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I was doing the latest quest (I'll probably post a review of it at some point), and I noticed my character was having some trouble maneuvering around objects properly:
It was particularly pronounced during the barrel puzzle, but I've seen it elsewhere too. Anyone have any idea what's going on?
Very meaty blog entry today. I hope you like my opinions, because I'm reviewing July.
The first update of the month was Love Story, a tale of the Wise Old Man and his estranged lover Zenevivia. (Spoilers.) Zenevivia, a PKer who despises adventurers and questing, challenges you and the Wise Old Man (her ex-boyfriend) to a battle. Then, basically, you go to her house, battle through her dungeon, and fight her. It's not an especially complex plot, but it works pretty well and it's a lot of fun. The characters are great--Mabel, Zenevivia, and the Wise Old Man all have great dialogue and plenty of personality. The opening bit is a tongue-in-cheek deconstruction of typical quests that put a smile on my face. The final fight is very well-designed and uniquely challenging, definitely on par with any of the boss fights in Daemonheim and much better than some of the classic quest battles that are so easy to beat with brute force. (Took me three tries before I figured out how to beat her!) Additionally, it's generous of the quest to supply you with so many house tabs and free teleports, although it is unfortunate that you still need to run back to Rimmington to use the chipped tablet. And the cutscenes are great.
There's some room for improvement. I don't think the quest made as good a use of the Wise Old Man's character as it could have. While it's great to have him around, he didn't actually help much until the final fight. In the teletab maze puzzle thingy, there's no real explanation for why he doesn't chip the tab himself--he's obviously more skilled at it, so why doesn't he just take the chisel and do it for you? And while I was controlling the mannequin, I felt like he might as well have been lying there taking a nap. A better set of challenges would have made use of the ability to work with two characters, or at least given some decent justification as to why the WOM can't help. And as Neo Avatars pointed out, the camera in the mannequin segment is jerky and awkward.
Still, it's an excellent quest. The rewards are pretty awesome too. The new wallpaper is easily my favorite style, and I've been using chipped house tablets to Brimhaven and Rimmington constantly during my fruit and bush runs, as well as for shooting stars and other miscellaneous activities. The huge chunks of xp (I gained two levels from them) and the butler discount are just gravy. Very tasty gravy at that. And a new room for the dungeon? That's like a cherry on top of the gravy! I don't even know what I'm eating here, but it's delicious!
Rating: Approve :thumbup:
Jagex followed up Love Story with the long-awaited Dungeoneering update! Let's take a look at what it offered:
Solo dungeon improvements
A highly-anticipated patch to solo dungeoneering, it is now possible to select medium dungeons in a solo party! Great! Additionally, solo dungeoneers can log back into their dungeon within 10 minutes of logging out or losing connection! Also great! All upside here. :thumbup:
Class Rings
The upgrades are, for the most part, costed and balanced correctly, as far as I can tell. It's a shame the melee classes only work with their specific stances, but aside from that I'm happy with this portion of the update. If I were a more enthusiastic dungeoneer, I would probably be able to offer more specific feedback on this feature, but I haven't quite gotten the swing of it yet. Hopefully some other blogger will step up with a more detailed review; I'm sure it would be an interesting read.
Groupstone Portal
The groupstone portal is amazing. It makes getting around so much easier. I don't know why anyone would even bother to build something else in its place. It's great. I love it. It's good to have the option of the photo booth, farming patch, and prayer altar as well; I'm not sure the range is very useful, though. Still, thumbs-up! :thumbup:
Other changes
Resource Dungeons
Here's where I have something to talk about. I and many others asked for dungeoneering rewards outside Daemonheim; well, here they are. There are 14 of them, and I think they're worth going over individually.
Level 10: Edgeville Dungeon
The lv10 resource dungeon has chaos druids. That's fine, they're pretty crowded and can use the extra spawns. More notably, though, there are ranarr and irit spawns. These are pretty significant, and even though they take 30 seconds to respawn, that adds up to a lot of ranarrs and irits entering the game, and so we get a price drop. Ranarrs are cheaper and will probably stay cheaper. Prayer potions have dropped to meet them. And this is the best spot for killing chaos druids--very profitable. It's great for low-level players, but I lose money from this dungeon because I already stocked up on prayer potions and I get lots of ranarr drops on my slayer tasks. :(
Level 15: Dwarven Mine (F2P)
With a bank deposit box in a convenient location, this is a boon to F2P miners. It's a great place for mining coal and/or mithril (although neither is really worth mining), and a great place for banking iron--there are iron rocks just outside the entrance. That just about says it all, I think...best place for mining iron in F2P, which is the best ore to mine in F2P. Not sure if it's the best place to mine iron in P2P; probably not.
Level 20: Edgeville Dungeon (F2P)
Lots of hill giants! Excellent! The hill giants in Edgeville Dungeon are far too crowded in F2P worlds, and the 11 new spawns are a huge help for training and moneymaking in F2P. There are also 4 spawns of limpwurt roots, which, while being excellent profit for those free players, also makes me lose a lot of money on the limpwurt roots I've been farming. #-o But aside from that, I heartily approve of this dungeon, and any free player with the dungeoneering level would do well to make use of it. A fine F2P moneymaker and training spot.
Level 25: Karamja Volcano (F2P)
Lots of lesser demons! And some imps! Lesser demons aren't actually worth killing, even in F2P, so it's not a very exciting dungeon at first glance. However, it happens to be a superb location for hunting for champion scrolls of both the imp and lesser demon variety. It's a good place for hunting with impling boxes too, provided you can tank the damage from the lessers until they're tolerant. And in a pinch, F2Pers can train there if they really want. (There's even some safe spots.) Seems okay to me.
Level 30: Daemonheim Peninsula (F2P)
Notable as the only place for free players to chop maple logs! This is exciting for about 30 seconds until you realize that maple logs are terrible xp with no profit and not worth chopping, ever, at all. Ever. Horrible xp. Don't chop maples, guys. Seriously.
The willows are okay, though. Great place to chop and burn willows. Nice scenery an' all.
Level 35: Baxtorian Waterfalls
Okay. Fire giants. Fire giants are fine. I know there are people who like to cannon them, and this is a good place for that. There are also people who aren't comfortable killing them in a multicombat zone, and this is a good place for them too. Me, I always killed them in the Chaos Tunnels and never had any problems with crowding, plus I can use a combat familiar there. But if you're not like me, there are 11 spawns here, which I'm sure will help you with the crowds in the waterfall dungeon--this is the second-best place to kill fire giants.
Level 45: Mining Guild (F2P)
Best F2P addy mining spot, best F2P mithril mining spot, best rune mining spot if the rocks are available. Moving on.
Level 55: Taverley Dungeon
There are 12 hellhounds here. It's multicombat, so cannon away, slayers. If you're slaying for speed, this just makes hellhounds another boring, fast task that wastes a ton of money and has no drops. Yawn. Power slayers like this, and that's fine. I blocked hellhounds ages ago, so I don't care.
Level 60: Taverley Dungeon
Here be blue dragons. This is, obviously, a good spot for killing blue dragons. That's good, because there's not enough dragon spawns to adequately meet the demand for dragon bones. More blue dragons will only help in this regard. They're a fine moneymaker if you camp them, providing you have the agility of course; obviously Kuradal's dungeon is better if you're on-task. The blue dragon scales here respawn quickly, making this a good place for gathering them, but if you have 60 dungeoneering, then you've probably figured out a less embarrassing moneymaker by now. Anyway, I approve of this one. Like I said, we need more dragon spawns.
Level 65: Varrock Sewers
I can't say I see a use for this dungeon. It has some moss giants, some limpwurt roots, and some magic trees, but it's not available to F2P, and P2P'ers don't care about moss giants. We have more moss giants than we know what to do with, what with Cairn Isle, the Chaos Tunnels, Pirate's Cove, and those ones in Kandarin. I'm sure the limpwurt roots are a nice bonus, but any member with 65 dungeoneering is clearly past the point where moss giants are a relevant training method, or at least I hope so. As for the magic trees, they're completely useless. There's 6 of them, but more than 4 is already overkill, and they're way too far from a bank to be worthwhile. This is the first resource dungeon that gets a thumbs-down from me. :thumbdown:
Level 70: Chaos Tunnels
This is the one with black demons. Not much to say-it's pretty much just an extension of the black demon room you just came from, only there's more spawns and it's kinda harder to safespot them. It's not exciting, but it's fine.
Level 75: Al Kharid Mine
There are gold, silver, and gem rocks here, but they're kinda far from a bank, so I'd say it's only worth mining if you're using a gem bag. What's really important are the impling spawns, because there's a lot of them! I'm told the spawn rate was nerfed, and they now spawn slower and fewer of them are high-level. Big whoop. They're still a great source of hunter + mining xp with profit. Even most lower-level implings are worth around 2k in a jar. I like this dungeon. :thumbup:
An interesting possibility: you could mine gold, mine gems, superheat the gold, use Forge Regent scrolls to craft bracelets, and alch it all in one place. Not useful, but it's a cute thought, isn't it?
Level 80: Brimhaven Dungeon
In another age, these 8 iron/8 steel dragon spawns with a hammer and anvil in the same room would have been awesome--a great spot to kill iron and steel dragons with no crowds, and you can smith the bars as you go? Sign me up! Sadly, Kuradal's Dungeon makes it kinda obsolete. The +40 damage every hit is just better. If you want to camp here, well, uh, be my guest, but it's really not worth camping iron or steel dragons. And they're still really far from a bank, which is just a pain. And the whole axe/gp thing to get in too. This one falls a little flat for me.
Level 85: Asgarnian Ice Dungeon
ZOMG FROST DRAGONS. These guys are AMAZING profit. Their 100% drop is worth what, 19k? Something like that? And you can kill them pretty damn fast. And you can even cannon them. Apparently they're the best moneymaker in the game, or so I'm told. Definitely an adequate incentive to get 85 dungeoneering. :thumbsup:
Plus, you get xp for exploring the resource dungeons! Sweet!
I'm still not 100% sold on Dungeoneering. But I'm getting there. Everything about this update was positive, except for the moss giant dungeon, which was disappointing but easily ignored, and some of the other things, which are arguably awesome! A great update.
Rating: Approve wholeheartedly! :thumbsup:
But wait, there's more! That's right, this blog entry is a triple feature! Actually, that was a pretty long thing with the resource dungeons, so let's call it a quadruple feature! As a bonus, I thought I'd comment on the latest Magic: the Gathering expansion. So here, in no particular order, are my top 5 favorite new cards from the Magic 2011 Core Set.
Jace's Erasure is a well-designed, flavorful, fun, repeatable mill effect that plays well. You can build a cute deck around if you want, and I'm a big fan of the way it enables mill decks in draft.
Amazing utility. Crystal Ball isn't flashy, but it plays really well, the flavor is spot-on, and it's going in all of my EDH decks. I like it much better than Sensei's Divining Top.
It's no secret that I hate regeneration as a mechanic--it just doesn't resonate flavorfully or mechanically. Reassembling Skeleton is soooo much better than his predecessors, the Drudge Skeletons, in every way I can think of. Flavor, power level, combo potential, fun, elegance, everything. Definitely a hit for me.
Another all-around excellent card, Liliana's Specter is strong in multiplayer, one of the best black cards for Limited, and a solid creature in constructed (although I'm not confident that it's good enough for serious tournament play). And again, the flavor is strong and, well, like I said, it's an all-around excellent card and I find it aesthetically pleasing. I like it.
