The Runecrafting Guild-The Great Orb Project + Tab RC times

The Great Orb Project

Released on August 12th, 2008, this is the minigame associated with the release of the Runecrafting guild. The main point of the minigame as stated by jagex is to attract the same-color orbs as your team to the altar in each level while trying to keep the other team from getting theirs to the altar. The team with the most orbs collected at the end of the game will be rewarded with a "win" and an amount of pure essence depending on how many orbs collected.

INDEX:

1.Overview Of the Guild

2.NPC's

3.The Minigame

4.The Game

5.Playing The Minigame

6.Strategies

7.Rewards

8.Common Mistakes

9.Helpful Hints!

10.Tab Timings

1.Overview Of the Guild

This the main room of the Runecrafting guild. Here is where you will find the entrance of the minigame, as well as the shop which you trade in your winnings.

This is the location of the Runecrafting Guild. Go up the stairs in the Wizard's Tower, and enter the portal on the wall.

Other than that, the guild also has some useful features as having a map of the entire world (of runescape) that can also be used to find the locations of altars when a talisman of that altar is used on the map.

2.NPC's

Wizard Elriss

She is the main person who you need to note. She will be the one who you trade in your tokens for rewards and has some helpful info on how the "game" has started. She also is in charge of making the omni-talisman. (explained later in guide)

Wizard Vief

This wizard is in charge of the yellow orb team. Simply talk to him about the game, and choose to join if you wish to help out the yellow cause.

Wizard Acantha

This wizard is in charge of the Green orb team. Talk to him if you wish to fight for the green orbs.

Wizard Korvak

This wizard is afraid of everything. His Main focus is to help you repair you abyssal pouches for a fee depending on which pouch. To repair both small and medium pouches, it costs nothing, but to repair a large it is 9k and a giant is 12k. He can also replace pouches for a price, however, both small and medium are free, large is 25k and giant is 50k.

3.The Minigame

Of course the main focus of the guild is the minigame, also known as "The Great Orb Project".

This is named by the fact of two conflicting wizards, each with a theory to the well being of the runecrafting altars. One believes that Green energy (orbs) are the postie energy for altars as the other believes that Yellow orbs are better. You must decide which wizard you want to help, and then you will be entered into the minigame when the time comes. Each team will be based upon up to 1 player difference, so there can be teams of 5-4 or 3-2, but there cannot be a team of 4-2 unless a player fails to enter the portal. Remember that once the portal opens to get into the game, you have 20 seconds to get in, or you will be left behind, and your team will suffer with 1 less player.

The entrance portal to the game

4.The Game

Waiting for the game to begin

When you are entered into the portal, you will need to wait a few seconds before the orbs appear, but when they do, its game time...

Here is an example of what each orb looks like:

Green orb

Yellow orb

Depending on which team you are on, you will need to attract the corresponding color orb to the center altar. Now when the orbs appear, it may seem easier than it appears, but there are challenges in the game.

5.Playing The Minigame

Before you do anything, make sure your inventory is prepared for this minigame. A good inventory is show below in order to reap the rewards of the higher runes able to be crafted. Also, To be the most outgoing in the game, wear a light outfit, with weight decreasing gear, such as hunting capes, penance gloves, boots of lightness etc. Even though you won't be doing a whole lot of running, it doesn't hurt to be prepared.

The suggested Inventory:

Using this inventory you can save up all of your rewarded essence and craft them at the nature altar and receive greater experience than others. Of course, which altar you craft at is completely up to you.

Since you are able to attract and repel both colors of orbs, it may seem like a good idea to attract yours and repel others, but the best way is to utilize both wands for the best possible score in-game.

A game has just started here

There are a few things you might need to know before you jump in and start to click on orbs.

First off, we have the main window pictured above a few times. This is where you will play the game and keep track of the current time/scores of both teams. Always keep your eye on teh score and make sure you aren't falling behind.

This is the score keeper:

It shows you how much time is left in the game by the large pie timer, and the score is represented by each teams orb count.

As well as this, you will notice you are wielding a wand, as well as having to other in your inventory.

Here is a quick description of each:

Attractor Wand:

This wand is probably the one you will use most. It brings the selected orb closer to you, although the orb can be trapped behind objects. Using this wand is what you will be doing 80% of the time.

