GregorDGrim

Thanks, guys, for the nice comments. Last night I was struck once again by the "log in and can't figure out what to do" bug. I have a long line of quests to tackle, a plan of attack for every skill, and a list of other miscellaneous items to try. Yet after signing on, I just sat there for a minute, looking over my spreadsheet, and then at my bank inventory, and then at my skill levels. I can't be the only player to whom this happens. Can I? After another minute, I decided that I was tired and probably wouldn't be playing for much more than an hour, so I took the easy way out and went to Seers' Village to cut down maple trees and burn the logs. I like combining the two skills because it combats the inevitable boredom that sets in after 15 minutes. There were few other choppers sharing the four maples just north of the bank, one of whom actually spoke, so we had a nice little conversation which helped the time pass a bit more quickly. I created a little contest, seeing how many logs I could chop before the last fire set from my previous inventory went out. The best I could manage was 14 logs. I played for about an hour and a half, and leveled firemaking twice (62 and 63). I also made good progress towards level 74 in woodcutting, but finished the session about 20K exp short. Total levels = 1,095

That's pretty funny. I was just having this discussion with my girlfriend last evening. I was muttering to myself about messing up on a quest, and she asked if everything was okay. I told her it was just in the game, and she laughed, thinking I was doing something work-related on the computer and getting frustrated. I said "I just wasted time doing something" and she responded "The whole thing is a waste of time, isn't it?" I said that every game is a waste of time, but it's certainly no worse than sitting in front of the television for a few hours. Man must play, to balance out the work. As long as it's fun, I will continue with Runescape. When it ceases to be fun, I'll move on to something else.

Congrats in advance! I hope you enjoy the party. Now your runecrafting 99 won't feel so lonely.

Bonus experience weekend is paradise to a (semi) efficient noob. I spent a total of eight hours playing and leveling, and close to an hour explaining to my sons why they should be taking advantage of the bonus instead of playing Red Dead Redemption (older) and Roblox (younger). They just weren't interested, however. As I mentioned, I wanted to get to work on my quest list. After the mandatory 'stare at the list for two minutes and feel at a total loss as to what to do first' period, I decided that it was time for Holy Grail. Excalibur was getting dull from disuse, sitting in my bank, and the prayer experience reward was very appealing. I teleported to Camelot (which, after this weekend, I had become quite the expert at doing), and spoke with King Arthur. He immediately asked me if I had made any progress finding the Grail, and that's when I remembered I had already started this quest awhile back. Okay, needless teleport, and inefficient start, but time to knock this out quickly. I got the items needed and headed out to track down the Fisher King. Level 120 titan? No sweat. Except I forgot to change into my armor. My little combat level 65 self wasn't going to have much of a shot fighting this beast with an air staff. So...back to the bank in Falador, where I changed into my armor and got a good weapon. Back to the titan, and here we...argghhh. I left Excalibur sitting in the bank. So...back to the bank in Falador, where I grabbed Excalibur and a few extra recently-cooked lobster. Back to the titan, and here we go. I fought the titan valiantly, and was down to three lobster when my mighty sword dealt the death blow. Unfortunately, I had mistakenly clicked on the titan during the fight, which apparently restarted the dialogue with it and so I somehow didn't get credit for killing it. The titan's health immediately went back to 100% and I was nearly out of food. So...back to the bank in Falador, where I refilled my inventory with lobster. Back to the titan, and here we go. After that debacle, there were no problems with completing the quest, and I returned the Holy Grail to a very grateful King Arthur. [spoiler=I Need to Titan Up My Efficiency] All that experience earned me four prayer levels (to 38) and a defense level (51), along with an increase in combat level to 66, and a nice feeling of accomplishment, accompanied by frustration that it had taken me twice as long as it should have to complete. Total levels = 1,093

