Alphanos

Is this speculation, or confirmed? When I go back to woodcutting it'll be while reading a book or something, but if banking teaks are faster than ivy I'll definitely consider it. Probably fairly close in AFK-ness....

The cooldown periods on auras are nonsense, with the possible exception of the XP bonus from that last aura - that won't be clear until someone can get it. All the rest of those auras should just be on permanently. Also, the graphical effect for auras only works properly for a small number of the most popular weapons. For most others, there's a golden sword outline that sticks out through the side, etc, of your weapon. I got Call of the Sea, but I haven't tested it out yet. Hopefully it was worth it :).

The math is not fine. The figures quoted for given confidence levels, etc, are based on a pollster randomly selecting and polling that number of people from a population. The math does not apply to polls where opinionated members of the population self-select themselves as part of the sample group.

Because I've also collected soundfonts previously, I can't indentify the source of all of the soundfont files that I have. This is made more complicated by the fact that many of the soundfont collection sites are falling into disrepair with the general shift in interest towards MP3/etc. So now the largest modern soundfont activity is in the professional music composition business. This means it can be hard to tell if an old, great-sounding soundfont file is now being shared i.e. on P2P because it's fallen off the original, intended-free hosting, or if it's now been changed to a commercial product. Anyway, I'll give as many working links as I can find. Utility Requirements: To start with, you'll most likely need the following: BASSMIDI Software Midi Synthesizer: I have a Creative Audigy 2 Platinum, a decent quality but slightly older soundcard. It has driver support to load soundfonts, but even if I allocate more memory to it, it can't handle loading more than about 300 MB worth of samples. Also, when it loads a soundfont it loads the entire thing into memory and keeps it there. The BASSMIDI software I linked to will install a software driver which can be set as Windows' default midi synthesizer, and works much better. It has been successfully tested with 4.5 GB+ worth of loaded soundfonts, and rather than trying to load everything into memory, it only loads the samples/instruments needed for what you're currently trying to play on it. In case it's non-obvious to anyone but me, although there's a file listing, you'll need to click the "Downloads" button to the right. SFPack: There have been two "standard"' specialized compression formats designed for soundfonts. This is the older one. sfArk: This is the newer soundfont compression format. Which one you find your fonts in depends on where you go, and how old the soundfont is. My Soundfont Loading Recommendations: In past playing around with soundfonts, I've run across situations where one GM soundfont will not play a particular instrument in a midi, while a different GM will not play a different instrument. For best results, I recommend loading 2-3 soundfonts, including at least one GS set, with the best-quality soundfonts loaded last to override overlapping lower-quality samples. Here's a load order I had good results with: Airfont 340 GS -- ~80 MB Fluid R3 GM -- ~145 MB Fluid R3 GS -- ~3 MB Airfont 380 GM -- ~270 MB As possible alternatives to the last Airfont 380 GM, you may want to play around with just using Fluid R3, or trying out RealFont 2.3 (~200 MB), SGM 2.0.1 (~240 MB), or Giant Soundfont 5.3 (~450 MB). Despite the huge size of the last, the others may be better options. Any of these will be far, far better than any default soundfont, but it's surprising the amount of difference in various areas between each high-quality soundfont. Of course, if you have Colossus then load it. Soundfonts: Links I've been able to find to some good soundfonts. For reference, my soundcard by default uses CT4MGM, a 4 MB general midi soundfont. General User: An early soundfont, about 30 MB uncompressed; an improvement from default soundfonts. Personal Copy 5.1f: This is one of the smaller large soundfonts at around 60 MB uncompressed, but still a huge step up from any default soundfont. RealFont 2.1: This is farther down the page, past a slightly older version of Personal Copy and some others. I've seen a RealFont version 2.3 which is almost twice the size, but I can't find a link to it. RealFont is probably better than Personal Copy; this version 2.1 is around 100 MB uncompressed. Fluid R3: There are others listed on that page, but Fluid's the only worthwhile one IMO. Use the USA download link for it. This soundfont is a large, full-featured set - ~150 MB once uncompressed. SGM 2.01: ~250 MB uncompressed, a high-quality large soundfont. Giant Soundfont 5.3: One of the few soundfonts that's been around for ages, but still gets regularly updated and improved; it's easy to run across outdated versions of this on other sites. Note that you'll need to download banks 1, 2, and 3 of v5.3 as well as the drumkit which is labelled v2.8. Giant soundfont is a mixed bag IMO; at ~450 MB uncompressed, the sample quality is undoubtedly higher than many other soundfonts, but the balance between instruments is very noticeably off. Listening to midis where certain instruments intended to be playing the melody are quiet and hidden behind the harmony can be irritating. Other Listings: This is a registration-required site which has alternate links to several of the above soundfonts, along with others. Notable Soundfonts with No Links: Airfont is an older, but very highly regarded soundfont for which I've only been able to see outdated versions on the main list sites. There are several versions available: 340 GM, 340 GS, 380 GM Beta (split into melodic and percussive), and 380 GM Final (back as one file). Finding links to any of these isn't hard with some googling, but as I've mentioned previously, the situation with this font makes it unclear to me whether the author stopped listing it on sites because they wanted to start offering it commercially? If so they did a poor job of marketing because they don't seem to be running any website for it any longer. Out of the four versions listed, the worthwhile ones are 340 GS (~80 MB) and 380 GM Final (~270 MB). Commercial products: Colossus Soundfont. Often considered to be the single best general midi set out there, the only way to get a better result would be to hand-pick individual instrument sets, which only professional musicians/composers really get into. This monster comes in three sizes: 1.5 GB, 2.5 GB, and 4.4 GB. Suffice it to say that if you get your hands in this, you should use it. Due to the way the BASSMIDI driver works, Colossus can be used even with lesser amounts of RAM, but you probably shouldn't try if you still have i.e. 512 MB of RAM or something. Well, this turned out pretty long, but hopefully others will find it helpful :).

Finding the midi files online isn't very difficult. I was hoping Jagex had provided some nice and easy way to revert control to the local hardware synthesizer, maybe through a Java environment variable or something :(. I don't want to mess around with anything that would require i.e. a modified client or anything like that.

Just recently I got interested in soundfonts again and got a nice setup going with BASSMIDI driver. My midi files now sound fantastic in when I play them with WinAmp. This got me to try playing a couple of old Runescape midi files as well, and they sound equally fantastic. However, in-game the Runescape music is unaffected. Some Google searching suggests that in the past, changes to the default Windows midi handling setup would automatically affect Runescape as well, but Jagex changed things sometime in 2006-2007 in an effort to improve music quality for most players. That's great, but does anyone know if there's a (rule-permitted) way to apply soundfonts to Runescape's in-game music these days? I'm certain that the music quality would be much improved using the higher-quality samples in the soundfonts I now have loaded... Background info: For anyone unfamiliar with soundfonts, midi synthesizers typically play all possible instrument notes/sounds/etc from a default sound bank that's either 2MB, 4MB, or 8MB in size. Obviously quality is limited by trying to fit sufficient sound samples for all possible orchestral instruments in this amount of space. For any unaware, this was one of the biggest limitations on the quality of Jagex's music for a very long time. I now have loaded a series of several soundfonts, the main one of which is >250MB -- this is like going from a 64 kbps MP3 to a 320 kbps MP3.

I suppose it makes sense that everything they showed in the video seemed cosmetic, since that is what makes good video material. Still, I hope that some of the actual stat-affecting options are accessible at launch.

Anyone planning to check quads hasn't given much thought to the math involved. For the base level of fairy rings, there are 3^4 = 81 possible destinations. All quad combinations would be 3^4 * 3^4 * 3^4 * 3^4 = 3^16 = over 43 million. Assuming for the sake of argument that each fairy ring destination took you only one second to dial, teleport to, and teleport back (which is nonsense), then it would take you 4 years of playing 24/7 non-stop to test all quad combinations.

For the record, everything in the quoted post is nonsense. I hope he was trolling. Items and money aren't stored on a network? How do you access them without going to Jagex headquarters then...? Can you read,I said they can't.... It most distinctly says "they can" actually. And you really don't seem to know much about programming. A rank in what? Your story isn't making much sense... Assuming they can hack into jagex and get your account info, why would they bother with 20mil. 20mil isn't alot of money, if hacking into multiple accounts will draw attention to the hacker, it would be a much better idea if he just hacked into 1 account with alot of money. To be honest, there are 3 options: 1. your friend isn't as clever as you make him out to be 2. the hacker can really hack into jagex 3. the hacker is bluffing If it is 1, make your own account secure. Change pin and password, scan your computer etc etc. If it is 2, nothing you can do. You loser either way so you might as well pray the hacker is bluffing. And another thing, you said the 'hacker' knew one of you. It wouldn't be difficult to put a keylogger on someone's computer if they trust you. P.S there is a 'multiquote' button for a reason. Just to make things clear we don't know each other irl,just known each other for a couple of years:) There are 5 of us that all co-own a clan(if I say what kind or name,I'll just get a load of [anything u want] about it),a very popular one,and one of us kinda knows the"hacker" so he gave is a chance to give him a rank in the friends chat,but we all just said no,so that's why he didn't do it straight away. 1.I don't know what yr on about,I keep saying this guy knows a lot but u guys dont catch on....he knows a lot about computers. @kimberly-chessy08 got hacked cuz she was very very rich. People get hack for a reason,no one would hack someone that just created a account to see what the game was like,would they.... @sy-I think at this stage,that has nothing to do with this thread,and in fact you are trolling :) And this is no troll thread,what I am saying is he had all the things u guys are saying,so there has to be another way he could have hacked him? [/hide] Gahahahaha. Do you have ANY idea how much money chessy08 had? Any idea? At all? ANY idea whatsoever? Well over 500x the amount this hacker is asking for. I'm not even kidding. In fact, 1000x works out to 20bil, and I would not be surprised in the least if cheesy08 had that much money (or more) at one point. If anything I'm still probably lowballing the amount. Actually Chessy's worth was estimated at around 200B, or 10x that. In other words, 10,000x the amount the OP claims is being asked for. Gonna have to go with troll. Yup.

For the record, everything in the quoted post is nonsense. I hope he was trolling. Items and money aren't stored on a network? How do you access them without going to Jagex headquarters then...?

I suspect this is mainly a ploy to make people better aware of these cards' existence. It's surprising the number of people I've heard talking about how their lack of a credit card makes it either difficult or impossible for them to get members.

So you're sure that your friend that got hacked didn't do something stupid then? Because if this hacker fellow knew you lot, it's completely plausible that he guessed your friend's recoveries and whatnot. The above sounds the most likely to me. Plain and simple, here's a breakdown of the ways people get hacked: A) The attacker gets the password. B) The attacker recovers the account through Jagex's recovery process. A1) The attacker is told the password, watches the account holder type it in real life, or simply guesses it. A2) The attacker uses malware to install a keylogger which captures the account holder's password. Usually, though not always, the downloaded software relates to Runescape in some way. Runescape isn't that big of a target in the wider world of malware. The most common culprit is botting software, which may capture this information regardless of whether it works. Note that anti-virus programs can only help so much once you start downloading dangerous software - anti-virus can't stop everything. A3) More difficult but still possible is a type of remote exploit which can directly infect and install malware via simply browing a website. With enough care (I.E. careful browser settings, good anti-malware browser add-ons, keeping all plugins like Java, Flash, and Adobe Reader up-to-date) this possibility can be almost entirely eliminated. A4) The attacker brute-forces the password, which involves trying millions of combinations to break through a weak password. Note that this type of attack is not directly possible against Runescape, but it can apply to the below. A5) The account holder uses the same password both on Runescape, and for other sites/accounts/etc (very very common). Many other sites have much poorer security protections than Runescape itself. If the attacker can gain access to one of these accounts, they can then try using the same password against the Runescape account as well. In particular, getting access to the account holder's email account could allow them to check for the many stupidly-designed sites which have a direct record of your password in plaintext, and will send it to your email account upon request. If as you say this particular attacker knows you in real life, this method of attack is also a possibility, for example if you check your email on a computer they will later have access to, and then close the browser without actually clicking logout. While less likely, another related possibility is that if the backend database of another site using the same password can be hacked into, then even without any security failures on your part an attacker can gain access in this way. B1) The attacker is able to find out the recovery question answers, possibly through personal knowledge, social networking sites, or social engineering (i.e. slowly asking the person related personal questions 2-4 weeks apart until they have all the info). B2) The attacker is able to gain sufficient other information to convince Jagex they are the account holder. Most likely this would require both getting into the account holder's registered email account using any of the described methods, as well as having details on the payment methods used for membership. Nobody who gets into Runescape accounts does so by breaking into Jagex. Just for starters, if they had that capability, they could simply give themselves unlimited money/rares/etc directly, without needing to take from anyone else. As stated earlier, bypassing the bank PIN requires either knowing it through observation (in real life or via an advanced keylogger), guessing it, or waiting for it to expire. I think that covers everything; if anyone can think of something I've missed let me know. Hopefully knowing the possible avenues of attack will help people to better secure their accounts. In particular, if you are reading this and use the same password for Runescape as for other things, I highly recommend that you choose a unique password for Runescape, and never use it for anything else. In the past, I used to pay little attention to possibility A5. That changed last week when I went to check my email, and found out that someone from another country had been trying to send gambling-related email from it. A5 is essentially the only possible way this could have happened, thus causing my above emphasis.

Tried it, it was fun. I see NO reason why they dont allow it. It's pretty easy to imagine that some of those weird camera angles people posted pics of would cause more server load. Since the number of players per server is already limited due to load issues, what do you think would happen if dozens of people tried doing this in the GE on world 2, for example? Maybe they'll be able to release a safer subset in the future, but just because it's programmed in there doesn't mean it's safe for general use.

This type of data seems hard to collect, yet still useful. For example, anecdotally people have concluded that arctic bears, lava titans, and granite lobsters are very useful to use while hunting/mining/fishing, while beavers are less so for woodcutting. Being able to quantify the differences would be helpful. Edit: To clarify, yes I know that a difference in experience per hour can be measured. There is still a lot to be learned, i.e. at what point, if any, do the benefits diminish, etc.

Slight diversion, but in case anybody else besides me thought of it, I tested the Berserker prayer on non-combat stats like agility, crafting, etc. Berserker does not affect the length of those non-combat boosts.

This is Jagex. A few days to them equals two weeks. Even then there will still be some glitch or bug that will be with the update. I'd take buggy content now over buggy content later. That's not their fault, and you're underestimating the scale of the job that Quality Assurance is presented with. At a guess, they will only get through about a hundred man-hours of work each day on this given bit of content, with a regular team working full-time, intensively. Release it to the world, and you're subjecting it to thousands and thousands of man-hours of bug finding work for the first hour, something that QA will never achieve without delaying it for months. When you're dealing with work done on QA, quite literally a few days for us equals several months/years for them. It's a fact of the development process. There's a balance to be had. As a paying customer, there's a level of quality that I and other members will come to expect. I would rather wait and get acceptable content later than unacceptable now. There's a grey area between buggy and not buggy where we all live. Hang on, give this a read if you're interested, it's an old DevBlog from the QA team: http://services.rune...st_id=25&page=7 What you say about QA is true, and most people giving Jagex's QA such a hard time have no idea of the difficulty of their jobs. At the same time, some bugs have recurred so commonly that they should be on a checklist by now. Smuggling runes and other items, just for a start. One fix that they could have used preemptively, and should implement now, is to make all dungeoneering use the minigame runes (catalytic and elemental). If they did this it'd be easy to catch and ban the cheaters with a few quick bank searches, and it arguably might even be better to leave some complex smuggling bugs in-game so as to have a continual cheater-catching trap in place.

Thanks :). To everyone talking about these items only being cosmetic, read again. The third sentence of BTW starts off: Maybe the things which give buffs will be more expensive, requiring longer membership? We'll see I guess.

Can we please get some or all of the above quoted information edited into the first post? I was reading through 3-4 pages going crazy until I finally ran across the relieving confirmation that this won't be microtransactions.

For black demons and steel dragons, I find that a combination of decent defense gear like bandos, turmoil's defense bonus, EEE, and occasional soul split allows me to tank. If you're finding that using a DDS/Korasi to spec causes you to need to bank, switch to the EEE. You're not saving time with those specs if they mean you need to bank :). An EEE is like a combination bunyip and unlimited super defense potion all in one inventory space - very handy. Depending on the task and the levels involved, this might not work on all cannonable monsters.

Kids to see big hits. Protect prayers mess up their big hits, and soul split doesn't.

If you want to duel someone without protect prayers, use the checkbox to disable prayers. Simple as that.

Given Tytn's other output, I suspect many others, like myself, are giving Paul Gower the lion's share of the credit for WGS. IMO, charm sprite hunting and FTP3 were both huge let-downs compared to the great potential they had as concepts. The Myreque questline is based on interesting ideas, but rambles and throws so many hoops at you that I just go "meh". I have trouble imagining anyone enjoying running back and forth through Meiyerditch.

Mining is terrible money, but I also prefer to mine semi-AFK so I have some figures for you. Using Varrock armour, a dragon pickaxe, a penance horn, lava titans, and juju mining potions, I've been getting around 130k per hour. That's without urns, and banking ores when my inventory fills. Without the penance horn, that's around 65k/hr. These figures are from before the mining suit came out, so it'll add around 1.5k extra per hour - not much, in other words. If making money is your main goal, it should be said that mining isn't the best. But if you're trying to judge the benefits of the mining suit, honestly I think it's mainly just for looks. Like with the lumberjack gear, you probably lose more experience/time getting the suit than you'll make back getting 99 mining with it. That said, I'll be finishing collecting my set soon anyway - it does look fairly neat :).

Purples seem to have slowed their spike and stabilized somewhere just above 1.2B for the moment.

This was some time ago, but I got 85->98 farming almost entirely from farming torstols, making a couple hundred million in the process. It's not the fastest XP, but if you're able to make 5-6 herb runs a day it's pretty decent. On average, a single (torstol) herb run will get you somewhere around 10k experience, depending on harvest yields and whether you're using juju potions (you should). Lower herbs somewhat less of course. Note that for torstols, you really need the juju potions to profit. You can profit on other herbs without them, but it's best to use the highest profitable herb if experience is a primary goal. Basically all high-level herb seeds other than cadantine profit well, so getting more experience sounds best for you. With torstols, assuming you do 5-6 runs a day that's around 1-1.3 million per day. Not the fastest moneymaker, but not many skilling methods make more. Since I've never done much tree farming, I'm not sure whether these profits cover what you'd need for tree farming.