U mad?

INB4FR33TR4D3:

717M, traded for 2 reindeer antlers

501.2M from cracker, lost 215M value



Classic purple phat before dup; 515.3M

Proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance

Last Sunday, I dutched up and completed Monkey Madness. I'd put it off for a long time, holding back until I got 50 range for the jungle demon fight. I did get the range level thanks to the circus and had to wait on getting blue dhide and sharks. The dhide bought in an hour, but the sharks were in limbo for three. I didn't want to wait any longer, knowing I'd push it back again if I did, so I hopped into Merch's chat and asked if someone would sell me 60 cooked sharks. Vaskor offered and we met at CW. I thought 60 would be just enough since I thought I'd be getting punched frequently by gorillas and might die.

Amazingly, I only ate three. Two were consumed during the two tunnel runs and one when I got cornered by a scorpion behind the jail. The jungle demon went down like a wilted pansy thanks to protect from magic. When I teleported to the arena, I stood where I'd landed with my prayer turned on while the demon stayed four squares away.

Saturday, I went through Underground Pass twice (once for the quest and once for Regicide) with nary a hitch. I had too much food until I met up with Iban (kept stunning me until I put on protect from magic [which isn't suppose to work]) and only fell off the bridges once.

A trick I read about on the RSWiki for Roving Elves: when fighting a moss giant in Glarial's tomb, first kill a zombie until one drops a sling, then safe spot the moss giant. It totally worked! Took maybe five minutes to kill it with a sling, but so awesome to use a workaround like that.

I'm finished with serious combat training. Working to get enough cash for dragon armor to wear so I don't look like a noob (rune plate, Neit helm, d skirt, d boots).

Not this blog post again

You've likely read about this already.

Am I disturbed by it? Yes, for reasons listed below.

- the voting page looks hinky

- certain links for sharing (Twitter and MySpace for me) go to error pages

- only typing an account name is needed (anyone can vote using anyone's name)

- no option to vote "No" or be taken to a familiar looking poll page (such as the regular polls Jagex puts up)

  ^ This is supposedly going to be fixed tomorrow, stated by Mod Emilee

- it's either yes you want both back or no you don't (I don't want "old" Wildy back, but don't care about free trading)

"We’ve been shutting down bot-makers all around the world" Is Aximili E I headdesking right now? Bots are as prevalent now, if not moreso, as they were.

Credits to Logdotzip for the heads up a few days ago.

Underrated Slayer Monster #7: Fever Spider

4. Empty spots

3. One drop (kwuarm; rare to get)

2. Special gloves

1. Bottle of Teleportation™

The only downside is the killer headache.

Bottlenecks

A bottleneck is a phenomenon where the performance or capacity of an entire system is limited by a single or limited number of components or resources. The term bottleneck is taken from the 'assets are water' metaphor. As water is poured out of a bottle, the rate of outflow is limited by the width of the conduit of exit - that is, bottleneck. Increase the width of the bottleneck, and you can increase the rate of which the water flows out.

~ Wikipedia 

There are several quests I want to get out of the way, but I've set a goal to be achieved before I'll do them. I suppose it could be considered two goals except they pretty well go hand-in-hand. Underground Pass is waiting patiently. I have all the required skills and I'm confident I can work through that hellhole dungeon a third time. Although one thing makes that quest simpler - 79 combat to kill Kalrag. The combat level is arbitrary; it only keeps Kalrag's minions from constantly injecting me with their venom. The other quest is Monkey Madness, which I hope will be easier a third time around. Being able to wield a dragon scimitar will be sweet and puts the other goal in the limelight - 60 attack. Since combat needs boosted, it makes sense to gain attack levels to raise it. 

I'm pretty burned out on combat in general, so it's sliding in favor of non-combat skills. Agility is winning out and you know how much I hate it (sorry Pie). I checked with Tipit's combat calculator which told me getting 60 in attack, strength and defense will get me 79 combat (without raising summoning and prayer). In the back of my head, I keep hearing Simple saying, "Slayer..." and not in an annoying way either. Reading up on the task list, I went to Chaeldar to get going. She's only got a few things I'll Burthorpe if they get assigned. She is my fave slayer master, though Rhonda gets pounded into the dirt a lot (51 hp lol XD).

TL;DR - My goals are 79 combat and 60 attack and I'm doing slayer (yucky) to raise them.

[For those who read this whole post, please enjoy the following hadoken gif.]

Gaming logic

You can't lay and light a fire in an open doorway, but you can lay and light a fire when the door is closed.

Money making for new players, or why can't we all be Egghebrecht (except for his exploding appendix)

Before I had the teleports and stockpiled money for MTK and daily shop sales, I hunted polar kebbits and farmed cats for money.

The cats take a bit of work, what with rescuing Fluffs' babies and eventually adopting one to become a cat in order to trade for death runes. [Please don't tell Gertrude. I've been lying to her and saying they're in my house and quite happy.] Getting the Ardy 1 cape makes it more than worth the few hours babying a kitten. I'd grow a kitten to cat a day, farm it out to West Ardy and sell off the 200 death runes for around 70k. 

When I got bored of being in Catherby, I went out hunting for polar kebbit furs with kitten in tow. The walk/run was nearly deadly (damned unicorns/bear cubs/rock crabs), but worth it. The furs were about 3500 each and I spent a good amount of time filling my inventory (27 plus a space for the kitten/cat). That was nearly 95k.

Efficiency?

So I'm browsing TipIt and I read this question about grenwalls and using bonecrusher. [I know there are "better" things to spend tokens on.] One sentence left me gobsmacked:

So I've heard its worth smoking traps at grenwalls, but I don't see how its possible between casting fruitfall, dropping bones, setting up/tearing down traps, and baiting said traps to fit that in.

O.O

I've heard of the super efficiency training since Zarfot came out with getting 200M exp in every skill as fast as possible and mouse keying being semi-legal. I know about firemaking backwards and tipping bolts while woodcutting/fishing/slaying. but J. Guthix Manderberry. Are people honestly and truly missing uber amounts of experience that they have to squeeze in 4 different activities in 2 seconds?

Desert Bus for Hope

My favorite charity endurance is on the horizon again. Desert Bus for Hope is making its fourth annual drive with the Loading Ready Run crew at the wheel.

Child's Play helps get toys and games to kids in hospitals.

Desert Bus is the worst video game ever made. It's real time driving a bus (with a veer to the right) at 45 mph from Tuscon, AZ to Las Vegas, NV. The trip lasts eight hours. There is no way to hurry this up either and the controller can not be "fixed" for the veer; a person has to manually correct for it.

The more money that is donated pushes LRR to play for longer. The charity event lasts about six days.

The kids aren't all right

The kids in RuneScape are ugly, the human ones especially. 

