Equilibrium League free-to-play guide
The Equilibrium League, running 10 August to 21 September 2026, is the first League in either RuneScape game that free-to-play players can enter. This guide covers what that means and how to make the most of it without a membership.
What F2P access means
Every previous league, including RS3's Catalyst League and all six Old School leagues, required membership. With a free account you can create a league character on dedicated free-to-play worlds, complete tasks, earn league points, unlock relics and take blessings.
There are 13 free-to-play worlds among the 68 league worlds the wiki listed on 19 August: 144, 145, 222, 223, 224, 230 to 234, and 242 to 244. Five of them are US East, three UK, two US West, two German and one Australian, so a free account has a world near it wherever it plays from. Treat that as a snapshot rather than a fixture: Jagex opens and retires league worlds while a league runs, and the in-game World tab is the list that is always current.
Free access is capped rather than complete. The wiki published the three limits on 11 August, the day after launch, and confirmed the relic tier a second time on 12 August:
| Track | Free-to-play | Members |
|---|---|---|
| Regions | 4 | 6 |
| Relic tiers | 3 of 7 | 7 |
| Blessing tiers | 2 | 8, including both God tiers |
Those caps sit on the progression tracks, not on the task list: every task the task database carries is worth its listed points to a free account, in the regions it can reach.
The relic cap has a second half worth knowing before you plan around it. The wiki says some effects inside tiers 1 to 3 are also unavailable in free-to-play, without saying which, so read the passive lists on the relic page as the members version of those tiers rather than as your own.
Starting position
Every player starts with Misthalin and Havenhythe unlocked. That start is friendly to free players: Misthalin is the classic F2P heartland (Lumbridge, Varrock, Draynor), while Havenhythe is RS3's newest region from the 2026 expansion.
Karamja unlocks next for everyone. After that members pick three from Anachronia, Asgarnia, Desert, Fremennik, Kandarin, Morytania, Tirannwn and Wilderness, giving six regions out of eleven. A free account takes one of those picks and stops, for four regions in total.
Regions open on tasks completed rather than skill levels or points: Karamja at 50, then one pick each at 150, 275 and 400. Because it counts tasks rather than points, an easy task carries you toward the next region exactly as far as a master one. The practical consequence for a free account is that 150 tasks is the number that matters: everything past it buys relics, blessings and trophies rather than new ground.
Region locking is softened, which matters more to a free account than a member one: clue steps, Slayer assignments and Reaper tasks only send you where you can go, and an area task that reaches outside its own taskset completes itself the moment you unlock the region it needed (full rules).
A handful of quests and tutorials start already completed, and every region you unlock brings its own set of auto-completed quests. For a free account, which normally cannot touch members' quests at all, that removes a chunk of the usual barrier to a region's content.
How points and relics work
Equilibrium follows the formula RS3 established with Catalyst:
| Mechanic | Catalyst | Equilibrium |
|---|---|---|
| Task tiers | Easy 10, Medium 30, Hard 80, Elite 200, Master 400 points | Identical: 10, 30, 80, 200, 400, across all five tiers |
| Relic tiers | 7 tiers from 10 up to 22,000 points | 7 tiers from 10 up to 20,000 points, of which a free account reaches 3 |
| XP multiplier | 4x at tier 1, reaching 16x only at tier 7 | 5x at tier 1, reaching 16x a tier earlier at tier 6 |
Equilibrium adds combat blessings on top: a second track split across Order, Balance and Chaos. You unlock it by completing blessing tasks, five per region. Blessings do not lock your combat style, and a free account gets two resets: the one at tier 1, and the one Jagex granted every league account on 12 August. The other two are earned at the God tiers, which a free account never reaches. The blessings page lists every one of the 24, with full effects, the unlock counts and the God tier rules. The relic page now carries the complete tree, every tier with its cost and its choices, and the task page carries the full list, every tier.
How to start well
- Nothing carries in. League characters start fresh: your preparation is knowledge, not XP.
- Learn the Catalyst formula. Skim the Catalyst archive to understand how task routing and relic thresholds shaped the meta last time.
- Route the first session. The first relic arrives within minutes of finishing the tutorial, so know which Misthalin tasks you are sweeping before you log in.
- Read tiers 1 to 3 as the whole relic tree. Those three are all a free account plays, minus whichever effects inside them turn out to be members-only, so the later tiers are worth reading once to know what you are skipping and then ignoring.
- Spend the one pick deliberately. Misthalin, Havenhythe and Karamja are decided for you, and the region menu opens once, at 150 tasks. Pick for the tasks and blessing tasks you can actually finish, not for the region you like most.
- Two regions are worth naming. Players on the wiki rate Desert the weakest free pick, because everything south of the Shantay Pass is members, and rate Wilderness higher on a free account than on a members one: Daemonheim sits behind it, and the other places to train Dungeoneering (the Zamorakian Undercity, the rest of the Elite Dungeons, Sinkholes) are members content, so it is the only route to the skill beyond a few lamps. Gravite weaponry is behind it too. This is player consensus recorded on 12 August rather than a Jagex statement, and the meta is two days old.
