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Showing posts with label Runecrafting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Runecrafting. Show all posts

Monday, November 2, 2009

More Goals Reached

The biggest news to report today is:



Yes, I now have 99 Firemaking, and the coveted (by me at least) Firemaking Skillcape!

While I had last reported that I was going to do beacons to get it, I learned through trial and error that simply burning logs was a lot quicker, but beacons gave better experience per log. Since availability of logs was nowhere close to an issue for me, I opted for the former.

Other News:

Hiscores:  I've recently broken into the top 50,000 players in Runescape!

Ardougne Achievement Diary: A new achievement diary was released for the Ardougne area. I completed Easy, Medium and Hard diaries...only to learn that there is an "Elite" achievement list.

I've always been one of those "do it all in the first day" kind of guys, but these Elite tasks really smacked me down. Hard. I've got 2 serious sticking points: 91 Smithing and 93 Summoning. That's going to be fun.

New Goals:

One of the things I haven't liked about my character is his inability to use the Giant Pouch when runecrafting. While I'm not 100% sure, I believe that 75 Runecrafting is one of the requirements for an Ardougne diary Elite task. So I've decided to get 75 Runecrafting.

I plan to do it by crafting Death runes (about 5k at a time) to get money to buy pure essence to use at the ZMI Runecrafting Altar.

Runecrafting is a skill I don't really like because of the time it takes. But after I get it to 75, this will trigger the start of my next set of goals: all skills 75+.

This will not affect my current goal of 80 Summoning.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

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.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

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!!!