What can I say? I like Ophidians. Scroll Thief is a better Ophidian. Not just in power level, but in art, flavor, creature type, and all-around cuteness. I didn't think you could get much better than the ninja version, but somehow... <3:
Honorable mention:
¡Qué loco! La regresa al juego en vez de tu mano, jaja. Bueno, es mejor que el Familiar chacal de M10, que no puede atacar ni bloquear, nunca jamás. :roll:
And that's my July review. See you in August!
I was just reading Scientific American while munching on some Wheat Thins and potato salad, and there was this article about lab safety in science classrooms. This one kid died in a lab accident because her clothes caught fire and nobody got her to the safety shower in time. Her death was totally preventable, and she died anyway. It got me thinking about how much we seem to latch onto the sorts of death which are near-impossible to prevent, like random acts of violence, when we ought to spend a lot more time and energy and money than we do on more preventable causes of death or illness, like iodine deficiency in developing countries or something. Which got me thinking, how much do we value life, anyway? And should the U.S. value the lives of its own citizens over the lives of random starving Africans? Then I thought, of course it should--the government's job is to look after its own people. That's why we have our own government and other countries have their own governments. The whole reason we have separate levels of government (local, county, state, federal...) is so that people can govern themselves more efficiently. If the U.S. is going to help other countries, it does so through international organizations like the U.N. And then I thought, hey, I wonder how the U.N. is doing on its goals of eliminating poverty and hunger and stuff? And that got me wondering what those foreign aid charities who are always sending me pamphlets actually do with all that money. I suppose they use it to buy food or something? And then I figured, well in that case, donating to those charities eases suffering, but it doesn't solve the problem of world hunger at all...you don't lift people out of poverty by giving them food and aid--you need stuff like jobs and infrastructure and whatnot, that sort of thing. I don't know, is a donation model really feasible for that sort of thing? Because it seems like a good commercial presence with free trade and that sort of thing has probably historically been more effective than relying on social and emotional incentives and stuff like that, right? Something like that...
Around this point it dawned on me that if someone offered me a penny for my thoughts, I would be able to honestly say I was thinking about the economics of solving world hunger. That sort of realization tends to derail my trains of thought. :mellow:
Anyway...um...I'm sure there must have been something I was getting at with that story...
Actually, that reminds me of a joke. So there's these two beautiful young women who set up a kissing booth at the local fair, and after a little while a long queue has formed in front of it. Right next to their table is a man who set up a "Punch in the face" booth, and obviously nobody at all is queuing up in front of his booth.
Hehe. Get it?
I've always been a fan of team quests. Not Shield of Arrav and Heroes Quest--those were a pain in the neck. I mean the quests like Swan Song, My Arm's Big Adventure, and Dream Mentor, where we get to work alongside NPC versions of heroes like ourselves. Zanik, My Arm, Cyrisus, and the Wise Old Man all made it onto my Top 10 Quests back when I first wrote the list. (As an aside, if I were writing it again, I'd probably add the Temple at Senntisten someplace towards the front. I liked that one a lot.)
As it turns out, I'm not the only one who's a fan of Cyrisus et al. They're popular enough that Jagex is catching on, and apparently the future will herald a whole new batch of NPC allies with which we'll share some of our adventures--so they've announced in this dev blog posted on Tuesday.
"Signature heroes" in dungeoneering garb. From left to right: Ariane, Sir Ewain, Ozan.
On the one hand, this is awesome! Not only is there a new Wise Old Man quest coming up next week, but eventually we'll have a whole new crop of fellow adventurers that will hopefully be just as cool as Zanik and Cyrisus are/were!
On the other hand, what if they aren't that cool? Xenia's supposed to be the first of these "signature heroes," and she's hardly awesome at all! She's more like the person who sends you on the quest in the first place. Y'know, like Sir Tiffy Cashien or something. And who likes Sir Tiffy Cashien? He's not awesome at all. At least, I've never seen him doing anything awesome. As far as I can tell, all he ever does is lounge around on a park bench like some panhandling bum.
Get a job!
I think the signature heroes are a fine idea, but they won't work without good writing. Like, dialogue that's actually good. Seriously. And they need to do things that players do--that's a big part of the charm. My Arm plays Tai Bwo Wannai Cleanup, farms herbs, and gets random events. Zanik collects Tears of Guthix. Cyrisus had a bank full of Barrows armor, magic logs, and ranarrs. The Wise Old Man casts Saradomin Strike, wears a party hat, and solos the Kalphite Queen. They do the stuff that we do. And we do it with them. They're just NPC versions of us. The whole "painting the fourth wall" bit is a big part of what makes these characters so charming. Xenia doesn't quite have that charm for me. I hope Sir Ewain and the rest will do better! :^_^:
Behind the Scenes: July
Also this week, our July installment of Behind the Scenes! I haven't blogged about it, but I'm happy to see the return of Behind the Scenes. The theory was that it would be nice for updates to be a surprise, and the quality of updates would improve without the pressure of the deadline. Neither of those panned out the way we hoped, so it's great to be able to discuss and speculate about the month's updates in advance again.
As I just got through saying, the Wise Old Man is awesome and I thoroughly enjoyed Swan Song, so I'm definitely pumped for a sequel. Quests are great, and this one looks promising! I expect I'll be ready with a review of it on the week of release to discuss it in detail. For now, I have high expectations.
Next on the list, we have our Dungeoneering Batch 1.5 scheduled for the middle of the month. Again, I have high expectations for all the new features described. You can just go down that list of everything they talked about and put a :thumbup: after everything and there's my reaction.
Class-based bonuses are a great idea. Specialization seems like an excellent way to subtly encourage strategy, diversity, and teamwork.
Rewards outside of Daemonheim are exactly what the skill needs most right now.
I said before that with some good upgrades, Dungeoneering has the potential to easily be one of my favorite skills. I have high hopes in this regard for the middle of July. Expect another review from me the week of release.
Finally, towards the end of July we'll be getting an update to clue scrolls! They certainly need it. As it stands, I never do clue scrolls. It's just not worth the effort for a few firelighters and some addy or rune garbage. But I'm apprehensive about adding new rewards because of the effect on the economy. Do we really need a whole new batch of super-rare items for merchants to use as anti-junk? The GE price restrictions will make it a nightmare to trade these new items no matter how the initial prices are set. Then what we'll have is a whole set of awesome, shiny new items that we can never buy. And then I'll feel bad about fighting in my Proselyte instead of souped-up 3rd-Age armor with the same prayer bonus but twice the defense...or crap like that.
On the bright side, even though the price restrictions suck, at least clue scrolls won't be worthless anymore. In fact, with guaranteed unique rewards for every treasure trail, even I might start doing clue scrolls. Investment tip: stock up on clue scroll items ahead of time. I imagine rune warhammers and pointy blue snelms will be selling like hotcakes the first week. Runescape Wiki has a complete list, so make sure you know which ones you can buy from shops and which ones will leave you desperately searching for a trade partner!
That's all I've got for you this week. 'Til next time, folks!
I am not a representative of Jagex. I'm not affiliated with them in any way and I don't have any contacts who are.
I do, however, have some mild psychic abilities. And I will happily abuse them to telepathically find the answers to all the pressing questions we have for the developers at Jagex. How does this process work? Well, it's really quite simple. First, I think of a question. Then I visualize it in my mind, repeating it silently to myself fifteen times while imagining an astral projection of myself traveling across the Atlantic to Cambridge, England. Then I blank my mind for five minutes. After those five minutes, I make something up! It's that simple! I can also use the same method to see into the future.
So without further ado, here's my interview featuring answers that I pulled out of my...I mean, that I telepathically obtained from the Dev Team at Jagex!
Q: Why does the Dungeoneering rewards system suck so bad?
A: Oh, we just didn't put enough thought into it and kinda screwed up. But now that we think about it, yeah, it does suck pretty bad. Kind of embarrassing, actually. We're looking for feedback, but we're going to be cautious with fixes because we wouldn't want to end up making things worse like we did with PvP statuettes.
Q: Why do you make so many updates for low-level players?
A: Support for low levels helps bring in new players, which is essential for the long-term health of Runescape. A good first impression makes a big difference. We realize that we have to cater to all kinds of players, and not every update can be for everyone; making something more attractive to newer players can simultaneously make it less attractive to experienced players, and vice versa. So we try to have a mix. We're still trying to work out the right balance; it's pretty difficult with so many projects going at once, all being completed at different times, and a weekly release schedule. So I hope you'll give us a little slack there.
Q: Why did you change HP?
A: Well, we had a dev blog about it. I think lots of players still don't see the point of the LP change because right now, it's just the same system, but with a disorienting change. But for us, it actually opens up a lot of space for new things we couldn't do before, like draining the Constitution stat to prevent healing, for example. So it'll probably make more sense once that stuff starts showing up on your end.
Q: Can you give us a hint about a future update?
A: Yes. Every Sunday, via our Twitter feed, and occasionally in Postbag from the Hedge via the Chaos Elemental.
Q: What are you going to do about price manipulation clans?
A: Probably something. We're not sure yet. If we change something here without really thinking it through, we might cause more problems than we solve.
Q: Why doesn't the development team communicate with the players? It's always the community management people, and no offense to the community management team, but they're not very good at explaining things.
A: We're busy and we get a huge volume of questions and feedback. There's just no way we could go through all of it even just to sort out the good questions, and if we picked questions at random to answer like we sometimes do in our Live Q&A sessions, we'd end up upsetting a lot of people who are confused why their questions didn't get answered when the ones that did get answered were all boring or answered elsewhere already. We do try and answer some of the most frequently-asked questions in the Recent Update FAQs we post on the forums. Yeah, it's a horrible reason. Sorry.
Q: Why do some quests have terrible rewards?
A: Oh, probably to err on the side of caution when we don't have enough time to properly balance anything good. Anyway, there are some people who like crap like the Body Body.
Q: Why don't you beta test your updates?
A: That's more of a question for Andrew Gower or Mark Gerhard. You should ask them. See, we can do this telepathically too.
Q: You said you can also see into the future, right? What are tomorrow's winning lottery numbers?
A: They are a series of numbers that, if you guess them correctly, can win you a large monetary prize.
At this point I got bored--er, I mean, lost my mental focus, and was unable to continue, um, channeling the thoughts of British dudes. Yeah. But if you have any further questions, I'll be happy to pretend to answer them some other time. :thumbsup:
I mentioned briefly in my previous entry that I had bought a Staff of Light and then sold it again at a 200k profit. As I was writing that, I realized how long it's been since I've done any merchanting on the Grand Exchange. Last time, I completely misjudged the bottom on the Amulet of Ranging's crash and never ended up reselling the amulet. The time before, I bought up monkfish when I thought they were undervalued and they proceeded to drop another 50 gp (although I did eventually make some good profit off of it in the long term).
Yesterday I decided to give solo merching another shot. I pulled up the Grand Exchange "most traded" list, clicked open several items into new tabs to observe their price graphs, and selected several of them to invest a combined 18,995k gp. This afternoon, all of the items had risen. I sold back my iron bars, monkfish, raw tuna, and cosmic runes all at max, collecting a total of 19,729k gp. 734k profit; wow.
So now I'm impressed, and I'm ready to get back into the game for real. I checked up on some more graphs while doing some fishing in-game.
I was on the lookout for graphs like these. As I said in the title, what goes down must come up. With the Grand Exchange, any stable item is going to have a wave pattern to its price graph, and blood runes are at the lower bound of that wave right now. I'll be very surprised if they don't rebound, especially considering that pure essence jumped in price today and the two items are obviously closely linked.