The highlights of my remaining bonus experience time: - Leveled mining from 44 to 50, in the Dorge'shuun Mine under the Lumbridge Castle. I found a spot with three coal where I barely had to move, and did the fill-up-inventory-and-then-drop-it-all move. [spoiler=It's All Mine] - Leveled smithing (37) by making steel bars in Falador. - Leveled fishing (62 and 63) by catching lobsters in Catherby. - Leveled cooking (54 and 55) by cooking those lobsters, along with a bunch of tuna another fisherman was dropping, in Catherby. [spoiler=Something Smells Fishy] - Leveled fletching from 60 to 65, at a few different banks. I need to decide whether to switch from maple longbows to yew shortbows. - Including playing time on Friday, I took advantage of just over eight hours of bonus experience this weekend (down to 1.2x multiplier) and leveled a total of 34 times in seven different skills. - I cracked the top 1.5 million in the rankings. Now that the bonus frenzy has passed, I'm going to spend some time on my quest list. Total levels = 1,088

Forget questing! This is bonus experience weekend, by Guthix! I spent the first three hours of my bonus experience on three skills - agility, fletching and magic. First, I ran through the Barbarian Outpost gauntlet (repeatedly) to train agility, since that may be the most boring skill and it can't be trained while afk. I got 30K experience in the first hour, and 45K overall in about 90 minutes to level the skill from 44 to 50. Notice that I caught a firework exploding in my picture: [spoiler=I'm Agile, Not Fragile] I just couldn't take it any longer, so I switched over to fletching. I bought a truckload of maple logs and fletched shortbows for levels 53, 54 and 55... [spoiler=They Call Me Fletch] ...and then fletched longbows for levels 56-60. [spoiler=No, I'm Serious. They Call Me Fletch.]] Fletching the unfinished longbows is the best money maker that I've found so far. I sold all of the shortbows and longbows I made, and bought a couple hundred law runes. Camelot, here we come (250 times). That got me from level 46 to level 50. Tonight there were a half dozen others doing the exact same thing I was. [spoiler=Magic, Schmagic...Why Do You Keep Coming Here?] I hit a new milestone - the first time I've earned more than 200K experience in a single day. Doesn't that figure sound so quaint (i.e., ridiculously low) to you long-term players? 240K total experience and 18 levels. And I didn't even have to use my AK...I gotta say it was a good day. I don't know how much more time I'll have available this weekend to take advantage of the bonus, due to a number of obligations. Keep living the dream! Total levels = 1,072

Thanks for the nice words; glad you'll be checking in on occasion. Yes, definitely was very fortunate with the robe legs. That was just the second clue scroll I've received. The first, a medium, took me quite awhile to finish, and I got approximately 70K worth of junk. It felt like a waste of time. This one did not. After not playing at all yesterday, I had a couple of hours free today and decided to do some leveling. I started at the Grand Exchange, purchasing a slew of willow logs (that would have sounded much better had it been a 'slew of yew', but I'm not high enough level yet) and fletching longbows for four levels, making it to level 50. [spoiler=I'll Be Fletching with Myself] Okay, not quite with myself, but the kitty wasn't helping. It was just sitting there mewing. I swear. 50 was good, but a couple more levels would be even better, so I bought a few cords of maple logs and started fletching shortbows. I leveled twice more (to 52) before I had enough of that. Plus, the dialogue around the area I was standing was getting very weird. I looked at my skill levels, and noticed that I was so close to level 32 herblore that I could almost taste the grimy guam. Energy potions would be the way to go for me, but chocolate dust sure sells for a premium at the G.E. Luckily, I remembered that the Culinomancer's Chest under the Lumbridge kitchen sold chocolate...and it's a bank, too! Okay, I wasn't really that excited, but I'm spicing up the narrative. I was able to purchase just 50 chocolate bars, and then I ground them to dust. Mixing them with the proper herb in a vial of water meant those 50 bars were enough to earn three levels, to 34. Out of chocolate but still wanting to level again, I took note of my limpwurt root inventory (filching them right before the bots could do so in the Edgeville dungeon, remember?) and used them to make enough strength potions to reach level 35. I was done spending money after that, and was itching to fight something after fletch and herb class was over. I strolled into the Stronghold of Security, fought walked my way to the second level, and started bashing in fleshcrawler skulls with my granite maul. I quickly leveled defense to 50, and then strength to 51. I could have gone longer but for the fact that I neglected to bring any food and my hit points had fallen below 100. I seem to make that mistake often. That's going to come back to haunt me at some point. Here's a snapshot of the happy man reaching level 50 in defense (unfortunately, my happy persona is hiding directly behind the congratulations screen that popped up): [spoiler=50 Str, 50 Att, and now 50 Def] One bonus to those bug-looking mobs: they tend to drop some decent items for a noob. I managed to pick up about 22K worth of items (herbs, a black helm and gold), along with 10 charms and a piece of a sceptre. I'll have to spend a bit of time figuring out what to do with that. I teleported to Lumbridge, dumped all that junk and my equipment in the bank, and sat for a minute. Was there anything else I felt like doing before calling it quits? Hmmm...I seem to have about 100 extra law runes. Not for long - I took them, along with an air staff, and cast Camelot Teleport 100 times, leveling magic once to 46. Although no one mentioned a word, I'm sure the three or four people standing around that teleport location were wondering what the hell was going on with me. Total levels = 1,054.

