Troacctid

Then this: So you're saying that the game is already easy and new updates are going to make the game easier. My point is this is not a hard game but it does present some challenges. I dont believe that any 'rational' player would accept the game becoming easier and easier unless you want to be king of the hill over players of 10 years old. Erewhon2's golf example is a pretty good way of putting it. So, getting easier...good thing is it? Easier in some ways and harder in others. I don't equate speed with difficulty, as I believe I already talked about at length. As for those things you do find challenging, I'll bet none of them involve just grinding your levels, right? Honestly, it doesn't take a Zezima to get 99 slayer. Any moron can get a black mask, a whip, and some barrows armor and do what Duradel tells them to do. Jagex made fletching slower when string-x came out. Again, fast =/= easy. I don't want to go way off on a tangent, but I don't think fletching is devalued so much because it's seen as easy, so much as because it's seen as useless, similar to smithing or herblore. And the fact that people don't care about a skill doesn't necessarily speak for the quality of the skill--look at how many people ignore skills like farming and summoning. But as I said, that's straying a little off topic. This is only a side note, but I mentioned the two together because the ectophial is used often for herb runs, and I don't really use it for much else, so that's just what came to mind for me when it was brought up. -.-

I found out titans die after like 40 spiritual mages. Hydra is going to beat fire titan at mages anyway, since they're weak to ranged. But your problem is easily solved by bringing an extra pouch, no?

This is no longer correct, actually. With the menagerie update, it is now possible to move rooms, but only the Costume Room and the Menagerie. Creating a second one of either of those rooms will instead move the first one to the new location. As for a house planner, there's one here. It doesn't have the menagerie, but I'm sure you can figure it out anyway.

Titans aren't that good? poppycock. They're plenty good. Use a fire titan for magic, a moss titan for melee (upgrade later to a spirit dagannoth or lava titan), or a hydra for ranged, depending on the monster you're fighting. Most of the time a fire titan will be best.

On. I don't reply if somebody randomly PMs me to say "Hi." And I don't typically add people to my friends list when I'm not messaging them.

I don't mind helping people out with advice when I can.

I don't take it for granted that this stuff makes the game easier. Do you honestly think that fletching takes less skill to train because of string-x? Do you honestly think farming requires less skill because the ectophial refills automatically? And even if they do, so what? There's no sound evidence to suggest that anything bad will come of it. It's just a fallacy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope Answer me this: what is it now that makes the game hard? Because the way I see it, it's been pretty damn easy from the start.

#-o Nothing is wrong with refilling the ectophial automatically. How could you possibly take issue with that? It should have been like that in the first place. And what is this slippery slope here? Improving the interface to be more user-friendly = automatic quest completion. Right. -.-

wat. You don't need to do anything if you are happy with your current name. Just forget they are releasing this feature ;). So other people can't use my name as their display name? But I also have to log onto my pures which I also want to keep their names =/ :wall: Your pures will be in the same place as your main, then. Don't change their names, and there you go.

One of my points was weighing up 'slightlier easier over significantly easier', but not necessarily speedier. Although I have to say that noted crops make farming significantly easier, this will never be a fast skill due to the waiting times, so your point doesn't have any validity here. Having said that I also feel that Pyramid Plunder is an example that disputes your point about Jagex balancing skill development. Anyone on the 'fast track to a 99 thieving cape knows that PP will enable them to achieve this quickly and easily (if mind numbingly boring), and much faster than any other method. I can definitely agree with you on Pyramid Plunder, actually. I see that as an example of an update where Jagex went over the line, and I think most people, including most of the developers at Jagex who are involved with the same issues today, would agree as well. The only change of comparable impact that I can think of (excluding Runescape Classic) was the advent of gilded altars for prayer training, which is more debatable, arguably balanced by the huge expense involved. There was also Pest Control, but that was nerfed back to ordinary levels. I actually talked about this before, as a matter of fact. This point is extremely pertinent and is one of my concerns, where does it stop? and as my original title for this thread says....."how easy do you want it?". I applaud those people who play the game the way they wish to for 'variety' and 'fun' rather than aggressive skill development =D> It's not so much a matter of power creep as it is a matter of entertainment value. There's a quotation I like from Mark Rosewater, head designer of Magic: the Gathering R&D: In other words, updates don't need to directly compete with each other.

