Syd

Congrats, it must've been long time since you started working on it. Atleast as far as I remember from the updates you've occasionally posted. :thumbsup:

Since it's been exactly a week since my last update, I think it's time to go through what has happened to Sydan during the last seven days. Not much, but it's still something. I started the week by doing some skilling, and aiming to get all (besides runecrafting) skills over 81. I had to do some more slayer to get the extra charms needed for 81 summoning. I didn't want to use blues I've been gaining from killing Glacors. Speaking of them, I'm afraid there are no loot pictures to add here. They've been awfully dry lately. I think I'm at about 1/600 rate currently. Haven't been bothering with them much. So at the start of the week, I got 81+ all: And soon after, with penguin points: After the nuking of bots, the game suddenly got twice as more interesting, I decided to spend more time slaying. I soon reached 84 slayer, and the very next day (at the bot nuke day) I took the advantage of 3x slayer (which was nice), I slayed for almost 300,000 experience and got this: Then I took the advantage of double penguins, and got closer to 77 runecrafting. Not very far from 80+ all. I also started doing some (quite occasional) farming runs, and managed to get 86 farming. No picture from that I'm afraid. My current plan for future is keep raising skill towards 82+ all, 83+ all, 84+ all and so forth. I keep raising runecrafting with all the bonuses I gain. Hopefully I'll reach 80 runecrafting in a month or so. I've also been thinking of doing some regular runecrafting if it gets even somewhat rewarding, due to absence of bots. We'll see. Could ZMI level or two, or few. :P The update wasn't that long, but that's due to fact I'm currently playing Soul Wars (as I write this), and I try to keep up from getting kicked out for inactivity. I could get 99 hitpoints today, but I'm not sure if I want to use zeal on that. It wouldn't make any sense. Though, a 99 is always a fun thing to get. :razz: More to come in near future!

Good luck. You got some catching to do if you want to keep up with me, though. :cool:

While I do agree at part, that RS certainly is a very grindy game, I don't see it only as a bad thing. Besides, not everything in my opinion is a "mindless grind." Actually there is awful alot of content in RuneScape (compared to many other games I've ever played) to do many different things, like minigames, distractions and diversions, quests, miniquests, collect things, train skills, play games, build house or throw a houseparty. Just to name a few. I really can't recall remembering games that would be more versatile than RuneScape is. On the other hand, while I personally don't like all the skills, I do understand why some other people like. What I see as the problem here, is that awful alot of people can't really agree with not being great in everything. It's a game, and one wants to be good in every skill and every activity. Have people ever thought that perhaps you don't need to have all levels in 99, or every item in game to have fun in it? One thing I would like to see, is more rewards for players who wish to stick around on certain skills, instead of going through the meta-game. I personally am a meta-gamer, and do try to find out interesting aspects from all around the game, but I do enjoy some skills more than others. Frankly, in skills that I like the most, I've already reached level 99 and unlocked pretty much all the possible content the skill adds in. There is really no other reason than "ranks" to go for past 13 million experience. 13 million experience, after all, is not that much for a game which is designed to take years to get good at. Adding max and completionist capes certainly threw the game into the meta-gamer direction, and I think it's a bit onesided view. So in my opinion, I would of course, like to see more content, but I don't think that is the real problem. I think the problem (like some have already said) is in the fact, that everyone thinks they have to unlock all the content and be in the very top, to be able to enjoy the game. No wonder it gets frustrating, when the game has so much content and more is coming all the time. I think there should be "impressive" rewards for those too, who might not want to go for 2475 or 2496 total. :-)

They should just remove the dice bag and the number from back of the seal emote. Problem solved. :thumbup:

Did you mean awesome? :thumbsup: * So great, finally all the players I meet actually talk back and it feels like multiplayer game again. Be it less people, but do also note there are more space, which is great in many activities. And then there are still worlds that are near full, so if you want to be in a crowd, just go there. I like it. Though, if it keeps going like this, it's very likely Jagex will cut out some of their servers to have more players per one. Which I personally won't mind much.