When Kennith's Concerns quest came out, Kennith was extremely creepy and his chat head moreso. The head bobbing makes me want to reach through the monitor and choke the little bastard. Sometime after that quest, all the kids got updated and their facial features are identical to Kennith, including the repetitive, nervous tick. 

[You can argue the adults are no different, merely cookie cutters of each other. At least adults grew out of that head bobbing bullshit.]

I think I was reading about the list of things Pontak asks you to get during Fremmy Trials when I saw an upclose picture of Andrew Gower. Bulgy eyes, long nose, no chin, bowl-style haircut; OMFG HE'S THE BASIS FOR ALL THE KIDS IN RUNESCAPE.

Rattus norvegicus

After getting through the cat/rat quest "serials", I've realized why there is still such a rat problem in West Ardougne: my cats can't catch rats for shit.

To start, Icthlarin helped me not totally desecrate the tomb of Klenter. It's one of those foundation quests that has to be done to get to other quests. It went better than the other times because I didn't have to run to bank for food/potions. RuneHQ saved me there. :D And I kept finding the safe spot by the pit jump (just at the top of the pillar, right-hand side) to keep the mummy from attacking me while I rested. I failed the pit jump often, only succeeding on the initial jumps when I had to leave the pyramid to talk to the high priest. BTW, watch out when you run by the ghost of Klenter because he will beat you up, take some money or both.

That led to helping Bob win Neite; an adventure I really enjoyed. I like having the mouse toy to play with.

Thirdly, Ratcatchers. It's up there for hated quests. Walkthrus make it easy, but it's still time consuming. The only change I noticed was I had to use specifically rat poison on the cheese. Before, I'd used the Draynor manor poison. Someone else and his kitten were in the mansion with me and pwning me with rat catching.

It's pretty cool to be able to understand my cats now. Also, I can finish up a couple medium ADs.

The essence of a lady

In a nutshell, this explains Merch Gwyar best. For anyone else, we'd've either remembered the guard plays a part in Biohazard, or decided if he's wearing all that protective gear maybe we shouldn't go poking around.

Also, if she ever remembered her combat info, she's be very much like Zanik.

Flammenwerfer

I completed Dragon Slayer last night. Holy crap, Elvarg has been ramped up! She uses her dragonbreath constantly and quickly. I read on the Wiki that it hits with the speed of a whip and I now realize how freaking fast that is. I did use an antifire potion since this was the first time doing this quest as a member (other times have been F2P). When she did hit, it was for a minimum of 70 damage and typically twice in succession. The other thing - once I stepped over the barrier, my prayer points plummeted. I'd compare the drain to what happens when fighting Damis (shadow diamond) during Desert Treasure. I toyed with the idea of using protection prayer, but fortunately I read ahead and decided against it.

Since playing on a new character, I have ran into people who nag me over "thought you quit lol". It's that same crap that happened with Sal's; I never said I quit RuneScape. I said I was not playing on Kitt. I swear, people aren't taught to read in school anymore.

Sal Scoursour

As a new character, I came into RS with no money. I rather enjoy scrounging off the ground and other players. More people are thieving the master farmers in Draynor and dropping seeds which I scoop up and put to my own use. I'm not getting very far with herblore this way, but it's more fun for me. :D

I'm in a spot now that didn't seem as bad with other accounts. I'm woodcutting to support firemaking and fletching. Wc is getting more experience while the others seem left behind.

Ocedar

I couldn't wait, so I signed up a new P2P account named Rhonda Snord (which I could not believe wasn't snapped up already lol). I'm having a ton of fun, playing with the low-level stuff I never bothered about. 

So, I was going to toss a cabbage in the pot up at the Black Knight fortress and not really worried because I wore guard armor and had cooked sardines when I go through the front door and get a hearty smack in the face by a black knight. :o 

Yeah, there's a black knight roaming around the hall between the front door, the secret passageway and the other door you gotta talk your way into. I don't know *when* he showed up or *why*, but BKF quest isn't as easy for low-levels as it used to be. I ended up taking 10 minutes to kill him with the new wind breeze spell. Probably not bad if you've got someone with you to kill him for you.

Elephant? What elephant?

Is anyone else having such difficulties selling herbs on the GE? It takes a few hours to sell even at min.

ION, Kitt is being retired on November 1st, or whenever her membership ends (should be around there). 

NOTE: I AM NOT QUITTING RUNESCAPE, JUST NOT USING KITT FOX AS MY MAIN ACCOUNT.

As it happens, I'm going to put myself in your hands. Yes, *yours* so I hope you washed them; I mean with soap *and* water, not just tickled your fingers under the tap. Anyway, there's a poll over there -----------> with a few suggestions and please comment if you have a different one or want to elaborate on your choice.

Ty Thorn of RuneScape

After spying the penguin in Falador, I was given an urgent message to speak with Sir Tiffy. I ran over to his park bench and received a short, ambiguous mission: sandwich troubles. My mission packet included my trusty Commorb and the Orb of Oculus. Savant was more forthcoming with what I should do - make contact with the Sandwich Lady and use the OOO to peak inside her kitchen.

The quickest method to do this would be to hang out in a random event-free zone for an hour or so, then immediately teleport somewhere. I geared up for slayer and asked Kuradal for a task. Obligingly, she assigned 168 hellhounds and off I went. With the task completed, I used my glory to teleport to Edgeville and got lucky with my first try. The Sandwich Lady appeared and offered a sample of her wares. I selected a tasty breadroll, accepted the gift with purchase she handed over and pretended to step onto the green teleporter. While she turned to walk to her kitchen, I quickly ducked into a crouch and hid beside the bar. I pulled the OOO from my pocket and raised it just above the bar so the camera lens could see inside the kitchen. Savant asked me to upload the images from the OOO to her directly, which I did.

This is when it went pear-shaped.

As soon as I hooked the OOO to the wireless, Java decided to update itself. The stupid pop-up message had no 'close' or 'cancel' option and Savant and I were forced to wait for the update to finish before I could send the images over the network.

MEAT PIES ARE MADE OF PEOPLE!!!!

Curses

The Dahmaroc statue is fully built and dusting up a corner of my main study. I'm not going to put the same effort into building a second statue like I did with this one.

My RuneScape ennui is still around. I will say I'm not bored with the game, mostly with the skills I have left to work on. I keep making attempts to talk myself into delving deeper under Daemonheim with little results. I use the bank as a stopping point when I graahk runecraft and that's it. I've read up on the occult bosses and I'm quite turned off. The only things I do are the daily freebies, kill Bork and craft nats for 49 minutes.

