Doomster

The ideal XP monster is: 1. Available: Doesn't matter how good or bad they are, if you're competing for them in single combat, or they get rapidly piled to death in multi. 2. Preferably outside of wilderness, unless you want PKers to add a little spice. 3. Weak in defence, if you hit a lot of zeros, it's not good (unless mage levelling, and happy with base XP for the spell). 4. Weak in attack (or safespottable if you mage or range) 5. High in HP 6. Aggressive (melee, so you don't need to hunt your next target). Lessers are far from the ideal monster, with the good drop countered by their good defence and considerable attack, Crandor Skeletons (the level 45s), on the other hand are a much easier target. The general rule, if it has a drop worth having, it will be tough for XP.

There is a most excellent mage/range safespot in the south central room, you get hit a couple of times on the way in, or when looting, but it's an easy safespot to hold, even while they are aggressive. There is a less reliable safespot in the northeast room, very hard to gain control of. However, the northeast room is much better for melee, as it contains ONLY Ankou. They don't hit that often against full rune and defence or power ammy, but they can hit for 8. The secret is to carry a decent stock of feathers, axe, tinderbox and fly rod, and just keep restocking with fish from the river, then portal / ladder / portal back to the level. If you go the safespot route, it is not possible to have too much ammunition, even fire strikes will do it (20 strikes, = 40 air & 20 minds + staff per kill). Earth strikes would save on air runes, but would be a little slower. Survive until they go non-aggressive, and even picking up the loot is a breeze (just watch out, move to the north end to snatch a spare drop, and they go aggressive again, also for any "teleport away" randoms. I did the sceptre on a level 34 and a level 32. The catablepons are more trouble than the Ankou, as their defence is insane!

The answer is always "it depends". Laptops can be convenient, but are expensive for what they offer, and upgrades are also limited and expensive - most importantly, unless designed to accept a graphics upgrade, that would be impossible. For Desktops, the onboard graphics of current Nvidia and ATI chipset motherboards might just manage bottom level games performance, while the compatibility of Intel onboards is shaky. VIA and Sis, until very recently, did not have an onboard that could be considered up to date (eg. DirectX9 hardware) - not sure if either are actually in the market yet. NB. Even the best onboards are only an alternative to the very bottom end cards, even an Nvidia 7300GS or a Radeon 1300 would acrually out perform them, but onbaord is good as a "stopgap" instead of a card that would be certain to need replacing anyway for a higher level of performance.

From level 2, a few loads of airs will bump the levels quickly. You can move up through the altars, though minds are a hell of a walk if you're only getting 1 rune per ess, and definitely not worth the trip for only 0.5xp more per ess. Waters from Draynor bank or Wizards tower mine, Earths from Varrock east or Aubury, Fires from Al-Kharid (or dual arena teleport if member), Bodies from Edgeville. Using cash-paid runners at low level will be fast but expensive XP. You cannot use runes-paid runners at low level, as you would not make enough runes. Use lightweight kit, so you can maximize the amount of run you use - if you cannot bank everything, wear the lightest - random event clothing usually has no weight. Avoid combat, though the only combat random you are likely to meet while runecrafting is an evil chicken. NB. The Rock Golem seems to have been removed from the essence mine, at least, since several updates ago, I've not seen one there at all.

Melee: Easy to train, at least in a fish, cook & fight cycle, as no other supplies are needed, but unless an iron armoured pure, carries a lot of expensive kit. Mage: The natural predator of the armoured warrior. F2P mage kit is cheap, but supplies are expensive. On the other hand, high runecrafting makes safespot firestrike training a breeze. Ranged: Perhaps the least popular in F2P, though possibly better than mage, though arrow stealers are a pain. Though basic supplies cannot be made, there are several monsters which usually offer a positive return on arrows.

Server company, I know the London ones are JO = Jolt gaming and DS = (not sure of that one).

As I understand it, Pure ess can be used/traded on F2P worlds and to F2P players, but better to sell the pure ess and buy 2-3 times as much ordinary ess (Varrock east bank, most F2P worlds) with the proceeds.

The Aussie version of Marmite http://rcarchives.com/marmite.htm Marmite is possibly even more powerful than vegemite - Always used to dilute Marmite 50:50 with margarine while spreading, but I can take Vegemite spreaded neat. As the adverts say, you either love it or you hate it - I like marmirte or Vegemite, but hate the slightest trace of mustard.

Black (g) looks classy, but is the cheapest of the decorative armours. Another few suggestions, do some bandage-man duty at CW and collect enough tickets for a full set of the lowest CW armour. Do the ghostly robes thing. If you want to stay fairly close to the concept of a skill pure, then a skill pure def pure has possibilities, and also the option to progress through the trimmed or heraldic armours

http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=527326 I think this has it, but the thread is on an unusable go-slow for me!

