Binary Mage

Just because I don't think anyone else has posted them yet: [spoiler=Banner Buffs Spoiler]All of the buffs are Active Level buffs like potions are. (Not invisible ones) The buff gained by completing all of the Combat tasks increases your basic combat stats (Attack, Strength, Defense, Magic, Ranged) by a certain amount (was 5 levels for me) for 30 minutes once per day. The buff gained by completing all of the Production tasks allows you to choose a non-combat skill (other than Agility) to increase by a certain amount (4 levels for me) for 30 minutes once per day. And finally the Exploration reward lets you boost your Agility level by a certain amount (was 4 for me) for 30 minutes once per day. Pretty decent considering the length, especially for things like reaching quest requirements without the actual level. Combat boost might be worth bringing along for something like Nex or other bosses.

Big image[hide] [/hide] Where geen is Guthix, blue is Saradomin, red is Zamorak, light blue is Seren, orange is Marimbo, purple is Bandos, Pink is Zaros and yellow is Tumeken Pink is Bandos and Purple is Zaros--Jagex messed up the color key by accident. am i the only person who finds bandos being pink to be hilariously ironic?

He said he was going to return home. Home =/= Gielinor. Nor does it mention the Edicts falling. [spoiler=Bandos]Bandos sends letters to every single Goblin clan that follows him, telling them that all the other clans are stockpiling weapons and are plotting to defeat them. Informs them to stockpile weapons and prepare to fight the others. Essentially, he's smarter than he looks--he wants constant bloodshed, even if it means killing his own followers. He abuses the goblins' stupidity against them. If you pay attention to the names, he doesn't do that at all. Though he is still douche. Tribe 1 - Gets told off for making a big gold statue and told to tear it down and research weapons. Tribe 2 - Gets told Tribe 1 are going against Bandos as they pulled the statue down and are making the weapons Tribe 3 - Gets praised for smushing tribe 1 & 2 off their own initiative, after 1 and 2 had fought and stealing the weapons. Urged to cross the mountains and seas to fight more. Tribe 4 - Get's reprimanded for trying to be diplomatic and refusing to fight Tribe 3 even after being given the same weapons tribe 3 has via tribe 1's work. [spoiler=Saradomin]A bunch of Icyene quarrel a bit about farming and stuff but Saradomin steps in and tells them to fight for him. Apparently they would prefer to be peaceful, but Saradomin motivates them to war. What a jerk. The Icyene are fighting rebels on their homeworld whilst Saradomin is away. A priest urges them to fight the rebels as Saradomin is finally returning (due to edicts). It's never a full out war and Saradomin never actually featured until the very end when he saved the writer from his depression. [spoiler=Zaros]A chronicle of Zaros' followers before and during the God Wars. As the godwars started, his followers retreated to the wilderness fortresses. Most of them died during the God Wars, but those that remained stayed true. The last part is his most senior follower, who realizes Zaros' true purpose---when he returns, he won't care about his previous followers. He will take interest in whoever will best execute his plan. He has no care for loyalty. Ends in a VERY interesting quote--that she sees a throne in a realm of shadows, but that noone sits on it. She says that he is there--in the nothingness. The empty throne is occupied by him--for he is the Empty Lord and rules without directly influencing. Apparently it implies that he has no real physical form, and never has. Not entirely true Zaros had ORIGINALLY surrounded himself with followers but was cast into the shadow realm by Zamorak stabby thing. The last follower realises Zaros has decided being surrounded by followers leads to betrayal so he is taking his control mantra further to be the unseen puppet behind everything utilising only a select few powerful allies. He still sent her a vision for being loyal and he hasn't abandoned anybody. [spoiler=Sliske]A bunch of tales talking about how the Desert Gods fought for Zaros, commanded by the Mahjarrat. Sliske's fighting style is described a lot, and he is generally called shadowy and deceitful. Nothing much about his current plans Seriously wtf did you read? The entire story is about the Kharidians and their gods fighting AGAINST the Zarosian forces and *finally* making headway when Icthalrin returned with the 'Stern Judges' aka the Mahjaratt. Let us not forget after all the Mahjaratt came to Gielinor as devotees to the Desert Pantheon and later abandoned them for Zaros before splintering to Zamorak. [spoiler=Seren]She and her followers originally came from a plane of Crystal (essentially giant crystal cities floating in space) Guthix forced her to leave the world when the Edicts were created--in a very angry way that had none of the love he once felt for her. She wanted only to protect her people and live without the influence of the warring gods--she had no part in the God Wars. She decides to comply with Guthix because of the love she still feels for him, and instead splits herself into billions of pieces of crystal to be used as weapons and tools by the elves. The elves want to bring all of these shards together to re-create her, or open the World Gate to go back to their world to try and summon her again. Seems like the most peaceful of the gods. Seren did anything but comply with Guthix, she exploded herself to actively defy him as being 'dead' she could not be expelled. Notable the Elves have ideas of how she might be restored but that does not neccessarily gurantee it will work. Added some comments because it bugged me how off base you readings were compared to what the books ACTUALLY say. Armadyl - Wasn't it established that the Aviansie were primarily on Gielinor? They were wiped out during the God Wars, and then Armadyl decided that they were entirely dead because they were gone from Gielinor. It seems entirely plausible that this is the world he is talking about. I mostly based the Edicts part off the fact that he "feels that it is now time to return" to the place that I believed to be Gielinor. The entire thing was written in such vague, poetic language (silly Armadyl) that I doubted it would mention the Edicts directly if it did. Bandos - Agreed, but my notes were intended as simply abridged interpretations. For the most part he was getting them to war against each other. Saradomin/Zaros - Noted. Sliske - I was completely thrown off by the line "From far away I could make out the Kharidian gods thundering through the enemy with the Stern Judges at their backs". I haven't read up on the Desert Pantheon lore in a while so it seemed like the passage was switching back and forth to me. Apologies. Seren - It's entirely debatable that she intended to specifically defy Guthix. The books says that she "would not abandon us completely" and that "(Guthix) gave her no choice but to leave", implying that she was simply complying with Guthix in a way that also helped her people. Her spiritual form is still beyond our world, but she destroyed her physical one to allow it to help her followers.

