qeltar

You should not be having that much difficulty with your stats. 70 tries? Ouch. Maybe you should look at some of the suggestions made by players who have had a bit more luck and see if a change in tactics would help? For starters, if you are always ranging him, try meleeing instead.

The problem with mint cakes is not just that they are useless. It is that their rarity is artificial, and that they exist only because of flaws in an existing system. You want to compare them to paper currency? Good idea. Now look at what has happened to the value of every paper currency throughout history. Here's a hint: a century ago one US dollar was redeemable for 1/20 of an ounce of gold. The only reason this thing is rare is that Jagex obviously intended it to be a fun reward from a minigame. At any time, they could decide to make the reward more common, or make it possible to produce it using the Cooking skill, or even make it untradeable. As much as I don't like untradeable items, having rare rewards from minigames be untradeable makes a lot more sense than many of the current untradeable items. Now add to this a couple of other factors. One, over time their GE value will increase, and it will increase exponentially until their real value reaches their street value. At that point, a bunch of people will have a a Homer Simpson moment and realize these things are truly garbage and dump them. Second, a lot more people are starting to do the minigame, in part over this "currency" nonsense. PS This thread is arguably price manipulation. If you own a bunch of these, or have any other interest in them maintaining their value, you should come clean on that.

That initial spike may have been due to merchants, but the overall price rise is NOT. If it were only merchants doing this, the price would have dropped right back down again. Iron ore is produced in too high a quantity for its price to be held up indefinitely by merchants. The real reasons are the silly PvP reward system, and also the introduction of the Living Rock Caverns.

A lot of the blame for this situation lies with the scumbags who run these pyramid schemes, and Jagex for refusing to take any meaningful action to stop them. Let's not kid ourselves, though -- the players who get involved in these often deserve what they get. They are motivated by their own greed, knowingly signing up to be involved in a group that rips other people off, so it's hard to feel too bad if they get ripped off themselves. I recently wrote an article on this very subject, if anyone is interested in reading it: The Grand Exchange Economy, Part I - "We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us". They are both bad, but I don't agree with your comparison or conclusions here. Something being cheaper doesn't always mean it is better for the game -- for every person who wants a cheap item to buy, there's another person trying to sell who is hurt by that low price. Some people have short memories of what it was like trying to earn a few bucks chopping wood or catching fish when the bots were around. Also, merchants are not primarily responsible for the overall inflation in the game. That's a pervasive myth. 1. Bots concentrated on resource items A situation only made possible by the trade limits on the GE, which Jagex refuses to acknowledge or correct for reasons that remain a mystery. A classic example of blaming things on merchants when it doesn't make sense. Torstol seeds SHOULD be worth more than snapdragon seeds -- they are much more rare, and torstol is in very heavy demand. Mod Edit: Please do not double post needlessly, simply take advantage of the edit button. - Rainy_Day

4) They are fools (the players who worship mint cakes, that is, not the cakes themselves) This is nothing more than a bubble, a mass delusion like paying the equivalent of a month's salary for a tulip bulb. It WILL end, eventually, and it won't end well. And the reason for the mint cake mania is not because Jagex is trying to prevent wealth transfer between accounts, but because Jagex's system for doing so is grossly flawed.

Well, I thought that might be what was going on. But I was really giving him the benefit of the doubt that he wouldn't base a monster difficulty comparison even in part on an item worth more than the entire banks of 99.9% of RS players....

And how exactly did you accomplish that? Of course it does. That must be why so many players die several times before killing him, whereas I know of NOBODY who died to the Avatar of Boredom. As opposed to the Avatar, which doesn't even require that you pay attention, and never had any ability to kill you at all? LOL There's an old saying in the world of computing: "Garbage In, Garbage Out". This means simply that no matter how good a program is, it won't produce valid output given invalid input. And so it is here: when you start with that sort of ridiculous premise, it's no wonder you end up making bizarre arguments like this. The Avatar is a monster that you can beat while posting on a forum; if you suddenly had to rush to the bathroom in the middle of the fight, even that wouldn't matter. And you claim this is more difficult than a boss with multiple attacks, who can reduce you to 1 HP, who can kill you in a few seconds if you lag or stop paying attention, and who requires most players to exploit all of their skills and abilities and try several strategies before beating him.

Sorry soma, but your position on the avatar simply makes no sense to me. How can you seriously compare a guy who knocks your HP down to 1 on a routine basis and hits you for hundreds of damage that you need to heal, with a monster whose damage can be completely avoided with a few prayer potions? The only thing that the avatar challenged for me was my ability to stay awake.

If only a third of maxed out players have completed the quest, that's not indicative of a problem with the quest. It shows the problems with a combat system that lets players get high combat skill levels without actually gaining any skill in combat. That's what you get when a high level player gets so-called "experience" for slaughtering chaos druids. The system should force players to fight real challenges to gain experience, and then we wouldn't have the present situation (incompetent whiners expecting Jagex to make things easy for them.) And they aren't considering a nerf, they have flatly said they are not going to nerf it. You're just repeating rumors.

This wasn't just some random comment on a forum thread over there. It was an official statement in their FAQ about the update, written by the same person who always writes them. I highly doubt she was "speaking out of turn".

