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.