Connection lost. Please wait... :pray: ..nothing happened. :---)

That's a pretty sweet investment there already! :thumbup: Good luck! Really hope bots are long gone (and you'll be a rich guy). :)

I'm quite sure this guide was aimed towards using a non-lootshare world, where the single person doing most damage gets the kill. So one people doing all possible specs is the thing that matters here. For the guide, the strategy is definitely nice and well played. However, I also know how it feels to get crashed on your trip, and I don't like it at all. That's maybe the main reason why I have given up with GWD as whole. I don't want to crash anybody, and I still tend to get crashed myself. I know for most people it's just part of the game and right of the player with better account or gear. I simply think it's rude so I don't do it. I'll do things where I don't have to worry about being crashed. :thumbup:

So, in overall the next week seems to have quite a nice chances for any player to: a) make some bucks with investing, long or short term b) level up some skills, in particular slayer and combat c) do some fun stuff with awesome rewards (d&d's and castle wars) So I have plenty of questions, and I don't expect anyone to know answer for all of them, but each and everyone will help. So, if I haven't gathered penguin points for this week, should I go collect penguins now? Am I still able to get all out of penguins for next week? What other D&D's can be considered worth my time (if my plan is to max total someday)? Should I try to do slayer as usual, trying to cannon at fastest possible spots, or instead do tasks that might be less favourable and hope for more space to kill stuff? Also, would it make sense to collect extra slayer points now, so I could use them to do only the best tasks with 3x slayer? Or should I just continue doing like usual removing tasks that are slow? Does anyone know when do the days "start", meaning when does the experience/zeal/point boosters come into effect? I bought 30k oak planks, sapphires and some other stuffs to get as many levels in buyable skills as possible, incase bots really do dissapear and the things do go up in prices. Is there anything else I should take into consideration? This thread is not only aimed for my questions, but also for others to ask questions considering this whole new "botnuking hype", and things how to prepare and what to do. :???:

So do you, Gregor, have any new plans for the upcoming week with alot of interesting events? Slayer, especially for low level could be very big boost. Assuming most of the slayers are on the higher end of "slayerchain", killing the higher level monsters, one with lower level slayer might be able to rack fast experience in almost empty spots despite the 3x experience. Might be. To be honest I have no idea how many players you see on your day to day tasks, but I assume it's less than there are on task to task basis at the higher level slayer monsters. And have you ever been searching penguins, or done Cold War (& Hunt for Red Raktuber) quest(s)? Next week at D&D day, getting 3x penguin points would mean nice experience on skill of your choice. And you most definetly should try Soul Wars on Soul Wars -day. It's easy experience no matter the levels. Just choose a team and stick with it and eventually you should be winning about 50% of games (2 zeals per 20 minutes), with 3x points that's already 18 zeals per hour. While top clan members can yield a bit less than 9 zeals per hour on normal day. That would be nice experience in combat skill of your choice. In overall, you're progressing like usual. Keep up the good work. :-)

1 boots in about 500 kills. Ragefire too. :sad:

I can't see any correlation between botting and flipping... :???:

Three days ago I managed to get something that has been my goal ever since the 126 level cap was raised, 130+ combat level. Now my next and only reasonable stop is at 138. Played couple hours of BA, charging my horn and collecting few points too for a laugh. Almost 3000 score in all roles in BA now. :) The game is quite nice, quite dull though once you learn all the roles well. It's just same thing over and over again. Gets a bit boring after few hours. Then I took my recharged horn and went to Desert to mine some granite. Was getting about 130k xp/h with horn (+ urns and obsidian golem), no idea if that's good or bad. I've heard people mining concentrated gold can top that. Seems a bit hard to imagine. Oh well, as long as I can't bother getting the second Varrock diary done for the platebody, I think I'm gonna stick with the granite. It's not so bad, really. After 81 mining, I looked I'm only 25 minutes away from 81 fishing aswell, so went to Otto's Grotto to finish that one. Was getting about 70k experience /hour alching all the fishes. During our stay there I noticed the update on the homepage, and fleed to Varrock immediatly. Incase Jagex this time actually manages to remove bots, or atleast most of them, it would make one assume raw items prices would rise. Thereforth I bought myself supplies from 81 -> 92-93 construction (oak and teak planks, though still need to get SC tools), and some uncut sapphires and gold bars, which I'm planning to use to train crafting to around 90. In any plan changes, I'm quite certain I could get my money and a bit extra back if selling them to G.E. If not, atleast I got some of the buyables bought in the bank, waiting to be done. Need to do quite a bit of Stealing Creation, which I'm not very keen to. I guess I'll need to collect some slayer points and do some slayer tasks to refresh my mind how the whole skill works. It's been long time since I last trained slayer, and with the upcoming slayer day coming, I might aswell pick my combat gear and go for some tasks. Might be a bit packed, but if it's any better XP than normally, I don't mind. Also, eagerly waiting for Soul Wars day (not really interested in Castle Wars, though might try that aswell). Only thing I'm really curious about, is if Jagex can actually hold onto their statement and remove 98% of bots, which probably means to like 60% of total players in the game. Ha. We'll see. I really hope we get rid of them! PS. All this buying things made a huge hole in my bank, which I'm trying to recover now. So I'm back at Glacors hoping for some loot. Could be about time to get something soon. :pray:

Definitely interesting. If it works, which I hope, it would feel like playing almost a different game already. :mellow: 98% of bots? How many legitimate players will there be per World? 500? :---)

Very simple, instead of random events you get some random questions that appear possibly on a small new screen (that doesn't interrupt anything you're doing and will let you click on the game screen), with let's say 10 minutes timer to answer it. If you don't answer to it right or in time you will be teleported somewhere, logged out or something until you answer it right. There is nothing in RuneScape that you can do, where you don't have 2 seconds in 10 minutes to answer a question that is very simple. And nobody can afk over 10 minutes anyways. These questions would randomly appear, maybe a bit more often (like every 2-3 hours?) than random events do. You could possibly even have a small XP bonus for answering the question right which stacks somewhere - and you could collect it. Wouldn't make answering a question that annoying. Even when bosshunting, PVPing or whatever you're doing, you always have that 2 seconds of free time to answer a question. And it really doesn't take that much of work to figure 5-10 new simple questions each day. I could figure and implement them in game in 2 minutes if it was my job. They could possibly figure thousands of very basic questions and just have a loop, like someone mentioned. :razz:

Thanks Gregor! :smile: Yesterday I forgot to add this one (even though it's most arguably my biggest achievement in this game so far), while too busy listing everything that I've done. This is a huge milestone for me, and next one will be even bigger. 2200. On my way towards 2300 now. (Darn quest reward gave me one level more than I thought, so I missed 2200 picture. Well 2201 - more the merrier right?) Today I've been killing more glacors, but they haven't been too good. Alot of kills but no loots to mention. Not even one effigy. I guess I'll have to go back later and pick few of them. ;) I also managed to get back with my D&D's as I've now done all penguins for the week, got back into Miscellania business (49% approval rating, ouch) and as soon as the System Updates allow, I'll go see if I can do either Troll Invasion or Tears of Guthix. I don't think I've done Circus in a moment either. Though to be honest I don't fancy the 30k xp divided in magic and agility too much. I'll do it if I happen to run past that circus booth. :razz:

Wow, this is interesting. Does this mean if we are supposed to flick prayers as we fight now? :P Not like I have fought against Frost Dragons in ages, ever since it became a bot fest. :smile:

