Repitition

Work and training has me insanely busy. It's getting in the way of playing like I used to.

I managed to get 94 Woodcutting while reading, I was pretty stoked on that. Lately though, my gameplay has been "buy staves, let nomad kill me, rinse, repeat."

This is getting expensive.

I'll update when I have something more worthwhile to talk about or get to play more.

It's been an entire month without a cigarette. Kids, don't start, because quitting sucks.

Quests!

Ok, so after a long, defeated delay, I started doing the circus again. I did it for probably the first 4 weeks it came out, would get like 200xp each and I gave it up. It wasn’t worth my time. I did it last Tuesday on the turn, so I did it, then an hour later it reset and I did it again. I got much better xp than I ever did originally, mainly because I read up on how to do it. It is the fastest xp you can get in any of the 3 skills (range, mage, agility), but I can’t get into it. I’ll probably add it to my weekly errands, but blah, it just seems kind of boring. I can see the intentions, and I have to hand it to Jagex for trying to come up with something interesting, but its just not my thing. Its like Bork & Jade vine, great rewards, but just can’t bring myself to do it regularly.

Anyways, that put me about 70k from 83 Ranged. I had about 500 chins from hunting so I decided to go to Ape Atoll and give this chinning a try. I had never done it before. It took a little bit to get used to, and I’m sure I did it wrong for a bit. Super fast xp though. Which is good, because Range has always been a skill that’s like pulling teeth to level for me. It just seems so slow. I know I should train it with Slayer, but I’m halfway through a Waterfiend task, and they aren’t really good to range on. That’s my problem with Slayer, on the rare occasion I’m motivated to train a certain attack style, it gives me a task where I can’t do it. I’m too stubborn to cancel the task as well. The chins got me to about 30k from the level. From there, I went to black drags at evil chicken’s lair and got the level there. Yay.

I don’t know what came over me. After getting the Ranged level, I figured I hadn’t punished myself enough, so I might as well quest. My hating of quests isn’t something I keep a secret. I do them mainly to get them over with, as well as get the rewards. It’s like running virtual errands. “In order to access that super fun area you really want to go, first you need to hop through hoops A, B &C, fill out an hour of paperwork, stand on one leg for an hour, then wear a ridiculous outfit and run laps around Varrock.” That’s how I feel.

That said, my hatred of quests has led me to doing most of them. I had a quest cape last year and have been lazy about keeping current on the new ones. I finally just said screw it, and did Fur & Seek, Within the Light, Curse of Arrav and Temple at Senntisten. Only the Nomad remains. Can’t wait for that one (sarcasm). They were all kind of ‘meh.’ At least I can use curses now. I only really want to do the nomad quest for the 70 zeal points and Soul Wars cape. +11 pray? *drools*

Wow, this is sounding like a really negative post. I’m actually thrilled with the fact that I accomplished so much stuff I don’t normally like doing so I mean it to be positive! Especially the quests. Motivation to quest comes in small doses which are very few and far between, so when it strikes, I really need to run with it.

I’ll take a shot at Nomad this weekend probably, see what all the fuss is about. It seems everyone I know has just been dying for a week straight at Soul Wars.

Ohh update just happened. They took the +4 str bonus away from the torso. I’m going to watch the ensuing firestorm now…

Here & There

A slow weekend and two sick days from work led to me getting a bunch a levels I was close to:
76 Hunting
79 Construction
90 Defense (with this came 126 cb)
78-79-80 Summoning

I went to partake in running some laps at ape atoll for agility when I discovered my ninja greegree is missing. Great... Oh well, so much for that. I don't feel like getting it back just yet.

I still hate hunting. Since I eventually want to work on my range, I've been hunting chins. It's always crowded and people always seem to be obnoxious.

Made a solo run at Graardor yesterday, just got one kill of him and the minions before I left. Got a clue scroll from the general himself. I wonder what that has in store for me.

