qeltar

Dungeoneering, at least for the next couple of months. ;)

Being a "pure" anything in Daemonheim is extremely ill-advised. Dungeoneering i s a skill that rewards balanced players. If you try going with only a mage setup, you will get wasted by all of the melee and ranged monsters in the dungeons. It is doable, but not practical. Add to that your inability to make runes for the best spells, or to cast the best spells, and I don't recommend it.

Stomp can be annoying, but is very beatable if you use the right techniques. And yes, gatestones are very helpful. I pre-published a full guide to beating Stomp that you may find worth a read.

No, it doesn't -- shades appear to use a magic-based ranged attack as well, and leather armor is much more effective at blocking it, in my experience. As for bosses, protection prayers are effective against few of them. PS My personal "meh" to those who glorify video game no-lifing.

IMO, Verac's is better. You may find this report worth reading.

As a leading voice calling for a beta test program for years now, my position is well-known. Jagex likes to get all hot and bothered about this issue, insisting that it is something they can't do. In that, they are basically implying that they are different from every other software company in existence, which is a bit hard to swallow. The reality is that they just dont wan't to, because of their control and secrecy issues. I mean, this is a company that can't even tell people whom they are charging $125 for an event, where the event will be held. All they need to do is get themselves a small number of experienced, adult players and make them sign binding NDAs -- just like companies in all fields do every day. (Have you ever noticed that when Intel puts out a new chip, there are full reviews of it the same day? The reviewers don't wait in line at Best Buy and then pull all-nighters). There would be a few more details to work out, but they definitely could do just that.

I've used both, and in fact switched from leather to plate and then back to leather. What I've found is that, in general, the plate does better on the mundane monsters, while the leather is usually better for bosses and tougher monsters, except for ones where I'm going to pray anyhow. Sure, I take more damage from level 80 hobgoblins and so forth. But in plate I get severely hurt by those mysterious shades. And there are few bosses where leather isn't superior -- I rarely use melee armor on bosses. I also generally find more ore rocks than bovimastyx in most of the floors I do. There's no simple answer, it's a tradeoff -- and that's as it should be. But for now at least, I'm sticking with the leather. I think the final deciding factor for me was realizing that I get a hunk of katagon plate armor for free on every level but I don't get free leather armor. ETA: The t10 leather body has a -15 magic attack penalty, while the t10 plate has -30.. so they aren't the same. This usually doesn't matter as much as the melee attack penalties, but it is in there. ETA2: After just getting KO'ed by consecutive 300+ hits in a 5:5 large, I'll amend my comments to say that plate might be better on a large floor. ;)

They did a good job of much better balancing the combat triangle in Dun, but ranged is underpowered because the arrows have too low ranged strength. Hopefully they'll fix that. I have a promy spear and a tyrannoleather hide body bound (after having a promy plate). The leather body does give small penalties when meleeing, but I find its combination of ranged boost, lower mage penalties and balanced defence more useful for the same reason the spear is useful -- flexibility. Most bosses, in particular, are much easier to fight in hide.

The reason people have problems with monsters like shades and Lexi -- we're on a first name basis -- is that nearly everyone runs around in big wonking plate armor. High magic defence is very important against these sorts of bosses. With a good leather body and protection from ranged, even the high level shades are not that tough. Lexi can certainly be a pain, and I haven't done him in a 5:5, but again, good magic defence counts for a lot. Trying to have one player kill all the books seems like a good strategy, but it is dangerous for that player as he/she won't usually be around Lexi and won't hear the warning before the barrages start. For Stomp, ensure you let him break rocks with his ranged attack, and use a gatestone in front of one of the lodestones if you aren't able to get it the first time.

But that's a fallacy. And that's why your advice is dangerous.

Because you're making claims about what prices will do over the long run, and that's what happens over the long run: things change. And in particular, areas of the game that are unbalanced, too expensive or dysfunctional get fixed. All it takes is one update to throw all of your claims out the window. Such as the Living Rock Caverns and what they did to gold ore. You also seem to be ignoring the fact that when prices get too high, demand drops and supply increases. It is simply not feasible the dragon bone prices will continue to just rise indefinitely, and it's far from a sure investment by any means.

Not really. For every person who pays more for a raw material, someone else gets more for producing it. Things go up in price, and it also gets easier to make money. The only areas really impacted are ones related to high alch prices and the like. Most of the rest of the impact of it is psychological, not real.

People love to complain about inflation. There aren't really many cases where it really matters all that much, though. It's mostly an overblown issue.

It's a lot easier to find a high level smith to team with and make you one than try to get one as a drop. Exceedingly rare.

You make some good points, but at the core of your reasoning are the assumptions that the supply of bones won't increase, and that bones will continue to remain the best way to train Prayer. Neither are good bets, IMO. I think it is very likely that Jagex will put new and better ways of training Prayer into the game, likely within the next 12 months. This will be done via a minigame, new ways of processing bones, new types of bones, or new sources of existing bones. Why? Because they have shown in the past that they will do this when training skills starts to get too expensive or one-dimensional. And Prayer qualifies on both counts. ETA: Even at today's prices, the opportunity cost break-even point between using dragon bones and big bones is over 500k/hr. If dragon bones get even more expensive, pretty soon players will switch to big bones, and those being F2P, more demand will lead to more supply.

