Yoko Kurama

Not only were there quite a few hidden updates to Barrows/Rise of the Six, but Vorago has been buffed. Because Seismics really need to be made higher; and because let's sabotage our very own new shard system which was meant to lower prices by encouraging participation. What a [bleep]ing joke.

It doesn't help that despite their insistence that he's really a 'noble' demon, that they make him do things that are so blatantly 'evil'. His motto is supposed to be strength through chaos or struggle -- because he thinks that peace makes people stagnant and decadent -- I can dig this. However, then BoL starts, and he just comes and starts trashing the place, until Saradomin comes to stop him. That's not really something newer players will be able to sympathize with. I don't really like Sara, so I went with Zammy in BoL (and he had much cooler armour), but, Zammy did seem evil to me...

I think you are wrong in some respects there: Based on their stats requirements t85 capes ought to trump skillcapes for sure, and last I checked fire/kiln, god and ava were the best cape choices (which still all ought to be worse than t85 options); admittedly they mostly lack lvl reqs but Ava's starts at lvl 50 so even allowing for some stats nudges from the upgrades I wouldn't put it beyond t70 and it is roughly on par with the god and kiln capes which would put them in the same placement. Of course comp will beat them, but that's a given comp is always rebalanced (thus far) to equal all the bests in cape slot. T85 rings again ought to beat the current rings (be that the seers/archer/warrior, 6th age or their imbued counterparts) - the current rings don't even have reqs which make them t1 really, but based on the balancing etc I'd place them at t70 or t75 at best. T85 weapons will be an interesting move, certainly for anyone with t90s they will be pointless, but for anyone still using t80s they will offer an upgrade that may make competing with t90 weapons in bossing a bit more of a level playing field. I mean t85 weapons (depending on what we get) can outdo Royal, Virtus, Zaryte and all the chaotics so for anyone lacking drygore/ascension/seismic they offer potential for a serious boost. I have doubts about all of those things. Will T85 capes trump what might be unofficially t99 capes? Or Fight Kiln/Caves capes which are regarded as reasonably challenging to get (and even trump skill capes for Melee)? Will the rings make imbued useless (which require a substantial 30-40 hour involvement, at least)? I know Sixth Age Ring makes Mobilizing armies useless as is, but at least it was an allegedly GM Quest. Will Jagex finally crash the Nex market, kill dungeoneering, and RCB? Again seems unlikely. So far they have announced thrown 85 weapons. Again, it seems very unlikely that they would support such consequences (based on their past actions).

I will be back for the regions, naturally, but I honestly don't think any of the mentioned rewards will be worthwhile. T85 weapons (thrown?)? Already got Ascensions/Chaotics. T85 Capes? Already got Comp/Skillcapes. T85 Rings? Probably not better than 6th Age Ring...

Why am I not in your teams. Add me. :lol: I already did [we use to Nex/KK] but then I went on a break over the summer, you deleted me and never replied. :(

And here comes 6th shield (another Merciless). The day that just keeps on giving.

Ascension would be definitely preferably but they are at 530-540M. I am using Ascensions lately, but for the first few days I did Dual Virtus. I have seen people do it with Chaotic Staff, but you will need to find a team that will be okay with that.

Just got 5th shield of the day (3 merciless, 1 malevolent, 1 melee). A fun day.

A chaotic staff will work just as well. Heck, once (and only then) someone on my team had dual Ahrim's and he made it work...

Not in all the cases. But even in the cases where your point is true -- it only reinforces what I am saying because in those cases the best gear was so cheap that it was essentially welfare gear cheap. But you still needed to be in the 1% to get any kills. It was so accessible that anyone could do it, but if you couldn't out-muscle whoever else was in the world you weren't getting any kills. That really didn't start to loosen up until part of the way through the Nex era, if not until they released instanced worlds. Sure, gear wasn't an issue, but I'd think that this is a better mechanic than one that fostered a lot of the social problems that you (and other Truthscape transplants, self included) tend to endlessly rant about. :-P World crashing didn't become a problem until about 2009 after the bonus weekends proliferated 96 Herblore/Summoning -- thousands of people got it for 50% price over the course of days. After that, crashing worlds became the norm. Edit: also with the (much welcomed) move towards instances, crashing seems more and more to be a problem of the past.

4 back-to-back shields today. 2 on trip, and another 2 on the one after... And 2 of them were merciless.

Not in all the cases. But even in the cases where your point is true -- it only reinforces what I am saying because in those cases the best gear was so cheap that it was essentially welfare gear cheap.

