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.

At Years End...

Well, one more day left of 2007, and not much more before school reopens, not that that isn't a complete disaster, since I've finished a portion of my homework at least...

But enough about that, lets get back to the reason I created this blog. Economy is almost certainly recovering, even whip prices are back up to 1.4mil, all barrow sets upped by about 100k in the last week. Even the flax market seems to be recovering! Either that, or Jagex got it into their heads to manipulate the prices so they'd be closer to what they used to be.

Went barrowing today with ancient mage, didn't go as well as I hoped. Gerald was right, ice rush isn't enough to keep the barrow brothers at bay, so I ended up having to run back for supplies before starting again. Despite a kill count of 15, I got nothing more than 36 bolt racks and a couple of mind runes... Guess I should stick to slayer darts next time...

A couple of level ups. The monkfish I decided to fish since I had a LOT of homework to do at the same time.





Finished Another Slice of H.A.M (Humans against Montsters) as well. This quest continues on with the cave goblin storyline, and as the title suggests, H.A.M is back to cause more trouble. This time, they try to set the cave goblins and dwarfs up go to war with one another by tying Zanik, who also happens to be the chosen Commander of the "Big High War God", to the tracks of the new dwarven train line to make it look like the dwarves have killed their chosen commander, allowing Sigmund and the rest of H.A.M to sit back and watch as the two non human races kill each other. Being the adventurer you are, your job is to stop it, obviously...



Well they certainly look happy to see me...





Ouch, the train nicked the side of my face!



The usual congratulatory scroll