PraetorDei

I don't quite understand what you're trying to say here and what you're comparing? Are you saying that without the potion, you hit 14 with both the rune scimitar and the 2H? I understand that the rune 2h sword gives more strength bonus than the rune scimitar. So -- with rune scimitar I hit at max at 14 (level 70 strength) and with rune 2h sword I hit at max 17. My point is that with strength potion my strength went to 80 (temporarily) and I hit max 16 with rune scimitar -- so by going from strength 70 to strength 80 I only gained +2 max hit. I presume if I was using rune 2h sword the max hit would have gone from 17 to 19. So my point is -- for F2P for non-PvP it appears there is little point in building strength. Building defense means I get hit less often so can stay on site longer for the same amount of food. And building attack means I hit more often -- so getting more kills for the same time on site. Therefore building the pair of them appear far more useful than building strength. That is my hypothesis -- request for comment was so any who are more experienced can point out if I am overlooking something.

Just to satisfy my curiosity, I took some red spider's eggs and some limpwort root (which I had already) and had some strength(4) potions made by the apothecary. I then went and fought ice giants. It boosted my strength from 70 to 80. But my max hits only went from 14 to 16 (with rune scimitar). However rune 2h sword gives me 17 (versus 14 without strength potion). This makes it seem like for F2P non-PvP it would be better to focus on attack and defense rather than strength. Comments?

The thing is there is a real world model to follow. So its not THAT hard. (1) You want a loan? You have to have collateral. You have to pay the loan back, with interest, within a certain time period. (2) You have to be trusted to pay the loan back. So perhaps you have to be able to demonstrate you are a "solid citizen". So maybe you have to have played the game awhile and amassed a certain amount of experience first. Say 2M XP. (3) Loan repayment can be easily done by extracting the money from your account. Say a 90 day loan -- every x days a certain amount of money (principal plus interest) will be extracted from your account until loan is paid off. (4) If, at the time a payment is due, and you don't have the cash on hand? Then one or more of your collateral items is take from your account and sold at the GE medium price to make the payment. How do you prevent "deadbeats"? Well.... A. Use the GE pricing as the basis for collateral. That way the "bank" knows that if they have to take the collateral out of your hide, they can take it from your account and dump it on the GE and get their money back. B. The "bank" can insist that you cannot risk the collateral. Therefore -- you can't loan any of your collateral. You can't wear it either because it might be lost if you die. So for example, if you have one sword, you can put it up as collateral but you can't wear or loan it. if you have two swords of identical type, you can wear one of them, or loan one of them. But you can't loan one and wear the other. The bank won't let you take it out of your account. C. The bank won't let you sell your collateral items either. So you could sell one sword but not the second one (and if you did, you couldn't use the remaining one at all -- it would stay locked in your account). Therefore you CAN'T rip the bank off because you can't risk the collateral. Doesn't this mean that the only people who can afford a loan don't need one? Yeah, in a way. Just like the real world. So there are advantages. I will give an example. Suppose I want to build my crafting skills by making jewelry. I can put up my armor and weapons as collateral. I then buy the gems, buy the gold, make jewelry, and sell it. When I sell it I either make a small profit or a small loss. If a small loss I make it up out of my own cash. At the end I have gained XP for crafting, and I didn't have to sell my property (weapons and armor) to get the cash to get going. Of course, I COULD have sold my weapons and armor to raise the cash to do my jewelry venture, did it, and then bought back replacement armor and weapons. But the loan approach simplifies matters. But. Suppose you borrow the cash, do your "jewelry making business", and lose money in a big way, and so you don't have the cash on hand to repay at repayment time. AND suppose when the bank grabs and sells your collateral the GE prices for the items have gone down and they get back less than what you owe. Two things could happen then. The bank just goes and grabs your highest valued non-collateral item and sells that. And if necessary the next one and the next one. If that is sufficient to settle the loan, you are paid off. But if not -- if necessary the bank strips your avatar naked. And suppose you STILL owe on the loan? Well, enter "wage garnishment". Unless you quit the game and leave, next what happens is -- you go get the cheap free hatchet and start cutting trees, or the cheap free net and catch fish, and the bank extracts their pound of flesh from your earnings. Again, just like the real world. So I think it would be fairly easy to implement, and it can be constructed in a useful way, and it can be constructed to prevent problems.

