Jax's Runescape Blog

September 5, 2011

2011-09-12T00:25:00.000-07:00

99 Fishing
99 Construction
99 Woodcutting

Maxed cape.

Monks, used up planks from slayer and luckily had done enough assists that I was only 300k away. I could have waited 10 days and done assists but wanted it done before bonus xp weekend.
Woodcutting sawmill. Love it.

Did not have a party. Told a handful of friends and that was it.

September 4, 2011

2011-09-11T23:26:00.000-07:00

Got 99 Cooking to end August. There's a nice gap between raw and cooked sharks and they buy and sell easily. I took advantage of this to get cooking done, do some chatting with friends and make some GP. I'm getting close to maxing now and don't think I'm going to have the patience to wait a month for 99 construction.

And then today got 99 Magic and 99 Fletching. Livid farm combination maging and making bolts. I have a bunch of diamond tipped bolts that won't sell anytime soon. But I don't need the monty right now so I put them in the GE hoping that they will clear out before bxpw. Otherwise it'll be a long while. I still need 300k livid farm points to be done with it but for now I don't want to go anywhere near there for awhile.

Down to 3 more skills and less then 500k til max. I wanted to get done before bonus xp weekend. Partly, I want to be done. Partly, I want to dungeoneer.

August 30th, 2011

2011-08-30T22:19:00.000-07:00

Well the bad news is my main gaming computer died. Waiting to replace it but in the meantime there's no way I can dungeoneer. I'm playing on safe settings on my very old computer.

Mostly been camped at livid farm. Getting group vengeance will take awhile, but it'll be good for dungeoneering and it should just about get me 99 magic. So focusing more on maxing while my computer is getting replaced.

After a few days there I really started to hate it. I pretty much do the energize/flower bunches and then fertilize. Sometimes I do the construction and less often the flower identification. Then I get a burst and do everything for a few cycles. Then I get distracted, and go back to my slow method. Think I've gotten about 200k produce points the last few days.

And today our Citadel updated. Did a bunch of mining (citadels are fantastic for xp, don't let anyone fool you otherwise) and got 99 Mining. Realized that the circus updated and did that for 99 Range. Realized that there is a decent price difference between raw and cooked shark so now working on finishing off cooking.

August 20th, 2011

2011-08-30T22:10:00.000-07:00

105 Dungeoneering. Finally feeling really comfortable with the skill. My teams are pretty consistently around the 30 minute mark as long as nobody gets disconnected. I realize there are groups who go faster but that's about the speed that causes my computer to get bad door lag. I really wish the skill had come out earlier in my Runescaping. But then again, being higher levels does it make it easier.

As much as Jagex got criticized for the "minigame" of it I think they did a lot of things right. There is a good time to take lower leveled people, you have to work as a team, you can't buy your way to being overpowered and dominating.

Would love to see a minigame for it though pitting two teams against each other. No keys. Race through doing guardian doors, puzzles and things of that nature. Points for kills, doors, puzzles etc.

August 15, 2011

2011-08-25T19:37:00.000-07:00

99 Crafting. That entire last level was a combination of livid farm, helping friends with effigy assists and standing around daemonheim making airstaves while waiting for teams to form, and doing dungeons. Slow and cheap.

That leaves the following for maxing:

Ranged-Circus and using a bow on my c1 floors. Might go kill some chompy birds.

Mining-Dungeons plus citadel mining plus an occasional star

Woodcutting-Dungeons plus citadel plus clan ring

Cooking-Cook the fish I get for 99 Fishing

Fishing-Dungeons and maybe some rocktails

Fletching-Was doing diamond bolts, then broad bolts, then maples. Probably just keep doing it while waiting for teams

Magic-Livid Farm plus circus plus dungeons

Construction-Assists plus livid farm plus dungeons

August 11, 2011

2011-08-25T19:32:00.000-07:00

Nightly construction assists are paying off with 98 Construction. And otherwise been doing nothing but dungeoneering. 104 Dungeoneering tonight.

Yes, I realize I could be maxed by now. Less then 5million xp. But I really enjoy dungeoneering and feel no hurry to get maxed. Got into a team that regularly gets floors less then 40 minutes without fighting and screaming. Going to keep running with them. The crazy thing is, at this pace, I won't get 120 dungeoneering for over a year. Not that I'm pushing that hard. Getting around 200k xp a day there and then wandering off.

August 4, 2011

2011-08-21T21:57:00.000-07:00

98 Fletching. Still hating it. Only reason it's moving up is I wait for dungeoneering teams or I go to livid farm and work it. At dungeons I make bows (using up random wood). At livid farm I do just the fertilizing, energizing Pauline and the flower bunching. If I feel up to it I'll do the construction bits but mostly I skip it. Then put together 100 bolts and start over again. Otherwise both are just too boring.

August 1,2011

2011-08-21T20:36:00.000-07:00

103 Dungeoneering 3 days ago. In with a good group of people who do it regularly enough that it's picking up the pace of my xp. Doing more keying, getting faster. I could be maxed by now but it's hard to say no when you log in and get asked to do a floor.

Got 99 Strength and 98 Cooking.

Started doing c2 and c3 floors. One person clears the floor, the other person skills like crazy. Getting around 50k an hour fishing xp plus cooking/firemaking/mining. Got on a streak of a crazy number of fishing spots per floor. Testing further.

July 27, 2011

2011-08-02T15:37:00.000-07:00

Been spending a lot of time doing nothing but fletching and waiting to find a dungeoneering team. I don't think I've set foot in w117 in a long time. Usually wait for friends to form a team and I tag along. Made 97 Cooking and 97 Fletching while waiting and working things. I was cooking sharks but am thinking of changing to Rockfish. But can't get any on the GE at the moment so I have orders in for both.

Fletching...hate it.

I did get 99 Defense in a dungeon. I switch between Berserker and Tank depending on need and finally chipped out the last little bit of defense XP.

July 24, 2011

2011-08-02T15:29:00.001-07:00

Been hanging out at the sawmill making planks. Almost as fast as ivy but with more peace and better gameplay. Tossing in a little ivy when I want to be brain dead. Made it to 98 Woodcutting. Will probably do a combination of sawmill, ivy and the occasional evil tree with friends to get the next level.

Oh and Dungeoneering 102. I am really starting to to like this, 30 minute larges with friends makes it go by fast. At least for the summer while everyone is around quite a bit it's been easy to form teams.

And finally 98 Magic. I swear, I haven't trained this other then the circus, teleporting around and some time with friends at livid farm. The circus is just fast free xp.

With all the dungeoneering I'm doing can see that it's making an affect on all my xp. Which is great.

July 19, 2011

2011-08-02T15:28:00.001-07:00

Fletching 96. Continue to hate it. Making yew longs while waiting for dg teams to form.

July 17, 2011

2011-07-25T18:23:00.000-07:00

99 Smithing via artisan's workshop and 99 Attack from doing some c1 floors.

Here's my notes on Artisan's Workshop, ymmv:

I think doing the tracks would be a good way with someone with less then 30 smithing to get started. It is free which at lower levels is always a good thing.

I despised cannon making so I have no thoughts on it. But try it and see how you feel, some people I talked to really liked it.

Dwarven burial armor and ceremonial swords are the only way to go at higher levels. As much because the xp/hr is good as you can see the pipes to fix.

Pipes give pretty good smithing xp, respect and are free. Highly recommend doing them when they burst.

If you are going to burial armor you can semi afk it. Yes, you won't get top level xp but it's still not bad. I did Steel Ingots I for the sake of cost until I got within 100k, then it was all Mithril II. I would suggest doing steel I to start with until you figure out what you want to do.

You can deposit ores in noted form.

You can use SC tools but don't bother. You want to earn respect too. You'll get faster xp but not faster respect.

I bought Quick Repair first. That helped a lot. Then bought the learner and student boosts from Suak.

Ceremonial swords are a good way to mix it up. It gets easier as you get higher in levels because your hits aren't so crazy. By 98 I could get a perfect sword 50% of the time.

Perfect swords are worth 120% xp. A lot more then the same materials would be for regular smithing.

I'd suggest mixing up the swords and the armour depending how much attention you want to pay to things.

I can't provide xp/hr since I kept experimenting. But it's pretty good.

I always killed the ancient armors that were coming off the wall, but I was looking for some attack xp. I don't think it's especially efficient to do it this way but if you are just playing for respect it's not bad.

I did artisan's workshop with the thought that at some time in the very distant future (2+years from now?) if I wanted a trimmed completionist cape it'd be out of the way. I still need 90 respect but I did put a big dent in it.

Once I finished up my time at the workshop I had less then 20k to 99 Attack. Normally I dungeoneer using strength but I had some low floor dungeons to do so I ran through them with friends and quickly got 99 Attack.

July 12, 2011

2011-07-15T23:44:00.000-07:00

Haven't been posting much. Been heads down in skilling.

Been doing bits of dungeoneering with friends and my melee skills are slowly working toward 99. Bound a primal battleaxe 100k xp short of 99 Attack. So went and found all of Clarence and been killing the various creatures in the artisan's workshop. I remember trying to find all of Clarence right after it came out. And how much I struggled and kept getting poisoned. I went this time and it took 15 minutes and wasn't any problem. Amazing what a few hundred levels (and 2 years of updates) can do.

Otherwise been working Smithing (June 27 for 97 and July 9for 98) via Artisan's Worskhop. It's expensive and not especially fast (nor especially slow) and it's one of the requirements for the Trimmed Completionist cape. No idea if I will ever go for that cape but figured I may as well get this out of the way if I ever did.

Also got a champion tacklebox. Not a huge deal but I really enjoy fish flingers. It (along with some penguins and trolls) got me to 98 Fishing.

I've been maxing out my assists since effigies came out. If my friends didn't need one I would go looking for a runecrafting assist. That finally resulted in 99 Runecrafting.

So my plan is to throw penguins and trolls at Fishing (slow, boring), do construction assists nightly (expensive) and then work my other skills in between. Looking forward to 99 smithing in a few days.

June 25, 2011

2011-06-28T22:59:00.000-07:00

101 Dungeoneering. Not sure why. My friends keep inviting me along and I enjoy it. Otherwise I'm doing a lot of fish flinging (getting very close to that Champion's Tacklebox) and doing Artisan's Workshop for smithing xp. Trying to get construction and runecrafting assists. That's pretty much the extent of the training lately. May try to get all the rest of my naval outfits this weekend but it'll probably be a few more Saturdays.

If you're around on Saturday's at 3pm EST, World 104 Trouble Brewing is usually active.

June 18, 2011

2011-06-28T22:52:00.000-07:00

Finally killed Jad. I think the final score is Jad 12-Jax 1. But I only had to kill him once.

I did the most wimpy method you can imagine. The idea is to get to him and hope he spawns on the boot of the "Italy" rock. Then eat up past 970 and venge yourself up. Stick your head out and get hit. The venge hits him and after 5-8 hits he's dead. His healers don't show up since you never actually hit him (actually I only ever saw the top of his head). Anyways, it's done.

I then immediately finished out the rest of my tasks and got the Taskmaster emote! I have to say, this is one of my all time favorite emotes. I spam clicked it off and on all day.

So that's another item on the Completionist cape crossed off.

(Using all my points/bonus xp on fishing at the moment).

June 9, 2011

2011-06-14T15:41:00.000-07:00

Got 97 Cooking a few days ago. I had about 50 urns from messing around with that update when it came out. Cooked up all the raw fish (swords/tuna/monk/rocktail/shark) that cluttered my bank. Sold off everything but some of the rocktail and bought more sharks. I don't burn them and I make a small profit.

A good friend of mine (who's a champion keyer) is back for a short time....or maybe longer. Regardless, he's been on a dungeoneering tear. I go with him every chance I get. The floors are fast and the team drama is minimal. When he's not around I'm working on filling my costume room still. Managed to find a weekly Trouble Brewing game (Saturdays, noon PST w104) and got a fair number of tokens. I'm down to needing 3 more sets of Naval clothing. Decided to focus on "free" clothing items (like lumberjack and the mining outfit). Bought all the cheap clothes I can for everything but treasure trails. I probably should figure out some strategy to make a bunch of money but right now I'm not there.

100 Dungeoneering to make the level total 2450.

June 4, 2011

2011-06-14T15:38:00.000-07:00

Finally

99 Slayer

This is actually one of the capes I've wanted for a long time. When I started on 99 Agility (my first cape) I actually was thinking about agility vs slayer.

I did most (98%?) of my slaying in proselyte with a whip. For the last two levels I used a rapier on metal dragons and it was faster. Used extremes every chance I got. (Getting to 99 Herblore does create quite a potion stockpile).

For the last 500k or so I had borrowed a friend's full Bandos. Tried it on some tasks. Really preferred the prossy, but I'm sure that's just me.

Thinking I'm going to spend the rest of June filling up my costume room.

May 30,2011

2011-06-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

May had a successful completion. I've been pushing hard to get to 99 Slayer but kept getting delayed by my own choosing. Chasing clues, stars, penguins, quests...whatever.

I did stumble across 97 Fishing by some using a few weeks of penguins plus doing as much fish flinging as I could. I realize that the tackleboxes aren't as useful as I first thought but I enjoy the puzzle of fish flinging followed by 10 minutes of afk fishing. For that it's the fastest xp in the game.

Also hit 99 Herblore. I went about 12 days without getting an effigy then started getting multiple effigies per task! Oh yeah...I was using my effigies on fishing too. No wonder that last level went as fast as it did without my actually fishing. Anyways, along the way I hit 99 Herblore. I think the only expensive skill left to get to 99 is Construction. Summoning, Herblore and Prayer are done. Smithing I have a stockpile of gold ore thanks to all the stars.

May 23,2011

2011-05-23T16:40:00.000-07:00

98 Mining. A combination of an occasional star, penguins and effigies. Really been doing well with getting effigies lately. Went 18 tasks without one and then got 3 in one task and since then have been pretty consistently getting one every 2-3 tasks. So while I'm pretty much only slaying I've gained a lot of xp in other skills. Penguins and lamps are currently going to mining just because. Once I get 99 slayer I will have 3 skills (mining, woodcutting, fishing) that can't be assisted. The rest I can rack up assists for. (Not that I intend to only do assists, just saying....)

Got 98 range sometime in the last week. Not sure when. I know I was close when I did the circus two weeks ago and then didn't think about it. Since I cannon every task I can it just happened in the midst of combat.

The nice thing about this big slayer push is that I'm seeing the same people over and over again. Making new friends and having people to chat with while slaying makes things go faster. Plus, I have a pretty good (ie large) group of folks who need effigies done for them. I'm not really picky about what I do (I'll do fletching and cooking no problem) and I try to make sure I get my assists in every day. Just pushing those levels along.

May 12, 2011

2011-05-13T11:16:00.000-07:00

98 Slayer, 98 Defense, Attack and Strength.

I finally gave in and got a chaotic rapier halfway between 97 and 98

I finally gave in and got a chaotic rapier halfway between 97 and 98. Love using it on metal dragons. I don't use it on anything I can kill faster then they spawn. For that a whip is fine and I don't have to pay to recharge it.

I bought the bonecrusher and herbicide a while back. Wasn't sure about the bonecrusher when I got it but I wanted to test it. I have to say....I love taking these with me to assignments. It's not about the xp benefit. While nice I have 99 Prayer and the herblore xp is trivial. But what I love about it is that it keeps my slaying area clean. Which translates into more gp. For example, if I'm cannoning spectres....any herbs that I see I grab. I don't have to check what it is. If the herbicide doesn't instantly destroy it then I know I want it. If I see something on the ground I know it's worth looking at (well...except the junk armor). Keeping the area uncluttered just makes things easier.