On another note, a friend of mine who I talked to a lot for some years now (not on runescape, but on another site) passed away suddenly at a young age the other day. I knew she had been sick and in the hospital, but never to a fatal extent. It's weird, you can type with people on a daily basis, maybe even talk via skype, but there's this weird social stigma attached to caring for people you haven't physically come in contact with. These *are* relationships. If you talk to someone daily for years, you are going to develop a friendship with them.

Losses like these are hard to deal with. Who can you even talk to about them? Your friends in real life might not get it. You might not have known anyone else that knows you in common to talk about it. Its rough and difficult to deal with.

Its weird because you're not actually a 'friend.' You don't get the phone calls or the updates. You only find out by wandering over to their facebook page to see if they posted anything new and all you see are comments like "you will be missed" and "RIP" and about how much you meant to everyone.

The friendships we form online are very real. There are real people behind each sentence and fun conversations had together. In these times, email, the internet, texts, all very impersonable forms of communication are ingrained into our heads, especially for those who are younger. These are very common ways to communicate and form these friendships. It does make me wonder what happens to the ones that we lose contact with. I try to imagine that they're doing what they like best. Hearing news like this though, makes it no easier to deal with than had it been a friend in real life. And life is a lot shorter than you think it is.

Happy New Year!

I don't know what got into me, but I decided to try and kill Jad this weekend. It looks like I'm not alone in that either, turns out about 4-5 other friends got the itch as well.

I'm great at the waves now. I did it 4 times over Saturday and Sunday. Aside from Jad, wave 60 is the hardest. The trick is trapping the 180 behind one of the 90s. I got to Jad 3 of the 4 times, and he's killed me 3 of those 3 times. I can pray switch alright, but sometimes he fakes me out then when I go to eat, it takes a second for the pray switch to happen.

I broke down and bought arma plate and ranger boots and an archer's ring for the occasion. I'll sell them back *when* I defeat him.

Not much time to write, so I'll just show my goals for the year:
1)Reclaim Quest Cape and keep current with new quests
2)Beat jad's stupid face
3)All skills 90+
4)Reclaim Adze

I have about 4-5 quests left to go for the cape. The real part of that goal is trying to keep current with the new ones as they are released.

Jad, well, its personal now.

90+ is a pretty lofty goal. Most of my skills are in the 80s, with a handful in the 70s. The one in the 70s aren't the hardest to level (hunting, thieving, etc), I just need to sit down and do them. That's a goal of 100+ big levels, but its over 12 months. I'll have time I hope. If anything, its something to strive for. Also, this doesn't include the new skill to be released. We'll assess that when it comes out.

Adze - ugh I just need to do that stupid beacon thing again. Its been a couple months, I just hate it so.

Real life goals for 2010 - buy a house (been looking for months), quit smoking (currently dealing with this - not fun, but 5 days without one), finish the triathlon on memorial day weekend that I registered for.

Christmas came a little late!

What a crazy night. Some pretty cool things have happened as of the last post. First, I sold my Fury. 9M was just too tempting and I have a feeling the price will go back down soon. I could be wrong, but 9M for an ammy seems a bit excessive. It took me a long time to come to that conclusion, but I just went with it. That cash can be better used leveling other skills.

After a decent trip to Kurasks, I got a leaf bladed sword drop and 85 Slayer! I was pretty excited about the level as I can now kill Abby Demons. I took a quick trip there just to see what they’re like before continuing on with Slayer. I killed my 185 Gargoyles and got my first Ferocious Ring along with a Granite Maul (311k! wow they went up!). After that, I was assigned around 150 Waterfiends. I was about 8k to a Strength level so I decided to go back to Abby Demons before prepping for Waterfiends.

There I leveled up to 95 Strength and got my first ever Whip drop! I was pretty excited. The whip was the first big purchase I ever made in the game. I bought it when all I did was sit on the dock fishing away the days. I had sold enough sharks to the pkers at Edge to save my first million gp. After a little more saving, I bought it from one of my first friends in the game. It cost 1.6M then and I’ve had it since. I was only even 65 Attack then and couldn’t even use it! I worked so hard for it though it was kind of cool getting it as a drop. Also, before I sold it for 3.6M (gone up a bit over the years), I put it in the bank just so I could see that inventory have that little yellow “2” next to it.

