This made me laugh

I checked my email this morning and found this waiting for me. It made me laugh for 2 reasons - 1) I stopped playing that day and 2) that's not the email associated with my account.

If you get this, keep in mind Jagex doesn't email players. This is a scam, so don't be like Merch Gwyar.

Last one

Membership expires tomorrow, so I dropped all my gold in the party room. ShineDown got it all; kudos to him/her! :D Thanks to all who helped me while playing:  the bloggers, the fansites, the podcasts, commentors.

Special thanks to those whom I had secret level races with:

Timothy Gold (99 mining/smithing/slayer/summoning) lost, lost, lost, won

Marlaine (99 slayer/summoning/agility) lost, won, won

Sominoreg (99 slayer) won?

Merch Gwyar (99 construction) won

Special thanks to players who inspired me to skill:

Simple013 - your ranging guide on Sal's was my bible 

Kitraas - took time to show me the farming cape emote in Shilo village many years ago and gave me my first pre-enchanted nature amulet

Marlaine - you were the top player on my secret racing list; I couldn't beat you in everything but I did get 99 agility and summoning! <3

Vaskor - you connected me to so many great RS blogs; long live Runewise! <3

Myst Drake - introduced me to the game <3

PrimeFalcon - best podcast outro ever! <3

Final accomplishment

Oh yeah, finally got this from Runewise! This was my only goal for 2012 - 90+skills - and I got it thanks to the JoT aura. I just missed it when dungeoneering came out (got 90 rcing a few days after), so I am mucho happy to have it.

My bank clearing is nearly complete. I have runes and whips left to sell, then it's trying to find someone willing to take the gold without coming off as a scammer. :P

fr33 st00f pl0x?

Mostly because of money issues, I won't be renewing my membership in January. It wouldn't be a big deal, except my account will likely be deleted by the time I can afford to reactivate it again. So I'm going to be liquidating my assets. No point in keeping stuff when it's going to go bye-bye. I'll sell what I can on the GE, then either drop the cash in the party chest or give it away. This is going to happen in January, in case there's a quest I need something for.

Hey, the best part is Kitt Fox will be available as a name!

More tears

A new record, finally!

I found out a lot of people have been having the same problem with the Loyalty points page.

In related news, my points came in yesterday and I got the JoT aura. Whoo-hoo, over 7k exp per day in dungeoneering! Much more than actually doing the skill. :P I found out the percentage increases based on my exp rather than level. Nice.

I spy

A crucial bit seems to be missing.

I do, basically, know when my points will roll over, but if you have a slot on your site for it, why not input the information?

When I did the Turkey day event on F2P, I found a guy in Varrock fountain attempting to advertise a gold-selling site. It was hilarious because he would only put one word per line, such as:

Used

Gold

Farm

d

0

t

c

0

m

(Not a real site, btw. I know someone will check. :P )

Also, Mackers is  awesome. I left him in my house with a shit-ton of cake. :)

November Screwjob

All the way at the bottom of the news article about revamping the RS website, here's this tidbit:

"Along with the release of the new website, we will be making hi-scores a members-only feature.

 

This is for a number of reasons, but the main one is to keep them fresh. We want the hiscores to feature players who will compete with each other, tooth and nail, for hiscore glory. There are many dormant accounts within the hiscores that have not played for a very long time, and this will give new arrivals in Gielinor a shot at hiscore fame alongside the grizzled veterans on equal terms for all."

Emphasis mine.

Well, you learn something new everyday, dontcha? I had no clue that F2Pers were uncompetitive lumps; lesser gamers because they don't hand over their $7.50 (CAD) per month.

"Members only" but "on equal terms"? Does it really surprise me? Not at all. After Mark Gerhard's "only true RuneScapeers are at RuneFest" statement when it was announced anyone going to RuneFest 2010 would be getting their tickets refunded (essentially going for free, aside from travel fare). He, or Jagex as a whole, is screwing over a fair percentage of their game base.

My question is: will all the F2P accounts be eligible to be wiped out so the names can be thrown into the bin for lucky P2Pers? Dibs on Syzygy!

CSI: Al Kharid

I tried my hand at the Dominion Tower. Mostly fought as a climber, happily strangling reincarnated bosses with my whip. That's pretty much all I'm interested in there. The boss fighting - taking on all dagannoth bosses at once - isn't my stein of beer. My rewards weren't overly noteworthy, though I only fought 5 bosses before calling it quits.