Repeller Wand:

This wand is the complete opposite of the Attractor wand. It repels the selected orb from you and is a viable source to deter the opponent's efforts at bringing in the orbs. It can also be used to push your orbs out of bad spots, or towards the altar.

Barrier Wand:

This wand cannot be wielded, however, it has a very important use to the game. It can put up shields that disallow opponents orbs from passing. This can slow down your opponents score very quickly, and although they can be destroyed, it helps a ton in the strategy portion of the game.

A green shield generated by a green team member's wand

Depending on your Runecrafting level, you may be able to push or pull orbs further according to Jagex, and while playing you can notice if someone's RC level is higher than yours your wand will not affect the orb they are manipulating. This stands true for same team, and opposite team members. If you try helping someone on your team that has an overall higher level in RC, you will not help them at all, although if someone has a higher RC level than you, and you are moving an orb, they will take over, and you will disengage the attract/repel of the orb.

A player using the attractor wand

Also, you will notice at some points in the game, that your wand will lose its affect to move the opposite color of orbs, and you will receive a message saying "Yellow orbs are no longer affected by Green wands" or Green unaffected by Yellow depending on which team you are on. This is due to the timer getting low on the game clock. Represented by a flashing part of the remaining time. When this happens, you really can only do one of two things. Try to get as many remaining orbs to the center, or try to set up barricades to stop the other team from getting any more points. Since you can't really do just one and suit back, it is best to do a mix of both, and Set up barricades and help to bring in the last of your orbs.

Time is running out!

Once the round is over, the orbs will disappear and you will receive an amount of pure essence (un-noted) based on you team's score as well as if your team won or lost. If you won by a large amount, you will receive almost an entire inventory of pure essence, but if you lost, you will receive hardly any at all. Unfortunately there is no way to bank this essence, but you can craft the essence at the altar, which will give 2x the experience, which can be quite handy.

Now the game has quite a few levels, and you must complete all the levels to win. The levels each are located in a runecrafting altar area, but they are warded of from the actual altars, so no RC'ers will mess you up. There are 8 rounds, Air, Mind, Water, Earth, Fire, Body, Chaos and Nature. Each round is based on the corresponding altar, and some are harder than others to gather points. Although for F2P players that are playing, they will only receive the first 6 rounds. Each symbol on the top on the game window will glow a color representing the winning team for that round.

The average game length is around 16 minutes and about 2 minutes per round, so if you don't have the time to complete an entire cycle of rounds, you might not want to join since tokens are not awarded until the end.

Points are given depending on how many rounds. Each round you receive 100 tokens for winning, and if you will all, or win overall, with a better win-lose ratio, you will receive extra tokens. From experience, you will receive 1000 tokens for winning all 8 rounds.

6.Strategies

There are 2 Main Strategies that you must utilize when playing this game. I have made up names for them, so they aren't real names, but I call em Side Attracting and Pillar Repelling. Using these two strategies, you can easily make tons of successful orb scores. A newer strategy I only have just found out thanks to Doomster is the use of a "fetcher" approach also explained below.

1. Side Attracting

This is the easier of the two types of scoring that you will use. It is simply providing enough room between you and the orb that while attracting the orb you will allow the orb to maneuver between obstacles rather than having to do it manually.

Simply attract the orb to the general area of the sides of the altar, and then go to the exact compass opposite of the altar and attract the orb. SO you are going to be attracting the orb over the altar, and it should go straight in. Make sure that if an opponent has placed a barrier in your way that you destroy it before trying to attract it, as you will just be wasting time. You can destroy barriers at long range, so there is no need to get closer to the barricade to destroy it, simply get to the opposite side of the altar, destroy the barrier and attract it without moving at all.

2. Pillar Repelling

This tactic is very useful when there is not much time left or that it is simply much closer than using the Side attractor method. Instead of attracting it to one corner and long range attracting, you use the repelling wand to "send" the orb to the altar.

First you stand at one side of the pillars and attract the orb to you. depending where the orb is attract it so that the orb will appear in the center blue line as shown in the picture above.

Then, when the orb is in the line, stand behind it, so that when you repel the orb, it will be pushed straight through the pillars. Using this method can be very effective as most teams don't blockade the pillars very often.

In case you don't really see how the technique is used in the above pictures, an easier picture is shown below.