I ended up putting 8200k into bloods, 9825k into deaths, 2925k into clay, and 3437k into dark bows. In total, that's 24,387k I've got in the market now--more than the price of my Bandos Godsword. If all goes well, I'm definitely going to keep up this investing and flipping business; it's high time I started collecting interest on all those millions I have stored up in my bank. Once its price climbs a bit, I plan to liquidate my BGS as well; I had hoped to make some money lending it out, but it seems now like it'll be much more profitable to invest its gp value.
Of course, none of this is at all a revolutionary discovery or anything. I know that lots of players have been doing this every day for a long time. Sometimes it seems like I'm always late to the party--I killed Nomad about 5 months after the quest comes out, I first started using Kuradal and getting strykewyrm tasks just last week, I only took around half a year to kill the skeletal horror and enchant my bonesack, and I still haven't done any real Dungeoneering. I guess I just have my own pace. :smile:
Well, I'll probably write some more some other time, hopefully about something interesting. Until then, feel free to send me adoring fan mail. <img src='http://forum.tip.it/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cool.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='B)' />
I'm going to start by showing my Adventurer's Log from Thursday.
There are a few things you should notice here.
1. Check out that stylish monocle. I've been sporting it since I noticed they exist sometime last week.
2. Some sort of bug caused Fairy Tale 3 to show up twice. Weird.
3. I finally hit 75 slayer. Those two granite mauls are from my first-ever gargoyle task. :^_^:
4. I also finally finished Fur 'N Seek and killed the skeletal horror! (That's where the 75 slayer came from)
5. Oh and did I mention I BEAT NOMAD w00t! Got my quest cape back! 
I ranged him in full Armadyl (with diamond bolts and a blessed spirit shield) using Soul Split. Finished with 4.5 brews and a rocktail left over. :smile:
So... yeah.
Anyway, a quick review of Fairy Tale 3. I really enjoyed it. All the visuals were stunning. The new Zanaris is beautiful.
Look at that. Lovely. Just lovely.
Although for some reason the Makeover Mage seems to have missed a few fairies in the marketplace.
Whoops.
As for the quest itself, it was well-done. I found the storyline engaging. No fetching, no escorting, none of the horrible things a lesser quest might have screwed up on. The cutscenes were good. The boss fight was creative and fun; I especially liked that each of the three generals has their own special ability (the melee one can attack your tooth plants, the ranger can buff the little orks, and the mage can summon more little orks) to add an extra layer of strategy. The Fairy Godfather's abilities were amusing as well--concrete shoes and fish. :thumbup:
My biggest complaint is that it was way too easy. But then again, I have 95 prayer now, so all I had to do was turn on Soul Split and Turmoil and finish the whole fight without needing a single piece of food. So maybe it's just me. Also, I don't really like the Tooth Fairy's character...again, though, YMMV.
As for the rewards, they're great. The magic watering can, sure, I guess. The magic rake (farmers weeding your patch, whatever, I still think it's a magic rake) is nice. The ivory orks you can fight after the quest have pretty good drops--might be decent to camp at for high levels, maybe. The new fairy rings are okay, I guess; I can already use Ape Atoll Teleport and Rum to get to Ape Atoll or Mos Le'Harmless just as fast, so whatever. The tooth pet is pretty cute, although I don't have room for it in my menagerie.
Using fairy rings without a dramen staff...priceless. :thumbsup:
There are some things that money can't buy. For everything else, there's money.
You'll notice that I'm wielding a butterfly net in that image. This brings me to my next topic: implings.
Now, I didn't blog about the changes to Impetuous Impulses when they first came out back in...whenever that update was. Since then, I've done some hunting, and I'm ready to report that it wasn't awesome before, but it's awesome now. When I was taking screenshots for this blog, I thought I'd do a little "before/after" image to sort of represent a typical trip to Puro Puro. Here's what I started with:
Now, as it turns out, it wasn't a very typical inventory. It took longer than usual because I stopped to paste and crop the screenshots, and also, well, I'll just show you the picture anyway:
That's 5869 xp (including the little bit of strength xp from pushing through the wheat) and yeah, a dragon impling that I yoinked as it was escaping from another hunter. Notice also the five zombie implings--they're fairly common and they boost your profits significantly once you get 84 hunter. (It's well worth bringing hunter potions for them.) With high enough hunter, plus high strength and agility levels for mobility, it's not at all unreasonable to expect profits of, oh, maybe about 800k gp/hr-ish, before factoring in the dragon implings. And it comes with 40-50k-ish hunter xp/hr, roughly.
By now I've memorized all the crop circle locations to get the farmer's affinity bonus--which is another new bit that I love, by the way--and now that I don't need my Lunar Staff to access Zanaris, it's a breeze to just hop over there with a Slayer Ring and step in the permanent crop circle on all the subsequent trips for the duration of the half-hour. I used to try and use the alternate crop circles whenever I could just to avoid spending the extra inventory slot on the staff. Now, not only is it much more convenient, the half-hour timer makes it a cinch to keep track of my xp/hr.
The new implings help a lot too.
1. Zombies: I already mentioned how common the zombies are. They're about 12k each these days and can easily contribute over 200k gp/hr to your profits on their own as long as you don't loot them. (Don't loot them. :wink: )
2: Spirits: Spirit implings are pretty common too, and they fetch a nice price. Obviously the charms are a nice bonus as well--I've taken to keeping an empty slot in my inventory because I can almost always expect to see at least one charm drop.
3. Kinglies: Rare and frustrating. Frustrating because they're worth millions and I don't have high enough hunter to catch them yet, so whenever I see one, I'm seething. This is why I'm training hunter. (Well, that and the 800k+ gp/hr I mentioned earlier.)
FML.
Shifting gears completely, I'm pretty excited about the new Archenemy variant in Magic: the Gathering.
Whoever named these things, wow, major kudos. I look forward to cackling malevolently as I put my Evil Overlord schemes into motion. Bwahahaha.
So yeah. I also gained a few other random levels, bought a Staff of Light, sold the Staff of Light two days later for 200k profit, saw Iron Man 2 (it wasn't as good as the first one, but it wasn't horrible), broke the 800-Pokemon-captured mark in my ongoing Pokemon Pinball save file, probably got a 5 on the AP Calculus test, my dental implant surgery went off without a hitch, I had pasta and sushi for dinner, and I get to vote this year! It's been a good May so far.
Guess what I did on Saturday. Go ahead, guess.
I know, you probably don't want to guess. You're just going to keep reading until I tell you, aren't you? But I'd really prefer if you guessed, so let me give you a hint:
Okay, I doubt very many of you will recognize that view, so I may as well spill the beans. That would be Carnegie Hall, AKA probably the most prestigious concert hall in the United States. So yeah. I was there. In fact, let me be a bit more specific. I was here:
Anyway, that's why I missed the Rise of the Eldrazi prerelease and haven't logged on since Tuesday. I was in New York, singing onstage at Carnegie Hall with my high school choir (and several other choirs) and the dashingly handsome and talented composer/conductor/all-around cool guy Eric Whitacre. Here are the pieces we performed, in case you couldn't find tickets in time:
Check them out. It's good stuff. I think "Lux Aurumque" is my personal favorite; I like the harmonies, the subtle dynamics, and the way it paints a picture with music, but it's also just really cool to sing. "With A Lily" has a great melody too, although the ending is frustratingly high for my baritone range. And check out the sound effects on "Little Birds"--there's some nice bird whistles and flapping wings. The "Five Hebrew Love Songs" are very beautiful and tender, as is "A Boy and a Girl". "Animal Crackers" is very silly--my favorites are the canary, the kangaroo, and the panther. "What If" is probably the strangest of them; it isn't often you hear choral music superimposed on a techno backdrop, and the result, I think, is pretty awesome.
So...yeah. :thumbsup:
I'm back from my hiatus to talk about the newest skill! Dungeoneering is a skill where you crawl through a themed dungeon filled with puzzles, monsters, and locked doors while searching for new equipment to use to defeat the unique boss monster at the end. For example, you might defeat some Moblins in a Fire Dungeon to find a Small Key and unlock the door to a room with Bombs that help you defeat the King Dodongo boss.
Dungeoneering has a lot of problems, but before I talk about them, let's be fair--for all its flaws, there are definitely some things that Dungeoneering does right. Examples:
So it's obvious our good folks at Jagex put plenty of effort into it in some places. The trouble, of course, is that it needs to be this good in all places, because being a skill, it's not the sort of thing you want to be only mostly done. Were it a minigame, it could get away with appealing to only a subset of players the way Shattered Heart or Familiarization or The Blood Pact are, but as a skill, it needs to have something for all players. Skills don't have the liberty of saying, "Well, if you don't like me, don't train me." Well, I mean, yeah, they can say that, but it's bad for the game when they do because they're such an intrinsic part of the experience.
Summoning was pretty lame at its first go too, but after a big patch a few weeks later, it's now widely considered a great skill. I'm fairly optimistic that given a sufficient patch a la Summoning Batch 2, Dungeoneering will end up being a perfectly good skill too. Now, in no particular order, here's what I think it needs after looking over some of the issues players have raised and some analysis of my own.
So we had an update today, and it's a new thingy for summoning. That's great, because I always need more charms. Is it strange, though, that what made me want to log in for this update was this little bullet in the patch notes?
"What? They changed the Dramatic Point emote? I have to see that!" As it turns out, it looks the same as it used to look, and so does the Freeze & Melt emote. But it had me excited there for a moment; I'm not a big fan of that flying snow thing they have going on.
Anyway, then what had me intrigued is this one:
And I couldn't stop wondering what they added as food or if you can just feed the guy anything. So I went over to Paterdomus and started a trek with some food items I found in my bank (they haven't changed what you can give them to hold before you start).
Naturally, the first event I run into is this piece of crap:
God, this event is annoying.
I wanted to do a real trek, so I teleported away and started over. On the next one, I fixed a bridge with some logs, and then...
Well that's torn it. I'm done with this minigame for today.
At this point I lost interest in completing a trek, but at least I got to test out some foodstuffs on the Adventurer. Here's what he accepted out of my test pool:
In case you missed it, he turned down the Saradomin Brew, the prayer mix, and the beer and wine, but he was willing to accept a whole watermelon, a whole pizza, and for some reason, deadly nightshade. Nightshade? Really? This is supposed to be an improvement? Geez.
Me: Here, take this deadly poison in case we get attacked and you need to heal.
Adventurer: Thanks, I'll save this for later.
What a sap. He took the caviar, though, so at least he must have some taste. Wait, but then why didn't he take the wine? He must just be weird.
Anyway, I'll probably try out this "familiarizing" thing later. In the meantime, I hope you all had a happy Valentine's Day!
Just a short blog entry today. I thought I'd share my feelings on the most recent slayer update, strykewyrms. If you're out of the loop, strykewyrms are new slayer monsters with high level requirements that can only be fought if randomly assigned as a task; they drop new ranged and magic analogues to melee's black mask and a new staff with powerful special abilities.
Anyway, I get the feeling that these strykewyrms are more of a "training" update disguised as a "reward" update. It only affects the people who are still leveling up. This includes the addition of the hexthing and focusthing. If you think of it in those terms, it's not really so bad. And the monster design is pretty cool just looking at still pictures and reading about their attacks--I have yet to check out the area in-game, but I'm intrigued. The idea of extra damage with magic attacks in particular is intriguing.
The staff's rarity irks me, though; I don't think the "task-only" thing works for it at all. I suppose it may be excusable for the lower-level ones (although I would much prefer to have the hexthing and focusthing more widely available, given their importance), but when you're at this high a level, you really don't need an update to your training--you need an incentive. I can easily see a lot of frustration for high-levels who have to work their way through dagannoth and blue dragon tasks repeatedly just to get a shot at icewyrms, making what was once enjoyable on its own into an exasperating wall of monsters preventing you from doing what you really want to do. At least with the jungle and desert wyrms, you're training up for the higher-level monsters anyway, right? But with ice wyrms, they are the higher-level monsters, and you aren't interested in training anymore.
