For the past couple of months, Jagex has been working on bringing new changes to OSRS’ latest game mode: group ironman. The main goal of all these changes is to make this game mode more casual so that more players can enjoy playing alone or together. Are you tired of skilling up alone? Do you want a friend to high alch all the goodies you crafted to get OSRS gold? Do you dread a particular boss but could use its unique drops? If the answer is yes, then Group Ironman is for you. You can enjoy the loneliness and restrictions specific to the Ironman mode while sharing a group storage with up to four players. You can use it to help them with OSRS items, straight up OSRS GP, or get assistance.
Trading
In Unranked Group Ironman, you can directly trade with other group members. And you’ll be happy to know that you can kill bosses and monsters together without the annoying warning that you won’t receive any loot from the kill because someone else touched it first. A great perk of the Unranked Group Ironman (UGIM) is that there are no limitations or restrictions on what you can trade and how many of those OSRS items you can trade within your group. This is also true for prestige GIMs or hardcore GIMs. On the other hand, Non-prestige GIMs have trade value limitations for the first four weeks when they join an already formed group. These restrictions increase every week from 1 mil OSRS GP value in the first week to 100m worth of OSRS gold before finally getting removed starting with the fifth week.
How to Downgrade to UGIM
Another great benefit is that you do not need to start over to join a new group. If you have already started the grind, you can downgrade your account to the newest version of GIM: unranked group ironman. You will be able to downgrade any version of ironman to UGIM. Suppose you currently have a Group Ironman, Standard Ironman, Hardcore Ironman, or Ultimate Ironman that you are tired of doing. In that case, you can downgrade it to Unranked Group Ironman and join a new group.
The downgrading process differs from the other Ironman types for the Group Ironman. For the Group Ironman, you can choose to become a UGIM upon leaving your current group. To start this process, you must go to the node using the portal just north of the Lumbridge teleport. A bit further to the north than the Ironman Tutor. For Standard Ironman, HCIM, and Ultimate Ironman, you’ll need to speak with the ironman tutor in Lumbridge to start the downgrading process. If you have made your Ironman mode permanent, you must remove this option by following the link Jagex provided in their latest Unranked Group Ironman post.
Regardless of what type of ironman you played before becoming an Unranked Group Ironman, the downgrading process will take seven days. That is enough time to be sure that you want to downgrade your account and have no regrets about your decision. Ultimately, this can change if you are unlucky enough to come across a group incompatible with you or your playstyle. Still, luckily, with GIM, you will have a lot of flexibility in choosing a better-fitting group. You will still need to wait seven days to leave the group, but at least you’ll be able to find a better fit for yourself.
Downgrade Losses
- Chat Symbol
Upon becoming a UGIM, you will lose the chat icon that indicated your previous Ironman status. You will instead gain a green tainted Ironman symbol. Now there are a total of six Ironman symbols that differentiate amongst the type of ironman you’re playing:
- Gray for standard ironman,
- White for ultimate ironman,
- Red for HCIM,
- A combination of blue and grey for GIM,
- A combination of red and grey for hardcore GIMs
- A combination of green and grey for UGIMs
Interestingly enough, Jagex did not initially plan on this as they didn’t want to make UGIMs feel like less. However, based on the valuable input from the players, they decided that it’s best to have a new fancy and separate icon for this version of Ironman.
Say Goodbye to Your HiScores
This might be a deal-breaker for many and an unimportant change for others; it comes down to your perspective and to whether you care or not about HiScores. Regardless of where you stand, upon becoming a UGIM, you will no longer appear in the previous list of HiScores, whether that’s GIM HiScores, Standard Ironman HiScores, HCIM HiScores, or ultimate ironman HiScores. You will still appear in the individual HiScores with all the regular accounts, so you still have an excellent way to track your progress outside of the game publicly.
You Get to Keep Your OSRS Items
Before these changes, when leaving a group, you had to choose between losing all your tradeable items and your OSRS GP and keeping your GIM status or keeping your valuables but becoming a main account. With the new unranked GIM, you will keep your OSRS items and OSRS gold and lose your status plus status icon and HiScores. For many GIMs and other irons, this is a fantastic trade-off that brings a ton of flexibility by removing the rigidity of the ranked GIMs. The changes are a win-win for everyone; you can even start a UGIM group from scratch.