BlimpyboyJr

OBSERVATIONS 1. The most common charm drops (by far) being reported are GOLD. 2. This a very expensive skill to train - even discounting the "main ingredient", the pouches, and the effort involved in getting the charms, you're looking at a bare minimum of well over 38M gp JUST FOR THE SPIRIT SHARDS. 3. Alot of these summoned creatures have limited abilities - most of their special skills basically amount to paying money for an occasional extra "special attack" on a per-use basis. Sooner or later, the most desirable summoned creatures will be the ones that can be used on a regular basis for everyday activities, most notably the combo Attackers/Beasts of Burden. 4. Thus, it follows, to keep costs down and ability to keep creating new pouches up, you want to concentrate on things that: a. Have a high ratio of XP to spirit shards, b. Use gold charms, and c. Are useful everyday and will have a demand on the GE that will want to buy your supply of pouches. Based on that systematic approach, I evaluated the summoning creatures and came up with the following levelling plan: THE PLAN Levels 16-24: Granite Crabs (gold charm, iron ore, 7 shards, 21.6 XP) These aren't going to be very useful in a fight. However, they give over 3 XP per shard, the best XP bang for your buck that you're going to find for the next 10 levels. And the main ingredient being an iron ore makes these very easy to make. Levels 25-39: Spirit Kalphite (blue charm, potato cactus, 51 shards, 220 XP) These also aren't going to be very useful in combat, and the 2 extra items they'll carry for you as a beast of burden are hardly worth the effort. However, they give 4.4 XP per shard and finally allow you to start using those blue charms that have been building up in your bank. Potato cacti are easy to pick up in the kalphite lair. Levels 40-51: Bull Ants (gold charm, marigold, 11 shards, 52.8 XP) These won't really help you in a fight, but they'll carry 3 items back to your bank for you, meaning you can bring them on slayer or monster hunting tasks for extra inventory space. They give nearly 5 XP per shard. The hard part is going to be getting a hold of all those marigolds - start farming them now! Levels 52-65: Spirit Terrorbird (gold charm, 12 shards, raw bird meat, 68.4 XP) Karamthulu Warlord (blue charm, 144 shards, fish bowl, 510.4 XP) Terrorbirds might help you a bit in combat and will also carry 4 items back to your bank. They give over 5 XP per shard and carry more than Bull Ants, and the bird meat ingredient is alot easier to get (a use for your hunter skill!). At level 58, you could start using your blue charms to summon the Karamthulu Warlord, which looks like a very good combat companion. It gives only 3 XP per shard, though, meaning Spirit Kalphite are still a better training option. You just might like these in combat, though, and the fish bowl ingredient is very easy to come by using your crafting skill. Levels 66-99 Barker Toad (gold charm, 10 shards, bloated toad, 87 XP) Arctic Bear (gold charm, 14 shards, polar kebbit fur, 93.2 XP) Addy Minotaur (blue charm, 144 shards, addy bar, 668.8 XP) Spirit Dagannoth (crimson charm, 1 shard, dagannoth hide, 364.8 XP) It gets a bit complicated here, and by this point you won't really need a guide anyway. But these three seem to give the best bang for the buck, with decent combat help thrown in as a bonus (get your bloated toads in the Feldip Hills). The barker toad is a very cheap alternative at 8.7 XP per shard. But the cheapest seems to be the Spirit Dagannoth, assuming you can lay your hands on dagannoth hides (Waterbirth Island) with relative ease (if you're buying them, though, there are much cheaper training alternatives). Make some addy minotaurs with your blue charms if you've got the addy bars lying around. Arctic bears won't give you quite as much bang for the buck as barker toads, but make a few just to break up the monotony. Get your polar kebbit fur in the ice plateau hunter area. Important Note Regarding Charms: There is a great use for crimson charms at level 82, but I'd hold off on using them at all until then. You shouldn't use the green to level at all - they offer far too little XP for the price. I'd recommend holding onto them until much later in your Summoning career, as there are some great uses, but they're not going to help you level very quickly. Scrolls It won't give you much in the way of extra XP, but for certain summoned creatures, converting your pouches into scrolls to use their "special moves" looks like it may be worth it, especially if you're going to end up just tossing out your extra low-level pouches anyway. None of these are immensely useful, but they're a way of making the best out of something that might otherwise be completely useless. Here's the best of them: Gathering Specials Use these specials and keep these familiars refreshed while alching, woodcutting, or doing some other standing around-type activity: Spirit Spider - produces a random number of red spider eggs (use his specials and keep refreshing him ) Beaver - chops 3 extra logs (use the special while woodcutting) Macaw - produces herbs (another standing-around activity bonus producer) Spirit Cobra - converts eggs (maybe even chicken!) into cockatrice eggs Combat Specials Summon these creatures and use their specials while training slayer in multi-combat areas like Kalphite lair or dagannoths or in multi-combat minigames like Castle Wars or Fight Pits: Granite Crab - boosts your defense Cockatrice - drain opponent's combat stats (though the effects are probably marginal) Spirit Jelly - drain opponent's attack Karamthulu Overlord - up to 16 damage Barker Toad - up to 18 damage Arctic Bear - up to 11 magic damage and stuns Granite Lobster - up to 14 damage and drains opponent up to 5 defense Praying Mantis - Binds, damages, and drains prayer (castle wars!) Spirit Dagannoth - up to 18 range damage and stuns All Minotaurs - decent damage and stun Energy Boost Specials Bull Ant - restores run energy (use in place of energy restore potions while cluing or even creating pouches - lol) Spirit Terrorbird - +2 Agility and restores run energy (same thing as bull ant, unless you have need of the agility levels) Have fun summoning!!! Blimpy

Thank you all for your support. :

Thanks for your support.

I wish it were that simple, but even the licensing aspect allows room for RWTs to exploit this, and the only means that Jagex will have to police this is automatically flagging and manually reviewing all significant wealth transfers. Anything involving the prospect of Jagex staff having to commit time to investigating, documenting, and banning accounts manually goes against the concept of what they're trying to accomplish. The fact is, the wilderness is huge, and it's very simple to find an unused corner in which to do a RWT. I'd focus my suggestions on things that have EXTREMELY difficult-to-implement exploits available, if any at all.

WELCOME First, an introduction (feel free to skip this section if you want to move on to the meat of the thread). I have recently quit as a Runescape member, as a result of the Recent Updates. I am not a true PKer (I only ever did it on my free account and pretty infrequently), a true merchanter (only a dragon long here or a berserker helm there), or a true staker (I never staked once). What caused me to leave was a fundamental lack of quality assurance, customer service, and (frankly) respect which has been evidenced by Jagex in the last 45 days. Their recent updates, including the Grand Exchange, Duel Arena and Tournaments, and Wilderness Changes are inherently flawed in many respects, and although their stated intention was not to eliminate aspects of gameplay without providing a replacement, they have failed in that regard many times over. I and many other players went onto the Runescape Recent Updates Forum to plead our case. After many long weeks of keeping several suggestion threads alive and seeing little (if any) response from Jagex, I ultimately decided that I had to ÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬Ãâ¦Ã¢â¬Åvote with my feetÃÆââââ¬Å¡Ã¬ÃâÃ

Someone stated earlier in this thread that one would have to be insane to crack open a christmas cracker, because they'd lose a ton of money doing so. I submit to you that anyone who FAILED to crack open their christmas crackers before Jan 2, 2008 are going to be very very sorry about it someday. The way the cracker works, you "use" it on another player and ONE of you gets the party hat, while the other gets a random item (worth like 1000 gp or less). Prior to the update, you could "use" your cracker on a friend and, if he were the one to receive the P hat, he could trade it back to you. Since 1/2/08, however, that kind of transaction is now impossible. Christmas crackers are not wieldable - the only way to show off the fact that you have one is to trade it. Personally, I can't imagine why anyone ever considered pumpkins, easter eggs, or christmas crackers (unless you count the possibility of breaking it immediately open, I mean) to be viable investments - there's simply no benefit to owning them, unless you feel like going to extraordinary lengths to attempt to flaunt your wealth. Why bother with something like that when there are other alternate rares that you can simply wear on your head if you feel like showing off? Sooner or later, I'm convinced that most others will reach the same inevitable conclusion - a rare that you can't wear is worthless. At that point, all of those christmas cracker owners are going to be left with a 50/50 shot of losing ALL of their investment in one quick crack.

Exactly :mrgreen: Karils > Knights For P2P players, I agree 100% with Wheat Thin. Yes, there are adjustments you have to make, and yes it might mean you are able to get less rune ore or green dragon kills per trip than before, but the revenants you encounter can be effectively defended with good equipment, and you don't have to feel so afraid bringing that good equipment into the wild anymore (up to 5 minutes to get back to your gravestone). However, for F2P players, there's no reason for these things to be so powerful. The best anti-mage equipment they can wear is green dragonhide. The gravestones available to them only go up to 3 minutes, not 5. There's only ONE rune rock location available to F2Pers, and it's in the high wilderness. The teleblock and ice barrage spells were never available to ANY F2P PKers prior to the update. What they've replaced old PKers with on F2P worlds is the equivalent of "replacing" a canoe with a battleship.