Chapter 4-Episode 5: I Guess This Is a Break...

Like many psychotic workaholics, I've decided to take a short "working-vacation" from my Legends training. I'm going to do a few quests...quests that I should have done a while ago.

My first plan is to complete the last of the Free Player quests: Pirate's Treasure. While it won't be a real windfall, I'm down to less than 1k gp, so at this point, any little bit will help. I will continue my vacation with Gertrude's Cat. This quest has been holding me back on several other quests I want to do, so it's time to get it out of the way. Next on the list will be Saving Evil Dave from the Recipe for Disaster quest. I will finally end this quest blitz with Garden of Tranquility. This quest will help open up a good portion of the Varrock Achievement Diary for me.

I know I need a white apron for Pirate's Treasure, so I stop by the fishing shop in Port Sarim before I depart for Karajima and grab the one hanging on the wall. I also plan to reclaim my Karajima Achievement Diary gloves. This quest is easy as they come, so I'll not waste time discussing my lack of trials and tribulations. Quest Complete: 2 Quest Points, 1-Eyed Hector's Treasure Chest, Pay-Fare Option at Port Sarim/Karajima. On a side note, 1-Eyed Hector must not have been a very good pirate.

Gertrude's Cat is equally uneventful, with the exception of the fact that they've made the boxes to search more obvious. Quest Complete: 1 Quest Point, 1,250 Cooking XP, A Kitten, Chocolate Cake, a Stew and the ability to raise cats.
Evil Dave was not overly difficult, with the exception that my kitten was lacking in skills and I had trouble finding enough red spice to make the stew. Quest Complete: 1 Quest Point, 7,000 Cooking XP, Hell cats, greater access to the chest. (56 Cooking).



Although it took a long time, I did get a Hell-Kitten. This is cool for me, because while I've had Hell-Cats before, I've never had a Hell-Kitten.

Garden of Tranquility requires me to have some seeds that I don't usually bother with: mainly onion and cabbage seeds. So I head over to rifle through the Master Farmer's pockets in Draynor. Luckily I need noob seeds so I get them within about 5 minutes.

This is a long, drawn-out, quest where I convince people to part with precious items through force of magical charms and steal statues for the Queen of Varrock...who does all this for her husband who doesn't know how to appreciate something. Quest Complete: 1 Quest Point, 5,000 Farming XP, 1 apple tree seed, 1 acorn, 4 guam leaf seeds, 1 Supercompost potion (38 Farming).

The supercompost potion will give me the first of my Supercompost, but the new ring is the real prize! This allows me many discounts across Runescape. While I may very well use the Guam Leaf seeds at some point, the rest don't have much in the way of value to me.

Computer Problems

A nice little virus greeted me this morning when I turned on my computer. I don't know where it came from or how I got it, but it's there, and as a result my good computer is down for the moment.

Luckily for me, I still have a back up computer. The problem is that it's ancient. So old, that while it hasn't been confirmed, many scientists believe that a dinosaur may have very well used it before me. Not really, but it sounded good at the time.

The effects of this on me are as follows:

No HD Runescape until I get a new copy of windows. The people who built my good computer were nice enough not to give me any way of solving this problem myself (i.e. a recovery disc). They're called Discount Computer Parts, and are located at 16500 Detroit Ave, in Lakewood OH. I would recomend that if you're driving past there that you continue to do just that: drive right on by.

Sal's Realm of Runescape's skill calculators and the entire Zybez website are off limits to me, since my current version of Windows doesn't support the latest Java. I'd imagine that I'm darn lucky to be able to play Runescape at all.

As such, I'm forced to use a different website...one that I absolutely loathe. While it's less graphically intensive, it's poorly set up, is difficult to navigate and very slow to be updated, and as a result, I refuse to even mention their name here. There will be no plugs for this place.

I will still make screenshots, but unfortunately, they won't be HD screenies for a while.

Chapter 4-Episode 4: "I'll take 100k worth of Herblore XP pl0x!"

I absolutely HATE buying skill levels. This is because I can only think of about 12,382,483,934 different things I would rather do with all that money...give or take. But there are times when it's difficult to avoid...this being one of them.

I need a bit more than 7 levels in Herblore for Legends. It could potentially take me a week to get enough herbs to acomplish this. Sorceress' Garden is far from reliable, and killing Chaos Druids will undoubtedly give me a bit more combat experience than I'd like right now, since I've already got a 60 Combat Level. And the #1 thing on that list of 12 billion+ things I'd rather do with the money? Magic. Heavy sigh...

