Troacctid

Yeah, you average about 20k gp profit from a granite lobster pouch, or roundabouts. Rocktails are a good choice. From what I've heard, you shouldn't have much trouble getting ~40k xp/hr there, which is pretty nice considering that's also what, 250k gp/hr? Not too shabby. So probably better than monkfish. I haven't heard much about cavefish, but supposedly they're around the same as monkfish or slightly better.

Meh, just get everything to ~75+ in whatever order you feel like. They're all worth training...even the ones that aren't worth training probably have updates in the works that will make them worth training. (Pretty sure they said something about smithing being next in line after herbore, and another thing about adding more rooms to houses for construction, for example.)

Why? You could range. Or just train defense some more and boost your rank. Anyway, it isn't as if you're going to get slayer any faster by doing it first--you'll just get it sooner. It might feel different, but as long as you're not training past 99, you're not wasting anything.

You'd love farming herbs. It's a good ~2m gp/hr or so.

Is that Darklight? ...Oh, right, the special reduces his stats, huh?

I made a conscious decision to exclude those because it would have made it way too hard to pick ten. I had a full 15 that I omitted because I wanted to focus on the bigger ones. I agree with the pathfinding, but it doesn't feel right to me to have a bug fix as one of the top 10 updates of 2009, y'know? Woah. B)

So apparently this is a persistent-world game:

Part 2 finished! :mrgreen:

Troacctid's Top 10 Updates of 2009 PART 2: THE LONG-AWAITED SEQUEL Okay, here we go. My top five. Part 1 can be found here if you missed it. Now...ready? Here we go... 5. Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf What is it? The third installment of the Rise of the Red Axe quest series, released in September. In Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf, we were asked to investigate mysterious disappearances in Keldagrim and ended up *spoilers I guess* revealing the secret evil scheme of the Red Axe mining company to invade the city with an army of mutant chaos dwarves. Released along with the quest was the long-awaited dragon pickaxe, which is dropped by chaos dwarves that can be fought after completion. Why is it on this list? This quest significantly impacted the mining skill and...well, pretty much the dragon pickaxe sums it up. The dragon pickaxe is something we've been waiting for for a very long time, so it was exciting to get it at last. True, I could say the same thing about the very unexciting dragon platebody...but the pickaxe is actually useful. It's worth noting that it won "Favorite new item of 2009" by a landslide. But of course, that's not all this quest has going for it. Along with the quest release, we got an update to the mine cart system: mine carts are now completely free to use, and, more importantly, a new mine cart was added underneath the Grand Exchange trapdoor, making it much, much more convenient to travel to Keldagrim. Also, the Keldagrim North Mine has become a personal favorite mining spot of mine--it's easily the best spot in the game for mining adamantite and non-concentrated gold...for what it's worth, anyway. But that's me. Finally, this quest began a record-breaking streak of actual high level updates that lasted all the way up to Halloween. Wow. And most of them--with one notable exception--were excellent. Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf was also the first quest to showcase Jagex's new (at the time) Developer's Blogs, giving us a play-by-play account of its development and setting a precedent for future quest...blog...things. While many of the year's previous updates had a lukewarm reception, Forgiveness marked sort of a turning point. Until then, the best updates of the year had an "About [cabbage]ing time" feel to them; I feel like this was the first jaw-droppingly sweet update of 2009. 4. High-level Herblore Potions What is it? In early October, the herblore skill received a long-overdue update: powerful, high-level, untradable potions. These new potions use already-made potions as a base, adding another herb to enhance the effects of the original potion. Super antifire potions can make killing even the toughest dragons a walk in the park, while Overloads are pretty much the ultimate power-up. Why is it on this list? It completely overhauled a skill in dire need of an overhaul. With the high-level potions, herblore transformed overnight from a useless skill to an incredibly potent advantage in any form of combat. Few skills were in quite the hole herblore was in before this update, its only function to grind out experience at a heavy monetary loss while providing no tangible benefits for the effort. While other skills had similar dilemmas, herblore was probably the worst, costing the most and doing the least. Now, thanks to the new potions, herblore actually has a point. 3. Living Rock Caverns What is it? In August, a new issue of Postbag from the Hedge was released. At the end was the following cryptic clue from the Chaos Elemental: [hide][/hide] Players quickly noticed that the letters to the right of those underlined in blue could be rearranged to spell "fishing" and those to the left of the red underlined letters formed "mining." From this, the community deduced that updates to fishing and mining were on the way. However, another puzzle remained unsolved: what was the significance of the rock musicians? All the names on the left belong to dead rockers. All the ones on the right are names of living rockers, except for that last one, "Caverns," which doesn't seem to make sense. The title "All in one place" probably refers to the Cavern Club, where each of the musicians had performed at some point. But what did any of that have to do with Runescape? As it turns out, in September, we got the "Living" "Rock" "Caverns," where mining and fishing can be trained "All in one place." And a massive GROAN was heard throughout the land of Runescape. Seriously though, the Living Rock Caverns introduced some new high-level mining and fishing training methods. Why is it on this list? Simply put, this is what all high-level updates need to look like. The Living Rock Caverns revitalized fishing and mining, stagnant skills that had few uses and, with the exception of runite mining, were poor moneymakers. Now, rocktails have given fishing an actual moneymaker that doesn't suck, and concentrated ores have given mining a viable, high-level training method that doesn't suck as much as granite. Notice that the high-level content here is both a training method and and incentive, unlike the agility or woodcutting updates, which merely provided faster experience without any real rewards. Furthermore, the Caverns' training methods are not unbalanced--because of the high levels needed to train there, it's impossible for rocktails and concentrated gold to replace conventional training methods; you still need to train at monkfish for a long time before you hit level 90. As if this wasn't enough, the area itself is creative and unique. Living rock creatures prowl the caverns, and you need to defeat them and use their remains as bait. However, in order to retrieve the bait from their corpse, you need to mine it. And so mining, fishing, and combat are elegantly tied together: you need combat to kill the monsters, you need mining to get the bait, and you need fishing to use the bait. Each step can be done independently, too--nothing stops you from trading with other players to buy and sell the living minerals, and even if you don't have the 73 mining to extract said minerals, the other drops are still pretty nice. Since each step is efficient on its own, the Living Rock Caverns are a DIY'er's paradise. So, the Living Rock Caverns are creative, fun, useful, well-balanced, graphically pleasing, all-around cool, high-level, and they fill an important need. An exemplary update in every way I can think of. 2. The Temple at Senntisten What is it? The Temple at Senntisten is another entry in the Mahjarrat quest series. Where Curse of Arrav played like a direct sequel to Defender of Varrock, this quest played a lot like a direct sequel to Desert Treasure. I've already described it in detail in my review. The quest deals with Azzanadra's efforts to restore the titular temple and re-establish communication with the banished god Zaros. The reward is a set of Zarosian "curse" prayers that act as an alternate, more aggressive "prayer book." Curses are higher-level than their typical prayer counterparts, but more powerful, including Deflection prayers that act as protection prayers but reflect damage back at the enemy; Leech and Sap curses that drain the enemy's stats; and the powerful Turmoil curse that greatly increases your melee abilities based on your opponent's levels. Why is it on this list? Partly because of its impressive rewards and partly because of its impact on the storyline. Curses made it much more appealing to train prayer where previously it was typical to stop at 70 for Piety. The potential rewards are pretty sweet for those willing to commit to the leveling required. Stat draining is particularly helpful against bosses. The prayer update was not as necessary as the herblore update or the upcoming smithing update because the prayer skill was far from useless to begin with; however, high levels in prayer make a lot more sense now than they did before, and that's definitely a good thing. What clinches it is the obviously monumental shift in the storyline that gives us story buffs jitters at the mention of it... [hide][/hide] And my #1 Update of 2009 is... Happy new year, everyone.