I think they pretty much had to make the Godless disappointing--if they were as appealing as they were in TWW, 70% of players would pick them. I'm glad I found a god, at least. I was originally going to be one of the Godless, but I just find Seren so appealing after all this lore.

My thoughts on the book's info [spoiler=Armadyl]Armadyl's private diary of him wandering aimlessly to meditate on the death of the Aviansie. He walks around a lot, gets poked at by random insects, and feels weak (until the edicts are broken and he plans to return). [spoiler=Bandos]Bandos sends letters to every single Goblin clan that follows him, telling them that all the other clans are stockpiling weapons and are plotting to defeat them. Informs them to stockpile weapons and prepare to fight the others. Essentially, he's smarter than he looks--he wants constant bloodshed, even if it means killing his own followers. He abuses the goblins' stupidity against them. [spoiler=Zamorak]Moia finds Zamorak in a realm of Chaos after the events of her story in the Dungeoneering tales. Zamorak teaches her the way of Chaos, shows her how things become stagnant if no change is applied. He burns down a village in a random plane, and shows her how the people band together and form leaders through the strife. Moia decides to spread his word. [spoiler=Saradomin]A bunch of Icyene quarrel a bit about farming and stuff but Saradomin steps in and tells them to fight for him. Apparently they would prefer to be peaceful, but Saradomin motivates them to war. What a jerk. [spoiler=Zaros]A chronicle of Zaros' followers before and during the God Wars. As the godwars started, his followers retreated to the wilderness fortresses. Most of them died during the God Wars, but those that remained stayed true. The last part is his most senior follower, who realizes Zaros' true purpose---when he returns, he won't care about his previous followers. He will take interest in whoever will best execute his plan. He has no care for loyalty. Ends in a VERY interesting quote--that she sees a throne in a realm of shadows, but that noone sits on it. She says that he is there--in the nothingness. The empty throne is occupied by him--for he is the Empty Lord and rules without directly influencing. Apparently it implies that he has no real physical form, and never has. [spoiler=Sliske]A bunch of tales talking about how the Desert Gods fought for Zaros, commanded by the Mahjarrat. Sliske's fighting style is described a lot, and he is generally called shadowy and deceitful. Nothing much about his current plans [spoiler=Seren]She and her followers originally came from a plane of Crystal (essentially giant crystal cities floating in space) Guthix forced her to leave the world when the Edicts were created--in a very angry way that had none of the love he once felt for her. She wanted only to protect her people and live without the influence of the warring gods--she had no part in the God Wars. She decides to comply with Guthix because of the love she still feels for him, and instead splits herself into billions of pieces of crystal to be used as weapons and tools by the elves. The elves want to bring all of these shards together to re-create her, or open the World Gate to go back to their world to try and summon her again. Seems like the most peaceful of the gods.