I don't think anyone would ever put me on any list of Jagex suckups. But for them to flatly say "we are not going to do X" with respect to a piece of game content and then do it anyway -- what precedent is there? Why would they bother? I agree with stormveritas about the decaying avatar, which is annoying, not difficult.

Jagex has flatly said that they would not be nerfing the boss. So either they lied, or Danqazmlp is mistaken.

Yes, it's a problem, but it's your problem. You cannot seriously expect Jagex to design its quests based on the oldest possible hardware? My computer is not exactly a spring chicken and it wasn't an issue. Did you at least play in low detail? The idea that you need very high prayer, herblore or summoning has been dispelled by the many players who have beaten nomad with none of them. I *do* have those levels, but I also finished the quest on my third try with over 20 potions left over. So it wasn't exactly a huge issue. Then you are lacking in combat ability and perseverance. Both can be remedied, but not by just complaining. This doesn't require fast clicking, just smart clicking. Part of questing is solving puzzles, and that's what Nomad is: a combat puzzle. For crying out loud, if he kills you, Jagex gift-wraps a gravestone for you right next to a bank! If you aren't even willing to put forth some effort to solve this, then you haven't earned the rewards.

Well, you're entitled to your opinion about what quests should or should not be, but those opinions are entirely arbitrary. I personally think quests should be utterly devoid of "gopher" type stuff, but that doesn't mean it will happen. This quest has a difficult boss but it is far from being the first one. There are other quests with bosses that are comparably hard *given their requirements*. The highest level requirement for Haunted Mine is *35*. The boss has a combat level of 95, but given his difficulty, it should be more like 150. How many people do you think ended up naked in Lumbridge the first time they tried that guy? No cheesy "gravestone by the bank" there either -- you die, it's all gone.

Everyone who says anything around here gets attacked. It's just the nature of a community comprised mainly of anonymous male teenagers. I don't see anything out of the ordinary here. The entire argument from your side boils down to "this is difficult so make it easier". What sort of reaction do you expect? I would give anyone who took that attitude a hard time, here or in real life. I certainly wouldn't let my kids get away with it if I knew they could do something and they just refused to work at it. This can just as easily be reversed to say that those who found it too hard and want it nerfed are being simple and selfish as well. I've already said I think this is a poor excuse for a quest, because it lacks any storyline and is frankly too simplistic. But there's nothing inherently wrong with making a tough boss even if it's tougher than what has been before. We NEED new challenges in the game, players have been asking for them forever, and Jagex is delivering. Maybe not exactly how you want, but that's life. Be honest, though. How many times have you tried this? Have you even attempted to explore different ways of killing the guy? And how much of this is about the quest versus the stupid cape?

You mean the people who think the world revolves around them keeping their precious silly capes? Couldn't agree more. ;) This is silly. The people who are saying it isn't that big of a deal recognize the realities here: 1. You do not need the maxed stats and other achievements that some claim; there are plenty of people with moderately high stats doing this quest; 2. Those who beat the guy do so generally because they take the time to try different strategies and use the clues that are given; and 3. They understand that any boss that you can try an infinite number of times without losing anything but a few potions cannot be considered that tough a challenge. If you can't beat the guy, try again some other way. Quite the collection of straw men there. I don't hear anyone calling those who can't beat the quest "bad people" or whatnot. But anyone with stats like yours who can't beat this quest *is* lacking in the skills relevant to this aspect of the game. The solution to that is to improve your skills.

Nonsense. RFD was a long, involved quest with plenty of backstory integration and character development. And even its limited storyline was a lot more than this had.

"He's up to something, go find out what it is" -- that is not a storyline. This could have, and should have, been a prequel or an addendum to a real quest.

Whether he tells you to go kill him or tells you to find out what is going on, I think the point is that this quest has no storyline. She's right -- it's not a real quest.

The existence of the stupid quest cape should have absolutely NO influence on quest design. If it does, it should be removed. I'm fed up with whiners who think their precious cape is some sort of an entitlement. If you want the cape, EARN IT.

Actually, I am pretty sure they DID. And even if not, it is implied that anything they make this big a deal out of for such a long time is going to be more than "go downstairs and fight this dude, oh, and if you die, don't worry because you get all your stuff back via this nice (completely contrived) teleporting graveestone". I am not a big quester and even I thought the whole thing was lame. If the point was to give us a tough fight, it could have been done in a much better way.

Most players can make more money and with more enjoyment by doing things in the game rather than speculating. But if you are going to do it, you are usually better off paying attention to consumables than trying to make $ off equipment.

You're basically asking for free investing advice. So the usual rules apply: 1. Those who are good at it aren't going to tell you anything. 2. Those who tell you anything probably aren't good at it. If you want to invest in an item you need to do your homework. If you think something will go up or down, you should have a reason why you believe so. The mere fact that something has gotten cheaper doesn't imply anything about what it will do in the future. Qeltar, who advised members on his private blog to buy Saradomin brews on Sunday. ;)

BTW, anyone who wants to use overloads and brews for this... you need restores also. Overload does not keep your stats maxed -- it just basically "reapplies" the boosts every 15 seconds. If you are mad-spamming brews to heal, and don't use restores, you'll spend most of the fight with your combat stats in the 60-80 range.

He is, and he isn't. Someone not using a quest guide trying to do Haunted Mine for the first time might disagree. And he wouldn't get the benefit of a cheesy gravestone spawn next to a bank.