qeltar

Well, I'm sorry if you feel I've misinterpreted what you wrote. Perhaps you can explain it a bit more clearly for me. You seemed to be playing down the differences between solo and team play, while I (and pretty much everyone else) know they are very substantial. They do? Why? It gives worse stats than a promethium platebody, and binding both armor items mean you have no bound weapon. People do this? Not that I have ever seen. It was just an example anyway. There are many other items that also never get bound because the system makes binding them a bad idea. They go to waste. You kill them at the end of the floor, so if nobody is going to bind them because the binding system is stupid, what is the point of having them be a "source of t11 items" that almost never get used?

That's simply false. There's really no more to it than that -- you're wrong. Sorry. Good team Dungeoneers can get over 50k XP/hr and no soloer can get anywhere near that. This isn't a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact. Now as *I've* said before, I'm okay with teaming giving more XP than soloing (even though I hate teaming). But there is absolutely no doubt that teaming is a *lot* faster. This *is* a matter of opinion, and you're entitled to yours. But I think the current system is very poorly thought out and implemented. When a team kills a level 500+ deep-floor boss, someone gets a primal plateskirt and nobody even *thinks* about keeping it, something is seriously wrong. Pretty much all of the special boss drops go to waste. Nobody is ever going to bind a primal pickaxe or celestial hood or whatever. You get them at the end of the floor and they're gone 30 seconds later. Why even bother having them? It's poor design, plain and simple.

Well, we are discussing future dungeoneering changes. I think this line of discussion is relevant enough to be continued. Okay. Well, I explain my views and ideas further in an article on my blog. I didn't want to post that here for fear of people thinking I was trying to get blog readers, but it's really too long to cut-and-paste here without being disruptive. Alex, feel free to send me any suggestions/criticisms privately, though I don't think I can do anything about the complaint you already mentioned. :)

You get a tiny fraction of the XP you would get otherwise, and NO tokens. Also, solo players are supposed to be able to do medium dungeons, which is completely infeasible with no save ability. My hope is they will implement this once saving is put in.

The issue with binding is simple: there aren't enough slots. I don't consider this a problem because it makes the skill "too hard", but rather because it makes binding very bland. Because most players never get more than two slots, nearly everyone binds a spear/maul/2H and a platebody. Everything else goes to waste, and it's really boring. Most boss drops have a lifespan measured in seconds, and nearly all of the special Slayer items last only part of one floor if they even get picked up at all. I have a proposed solution that this dev blog finally motivated me to write up, but this is getting off-topic so I'm not going to get into it here.

Some nice looking stuff there. They do still need to deal with binding, however.

Odd that you are having so much trouble with what is generally a fairly simple boss. Though the level 230 version (I've gotten it too) can be tough. You may find my boss writeup helpful. But some quickie advice for those who don't want all that detail.... 1. As Omali said, melee armor and prot/maged works well. So does ranged armor with prot/ranged. 2. Use a beast of burden. Fill it with food. That alone will help a great deal. Remember you can also grow potatoes and mushrooms and combine them with fish to make much better healing items. 3. You're level 50 Dun so you should have a weapon and armor bound, no? 4. Drop a gatestone in the combat spot so you can get back quickly before it heals up.

Rocktail is the best reliable source of money, even with living minerals as expensive as they are now. But if you are patient, you can actually earn more fishing eels in the caves...

I also have detailed guides to basic and advanced mith dragon maging. These are pre-SOL but should still be mostly valid.

LOL, was afraid someone might see that. Haven't posted on RSOF in months. Serves me right. At least the J mod's response was decent.

Rosanante1, I wasn't calling you a "liar" any more than you were calling Anim7 a liar when you challenged his/her claim. It may take you 60+ minutes to clear a solo dungeon. I dunno what you're doing for all that time -- that averages out to about 5 minutes *per room*. Still, that is not even remotely representative of the time actually required by most players.