So due to forums being down, and me not being able to change password to my forum account - and thereforth logging in, I haven't been able to update this blog in a while. Two weeks is it? Well, alot has happened (like usual) ever since, and going through about it all would make a long post. And I'm currently a bit too hungover (sunday) and tired to write long stories, so I'm going to keep it short. For those who happen to be still around reading, news are that I'm still alive and kicking. I just sometimes tend to forget/not have motivation to write updates. Sorry about that. In overall alot has happened lately also in my real life, which has resulted me slacking from some of my goals, like doing D&D's on time. So I'm late for my penguin points, and I'm not sure if I have done Tears of Guthix either. However, I will get back on them right tomorrow. Monday is a good day to get back on track. Since my last update I have completed loads of quests again. Quest Journal has been updated. Here are some of the quests I've done: Definitely not as bad as people say it is. Just need to have a bit of motivation and patience. Just keep going forward and you'll get it right. I thought Elemental Workshop III was alot more tedious. Still glad to get it finally out of the way, so I could proceed to the next one. Which happened to be this: About time to get it done, eh? I still haven't got time to go try out Tormented Demons, but I think I'll check them out too soon. Been spending all my time killing Glacors. However, completing this quest got me this one (awesome). Getting closer to all 80+. After that I finished few other quests, including Fairy Tale pt. 3, Great Brain Robbery, Rocking Out (funny), Enakhras Lament (fun with the camel statue!) and eventually reached requirements to get this one done: That was one of my main goals concerning questing. First of all the XP reward was very generous, the quest was quite funny and it unlocked Glacors, which I've been hunting ever since. I really needed a source for money, charms and effigies at the same time, and Glacors seem to be perfect for it. I've already learned to do it a bit better and I reckon I can kill 35-40 per hour at my best speed. Of course this is up to 15-20 short from what maxed players with maxed levels, gear and complete focus can achieve. I'm happy about it though. Not too stressful yet. I've been planning on getting elite void someday, but can't seem to find motivation to go for it. :) Also got my first drop. Very lovely, shame it was the cheapest boots though, so only yielded 9,5 millions. Other boots sell for 25-35 million. That's pretty much about it. Will be killing Glacors for as long as I possibly can mind now. My goal is to work towards 99 magic (and get 99 constitution at the same time). That is still over 3m magic experience, so it's going to take a while. Hopefully I'll make a decent bank out of it too. More news to come in the future. :grin: ... Hopefully pictures of the boots on the ground.

Maul > CLS for overall usability in all kind of monsters. You might want crossbow if you ever plan to do bosses like Armadyl or Nex. Rigour is often considered as better upgrade than crossbow though. I personally would pick in the following order. Maul Rigour Augury CLS Shields I personally have only rapier though, so I'm not expert. :shame:

I meant planting a fruit tree in the Herblore Habitat area. As far as I know, planting the tree doesn't require any levels - as the area itself doesn't require levels to access. So you're not actually "playing the minigame" but using the fruit tree patch to farm. It should work, as long as you're able to reach the place. I'm not totally sure if it requires levels to reach, but not as far as I can remember. :) However, even skipping one tree you're still looking for decent xp rates. :lol:

Congrats for 1000 views Gregor, good going! :shades: Good job with the latest levels too. My hint for growing trees for farming still stands. One tree can easily give you like couple k's xp at lower levels too. At higher levels getting over 10k experience per tree is very much possible. And using supercompost and seed you don't have to check the trees at all. Only need to claim the xp. Survival rate is still 90%. So basically setting up trees and going back to set up new trees once a day (doing apples and oaks which you can now) could yield like 6,000 or more experience per day with very little effort. When I was doing trees, I used to get over 35,000 experience per day checking them all once (which took me 5 minutes to do), and I didn't even do normal trees at all. Not to mention the lower level trees are cheap as dirt. Actually it's about somewhere up to pineapple trees and willow trees very very cheap. :smile: Like for example, doing 5 oaks (467xp) and 4-5 apples (1199xp) (depending whether you use Herblore Habitat area which might be a bit hard to reach - unless you buy juju spirit bags from there) you could get 467x5 + 1199x4 or 5 =~ 7000 - 8200 xp per day. After you reach level 30, you could do willows and banana trees, which would already be 1456x5 + 1750x4 or 5 =~ 15000 xp per day. The levels would go up very fast and you could still boost those XP ratings by growing orange trees, curry trees, maple trees and upto pineapple trees as soon as you're able. Over 100,000 farming xp in a week, spending 5 minutes on a day with it would be possible even for your levels. Double that after you get around 50s. That's why I said the skill is actually one of the easiest to train. :razz:

Ok, so as I haven't updated the blog in a couple days, yet I have done alot in the game - might aswell update it properly now. So caution, this is going to be a long read. As one of my goals, and currently maybe the most important, is completing all the quests in the game - getting a nice cape, good XP rewards and unlocking all the content at the process - I've been doing quests lately. Alot of quests. Actually I've completed 6 quests since my last update. CAUTION: May contain some very mild spoilers - so don't read if the quest storylines are very important to you! [hide] I started with the quest "Contact!" I remember a while ago almost starting this quest, but moved it on the things-to-do list as soon as I noticed I have to go to the desert. I don't really like desert. I often tend to get lost, run out of waterskins and well.. Die. If not that, I'll just get extremely annoyed being lost all the time and end up teleporting out. Not to mention, that my previous experiences with quests placed on desert are not very pleasant. Desert treasure? However, knowing that I will have to get on it eventually, I just decided to famous F it and venture forward. Contact! is one of the first quests in a long storyline leading up to Do No Evil, which I'm planning to complete in near future. Well, the quest itself wasn't that bad, even though I died once - due to my precious lantern running out of oil or something while I was hanging out at the scarabs nest. A piece of advice - never spend time in a dark scarabs nest, you'll die faster than I can say "gravestone." And talking about gravestones, I have to mention that I've always had my trusty wooden placate -gravestone, which stays up for only 5 minutes. Dying in the middle of nowhere, in a dark lair filled with angry scarabs, is great way to lose your items. With a 5 minutes gravestone that is. However, like a MacGyver I managed to return just pretty much about a second before my backbag and all the other precious belongings would've been gone for good. Thank Guthix, I didn't need to go get meself another dragon defender. At the end of the quest, I had to slay a "dangerous" giant scarab, which basically died as fast as I pulled my shiny rapier out. Heart attack, I guess. Was relieved when the final scroll opened up showing I had completed the quest. Yay, me. One death on the desert wasn't enough for me to call it a day though. As much as I enjoyed finding out about the mysterious scarabs, I was eager to continue with the storyline. Eager to click past over all the talking parts and fast, I mean. I was ready for some scarab hunting. I also got a new weapon - Keris - which is supposedly like the greatest thing ever invented in the fight against scarabs. However, I didn't end up using it much, as I came in to conclusion that my precious rapier was still better. Like really, is there a place where rapier doesn't just shine? The quest was all fun and games until I realised I had to get... a) a goddamn golden triangle from top of an agility pyramid b) 10 trinkets of useless gold pieces from Pyramid Plunder c) 9 bronze helmets - covered with ugthanki dung in the desert ... Actually making fake "antique helmets" was quite fun, until the guy I was trying to trick realised they were fakes. Good fella as he was, he took them anyways. Going to sell them to some more stupid customer. Thumbs up for him. Like before, I still managed to finish the quest and fight the mighty scarab high priest about 5 times. The scumbag vanished like 4 times during the fight, which reseted the whole scene. I almost ran out of supplies, and was ready to curse the existence of all the scarabs and everything that has anything to do with desert - until it finally agreed to give up. I was down to 300 hitpoints and no prayer. =D> After the day in the desert I decided to call it a day. Couldn't really take any more quests. On the very next day, however, I was prepared to be a hero again and save the day at some other place. I soon figured that I hadn't been hanging out with the dwarves in a long time, I decided to take the cart to the Keldagrim and meet my old friend Commander Veldaban at the Black Guard HQ. He told me something about some drunk dwarf telling some drunk stuff (I didn't really read very carefully). So - like usually - it was upto me to figure what the hell was this drunkard thinking. During the quest I grow some hops and brewed some beer, gave the drunk dwarf more beer and heard some stories about something I didn't care. Anyways, It was quite fun and straightforward quest. I like those. Thrilled with finishing the drunken dwarfs story, I decided to continue with the storyline. The next quest, called "Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf" continued pretty much from where the other one ended. At Veldaban. I mean Commander Veldaban. At this quest I got to drive around with some carts, and eventually being hexed by a maging ogre. Darn Ogremagis (anyone played Heroes ever?). I ended up being more drunk than the drunken dwarf I just tried to rescue from the rehab in the last quest. It was funny quest though, especially the end. Me not spoil more, me fair though. So checking up the quest guide I realised that I could go on with the same story line, with another straightforward quest that didn't require tons of preparing with supplies and all that. I hate when first hour doing quest is spent collecting items on Grand Exhange and organising them in your bank. Grand Exhange beats agility pyramids on the desert though. So basically - as much as I understood - there was a guy who wanted to be a king amongst the dwarves and other people who didn't want him to be the king. Then the guy who wanted to be king started doing some nasty things and everybody was like "damn." So basically it meant that I had to run back and forth all around the Keldagrim, doing this and that because dwarves apparently can't do anything themselves. I can't even remember what actually happened in the quest now? I lifted a big rock and gave a pretty flower to a troll called "Pretty Flower." That was quite nice, except the troll didn't like it. I managed to blame the other dwarves for it, so the troll went after them. Poor dwarves, that was one big troll. So eventually a dwarf was crowned as a king and I got the scroll that says I completed quest. I didn't really care much, as I was busy inspecting the rewards I had got. Seriously speaking I know what happened, but I can't spoil too much. Someone might get angry and my blog censored. That no good. After the quest I went to try out some lava flow mining and got bored fast. So after doing some quests, I figured what to do next. I looked at the oh-so-lovely Tip.it quest guide and checked quest "A Void Dance." Ther requirements said I got to have explorers ring 3. "Explorers ring 3, what's that?" I thought and mumbled to the item search. No I really didn't, I do know what the explorers ring is. Right? Anyways, the rest of the day I spent running around Lumbridge doing tasks - looking badass killing rats with oak longbow, messing around with bronze mace and killing cows with fists. Amongst many other things I'm too lazy to list. After a hour of two of doing all kind of nonsense I managed to get Lumbridge diary done, a nice 12k XP reward to be used for runecrafting and a ring that allows me endless amount of teleports whenever I desire cabbages. All in all, it was more fun than I first though. I also completed quest Myths of the White lands (which was a total bore) as a requirement for Lumbridge diary. [/hide] One down! :pray: So after two long days of questing I decided to take small break to figure what good does this questing actually do. I took a piece of paper, my good old calculator and started to count the rewards I had left. To save you the time I went through with this, I just give you the numbers. The last 33 quests will give me total of following experience: [hide] 806,000 any skill 323,000 agility 215,000 thieving 151,000 crafting 113,300 magic 112,000 woodcutting 100,000 any combat skill 95,650 construction 93,500 slayer 78,000 defence 64,100 strenght 59,500 farming 56,500 summoning 54,000 mining 46,850 runecrafting 43,000 smithing 40,000 fletching 33,000 herblore 25,000 constitution 22,000 prayer 20,000 fletching 20,000 ranged 12,000 dungeoneering 10,500 hunter 8,000 fishing 7,000 firemaking 5,500 cooking 4,500 attack ---------------------- = 2,618,900 xp [/hide] That's ALOT of experience! That will get me to 76 runecrafting already. Also I still have about 6 diaries left, which should give me another 1,039,300 experience for runecrafting. That'd get me alone to 82 runecrafting. :geek: So now I'm going to call it a day and get a good sleep. Tomorrow I'm going to tackle a whole new set of quests!