My recent smithing venture has given me 100k gp, and I intend to see exactly how many Herblore levels I can buy with that. My plan is to make enough combat potions to get me 1 more level, and then make Prayer Potions for as long as I can. I may adjust this based on cost and ease of obtaining the necessary materials.

I immedately see that Ranarr weed costs 6 times as much as Harralander, and only gives 4 more XP per potion. I decide to make combat potions the whole way. I buy 97 Harralander, 100 chaos runes and 300 fire runes with a bit over 100k. I had forgotten that I already had 8 unfinished Harralander potions, and 17 unfinished Ranarr potions. I guess I'll get a few Prayer Potions after all...

The reason that runes became a necessity is because I have to kill desert goats to get the other ingredients. I plan to melee them untill I hit 50 Strength, and then Mage the rest of them.

Shortly after I switch to Magic, another problem became apparent: I need runes. I head over to mine mithril and coal south of Lumbridge, and while I'm mining I realize something. I could buy the ore relatively cheaply, and simply mine coal...using Superheat to make the bars immedately. I rush back to the GE with an inventory full of mithril bars, which gives me just enough to buy 100 Nature runes and 100 Mithril ore. I then head over by the Legend's Guild and mine coal by the Grizzly Bears. It's relatively close to a bank, and works incredibly well. I sell the bars, buy 100 more Nature runes and 100 more Mithril ore. The net profit when all is said and done is a bit over 100k. I've discovered my new cash factory.

The initial 100k bought me exactly 3 levels, although Combat Potions actually sell, so I make most of my money back (after buying vials of water to replace the ones I lose in the process). After I run out of herbs, I head over by the Crafting Guild and finish up those Prayer Potions. I end up with about 15 full Prayer Potions (cash value, had I bought them: about 100k gp).

I check a skill calculator to see how many more Harralander I need to get to 45 (which is 255). I then set off to make the next 100 Mithril bars.

I make about 200 more Mithril bars, with which I buy runes and herbs, which eventually gets me up to 54 Magic and 42 Herblore. While Mining, I got a book from Mr. Mordaut...which reminded me I needed to pick up my Varrock armor from Achievement Diary. I should get another lamp in the process. Sure enough, I get another lamp for 1k more XP, which I add to Herblore. This puts me about 1.7k XP from 43.

On a side and unrelated note, I got another Mining and Smithing level in the process.

Time for a little break.

Chapter 4-Episode 4: The Bizarre Relationships of Skills

Skills maintain strange relationships with each other, as I was quick to discover. It's not at all uncommon for a higher level in one skill can make it easier to train others, and you are occasionally able to train two skills with the same action. Power training is made much faster and easier with planning and a bit of creative usage of other skills.

For example: I currently need levels in both Magic and Smithing for Legends Quest. Of course, we all know about the spell: Superheat Item (in case you don't, it basically allows you to to get Magic XP while Smithing without running to a forge, all for the cost of 1 Nature rune and 4 Fire runes). While it isn't a big secret, most people choose not to do it and get their Magic XP and Smithing XP separately.

If you can't cast High Alchemy, Superheat Item is the greatest spell for power training. People believe that it costs too much, but if you do it correctly, it won't cost you a single gp. If you aren't concerned with making money, Superheating will more than pay for itself if you mine your own ores and sell the bars (and it's not like anyone ever got pwned at Bounty Hunter because they had a high Mining).

I'm going to train Magic and Smithing with Superheat for as long as I can stand it. I get bored easily, so I'm going to do this by the truck load of coal (meaning I'm going to fill the coal trucks in Seer's Village once and make the bars).

The coal truck holds 120 pieces of coal, and you can carry up to 28 in your inventory (provided you don't get a lot of gems). 148 coal is enough to make 74 Steel Bars, and thus I'll need at the most 74 Nature runes per load. Now that I can teleport to Camelot, the trips back and forth will be a bit cheaper (teletabs are almost 1k gp, and fairy rings don't really get you as close as I'd like).

Current GE pricing shows me that in order to buy enough Nature runes each load, I'll have to sell 32 of the possible 74 bars per trip. This leaves me with 42 extra bars. I plan to make 1k iron knives, and possibly sell the rest of the bars to buy Death runes. Knives are very fast range weapons, and they may (or may not) come in handy in the future.