Here I Am

CTV News - Hurricane Igor Follow-up

Postpartum blues

There is always some kind of down time after achieving a 99. You've been in a cycle for days/weeks/months and moving away is hard. Though I didn't like making 15k teak tables for two weeks (with a break in between), I found myself standing in Yanille bank wondering what I'm going to do. The really obvious thing is to upgrade my house now that I can build everything. The down slope is affording everything. I went to RuneHQ and used their POH mapping calculator? to come up with a new layout for the main floor and dungeon. Once I had the plans, I copied them down and listed out all the items to go in each room. I'd set a loose budget of 100M, knowing I'd be getting a demonic throne (25M) and at least one dragon (10M). My rough estimate of the expensive gear - marble blocks, magic stones, dragon(s) - is in the ballpark of 60M. That means it's time for serious money making, going so far as to try this double nat crafting thing the cool kids talk about, along with herb farming and some slayer.

Since I've been figuring out what to do with myself, I felt it was time to give up and make serious attempts at the fight caves. I asked for advice from players who kill Jad on a regular basis and they tell me I should have no problems with anything except the prayer switching. I haven't gotten to Jad yet because of my own stupid mistakes. Finishing the damned KAD is driving me bonkers; very much akin to ME2 which I only left undone for so long because it was moronically difficult. That pushes me forward. What holds me back is knowing I'm very likely to die to Jad and waste 2 hours that I could have been avoiding runecrafting and dungeoneering.

20

Now I can build my own TARDIS:

The fruits of my labors:

Questions again

Since the release of the chaotic weapons, have the higher-end monsters (metal dragons and such) gotten tougher to kill with older methods (whips, godsword, range)?

What makes a good house dungeon?

Imps can teleport inside the magic guild. Does that mean they have 66+ magic?

Ook?

Ignore the monkey

BEW went very well for me. My only regret were those silly Real Life things - bathroom breaks, food and sleep - that held me back from getting another construction level. I'm a rarity in that I like having BEW and would like more, just not often.

Here's a bot who was trapped in the Yanille pillory for 29 hours (2p Sat - 5p or 6p Sun). I'd love to have been a fly on the wall when s/he checked their program and saw they got nothing for their efforts. :[)

The elite sections of the achievement diaries came out this morning. Seeing the update timer appear freaked me out. "WTH is Jagex doing updating on a Tuesday morning?!?!" o_O I snooped around the RSOF and KB to find out what the tasks were and was bummed to see "Kill Jad" on the KAD list. I've been expecting it since the elite diaries were rumored; Jagex would have us kill a boss of some type and Jad felt for sure since they had us kill a Ket-Zek. The Ket is on wave 32, so the only logical thing tougher would be to complete the fight caves period. I'm honestly surprised we aren't going after the DKs for the Fremmy diary. Anyway, the only tasks I haven't finished are kill Jad and 75 pts from Lapalok. Yeah, I know I don't *have* to kill Jad. It's that I'll have done/do everything in the KAD (and other diaries) except that and it would bother me more to see it unfinished. I wonder how many other players feel like me about Jad?

Other notes about the elite parts: make sure you make the pies, potions, bows, etc. within the limits of the area. I didn't take any chances, especially with the super restore potion; I stood next to Jackie the Fruit when I made it. I despise the agility arena, can you tell? :P The potatoes have to be farmed, not picked from a field. Bork does give double rewards (double cash, 2 rubies, 2 emmies, 2 sapphs, 14 crims, 10 blues and 4 greens) so definitely worth killing him now (you don't need the VAD armor with you).

ION, I had to accept I'll never cross off everything under the Achievements section of Runewise. :( Vaskor added the main boss monsters recently and I'm not much for boss killing.

9 hours

It's 96 hours to Bonus Experience Weekend.

I've got 55,908 teak planks, 1,050 pack yak pouches, it's always 2:00 pm and I'm wearing sunglasses.

1. teak planks

(If I get through all those planks, I'll move on to the rest.)

2. battlestaves

3. nightshade (super poison ++)

4. ranarr (prayer pots)

5. toadflax (Sara brews)

6. irit (super antipoison)

7. snapdragon (super restore)

8. cave fish

9. rocktails

Um, okaaaaay

Today, my last login was 10 years ago.

It's loud and it's tasteless

There are a mega butt tonne of new clothing and color options at Thessalia's shop in Varrock. Oh, and you can be "naked" in game. :P 

Here are 3 options for ladies to be "naked". Any stripes from the tops I pretend are body paint and you're wearing a belt. The skin tone is third from the top at the Makeover Mage.

And for the gents:

I cosplayed as Mirror universe Uhura from Star Trek. The sash should be gold, but the stupid thing only comes in purple.



Also of note, there are 3 newish hair styles for ladies. I'm not sure if there are any new ones for the gents.

I am my own lackey

Whenever I'm doing something mundane and/or noobish, someone will invariably come along and either demand to know wtf I'm doing or make snotty comments. Sunday, I was mining iron outside the Ardy monastery when this guy ran by to his bush. Then he ran down to where I was and said, "Why...". For the clue fest, I killed 3 cows for the bones and hides and get a random demand to "leave da cows alon".

[I know for a fact that I'm not the only "high level" who gets most of her supplies. Marlaine does it; does she get these weirdos ordering an answer to why she's picking seaweed from nets?]

I do regular things. I'm a regular player who doesn't mind getting her hands dirty. I pickpocket guards. I hunt kebbits. I kill unicows and spidines. I mine iron ore. I make my own potions. I craft my own tele tabs. Why should I spend gold pieces on all the little stuff when that money can be better spent on crap I don't want to get (such as god/infinity/barrows armor)?

Domination

Ever been slaying or camping a monster and run across these type of people, the ones who have to attack every monster in the room/area? It's as though they're disturbed about monster killing with another person around ...watching.

It's not about being faster than me, or setting up a cannon, or 'lrn2share kkthxbai'. It's about getting me to leave by killing all the monsters before I can. I can be quite content hanging out at one spawn point and waiting. I know it will take longer to finish my task, but at least I'm getting A kill rather than wasting time trying to prove my epenis is bigger than yours.

Proof

He may not play dice, but He does play RuneScape.

Effigy abuse

As a person who has the high skills to complete an effigy without asking for assistance, I rather like the 3 I've gotten so far. Yes, I'd rather put that experience into construction, rc, mining and agility, but I'm more concerned about the dragonkin lamp for dungeoneering. I feel pretty lucky to be able to finish an effigy no matter what pops up because I have at least one of the desired skills 97+. 

At the beginning, I was firmly in the camp of "I should be able to assist even if I've gotten 30k exp already". I never saw a need to raise the exp limit any higher and I certainly don't need the exp that badly. (If I did, I'd train the skill). Now that effigies have been around a while, I'm seeing and meeting more people who are using them to train skills, akin to penguin points and exp lamps. For that, I'd prefer to stay with the 30k assist limit period; no helping without me getting exp.

Sisters are doing it for themselves

Ahh, I love Korasi and her "bash it with a stick" mentality. <3

Two things I'm not happy about concerning this quest. Firstly, "navigating a maze of beer" was advertised and "kick beer barrels around" was delivered. Secondly, the music track, All for the Pest, is still locked after I finished the quest. Is that a glitch or did I skip over something?

I killed the void pest. If only choices like these were implemented into the game.

ION, I was killing dagannoths under the lighthouse because Kuradal thinks I enjoy doing it, when someone mentions my herby cape with the >_> face afterwards. The next thing he says is, "*cough* rich noob *cough*", while showing off a spectral ss! Let me give you a big tip. Just because I wear an herby/summoning/prayer cape doesn't make me rich. Any riches I had were spent getting the damned skills to 99!

New things

I have finished with my runecrafting for an extremely long time. Finally, I reached level 91 which is apparently where the gold pieces come. I haven't figured out how, exactly, that happens when I use the nats I make.

Anyway, I learned a valuable thingy about my alotted bank space. Jagex adds up the F2P and P2P bank space together to get this mystery 516 total. Seeing as I have 2 sets of numbers whenever I open my bank, it bothers me a bit. It didn't used to, but I can't wrap my head around the math. 

Lastly, I invented a role-playing game to play when I'm very bored. I get low on life points, then hurry to Morytania. I activate the soul split prayer and attack people, pretending to be a starving vampire. It's most fun when played with the swamp vampires as you can be pushing to dominate the area.

@Jamie - Yes, quote whatever you need.

What friends are for

These are all the things I do wrong in RuneScape.

Slayer

- no super/extreme pots

- no piety/turmoil

- no cannon

- no Guthan's armor

- don't complete clues ASAP

- no combat familiars

Agility

- don't run at Ape Atoll

Mining

- don't drop ores

Construction

- no servant

- no oak doors

Runecrafting

- no graahking

- no abyssal minion

- don't bank at ZMI

- use all pouches

Farming

- no daily herbs runs

Hunter

- no red chins

Dungeoneering

- don't rush

- don't run 5:5 larges

- kill everything except dino cows

- check every room

- haven't switched to 2h

ION, I'm back to slaying, trying to get in 3 tasks per day. I'm going to keep this up until one of two things happens: getting an effigy drop or end of the month.

Who cares? I care.

This isn't directed toward people from non-English speaking countries. This is for you, Canada, U.S., Great Britain, Australia; the descendants of the long-dead British empire whose base language in most schools is English.

Rogue  is part of the name of the basement under the Toad and Chicken Inn in Burthorpe, those nifty bits of clothing you get from Brian O'Richard and the bald dudes northish of the Chaos Elemental. Rouge  is completely different.

Loose rhymes with goose and has nothing to do with lost.

Binded and quitted aren't words. Fuck popular usage. You mean bound and quit.

And now for something completely different:

I know why I find dungeoneering such a drag (I can barely get one dungeon cleared before wanting to stab myself with an ice pick ++). Imagine only being able to train crafting by making pottery and jewelry, but after making each item in sequence (pot> pie dish> bowl> plant pot> pot lid> gold> sapphire> emerald> ruby> diamond> dragonstone amulets), you have to start all over again with those blasted clay pots.

Family fun

With the new resource dungeons out and some of them available for F2P, I cajoled my husband into logging on with, "Get your noob ass on RuneScape. There's shit you need to do." Usually, I'd log on with him to show him since I'm crap with directions when not online. This time, he said he could do it by himself. :o Noob is getting above of his station!

I told him where to go for the first 3 dungeons, advising him to take food in case something happened and he couldn't run away fast enough. Edgeville was quite fun since he learned about the brass key and they lonely building west of the cooking guild.

Karamja was another kettle of fish. He got distracted on the way, determined to make the ship fare by killing goblins near Port Sarim, not because he has no money, but that he was close to leveling up attack, strength* and defense. Once he'd "gathered" enough gold (and runes, bronze arrows and bronze bolts), he paid Seaman Lorris (hee hee, "seaman") and sailed to Karamja. As he tried to get onto the gangplank, he picked up 500 gold pieces laying about on the return ship. Carrying around this kind of money concerned him. I reminded him to just run if he got attacked.

Anyway, he found the hole on the volcano and dropped down into the waiting arms of a skeleton, who wanted to kill him. When he ran far enough away to get the skeleton to shove off, a deadly red spider pounced. When he got away from the arachnids, he found himself in the midst of hungry lesser demons that, unsurprisingly, wanted to use him as elevenses. He staggered into the hidden dungeon with some relief. The lessers in there were some distance away, giving the impression of safety, or just long enough to use the ring of kinship teleport. 

The demons ...well, had other ideas.

By the time he'd escaped the walking deaths and scarpered up the rope, he was sitting at half health and shooting me dirty looks.

*He never did get that strength level. He spent the next two hours chipping away at one coal rock in the dwarf mine resource dungeon (the one with silver, coal and mithril).

That's it exactly

Full Bandos, Nezzy helm, fire cape, whip and dfs - B1ll_Schm03

Spotted cape, boots of lightness, nature tiara and spirit graahk - X_StrPk_X

Agile top and legs, Ardy cape, boots of lightness, lava battlestaff and Abyssal titan - Kitt Fox

What do these people have in common?

They all use Daemonheim for fast banking.

Obviously, they want to join your dungeoneering party.

Because, yeah, they aren't doing anything else.

Disturbance in the Force

Sine the countdown of my membership going, I've been slogging away at the pure essence in my bank. I told myself, "Just 1k a day. Takes, what, an hour at ZMI? I can stand an hour running the hellhole that is W70 ZMI". Eventually, the people training there broke me. I couldn't take the herd mentality and being a free taxi anymore. I decided to try ZMI on another world, wanting to know how much I'd get beaten by the Zamorakians roaming the tunnel.

It's quite all right. Oh yes, 99 defense and magic help a lot and I don't get hurt that much. So I'm running ZMI on my own world, contented knowing no one is waiting to shackle onto my ass like a patient barnacle. 

I didn't notice until I rechecked my maths.

I'd been clocking out 3k pure essence a day.

For a whole week without realizing it.

 And I'm not insane yet.

:o

ION, the poll results are in. Kitt wins, so I'll plunk down more money for continued membership. Also, for the 2 people who want me to die in a fire:

You decide

See that poll on the right side of the page? Would you take a minute to throw a choice in the ballot box? If you do vote, I'll let you in on whether or not the Large Hadron Collider has destroyed the world.

And don't click on that link until you vote, buster. 

Srsly.

Two more things

While working on the elusive 5-feathered flappy hats, I noticed my avatar's AI is still awful when I'm trying to target chompys. I'd say perhaps it's due to lack of line-of-sight between me and the chompy, but this whacko delay between my clicking on one of the birds and when I actually get off my ass to fire my stabby chucker (about 3 seconds) can happen when I'm standing right next to a bird or refilling my bellows behind a small hillock with my back turned. 

The other thing has to do with Jagex's magical math-fu. Can you see the mistake in the following picture?

All in the family

Having seen more posts about the need to stand up against bigotry in RuneScape, I want to come out and say my peace.

With a chat message calling out racial slurs or homophobic epithets, I silently report and go about my gaming. I don't get into a big harangue about it with the insulter or call out my friends/clan for argument backup. I don't make a big deal out of it. Why? I think most of it's laid bait for reactionary purposes and I'm not going to fall for it.

As for the swastika-shaped fires/ashes, save for the impotent, do-gooder, "that's wrong" speech, there's nothing to be done about it. Unless  the swastika creator is babbling about the strength of the Aryan race, how Jews/blacks/homosexuals need to burn in their ovens or talks at all, you can't report them. I will say that's the shitty part of the game's report system. I like to think a screenshot is taken at the moment I hit the Report Abuse button, but I think it only goes through the chat log.

Yeah, I know my not giving a shit perpetuates the bigotry. I really don't care.

Reboot

Given serious thought to retiring my current P2P account in favor of a non-combat skiller has opened my eyes to something I've taken for granted: traveling via spells, quest items, jewelry, fairy rings and spirit trees.

In preparation to take a F2P skiller into P2P, I've made lists of quests I can do while keeping my combat level at the coveted number three. As I don't have the ring of recoil fighting method in hand, I eliminated any quests that require any combat. This removes the fairy rings and spirit trees for quick travel around the world. It puts a major dent into using enchanted dragonstone jewelry because I won't be able to access the guilds to recharge these items.

Quests aside, magic remains and with that, money making. I'll have to rely on other people to make games necklaces, dueling rings and teleport tablets since I won't be able to make my own. No more grabbing a few runes and teleporting to wherever. I'll stock up on boots of lightness and Dr. Scholl's gel inserts.

You thief!

My rule on scavenging other people's drops is if I can see it, it's up for grabs. Think about it. If the other person wanted it that bad, they'd have picked it up. Some people don't care if you scavenge after them. Some will get hostile, demanding a death match and/or reporting you.

I suppose arrows could be considered an exception because I do pick those up, but I don't do it to someone actively ranging. I've been in that situation and so have you. You're ranging blue dragons in Taverley and since they take more than a minute to kill, your arrows/bolts start appearing to everyone. Inevitably, someone will grab those arrows/bolts while you're still plugging away at the dragon. [My peeve is when this happens and the arrow picker-upper wants to trade you the ammunition back because they're just being helpful. Like I wasn't picking up my arrows anyway.]

Today, a guy was casting Fruit Fall in front of the Catherby bank while another guy was picking up the fruit the first guy left on the ground.

Iddison isn't looking so bad

Climbing boots were updated today. Now there are 2 types: climbing boots (no stats, cost 12gp) and rock climbing boots (same stats as before update, cost 75k).

"There are always thousands of accounts trying to buy these boots on the GE with very few trying to sell them, because they had low shop prices and complications to obtain in the first place."

People want to buy these boots off the GE and/or other players for one of two reasons: 1) too lazy to buy from Trenzig or 2) haven't done Death Plateau quest.

I'm looking forward to the future rope update which will increase the cost of a rope to 50k with a high alch value of 26k.

Jumping through hoops

Chinahearts mentioned on System Update #18 about the hoops one has to go through in order to join a clan these days. Having made several applications of my own, I've seen common ideologies amongst them.

The first point is there will usually be a combat and/or skill level requirement. For clans leaning more toward fighting, combat will be their big concern while a skiller clan looks toward high, non-combat skills. The lowest combat and skill requirements I've seen were 100+ (without summoning) and 50+ in a single, non-combat skill respectively.

Secondly, event attendance is necessary for, typically, 2-3 events per month. It doesn't seem like a lot to ask. Clans tend to have quite a few events each month and picking a minimum to attend shouldn't be difficult. If you only have a few hours to play, clan events can cut into any training time you may have planned. 

Online forums are standard as well. Minimum post count (10-20) seems to put you into the "I'm serious about this" category. Screenshots of you attending any events provide proof.

It's a rarity to find a clan that doesn't have or has a minimum of requirements. If Canting is considered a clan (in loose terms, I suppose it is), it has the least; merely joining Merch Gwyar's clan chat will get your boot in the door. 

The worst part of joining a clan is going through all the trouble of being at events, posting on the forums, getting or keeping your skills high enough only to find out the clan dissolved.

Questions

Why can we not recharge prayer points at the Ectofuntus?

When did AFK (Away From Keyboard) become AFRSWYTBFINAFKBICHGS (Away From RuneScape Watching YouTube Videos and Browsing Forums but I'm Not AFK Because I Can Hear Game Sounds)?

What is the deal with the slow response times between mouse clicks and keystrokes and RuneScape?

Does the return of Behind The Scenes mean Jagex has learned their employees aren't any better workers without deadlines?

Guides

When did using a quest guide become the Welcome to Noobville city sign?

It's great that you did Elemental Workshop 3 without any help, but are you really that much of a better person because of it?

I use quest guides most of the time. I don't see anything wrong with it. I certainly don't think it makes me a crappy RuneScape player.

Learning process

You can never know everything about RuneScape because it's constantly updating and evolving. Last year, I learned something that made my opinion of Barrows armor do a 180.

Since I became a member in 2006 and learned about the Barrows brothers and their armor, I'd been under a misinterpretation of their degradation. The RS Wiki says this about Barrows degradation:

"Each piece of Barrows equipment degrades when it is used. After 15 hours of combat, an item becomes fully degraded, at which point it is unusable (cannot be worn or wielded) until it is repaired. The equipment only degrades during combat and can be worn indefinitely without degrading as long as a player does not enter combat."

Theoretically, Barrows armor should degrade like the other degradable items in RuneScape (runecrafting pouches and crystal equipment). Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?

Not really.

What's left out of the explanation is Barrows armor doesn't lose any bonuses as it degrades. That's right; Torag's platebody gives as much protection undamaged as it does when knocked down to 25%.

It took me 3 years to even get to the point of asking myself (and Merch) whether this uber armor really degrades (as in loses protection bonuses). I ended up secretly testing it out in the Legends' guild basement. 

To sum up, other degrading equipment gradual decreases in ability until it's destroyed (the usual definition of "degrade"). Barrows, on the other hand, has full ability until it breaks (moreso a demotion or binary definition; either it works or it doesn't).

Fast SC

Asking anyone how to make construction, crafting or smithing faster and the usual answer will be "play fast sc". It's a tad more complicated than that.

The short of it is Fast SC is a clan chat dedicated to making Stealing Creations go fast by eliminating the combat aspect. Everyone is expected to wield a bow with no arrows and help by calling in the chat where the clay deposits are hiding.

Now for the long version. On the RSOF under Events is a thread titled Fast Sc: NonCombat Sc Clan 6.5 (lazy may clicky here). Read the first couple of pages to get an idea for acceptable behavior and what will get you kicked/banned. The group typically can be found on W99. Joining the chat can be done by typing "fast sc" after clicking join a clan. Hop one of the stiles into the clan holding pen and wait for the massive crowd if there isn't one. The chat will tell you if they're close to completing a game.

The clan's basic rules are pretty straightforward:

1. Always wield a bow (no arrows). Doing this means you can't accidentally attack someone.
2. No armor of any kind, this includes mage hats.
3. No thieving/pickpocketing
4. Don't put barriers around clay locations. The whole point of Fast SC is to get all the clay picked/processed by EVERYONE as quickly as possible.
5. Call out any clay locations. The code is not hard to understand once you get the hang of it (C4s = class 4 swarm for example). Frags or rags are those low level fragments. Giving calls in the cc helps make the game go faster.

They get their share of griefers, mostly in the form of pkers (typically mages). The idea is to get those sc tools as fast as possible and getting into fights only prolongs the games. If you want to pk, go over to regular Stealing Creations.

Here's my strategy which may help.

When game starts, head out to the nearest frag spot and get 5 frags. Run to the nearest kiln and make 1 of each: hatchet, pickaxe, butterfly net, harpoon and a bow. Equip the bow asap, then go hunt around for the best clay you can process. Keep an eye on the chat for clay calls because it seems the cc has scouters for that. Once you get to the best clay you can make stuff with, get 1 clay, run to a kiln and make a new piece of equipment in order to get clay faster. After that, get a load of clay and hit the kiln again. Make replacements of the old frag tools, a summoning pouch and the rest make into scrolls. Summon your familiar and deposit your frag tools into it. Now, just run around gathering all the clay you can and processing it into scrolls. I make scrolls because they can't be used for combat like arrows or runes. Keep gathering until the one minute warning appears. That means all the clay is gone and you've got to hustle your butt back to base. Deposit all your tools into your summon and use the Clay Deposit ability to send all your tools to your base. Run to base, take off your bow and deposit your inventory.

Non-Player Characters

It's got to be the Varrock cleaner, only just winning (?) over the Varrock stray dog as the most useless NPC in the game.

According to  the RS Wiki, the cleaner's job is to "help cope with the large number of ashes that often littered the streets of Varrock". 

Really? Because all I ever see this guy doing is leaning on his broom around the east bank. The only times I've seen him sweep up ashes were when someone was trying to collect them for herblore. He rather enjoys pushing his broom around the Varrock east bank. I suppose he's cleaning up all that dirt and dust we adventurers track inside (read that with heavy sarcasm). 

If he's really looking to do his job of ash removal, he might want to move his cabbage across town to the west bank and the GE, you know, where people are actually lighting fires.

Another interesting debate is who is currently the richest NPC. A couple years ago, the hands-down favorite was Saniboch, to whom you paid 875 gold to enter Brimhaven dungeon. With the addition of the achievement diaries, the entry fee is waived when you wear the KAD gloves. Alathazdrar, the demon butler, may be near the top of this year's list with his whopping 10k gold salary, but not everyone has a servant. Personally, I'm choosing the fruit tree patch gardeners and the 25k gold they get (in papayas) to keep an eye on palm trees.

How to win friends and influence people

Try this in Real Life:

1. Find the person nearest you, preferably a stranger.

2. Say, "Hi"

3. Call them, "Jerk"

4. Wait for response

Sucking it up

At the beginning, runecrafting was a fun skill to train as the levels came rather quickly and there was something new at each one. Once level 20 came around, I could make all the F2P runes. Of course, why not keep going until 30 so I can be on the hiscores? That's about all you need for F2P, the other runes will have to be bought. Around this time, I got membership. P2P comes into it with the ability to make new runes until 77 and throwing in 4 essence pouches as well. After level 77, the only things to change are more runes per essence and a schmexy cape if you're a weirdo who likes runecrafting. :P

So what keeps me slogging my way through a skill I absolutely despise?

It steams from a mix of reasons. One, I need certain runes, like astrals, laws and nats, for crafting and alchemy and I'm not buying when I only need a few hundred or so. Two, goals of all levels above 70/80/90. Three, I've finally relieved my kung-fu grip of hoarding runes Just In Case and am making deaths to sell. 

And why don't I like runecrafting?

It's a lot of work for a little pay. When first starting, 5 exp per rune is great because the experience between levels is small. Right now, I'm staring at 413k exp until level 88. Just thinking about all those runs through ZMI or the Abyss is killing my will to train it. ZMI will make it go faster, giving me nearly double the experience over the same number of death runes.

There and Back Again

I have a RuneScape Classic account from the reopening in November 2009. I barely played on it until this week, when I went in to find out just how different the quests are from RuneScape (2). One quest tested my memory: Fishing Contest.

I'd been fishing shrimps at Draynor and got the urge to get to Catherby for more variety. Seeing as I don't have the magic and runes for a teleport over White Wolf Mountain and I kept getting my cabbage handed to me attempting to go over it, I talked to the dwarf at the little hut to see about using the shortcut under the mountain. I accepted the mission to get him the fishing trophy, wandering back to Draynor to level up my fishing skill. While dipping my net into the water, I tried to figure out a way to get to Catherby safely. RuneScape has changed so much that I'm not sure if the travel methods there would be in Classic, but I really had nothing to lose except my life. I had no idea if the boats traveled from Brimhaven to Ardougne, or even if Ardougne was there.

As I did in RuneScape, I found the nearest man and started repeatedly mugging him for change. I needed 60 coins to pay for boat fares - Port Sarim to Karamja and Brimhaven to Ardougne (hopefully). I managed, even learning the art of timing 3 combat rounds, and found myself walking across the volcano, avoiding the scorpions. Oh, the Brimhaven boat was there! I walked up to Catherby and discovered I was back to shrimp fishing but in a different location (and there's no range either). 

After another day of fishing to level 10, I had to do more random muggings to gain fares so I could go to Falador for a spade. Sure, I could've just wandered up WWM, died and respawned in Lumbridge. I was proud of my memory proving accurate, so I took the boats and headed to find the possible spade spawn in Falador. My mind told me it was at the house next to the furnace. I wandered about town to keep myself active, looking out for red dots, while I opened up the Classic Wikia for a description of this place. Nothing was said about a spade spawn and farming hadn't been thought about yet, so I kept wandering inside buildings. It took 2 days, but I did find the spade (and a gloves spawn too) which is in a house near the north wall.

I packed up my traveling supplies - bronze platebody, bronze platelegs, iron dagger and 12 cabbages - and made certain I had everything from this side of the mountain - garlic and spade - and set off again via the boats (after more judicious thieving). The next hard part was getting the red worms from the woods without dying to a guard dog. More time was taken finding the loose fence (it's the wooden bit along the east wall) and the dog's bite nommed me for half my health before I could run away. I dug up 2 red worms and escaped. The best part of this is that I could speed through it. I paid my fee, plopped the garlic in the sewer pipe and then started the fishing contest. 

I fished up 2 big carp, handed them over and got the trophy. Walking to the other WWM dwarf and giving it to him got me 4 fishing levels. Not bad and now I can use the under shortcut. :)

It broke the camel's back

I'm going to be hanging out in my clan chat for a while. Either my thick skin is not as thick as I thought or the accumulation of annoyances has reached its peak.

Ask a question -I'm a Grammar Nazi

Put someone on ignore/ask not to be called "kitty" - I'm an Elitist

Offer supplies - I get scammed

Mention star/tree locations - I'm spamming

Don't talk/have 99 hunter/have high skills - I'm a bot

Do absolutely nothing in chat - I get named chat gorgon

If you've heard about Canting, only go if Merch is in there. Otherwise, prepare to be glomped (and not in a good way).

My level is

It's not long until you reach the big goal of fishing: sharks. A few more lobsters separate you and you prepare the big moment like you've seen others do in clan chat countless times. You go into clan quick chat and say:

My fishing level is 75.

Another lobster crawls inside the cage; bang! Fireworks explode over your head and in triumph you tell the clan:

My fishing level is 76.

The congratulations pour in from those in the chat, along with the invariable troll to spoil your achievement:

My fishing level is 99.

This happens every single day in Canting. A person will be working on a skill, mention the current and newly achieved levels in clan quick chat, only to be overshadowed by someone outstripping them, usually with a 99. It comes off as being rude. You trolls piss all over another person's accomplishment because you want to be seen as a better player. It's nice that you have 99 fishing, but you've had your parade so let someone else shine for a moment.

Quest picks

Here are my lists of the to do quests in RuneScape, separated into F2P and P2P and my reasoning. I'm taking in all, not focusing on only combat/skilling/pking.

Top Five Must Do F2P Quests:

1. Prince Ali Rescue - free entry through Al Kharid/Lumbridge gate (negated by Lumbridge bank)

2. Doric's Quest - jump start on mining (1300 exp =nearly level 11)

3. The Knight's Sword - huge boost for smithing (12,725 exp = level 29)

4. Cook's Assistant - let's you use the Lumbridge castle range which gives you better success to not burn food

5. Blood Pact - a little boost to all combat skills, free gear and a place to train

Top Ten Must Do P2P Quests:

1. Fishing Contest - shortcut under White Wolf Mountain

2. My Arm's Big Adventure - disease free herb patch

3. Cold War - opens up penguin spying

4. Druidic Ritual - starts up herblore

5. The Grand Tree - gives you spirit trees and gnome gliders for transportation

6. Throne of Miscellania - Manage Thy Kingdom for skilling/profit

7. The Hand in the Sand - 84 buckets of sand, every 24 hours for free

8. Smoking Kills - slayer points to buy abilities and items like permanent canceling tasks and slayer rings

9. Ghosts Ahoy! - Ectophial

10. Lost City - allows ability to wield the dragon longsword and dagger

The high cost of living

Many would say hiring and using a servant will make construction training go much faster. Let's look at the cost of using the servants to run noted logs to the sawmill.

The earliest servant to take noted logs is the cook, who will unnote and carry back 16 planks. She's available at level 30 construction, but for this we'll hire her at level 33, the level we can make oak larders. Her salary is 3,000 gp upon hiring and per every eight trips afterwards. In order to reach level 99, we need to make 27,118 oak larders (216,944 oak logs). If we take 24 oak planks with us for the first trip and have the cook convert the remaining oak logs into planks, we'll need 59,324,000 gp to cover the costs of her salary (5,088,000 gp) and oak log payments (54,236,000 gp).

A little over five million gold extra paid because we're too lazy to convert our own logs. Of course, this is sticking with the cook. How much would it cost if we upgraded to the butler and then to the demon butler at the appropriate levels?

The amount of oak larders stays the same - 27,118 (216,944 logs) - and we'll already have 24 oak planks ready. Taking on the cook from levels 33-40, we'll pay out 60k. Then we hire the butler for 5,000 gp from levels 40-50 for 275k. Now for the demon butler! He costs 10k to hire and will convert 26 logs into planks. So, from level 50-99, the demon butler will want 10,380,000 gp for his salary and the oak planks will cost 53,888,000 gp for a grand total of 64,603,000 gp spent. 10,367,000 gp spent hiring and paying servants.

Shared information

Bit by bit, I've been getting into regularly checking for falling stars and strange saplings. When I find one, either via diligent searching and patient waiting or run by on my way to somewhere else, I tend to provide the details in whichever clan chat I'm in at the moment. Those in the chat can then do what they like with it. They can join or ignore me. I'm not forcing or begging anyone to do this, just sharing information.

You're wasting those!

This week marked the beginning of being able to put experience lamps, books of knowledge, reward lamps, tears of Guthix and penguin points into dungeoneering. For those who'd rather have their nails ripped off with rusty pliers than be trapped in a dungeon for 2 hours, it's a blessing.

I was hanging out in a friend's clan chat when she announced she'd dumped her penguin points into dungeoneering. This prompted a big of a kafuffle. Some said it was good. Some said it was a waste. The arguements for are what I'd term the rule of thumb for those little bonus experience points we can get: put them in a skill 1) you hate training, 2) costs a lot of money, or 3) is close to a level. The naysayers argued she was missing out on tokens to cash in for rewards. 

What would you put your bonus experience points in?

Worthless

"Clue done. 2 rune longs, 2 rune b axes and black chaps. Worthless."

Just figuring the high alchemy return, that clue reward brought in a little over 92k gold. Is your time spent schlepping across the world and solving puzzle boxes really worth more than 92k? Did it really cost you that much to complete that clue scroll? Clue scrolls are the lottery tickets of RuneScape, except you get the scrolls for free. Compared to the possibility of acquiring 3rd Age plate legs (GE mid price of 132.8M), I suppose it is "worthless".

Down and dirty herb farming

Herb farming is a solid money maker because every harvest provides profit.

You don't strictly "need" all these things, but they make it easier if you're serious about herb farming for cash. I'm hoping you have the tool leprechaun filled with farming tools (rake, spade, seed dibbler, buckets).

1. Supercompost

2. Magic secateurs (Fairytale Pt 1)

3. Access to My Arm's herb patch (My Arm's Big Adventure)

4. Amulet of nature bound to an herb patch

5. Teleports to 5 herb patches 

6. Money to buy seeds or 38 thieving for master farmers

Get a hold of a bunch of pineapples for making supercompost. There's other stuff, but pineapples are the easiest and cheapest to get. Buy from GE, Arhein in Catherby (40 per day), Grand Tree shops (2 shops 10 each) or get free from Karamja, Dell Monti (KAD gloves 3) and farmed pineapple bush, then fill up all 4 compost bins. It takes about an hour for the fruit to rot.

Get your seeds. teleports, nature ammy and farming gear. Bind your nature ammy to the last patch you plant so you can get an idea of when your herbs are done growing. Remember to wear the ammy or you won't get any messages about it being grown/diseased. If you're the type who'd rather hang out near your herbs, bind the ammy to Fally or Port Phas patches and hang out in Catherby/Ardy since the latter are very close to each other. My Arm will watch over your herbs at his spot, so no worries about that. The herbs take about 70 minutes to grow, though give them 90 mins - 2 hours to be sure, especially if you don't have a nature ammy to help. 

Your plants will die at some point. If you catch the disease early, cure it and maybe keep an eye on that patch (unless it bound to the ammy). It seems like a huge deal when an herb dies, moreso with the high priced ones like snapdragons, ranarrs and dwarf weeds. Death happens. Keep in mind that an average harvest (5 herbs) will pay for the seed and earn a profit. For example, ranarr seeds cost 31k and herbs sell for 8,800 gp at mid which means you only need 4 herbs per harvest to pay for the seed planted. Look at the big picture of your farming rather than at each herb run for your profit/loss.

My take on it

I held off jumping straight into dungeoneering for a week because I knew there would be glitches/bugs to work out. I'd learned from the release of construction that it's better to wait than jump in blindly. I avoided the experience nerf in F2P and the runecrafting jamfu (Jagex and math fuck up). The seemingly downside to this is I'm too far behind my friends to actually be of any help to them when they want me to join a party.

Now that I've tried the skill out, my opinion of it hasn't changed. It's still "meh". I was never excited over it, nor did I bash it. I wondered what the cock-up would be and when it would happen. The dungeon crawls I see as a mini adventure, something I could do if boredom of everything else overtook me.

I have pushed myself to level 12 and reached floor 5. I began by running through the rooms, killing everything until I found the boss, then killed it. At floor 4, I wondered what to do about the food. Surely there had to be something more than what I was finding. With thanks to Shysteph's videos, I noticed she was healing over 300 per bite during her boss fights. I learned about the mysterious cave potato and edicap mushroom and how to actually use Smuggler to my advantage. My two most recent delves have spent most of my time growing potatos and sorting out the best healing fish, when I can find a farming box and some food.

My luck as being able to stay online during my delves has held up so far. I'm positive that's a wish of all solo delvers: an ability to save dungeon progress. I rather enjoy being alone down there.

An Idiot's Guide to Making Money in RuneScape

Combat Way:

1. Kill something

2. Pick up whatever it drops

3. Sell the drop

Non-Combat Way:

1. Go to where the combat is

2. Pick up whatever is on  the ground

3. Sell what you picked up

Lazy Way:

1. Go to Varrock

2. Find someone with combat level higher than yours

3. Follow them until they give you money or teleport

4. Repeat until you get money

Battlestaves for profit

A staple in my money making is high alching element battlestaves after having gone through the ritual of making nature runes, making and enchanting orbs, buying the staves and jamming the orb atop one. Doing all this guarantees a steady profit of 2300 gp each staff.

There's a few bits of bother in making the elemental staves from scratch. You need at minimum: 54 crafting (putting water orb on staff), 56 magic (enchanting water orb) and 56k gp (to buy staves, more if you buy molten glass). Some of this has to be done or else it's not profitable. If you aren't into doing all this or don't have the skills, you can just go buy the battlestaves from Zaff and resell them on the GE. Wearing any variable of the Varrock diary armor improves the amount of staves you can buy each day - 16, 32 or 64 for levels 1, 2 and 3. Without it, you're only going to get 8 battlestaves a day.

Getting sand and seaweed for molten glass can be easy or troublesome. The easy method is pick up sand from Bert in Yanille, provided you've complete the quest The Hand in the Sand, then teleport to Catherby and buy seaweed from Arhein (talk to him). The other way is to scoop up buckets of sand from a sandpit (Yanille by house portal, Zanaris by cows and Entrana by hops patch) and gather seaweed from a coastline (north of Rellekka's rock crabs near Olaf or Entrana west of the law altar). Again, making the glass comes in two methods. The easy one is using a lunar magic spell, Superglass Make, and the harder is to cook seaweed on a range for soda ash and taking it and sand to a furnace.

Choosing an obelisk to enchant the orbs is personal. The air and earth obelisks are in the wilderness part of Edgeville dungeon and subjected to revenants (air) or revenants and poison spiders (earth), while the water and fire obelisks are deep in Taverly dungeon where the black dragons live (water is up a ladder between dragons and hellhounds). For myself, I make fire orbs as they're the easiest for me to get to now that I can use the agility shortcut by hellhounds. Most people tend to make air orbs and teleport back to Edgeville with a glory ammy. Beasts of burden (BoB) will carry orbs, but keep in mind it's a juggle to swap inventories.

Here is how I do it. I collect sand and seaweed every day for a week or so, then go to Moonclan island and switch over to lunar spells. I equip a fire staff since I have too many air runes, get enough air and astral runes to make all the sand and seaweed into glass, then take out 13 seaweed and 13 sand. The spell is so lovely because it converts the whole inventory and gives bonus glass per cast. Now I blow all of it into orbs and go enchant them into fire orbs. My only worry in Taverly is getting nommed by a dragon, so I keep the anti-dragon shield readied. The blade jump shortcut is fast, though watch out for the poison spiders if your combat is less than 129. I use the west bank in Falador, either using a Falador tele tab or the cabbage port of the explorer's ring when I forget a tele tab.

The bottom line: what kind of profit do I make each week? I spend 3,185,000 gp on buying battlestaves and get back 4,231,500 gp for high alching 455 fire battlestaves. My net profit is 1,046,500 gp.

Open house

Some points to clarify about the open house this Saturday:

1. Times

The base time is 7:30 pm GMT. Times across Canada/U.K./U.S. are:

8:30 pm British Summer Time

4:00 pm Newfoundland

3:30 pm Atlantic

2:30 pm Eastern

1:30 pm Central

12:30 pm Mountain

11:30 am Pacific

2. Location

World 84, Yanille house portal, RSN Kitt_Fox

3. The Level Up

I'll be getting 99 ranged at the start and after 5-10 minutes, I'll quickly go to the ranging guild, buy the cape and return to Yanille. If you're just wanting to use a gilded altar or make tele tabs or whatever, please be patient. I've only just had the portal painted from the last batch of rampant knockers. :P

4. Length

The house will be open for 2 hours. You're welcome to use the facilities (gilded altar, tele tabs/B2P tabs, Kharyll portal for barrows). For the altar, please bring your own marrentil as I don't have any.

5. Donations/Gifts

This open house is for FREE.