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Chances are you'll see rune mining bots before any pkers. Don't forget about the Resource Dungeon in the mining guild. Another spot with 3 Rune rocks. The foreign worlds are also good to check up on for Rune mining. Canoes are the best way to reach deep Wildy quickly. I use it all the time when I'm mining at the Hobgoblin mine.

Foreign worlds. +1 I was on the German high-risk wildy world this morning, for a couple of hours. Only 30 people on the server. Had the four yews (Eibenbaum) in Rimmington all to myself.

I'm sure Tez is up for a little break from RS. Getting 120 DG in F2P is not fun...

Urns from scratch are cheap and easy, but slow xp. I've been making them at the Crafting Guild; Cabbage tele, run west, make 25 urns, Daemonheim tele, bank and repeat Average time to make each urn comes out to about 20 seconds (7-8 minutes a trip); this nets 11K to 14K per hour crafting xp...

161 here also. Probably the max for F2P...

Do roach soldiers not have relativly higher defence? I don't know if they're 'worth' killing but back when I tried them they had half decent drops with alright exp rates. And with their weakness to stab, the +50 from the Grappier would probably be better then the +7 of the rune scim. Cockroach soldiers do have decent defence (for F2P), but a Rune Scimitar will still slice them up with 70+ Attack and the Slash combat style. Nobody would/should use the Stab option of the Rune Scimitar, just to exploit a weakness. It's just too ineffective, with it's small Attack bonus. The G. Rapier might be marginally more effective with it's Stab option, but as others said, this is offset by the time needed to earn the tokens/GP needed for recharging. It's probably a toss-up up either way...

With only two binds (+ ammo slot) I'd recommend a Fractite Spear or 2H and a Spinebeam Short/Long with 125 Fractite arrows. If you range more often than not, go with the Short. If just ranging vs. certain bosses or high monsters, go with the Long. Mage just isn't worth binding since you or others can easily (hopefully?) RC the needed runes when magic might be necessary (like vs. Rammer). A smuggler-bought Tangle Gum staff can be quickly turned into a Water staff for added Magic Acc. Learning when to use the Spear's three (two for the 2H) combat styles makes (them) extremely effective against most monsters you encounter. If you find that you're eating food alot or spending time fishing/cooking to stay alive, you might want to swap the Spinebeam Short/Long with a Fractite Platebody/Dromo Body for better tanking abilities vs. harder bosses/guard rooms...

We don't know what the training method will entail exactly, and if it allows you to bank less often it might be a better investment than before. Any of the best/new/faster training methods probably won't make it our way with the smithing update. We'll see a part of it, but I doubt it'll be a major game-changer for F2P. The coal bag is a worthy and fairly cheap investment, in any case. No regrets necessary...

Have you tried downloading and using Jagex's own Runescape Windows stand-alone client? http://www.runescape.com/kbase/guid/Downloads_and_Wallpapers You don't need to have Java or the latest web browser installed. It's perfectly safe and runs in it's own uncluttered simple browser window. I've gone from using Firefox + Java to the RS stand-alone client, a few months ago. I find it runs much smoother, uses less system resources, and has more total viewing area without all the buttons and bars. Good luck...

With equal prestige and barring any deaths, you will always get more XP than a player with a much higher combat level. If I (Lvl 105) pair up with a Lvl 126, I'll always get more XP than him on the same floor, regardless of the floor we complete. As your combat lvl increases, the base XP you get per floor decreases. That's the way I see it (Please correct me if I'm wrong)...

Skeleton mine @ Lvl 9-10 Wildy for coal, if you have decent defense. Fantastic spot. That's where you'll find me. Some low level Skellies are there (Lvl ~25). Low risk of loss from PK'ers. Easy to tele away if bothered.

If you can do with the added Magic XP, give superheating steel bars a shot. It looks to earn a slight profit, while being much faster than smelting at Al Kharid. It'll just take a bit more effort to buy/sell the items at prices beneficial to you...

Lvl 3 "Skillers" are highly sought after for dungeoneering teams on World 61. You'd have very little trouble at all getting 99 Dungeoneering. Your presence on the team is only to lower the team combat lvl, to subvert the 50% xp reduction for Combat Lvl 90+ dungeoneers...

