Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury...

Okay, may not have been the smartest thing I've ever done, but I've put Boombaye's situation (In anonymous terms of course) on the tip.it forums to see what a neutral audience would think of it, since I noticed most of his accusers are Blessings members (or ex-members), and Tim's groupies.

And Blessings, the odds are kinda stacked against you guys in it.

Here's the link the thread

Honestly though, I think both parties were at fault here, if you ask me.

One (Not Eight) Legged Freaks

Let me repeat that, I hate turoth, I hate them, I hate them, I HATE them. Stupid one legged freaks.

Trying to take advantage of the new Slayer points system, I went about doing slayer tasks to stack up the 4 tasks needed to start getting points. I forgot any old slayer master would do, and foolishly asked Chaeldar for a task, and was promptly punished for that when she gave me 140+ turoth task.

The leaf bladed spear is a hopeless weapon, much like many other spears. I haven't got any problem with it only being able to give either controlled or defence exp, but it can't hold a candle up to a whip, losing in all departments from speed to damage. And its two handed.

I refuse range or mage the bloody things since there isn't a safe spot, and the only melee weapon that will hurt them is a leaf bladed spear. I wasted close to 3 hours on that task...

Mazchana on the other hand, understood that I had only one week of vacation left to play, and gave me much shorter ones, short to the point I can't remember what they were.

Got a grand total off...20 points now. Which is to say not much. Did get a good look at the new slayer monster's makeovers. Jellies now have the remains of their unfortunate victims floating inside them.




My level ups from my little flirt with Slayer. Pushing me ever closer to that not-so-exclusive-now club of 3 digit combat!

Ranarrs are dropping (Bloody hell), and my ultra secret crop is probably back on the rise now, so I'll go back to that.

I just realized, although Fishing gave me more time to post, it caused another problem. I had nothing to post ABOUT.

Smoking Kills...Duh...

Upon finding out about the new Slayer points system that was recently put in place, I finally managed to overcome my loathing and state of inertia when it comes to quest, and do Smoking Kills.

Moment I caught wind of it being able to swap the points for Slayer exp, I could already hear some veteran Slayers whining in the forums (RSOF, Tip.it as well if it hadn't crashed already) about how the skill has been nerfed, same way the Farmers did when Vinesweeper was released. As well as see all the Slayer exp rolling in for me.

This time round, its your usual save-the-damsel-in-distress quest, where you have to save the sister of a woman named Sumona ( who looks ALOT like the Devourer) from a smoking well in Pollnivneach.

As usual, you have to play dumb and follow along with the evil plan like in Regicide, despite it being very obvious that Sumona is the Devourer, and the game doesn't allow you to not help her, or throw your cat at her instead, which would probably cause her to implode on herself. Which would be quite funny.

As you prepare to leap headfirst into the well, you are stopped by a cat (Who is, like everyone else in the town, named Ali), telling you your ass is fried if you set foot in the dungeon since

Smoke + Banshees - (Facemask or Earmuffs) = Dead Adventurer

And that you have to find a Slayer master to teach you how to put the facemask and earmuffs together so that you don't die instantaneously in there. Of course there are a couple of problems.

One being the fact that he's been dead a LONG time, and the other being that his tomb is situated in the middle of bloody nowhere in the desert. East of the Agility Pyramid to be exact.

So off you go to dig him up. Here he is, goes by the name of Catolax.



Once consulted, you put the two together, head down the well, kill a banshee, pick up what appears to be its head, before using it to break a barrier to meet a...bigger banshee.




Well, its bigger than a normal banshee, thats all I can say for it really. Not that hard to beat on its own.





Bloody thing has an annoying ability to knock you flat though, as seen in the above. I didn't take any screenshots of the rest of the scarab archers suddenly turning on me as well, since I was too busy swearing and trying to stay alive. I went from 40 hp to 8 after one volley of arrows. The bastards. Oh yes, if you do try this quest, please don't turn off your Protect From Range prayer immediately after the fight, because the bloody archers can fire one last volley at you after you kill the Banshee Mistress. They left me wondering why the hell my Hitpoints meter read 5 instead of 50.

