WeatherMatt

Pretty invincible, isn't he? As a matter of fact, do any of those titles have any use? My pet (level 12) is now "vivid". Whoopie? In other news, So what do I win? Nothing. Didn't buy any bricks, skill or equipment upgrades, nada. At least my hero only wasted a few thousand of it, he's heading out now with a hair over 7k gold left and 100% godpower.

XxCavalierxX was the TIFer you are (likely) referring to. An update in May 2002 banned around 3k players for botting with a very popular program; Cavalier's defense was he just used the program for one day to see how players moved while using the program so he could report offenders to Jagex. IIRC he had 99 cooking and some other cool stats, yet he got wiped completely.

So am I the only person whose hero replaced their pet? Replaced a level 8 pet for a level 1 (now level 3) Did your first pet die? My hero replaced a dead pet. If the first pet was alive when swapped, then that's the first I've heard of it.

I'm another one of those in-betweeners that's not good enough stats-wise to get in an elite DG clan/group, but would be willing to give a Tip.it group maker a try. I DG'ed to 81 via w117 because I didn't know any better and developed a strong urge to travel to Sweden and physically melt the server to the ground when I was done. So any half-decent dungeoneering grouping would be swell.

So apparently pets get to be super awesome at level 30 according to the new blog post. Considering how pets can die pretty easily, and the cost of reviving them at higher levels becoming absurd even for the most thrifty heroes (the formula is 450 gold x pet's level, and this reviving is done after spending on new equipment, bricks, skill levels, etc.) I can't see how getting a level 30 pet would be possible, unless you can influence reviving a dead pet via god voices. Level 26 hero now, one more level for a new skill. I also got 3 invites in the Great Godville Invite Giveaway, and tried to use them on TIFers that still seem to be playing, with preference to those in the ELITES guild.

I can't explain unity either (take a look at Slaves To Armok, ranked 40ish, and easily the biggest guild with the biggest gold fund), but the drop is easy to explain. Heroes like to associate with smaller guilds, for some reason. When a guild gets high in the rankings (like the Elites, recently up to rank 5) heroes will try to leave and join guilds much lower ranked, 30 or below. The dedicated ones like us will cancel these quests, but most players will just jump to the next guild. We cascade down the rankings until we're small again, and can proceed to pick up stragglers.

More updates for my hero: Level 24 reached! Another combat skill learned. That makes 3 combat and 1 travel skill. I would have liked a trade skill to have use of one of each type, but I can't complain. I'm assuming that the more combat skills the hero has, the more likely he is to use any of them (so the more skills the merrier), which should make leveling easier. My hero also has his second pet, a sun dog named Stitch. Early results indicate this one may be more combat-oriented than Scrat was, which may make him more useful. Then again, continuing to breathe may make him more useful than Scrat as well.

So after dragging the dead corpse of a pet around for 3 days, my hero apparently discarded Scrat in the weeds somewhere, meaning I'll probably have to tame a new pet and have it start over at level 1 now. What a waste. I've been trying for a couple of weeks now to use any invites my hero gets, except I haven't seen any pop up. Oh well.

I'm thinking there has to be some sort of bug with the creation/destruction pantheons. My hero is now pure good!, which he has never been before, along with over 170 other heroes. The number of all pure good heroes (those with and without the !) are up to over 700. The numbers are similar, if slightly less, on the evil side of things. In other news, Scrat apparently died overnight. Forgive me if I don't really miss him. Heroes may pay a buttload of cash to revive their dead pets, but I'm not counting on it.

I somewhat care about my overall rank, though considering it's as low as it is there's not much point in paying attention to it. I would care much more about it if I had, say, 2200+ or 2300+ total. Individual skills I don't care about.

Anyone else notice that the number of pure good heroes has massively jumped? There are now over 350 of them. Normally there's only 20-30. Won another skirmish the other day, which brought me over 6k gold. Scrat is now level 5, and still as semi-useless as ever. However, there may be a sign of things to come: 02:31 It seems that Scrat just tried to use navel clamp. Of course he failed. What a boob. Pets with skills? Yes, please.

20:02 Hm, dust bunny Scrat. Not the best name, I would say. Maybe I should have called him Flat-assed Hot Dog? I lol'd. In other news - near level 22 and Scrat is probably near level 5. Hopefully I learn more about him then.

Scrat is now level 3, and is now known as Scrat <<Drolly>>. Apparently at level 3 you learn about their personality. I don't know what his does for him yet, but I assume I'll find out soon. I've also heard of <<Lazy>>, I'm sure there are more. Level 21, and finally a transportation skill! Anyone else with a transportation skill know how well it works?

Woah, Scrat's usefulness just jumped: 01:21 Scrat grumbled at the trader. Trader swallowed nervously and gave us a generous discount. This was followed up by: 01:22 The trader was so surprised to see a golden ticket, he immediately cashed out 1562 gold coins for the worthless thing. Headed to the nearest tavern to celebrate. 01:23 When the trader saw my will power generator, he grinned and paid 841 coins for it. Other random items got a similar, close to 2x jump in cash. I don't feel like complaining much about his uselessness anymore.