This is my personal favorite, and you can also use variants of this to repel it from further away to keep the enemy team from blocking the orb's path when seeing you setting it up, or from them repelling the orb of its track.

3. Fetcher

This tactic is very useful with a slightly larger team at least 3+ people, and really isn't effective unless there is a good working team. If you notice that your team during the game is doing fairly well, and you usually end up "double-attracting" orbs where two people are trying to pull one orb, then maybe you should be the "fetcher, and bring orbs from far out where other members won't see them, and they are usually focusing on the orbs close to the altar. You simply bring the orbs closer to the altar for your team-mates, and then grab another. This is especially helpful on the very large altars, like the earth and chaos altars, where many orbs can spawn far out of the reach from the altar.

7.Rewards

What would be a minigame without some rewards?

At the end of each round you will receive some tokens.

These can be traded in for a variety of rewards, ranging from Talismans to Robes.

The few notable items are the Teleportation tabs, the Runecrafting Robes, and the Runecrafting Staff.

First, the Teleportation tabs. I believe these are an excellent way to Runecraft, if you have the patience to gather them up. Since the game does give you some viable RC xp, you can use the tokens to buy some of these. They teleport you directly outside the Altar which can let you craft incredibly fast. Using the Law tabs, I made almost 1k runes in little over 30 minutes. But, since they teleport you outside the altar, remember your talisman.

Next is the Runecrafting Robes. These give bonuses to your Runecrafting level, but it is only effective inside the minigame. Gloves give you a +2 to Runecraft and the top and bottom give +3 each respectively. Although this may seem pointless, they are very useful in the game, and can really affect the outcome. However, since you will already be wearing the hat of your team, the runecrafting hat has no bonuses, it just looks good :)

Finally, there is the Runecrafting Staff. It can be infused with any talisman and will work as a tiara, so you can carry the Staff instead of wearing a tiara. This is exceptionally useful because the release of the Runecrafting Guild also releases the new "Omni-Talisman" This talisman can only be created by bringing all talismans from every altar that requires them to Elriss inside the Guild. You will receive a chuck of Runecrafting XP, and the Talisman from Elriss, and the talisman can then be infused with the Staff effectively making a wearable tally to every altar in the game.

Note that the Omni-talisman is members only due to its need of nature death and blood talismans.

Also note that the omni talisman gives massive experience. You recieve 13,606 RC xp for making an omni-talisman, and note that the talismans used to make one are not used up, and can be lended to friends in order to make the omni-talisman

8.Common Mistakes

So now that you know most of the information about the game, you should note a few beginner mistakes so your team doesn't yell at you.

1. Don't repel you noob!

You should always note which wand is in your inventory and which is in your hand. You may accidentally switch wands, and repel an orb which could cost you team.

2. The orb isn't moving!

If the orb is stuck behind an object and can't be moved, it won't move over time. if you want to make and orb go through multiple objects, like the sides of the altar, you can stand on the exact opposite of the altar, and attract it from there.

3. I got it!

If your team member has the orb under control, don't try and help unless the other team is messing him up. Sometimes trying to help with an orb can get it stuck, and cause more work, or even anger the other player causing him to insult you, however, when very close to the end or when fighting for the lead, always help out if you are dangerously close to not winning or attempting to break a tie. If so, try and figure out where the player is moving the orb and get into a strategic spot in order to make a sort of team movement for the orb and lead it to the altar.

4. Penalty for Leaving

You will receive a penalty for leaving a game to soon. So, if you plan on playing the game directly after the next, don't try to leave early if you team is losing. You will just suffer even more. And think of it this way, you gain free essence anyways, so make the best of it.

9.Helpful Hints!

These are just a few ideas that can really help out your experience at the Great Orb Project and help you earn some extra points, or maximize your RC experience gain.

Bring some cash along with you for the mini-game. This will only apply if you are bringing your own pouches in order to save up rewarded pure essence for later, higher end runes.

Using the money, you can buy and repair all of your pouches, so a very easy way to replace lost pouches.

Repair cost:

9000 - large

12000 - giant

Small/medium - free

Buy cost:

25000 - large

50000 - giant

Small/medium - free

Focus on only a few types of Runes to conserve inventory space.