Anyway, the Devourer's scheme is quite obvious now, her twin sister is actually her, and she blows up a book nearby which would have give you total control over the archers, before incinerating them like the cannon fodder they are.

Killing big mama Banshee apparently freed Catolax's soul as well, so you didn't totally mess up by helping out the Devourer unwittingly yet again. She isn't allowed you blow you up by some covenant of the gods since she already promised to reward you for saving her "sister".

The reward being the new Slayer system I was talking about. Oh yes, she's now a new Slayer Master too. Thought it would be Catolax when I first heard about a new Slayer Master being released.








PS : For Fishing, just surpassed 5.5 mil exp.

I'm Back, And Better Than Ever!

Yes, I'm back, and no, I haven't quit. I've been horribly busy lately, I barely even update my regular blog that often any more. Unlike Tim, I have no bloody no idea how to juggle schoolwork, and still play a decent amount. Maybe I should get around to asking him one of these days in school.

Anyway...

I've given up on going for a Hunting Skillcape, at least for the time being. Too much attention required, more than I can give. Besides, I was getting tired of hopping around for an empty world for red chins.

I've decided to go back to Fishing, which admittedly, is rather boring. Okay fine, very boring. My DS helps stave it off, but can barely last 1k monks without breaking down and doing something else. I've got about 60k or so monks till I hit 99, though I have no idea how long that'll take.

I dabbled in powerfishing for a while at Shilo, but trust me, the rate that stupid fishing spot moves around, and the remoteness of the place, and the lack of too much profit just about cancels out the advantage the slightly faster exp rate. For me at least.

On the bright side though, there is money. Lots of it. But I think the market for raws might have cooled off a bit, though they are still going at 450 each on the Exchange.

Reached 90 Fishing today




Future posts will probably be longer, given how I'm fishing, so I'll have *A lot* of free time.

We Are Currently Experiencing Technical Difficulties...

In the morale and willpower department. I might have misread the various guides I've read about raising Hunter to 99, seeing as how I *think* they all say it takes two weeks to a month at most to max it out. Either I misread when it was supposed to be two months, or when they meant two weeks, they meant playing 8 hours a day like some people...

Anyway, kinda got with Hunter after hitting 66 Hunter at the Red Chinchompa areas.



Its good money alright, since you can't retrieve Chinchompas like arrows, but its so hard to find an empty spot to yourself during peak hours. While my timezone makes it easier for me since its morning where I am when the Americans are all asleep (Or should be at least), its near impossible to find a trapping spot all to yourself, even when you hop 5 or 6 worlds during peak hours.

Tim planned on bringing a crossbow to shoot down other people's Red Chins if he isn't getting enough, but I talked him out of it, partially anyway. Its an idiotic thing to do, like ranging every Fire Giant in a room so the other guy can't get any. He now promises to fire only if the other guy is an asshole. Which, unfortunately, are pretty common at the Red Chin spots....

Right now, I have three options

1. Continue with Red Chins and battle for a spot during peak hours

2. Level up to 67 and do Black Salamanders, but there's close to 0 profit in that. Heard they're good for barrows though.

3. Just go back to training Fishing. Again, quite boring, but at least I'll have the time to do other things.

I'll probably good with Option 2 or 3 though, at least until I can lay 5 traps in one go at 80 Hunter.

Anyway, my usual remedy for boredom is normally killing stuff, so I grabbed my gear and headed for Chaeldar, who, for once, didn't give me a stupid, troublesome task for once. A hundred or so Dagannoth, easy and convenient enough, and I had the luck to get 2 Snapdragon seeds while I was at it. Inching toward 65 Slayer, and Dust Devils!!



An Attack level up halfway through the task which I didn't expect.

This May's Behind the Scenes has a couple of interesting features lined up, most notably the new Quick Chat system. Apparently, it is a list of selected common phrases that can be quickly clicked on for your character to say, which would help a lot in games which need quick communication like Castle Wars. Unfortunately though, if it selects the most commonly recurring phrases in CW, it would probably look like this...