Well if you have maxed stats and you fight an opponent with maxed stats, you'll get a 29-32-29% bonus to att-str-def. If your stats are lower than maxed and you fight an opponent with maxed stats, the percentage will be larger, because you're being boosted by a percentage of their stats but it's displayed as a percentage of your stats...or something like that, I haven't used Turmoil. :mellow:

Check? Hmm? It's a void ravager. Level 34. It can give you a +1 mining boost, as well as an additional invisible +1 boost that marginally increases your mining speed. I haven't used one before, but I'm pretty sure (based on Dreadfowls and Stranger Plants) that it's a right-click ability. The pouch costs something ike 5-6k, and it lasts 27 minutes. So you can basically go 27 minutes with +1 mining. Not a lot of people make the pouches, though, so they could be hard to buy. Alternatively, you can use a dwarven stout for +1 mining temporarily at the cost of inventory space. A mature dwarven stout will give a +2 boost, but they're rarer and more expensive, so they're impractical to use in significant numbers. Braindeath 'rum' is a more obscure drink that also gives a mining boost iirc, but there's no real reason to use it. I'd stick with the ravager.

That would mean you're getting 150+ SC points per hour, which seems rather high.

Well, there are a couple ways around the B) issue already: Use tags like I did here. Use "B." instead of "B)". Use numbers instead of letters. Turn off emoticons in your post. Keep in mind that were the code to change, it could screw up all the emoticons in existing posts, yeah? That could be messy.

Yes...today, for example.

Woah, you're right. That's pretty uncanny.

Yeah, I'd definitely use the GE train...why would you teleport to Camelot with a mine cart right there, right? It's like, "I need to go to Varrock. I know! I'll use Falador teleport, that'll put me close!" :shame:

Yeah you're wrong. You just need to be in a f2p world. (Members can still mine regular ess by going into a free world.)

Slayer ring to the slayer cave, use climbing boots to go up to the Stronghold from the back door.

I wish we could get the Saradomin and Guthix campaigns already...I don't like working for Zamorak. He's kind of jerk.

So in the blogs section there's an option to rate a blog on a five-star scale. It doesn't work properly, though--the rating displayed is actually the number of times the blog has been rated, not the average rating it received on the five-star scale. So one blog could be rated 5/5 by one person and its rating would show up as 1/5, but another could be rated 1/5 by five people and its rating would show up as 5/5. That's kind of weird. And if more than five people rate it, it makes even less sense. Is there some way to fix this? Also, on a completely unrelated note, is it possible to set up an RSS feed for my blog? Then I could link it to my Facebook account, which would be convenient.

I suppose ideally you'd use a Void Knight Mace, which gives you a +6 prayer bonus in addition to the +10% damage. A master wand would also be superior to an ancient staff, as it gives more magic attack and lacks the -1 prayer thing.

I had no trouble making ~2-minute runs without a beast of burden (~540 orbs/hr) last time I timed my runs at the air obelisk. I definitely prefer a foraging familiar--futzing around with your inventory and the familiar's is a hassle and requires more precision, which can actually give you slower rates if you're not giving it your full attention or if you have a laggy connection.

Sara sword is the best weapon for strength training, but it kind of sucks to have to use it when you could be using a whip and defender for better damage. It's more efficient to train on controlled when you can use a whip, and just train strength when you have to use other weapons. (Turoths/kurasks, Dharok's, waterfiends, etc.) But if you're dead-set on strength training, get the Sara Sword. No point using anything less than the best, right? If you have to, sell your Tassets; the SS will have a greater effect on your training speed than the +2 strength +1 prayer, and you can just use a Verac's Skirt instead.

Well, I can recommend the Runescoop guide for moneymaking. That's a good place to start. Other than that, training hard-to-level f2p skills is a great idea; prayer (to at least 43) and runecrafting (to at least 50) would be good places to start. You could get prayer to 43 just through quests if you wanted, although it would be faster just to buy dragon bones and use them on a gilded altar. Getting your ranged level up is easier in p2p as well, since you can use darts or knives instead of a maple bow.

I see that you are a sadist. Anyways, the fact that I never had a Dragon drop sometimes pisses me off. So what? I got a dragon spear drop once. I was all, "Hey cool," then I realized it was worth less than a snapdragon seed.