You can choose which runes to craft, but as every rune you do end up crafting gives 2x the experience, I suggest saving your essence for the highest rune possible. This is why pouches are very handy to have, as you can fill them up with the essence and save it all until the nature altar.

The number of Essence received is based on number of orbs scored by your team.

Orbs are harder to get during some rounds (listed below), this is the number of essence received based on my experience

-Air - many

-Mind - few

-Water - many

-Earth - few

-Fire - many

-Body - many

-Chaos - few (P2P)

-Nature - many (P2P)

Also, the most important rule is to be nice to your team members. Since this game has only just been released, some people may have just jumped into the game without reading a guide. Don't discriminate, just explain to them, and even if you lose one round explaining to them, they will be much better off after that explanation than simply learning for themselves.

10.Tab Timings

Since The Tabs are a fairly new method of runecrafting, I decided to test them out.

Now at first I was very skeptical at the the uses of these tabs, and if they would be effective at all, but boy was I wrong.

The Tabs are very good at what they do. An average run from the altar to bank is about 49 seconds after timing 20 runs, and this includes switching out glories if you are very fast at it.

So the average times of Runecrafting with Tabs are as follows:

Minutes-XP-Runes Crafted

10min - about 6k experience - 600runes

30min - about 19k experience - 1900runes

1hr - about 38k experience - 4000 runes

Note this is only if you have no pouches degrade on you, and do not need to recharge glories, so these are the maximum output at my RC level (69 atm) so It will definitely be much higher at 75+ with the use of the Giant pouch.

Tab Runecrafting is very fast, but you must have patience to gather the tokens, and if you don't feel like playing the minigame, than you probably won't be getting much out of it, but Here are a few Tips on the Tab Rc'ing method.

If you want to see a few more calculatons about the average timings + token collecting etc, then few the hidden calculations below.

[hide=Calcs]Well first off, the tabs are already an extremely fast way to RC, and will beat out any other form of RC'ing, but does the times to get the tokens actually get more xp/hour than tradition RC'ing?

First off, the times of the game. Since Each round lasts for 2 minutes, and that an entire game lasts 16 minutes, you can assume that you can do about 4 rounds per hour, give or take a few minutes. Now, for assumptions, we are going to make the assumption that you have a very even match up and win 4/8 rounds, so you will receive about 500 tokens per game, so that's about 2k tokens per hour. Now, looking at the token gather rate, you should end up with about 2000 tokens per hour give or take a few bad rounds or good rounds, but the average should be about 2000.

Now, that you have 2000 tokens, we are going to factor in the amount of time to craft. Now since you have been collecting tokens, our traditional RC'er has been crafting away, and has about 1.5k law runes mad (we are using laws as a default) Now that you have collected 2k tokens, its time to craft some. With 2k tokens, you can buy 46 law tabs, and those law tabs will end up crafting about 1.8k laws. With the average times of crafting runes with tabs at normal conditions, you will end up making all 1.8k laws in a little over half an hour. unfortunately, this will make the tabs a little slower than crafting since you need to collect points to buy tabs in the first place.

Timings

Average run time w/abyss to Law altar is around 1min 40 seconds

Average run time w/tabs to Law altar is around 50 seconds.

Now yes it is a disappointment, but personally, you don't really have to do one thing over and over like traditional RC'ing. You can play a minigame, while getting RC xp, as well as then gaining access to a extremely fast method of crafting. Even so, you can sometimes go above or below the average tokens per hour, and thus become faster or slower than a traditional RC'er. After gaining enough tabs to craft 3k essence, I crafted it all in a little over an hour. Also note that while using the tabs method you save money by not needing super energies at all. I am 70 agility, and never needed super energies except when getting back from repairing my pouches.

Final Verdict:

Tab RC'ing is extremely fast, but since you cannot constantly craft, unless you collect every tab needed beforehand, it will still be slightly slower due to the time collecting when you could be crafting normally.[/hide]

This is what your average inventory should look like:

The Tabs replaced with whatever tab-rune you are crafting, as well as having boots of lightness and a hunter cape etc. However, this isn't very important which you will see by the next picture.

[hide=OMG!][/hide]

The hidden picture shows you just how close you teleport to the altar using one of these tabs. The furthest away I was teleported was about 6 spaces away. But, since you are teleported outside the altar, you will need your trusty tiara/talisman.

