The Longest Mile: Part 1

Being down to 3 quests now, I find myself driven...well, that and the fact that I've already got the hardest piece of work out of the way (69 Smithing). So it's time to make a few decisions on what to do next.

On one hand, I have the Rocking Out quest. For this, I still need 4 Crafting levels and 1 Thieving level. Crafting takes a while, since I like doing it at Shades of Mort'ton. Thieving can also take a while, if I decide to use the Sorceress' Garden Minigame.

On the other hand, I have the Devious Minds quest. For this, I need 6 Runecrafting levels. While I don't mind runecrafting, I like it a lot better when I'm making Law runes. I don't enjoy high alchemy magic training, and Nature runes don't sell for as much as they used to. But the up side is that both mining pure essence and crafting runes through the abyss are relatively quick.

I'm anxious to get another quest done soon, so I opt for the runecrafting level and Devious Minds.

I do my calculations, and they show that I need to make about 4.5k Nature runes to go from 44 to 50 Runecrafting. Since I have a 66 Magic, I mine through the Mages Guild in Yannelle. This is, by far, the shortest trip between the teleporting npc and the bank, and mining essence here takes very little time at all. It takes me only about 4-5 game hours to get what I need.

Then it's off to craft. Before I start, I use some of the money I've amassed to buy 12 more Amulets of Glory to complete my Runecrafting/Prayer training kit of 28 (by the way: the total value of 28 Glorys is aproximately 1.26 million gp). I charge my used ones and get to work.

Before PKing left, it was rather unwise to wear anything valuable while crafting runes in the abyss because there were people who would wait by the Zammarok Mage (probably because they were poor PKers and couldn't take anyone geared for a fight). It was also hard on your run energy, since most armor is somewhat heavy. Jagex has thankfully solved both problems. While PKers were replaced by Revenants, the Revenants are little more than an annoyance most times. Also, after the As a Last Resort quest, you have access to the Ogre spa (yeah I know how it sounds) which have pools with some helpful affects. The spa that helps in Runecrafting is the salt-water spring, which gives you unlimited run for a period of time determined by your Agility level. While the effect lasts less than a half hour for me, it is well worth the trip back if you can use Fairy Rings. The whole process takes only about 3-4 hours.

It was here that I made an expensive and rather noobish mistake. Knowing that I need a large essence pouch, I return to the abyss to hunt abyss creatures in order to find one. This is not wise, and I would suggest that if you have access to Fairy Rings, that you should use the abyss area that you can access with coordinates: ALR. First of all, you don't get skulled and your prayer doesn't get drained. Another benefit is that it's not multi-combat.

It was here that I died a most moronic and expensive death, mostly due to the fact that I couldn't see my Hit Point bar because of all of the attacks I was weathering. I lost a full set of rune armor (with a dragon medium helmet), my dragon scimitar, and one of the Glorys I had just bought (not even taking into account that I also lost all the pouches I had currently found). I tried desperately to return to my grave marker to retrieve my items, but I still have the noob one and it fell as soon as I arrived at it. This set me back almost 1 million gp (but in the process I upgraded to Dragon Platelegs and Dragon Gloves). I decided to sell the Nature runes to offset the cost.

I then set out to do Devious Minds. The hardest part of this quest is training for it (65 Smithing), and it only takes me about a half hour to finish it. This puts me to 265 quest points.

I then set out to train crafting. I make the trip to Mort'ton and build the temple for several hours (getting 2 levels in the process) before I get bored and try to come up with another way to train. I try the gem rocks in Shilo Village, but it's slow and I get far more junk than I do anything useful (although I do manage to increase my stock of games necklaces and rings of dueling). I give up on this and head to Varrock to buy some battlestaves from the shop there. I can only buy 32 a day, so this doesn't get me very far. I high alch them to get my money back and try to come up with something else.

It was then that I decided to look to see what the Grand Exchange had to offer. I found that battlestaves sold for about 8.7k gp max, which is still less than the 9.3k gp alchemy value. I don't hold out much hope, but I put a max price bid on 50 battlestaves...and I get them. While I'm not making a whole lot of money off making them, I'm not losing anything (which is one of the most important parts of power-training).

The battlestaff market quickly dried up, leaving me 12k experience shy of the needed 66 crafting, so I return to Mort'ton for about an hour to finish this up.

Then all that is left is the one Thieving level to get. I decide that it's time for me to do the Penguin Hide and Seek this week in order to get some fast experience. It takes me less than a half hour, but I find myself about 9k experience short. While I wasn't looking to get into sq'irk gathering right now, I make some quick calculations in my head to learn that I only need about 4 glasses of juice, so I spend another hour gathering the fruit to make juice for Osman. My calculations were a bit off, leaving me with not quite 500 experience left to go. I managed to pick this up by stealing from the stalls in Ardougne.

Then I'm off to do Rocking Out. While it's not a difficult quest, it's long and requires a lot of running around doing favors for people. It also helps to watch a lot of MacGuyver reruns to sort out this out without a guide. After an hour of mind numbing errand-running, the quest is done.

I now have 267 Quest points, with only 2 more quests to do.