Bonus XP Weekend!

From the Jagex Website:

"When you initially log in on the weekend, you will gain approx 2.7x XP for all "normal training" activities (see the question below for a list). While you are logged in, a timer will be running over the time you are logged into the game. Over time, the bonus will decrease to a minimum of 1.1x your usual rate."

HOLY CRAP!

Something of this magnitude needs careful and meticulous planning.  Priorities need to be set and materials need to be gathered.  Because when that timer starts, Wrthlss Noob is going to explode.  I have Friday and Saturday off, so I fully intend to spend every waking moment possible training something.  Apologies in advance to Dylan and Zack.

Expensive skills are currently a priority, followed immedately by hard to train skills and skills which require special, untradable materials (Summoning).

Herblore immedately rises to the top of that list, as does Construction.  Both skills are skills that I really want to train up.  Smithing makes the list from the "hard to train" category, and while Summoning would normally be high on this priority list, I'm happy with my current level.  Fletching makes the cut as a wildcard, from the "skills I hate to train" category.

Current Priority List (as of 3/8/10):

#1)  Herblore
#2)  Smithing
#3)  Construction/Magic
#4)  Summoning
#5)  Fletching

My weekend rounders will be Fishing, with possibly a little bit of Slayer and Runecrafting thrown in for good measure.

Preps:

Herblore:  I have bought about 3m gp worth of herb seeds, and I plan to continue to farm and possibly do more Herblore throughout the weekend.  *NEW*  I realized that I would save a lot of time by making unfinished potions, and so this is done.  I currently have over 2.6k various unfinished potions stockpiled.

Smithing:  I have made plans for trips to GWD to obtain Adamant bars, and I'm saving the bars made from ores obtained from star bonuses.  While my goal is 2.5k bars, I will continue to add to this total as time permits.  I need at least 89 Smithing for the Ardy Achievement Diary.  2.5k bars will insure at least 80 Smithing.

Construction/Magic:  I have a signifigant number of mahogany logs, which I intend to use Plank Make during the bonus weekend.  I have not yet made sure that I have enough runes/money for this, but calculations are forthcoming.  I have no particular goal for either skill, other than "higher than they are now."  *NEW*  Plank Make kills a lot of time, so I decided to make the planks beforehand.  While Magic is not necessarily off the table, making planks is.

Summoning:  I do not intend to persue charms (outside of daily Bork battles), but I will be gathering the necessary secondaries to use the charms I have.  *NEW*  I've changed my mind, and decided to do a little Slayer in order to boost my charms.  This is not a signifigant focus, however.

Fletching:  This is an extremely small priority, and really I just want to save myself some time in the future by boosing it a level or two in a short time.  Bank space will quickly become an issue, so I don't want to have a lot of logs hanging out in my bank.  So, I need 431 Yew logs to train my Fletching to 85 (Mage Longbow).  I intend to have 1k Magic logs that I will fletch and string.  These will either be sold or alched.

Fishing:  I have a goal of 90 Fishing, so that I can fish Rocktail.  I'll be switching back and forth between Monkfish (to sell) and Sharks (for food).

Slayer:  Not a terribly large concern, but I can't pass up the chance of some bonus Slayer xp.  Iron Dragons is up currently, and I'll stick with that for starters to save a few charges on my Gloves of Dragonslaying.  This is just to break up the monotny of Fishing.

I will not repost, but instead, will make relative changes here.

Completed Goals

Big news today.

First of all, I completed half of the goal I mentioned in my last post:



Dragon Full Helm: 15,600,000 gp

This fulfills a long standing dream I've had since I started: Full Dragon Armor. As usual, it was up 1 million from when I last checked the price. Typical. But I still like it, and that's all that matters.

Next, I've finally acquired something I had been hunting for a while:



Full Lumberjack!

The Woodcutting bonus is small, but every little bit helps. I found some advice on the forums to stay to the easy path and avoid encounters (fewer combats means faster trips, faster trips means more trips, more trips means more chances to get it).

I am still working on the Firemaking cape, and I'm still doing Shades of Mort'ton in order to get it. My current plan is to use the money to train up Construction, and to do Summoning when I have the charms for it. I currently have a bunch right now, so I'll be doing some soon. As of this moment, I have 500 Sacred Oil (4), and I'm cutting the logs for them now.

-----

Other News: They opened up a new cavern in the Dwarven Mines under Ice Mountain called the Living Rock Caverns. New monsters with ok drops from what I've seen so far. In my Full Dragon, they don't hit me often, but they are quite easy to hit. Doing this I managed to get an Attack level, a Strength level and a Combat level.

