Sorator

Chat degenerated into rhyme time when no mods were looking.

I don't even own photoshop. Nor do I know most TIF'ers combat level or appearance... nub. But if you want me to stop cropping them for your viewing convenience, I can do that. :P edit: Got this just now (June 6th, 1am CST)... I'm pretty sure that's Serpy running on the right side, but I couldn't catch him in time to take a better one. (By the time I pasted this into paint, he was gone!)

Yeaaaaah... I'm not a fan of the first article. Sorry TS, but I was a little leery of it coming in because of how you had rant-advertised it beforehand in chat, and it was just as ranty and uninformative as I thought it might be. I don't especially like the SoF, but I'm definitely not convinced that it's a sign that Jagex is maliciously attempting to get us addicted to gambling to give them more money. I would much rather read a logical but calm argument about how the SoF is bad for Runescape than read a rant that uses just enough logic to appear to be valid when making drastic claims.

Also, for anyone who doesn't want to (or can't) use Kyatts/Tokkul-Zo for teleporting, note that since the update to Taverly & Burthorpe, training summoning there without any teleports is much faster. Taverly has its own bank that isn't too terribly far from the summoning shop, and the obelisk at the summoning shop in Taverly is now on the ground floor instead of in the basement (no need to climb a ladder). So, you can run back and forth between the bank and the obelisk and still make pretty good time overall, as well as taking advantage of the free pouch & gold charm & spirit shards in the summoning shop. (I grab the charm and use it to make a barker toad for more xp, and grab the charms and pouch just to save a bit of gp when training, but you can also grab them and the wolf bones for an extra spirit wolf pouch if you are so inclined.)

Oh, and can I get my first two listed?

C-c-c-combo!!! Edit: And around half an hour later...

A wild Sorator appeared! So I tried taking some pictures both with my webcam and my phone... but one does not simply take their own picture with a smartphone! Maneuvering with that thing was difficult, but it has a much better camera than my laptop. On the flipside, my laptop is much easier to handle but has crap quality (and I have to contort oddly to keep the screen from reflecting on my glasses). So... yeah. I'll probably shave the facial hair within the next few days... it's getting annoying. But for now, let's make the first two my keepers.

Alex Ludwig started out cute, and then grew up a bit... <33

Whilst she may not be the biggest money making boss I don't think she'll be entirely dead content. Those who have trouble finding teams/groups will surely enjoy the improved profitability they get from a solo only monster compared to trying to solo higher stuff and likely being spot stolen/kill stolen etc. And even if her unique drops aren't up to much her other drops seem to ensure she'll give reasonable returns. I'm very, very happy to have a solo-only boss, so mark me as one person who may kill her often.

Eh, some people have a lot of disposable income. *shrug*

Why did Saradomin then get to Gielinor through the Law altar? The most holy island of Saradomin is home to the same altar, so there do are links with Saradomin and Law. Where are you getting that he came through the Law altar? All I see is that the Law altar was built later on the spot he was believed to have arrived on. It'd make sense that the idea that Saradomin is god of law came into being after Zamorak ascended and Armadyl sank into sorrow and departed from Gielinor, and I'm not sure how that lines up with the timeline of the altars being created, but if the altars came into being after Armadyl's departure (and weren't the God Wars partly sparked by the limited rune supply?), that would all line up. And the monastery on Entrana could be founded there because Saradomin first appeared there, or because of the confused attribution of Law & the Law altar, or (more likely) both.

Except that with every other dragon currently in the game, it's fairly easy to kill it multiple times without banking... I don't believe that's an option here, or likely to be in the near future.

Because Max won, Dragonkng lost, and Dragonkng threatened to post proof to the contrary. ^.^ Edit: And he admitted it, too!

Bleh. It'd be nice if you mentioned it was a video in the title; I would've known not to bother clicking.

I kinda doubt that'll ever happen. There are the skills that primarily gather materials (woodcutting, fishing, etc.) where the biggest factor has always been time, and then there are the resource-using/refining skills (prayer, herblore, crafting, etc.) that still take time, but the more cash you're willing to spend the faster it goes. For this purpose, I'd put runecrafting in the first category, because the time it took to train was always a bigger factor than buying the essence required (though it is somewhere in the middle because that was also a big factor). We now have runespan and ivy, which train these skills faster and with less attention/apm, but which also yield very little other than just XP. I don't think they'll make such an option for the 'buyable' skills like Prayer and Herblore, though, because they function on the complete opposite end of the spectrum.