It looks like a demon of sorts. How old are these pictures? The date on the pictures says they were drawn in 2011, meaning they are likely unused ideas for the GWD graphical update.

This picture has been going around the HLF according to Reddit. Looks legit. Seems like the boss for some sort of "God Invasion" themed update in the future. Jagex did mention that some gods would try to take over certain places--perhaps this is one of the minions that will be leading the charge in the RS3 world events.

Butterfly flowers seem like the biggest waste of dev time ever. Jarred butterflies weren't even useful when they came out let alone now, I assumed when reading it the flower was going to attract butterflies making a sort of mini hunting spot with a higher concentration than in the usual places but nope it's been Jagexed and is about as useful as a chocolate teapot, made without the chocolate. Considering that Ruby Harvests are 1.1k each, being able to grow them isn't that bad of a deal--not to mention the fact that it makes it quite a bit easier to train Summoning via Forge Regent pouches. According to the update post, the Butterfly patches have a chance of spawning a Guthixian Butterfly (from the Memories of Guthix event) as well--with no daily limit apparently. Should be a nice bit of XP for those who want to train Farming using the butterflies.

I think this is a recurring theme... Also notice that it doesn't show any of my daily challenges in the actual list. At least I can go to the skill categories to see them still.. Buggy day today I guess.

It's a great training method, a great explanation for the setting, an evolving story that gives you more details as you get closer to the cap, an excellent implementation of a social training method, and one of the only times I've ever seen RuneScape players work together as a team to accomplish something when they aren't specifically told to do so by the game itself. It's almost a perfect update--the only issue is that it isn't F2P. A majority of the people doing this right now are 70+ folks doing it for a barely-noticeable tidbit of XP and some lore. There's barely any folks here that it is actually targeted towards, which is a shame because it would really be such a great update for those who need it.

The idea of a wallbeast actually being one of these? Terrifying. Every single wallbeast being a different arm of a giantic monster trying to claw its way out from under the entire swamp? I am never going to Lumbridge Swamp again. Ever. Nada. At least without a bodyguard.

They've already said 100% that it's an "old-school resource gathering skill". It's almost guaranteed that it won't be task-based or anything funky like that. You don't need to worry.

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). I agree about the height ratio of the towers, they do make it look a bit odd from a realistic castle standpoint. However, I think that it was likely a conscious design decision to make it a four-towered Keep design expanded to a ridiculous size. The improvements to the game engine over the past few years has made it tons easier to make larger structures a continuous, seamless centerpiece. Older structures like the White Knights' castle and the old Black Knights Fortress had to be made piece-by-piece from tile-restricted kit parts--which while it looked more "realistic", it wasn't unique nor interesting from a design perspective. However, the enormous "gate" that you are talking about is actually two separate stories--containing a door and a large front "window" combined into one continuous overlaid shape. You can see the individual arch of the bottom door (more realistically sized) and then the arch of the upper portion, that shows a second story floor. There's some finer design elements like this that help a player seeing it from the ground angle get a sense of scale.