One Piercing Note, however, is just what I want as a quest. Though labeled as short, it took me just over an hour to finish while using a quest guide. I really liked the music. As a follower of Guthix, I helped Anna get a closer view of the desert surrounding the abbey, ala a hard shove out of the bell tower window. Getting my god books illuminated was nice for crafting exp. I wish I had all 6 books, but the pages haven't been selling (or not to me at any rate). 

What I've been doing is kicking back and doing bits of skills. Atm, working skills up to the nearest million mark, provided they're anywhere close to it. I'm mad at myself for allowing the lure of the eastern outfit to catch me. When loyalty points came out, I was 250 short of getting the JoT aura, which would help my dungeoneering immensely.

Fine print

I did 2 slayer tasks on Tuesday. The first, dust devils, I got lucky with the spot I was killing in and was left alone. I decided to try my luck with a second task of gargoyles (after canceling 4 tasks).

What a nightmare.

It reminded me of the first week when summoning was released. 90% of the slayer monsters were camped. After 10 world hops (that's my limit for hopping), I talked to Kuradal and changed tasks, skipping 6 more before landing 180 fire giants.

Now onto penguin points. Either I didn't read it correctly or, more likely, it wasn't clear in the new post, but did you know you could spy this week's penguins twice? Well, I missed out on extra dungeoneering exp, though I did get the 2x and 88 dungeoneering. I didn't bother to try for W60. When I checked, it was full, so I moved to W71. Just be aware of trap springers.

Appropriately named

The wicked hood is just that. I've used it twice and love it. It's just what I need for a little bit of runecrafting every day. I messed up the first day, of course. I fed it talismen, then used one of the teleports to the nature altar (the hood acts as a tiara to enter an altar) and learned I hadn't unlocked the pure essence part. So I reread the RS Wiki and found out someone had edited it to be actually helpful. I'd wasted a bit of gold on the talisman when I could've just used an omni talisman/tiara and been done with it. The bit about the elemental talisman wasn't too clear to me, so I killed off a bunch of abyssal walkers until I got the drop, then fed it to the hood. Overboard, I know. The hood works as advertised. I can get my 100 pure ess daily and teleports to all the altars. I've been sticking with nats since I use those the most and getting 10 law runes as well. If I do nothing else during this 3 month membership, the hood was worth it.

TBH, the other reason I became a member again was to get this month's loyalty points in order to buy the Jack of Trades aura. Anything to get dungeoneering up without technically doing any of the skill. Math is not my strong point, but rough calculations put me getting 99 dungeoneering somewhere in 2013 (using JoT aura, TI, ToG and PP), but I'd guess a new skill will be out by then. I am looking forward to getting level 90 just to wear the 90 in All Skills cape.

I did the Halloween event, too. I liked it. Helping Frank and Horses with the rooftop fireworks was by far the best. I like those types of puzzles where I know how things move and not overly complicated (also no move/time limit).

I will not be happy

Firstly, I farmed all those herb seeds I picked up from slayer. I've only kept toadflax, spirit weed and felstalk herbs, the rest were sold for mucho profit. All I have left on the farming front are those morchella spores.

Secondly, I'm fishing in LRC (W88) to rid myself of almost 11k living minerals. Yes, I could've sold them, but, though I dislike being in LRC due to the lagfest it is, I want the fishing and cooking exp. I don't spend a lot of time down there. I pack up about 500 minerals in a go and fish while waiting for my morchellas to grow.

Thirdly, I've just tried out The Pit. The one time my agility cape is useful! I found a scout at the gnome course and found out this guy must be related to Pirate Pete (my aching head). The games are simple, though take getting a rhythm before success. The ones I tried I failed either by running out of time or turns; the falling rocks one I plain got squished! What I think the gorilla mask may be used for is an alternative to the monkey greegree - wear the mask and be safe on Ape Atoll.

Fourthly, I'm working up the effort to take on Branches of Darkmeyer. The difficulty doesn't worry me so much as the motivation. I'm not into getting my quest cape back, so what reason is there to do it? The  title? The medallion?

Fifthly, I gave poke on Merch's blog and found out she'd been banned for macroing. From what I could gleen, she was stupid enough to follow a link in an email Jagex supposedly sent her. Honestly, I felt Merch was the one person who *wouldn't* ever fall for that bullshit.

