craggyp

one more thing: do you use anything to protect from bandos' minions? darkarbiter: pray pots vary, check the grand exchange and/or the forums for prices. the crossbow used is the bone crossbow and bone bolts. you can get them in the mines you uncover while doing the Lost Tribe quest, they're pretty reasonably priced as far as crossbows go the book he has is the unholy book. you obtain the cover after completing the Horror from the Deep quest, and you get the pages from treasure trails clues or other players. there are 4, and for the zamorak book they can tend to be expensive as far as the outfit cost, lets see: xbow/10k bolts will run you like 43k. unholy book is about 800k-1m once you have the cover and buy all pages monks robe is easy to get god cape requires 60 mage to get from mage arena in northern wildy, but once you beat the arena its free. skill capes are a lot harder honestly, I'm operating from memory here. the important thing is that the outfit isn't too terrible to obtain, and the inventory will be more than paid for by a single trip if you know what you're doing. as long as you have the levels and don't mess up too badly, this method appears to pay for itself.

awesome guide, very easy to understand and you make me feel like I can just hop in and do this... one question though: will iron knives work as well as the bone crossbow? I know they're a lot more expensive, but I make them myself, so cost isn't really an issue. lemme know what you think, and again, great guide :D

what happens when you're a mage and you get a random event and they become aggressive again when you get back?

as far as how many anti-fire potions to buy, you want to consider how many you'll bring per trip and how many trips you're gonna make. if you buy 10k spells, you might want to start with 25-30 potions and get more as needed. you'll probably need more, but if you don't like killing them (*gasp!*) you might not want to be burdened with more than you need. on the other hand, you can always re-sell stuff on the grand exchange. if that's your plan, go nuts! again, thanks for all the creative criticism. I love seeing that people appreciate the guide and, when they see room for improvement, see fit to explain their methods and reasoning clearly. oh, and the bit about prayer potions increasing your fishing level was sorta a little joke. you know, a joke? something amusing? :D

ok, here we go: none of this comes as any surprise to me. nor do I care about any of the changes jagex made. heres why: assist system: this is a great idea. people would essentially make trades that were exactly the same thing as what the assist system does now. instead of having to make potentially risky trades, we can now just lend our skills to those unfortunate souls who haven't dedicated time to skilling, and in return we get free xp! ok, we can't move around or do anything while they're being assisted, but it's definitely not a bad system. grand exchange: despite the complaints I have about how prices were set to begin with, I do believe that things will even out eventually. it won't ruin trading as we know it, it just seems like that immediately. over time, prices will re-adjust to pre-GE levels, and we'll simply have a much more secure way of trading our treasures. wilderness changes: as far as I'm concerned, PKers are a step below jackals in the order of things. as long as PKers only fight other PKers, I have no problem. when they prey on me while I attempt to get green dragon hides and bones, I have a problem. I realize that the wilderness is dangerous. but people who want to kill dragons aren't even a challenge to the elite PKers. those who want to kill other real-life people can go to bounty hunters. now we dragon-killers have the ghosts to deal with. also, abyss pkers have all but disappeared. this is awesome. for those of you who liked to PK other PKers, I'm sorry. try bounty hunter. for those of you who used to prey on those of us who were simply trying to obtain raw materials, screw you. you finally got what all of you deserved. none of the changes jagex made affect how I play. I can still kill monsters for their drops, I can still skill, and I can still sell what I have. I have no need to kill other innocent people in the wilderness, and I have no need to make unbalanced trades. as far as I am concerned, jagex can keep screwing the people who made life miserable for the rest of us in RS. down with PKing innocent skillers, down with real world trades, and down with anyone who thinks the game has been destroyed because of the recent changes. thank you

just wanted to post a slight update. originally I bought 1.8m worth of runes (10k chaos and 40k fire), then after getting a visage, I bought another 20k/80k. in the process of using those runes I leveled my mage from 60 to 75, half to get from 60-70, the other half to 75. in the first half, I got 1 visage drop. in the second half I got 3 skirts. considering I killed anywhere between 600 and 750 dragons total, this is a pretty good record. not gonna say these results are typical, but it just goes to show you can make money doing this, and if you pump all profits back into runes/potions/food/equipment you can go for quite a while. of course, it helps to get a visage, cuz that pays for a good 100k spells, but it can be done even without one.

ok, 2 questions: how does it work? does it teleport me directly to an obelisk? can I get it in the abyss dimension (fairy code ALR)?

I have to agree with everyone who says party hats are useless. valuable, yes. but they have no use. wearing one does not boost stats in any way. I understand that selling one is worth tons of money, but its the money that's useful. owning the hat is not. I personally think jagex should just get rid of all phats, masks and all other items that are merely remnants of long-gone times. they only have value because of their rarity, not because of their relative usefulness in addition to the rarity. wipe the board clean, give players fair market value for them, and lets get rid of all this useless "phat" talk forever. also, onions are useless. well, ok, they have uses, but none of those uses is actually useful... :D

thats a pretty good setup and a decent level. especially with those bolts, you'd probably kill them pretty quickly

thanks for all the support guys, I really appreciate it. nice to know I'm helping some people out. as far as AOW, well, I'm not in charge of that, but if it gets the mods' attention, that would be sorta cool :D when it comes to the dart/bolt question, I mostly rely on cost. with chaos gauntlets, bolt does 15 damage max. dart does 19 max. those numbers are pretty close, but each casting of the dart costs over twice as much as casting bolt. if it did twice as much damage, there would be no difference, but since I'm not a billionaire, or really even a millionaire, I can only afford to buy stuff every once in a while, and I have to go with whatever is more cost effective. yes, dart is faster. but the god spells are even faster yet, their max damage is 30! it all comes down to balancing what is important to you. if you have virtually no money, buy minds and go with strike spells. it'll take an eternity, but it works. if you have unlimited cash, buy whatever runes you want. I believe that fire bolt is the best economical value, considering time, damage and cost. and the average person can afford 1.8mil every now and then to buy 10k chaos, 40k fires and go hunt some big game. its all personal preference, but I was trying to appeal to the largest group of players out there. plus you need 55 slayer for dart, and even I don't have that yet. :D when it comes to drops, the ultra-rare stuff like dragon armor and weapons are gonna be few and far between and thus will vary the most with respect to how often you get them. you might get 2 very quickly then get none at all for 100s of dragons. it averages out over a long period of time

I have to say bolt too. dart is just so expensive, too expensive to justify using it over bolt, especially with chaos gauntlets. thats what I use. :D

well, consider the repair costs of torags stuff. if you dont have steady cash flow, that can be a factor but yeah, torags is way better

honestly, I think the spot at the edge is the best. it limits the places they can roam. if they roam too far west, they have to come back towards your traps.

if you mean "how do I make it so that my signature is a link to something" then theres an easy answer to that: [url=www.yourlinkhere.com][img=yourimageurlhere][/url]

I've learned that every living thing carries the left half of a dragon square shield. I've learned that almost every living thing carries gold coins I've learned that chinchompas will never learn I've learned it is impossible to craft a bow made out of yew until I have crafted over 20,000 bows made of maple I've learned that despite having mined several thousand iron and coal ores, I won't have the skill to mine runite ore until I mine 100,000 more I've learned I can pay a merchant $10,000 for a metal helmet that protects my head, or I can pay a fellow adventurer $250,000,000 for a colorful paper hat that does nothing... or $40,000,000 for a holiday-themed mask or hat that does nothing

it just occurred to me that if they're gonna add dragon ore (which I do not believe they are) they'd need to add levels above 99, since smithing already has certain rune objects only available at 99, the only skill besides construction to have that feature.

I don't respect the QUEST CAPE! soooo many people have it. you don't have to have any skills at 99, or even above 70. with the amount of xp required to get 1 skill to 99, you can get almost 18 skills to level 70. also cooking, fletching, fishing, woodcutting and firemaking. is there an echo in here? :P there are several I admire more than others: hunter (just my favorite cape :) ) construction (sure, its buyable, but for like 200 million...) herblore/farming (again, buyable, but herb takes forever and farming, well, it either costs a ton w/ mage seeds, or takes forever with all the growing time) slayer (earns xp like hp, but not automatically like hp) prayer (again, buyable, but time-consuming) runecrafting (the ULTIMATE grind-it-out cape. no shortcuts, no fast-xp minigames. this one takes dedication) I appreciate combat capes, because I know they can take a while, but they're really pretty common.

read the equipment part of the guide. ahrims no staff is better than infinity, which is better than mystic. but mystic is by far the cheapest and easiest to obtain. if you're gonna cast fire bolt, you need the chaos gloves. glory is good. I think technically fury is better, but thats so expensive, you'd hate to lose it somehow. for any other questions, please refer to the guide first, thats why I made it :)

at 60 per iron, I'm gonna say probably not. if we assume that you pay 140 for each chaos and 40 for 4 fires, thats 180 per cast. multiply by 60, and we end up with 10,800gp per kill. unless you get something worth that much every kill, its not gonna work. if you kept everything that dropped (bones and bars too) you would be able to reduce that number by bones price (1.3k) and 5 bars' price (maybe 900), making the total worth needed from drops 8.6k. if you get lucky enough to snag a visage, and you sell it for 20m (thats a low price!) you can afford 100k chaos and 400k fires with 2m left over. that pays for a lot of kills. it all depends on what you get. d legs can get you 10k more spells. getting a bunch of bloods, or runite limbs you can make into cbows, is always a good thing. however, until you're able to kill them in maybe 30-40, you're really not gonna make a profit. :( sorry. keep leveling magic. once you hit the 80s (ok, I know, not easy) you'll be in much better shape. also, consider saving up to buy the best possible equipment :D

12pure34: thanks so much for the advice on the bolts! I'll be sure to include that next time I edit, which should be any day now. also, thanks for the compliments about the guide. the reason I made this was because I had heard about the ability to mage steel dragons, but never knew how it worked, and I couldn't find one place to get all the info I needed. how does it work? where do I go? how do I get there? what do I need? I had to search about 10 different threads before I finally got the gist of what to do, and it seemed like it was a pretty popular thing to me, so I decided to take what little I had found and add all of the things I had learned and make it easier for people to find everything. I took pics, kept track of everything I did, tried all sorts of new stuff, asked a few other mages what they did, and compiled it all in an easy-to-read format. mostly, I just want to make it easier for other people to learn about and try this method. hope I helped :P

great guide! 10/10. perfect pictures, technique well explained, and very useful. if I start buying unids (once I get my herblore level up) I'll defnitely use this technique. :D

pantim: you lucky *bleep* :D campbell: yeah, as far as the inventory goes, I kinda gave a good starting spot and then said that it was possible (probably necessary) to tweak it to your liking. I tend to take fewer pots because I keep almost everything. if I don't have a reason to leave early, the time that 6 pots takes usually allows me to fill my inventory. I need less food these days too :)

yeah, definitely. if you notice ahead of time about the update that mentions new runes to craft, better sell what you got :)

to each their own when it comes to what spell you use I guess. I seem to hit 10+ on fire bolt very frequently, so I'll keep using it. I believe I mention several times in the guide that in order to make money, you need to be pretty high level and get rare drops. over time, this will happen. if you were level 90+ and took everything you got and sold it, then put that money back into buying more runes, I'm fairly certain you would at least break even, especially if you get lucky on a few visage/dleg drops. and yeah I wanna try ranged once I get good enough. the problem is, its harder to be effective at lower levels. phata_elise, what level magic are you? because 50 spells per steel is a pretty darn good rate. I'm at about that and I mage irons. as far as ranged, well obviously at level 91 you're going to be pretty effective. I'm sure when (if) I ever get that good I'll be raking it in too :) ps: ever try pearl bolts? I've heard they're good, but confirmation would be cool :D

well, at magic lvl 60 on irons, it was about 50-70 spells per kill. Now I'm at 69 and I'm down to about 50 per kill. or, another way to look at it: I used to kill 1.5 per anti-dbreath potion dose, now I kill 2-2.5. :D