The one and only time I did a 5:5 large, the team "leader" let everyone run around like chickens with their heads cut off, while he continuously whined that he wanted a tier 9 or 10 torn bag to make a BoB. I found one, and took the time to bring it to him. He was goofing around, nothing was organized; the floor was getting done but not quickly. Then suddenly, Captain Chaos decides he's in a big hurry to kill the boss. I tell him I need a minute to get ready, and he marches off with a couple of his friends and just does the boss without me. That's the last 5:5 map I've done and probably will ever do. They can have the fast XP: I don't play games to get stressed out.

I think a lot depends on your playing style. I'd almost rather end up with someone who didn't entirely know what they were doing than one of those "Wall street executive" players who are always in the biggest damned hurry and are constantly telling you what to do to try to get through the level 5 seconds faster. No patience for that BS -- if I feel the need to be ordered around, I can talk to my wife. ;)

Why would a 105 and a 65 even want to be on a high level team? Why not just duo together? The game will adjust to your combat levels.

I think anyone whos willing to spend $125 on a item that offers no benefit, and is there just to look cool and realistically wont be used often except when your standing around showing off DOES need to get some counselling. I mean no one should spend that much money on a worthless item, especially if it brings no benefit. If someone needs to show off in a game, it probably says that there i something wrong with their life outside the game, that or they are extremely addicted not to the game but to the attention they get in the game. You didn't answer the question. If I posted on a thread where someone was talking about spending months grinding to get 200 million XP in a skill, or to get a party hat, saying that I thought they needed to get counselling, everyone would flame me to a crisp. How is spending a lot of money on a worthless item any different than spending a lot of time on a worthless item or a meaningless "achievement"? I guess this is an illustration of how few people understand that time and money are pretty much interchangeable (which explains why people do pointless things like getting 200 million in a skill in the first place). If this item were achieved by spending 250 hours grinding in a minigame instead of paying $125 cash, there would be thousands of players who had it within a month or two. Yet most of those same players would scoff at paying the cash just like people here are, not realizing that they are implying that the value of their time is less than 50 cents an hour. There are people who spend hundreds, thousands or even millions of dollars to collect all sort of things that most people find silly: stamps, coins, artwork, furniture, baseball cards, baseball bats, cars, trucks, flowering bulbs -- you name it. What's the difference? Heck, I think blowing $125 on an e-trinket is silly too, but not as stupid as blowing $125 on getting drunk in a bar, which many people do on a regular basis.

The key to the ferret trapping is to make multiple traps -- people don't realize you can make more than one. Use the special tree that grows in the room. Put them as close as possible to the corners and then just flush it until it goes into one.

I think he's talking about the items in the starting room. They never go above katagon, sorry. :)

Again, you can keep repeating this, but it doesn't make it true for everyone. Some people *are* paying for the flag. You may wish that weren't so, and Jagex may wish that weren't so, but it *is* so. Just like some of the people going for wiffle-bat day at the ballpark aren't there to watch the hometown boys, they are there for the wiffle bat. ETA: Even if Jagex wishes this weren't so, for them not to have been able to predict this would happen is hard to comprehend. Even if Jagex has the *legal* right to not provide this flagstaff -- which I don't necessarily agree with -- that doesn't change anything. This is not a court of law, it's a court of public opinion. As *soon* as Jagex dangled this thing in front of people saying "buy a ticket and get this e-trinket" they gave up the ethical right to tell *anyone* that they were not paying to get that thing.

Maybe you keep repeating this because if it actually *were* true, it would support your position. The problem is that it *isn't* true. They are not giving out a momento to "those who attend the event". They are giving out a moment to *those who purchase a ticket*. They're not the same thing. At all. And the fact that they can change their minds about the item is irrelevant. They can change their minds about anything associated with the event. They could sell tickets for $125 and have the entire event consist of 10 hours of watching old home movies and eating stale chips. That doesn't mean that it would be right, fair, or even legal to do so. It also doesn't mean that because they have the power to not do anything they actually promised on that date, that you weren't paying in part to get those things.

Okay, so you're *not* a lawyer, but you feel comfortable pretending to be one. Whatever floats your boat, I suppose. But you're still not a lawyer. I could do the same, saying that I feel pretty confident that if Jagex advertised a benefit as being tied to the purchase of a ticket and reneged on it, that they could be sued. Which of us is correct? Nobody knows, but the presence of the question nicely tosses your neat little "legality" argument out on its ear. Companies have been sued for less, and the matter of the "gift" versus the "purchase" is not nearly as cut-and-dried as you'd like to pretend. Why is it ridiculous? You're engaging in enough hand-waving here to propel a sailboat. An item that can only be obtained with money gives an advantage to those with money. It is Jagex themselves that said they didn't want money to be a factor in who owns what. So why get pissed off at people who hold them to their word? The argument that it's okay for Jagex to do something that's unfair to poor players because life is already unfair to poor players is nonsensical.

Not only is this utterly beside the point, it's not even necessarily accurate. Are you a lawyer? Somehow, I doubt it. That analogy is too asinine to even bother responding to. The heart of the matter is that Jagex is supposed to be doing this to thank all of their customers. Deliberately doing something so petty and divisive is not justifiable using the "life's not fair" canard.