Punitive_D

Easily Zezima, and you can prove it for yourself. Go to some crowded area, like the GE, and shout OMG! ZEZIMA'S in EDGE THIS WORLD! Watch people stream to Edge. Then try the same thing using any other player's name. No question, Zezima is THE Runescape celebrity. The only thing that compares is when a JMod shows up in game.

I assume they want the outcome to turn purely on superior combat skills and not on things like superior gear, pots, etc.

Probably tracking down little things in the game that I never have done -- like getting the maximum chompy hunting reward!

I've found this rarely to be a problem. I keep the things that I frequently need. And if I don't have just the right thing and can't get it right away, I make do with a close substitute. Almost always if I put in an offer for max overnight, I get the thing. Half these people who complain that they can't buy aren't willing to pay max. Stop being so cheap. Half just can't bear to wait fifteen minutes for their offer to go through. Stop being so impatient. It is true that merchers drive prices up and down. Ordinarily, it makes no difference to me because I generally buy things to use them, not for resale. But I sometimes take advantage of the merchers -- if I see something moving, I might jump on board. Gotta be careful there, though, cause if you get greedy, you can get burned. I lost five mil on zammy stoles one time because I got greedy. Everything about this game is a competition. Some use the GE to compete for money. That's part of the game. If you don't want to be subject to the price swings generated by the competition, then you can either (1) keep the things you need on hand, or (2) develop the skills to make the things you need yourself. But if you are begging (literally) borrowing and stealing just to get enough to buy some expensive item at the minimum, and then become disappointed because the price keeps running away from you, stop complaining and start playing smarter.

The author of this thread is upset that there's something in game that he can't get by grinding. Sad, really. There are in game benefits to grinding (lots of them), but I don't like to grind, so I'll never have a skillcape. I can live with that. There are in game benefits (only a few) to longevity. So a few old timers have scythes (which are really cool) and bunny years (not so cool) and a few other things like that. I can never get those. I can live with that. I honestly think, dude, there's something wrong with you because you can't live with that. It's that way in life, too -- whoever said you can have whatever you want if you just work hard enough lied. No amount of grinding will put you in a time machine so you can get a scythe. There will always be someone richer than you. The sooner you learn to live with that, the happier you'll be. And while you are indeed an impressive clicker, there will always be a zezima out there who clicks just a little more. If you enjoy collecting capes that show how much you've clicked, then do it! Enjoy it! But why deprive someone else of the joy of showing that they've played longer than anyone else or that they've amassed more gold than anyone else, or whatever? Runescape gives us many ways to compete and many ways to develop our online personas. You should revel in being a beast clicker and let everyone else revel in doing whatever they like.

It's been days since this event -- obviously, there isn't going to be a rollback.

Our society really has devolved. Naked envy now can parade as a virtue, and some take it seriously. So the early holiday events didn't turn out as jagex planned -- that does not mean that they turned out badly. Jagex fixes things when they think they have turned out badly, and they have not "fixed" this, so I think it's safe to assume that Jagex doesn't think that this has turned out badly. The poster here takes jagex as an authoritative source -- well your authoritative source permits rares. Live with it and stop trying to fight the gods of runescape, as you call them. In reality, Jagex stumbled onto unanticipated game content with rares. The collection, trading and merchanting of rares is a big part of the game now. It's good. It was not planned, but there's always room for serendipity. Jagex knows a good thing when they see it, and rares are good. That does not mean that everyone will enjoy rares. Most aspects of runescape are competitive. That means there will be winners and losers. There are winners and losers with rares. Apparently you are a loser. Stop whining and find something that you can win. There is plenty of low level content on runescape. I don't like grinding, so I don't have a skillcape. But it would be pure envy for me to say that nobody should have one. I usually can't sit at the pc for hours at a time, so I don't have a firecape (yet), but it would be pure envy for me to insist that others who can should be deprived of their capes. Hey, I want an elysian shield and can't afford one -- Jagex should give us all one! How lame! Get over your envy. Play the parts of the game that you enjoy and at which you can succeed. If you don't like the rares game, don't play it. But please stop dressing your envy up in respectable moral garb. It doesn't look good on you.

Joining a merching clan probably is the best way to make money, but I'm not interested in that. I've made hundreds of millions in Runescape, and I've found that the best way is to do what you enjoy. Every newb wants to know how to make money fast, but there's no easy money in Runescape. The only way to make money is to do something and stick with it. And the only way you'll stick with it is if you enjoy it. For example, I've known scores of newbs who decided they wanted a visage drop (not so valuable anymore), so they started killing black drags. They swore that they wouldn't stop until they got the visage. Well, sooner or later, boredom overwhelms them and they give up. I, on the other hand, enjoy slayer and enjoy the variety of assignments that I get. I've killed thousands of dragons, but not all in a row trying to get a visage. And, guess what, I've had a visage and four d legs from drags. I didn't set out to get that, but I got them while doing what I enjoyed doing. Another way to make money is runecrafting. If you can craft double nats, you can get very rich in runescape. But the training required to get to that runecrafting level is just brutal. Honestly, the only people who are likely to do it are people who like runecrafting anyway. So my take on this is that the best way to get rich in runescape is to do what you enjoy. You'll eventually get more skilled at it and probably find that you earned some gold along the way. Even if you don't get rich, at least you've done something that you enjoyed, and isn't that what gaming is supposed to be about after all?