But all the while, you should always keep a spare tab to the runecrafting guild in case you should run out of Tabs to the altars, and you can begin to collect the up again.

As well, the tab collecting may feel like a waste of time, but each round lasts about 16 minutes, and each round you will gain 2x experience for the runes crafted in the minigame, and so you will be gaining RC xp while gathering materials to use the fastest method of Runecrafting In the game!

Now that You have read this guide you are prepared to get out there and play this game. Go make the Runecrafters Proud :)

Thanks to El_Macho for some helpful information for playing the game as well as a picture of the map w/altar locations.

Also, Thanks to Doomster for pointing out the "fetcher" approach.

Nice guide, and way to be one of the first to get a guide out about it!

Do you know whether or not Runecrafting Robes affect your ZMI outputs? Because they could be useful in increasing xp and profit per hour if so at the ZMI.

Great guide, too bad i need to get 50rc first :?

nice guide. it could use some work 8/10

As far as I know, The robes only affect your abilities in the game. As for outside the game, I'm not sure about their abilities, since I haven't tried it yet.

I will be off for a few hours, so I will update my guide when I get back.

Please feel free to post help and info about the game.

So how viable do you think it is to rc training?

Is it just a fun minigame or something that would be good to use to train?

Awesome way to train and make money. If you win all altars you get 1k tokens = 20 tele tabs or 1k pure ess.

That equals 152k if you sell the pure ess or 20 times the runes you can make per trip, so for example I can take 40 ess per trip to an altar, if I get 5k tokens I can get 100 teles to the altar = 8k runes in a very short time.

Such a fun minigame! I've already got 2000 tokens (ok I know its not a lot...) and I plan on getting a LOT more. I wanna save up and get a full set (yellow ftw!).

I think TipIt should have an unofficial Great Orb Minigame world and color (as long as its yellow).

I believe that the robes not giving an effect outside of the minigame just turned me off. I would have been able to make 7x airs then :/.

The tele tabs are nice too, will make rcing much more enjoyable. And the staff, probably the best for obby maulers training in f2p :D.

But good guide.

I wrote down a few tips on another forum, I'll post them here (add if you want, credit pl0x?)

• [*:27vtdcvk]Bring your pouches (P2P)
   
  
  • You can store more essence (see below)

[*:27vtdcvk]Bring cash. Why? (P2P)

• 
   
  You can buy and repair pouches there:
   
  Repair cost:
   
  [*:27vtdcvk]9000 large
   
  [*:27vtdcvk]12000 giant
   
  [*:27vtdcvk]Small/medium free
   
  Buy cost:
   
  [*:27vtdcvk]25000 large
   
  [*:27vtdcvk]50000 giant
   
  [*:27vtdcvk]Small/medium free
   
  Bring more cash the longer you're gonna stay
   
  

[*:27vtdcvk]Focus on a couple of runes, that way you'll save more inventory space

• As I'm p2p I do 8 rounds and I only do water runes and nature runes so I only spend 2 spaces for runes instead of 8 (if I'd do all runes), of course you can do other runes but that works great for me. (This is where pouches are handy btw)
   
  

[*:27vtdcvk]The number of Essence received is based on number of orbs

• Orbs are harder to get during some rounds (listed below), this is the number of essence received based on my experience*
   
  [*:27vtdcvk]Air - many
   
  [*:27vtdcvk]Mind - many
   
  [*:27vtdcvk]Water - many
   
  [*:27vtdcvk]Earth - few
   
  [*:27vtdcvk]Fire - many
   
  [*:27vtdcvk]Body - many
   
  [*:27vtdcvk]Chaos - few (P2P)
   
  [*:27vtdcvk]Nature - many (P2P)
   
  * - this depends on your number of teammates and so on but with a couple of teammates (and a good team) this should be accurate
   
  

[*:27vtdcvk]"Scoring" isn't all!

• Don't try to "score" every orb, you don't get more essence for scoring you get essence based on the total number of orbs, so try to get another orb if you see that someone is working on one already. (You already have this in your guide)
   
  

[*:27vtdcvk]Be nice to people!

• Self-explanatory

That is some good info right there, I will add it to the guide.

Ah thanks for the guide. :)

I've already fallen in love with the game, it's very fun and addictive... I just wish the runs were shorter. I hope to get a full mage set soon. That yellow looks snazzy.