I'm now 110 Combat level.

With this new cavern, they introduced new fish which require a high Fishing level. The lowest of these are Cavefish, which require an 85 Fishing. I spent the night before I went fishing Monkfish in order to get the level for it.

I don't know how they are as food yet, as I'm not currently working on combat and haven't even cooked any of the one's I've acquired so far.

The new Dwarf quest (Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf) is also done, keeping me eligiable to wear my Quest cape...even though I'm still wearing my cooking cape. This opened up a new area with monsters that drop a new handheld cannon and the long awaited Dragon Pickaxe. I haven't been to the cavern yet (I'm assuming it's going to be busy for a while), nor have I price checked handheld cannons or pickaxes. I'm assuming they're going to be expensive, so it'll be a bit before I got one of either.

The Cost of 69 Smithing

First things first:

I replanted my 4 fruit trees in an effort to help my Farming skill...which wasn't quite enough for 2 levels. This forced me to hit the Vinesweeper minigame again. In spite of the rabbits and the idiots stealing xp from me, it only took me about 2 hours to get to 53.

This opened the way for me to get Back to My Roots out of the way. This quest isn't really hard, but it's best to use a guide to keep you from getting lost in the jade vine maze. The final fight would have undoubtedly been easier if I had access to a dragon hatchet, but my rune axe worked alright anyways.

News Flash: Pking worlds are here. Big deal. On to the next subject.

Now I've decided to get the nasty requirement out of the way: Smithing. I need 14 levels in all, which will meet the qualifications for two different quests (both of which have other requirements). I could mine, but I decide to buy ores instead, since I need 6160 Mithril ores and 24,640 coal. The price tag for all of this? Somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 million gp.

First thing I do is sell those yew logs. I don't need them right now, and I can always get more somewhat easily. Then I head off to do...yep, you guessed it: fish.

I fish about 1k lobs, and when I head off to sell them I noticed a bit of a side-effect of the recent Pking activity: food prices are skyrocketing. This is good for me, but it's not going to last. I'm all too familiar with the process: something new hits Runescape, prices of related items go way up untill they stop selling altogether. It is at this point that prices will then plummet back to their origional value. I switch over to sharks, in an effort to cash in quickly before the bottom drops out.

This happens a couple of days later, and I spend some time with fish on the Grand Exchange that won't even sell at minimum price. Not to worry, I have a back-up plan: I pop off to cut some yews. I only cut a few hundred before the fish sell, so I head to the GE to turn my gold into coal.

It's not long before the whole fish market crashes, and I'm relagated to wood cutting to buy the last 5k coal. A friend of mine lent me his dragon hatchet, which did help speed up the process. I only needed to cut about 2k yew logs at this point.

With the logs cut, I spend the money on the last of my coal. I finally did a price check on the ores (although I didn't think to get a screen shot).

The final cost of 69 Smithing for me? 5.2 million gold pieces.

60 Attack!

As I said in my last post, Desert Treasure, All Fired Up and Spirit of Summer were #1 on the list. And they're both finished! Desert Treasure gets easier every time I do it, and as I always say: the shopping list is the hardest part of that quest. Spirit of Summer was kind of cool, too. They worked Summoning into the quest extremely well. I'll save any judgments on All Fired Up for when I actually mess around with the minigame.

Since I had decided that the two evil quests (Haunted Mine and Contact!) needed to wait until I got 60 Attack, I decide to train for a quest that I'm very close to qualifying for: Fremnink Isles. It only takes about a half hour of cutting Maple trees to get this.

I get all the way through to the end, and before I can have a go at the troll king, I have second thoughts. I'm not totally keen on the idea of buying a weapon that I'm just going to turn around and sell again in a couple of Attack Levels (a rune halberd, which is ideal for this quest). This is not even taking into account that I'm worried about getting murdered.

I made a decision to raise my attack, not only for Fremnink Isles, but so I can get the rest of the quests done that I've already started. Of course, since I don't enjoy just finding a random monster to kill for hours on end, I set out to do a few slayer assignments.

My combat level is now 71, so I can head to Chaeldar for assignments. I've always liked training through her, and she doesn't dissappoint me this time around. I get a few really decent assignments, with one of my favorites being Basilisks. I get my desired attack level, and get Slayer up to 48 (and a combat level of 72).

