Quyneax

I use the module system which works for all those things and more :P. But yeah, battle size is awesome and sometimes crashes. I have trouble when I get about ~150 in a battle (max settings).

Yeap, happens all the time when updates are setting in.

They are fine for range + mage xp, you can use a cannon.

The 1% seafaring are nicer for money because you will be focusing on the Whaler, who provides 20k and 22.5k seafaring voyages. 10k all voyages for plate are about as common, I think. But you can use a non-seafaring captain with +100 traits for the 10k all voyages. @Aiel: you can get 8.3-8.4k all with merchant on triples.

A four-towered keep would be a tall structure, not squat, which is also useful for seeing attackers coming. I don't see why you would bring up unique and interesting in this, it's not like this black styrofoam cube design is more unique or interesting than the old ten-centimetre-thick "Sims" style wall designs. This thing could be any 'dark' building in any game at all. Interesting is when you look at a castle's floor plan and you think: 'Oh that's a clever way to adapt to the natural terrain, I can see how that would be a good defensive position, how good of the designers to understand castle building' which the current design lacks very much. Castles are not built on pre-provided flat stone platforms, they are built on naturally-occuring hills in important places. In the case of the black knight's fortress, that is a) watching the wilderness and b) the mountain provides added height to see further. Jagex took no effort at all to take that into account. And yes, I know there is a window, if you read carefully I said "designed to give the impression" which is exactly what the window does. So much this - it should be a small, fairly low fortified house/outpost with one tall tower to look over the mountain (the tower being on the mountain, the outpost can be built partially into the mountain). The current design is okay-good for that (tower doesn't reach very high), the new design... not.

Nope nope nope. I disagree. It's bulky, sure, but it doesn't look like a castle. To me it looks like the black knights have no idea how to build a defendable castle. If you look at the gate, you'll notice that it's designed to give the impression that it runs up to about three-quarters of the castle height. That, along with the width, gives an impression of smallness. The height/width ratio of the outer walls gives the impression of a small floor plan - a larger castle is more sprawling, like this one for example. Combined with that, the size of the people shows you that the castle was built as a log cabin for a single giant, and that the trees are ridiculously small, and the land around is flat for miles (this is a problem of mountains in general I think, but there's no need to emphasize it so much). Edit: that mod sounds like she doesn't know what prayer does. Wow.

Superantifire doesn't reset when hopping, that's jujus only. Karil + hc should work for QBD, bring your royal crossbow, forge, then use that afterwards. It's the best t80 weapon for you (extremely cheap, good range). You could also get the 100k tokens for a main hand claw and use that with ee.

If black knights were just ordinary knights, they wouldn't have gone out of their way to build such a fake black castle. Styrofoam is exactly what it looks like. You could pick it up and lift it with one hand. A normal castle, with a curtain wall and a keep, some towers: That's fairly dark rock, and it doesn't look friendly, but it's not styrofoam, and it looks defendable (it needs some more arrow slits in the keep especially, but that's minor).

Cruelty is limited by the fact that it hits over time, so there is a lot of overkill if it activates late in the kill. But it should be a bit better than elements.

With the action bar (properly implemented, so not just the first option on each item possible) you could take away some of the 'artificial difficulty' if you wanted to. Regardless, the problem with pre-EoC combat was never on the players side, it was that monsters did absolutely nothing - no abilities, no prayer, no summoning, no food, no potions, for the most part no damage. Auto-ss flashing (with or without deflects) would be perfectly acceptable imo, it still requires coordination (don't want your ss tick matching Graar's attack tick). The only good PvM pre-EoC, design-wise, were things like tormented demons, glacors, Nex, dagannoth kings, maybe corp. The problems with current pvm are (amongst others) the unbalanced xp and kill rates, the problems with tagging that very high killrates give you, the problems with cannon and familiars as well, the problem that it doesn't matter whatsoever what ability you use when, rotations are all fixed. Only at KK do you need to pay attention, and tanking Nex, and otherwise it's just a matter of not overkilling with Assault/Destroy. Equipment system is lousy too, so boring. Getting 200k xp/h in a skill, one skill xp, should be the max. Skills like Firemaking, Cooking and Fletching are already considered the most easy afk/noob skills ever, combats are now part of that category, which really shouldn't even exist. 200k xp/h (including moneymaking, for buyables) should be the baseline, and of course some skills can be faster (Dungeoneering for one), and some will profit so they ought to be slower (high-level magic at glacors for example), and some are trained along with so many skills that they can be slower (hp, slayer, agility could be extended to that). But the 'cheap 500k xp/h' category is ridiculous. RS is based on long grinding, if you throw that away, you might as well buff all xp rates to the 500k xp/h mark.

Patch notes said chompies were fixed a while back.

[hide] [/hide]No. Let me fix that for you. Old combat needed updates, but never the EoC we got in the end. Saying that 'old combat needed an update' doesn't mean EoC is any good - there's a lot of alternatives.

That fortress is so ugly :(. The height/width ratio is wrong, it looks like a 4x4x4 cube (that's metres) because of how fat the walls are and the size of the gate. It just looks really fake...

Prayer would help with the increased healing as well. You can use a fire cape or tokhaar cape until then, also whisper amulet, cclaw + ee, warrior ring (switch with row before looting).

Summoning is in its saddest state yet... titans were good from summoning 2.0 onwards iirc, getting slightly worse each time because of main weapon dps increases, but they were still good in beta... now, nobody bothers anymore.

