bedman

If you are going for 99 mining is is very simple. Go to the living rock cave, and superheat your gold while you mine it. By the time you have 99 mining you will have 95 something magic. NOTHING beats this, since you don't lose time superheating (and you get smithing experience). edit: you are 95 mining already, oops. Shame you didn't do it before though, really a waste of xp. Still, you can get 85-90 magic by doing it now;

Buy yourself some claws : p I tend to use em at corp with stat hammer and bgs when I can. Thinking of using them on Slayer tasks or something lol. I remember a high level showing how with spec restores and extremes you can Barrows VERY effectively (pretty much 1 hitting of the brothers) which worked out to be a great money maker, even for high levels (think it was 3m+/hr but don't quote me) More like 1.2-1.5. But yeah, I use spec restores everywhere. At barrows it's handy so you can claw spec both ahrim and karil.

I know, and it seems unlikely to me. Time to share some images: Finally managed to get full battle robe set off the GE. Took around a week for the last part (bottom), but I never used any GE timers or whatever. Just updated offer whenever I saw that the GE had updated. Found out it goes pretty well with purple phat. Also got 99 prayer a few days ago. Not too excited about it, just something that I should have finished off a long time ago (had the bones for quite some time now). However, this means I'm finally COMPLETELY MAXED COMBAT, including herblore and MA rings (if those count lol). Chaotic weapon will be added soon hopefully. Also goes with a nice total lvl. So I mentioned MA rings, well I finally finished that goal. Have to start studying a lot IRL, so I thought, why not combine them and do some afk ma'ing in the mean time. Bought my onyx for 46m. Got easily rid off the junk by buying crashing arcane and selling in GE + selling my 3rd ag range top + junk and rebuying it in the GE. All in all, I payed about 10-11m for my ring :-).

thar's a silly excuse, shooting a rune crossbow without an accumulator, for an hour, costs 144k, a crystal bow costs 108k, is that really a substantial difference? Honestly I use a soul wars cape instead of an accumulator with rune crossbows now. and I still don't bother looting the ammo. you really should never ever loot the ammo you fire, unless you're using dragon arrows or something. Okay, poitn taken. Hmm, seems that all in all, broads are indeed one of the best, and for sure the most versatile.

Low, I heard under drag boots.

Funny chatbox, pretty sure that guy is lieing though, 2 wheel with a truck, yeah right...

You need a lot of money to get something out of it (5 red masks gets you .. what? Still it's 650m gone).

Some valid points. For me personally, these tests were interesting because of the results with the crystal bow. I mainly did it to see how well it performed against all those new weapons. Conclusion is that it's actually still pretty damn good, and I love the fact that you don't have to worry about ammo on the floor (some safespots dont work with ava's accumulator for instance). Also, it has the same accuracy as the rune crossbow, so unless bolts somehow add accuracy, it will perform just as well on high def monsters. So "an accurate and strong weapon" like you said, might as well be the crystal bow. I know darts and knives are awesome for raw xp/h at low def monsters (and moreso in kuradal's dungeon), no surprises there. However, I liked using the crystal bow much more due to no ammo on the floor.

That's useful for boss monsters, but not as much for training. Zammy book is nice, especially the prayer bonus, but I prefer crystal bow + SW cape for more prayer bonus, and only 2 less accuracy. The whole "story" in the beginning was just to put the whole thing in some sort of context. I went by my memory, but of course I'm probably wrong indeed at some places. Thing is, it's not that important, it's just a filler :-) Btw, I just did a very short (5 min) test on dark beasts with crystal bow vs. broad bolts. It was not very accurate because I'm not used to play on this computer (missed quite a few attack turns here and there). This time broad bolts came out slightly better, so yeah, more tests need to be done.

Yet you tested with rune arrows and darts, which frankly are not the best for every-day use. Try either adamant arrows/darts or rune bolts. I bought 6k rune darts when they were 160 gp each. At that price, they are very reasonable for every day use. Rune arrows have been in my bank for ages. Was surprised they were 400 gp each. I thought it would be more like 250. You are right though, at current prices, rune arrows aren't very economical, nor are darts.

i still think we'd be best off counting the # of attacks to kill, since we know each attack is a set number of game ticks. Then your results will be very theoretical, perhaps too theoretical? While it's nice to leave out all variables, when training "for real", you WILL have those variables. And due to the nature of some of the methods, some will be effected worse by the variables than others (with a crystal bow for instance it's easier to train in optimal conditions, than with darts, where you have to pick up darts a lot and run towards monsters). That being said, more accurate and just more tests in general should be done yeah