The drop aside, I think Abby Demons are kind of fun. They’re really not very dangerous as their required slayer level would have you think. Waterfiends are much harder in my opinion. With a Bunyip you can just stay there, max damage is 8 I believe. They just teleport you a little bit away, but it just makes it look like you’re dancing with them.

After that I helped a friend on a clue and got a little bored. Everyone was busy and I didn’t feel like spending hours on a long trip so I figured I’d go solo godwars. Kril (Zammy) is the one I like but for some reason I didn’t feel like messing with magic defense and anti-poison. I loaded my tortuga up with rocktails and decided to go to Bandos. I had been riding high off the level and the whip drop and gmaul drop. I remember what Merch had written that someone told her about luck and not logging out while on a lucky streak. I started killing goblins and got my kc to 40 and went up to the boss door and… forgot I was in a lootshare world. There were about 4 people in there who looked like they weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. At this point I decided to tweak the luck/logout thing and decide that it doesn’t apply to world hopping. So I went to a few worlds, being sure to type “doesn’t count” in each one before leaving. I was still at my computer, it still counts!

I walk in and hit 3 big hits on him and get him down to half health. Then Graardor started to get offended and hit me harder. He got me pretty low on hp a few times before finishing him off. I actually had on a ring of life this time, and I hate those things. I swear by my ring of wealth, but this time I didn’t bring it. I finished him off and then went to pick up my drop, Bandos Tassets! I didn’t even bother killing the generals, just pick up my loot and tele’d out. I had been wanting tassets for the longest time now! I’ve been going back and forth in my head debating if the str bonus is worth the insane price tag. 24m? Insane! Now I have them for free! No wonder its always a pain finding an open Bandos world.

After that a friend wanted to solo Graardor. I made sure he was prepared and followed him to the spot. Watched him get his kc and made him wait for me to get mine. If he died I was going to run in and bless. I watched at the door, he got his kill and left. I went in and got mine and left. No good drops, but I wasn’t going to complain after the kind of day I had.

I like going to bosses because I think its fun to fight something big. Ridiculous drops aren’t really ever motivation, but wow, they are cool. I didn’t even have to use my A-K, I have to say it was a good day.

Bring it on home...

Things have been crazy busy. No luck in taking next week off. That’s 4 vacation days this year down the tube being that they don’t carry over. It bites, but I just had my year end review and there’s just too much to be done. Good review though, for the most part. Remind me to take more days off next year.

Merch Gwyar’s Canting Away had their winter solstice festival last week. I had managed to stop in for a little while. I checked the schedule and they were doing a trip to godwars. It was originally planned for sara, but when the host couldn’t make it, they let me lead a trip to Zammy. For the past several months I had been going to Zammy about 3-4 times a week with groups, usually staying for a few hours at a time. Its probably the god I’m most comfortable with. The one thing with all godwars bosses is communicating where you’re at with what you have. The last thing you want is say 2 people low on supplies, they tele out and all of a sudden you’re accidentally tanking (aka accitanking). A few had been before, a few hadn’t. I had a really great teacher the first time I went, so I tried to do what I remembered they did. Just take it slow, let people know what to expect, and make sure everyone lives. If not, bless and get back there. We got some good kills, everyone did great. No real luck with drops, but killing something big is always fun. I pretty much ran out of supplies tanking so I asked everyone to tele out. I’m sure some could have stayed longer, but I don’t like taking risks with other people. If its me, that’s fine I can cope, but I can’t handle taking someone somewhere and they lose their stuff! That’s the worst. Vaskor and Dr Leviathan missed the exit call, but thankfully they were fine and killed it. After not hearing from them and a few mins of sheer panic, and restocking and running back up the mountain from troll, got the word they were ok. Whew!

Sadly I had to miss their lighting a continuous fire from Varrock to Falador, but I definitely want to thank Canting Away for letting me partake in their holiday.

