A few more behind me

It's been a long time in comming, but I managed to get 59 Slayer, and I'm well below my combat requirements. This is good news, since I thought that getting the Slayer level I needed might push me a bit over what I needed combat-wise. I've got plenty of room to maneuver.

I still need 1 more Defence level for Kings Ransom, so I go and play with the fire giants in Brimhaven dungeon for an hour or so to get it. This quest isn't very hard, it's just a lot of running around...and I'm still trying to figure out why I needed a 65 Defence for it. The highest level armor you need to wear is black.

Having finished Contact!, I decided that Dealing with Scabarous should be next on my list. I made this decision based on two factors: Thieving would be the easiest skill to get two fast levels out of, and to be finally finished with the desert based quests. This will give me leave to move my house to Yannelle at my convenience. The only reason it's been in Pollvenich so long is to make it easier to get to these quest locations.

After some minor calculations I determined that it would take 19 glasses of the red squirk juice to get me from 58 Thieving to 60. While this might not seem like a whole lot, keep in mind that you need 3 red fruit for each glass (for a total of 57 fruit). I was very lucky in my time at the Sorceress Garden in that I didn't experience much in the way of lag. Lag kills you there.

Dealing with Scabarous isn't really a difficult quest if you know what you're doing. It's also one of those quests that will kill you the moment you think you've got a handle on it. My advice to any of you is NEVER THINK YOU'VE GOT THE QUEST BEAT UNTIL YOU GOT THE XP REWARD! Case in point is to follow:

I'm doing this quest, and I know that most everything I'll be facing will be both hostile and dangerous. The average enemy level is somewhere in the neighborhood of 100, and while they don't hit obscenely hard, they do hit often enough to make it a problem. I run through, kill a bunch of zombies, skeletons and scabarites to get the information for the archeologists. I switch to mage to kill the giant level 200 something scarab (while having to allocate more power to everything else because my skills aren't overly exceptional), and kill it easily.

I think to myself at this point: "Hard part over. Cakewalk from here." As I'm running through the underground tunnels filled with scabarites, I'm not paying as much attention to my HP as I should be. I lag for a second, and I'm dead. I lost a bunch of sharks, 2 full prayer potions, about 75 blood runes, 7 times as many water runes, and my Mystic hat, gloves and boots. Never think you've got it beat. Never.

On a side note, I'd like to point out here that Sal's Realm of Runescape has wrong information posted about this quest. It says that the giant scarab uses magic and melee attacks. This is wrong. While it does melee, it's ranged attack is just that: ranged. I used protection from range and stayed outside the door and took absolutely no damage.

I also went out and did the new Defender of Varrock quest. While I had a few concerns about the Wilderness, the quest didn't turn out to be very difficult. It gave me a Smithing level and two Hunting levels.

I now have 256 Quest points.

I'm thinking that my next plan will be to head out to Brimhaven Agility Arena to get 60 Agility. This would fulfill requirements for two quests.