--------
1. NOOB!!
2. SAFER NOOB!!
3. PRAYER NOOB!!
4. POTTING NOOB!!
5. ANCIENT NOOB!!
6. STOP KILLING ME WITH OUR CATAPULT NOOB!!
7. STOP BLOWING UP OUR OWN BARRICADES NOOB!!
8. I've got the flag, cover me!
9. Enemy flag bearer is in the tunnels/middle/battlements
10. Everyone attack *username*, he/she has the flag!!
--------

Another update I found rather interesting is the random statistics one, which will spout useless but funny nonetheless facts, like how many guards are killed in Varrock Square a day. Not sure how many that would be, but it'll probably be a *LOT*.

As stated in the Garden of Tranquility quest, your average guard has a lifespan of about 5 minutes.

>Insert Title Here<

First off, I'd like to say that amazingly, there IS a market for grey chinchompas, and that I really regret blowing up my first 100 at Pest Control.

Anyway, trapped my way up to 58 Hunter on Grey Chins, before being hit by an overwhelming sense of BOREDOM!! Guess zeal can only take one so far... Hunting is more click intensive than I thought, given how Chinchompas never learn that box traps are a BAD thing, combined with the fact I need to watch out for my turf from marauders, since Chins can't be shared like Fishing. Perhaps a change in target is a good idea right now.

Coincidentally at the same time, the new minigame Fist Of Guthix had been released, and after hearing good reviews about it from my friend and brother, I decided it would be a good break from Hunter/Skilling overall.

Guthix apparently really does select guardians of his areas randomly, the one in the Fist Of Guthix being a giant...Earwig... He should have stuck to giant snakes.

Objective of the game is simple. You get paired up with a random person in the waiting room



And then you take turns being the hunter and the hunted. As the hunted, you have to run around holding a charging stone to collect charges around the arena, and since the stone is two handed and goes in your weapon slot, you are pretty helpless in this form, and your objective is to last as long as possible to collect as many charges as possible until you are killed by the hunter.

As hunter, just frag the hunted ASAP before he/she collects too many charges. Person with more charges at the end of two rounds wins, and gets a certain amount of FOG tokens, based on how many more charges you got, and how balanced your total level is. An anti-pure measure perhaps?

I heard that free runes were given out at FOG, and I thought to myself "This would surely kill mage training in any other method." Two matches in, I realized it wouldn't. Why?? Because most decent players would hide in the safehouses from time to time, so they can't be attacked. And also, the arena being crowded leads to an even bigger problem, which is finding your target in the first place! Everyone normally goes to the center to collect charges since the rate is WAY faster there, but since everyone is standing in one area, one has to scroll down countless names before finding your target.

Random pairing also has no regard when it comes to your combat level. You could be level 3, and get paired up with a level 138. I got two people with combat under 30. I got 4k charges from each of them before they forfeited. Then I got paired with a 120. It was not cool to get fragged so fast.

All in all though, its a pretty OK game this time from Jagex, and the rewards look okay as well.

On the next one!

I've decided to go after a Hunting skillcape now. It seems fairly straightforward after watching a couple of videos and reading a few guides, and it doesn't seem to take too long to reach, from what I've read. Plus, there's the red chinchompas to look forward to, there's alot of profit in those.

At 56 Hunter currently and hunting grey chinchompas. Just finished blowing up the 150 I caught from 53 Hunter at Pest Control, which I regret doing, since one only gets half the exp than normal when at Pest Control since the nerf. Still it got me to 62 range, and I managed to hit 700+ damage altogether in a single match, a feat I have never done before. Is this alot??

Also learnt how to merchant properly on the G.E, made 150k off in my first deal. Grandmama would be so proud so have a new generation of profiteers to take over from her.

Tried my hand out at Bounty Hunter today, came agonizingly close to maging a full rune warrior to death, but he got away. Had no more luck after that one...

By the way, is there a market for grey Chins, I don't mind selling them off instead if the money good.