Variety = thought. The more variety, the more thought you need to train at peak efficiency. Rarely do we see large increases in speed that turn slow skills into fast skills--I can't think of any recent example. The most significant of them have only turned really slow skills into slightly-less-slow skills. (ZMI altar, advanced agility courses, Smoking Kills, heavy rod fishing.) When was the last time a slow skill suddenly became a fast skill? And for contrast, how often have new training methods not made the skill significantly faster? Like I said, Jagex has actively avoided unbalancing the relative training speed of skills. If you look at Vinesweeper, the Runecrafting Guild, Soul Wars, Stealing Creation, the Pest Control update, the Bandos Throne Room, charms in the Dorgesh-Kaan chests, and so on, I think you'll see what I mean.

Farming is obviously the least. You don't even need to be logged in. Plant, log out, log back in two hours later. Boom.

If you have to ask, then no, they don't. Neither do lanterns and candles and hot air balloons--they would function just the same if the firemaking skill did not exist. Shade/vyrewatch burning, pyre ships, and the adze are pretty contrived uses for the skill, as if someone in Jagex said, "Hmm, firemaking sucks, what could we add to the game that could use it?" I think firemaking needs to move away from making little campfires. It should focus more on elemental control of flames, sort of like magic, only with completely different mechanics (no runes). Flaming arrows and swords are one obvious usage of the skill; there are also potential applications in smithing. It would be so awesome if they actually made firemaking useful like that. : They already have fire arrows although I'm not sure if they actually do anything different then normal ones. They don't, which is exactly why it would be so easy to revise them.

None of the fairy rings that are close to an altar are very close to an altar...you have the Ardougne monastery, the Mudskipper Point church, and the Nature Spirit grotto, all of which are still a fair distance. If it were me, I would use a slayer ring to Pollnivneach, use the altar in my POH there, then slayer ring back to the Fremmy Slayer Dungeon to get to the fairy ring. If that's an option, that is.

Karil's Crossbow is pretty bad too. As far as the zerker combo, it's true that it beats the d scimmy, but the fact that you can't use a salve amulet with it means that the d scimmy is still better unless you're using a substandard training method already.

The best moneymakers in f2p are mining runite at 85 mining, followed by Great Orb Project buying water/fire talismans with 50 runecrafting, followed by mining gold ore with 40 mining and crafting, or making anchovy pizza from plain pizza and cooked anchovies with 57 cooking. Speaking as a player with 99 fishing and woodcutting, any of these would easily surpass fishing or woodcutting, which are horrible moneymakers in p2p, only slightly less bad in f2p, and vastly overrated in both cases. Then there are other miscellaneous methods involving processing things without significant experience--off the top of my head, making soft clay from water and clay, making chocolate dust from chocolate bars with a knife, tanning cowhides into leather.

I want to correct this. Ring of Wealth only affects rare drops, and addy bars are not a rare drop. Thus the RoW has no effect on them one way or another; they will be just as common with a Wealth as without a Wealth. The RoW will affect drops like rune limbs or whatever, which in the case of aviansies has little influence on your actual profit, so you're better off with some other ring anyway. But yes, aviansies are a good example of a good moneymaker.