I don't really like the idea of raising pets. Summoning is convenient and it makes sense as-is, the only pet I need is my cat tyvm. Apparently the final skill is supposed to be 'end-game'? From the Dutch article: "De tweede vaardigheid is nog geheel onbekend, maar dat moet meer met de endgame te maken hebben, vandaar dat ze geen enkele hint, zelfs de naam, niet willen prijsgeven." "The second skill is as of yet completely unknown, but it has to have to do more with the end-game, which is why they [Jagex] do not want to reveal any hints, not even the name." It's a bit ambiguous, it could just be an early conclusion by the writer, but I hope they have more sense than that :P.

I like that Saradomin has no legs. It doesn't make sense for a being so powerful (and reasonably intelligent) to be limited by the ground. I hope the fighting takes that into account. Bandos, on the other hand, looks almost like a mount. Would be cool if he was heavily influenced by the people riding him, he might just be pretty dumb and impressionable.

You can fletch broad arrows at Livid, 300 arrows per cycle, 60 cycles per hour, 15 xp per arrow, 270k xp/h.

Solo, I use a masterwork war bow (8 power draw lol), two large bags of arrows and a two-handed melee weapon. When commanding, I can't afford to put 8 points in power strike/draw, ironflesh etc. plus you spend a lot more money on troops, so no masterwork armour (yet). It's much more convenient to use a shield, masterwork elite scimitar and a regular strong bow/war bow with only one bag of arrows. It's pretty crucial to have a ranged weapon for some of the quest fights, like breaking free from a castle. It also helps attacking/defending sieges. Crossbows would work for sieges, but for breaking out you need the rapid fire ability. Both times, coat of plates, iron greaves, gauntlets, Sarranid veiled helmet (ok I just like the look) or great helmet, hunter. Horse archery is really cool to get right, very effective too, but the hardest part is blocking on manual, especially versus fast weapons. I'm always really happy when I can win against three people in a quarterstaff sparring session. About dyeworks, that's only in Warband, in original M&B there was no weekly income except fiefs, and you had to visit them to collect. In Warband, you just get a weekly budget with all fiefs (garrison cost & rents from land), investments in cities (dyeworks, ironworks, bakeries etc.), and loss due to tax inefficiency (if your fiefs are quite far apart, you lose some). Also woo, captured another castle all by myself (more importantly, I asked the king to grant it to me and I got it), immediately repelled a siege as well, apparently the besiegers had ~100 prisoners all together, so I was able to garrison all of them. Instant 100+ garrison, for free :D. Also captured four lords there, but I let them go. Must be about 100 honour now. Edit: 14 plate voyage succeeded. Also, the king for some reason saw fit to give me a village and city, which means I now have 300 extra soldiers and about 8k denars per week extra. If only he knew my goal is to become queen of all Calradia :D. Shame they're all Vaegir troops though, I never ever use them, so I guess I'll use them for garrisons.

Oh right. Well, you get what, +2 strength bonus on barrows gloves versus dragon? Seems like a fair trade for two defence levels, considering that defence isn't completely useless (only mostly).

I play Warband Native with only one modification, to be able to recruit women :P. I don't really use any guides, just the wiki http://mountandblade.wikia.com/wiki/Mount_and_Blade_Wiki for info. In Warband, your most important thing is getting a steady income from investments, that way you won't have to keep slaughtering sea raiders for cash when you go campaigning. I think I have about 5000 denars worth of troops, some stored in my castle, for a total payroll of ~3000 denars/week, but I only lose ~800 because of the dyeworks etc. I own.

Probably, but it won't be far off either way.

@Sinkhan: http://mountandblade.wikia.com/wiki/Coat_of_Plates @constrictor: I think the factions are pretty well-balanced, personally I dislike troops that are not homogenous, with the worst being Vaegir Veterans, srs, half of them have horses and half don't. The AI is also pretty bad at using polearms (w/ shield especially) except for the initial charge, so I avoid those. NPC lords of course use large armies of all tiers mixed up, I think it's better to have a small party of 20-30 huscarls, knights, sharpshooters, get your sharpshooters in a line (stand closer 1x) with huscarls in front but down a slope (also stand closer 1x, hopefully the slope stops couched lances as well), Swadian knights or mamlukes following you, let the enemy approach under crossbow fire while you go around and charge the flank or rear, huscarls can charge as a block if you use advance 10 paces repeatedly. That said, I added a little mod which allows me to upgrade camp defenders into a huscarl-type troop (same cost/stats, different equipment). It's nice, but camp defenders & previous versions are really really really bad, defenders are on par with regular bandits (no horse though), huntresses/followers/peasant women are all worse than nord recruits -.-. The problem with the AI is that it's not good at tactics. I've had a lord charge me head-on with recruits and basic spearmen (about 80 of them) which basically meant they all died and I lost two soldiers.

I would just take the defence. But why do you want to go to Ape Atoll anyway, is there anything there you need?

I'll agree that plate > chain overall, and nothing stops 2h pierce/crush weapons, I just mean to say that in general, both are good types of armour, with slash being overall the weakest and crush overall the strongest versus all types of armour. Incidentally, in M&B, this is also the case (and more or less used to be the case in RS, with the exception of higher crush def for chain), with there being no different defence values versus styles, just armour, and plate obviously having higher armour values (it also looks really bad, I use a coat of plates myself, essentially a full mail shirt with extra plates covering chest and back).