I went and spent some time at Livid Farm last week. 10 minutes...I'm fine. 30 minutes it's getting to me. A full hour....that's a struggle. I've been making it a clan event which helps a bit. But I am thinking of just doing 10 minutes a day. Yes, it will take forever but the spell I want (group venge) I only need once I start seriously dungeoneering so I have some time.

May 6, 2011

2011-05-06T14:17:00.001-07:00

Let's talk about capes. Specifically completionist and trimmed completionist capes.

Specifically why aren't the following required:

Champion's Tackle Box (fish flingers)
All sets of Great Orb Project robes
All sets of Naval Clothing
100 Gnome Deliveries
Win a game of gnomeball
Obtain a sceptre from Pyramid Plunder
Full Rogue's Outfit from Rogue's Den
Get a Barrow's drop
Full Witchdoctor
Win a game of Stealing Creation
Full Lumberjack
Full Mining equivalent of Lumberjack (the update we're getting this month)
(I hate the games room so I will continue to ignore it's existance)
Get max shards in familiarization
Get over 100 Tears of Guthix
Get a phoenix (either) familiar

Am I missing anything? Are any of these touched on any task?

Come on Jagex....if we're going to play 5,000 games of Castle Wars (huge grind) AND get all Champion's Scrolls (LUCK!) AND have to get one of every circus costume (no comment) then all of the above should be included too.

April 26, 2011

2011-04-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

Got 97 Mining using penguins and stars. Otherwise I've been busy slaying. Been very liberal in my use of points to avoid tasks.

Here's my list of Kuradel assignments:

Aberrent Spectres-****
Abyssal Demons-***
Aquanites-not unlocked
Black Demons-*
Black Dragons-**
Bloodveld-****
Blue Dragons-***
Dagannoth-****
Dark Bests-**
Desert Strykeworms-*
Dust Devils-*
Fire Giants-*
Gargoyles-**
Greater Demons-***
Hellhounds-****
Ice Strykewyrms-not unlocked
Iron Dragons-**
Jungle Strykeworms*
Kalphites-***
Living Rock-***
Mithril Dragons-***
Nechryaels-*
Wyverns-*
Spirtiual Mages-*
Steel Dragons-**
Suqahs-***
Terror Dogs-***
Tzhaar-****
Warped Tortoises-**
Waterfiends-*

One star-Ask for a new task
Two star-Might ask for a new task if I don't feel like it
Three stars-Always
Four stars-Always and Happy!

I acknowledge that there is no rational reason for some of these. Terror dogs I like because I can tele right into them. Same with Suqahs since I'm always on lunars. Loath waterfiends. Spiritual mages-too much work to figure out what I'm wearing and no profit. Why do I like Miths and sometimes pass on Steels? No idea....

Told you no rational reason.

April 12, 2011

2011-04-12T16:49:00.000-07:00

Wandered up to the Lunar Isle over the weekend and messed around at Livid Farm. Have to say, really enjoyed it for about 15 minutes and then it got repetitive. It might be a good distraction while I'm bankstanding but I can't see myself camping there for hours. But as a change of pace activity while farming I can see it making sense. And those people who are crying about it taking 44 hours to get the highest level spell, sorry but it should be hard. Those higher level spells would be very powerful and limiting the people with them is fine by me. I'd love to see more content like this that takes time. Yes, the game needs to be tweaked to make it more fun but there's a lot of ways to do that. Anyways, 99 Constitution on the 6th. Can't get excited about it really because it's just a milestone to 99 Slayer. And 97 Range on the 9th. I've gotten to the point where I only do tasks that I can cannon, darkbeasts and blue dragons. At least so far. We'll see Kuradel offers up tonight.

April 6, 2011

2011-04-06T15:48:00.001-07:00

No levels since last post. Not excited about the April BTS. Don't get me wrong, I think the updates will be really useful in some ways and I'm sure I will find myself using them. But nothing that makes me sit up and go "Now THAT will be fun!" (like a pirate monkey zombie quest). Been mostly slaying with a little bit of random other stuff. I am getting my assists in every night and while waiting using my Explorer's Ring to smelt bars. I can fill up an urn every other night using this method (mix of addy and mith). Not efficient, but it's free and it beats standing there just waiting. And I use my alchs since I usually have enough time to burn through them too. Two things that I find amusing lately: 1) Go to your favorite spot to find assists (Daemonehim 117 or assistclan chat). You'll see people announce "Offering 91 Herblore" one time and then go "OMG....nobody wants herb" and then either leave or just lose it. I got from 91-97 RC doing nothing but assists, sometimes it takes a little time. Spamming chat doesn't really help, you just have to be consistent and pay attention. Don't expect people to PM you, if you see someone who is asking for help PM them. And if you are in D'heim HIDE your public chat, but don't turn int off. That way you can see if someone is asking for help. 2) People who are hunting for penguins who ask: Where in McGrubors Wood (Dragontooth Isle, Entrana) is the penguin. Those are all really small confined spaces....did you look?

March 31, 2011

2011-04-01T14:42:00.000-07:00

Wow sorry about that last post. I reread it and realized that I had hacked together two different posts and neither made any sense. I really need to proofread better. On the 25th I got to 97 Runecrafting. Every single xp was either penguins, lamps or assists. I don't think I've actually earned 50,000 xp by making runes since I hit 91. I've been fairly consistent with doing my assists every night. When friends ask I usually do whatever they need but more often then not I use 117 Daemonheim or Assistclan and in those cases I only advertise runecrafting. The next day I got to 97 Slayer. I actually really like slayer and I train so many things at once that this one kind of crept up on me. Then tonight I went to a clan fishing event and got 96 Fishing. I've done a lot of fish flinging and an occasional hour of fishing with my clan and that's about it. Not sure how I want to train fishing once I decide to. I do try to do one round of fish flinging every day so that helps move it along without it being dull.

March 23, 2011

2011-03-28T21:36:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'm in a slump. But it seems that suddenly Jagex is increasingly.....half assed about things. First they hold the clan month kickoff the same weekend as bonus weekend. Then they ask the clans to issue challenges, race etc. But with minimal advance warning-which is fine-I guess. Then when they post the individual challenge list they don't alphabatize that list. There's hundreds, if not thousands of names. Just thought it could be dropped into a spreadsheet and sorted by name. Just....a finishing touch you know? Anyways, on to the skilling. Decided to fool around a bit in the lumberyard doing that plank making game. I kind of enjoy it and it worked well as I chatted with a friend. But I'm a fan of minigames and puzzles. Not sure what the xp rate was and how it compared but I did get to 97 Woodcutting. (I'm going to guess about 50k in 30 minutes). A friend asked for a crafting assist and I ended up at 98 Crafting. Honestly, I have no idea how I trained. Which I guess is the point. I just did stuff that I liked. Next up 99 Thieving. I know how I trained this. I got to 95 with a little thieving on weekends. I decided to spend all of bonus weekend raiding tombs. Arguably not the fastest thieving xp in the game but it was fast enough and I could do it for long enough stretches to make it worth it. Got to nearly 98 over the weekend and then just kept at it. I found myself playing less, which is fine since I have a garden to prepare, but I'd get on and push a bit and finally hit 99 Thieving and 2430 total levels.

March 18, 2011

2011-03-23T12:18:00.000-07:00

Took a day or two to recover from bonus xp weekend. Got 97 Attack, Strength and Defense before returning to thieving to pick up 98 Thieving. Our clan has a competition this week for thieving so aiming for 99 during that week. Then full bore into 99 hp after that (don't tell me it's constitution).

In the last few months I've become increasingly irritated with Jagex's decisions. The bugs, quite honestly, don't bother me. I understand lots of lines of code, millions of users....guaranteed bugs.

Bonus weekends meh. Yes they make things easier but it's a game and I get it. Wish it was better executed but it's minor.

Nope...the thing that makes me facepalm is twofold:

1) Why why why is a Jmod (Mod Poppy) starting a clan? Seriously? There's hundreds of people running hundreds of clans and Jagex starts their own? I don't get it. I know it's the year of clans (in fact, I think I said it before Jagex did :) ) but come on. Jmods have a huge advantage to running clans (think of recruitment) and a Jagex run clan is not within anyone's definition of what a clan is about. It should be about players forming groups of friends to do stuff. I realize that this is part of community outreach but it just hits me wrong. Normally not something I would rant about or even go beyond "meh" with but then

2) What the hell Jagex? Kicking off clan month the same weekend as bonus weekend? How does that make sense? What in the hell were you thinking? There's exactly 6 days a year that EVERYONE pretty much goes heads down into skilling and you had to pick 3 of them to kick off clan month? What about the other 10 months of the year?

March 14, 2011

2011-03-15T16:47:00.000-07:00

Had a great bonus weekend in RL. Which kind of threw off my plans in RS.

Started the weekend by checking the RS forums. I really REALLY wanted to start playing but after the goofs of the last two weekends I decided to make a last minute check to make sure nothing was glitched/changed.

I would have been ok with a weird bug or some calculation issues. I had hoped that they had fixed all the technical bugs...and it looked like they did. But what's with nerfing the Circus bonus? They had 6 months to think about it and assess since the last bonus weekend and they waited until the day before to announce it?

So anyways. I made about 200 Super Anti Fires. My bank still had a lot of pots from the last two weekends and I didn't want to make more. Plus, I gave away some herbs and stuff to friends. Getting close to 99 Herblore and figured I could effigy/herbicide/herblore habitat/assist the last 700k.

After a quick herblore session it was off to Pyramid Plunder. Got to 96 and 97 Thieving. Halfway to 98. I was very conscious of skilling or logging out and not standing around doing nothing. For some reason I could theive for 3 or 4 rounds then I would log off, get some water, come back ,a few more runs, log off walk the dog etc. Altogether, played 10 hours over the weekend. The last hour was slaying.

Now I'm back to working on Slaying and Thieving. Getting close to a lot of levels.

March 6, 2011

2011-03-06T00:10:00.000-08:00

1.5 million xp so far this month and not a single level. Been working on Slayer with some thoughts towards bonus xp weekend.

Normally I'd say I'm doing an expensive skill that doesn't have any other way to get a bonus modifier (ie stealing creation tools or similar). But the only one that really fits the bill is herblore. I need 1,000,000 xp for 99. That's about a month's worth of assists. Plus, I have herbicide from dungeoneering and effigies I'll be getting still from slayer. So overall, this just doesn't excite me. But I am low on super anti fires and sara brews so I may take a handful of each. Looking at circus, herblore and then a lot of thieving. I can push to 99 on bonus weekend but I like the idea of going outside. It's not out of the question though since we're supposed to have lousy weather here this weekend. Once I get down to 1.1 (and start to hate thieving) I've got some raw rocktails to cook up. Only other skills that I would consider are mining and fishing but I think by the time I get down the list to them I'll be done.

I did try out herblore habitat on Friday. Hadn't been there yet and since it combines 3 of my favorite skills I wanted to try it out. I think I caught on pretty quick. Growing the hunter potion really slowed me down but I used the time to get more familiar with the game. Other then the potion giving bonus farming herbs is there any potion from there that I should really keep?

February 28, 2011

2011-03-06T00:07:00.000-08:00

Ended the month with 98 Hitpoints and 99 Firemaking. Went and got my adze back midway between 98 and 99 with no problems from pker's. Did most of my burning in Oo'log. GE is too crazy between the flower game, people begging, scamming and testing the language filter. Though I appreciate that it exists to keep all the crazies in one place.

February 20th, 2011

2011-02-28T19:45:00.000-08:00

96 Ranged on the 17th followed by 96 Slayer on the 18th and then 95 Thieving on the 20th. So that brings everything up to at least 95.

I'm thinking of doing thieving for bonus weekend. I can't think of a skill I like less and the promise of really fast xp and big numbers kind of is motivating for me. Maybe some fishing or mining too, not sure.

Surprisingly, I'm not encountering as much off color language as I thought I would when the censor got removed. I have been in more remote areas lately so that may contribute to it, but it's been surprisingly normal.

February 17, 2011

2011-02-17T15:05:00.001-08:00

Fletching, Cooking and Fishing all to 95 on the 11th, 12th and 13th followed by Firemaking 98 on the 13th. Been slaying a lot except on weekends when slayer areas are full, then working on other skills.

Tried out the new urns and I really really like them. I think it's a nice little bonus for skillers and not too crazy.

I started playing RS because I like quests and I was looking for a game that had good quests but wasn't 100% combat based. Hard combination I know. When I started I did a few quests and figured that I'd take a few months, knock out the 43 quests I had available and that would be that. Didn't really realize that there was a whole P2P element and wasn't really looking for something to do beyond that anyways. But I kept playing and got members after a week or so. Figured, ok....one year and I'll be done. I thought 99's were kind of dumb/end gameish and didn't care about them. So year one was all about questing and getting some basic competency.

About midway through year one I started making friends. And not the kind where you just add them and say hi. But friends that you actually trusted to go with you into the wildy without stabbing you. That really helped me along. I was rocking my mithril/steel armor and found out that it wasn't nearly as cool as I thought. (Keep in mind, this was when dragon armor was king and barrows was exotic). Most of the next few years after that were spent training skills, playing minigames and messing around. It's not that I wasn't goal focused. (Anyone who's read this blog would know better). But my goals were smaller-get all skills to 75+, complete diaries, race a friend to a goal. Along the way (before the GE) I was focused on being self sufficient. I got badly ripped off early on buying a mix of seeds. I didn't know that there were price guides and I thought I was getting a great deal on some exotic seeds. I quickly figured out I got ripped off and from that I was very reluctant to buy things from people I didn't know.

Once the GE came out and prices kind of stabilized I had reached the level where being self sufficient was making less and less sense. Instead of needing 50k for a level I needed 500k. I was still pretty self sufficient (growing my own herbs and making potions) but I realized that there was an impractical aspect to it. So I started buying things every week. With my kingdom going I didn't need that much stuff. So 100k gp a week of bones, gold ores, cannonballs and oak planks. I'd buy toadflax seeds with the profits from farming (and made a lot of pots with that toadflax too) . That was about it. I'd buy 2nds for potions as needed. Altogether I never spent more then 500k a week on supplies. When battlestaves became easier to buy I would make/buy air orbs depending on my goals.

I did this for over a year, maybe a year and a half. I had a slow steady stockpile of supplies. I was probably 75+ on all skills by this time. Making 500k a week wasn't at all difficult. Some combination of slaying, skilling and selling products and gathering daily supplies (pineapples and seaweed in Catherby, sand from Burt, Pineapples from Del Monte etc).

About 6-9 months ago I changed my formula to a million gp a week in bones and 100k a week each of ores, shards and planks. For the most part, I just continued working various skills. Got a whip drop, sold it, bought dragon bones once or twice. But mostly, it's about the slow steady collection of cash.

Why am I telling you all this?

1) I have no idea how long it takes to get 99 in anything because I never had that as a goal.

2) I have no idea how much gp a 99 will cost you because I never kept track. And I did random stuff. Like for prayer, I burned tons of shades because I had a friend who loved it and would ask me to join her.

3) I owned a dragon hatchet for about 2 months. I owned Guthans for about 3 months. I slay in a slayer helmet, fully proselyte, dragon boots, whip, barrows glove, dragon defender, Varrock cape and a glory. (Until I got a slayer helmet I used a helm of neitznot, before dragon boots I used white boots, before the whip-a rune scimmy and a legend's cape).

More importantly, I'm the last person people should ask for advice. Being efficient usually makes my eyeballs bleed. Forcing myself to do something I don't want to do sounds too much like work. My goal is to be entertained. Yes, I do create other subgoals along the way but making my eyeballs bleed has never been one of them.

February 9, 2011

2011-02-09T17:10:00.000-08:00

First the levels,

Feb 3 got to 96 Runecraft followed on Feb 4th by 95 Range. It feels like cheating when I get levels doing nothing but assisting. But I still get my 30k a day.

Second,

The wildy goes away, next Jagex announces that we can pay our way out of trouble and then the censor goes away.

My prediction for the next two updates:

1) Microtransactions. We pay $10 gp and get 50million gp or something stupid

2) Welcome to RS-Dating. Go to Falador, fill out this simple survey and we'll match you with your new pixel b/f or g/f.

January 31, 2011

2011-01-30T15:02:00.000-08:00

Jan 15- 96 Mining

Jan 16-96 Attack

Jan 17-96 Defense

Jan 19-98 Dungeoneering

Jan 25-96 Strength

Jan 27-97 Magic

Jan 30-99 Dungeoneering

Nearly a whole month of not posting and not much skilling. My apologies. I usually post while I'm doing an afkable skill and there's no way to afk Dungeoneering.

That and at Christmas dinner some friends started talking about Glee. I thought this was the dumbest show I'd ever heard of since Knight Rider. But then I decided to check out an episde on Hulu. So then I had to watch the first 1.5 seasons that I missed out on. And for some of them I had to rewind and play again because they were fun. So the short story is, sorry but blame Glee for my lack of posts.

(And no, I have not rage quit since Wildy is coming back).

January 6, 2011

2011-01-06T00:05:00.000-08:00

First post of the New Year. Had a really busy (IRL) New Year's weekend. Lots of last minute friends and family stuff.

Got 95 Slayer and 97 Constitution on the 2nd. Otherwise it's been really quiet.

I'm a bit disappointed that there's no "2011 Behind the Scenes" from Jagex like there's been in previous years. Even if it's just to say "stay tuned".

December 28, 2010

2010-12-29T15:46:00.001-08:00

Got to 97 Dungeoneering. The last couple levels have gone fast. I've got one set of friends who like to do 3 man dungeons. We can get them done in less then 50 minutes usually. Another group of friends who like to do 5 mans and that takes 35-50 minutes. My personal best was a 35 minute 5:5 large. 89k xp or something like that.

Thoughts on 2011-Wildy, Clans and a Jagex Conspiracy

2010-12-25T23:31:00.000-08:00

Remember when we had the year of Jagex fixing stuff?

And in some ways 2010 was the year of high level content and dungeoneering?

So here's what I think 2011 is going to be about (and before I go on, not all updates will be about this. Just like this year not all updates were dungeoneering but we got a lot of stuff related to it).

2011-The Year that Clans return to Jagex. In force. For a reason.

First, there's the developer blog that came out earlier this month about tools that support clans. Jagex is saying that there will be a true "clan chat" along with the ability to create ranks, have a clan registry and other features. That's going to be a major undertaking requiring both game engine and web development effort.

If you were in RS prior to 2007 you'd remember some of the dominant pking clans and how the removal of the old wildy killed off a little clans. Some have survived, a few have grown but most just faded away. Even when PVP worlds and clan wars were introduced they (clans) weren't the same.

So what did we get this week? Let's be honest, it's not a poll it's an announcement by Jagex saying that the wildy will be back. And what will come back with the Wildy? Clans!!

I've been a rampant multiclanner and have been in all kinds of clans. And I'd guess that 80% of clans are pvp/pking/warring clans with about 10% skiller clans and 10% others.

And why does Jagex want to do this? Cause it's an MMO. People play RS to interact with others. Some of the interactions are positive, others are negative. Depends on viewpoint. But it's about interacting. And what provides lots of interaction and therefore keeps people coming back? Clans.

So my guess is wildy is coming back, Jagex is going to make a push to be more supportive of clans, and they are hoping that the clans cause people to keep playing more/longer which is what their business model is all about.

December 23, 2010

2010-12-25T23:20:00.000-08:00

I was closing in on 2400 and wanted to finish it before Christmas. So I pushed hard and got to 94 Fletching which brings all my skills to at least 94. With the assists I had been getting smithing xp and was coasting along. I dug out all the ores I had at a clan event and superheated a bunch of them. Then I found 2 half used sc hammers. I can free up and two bank spaces? Woohoo!! With dungeoneering bankspace is at a premium for me so I finished those out and got to 95 Smithing. So at this point I was sitting at 2396 and really wanted to just get 2400. I started looking at the effigies I had banked. I found a few woodcutting ones and got my hands on an axeman's folly. That gave me a couple of lamps that I used for Runecrafting. Then I found 4 thieving/construction 97's. I am not a fan of thieving and can always do assists for construction, but I decided I really wanted the bankspace more. So to my house, brewed up some tea, opened the effigies and hit 95 Construction and using the lamps on Runecrafting hit 95 Runecrafting. (side note: If you do rc effigies 91 and 93 are a pain to find. 95 is very easy. Something to look forward to).

About this time a friend asked me to join him dungeoneering. We ran through a few floors and when I looked it was 1am. I've got some time off work so this wasn't a big deal. But I also saw that I had gotten enough crimsons for 99 summoning. (Blues are too pricey for me). So I spent some dungeoneering points and got to 96 Dungeoneering. All that was left was 4 trips to the summoning obelisk in Gu'tanoth (I needed to buy shards too) and I found myself with 99 Summoning and 2400 total levels.

WTH Is Jagex Thinking?

2010-12-21T13:55:00.000-08:00

I'm not even going to link to it but you can find it on the front page.

Jagex has opened up a vote on bringing back old school wildy pking and free trade.

I'm just going to list out my thoughts and try not to cuss up a storm but no promises.

1) Let's start with Free Trade. I'd be fine with this IF we could go into the GE and set our prices. So if I want to sell coal for 200gp ea I can go in there and enter 200gp as my price. Maybe the ge would show an "advised range". But I really used to hate having to chase down buyers/sellers for my stuff. It was a huge pain and a fantastic way to rip people off. But if the GE remains as it is but people can trade for whatever then prices will go out of whack and become useless. I like one stop shopping!

2) Wildy pking. I was around before the end of free trade/wildy pking and I never considered pre2007 RS as the Golden Age. I'd rather deal with a rev then a pk'er any day of the week. If pking in the wildy comes back then forget about stars in the wildy, forget about penguins and we're back to forming a gang of people to help a friend with a wildy clue. To be honest, this only marginally bothers me. I'm red to most players so I'd be safe for a lot of stuff (though the people who could hit me could do some pretty massive damage fast). I rarely went into the wildy for any non clue reason before and I could go back to that now. But I'd like to see brawler gloves and all the other pking workaround stuff removed. If we're going to have to go back to the annoying days of pker's then take away all the "bandages" that have been put on pking in the interim (bye bye corrupt statius armor, and statues, and all the "fake" rewards from pking)

3) The voting mechanism. What idiotic Jagex manager thought that this was a good idea? Even a poorly run election in the most dictatorial regime could come up with something better then this. Did Jagex hire Kim Il Jong as their elections consultant? Entering your name which is at the TOP of the page registers you as a yes vote? So people who enter their name thinking that they are using it to ENTER the vote are actually VOTING? There's nothing to stop someone from creating 500 accounts and voting 500 times. Or, even easier, just go find a list of Jagex accounts and vote using all those names. Are you kidding me? Pull up high scores--there's 2 million names right there! A fairly organized group of people could divvy up the list and probably get a few hundred thousand votes in fairly easily.

So I'm left to believe one of two things:

1) Jagex had a wild Christmas party where some people got drunk off their ass and said "hehehehehe wouldn't it be funny to post a survey and get everyone all excited about bringing back the wildy?" and in that drunken state they designed their webpage and put it up without thinking about it at all and then went outside and tried to go sledding on garbage can lids. Today they are severely hungover and going "wth were we thinking?"

2) Jagex has already made the decision and is doing this to get buzz going about it.

December 21, 2010

2010-12-21T13:22:00.000-08:00

December 13th 94 Cooking and 94 Thieving. Since then knocked out 94 Range (12/14), 95 Attack and Defence (12/16), 98 Herblore (12/16), 95 Strength (12/19), 94 Fishing (12/20) and then 95 Construction (12/21).

It's pretty much a ton of slayer during the week with some dungeoneering on weekends. While waiting for teams to form I do my bank standing skills. And play a little fish flinging with friends.

I've also been very disciplined about getting assists. Specifically, getting construction, smithing and runecrafting assists. I've even helped friends on occasion with herblore and crafting but I prefer to pass on those.

I was fortunate and made friends with a group of people who slay A LOT. That results in my getting about 4-6 requests a day for assists. Plus my friends and clan. I've been trying to hook people up with assisters which works out great for everyone involved.

I try to reset close to the same time everyday. If I don't have any friends who need an assist I hop over to w117 Daemonheim. I HIDE public (not turn it off) and then announce "Offering 91, 93 RC assist". The funny thing is, most people turn off their chat entirely. So you'll see someone offering 97 herblore standing next to a needing 97 herblore. Hence, hiding your chat lets you still see people chatting without spamming your chat box. Watch for people who care looking for what your offering. It rarely takes more then a few moments.

December 11, 2010

2010-12-12T00:17:00.000-08:00

Got to 93 Thieving a few days ago. Have to admit, not a skill I like. I'm trying to do a combination of pyramid plunder, dwarf traders and monkey knife fighters to keep things interesting.

Pyramid plunder: Fast, doesn't require a ton of focus. Not a great way to make money. I use my enhanced excalibur and anti totem and that is more then adequate for healing/preventing poisoning which adds to my speed.

Dwarf traders: Lure a guard into a room and go crazy stealing from dwarves. Not the fastest xp but nice rewards. And it's quiet.

Monkey knife fighters: Good rewards, xp is pretty good. Probably the best of the combination of xp/gp. Does require a lot more concentration then I sometimes want to put into it. Go to the 2nd/3rd floor or you'll have a lot of people coming by to chat you up.

Otherwise, working on quite a bit of slayer during the week. Thieving and various other things on weekend. Been doing quite a bit of fish flinging too. The xp is good and I enjoy the puzzle of it.

December 2, 2010

2010-12-03T14:29:00.000-08:00

Got 94 Runecrafting on Sunday (11/28) to finish out November with 2385 levels. My master plan is to work on 2400 total levels which means doing whatever until I magically get some more levels.

I was out hunting penguins and it was exactly as Merch describes it here: http://runescape.salmoneus.net/forums/blog/merch_gwyar/index.php?s=d8ad80ee4b202c1b7cdf5f3fb563ccc9&showentry=57000

I read that and laughed. Personally, I like the guy who yells "Where's the penguin on dragontooth?" (substitute Entrana/McGrubors woods). It's a tiny little area. Just GO THERE AND LOOK!

Got a friend of mine to start playing and he loves it. It's kind of fun to talk to someone who's just learning the ropes and is having fun. The stuff that I find annoying or mundane he's going "wow did you know?" and it's kind of cool. I know at this point that I don't even see a lot of RS. I just go without looking.

But I did have a good laugh with a friend the other night. We were listening to two guys discussing various outfits and how they looked. How disappointed they were with the dragon scimitar and the angle it was held, where the elbow sat etc. And then what bottoms went with a robe that one of the guys had.

I'll be honest and admit-if you were to walk into my house in full 3rd age I would have no idea. I'm sure after 4 years I've seen it somewhere. I think I can recognize the basic metals, d'hide and prossy armor. I think I'd know Guthans if I saw it. But I don't really recognize much beyond that. Even though I've owned all kinds of stuff. I know it by it's attributes (bonuses to strength, hurts mage, is heavy etc) but I just use overhead camera view for 90% of my gaming and couldn't really comment on colors, spikes, length etc.

It's actually pretty cool that some people put that much effort into how they look. Just reminds me that people really do play for their own (very random) reasons.

November 27, 2010

2010-11-27T23:46:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Hope you all had a great week. I went to my first "Black Friday" in real life and I will never be doing that again.

Got 98 Prayer on Monday. Went and cashed in all the zeal I had from killing Nomad plus altared the bones I had left from my push to 98 and found myself just below 800k xp til 99. I'd been buying 100k gp worth of dragon bones a week since the mid 70's prayer. Admittedly, not the fastest way but it was consistent. Then I upgraded to 1million gp a week in dragon bones a few months ago. Again, not exciting but consistant.

Then spent the rest of the week working on slayer and got to 94 Slayer and 96 Constitution. I'm doing a few days of dungeoneering and a few days of slayer each week to break up the boredom. And I can't say I'm even thinking about constitution leveling, just seems to be a byproduct of leveling other combat skills.

So then the new update came out. And my friends needed apple/banana/orange seeds. I hadn't checked my kingdom since the last double xp weekend so I knew there'd be a lot in there. So I checked it and started shoving herbs and nests and seeds into the GE. Most sold pretty fast and I had a nice pile of cash in front of me. So I bought dragon bones. And got 99 Prayer. I also bought a bonecrusher and a dragontooth necklace. Combine those with extremes and I can pretty much pray turmoil through 60% of a slayer task without needing more prayer. Very very handy. Maybe not the best use of my points but at this point I have a lot of them so I'm willing to spend a few (the other thing I bought is the antipoison totem. Amazing. Useful in a lot of ways. Highly recommend it).

Anyways, been dungeoneering with a bit of fish flinging and star chasing mixed in the last few days. Got to 95 Dungeoneering. Been doing a mix of larges with friends and mediums solo (I c1 the first 30 or so floors unless friends want them for the XP).

2010-11-23T12:37:00.000-08:00

Per Eggebrecht: http://runescape.salmoneus.net/forums/index.php?autocom=blog&blogid=1391&showentry=57258

(Bold=read, *=saw the movie, italics=started it and hated it so much I put it down or flung it)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien *
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling*
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens*

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott*
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (if it weren't for school I'd have gotten to page 10)
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare<--Read a fair chunk of the comedies and dramas but not "complete"
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (most overrated book ever)
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell*
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (school requirement, awful)
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown*
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding (school requirement, awful)

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding*
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson (awesome)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (in French no less, I should get double points)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole (my favorite of all time!)
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo*

November 19, 2010

2010-11-19T13:37:00.000-08:00

Mad scramble before the holidays in the real world is impinging on my 'scaping.

I have managed to get a bunch of levels since my last post though:

93 Ranged, 94 Strength, 94 Attack, 94 Defense all through a combination of circus/slayer/dungeoneering.

I got burned out on dungeoneering after I hit 94 Dungeoneering and pretty much quit doing it except with a few friends. Tried to do a large floor last night and it was a miserable experience. Not because I don't like it, but because I kind of forgot what to do. Going to do some solo floors over the next few days to get used to it again. Mostly slayed since last week. Got 2 whips and sold them and some other stuff from slaying and bought a lot of dragon bones. Ran through 3 pack yaks of altaring bones and getting close to leveling. I have 98 banked and a bit beyond that. 99 Prayer may be doable by the end of December. It really depends though on how much dungeoneering I do.

I'm thinking of 3 days of dungeoneering and 3 days of slaying a week. I keep getting asked when I'll get my next 99 or if I'm going for all 99's at once. To be honest, I don't "go for 99" because I get bored along the way. So I switch skills every few days. Which makes it look like I'm going for all skills 99 at once.

