Old meets new as classic MMO players worship a famous Vtuber via gifts of bones so she can max out the Prayer skill

GamesMMOOld School RuneScapeOld meets new as classic MMO players worship a famous Vtuber via gifts of bones so she can max out the Prayer skillWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Jagex)

A party of runescape adventurers

A recent Nerissa stream was entitled,ahem, “I’m sick but there’s always time to bone.” And in some sort of meta-shift for RuneScape, a whole load of players queued up to genuflect and gift Nerissa as many dragon bones and even superior dragon bones (la-di-da) as they could. “It’s boning time,” declared the Vtuber. “Now I just await the bone donations.”

I’m sick but there’s always time to bone | Old School RuneScape - YouTubeWatch On

I’m sick but there’s always time to bone | Old School RuneScape - YouTube

And the bone-ations did flow. Nerissa’s fans, who for reasons I don’t understand call themselves “Jailbirds”, absolutely drowned her in bones. The max level for the Prayer skill is 99 and Nerissa currently rests at 96 (in OSRS the XP required for each level increases exponentially, such that the halfway point to level 99 is level 92).

The whole thing is something of an OSRS in-joke. Prayer is one of the skills that’s basically a pain in the ass to max out, being both hugely expensive in terms of the bone outlay (if you want to do it efficiently) and taking a lot of time regardless, and the benefits of hitting the higher levels aren’t even that good. It tends to be something that players do after they’ve doing everything else, rather than an important focus.

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Unless you’re a Vtuber with an army of fans bringing you the bones, of course. Nerissa never had to leave the altar (where you sacrifice bones) because a steady stream of OSRS players were lining up to hand over their dragon bones, superior dragon bones, and even doing the busywork of lighting the altar’s incense burners.

Nerissa is probably the highest-profile Vtuber to get into OSRS, which is probably why the game’s community has responded so enthusiastically to her interest. They’re not just offering bones for the bone god, but creating fan art of her in the game and even remixing some of her songs in the OSRS style.

As far as OSRS goes this is pretty wholesome, not least because the appeal of some of the game’s more bananas stories is in the time commitment some folk make to this game. Maxing out Prayer skill is all well and good, but what aboutgrinding the worst version of a minigame for 149 long hours(and abandoning 88 levels of XP) just to get a cute raccoon without committing a crime? Heck, there are some out there who’ve beaten odds higher than winning the lottery jackpot to get hold ofthe game’s rarest item. In that kind of context, getting crowds of worshippers to bring you bones seems like a pretty sane approach.

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