3-0!

Its official kids, I'm 3o!

Forced my way to 1897 levels. 6k from Mining, 45k from a Magic and 47k from a Firemaking level. Maybe I can get 1900 in the next 24 hours and have 2 celebrations.

Baseball starts this next weekend and I have to give a shout out to 15 miles away (Gooo villanova!!)

Daily Grind

Real life has been pretty hectic, I haven’t gotten on to play much. Clan trips keep getting cancelled left and right. It kind of makes me wish I had the time I spent prepping for them back.

For the few hours I get to play, I’ve got a pretty decent routine down. Staves, check on tree, check on star and do either if they are close in time. If both are over and hour, I’ll take my Graahk and hunt chins until it runs out. Its really annoying that the familiar stays so close to you when hunting. I just want to check my box, I don’t need to chat with it. Its amazing to me how much the bonuses help in hunting. I take a dip in the mud bath and summon the graahk, using pots when the mud bath wears off. It’s a difference of getting 3 chins out of 4 traps or getting 1 out of 4. One more summoning level til the Arctic Bear familiar which gives a +7. For trees, if it’s a low level, I’ll focus on chopping the tree as much as possible, only chopping the roots when they’re impossible to avoid, saving the kindling for the higher level trees.

The past week I’ve stalled at 1893 levels, however I’m close to about 8 which I’ll see how many I can get this weekend. I think I’ll be able to cross the 1900 barrier.

No team for the Jagex Cup. I think I’ll just use it as motivation and train whatever skill it is solo. I’ve been thinking about signing up for one of those 300+ people clans I see all over the forums recruiting people. I never PvP, but just to say I was part of it and check it out. Its kind of annoying when you’re excited to try something and can’t because you can’t solo it. It reminds me of standing in Varrock going “Need black arm band member!!!!!!” over and over again for hours.

Jagex Cup

Random post - but if anyone needs another for the skilling part of the Jagex Cup, I could definitely use a team. I've got 1893 total with my lowest being 66 Construction. This is as close as begging as I'm going to get.

Ramblings

I really have no tolerance for cheating. It bothers me also that I don’t know what to do when friends do it. Lately a lot of people I know have been doing a lot of account sharing. The one who hates quests that’s friends with the one who doesn’t like cb, they switch, one quests while the other plays Pest Control. It’s been so much that when I sign on, I never know who’s who anymore. They think it’s amusing, I just think its still cheating.

As much as I hate quests (and I really really hated questing), I did them all. I did them all to unlock all the places I could. I sat there and died time after time after time. I had offers of “why don’t you just let me do this for you” after hours and hours of struggling, but I can’t do that. Not only do I not want you on my account (even though I trust you), its that *I* want to know how to do it. Some quests teach you stuff you need to know later. Path of Glouphrie was easy because I already had experience using that stupid exchanging machine.

I’m Aries, so I got stubbornness in me. When you have me over to your house to celebrate you getting your cape, don’t make a statement like “I can’t believe I did all the quests!” because I will call you out on it by saying “Don’t you mean *most* of the quests?” And that makes me look like a jerk. Maybe it is bitterness because I tried over and over and over things and you signed on going “wow they did a lot of quests for me” but its still against the rules. I’m not talking about anyone in particular, just a trend I see occurring. It seems that if friends so it, then others see it and view it as ok. How do you step in and say, cut it out, or at least maybe stop proclaiming it out loud to everyone, and not be viewed as the one that’s being the jerk in that situation?

Ok vent over. I’ve had lots of fish from my kingdom stacking up over a while now. I decided that since I was at 96 Cooking for like 6 months, that I’ll just pull the trigger, do it 2 hours a night and get it over with. I’ve gotten it up to 98 but I still am not excited about it. I don’t view it as much, I’ve really only cooked when I needed food. I hated training it so its not like its something I’ve toiled over for hours and hours and hours at a time. One of those things that just kinda happens. I’m not thrilled by the cape, I don’t really like the color and am not that into the emote. I think I’m prouder of my Mining being 77. That’s a skill I’ve worked my adze off for. No disrespect to anyone that likes to cook, its just not my thing. Not every skill is for everyone. Maybe the fact that I’m a terrible quester/cb’er contributed to this. I’ve needed a *lot* of food in my RS life. I’ve eaten enough sharks to put them on the endangered species list myself alone. The best part though, is that and the questcape knocks out two of my goals for the year and its early March. I’m off to a good start.

Kinda bummed in clan reaction to the Jagex Cup. I think it’s be something to be stoked for, but when I started doing the numbers, its going to be hard. We definitely can’t do PvP, some of those clans not only have 100+ members, but they’re all good at it. Might be interesting to watch though. SC I’d be willing to do, although never done it with cb involved. I don’t think we can pull 20 people together. It actually has me wondering if we can pull 10 people together to skill who are actually into it. Some just don’t like competition. Which is had, because I’m kind of a competitive person. I just view it as good motivation. I don’t actually care who wins, winning’s nice but losing isn’t the end of the world, it’s the competition itself that I enjoy. So I don’t know, we’ll see what happens. I’m stoked on it, I think it’s a great idea. It’s also a lot of work for Jagex to take on when they don’t have to. It’s like volunteering to have a giant headache, and doing it with a smile.