I know I'm writing as eloquently as a 10 year old writing now, forgive me, Hunting is more click intensive than I thought...

I Am A Master Chef!!!

Finally, at last, I finally have my first skillcape!! Tim came down specially to celebrate this amazing occasion in the Rogues Den, and has decided to wear a full cooks set for the entire week to commemorate it! You really didn't have to man, but thanks a ton!





I leveled up on a shark, then the both of us headed to the Cooking Guild for my skillcape.






And there's to two of us fooling around outside the Cooking Guild after I got my skillcape. How long I have waited for this day. While we were celebrating, a level 40+ came up to us. Despite his unenviable spelling, he was extremely polite and well mannered, politely asking to see the emote instead of the usual "EMOTE PLOX!!" from most idiots. An example of how not all low levels are idiots. Too bad I can't remember his username, but kudos to you mate!

The appearance of the Grand Exchange and the lockdown on unbalanced trades were real spanners in the works, but in the end, I've got that purple cape hanging from my shoulders.

I don't care about the idiots who are going to say an untrained skillcape is for noobs, for to them I say so why don't you have one?

I shall wear this skillcape with pride!

Now, where to from here? Trim it of course!! But with what other skill??

Delays, Delays, Can't Help Them Sometimes...

Okay, I haven't touched my laptop in close to a week. This term has been nuts, courtesy of the rugby season in full swing and the Mid Year drawing nearer.

Still, managed to sneak on to do the Easter event for this year. I've already missed the one last year, and while I'm not exactly big on holiday events, I don't want to miss stuff like new soundtracks and emotes.

This year's Easter involves helping the problem prone Easter bunny out of trouble. Again. This time, he's let his entire stock of chocolate eggs get eaten by rats, mice, and other nasty chocolate munching cretins (Not sure when snails got into chocolate though), which conveniently got themselves trapped in a chamber. Of course, that still means the Easter bunny is out of eggs.

So, being the helpful adventurer you are, one has to set out to find and retrieve at least 3 eggs that were delivered before the pests invaded and finished every bit of chocolate. Wasn't that hard, although I did get the wrong statue of Saradomin. According to Tim, its the one outside Falador, not the one inside the park there.

Once retrieved, the Easter bunny will allow you into is warrren, complete with Easter flags and little rabbit guards. He then tells you of his plan to make more chocolate using a chocotrice, which turns people into chocolate, instead of the original with turns people to stone, since stone doesn't really taste good in Easter eggs. Making a chocotrice is a simple, just take a cockatrice egg and dip in chocolate apparently.

Manipulating an incubator, a contraption similar to the fractional distiller in the Regicide quest, to maintain optimum temperature for the egg to hatch. Once done, the Easter bunny will turn you into an adorable bunny as well so you can squeeze your way into the rabbit hole and into the cavern which the pests are trapped in, and where the chocotrice awaits your command. One has to turn 15 animals into chocolate to gain enough chocolate to save Easter.

Chasing and chocolatifying helpless animals by insulting the chocotrice so it attacks them was funny at first because of the hilarious taunts your player comes up with (Hey, that snail said you lost your tinderbox and cried)(Hey, that mouse said you took 3 months to get off Tutorial Island) but it eventually gets repetitive and boring.

Once done, one chucks all chocolate into a giant melting vat, and the Easter bunny gives you a cape that allows you to do a pretty odd emote. Speaking of which, getting more chocolate for the Easter bunny will help you unlock past emotes that you might have missed earlier on, like the bunny hop emote, which I missed last year.

Out of curiosity, I checked to see if there were any more rewards aside from getting a past emote. I almost fainted when I saw the Easter bunny was giving out EASTER EGGS!!! Now a discontinued item, one egg is about, say, 5mil to 6mil?? I rushed in to get one, but it turned out to be too good to be true. A quick check on the forums showed these new eggs can't be traded, although the old ones can.

Sorry for the lack of pics, too tired to upload...

Shortage!!!

