Edits # 1 & 2 6/18/2010 : Added links underneath all skills section which takes you to skill guides/combat guides. Also added in 3 Mini-games/Activites. Edit # 3 6/18/2010 : Added contributors tab to keep track of everyone who gives me ideas, and tells me what things would fit in the guide. Edits # 4 & 5 6/19/2010 : Added a segment about fun things to do with friends. Also added a support section for people to use a link to the guide in their signature for support. Edit # 6 6/19/2010 : Added the first fun/interesting wat to train combat. Hey! Thanks for visiting my guide on keeping your Runescape play time productive, but also fun! No matter what your stats are, or how long you've been playing, I'm sure everyone has hit that pivital point in their Runescape career when they just have no idea what to do when they log on. I know I have, and that's when I realized that to keep myself interested, I should just do things I find fun at the time, and when they aren't fun anymore; I do something else I deem as fun. :) In order to keep things fun, productive, and interesting while you play you must first address what your interests in Runescape actually are, the two main types people classify themselves into are - Skill Focused Combat Focused The skill focused players tend to focus on skills that do not involve combat directly or indirectly, while combat focused players focus mainly on training the skills that will increase their combat level and involve killing monsters around the world of Runescape. As you can see, those are two very different player archetypes, there are more obviously, but I don't feel the need to delve too deep into them, as this is not a guide explaining player types, now is it? ;) Once you have decided whether you are combat or skill based, it's easier to understand what things you find enjoyable. (You should already know this, depending on which of the two archetypes you fall in to.) I will now explain what you can do to keep yourself interested in the game, being produtive, and most importantly: having fun! This is a game, after all! [hide=For The Skillers!]So you've decided that you're a skiller huh? That means you focus mainly on - Woodcutting Mining Fishing Smithing Firemaking Fletching Cooking Hunter Herblore Farming Crafting Agility Thieving Runecrafting Construction List of Skill Guides If you, as a Skiller, enjoy the gathering skills, the main three being - Woodcutting Mining Fishing List of Skill Guides That's good, now pick your favorite! If it's Mining, by all means, mine all the ore you want! Mine day and night until you reach the point where you don't want to do it anymore. It's important that you stop when you reach that point. If you were to continue beyond this point, it would simply become you grinding for levels, and since we're trying to keep it fun as well as productive, we don't want that. :) The same goes for the other two main gathering skills. Now, if you enjoy the production skills, which are - Fletching Runecrafting Smithing Crafting Herblore Cooking List of Skill Guides I encourage you once again, to pick your favorite. Let's just say it's Fletching (that's my personal favorite.) Cut those bows! Feather those arrows! Make darts, make bolts, whatever! Just Fletch until, once again, you don't want to do it anymore. Just like with Mining, you don't want it to become a grind fest! To sum up the skillers section, you basically just want to train what you find the most enjoyable, and only train it until the point where it's no longer fun, you don't want to do it, and it's boring. That will keep you mixing things up, you'll be training various skills as you switch between the skills you want to train on a particular day. Many people will simply call this playing style ineffecient; but efficiency isn't always the most important thing while playing a game. So keep the fun in the game, mix it up, enjoy what you do, don't pass the "I can't do this anymore!" point![/hide] Now on to Combat! Players who enjoy combat, are the types of players that strive to be the strongest, they want to kill the strongest monster the fastest and be the highest level. But then again who doesn't? ;) Seeing as how all the combat skills (melee based) are so closely related I will not be putting it in a hide tab. Attack, Strength, Defence, and Constituion (Hitpoints) are the basis of combat. Those four skills increase your combat the most out of all eight current combat level raising skills, which are - Attack Strength Defence Constitution (Hitpoints) Ranged Magic Summoning Prayer Combat Guide If you are the type of person who does not enjoy killing the same monster over and over, and lose interest quickly, (which is not what we want!) You might be a fan of the Slayer skill. Slayer is such a massive skill, I will not even attempt to explain it. Simply click on Slayer to be taken to the guide for it, where everything will be explained; but basically, Slayer Masters give you a certain number of an assigned monster to kill, and the master changes the Slayer task after you have killed the required amount and asked for another. Slayer is the way many Runescape members choose to train combat due to it's constant changing, so it keeps things, fun, productive, and interesting! Fun/Interesting ways to train combat! Yesterday evening I was a bit tired of Runecrafting, so I decided I wanted to do some clue hunting! So I grabbed my Whip, and some armor and headed down to the Earth Warriors. Earth Warriors are agressive monsters with relatively low life-points and are quite easy to defeat. In about 45 Minutes I managed to accumulate around 30k experience while training on controlled, other than dropping clue scrolls, these monsters also drop the sought after Champion's Challenge! If you're feeling up to it, head on down to the Edgeville Dungeon and try 'em out for yourself! Another option you have at your disposal to keep things fun while playing, is Activites! There are 32 activites (mini-games) that you can play (this is including both P2P and F2P options.) I'll only focus on the main few that I see people doing often. Barrows! I won't bother attempting to say anything that doesn't need to be said, since my good friend Saru has done it already, here's the link to his fantastic Barrows guide! Stealing Creation!I've never played this mini-game/activity, so I won't even bother with this one. ;) Castle Wars!Castle Wars pits the good and evil gods (Saradomin and Zamorak respectively) teams against each other in a game of capture the flag. The objective is to have a member of your team make it over to the other teams flag room; the top room in the opposing base which is usually heavily guarded, steal the flag, and make it all the way back to your base, and capture it. All the while you'll be getting bombarded with attacks from every direction, but don't worry! Should you die, you will respawn in your respective spawn room with two minutes to leave and all items in tact! The games last twenty minutes each, and at the end the team with the most captured opponent flags wins! Upon winning you receive two Castle Wars Tickets, which can be traded in for various rewards by speaking with Lanthus in the Castle Wars lobby. This section will be for things that are fun and you can do with friends! Revenant Hunting! With the removal of the Wilderness PK'ing ability, Jagex put a new type of monster in the game - Revenants. These monsters vary in levels from being very low to very high. A word of caution, they're strong, there is a possibility you will die! The monsters have the ability to teleblock and roam around the wilderness and even in the Edgeville dungeon wilderness section, so watch it! I'm told that friends get together and just go out to kill these monsters, so if it's something you'd like to learn more about, as always, link to the guide in the title! I realize that my guide is quite short right now, but it's my first guide ever and I plan to keep updating it. Whenever I find more interesting ways to train a skill, whether it be combat or non-combat related, it will be added into a special section for it. (The section will be editted in as soon as I can get around to training each skill in a new way.) Other than that, I hope you enjoyed it! And remember, play for fun! Not to grind! :) If you would like to show your support for this guide, add this to your signature. [url=http://forum.tip.it/topic/269329-keeping-runescape-enjoyable-productive-and-fun/]Keep Runescape Fun![/url] Keep Runescape Fun! [hide=Contributors] Rawr_im_very_scary - Idea to include mini-games/activites/D&D's. Ihavedinner247 - Idea to include things you do with friends, such as revanent hunting.[/hide]