Yes, and as I mentioned, someone I did this with today did it with dual Ahrims. But this is several days after many have gone through the learning curve, and the crashes in the price have already occurred. I don't doubt that once you have gone through the experience curve you can do this easily. My point was that in the beginning it was about the Seismics and Tectonics and what not... Summoning was very easy to train actually. I got 99 summoning alongside 99 slayer, over the course of a 7-9 months, with moderate gameplay, and I would often use the Slayer points to buy the runes reward so I could Ice burst rock lobsters with Ahrims/Veracs + Staff of Light. Not unreasonable by any means. I did some Waterfiends as well. The slayer drops were more than enough to pay for the secondaries. It wasn't an overnight thing, but it wasn't terribly difficult either. As for 96 herblore (which I got immediately after the overload update, from about 77-99) Not really comparable to today. If you wanted to do it the purely expensive way it was about 100-200M -- there were cheaper but slower ways to get it for much less. It wasn't ridiculously hard by any means -- though against it wasn't a cakewalk either. It's true that rich people have had advantages, but usually after the boss hunt gets going -- so once the loot starts coming into the game, the rich are the first to be able to buy them, but still, early on, there is a parity, everyone starts with the same Chaotic Maul + Void regardless of how much money they have. It's different now that they already have all the T90 gear in the world, so they can just walk in at any boss on day one and dominate. If we want to go back even further, when God Wars came out, I and several of my friends were able to do with complete welfare gear (black dragonhide and rune crossbows for Armadyl, full Verac's for Sara -- and Saradomin and Armadyl were the most expensive of the 4. Just about any gear, such as whip + rune armour for Bandos, and Karil's for Zamorak) and make loads of money. Similarly, if you wanna go back further, the KQ was similarly welfared, easily, with black dragonhide, and/or Veracs, or Mystic armour for the mages. Similarly, barrows could be done with Mystic/Splitbark armour, or Rune armour. The KBD was also very accessible. The current trend is very different from all that.

The drops have mostly tanked, though the kills are very easy at this point -- not much else to say. The update was basically designed so that the super wealthy people with lots of money could walk in with their seismics, make lots of money (billions), after which everything else crashed as everyone else learned, and then it became a normal boss hunting activity with profits in line with the other things (KK/Nex, etc.). Mind you, once you get the hang of it, this is a very, very, very fun activity. The learning curve is very steep though, and it does require TS/Skype at a level previously unheard of RS (though after a while you might be able to get away with not having them)... This is different from Nex and KK in this respect. When Nex was released, the best weapons and armours to kill her with, chaotics, Armadyl, Bandos, Dragon Claws, DFS, etc. were widely available so just about any average high level could go there and make lots of money. Similarly, when KK was released, you could still kill very efficiently with Chaotic Maul + Void -- the bosses were very egalitarian. Any high level could walk in and have a very good shot at it. This boss however, was different, early on, it was all about the Seismics/Ascensions/Tectonic (as the extra DPS really helped with smoother kills early on the learning curve) -- it was different in that regard. I expect this trend will continue with future bosses -- where highly wealthy players will have a very significant advantage. On an unrelated note, I did go with a non-elite team just for the hell of it (all my teams up till this point had been elite), where my partner had full virtus and dual Ahrm's (wand + book), and he was doing surprisingly decently on the kills.

I have gotten that a dozen times. ------- Also, today's rotation is even better than yesterday( and that one was pretty good as well).

Ahrim/Dharok/Torag, and Karil, Verac, Guthan.

Best rotation in days. Got plenty of back to back kills, a shield drop and plenty of energies.

I can get the kills, but to get to this point, I have had to Skype with people, elite people (not necessarily always Seismic gear) for days. I have NEVER had to Skype before for anything RS related (and I have done every boss in the game, as well as my share of staking). Then after I Skyped, I basically had to suffer through various other people's deaths until everyone on the team was comfortable with each other and the current rotation. Sometimes this person DC's, black screen over there, this person doesn't want to Skype, that person's mic stopped worked, blinked this happened that happened, Karil's HP is down to 100, he teleports away into Bomb mode, Ahrim's HP is down, he teleport aways, got all my side killed, but other side unfortunately dies with all their brother at under 5K, and they won't teleport to our side, there's a multiple spinners + portals -- basically a very steep learning curve. It's too much effort to do this every single time, particularly when the rotations change every day, and the loot is crashing. It's getting to a point where I can safe it up at Nex all day and probably make as much money -- that shouldn't be happening. Barrows requires so much more effort, the reward should be proportional. This is great for someone like iTrolledU or whoever who can stream for 20 hours at a time and has a familiar and old team at his beck and all at any given time. Most of us don't have that time, or people we can get together at any moment. So the setup time is just too much. This needs to be made more random friendly. I should be able to get away with this reasonably well with a team of forumers, not have to give them a 2-3 hour lesson every day on Skype micromanaging their stuff.