Call me nuts if you want, but I've been hopping around the lobsters, sharks and monkfish, looking for the ones which have raws that are easy to buy, and easy to sell. Sharks were going so well, raws were being sold for under the market price, and the cooked ones were going so well...

Unless I single handedly sent the market up by myself by buying about 5k to 6k of them over time (which I doubt), the price has somehow skyrocketed to more than 1k right now, so I've switched over to monkfish for the time being.



YET another level up in Construction entirely from lamps and books of knowledge. Just goes to show how long I've been here...

While Cooking one day, my eye strayed over an article on Runewise on how to hunt aviansies in the God Wars Dungeon. It looked real promising, so I rushed my way to finish Eadgar's Ruse



But I've decided to put that off till I reach 99 Cooking. Maging is expensive in there, and I'm going to need a better range level than 59 to shoot them down.

I also decided to test run Vampire Bats when I hit 31 Summoning, after reading Smavey pour praise all over it on the Tip It forums. While I am rather impressed that it can hit around 8, it didn't turn out to be the pwnage Smavey made it sound like. Or maybe I shouldn't have let it make its debut on Cockroach Soldiers on a peak hour. It did help me beat moochers on a few occasions though.



And this is level up I never expected.



Just bought 2k monkfish, 8k more

P.S : Boombaye, since you've finished Deception Point and you liked it so much, why not try out Digital Fortress??

Player Safety Dungeon

Decided now would be a good time to take a break from Cooking and check out the new Stronghold of Player Safety Dungeon south of Edgeville, and coincidentally, right above the Stronghold of Security in Barbarian Village, and I must say, JaGex has, at last, released an update which will actually garner praise instead of bricks being thrown at their office headquarters. For once, they've released an update for F2P too.

It involves a mini-quest (Really mini), just taking a test from one Professor Henry Smith, a play on Henry Jones, father of Indiana Jones, right down the to beard and glasses, completion of which giving you full access to the jail cells beneath the school, as well as a new emote called Safety First.



Looks like something out of Ultraman, complete with a rising shield from the floor and crossed arms. Personally, I found that tacky.

What really makes this update good are the monsters in the lower dungeon, which is accessed by pulling back a poster that conceals a tunnel to the rest of the jail wing, and as pointed out by Timothy Gold, is a parody of the Shawshank Redemption, where Andy Dufrense, a convict in Shawshank Prison, hides the escape tunnel he dug behind a poster of Linda Ronstadt(He took 27 years and some spare change to dig it). Of course, in the Stronghold its an ugly gublinchette instead of a pretty country singer... At least they didn't parody the other aspects of that novella by Stephen King, because they sure as hell were disgusting...

Anyway, back to the subject at hand. Giant roaches dwell deep in the prison cells, and believe me, have great drops. They drop dozens (literally) of law runes. I got almost 70 in 30 or so cockroach soldiers, and thats not all. They drop plenty of charms as well, mostly crimson for some reason, but the occasional green and gold comes along. GP drops are decent and frequent, and they tend to drop NOTED ores, which makes them stackable, mostly mithril. Best of all, they drop rune items like scimitars and square shields on a semi-regular basis which make for a quick buck if you high alch or sell them.



They have a range attack, but I heard that does close to nothing. Only problem here is, the place is a multi combat area, so watch out for moochers. My brother Hunter complains he has his cockroach soldiers swarmed by freeloading noobs quite often, even on worlds with 400< people on them. A cannon cannot be set up there as well, I read this on the Tip It forums.

I'd like to comment on the safety gloves you get upon pulling the lever on one of the higher levels and going through the jail doors. They certainly don't look safe to me, being spiky and all. Look more like something out of a BDSM ritual or something... Besides, I don't think they're safe for any poor pet you decide to pick up while holding them.

I decided to switch to sharks to speed up my advance for 99 Cooking, selling of the trout I had bought with relative ease, and its sure paid off.



The cost of 100k per 210 exp is insignificat. I must hurry up and get that skillcape.

This close to my first 99 though, I've started to give thought to the next skill I'll max out.

I've narrowed them down to the most possible candidates.