I think the fundamental problem with the current setup is the weakness of mages. But this is inherent in the fact that mages cannot wear armor, which is an artificial construct. In the original class based games, mages were deliberately weakened because otherwise, one on one, they would be too powerful. This was compensated however by the fact that in the earliest games, a central idea was that of the PARTY -- a group of players together. And this was (IMO) derived from Tolkien and elaborated in the earliest paper and dice based DnD. A strong offense/weak defense character was fine in a party where they would fight from behind the armored guys. But Runescape really lacks this idea of a party. Runescape has no concept of the dungeon crawl party (with the exception of high level boss monsters for members I think). No need to magically open doors and chests because again Runescape is not a dungeon crawl. No F2P healing of other party members (P2P at a pretty high level e.g. 92 & 95). No F2P teleporting of a party (P2P again only at a moderately high level). So...what you have is a strong offense, weak defense character type. Which can be okay for PvP but for non-PvP use not so great. And if you are going to shoot from a distance -- well rangers can do it cheaper than mages and they can wear at least basic armor. There are some spells of value for F2P non-PvP. High level alchemy. Superheat item. Teleport. For P2P non-PvP you start to get some good party-based spells -- so IF you are doing party running then high offense spells, plus group teleport and group healing spells come into their own. If not -- then really what is the mage good for? If I could suggest one thing to improve the game it would be to provide party-based skills for F2P mages, and provide a reason to use them -- really tough F2P monsters for example. I think this would make good business sense as party-running F2P players would have more motivation to upgrade to membership. I can say this. As an F2P, I have zero need to become a member for mage skills because I don't run in any parties. So what's the point?

And look at the mess the real world economy is in now - it all gets back to banks lending money. Also, banks don't necessarily require collateral to loan money. Look at college loans. I can take out a loan for $40k to pay for my college expenses each and every year, with virtually no money or possessions to my name, and banks will grant it to me. I can go into $200k debt, not graduate college, and have to default. It will hurt me in the future to - there is only one of me, so that's the extent I can screw up the bank. Runescape, I can create 1000 accounts, and abandon each one of them. There's no place for loans in runescape. But we aren't talking about student loans. In Runescape simply require collateral such that the amount borrowed has to equal the GE midpoint trading range for items. Additionally forbid loaning any items if by loaning such items it would reduce the players assets below the value of the loan collateral plus the loan value (e.g 2X loan value). Such loans would be blocked. So -- no borrowing money on dummy accounts (they have no collateral) No borrowing money with intent to default by "loaning" everything out to other accounts (loans would be blocked to prevent total asset value from falling below 2X outstanding loan value). Fact is, such an idea would be useful for the same reason it is useful in the real world -- you borrow money to buy items to enable you to make MORE money more quickly than you could without the item. If, however, you borrow the money just to buy stuff to advance a skill -- well when you don't pay you find your account stripped of sufficient assets to repay the loan. A valuble lesson in itself.

First players would receive a warning. if they dont pay the loan back, banks would take the money from their banks in cash or items. Then they can blame only themselves. Or they could even take furniture out of their house or stuff from their costume room. If this would happen, the bank should take more revenue as the loan was delayed. For this reason, the max amount of loan should not be dozens of millions. Make 1000 dummy F2P accounts loan the max F2P amount and trade it using the max F2P trade limit to x account. Repeat for all 1000 accounts. Forget about the 1000 accounts so debt collection has 0 effect. Free money to anyone who wants it. No. Banks would require collateral. How much collateral would those 1000 dummy F2P accounts have? Zero. Thus no loans. Guys, any problems you can come up with regarding this concept apply to the real world too -- and the solutions are similar to the real world solutions.

Question about the list order of skills in the Hiscores ranking. From Attack to Mining -- all are F2P skills, followed by the P2P skills. Except for Fletching. Why is that? Was Fletching originally a F2P skill? If not -- anyone know why it is stuck right almost in the middle of the F2P skiils? Just curious.

