J a m e s

GL Suomi, we never knew each other but from what I've read I gather that moving on from RS has been bittersweet for you. Don't pull a Zarfot and delete all your YouTube vids btw, that's precious history right there! :D It will be nice to see Drumgun get 200m all, never would've guessed he'd be the person (at least the second person) to get it a few years ago. So many other people seemed to be ahead (or maybe not, I don't really remember the shifts of rankings of the hours left to 200m all that Gemeos and others calculated). As for the state of RS3 as a whole, I'll just say that it's become a bit of a joke now. Long term efficiency in terms of 200m all skills has become so convoluted now that nearly half the skills in RS are inefficient to ever actually train (firemaking = book of char, mining = warbands, smithing = warbands, herblore = warbands, construction = warbands, agility = silverhawk boots, dg = dailies/sinkholes). In addition, the excessive amount of daily-type activities (divine locations, daily challenges, sinkholes, book of char, ports, farm runs, jack of trades, warbands) require you to spend many hours of every day doing the same basically mandatory content if you still wanna be efficient. Not to mention the borderline retarded/broken things like bonus XP from minigames, kalphite king slayer XP, etc. It only takes Jagex months/years to fix things that are broken (effigies, waterbirth dagannoth barraging/chinning [still works but not as well and need cannon now, dat cball price tho], and so on). Silverhawk boots simply should not exist... Come play OSRS. Or give in and buy spins during the next slayer mask promotion so you can finally get those masks that make you like 1.5x as efficient as slayers who didn't buy spins, oops I mean keys. Hi abby demon/gargoyle/dark beast/jadinko mask, ty for ruining slayer and making it boring like every other skill. I might be a little bitter. ;) Also, the last few pages have been amusing.

still not done with dom tower? smh

Saru u r not an MD sit down KOTA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! come back to codguy fc sometime you're a legend

Make sure you do as many dg dailies as possible and sinkholes every day, and you'll get comp cape not long after you max. proud of you kiddo xoxo Also you take a lot of screenshots, damn.

Nice blog, lots of pics, good luck not burning out and whatnot. Posting in future 200m all person's thread idk?

Been considering starting up a DIY 07rs account myself this summer, interesting to see how far you've come with your account! Motherlode looks intriguing. Oh, and nice paragon level, I'm only 228. I got 100 during the Alkaizer world first days, quit until RoS came out. I main a demon hunter, but like you said, RoS getting boring...

Damn olly, I'd never guess you'd be one to keep in touch with RS let alone this thread lmao. Crazy seeing you around after all these years. ^Also nice 07 drama. Drumgun is so close to 5bil. Very xp!

@Muggi, there are plenty of people that donate a lot to charity simply because they feel it is the right thing to do. They might even feel a pang of sadness as they give the money away. Kant says it more eloquently: http://www.lawandbioethics.com/demo/Main/EthicsResources/Kantian_deontology.htm#Praise Also, I know this is a bit cheesy, but if you've ever been in love you'd know that you love someone when you make the conscious decision that their happiness is worth as much as yours. This decision applies to your wife/husband as well as your potential children. Your philosophy seems to suggest you should not be a parent. I also suspect that people who write about how extremely happy they are like you do are not as happy as they'd like to think. Life is too lonely to care about and depend on only yourself. Making other people happier doesn't demand that you become less happy; happiness is not an exchange. And very few of the unhappy people in this world could give less of a [bleep] about their contribution to society - ask any depressed person whether they think they are depressed because of their struggle to make society happier. It sounds ridiculous to them, and it should.

Insofar as video games are designed to be time wasters, sure, Runescape was a waste of time. That's the point. However, I wish I had spent my high school years on something that had developed me more as a person, rather than developing an online character I control. I like Veiva's post, but most of the time I find myself preferring to do things that aren't making me more valuable to society and/or making me more knowledgeable/intelligent. Right now, I'm watching a TV show on Netflix and nothing else. Just as much a waste of time as Runescape. But at least I'm not foregoing the extracurricular activities that I need to be doing to get into medical school to play Runescape anymore. It feels pretty liberating to stop giving a crap about XP. As you can see in my signature, I used to be all about dat XP. Thankfully, my grades never suffered.

Just finished up Foundation and Empire. On to the third in the trilogy. Great albeit sometimes cringingly outdated science fiction so far. Apparently everyone still smokes in the future. And we'll watch movies through projectors.

Hard to find ciders here in America, but that's definitely my go to. Not a fan of hard liquor (getting/being drunk is not fun anymore, never really was). A nice little buzz is the sweet spot. Angry orchard and Hornsby's are acceptable. Woodchuck is quite decent, especially that new Granny Smith flavor. But man I love when I can get Strongbow. Best cider I've had, though I've not had a large variety... I have no clue how anyone can legitimately enjoy the flavor of beer. Corona is BARELY drinkable but I still hate it.