Now I need new weapons. Luckily, I don't have a lot invested in weaponry right now, so I don't have to worry about taking a loss when I sell my old gear. Of course, Dragon weapons are dramatically more expensive than rune. Time to fish...again.

I spent a day and a half fishing lobsters, in order to get the money I needed. On my shopping list are a Dragon Battleaxe and a Dragon Halberd. 1.5k is the number of lobsters I need to get that kind of cash. Another concern of mine is the fact that lobsters are no longer selling for the mid range price. In fact, you can't sell them for a gp more than minimum. The fish buyers have spoken, I suppose. I also do a bit of farming while I'm in Catherby, if for no other reason than to grow some more Ranarrs for Prayer potions.

The fishing has a couple of side benefits that I didn't really forsee. First was a 70 Fishing. The other was that while I was fishing, someone reminded me that you have to talk to Daero to get your xp from Monkey Madness (yes, as my name suggests, I am a total noob). I pop off to get it, and end up leveling in every melee combat stat (and get a 74 combat level too).

I also played around a bit with that farming minigame (the name of which escapes me right now), and got to like it a little. It's similar to "Minesweeper" so it didn't take me long to get the hang of it. The rewards are pretty good, although you do have to work for it.

I end up with not only enough money for the halberd and axe, but I got enough left over to buy a Dragon Scimitar. I briefly toyed with the idea of buying 3 more Glory amulets, but doing this has become something of a bad omen for me. Buying an extra Glory or two before doing something dangerous almost guarantees that I'll end up losing one in the process.

It was a good call, as I ended up using the scimitar to finish Haunted Mine. It was a rather easy victory with one of the better weapons in the game. I also finished Fremnink Isles in a dramatically easy fashion (in fact, I had more trouble killing the 10 trolls than I did killing the troll king).

The funniest thing is that the Defence xp that I selected from Fremnink Isles got me up to 55 Defence (which is high enough to wear the helm you get from the quest).

This gives me a grand total of 234 quest points.

Chapter 2-Episode 12: Power training for Heroe's Quest

The life of a quest noob is somewhat boring on many occasions...expecially when you like to rush things like I do. I am pressing on towards Heroe's Quest, and I need some skill levels. I need 4 levels of Mining, 7 levels of Fishing and 8 levels of cooking.

I take on the mining first. I decide to take the shortest route there and mine gold, and since my Construction level isn't 50 yet (so no demon butler), I decide the best place to mine would be under the volcano in Karajima. There are only 4 rocks here, but their closeness to the bank makes them a very good second option.

Because of my level, the bats still harass me here. This proves to only be a minor inconvenience, and I only have to kill a few of them.

Gold mined: 474 (50 Mining)

I decided to fish lobsters to increase both my Fishing and Cooking skills. I need 610 cooked lobsters to get 53 Cooking, so seeing as how I'm very likely to burn a few, that should be more than enough for 53 Fishing.

Lobsters cooked: 569 (already had 106)
Lobsters burnt: 212
Total fished: 781
Levels: 53 Fishing, 52 Cooking

To make up some cooking experience, I do all the parts of Recipe for Disaster quest that I currently can. This includes the start, and saving the Goblin Generals and Pirate Pete. I doubt it will be enough, but I do want to get this quest started for many reasons. I gather my shopping list:

Eye of Newt*
Rotten Tomato (3)
Greenman's Ale (3)
2 Lemons (2)
2 Oranges (1 sliced) (2)
Pineapple (2)
Cocktail Glass (2)
Cocktail Shaker (2)
Ashes (4)
Charcoal*
Spice (or Gnome Spice) (2)
Water (3)
2 Bread (2)
Green, Blue or Purple Dye (4)
3 Bronze Wires (4)
Fishbowl*
Raw Cod*
Knife (1)
1 Fishing Bait (1)
Mortar and Pestle (1)
Needle (1)

(1) is stuff I already had in the bank.
(2) is stuff I acquired or acquired the materials to make at the Gnome Stronghold.
(3) is stuff I acquired in Yannelle
(4) is stuff I acquired or made in or on the way to Ardougne.

* I fished a raw cod myself at Catherby, and the Eye of Newt, charcoal and fishbowl I bought on the Grand Exchange.

I do the first part, and set out to save Pirate Pete and the Goblin Generals in a single trip. I talk to the cook about fishcakes, and then gather up my needed items and head off to goblin village via Burthorpe Games Room. Once I have the Slop of Compromise, I teleport to Castle Wars, and bank everything but my rune battle axe, 3 bronze wire, a needle and my fishbowl, and head to Port Kazzard.

(28 Farming, 39 Crafting)

This cuts me down to needing 2.5k experience for 53 Cooking. I return to Catherby and 1 load of Lobsters gets me 53 Cooking.

I don't need much for Merlin's Crystal (a loaf of bread) and I make that at Ardougne. The quest sends me to Falador and back, but it doesn't take me long to finish it. Quest Complete: 6 Quest Points, Excalabur.

I head over to Varrock and start Shield of Arrav. I decided to join the Phoenix gang (with the benefit of hindsight, this wasn't a good idea...which I'll explain later). I head through my whole half of the quest, turning in my shield half and getting 2 certificate halves (the same half). I then post on the "Find a Shield of Arrav Partner" sticky. It takes about 20-30 minutes, but I find a partner (Grim Veteran). It only takes a few minutes to finish the quest. Quest Complete: 1 Quest Point, 600 gp.

All obstacles have been removed...

Chapter 1-Episode 12: The Final Grind

This stands to be my last power levelling session in a free world, and I have some high goals to meet before I pay my membership (actually, I have some time to kill before payday). My list of things to do include:

Buy a rune platebody
30 Woodcutting (9 levels)
38 Fishing (8 levels)
35 Cooking (1 level)
27 Runecrafting (26 levels)

I'm also going to need about 20k-30k gp to buy food, potions, and other supplies for the fight. So I need a lot of levels, and about 70k gp. I make a base plan:

I will cut and burn oaks until 30 Woodcutting. I will then fly fish until level 38 (buying feathers, as I'm getting more and more concerned with my Hit Point experience level), and cook trout until I get 35 Cooking. I will sell the rest of the fish. I will then mine rune essence in Varrock (in lots of 500) and make the best runes I can until I get 27 Runecrafting. I will save these runes for when I train magic. Finally I will manufacture steel bars to get the money I need for the plate and the quest supplies.

The woodcutting, fishing and cooking go way faster than I expected, so I have plenty of time to devote to runecrafting and making money. I sell the fish, and only get about 6k for all of them, so I still have a ways to go yet. I head to Arbury's shop to start mining essence. I start off with 200, since that will get me to 9 Runecrafting. Making earth runes will bring me back to Varrock, so I can mine more essence then.

I finally get to 14, and start planning the runes I'm going to make to get to 27 Runecrafting. I plan on using these runes to train Magic after I do the Dragon Slayer quest, so I decide to make 500 mind runes. These will be the main rune of all my spellcasting until at least 17 Magic, so I want a lot of these. I mine 250 essence (since I make 2 mind runes per essence at this level), and start crafting.

Once I get the 500 mind runes made, I set a goal of 300 essence worth of all the elemental runes. The number is arbitrary for the most part: I just want to ensure I have enough elemental runes to be able to use up most of the mind runes, with a bit of a reserve stockpile. I set off to Varrock to get started. I start with mining 300 essence for earth runes. I craft those, then mine 600 essence for the water and fire runes. I wait until last to make the air runes in order to get my runecrafting skill higher, because once it's past 22 I get 3 air runes per essence. By the time I get to the air runes, my Runecrafting level is 26. Making 73 essence into air runes will give me my goal, but I'm going to want a lot of airs so I mine 200 essence (which will give me 600 more). It doesn't take long to finish those, which gives me a 27 Runecrafting (and close to 28).

Now there's still a little matter of a rune platebody that I need to buy, and decide that mining has always worked out best for me as far as making cash, so I head over to the Grand Exchange to buy some coal. My plan is the same as it was the last time: mine enough iron to use up the coal making steel bars while mining the bits of silver as they are available, sell, and buy more coal. Here's the financial report:

Starting cash: 13,325 gp
1st run: 35 steel bars, 13 silver bars = 23,403 gp (bought 120 coal)
2nd run: 60 steel bars, 23 silver bars = 40,031 gp (bought 200 coal, 5k left over)
3rd run: 100 steel bars, 0 silver bars, 1 sapphire, 5 cut sapphires = 66,958 gp

This is more than enough for a rune platebody. I have 26k left for other quest related expenses, with plenty of room for rapid capital expansion (making my money grow).

Tomorrow is payday. Tomorrow is members. I can hardly wait!!!

Chapter 1-Episode 10: Time For New Gear

With my combat skills right where I want them, temporarily set asside my violent ways to prepare for membership, and subsequent attempt at the Dragon Slayer quest. I have a couple more quests to get done, some armor to buy, $5 to come up with, and an infamous dragon to slay...all of this long before it is commonly considered wise to do so. Admittedly it's not, but I think it's completely doable.

Rune armor by the piece is almost the same as the whole set (a bit over 143k max price)...and in fact if I may possibly be able to get it cheaper piece by piece. The main problem is money. I need lots of it. Cows are totally out (since I don't want any more combat experience), which leaves mining, smithing, fishing or woodcutting. I decide to do a little of everything. I start out, since I'm at the Grand Exchange, and check prices on iron ore and coal against what I can sell the smithed bars for. I will make at least 100 gp on each bar. The money I currently have isn't enough to justify the effort (I only have enough to make 25 bars, which is only about 2.5k).

I decide to experiment with mining silver and selling silver bars (people use them for crafting). What I'm concerned about is how quickly I can get rid of the bars. The silver bars sell quickly for the middle of the road price, so I decide to buy 80 coal and mine silver south-west of Varrock. This way I can mine some iron when it's open. I get 63 silver ore in the time it takes me to gather the needed iron. I make about 35k gp, which is more than enough to get started. I sell my full adamant set and buy a rune chainbody and a rune full helm.

I now set out to Lumbridge to fish salmon and trout. I'm relatively sure the salmon will sell, but I decide that if the trout don't sell quickly I'll just cook them for noob food and experience. Fortunately they both sell instantly and I get a bit over 20k. Out of curiosity, I put up the raw beef and the bones that have been stockpiling in my bank and was shocked to learn that these, too, sold almost instantly. This gave me enough for a rune kiteshield. All that is left now is the plate legs and platebody.

Fishing is far slower than the silver bars, so I go back to that. I stick near Varrock, since the mine north of Al Kharid is usually crowded. My goal is to mine 100 silver, and stockpile iron ore to sell. I'll be mining way more iron than silver, so this goal should have a good profit. Competition gets stiff, so I try to finish up in Al Kharid (which is the best free world smithing place anyways). It doesn't take long untill I have competition there as well, so I decide to smelt the silver and sell everything and see how much I have. I have less than 20K...I need more than twice that to get platelegs.

I decide to use the money I have to buy coal and smith steel bars. I have enough to buy 100 coal, and after I sell the 50 steel bars, I'll add about 10k to my cash total. Iron respawns faster than silver which makes it easy enough to get, and I can also mine the incidental silver ore for a small bonus.

First Batch: 50 steel bars, 16 silver bars = more than 34k (bought 188 coal)
Second Batch: 89 steel bars, 28 silver bars = more than 60k.

I have more than enough for my legs, to complete my current combat kit (not that I'll be combating any day soon). Funniest thing is that, after the purchase, I have exactly what I started with! I also buy an adamant scimitar, which complete's my Dragon Slayer combat kit.

While I still have to get my rune platebody, I still have other things to see to so I call this work session done.

Chapter 1-Episode 6: Teach a Noob to Fish...

I head over to Rimmington to experiment with a fishing power-leveling technique. My thoughts in this experiment is that I can sell the fish (since my cooking is so much higher anyways) to buy bait to continue to fish. Some key factors to consider here are the distance to the fishing store in Port Sarim from the fishing holes behind the small temple to the west and the price fluctuations for the fish I'm selling vs. the cost of the bait. I had 24 fishing bait left, so I started there. Bear in mind that the first trip was not a full inventory (25 bait would give a full inventory). My goal is 20 fishing (trout).

1st trip: 0 gp left (purchased 25 bait)
2nd trip: 22 gp left (purchased 25 bait)
3rd trip: 36 gp left (purchased 25 bait)
4th trip: 149 gp (minus the 75 for bait = 49 gp)

The trip, itself, isn't extremely long, and you don't pass anything more dangerous than a giant rat. So effectively, you could easily support power-leveling doing this. This would only be time effective would be between Fishing level 10-20. Good for the lower level player who doesn't yet have much in the way of means.

I head back to Lumbridge to fish trout. I'm killing chickens to keep me in feathers. I'm also cooking on the Lumbridge cook's stove before I bank.

Goal: Fishing level 25
Cooked fish: 44
Burnt fish: 20
Cooking level: 30

I return to Port Sarim to buy some more bait (duh), then return to Lumbridge to fish pike.

Goal: Fishing level 30
Cooked fish: 74
Burnt fish: 18
Cooking level: 34

Pike fishing is slow, and I would have probably levelled faster had I continued to fish trout. But now I can fish salmon, which is a very good noob fish!

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.