Plugins are now officially part of RuneScape. Following the Open Beta, Jagex has opened the in-game Plugin Hub to all players and opened the submission process to community developers who want to build their own tools.
Plugins are community-made tools that add helpful features on top of normal play, such as quest guidance or marking tiles in the world. Unlike third-party clients, RuneScape’s plugins run inside the official client and go through Jagex’s approval process before anyone can install them.
What’s available now
Every plugin from the Open Beta is now live:
- Quest Helper, covering 69 quests
- Menu Entry Swapper
- Tilemarkers
- Entity Hider
- Job Gauges
More are already in moderation, including Clue Trainer and Ground Items. Jagex plans to release new plugins in batches roughly every two weeks alongside regular game updates. For the first few weeks, though, the team is focusing on launch stability and working through a large backlog of submissions.
To open the hub, look for the toolbox icon on the Ribbon menu in the bottom right of the screen. If you use the Modern interface with the default ribbon, it sits under the Settings button. With a custom ribbon, it’s added at the end if there’s room. If there isn’t, you can edit the ribbon to add it yourself. Plugins are hosted on mod.io, so you’ll need a verified email address to use them. Jagex recommends using the email tied to your Jagex Account, because automatic account verification is planned for later. Ratings and plugin subscriptions through mod.io are also planned.
Rules and limits
Plugins must follow Jagex’s guidelines. The main rule is that they can support and enhance gameplay, but they can never replace it or carry out actions for players. They also can’t run in a separate window outside the client. Some limits come from the API itself rather than from plugin developers. Jagex pointed to two Open Beta complaints about Menu Entry Swapper as examples: shop “Buy All” isn’t allowed, and Teleport or Drop can’t be set as the default left-click option. The team says it will look into lifting restrictions like these but hasn’t given a timeline.
API feature requests currently go through the API Council, a group of trusted developers Jagex has worked with since the project started around seven months ago. Jagex hopes to open requests to the wider community later.
If you run into a bug with a specific plugin, report it to that plugin’s developer through its mod.io page. Issues with the hub itself should go through the in-game bug report tool or the official RS Plugin Discord.
For developers: a new title
Development documentation, guidelines, the AI policy and dedicated developer worlds for testing are all available at developer.runescape.com. Mod Jewel has also written a beginner tutorial for making your first plugin. Duplicate plugins are allowed, but Jagex will prioritise reviewing projects that already have community support. It also notes that an approved plugin isn’t guaranteed a spot in the next batch.
To recognise contributors, Jagex is adding the Luanatic title. It will be awarded at Jagex’s discretion to people who make significant contributions to the plugin project, such as having a top-downloaded or “Jagex recommended” plugin, or being especially helpful in the developer community. The first titles are expected in roughly a month, with reviews planned monthly after that.
Source: RuneScape official news.
