Summoning Goal Reached!

Finally:

This, coupled with my 75 Farming have opened the door for two long term goals:  99 Woodcutting and 99 Fletching.  With the Hydra's scrolls I can re-grow my planted Magic trees instantly.  No more wilderness woodcutting, no more competing for resources.  But that's for the future.

Coincidentally, I reached another goal that I wasn't actively working on:

Runite ore is the best ore there is to mine.  While I can't quite smith it yet, it still sells for about 16k per ore.

Next on the list:

Obviously, the "All Skills 75+" goal is next on my plate.  While I was a fan on Hunter in the past, I had been having difficulty getting back into it.  Imp boxes (71 Hunter) was hard enough for me to get, and I was having some trouble trying to figure out how to handle this.

One thing that is kind of breaking me out of my rut is the new-ish group of hunting animals in the elf land.  While I can't catch Grenwall yet, I can catch their bait:  Pawya.  So I gave it a shot...

Unlike any other hunter animal that you catch with box traps, bait is REQUIRED.  And the bait isn't cheap, either.  Papayas have been on the rise thanks to the new "extreme" potions (Grenwall quills is an ingredient for one of them).  And I quickly learned that you lose a lot of bait.

It's hard not to notice players using the Fruit Bat familiars.  Anyone who's played has seen this.  The constant sound of the scrolls being used and bananas, lemons, limes and other fruit littering the ground everywhere is usually a dead giveaway.  When asked why, everyone who's doing it will tell you:  "I'm making money."  And the only fruit that is currently worth going through hours of clicking for is:  PAPAYAS.

So, having never used a Fruit Bat familiar before, I bought back 100 of the pouches I've sold, converted most into scrolls and set to work.  First thing I noticed is that you get a papaya every time it drops fruit.  So I started keeping track of what I spent Vs. what I'm "making" (I'm not really making any money since I'm not selling it).

The profit is high.  And when I say it's high, I mean:  "WHOA MAMA!"  I don't have any solid numbers on this yet, but I will soon, and I'll post the result here.  But so far, I'm up 500k gp.

I'm currently in the process of figuring up some percentages on profitability, as well as bait loss ratios when catching Pawya.  I'll post them once I've got them.

One final note today:  that Ardougne Achievement Diary Elite task list is really bugging me, so I've decided to gradually work on Smithing.  Summoning will come soon enough (as soon as I get back to Slayer).  Progress will be slow, and I maintain no illusions about getting it any day soon, but I am working on it when I can.  Gold ore with the Crafting Gauntlets from the Family Crest quest currently seems like the way to go, but I may mix it up with Adamant bars from GWD.

Back From Vacation

After spending a week getting 75 Runecrafting, THEN spending a good deal of time getting 1k tickets at Brimhaven Agility Arena, I had to take a break.  When it starts feeling like work, it's time to do something else for a while.  But the vacation is over.

I'm officially down to 3 skills below 75:  Herblore (74), Thieving (71) and Hunter (71).  And Herblore is getting close.

There were also 2 quests to do when I got back, and both were a little tough.  Blood Runs Deep in particular gave me a good measure of trouble (and I died twice), and it took me a couple days to finish.

A mixed blessing out of The Temple of Senntisten (the other quest) are the Curses.  It's an alternate "prayer book" if you will.  Gone now are the low level prayers that are pretty much wasted because of Chivalry and Piety.  Likewise, Piety's equivelent Curse (as far as I can tell) requires 95 Prayer.  And the price of dragon bones continues to skyrocket...not that I would ever buy them.  All penguin points are now going to Prayer.

Of course, now that those two quests are done, Jagex has released their second Grandmaster quest.  And from what I've been hearing, it's nasty.  I meet all the requirements (except for the two Soul Wars requirements), but with my "all skills 75+" goal being just around the corner, that quest is way on the back burner for now.

My origional goal is likewise on track.  I managed to get 75 Farming (for Magic Trees), and I'm 2 Summoning levels from 80.  As close as I am, I still imagine it's going to take several million GP to get there (not to mention several Slayer assignments).

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.