- Take blessings for tiers 1 and 2 only. The two-pick rule that decides a God tier never resolves on a free account, so path consistency buys you nothing: take the strongest blessing on offer at each of the two tiers. Wiki players name both. Teragard's Aegis at tier 1, and it is a wider gap on a free account than a members one: there is nothing free to synergise Big Boned or Adrenaline Junkie with, and no Soul Split, so its healing is the only sustain you have, enough to hold a boss semi-AFK without food. Striking Light at tier 2, less commanding but still the pick, because a thin ability book makes boosting the basic attack worth more. Recorded on 23 August, player opinion rather than a Jagex statement.
Which tasks a free account can actually do
The task list carries no free-to-play flag, here or on the wiki. What decides it in game is each task's own members flag, and wiki editors spent 20 August cataloguing where that flag and reality disagree. It disagrees in both directions, across 52 tasks worth 4,200 points between them. Treat this as a day old and written by players rather than by Jagex: two entries say outright that nobody has confirmed them.
30 are flagged members and complete anyway (2,790 points)
The largest block is quests. Every "Complete the quest" task is flagged members, including the eight whose quests are free: The Blood Pact (10), Necromancy! (10), Witch's House (10), Sheep Shearer (30), Demon Slayer (30), Vampyre Slayer (30), One Piercing Note (30), and Dragon Slayer (30), which auto-completes the moment you unlock Karamja.
The second block is worth more. All seven "Reach level 110" tasks in free skills (Mining, Smithing, Crafting, Firemaking, Fletching, Woodcutting, Runecrafting) are flagged members at 200 points each. That is 1,400 points a free account can bank, while 120 Dungeoneering is flagged correctly.
The rest are one-offs: the Edgeville waka canoe (80), the Warriors' Guild (30), a defender (30), Tiffy in Falador park (10), the Giant Mole's combat mastery set (80), the Mage Arena bank (10), the Chaos Elemental twice (10 each), dragon bones on the Chaos Altar (30), a monkfish (80), 100 magic logs burned (200, and only by having Endless Harvest upgrade yew logs), and the Richie pet (400). Two are unconfirmed: burying frost dragon bones (80) may not count when they come from Dungeoneering, and resting with the Dead Beats in the City of Um (80) looks like it completes itself for everyone.
One of the 30 is worth singling out, because it decides your opening move. "Complete all Combat Mastery achievements for Ivar, King of Bones" (80) is a blessing task, and it only wants the two Combat Mastery achievements, Broken Bones III and Protect from Ivar, rather than the full Ivar achievement set that needs members content. It sits in Havenhythe, next to the plain "Defeat Ivar, King of Bones" blessing task, and "Kill a goblin in Lumbridge" is a third in Misthalin. Three blessing tasks unlock tier 2, so a free account can finish its entire blessing track, both of the tiers it is capped at, out of the two regions it starts with, before it unlocks Karamja and long before the region menu opens at 150 tasks.
Nine of the 30 are Global, seven Misthalin, one Havenhythe and one Karamja, so 2,380 of those 2,790 points sit in regions every free account gets before it spends its pick.
13 are flagged free-to-play and cannot be finished (980 points)
These are the ones that cost you time, because they read as available. Ten of the thirteen are Global, so they show on every free account whatever it picks: a pineapple pizza (30), red dragonhide armour (30), an elemental battlestaff (30), a yew shortbow (80), a magic shortbow (80), 100 unstrung yew shortbows (80), 100 yew stocks (80), 200 magic stocks (200), level 50 in all non-elite skills (80), and all of the Free to Play Lodestones (30), which wants Asgarnia, Wilderness and Desert at once where a free account takes one. Most of the Fletching and Ranged rows are collateral from the Mid-Game Rebalance turning those items members-only. The other three are the Karamja salmon (30, whose only fishing spot sits in members-only Shilo Village), the Taverley dungeon blue dragon (30), and 350 rune darts (200, which needs a members quest).
9 turn on the one region pick (430 points)
Every agility-lap task and every Hunter-creature task is Global, so all seven appear on a free account's list, and every one of them needs Asgarnia: Burthorpe is the only free agility course, and there is nowhere else a free account can train Hunter. That is 10, 30, 80 and 80 for the laps and 10, 30 and 80 for the creatures, 320 points. Medium and Hard Lumbridge (30 and 80) need Asgarnia or Desert, for the holy mould and for gold rocks, though Endless Harvest can upgrade silver ore into gold for the second.
Read with the block above, that is an argument for Asgarnia that the region screen never makes: it converts 320 points of Global tasks from unfinishable into routine, and brings six more mislabelled Asgarnia tasks with it. Weigh it against the Dungeoneering case for Wilderness in step 6, rather than instead of it.
Worth upgrading to members for the league?
Membership adds two more regions, four more relic tiers and six more blessing tiers, including both God tiers. That is where the gap is: a free account tops out at tier 3 relics, so it never reaches the upper XP multipliers that make the second half of a League run fast, and it never picks a God tier blessing at all.
Against that, the whole task list is public and the point values are the same for everyone, so a free run is a real run rather than a demo. The task data still carries no free-to-play flag, so the pool has no single published number, but it is no longer unmapped: the 52 tasks above are the known places where the game's own members flag is wrong, and the 13 worth 980 points are the only ones that will waste your time.