Old School RuneScape's new meme is 'Explain Yourself' as scoundrels exploiting bugs slay F2P players who are unaware with gear that shouldn’t exist

Every moment in the Wilderness of Old School RuneScape is a risk. The Wilderness is a PvP enabled region that spans the northern portion of the main continent. You are vulnerable whenever you are there. The Wilderness is a place that has hosted some of the most high-end content in the game over the years. However, its greatest threat are player-killers - those who have armed and trained their characters for PvP battles. You could be exposed to an ambush by someone who has been stalking the Wilderness for over a decade. Death in RuneScape is expensive. You lose everything except your three most valuable items when you die. So, encountering a PKer could cost you gear you've worked dozens of hour for.

Fortunately, there are safeguards to prevent free-to play players from experiencing the same level of lethality as PKers who have paid memberships. OSRS members have access to a wealth of exclusive quests, rewards, and activities (many of them far superior to the limited selection of gear available to free-to play players), but they cannot use this higher-quality gear against their free-toplay peers. The equipment and spells that they can only use on free-to play servers are not available to them. This ensures that any PvP in a free server is played on an even playing field.

At least, this is the idea. Unfortunately, some OSRS free-to-play players have recently been the victims of weapons that they should not be able to use against them.

Last week, Tough-Scientist7686, a redditor, reported that he'd been attacked while playing on a free-to play server by someone wearing member gear. He attached a screenshot showing the attacker's gear, which, as it turned out, was mostly made up of items that are not allowed to be worn in F2P servers.

OSRS Redditors soon had some unmistakable proof that something was amiss. Tough-Scientist7686 then returned with a video on YouTube, in which someone was destroying free-to-play gamers with a load of members' gear contraband.

In the video you can see how the uploader's unwitting prey reacts when they suddenly receive heavier attacks than any player could possibly handle with free-to play gear. Onlookers start to notice the damage numbers that are inflicted by the uploader on their victims. They ask what strength level they have to allow them to hit so hard, and demand to know what weapon is being used.

Around 30 seconds into the video, you'll see its highlight. A player who noticed that there was something wrong marches straight at the uploader. The player asks the uploader to "explain yourself" before executing them with a rapier which shouldn't exist. It's comedy. It's drama. It's cinema. It's not surprising that it has already been memed.

The OSRS subreddit believes that the uploader of the video discovered an exploit that allowed them to smuggle out items from the Last Man Standing PvP. LMS, which is available to free-to-play players, is RuneScape’s version of a battle royale. Players are teleported to an island, where they can loot and fight for survival.

Normal circumstances would see any looted equipment disappear when a match of LMS ends. Redditors explain that some OSRS players had discovered an exploit in the past that allowed them to keep possession of LMS gear by deliberately stalling game UIs with spammed inputs.

The original LMS smuggle bug was patched shortly after it was found. It seems that a similar exploit is back, based on the above rapier incidents. The patch that was released last week, on November 6, shortly before these unsporting kills were reported, included some UI updates for the mobile version Old School Runescape. We can only speculate but it's possible those UI updates reintroduced the same vulnerabilities that were exploited in the original LMS smuggling.

Jagex, the developer of RuneScape, has not announced any hotfixes relevant to item smuggling since the last reports. If you're in the Wilderness right now, be on the lookout for someone who needs to explain something.