Not really sure what you mean here about losing attacks and so forth. The problem with elapsed time testing is that it introduces a whole bunch of variables into the mix -- how much time you spend (if any) picking up drops, where the monsters are when you attack them (since they move around), how far away you are during combat, etc. As for the 28%, you'd be surprised. I did a series of tests comparing two weapons and found wild fluctautions between test runs. The RuneScape RNG is pwnage. ;) I mean that while picking up a drop, you can lose an attack turn, or you can lose time by running towards a gargoyle (with darts, crystal bow covers the whole room). You are right about new variables coming in, but with ranging these are pretty minimal, since you never have to run towards a monster. I did pick up some drops, but made sure I wouldn't lose an attack turn. Perhaps I should do some more tests where I don't pick up anything.

I'm sorry,but they really aren't. You need to do more testing, and on more monsters. I think you'll find that broad bolts are *still* the best option, even in Kuradal's dungeon, which is one reason why the entire ranging skill has been unbalanced by crossbows. The only things consistently faster than broad bolts are insanely expensive (diamond bolts, Karil's, etc.) That's why I made this topic, to discuss it. My results are very incomplete and perhaps not very accurate, so I made this thread to see what other people have found about it. However, like D Jay said, human errors and whatnot can account for some differences, but 28% is quite a lot. @ Qeltar: IMO testing just "in combat" time is not a good way of testing, since these tests dont reflect "in use" conditions. With fast and short range weapons like darts for instance, you are far more likely to lose an attack turn here and there, when attacking new monsters or picking up a drop. Also, the crystal bow had a slight advantage that you never have to pick up some arrows that your accumulator leave behind. I'm definitely gonna do some more tests when I find some time, but I'm pretty sure that broad bolts aren't as good you make them out to be. (ps: just used some darts on dark beasts: lots of zeroes, not recommended)

Unless you're using a cannon, or red chins or something, 55k slayer xp in 2 hours is impossible. Even with maxed melee stats, 15k/hour is pretty much the max you can hit.. most likely between 10-15k. Haha, on what planet have you been living? Certain tasks in kuradal's dungeon can be up to 35k slay xp/h, purely melee'ing (maxed stats, turmoil, extreme pots/overload).

I like the extra boosts you can get by the slayer helm and kuradal's ring. People who camp abbies can hit perhaps up to 500. I can hit up to 610 on task, and get insane rates of melee xp/h. Next, there is the variety, and the fact that it can be broken up task per task.

Proof?

You use a uni? It's actually been ages since I used one.

Actually, I was hitting very very accurate with that magic shortbow. I'm pretty sure that even with darts I would still hit very well, making darts still the best there. I understand that, and that's why I said darts were unsurprisingly the winner. What surprised me though is how well a crystal bow performs. It's only 1 bar faster (I think) than rune crossbow (so it's not affected *that* much), has the same accuracy, doesn't need ammo and lets you wear soul wars cape. It's really not the outdated weapon people make it out to be. I will surely try out the crystal bow more now. I'm inclined to think that it will perform at least as well, if not better than broad bolts outside of kuradal's dungeon too. I also like how easy it is to work with. No ammo hassle and an extreme range. @Morionic: you dps sheet is quite interesting, but these things are entirely theoretic, right? When really training with it, there are so many variables that can altar the theoretical values. That's why indeed my tests were way too short, and way to low in number, I admit that :-). But still, the difference were pretty huge, not just 3k xp or something.

Don't really like it tbh. You are like a pyramid, going from big at the bottom, to very small at the top (phat makes your head very little IMO). Master smither had an outfit similar to this a while ago too, and I didn't like it either. It just seems that phat + 3rd age mage doesn't go well.

You are right that more tests should be done, and also outside kuradal's dungeon. Diamond (e)'s are nice, but I was more testing for every day training ammo, not the boss hunting ammo, even though even there crystal bow might be quite good. That's why karil's crossbow isn't an option either (would cost too much) for normal training. I'm also pretty sure that sighted longbow is gonna be trash. Crystal bow and broad bolts were already insanely accurate. Even darts were very accurate actually. But who knows, on mith drags or something perhaps... crystal bow trick: It degraded about every 10 min, so it's easy to time, especially if you use overloads.