I'm tending to think that WGS was not the big quest. One possibility to consider would be a sequel to slug menace. Proselyte armor has been around for a long time. We are due for another promotion from Sir Tiffy. New armor with rune defense stats but prayer bonuses would be HUGE. Could this be it?

I've considered this many times because the drops are so bad, but the xp is pretty good. I think next time I'll break out the old cannon.

Already have that in two ways -- Varrock armor and in the fifteen minutes following the meteorite random.

I would help craft laws, if needed, but I suspect that I won't be needed.

$15k

This is why revs stink, imo: They're irrational. Pkers are rational. They risk something, so they don't attack you for no reason. Back in the day, when I went clue hunting in wildy, I wore worthless stuff that offered some protection. I carried a dds. It was obvious to everyone that no decent drop would be obtained by killing me. Plus, nobody could see how much food I might be carrying. So the calculus looked like this: A pker could attack and maybe kill me with no upside gain. But because I wore some protection, carried a dds and might be carrying food, there was plenty of downside risk. Bottom line: I never got attacked. That's because pkers are rational. Revs, by contrast, have nothing to lose. They don't care if they die. They're not out for profit. You can't deter them. You can only fight or run. Fight is a waste of time because their drops stink. I think that revs would be better if they did a quick calculation of what you're wearing and attacked only if it would be worthwhile to kill you. That's what pkers did. Also, their drops really need improvement. If revs were worth hunting, wildly would be a much more interesting place.

The end of unwanted randoms!

Hunter -- fun, varied, useful and decent money.

I think that what was unusual about this event was that you really had to do only one very simple thing -- find jack (and "defeating" him makes two things, I guess). Most other events involve either doing one thing several times (like bowling for chocolate) or a little series of things. With this one, once you found jack, you pretty much were on auto pilot. I'm not really complaining -- I'm just saying that it felt a little different. Another thing that I noticed is that this event was not as well integrated with the accompanying quest as the Halloween event was. With the Halloween event/quest, you could pretty much do them simultaneously. These were almost entirely separate.

I think this can be a useful tool in analyzing which skill is easier. Here's another way: Assuming that players are rational maximizers of their own benefit (i.e. promote their own ease), couldn't you just count how many of each sort of cape there is out there? The more of a particular cape that exists, the easier that cape is to get (apparently). Does anyone keep track of how many 99's there are of each skill?

It would be interesting to know how many people can wear quest capes right now compared to how many can wear the other skill capes. I know that I haven't been able to wear the quest cape since rocking out because I don't want to train up smithing. Jagex could set up a mechanism for tracking this, and I wish they would. In fact, I would like a page in the KB that would allow us to check how many of each cape can be worn at any given time -- this would go a long way, imho, toward resolving these incessant arguments about which capes are more prestigious. The more rare a cape is, the more prestigious it is. I just wish it were easy to tell which are the most rare.

Runecrafting is tempting since it is such a HUGE PAIN to train. On the other hand, runecrafting, unlike some other skills, actually has a little payoff as you train it up. That's a tough tradeoff to decide -- pain v. money.

I haven't seen any significant discussion of this yet, and think it warrants separate discussion. Usually when I get to choose a skill for an xp reward, I don't think much about it. I throw it on something like construction or runecrafting, whatever I feel like at that time. But this requires some thought. This much XP at one time on a skill of choice could be a game changer. And the analysis can be pretty complicated. Of course, we have to think about which skill or skills to boost, but there's more to the analysis than that. Do we put it all on one skill, or spread it out? (Does it let you put it all on one?) And we must keep in mind that, if we put it on our lower skills, it can affect the way TOG works going forward. After all, that much xp on a lower skill could keep that skill out of TOG territory for quite some time. Does it make more sense to dump this xp on skills that we hate to train? Skills that are expensive to train? Skills that are just plain hard to train? Is there some skill or skills for which this kind of xp lump could allow a normal player to reach a particularly crucial level? I think this could be a very rich discussion!

Excellent advice! I'm not in the ph market -- don't have enough money. But I do buy and sell things in the 20m and below range, and knowing that people are out there manipulating prices, I apply one simple rule to stuff that I buy with an eye toward selling -- I never buy anything if I'd be totally bummed if I had to keep it forever. If you want to be a real merchant, you better join a group that has the power to manipulate prices. Otherwise, you're better off buying what you like, selling it if it goes up, and buying again if it goes back down. I can't tell you how many people I see begging me to take items off their hands because they sold everything they had to get it, and now the price is crashing. Don't be that guy!

I happen to have a visage at the moment, but I don't have the level to smith the dfs.

Hopping can be a huge waste of time. Sometimes you never find an empty world. And if you do, someone else will show up soon. That's why I just try to find a world where there are enough monsters to reasonably share. If the other guy cooperates, I leave his monsters alone. If he doesn't, I compete with him. If he gets all the kills, I hop. If I get all the kills, I figure he brought it on himself. Another point is that if you try doing a few quests, new venues open up to you. I always kill greaters in the cage at the ogre dungeon. There's more than enough to go around in there. I just get a crystal bow and slaughter away -- insanely fast ranged xp. Most newbs don't even know that cage exists.

This particular topic has not be posted at this time of year before because we didn't have the GE before. I would expect that the GE would cause prices to remain more stable. Prices move drastically when it's impossible to buy or sell. The GE makes the market more efficient so that it's almost always possible to buy or sell. Still, prices of all holiday items are up right now. I've sold everything already. I'll buy again after the holidays. Btw, to the original poster, don't be discouraged by the rantings of those who wish they could think about this topic but can't afford the items.