Praetor, amaya was kind of a troll, but he/she did have a correct point. the money you save by training all 4 skills at once is outweighed by the time you will lose. I don't have time to calculate the numbers for you right now, But can you just trust my word on this one? Actually I would be interested in the numbers. Because the only way I can see that you can build the 4 skills faster is to buy the items to build the skills. But in F2P the trade off is -- where do you get the money? Because the money made from one skill is at the expense of another. So I could mine gold ore (gaining mining) and sell the ore, then buy runes to build magic. But this shorts me on smithing and crafting. Or I could mine ore and sell them to buy gold and cut gems to build crafting (at the expense of magic and smithing). Of course I could cut yews (building woodcutting) and sell them to buy items to build the other 4 skills -- but then I think I would be building those 4 skills even slower than the method I suggested because of the time spent woodcutting. So I would like to see a method that would -1- make enough money that I could -2- build all four skills (mining, smithing, crafting, and magic) faster the method I suggested. Because the method I suggested has you spending 100% of your time on the very skills you are trying to build. So any other way would have to earn enough money to buy items to build those skills fast enough to overcome the time spent doing the other way to earn money. My gut feel is the only activity that might do it is merching. THAT might let you earn enough to buy the items to power build the skills (except for mining, the only way to build that is to do it -- with a plain old rune pickaxe I might add.) Ok, so those are the skills you mentioned: mining, mage, crafting and smithing and you wana better way to train them as the one you said, right? So here it is: 1) You can train mage and smithing at the same time using superheat item. Buy 4k coal ores (252x4000 = 1,008,000gp per total), 1k mith ores (298x1000 =298,000gp) and 1k nats (233x1000 = 233,000gp) and make 1k mith bars and sell them (1556x1000 = 1,556,000gp) and you will end up with 17k gp profit and 53k mage xp and 35k smithing xp, PER HOUR (I've done this and it's perfectly plausible). 2) For mining, just mine iron. If you bank them, that would be around 20k mining xp per hour and 50k+ gp per hour, and if you don't bank that would be around 32k xp per hour and 0 money. I suggest to powermine, no banking. 3) For crafting buy 600 CUTTED emeralds (3537gp ea) and 600 gold bars (108 ea) and make emerald rings (3914 ea). You will end up with 150k gp per hour and about 40k crafting xp. So, in 3 hours you make: 53k mage xp, 40k crafting xp, 35k smithing xp and 32k mining xp + 167k gp! Still think what you said is faster? Then come with some clear cold facts! You make some good points, but there is another factor which is -- you have some level assumptions hidden in your recommendations. For example -- your mithril magic/smithing approach using mithil is a very good one for the reason you describe -- once someone reaches level 50 in smithing! I only have level 42 smithing at this point -- so I can't smelt mithril. That last one for the rings is good -- I have been doing that except I have a stock of gold bars so only had to buy the gems. The point about mining iron and dropping it is good -- that would be the fastest XP. Only thing I have found is being crowded by mining bots on the iron. That is why I was mining gold. Not so many mine it so I have generally been able to mine it with no competition. However....I think I should just crank smithing on iron bars and platebody from 42 to 50. The loss of GP is lots and lots though. Thanks.

Praetor, amaya was kind of a troll, but he/she did have a correct point. the money you save by training all 4 skills at once is outweighed by the time you will lose. I don't have time to calculate the numbers for you right now, But can you just trust my word on this one? Actually I would be interested in the numbers. Because the only way I can see that you can build the 4 skills faster is to buy the items to build the skills. But in F2P the trade off is -- where do you get the money? Because the money made from one skill is at the expense of another. So I could mine gold ore (gaining mining) and sell the ore, then buy runes to build magic. But this shorts me on smithing and crafting. Or I could mine ore and sell them to buy gold and cut gems to build crafting (at the expense of magic and smithing). Of course I could cut yews (building woodcutting) and sell them to buy items to build the other 4 skills -- but then I think I would be building those 4 skills even slower than the method I suggested because of the time spent woodcutting. So I would like to see a method that would -1- make enough money that I could -2- build all four skills (mining, smithing, crafting, and magic) faster the method I suggested. Because the method I suggested has you spending 100% of your time on the very skills you are trying to build. So any other way would have to earn enough money to buy items to build those skills fast enough to overcome the time spent doing the other way to earn money. My gut feel is the only activity that might do it is merching. THAT might let you earn enough to buy the items to power build the skills (except for mining, the only way to build that is to do it -- with a plain old rune pickaxe I might add.)