I'd agree with making that change - training crafting with only dstones is great when you're being purely theoretical, but your time calcs are a bit more practical than that, so it's a good change to make.

I feel like the first article was more of an accompanying article rather than a main feature... but I don't feel like any of the others were main-feature-quality either. Signature Heroes: I agree, for the most part. I think there's some cool possibilities here, especially if the same crew who put together RotM gets in on it - they're already excellent at crafting stories and weaving seemingly-unrelated characters together, and I'd love to see them do the same with the signature heroes. It's too cool of an idea to not do, so I hope they get to it in the near future. Runespan: I didn't understand the point of this article - I agree with Alaz that while it does devalue the relevant achievement capes, it's an unavoidable side effect of Runescape being a game that continually updates. However, everything doesn't just always get easier as time passes - new challenges are also added. There was a time before achievement capes, and it was also a while after the initial set that we were offered the max cape and comp capes, and these each become more valuable as new skills, minigames, and other challenges are added to the game. I think it's just the way Runescape is, and that's part of why I love it and keep coming back after eight years of membership. A Game Worth Fighting For: Yeah, I'm in a similar boat as the author, and many others, I suspect, where I don't think Jagex is a complete failure (if I did I would've resigned my modship a long time ago) but I don't think they're doing perfectly either. I find that Tip.It's Forums offer a decent place to voice my opinions, actually, without getting flamed for being a Jagex defender. And I disagree with the author on one particular thing, that is a bit easy to miss: This is not a good question to ask. We can always voice our criticism; that's a magical thing in this day and age. Whether or not Jagex chooses to listen, we cannot control, but we can always express our opinions on what they have done, and we definitely should. So that if and when Jagex does want our opinion, it's there for them to peruse at their leisure. And I suspect they may do just that more often than we give them credit for.

I think you failed your spot check there. I'm really wondering what Jagex will do about this... there's the chance they already anticipated it and have been working to change their code, but I don't think that's especially likely. So, I wonder how long it will be until they can implement a working fix, and what kind it will be. They could just assign a lackey to update his total xp count manually, but that would be... sucky.

+3 to Suomi for breaking Runescape. (What's gonna happen now...?) +1 to Jake for getting rank 1. ^.^

Guides are actually fairly unnecessary for span; the intro tutorial does a pretty good job. A few important things to mention that the tutorial doesn't: Don't use the Chip Off option. Just don't. Non-combination nodes offer twice the XP as creatures of the same rune type - you'll want to be siphoning nodes whenever you can. While I don't really recommend actively hunting for the wizard in yellow robes, if he shows up nearby, you should (at your level) always give him blood runes, no matter what he asks for (if you don't have 10 bloods on you, give him his request instead). Unless the runesphere pops up right next to you, don't bother looking for it - you'll usually wind up with less XP and less points than if you just kept with your normal method. This won't help on your first visit, but make sure that when you leave, you have at least 200 points saved for when you next return. This allows you to get a 'starter set' of 10 of each rune you can make from Wizard Finix (talk to him once you're inside). This saves so much time, since you don't have to go hunting for the runes to cross platforms to your camping spot, and there's no waste since the runes you don't use get converted back into points when you leave. I personally camp out on the upper level, siphoning from a blood wraith while watching for nearby nodes. I generally switch to nodes above shifter (so shifters, jumpers, skulls, and blood pools, and once you have access to them, bloody skulls/living souls/undead souls as well), with the occasional nebula if it shows up on my island. I'll usually also build up to at least 200 essence before switching to any nodes, just to avoid annoyingly running out of ess halfway through the thing.

+1 to Aslan for giving a nice list for getting these! I don't know that I'll be heading for that anytime soon, but that's a handy resource I'll save for when I do.

I like getting rewarded for having an unlapsed membership for the past seven years; I'll admit I was feeling a little left out what with all the new subscriber and card-redeeming benefits. ^.^ And I think that since every member gets access on the weekends regardless, it should be just fine.

Completely agreed.

Eh, interesting idea with the monkey hunt, but I can't say I'm a fan of the monkey theme overall. *shrug* Could be worse, but I still dunno that I'll participate.