official Discord server.
Contests & Giveaways
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We will be running official giveaways throughout the RuneFest livestream via our Discord server. We can't wait to show you the line up of prizes! To enter you'll need to join the server and head to the #giveaway channel and keep an eye out for the bot announcing each giveaway, then simply react to the post!
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Our volunteer team are hosting two other contests!
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Discord Banner Competition - design a RuneFest-themed banner. This contest is open until September 23rd and the Mod team are offering up a bond as a prize, with the winning banner being used in the server until mid October, plus you'll get our fancy new "contest winner" role and name colour. To enter, share your banner design in this server events thread.
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RuneFest photo contest - if you're attending RuneFest, snap a photo, whether it’s a funny or cozy photo or your first-time meeting a clan mate or JMod or long time friend in person, and share those moments in the #rf-photo-contest channel for your chance to win one of five bonds.
Watch Party
- Our mods will be hosting a Discord watch party complete with a community-generated Summit predictions bingo board! Time to find out if you guessed correctly! You can join the watch party via the dedicated RuneFest Stream Watchalong Stage channel we will open nearer the time!
New Channels
We will be introducing a bunch of new channels in a dedicated RuneFest server category!
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#rf-announcements - we'll be sharing all the RuneFest news and notices right here!
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#runefest-2026 - this is your channel for chatting all things RuneFest, whether you're attending the event or enjoying it all from the comfort of your home.
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#rf-attendees-lounge - this is a channel set up specifically for folks attending RuneFest
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#rf-photo-contest - this is where to enter the photo contest as mentioned above.
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#rf-meet-ups - to help anyone attending meet up with others from the server at the event.
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#rf-archives - to celebrate our anniversary year, this channel dedicated to sharing photos and memories of RFs past! We want to see RuneFest through the ages!
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#rf-gallery - for photos of this year's event.
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#rf-goldengnomes - want to shout out a fellow player, community or group? This is your chance to send a virtual golden gnome from you to them. There's no physical gnomes or prizes, just a whole bunch of positivity
Any channel not linked above will open closer to the time, so keep an eye on the server! We can't wait to see all your photos, memories and shout outs, and you may even see a J-Mod or two join in!
You can also discuss this update on the 2007Scape subreddit, the Steam forums, or the official OSRS Discord. For more information, check the official Old School Wiki.
Mods Abe, Abyss, Acorn, Ape, Arcane, Archie, Argo, Ash, Asherz, Ayiza, BigRig, Blighted, Blossom, Boko, Brooksie, Bruno, Bulb, Chilly, Criminal, Curse, Daizong, Default, Doctor, Ed, Elena, Enigma, Entropi, Frogs, Fuzz, Gecko, Ghost, Gizmo, Goblin, Grace, Grub, Halo, Harold, Hend, Hornet, Husky, Ivory, Jalo, Jamesy, Jerv, Keyser, Kieren, Kirby, Kurotou, Leebleh, Lenny, Light, Liron, Lotus, Lykos, Mack, Manked, Markos, Maylea, Mobius, Moogle, Morty, Moz, Necro, Nin, Nixon, Nox, Nylu, Oasis, Ori, Other, Otter, Pheasant, Philomel, Pork, Pumpkin, Puppi, Pyro, Rach, Redfield, Rice, Romy, Roy, Ry, Saiyan, Sarnie, Schmidt, Shogun, Shroom, Sigma, Skylark, Smithy, Sova, Spacebar, Spyro, Squid, Starry, Suharun, Surma, Sween, Tide, Titania, Titus, TJ, Tomb, Tsourorf, Tyran, Veda, Vegard, West, Wolfy, Yozora, Yume & Zaf
The Old School Team