Somewhere along the way, I decide to finish Elemental Workshop II (since I was in the neighborhood). Doing this gives me a 50 Crafting, and a Smithing level (from 48 to 49 at the point I did it). One more requirement off the list, and another will very soon be joining it.

It takes a long time, and near the end I simply decide to stop selling bars and I smith them for the experience. I make 10 total full sets of steel armor in the process. After almost two whole days of mining and smithing, I finally get 50 Smithing and a 51 Magic.

Doing all the mining myself has also given me another benefit: access to lots of sapphires and emeralds. A while back, I had unwisely choosen to sell a lot of Games Necklaces and Dueling Rings for extra cash that I needed, so I was down to single digit quantities of both. I now have close to 40 of each.

I also broke down and finished the last of the Lumbridge achievement diary. It was worth it, as I got another lamp for 1.5k XP, which I added to Herblore (my next target), and it gives me a teleport to the cabbage fields south of Falador. It'll come in somewhat handy for farming there, as well as trips to Port Sarim and Rimmington. It's not extremely handy, since I've already got a teleport to Draynor Village with my Amulet of Glory.

This leaves 3 more skills...

Chapter 4-Episode 3: Need...More...Magic!!!

My magic skill is really, really low, so I decide to get to work on that. And where do I usually start when I want to power train? Quests!

There are two things that stand out in my mind immediately. The first is Imp Catcher. While it's small potatoes in the XP department, I've already collected the beads from imps over the past few month so it will be quick. The other thing that jumps out at me is Troll Stronghold. Now that I have Protection from Melee, I should be able to take down that troll general without a free trip to Falador.

Imp Catcher is as easy as a trip to wizard's tower. Quest Complete: 1 Quest Point, 875 Magic.

Then it's off to Burthorpe. I quickly find out that I'm a bit more rusty than I thought as I was as I make two noob mistakes which results in my death. I got lost and went up the wrong path, right into that death zone just past the wounded soldier. After realizing my first mistake, I tried to turn on Protection from Missiles and turned on Protection from Magic instead. Ah well, time to fish.

150 raw lobsters later, I have my rune helm and battle axe back (my orange cape is a total loss unfortunately). And this time I go up the right way...and turn on protection from magic again. I quickly realize my mistake this time and fix it, but not before I waste two lobsters in the process. Unfortunately, the rest of my trip was a waste as well: the troll general outlasted my 43 Prayer points (33 by the time I got past the troll throwers). I need a Prayer Potion. Back to the GE.

The second trip goes better, since I get back to find that the troll I was beating on was still there and still injured. I annihilated him in short order, and didn't even need the potion. Quest Complete: 2 quest points, 2-10,000 XP lamps. I use them both on Magic and it jumps up to 45. Not as high as I hoped, but about where I expected.

Then Watchtower catches my eye. I know the quest and it's nothing I can't handle now.

Shopping List:

2 Ropes
Jangerberries
Dragon Bone
Bat Bone
Tinderbox
Pickaxe
Water-Filled Vial
400GP
Death Rune
Pestle and Mortar
Gold Bar
Guam Leaf

Lucky me again: I got most of this stuff. I do have to buy back a dragon bone that I just sold to get the Glory that I just lost (heavy sigh). But everything else I can get in Varrock or near where the quest takes place.

It's a long quest, but it allows me to pick up a few novelty items (rock cakes and nightshade). Quest Complete: 4 quest points, 15,200 Magic XP, 5,000 gp, Watchtower Teleport. I'm now up to 47 Magic, and very close to 48.

I'm tired now, so I'd say that gaining Protection from Melee, almost 7 Magic levels, and 107 total quest points makes this a productive day. Good stopping point.

Chapter 4-Episode 2: Protection From Melee

43 Prayer. This is a must have skill level. In many places it literally means the difference between victory and spending a load of cash to replace a majority of your gear.

While I only need 1 level to be qualify for Legends (that was my goal before my break, and I see no reason to change that goal), I need 2 for Protection from Melee. According to Sal's skill calculators, I need to ecto either 73 baby dragon bones or 31 dragon bones to get 43.

I had already started collecting bones before I had taken my break, and since I've used all XP granting rewards on Prayer since I've come back, I only need to collect about 33 more baby dragon bones or 16 dragon bones. My secret green dragon stash (in the chaos rifts) are out now, so for no other reason than to save time, I head to Falador to collect baby dragon bones. It only takes a few trips to Taverly Dungeon, and I not only get the bones I need, I end up with enough food to take on my first adult blue dragon. While I did win, I used a lot of food...and almost chickened out twice.