My impression is that it's a poorer execution of the decent concept that we first saw in Kuradal's dungeon. Task-exclusive monsters aren't bad in and of themselves, but it's not good to have monsters that can't be fought at all without a task, especially when slayer tasks are chosen at random. In fact, I happen to have a link on the subject that you may find interesting. It talks about the advantages and disadvantages of having randomness in games, and I think it's very relevant to this update. Give it a skim at the very least.
As far as the fire cape requirement thing that people have complained about, the general idea of requiring a fire cape for something doesn't bother me in itself; however, I don't appreciate that it further adds to the exclusivity of the staff, which is already prohibitively difficult to obtain. That damn staff is going to have an unreasonably high price tag, which will make more slayers want to try and get it, which will force them to go through the frustration of not getting ice wyrm tasks, and then force them through the frustration of finally getting one, completing it, and not getting a staff. The whole system with the ice wyrms incentivizes players to go through gameplay that they don't enjoy.
So yeah, that's what I'm thinking with these wyrms. Good concept, not the best execution.
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:
10:58
So I need to talk to the other wizards.
11:00
Wizard Dougal: paranoid much?
But I'm going to forgive him for this line making fun of bad quests:
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:
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.
For those of you who missed the announcement, Jagex will be holding a new Machinima contest for 2010, complete with another round of lifetime membership for the winners and a trip to Jagex HQ for first prize. This time, the theme is advertisements--the video must be a 30-second ad for something in Runescape. You know what I think? I think that [cabbage] is easy! Anyone can write one of those, and to prove it, here's a good half-dozen or so ideas right off the top of my head!
Do you have permission to use these ideas? Hell no. These are my ideas. Any video I see using any of them will be reported for copyright infringement for STEALING MY IDEAS! GAH!
Seriously though, if you actually do want to use my ideas, we should totally collaborate. I'm game.
1. Anti-drug public service announcement
These things are comedy gold. Here's what you do. Decide on a Runescape thing to represent drugs. Herblore potions are great, although I prefer to think of them as steroid-type drugs rather than "Kids, don't do drugs!" drugs. (Of course, I already made that joke.) Sea slugs would be great too, especially since "slugs" rhymes with drugs. Once you have your drugs picked out, play on famous drug PSAs. Use scare tactics to show what will happen if you do slugs. (Clips from Slug Menace would be welcome here: "If you do slugs then a terrible evil will overthrow the world! We're not kidding!" There's probably something from Hunt from Red Raktuber you can use too.) Get celebrity spokespeople to testify against slugs. And don't forget the catchy lines! "Winners don't do slugs!" If you need to do some photoshopping, Armies of Gielinor has good sea slugs to work with, I think. (By the way, I'm seriously hoping a new Sea Slug quest comes out soon, because I've been waiting months for a good excuse to make a "This is your brain on slugs" joke.)
2. Sea slugs
Or, instead of advertising against the slugs, you get to be Mother Mallum and pitch them to the masses. [black and white footage of a sad-looking player] Have you ever felt alone? Do you lack a purpose in life? Do your friends make fun of you for being "intelligent" and "thinking"? [switch to color] Worry no more! Simply insert the slug directly into your cranium, and you'll instantly lose all individuality and become a mindless servant of our great Mother! Just hear what this satisfied customer had to say:
[trance-like] "Soon now...so soon...the stars are almost right..."
3. Army recruitment
Make an ad encouraging the viewer to enlist as a Falador Guard. Boast about how the average life span has increased several seconds over the past six months. Show clips of the duties you'll have (standing around the square waiting to be killed). End every scene with the guard being slaughtered and start the next one with a brand new guard taking the old one's spot each time.
4. Foreign aid
This one requires the correct mood from the soundtrack. I'm imagining an ad with no dialogue, just panning shots of tragic poverty and starvation in Meiyerditch and Burgh de Rott with captions explaining depressingly tragic statistics, urging the viewer to make donations, all set to a plaintive music track. As we all know, Morytania is Runescape's version of sub-Saharan Africa, where poverty rates suck, disease rates suck, corruption literally sucks, etc. So you can play on that.
5. Political advertisement
Well, the other ones come together in my head a little better, but this seems like a fairly original idea that would be great if you pull it off well. Introduce yourself, talk about what position you're running for, right? Then normally the politician would talk about their background and their vision of the state, so do that, only change it to be about Runescape, and make it funny. Also, be sure to make vicious attacks on your opponent, preferably in a silly way. Meta-jokes would work well here..."If elected, I vow to bring back the Wildy," or "My opponent is a safer, rusher, pjer, and/or def n00b," might be the platform of someone running for Chief PKer or something, for example.
6. Parodies of famous real-life ads
Think of a well-known real-life ad. Think of a Runescape something-or-other similar to it. Parody the original ad. Which ad? I don't know. Maybe one of those "Foreverything else, there's Mastercard" ads? Maybe a "Trix are for kids" ad? You all watch TV. You see commercials all over the place. Pick one and shamelessly rip it off. It'll be great.
7. Any item in the entire damn game
Seriously. You could make an infomercial on ANY item. Allow me to click "Random page" on the Runescape Wiki. Let's see...Skin Paste. Okay, we could do it, but maybe that's a little risky, so let's try another one. Brawing gloves. Easy. You start by advertising that they give double xp. You go on to advertise other uses: oven mitts! Sock puppets! And so on. Okay, another one. Snakeskin armor. Again, easy. This time you might emphasize the quality of the snake leather from which it was crafted--none but the finest swamp snakes of Mort Myre could produce leather of this quality! Why buy expensive dragonhide armor? Get your set of snakeskin armor today! Call now and receive an Amulet of Glory absolutely FREE! Okay, how about another? Green gloop soup. Let's just extend this to all Cave Goblin food. Make it an ad for the fine dining of Dorgesh-Kaan. Take the viewer on a tour of the caves where the ingredients are collected. Demonstrate how they are harvested by killing some frogs, cave slimes, wall beasts, and so on. Show a shot of them placed on a table like a banquet. Add a clip of customer testimony.
This [cabbage] is easy. I could do it for any item. Seriously, comment on this post. Give me an item. I will give you an ad for that item. I mean it--post some in the comments and I'll prove it. Not hard at all. It's not going to win any points for originality, though.
Anyway, there's some quick brainstorming on ideas. I got loads more of these too. And I could write out full scripts, too. Trouble is filming and editing an actual video. I have pretty much no idea how to go about that, haha.
I don't have a blog entry for you today. Instead, my guest article for the Tip.It Times was published in this week. You can check it out here. Hope you like it! :thumbsup:
I bet you thought I was done after the Top 10 Updates of 2009. Nope, there's more! It's time for the Bottom 5 Updates of 2009, the five updates I thought were the worst from the past year. Remember, this is based on my opinion, so if you don't like it, go make your own list. Or comment. Or both.
Troacctid's Bottom 5 Updates of 2009
5. In Pyre Need
What is it?
In April of 2008, players voted in a Guaranteed Content Poll on a new type of summoning familiar to add to the game. The winner of the poll was a phoenix. Eight months later, Jagex unveiled In Pyre Need as the first update of 2009. In this quest, the player is asked to aid a dying phoenix in a ritual to restore its power. As a reward, we gained access to a new Distraction and Diversion in the Phoenix's lair: every day, we can revisit the phoenix to spar with it for the chance to earn some of its feathers, which can be used to create summoning pouches for summoning a phoenix. On rare occasions, a phoenix egg can be found in the lair on the way out, granting the player a new pet phoenix.
Why does it suck?
It just doesn't really do anything. Sure, we can visit once a day, but the rewards aren't very good for the time it takes. Sure, we can summon a phoenix, but it's not that big an improvement over other familiars of the same level. The pets are cute, but there's not really anything to do with them besides show them off. And the quest itself was stupid. Why was it a quest? The daily event has you fight your way through the cave and battle the phoenix at the end; the quest has you run through the cave without fighting and talk to the phoenix. What's the point? Why not just skip straight to the Distraction/Diversion?
Pretty much, I don't like this update because it didn't add anything of value to the game. Other updates can get away with that, but I'm taking off extra points because this was a Guaranteed Content Poll result that could have been cool and wasn't.
What is it?
In October, members were given the ability to change the visible name of their account up to once a month. That's pretty much it, I guess.
Why does it suck?
It's annoying. Initially I praised the update, saying, "While it's not a hugely significant change, and things are a little hectic the first week as everyone is changing names at once, there's really nothing to complain about, and I think it improves the game." As time passed, however, it became clear that it would be hectic every week. Players who changed their names had a little icon showing their previous names, but the icon can only be seen if the player in question is on your friends list, and it goes away after a month. Pretty soon I would be looking at a list of names in my clan chat and recognize none of them. The intent of the update was to let players with lame names change them to something different, but due to wishy-washiness and whims, it ended up being a nuisance to me.
What is it?
Mobilising Armies is a minigame. It was released in July after an unusually long time in development (release was postponed seven months!) due to technical issues; it does things that the game engine had never done before, such as completely changing the interface during gameplay. The game has the player control squads of elves, dwarves, and goblins to battle other players in a real-time strategy setting. Alternate gameplay modes include assaulting a castle in Siege mode, stealing treasure in Hoard mode, and rescuing TzHaar in Rescue mode.
Why does it suck?
"But wait!" I hear you cry. "You already put Mobilizing Armies as one of your best updates of 2009! What's up?" Yeah, I put Mobilizing Armies on both lists. That's because part of it was great, but the other part was stupid. The real-time strategy minigame itself is boring. You don't get any experience for playing it, and unless you spend excessive amounts of time building up your rank, you can only access the crappy, useless low-level rewards, so the only incentive to play would be if it was fun, except for two problems: first, it isn't all that fun; and second, there are good rewards--once you reach rank 300, you can access the most powerful rings in the game. So now if I want those nice items, I have to slog through a minimum of 25 hours of a lame RTS. The interface, which they probably spent months programming, is still clunky--you can only select one squad at a time, your camera control is poor, and you can only use quickchat to communicate with the other players. I consider the minigame a failure. It probably would have been better as a Funorb game.
What is it?
In June, PvP worlds were changed. The drop tables were drastically altered, with items such as abyssal whips, barrows items, dragonfire shields, and dragon full helms being removed from the tables because of complaints that such items previously only available as rare drops from certain monsters were being devalued and little reason remained to battle mithril dragons, abyssal demons, and so on. In their place, a variety of ancient artefacts--essentially large sums of pure cash--were added to the drop tables.
Why does it suck?
The ancient artefacts solved the problem with whips and dragon full helms and stuff, but it created a new problem: massive inflation. With huge amounts of new gold entering the game from PvP drops, just about every item starting rising in price. Take a look at Runescape Wiki's Common Trade Index:
Notice the spike between June and July? That's this update. It caused turmoil in the economy.
To make matters worse, the artefacts are far more common drops than their more expensive predecessors were. With more consistent payouts, it became even more profitable to abuse the system by trading kills with friends, so much so that other moneymakers paled in comparison. This led to even more massive amounts of pure cash entering the economy, further compounding the problem. While Jagex made more patches to the system to fight such abuse, and the economy is much stabler half a year later, it's hard to deny that this update really [cabbage]d things up big time.
And the #1 worst update of 2009:
[hide]1. Woodcutting Rebalance
What is it?
