Long Time No See

I’ve been very busy in the past few days, getting settled into my school routine and doing the massive amount of homework I’ve been given. I should have expected the enormous workload – I am taking 4 high school courses this year – and managed my time better. Thankfully, the first two weeks of school have been short, due to holidays.

I haven’t had any time to play Runescape during the past week, but now that I have the next 4 days off, hopefully I’ll be able to get more playing in.

First off, Jagex released the “Grimy Herbs” update while I was off. The update is very useful, even though I do very little with herbs. Still, it’s nice to know that Jagex is thinking up ways to stop scammers. Also released while I was off was the Varrock  Achievement Diary. I haven’t had an opportunity to try it out, but I may do so this weekend. Hopefully my efforts will be rewarded with some nice xp – or that new armor.

Before school started, I also gained a bunch of Hunter levels. The first level I gained was 59 hunter, up 12 from 47 the week before.

I’m planning to take a break and get my farming level up, but once I do that it’ll be back to hunting, which I’m hoping to take all the way to 80.

God Wars Dungeon Video

I’ve been waiting for one of these to come out!

First up, a group of 25 guys killing the Zamarok bosses:

Second, a video of the full dungeon:

These two awesome videos (both by Coffey522) give a good feel of the new Dungeon. There are a bunch of things that I liked about the dungeon, at least from what is shown in the video.

First, the amount of difficulty just to get to the dungeon is amazing. Not only is there the cold, which drains your hit points, injuring you before you even enter the dungeon, but there are also extremely high leveled wolves outside and/or near the entrance. Also, the entrance is very remote, forcing you to push aside a boulder, which was very cool, and climb down a massive hole in the snow. Very cool.

Second, getting thrown into the battle so early on looks extremely intimidating. You don’t get time to look around and check things out – instead you’re thrown into battles from the offset. No matter what area you enter, you are automatically attacked by hundreds of malicious monsters.

Third, the graphics for the dungeon are very nice. Everything looks frozen and “destroyed”, as if a battle actually had taken place right here. Furthermore, in the main area, there is a mix of monsters from each of the different armies, adding to the chaos of a battle. I’m not sure if the monsters from opposing armies fight each other, for example Saradomin soldiers fight Zamarok soldiers, but if they did that would be very realistic.

Finally, the bosses – at least the Zamarok one – were not impossible to take down. An alter was placed within the boss area where you can recharge prayer, though it has a “waiting” time between recharges. Also, the Zamarok boss looked extremely menacing and dangerous, befitting his “I can crush mountains!” reputation.

That’s about all I can think of. I can’t wait to try it out (I just need the stats to be able to kill the bosses…), but, when I do, the dungeon will probably be a lot emptier, since everyone will have a Godsword by then.

Lots of Hunter Levels

Well, for the past few days I’ve been doing a ton of hunting, mainly swamp lizards and orange salamanders, and have gone from level 29 to level 51 hunter.

Well, those are all the hunter levels I remembered to screenie.  I’m hoping to get 54 either today or tomorrow, so that I can wear Gloves of Silence. After I buy a pair, I’ll be hunting orange salamanders until 59, then trapping red Salamanders (and at 67 black salamanders) until level 80.

Why Hunter is the Best Skill in Town (or at least in game):

1. Requires a lot of clicking to check your traps, fix them, etc.
2. You can get a large amount of experience at low levels. For example, you can catch swamp lizards (at level 29) that give 152 xp. For woodcutting, you can cut willows at level 30, which only give 67.5 xp.
3. Hunter areas are often empty.
4. When there are people, the people are very nice and it is fun talking to them.
5. The things you can hunt are diverse.
6. Dragon Implings!!!!
7. Impetous Impulses.
8. The hunter monsters look cool and give you something to look at.
9. Traps are cheap and easy to replace
10. You can make a ton of cash going from level 1 to 99.

Well, I’m off  to do more hunting!

God Wars Dungeon!

Finally, after a month of waiting, the God Wars Dungeon has finally been released.

Requirements:

Either 60 Strength or 60 Agility

Requirements to Access God Areas:

Saradomin’s Encampment – Level 70 Agility
Armadyl’s Eyrie – Level 70 Ranged
Bandos’s Stronghold – Level 70 Strength
Zamorak’s Fortress – Level 70 Hitpoints

Seeing as I have none of these stats, I’m going to have to wait to get in, especially since I need more armor.

Bye Bye 12 and Unders

Just read this post on Thinking in a Different Box. Apparently, anyone under 12 years old cannot should not create a Runescape account. Though this probably won’t stop 12 year olds from making an account, hopefully it will cut back on the amount of immature noobs in the game.

Personally, I feel Jagex made the right decision to limit the game to more mature users. I’m not saying that all 12 and unders are immature – but the majority have proven that they are. You can go to some of the more crowded worlds and see for yourself – there are tons of lower level players constantly using profane language and ruining the Runescape experience for the rest of us. Quite frankly, I’m disappointed by the lack of maturity. It shows that kids have no desire to be a member of society and have no respect for the rest of the Runescape community. This comic sums it up quite nicely.

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I would also like to touch on the growing number of Flax bots and bots in general. Flax has become one of the largest “botting enterprises” (for lack of a better term). Take a look at the flax fields next time you’re in Seer’s village, and remember to wear sunglasses – all those green “Level-3s” can hurt your eyes. Yup, level 3′s. I counted a bunch, last time I was there, and the amount has simply grown since. Not only is this highly annoying for those human players who wish to collect flax for money or bowstrings – but it can severely cripple the flax economy. Imagine, hundreds of bots selling massive amounts of flax for cheaper and cheaper prices, and, eventually, the price will go down so far that flax is virtually worthless.

Sieg commented on Marlaine’s post:

Jagex is really trying to sort out the bot problem…it is really getting bad though.
You CAN however stop flax bots yourself, it just takes a lot of time on your part.

Equip either of the following:
Frog mask, green dragonhide body, green dragonhide vams, greendragonhide chaps NOTHING ELSE
OR
green fremmenik robes (with cape and hat or frog mask) and again again NOTHING else.
Then what you do you stand outside the flax area and type either “cyan:::” “cyan:.:.” or “cyan:.” a bot might start trying to pick you like flax, then what you do you VERY SLOWLY (as in 1 space at a time) move to le-fays castle slightly north east of the flax field. Eventually you’ll reach the giant bats and they will take care of the rest.
I have tested this and it DOES work it just does take a little bit of time. It’s best done in groups of 2, and if you do manage to get a bot following – please don’t talk, as that may make the bot go back to the flax. Use clan chat instead XD

So, let’s all do something good for the community, not to mention our precious economy, and endeavor to have one flax bot killed per day. Not only would you be helping others, but the flax bots would finally be doing something useful – they’ll entertain you as they are murdered by a level 27 bat. Hopefully, if enough people do this, we can destroy the whole enterprise.

With that said, I’d like to pose a question: Where do people get these bots from anyway? Hopefully, if someone can answer this, Jagex and those responsible players can strike at the heart of the problem.

Just Got Back

Well, I haven’t posted in a week, due to my being on vacation. My family and I visited the Baseball Hall of Fame and th battlefields at Gettysburg. It was very interesting, and I learned a lot more about the battle. It’s too bad there were no reenactments going on.

Anyway, before I left for vacation I gained a bunch of Hunter levels, 16 in total. Since I’ve gotten back, I’ve gained another 6. I plan to spend the next few weeks working on hunting, mainly hunting tropical wagtails, then moving on to Larupias once I hit level 31. Here’s a pic of me getting Hunter level 19:

I’m also hoping that hunter will give me a good amount of xp giving random events, which I can use to get my runecrafting level to 44.

Scams are the Germs in Runescape…

Scams, the tricks scammers try to use to get our items and cash, are very closely related to the microscopic bacteria that make us sick. They share many similarities, including the ability to make you “sick” – or at least highly annoyed. That is only one of the similarities, however. There are many more.

Scams and bacteria are similar in that they evolve and adapt to fit new situations and fool ever more vigilant players. If a certain scam, previously unknown, is written about, the scams will change to fool players. For example, there is a scam where one person offers an item (always a cheap one) for an expensive item, and tries to accept the trade before the other person can realize the trade is bad. Now, this scam is widely known and, since players understand item values better, it is now easily avoided. In response to this new “immune system” against the scam, the scam changes to fool players yet again. In this case, two or more people will do the trades. One person trades the cheap item for the expensive one, while the other person(s) offer extremely high prices for the cheap item. This fools players into thinking that they will make a profit. The scam has just evolved into a whole new scam that is even more effective than the first.

Another instance of scams adapting to changes in Runescape occurred when the German Servers were released. Since the names for certain items, such as magic logs, are so different, scammers used these servers to trade cheap logs for large amounts of cash. This was highly effective since the majority of players do not speak German.

Finally, there will always be new scams because, like bacteria, scams are invented everyday. Unfortunately, this is somewhat due to the updates we all know and love. Due to these updates, new ways for scams to be used open up and an intelligent player, unfortunately, decides to exploit the new “weakness” to gain money or items. Soon, a new scam has invaded Runescape, one for which we have no defense against, due to the little knowledge we have of it. Unlike in real life, there are no antibiotics for Runescape, which is an excellent reason to make good use of your “Report Abuse” button.

With so much nasty bacteria in Runescape, we must be on the lookout for new scams, so that they can be reported, not just to Jagex, but posted onto forums or blogs such as mine. Leave a comment here. I’ll happily record the new scam to warn other players of the dangers. In this way, we could effectively build up an “immune system” for Runescape. As Francis Bacon once said, “Knowledge is power.” How true.

Runescape is Good for You

Found this while surfing the BBC site. It’s very old, but still interesting. I find it interesting that a game could be teaching life skills, not that I’m surprised. Runescape teaches hard work (getting 72 woodcutting in 3 weeks) and budgeting/money management. It’s nice to know that my “addiction” is doing something other than ruining my eyes.

After reading the article, I would like to pose a question to my readers: What do you do to “chill” in Runescape? Whenever I need to “chill”, I head to Relleka. It’s usually pretty quiet and pickpocketing Relleka citizens is a lot of fun. I especially like the Viking style and all the wintry terrain. It reminds me of a quiet, Christmas snowfall, which I find very beautiful and relaxing. When I’m here, I usually spend time thieving fish from the stalls, and cooking them.

What is your favorite place to relax or hang out with friends?

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Other the past few days, I’ve worked on a bunch of things, namely 40 runecrafting and the Grand Tree quest, which was pretty good. The demon was easy (I maged it with 40 mage), though if I had meleed it, I expect it would have ended quite differently. The Gnome King’s naivety was very annoying – he seemed to be unable to accept that Glough (the antagonist) was really evil. It seems like all the quests include one of 3 things:

1. A Naive king, lord, or some other official
2. A guy who hates humans, monsters, or everyone else
3. A megalomaniac who wants to conquer Misthlin, Ardougne, or all of Runescape

The list is a bit depressing. Unfortunately, it’s also a little biased, since I’ve only done a few quests. But personally, I would like to see an interesting and innovative quest – something that hasn’t been done already.

Oh, before I forget (again) I changed my player’s look again. The red was starting to hurt my eyes, so I changed to naturally brownish colors. My hairstyle is black samurai.

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In other news, I saw the Bourne Ultimatum yesterday, which was an awesome movie. It was very intense and action packed, and not at all confusing. The entire thing was realistic, even if not plausible. I highly recommend it. Now I just have to watch the first two.

Real-World Trading

This is just pathetic. I was reading the newest post in the Runescape-Blog when I read this:

“You see a lot of sites selling Runescape gold on the Internet nowadays. It opens up a lot of opportunities for players too, instead of players grinding and using a lot of time making gold pieces in-game to buy the next best weapon, or armour, they could just buy gold online – much quicker, much more efficient.

This also opens up opportunities to players to make some real cash too.

These sites also buy gold pieces of players, so if you find a way of making a lot of gold pieces, then you could sell them to these sites and make some profit. Merchanting is a quick and easy way of making money (check our merchanting guide), but it does require some initial investment.

Runescape gold sites normally buy gold pieces in millions, from around $2.99+ per million. This sounds like rubbish money for a million gold pieces, but it’s actually pretty easy to make a lot of gold once you reach your few hundred thousand gold pieces.

Not only to these Runescape gold sites buy gold pieces, but they also buy characters as well. If you have a character that is of a high level in a lot of skills, then you could probably get a decent price for it on one of these sites. The best thing to do is offer your character for sale, and see which site will offer the most for it.”

It is highly disappointing that a respected player, who has chosen to teach less experienced players how to make money, would be encouraging players to break the rules by buying/selling runescape goals and accounts. This is against Runescape’s Terms of Service and is, in my opinion, possibly the worst offense. Buying/Selling gold and accounts is cheating – you are spending real money to buy gold and accounts that will make your Runescape experience easier. By buying/selling accounts, not only do you put yourself up for being banned, but you also allow yourself to be scammed out of your real-world money. Think about it. The person selling their account has far too many ways to regain their account. They know all their old passwords, they have security questions, and, for members, they have their old membership details. That’s enough to get any account back.

Instead of buying/selling accounts, report any players who are buying/selling accounts and gold. Who knows – you may be made into a player moderator some day. To say the least, being a player mod is far more rewarding than being banned. So, report all players who are selling/buying gold or accounts to Jagex and, if the accounts are being sold on a site like ebay, report the person to ebay as well. Also remember to read the rules carefully to familiarize yourself with them so, should you find a player breaking them, whether in-game or out of the game, you can report them.

Now, I have a suggestion to make. I believe that it is too difficult to report players who are buying/selling items or encouraging others to cheat outside of Runescape. For the Runescape-Blog, the poster, instead of giving a Runescape username, is simply named admin. For that reason it is impossible to report him. That is why Jagex should add a “Report Web Page” form that allows players to enter a URL and tell Jagex which rule is being broken.

You could try telling Runescape through this form.

Here are a couple links to help educate you about scams:

1. Scam Prevention
2. Known Scams
   

Watch out for scams and scammers, and happy scaping!

Goals as of August 14

Skill Goals:

Runecrafting: 38/54

Magic: 40/66

Item/Money Goals:

Money: 60m (60,000,000)

Items:

1. Red H’ween mask: 41m
2. Zamorak Robe Top & Bottom: 900k
3. Dragon Hatchet: 3.3m
4. Abyssal Whip: 1.5m
5. Dragon Square Shield: 1.2m
6. Ahrim’s Robe Top, Bottom, and Hood: 2.2m

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I plan to get the cash via runecrafting and, if I get bored, through smithing and merchanting.

New Player Kit; Themed Servers; Full Mystic; Rune Ess Mining

For today’s updates, Jagex added a new player kit, that includes new hair styles and clothing styles.

Personally, I still like the dreadlocks the best, as the other hairdos feel unnatural. The Mohawk was very cool too, though.

Introducing the new player kits was a very good idea, since it offers a larger selection of styles that, hopefully, will diversify the players of Runescape. I can’t tell you how tired I am of looking at virtually identical players for 2 years. Now new players can choose cool colors and “unique” styles, rather than the green shirt, brown pants, bald head and brown beard that is so common among lower level players.

Check out my new do:

I still have my old dreadlocks, but I’ve changed the color of my clothes, as well as the type (I can’t remember what they’re called). I’m thinking about getting some better pants before the free week is up, which brings me to another point. Since this first week is free, you can change your appearance as much as like, without it burning a hole in your wallet.

The other update introduced “themed” worlds:

This is a great update and actually does help when looking for a good world to play certain activities. A couple notes:

1. World 9 is also good for Pest Control
2. World 116 is also good for generally nice players

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In other news, I also purchase a set of full mystic, for when I train magic:

At the moment, I am mining rune ess, aiming for 20k ess. I’m going to make 5k chaos runes and 15k nature runes, which I will sell for 300 each. Once I start training magic again, I’ll rate the mystic robes and write an overview.

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Check out the (somewhat) new Apple Keyboards:

The top keyboard is wired, while the bottom is wireless. Personally, I find the wireless keyboard disappointing, as it offers only the basic keyboard – no number pad or special options (page up, page down, etc.). Though the design may be fine for the regular, traveling business man, hopefully Apple will release a full version in the coming months, which can be used by those people who won’t be constantly on the go.

New Interface; The Lost Tribe; 55 Fletching; 40 Agility

As part of a recent update, Jagex has added a new clan chat system, which allows players to chat on a clan only frequency. Since I don’t have a clan, I probably won’t be using it for a while, so it’s a bit of a useless update for me.

The new clan chat isn’t the only major update from Jagex – the entire Runescape interface has been changed making it, in my opinion, much more modern.

Looks great, doesn’t it? (The HAM Robes are for the Death to the Dorgeshuun Quest) The new interface, except for chat, works the same as the previous interface. In a nutshell, the All button will display all your chats using the given settings. So, if you have private chat on friends and clan chat off, you will not see the clan chat, private chat will be friends only, and the public chat (if on) will be displayed normally. The Game button allows you to view only the messages from the game itself. Effectively, you are turning off all of your chats. The Public and Private buttons, if left-clicked, will allow you to view only public chat or only private chat. By right-clicking you can set the options for that filter (as Jagex calls it), which is how it will appear when you select the All button. The Clan chat works in pretty much the same way, but with more options when you right-click the filter.

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In the past few days, I have gained a bunch of levels in Runescape, as well as completed a whole new quest.

I spent a few hours playing Skullball to get my agility up. I highly recommend Skullball as a training method for low to medium level players, since you can make 750 xp in about 3 minutes 30 seconds. I went from level 28 to level 40 in a single day.

Skullball is a simple and fun game. The goals is to move the ball through a course, scoring in each of the “bone” goals, then shooting it into a hole at the end. Unlike many other agility courses, Skullball can actually be fun, and is quick xp, which makes it very worthwhile.

Afterwards, I decided to get rid of my willow logs by fletching them into Willow longbows. Altogether, I obtained a total of 5 levels, so I can now make maple longbows.

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, I completed the Lost Tribe quest, which was short and easy. I’ve been doing several quests lately since the give quick xp and access to new areas of Runescape. For example, I can now access the Dorgeshuun mines, which I couldn’t before. Overall, the Lost Tribe quest was fun, but easy. Not much walking was involved either, which was great.

Now I’m off to work on my Construction, which I need at 20 (mine is 1) to begin the Fremmenik Isles quest. Wish me luck!

Lots of Levels!

A lot has happened in the past 4 days, since I last posted. I’ve gotten 5 slayer levels and 11 runecrafting levels (3 more since the pic).

I’m very happy about the 38 runecrafting since it means I can make the chaos runes I will need to cast Crumble Undead. The slayer level was just annoying to get, but I’m aiming for level 50 so I can use a slayer staff and auto cast Crumble Undead. The fishing level simply got me to the spot I need for Legends and Heroes quests.

The runecrafting was tedious, however it has payed off so far. I reached level 35 by crafting earth runes, for Crumble Undead, and then did the What Lies Bellow quest, which got me to 38. The quest was definitely worthwhile. The runecrafting experience was great and the shortcut to the Chaos Alter is very useful when crafting chaos runes since you only need to navigate one floor. When I go to craft chaos runes I’ll try to get some pics of the temple, which is very cool.

On a side note, if there was no shortcut, I would probably not even consider crafting chaos runes. To reach the alter you have to navigate through a maze. The maze itself is not too difficult, however it does take a large chunk of time, especially since you must navigate 4 floors. Thanks to the shortcut, you only have to navigate 2.

For slayer, I was assigned 56 crocodiles to kill, which are located in the desert near Pollnivneach. Due to the heat, I was forced to constantly take breaks to refill my water skins, which was very annoying. Also, the crocodiles would swim out into the river, where you could not attack them. Instead, you would have to wait for them to come to your side of the river.

At this point I am just killing Baby Blue Dragons for attack and prayer experience. My goal is to have 70 attack, and, at least, 43 prayer. After that I’ll be cutting 3k yews, to purchase an Abyssal Whip. Unfortunately, when I purchase it, I won’t be using it much, since I’ll need to completely reestablish my financial base, or, in other words, regain my original 950k. Anyway, Baby Dragons do hit rather often, so food is required – food that I don’t have. For that reason I am in Catherby, fishing lobsters. The goal is to have 500 of these.

Woodcutting Level 75, 41 Prayer

After a ton of hard work, I finally got level 75 woodcutting. The 41 prayer came from a genie lamp.

Woodcutting Level 74

After about 1k willows I finally got level 74 woodcutting.