Nice blog...I was wondering why I couldn't find you on the highscores list under your name. Do you ever get nervous about accidentally resetting your total XP counter? :ohnoes:

Busy weekend...nice job! Sounds like a decent plan for the bonus weekend.

Today I spent two hours with Runescape, only 10 minutes of which were logged in to the game. I have 64 quest points; not a lot for someone of my level. While logged in, I checked my quest box and noted that I'm eligible to complete 55 additional quests. Which ones, though, should I do first? I needed to prioritize, so it was time to bust out the Excel spreadsheet. I spent the ten minutes on-line copying the 55 quests listed in the quest box onto the spreadsheet, and then the next hour and 50 minutes looking up the quest guides on-line. For each quest, I noted the general location of its start point, a short summary of the rewards and any pertinent miscellaneous information (for example, what quest I would become eligible for upon completion, if any, or whether a quest would take longer than average). Then, I highlighted those quests that had some combination of a) good, relevant experience; b) being necessary for a more important future quest; c) interesting rewards; and/or d) ease to complete. That narrowed my list of 55 quests down to 35. That's not to say I will be completely ignoring the other 20, but they're not going to be my focus. I still need to prioritize this list of 35, but here it is: Novice Death Plateau Dwarf Cannon Jungle Potion Nature Spirit Plague City Rag and Bone Man Rune Mechanics Shield of Arrav Swept Away The Tale of the Muspah Vampyre Slayer Intermediate Animal Magnetism Death to the Dorgeshuun Elemental Workshop II The Feud The Fremennik Trials Ghosts Ahoy The Giant Dwarf Holy Grail Scorpion Catcher Spirits of the Elid Tears of Guthix Tree Gnome Village Wanted! Watchtower Waterfall Quest Experienced/Master/Special Dragon Slayer Fight Arena The Grand Tree Grim Tales Haunted Mine Horror from the Deep Lost City Recipe for Disaster (I've completed one of the subquests and am eligible for two others currently) Temple of Ikov I think Dragon Slayer, The Grand Tree, The Fremennik Trials, and Elemental Workshop II are definite must-do's, but I have good reasons for including each of the 35. Given the impending double experience weekend, however (for which I still don't know on what I'll be focusing), any questing may have to wait until next week. Total levels = unchanged at 1,041

Enough time to run through three more Daemonheim floors - 18, 19 and then had to reset due to my dungeoneering level so back to floor 1. 2,066 prestige carried over; not sure if that's any good or not, but definitely helped get me better experience on my second run through the first floor. The boss monster for both 18 and 19 was Har'Lakk the Riftspitter, or, as I like to call him, well, let's just say [cabbage]. He killed me three times in total, and is certainly the toughest boss I've faced so far. Got a dungeoneering level (37), a farming (14) and a cooking (53). Oh, and a mild headache from Mr. Riftspitter. Total levels = 1,041