Wasn't surprised by the darts. More by crystal bow being this good. (and ranging in general, damn, over 100k xp/h is pretty damn fast).

In the days before the crossbow update, ranging was fairly simple. First of all, there was the magic shortbow as main option to training ranged. Most people used an assortment of arrows, ranging from just bronze up to rune. Rune itself was mostly a tool for pkers, while training was mostly done with bronze-addy arrows, depending on the wealth of the player. Next, there was the crystal bow. This powerful bow shoots slightly slower, but hits higher, and doesn't use arrows. Richer players trained with this, since the recharge costs are about 100k for an hour of shooting. Then came the crossbow update, and rangers saw their max hit increasing from around 25 to 40 (rough estimations). Broad bolts were introduced not that much later (I think) and they became a popular training ammo, since they were fairly cheap (50-60 gp). Ever since, it seems that rune crossbow + broad arrows is the main and superior way of ranging. However, with the introduction of Kuradal's dungeon (favouring faster weapons), and the increase in broad bolts price, I wanted to see whether broad bolts were really worth their number 1 position. I decided to do some tests on Gargoyles in Kuradals dungeon. I compared the following setups: All tests were done while using overload potions and the eagle eye prayer. These were the results (10-20 min of ranging with each). 10-20 minutes is pretty short, so the results should be taken with a grain of salt. However, the differences are big enough IMO (both in raw data and perception while ranging) to make some conclusions. Broad bolts: 86.9k ranging xp/h ... bolts used/h ... cost/h Remark: forgot to track how much bolts I used. Cost is probably around 40-80k/h Cyrstal bow (10) 99.2k ranging xp/h 6 charges/h 108k gp/h Remark: Used crystal bow (1) for around 3 minutes (crystal bow trick). With more timing, this could be less than 1 min, making the rate quite a bit higher (the first 5 min on my (10) bow were going at a rate of 112k xp/h). Runite Darts 112.2k ranging xp/h 550 darts/h 330k gp/h Remark: Darts are merched. When they are at their normal price of 150-200, cost/h is roughly 82.5-110k/h Magic Shortbow 95.2k xp/h 400 arrows/h 160k/h Remark: My gargoyle task ran out, so I conducted this test on Dark Beasts. Also, a few arrows were not picked up, so cost could be slightly lower. So, as you can see, the results are pretty surprising. Broad bolts come out as worst option xp/wise, allthough they probably are the cheapest (if someone knows usage/h, I would be grateful). The fastest xp/h is not so surprising, if we think about the effect of kuradal's ring: Darts. The +40 on every hit favours fast htiting ammo, like darts. One thing I have to add with darts though, is that ranging is far less relaxing. With a crystal bow you can position yourself in a corner and just shoot around the room, while darts made you really come out of your spot and chase the gargoyles. Also, picking up drops and moving in between hits is farily hard, if not impossible. Lastly, quite a few darts stay on the floor, despite ava's accumulator. Another advantage of the crystal bow option is the possibilty to wear a soul wars cape for its massive prayer bonus (+ of course no issues of picking up arrows). The magic shortbow was inferior to the crystal bow in every aspect (xp, cost, prayer bonus). For me, it seems that crystal bow is the best option, if you take everything into account (cost, user friendlyness, xp). Somehow, I had this idea in my head that rune crossbow + broads is more accurate, but if we look at the stats, we can see that even there the crystal bow + SW cape is only slightly worse. In terms of max hit, I managed to hit up to 404 with crystal bow, while over 480 with broad bolts. A difference, but really not that big. I'm pretty interested to see how these results change outside Kuradals dungeon. I can see myself using a crystal bow over rune c'bow at several activities now. It seem pretty damn handy for TDs for instance . Heck, it might even own at armadyl GWD, allthough the lack of shield is a big disadvantage... So yeah, what do you guys think about this? Was I just unlucky while testing broad bolts? Are these tests irrelevant because the ring gives too much advantage to faster weapons? Do you still us your crystal bow often? Do you know any other overrated weapons/spells/... ?

Actually, I think the newb one is the only accurate stereotype. The other two are completely wrong though. I think the guy in full bandos and dfs is actually a good stereotype, he just described it wrong. It's not a pro slayer, it's a slayer who is obsessed by strength and showing off.

Fury won't go lower, better buy it now. And bladewing, you are saying an onyx ring is better for kbd and miths?

I smiled reading this :-)