So I have gotten dozens of successful kills at this point, and probably been on that many teams as well, that is to say, I have given this update more than a fair share. All I can is that it is a complete letdown. The mechanics are just too ridiculous, too annoying, and at times too difficult. I have been able to get kills, so this is not whining on a personal level, but I have seen other teams there for days that haven't gotten a kill. Especially if you don't have Seismics/Ascensions, the extra damage really helps. Just a ton of stupid stuff from mechanics, sometimes you blink and it's an instant KO, other times, you're near the end and they start doing lame glitches, and other times, it's just too many specials. It's completely idiotic that there are teams who have been there for days without a kill -- they keep getting close, but each time one tiny variable just goes wrong -- this whole thing is like betting at a casino. They decided to throw every [bleep]ing thing to piss people off they could into one update (without considering how they might all interact), it's just a mess. Bosses should be skillful, not require a game of pure luck. Some of these mechanics simply should not be allowed to occur simultaneously. There have been times where we killed the brothers (all of them), and because of glitches we didn't get any loot and they all re-spawned... It's clear that this update was made to line the pockets of streamers like Dardan and iTrolledU. Next time instead of releasing something like this and wasting everyone's time, maybe they should just directly deposit the 5-10B or whatever into their bank instead. It makes all their hype all the more ridiculous, about how this would be a reasonable boss much more do-able than Vorago -- it isn't. The old adage that they don't play their own game is certainly appropriate here. For the majority of high level players, all this update will mean is throwing away hundreds of deaths, and thousands of supplies for a few kills. I was able to get away with it because I did it with elite teams that I skyped with and did it for a few day, it was a very steep learning curve. Anytime you have to change people, it messes up. When there are dozens of teams that get maybe a handful of kills for a day's worth, you know the boss is designed wrong. What a waste of time.

Most of the teams I am with are good, it's just some bad luck that messes everything up. Some combination of multiple specials. It's just completely retarded. Like I said, you can do the whole kill perfectly and get [bleep]ed by one thing.

It's usually not that simple. I always hug the walls, however, sometimes the spinners drive my away. And of course I use P Necklaces. I have gotten a lot of kills. Usually it's my teammates that fall to those things. Forum teammaters; whatcha gonna do?

Okay, I have done this quite a while now. And some of the mechanics are just [bleep]ing ridiculous. Like being able to get hit with bombs from the other side. Or having bombs and and then running into Ahrim's fire. Or bombs + spins. It's just downright stupid. You do the whole kill perfectly, and you have the misfortune of getting bad specials from the brothers and instant KO. Half the luck factor needs to be nerfed. The boss should be a skillful thing, not just "be lucky not to get caught in two specials" thing. It's getting really annoying now.

Karil's bomb alone is extremely easy to avoid, especially if you're all on Skype/TS/whatever. It's only when OTHER stuff happens with Karil that sometimes it becomes silly. So like I surged away from a bomb and JUST then, Ahrim starts firing up and I land in the KO spot.

The thing with this boss is, that you will eventually get pretty good and know all the tactics -- however, it has so many things that are annoying, that even on a good day and a slight error will mean you're dead. It definitely needs a nerf to be less forgiving -- not a major nerf, but just enough so that if you make a mistake that you should be able to live. I only say that here because on most other bosses (like Nex), even though they might some attacks that have KO abilities, usually you can predict it, and there's only one, but in this new boss you have to memorize, accurately predict and evade several attacks. I can certainly get bosses at this kill and I have but a lot of it is just annoying. For instance, I have gotten times where Karil was doing his bomb, Ahrim was doing his fire thing AND something was spinning. Even the best PVMers can't escape out of this situation. What's a person to do? Other times, I was in the shadow realm, but I was down back into the main game just as there were spins/bombs. So it definitely needs minor tweaks to get rid of situations like that. They shouldn't be able to use like 3 KO abilities with very long range simultaneously. Then the run back after the kill, there have been times where someone got trapped in obstacles (can't move at all, no mining, no jumping over it, no nothing). That also seems incredibly stupid and a cheap way to rob someone of their energies... At the same time, despite all the difficulties, the drops are very common and they are all crashing hard. This new update has the potential to be like the old barrows: very good gear that's reasonably cheap and affordable. So definitely a positive.

Just got quite a few kills today (first day, only did like 4 tries last night). No shields though.