Monday, December 29, 2008

New Year!

I had completely forgotten about the Wild Pie bonus for Slayer. I ate one of those and took off to the dungeon by Port Sarim, went into the ice cave and killed my first Skeletal Wyvern. Got my revenge from stupidly wandering in there ages ago at lvl 50 or so. Then I used my pingu points from the week on Runecrafting, made a few rounds of crafting Nats and got to 66 Runecrafting. Collected my rewards, Falador Diary done. I also, temporarily, cracked the top 50,000 overall on hiscores. I was at 49,996 last night and knew that wouldn’t last. I woke up this morning, 50,026. One or two more levels should do it.

Last May I started keeping track of my levels on Excel. I did this because I wanted to see how I was progressing, which skills I was neglecting and that I’m a huge nerd and use Excel for pretty much everything. In the last 7 months, here’s how I have progressed:

Attack 74 – 81
Defence 72 – 80
Strength 80 – 86
Hitpoints 75 – 83
Ranged 62 – 77
Prayer 61 – 70
Magic 73 – 82
Cooking 92 – 96
Woodcutting 66 – 81
Fletching 73 – 75
Fishing 98 – 99
Firemaking 53 – 86
Crafting 66 – 79
Smithing 71 – 73
Mining 62 – 73
Herblore 50 – 63
Agility 57 – 74
Thieving 61 – 65
Slayer 58 – 71
Farming 67 – 77
Runecrafting 51 – 66
Hunter 50 – 66
Construction 52 – 63
Summoning 43 – 68
Overall 1567 – 1834

Looking at those original levels, I can tell that I had just completed the Varrock Diary. Close to 300 levels in a span of 7 months sounds pretty good, but at the time, skills like Summoning, RC, Hunting, I wasn’t really working on and some of those skills in the low 50s and 40s are pretty quick levels. Some people would ask why I’ve only gone from 92-96 Cooking when its such a fast skill to get xp in, and I’m so close to a cape. The easy answer, I kind of hate cooking. I find it boring. I don’t have any desire to go buy 5k sharks and tuck away at the Cooking Guild for hours on end. I’ve only ever cooked what I’ve caught and I really only cook when I need food. The cape is nice, but I’m not a big fan or purple anyway. Why do I bring this up? With the new year approaching, its about the time that everyone sets goals for themselves. While we’d love to be optimistic, we also need to take a second to be realistic.

While I’d love to sport that beautiful Hitpoints skillcape in the next twelve months, let’s see what it would take. In the past 7 months I’ve gone from level 75 to 83. 8 levels. That’s a little more than a level a month. As we all know, you need more and more xp as the skills get higher. Even if I continued at that rate, that would still only bring me to the mid 90s. To break it down even further, I look at xp because level numbers can be deceiving. I have 2,820,904 xp in HP as I write this. The magic number for a skillcape is 13,034,431. That leaves me with 10,213,527 xp until 99. Divide that by 365 days and I’d need to get about 27,982 xp per day. Maybe for some people that’s do-able, but I know how I play. I sometimes neglect cb altogether for weeks at a time. That’s not happening.

It kills me when I see people fishing at Piscatoris and they state that they are going to get a level that day. However, they need 550,000 xp to that level. You make roughly 30,000 xp/hr fishing monks. If you break it down, that level is going to take you over 18 hours to get. I love your enthusiasm, but its already 5pm…

That said, for 2009 I’m going to keep my goals pretty simple and not do anything to really burn myself out on the game. I have 14 quests remaining, so I can see myself getting a Questcape. This will also, hopefully, serve as motivation to do quests as they’re released. I’d like to get 75+ and 2000 total levels. These are probably going to be the biggest goals that I have. However, 170 levels isn’t a lot to achieve in the span of 12 months. That’s 13 levels a month, which I feel is attainable. Runecrafting will be a pain, but with the pingu points, and other xp bonuses in the game, I can do it. It won’t be easy, but that’s the point of setting goals, right? With that I think will come 2 skillcapes. I have about 4M xp left til my Cooking cape and over the span of 12 months, I can see needing that much food. That’s roughly 19,048 sharks cooked. That works out to about 1,587 sharks a month. That’s attainable. Getting 75+ will give me 1907 levels alone, putting me in good position to finish out the year with 2000.

As for the other cape, I have a suspicion that it might be Firemaking. As much as I would love for it to be another time consuming, no easy way to buy levels one, like Woodcutting, I’m only 81 in that currently. I don’t realistically see going from 81-99 in a year’s time. My short term goal is the Inferno Adze. In the past week I’ve gotten 84-86 and the experience is super fast. I just use Maples from my kingdom or train it in synch with WC when chopping Yews and chatting to friends. Also if I’m going to get it to 92, I can see myself saying “what the heck” and continuing on with it. I’ve gotten over 2M xp in it this month alone and it wouldn’t be that much of a strain to get the remaining xp.

I wish you lots of luck and happy playing in the year to come! Set some goals, just be realistic about it. Don’t think that you’re going to get from 75-99 Fishing before March because you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment, and you’ll probably end up hating the skill and burning yourself out on it. Take your time, enjoy it! It is a game afterall.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Holiday Time!

Holiday time is here! The Christmas event is out and, well, I still haven’t done it yet. I might do it on the actual day of Christmas as something to keep with the spirit of it. I initially held out because I saw one of the rewards that can be claimed is 20k Woodcutting xp if you have over level 80 Woodcutting. I had 79, so it wasn’t long and 2 days ago I got my 80 Woodcutting. I’m starting not to mind that skill as much as I used to.

I’ve been taking a break from my chores, yes even staves. I felt like it was getting to me a little. It’s ok though, its good to get a break every now and then. Since the skill of the month for clan has been Firemaking, I’ve been doing a lot of that. Since December 1st, I’ve gone from 74-84 and more than doubled the xp I already had in the skill. I really don’t like the skill, it seems boring, however its much easier with friends. Well, as long as there’s enough lanes. I’ve got all those maples in my bank from kingdom, so I might as well use them for something. After I got to 83, I knew the levels would be further away so I decided to get the Fire Gloves and Ring of Fire for the 5% boost in xp. It’s not an overwhelming amount, but it adds up after time. The minigame wasn’t that hard, more just annoying with all the prep work. Once you talk to all the people, give them what they need and load the logs, the actual lighting aspect isn’t difficult at all. I did it a second time with a friend, to show her the routes to the 10 beacons and how to get there quickly. If you bank properly and use a Terrorbird, I was able to fill all the beacons in just a few minutes. After lighting all the ones that I could, it was nice to see that it made me roughly 25k experience. I used maples for the second trip, and with the time put into it, the experience seems similar to just normal lighting. However, I can see it being a money saver if you just use normal logs or willows. If anything, it’s a way to change it up a little bit if you feel regular firemaking is boring you.

I’m hoping that by the end of the month, getting an Inferno Adze will at least be in reach. Then I can sell my Dragon Axe and put that cash towards something else of good use. I know it’s only saving one spot, but you never know when you’ll need the bankspace ;) Plus I love the fact that you get Fm xp while Woodcutting. I like training multiple skills at once.

If I seem sporadic with my goals, its because I am. You can probably read each post on here and I’m always talking about something different. I’ve been neglecting Hunting for Firemaking. I’m kind of streaky as a player. However, I think you need to be a bit like that to get the most out of the game. Sitting doing one thing for 5 hours/day every single day can get to you. I get distracted by clan events, trips with friends, helping someone with a quest, etc. After all that I have sit and go, “ok, what was I doing again?” It’s kind of comical. I also lose my keys a lot, so its not just something that occurs in-game.

I’ve been dying to break into the top 50,000 overall on the Hiscores list. I’ve gotten a lot of levels since I cracked the top 60k and my total is up to 1825, but I’m still just hovering on the outside of it. Everyone must be thinking the same thing and trying to level just as hard as I am J

Happy and safe holidays to everyone!

Friday, December 5, 2008

Burning Down the House

The December “Behind the Scenes” is out, and it looks like there’s two new Achievement Diaries! I don’t know what it is about these things, but I love doing them. The Varrock one motivated me so much to work on my skills and the Karamja one forced me to get my cb up. The rewards are great. Even though the Lumbridge one was low-leveled, the Cabbage-port is great for farming runs, and the run-replenish is great when you don’t want to waste a strange fruit or a Terrorbird scroll.

Last week, questing seemed to take first priority. I can use new Lunar skills thanks to Dream Mentor. I also did Land of the Goblins, Mountain Daughter, My Arm’s Big Adventure, Olaf’s Quest and Dealing with Scabaras. Dealing with Scabaras allowed me to keep my streak alive of dying during every desert quest. I always use guides and the two I was reading mentioned nothing about fighting the priest who deals with multi-combat, poison and disease. They seemed to focus on the fighting of the Scarab, which is lvl 206, but a pretty straight forward-easy fight. I also didn’t notice that instead of withdrawing just a few thousand gp, I had all my cash on me. I lost about $3M which I had been saving for Con & Summoning as well as my Beserker Ring, Dragon Boots, etc. I’ve never understood the system RS uses as to what you keep when you die, but I held onto my Dragon Legs, which are considerably less than a Beserker Ring. It would always confuse me too as to why I’d hold on to a shark opposed to something like Boots of Lightness. That was kind of a bummer, I didn’t make it back in time to retrieve them. It’s alright though, I just shook it off. It’s a game, it’ll be fun. Nothing to cry over, just get back up and do it again. I spent some time fishing to make some more money to get some items back and the rest will come in time. The thing that got me was that after losing all my cash, I had to make money to re-buy my skillcape. It’s weird that you just can’t get that back by talking to the person, like you usually do with quest items. So now I have my cape back and two hoods in the bank. Weird, but whatever.

I have around 15 quests left to do. Not a lot, but not a small amount. I really dislike doing them, so the motivation comes and goes. When I have it, I need to strike while it’s hot. This week I haven’t done any, I need a break. I also hate leaving a quest in the middle of it, so with just a few hours to play after work and a lot of that time dedicated to my daily chores, it hasn’t seemed worth it.

December is Firemaking month in the clan. I need to redeem myself for my dreadful showing during last month’s Farming. I think I only got around 250k xp. All I had were a lot of low level seeds and didn’t get any good ones from my kingdom until 2 days before the end. Figures, huh? I’ve been burning my stock of maples, but I’ve also been trying to stockpile some yews/mages. I don’t mind Woodcutting as much as I used to. As long as I can find an empty world. I usually cut at tree gnome. There’s a mage tree there, as well as the mage I have planted at my farming spot, plus a few yews and the bank is very close. It’s amusing how the xp level of skills vary so much. I’ve already beat my xp from last month, and it’s only the 5th. Whereas it would be the equivalent of months running to the abyss over and over making runes.

I love that the new quest gives 400k xp in any skill. I’m really looking forward to being able to do it. I’m not sure what I would use it on. It would save a lot of money using it for Construction or Summoning. The time it will save for Runecrafting though makes it seem more valuable. That would more than double the xp I have now at lvl 63.

In all the times of checking my kingdom for nests and receiving them as randoms while Woodcutting, there’s one thing I never understood; why are there rings in them? I can understand the seeds and the eggs, but is there also a collection of lost fingers? I don’t mind the normal golden rings, they can be used in Summoning, but its so disappointing when you get a nest and you’re like “Awesome! Nest! Dang, Sapphire Ring.” I guess I could enchant them, but I just seem to keep those things around for Treasure Trails. I have plenty of Dueling Rings, I never use Rings of Recoil, I don’t even know what an enchanted Ruby ring does and Rings of Life drive me insane. I hate it that there’s a chance I might die and all of a sudden I’m tele’d out, when I wasn’t close to death or was simultaneously clicking to eat. 10% of your HP is still easy to deal with when not fighting anything major. I don’t know, I think it’s a control issue I have.

I also, finally, got my Prayer to 70 thanks to some Steel/Iron assignments from Duradel. I’m going to use my pingu points this week for Slayer. The update mentioned needing to kill a Skeletal Wyvern and I know you need 72 for that. Currently I’m only 1k xp from 71, so that should make it easier. Revenge is going to be sweet! Ever since I was lvl 60 or so and mistakenly wandered into that Ice Cave, I’ve had a bone to pick with that thing. Vengeance has been my motivation for Slayer, to kill the Skeletal Wyvern. I’m ok with that. We’ve all had those instances when we were lower levels, and you say lose your Rune Chestplate which you saved so hard for and spent 3 hours in a bank yelling “Buying Rune Plate!!!!!” because it was pre-GE and late at night so not a lot of people were on. I’d love it if you guys shared some of your stories like that, so feel free to!

This weekend, clan trip to Fishing Trawler and the goal is for Path of Glouphrie. I’m not going to have a lot of playing time, so nothing too high. Going to watch the De La Hoya/Pacquiao fight at the boss’s house, so that should be a good one. No idea who to root for. I guess my heart’s with De La Hoya and my money’s on Pacquiao. Eagles go up to the Meadowlands, ugh. Its ok though. The Phillies are World Champions.