I head to the GE because I want another Amulet of Glory to make the ectoing a little easier. This will give me 8 return trips to Edgeville, as opposed to 4. It works out pretty good because by the time the amulets ran out of charges, I had enough left over inventory to carry both Glorys and a Games Necklace. This let me recharge without totally going out of my way. All in all, it's a rather quick operation, and in about an hour I have 43 Prayer!

Chapter 4-Episode 1: Back At It

A lot has changed since I last played, so I decided to take a moment to explore some of the new changes. I'm playing in the new graphics mode, and I must say that I'm absolutely impressed. It looks cool, and they've even redone teleport animations! I can hardly wait to actually do some real mage.

I log in to find out that instead of having about 800 gp, that I now have 21k! I had put some plain tiaras on the GE, and during my time off, they all sold. Good news for me!

I then head off to Lumbridge, because I've also heard that there's a new achievement diary, so I head off to get that rolling. I'm disappointed with the changes to the achievement diary. I always felt part of the challenge was figuring out where the task was and how to pull it off. Now it directs you every step of the way. I shrug off my misgivings, and set about the task of trying to finish at least the easy part (I decide to do Varrock, too, since I'm in the area).

While looking around at some things not in the game, I'm now officially less happy with how Hiscores works. It used to only show the top 1 million players. Now it's the top 2 million players. It bugs me as it now takes so much less effort to make it onto that list.

I can't finish the Varrock (need Dig Site quest...I'll do it later) right now, so since I'm in the mood, I pop off to Karajima to try to finish the easy part over there. Looking at it, there's nothing I shouldn't be able to complete. On a side note, I didn't do terrible on my first trip to Fight Pits (considering I didn't take any food).

I was lucky enough to get a max hit before my unfortunate, yet anticipated demise.

I manage to complete the Karajima easy tasks as well as the Lumbridge beginner and easy tasks, and I'm one task away from finishing Varrock's easy tasks, too. I decide to jump back into questing, and I start with the Dig Site quest (this should allow me to get enough Kudos to complete Varrock's easy achievement diary).

Shopping List:
Tinderbox
Chisel
2 Rope
Pestle and Mortar
Vial
Uncut Opal
Cup of Tea
Leather Gloves
Leather Boots

I grab a pestle and mortar, vial, tinderbox, chisel and 2 rope from the bank, and steal a cup of tea on my way out of Varrock. Everything else I'll get at the dig site by pick pocketing workers.
While I end up buying the boots, everything goes off without a hitch...although it took a lot longer than it should have (I couldn't pickpocket hardly any of the items I needed). Quest Complete: 2 Quest Points, 2,000 Herblore XP, 15,300 Mining (54 Mining, 37 Herblore).

While the quest itself doesn't give me enough Kudos, I spend an hour in the cleaning room and find enough artifacts to get me there. With this final task, I have all easy achievement diary tasks complete.

While the item rewards are barely useful, I learn that they now give out experience lamps with each completed difficulty level. Those, coupled with a book from Mr. Mordaut, get me to Prayer level 41.

Chapter 3: Prologue-Hiatus

July 26, 2008

After a bit of a hiatus, I've decided to return to Runescape.

The reason why I took a break was simple. I was bored and went to check out other things:

My website: I have a Geocities account that I maintain and periodically tear down to the ground just so I can rebuild it. Recent updates include a new account with a new name, and moving the things I wanted to the new site, and the addition of some slick flash nav menus. I will be adding a section on my Runescape acomplishments, few that they are thus far.

Guild Wars: Total and complete waste of time and money. I'll give you my official review of the game:

Civilization IV: I absolutely love that game, but I can only play it so much before I'm bored to tears with it. It's one that I play for a couple days and put it away for a few months or more.

History Channel: My favorite channel on cable. I get in moods where I want to do nothing but watch TV, and this is my normal choice.

Youtube: I have days where I'll just search Youtube for random stuff. I usually end up getting mad at the psychotic conspiracy theorists. That's where I'm at now.

Why Come Back?

I always knew I'd come back. I always do. I've gone long spans without playing and letting my membership expire, but I always come back. I enjoy the way the community works better in this game than I do in any other game. I usually start over...but not this time. I have the perfect character name and I've already done some noteworthy things. This one's for keeps.