You might as well get ranged and summoning to 99, since at this point you're pretty close. Scabarites seem like a decent choice, as zaaps suggested. It's absolutely worth getting those last couple of summoning levels, since the steel titan is badass and a significant step up from an iron titan. Prayer would still be worth leveling to help with fighting bosses, if you like that kind of thing--medium priority. Runecrafting would also benefit you if you got it up to 91, but otherwise it probably isn't going to be faster money than, say, spiritual mages. For agility, I would normally say go to 81 for the slayer dungeon and taverley dungeon shortcuts, but you're 99 slayer, so you don't really need to visit those places--low priority. Herblore would be useless--bottom priority. Thieving is relatively low, and there's still plenty of room for improvement. I recommend training via blackjack on Menaphite Thugs. For crafting, your level is perfectly adequate, although if you plan on playing Stealing Creation you will benefit from getting to 80, in which case air battlestaves and blue d'hide bodies are good methods for you. Fletching would be useless, although you could potentially fletch broad bolts while multitasking for extra profit. Smithing, fishing, and mining, like crafting, would only benefit you in Stealing Creation at this point, so it's up to you. Construction, you're right, it's more than enough already. Cooking and woodcutting are high enough already to do anything important. Firemaking would only help with woodcutting, if you were training woodcutting and wanted to burn elder evil trees, or if you wanted the inferno adze, and neither of those are important. All of these are low priority. Finally, farming levels are unimportant at this point, but you should continue to farm herbs for profit. Your levels are all high enough that you can already fully access most of the content in the game. The best you could do to improve would be to finish maxing out all your combat skills and maybe get 91 runecrafting. Other than that, do whatever you feel is the most entertaining. If you haven't gotten a quest cape already, that would be something I'd suggest.

You just need to think of yews as being worth slightly less xp on average than they normally would be, that's all. FYI, cactus spines are easy to sell, very valuable, and not worth using for herblore, so you're absolutely better off selling them. Just use the money to buy more seeds or whatever.

No need to water. It takes too long. Don't worry about not having enough to train herblore because they're dying. You'll never have enough anyway, because your herb harvests will always be more than twice the size of your limpwurt harvests. If you have more kwuarms than limps, there's nothing wrong with selling the extra herbs and/or buying more limpwurts to close the gap.

I prefer to heal with food rather than switch to a much weaker weapon. I typically bring p'apple pizza, enhanced excalibur, and a combat familiar on my slayer tasks. This is most effective once you get a feel for how much food you should bring to optimize inventory space for drops without having to bank too soon.

If you have to ask, then no, they don't. Neither do lanterns and candles and hot air balloons--they would function just the same if the firemaking skill did not exist. Shade/vyrewatch burning, pyre ships, and the adze are pretty contrived uses for the skill, as if someone in Jagex said, "Hmm, firemaking sucks, what could we add to the game that could use it?" I think firemaking needs to move away from making little campfires. It should focus more on elemental control of flames, sort of like magic, only with completely different mechanics (no runes). Flaming arrows and swords are one obvious usage of the skill; there are also potential applications in smithing.

Well, frankly, they don't. I'm sure it's your imagination. It's a well-accepted fact that a whip + defender is the best training weapon. Not that that particular fact has a particularly important impact on this debate, because until slayer came around, we didn't have whips either, did we? Nor did we have defenders until the Warrior's Guild. This particular combat-related example ties into the discussion about the sort of high-level content that should be added into the game--as we all know, players frequently request new content for the higher-leveled, and the abyssal whip is an example of such both for slayers and (at the time) melee combat in general. Just like in real life, where voters want lower taxes, more public services, and a smaller deficit all at once, there are competing demands in Runescape. Obviously there's a huge demand for high-level content. Players want high-level content that is worth using, because if it isn't better than what we already have, what's the point? "omg agile clothing is useless we dont need reduced weight at 99 agility i train my agility all this way and this is all i get!!! phail update jagex!!!" But they also rant and rave that their achievements are devalued whenever a new training method comes along. "wtf jagex i spent a bajillion years getting 99 agility!!! now you made it faster with adv courses omg this sux!!!" I think a rational player just accepts that skills are going to get faster to train as new updates come around, and based on recent examples (Bandos throne room agility course, anyone?) Jagex is going to go to great lengths to keep things from getting out of hand.

Are you talking about skills or PvP? I was talking about skills. I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Whips easily beat godswords for training. And while the Bandos Chestplate is in most cases the best melee platebody, it's far from a landslide--with only +1 max hit, the difference in xp/hr is negligible compared to Barrows.

Yeah, I double-checked and that's wrong. It would be 48k bolts/hr, not 4.8k. You're confusing xp per bolt with xp per 10 bolts. Broad bolts are 3 xp per bolt, not 30. It should actually be more like 144k xp/hr and 240k gp/hr, significantly more impressive. Especially since you can couple them with any other activity. Take them on farming runs and fletch as you run to the patch. Take them on agility courses and fletch between obstacles. Seems good.