That said, is there a way to watch Clan Wars? I’ve never been there. Even though I wouldn’t be competing, I think a giant PvP tournament would be fun to watch. Is there a way to peek through the portal and see the action? If not, there definitely should be for this.

Bring on the Games!

Got my Quest Cape last Friday. I was never a big fan of questing, but WGS was pretty interesting. Also, no death, which is always welcome. I never claimed my xp reward and probably won’t for a while. The only thing that has me torn about it is the fact that there’s a cutscene preview of upcoming quests and I really want to see it, but to see it you need to claim your xp. There’s just not one skill I’m focusing on at the moment, but maybe with new releases or whatever there’ll be something I really want to get to, so for now, it can just wait. Its kind of good to know you have 400kxp in the bank.

Sunday was another awesome game of skill only Stealing Creations. I think there was a game that was only 12 minutes at one point, but I could be wrong.

I didn’t realize it until it was too late, but I definitely forgot to do penguins and I hate myself for it. Not only for the xp, but I actually kind of enjoy it. Also, it was the fact that when I realized it, I was only an hour too late and I had basically spent that time just clearing out bankspace.

I’m loving the Q&A with the company on the forums. I never grasped why people love to hate Jagex. They created something awesome, but for every update there’s someone reacting as if it ruined their lives. The game is fluid, we can adjust. They seem very candid and honest in their responses, while still being able to withhold information that they should. That information being upcoming plot lines, quest details, etc. You don’t see an author come out and say “the book ends like this…”, you need to have some things kept secret. I loved that they addressed the dragon pickaxe issue by saying they’re coming out with it, but are just figuring out a decent way to do it. I get that. You don’t want to release something people have been begging for directly for sale in a general store. You want to wow people and make you feel like you earned it. I’d love to see it released in a quest/mini-quest involving the star sprites since they’ve become such a big part of the Mining skill. Maybe deal with their origin or whatever. I also like that they not too subtly called out their mistakes. Its not the exact words, but it was along the lines of “do you really want another Firemaking skill?” Ouch. To my view, it pretty much calls out Firemaking on sucking and not really useful. Which, I think, is true. But the cape is orange, which makes it kind of awesome.

I hope this becomes a regular thing. A little bit of effort goes a long way. Even when people had suggestions that they shot down, they came up with pretty good reasons. The “yeah, we thought of that but just couldn’t figure out a way to execute it properly because of x, y and z” at least shows the player that they are in fact, trying these things out. And a few times, it makes perfect sense. Lag vs an unresponsive player? I get that too.

The reasoning behind Stealing Creations not giving skill xp cleared so much up for me. It makes sense. It *does* give xp basically, its just not given on the completion of the game directly. it’s the bonus xp you get from using their tools, which still makes you go out and actually do the skill. it’s a motivator to both play the minigame and actually go out and train that skill. Brilliant!

They hinted at a “Runescape Olympics” and it looks like they gave us just that with the Jagex Cup. Its on the forums under clans. I can not wait for this. I’m crossing my fingers our clan can enter all 3 things. However, we are kind of on the small side, spread out in a million different time zones, and the fact that I’ve never seen 20 people online at the same time is kind of an issue. We do our monthly in-clan skill months, but honestly, there’s only me and a handful of others (5 tops) that actually care or do it. I want to do the skilling one, just hope that others do too. I’d help out at the combo one, not saying how good I’d be at it and I’d probably be terrible at the combat one. I can be there for the sake of being an extra body, but will probably be dead before I know how to react. It starts shortly after 3/23 and I’m trying to figure out if that means they hate college basketball or not.

10, 10, 10 , 10, for everything, everything, everything...

Over the past 2 years there’s been some major renovations in the Runescape world. Removal of the Wildy, introduction of PvP worlds, GE, HD, While Guthix Sleeps, Summoning, bank tabs, Decanetc. There has also been some minor ones that go unmentioned or are just sidenotes along with a bigger update. Here’s my top 10 minor updates in the past year or so (in no particular order):

1) Fairy Rings - When dialing in a Fairy Ring destination code, the wheels would only go one way and you could only do one at a time. This was incredibly annoying when you were trying to get someplace in a hurry. Now the rings go both ways and you can do them without having to wait for the first one to finish setting. A few seconds here and there adds up over time.

2) Ectophial - I *hated* that I would need to get to Port Phas, I go to grab my ectophial and realize, its empty. That long trek back to the temple was a bit of a walk of shame. Now its impossible to forget to fill it because it automatically does it for you when you use it to tele there.

3) Bone Grinder - Upstairs at ecto. I can’t tell you how many Dragon Bones I’ve buried there instead of loaded into the grinder. You had to insert, grind and collect each one. Now you just set it and forget it.

4) Map - The in-game map saves me from having to have a separate window open and flipping back and forth between browser screens. Also, the new “You are here” indicator is helpful as well. If you click to run somewhere, open your map, you can see your X as you’re still running. Amusing.

5) Decant - Making potions is annoying enough, making (3) into (4) usually led to accidental drinking of doses and time wasted standing in a bank. Now you can make all the (3) into (4) in your inventory all at once thanks to the helpful Herblore guy in the GE. This is great because its right next to the bank and clears up some bankspace in a pinch.

6) XP - It used to be when you would hover your mouse over a skill, it would just show you how much xp you had. In order to figure out how much needed to get to the next level, you’d need to have an experience chart open (as well as your map), pencil, paper and a calculator near by. Also lots of cursing when you realized you were wrong. The little addition of “xp needed to next level” makes it so much easier to judge what you need to be doing.

7) Grimy Herbs - So much better than “Unidentified Herb.” Cut back a lot on herb scamming, also just makes it easier when planning what you’ll use them for later. I don’t like having stuff in my bank that’s ’unidentifiable.’

8) Bird Nests - LOVE the audio when nests fall out of the tree now. I cringe when I think about all the nests I might have missed in the past just because I didn’t notice a dot of red on the mini-map or a small brown dot on the ground next to me.

9) Dragon fire - Between chat, clan chat, “Your shield absorbs some of the dragon’s breath”, etc, chances are, you’d miss that message that your Anti-Dragonfire potion has worn off and you’re about to get a little hot under the collar. Now not only have the added a warning that it was about to run out, before it had, they also made the text a different color so that it stands out and added an audio warning as well. This has saved me several times.

10) High Alch - Not only is the animation less obnoxious, but more importantly, they moved the icon. It couldn’t be done as easy as before. That’s not the good part, its that they could have left it, then they had the update moving it back. That’s awesome. Nothing goes perfectly. It happens. What I love is that they could have left it, but were more on the “we’re wrong, we’ll put it back” side. Well played.

Who's Got The Herb?

The quest filter threw me off a bit when it first came out. I had thought I was a lot closer last week than I actually did. Thankfully, some free time this weekend plus an additional snow day due to a crazy storm that had me shoveling for hours allowed me to knock out a few. Did the Tozl-Ket-Whatever, both parts of Rag & Bone Man, Kennith’s Concerns on Saturday-Sunday. Since yesterday was technically ’bonus time’ being that I didn’t plan on being able to play, I thought I’d take care of a few more. I started out with Mourning’s End 1, and followed it with Mourning’s End 2 (which isn’t as bad as a lot make it seem). I think I died close to 40 times doing Summer’s End and capped it off with an easy one in Meeting History.

Just 4 left. Forgettable Tale, Path of Glouphrie, Spirits of the Elid and WGS. I’ll probably get those over the weekend sadly and not before. Weeknights are a little pressed for time the next few days. This month’s skill is Herblore, ugh. Gathering seconds and filling vials… I’ve been trying to come up with a plan of how to go about it, and I can’t make it click properly in my head. I have been saving all the herbs I’ve gotten for drops the past few weeks, but there’s not many. I’ve grown all the seeds I’ve had in my inventory as well. Short of buying seeds and slowly growing them at about 30 per hour, maybe getting me 3500xp/hr in Herblore, I don’t see anyway to really dig in and train this without losing lots of cash.

Skills like Woodcutting are easy, want to train? Then you go cut. Herblore just has so many aspects that don’t give any xp, that unlike saying buying essence and crafting them into runes for a profit, you just lose on. I didn’t think it was that bad last night until I realized what I had been doing wrong. I was figuring 24k per Ranarr seed, 6.3k per Ranarr and 6.2k per ppot (based on RS Wiki’s numbers). I spent about a half hour with a friend on Lunar gathering 400 Snape Grass, so that was free. With buying 400 Ranarrs, making into 400 ppots, I was thinking great, only a 40k loss in gp. What I had forgot (and luckily realized before buying anything) was the decant aspect. You make a (3) while only the (4) sells for 6.2k. Instead of selling 400 pots, you sell 300, which brings you to a 180k+ loss in gp, all for gathering only 35k Herblore xp.

Goraks and Star Flowers are seemingly cheap xp. However, I average around 10 Gorak claws per trip using a Bunyip and a full inventory of sharks. Say you bring 27 sharks, that’s about 21.6k gp or about 15 or so minutes of fishing your own. Add a few minutes for gathering the Star Flowers as well. For me, killing that many Goraks takes about 25 minutes, so that’s 45 or so minutes (or 30-35 and 21.6k gp) to make 10 Magic essence for a total of 1.3k Herblore xp.

I’ve got over 700 nests stored up from my kingdom and WC, just waiting for me to get 81 Herblore. Its getting there from 67 that I’m having an issue with. I’ve got about 150 each of Grimy Dwarf Weed and Lantadyme saved up, which I can’t use yet. Is there some glaringly obvious aspect of this that I’m missing? I guess I could do Fleshcrawlers, but that’s still about 25 mins grabbing 27 herbs to make roughly 3k xp.

I’m going to use about 3 weeks of Penguin Points on this, but I hate doing that being that I like that saving me money in either Construction or Summoning or trips to the Abyss while Runcrafting. I wish there was a mini-game for this…