That's why I always go to the arena only if I'm at 100 GP, so I get 1 punishment during the fight. Not an arena fight (I had 0 godpower, I couldn't go to the arena), a random skirmish. Scrat is becoming marginally more useful. A couple of times I noticed him performing CPR on my hero to revive him (useful!) and occasionally digging to find 80-100 gold. Haven't noticed him fighting any monsters yet.

Rough day so far. Logged in to my hero being dead (for only 90 minutes or so, not too bad), only to get involved in a skirmish about 5 minutes later when I didn't have enough godpower for an encouragement. I lost by 13 hp to a guy who had about +4 or +5 on me in all equipment. One heal and I might have won...oh well. Scrat is level 2 now and still mostly useless. He found me a regular item once when traveling, and will occasionally heal a small amount, but overall is still just something furry to kick down the road in front of my hero.

02:22 Scrat refuses to drag a cart that I found in a ravine. Naughty dust bunny! Now I have to leave the good cart on a road. 02:25 Noticed how Scrat snatched hardly earned popped balloon from my knapsack and started to gnaw it. Fortunately, I took it away in time. Bad dust bunny! Scrat seems to be quite the useless thing, so far. He will occasionally rub one of my hero's wounds and heal a small amount of hp (about 5, the one time I noticed it), but that appears to be the only benefit so far. He is only level 1, though.

21:59 I looked into the kind eyes of the vanquished monster and suddenly decided Dust Bunny, you'll be my pet! And I'll call you Scrat. Bandaged his wounds, gave him a bone and fastened the leash. And with that, a TIF hero has its first pet. No idea what it does yet, will report back if I notice anything.

Skills are learned every 3 levels past 15 (so 18, 21, 24, etc.). I'm starting to like my hero's skills (both combat, levels 7 and 6). They, when used, pretty much KO whatever he's fighting, and since they are decently leveled now, are used quite often. Pets have been released! (Read the latest blog post) The relevant details: Heroes need to be level 18, and apparently gods can do nothing to influence pets in any way - heroes are completely on auto-pilot regarding getting a pet, feeding it, training it, etc. Level 21 for my hero should be sometime on Friday. Again - transportation skill or I dismember him limb from limb. Also, I don't think I ever posted my hero for the front page, so here he is: http://godvillegame.com/gods/Weathermatt

So Zaaps, if I may ask a question: When do you use punishes as an evil hero? As a good character, I wait till my hero gets down to 20-25% health when fighting, then encourage to try to heal him. At what point during his travels would punishing be useful? I've been considering going evil just to mess around with it.

Haven't touched a d scim in years (if ever? Dunno), but I voted for D. I prefer the clean, larger plain scimitar look. No dorky spikes, and it can't be used as a wrench (as apparently C could). Wish there was some more variation, though. Not much difference to look at overall among the 5.

I don't think the theory about a set number of pure good/evil is correct...My hero has been on the virtuous/pure good line a number of times now, and I've checked the pantheons for his rank from time to time. The number of pure good players can fluctuate quite a bit, from 15-20 or so in the dead of night (US time) to over 30 during the day (presumably, when more people are on and encouraging their hero). The number of overall good heroes doesn't change that much over time. Update on my hero: Level 18, and he decided to learn...another combat skill! *headdesk* At least with two decent combat skills (level 6 and 4) he actually has a half-decent chance to use them now. Also a master in the ELITES guild, which is back on the rise (rank 9 again!). Possibly, with more and more of us being long term members in the guild, we can preserve some of our unity for when we start to drop again, and won't cascade down to below 20. (This is going under the assumption that more master+ level heroes = more unity, which seems correct)

And my method is simply to bank all the effigies I can't do (which, as of now, is 100% of them) until I get the motivation to get the levels for them. Why do people give away so much xp, anyways?

This, please. Make it a Dungeoneering reward if you have to, but it would be so worth it.

Playing efficiently doesn't have to mean playing with crazy methods. You can be a perfectly semi-efficient player without doing things like alching planks made by magic in between woodcutting actions, etc. My opinion on that gameplay is that you suck all the interaction out of the game doing that. You may as well be playing with Excel spreadsheets (nothing against Grimy with that statement). But I respect that style of play, even if I never will choose to do the same. But it doesn't mean efficiency isn't good to strive for during every-day scaping. Take slayer, for example. I went and spent the 2 weeks needed to get myself a Chaotic Rapier because I knew it was the best weapon to train to max combat stats with. I got 85 herblore because I knew I'd want the levels anyways, and being able to use super antifires and stewed extremes would help during slayer as well. Better to get them now and use them rather than after my melee stats are finished, after all. That's efficient. I don't cannon or use piety, though. (Trying to save money, I guess) So I'm not what one would consider a "pro" slayer. I don't play the game to achieve robotic, 100% maximum xp gains at the expense of interactivity within the game. I value my clan chat, for example, and don't mind stopping during my travels if an interesting topic comes up. I don't devote 120% of my attention or reaction time to the game just to squeeze a few extra XP's per hour out of my time. I also don't (generally) play 8+ hours at a time, gaining large amounts of xp in a certain skill(s) quickly. So am I inefficient? Some would say yes, others no. But I feel like I get so much more out of the game this way. This is a massively multiplayer game, after all. Embrace that aspect, and you'll find a lot more fun in the game than no-lifing for hours on end or multitasking in between game ticks to the extreme.