On September 23, the woodcutting skill was overhauled, with several new training methods being added. Arctic pine and hollow trees were improved to give better experience, new special logs were added to teak and mahogany trees, ivy crept up Runescape's walls, and the sawmill opened its doors to part-time labor, paying woodcutting experience as wages. These new methods vastly improved experience rates.
Why does it suck?
Woodcutting needed an update, but this was not the kind of update it needed. For a long time, woodcutting has been a poor moneymaker without much reason to train it. The ideal fix for woodcutting would focus on high-level incentives for training with decent experience as a bonus, like the previous week's Living Rock Caverns, which was essentially perfect. Instead, what we got was faster experience and no incentives, making this a stellar update for...well, nobody! Nobody benefited from the woodcutting rebalance except for people looking for an easy skillcape. It's not as if woodcutting was ever a difficult skill to train...it's one of the simplest in the game. You get a hatchet, you click on a tree, you get logs. Repeat. And it wasn't as if the experience was slow to begin with--sure, it wasn't the fastest skill, but it wasn't exactly the slowest either.
I'm not the type to complain that woodcutting is "meaningless" or something because of this update. It was just as meaningless before the update. And that's the problem. Here we have this long-awaited high-level woodcutting update, and it changes NOTHING. Oh wait, I'm sorry, it makes it easier for even more players to get to a high woodcutting level so that they too can wait for a real high-level woodcutting update to come along. At least the extended agility courses gave some nifty weight-reducing clothing; the woodcutting rebalance didn't even pretend to give some sort of reward.
I thought Jagex had things down after the Living Rock Caverns, but then the next week came around. Apparently they got lucky the first time, because if the woodcutting rebalance is any indication, the development team responsible completely missed the point and have no idea why people want high-level content in the first place. Jagex: if you're going to obsolete my woodcutting guide, I don't mind, but could you at least do it with a good update? Please don't give us any more crap like this!
[/hide]
That's my Bottom 5 Updates of 2009. As a bonus, allow me to offer a short list of the best minor updates of the year, in no particular order:
Troacctid's Top 10 Updates of 2009
PART 2: THE LONG-AWAITED SEQUEL
Okay, here we go. My top five. Part 1 can be found here if you missed it. Now...ready? Here we go...
5. Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf
What is it?
The third installment of the Rise of the Red Axe quest series, released in September. In Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf, we were asked to investigate mysterious disappearances in Keldagrim and ended up *spoilers I guess* revealing the secret evil scheme of the Red Axe mining company to invade the city with an army of mutant chaos dwarves. Released along with the quest was the long-awaited dragon pickaxe, which is dropped by chaos dwarves that can be fought after completion.
Why is it on this list?
This quest significantly impacted the mining skill and...well, pretty much the dragon pickaxe sums it up. The dragon pickaxe is something we've been waiting for for a very long time, so it was exciting to get it at last. True, I could say the same thing about the very unexciting dragon platebody...but the pickaxe is actually useful. It's worth noting that it won "Favorite new item of 2009" by a landslide. But of course, that's not all this quest has going for it. Along with the quest release, we got an update to the mine cart system: mine carts are now completely free to use, and, more importantly, a new mine cart was added underneath the Grand Exchange trapdoor, making it much, much more convenient to travel to Keldagrim. Also, the Keldagrim North Mine has become a personal favorite mining spot of mine--it's easily the best spot in the game for mining adamantite and non-concentrated gold...for what it's worth, anyway. But that's me. Finally, this quest began a record-breaking streak of actual high level updates that lasted all the way up to Halloween. Wow. And most of them--with one notable exception--were excellent. Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf was also the first quest to showcase Jagex's new (at the time) Developer's Blogs, giving us a play-by-play account of its development and setting a precedent for future quest...blog...things.
While many of the year's previous updates had a lukewarm reception, Forgiveness marked sort of a turning point. Until then, the best updates of the year had an "About [cabbage]ing time" feel to them; I feel like this was the first jaw-droppingly sweet update of 2009.
4. High-level Herblore Potions
What is it?
In early October, the herblore skill received a long-overdue update: powerful, high-level, untradable potions. These new potions use already-made potions as a base, adding another herb to enhance the effects of the original potion. Super antifire potions can make killing even the toughest dragons a walk in the park, while Overloads are pretty much the ultimate power-up.
Why is it on this list?
It completely overhauled a skill in dire need of an overhaul. With the high-level potions, herblore transformed overnight from a useless skill to an incredibly potent advantage in any form of combat. Few skills were in quite the hole herblore was in before this update, its only function to grind out experience at a heavy monetary loss while providing no tangible benefits for the effort. While other skills had similar dilemmas, herblore was probably the worst, costing the most and doing the least. Now, thanks to the new potions, herblore actually has a point.
What is it?
In August, a new issue of Postbag from the Hedge was released. At the end was the following cryptic clue from the Chaos Elemental:
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Players quickly noticed that the letters to the right of those underlined in blue could be rearranged to spell "fishing" and those to the left of the red underlined letters formed "mining." From this, the community deduced that updates to fishing and mining were on the way. However, another puzzle remained unsolved: what was the significance of the rock musicians? All the names on the left belong to dead rockers. All the ones on the right are names of living rockers, except for that last one, "Caverns," which doesn't seem to make sense. The title "All in one place" probably refers to the Cavern Club, where each of the musicians had performed at some point. But what did any of that have to do with Runescape?
As it turns out, in September, we got the "Living" "Rock" "Caverns," where mining and fishing can be trained "All in one place." And a massive GROAN was heard throughout the land of Runescape.
Seriously though, the Living Rock Caverns introduced some new high-level mining and fishing training methods.
Why is it on this list?
Simply put, this is what all high-level updates need to look like. The Living Rock Caverns revitalized fishing and mining, stagnant skills that had few uses and, with the exception of runite mining, were poor moneymakers. Now, rocktails have given fishing an actual moneymaker that doesn't suck, and concentrated ores have given mining a viable, high-level training method that doesn't suck as much as granite. Notice that the high-level content here is both a training method and and incentive, unlike the agility or woodcutting updates, which merely provided faster experience without any real rewards. Furthermore, the Caverns' training methods are not unbalanced--because of the high levels needed to train there, it's impossible for rocktails and concentrated gold to replace conventional training methods; you still need to train at monkfish for a long time before you hit level 90. As if this wasn't enough, the area itself is creative and unique. Living rock creatures prowl the caverns, and you need to defeat them and use their remains as bait. However, in order to retrieve the bait from their corpse, you need to mine it. And so mining, fishing, and combat are elegantly tied together: you need combat to kill the monsters, you need mining to get the bait, and you need fishing to use the bait. Each step can be done independently, too--nothing stops you from trading with other players to buy and sell the living minerals, and even if you don't have the 73 mining to extract said minerals, the other drops are still pretty nice. Since each step is efficient on its own, the Living Rock Caverns are a DIY'er's paradise.
So, the Living Rock Caverns are creative, fun, useful, well-balanced, graphically pleasing, all-around cool, high-level, and they fill an important need. An exemplary update in every way I can think of.
What is it?
The Temple at Senntisten is another entry in the Mahjarrat quest series. Where Curse of Arrav played like a direct sequel to Defender of Varrock, this quest played a lot like a direct sequel to Desert Treasure. I've already described it in detail in my review. The quest deals with Azzanadra's efforts to restore the titular temple and re-establish communication with the banished god Zaros. The reward is a set of Zarosian "curse" prayers that act as an alternate, more aggressive "prayer book." Curses are higher-level than their typical prayer counterparts, but more powerful, including Deflection prayers that act as protection prayers but reflect damage back at the enemy; Leech and Sap curses that drain the enemy's stats; and the powerful Turmoil curse that greatly increases your melee abilities based on your opponent's levels.
Why is it on this list?
Partly because of its impressive rewards and partly because of its impact on the storyline. Curses made it much more appealing to train prayer where previously it was typical to stop at 70 for Piety. The potential rewards are pretty sweet for those willing to commit to the leveling required. Stat draining is particularly helpful against bosses. The prayer update was not as necessary as the herblore update or the upcoming smithing update because the prayer skill was far from useless to begin with; however, high levels in prayer make a lot more sense now than they did before, and that's definitely a good thing.
What clinches it is the obviously monumental shift in the storyline that gives us story buffs jitters at the mention of it...
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And my #1 Update of 2009 is...
What is it?
For those of you who are relatively new to the game, random events used to be annoying. They would bother you repeatedly and frequently, sometimes in the middle of combat, and interrupt your training to give you only a small handful of gold. If you took your eyes off the screen for a minute, and evil chicken could appear out of nowhere and kill you with powerful magical attacks. A tree might randomly come to life and smash your hatchet. A fishing spot might turn into a whirlpool and swallow your harpoon. A rock golem might appear while you mine to smash you for disturbing its resting place. It pretty much sucked. Sure, you might get the occasional genie lamp, but you'd be constantly accosted by strange freaks. February 25th changed all that, eliminating the evil "attack you" events, improving the rewards of everything else, and greatly reducing the frequency of all random events.
Why is it on this list?
The random event update was well thought-out, perfectly executed, and universally adored, more so than any other update of the year. It was a slam dunk. Not only did it fix one of everyone's biggest complaints about the game, but it pretty much found the perfect solution and just got it right. The random event fix impacted virtually every part of the game in a positive way. I think the only complaint anyone has against it so far is that it fixed the problem so well that we actually want more random events now. That's right, it was fixed so well, we're begging for more of what we used to despise. Dammit, this update pwned. If it weren't for the pathfinding bug fix, I'd say that the random event update singlehandedly justified the concept of an "Upgrade Year." As it is, I'll settle for calling it the #1 update of 2009.
Happy new year, everyone.
Well, it's the end of 2009 at long last! A time for reflecting on...what? What do you mean "It's January 10th"? So what if it is? A guy can't write a year-end review unless he does it in the first week? Jeez!
Troacctid's Top 10 Updates of 2009
Now before I start, I should explain that I'm only going to list headline updates. Smaller updates, though they certainly have an important impact on our gameplay, are just too hard to sort through without the risk of missing some. Or perhaps they simply deserve their own list...
Also, this is my list. There's no point in pretending to speak for the entire community. Obviously the choices will reflect the biases of my personal style of play. I welcome debate, but if you want your stuff in a different order, make your own list.
Now, commence the Top 10 list!
What is it?
In this portion of the Mahjarrat quest line, the player uncovers some important secrets about the mahjarrat and undermines the evil necromancer Zemouregal's control over Arrav, the legendary hero of Varrock.
Why is it on this list?
I liked it. The Curse of Arrav is easily one of my favorite quests ever. Sure, I wasn't crazy about that bit with the digging. Infiltrating Zemouregal's hideout, however, was pretty sweet. I discussed it in a previous entry already. Nothing makes you feel like a master thief quite like an extended cutscene detailing all the security measures in place to stop you. There have been other quests that revolved around the "stealing priceless artifacts" thing, but none of them pulled it off this well. It was fun.
Additionally, the information from this quest gave us story buffs Zemouregal's Notes, which give us info on all known mahjarrat. This information has become the basis for a great deal of storyline speculation.
9. The Reopening of Runescape Classic
What is it?
Back in November, Jagex temporarily reopened Runescape Classic to new players. Runescape Classic, as you probably know, was the game's original incarnation. Until this update, only those who had played it back in the day could still access the Classic servers, and only if they remained active. However, all members could log in during a special two-week period and gain permanent access to new Classic servers. A similar period of Classic reopening is slated to occur every six months or so from now on.
Why is it on this list?
Well, it was pretty significant. Runescape Classic has been closed off for a long time. I tried it out for myself. The basic mechanics are the same, but it's like a completely different game. This update gave the rest of us a chance to see for ourselves a part of the game's history. Do people play Classic very often? Probably not. But now we can.
What is it?
Mobilising Armies is a minigame. It was released in July after an unusually long time in development (release was postponed seven months!) due to technical issues; it does things that the game engine had never done before, such as completely changing the interface during gameplay. The game has the player control squads of elves, dwarves, and goblins to battle other players in a real-time strategy setting. Alternate gameplay modes include assaulting a castle in Siege mode, stealing treasure in Hoard mode, and rescuing TzHaar in Rescue mode.
Why is it on this list?
Now, you might be thinking, "But troacctid, Mobilizing Armies sucked. It was riddled with bugs for the first week, it's boring, and it was pretty much an all-around failure." I would agree with you. But there's no denying it's had a significant impact on gameplay. Or at least, it's had a significant impact on my gameplay, and it's my list. As much as the actual minigame was lame, I can't ignore the addition of a very useful bank and teleport location, both of which I use every day. Any part of the spirit tree network is now easily accessible within seconds through a mere ring of duelling, and there's a bank right there. And as someone who chopped eucalyptus to 99 woodcutting, you can bet I appreciated the location they chose for it.
What is it?
October saw the release of the latest Achievement Diary, this time for the Ardougne area. Players who explored the area, trying out all the different content around Ardougne, could complete a list of tasks. The reward: an Ardougne Cloak. This was the first diary to feature Elite-level tasks, with requirements as high as level 90+ in some skills.
Why is it on this list?
This one earns points simply because of the usefulness of the Ardougne Cloak. It has the highest prayer bonus of any cape, a +6 stab attack bonus, unlimited teleports to a prayer altar and a bush patch, and a great teleport to the Ardougne farming patch. That's on top of the more specific bonuses such as free pure essence or increased Thieving success rates--with really high levels, gloves of silence, and the cloak, you can actually gain a 100% success rate pickpocketing some NPCs, including Master Farmers at level 93 Thieving.
The addition of the Elite tasks seems to have been generally well-received, and its success will influence future--and maybe even past--diaries. (Jagex suggested that new Elite tasks might be added onto existing diaries at some point.) And although some of the tasks seem arbitrary--a rune crossbow?--it's still great to get some high-level content.
6. Run Energy Update and Resting
What is it?
In June, the entire run energy system saw an overhaul. The Rest feature was added, allowing us to sit down and restore run energy more quickly. Musicians were placed in strategic locations for even faster restoration. Finally, the Agility skill now has a much greater effect on your run energy restoration as well as your drain rate. Energy potions and similar items were tweaked to retain some of their previous power level.
Why is it on this list?
Few updates this year have had the same impact on our play that the run energy update had. We run everywhere now, all the time. The once-ubiquitous super energy potion has become a relic of the past--or at least, it has for those of us with half-decent agility levels. :wink:
Blood Runs Deep: A Dagannoth Christmas
Rally the troops, fulfill a prophecy and prepare to defend your loved ones as the Fremennik go to war! Can you lead a ferocious assault on Waterbirth Island in our latest quest?
It's that time of the year again. The time when we set aside our differences to celebrate peace and love, feel the spirit of giving, and of course, violently cleave some dagannoth skulls with a large axe!
"Guthix bless us, every--*thwunk* Aargh my arm! What are you doing?! Gaah, no, not the spine, not the--*crunch* Oh Jesus, the pain!"
From Jagex's Twitter hint, I totally thought this week was going to be the Christmas Wintumber event. Turns out we got something a little more exciting and a lot more violent: the follow-up to Glorious Memories, in which, well, let me go over the plot for you.
[hide=Synopsis]So you start the quest with Baba Yaga on Lunar Isle. Apparently, she wants to go inside a random stranger's dreams. Setting aside the creepy implications of such a venture, we go into a dream sequence in which we learn that the unconscious stranger is an obscure character mentioned in the dialogue of the Lighthouse quest. Apparently this dude went loopy and was helping the Dagannoth Mother raise a Dagannoth Army to take over the Fremennik Province. And apparently the dagannoths are ready to invade RIGHT NOW. Oh [cabbage].
In fact, it seems he's so kooky that the dagannoths in his dream start piling you, and you have to kill a whole bunch of them to "hold them off" or something while Baba Yaga casts some absurdly long spell to leave the dream. Lovely. You then spend several minutes killing dagannoths with no real indication of when exactly the spell will be ready, which is a little annoying. Then you leave the dream and find out that the dagannoths are attacking Rellekka RIGHT NOW. Oh [cabbage]! So you have to go back to Rellekka and do the exact same thing as before, smacking around some interminable number of semiaquatic monsters, again without any indication of your progress. Great. Although to be fair, the music in this section ("Jaws of the Dagannoth") was admittedly pretty sweet.
So you beat back the initial assault and it's time to bring the fight back to the enemy. Ex-yeti King Vargas is way ahead of you on this front and has already...well, been captured. You need to rescue the poor guy. And so, after Queen Sigrid gives us a big axe, we commence an escort mission. Does anybody really like escort missions? You walk very slowly through the cave so that the poor, limping Vargas can keep up. Meanwhile, dagannoths, rock lobsters, and magic walruses come at you from all sides to kill you in various nasty ways. Joy. At the end of that ordeal, you finally escape, and let King Vargas up the ladder first. Naturally, he collapses the cave behind him by accident, burying you in a pile of boulders. You wake up in the afterlife. Come on man, what the [cabbage], Vargas?
So the afterlife dudes pull the old "WTF are you doing here you're not supposed to be dead" line on you and send you back. Then you have a wedding on a boat and you go to kill some more dagannoths. You have a fight with some sentinels that heal each other, then you go kill the Dagannoth Mother in a big boss fight. Afterwards, you collapse the cave to trap her inside, and accidentally get boulder'd again. [cabbage].
Afterlife dude lets you go AGAIN, saying "Geez n00b, I thought I told you it wasn't your time. GTFO from my Valhalla." Then you go back to salute your fallen allies (Prince Brand and Princess Astrid die...so much for your marriage) and the quest is over.[/hide]
I have a few bones to pick with this quest. Let's go through them.
That said, it wasn't all bad. There were epic moments. It was a pretty challenging quest. It tied up some loose ends in the storyline. All good things. And the reward is perfect--combat experience and a new, specialized weapon. Both fitting rewards for an advanced quests.
Bottom line
A mixed bag: awesome rewards and awesome story, but some frustrating gameplay elements.
Additional note
Should I have the widget boxes on the left, on the right, or split between both sides? I can't decide which looks best.
Kuradal's Dungeon: It's KuraDAL. Jeez.
Kuradal, daughter of Duradel, has left Shilo Village for the Ancient Caverns. Find her there and she will offer access to an exclusive dungeon, her personal collection of slayer creatures, and one particularly unconventional task...
Before I start my review, let me make this abundantly clear:
KURADAL. With an A. Her name does not rhyme with "Duradel." It's DAL. As in "Dalai Lama."
Kuradalai Lama: Freeing Tibet and kicking Abyssal Demon butt.
Okay. Now that we have that settled, let's talk about KuraDAL's new slayer cave. Located in the Ancient Cavern underneath Baxtorian Falls, Kuradal, daughter of Duradel and our newest slayer master, has captured a variety of rare creatures and trapped them in her cave for her pupils to fight. What's interesting is that players can only access the cave during one of her slayer tasks--no camping off-task allowed. This solves the age-old dilemma of "I need to kill steel dragons and the spot is crowded with n00bs who don't even have them as a task." So far so good.
In addition, monsters in the dungeon have a fairly common drop of a Ferocious Ring. Ferocious rings contain 5 teleport charges to Kuradal, disintegrating after the last is used up. When worn, they increase all damage against monsters in Kuradal's dungeon by 4! That's pretty damn sweet.
Kuradal herself, of course, is also a slayer master requiring 75 slayer and 110 combat. She has a really great task list (the full list can be found here), assigning the Shilo Village standbys such as iron dragons, waterfiends, dust devils, black demons, aberrant spectres, bloodvelds, and so on, but she omits some of the less popular tasks, most notably warped terrorbirds in favor of warped tortoises. She also assigns some new monsters. Living rock creatures, for example--a very nice task to receive. Oh, and how about JAD. That's right, we always joked that slayer masters should assign you to kill TzTok-Jads...well, now they do. Kuradal assigns TzHaar creatures as a task, and when she does, you have the option of killing the mighty TzTok-Jad for a hefty 25k bonus slayer xp on top of your fire cape. Can I hear an AWESOME?
My thoughts
I really like Kuradal. Looking at her task list, there's very few tasks I don't like. Suqahs, hellhounds, and kalphites aren't my favorites, as they all have pure crap for their drops, but at least they're fast xp. And steel dragons aren't a task I personally enjoy, but with the new dungeon and ring to kill them, I don't mind so much. And the new ferocious ring has a pretty awesome effect.
Now, I don't slay very often. In fact, I don't even have 75 slayer. But this update really makes slayer more worthwhile to train. On the surface, it doesn't give the sort of rewards we're used to expecting at high slayer levels--new monsters with unique drops--but it subtly improves our slayer tasks. It's not blatantly obvious, but Kuradal's task list has more profitable monsters and the monsters in her dungeon give faster xp in both slayer and your other combat skills, increasing the viability of slayer as a method for training combat.
High-level slayers may be disappointed that the update focuses on the training aspect of the skill without offering significant rewards. That's a fair sentiment, although I might point out that the ferocious ring makes a very handy teleport to waterfiends and mithril dragons. Still, even though this new area may not offer much for those who have already mastered the skill, it drastically improves training for those who have not, and it does so in a well-balanced, interesting, and elegant manner. (Unlike September's godawful "woodcutting rebalance" which basically said, "Hey, let's add random new training methods that give super-fast xp and no rewards.")
Bottom line
I approve of Kuradal. You may even see me noshing on a wild pie or two to get a task from her.
Free Tibet!
(To give credit where it's due, that screenshot is from the RS Wiki; I just added the Dalai Lama head.)
The Temple at Senntisten: The slings and Zaros of outrageous fortune
When an eager archaeologist by the name of Dr Nabanik arrives at the Digsite, the researchers doubt his credentials. They could be missing out, though, as the enigmatic doctor seems to know more about history than anyone suspects...
For our latest quest, we've been asked to retrieve some ancient artifacts to restore the Zarosian temple unearthed at the Digsite. Let me tell you my initial reaction to this quest. I saw the title and thought, "Senntisten was the Zarosian capital at the Digsite. Hmm." I read the description (quoted above) and thought, "Dr. Nabanik is a Mahjarrat. Who would have business in the Digsite? Probably Azzanadra. Hmm." Then I logged into the game and saw this:
And I thought, "ZAROS IS BACK." (Not in capital letters, but you get the idea.)
[hide=The Plot (spoilers)]Well, as it turns out, I kind of nailed it early on. This quest deals with Azzanadra's attempt to contact Zaros, continuing the Mahjarrat storyline. It ties up some loose ends, particularly in regards to the Super Barriow Bros. You do that thing where the person who starts the quest isn't really the person who starts the quest, because they ask you to talk to somebody else immediately. (Ever notice how a lot of quests do that?) Mercifully, Ali the Wise/Wahisietel (hint: when you disguise yourself, don't pick a false name that's an anagram of your real name) gives you the Digsite Pendant you need to teleport to "Dr. Nabanik," who is, of course, Azzanadra, apparently a redhead--who knew?
After talking with "Dr. Nabanik" and putting in a good word for him with the archaeologists, he gives you the rope you need to access the Zarosian temple (thank you) and sends you on a mission to fetch some artifacts from dangerous places.
You need to get one of them from the Barrows. Surprise! We knew that the Barrows Brothers were originally cursed by a mahjarrat loyal to Zaros (probably Sliske) during the God Wars. Now we know why--they were guarding this thing while it charged up power. And apparently, the Strange Old Man is also a mahjarrat in disguise or something. Hmm. Well, we don't know who, but we know why.
So you do a Barrows run as part of a quest (cool!) and then you have to go get the Frosterhorn, which is way up north in a freezing-cold place. Jeez, you'll probably need a random rope or something and have to go back to fetch it, right? Luckily, if you ask Azzanadra, he'll tell you exactly what you need: runes to cast multiple telegrabs, and an anti-dragon shield. You also need a hammer, but there's one available in the area. So you go to the deep Wilderness and visit the ancient fortress of Ghorrock, where you have to solve a puzzle where you melt ice with heat orbs. During the puzzle, by the way, you fight icefiends, which melt into waterfiends along with the ice in the puzzle--a stroke of brilliance, I think. Then you fight an ice demon and take the artifact from it.
Finally, you go back and collect a delivery from--ZOMG--the assassin from Devious Minds! Turns out the artifact you inadvertently helped him steal from Entrana is one of the ones Azzanadra needs to power the communication portal. And the bowsword we've been hoping to obtain for ourselves? Well, he pretty much says, "Go to Stealing Creation and get a Sacred Clay weapon, n00b." Jerk.
So finally, you get yourself a cutscene in which Zaros doesn't really return, but he makes his influence known on Runescape once more, basically saying, "THAT ****ING ZAMORAK IS ****ING DEAD MEAT." Then you get a new prayer book![/hide]
I have to say I really enjoyed this quest. It has pretty much everything I want in a quest. Let's go down the list:
Speaking of rewards, let's talk Curses.
Ancient Curses are the prayer skill's equivalent of Ancient Magicks: higher-level, higher-powered, and all about killing things. For the most part, they're better than the normal prayers. Although Piety is stronger than the Leech curses on most slayer tasks and such, draining the enemy's stats is great in PvP and amazing against bosses. Turmoil is pretty damn sweet, Wrath is far better than Retribution for settings like Soul Wars, and when you're fighting a boss as a team it's definitely more effective to drain its stats than to boost your own. The Deflection curses drain at the same rate as ordinary Protection prayers and have the same effect, only better: they prevent more damage against players, and they can occasionally reflect back to your opponent 10% of what would have been hit on you.
In short, they're strong enough to provide a substantial incentive to train prayer to a very high level. Well, that was the goal, so...check. And the price of dragon bones evidently has level 95 prayer, because it just activated Turmoil.
Economic repercussions
Dragon bones are rising. Fast.
What's interesting is that we knew this was going to happen. Jagex announced a while back in their Q&A that new high-level prayers were on the way, and dragon bone prices spiked up to around 3.8k each in anticipation. I myself bought up a few thousand of them and trained my prayer to the high 70s. The price had already shifted partway to accommodate the new curses before they had even been released. Dragon bones are now 5.2k each and rising.
I predict that dragon bones will continue to rise for no longer than a week before crashing. When they do crash, they'll overcrash, as is normal for the Grand Exchange, so the crash will be followed by another spike, smaller this time. (If you think you can predict where the market will bottom out, you could potentially earn some great profit riding the second wave, again a normal phenomenon.) After that spike, there will be a smaller crash and dragon bones should stabilize comfortably.
I'm not sure what price they'll end up. My guess is somewhere in the 4-5k range, but I could be wrong. I am certain, however, that they will not go back to 2k each unless something radically changes on the supply side.
How can you profit from this? Obviously, kill green dragons. They're a huge moneymaker right now. Of course, everyone else will have thought of that too, so they'll be really crowded. If you want to dodge the crowds, consider visiting the lesser-populated of the green dragon spots: south of the Lava Maze, best-accessed via canoe; and west of the Dark Warriors' Fortress, best accessed with Ancient Teleports I suppose.
That's not the only way to take advantage of the prayer boom, of course. For one, you can kill other dragons--again, obvious and everyone else will have thought of it. You can also kill baby dragons. Babydragon bones are approaching prices that have historically belonged to the bones of their mothers. Baby blue dragons could prove a decent moneymaker, especially for players with 70+ agility for the Taverley Dungeon shortcut.
Big bones are rising as well, making it a good economy for killing giants and such. Moss Giants could be worthwhile for mid-level players--they're not bad for xp, and they drop herbs and herb seeds that have benefited greatly from the rise in price due to the herblore update. I'd recommend them over hill giants. Good places to fight them are the Chaos Tunnels and west of the Fishing Guild, both reasonably close to a bank.
Bottom Line
I really enjoyed doing this quest. It was fun to do, it had a lot of story, and the rewards are nice. All in all, a good update.
Some bits & pieces to track this week too, although not many. Here's your list.
[hide=Bits and Pieces this week]
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How to eat a shark
Sharks are well-known for eating people, but we often forget that people eat sharks far more often. Want to get in on the feeding frenzy but aren't sure how? I've compiled a handy guide on how to capture, prepare, and feast on your very own shark.
Step 1: Get a shark.
Fig. 1: A shark
Gourmets in search of the delectable shark will first need to obtain a shark to cook. The most obvious method is to simply purchase a shark in trade; however, as any fisherman will tell you, the fish always tastes better when you catch it yourself. It takes a skilled fisher to successfully capture a shark, so before you begin your first attempt at "sharking," it's important that you have plenty of practice with other fish, such as salmon, tuna, or lobsters. Sharks are typically caught with a simple hand-held harpoon, although some hardcore fishers prefer to wrestle sharks from the water with their bare hands; formal training, plenty of upper-arm strength, and a high tolerance for pain are recommended for this method. Murphy's fishing trawler, which docks in Port Khazard, often catches sharks in its nets as well.
Fig. 2: Hardcore style.
Of course, before you can catch the shark, you must first find the shark. Sharks are relatively rare--outside of Runescape's remotest areas, they can be found in significant numbers only in Kandarin, where they infest the waters near Catherby's beaches and feast on the occasional duck at the Fishing Guild. These locations should be easy to access for anyone willing to travel there.
Sharks can also be fished in the oceans that border Runescape's mainland. The Fremennik Province is heavily bolstered by its fishing economy: Rellekka and Jatizso are prominent shark traders, and those who have earned the favor of the local Fremennik tribe will be welcome to fish there. Some sharks can be found on the coast of Isafdar near Prifddinas, although it is unlikely that anyone but the elves will find the location convenient. Likewise with the sharks on the coast of the Feldip Hills, where a grumpy ogress or hungry wolf is always ready to poach your catch.
By far the largest congregation of sharks is on the southern coast of Morytania, where the terrors of the sea feed en masse on the bass there. Some have theorized that the vampyres of the region cultivate the sharks themselves to keep the human prisoners of Meiyerditch from attempting to escape by sea; others postulate that the sharks' affinity for blood instinctively drives them to congregate in the area. Regardless of the reason for their prevalence, the shores of Burgh de Rott are a formidable choice of location for those unafraid of the Vyrewatch sentinels who patrol the skies. Equally hostile to intruders is Ape Atoll, where sharks swim in the waters on the southern beaches of the isle and venomous snakes and jungle spiders can strike from the bushes to attack humans.
Once you have secured a shark, it's time to cook it.
Step 2: Cook the shark.
To cook a shark, simply place it on top of a cooking fire or stove. The shark should very quickly turn a lovely golden-brown color, at which point you may remove it from the heat. Be careful not to leave it on for too long--it only takes a split second for your lovely golden-brown to turn burnt-black and ruin the dish. Caleb, the famous chef from Catherby, is well-known for his enchantment that helps to prevent overcooking, and seeking him out would be wise before beginning this culinary undertaking, as the process of cooking a shark is difficult to perfect despite its simplicity.
Many believe that it is necessary to prepare the fish before cooking; however, this is unnecessary. A whole shark, fresh from the ocean, will cook magnificently whether or not you remove the bones, head, and so on. Most ranges are large enough to support the shark's weight without cutting it into pieces, and even a simple camping fire without so much as a cooking spit will likely have no trouble. Your shark can safely go directly from dock to dinner.
Fig. 3: Successfully cooked.
Step 3: Eat the shark.
Eating the shark, once successfully cooked, is a very simple process. As with most other foods, simply stuff the entire shark in your mouth at once, chew once or twice, and swallow. On what occasions is shark an appropriate dish to serve? Well, again, as with many other foods, sharks are most commonly eaten after suffering serious wounds. Satisfied diners often report carrying a dozen or so whole sharks in their pack while slaying dangerous beasts such as the King Black Dragon and taking them out to snack on while dodging blasts of flame. Before eating your shark, it would be a good idea to put yourself in mortal peril.
Figure 4: A sudden craving for shark.
Congratulations! You're now ready to eat your very own shark! Om nom nom!
Folks, it's no secret that I am not a Thanksgiving person. Sure, I'm thankful for a lot of things. Friends, family, freedom, love, hot chocolate, apple pie, ice cream, cookies, internets, material possessions, five-dollar footlongs, digital watches, modern plumbing, all that jazz. But let me be frank for a moment. Thanksgiving is lame. What, so some European settlers got together with the local indigenous tribes and had a party back in the 17th century, so we celebrate...for some reason...by inviting relatives over to eat foods that we probably wouldn't touch any other time of the year and that are completely different from the foods that said 17th-century folk ate? If we're supposedly duplicating a historical event, why don't we eat venison and corn at Thanksgiving dinner? And what makes their party so special? It's not like it led to some lasting friendship in which the two cultures respected one another as equals and did not commit any genocides. Nothing really came of it. We don't have a national holiday for, say, the discovery of the polio vaccine, and that was a lot more important to our history.
It's not even especially good food. Sure, there's some pumpkin pie, and that's okay. But...stuffing and cranberry sauce...? Yeah...okay...and then we have yams, which admittedly aren't so bad, but really not worth fussing over. And of course, the turkey.
Now, I'm sort of a vegetarian...I mean, I'll eat meat, but only if it's so fried, battered, and/or smothered in sauces that you could have swapped it with a hunk of cheddar cheese and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. So maybe this is just me. Or hell, maybe my dad is just terrible at cooking poultry. But I hate turkey. I loathe it. I wouldn't eat it if you paid me. Well, I wouldn't eat it unless you paid me. And even then I'd drown it in mustard first.
The worst part is, we always have a humongous turkey for some reason, so every year we're left with a week's worth of leftover turkey, which, as I believe I mentioned already, I detest. Invariably, my dad will take the leftovers, cook them into some fowl-smelling soup (no pun intended...well, okay, yes, pun intended), and offer it up as dinner every night until Hanukkah...because why would anyone bother to cook something new that I don't hate when there's plenty of old food that I do hate? Naturally, that leaves me with a good week of Hot Pockets and Rice Krispies for dinner.
Hopefully you can see why I'm not a big fan of Thanksgiving or of turkeys in general. Even the wild turkeys that occasionally wander around my neighborhood don't seem do much besides waddle around making annoying clucking noises while you're trying to sleep. So you can probably imagine that I enjoyed having the opportunity to mercilessly pummel turkeys to their painful deaths with heavy, blunt objects during this year's Thanksgiving event.
Revenge is sweeter than any pumpkin pie. :twisted:
On an unrelated note, I saw New Moon this week. There's really not much to say about it except that it was, like the first movie, very faithful to the book, so if you liked the book, you'd probably like the movie, and if you hated the book, you'd probably hate the movie. The main problem I had was that it was full of copious uncomfortable close-up shots. Not to mention excessive fanservice. "Mmm, yes, I'm so ridiculously good-looking that the camera can't shoot me without going into slow-motion. Ooh, yeah, zoom in a little on my pecs, yeah. Keep drooling, fangirls...I'll probably take my shirt off sometime in the next five minutes." (Ironically, the fanservice probably makes it even more faithful to the book.)
I like even numbers. There's something elegant about the way that each even number is double some other number. So I went to page 246 in my thesaurus. (I believe a thesaurus is more useful than a dictionary for everyday writing.) Then I went six words down, because six is a perfect number and I like it. What did I find? The word "Hearing." (Nouns - 1. hearing, sense of hearing; audition, auscultation; eavesdropping, audibility...etc.) Realizing that this was no coincidence, I immediately got an idea for a blog entry and sat down to write about music in Runescape.
This is actually how I get ideas, by the way.
Anyway.
Most of us probably don't listen to Runescape's music very often, but maybe we should. They may not be the catchiest of tunes, but they can really add atmosphere to the experience. "Armageddon," the track in the God Wars dungeon, is a good example--it's a pounding war march that captures the feeling of a four-way battle, and even manages to throw in some tinkling bells to reflect the icy setting. The Chosen Commander's "But We Can Fight" is just the sort of heroic theme that you ought to be listening to before your final stand against Bandos. Music from the Wilderness is the sort of thing you'd expect to hear in a horror film right before somebody gets murdered.
I remember starting out in Runescape and listening to the "Newbie Melody" during the tutorial. To this day, it's still the song I most associate with the game, except perhaps for the "Scape Theme." And some of the songs are actually pretty damn good--try listening to "Route of the Problem," for example. I also very much enjoy the piano melody in the smooth arpeggios of "Waiting for Battle."
So why don't people listen to Runescape music? Perhaps it's the sheer size of the track list. There are over 600 different music tracks in the game--that's a lot. Seriously. And not all of them are any good. You can look through the song list and go, "Hey, 'Fangs For the Memory,' that's an interesting name. Bet that sounds good." Then you play it, and...meh, it'll be okay, but not nearly worth the effort of going through the list and choosing it.
The truth is, while there are a few standout songs and many that provide atmosphere in a particular area, the majority of tracks are mediocre. Sure, ambience is nice, but we aren't typically looking to immerse ourselves while we grind skills, and the few that are epic aren't worth dredging through the long track list to find. Listening to Runescape music can be like going fishing: you get all geared up and ready to go, then you spend four hours sitting in a boat waiting for a bite. Sure, sometimes you'll get to wrestle a salmon out of the river, but most of the time the best you can do is enjoy the fresh air.
Still, though it may not always wow us, Runescape's music is underrated. We ought to give it a chance more often--it's worth giving a listen once in a while. So the next time you do a new quest or try out a new minigame, flick off your iTunes and give the game's soundtrack a listen. It is, for the most part, a solid and worthy score. Besides, I know we all want the Air Guitar emote.
By the way, you need to unlock 500 songs to unlock Air Guitar. And guess what the sixth word on page 500 of my thesaurus is? That's right, "Secret." You heard it here first, folks--there's a secret that can only be unlocked if you have exactly 500 songs and only during June (the sixth month of the year). Mark your calendars--this may be the elusive answer to the secret that lies behind the mysterious door in the God Wars Dungeon!
Remember all those little changes to the game that we all forget about, but couldn't live without if they suddenly disappeared? It's almost time for Thanksgiving, so to take note of what we take for granted, it's time for another installment of Upgrade Watch! Now with title banner!
See, cuz Burgh de Rott needs to be upgraded...right? ...Yeah...anyway, moving on.
October 26
The week of Halloween brought us Web of Shadows, a typical short-and-sweet holiday event with a cute toy as a reward--in this case, a new pet, Eek the Spider. The spiderweb cape is kind of lame, but Eek is fun. I'd say Halloween met expectations this year without exceeding them. More importantly, 26 October 2009 brought some important small changes to existing content.
November 09
This week's headline update was the expansion to Champion's Challenge, which gave us Banshee, Mummy, Aberrant Spectre, Leprechaun, and Gnome champions with which to tussle, as well as Banner Carrier imps to show off the champions we've defeated. This in itself qualifies as an upgrade. I approve of the Banshee and Spectre champions--if we're going to be killing thousands of monsters, the least Jagex can do is make them monsters with good drops, and these ghosts definitely have good drops. Mummies, eh, not quite so much, but they drop Ancient Staves, which isn't so bad I suppose. The Banner Carrier is a fine way to allow players to show off their achievement, elegantly solving what has widely been considered the greatest problem with Champion's Challenge. I approve. :thumbup:
This week also saw an unusually large number of bug fixes and other minor updates, so let's look through them:
November 17
This week's headline update saw the release of some new high-level combat spells for the Modern spellbook, a change in the way magic boosts work, and a major change to the way multiple runes are crafted. There's plenty to say on those updates, but I don't feel like being the one to say it right now, so I'll leave that to others. 'Course, there's still the little things:
And that's your Upgrade Watch for the past month or so. Hopefully, your Runescape character will have no shortage of things to be thankful for this year!
It's no secret that questing is my favorite aspect of Runescape. It's not just the rewards earned--it's the story. Lots of players never truly explore the storyline of Runescape; for me, it's one of the game's greatest strengths. So this week, I've compiled a list of my 10 favorite quests based on their story.
SPOILER WARNING.
10. Grim Tales
Grim Tales doesn't offer much in terms of substance, but it has a lot of style going for it. I really enjoyed climbing a beanstalk to conquer a giant and shrinking down to miniature size to battle giant mice. I found the dialogue amusing as well. The Q is silent!
9. The Great Brain Robbery
This quest has it all. Zombies, pirates, mad scientists, brain surgery, werewolves, giant monsters, and scuba diving. I don't know what else you could ask for. The Barrelchest is pretty damn cool, the redemption of Dr. Fenkenstrain is almost heartwarming, and brain surgery is surprisingly comical in the context of zombies.
8. Dream Mentor
I always enjoy the occasional fourth wall joke. Cyrisus was a favorite character of mine because of the way he was the only NPC that was really just another player. Cyrisus was one of us: he had a bank account with all sorts of common items stored away, he went adventuring on quests, and he trained his skills to high levels. Battling manifestations of his subconscious fears and anxieties actually made for exciting boss battles. The concept was nothing new--A Soul's Bane had already been there and done that--but the execution was far better. And after the quest, he remained an exciting character: he went out on his own and battled boss monsters, Bounty Hunted, and took down TzTok-Jad. Basically, he was what we call badass. In memory of Cyrisus, Dream Mentor makes my Top 10 list.
7. Swan Song
I'm a fan of the Wise Old Man for many of the same reasons as Cyrisus. In fact, pretty much exactly the same reasons as Cyrisus. I guess I just really like teamwork quests. My favorite part of this quest, though, was raising the army of skeletal mages to fight the sea trolls. Now that was awesome. And I like that you can still use the bone seeds to summon more skeletons after the quest is finished.
6. The Chosen Commander
This quest actually deals with some fairly serious themes. To what extent is violence justified? How much free will do we really have? And it all culminates in a battle against Bandos himself. This is a pretty epic quest.
5. Cold War/Hunt for Red Raktuber
The penguin storyline is a very lighthearted take on the evil world-domination plot. While the espionage and antics are comical, as the storyline progresses, well...it's still pretty comical. Cold War doesn't really have the creepiness of the Sea Slug quests, the darkness of the Myreque quests, or the mystery of the Glouphrie quests. But you know what it does have? It has octopus hats. It has penguin mafias. It has cowbells. It has talking polar bears and dwarves in penguin suits and penguins in sheep suits. I don't know about you, but comical is fine with me.
4. Darkness of Hallowvale
The first two Myreque quests are relatively boring. So there's a few humans who live in a cave in a swamp trying to survive. Yeah, yeah. What are they doing there in the first place? Why should we care? There's no real villain to get you worked up--they're screwed, but they aren't screwed because they're oppressed, they're screwed because they live in a crappy neighborhood.
Then you visit Meiyerditch. And oh my god, it's truly horrifying.
There's just this atmosphere of futility and despair. All the humans are ghostly pale because of all the blood that's been drained from them. They're kept in disgusting slums and harvested like cattle, or else enslaved in underground mines and worked until they collapse from exhaustion. And it's not just that--there's so much detail. You can see malnourished puppies wandering the slums. There are bucket spawns that you can't even pick up because they smell so disgusting--possibly the closest thing to a toilet you'll ever find in Runescape. There are leaves and dust that blow in the wind. There's the sheer number of vampyre sentinels patrolling the skies of the city, if you can truly call it any kind of city--besides an atrocity.
Darkness of Hallowvale makes me want to kick Drakan's vampyre [wagon] from here to Isafdar.
3. The Curse of Arrav
I really love the Ocean's Eleven-type theme of this quest, where Ali the Wise explains the traps and obstacles you'll be facing as you attempt to steal one of the most heavily-guarded prizes in all of Runescape. (See, why couldn't we get that sort of thing for Path of Glouphrie? Could've avoided the whole death-trap business at the end.) The corridors are full of human-detection traps. You can sneak through the sewers, but there's an electric current that zaps you to death as soon as you touch the water. And even if you get through those, the zombies patrolling the inner corridor will catch you and raise the alarm. If you can sneak by the zombies, you still have to get through the combination lock, which will set off sleeping gas if the code is entered incorrectly. After that, the floor of the final room is crisscrossed with magical laser beams that roast you if you touch them, and on the other end is Arrav's heart, which can't be removed from the pedestal on which it sits without killing him. Your task? To steal the heart and use it to break the spell on Arrav and set him free from Zemouregal's mind control.
Good luck. :mellow:
2. My Arm's Big Adventure
My Arm's Big Adventure has probably the best cutscenes the game has ever seen. First you get to watch wistfully at a scene where a set of full dragon and an abyssal whip are lying on the ground, with left-click options to pick them up, even. And you can click on them. And if you do, you get yelled at for not paying attention and the scene starts over. FRUSTRATION! Then you get to watch a troll wreak havoc in Tai Bwo Wannai Village. Then you get to see the Drunken Dwarf knocked off a cliff, a scene known to elicit cheers. It's not epic, but it's epically hilarious, and my pick for the funniest quest in Runescape.
And, coming in at #1...
[hide]1. While Guthix Sleeps
I wouldn't be surprised if you saw this coming. While Guthix Sleeps is the quest. Lucien is the power-hungry villain. Infiltrating the Black Knights' secret hideout was infinitely more exciting the second time around, and the deadly conclusion is one of the game's most dramatic moments. But what really does it for me is unlocking the ancient secrets. When I descended down the chasm into the ancient Guthix temple, at first it was no different than exploring the Underground Pass, the Haunted Mine, or the dungeon from Legends Quest. But where those dungeons were creepy largely because of the haunting presence, the Guthix temple is spooky because it's so empty. It really feels like it's been untouched by anything for thousands of years. And coming up to the Stone of Jas was awe-inspiring--the scale, the glow, the magical sheen...its power is just obvious. And then the Balance Elemental, which is IMHO one of the coolest monsters in the game. And finally that cliffhanger at the end, just dangling the dragonkin in front of us.
While Guthix Sleeps is a truly epic quest. Parts of it may be underwhelming (catching a wild broav to sniff dirty laundry?), but the climax is worth it. For sheer pwnage, While Guthix Sleeps is my #1 favorite quest.[/hide]
Agree? Disagree? That's what the comments section is for, people. Have at it. :razz:
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