-Fishing
-Fletching
-Hunter
-Farming

Suggestions and advice are welcome, even if you think I should do another skill.

Recipe For Disaster Complete!

My exams were on for the last week or so, causing my lack of posts, my apologies.

I finally got down to getting enough quest points to finish off Recipe For Disaster once and for all, after finishing Rat Catchers and Watchtower.







Once those were out of the way, I strode in through the portal in Lumbridge to get rid of the Culinoromancer permanently. He summons 5 monsters to attack you, all food based parodies of enemies your character should have fought before.



First up, Agrith-Nana. A banana version of the demon you face in the Shadow Of the Storm quest, Agrith-Na. As easy to dispose of too...

Next up was Flambeed. A giant cake-like version of Fareed, the fire demon you face in the Desert Treasure quest. With the same effect of forcing you to drop your weapon when he hits you from the heat as well. I used a trick I saw on Youtube to get around it without ice gloves, binding it to one spot then running to a safe distance and hitting with water spells. Forgot to take a screenie, too busy running.



Next up was Karamel, a caramel version of Kamil, another boss in the Desert Treasure quest, and like the original, can use ice spells which freeze, as well as lower stats.



The fourth boss was Dessourt, a chocolate bar version of Dessouss (spelling?), the vampire in Desert Treasure. Unlike the real deal though, his candy version was only to easy to kill.



Fifth on the Culinoromancer chucked at me was the Gelatinnoth Mother. Thats right, an Dagannoth Mother. Made of jelly, but other wise completely the same, this was more annoying than hard to deal with, since can only be hit with certain spells when it is a certain colour. (Blue for water, brown for earth and so on...)





Finally, the Culinoromancer decided to take me on himself. Despite being only around level 70, he can hit up to 24. His death scene is hilarious, he explodes into cake and jelly

Guthan's Warspear

Yes, I can hardly believe it myself!! When I first got this in the crypt, I thought "Wait, did I forget to bank the leaf bladed spear from my turoth task??" On closer examination, I realized that I had just gotten the most valuable possible drop from the barrows minigame!!

But now I had a problem. I had forgotten to bring a means of teleportation out of the crypts, and I wasn't exactly full on health, as you may (or may not) see from my screenie. I dashed out of the crypt hoping like hell I wouldn't get killed by the bloodworms and skeletons and got to the ladder with just 23 HP left.

I finally dared to believe my good luck when I had time to take a close look at it. The first thing I did was dash straight to the Grand Exchange to put it up for sale along side the 110 bolt racks I got as well. It made for a whopping instantaneous 5.8 Million gp, bringing my total gold up to 12 Million.

I cannot believe my luck. It was just a casual trip, one trip only, just for fun, a break from my cooking, and I struck the motherload, the jackpot!!

In other news, Jagex has made modifications to the Bounty Hunter Minigame to stop clan piling in it, as well as adding cash rewards to it and reducing the requirements for the Bounty Locate spell to just 32 Magic. A welcome relief to all those pkers who turned to it since the loss of the Wilderness!!

Farming has finally received updates as well, with updates to the amulet of Nature, the most noticeable change being the fact that it now has a face. It gives a farming bonus too, as well as being able to teleport you to the patch its bound to if it gets diseased.

The biggest update however, is still the addition of a new Farming minigame. Called Vinesweeper, its an obvious parody of the game Minesweeper, and runs on the same concept. Arriving there via the Tool Leprechauns, it runs on the same concept as its namesake. You have to try and find seeds that are hidden in the ground (Mines) and to do so, you have to dig the area with a spade, and digging a patch without seeds in it will result in a number popping up to show how many patches contain seeds in the surrouding 8 squares around it, like Minesweeper.

When you come across a patch which you think has seeds in it, you place a flag on it, and a farmer will come and dig it up, and if you guessed right, all around him will get points which can be swapped for rewards like seeds and Farming exp.

Of course, guess wrong, and the farmer won't return your flag. At 1k a flag, its pretty pricey.