Youtube HD Video - This video will cause high CPU usage, to view the video in a lower quality, please click . Looks great. I'll be interested to see the lore about why The Grotesque is there. I always wanted to see what was behind the hands of the Wall Beasts.

I think the styrofoam thing is mostly a problem of graphics shaders. The entire thing has a very clean look that contrasts with the worn roughness of most of the game's other stone textures (even the ground below it). If you look at the actual architecture of the castle it's very much a bulky stone monstrosity. It's an impressive piece of graphics work that really makes the Black Knights look more powerful and imposing. To me, it looks like a crazy Zarosian fortress (like the Slayer Tower) from before the Godwars that was taken over by the Black Knights recently. I have the feeling that the new retcon of the Black Knight's Fortress quest (and the new sequel that will almost definitely be released with it, a la Ozan/Ariane) will give us some insight as to why the fortress is the way it is and why the White Knights haven't done anything about it.

I must say, giant bottomless pit with eerie vaguely humanoid elongated hands wriggling out from it is absolutely terrifying. Reminds me of the Enigma of Amigara Fault. Glad that we're getting some low-level prayer training methods, especially one that looks this interesting lore-wise.

It's already confirmed to be the Gathering skill, as it was said to be the first skill of the two coming out this year. Not to mention the fact that Divination doesn't really make sense as a production skill, while there is a big link between the mythology of Divination and gathering/finding objects.

Looking back at the Q&A transcript, you are correct. It appears to be that the full rework is going to be sometime in the future, but that that there will be a large change to how Summoning is trained, the pet system, and how summons fight for you (which is going to be this year). Exciting stuff. I wonder just how many of the future updates we've been hearing about over the past year are going to be crammed together into the RS3 release. It's sure going to be an enormous change :D

That Summoning "feature" is actually probably a reference to the planned Summoning Rework this year. Apparently they've said before that they have plans to rework Summoning so that you have more permanent-style pets that fight for you and gain XP alongside you. I would be really, really, REALLY surprised if it came out with RS3, but incredibly happy if it does! I was expecting Winter at the least.

Wow. Bandos has tassets made of kiteshields. Let that sink in for a moment. Saradomin is really echoing the sort of Zeus-like design. His beard shifts between Wise-Man and Lumberjack between stages too. Definitely looks like he's going to be tough to take down, especially with all those flowy magical runic scripts circling around him.

They've already confirmed that it's going to be an old-school gathering skill. Someone already asked in a Q&A if it was going to be a unique skill like Dungeoneering, and Mod Mark said its designed to feel like a traditional gathering skill (like Fishing or Woodcutting).

This is probably one of the reasons Jagex chose to put so many quests "in the past". It would be really stupid to have a level 140 combat requirement on the new skill so I hope they don't choose to require it. They won't. They removed the quest requirement from Summoning, Runecrafting, and Herblore because they were too inaccessible--they're not going to add a requirement fifteen times as hard to a brand-new skill. Besides, Divination is supposed to be partially a F2P skill. F2P cannot access TWW, and thus would not be able to access any content at all.

So should we expect them this week? Assuming they keep their word. I wouldn't say to necessarily expect details about the skill. It just seems like IGN was just a little quick to pull the trigger on Divination info. A whole bunch of websites reported on details from the exact same press event, and yet IGN was the only one to talk about Divination at all. Seems like we might be getting more details from other websites in the coming days/weeks, considering that they are still saying they have information from the event. For all we know they might just do the Divination namedrop a week after IGN did and not provide anything substantial yet.

Was pretty much a certainty by now, but I'm glad we finally got official confirmation :D Now let's see if they reveal details this week. A lot of MMO news websites made a much smaller article than IGN did from the press briefing's info, but said that exclusive details would be coming the week after. Let's hope!

That is HTML5 itself, not the Runescape client. HTML5 is still very much in a beta stage, and the W3 Consortium (controls the standards + general oversight of HTML and other web languages) isn't going to release an official stable release "recommendation" (basically, standards for HTML5 documents and programs, meaning that they officially support it for use) until sometime in 2014. (See here) So yes, RS3 with the HTML5 client is still on track for a Summer 2013 release.