I finished the Blood Runs Deep quest and used all my xp lamps on Prayer. After that I finished the 4 soul wars games I needed to get my 100 points, used them on Prayer as well. Went from 77-81. I’m pretty happy about that. Waiting in the Soul Wars lobby gets incredibly boring, especially if you miss 2 games in a row (40 minutes of standing? Ugh!). The thing is, it keeps teasing you thinking you’ll get in at any minute. If it would just come up and say “you don’t stand a chance” I’ll easily go out and alch or do whatever for 20 mins, opposed to just standing. Using the candy cane emote to make it look like I’m flipping my sword around in my hand kept me amused. I’m bummed that they’re ‘fixing’ that.

I liked the Christmas event. A little hard with the tons of people, but fun. I also liked Blood Runs Deep. I usually do my quests with guides, but this one I just read what others had written about it and made sure I had tons of food and I just did it on the fly. That was pretty fun as well.

I also managed to pull off 89 magic, just by alching/teleporting/enchanting my way through everyday activities and 83 mining by spending some time stocking up some gold down at the living rock caverns.

Did pengs last night, put the points towards Slayer. I’m about 20k from lvl 85 and abby demons. I thought once I got to 83 I would have at least spent some time killing mages for dboots, but I think I’ve killed 4 just out of getting kill count for Zammy. As much as I’d love to kill abbys looking for a whip drop, I wonder if I’ll actually spend the time doing it.

After that watched one of my friends get her mining cape. It’s amazing to think about how that skill has changed in the past year and a half. It went from really only mining ores to ores, stars and now living rock caverns. I remember trudging through al kharid back and forth wondering how anyone could do that for so long.

I was rushing to fix my house up because I was hosting a Festivus event. I told the back story that the same, legendary, Frank Costanza told. We had the airing of the grievances where we made our complaints about the game (all in good fun of course). There were some pretty funny ones and some ones that were spot on. We ate some cake and then festivus doesn’t end until the feats of strength. So I ran into the combat ring with my “aluminum pole” (see also: rune cane) and people whooped me pretty good with their godswords and whips. Then I just let people play in my house, make tabs, pray, cook, use the cb ring, etc. I got a lot of unexpected compliments about my house! That made my night! A while back I was completely sick with my layout and basically tore the whole thing down, spent a couple weeks trying out new designs, running them by people, tweaking them, etc. Made it worth it. Most importantly, *I* love it! It actually feels like a home to me.

I think I’ve been single handedly driving Jax’s hit count through the roof. Her RSS feed of all the runescape and runescape blog updates is pretty amazing. You should definitely check it out.

So with the no days off next week, I’m not setting any new goals for the year end. I’m not going to have much time getting them done. I’m extremely happy with what I’ve done in 2009.

If I don’t get a chance to write again, have a happy (and safe) new year! I’ll see you in 2010!

Hazy Shade of Winter

I haven’t written much lately. To be honest, I haven’t had that much to say. I’ve just been going about my business. Errands, woodcut, mine gold in living caverns place, godwars, penguins, etc. Nothing too exciting, just letting you know I’m alive.

There’s a slight chance that I might be able to take the week between xmas and new year’s off. This all depends on how much work I get done next week. If that miraculously comes together, my plan is to bang out all the quests that I have left. There’s only like 4 or so I haven’t completed, mainly the most recent ones. The new one looks fun and has pretty decent rewards. I’m glad I do the diaries as soon as they’re released.

Real life has been incredibly hectic. Some in a good way, some in a bad way. I’m looking forward to it calming down a bit. I’ve got some big goals for the new year. I’ll bring them up in a year end post.

I want a goal to be ‘write more.’ I feel like that would just lead to some incredibly boring entries though. I think I need to adjust that to ‘have more to write about.’ Kind of hard, but we’ll see how it goes.

For those wanting to fill their costume room, Jax is hosting some events to get those pieces of clothing which can be hard to acquire. I actually think I have more of a chance of making the 2AM time than I did the previously scheduled time, but my chances of making it are pretty low, sadly. Again with the real life stuff. However, you should go! Here’s the info:

Trouble Brewing at 7am Saturday 19th of December (GMT Time) which is 11pm PST (my time) and 2am for those of you in EST. World 104.