Excavating seeds will result in loss of points as well. There are also rabbits which run around looking for flags, which means seeds and food to them, and will munch on any patch you put a flag on, which means no reward for you!!

Slow and Steady Is The Way To Go

I bought all the fish I'll need for 98 Cooking yesterday of the Grand Exchange. My bank account screams in agony (Just 6 million left), but all the fish was bought instantaneously, so there was no time to change my mind.

This will be the largest grinding job I've ever done so far, with 70k+ fishes to cook before I hit 98 Cooking, then just 2.5k monkfish to 99. Its going to take a LONG while, even if I keep my constant rate of cooking 800-900 fish an hour, I have my reasons. Its easy to multi-task while cooking, which I'll need to do if I'm going to study and sustain my A1's in both my maths and sciences since my school exams are in a week's time.

Cooked about 3k of them so far, I can see why Matman got bored so easily while cooking for his 99. Course, he didn't have to worry much about costs, since Tim donated 40k raw lobsters to him... Finally levelled up after the first 2k



Levelled up my Construction AGAIN using only genie lamps and knowledge books




Note to self, genie lamps and knowledge books have the most effect on stats around 40 or so.

Summoning, And Why It was Never Released For F2P

I was on my way to the Grand Exchange when my friend Gitabug tipped me off about a J Mod in Lumbridge in world 68. Seeing one is a rare occasion indeed, so I hauled myself to Lumbridge ASAP. She suggested I ask him any question concerning the recent updates or future ones, since the answer would be pretty accurate coming from a J Mod. The question of why Summoning was a no-show for F2P came into my mind. This is his reply.



If the picture isn't clear, just click on it for a larger one. Jagex's reason for not releasing the skill to F2P players is because they felt they had too many updates for them already, like Bounty Hunter and the Grand Exchange. Rather tired at the moment, so I won't say much more of this post, aside from the fact that I think their reason isn't exactly fair.

Closing in on that first skillcape

I'm within grasping distance of my first 99 skill ever, 99 Cooking. Ever since I was killing cows in Lumbridge, cooking was ingrained into me as the best skill there was around by Reuben Sa, a real life and RS friend, a rabid but now retired cook in RuneScape. (Wanna know how rabid?? Check the highscores. If I'm not wrong, his cooking's somewhere within the top 100)

For a long while, 99 anything seemed like a distant dream. The cooking skillcape is now within a reasonable fiscal range, given the method I'm using now. 3 million is a small price to pay.

While cooking at the Rouges Den, I chanced upon a real idiot. He pranced around in a untrimmed Cooking skillcape, and was laughing at another guy who said he bought the fish for cooking his way up to 99. He went on to shoot him down for being a noob who "buys" skills, and how killing fire giants was a lousy way of making money since that guy did it, blah blah blah... Get this, earlier on he said he was trying to raise 3 million to buy equipment for Lunar Diplomacy.

So I asked him, if the Cooking skillcape was no big deal, why the hell was he wearing it?? His answer? I worked for it. Claims to have to fished every fish he used for it. Turned out to be his undoing. At level 85 Fishing, there was no way in hell he could have caught enough fish. He ended up being flamed by all present. Doesn't pay to be a loudmouth.

Anyway, that asshat aside, I got 92 Cooking yesterday, and I'm now halfway to 99 by exp.


Still haven't found a real solution to the photo problem, maybe I should switch from Photobucket to Flickr or Imageshack...

Summoning, and its about time!

I had just finished up my math homework and was halfway through my last farming run for the day when a system update timer popped up on the screen, and it turned out to be the long awaited, and pretty overdue, Summoning skill!!



The usual new interface that follows the release of skills. They released one with flowers and plants all around it for Farming as well.

First thing I did when I got back on was rush to the start of the Wolf Whistle quest start point, which was supposed to double as an intro into Summoning. Started up with Druid Pikkupstik having problems with what he described as a bunny rabbit tearing up his room.