Rofl, worst solution ever! 1) Your xp in any of this skills will be very low, even if you count all skills as a single one you wont't get more then 40k xp per hour. 2) Per total, the money you earn are so litle that it doesn't even worth the trouble. So, bad xp, worst money making method from skills that usualy are very profitable, like mining and crafting. Just consider that if you mine the gold ore and sell them you can buy 3 gold bar for every ore. But if you superheat them then you loose natures on every bar. Grrrr... It's all about how much money you make per hour. And I've suggest him a good solution to make money while training combad and a good solution to make money while traying crafting + good xp. If you want to i can suggest you good solutions to make more money and xp for any of the skills you have mentioned. Except -- if you sell the gold ore and buy the gold bars you will miss out on the magic and smelting experience. So YES if ALL you want to build is CRAFTING the approach I recommended is not optimal. BUT if you also want to build magic and smithing, selling the ore and buying the bars -- you give up the magic and smithing experience. You say you lose natures on every bar. But I get enough natures from fighting the right monsters that I don't have to buy the natures. So in fact I don't have to buy them. However you can in fact buy natures and still make money and experience (although not for crafting). For example -- if you buy natures and then mine iron and coal together you can (on site) superheat the iron and coal into steel and sell the steel bars. This (currently) gives you 700 profit (steel bars minus nature runes) while again gaining both magic and smithing experience (for the smelting). This has another advantage -- way fewer bank runs between the mine and the bank -- because all you carry to the bank is steel bars, not iron and coal. Since it takes 1 iron ore and 2 coal you make only 1/3 as many bank runs -- thus you spend more time mining, less time running, AND still turn a profit. You can argue other approaches where you make money on other tasks to buy the items you need to make the XP for noncombat skills. However for F2P there is not much that works out. P2P is different. But from a F2P perspective if you want to build multiple skills -- the approach I recommend will let you build 4 different skills simultaneously without going broke.

If you mine your own gold ore you get mining experience (and the occasional gem). Then you can cast "Superheat Item" and gain magic experience AND smithing experience by smelting the gold ore into gold bars. You can buy the nature runes and use a fire staff -- although if you spend a lot of combat time you will have plenty of "free" nature runes if you fight the right monsters. THEN use the gold bars to make the jewelry (you will have to buy the gems). This way you build 4 skills at once -- mining, magic, smithing, and crafting. If you buy uncut gems you will lose a little money for each item but you will gain some crafting experience for cutting the gems. If you buy cut gems you may make a little money for each item but for a little less crafting experience. However you should be able to buy cut gems much faster on the GE than uncut gems. I recommend this combined skill approach to F2P players.

Not sure it is the same bug but I have been woodcutting and then dumping my inventory in a bank deposit box. After a few times my browser hangs and I have to kill it from Windows Task Manager. This is new behavior and it only started after yesterday's code download.

I'm taking a break from killing critters to raise my defense by woodcutting. It is way easier than killing critters. However -- reward? What reward? Seriously, there is no real reward. As F2P, no skill cape, no nothing. But even as P2P -- you pay actual money to get an imaginary piece of clothing for a simulation? (Because you pay money to become P2P). The actual ==> "reward"<== aspect escapes me. And its not like I would ever brag about it in the real world. Oh yeah -- I just spent 8 weeks (or whatever) having my simulation chop a hundred thousand pretend trees. And how does that work? Oh it chops, and when the tree is down, I click on another tree. Repeat a hundred thousand times. Ummm hmmmm -- couldn't a pigeon be trained to do that? Well actually -- probably yes -- with a touch sensitive screen. (Heh -- I wonder if a trained pigeon would be considered a bot? Probably yes.) So would I EVER tell anyone in the real world that I got a woodcutting "skillcape"? (Except I won't since I am F2P). Heck no. They would think I was: A. crazy and B. stupid and C. have no life. And they might be right.

To explore this. Suppose the weapons were (of course) katanas. The 2 swing katana would be level 30 The 3 swing katana would be level 60 The 4 swing katana would be level 80 The 5 swing katana would be level 95 Any katana, when wielded, would strip any armor from slots -- helmet, body armor, pantlegs, shield, gloves, and boots. Key features are -- unarmored but multiple swings. Expanding the agility skill might be an approach. Then this skill would really be something that higher level players with high defense and high agility would pursue. Just to make it more interesting, the katanas should be very expensive -- make them available in stores but the 2 swing store price at 1M, the 3 swing store price at 10M, the 4 swing katana at 50M, and the 5 swing katana at 100M. Don't make them available as drop weapons. Don't make them tradeable. Also require that each one requires first finishing a quest before they can be acquired. Thus this skill becomes an actual CHALLENGE! Now what do you think?

In addition -- does anyone when crafting mine their own gold ore, smelt it, get the gems from drops or mining, cut them, then make jewelry? Don't make d'hide armor unless you kill the dragon yourself? Not wearing armor unless you mine and smith it yourself (or from a quest)? I keep reading on the forums that people mainly buy the items used to level up. How common is this compared to do everything yourself?

How long would it take to get from level 45 prayer to 70 prayer? How long would it take to get from level 45 mining to 70 mining? How long would it take to get from level 45 smithing to 70 smithing? Assuming never ever buying bones, or ore. (Also not picking up bones from Chaos Temple -- only from monsters you kill yourself, and ore you mine yourself). And doing this as F2P so no dragon bones. Also -- how often to people try this -- versus just buying their levels either by skilling and selling stuff (fish, herbs, whatever); or becoming a member and leveraging member items, alters, etc?

Hmmm....perhaps I should not have called it a "ninja skill" -- I think as I pointed out too many people make mental associations with "Naruto" etc. However. As I mentioned with the ancient game of Avatar it was a combat skill. The key attribute was "multiple swings" associated with essentially no armor. For example, in a melee with a heavily armed and armored fighter you would think being unarmored would be fatal. But the skill received more swings at higher levels. Thus while the fighter gets one swing -- this skill gets several. Thus all other things being equal, the higher damage received (unarmored) was offset by the higher damage given (multiple swings). Another factor would be -- light weight, therefore longer run distance. Use of the skill would be controlled by weapon usage. Wielding the weapon would "unequip" shield, helmet, platebody and platelegs (for example if armored up as a fighter). This effect is already seen when wielding a bow (unequips both sword and shield if previously equipped). Thus the multiple swings would be controlled by the weapon wielded. As for throwing knives -- this is already a ranger skill, yes? Difference would be these would again be equivalent to multiple swings -- throw two in the same period of time, then three, then four -- depending upon skill level. Difference from ranger would be that it would count for the new skill rather than for the ranger skill, and again would be controlled by the item. -- and of course shorter range than the bow. It is the combination of multiple swings (or throws) in combination with being essentially UNARMORED that made this an interesting skill to build (in ancient Avatar). It was, as I recall, VERY HARD to build especially at the lower levels -- thus this would make it a challenge for players who are already higher level (95+) fighers, mages, or rangers and who want to build a new and different combat skill. Key reason so hard at lower levels -- you might not get to the 2 swing weapon until you reach level 30 -- so you have to make the first 30 levels using a 1 swing weapon WHILE UNARMORED -- no helmet, no shield, no plate body or plate legs. Oh and I forgot -- no boots and no heavy gloves or gauntlets either. It was for this reason (in old Avatar) that no one tried to build this skill until they were already moderately advanced because the extra hit points were required merely to survive building until the ability to wield multiple swing weapons started to make it a bit easier. Otherwise you spent most of your time dead. I think it would be very hard to introduce a new COMBAT skill unless an approach like this would be taken. Otherwise -- the only type of skills that can be added are non-combat skills or some kind of combat supporting skill. So mock this if you want to but I suggest it would be a very very challenging skill to build. I would be interested in seeing comments related to building a new and different combat skill. If you think this is a dumb idea OK that's fine. I have seen it done before though and it did work.

I offer an alternative skill -- ninja. Reasons for: A. It would be possible to create an entire game around the concept of ninjas -- and obviously there are various anime series that have done so -- AND there are games that do so -- but it is not popular among MMORPG games.. B. One of the VERY earliest MMORPG games (Avatar) had a ninja skill -- circa 1980 (yes 30 years ago now). So it is doable. C. The ninja skill would be a combat skill -- offering multiple swings. More swings the higher the level. Would have specialized weapons only usable by ninjas, would have specialized (lightweight) armors. Would be able to throw knives and stars. D. If introduced it would alter the combat triangle and make it a combat square. This would be a MAJOR game changer. Offsetting the melee heavily armored fighter by giving multiple attack swings but being essentially unarmored. Not able to throw as far as rangers can shoot -- but able to throw more often in the same time period. And perhaps having a "dice throw" against the mage "bind" spells, and a "dodge" against thrown spells (also a "dice throw") to make it harder to pin down -- thus dangerous to mages as well. Reason against: Naruto. Obviously.

I offer an alternative skill -- ninja. Reasons for: A. It would be possible to create an entire game around the concept of ninjas -- and obviously there are various anime series that have done so -- AND there are games that do so -- but it is not popular among MMORPG games.. B. One of the VERY earliest MMORPG games (Avatar) had a ninja skill -- circa 1980 (yes 30 years ago now). So it is doable. C. The ninja skill would be a combat skill -- offering multiple swings. More swings the higher the level. Would have specialized weapons only usable by ninjas, would have specialized (lightweight) armors. Would be able to throw knives and stars. D. If introduced it would alter the combat triangle and make it a combat square. This would be a MAJOR game changer. Offsetting the melee heavily armored fighter by giving multiple attack swings but being essentially unarmored. Not able to throw as far as rangers can shoot -- but able to throw more often in the same time period. And perhaps having a "dice throw" against the mage "bind" spells to make it harder to pin down -- thus dangerous to mages as well. Reason against: Naruto. Obviously.