A busy, and truly meandering, few hours in Runescape. I leveled eight different skills and hit a significant milestone (for me). I started alongside the southern outside wall of Falador, chopping some ivy. Shortly after hitting level 73, I reached one million experience in a single skill for the first time. [spoiler=One Meeeeeeeellllll-yun Experience] With a pep in my step, I headed next to Daemonheim. I cleared floors 15-17 and leveled dungeoneering three times (to 36), smithing (36), firemaking (51) and defense (49). Tiring of that, and a bit frustrated after dying once to the boss of floor 17, I went deep into the depths under the Lumbridge castle to mine some iron in Dorgeshuun. Those dwarves down there are much friendlier than H.A.M. would have you believe. I also purchased a bone crossbow and bolts, upon the advice of my son. After reaching level 44 mining, I decided to test out my new weapon. I traveled to Edgeville and fought hill giants in the dungeon, leveling constitution to 53 and prayer to 34, but not ranged. I filled my inventory with limpwurt roots, after standing in the corner and filching them as they respawned, just seconds ahead of the bots each time. That was enjoyable. Rummaging through my inventory, I remembered that I had obtained an easy clue scroll a little more than a week ago, so I decided to finish my afternoon by solving the clues. Four clues later, I received the treasure: [spoiler=A Tisket, A Tasket, This Was in the Casket] Those Saradomin robe legs sold for a little under 130K, doubling my gold balance. The salmon? Not as much, but they were quite tasty. Total levels = 1,038, and solidly ensconced in the top 1.7 million in the rankings

From the farming article: I think the Industrial revolution has changed human society more. But, that's a minor nit with an otherwise interesting and well-written article. I also enjoyed the interview with Jiblix, but I'm not surprised by Jagex's decision to de-mod him.

I haven't trained fletching since registering on Runetrack, so I decided to spend some time this afternoon whittling some logs into bows. I bought enough oak logs to get fletching from level 30 to 35, and then switched to willow logs. I purchased 1,100 logs, since that brought me down to almost 50K coins exactly and I don't ever want to be below 50K. Saving for a rainy day, or some such nonsense. After fletching willow shortbows and then longbows once I hit level 40, I was able to finish at level 45. 54,000 experience without breaking a sweat, and sold all of the bows to bring my savings account balance up to 100K. [spoiler=Earning my Whittling Badge] Then my oldest son told me about buying the battlestaves from the little kid in Varrock, and selling them for a quick 8K at the Grand Exchange. Apparently that's a very simple and fast way for a noob to make a bit of daily extra cash. I like it, and I'll try to remember it in future sessions. Since I had the benefit of my son's expertise right at my side, and had his attention, I asked him what I was supposed to do with the strange rocks I'd found over the past month. I knew this, but it slipped from my memory. After being instructed to use matching pairs to add to the statue in the Varrock Museum, I discovered I had four pairs in my inventory, worth 1K herblore, 1,800 thieving (level 43), 2K fletching (level 46) and 1K construction. Total levels = 1,028

Only an hour free again, so back to Daemonheim. 47 minutes to get through Lucky 13th Floor. Leveled dungeoneering to 33, farming to 13 and defense to 48. I plan to level defense to 50, and then switch to training strength for awhile. I spent my last 15 minutes of this session roleplaying with a friend who wants to start a clan on world 42. It appears as though we'll have seven or eight members to start. We're certainly not going to be shooting for a fancy clan citadel, but it will pass the time. I'll be part of it as long as it continues to be fun. Just six more days until bonus experience weekend is upon us. I've been reading the thread in general discussion about what skills people plan to train during that time, and I'm trying to figure out what I should be doing. Given my low bank balance (currently around 80K), training a 'buyable' skill appears to be out. Hunting and farming might be a good idea, to get those above level 30. Agility is a strong possibility, since increased levels would help me recover my energy quickly and I might get access to some extra shortcuts around the map. I am definitely open to suggestions. Total levels - 1011. Only four more binary totals remaining.

I have had just an hour to play over the last two days, and I spent it dungeoneering. My strategy is to take as long as possible and eke out a few thousand extra experience points on all of the various skills. No, I kid. My strategy isn't really to take as long as possible; it just seems that way. I spent 55 minutes on floor 12 today. The smuggler and I ate a nice lunch (web snipper-infused potato with a side nettles salad), I did a little smithing, I did a little mining, I did a little fishing, I did a little crafting. I also accidently clicked on opening the door to the boss room before I was ready. Luckily, I figured out that I needed to use the pickaxe on it to break down its crunchy exterior shell, before causing it any damage. I felt as if I were attacking an M&M. That 55 minutes gave me just under 9,500 experience, and level 32 in dungeoneering and 45 in crafting. No screenshots, because nothing interesting happened. I did re-read the dungeoneering guides here at Tip.It, and got a better handle on prestige, so maybe I should have taken a screenshot of that. Or not. I'm almost in the top 1.8 million on the Runescape level rankings! Party time.

Sorry you got compormised. Hopefully that will heal soon.

Nice blog you have going! I grew up in eastern PA; my brother went to Pitt and has been living out there for a long time. I need to work towards eligibility for kingdom management. Seems like such a great money maker.

Agility - Wildnerness course - don't bring anything valuable Thieving - Master farmers and/or Guards (Varrock, Falador, Ardougne)

Had some extra free time this evening, so I logged on and just stood at the east Falador bank. Upon realization that this was not getting me any experience, and that even in a roleplaying world, attempting to rob the bank was highly unlikely to net me any gold, I decided that I would get a couple of crafting levels. I bought 500 yak hair at the GE and then teleported to Lumbridge for spinning class. Turning yak hair to rope is a good strategy for someone of my level and wealth. Given the fact that I have less than 100,000 gold to my name, I do not currently have the luxury to buy my levels. I bought the hair for less than I can sell the rope, although it does take awhile to sell 500 rope. I should have purchased 501 yak hair: So I leave myself eight experience short of level 45, but on the plus side I did level crafting twice. Perfect example of my goofiness: I logged off without going to the GE to sell the rope. I logged back on, got the teleport tablet, and broke it. As I materialized in the middle of Falador, I realized I had taken the wrong tablet. *sigh* Bonus comment: I greatly prefer playing with the full overhead view, and keep the compass facing due north. This makes emotes generally pretty much useless to me. Is this anyone else's preferred view?

Thanks for the nice comments about my initial post and blog idea; that was unexpected, and appreciated. Working towards my goal of having a minimum level of 30 in all skills, I planted potatoes and marigolds south of Falador and in north Catherby. I'm aware that there are two other spots that I should include on this farming 'run' (more like a very short walk), in Port Phasmatys and north Ardougne, but I can't get to either of those places quickly since I don't have the skills/quests to teleport to either. So, I'm keeping it short for now. After planting I decided to wait out the 30 minutes playing Vinesweeper. I like to consider myself a Minesweeper expert, although my heyday was a long time ago in that game. Let me just say that Vinesweeper is painfully dull, and the music is extremely grating, but on the positive side I was able to work on two of the three skills in which I'm sub-30 - hunting and farmer (see what I did there?). Here's a picture of the board after digging holes all over the southeast corner: Maybe it's just my eyes, but if I use the mouse wheel to scroll up and down quickly, that picture looks like it's expanding and shrinking. Optical illusion, or vision problem? Anyway, that foray got me enough points to trade in to gain a farming level, and while I was at it, I poisoned a bunch of bunnies with some nasty-looking root, so my hunter level increased as well. All that farming made me hungry, so I logged off, increasing three levels in farming to 12 and a single level in hunter, to 21. I took screenshots of those glorious achievements, but I bored myself looking at them, so I'm not certainly not posting them. Four levels down, 996 to go.