Pay fare should work, if you have completed "Pirates Treasure".

Try banking all your stuff and dying? - are you forgiven when reincarnated?

http://tip.it/runescape/?page=magic_calc.htm Looks like you are right with the 5k (give or take a few). I'd also add curse runes to that, to maximize the the hit & damage. If you do the Wizards tower lesser, then be sure to take a telegrab, you never know when a rune med might turn up! If you don't already have a completed skull sceptre (makes a handy 1-space teleport), then that should be plenty to get you the Ankou's piece (safespot in the south room - should also yield some laws), and the catablepon piece (safespot in northwest room). I've burned a lot of fire strikes in the ankou safepot, and been comfortably rewarded with law runes - 1500 strikes gave me 34 laws, have to burn a similar number on Lessers and see if I can score a rune med. At ad-hoc 1k for single prices for laws, you'd need to score 3 rune meds from the lessers, or a least a fair smattering of medium value drops. I forgot, there was also some mithril ore, addy arrows, rune ess and coins.

Mage: Wizard hat (BLUE) Wizard robe (blue or black) Magic ammy, Power is an alternative to trade a little attack for defence. Normal leather boots & gloves/vams. Toughest mage spot (F2P) to fill is the legs: I usually favour leather chaps, with a small melee defence bonus and no penalty, or even studded chaps - though -5 to attack, a decent amount of defence, though best to remove them once entrenched in a safe spot. Alternatives: 1. Blue skirt (no stats, but completes the blue Wiz look) 2. Priest bottom (completes the black Wiz look, some prayer boost) 3. Monk robe bottom (the best for a praying mage) NB. Even trimmed Wizard bottom/skirt has no bonuses. As mentioned, the stronghold boots have mage/range attack penalties and only slightly higher defence than leather.

Mine 4k coal, and make steel - though actually, even in F2P at 50% success, Iron is actually more XP per ore. If you need smithing XP, better to smith what you have, otherwise you may end up needing to "buy XP" later, or at lest spens as long aging mining even more materials.

Everything's jumped around, now do I try and faolow the sections in the same logicla orser as I used to, or just take in the points of interest from top to bottom. Is it meant to be reshuffled, or has something gone wrong?

If Iraq can be invaded to look for WMD (which they never found), what do we do with a rogue state that proves they DO have WMD ? The other thing, of course, is that unlike China (dodgy human right issues and lots of WMD, plus the world's cheap manufacturer of technology), the world has no need of any dealings with NK and can sanction the hell out of them for ever more!

Why not dragonhide vambraces in gloves spot, in keeping with the mage defence theme. One other possibility springs to mind... Move along fighting a partner with "fun weapons", same effect as skeleton protection, though you'd need to trust your partner not to pull a real weapon on you - of course, the first one to strike will be skulled immediately, rather than on entry to the abyys.

Some actions can take longer than the timeout - doesn't matter if your character is busy, if there's been no input.

Subsilver icons completely blown for me, getting post icons on subcanvas.

IE7 - is now at FINAL release version http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.mspx So far, no great surprises - the big news is "Internet Explorer gets TABS". Tried a few miniclip games (one seems to be missing sound), but not tried runescape yet. IE7 will be "pushed" as an update, sometime in November, though it can be opted out of (until such time as they wish to declare IE6 unsupported).

Photo copyrights are a minefield (frequently exploding on newsgroup - rec.photo.digital ). Unless the photos are a "work for hire" with copyright assigned to the commissioner, copyright rests with the photographer and the usage rights are dependent on whatever contract the images are supplied under.

Fish & cook (Lobster) - if not using forums & main trade worlds, Edgeville bank (NOT loose near wildy!) is often a place to find demand. Trading ores or bars tends to be better cash than smithing items, though smith and alch enables cash to be made without any buyers. Is there still much demand for oak (construction) - did a K or 2 when oak was trading higher than willow, but after the initial construction level race, it seems to have slowed down. Unless non-combat skiller, Fish & cook is a double bonus, as being self-sufficient in food means one less combat/training expense. Runecrafting also has potential, Airs/Minds being probably the best bet in F2P. P2P pure essence mining may be worth a look, with a rune pick, loading up is fast, faster than iron.

Sounds like it wil be Diango's workshop, like last Christmas. "Pick up your ghost-busting gear" - I doubt they are talking about combat, since it's never been needed in any previous event - maybe the ghostspeak amulet will be needed?

F2P: Dragon slayer is the toughest combat, but Ernest the chicken has a truly evil puzzle - is there ANY logic to it? Another pet hate, and the quest I'm most likely to leave... Shield of Arrav. P2P: I'm not, but from the description, maybe the awful puzzle in the one for Death rune crafting.