I'll do some more testing at some point. But I think you are underestimating the impact of rushing a dungeon. It's not just the modifiers that get knocked down -- the base and prestige XP are also affected. And if you're rushing the high-numbered floors, then that means you are likely also rushing the low-numbered floors. You have to average all of that together, and the net result is going to be a rather pitiful XP rate. The only effective way to do this skill without teaming all floors is to solo-rush the low floors and then either do teams for the high-numbered floors, or attempt to maximize XP per floor when soloing. Otherwise, you're mostly spinning your wheels.

All I want to know is if they fixed flagholding. If not, the rest really doesn't matter much IMO.

You can average 8 minutes if you are rushing, sure. This also means you give up a lot of XP, though. And yes, since XP is based on prestige, there is no logical reason to believe XP rates won't go up significantly with the second batch.

IMO, no, even if it is 20%. It's not a bad item but there are far better places to spend your tokens.

No, you don't. At least, not on a complexity 6 dungeon where you are trying to do the dungeon properly (not skipping rooms or skipping every monster.) There are bosses that can take close to 5 minutes by themselves to kill solo. Even some of the puzzles can add 2-3 minutes to a solo floor. And then add to that killing regular monsters, picking up and running keys around, ensuring you have enough food for the boss, etc. I've been through this numerous times with people, and when they actually stop and time themselves, they realize they are not getting the numbers they think they are.

I would challenge that statement as complete and utter tosh! Are you one of those who runs around just opening doors? It can take several minutes to finish the boss. My CB level is 20 higher than yours and you say you can do it 70 minutes quicker. Do me a favour, dont post nonsense. There's a natural human tendency to exaggerate how much time it takes to do things, biased towards whether the person feels they can do it quickly or slowly. Most people notice more the attempts that support their theories and less the ones that do not. They then extrapolate these "perfect" or "worst case" examples and claim them to be averages. This is how you get some people saying it takes 10 minutes to do a C6 solo dungeon (which is false) and some saying it takes 90 minutes (also false).

Actually, I agree that for the lower floors there isn't much difference because of the overhead and hassles. In fact, in my guide (see sig) I recommend that players who don't like teams solo floors 1-25 or 1-30 on complexity 1 to get them over with quickly. But that assumes using teams for the larger floors. Without that, your XP rate suffers dramatically. It's not my favorite skill but it's certainly no worse than several other skills. No, you don't. You can just do a run when you log in after it's been a while. There's no need to try to be super-optimal about it. Again, only if you're in a big hurry. If you're smart about it, Farming is one of the most profitable skills.

Yeah, actually, it is. And I say that as someone who prefers to solo.

Jard, You make some good technical points. But I think you *vastly* underestimate the non-technical importance of RS being a browser-based game. The portability and universality of the game have been major factors in its success, and changing to a downloadable model would be, IMO, a risky move that would cost them far more customers than it would gain.

Herbs and wood are currently the best. Full table, updated daily

Odd that they were so cryptic; the instructions on their site seem clear enough: The main reasons they want the items properly packaged are: 1. They don't want whatever is wrong with the drive made worse. They refurb these drives. 2. They want to keep track of problems that aoccur with various models and don't want shipment damage to complicate this. 3. Some large percentage of "defective" drives are perfectly fine.

What you seem to be missing is that for some people, there never *was* any "fun aspect". What's "fun" is entirely personal. Some people enjoy Dungeoneering, but many are just doing it to get the levels or rewards. And for them, concentrating on the deeper floors is what makes sense. Same thing with respect to different ways of rushing the lower floors. I find C1 rushing on the lower floors infinitely more enjoyable than trying to find 4 non-clueless people to do low floor numbers with, then watching as the team breaks up because some people leave, then getting more people, ending up with some idiot who doesn't know what he's doing, some guy quits in the middle, etc. I'll save the team hassles for when it really matters -- large, high-numbered floors.

I figure with the pool of people tif has, someone might at least have a suggestion. No need to be so cynical. That's not cynicism: it's wisdom and common sense. Take your GF to the doctor.

Thanks for the kind words. My tests shows 95 per hour is all that is practical so I'm not sure where you're getting 1 M+ per hour.. though if you are able to kill them that fast, that's great. :)