Level 1,000. A nice round number. The easy thousand. It took me 203 hours to reach this point. That's fairly quick, I'm thinking. My sons, who have had accounts for much longer than I have, agree. I decided a couple of months ago to reactivate my membership in the game, so that I could play a computer game and have fun with my boys, even if we were in different physical locations. Since then, I have done a lot of reading (guides, forums), a lot of exploring, and a lot of leveling. I set up an Excel spreadsheet to chart my goals, because there is just so much to do and I am a numbers-oriented person. My primary goal was to get all skills to level 30, and with the exception of summoning, hunter and farming, that's been accomplished. Which brings up a question I've had: why hunt-er and farm-ing? That's inconsistent. Why not hunting and farming, or hunter and farmer? That's a great example of why I chose to describe this blog as a 'meandering' journey through my next thousand levels. I tend to digress, switch goals, change ideas. It's a constant battle against my desire for structure and organization (see Excel spreadsheet, above). I decided that I would start this blog upon reaching 1,000 total levels, and the day has arrived, so here I am. My hope is to provide a little bit of entertainment for those of you who have become battle-hardened, cynical, bot-hating, scam-busting, shaking-your-fist-at-Jagex-in-anger-and-sadness players. Remember when this game was fun? Well, that's where I am now. This is actually fun for me. I'm enjoying most of what I try, at least for the first few hours in a row of a particular skill. I'm liking the quests, and will spend significant time in the near future working on my quest point total. I'm having a good time soloing the floors of the Daemonheim dungeons (although I spend inordinate amounts of time milking every bit of available experience I can out of each floor). I enjoy the roleplaying aspect and opportunities of the game, which is why most of my time is spent on World 42. I definitely plan to get more involved in that. As I mentioned, there's just so much to do. I'm no expert blogger, but I do look forward to sharing my rambling thoughts, and descriptions of my journey through the second thousand levels, with anyone interested enough to read them. Onward we go. [spoiler=Level 1000 pics]Sniffing the Compost Bin for My 1,000th Level Sweet! I Can Now Plant Guam Current levels - in signature below

Like 5000 hours to catch up with paperbag. Okay, so just over 4800 hours to go.

I'm a true noob, so take my comments with a chunk of salt. I think the answer to this thread's question is dependent on what a person wants to do in the game. Many of the long-term players are going after 99s and/or higher, and are very efficient players, and they're seeing significant issues caused by the bots as mentioned throughout the thread. As a new player, I notice the bots in certain areas (chopping trees, killing hill giants in the Edgeville Dungeon), but they really don't affect my gameplay. If you're into the roleplaying aspects of the game, or are less concerned with efficiency and power-leveling, then they probably wouldn't affect your experience at all. There are a lot of ways other than quick leveling that someone can play; I was recently reading a thread started by do-it-yourselfers who are starting characters who will not use the Grand Exchange or trade. That's just one way that someone could change their gaming experience. I know that I'm speaking from a completely different perspective from 99% of the posters here, because I started playing just recently. There's no way I'll ever be able to compete level-wise; I'm years behind and don't have a ton of free time to spend on the game. It's a fun diversion for me, particularly because both of my sons are members and I enjoy spending time with them on the game instead of doing something in the other room while they're on the computer. I used to be more of a "no-lifer" on the computer back in my college days, but I'm just not going to be spending 10 hours straight or 40 hours in a week playing a single game. If that's the way that you want to play RS, then you probably should pay attention to what the others are writing - bots are definitely having an influence on the game's playability and enjoyability for the power-levelers. For the casual gamer, though (and there really are a number of us out there)? I like the game because there are just so many different things to do, and nothing to download, and I can play AFK-ish at times, and I have friends with whom I can play. The bots don't affect the game for me, and I'm enjoying myself. Time to get my skills up to level 30 so those dashes in my signature go away.

Greetings. I'm the perfect definition of a RuneScape noob. I've played a total of about 125 hours, 60 of which has been in the past month. My sons both play RS, and I decided to become a member so that we could have fun playing a game together. I've been a computer gamer for many, many years, getting my start on an Atari 800 XL. I started playing MUDs in the 90s, so I've been a fan of on-line roleplaying games for more than 15 years. I'm a huge believer in reading about the games I play. I have found this site to be among the best with respect to guides, advice, articles and the forum, so this is the first (and likely only) one where I've registered. I look forward to using all of this information to make myself a better player, and most importantly have fun doing so, both with my boys and solo. There is just so much to do. :ugeek: