Chapter 1-Episode 4: The Great Cowslayer

New goals firmly in hand, I set out to get started. The first order of business is Quest Points: I need 32 and I have 12. 20 Quest Points is not as long a haul as it sounds. While I have got a few of the better yielding quests out of the way already, I still have a couple of good ones to choose from. I decide to balance good Quest Point rewards and good experience rewards. The quests on the list now are:

Black Knights Fortress (3 QP)
Doric's Quest (1 QP)

Earnest the Chicken (4 QP)

Prince Ali's Rescue (3 QP)

Romeo & Juliet (5 QP)

Rune Mysteries ([which I was planning on doing anyways] 1 QP)

Vampire Slayer (3 QP)

But before I get started, I want to beef up my Attack, Strength, and Defence at least 5 points each (which would bring me up to Mithril armor and Black weapons). Before I go and beef up my combat stats though, I need food. So I decided to head over to Port Sarim to buy a fishing pole and train fishing up at least 4 more levels (to about 10), which will also help my cooking skill.

While fishing I helped someone out by telling him where to find a fishing rod. He was really appreciative, and said that people in Runescape were nicer than they are in other online games. While I know that this isn't always the case, people do tend to have "niceness spurts". It doesn't seem like much, but it kinda felt like a rare moment. Speaking of rare moments, I just realized that I haven't had any randoms since I started this character. Not one.

I fill my inventory at Fishing level 12, and after cooking everything, I end up with a nice 31 sardines and 6 herring. I set off to the cows by the flour mill to start leveling combat. I like this place a great deal due to the close deposit boxes up by the gnomecopter thing (I still don't know what it is). I can clear my inventory of cowhides without making the trek to the castle, and if I bring a tinderbox and woodcutting axe, I can cook the meat. Doing this, I can stay here all but indefinately.

The need for food was aparently greatly overestimated, as I ended up depositing most of it to increase the time between drops. My hope is that by the time I reach 10 Attack, 10 Strength, and 20 Defence I'll have enough cowhides to buy Mithril armor and a black battle axe. The battles rage on for hours. Trust me when I say that cowslaying isn't at all as glamorous as it sounds. When all is said and done, I also have 17 Hit Points, 13 Prayer and a combat level of 17. My max hit with a steel battle axe is now 3. I run the cowhides over to the Grand Exchange to see if I have enough for either new armor or a weapon. It turns out that I killed a few more cows than I thought, and it's more than enough, leaving me a bit over 4k.