Yes this game is very addicting, I just can't seem to stop playing it. \

Updated a few parts on the Strategies to sue while playing the game, and the Timings per Runs using the new Teleportation method of RC'ing. Also added a few things and moved some things around to make it more of an actual guide on playing the minigame and receiving rewards.

Very nice guide!

EDIT: Just did a bit of searching to find that omni-talisman is P2P only.

As soon as I saw the omni staff, I was wondering if you were allowed to have two. I know you can get an omni talisman if you get one then drop one, but does the same concept work with the staves?

As soon as I saw the omni staff, I was wondering if you were allowed to have two. I know you can get an omni talisman if you get one then drop one, but does the same concept work with the staves?

I going to take a shot at a yes for this, but only because this holds true for many items in the game, and since it works for the omni talisman, it probably works for the staff, however I don't really want to spend 20k tokens just to try it out.

As soon as I saw the omni staff, I was wondering if you were allowed to have two. I know you can get an omni talisman if you get one then drop one, but does the same concept work with the staves?

 

 

 

I going to take a shot at a yes for this, but only because this holds true for many items in the game, and since it works for the omni talisman, it probably works for the staff, however I don't really want to spend 20k tokens just to try it out.

While I was playing this today I heard someone ask this.

Apparently you can have multiple omni's if you use them to make staves/tiaras first or the drop method you mentioned, and you can make a tiara out of one.

Good Guide =)

couple things you might want to possibly add?

When you go through the portal, you unlock the song "Second Vision."

Elemental Talisman/Altar:

Mind Talisman/Altar:

Chaos Talisman/Altar:

There's also some things to click on, although I can't imagine people going to the guild to see these:

This is a little mechanism which makes a yellow orbs squeeze into a glass case.

Containment Unit

With this one, you can make the two orbs appear in glass balls. It has yellow on top, but that probably doesn't mean its preferred by Jagex or there's some kind of polarity involved. There are two of these in the guild.

Glass Spheres

This device allows you to conjure up a pair of orbs, one green, one yellow, which spiral towards each other and release some light when they collide.

Gyroscope

This last machine will periodically shoot a yellow orbs through its tubing into a holding cell at the bottom, then it will shoot back up out of sight.

Runestone Accelerator

Then there are three bookcases, all of which have nothing interesting, or nothing you would ever want to read.

About the omni-talisman, if you show her (wizard Elriss) a blood & death talisman you got a lot of exp.

(I showed her death, blood & two others (cosmic and some other) and I got a whopping 11k exp, rc lvl 60 (if that's relevant).)

Edit: Just realized that Mind should be few too

Here's a test round:

17 Air

9 Mind

18 Water

11 Earth

18 Fire

15 Body

8 Chaos

20 Nature

Of course you can get more/less but as I said that was the first test round.

Edit2:

@ the_korny mines bigger than yours XD

Omni-talisman, all altars

Edit3: Test round 2 & 3

26 Air

8 Mind

10 Water

4 Earth

(Lagged and got disconnected >.<)

20 Air

12 Mind

13 Water

8 Earth

20 Fire

18 Body

6 Chaos

21 Nature

So according to me chaos, earth & mind should be considered as "few", meaning you won't get much essence from them.

The numbers are orbs btw :o

Very nice guide 9/10 =D> :thumbup:

Nice guide, really helped me out. :thumbsup: The only thing I would fix is your spelling of "Altar" it's spelled with an A not an E

Great guide.

You should probably add a more convincing argument about the tabs. Like using math to determine wheatear the time it takes to get the tokens is worth the time saved.

If the rest of your team is doing well around the Altar, it may pay to go and fetch more distant Orbs, or go and barrier the other teams orbs if possible.

Taking the "fetcher" role can be good, if you are poor at actually directing the orb to the altar.

Wow, it seems to me that you definately did your research. (Or just played the game a lot : )

Very nice;y written, very informative guide. Keep up the good work.

Wait, does the Law tab let you smuggle stuff onto Entrana?

Very nice guide, should help the new people with the minigame :)

Two notes: the release date is August 12th, not April

The scared wizard wouldn't accept my talismans, I had to give them to Elriss and get the Omni Talisman from her

PS: Runecrafting with those tabs IS insanely fast :o