Unless you are set training the skill by actually training the skill? Did you actually just say that? Yes, I think the point of the skill is to actually train it. And one of the reasons that this update in particular was such a big deal was that dramatic increase in xp, much more so than any other update before. Take Runespan for example, that was a huge update that majorly increased the xp rates for the entire skill, from like 60K at ZMI to 90K at Runespan. That was approximately a 150% increase to gains. Now for this update, the previous max was 140K xp, now up to 412K xp. That is nearly a 300% increase...that is unheard of. Worst yet, only the players who were active this weekend even had the chance to get it, which makes it really unfair to those who didn't have access and future players. Plus it came from Treasure Hunter, but that is another matter altogether, I am less concerned that it came from microtransactions than just the fact they brought an item like that in the game. In relation to other skills, I would argue that many skills are left untouched by the amount of gp in your pocket. Combat (aside from the price of armour/supplies, but having unlimited gp won't speed up training), runecrafting, hunter, thieving, divination (you can buy energy, but that has minimal benefits)...basically the only skills that shouldn't be affected by it that are, are the warband skills and now agility. And you didn't talk about this, but others in the topic talked about how the majority like this update, since it helped them train a skill they hate training. I don't know who is the majority and who isn't (I would suggest its a pretty big split), but I am pretty disappointed with that reasoning. I understand people who don't play for grinding/skilling, I have no quarrels with that. But why do you need to train agility then? Also I get that people who are skillers, but just hate one skill would be happy to not need to train it much. However there are many, many ways to get tons of xp so that you don't even need to train it. Plus loads of bonus xp so if you do train it, you barely spend any time. Resorting to these drastic measures seems crazy to me. You are mistaken in thinking that only those who played this weekend can take advantage of it; the feathers are staying on treasure hunter and will continue being tradable. You are correct that there are many skills where gp is mostly irrelevant, but in the framework of 200m all skills we need to pay mind to the pay to win buyables, both new (agility) and old, because there isn't much to say about skills like combat, hunter, and thieving. You just do the best method, which is well known and requires only time and focus. Making money for buyables is a complicated ordeal in comparison. We also talk about the warband skills because of how inefficient it is to train mining and smithing (and even herblore/con/farm if you have enough time) by actually mining or smithing, which is pretty ridiculous when you plan on 200m'ing them. I agree with you that people shouldn't be happy about this update. It's a horrible, horrible update. Every past agility method is now obsolete, except barbarian assault (which is a whole other thing I find irritating about modern runescape, all this bonus experience).

Unless you were really set on acquiring agility experience by actually doing agility, then this update hasn't really changed much - the vast majority of rs skills have xp rates which can be significantly if not massively improved with in game wealth (the ones that aren't loldailyscape like warbands/char at least), which was made directly translatable to IRL wealth a while before silverhawk boots were released. That is, nothing has changed in the grand scheme, but I guess pay to win is slightly more apparent than ever. Being among the top in RS is no longer just about how many hours a day you can play. Either be a brilliant merchant or acquire dem bilz through Jagex endorsed RWT if you want to be the best. Good luck to the future 200m all contenders...

Oh, I forgot to say this, but fantastic guide Aiel. Thank you for the effort put into it. Only thing I would suggest changing is to use the Sunshine ability instead of Metamorphosis now (it's more powerful than Meta as long as you don't move out of it which you should never have to, it's got a 3x3 radius so you can easily bind Rex and stay within the radius).

I went yesterday on a 300 population world with drygores, chaotic staff, and ascension crossbows, and the spawn rate was almost perfect. Only had to wait for rex to spawn occasionally - better than having two up at once, I'd say.

Cannon would have almost no effect @ ice strykes, you 2-3 shot with magic abilities (wild magic 1 shots them usually) and cannon won't ever speed that up more than it slows you down setting it up etc. Horrible task to use cannon at. How are ice strykes a free block?

You'd be surprised by how few people know that. People still think using ascensions is significantly worse slay xp/hr than drygores, too.

Yes, it is worth it, even at the desert spot (use pharaoh's sceptre to get back).

Note that farming is by far the most inefficient skill to use warbands on - do it only if you're desperate.

^ They should really reveal this kind of information somewhere. It's ridiculous how much research players must undergo to figure out something as simple (in any other game) as how armor stats work.

I have 125mil+ now, but I thought this was cute. Excuse the broken UI, idk what happened there.

You can solo arma without food in pernix? Damn, I use a lot of food with armadyl armor (I do it for aviansie slayer tasks).

Ciders, like Angry Orchard or Hornsby's, if I'm trying to enjoy the taste and get just a bit tipsy. If I'm trying to get drunk, gin+lemonade or spiced rum+mtn dew w/ a bit of lime juice. I hate all beers. Disgusting.

The problem with calling skills is "pointless" is how you define pointless. If you say that a skill has a point if it allows you to make money efficiently, then yes, everything outside combat is pointless. But then there's experience. Experience and levels have been an integral part of Runescape since its inception. Experience is everything. People play to get XP and 99's, or even XP past 99. Getting a high level in one skill often allows you to get experience faster in other skills. But there are several skills that provide absolutely no benefit to other skills. In that respect, you could also call those skills useless (agility comes to mind).

It's nearly impossible to get into one of the warband friends chat these days, and even if you do, you are quite likely to be kicked for people who pay the owner for VIP priority access. It's become quite frustrating.