The smelting urns do work with Superheat. I've been making my urns at the Crafting Guild. Everything is there in a very small area. Plenty of clay rocks (low competition), a sink, pottery wheels, and a pottery oven. I cabbage-tele, run west, load up with ~25 urns, Daemonheim-tele, bank and repeat. I have room for empty runed urns of each skill, so this method works well for me.

I would borrow it, but no Santas in dung. =)

I highly doubt the G. Rapier is any faster with regards to XP/HR versus the Rune Scimitar. I'd also be wary of the stats listed on the official RS KB, as it might be lower than +50 Stab Att bonus and +48 Str bonus. That whole Dungeoneering section is wholly inaccurate. Besides that, what monsters are weak to stab that people train on? Hardly any...

I don't find him too challenging when solo'ing (I'm sure it all depends on your CMB lvl and attack method). Bal'lak attacks with strong melee, magic, and range. Avoid the green blobs that appear on the floor (much like the Riftsplitter's portals). Every time you attack him (hit or not) his defense meter fills up. Don't waste time trying to lure him over the green blobs to lower the defense meter. Make yourself some gatestone runes and leave one outside the boss room. When the meter gets over ~60% or you run low on health, gatestone out. Heal up, wait a few seconds, drop another gatestone, and head back in. The defense meter will have reset. Rinse and repeat. I use Att and Str 15% prayers as he can disable your Protect prayers. Works well for me, and while in groups the above method is highly effective...

Yeah, I've used Protect from Magic vs. Harlakk, but he just ends up draining my prayer to nothing. So I don't do that anymore. Instead I just use Att and Str 15% prayers, and gatestone heal. It's nubbly, but it works...

Wish I had your skills. I find Turdsplitter to be in the top 3 hardest bosses for me, when solo. I always have to play gatestone heal on him multiple times...

Probably helps to minimize "travel waste" by buying/charging multiple GD coifs. I have 3 of them. I only play FOG after all 3 are discharged. And only for enough tokens to recharge all 3. Is it worth the extra time, back and forth to FOG and actual time spent playing FOG, for a little extra range attack bonus? Most definetly not. But we're F2P, what the hell else do we have in our pathetic range arsenal? I've found the Green Dhide Coif and Rune Berserker (yeah, I use that joker too), are pretty darn consistent with nominal 5 hour (+ or - 5 minute) degrade times. You certainly can stick with the GD coif and just figure out what bow to use. You'll probably find in (most) cases that; Maple Longbow w/Sight > Maple Shortbow > Gravite Shortbow.

The recharge cost for the coif is quite reasonable. It's up to you if it's worth the minimal effort in FOG. Recharge cost is 1M gp or 100K gp + 6.5k tokens, for a fully discharged g. shortbow. I'd suspect people would be more inclined to use the gp/token option for recharging. Rate of degrade has personally been tested at 1% per 15 minutes, in a worst case scenario (non-stop firing and not picking up arrows). This comes out to 25+hours for a fully charged g. shortbow. Much better than Jagex's reported 10 hour usage time. Anyone can tell you until they're blue in the face that one bow is better/worse than the other. The only thing that really matters is how each works for you. I'd recommend just spending some time with both. Use each for 30 mins to an hour and keep track of range XP gained. See which one is best for you. I've done just that, and found that the maple longbow w/sight isn't as pretty as it looks. It's just too darn slow.

Gravite shortbow has +47 range attack bonus and it's firing rate is equal to the maple shortbow. Even with the maple longbow w/sight's very high range attack bonus, it does not make up for it's much slower rate of fire. The high range attack bonus favors lower level'ed rangers (~ under 60) more (if at all), as they would be hitting more 0's anyways. But I don't see higher leveled rangers getting any benefit out of it...

In terms of range attack bonus, yes. For training purposes the maple longbow w/sight is still slower than a maple shortbow. The gravite shortbow would be a slightly better choice than the maple shortbow, with regards to xp/hr. You'd only see the benefit of the high range attack bonus of the maple longbow w/sight during PVP or minigame situations versus metal armoured or high def lvl opponents...