Sixthly, I sniped an enemy's old username. I wonder if he's noticed yet? :P

I got 24 skillcapes and Dungeoneering ain't one of 'em

Last skillcape for a while. My pride is I did it without using a dwarf cannon. :) One thing I wanted to do was cash in my slayer points for slayer dart runes, but I haven't yet. I think it's worth doing to sell off the death runes.

I found the source of that weird smell coming from the basement

An unexpected drop while doing a slayer task. I finally had something positive to update on my Runewise achievement list (so many things to uncheck :( ).

Oh, I learned a new sign of who's a bot - only bots use the Abyss to runecraft. Siik Rephase insisted I was one when he killed me in the Wildy. I paid him back, though. I went straight back to the Wildy, called him a chicken and used my corpse to hide my bones. :P

Diggy, diggy rocks

Done with mining! Now to swap all those lava titan pouches for shards. :P I'll focus more on slayer, maybe upping the daily exp gained to 50k.

Newfound info

A couple of things I learned that do work during the BEW:

- checking your jade vine farming exp (I got 1650 exp with 1.1 bonus)

- 2 things for LFM: golden mining outfit and dwarven ancestor bonus exp stack with BEW bonus

I'll likely get 99 mining from this, too. I are a happy 'mech. :D

A ready teddy

I'm about as ready for the upcoming BEW as I can get. I'll be poking about in the LFM, providing Jagex deigns that place BEW compatible, after selling the handful of long bones to Barlak. I really wish Jagex would post a complete list of what is and isn't allowed for the upcoming BEW. I remember doing the circus last time, then finding out it wasn't included anymore. Well, anyway, my list: turn in long bones, no life LFM at long as possible (to 1.1), make potions, craft fire bstaves, runecraft at ZMI.

One thing that did make me happy was the updated RS toolbar. The list of activities is customizable, so I ticked out the ones I don't do. All I have showing up now are bstaves, Bert, kingdom management and ToG.

ION, anyone looking to get a lot of the felstalk seeds and morchella spores, go kill nechs. I got a lot from them this morning - 8and 54 respectively.

Two four

Oh so excited. I'm on a nice, rounded number for my total level (2460) and the downhill for slayer and mining is (relatively) fast approaching! I'll get a double 99 for my birthday, which will be way better than the provincial election I got everyone else.

TWIMC

I don't read every item Jagex throws out on the homepage. I wasn't interested in getting a 15% discount on membership since Jagex keeps refusing my credit card(s). That meant I had to hear second-hand about the BEW coming up on Sept. 9-12; I'm now glad I went back to the fallen star at Miscellania (where I heard about it).

I intend to take advantage of the fourth BEW, as I did with the last three. Likely mining, if LFM is allowed, since monster areas will be swamped which means no slayer. I'll stockpile my daily battlestaves and the spoils of my queendom (coal and herbs, so be sold when prices are peaking).

Nerd rage

Anyone who tells you the LFM is dead needs to hang out with me. The last tenday has given me such a hatred for that place! There is always someone else mining there. You know, that's cool. It's not another miner that burns my butter. It's another miner who is too fucking lazy to find his/her own way to the new 50% outlet. You wanna follow people who don't give a shit? GO TO WORLD 71. I do my damnedest to get  away from these remora: world hop, dance (they follow me, I follow them, creating this dance), trick them into mining 100% flow, ignore, but I can't stand it any longer. I can't even come up with words to say why it pisses me off so much.

Now it's another struggle to find the third best mining exp option. I believe it's mining gold at the Keldagrim mine (has gold, addy and runite). >.< If account sharing weren't ethically and rule wrong, I'd beg Marlaine to swap; I wouldn't mind running agility right now.

Dealing with it

An open question for anyone who cares to answer:

How do you respond to someone who says you're a botter? Ignore them? Laugh? Try to convince them you aren't? 

So, this started at the LFM (lava flow mine) today. I'm digging out the crust and the other guy, ALMIGHTYJATT says out of nowhere, "Haro". I read it as 'hello', but didn't respond because people say shit in the public chat that's meant for clan or friends or another window they have open. A few minutes later, he calls me a bot. 

So I said, "Just because I don't talk doesn't make me a bot."

"Well, alot of botters don't talk. And most people bot these days."

"If you think I'm a bot, then report me."

And then he goes into a mini rant about Jagex not doing anything about bots because they support by buying membership (imo, very true).

I understand that botters are more prevalent than ever. I see them constantly during my daily slayer trips. I don't automatically assume the person skilling along side me and not cursed with verbal diarrhea is a bot.