Jump to content
  • entries
    85
  • comments
    324
  • views
    682560

Rune Mechanics: Live Quest Review


Troacctid

1955 views

I'm going to do something different for this quest. I'm going to review it while I complete it. You'll be getting my impressions of the quest live (well, prerecorded) as I go. Then at the end, I'll sum up how I felt about the quest as a whole. I'm standing at the quest start right now, so let's jump in! SPOILERS if you care.

 

10:55

Starting the quest; just entered the basement. I assume we're going to be making rune guardians. That's interesting--continuing the "rediscovering runecrafting/magic" thing from Rune Mysteries. Not as exciting as I usually like from a new quest, but at least it isn't totally random and out of the blue like Perils of Ice Mountain.

 

10:58

Lol:

Petrocklol.png

 

10:58

So I need to talk to the other wizards.

 

11:00

Wizard Dougal: paranoid much?

WizardDougalparanoia.png

 

But I'm going to forgive him for this line making fun of bad quests:

Fetchandcarry.png

 

11:04

This is going fairly slow because as you can see, I'm stopping to take screenshots and type stuff like this. Anyway, just remembered to turn on the music in case there's any new tracks.

 

11:08

Well, I apparently need to solve a puzzle, but I lost connection...I have a pretty high ping. Oh well.

 

11:10

Starting the puzzle.

 

11:13

This is interesting. The portals make you move sort of like chess pieces.

 

11:24

Finished the puzzle in about 10 minutes. Got a tool for shaping rune guardians.

 

11:27

Wizard Shug is a rambler. I'm going to see how long he keeps telling his story.

 

11:28

That wasn't so long. I guess I need to enchant an emerald or two. I really hope this isn't a fetch quest. If there aren't any emeralds around here, I'm going to be very annoyed.

 

11:29

Wizard Shug is asleep, so he's not going to be giving me any emeralds. Let's check the basement.

 

11:30

Talking to Clerval. Apparently he got literally turned into a guinea pig for an experiment. Lol.

 

11:32

Goddammit, he doesn't have any emeralds or rune essence. GRAAH. And I already need to go craft a bunch of lame runes too. RAGE!

 

11:34

Oh, lovely. I lose connection again. At least I already have mind and body runes and emeralds banked. No such luck with steam runes. This is not an exciting quest so far. <_<

 

11:44

Finally I got everything. I'm going to talk to whatsisface again now.

 

11:47

Okay, another puzzle with some wires. About time something interesting happened. The last one was pretty tame; this better be better.

 

11:54

Solved the puzzle in 7 minutes. Now I need to carve the body. And it seems all I do is use them together.

 

11:55

Cutscene of a rune guardian coming to life, and...that's it, I guess. Quest complete. And I get a rune guardian pet.

 

 

Analysis

 

Okay, this was a boring quest. The first puzzle was okay, but not great. While the concept was okay and it wasn't incredibly easy to solve, it suffered from some visibility problems--you can't see the whole room, and you kind of need to. That hurt. The wire puzzle was poorly-executed. It might have had some potential as a sort of maze where you need to create a path to the other end, but that wasn't how it worked out. Instead, it was just matching the ends of each piece with the ends of another piece that fits. It might as well have been a nine-piece jigsaw puzzle. I was unimpressed.

 

And despite poking fun at fetch quests (and rightly so), this is a fetch quest. Fetch quests are lame. If I hadn't had an emerald in my bank already, what would I have done? It could take a long time at the gem mine/Rogue's Den safe/Ardougne gem stall/a monster that drops gems before an emerald shows up. And you need two of them. That's potentially frustrating.

 

The rewards are lame too. A very small handful of xp and a pet. Okay, it's a cute pet, but it's still a pet. It doesn't do anything. I stuck it in my Menagerie right after the quest and forgot about it. I've already forgotten about it. It's boring.

 

And that's the problem with this whole quest. It's boring. Nothing really interesting happens, nothing interesting is offered as a reward, and none of the puzzles are interesting either. There's no real incentive to do this quest--it's not particularly fun and it essentially has no reward. I am thoroughly unimpressed. Initially I thought that it would at least advance the plot in some minor way. But it doesn't even do that. The knowledge of how to make rune guardians wasn't even lost. The apprentice was just an idiot. It's Perils of Ice Mountain all over again. I suppose it's a tutorial on how to craft combination runes, but who cares? Combination runes suck. The only practical way to craft them is with Lunar Magicks, and by the time you can use the Imbue spell, you really shouldn't need a tutorial, and you certainly don't care about 2k xp or whatever it was.

 

So, to recap:

  • Uninteresting plot.
  • Unexciting puzzles.
  • Lame rewards.
  • Irrelevant to everybody--even the low-level players who don't know how to craft combo runes don't care because combo runes are mostly useless.
  • Only redeeming feature is that the pet is kinda cute.

 

My verdict: Disapprove. :thumbdown:

 

What Jagex should have done was just release the pet without a quest. Cut out the research and just have one of the wizards tell you how to make it from the start. Then let us bring the supplies there and craft one if we want, or give us the option to buy one with our Mage Training Arena points. Boring quests like these give the good quests a bad name.

4 Comments


Recommended Comments

On the upside, the rune guardian has some funny dialogue, including what I believe is an allusion to a maxim by Nietzsche.

Link to comment

Mhmm. Quest was pretty weak. But Rune Guardian is pretty awesome. I might do a live review next quest. :-k

Link to comment

Compared to other quests of a similar level it aint bad...also...maybe their is osme use for combos planned and this is a precursor

Link to comment

Compared to other quests of a similar level it aint bad...also...maybe their is osme use for combos planned and this is a precursor

Why should low-level quests be held to a lower standard than high-level quests? I expect all quests to be well-designed and fun.

Link to comment
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.