Thoughts from a Spider Goddess

I am continuing to make good progress towards becoming Maxed. I reached 110 Combat (this will become 162 with the release of EoC).

Now I can try my luck at Dominion Tower!

I killed the Queen Black Dragon yesterday too! It was totally awesome!!!

All my skills are now at least level 70 (in some cases much, much higher)!!

Despite some reservations about certain aspects of the up-coming EoC update, I am looking foward to it's finalization and eventual release!

I am progressing towards my goals. I recently leveled all but one skill to 70 or above. My total level is sitting at 1996 and will soon be 2000! w00t!!

I know I haven't written in a while, for this I'm sorry. I've always had trouble with anything that was like a diary or a journal.

I am so looking forward to Septembers updates. 2 new quests! Botany Bay looks to be fun as well.

I don't do GWD yet, and I can't wait to see the re-work for Al-Kharid!!

Jagex has started their special Combat Beta Weekend Events and the first one is Castle Wars. Playing one full game of CW over the weekend, which now allowes all current members access for the weekends now until the end of the Beta Test, gains you a peice of the special new Mad Scientist Outfit. If you like Steampunk, this outfit is for you! It is totally steampunky to the core! A Castle Wars game takes 20 minutes and is super easy and there's no risk...you defend your flag while trying to capture the enemy flag. Playing it on the Beta Servers is the only way to get a peice of the new Mad Scientist Outfit, with a peice being released during each special weekend event! Go the main RS webpage for a look at the new outfit!

So I've had a chance to toy around on the Beta Servers. Overall, I must say that I like about 90% of the combat changes. The combat abilities, the new looks/stats for the armors, the new action bar (which makes drinking pots and eating food and tele'ing soooo much easier, even the new levels for the monsters are good ( at least most of them). Some things do not sit well with me, however. Multi-way combat everywhere and the lack of full protection from the prayers makes fighting anything take a really long time and makes every slayer task 100 times more difficult to complete. The removal of runes from certain high level spells makes magic cheaper, but negates two very important runes, bloods and deaths, and likewise negates the importance of two quests. New level requirements on enchangted bolts makes training ranged very hard, unless you have 80 dungeoneering AND 80 ranged! Only ONE crossbow in the entire world will allow you to use ANY enchanted bolt!! This is absurd and most of us beta testers hate the change. Most of us are calling for full prayer protection to be restored, single-way combat to be restored and lower requirements on enchanted bolts to be restored as well, no one wants to be forced to train dungeoneering just to get a c-bow that needs tokens to be recharged constantly! This weekend I will be testing out the new combat system on the popular mini-game Castle Wars!!

The good news is that Jagex actually IS reading our feedback AND making some changes in the beta, so hopefully they will see that we want the above mentioned changes to happen as well as some graphical changes on the avatars, right now they all look horribly gangly and ugly.

With the plans to rework combat levels so that the new high is 200 (I hope they plan on changing how this is calculated) my previous min-quest is now nerfed!

I am changing my goals to be achieving Max in all skills and obtaining the Quest Cape

My march towards this is going well....I have one 99 already, many skills above 70, several above 80 and 3 others above 90 and only 5 skills below 70 but above 60!

My quest points sit at 260 with only 40 out of 182 quests left to do and 8 in progress!!

Combat skills are all pretty much even at this time! 77 Att, 74 Str, 75 Def, 80 Magic, 71 Ranged, 77 Constitution. Slayer is 69, while Prayer is 70 and only Summoning is lagging behind, but that is due to the horrible rate at which charms can be obtained from killing stuff!

My mini-quest to achieve 2000 total level before reaching 105 combat continues...I (for the most part) have avoided leveling combat skills....I level Summoning and Magic recently

but neither pushed me to 104 combat let alone 105 cmb. My currrent total level is 1935, so 65 levels remain for me to attain my goals. I raised my cooking recently to 93..

I can cook those pesky rocktails but not fish them yet, fishing remains below 90 atm...it is struggling to reach 83 (lol). Alas I am getting bored with skilling and

have avoided playing the game for this last week. I want to continue my slayer tasks and finish some quests that have been sitting on my In Progress list for way too long.

But I will remain steadfast and true to my mini-quest. I have nothing else to do with my time...I am a true no-lifer....lol.

Whenever I visit the RS forums or even the tip.it news articles, I see tons of people whining and complaining about this update or that update or that JaGex has lied to us. So JaGex decided to introduce "buy spins" for the populare/unpopular (depending on who you talk to or believe) Squeal of Fortune. This is no matter what they (JaGex OR the players), a micro-transaction and real world trading (RWT was (and is) against JaGex's rules) People are not supposed to be able to buy their way to success in the game, but isn't paying for membership buying your way to success? Doesn't buying a monthly membership grant you access to skills and items not available to free players? I think so. But JaGex is allowed to change the rules in order to incorporate a feature within the game that grows their profit margin. No one is forced to buy spins and these feature has not destroyed the game for people who play the game for fun rather than ranks or huge coinage. The game is suppose to be fun but people keep complaining and whining about every little update or change that JaGex makes. They are the ones who is ruining the game for themselves. Yes, JaGex changed their rules in order to allow for the buy spins feature and yes I think that was a mistake of integrity on their part, but ultimately it is their business, not mine. But to endlessly whine and complain about everything when in reality it does nothing to stop you from playing the game (horrible fps is the only thing that really stops people from enjoying the game and that is something that even I complain about). Only you can make your achievements mean anything, how other people play the game should have NO effect on how you play the game (I may not like rankers but I don't let them stop me from enjoying the game). Only you control what your character does, no one but you can ruin the game for yourself (Unless you're talking fps, lag and bots).

All that said, polls and feedback mean nothing when people can make multiple accounts and masquerade as multiple people within the game and the forums while only being one person in reality. I do not believe anything said for or against the SoF due to this simple truth. Statistics can be skewed and often are mis-used. The SoF is harmless fun for me and since I am not forced to buy spins, my account information is never in danger. I follow the rules and I play for fun, period!

And yes I realize that my rant can be seen as a complaint in and of itself, my point is all the endless whining and complaining that occurs in the forums and in tip.it articles over the same thing day after day.

Personally I love the new Runespan, it has helped me level what was an incredibly tedious skill. Many have said that it's existence devaules their achievements, but I disagree with this senitiment. Skill capes and levels only have the value that the person who achieved them has placed on them, so no one other than the account owner can devalue their achievements. This is not just my personal opinion, but cold hard logic. My skills and levels have value because I say they do. No one can devalue these achievements but me and I see no reason why I should do that simply because a formerly tedious skill has been made easier and more fun.

Bonfires are also a wonderful change, although I will miss picking up the lines of ashes left behind by those who lit fire after fire all in a row. Bonfires just make sense to me, I love the fire spirits as they give me not only runes, but also charms, which are hard (but not impossible) to come by and untradeable. This update has made leveling firemaking easier and more fun with the feature of adding logs to someone else's bonfire. Friends can be made at these fires, more xp is to be gained as well. This update, in my opinion has done nothing to hurt the Jadinko Lair either as it is still a much higher xp gain by burning the roots in there, so some people will still go there, I know I will when I run out of logs to burn in my bonfires. :)

My current goals are:

All levels above 70 (only 5 more skills to go)

Firemaking 92 (so I can get that Inferno Adze all my friends are talking about)

Runecrafting 80 (thanks to the Span I am well on my way)

Total Level 2000 before reaching 105 combat ( well on my way to this one too)

These are just the humble thoughts of a Spider Goddess!