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.

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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.

Combining Goals

While doing the various things I do to make money, I got a little bored and went out to do the Temple Trekking/Burgh de Rott Ramble minigame for a bit. While I didn't get a Lumberjack shirt (much to my continued annoyance), I did stockpile some shade remains. So, once I got tired of trekking, I decided to burn some shades.

I, of course, didn't just burn the small number I got from trekking: I decided to make a day of it. I stockpiled 250 sacred oil (4), 250 magic logs, and 250 shades. I ended up making about 1.2M gp. I also got somewhere in the neighborhood of 120k firemaking xp.

This got me to thinking...instead of just wasting time burning maple logs for weeks to get 99 firemaking, why not burn shades? It might take the same amount of time (or a bit more), but I'll have a whole lot of money when all is said and done.

Now, I've never played for money. But (much like in the real world) money does help. I am going to get the firemaking skillcape anyways, so why not do it in a way that I end up ahead financially? Plus, I'll also get a decent amount of crafting and prayer xp, too. Finally, the minigame is rather easy (although it is a bit labor intensive) and I enjoy it.

As a result, my firemaking skillcape goal and my Dragon Full Helm goal have met unexpectedly at a bizarre crossroads out in the middle of nowhere and became unlikely travelling partners.

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In other news: All of my melee stats are now 79. With 80's across the board in combat, I'm temted to try to get all my combat stats 80+. It would give me an excuse to do some work on my prayer. I already have a goal to get summoning to 80, and I could train range and prayer at the same time by killing dragons. These are only thoughts, however, as I still have a long way to go for 80 in my melee stats.

I am also just a stone's throw from 74 summoning.

Grandmaster Quest

Up to now: I managed to get my Firemaking skill to 80, which gave me both access to fire gauntlets and Magic pyre logs. I cut somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 magic logs to use in Shades of Mort'ton. As maybe you remember, I already have about 800 sacred oil (4) that I intended for use with magic logs. While I made, on average, about 400k per 100 logs, I managed to lose a good amount of money in the process. The shades I need for Magic pyre logs are level 100, and I wasn't watching my HP. The loss was a bit over 500k, and I still haven't replaced my dragon boots.

After about 300 logs, my attention turned to combat. And as with most any other time where my attention was on combat, I decide to train combat through Slayer. At first, my goal was simply to gain access to the warrior's guild (which required 3 Attack or Strength levels). But after I managed to get both 65 in Attack and Strength, I decided it was time to raise my combat level. My current combat level goal is 90, with a goal set for my Attack skill of 70.

I goof around at the Warrior's guild for a bit (about 1k tokens and still no defender of any type) before I return to Slayer. I'm using Sumona now as a master, and she gives good assignments. The assignments however make me realize that my current food technologies are a bit lacking. I stop my training at combat level 88, in order to fix this problem.

I have a load of salmon in the bank that I used to get to 70 cooking. It was my origional intention to turn these 3600+ salmon into admiral pies, which would have got me well above 80 cooking. Once I sat down and thought about how I had to acquire everything to make them (flour, potatos, tuna and pie shells), I realized that making that many pies wasn't within my patience threshold. I sold all but 1k, and bought everything I needed to make the pies. This was not as easy as it sounds: nobody sells pie shells on G.E. Those I had to buy from a shop.

If you want to make a lot of high end and labor intensive pies, the best way to do it is to use the Lunar Spellbook. First thing it does for you is make it easy to fill buckets with water (Humidify spell). This is only a minor benefit, which can't be beaten out by the Make Pie spell. It cooks the pie, without the need for a stove, and you don't burn any. This means you get all the xp you worked for.

The pies only get me to 76, so I sell the pies and buy monkfish. I decide that this will be the fastest way to train cooking. I am not wrong, despite the fact that I burn about 15%. It only takes me about a day to get to 80. I set off to Catherby to get me some sharks.

It was here and about that Runescape took off the kid gloves. The long awaited "Grandmaster Quest" was released. And if the requirements are any indication, it's no joke. My quest cape is banked indefinately.

As you can see above, I have a lot of work to do.

It's been a while...

Not a whole lot has happened since I've last posted.

I've got a couple more quests done, namely TotTz-Ket-Dill, As a First Resort, and the Rag and Bone Man's wish list. This puts me at a grand total of 242 Quest Points.

I now qualify for Lunar Diplomacy in the Magic department. Now all I need is a 61 Crafting. I also need another level in Magic to be able to do Swan Song.

I've done a whole lot of fishing to get the money I needed to level Construction and Magic, and I'm now 2 levels away from sharks. While sharks take longer, it'll take far fewer to get a signifigant amount of cash.

I'm going to spend about an hour doing part of the Shades of Mort'ton minigame in order to see how long it'll take me to get to 61 Crafting.

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While I specifically remember hearing someone say you can get as much at 15k Crafting xp from Shades of Mort'ton, I figured it out to be more along the lines of 8k an hour...which still isn't bad. Making the pyre logs is the most time consuming part of that minigame anyways.

My plan is to continue with Shades...until I get bored with it, of course.