Easier said than done...

I had originally intended to smith the 6k+ mithril bars into knives, but now that I've put a price tag on this particular level, it doesn't really sit well with me. 5.2 mil is a whole lot just to blow on a skill. But I had a little time to think about it...

My first instinct was to see what the bars were worth, in order to try and make a bit of money. I check, and indeed: I'll make about 3 million more off my origional investment (for a total of 8 million gp). This was my origional plan.

You can only make 5 mithril bars at a time, because you have to carry an obscene amount of coal, too. This make the smelting of 6k+ bars take a very long time. 3 days to be exact.

To smelt somewhere in the neighborhood of 15k mithril bars would take about 8-9 days, so this doesn't sit well with me either. So I do several groups of calculations based on sale prices of the mithril bars vs. the cost of buying gold ores to smith with goldsmithing gauntlets. I settle on a nice little happy medium in my mind: I sell all but 1k of the mithril bars, and buy enough gold ore to get me to 69 smithing. This leaves me with about 3.5 million gp left over. I use part of my proceeds to buy a dragon woodcutting axe, and bank the rest for future usage (I end up with about 1.8 million gp left over). Doing things this way has given me a nice profit, 5k mithril throwing knives, 69 smithing, and more gold bars than I'll probably ever use.

With this done, I start ectoing the baby dragon bones I gathered a while back (along with a few good bones from zogre hunting) in order to get the Prayer level I need for Summer's End. I only need 2 levels (one of them rather short), and while I process all the bones, I only ecto what I need to get 55 Prayer.

It is at this point that I unwittingly walk headlong into hell.

To say that Summer's End is a difficult quest would totally reset the scale (making quests like Dream Mentor moderate difficulty level by comparison), so I'll create a new difficulty level for quests of this magnitude: OMFG! Yep, that about says it all.

I went into this quest with no illusions that I would probably die numerous times. I had little idea at the time that I would die more times than I could possibly count. In fact, I spent 3 days doing little in the quest other than dying. I struggled on several points, which I will outline below:

1) I lived in horror of losing the dragon wood cutting axe I had just bought. This was silly, since armor was totally unnecessary (and would also reduce your run faster, resulting in an unavoidable, horrible, and nearly instantaneous death), any axe you would think about using would probably be the most expensive item in your inventory. When in doubt, check the screen that tells you which items you'll keep upon death.

2) I spent a great deal of time trying to do it the way someone else did. Don't do this. Every quest guide I looked at offered very little in the way of help. Look at what they did to get a general idea of what is expected, and find a way that suits you best. My way was to cut the roots closest to the exit. If the beast wandered on the radar, I left the cave and waited a minute before I went back in. I did this until I had 5 logs. Then I went in and built a pyre and lit it. Building the pyre is the hardest part, as if you leave before you light it, you lose any logs you put down. It's best to run back and forth: put on a log, run to the other side of the room. The second and third parts are easier, since you're not required to stand in one place for any amount of time. Another thing to note that no other guide mentioned is that (during the second part) when the "dark core" leaves the beast, the beast stops shooting. This makes it relatively easy to lure it.

3) Finally, I lost a lot of food because I was initially filling my entire inventory with food. Don't do this, because you're very likely to lose it. It's best to just take about 10 pieces. The problem is that once you have to start eating, it will slow your movement down to some extent. Once you get hit, you're likely to get hit again soon. A good tactic is to run straight past the beast to the opposite side of the room, while eating. It does wonders to put you out of the range of the splash.

My only advice for this quest is to be patient and watch what's going on. If you watch long enough, you'll be able to identify your window of opportunity.

With this horrible quest done, I have a grand total of 264 quest points.

The quest also boosted me up to 30 summoning. An objective a long time in the coming has been achieved: all my skills now rank on hiscores.

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.

I hate Woodcutting

Boring, boring, BOOOOOOOORING!!!!!

I hate it. I always have and I always will. Still, I need it. Since it's cheaper than Smithing, I decided to spend a bit doing it. I've spent close to a week to get to 71, which was all I needed to do Grim Tales. Another quest point, and a snazzy new helmet (which isn't as good as my dragon medium helm). It only took me another day to get to 72, which is all the Woodcutting I need to do to get my quest cape. I've also amassed about 2.3k yew logs. I haven't decided what I'm going to do with those yet, though.

I also did the penguin hide and seek, which got me another 2 points of Farming. But since I still need 2 more levels, I decided to plant all the tree seeds I got from Woodcutting (a willow, a maple, 3 apple trees, a banana tree, 2 orange trees and 2 curry trees). I should get a lot of xp from these after I check the ones growing now, and the one's I'll plant tomorrow. Maybe 2 levels, but I doubt it. Time (which is a major factor in Farming unfortunately) will tell.

That's 261 quest points, with 6 quests left to do!