Anyways, decided that my next goal is 2400 total levels. It's pretty attainable (January?) and buys me time to figure out what I want to do next.

November 8, 2010

2010-11-08T09:55:00.000-08:00

Only level to report this week is 93 Dungeoneering. I've pretty much quit actively training it but I still love running with my friends and helping out new people. So it's been drifting upwards. I've got a couple of friends who are training for 99 or 120 and always try to answer the call when they need a 5th.
I had a couple of floors with people who were leeching. One guy tried to justify it to say that I'm getting a 5% bonus for his being there. Well, fine, but I'm also taking a lot more damage and it's taking a lot more time so no, the 5% bonus isn't worth it. Another person I just called out on it. Otherwise though I've had a blast with this. And considering how many floors I've run I can't say enough good things about my friends and comrades in arm.

Still haven't gotten a plan together for year 5. And no, I wasn't thinking of quitting. Maybe throttling back a little though.

The funny thing about dungeoneering is that it's made me more of a team player. I usually prefer to skill solo and hang out in a clan chat or read a magazine or surf the web. But if you are in a dungeon you kind of have to pay attention. Which makes you interact more. There's a few people that I have rarely talked to but that I know from something who are now on my friends list. It started out as "this person is really dungeoneering a lot I should add them so we can team" to actually talking about stuff other then teams and dungeons. I'm not saying the skill is perfect, but to all the people who are raging about not wanting to form teams.....seriously...chill out and have fun. Sure there are idiots. Just endure them and remember to add the good ones to your friends list.

And this leads to my next thought. People are way too focused on bad people. I hear raging about how how awful a dungeoneering team is or that this person did this dumb thing etc. Or, heaven forbid, you show up without a prommy 2hander. Really? And it's not just in dungeons but let's start there. How often do you hear: I was on a great team, people laughed, this guy fished for me and we had fun? Or Yeah, it was a tough boss but my team pushed on and it was too bad I died but we worked it out? Instead it's rage rage rage. I realize it's human nature, but give me a break. Sure there's people that I'd rather not dungeon with. But to be honest (and fair) it falls into 2 categories. People who are just asses. They are noticable but to be honest they are just another vocal minority. You find them, figure out what they are and just don't go with them again. And then there's people who are trying to find their way. Maybe they have nothing bound, or something underpowered. Or they haven't done group dungeons before and don't know what "gd ggs" means. We've all been there recently. Why not just pm them and ask them if they understand? If they are new they will appreciate the help, if they are an ass you'll confirm it. And don't say they should just know. Nobody just "knows" an acronym or the difference between a tooler and a keyer or that whatever. (And before you rant at me about "well you have high level friends who are nice you don't go to w117" I DO go to w117. And I have met jerks and nice people.)

Which brings me to my next point (I had a lot of coffee this morning). What's up with people being so flipping intolerant of new people? Seriously! Have you never been the new person in class/work/club/team/party/whatever? Do you not remember what it's like to walk in to a situation where everyone knows everyone else and try to fit in? You see it in public and in other areas. People whining about not having friends in game or everyone being a jerk. But then they turn around and turn off public or ignore people who are "green" to them or decide that because someone is a bit awkward or doesn't understand their "cool" inside joke that they should be treated badly. Hello!! You don't make friends if your public is off all the time! People are jerks to you because you are a jerk to them. Yes, there are certainly some people who should be ignore or are total head cases. But most of the time I find that people ask to add me. People want to connect with people. Otherwise we'd be sitting at home playing single player games. Yeah, I don't always chat when woodcutting/fishing/whatever. I'm not arguing that. I'm just saying, the people who whine about the RS community are just as guilty of the behaviors that they whine about as their targets.

November 1, 2010

2010-11-01T22:42:00.000-07:00

End of year 4.
2373 total levels.

Met the goals I had to start the year. All skills to 92. Bunch of other things.

Been thinking a lot about this post the last few days.

In the last four years I've learned a lot. Met a lot of people. Spent a lot of time standing in banks.

To be honest, I had a lot of things I wanted to say in this post. But right now they are still a jumble in my head.

I've had quite a few people ask me about my goals for year 5. Specifically is the plan to get all 99.

To be honest, I don't know if there will be a year 5. I'm not saying I'm quitting, just saying I don't have a plan.

It's not about the community, or about the lack of high level updates. Or about the grind. I just don't have a plan.

Year 2 was about getting a quest cape.
Year 3 was 3 99's
Year 4 was all 92's
Year 5 ????

Anyways, I'll probably get a post or 3 up in the next few days that's the year in review.

October 26, 2010

2010-10-26T00:05:00.000-07:00

As I draw to a close on my 4th year I've been pushing to mop up levels. Got to 93 Strength and 93 Slayer. Funny thing, I haven't gotten an effigy in 8 tasks. Task 9, living rock creatures I get one. Next task, hellhounds I get 2. Just random.

By the way, cannoning hellhounds in the Taverly resource dungeon is great. Fast and quiet.

Knocked out 97 Crafting. Had a bunch of air orbs. And of course, once I get to less then 50k xp I started pulling out all my other crafting supplies. I'll be busy alching leather armor now.

Then 98 Summoning. This is the first time in about a year I actually intended to do summoning for xp. Mostly I do it in dungeons and when I need the pouches. I think I have enough charms now, but I don't want to spend the money. I'd rather keep getting little bits of xp from dungeoneering and waiting to see what happens.

Got to 93 Cooking and 93 Fishing. Mostly cause I was close. It's funny but with dungeoneering xp does sneak up on you. Have done little bits of fish flinging too so I just finished off the levels. I fished for about 20 minutes in Piscatoris with a friend and thought it was the most boring thing ever. I may start doing fish flinging daily just to chip away at it and guarantee that I'll never have to actually fish.

And finally, 90 and 91 Dungeoneering. I'm really enjoying this skill. And yes, I've had some bad teams and some good teams. But it's just fun. It's different though. Nobody I know who's done it for a bit doesn't get into it. Especially when you're going with friends.

That brings me up to 2367.

I have to tell you a secret though. I was woodcutting while waiting for a friend. Some guy asked me my woodcutting level. I said 96. He said lucky. And he was secretly right. I didn't spend hours standing chopping trees. See, I fell into one of those pits in Lleyta. And as I stood up my hand brushed against a piece of metal. It was a bit tarnished but it had some writing on it. So I rubbed it on my sleeve and.....a giant genie appeared. And he gave me a wish and I asked for 9million woodcutting xp and Poof! 96 woodcutting.

Really hoping I get lucky again and find a 96 Dungeoneering lamp.

October 19, 2010

2010-10-19T23:35:00.001-07:00

An incredibly busy week. Finally really got the hang of dungeoneering and got 88 and 89 Dungeoneering. Still a mix of friends and w117 randoms. Getting pretty good at getting into a floor and getting through them quickly. Learning a few tricks here and there.

Also got 93 Smithing and 94 Construction with effigy assists and smelting little amounts of gold ore while waiting for people. What I really want are 91 RC assists but they are hard to find. And if a friend needs an assist I'm happy to help if I can. So I have been getting some runecraft assists. I see a lot of people looking to do assists in runecrafting and farming. Hard to find people for construction and smithing. So I take what I can quickly and figure that I can use penguins/lamps/diaries to get to 93 and maybe have a broader scope of people to go after.

Got a little burned out on dungeoneering. It's a high focus skill. So I did some slaying. I love hellhound tasks now! It's so easy to cannon them in the Taverly resource dungeon (the one you can access after level 40 or whatever Dungeoneering). I've had 3 tasks there and never seen anyone there. Set up a cannon and go. It's not as fast as mutated bloodvelds because of how the spawns are set up but it's a lot faster then just meleeing them. Plus, since they don't drop much it's easier to grab what you want and go full throttle.

Got a few clues. Nothing exciting except that I got a Saradomin Platebody! It's my second one so I sold it and bought the full helm and have a request in for the shield so I can complete the set.

Otherwise I'm looking for a team to do floor 45 with. Or I may just go w117 it on Thursday or Friday. Kind of switching between slaying and dungeoneering with a bit of fletching/smithing/crafting while I stand around semi afk.

And right before posting this I hit 93 Attack and 93 Defense while finishing an Abyssal Demon task. That's 2359 total levels now.

October 12, 2010

2010-10-13T15:32:00.001-07:00

A friend had a house party with an open altar over the weekend. That pushed my prayer along and I hit 97 Prayer. Just 2 levels (and 50m gp) to 99. Also got to 87 Dungeoneering.

I've been doing one floor every other day or so in W117. I haven't had many bad teams, had a few great teams and mostly good teams. The xp is such that it's worth the 10mins of getting organized to do that.

Started the new Void quest. Haven't finished it yet. Did the boss fight 2x and lost interest. Maybe I'm still hung over from my Nomad standoffs. But I'll get it done soon (I think). I have 2 diaries left to do and they both hinge on my killing Jad. Waiting for Kuradel to assign him to me before I go down that path.

October 3, 2010

2010-10-03T23:39:00.001-07:00

Busy few days. Managed to get 96 Magic a few days ago. It's so much a skill a train as a skill I use and happen to get XP. The only thing I do that gives alot of xp would be alching all those air battlestaffs I make. Otherwise it's just little bits and pieces from teleporting, dungeoneering etc. (Which is why I'm not very helpful if asked how to train Magic.)

Did a bunch of slaying and got to 92 Attack and Defense. I finished my task right after I got these levels and went to 117 Daemonheim to see about doing some assists. I was 6k xp away from 92 Strength and 130 Combat. I saw a guy advertising for floor 40 and traded him so I could join. He invited me, I was looking at my teams stats, and found myself booted. 130+only! Oops.

So I went and did 2 dungeons and got the xp and 92 Strength. And 130 combat. I guess that's good because I can use W117 now and get easier teams. But to be honest, I don't really want to. I'm slow at dungeoneering, I get tangled up in combat. And I have a lot of friends who atm are training like crazy so I tag along with them.

Which lead to 94 Constitution and 85 Dungeoneering for a total level of 2350.

And then 86 Dungeoneering for the fun of it.

So I've reached my goal at the beginning of this year. As I reach my 4th anniversary I have all skills to at least 92 and a few to 96. (If last year they were below 92 I wanted to get 92 and below 96 get them to 96). I got a few skills (mining, herblore, constitution, summoning) way past that.

Now I've got a month left in this year to think about what I want to do next year. I'd really love to get 90 Dungeoneering this month too, we'll see.

September 28, 2010

2010-09-28T20:30:00.000-07:00

Hit 92 Smithing last night. Just smelted gold with gauntlets while chatting with friends and reading the forums. And did assists....and rocks. Did a little bit every day while I looked for people to assist so it didn't really feel like I was working for it.

Then got to woodcutting, which I've been doing while waiting to tag my jade vine if I'm early and while standing around trying to get a dungeoneering team. Plus a lot of rocks. 96 Woodcutting.

And then did fletching. This one I was trying to work on since it's one of my few sub 92 skills and it was easy. Made a lot of maples unstrung which I have no use for but with my kingdom it's dirt cheap. And it left me free to chat and work on other things. So add in 92 Fletching.

And it got me to thinking. I think dungeoneering was needed. Here's why.

You have skills like woodcutting, cooking, fletching that are stand around and chat with your friends skills. They get treated like second tier skills because they are afkable. But really they work for a MMO. They let you do something while chatting.

You have skills like all the combat stuff, firemaking, hunter etc where if you want to do them well you can't really chat. Or at least will be less chatty.

And now you have dungeoneering which requires the focus, you can't just chat but you can be with your friends doing stuff with them. Which kind of makes it the combination of the other types.

Having said that, I think there's a little too much afkable stuff but not a big deal.

September 19,2010

2010-09-20T15:59:00.000-07:00

Due to the start of the college football season and a few games I really wanted to watch this weekend I didn't much dungeoneering (2 floors) and spent most of my online time working on prayer and cleaning out my bank. Got to 96 Prayer and I think I may have enough bones to push to 97 (or get really close).

Planning on playing a bit of Trouble Brewing on Sunday so if anyone wants to play PM me in game for details. Still working on filling up my costume room.

And anyone know where to find 50/50 games for castle wars and great orb project?

September 16, 2010

2010-09-16T22:47:00.000-07:00

Got to 92 Runecrafting. Wasn't planning on it. Just started chipping away at the elite diaries, did a few assists (I have to say that 91 RC is the HARDEST thing to find). Anyways, I got it without planning on it as I was assisting someone and then fireworks!!

Got 83 Dungeoneering. The more I do this skill the more I like it. It feels like a skill, not such a grind.

6 weeks til my 4 year anniversary. On track for all my goals and thinking about my year 5 plans. I have a few things on my list but not sure what else.

Just a question but when penguin hunting....do you really need to know where the McGrubor's Wood or Dragontooth Isle penguins are? Really? Cause I can see with Gnome Stronghold, Jatiszo, Neitznot etc that those are pretty big areas with room to hide. But McG's? Dragontooth? You could run the whole thing in less then a minute.

September 10, 2010

2010-09-11T17:17:00.000-07:00

To end bonus xp weekend I got 82 Dungeoneering. I put in 22 total hours over 4 days of bonus, a bit more then I usually do. So that put me at 2335. I want to get to 2350 by the time I get to the end of my year (October 31). So 15 levels isn't too bad.

Spent Tuesday and Wednesday gathering rocks for the statue. Built my fourth one on Wednesday. Looked a thte elite diaries when they came out and decided to put them off to work on other goals.

Then the next day I changed my mind. My Argougne was already done. And I needed to fight Nomad. And Jad. The rest would be pretty easy. So I worked on some rocks and thought about how I wanted to do this. I was really hoping that I could find 2 people a day that needed 91 runecrafting effigy assists. I was really wrong. If I tried I could get 1 if I hung out in the assist chat and Daemonehim in 117. (So if anyone wants a 91 rc assist let me know!!) So now I want 93 RC to make it easier to find people to assist.

So anyways, I borrowed a BGS from a friend and geared up. Aksed a number of friends what to take and got a lot of advice. Died 7 times. Time 8 I knew I was going to make it. I got a bgs spec on him, hit a few 750's with the ruby bolts, spammed the kyatt attack and it went pretty fast. I had gotten him down to his melee frenzy once before and he had healed back up. So I knew I needed to step out and just beat on him. Which is exactly what I did. Spammed the kyatt, bgs spec again, lots of arrow shots and it was over. I had such a rush that I kind of was an idiot for the next half hour. So that was 2 down.

Lumby, not much to it. Did what I needed to do (does anyone ever use the anvil in the Draynor tunnels? why do I need to light a log on a random building?)

Then came Seers. Why not have me pick a coconut from my tree? How about barehanding a shark at Catherby? Nope, had to grow a potato!! And catch a tuna and salmon? Ok....medium level maybe. But elite? Why not make me chop down a mage tree and make a mage long from scratch? That would have made a lot more sense.

Anyways, got that done. And the Falador one (why not go into a resource dungeon? This one I found annoying too in that it was "go find this obscure place and do this thing that you would never do" to ge things crossed off)

So now I'm stuck. Karamaja I need to beat Jad, Relleka I need to kill an Ice Strykeworm. And I don't want to spend the 2k slayer points if I need to get a fire cape anyways. So I'll wait and keep working on slayer until I get a Jad task.

So if you need 91 Runecrafting I reset at 5pm EST or around that time. Let me know and I'll be happy to help.

September 5, 2010

2010-09-06T00:08:00.000-07:00

About 2/3 of the way through the bonus weekend for me.

Spent the last week kind of getting ready for it. Unlike the previous weekend I had no skills that I had hard and fast goals for. As I blogged previously, I knew more about what I didn't want to do then what I did want to. Did the penguins in Tuesday night (right when they came out) and cashed in those points. Wednesday, after I reset the statue I got 2 rcing rocks and with it came 91 Runecrafting! Double nats plus effigies. (though as I've come to find out, finding people in need with for 91 runecrafting is a bit tricky. I usually see 3 or 4 other people advertising that they are offering 91 rcing).

Anyways, I made unfinished pots, gathered rocks, sold off all my herbs from 3 months of miscellania and bought a lot of dragon bones (not used yet, thinking of using them next weekend.) Went with a few friends dungeoneering. I'm running around like a crazy person and suddenly the magic fireworks go off. 91 Cooking?!?! I was close and someone cooked a bunch of fish and I guess it pushed me over.

Anyways, bonus weekend came. Started at the circus. Was watching the xp fall. Love the circus as a first stop. Range and mage are both slow for me. Then made pots. Had about 150 Torstols and made them all into overloads. 97 Herblore. Less then 30 minutes in and got my first level. Took off on a thieving tear and got to 91 Thieving within the first 2 hours. The intensity wore me down a bit so I did some cooking. And slaying. Loved slaying. First gargoyles which went fast since I used overloads/turmoil (trying to max out my bonus). Then I got abby spectres. Grabbed my cannon and headed to Pollinveach. Was hoping that nobody was there and got really lucky. Started cannoning and whipping spectres. Took a yak and grabbed up the good drops. No levels but a lot of xp there. By now I was 6 hours into it. Decided to take a breather and did some cooking while thinking about what to do next. A few more hours of thieving got me to 92 Thieving. The last 200k took forever. I kept getting bored and logging out. Anyways, in there I mixed in some dungeoneering runs too. Friends were organizing runs and I went along. Made it to 80 and then 81 Dungeoneering.

Not bad for 2 days worth of skilling.

August 28, 2010

2010-08-28T00:16:00.000-07:00

Nearly done with all the end of summer house maintenance. Not had much time to skill or blog. Got to 91 Attack, Defense, Strength and 92 Hitpoints. Hit 79 Dungeoneering. Probably some other skills or two and hit 2326 total.

Been thinking about what to do for bonus xp weekend.

Agility, Farming and Hunter are off the table.

I can get better XP using SC tools with mining, woodcutting,fletching, smithing, construction.
Firemaking I'd rather use my gauntlets and ring. And at 97 I have no use to raise it at the moment.

Wasteful to use it on Summoning (at least in the first 10 hours). Same with dungeoneering and prayer.

Slayer is tempting.

Magic may be but....can't get excited about it.

Herblore....got 96...close to 97. But it'll be expensive. And I can sell the herbs and seconds that I have for a lot of cash. Hmmmm.....

Crafting. Battlestaffs. Tempting....not excited though.

Thieving....dislike it but at double xp and I don't have to fight people for room....tempting.

Fishing, cooking, runecrafting are potentials.

I'm putting together 2 lists.....1.1 xp and the first ten hours.

First ten hours:
Circus-should take 3 mins and give me a bucketload of mage and range xp.
Herblore (just making overloads and sara brews as I don't need anything else and don't want to lose a bunch of money making pots I won't use).
Crafting-battlestaffs and cutting gems. Should be fast easy cheap.
Thieving. Was thinking of doing runecrafting. One more week of penguins and rocks should put me at 91. After that I can assist......
Cooking/Fishing-I might do this if I get bored with thieving. But I enjoy these both and kind of think I'll spend the time working on skills I dislike.

After 10 hours:
Slayer and dungeoneering. I'm thinking of just small rushing all floors. 10% doesn't sound like much but it all helps.

Any thoughts?

2010-08-16T20:18:00.001-07:00

91 Smithing, 78 Dungeoneering and I know I'm forgetting something. Anyways, been in and out of RS. It's hot here and I've been trying to get some end of summer stuff done. (Side note: Painting gutters is not fun).

Anyways, I really like dungeoneering. I've got 34 floors done in this run and I'm waiting for the update to do 35. Hoping I can get to 79 Dungeoneering before I have to reset. I did a floor 1 over the weekend and at 35 prestige even that wasn't bad xp (ok, so not great but not painful to see).

Anyways, once the update comes out I'll be doing a bunch of dungeoneering (thinking of spending the weekend pushing hard on it) so if you're looking for someone feel free to shout.

July 31, 2010

2010-08-01T00:44:00.001-07:00

Flurry of end of month activity.

91 Fletching a couple days ago, then 75 Dungeoneering, then 92 Construction. Then today got to 91 Slayer.

Need hunter and fishing rocks this week but otherwise had the rest in 3 days. I'm ready to be done with the rock collecting, but 8 weeks isn't bad. And if I really don't like it I can put it down for awhile.

Haen't been fish flinging lately though and I kind of miss it. Been getting back into star chasing instead. Seems that my D&D's run in cycles.

Getting back into slayer and dungeoneering. Once rocks are done and I reach a few modest (within 1-2 level) levelling goals I'll be devoting a lot more time to those two skills. Got my first effigy after 13 slayer tasks (forgot what dropped it) and then 2 tasks later got another one.

Two friends started blogs and I'm sorry I didn't post this sooner:

www.sheblok.blogspot.com
www.pongsadventures.blogspot.com

I'll be adding them both to the blogroll in the morning.

Happy August!

July 25, 2010

2010-07-26T21:59:00.001-07:00

Not much to report from a weekend of skilling.

Did my part for my clan’s Jagex cup team. We’ll see how that turns out. I have to say, I was kind of looking forward to the cup this year but at this point I’m more annoyed about it then enthused. I did manage to get 92 Fishing. I know it’s minor but I’m kind of annoyed that I fished/cooked for 2 2 hour blocks and wasn’t allowed to bank. That’s a lot of fish to eat or drop.

I have been taking full advantage of the ancient effigies. For those who have been away for awhile and are not yet up to speed on the last few months worth of updates (like a good friend of mine who PM’ed me today in game to tell me she’s now EXPECTING!! grats!!) here’s the quick and dirty:

Ancient effigies got introduced into RS a few months ago. It’s a rare(ish) drop from a whole bunch of creatures. I’d provide more information here but I haven’t gotten one yet in 11 slayer tasks.

Anyways, these things drop. You pick it up and it goes through 4 stages. Don’t ask me the names since it doesn’t really matter to me.

Each stage requires a certain amount of xp to satisfy the effigy and get it to the next stage. The first stage requires level 91 in one of two skills and grants 15k xp. The second stage requires level 93 in one of two skills and grants 20k xp, third stage requires level 95 and grants 25k xp and the fourth stage requires level 97 and grants 30k xp. Once the fourth stage is met the person who found the effigy gets a dragonkin lamp that grants a big pile o’xp. (level cubed/20 or something like that).

The skills are presented in pairs with the following combinations:

Agility or Crafting

Construction or Thieving

Cooking or Firemaking

Fishing or Farming

Fletching or Woodcutting

Herblore or Hunter

Mining or Smithing

Runecrafting or Summoning

The skills in bold are assistable. And here’s where it gets good.

Look on the forums under Distractions and Diversions. There’s a number of clan chats listed for effigy assists.

I use “assist clan”. I go in there and announce:

“Offering 91 or 93 Construction assist”

“Offering 91-97 herblore assist”

I can usually find 2 people to help in less then 10 minutes. Free 30k herblore xp in ten minutes is a great trade off. (You can only get 30k a day assisting people. If you assist someone and get 25k you can assist someone else for 25k but you’ll still only get 30k, but two people will be happy so…..)

You can also pot up to get the levels needed.

Couple of tips there:

Level 3 shelves in your POH let you increase construction 3 levels. So at level 88 you can start assisting with construction. Construction is highly in demand so you shouldn’t have much issue finding people who need 91 construction. At level 91 I’ve been doing 91 and 93 construction assists in my house. Never had a problem quickly finding a few people.

If you go to the guy in the lighthouse you can buy 10 Greenman’s Ales and 10 Dwarven Stouts without a lot of chit chat. I buy 10 every time I’m near there (usually doing penguins or running laps for rocks). The +1 herblore lets me do 97 herby assists and I keep the Dwarven Stouts for 91 Smithing for friends.

Herblore, crafting and construction seem to be the most in demand from what I’ve seen in clan chats I’ve camped in. Fletching and cooking I’ve rarely seen. I’ve seen a few for rc (which surprises me) and 97 farming.

I try to do assists at the same time every day so that my clock resets at the same time. Clock starts ticking when you do your first assist, not when you max. 24 hours to renew another 30k.

July 20, 2010

2010-07-20T21:44:00.000-07:00

Another week, another set of rocks. Only 10 more weeks to go I think.

Been doing some Jagex Cup training both for mining and getting ready for fishing/cooking. What should be fun is becoming a pain. Mostly because the rules aren't established and you have no way to verify anything.

Other then rocks I've been doing a lot of slayer. And I've been trying to do assists every day (now resetting after 6pm pst). I've met a lot of people and it's been enjoyable, plus a fast 30k a day xp doesn't hurt.

Got to 97 Firemaking. Just from rocks and the adze.

Hoping to level fishing this weekend. And maybe do some dungeoneering (thinking of doing fl 35 on Friday, PM me if interested)

July 13, 2010

2010-07-13T21:33:00.000-07:00

91 Construction! And yes, I did it just so I could assist with construction effigies. I plan to upgrade to the gilded shelves so I can get +3 tea boosts. And I'll get another construction level this month (I think) which means I can assist up to 95 construction soon!

And yes, I am loving the effigies. I reset at about 10pm PST each night.

97 Herblore, 95 Crafting and now 91 Construction.

July 11, 2010

2010-07-13T21:21:00.000-07:00

73 Dungeoneering. I really really like dungeoneering for about the first 2 hours each week. Then the next 2 hours drag.

So from now on, just 2 hours a week. If I do that consistently it'll increase slowly but it'll get up there. I'm still thinking about whether or not I should reset before more floors get added. The xp will be better with more floors (more prestige) but the higher my level the more floors I can go up once it comes up making my prestige even higher. Plus, I like it.

The soft bigotry of low expectations

2010-07-06T15:28:00.001-07:00

Had an interesting weekend of stuff. Knocked out The EW 3 and the new Void Knight quest. Started but didn’t finish Love Story.

Since I didn’t do much in RS this week I finally put together a post on something that I’ve been thinking of .

Most (nearly all) of the people that I have met are actually pretty wonderful people. I’ve been in a bank where someone needs help and a random stranger volunteers to help them. I’ve teled into a bank poisoned and had someone hand me an antipoison. And this has happened many times. I think as a community we focus on the willfully ignorant, the oblivious and the troublemakers because they stand out. But most people, quietly, are just doing their thing.

But we notice the true troublemakers. The person who harasses others in a dungeon, the guy spamming hateful messages, the girl spamming sexual comments. And more often then not we shrug and walk by and say “it’s kids being kids” or “it’s just a game” or “I was joking”. Those are all excuses for bad behavior. Yes, all may be true, but it doesn’t make it ok. But by being silent when these things happen we leave the impression that behind those pixels we are snickering and giggling at their antics. That we approve of the harassment and the inappropriate comments.

Every time I post on this topic I get a bunch of comments about how I should be more understanding and that it’s just a game. Chats will be spammed, dungeoneering teams will get ditched, people will get insulted with a (jk) after it. So what?

No matter what we do those things will continue to happen. I’m not so Pollyanna to think it won’t. But it doesn’t mean we, as a community or as individuals, need to sit back and let it happen. People will fulfill the expectations you set for them.

And in case you didn’t read it click here:

(Merch Is Right.....)

July 2, 2010

2010-07-03T22:38:00.001-07:00

Apologies for not blogging. Using a new blogging "tool" and it's a pain. Going back to my previous way of doing things.

So June ended with 2300 total. July started with 2 dungeoneering levels to 72 Dungeoneering. I read the July Behind the Scenes and I'm pretty excited about a lot of the new stuff.

Still haven't gotten an effigy but haven't worked at it that hard either. I am enjoying how they work though. Especially enjoying a bit of free herblore or crafting xp that I'm getting regularly. I read that some people thought it would make getting 99 too easy. From what I've seen I doubt that. With the current cap in place on xp/day it saves an hour of skilling at the most.

Though I laugh about it. I rememember when assist came out. People ranted about being able to assist in the gathering skills. So Jagex pulled wc/mining/fishing off the list. Turns out that there is a good reason you'd want to be able to assist in those skills. Oh well.

My goal for July-2310 levels.

June 27, 2010

2010-07-03T22:32:00.000-07:00

90 Runecrafting.
2300 total.
Everything but dungeoneering to 90.

Met my goal w/3 days to spare :)

June 26, 2010

2010-06-27T12:41:00.001-07:00

Spent the day alternating between gathering rocks, thieving and smelting. Smelting because it’s so slow and afkable. Thieving in 2 bursts since Pyramid Plunder was just not my thing today. Regardless, managed to get 90 Thieving out of it. I wanted to get all but dungeoneering to 90 by the end of the month.

Stayed up late and got to 90 Smithing. Using gold gaunts and gold ore. At the top I bought them they were just a bit under 300 gp. Now they are 540 or so. Trying to decide if I want to smelt my way to 96 very very slowly or sell them and pocket the profits.

June 24th, 2010

2010-06-26T22:42:00.001-07:00

Been heads down working like crazy to get all skills but dungeoneering to 90. Got 70 Dungeoneering on 6/22 (Tuesday).

Been slaying. I’ve completed 9 slayer tasks and not a single effigy. At an average of 150 creatures per task that’s over 1000 kills.

I have been assisting though. And I do appreciate all that extra xp, especially herblore and crafting.

Got 90 attack, defense, strength along with 92 constitution today.

June 18, 2010

2010-06-18T16:07:00.001-07:00

There are two words that I find cringeworthy in Runescape.

1) Fair. As in “No fair, I don’t have level 70 and I want to use an SGS” or “It’s not fair that he has more money” or “no fair, I died”. You can come up with your own. First of all, tough. Secondly,most of the time when people say things are unfair what I hear is “It’s not easy for me” or “I don’t want to work that hard to do it”. Runescape is incredibly fair. Much more fair then real life. In Runescape I start out at the exact some point as everyone else. How I chose to use my time is different then how anyone else uses theirs. But different is not unfair. Different is different.

What I appreciate about RS is that I’m not forced to be in a specific template-Human Paladin Circus Clown or Dwarf Ranger Acrobat. Therefore there is no default that lets one group have an advantage over another. If you want a pack yak you can go train and get one. Nothing is stopping you (well, maybe your parents) from doing so. No choice prevents you from a path except for the choice of how you spend your time.

I know a guy who chose to train his way to 99 Attack via experiments, armored zombies and a couple of other things. He wanted to get it as fast as he could. Now he complains about it being unfair that he’s poor. It’s not unfair. You can have money or speed, rarely both.

2) Luck or Lucky. “oh you have 91 runecrafting? lucky!” or “Jad is just about luck” or “I never get anything good, I’m so unlucky”. A lot of times when I hear people get called lucky I want to strangle the person saying it. 91 runecrafting is not about luck, nor is 85 slayer or any other skill. It’s about grinding out the skill. To say it’s luck is insulting to the person doing the work. My friends who have high levels (however you want to define that) aren’t lucky. They worked at that skill past the point most people do and are relatively higher. Jad is about luck? Really? So the guy with the youtube video with like 12 fire capes is super lucky? I doubt it, I’m guessing he’s worked on his skill of killing Jad.

Does luck play a role in Runescape? Certainly. Some people get better drops/clues then others. So yes, there is a luck element to it. But in RS (as in RL) luck tends to happen to those who prepare the best. Sure, you could win the lottery. But most people I know with a lot of money worked at it very hard. They were “lucky” because they had laid out the groundwork to take advantage of opportunities as they arose.

Side note:

At this point I've gotten one dragon skirt drop, one dragon legs drop, 3 god platebody things from clues....and that's about it. Combined not even 5 million in high end drops. (Many many millions in all the other random stuff). I've got 90 Slayer all other combat at 89 or 90. That's a lot of combat there with more to come. And along the way I've been able to get nearly all my skills to 90 and beyond, I have the gear I need to do what I want to do. Nothing fancy mind you, but to be honest my playing style doesn't require anything fancy. I realize I'm different but my point is this, you can go far hitting a lot of singles and not hitting home runs for cash. It's a different mindset then others but it's very effective and never boring.

June 16, 2010

2010-06-17T16:03:00.001-07:00

96 Herblore, 90 Range and 95 Magic.

Not much else to report. Helped two people with effigies, got my 30k xp. I still have mixed feelings about the effigies, not sure what they are but I’ll post on it when I do.

June 14, 2010

2010-06-15T14:11:00.001-07:00

Did a nechrayeal task today. Got a clue scroll which I’ll chase down tomorrow. Otherwise, not much to not in game.

I’m looking to do floor 34 large on Friday night (night being 9pm PST). I think I’ve got 2 people who want to go but if two others are free that night it’d be perfect. (Kayla-if you’re reading this I’m going to bug you to go).

To be honest, I am mean. In RL I work in a very urban setting. When I walk out of the office and go down the elevators I’m surrounded by some mix of businesspeople, tourists, street vendors, locals who are visiting downtown, homeless people, the guy who says the world will end in 2012 (I’m impressed, he has new charts this week), and a number of people collecting for a variety of charities. Typical day, I run a gauntlet of at least 5 people representing 3 different charities. When I first started this job I would make eye contact and say no thank you to the solicitors. Then it became a rush pass and shake my head. Now I just ignore them. There’s one, especially, that I’m really not convinced about. And I really avoid them the hardest. Or more to the point, I ignore them the most vigorously.

And what’s this have to do with RS? The other day I was mining a star with some friends. Someone walks up and starts mining it and asking all kinds of questions about stars. He’s got a higher combat level then me but is clueless as to how stars work. So first thing I think is that he’s recent moved from F2P to P2P. Hmmm…but he’s got 138 combat, which means he maxed summoning. So he can’t be that new. So the star finishes and I start mining the coal on Misc to get my favor up. He asks me what I’m doing…..to make a long story short he asks me how to manage a kingdom. I look him up on HS. He’s got something like 2120+ levels. I’m finding his questions stranger and stranger. How do you get to be that high level and not know some of this stuff? I told him to check his favorite fansite for guides on Misc since it’s a bit complex (not really but not something I want to explain in depth). Anyways, the upshot was that I got the feeling that he bought his account. Or was given it at least. And so I just left. No good-bye, no argument about “how the heck did you get those levels and be so clueless”. I just left. It wasn’t just the questions about Misc, it was all the questions. I can’t put my finger on the exact words or question, it just left me that feeling of something not right. Like the charity that I don’t think is legitimate in real life, it’s not something I want to fight about. I’m not going to to up to the people collecting for this charity and tell them I suspect something is up and I’m not going to fight with this guy about his account. So for both, I just leave. Yes, I know that’s mean in a way. Maybe this guy did have legitimate questions, who knows. But there’s this weird feeling I think we all get when things don’t make sense. And in RS just like in RL……it’s not worth the fight and I doubt there’s anything that can be done.

June 13, 2010

2010-06-14T11:08:00.001-07:00

90 Cooking and 68 Dungeoneering. Slowly creeping up on 2300 levels.

Some dungeoneering thoughts:

1) I’m not arguing it’s not a minigame. But I will argue that it’s a capstone skill. People say that it doesn’t help your other skills (not really). Maybe it’s not meant to. Maybe it’s meant to be the culmination of all your other skill’s training. Like writing your final dissertation in college.

2) Each person in your party is worth 5%. It pays to go with more people, even if they aren’t very useful.

3) Most people are decent. I hung out in W117 a bit and joined a random group. It went surprisingly smoothly, I think we did floor 33 large in about an hour. I’ve met 3 true jerks doing dungeoneering. I’ve also added 7 friends who I think are good folks to stay in touch with even if not dungeoneering. That’s a pretty good ratio. (Not including the decent people I met who I just didn’t feel like adding or they didn’t want to add me or whatever).

4) Doing floors below level 25 as small with a friend is my preferred method. It’s faster and more fun then soloing, if you get a sudden dc you can get back in and still keep your xp and the extra 5% a floor makes the xp a wee bit better. Better still, I go with one person who knows what they are doing and one person who is totally new. The new person plays tourist (kills a little, skills, gets lost, figures out stuff) and the other person and I run through it like crazy. Works well and goes fast enough. The new person is racking up xp much faster then they would otherwise and ends up quite happy. Everyone wins.

5) People get annoyed when you go through the checklist at the beginning but it really helps things along. What’s in the checklist?

Who’s doing tools

Who’s doing keys (preferably the leader so they can mark)

Are we clearing dead ends (DE)?

Are we clearing rooms that don’t have guardian doors (gd)?

6) I’m starting to see the logic in the prestige thing from a game design point of view. To a certain degree, more experienced people are rewarded for helping others (see item 4). And it keeps it from being a total grind.

7) I probably use mage and range more in dungeoneering then on the surface. It’s easy enough to get set up, runecrafting is faster and the triangle is more balanced. Plus, vengeance is such a nice help.

8) I don’t understand why people are still so bitter about it. I know one guy keeps calling it “faileneering”. First of all, that’s not clever. It was clever in April. Now it’s just old. Secondly, everyone likes different skills differently. If you don’t like it don’t do it. To be honest, I think for every skill I can come up with one training method that I find somewhere between ok and enjoyable and one which flat out makes me want to quit. Figure it out or ignore it, but either way quit your whining.

June 10,2010

2010-06-11T14:56:00.001-07:00

Still collecting rocks. Planning a big dungeoneering push this weekend that I hope will finish off this run at 35 floors so I can have maximum prestige.

Toying with the idea of leaving dungeoning alone once I hit 35 prestige. 35 will be max until dungeoning part 2 comes out. That won’t happen soon so any resetting at this point just means I’ll have to keep running the same floors over and over again. Seeing as how big an impact prestige is it would seem to be a better use of time to work on other skills and let dungeoning just grow via tears until the new floors come out.

On the other hand, I can only do about 2-3 hours of dungeoning without getting bored or distracted. My original plan was to do 2 hours on Fridays and 2 hours on Saturdays. This would give me a nice balance between grinding and having fun. Which means this weekend, if I want to keep doing that, I’ll have to reset.

Otherwise, working on getting all skills to 90 by Fourth of July weekend. (Not including dungeoning). So 7 skills at 89, less then 2 million xp to go. I could knock this out faster if I wasn’t pushing on getting the rocks too.

June 6, 2010

2010-06-06T21:57:00.000-07:00

Tons of levels this weekend.

65 Dungeoneering. Finally learning group dungeoning tactics. I really prefer small floors, duo or triple. But I feel like I have to do floors 30-35 large 5:5. It's always that fifth guy that is the problem :)

93 Mining, almost all stars and rock collecting.

89 Smithing, in my pursuit of rocks I'm using gold gaunts and smelting ores. Slow but cheap and very easy for me to read other things while I smith.

90 Fletching.

90 Slayer. Kindly enough, my first task after getting 90 is Dark Beasts. 216 of them.

94 Prayer. A friend had a houseparty. I buy 100k worth of bones every week plus sell my red chins from hunter and buy bones. I want 95 before facing Nomad again.

As long as I keep chasing rocks I'll have weeks of no levels and then bursts of levels. 2284 total. Decided my goal for June is 2300 total. Trying to get 70 dungeoneering this month so 5 levels there.

June 1, 2010

2010-06-02T16:06:00.001-07:00

Over the weekend I did 3 large 5:5 floors. Total of 10 different people.

I had done one other large floor previously. So I wasn’t too sure to expect.

Every floor/group the expectation was different. Do we clear dead ends or not? Do we stick together or just kind of loosely go along? I like to follow the “key” guy. Makes it easier that way. For the most part though each team had 4 people on it who were somewhat on the same page and one person who was doing their own thing. I think dungeoneering is still pretty new but funnily enough everybody had their own “but of course you would do it this way” strategy. Reminds me of PK’ing and people who say “you cheated” or “that’s not fair”.

There were two people I’d never want to be stuck with again. Both were random guys I found either on the forums or milling around. Both spent a majority of the time doing their own thing, wandering off and then yelling at us to make them stuff. I don’t think I’ve been called a noob, loser, ignorant, dork or nerd so much in the last year as I was in that very painful dungeon. We finally got to the point where we more or less stopped talking to them.

I really wish there was a way to rate dungeoneering partners. Yeah, I can look at your level but to be honest that doesn’t tell me much. I wish there was a way to say “look, this person goes really really fast. you’ll have to run to keep up but they know what they are doing” or “they listen well, a bit clueless at times but very pleasant” or “this guy is a complete ass”.

Anyways, I finally read Qeltar’s dungeoneering guide in it’s entirety (www.runescoop.com). Learned some things I didn’t know. Thinking about rushing some dungeons this weekend if anyone wants to join in.

May 30, 2010

2010-05-30T23:13:00.000-07:00

Well it's been raining here so most of my plans this weekend got canceled. So lots of RS time (and laundry, and vacuuming etc).

Got to 91 Fishing, 95 Crafting, 63 Dungeoneering, 97 Summoning and 94 Woodcutting. It may sound like a lot but to be honest.....it's been weeks in the making. Crafting is a function of rocks and air battlestaffs. So I can pretty much predict when I'll level that since it's really the only two things I do.

Fishing, rocks and fish flinging. I use up all 10 tickets a week so that's about 175k xp there. Rocks are good for another 10k.

Woodcutting, rocks. More rocks. I think I did 2 evil trees this month. Haven't farmed any trees. Oh....Jade Vine. Didn't realize it gave woodcutting exp (yes, been hitting it almost every day since it came out). Went to kill it and got my level! Oh and I do a tiny bit of woodcutting while dungeoneering.

Summoning. Was about 200k short of 97 after double xp weekend. But I could make pack yaks, was broke and didn't really want to deal with anymore summoning. Made some pouches to make scrolls but not much else. Then I realized I could cash in all the iron titans and replenish my shards. Plus, I made about 50k xp making pouches in dungeoneering.

And dungeoneering. Did a few large 5:5 floors and I'm hooked!! Xp is so much better in a group, even if it's just a duo. Duo'ed fl30 with a friend. We got killed and while restocking the boss fell over dead from the poison!! Which was good since we hadn't stockpiled food. Just another argument that poisoned spears are the best weapons. Did floor 31 and ended up with about 40k xp. Which tells me when the dungeoneering update comes out the high levels can probably make close to 80k an hour or more.

May 27, 2010

2010-05-28T14:47:00.000-07:00

A week or so ago I posted about how it's a pain to get hunter rocks. In yesterday's patch notes hunter rocks were made easier to get. (I did hunter last night and it took 113 red chins or about 35 minutes of hunting, I'm ok with that).

So while Jagex is working to on things to make me happy I'd like to provide them a full list:

1) Abolish combat levels appearing over our heads in non pvp worlds.
2) Make our names change color based on our chat status (see my blog post from earlier this week)
3) Change it so an uncharged glory costs less than a charged glory. Why they are the same now I just don't understand.
4) For dungeoneering, add in unfletched arrows to the drop table.
5) For farming, a seed pouch as a reward would be lovely.
6) Add in real support for clans including a clan registry. (Look at Runehead. It's just not that hard).
7) Allow me to leave messages for people on my friend's list.
8) Construction. More please. I'd like an armory. For all the random weapons I have. And the quest hall should let you store quest items (sigil, sled etc)

Going to be working on Dungeoneering this weekend. If anyone wants to do floors 26-31 large let me know. Want to get max xp on those since they are my top floors right now.

May 23, 2010

2010-05-24T16:01:00.001-07:00

Spent the weekend dungeoneering, fish flinging and gathering rocks. While that might sound completely random it really wasn’t. When I had big chunks of time I worked on dungeoneering. There were some times that I was between weekend activities, resting, whatever and I worked on rocks and fish flinging.

I was hanging out in clan chat and the discussion turned to how high leveled players (in this case over 120+) were rude. This is, for those who read any of the forums, also a popular topic. I really wonder if all of Runescape wouldn’t be better off if there weren’t little numbers our head. So if you saw me in game it’d say “Jaxana'” not “Jaxana (126))” It’s kind of like if in real life we had our bank account balances or years of schooling (or whatever) over our heads. Especially in the non-PvP worlds, is there any good reason to have the numbers and our names?

Get rid of the numbers. Change the colors over our names to:

Green: All chats are on

Yellow: Public is off/private is on

Red: All chats are off

Wouldn’t that be better for the community? Then I could tell if someone was ignoring me, ignoring public or had their chat off. Would at least make some people seem less hostile.

Further to that, I kind of wish I could write my own “Examine”. So if you saw me you could “Examine” and it would provide you 10 words that I put in about myself.

Anyways, this guy said something about levels 120+ being no lifers. Well, clan chat was full of 120+ people. And I got a few PM’s about it. It’s interesting, if you have low levels you’re a noob who doesn’t know anything and should just shut up. If you have high levels you’re a no-lifer who has no friends.

I know a lot of people who are in both categories. Yes, I have met a few high levels who no lifed and a few low levels who should have kept their mouth shut (not to mention a few high levels who should also have kept their mouths shut).

But I will say, when I had low levels I met a lot of my peers who were pretty smart. And who had the good sense to figure out good LEVEL appropriate training methods. See, here’s where I think the high levels sometimes go sideways. Let’s take runecrafting for example. If you walk into a chat and asked best RC xp you’d probably get told ZMI. But what if you didn’t have lunars? What if you didn’t have the mage level to tele yourself? What if…… you see my point? Low levels might train like “noobs” because that’s their best option, not because they are dumb. (And let’s face it using dumb=noob is dumb because there’s plenty of high level people myself included who do dumb things)

As for high levels being no lifers. For the record, my life has a spouse, dogs, cats, a job, a mortgage, friends I see regularly and a bunch of other stuff. RS is a hobby for me. And for most of the higher levels I know. There’s people who have been playing for 5 years. Of course they are high leveled!! Even at a few hours a week that’s enough time to get up there. I know a few people who might “no-life” a weekend. But trust me, most of the high levels I talk to…..we talk about REAL LIFE stuff. And we all have plenty of that. Calling high levels “no-lifers” is, to me, bratty behavior. Most of the high levels I know have those levels because they have played a long time, they are focused, they can plan out what they want to do well so they aren’t constantly careening from activity to activity which wastes time and they don’t do things that are utterly pointless. (Utterly pointless being defined by what does and doesn’t make sense for where you are the moment).

So anyways, I’d love for the following to happen:

1) People who consider others noobs/no lifers based on levels need to get over themselves.

2) The abolition of the combat level over our head.

3) Examine options for people

4) Name colors corresponding to chat status.

May 22, 2010

2010-05-23T14:11:00.000-07:00

Got to 59 Dungeoneering. Been following the debate over on Runescoop (www.runescoop.com) about dungeoneering and the fastest way to do it. I've been dungeoning on weekends only since it's just one of those skills that works best with a block of time.

It seems that there are people who want to wring every bit of xp out of each dungeon, and others that want to just get through the floors quickly. (There's a whole discussion on runescoop about the quickest ways to do floors and which you should solo or do in a group, very interesting if you are into dunegeoneering at all).

Personally, I like to go with the people I like otherwise I'll solo. If I add a stranger it's usually when I'm with friends and we set it assuming that the stranger is going to ditch us. If they stay, good....if not....we're not stranded.

I'm not one to wring out xp, I want to get in and get out fast. I'm pretty convinced the fastest way is to just bypass all creatures except those you have to kill for guardian doors. The couple of % you give up for not killing all monsters is tiny compared to the time you save. I will, however,kill anything below level 50 just to get the supplies. It's fast and if I have a familiar I can do it in 2-3 blows.

But there is one other skill (then dungeoneering) that I like to work while doing dungeons-summoning! Now that you only need the second and the charm it's a great skill to work down there. The familiars are very helpful, especially in the boss fights. I'm biased towards making the stormbringers. I use a poisoned spear and the stormbringers bring magic to the party. One of the people I dungeon with likes to range. Makes for a pretty formidable group. Plus, making a blue charm familiar gives me 800 or so xp. As good as anything on the surface for FREE! Yup, that's why I do it. Combination of free and highly useful. Most of the people I go with don't complain because I'm pretty upfront about this. And since it's shared xp it benefits them and takes an extra couple of seconds (save up all cash and valuables, when at smuggler buy a runeleaf, tag the obelisk). If I'm buy myself I'll make more, if others are waiting on me I'll speed it up (unless they go afk, then I make all I can).

May 19, 2010

2010-05-19T21:50:00.000-07:00

Finished my 11th statue.

Nearing the halfway point I have some thoughts to share on the statue.

Overall, I think I like it. At least right now it's keeping me working on something other than a straight grind. I have some other friends working on it now and it always seems more fun when you can talk to others doing the same thing you are and compare notes, tease, encourage etc. It's keeping me from doing a lot of slayer, which means I may skip a week and just slay but for now it's ok.

I do, however, have a few things I'd like to see changed.

Hunter: It seems this one always takes forever. I realize that it's random but it seems that Hunter is slow. Combined with most of the good hunting spots being camped and this one just feels like a chore.

99: I read where the mod who created it didn't want higher levels to have a higher/better chance at a rock. It's supposed to be level agnostic, which is fine. I get that part of it. But having said that, she also said she didn't really want people hunting them (the rocks). That they should just be a spontaneous part of the game. Okkkkk fine. But most people I know don't work their 99's at all unless they are going for a ranking. I really wish they would look at this and make it count for something. Mostly to get the 99's out of the way of the good hunter spots.

Diversity of training methods: To be honest, I like the choices. But they are also the most popular ways to train. I'd really love to see some esoteric way of training (werewolf arena anyone?) reward rocks sooner to get people spread out more.

May 17, 2010

2010-05-18T10:22:00.000-07:00

56 Dungeoneering over the weekend. Real life caught up to me in terms of a massive garage sale plus yard work (mostly yard work between garage sale customers). Got 2 raised beds planted plus a bunch of other stuff. And got the garage cleaned out. All that equals not a lot of RS time.

I'm back to doing the jade vine daily. Between rocks and everything else I'm not doing much slayer. So this is my compromise. I'm also back to doing Tears regularly since, well, tears are faster then dungeoneering. At least for me so far.

Anyways, working on building statue 11. And flinging fish. Figured by the time I get the champion's tackle box I'll be around 93 fishing and probably bored of fish flinging. Would like to wrap it up by the time my fourth year ends but we'll see how that goes.

May 13, 2010

2010-05-13T20:56:00.000-07:00

Finished my 10th statue last night.

Did the new Fairy Tale Part 3 quest. Really enjoyed it. Liked how they handled the multiple things trying to kill you and all that.

Thinking that this weekend I won't have a ton of time but I should be able to do some dungeoneering. As a practical matter, I don't like doing it with less then 2 hour blocks of time because it's a pain to get into and out of rhthym etc.

Still waiting for a great guide for it :D

May 4, 2010

2010-05-09T00:29:00.000-07:00

Fishing 90
Dungeoneering 55
Total 2265

My last 3 fishing levels all come from fish flinging and rock chasing. Pretty pleased about it. 15 minutes a day (maybe 2x on weekends). Up to a standard tackle box now too. It's not stand around and get bored fishing (and the rocks come pretty fast) so I'll probably keep flinging fish til it's not fun anymore (I suspect that'll be about the time I get a champion's tackle box).

As for dungeoneering, it just makes sense to me to limit myself to Friday and Saturday. Otherwise there's too many interruptions and other things for me to do. I'm maxed on floors but don't feel like resetting prestige. Maybe I'll do two weeks of tears, maybe I'll feel like resetting next weekend. For the most part, when I'm in the dungeons I focus on doing what I need to get to the next floor. Except.....I'm making pouches like crazy. Just picking up stuff and tapping the obelisks (so much faster now that we don't need shards or pouches). Seems pouches alch for about 75% of the smuggler price for the secondary item. So if you start with some cash you can usually use up most of your charms. The other thing is, I make a lot of potions. Both these skills are expensive and slower outside of Daemonheim then inside. When I two man a dungeon my friend goes off and cleans up the last couple rooms (assuming we've killed the boss) and I make pots and pouches. We split the xp so it's a bonus for him as my summoning is higher then his and he makes some decent xp for free. Not a style for everyone but it works for us.

5/4/2010

2010-05-05T22:59:00.000-07:00

Got to 89 Defense and 89 Attack last night. I think my goal in May will be 2290 total levels (so a gain of about 26 levels). I'd like to hit 2300 in June (along with all skills 90…..hmmm….maybe I'll work on all skills 90 for May). (Of course, all skills but dungeoneering I mean)

The trip from 2200-2300 is certainly going faster then 2100-2200. But 2300-2400 is going to be a killer. There was a time I thought I may want to try to get all 99's. I'm really not seeing that happening now. I did the math and I'm about 55% of the way to all 99's MINUS dungeoneering. Granted, I am not the most efficient player in the world. But I'm also not one to stand around and do nothing. I think I play in a pretty typically semi-social, semi-efficient manner.

Anyways, just a thought. Over my cold and catching up with housework and stuff. Back to rock collecting for now :D

4/29/2010

2010-04-29T22:16:00.000-07:00

I think I'm finally beating my (RL) cold. Which was probably a level 130. And yes, when I'm sick in RL I play differently. Hardly chat, don't want to do anything that requires focus or even a brain cell.

Anyways, got to 89 Defense doing slayer. Did some tasks that were slow and easy. Bit of Tears (note: doing Dungeoneering with a cold is a bad bad idea) up to 46 Dungeoneering.

And knocked out the new "capers" for 89 Thieving.

Mostly working on gathering rocks, doing fish flingers and mining stars. Would have loved to do more dungeoneering but really didn't want to get tied into something that long.

I did try to take on Jad. Well, Kuradel suggested that she'd give me a bonus if I did. So what the heck. I didn't think I'd get all the way through but I had a great run. And then decided to just finish the task in the Fight Caves. It's safe, you die and you respawn outside with full health and prayer. Went pretty fast. I think when I next get asked to go deal with Jad I'll get all the way to him and end up owning a firecape.

2010-04-21T14:43:00.001-07:00

Runecrafting 89, Fishing 89, Cooking 89......almost all from fish flinging and rock collecting.

42 Dungeoneering. Thoroughly enjoying myself. I've reset my prestige 3 times. Once I knock out floor 21 I'll probably reset again. Then wait til 35 to rest after that (tears will kick on next week and I want to work on other things. So by the time I rerun the first 21 levels plus whatever new levels I unlock plus tears I'll be pretty close. And probably ready for a break).

I've done various sized teams and dungeons. To be honest, I just go with my friends when they go and go by myself when they aren't around. I don't see huge differences in xp anyways. Well, I do but it's also a huge difference in time. When I solo I spend more times "tinkering" with the skill to get a feel for it. When I go with others it's all about speed. I think it's hard to unlearn a lot of my old RS habits (like utilizing everything that is available to you) and focuse on just the dungeon crawling.

I read today's Dungeoneering Q&A. Looks like the new skill is an end game skill, meaning for high level players to use those levels on something. We'll see how that pans out.

April 16, 2010

2010-04-16T14:27:00.000-07:00

Ever watch the Olympics? Is ice dancing a sport? How about synchronized swimming? Curling? Ping-pong?

yes? no? Well, the IOC thinks they are sports and those medals are just as "medally" as the ones giving for track, swimming and skiing.

So is dungeoneering a skill? Regardless of what any of us thinks Jagex says yes. So there you go.

I'm having a blast playing it. Do I think it's a good skill? Not sure. I'm reserving judgment. I'm level 21 and haven't gotten far enough in it to make a decision. The idiots who were screaming about it when it first came out....you gotta be kidding me? At least try it. Maybe it doesn't fit your opinion of a skill.

But it's a game....so they question shouldn't be "is it a skill?" the question should be "Is it fun?" and right now the answer for me is YES!!

Here's my cheat sheet. The 3 cheatsheets are the key. use at your discreation. Leave me a note here if it needs anything.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0ArrDSeCW5lS8dGx3VFV6YWp3dEoxdV9weWlvRG9tUEE&hl=en

So I got this as a comment the other day....

2010-04-09T15:31:00.000-07:00

"YES YES YES!!! ive found a runescape very low price power leveling!!! plus they give u 5 levels free of any chosen skill that is between 30-50 how cool is that??!! well the only availble skill now for them to get to 99 is hunting. although they aren't 24/7 working they do 2-12 hours per day. they're just a group of students that want to help people for a low price because they hate the websites that ask for like 100$ for a skill. (email address removed by jax) and ask them for more details. they do not have a website yet because they like to stay availble for a small group of people and don't want to be detected by jagex. they do not use bots,hacks,cheats,exploits or anything like this. they do not waste your money. they do not change passwords. they will tell you that as long as you have ur recov quest ur acc is safe. they will give you alot of tips. they will not drop any of your items. they request that you change your pass and recovs after they finish the leveling for ur acc. they ARE SAFE trust me ive tried it. check rain b4 kaos highscores they've goten me 86 wc and str for a favor. plz do not post stupid stuff like "it's a lie" "they scammers" or anything like that because they are not.do not juge before u try it.

Let me just say: If you are going to be a scammer, at least make an effort at it. Try to at least make it sound legitimate.

1) You guys gave me a gmail account. Really? Come on, at least register your domain and sound like a real business. If you don't want to be detected there are better ways then randomly spamming bloggers.

2) The only thing they have available now is getting 99 hunter. Uhm, I have 99 hunter. It's pretty much obvious. So not sure why I'd want this.

3) You say the only thing they do is hunter, but then you say they got you 86 woodcutting and strength. So which is it?

4) I looked up rain b4 kaos. Not on high scores.

5) So I'll just say it: OF COURSE YOU're a SCAMMER!! Your whole business model is I send you my acct and pass and you hack it, sell off the stuff or sell the account.

So this brings me to the real topic of this post: the price we all pay because SOME people cheat. And I don't mean the person who sent me this comment. I mean the people who fall for it. See, I don't see you folks who get hacked or whatever as poor helpless victims. I'm sure some of you legitimately are. But mostly, you fell for some scam site like this. Or you wanted levels fast. Or you told your friend your password. And what happens? I get pop ups constantly with security warnings. Jagex has to hire a bunch of people to do nothing but recover your passwords and sort out the hacker who stole your account. Instead of spending money on developers to finish out some of the quest lines. And I get to read post after post after post after post on the RSOF with all the whining about how somehow "magically" you get banned, or muted, or locked out because someone else hijacked your account. (Or maybe you're lying and did it and now want your account back). I'm really thinking Jagex should take a "tough, too bad" approach to these things. You lost it. Finders keepers etc.

April 9,2010

2010-04-09T15:26:00.000-07:00

Jax's Guide to Flinging Fish

Read this first. I'm going to assume you've had a look at that before you read the rest of this as I'm not really going to recap for you how to play the game, this is more of a strategy guide on how to get 100% easilywww.runescape.wikia.com/wiki/fish_flingers

When to play: Games start every 90 minutes. If you are trying to get all 6 kinds of fish to 100% you want to play when it's busy so you can see if 2 kinds of fish are being caught in one place.

Each location has 1 type of fish and 2 locations have 2. If you get 3 fish at 100% you get the Junior Angler medal, all 6 at 100% is the Master Angler. That may seem like a lot of work but I can show you how to do it faster (best time so far: 8 mins, 19 sec)

Talk to the fisherman and ask for his advice. He'll give you a hint like:The cod at the beach likes brown wiggly creatures.

This tells you that there's cod at the beach and they like worms. You always get a fish, a location and then 1 hint for bait/hook or range.

As you hit each location watch what people are catching. If they are catching something different from you then you know it's a 2 fish location. So make yourself a table that looks like this (I color coded the hooks to help you see what's associated with what)Table for Fishing

Using that clue hint I gave you'd go to the COD column and put in BEACH for location and WORMS for food.When you start run to the beach and use WORMS, pick a hook and add 1 medium weight.

If you get 33%-WORMS you know is right. So switch to a hook that is NOT associate with the hook you just used. For example, if you used a standard hook you know that STANDARD and SLIM are both out. If you get 50%-You know WORMS is right and you got 1 other things at half right. So if you tried a STANDARD hook switch to a SLIM. If you go to 66% you now know the hook and bait. If you don't change then you know it's associated to the weight and you are on the wrong hook grouping and switch hooks.If you get 66%-You know WORMS is right and I'd assume that hook is too. So add 3 Large to your 1 Medium. This takes you from 1 to range 5. If it's still 66% you know that you do have the right hook and bait. If it falls to 33% then you know it's WORMS and 1 MED and then you can start searching for the hook.If that doesn't get you to 100 clear your line and put on WORMS, the right hook and 1 large. Keep adding 1 large til you scroll through all the ranges. Once you get 100% put that in your chart. So for example you'd write, COD, BEACH, WORMS, STANDARD, 1.Cross off Worms, Standard and 1 (of course you can keep fishing once you get 100% since it'll boost your scores).

Once you do that look around. Is anyone catching a fish that looks different then yours? If so stay there using a different hook, bait and weight (I like start at 1 MED until I find the fish with 1 range).Now you know no other fish can use worms, standard, and range 6.

Which means by the time you find 5 fish the 6th one you will know the hook, be 50/50 on the range and be 1/3 for the bait. Which means it should take you 15 seconds to figure it out.If you start out knowing what the hook is you can quickly find the bait. Each bait is associated to 2 other baits by color and shape. For example, shrimp are associated with crayfish (shape) and worms (color). So if you use shrimp and get a 0% boost you know it's not crayfish or worms (eliminating 3 possible options). At most it should take you 4 guesses to get the food.

Range is a pain. I like to use a known range to start with it doesn't mess with my percentages. (I don't clear my line between spots, I just switch out hook and bait, that way I know that the range is wrong to start with and I can focus on the other 2). Getting a 16% boost when changing range tells you nothing that I know of. So fastest is to quickly try each one that is still eligible.

You have 15 minutes. Which is 2 min 30 sec a fish. And your last two will go really fast. So take your time, when you have 100% always keep fishing until you are ready to move.This method will result in you getting 2 medals per game minimum.

April 1, 2010

2010-04-02T15:56:00.000-07:00

88 Fishing.

Got a new job and been really busy with that. Things are slowing down so I'm hoping to blog more. After the big xp weekend activities and then hitting 2200 I'm going through that I dont't know what to do with myself phase.

Until something catches my eye I think I'll just collect rocks, chase stars and fling fish. I'm sure I'll think of a new goal (all 90's is obvious since it's 20 levels away but I need to get motivated for it). I think after the big xp weekend I was so out of synch with what I usually do that I'm just kind of wandering.

I'm really like the fish flinging by the way. When I first read the update I thought it'd be kind of stupid. Now I'm getting into it. Should have a guide up this weekend.

March 21, 2010

2010-03-22T15:48:00.000-07:00

So Friday I was looking at my levels and realized....boy am I close to 2200 total levels. I had collected my rocks for the week and didn't know what I wanted to work on. It seems that any time I reach a major goal (quest cape, 2k total, 99) that I kind of lose my motivation for a week or so. Post bonus XP I ran into the same thing. So I was kind of poking around in my bank, looking at what I had on hand and trying to decide what I wanted to do. Hmmm. Didn't feel like working on any of the skills I needed to get rocks for. Just didn't seem like what I wanted to do. Didn't want go slay. Noticed I had a lot of planks. Like 10k or so. I could get a few levels with those. And I was only 20k away from a range level.

So I trekked up to the Stealing Creation person and filled up my bank with tools. (Since they don't stack it only took about 20 to fill up the bank). Then off to my house. Spent my time watching for stars and building oak larders.

Got 87, 88 and 89 Construction. And got bored. Really bored. Even mixing in some star chasing and doing it at 2x speed construction is zzzzzzzzzz.

Decided to pull out my cannon and go finish up my slayer task. Grabbed a pack yak. First time taking one slaying. Amazing!!! Stayed in the dungeon in Pollinveach for about 120 spectres. Ran out of cannonballs 4k xp and 17 spectres from being done. Decided to finish the task. (I will admit to being momentarily confused at the yaks autobanking since I thought it was random. Finally got that sorted out). I banked more herbs then I normally would of. Made a mess of my bank but worth it. Anyways, Kuradel was kind enough to give me blue dragons. Easy enough to range and get to 89 Range! So that put me at 2199.

Decided to push for 90 Construction. Another 90 would be nice and I still had a few more hammers to use up. I guessed at how many hammers I needed so I went ahead and gathered those. Then I started on mahoghany tables. I had about 1500 mahoghany and teak planks. Which are a lot lot faster then oaks. I was told that it's 500k xp an hour. Which means it should have taken me about an hour to get that level. Since Jax works at 1/2 the speed of everyone else 2 hours later I was finishing up with oak larders when I got it. 90 construction=2200 total.

Fortunately, the rocks reset an hour before I did this so I at least have something to work on for a few days before I start on my next goal. Whatever it ends up being.

March 16, 2010

2010-03-17T14:22:00.001-07:00

Got to 94 Crafting on Monday. Going to count that as part of bonus xp weekend since I did do a bunch of bank cleaning/crafting over the weekend. New goal: 2200 total levels by the end of the month. Was going to get it in May but now.....

Here are my thoughts on the big bonus weekend (in no particular order of importance):

1) It took a lot of cash out of the game. All those pouches? Worth less then the sum of their parts....a lot less. All those pots? Can't trade anything in the "extreme" category. Those were the two biggies from this weekend. All that money spent (and I bet a lot of bank space created) and not a lot that of finished products that can be sold back. If Jagex was trying to control prices this did it.

2) I said this before the weekend and believe it now even more. 2010 is going to see a lot of elite and high level content. And the only way it makes sense to produce all that content is to have players who can or are very close to being able to use it. This weekend was to help boost up the numbers in those categories.

3) Everyone complained about the prices. But prices were never twice what they were the week before the event (I'm only talking herblore since that's what I focused on). Therefore doing activities that gave you at least 2x the xp you normally would get still put you ahead. Yes, things did cost more but still cheaper using an xp/gp ratio.

4) 2.7x xp and people have the time to spam close doors? I wish Jagex had just "broken" all the doors open.

5) Speaking of which.....look I know this was a gift. The whole bonus was..well...a bonus. But sometimes Jagex tries to be too clever. First they said that they would use the graph (that they showed us and even provided the forumla for). This implied a minute by minute recalculation. Then they said it would change hourly. Then back to the formula being recalculated each time an action is taken. Then....when it mattered....the formula was a bit too aggressive. Look, I don't ding Jagex for most of their bugs/issues. I have worked in/with software development long enough to know it will happen. With all the coding for this game things are going to happen. But this? Come on......30 minutes of play testing should have thrown the flag on it. Really Jagex, this was a big glaring oops. And then to go and compound it by not posting it on the front page? And basically shrugging your shoulders and saying "oops"? I'm pretty sure I missed out on a summoning level (170k short) because of this. But it' s not a major level. I am a bit annoyed that I didn't get closer to 96 herblore (wasn't going to get there but thought I'd get a lot closer). I feel bad for people who planned based on what they were told though.

6) For those of you who didn't prepare for TWO WEEKS prior to the event but just logged in and then started crying because you couldn't get what you needed WAAAA!

7) For those of you who just played as normal and had fun....hats off to you.

8) I feel bad for those who got 99 on Friday/Saturday. Was pretty hard to get anyone to celebrate with you.

9) Go read Merch Gwyar's blog on this weekend (Google: Merch Gwyar) She blogs on Sal's Realm. I 100% agree with her opinions on this weekend.

10) Do I ever want a bonus xp weekend again? Not really. It was an interesting experiment and my hats off to Jagex for trying it. But, this is a game. And a game should be fun. And the stress of getting ready, leading up to and doin this did not equal fun. Maybe do it as part of a quest reward or a D&D. (Finish the D&D and get x minutes of bonus time)

March 12, 2010

2010-03-13T09:48:00.000-08:00

Day one of bonus xp weekend.

Did a bunch of summoning. Used up my greens and golds the night before. Not much xp in them but I wanted to be as close to 96 as possible as I was concerned about running out of iron plates before I got to pack yaks. Shouldn't have been concerned, I had 100 left over. Anyways, 96 Summoning!! Pack Yaks!! I've been thinking about this. Ever since Bork came out I think I've only missed a dozen days of killing him. Bork being the main source of charms with a bit of slayer thrown in. At 96 summoning there's really nothing else to do but get 99. And from 88 slayer I should get more then enough charms for 99 summoning. On the other hand, the time I'll save not messing around with Bork will help other levels. (I'm also going to ease off the jade vine since it really breaks up my training. I may do them both a few times a week when it's convenient).

Then I did herblore. This is what I've preparing for the last 2 weeks. Got from 90 to 94 Herblore with (I hope) enough supplies to push for 95 today. I really wanted 96 but realized I didn't have the cash. Was hoping to get past 94 and I'm there already so I'm pretty pleased.

March 4, 2010

2010-03-05T13:15:00.000-08:00

Been busy gathering stuff for 2x weekend. Starting to slow down though. I'm thinking: If I'm spending all this time not skilling but gathering am I really better off? In some ways yes as I will be saving a lot of money. In some ways no because I could have gotten a bit more done on my goals.

I'll just come out and say it. I really really don't care about the hitpoints update. I'll give Jagex a chance to bring out the new things that go with it before I start ranting, if I ever start ranting.

I like the (overlooked) smelting update that lets me lose less iron ore when I make iron bars.

On a side note, I've been reading the RSOF a bit lately. I like to just surf around in there. I've really decided that Runescape is like it's own little city. You've got Pk'er village, clanner neighborhood, merchant's alley etc. I'm always amazed that whenever Jagex makess an update there's ALWAYS ranting. Too easy, too hard, stupid name, bad colors etc. Well guess what? Not every udpate is targeted at every player! I could care less about PVP. But it gets updated. New quest requiring 3 skills level 10? Sure,ok, I'll go do it and then go back to my other stuff.

I had the misfortune to be on the forums after the blurb about Constitution appeared on the RS front page but before people could log in.

Rants rants rants.

And here's how I see them:

1)OMG!!!! i cnT spul gd n i dnt no maths.....x10 z hrd. Failscape! (If this is you I suggest you do the following. Log out of Runescape. Forget your password. Go do your homework.)

2) I don't like change. Why'd you have to change it? Why can't everything stay the same always (I thought that this is why we have RSC?)

3) You didn't survey us first. (Thankfully! Otherwise we'd all be ninjas or pirates riding horses and getting maxed out in a week)

4) I quit!! (Really? Didn't you do that after the last 9 updates? People come and go, you can leave or you can stay. At the end of the day someone will replace you.)

5) I"m the customer and you need to cater to me. (ROFL!! I read this and think about all the customer service jobs I have ever had. Sorry. The customer is not always right and is sometimes flat out wrong.)

6) Well reasoned thought out arguments. I have seen a few of these. They are written so people can read them. Using paragraphs and punctuation so that they make sense. There are some really great ranters on the forums who do a really nice job of ranting. I may not agree with them but I can see their point and why they are adversely affected. I have a few favorites that I track their postings because it's like reading the NYT Op-Ed page for Runescape.

What are you doing on 2.x?

2010-03-03T14:16:00.000-08:00

Seems to be a very popular question lately. I've been working on this myself. I thought about which skills I should train that weekend and which I shouldn't.

On the definately not side I'm putting skills that are easy enough to get a multiplier for without this weekend or that are contentious for resources that may impact your xp:

Prayer-gilded
Crafting-SC
Smithing-SC
Mining-Contention, SC
Woodcutting-Contention, SC
Fletching-SC
Firemaking-Gloves and ring, cheap, easy
Fishing-SC, will be super annoying with the sites full
Construction-SC
Hunter-CONTENTION!!!!
Attack-Contention
Defence-Contention
Strength-Contention
Hitpoints-Contention
Ranged-Contention
Slayer-Contention

Take out my 99's
Farming (if I didn't have 99 already the first thing I'd do is a farming run as it'll be crazy good xp in a matter of minutes)
Agility (again, if I didn't have 99 I'd probably think about doing this)

Take out skills which are free to level and for which I have no need for more levels (would be nice, wouldn't say I wouldn't train them but they don't need a boost)
Magic-I know money is spent but I do all my magic by actually using it to do something else (teleport somewhere, enchant something, alch my battlestaffs). Level 96 would be nice for spellbook swap but not really a big deal to me.

Thieving-Fine for now.

Which leaves these four:
Cooking
Herblore
Runecrafting
Summoning

For me, herblore is number 1. 96 for Overloads would be great. Plus a 10% bonus (or more) on making them would be wonderful. This will be the second thing I do after I knock out the circus. It's really really expensive but I'm using what I have or have the seeds to grow. Not going to go past making my overloads since I'm better off selling what I don't need and taking the cash.

Second priority will be summoning. I have the charms now to get 96 which has been my goal since summoning came out. Considering how low my other combat skills are I have no fear of not getting enough charms gathered. But the expense of summoning puts it in 2nd place. If I can get some relatively cheap xp I will.

Next-Cooking. I don't have tons of fish or anything to cook. And to be honest cooking is one of those fast, afkable skills that I can't get excited much about a bonus. Level 90 is the only thing I'd be interested in and I'm getting close to that anyways.

Runecrafting-Specifically the ZMI. Yeah, I know RC is slow so the total xp I gaid won't be that great even with a bonus. And it's profitable (or at least break even). But for me it's so slow. And 91 is double nats. Which would be great. And will probably be a Karamja elite task. SO yes, this will be what I spend my time on after I knock out my other skills and just am working with a 10-20% bonus.

Updated Shopping List

2010-02-27T10:41:00.000-08:00

Lantadyme 620
Dwarf Weed 498
Avantoe 1100
Coconuts or coconut milk 600

I'll take seeds for Lants, Dwarfs and Avantoe too.
I've got to trade:
800 Ground Dragon Scales
1000 Harrlanders
1500 Ground Chocolate
1000 Tarromin
1000 Ashes
800 Iron Plates
300 Earth Talismans

Tons of other stuff if you're interested pm me.

Shopping List

2010-02-26T23:20:00.000-08:00

In light of the 2x weekend here's what I'm in the market for:

400 Super Defense Potions
200 Dwarf Weed (or seeds)
1100 Avantoe (or seeds)
400 Coconut Milk
1300 Crushed Nests

I'm willing to trade all kinds of things including herbs and 2nds that don't appear on this list.

I also have a nice stockpile of earth talismans and iron platebodies.

February 26, 2010

2010-02-26T16:05:00.001-08:00

Got to 88 Attack and Defense. Should get strength tonight. Been working hard on slayer to get summoning charms.

I got abyssal demons task and decided to use my Familiarisation bonus on them.

I easily got 60 shards this time. I turned off run at about 50 and only used it to escape things that were trying to get me. Even walking I had plenty of time. I would get a shard and then look around and get the next one. Worked my way north to south and back. Abyssals aren't the best charm droppers but I figured good enough.

February 21, 2010

2010-02-21T21:44:00.000-08:00

Well after a few weeks of no leveling I leveled in a fury the last few days.

Got to 88 Fletching a couple days ago.

Last night used every single one of my blues, golds and greens and got to 95 Summoning. I've got about 75% of the charms for 96(Pack Yaks!!) but not nearly enough cash to get there. Need about 9million GP so it'll be awhile. Might go back to doing RC for a bit.

Then realized I was only 18k from 90 Herblore so did that!

2181 now.

February 16, 2010

2010-02-17T16:01:00.000-08:00

More messing around in game. Mostly been doing slayer. Trying to get to 91 before the end of March. I don't want to slay in the summer when it seems that all the slayer areas are over run. So I'm thinking now is as good as time as any to get to some slaying.

Went and checked out the Familiarisation minigame that got released.

Gameplay: Dull. Normally I'm not really down on the updates and I try to accept that there needs to be something for every level. But this is just dull. First, walking. I have 99 agility. I don't like walking. Yes, I realize why they did this (read Mod Emilee's FAQ). However, I think it's lousy. Energy should behave the same as it does everywhere else in the game. Secondly, the creatures are hard to spot what the heck they are. Sorry, maybe it's me. Maybe I need a new glasses prescriptions. But for the most part I'm seeing translucent ghostie things until I'm up close. Third, it's just a slow pokey game. Walk around, pick up stuff, be careful. I wasn't very careful (ok I was semi-reckless) and ended up with 52 shards before I ran out of green bar stuff.

Rewards: I opted for the double charms. From what I've heard you get from 60-100k gp worth of stuff if you choose that option. I'm not entirely convinced that the 20 minutes I spent finding the obelisk, getting there, doing the game and getting back to a bank....I'm not entirely sure it wouldn't be better spent just slaying things.

I'll probably play this when it's convenient (ie when I'm bored, when I'm near an obelisk when it's lit up) or when I get a good charms task (waterfiends, dragons, stuff).

Oh and Jagex-I HATE the stuff that you have to wait a week for. Reset everything (Penguins, Circus, Skeletal Horror, Familiarisation, Tears) at the same time every week. Please. It's a royal pain in the rear.