Exactly. I think the problem with the author is the fact that he has been around these forums and this community long enough, and reached a status that is not a "newbie" in F2p. Problem being in the fact, that in this community and forum - most of the scapers have already scaped for years and years, and have levels and gear that could take a person who just entered the game first time - years to get. Of course, if you've seen other players achievements for so long, going through the "newbie" -stage may very well be frustrating. Point is, that the gaming should be adjusted to your own levels, time and dedication. Not by others. I personally feel myself like a newbie at times, even though I've played this game for almost a decade. Actually not just almost, but yes - a decade. The game has so much content and things to try and learn - it might be very frustrating for a person whose goal is to complete everything fast. As the author said himself, reaching the top 250 f2p'er list sounded intimidating. After being close to being at the top - it can be really hard to go back to the bottom again. I personally don't know, if I would or wouldn't be a noob again. It has been so long journey, with the game changing like as much as I have in the process - it's hard to say. For long time scapers the new content came sort of with the levels. There were not dozens and dozens of skills and activities to choose from - the new updates came one at a time. You could usually try all the new things as soon as they were implemented in the game. That way you kept up with the change, and didn't feel like falling out. Everyone who has played enough knows, that getting back inside the game after a long break can be very hard. The game updates fast. And to everyone who are looking through the nostalgy glasses how everything was better back in the "golden days"... I wouldn't say so. If the game hasn't been updating since early stages of RS2 or RSC, I most certainly wouldn't be playing anymore. The fact that RSC has been opened a few times again, and still is deserted like the deserts of Egypt, should tell you enough how much people actually want to play like it was. Just my thoughts. :grin:

Congratulations on 99 Smithing. The skill is amazing and cape is awesome. Was my first 99 skill, about a year ago. :thumbup: Shame the usefulness of the skill doesn't really match with the awesomeness. :razz: