2 Years of Advice

About 2 years of Runescape, a quest cape and 1956 levels. Nope, don't have a skill cape. Haven't worked on getting one. Just doing my thing. But I've learned a few things and I'm going to share them with you. What you do with them……well……that's up to you. This probably isn't good advice for the super casual or super serious player. But if you're somewhere in the middle I hope you find something useful.

How do you make money? I know it's just me but I really don't get too wound about the money. In my first year of RS I focused on doing quests and raising my skills to do quests. I didn't buy supplies, just fished and cooked, mined and smithed etc. Pretty much the only skill I spent money on was construction. I used a lot of quest equipment (Darklight was my weapon of choice until I got a dragon scimitar after Ape Atoll). I gathered the resources I needed and used them to raise all my skills. The advantage to this is by the time I got to the point where I could wear Guthan's I had most of the money I needed for it AND the skills to quickly make money make up the difference.

Patience will make you money. Impatience will cost you. I have a friend who sells fish. He puts them on GE at max price. They don't sell. He drops to min price. If they don't sell immediately he keeps dropping the price. Then they sell and he talks about how much money he lost because he had to drop his price. I just stick things on the GE and wait. I don't need the money that urgently and I'm ok with waiting for the next day. If you're trying to make money for something expensive you can wait overnight. It's amazing how much stuff sells if you are patient. And if the money is going to just sit in your bank there's no point in rushing it.

Equipment versus supplies, always buy equipment first. Let me explain. If you buy a tool you can use it to gain xp in a skill and supplies for other skills. A dragon axe can be used to gain woodcutting xp that supplies fire making and fletching. If you buy 5k logs you might get your 6 levels but at the end you'll have nothing of value. The obvious problem here is what if you are buying 5k yew logs to make into bows? You do get some of your money back. Bu if you are buying all your supplies (bowstring, logs, runes) you'll still lose money. The RS economy is like that.

Fast isn't always the best. Rock crabs and experiments. What a waste. Sure, if you're building a pure or whatever knock yourself out. I'm looking for total skills. So Slayer all the way unless you need to be doing combat for some other reason (to get a defender). Yes, you will level faster just standing at rock crabs. But it is also mind numbingly dull. The other issue with "fast" is that it's almost always the most expensive way to do things. Understand that there is always a slower more profitable (or at least less loss) way of doing things and the faster expensive way.

Be nice be nice be nice. Does it ever hurt you to not be nice? Sure it does. When someone crowds your spot. But this is a mmorpg. Get over yourself. If you want to play alone there's a lot of other games to check out. You don't have to talk but it never hurts to be kind to someone. I've had plenty of people that I lent a quick hand to pm me a quick tip. (Great one I just heard: When your dueling ring is down to one charge high alch it for 760 gp. This'll nearly pay for the materials for a new one).

Keep your skills balanced. It's nice to be able to get what you want when you need it. And because each level requires 10% more xp then the next one it's a lot easier to get a lower level in a low skill then it is to get a higher level in an easier skill.

Have fun! Stressing yourself out isn't fun. Getting mad and yelling people isn't fun (for you or for them). Want to know why I don't have a skill cape? Because it's not fun to do something for 100 hours straight or whatever. Have fun.