Well, if you ignore the wings, the sabre-like fangs and the fact that its about the size of a cow, yeah, could say it was a bunny rabbit. As with most quests, you're supposed to help him out with getting rid of it. Apparently, despite being a Master Summoner judging by his skillcape, Pikkupstik can't leave the front room, or the wolpertinger (Fanged, winged "rabbit") would sneak out the door or get down to the Summoning altar in his basement and release more wolpertingers, and thats where your character comes in.

Because its still got the mind of a rabbit (tendencies for eating human flesh aside), it should therefore be scared of wolves, but since its not an ordinary animal, but one from the spirit domain, it has got to be scared away with a wolf from that domain as well, which is where the Summoning comes in. First, pouches need to be infused with spirit shards, charms and a certain ingredient (that determines what ends up Summoned) at the Summoning altar



In this case, 2 sets of wolf bones were needed since a spirit wolf was required. Pikupstikk had already sent his assistant out to gather them, but he hasn't returned for quite awhile, so you've got to go out and look for him and find more wolf bones at the same time. With most of the wolves on White Wolf Mountain suddenly finding themselves fought over to be killed, I was hard pressed to kill a wolf, until I found the assistants body. Apparently, he bought it on the mountain.



I decided to give the poor guy last rites. Yes, he's a Guthixian druid, I know, but I guess Saradomin and Guthix would probably get along well anyhow. Looted his corpse, which conveniently had the wolf bones I needed, headed back to Pikkupstik, made spirit wolf pouches and scrolls, Summoned spirit wolf, pwnz00red the wolpertinger, finished quest.







Its going to be an expensive skill to train, by the looks of it. At level 4, one dreadfowl pouch requires 8 spirit shards to be infused, and one shard costs 50gp, though Jagex are halving the price by the end of the week. Even so, at 25gp a shard, its still going to cost 200gp for each pouch, and considering the one pouch gives a measly 9.3 exp, that works out to about roughly 20gp per exp. So for a 99 in Summoning, it would cost 260,000,000 if you made pouches alone. 260 million. In short, a lot of money. Even for level 50, it would require about 100k exp which still comes up to around 2 million.

Then again, there'll probably be more economical ways of training at higher levels, but its still going to cost a bomb like construction. A great money sinkhole to help reduce inflation. Of course, its not like the entire community is feeling very rich at the moment thanks to a few other updates recently....

That aside, Summoning looks like a pretty promising skill. Most, if not all, the spirit monsters can aid you in combat, as well as having a few side perks thrown in (Dreadfowl temporarily boost your Farming level, others will carry items for you), and the pets!! Most people would be going for 99 for the dragon. Imagine that, a dragon following you around... Of course, at level 4, I'll just have to be content with my little bulldog puppy. I have to admit, its kinda cute.

Arms race, which I am losing...

My ranarrs have been going through a patch of bad runs as bad as Newcastle's, having gone through 4 runs in a row where at least one patch died on me, 2 of them with 2. Managed to climb my way up to the 7 million mark though, despite the poor harvests.

I also figured out a way to 99 Farming that would cost me a mere 2.3 mil. Problem is, it would also take 8 years, a bit too long for my liking. Guess thats why no one ever tried it. Still, didn't stop me from getting yet another Farming level.



Finally got around to cooking the monks I caught while doing homework, this being the result.



Right now, I'm considering the most efficient route to 99 Cooking, cost and time wise.

-Lobsters are pretty much out of the question, it is impossible to sell of them off once they're cooked.

-Monkfish sound good, its not hard to sell off the cooked fish, and the price difference between raw and cooked is not very large.

-Sharks would be fastest, they sell fast, but I'm having a little trouble acquiring raws.

-Raw for cooked is essentially cooked thanks to the removal of unbalanced trade. Thanks a lot Jagex.

Another pressing matter on my mind is my own personal crusade against the vacca foeda
whom I wish barbari spatium proprium tuum invadant. Will I degrade myself to wagging school (Like a certain someone) to play like a fiend, or shall I do the responsible thing, and study hard for my O-levels, get less than 10 points for L1R5, preferably 7?? If there's one thing I hate, its being outdone, which is exactly what is happening now.