Sorator

So, I kind of thought Jagex was on their way to a new, good reputation with their players, what with the bot removal and all. But then they 1: destroy any popularity that had gained by removing F2P high scores (i mean seriously, wtf guys) and 2: attempt their damn best to destroy the (existing) Runescape Wiki, one of the bigger fansites that I am aware of, as well as seriously undermining all other fansites. I read this update and facepalmed harder than I think I've ever facepalmed before. I've had my fair share of disagreements with Jagex over the years, but I think this is probably the worst single update I've seen thus far. Edit: FAIL FAQ IS FAILTASTIC i mean srsly guys, did you even read the questions, or did you just challenge someone to write the same response thirty different ways?

I tried with quest robes, sara hood, sara sword, sara arrow, white gloves, white boots, and ill. holy book, in various combinations of wielding/holding those items, and couldn't quite get it. Normal prayers and magic, though I had no prayer points, and I have dropped my guthix/zammy books/ill. books to avoid getting blasted (the idea was to drop em, get the thing, pick em up, and leave, saving a trip, but noooo....). I concluded that it only looks at what you were wearing when counting sara items, not any that were in your inventory - it only looks in your inventory for rival god items. Thus my sara hood/cith. robes hood wasn't counting, because I could only wear one of those at a time (and the same for the sara sword/ill. holy book). Also, I'm pretty sure the white gloves/boots don't count. Thus, I was only managing to wear 5 sara items at one time. I went to the Mage Arena and grabbed a sara staff and cape and came back (so sara cape + staff + arrow + quest robes hood + quest robes top + quest robes bottom + ill. book equipped) and got it on the second try. (I also had normal magic book & normal prayers, with no prayers activated, and none of the other god books in sight.)

I'd tried at least three times with several setups of the stuff described above without it working (though yeah, when you finally get it you may get that message one or two times before actually getting it, despite having the right setup). When I actually got the thing, I was wearing sara cape + staff + arrow + quest robes + ill. book (it's 7, felt like making sure, and I had just gone and actually finished the Mage Arena so I had both the cape and the staff anyway). So I'm pretty sure it just looks at what you're wearing, not what's in your inventory (except for checking for non-Sara god items to blast you). Also, the abbess isn't programmed to notice you taking the thing, sadly. I was hoping for a shocked or awed reaction if I played near her/talked to her when wielding it/used it on her, but alas, they did not think of that.

I'd guess: Your issue was you did not have the hood of the quest robes on. I tried that as well, with the sara hood in my inventory. It may just be that it only looks at *worn* sara items, not ones in inventory, and because of that one of the hoods and either the sara sword/ill. book didn't count because they weren't equipped. Or it could just be that I needed to leave and come back (that may be what the spirit meant by "you may try again after some time has passed" or whatever that was.

I tried with quest robes, sara hood, sara sword, sara arrow, white gloves, white boots, and ill. holy book, in various combinations of wielding/holding those items, and couldn't quite get it. Normal prayers and magic, though I had no prayer points, and I have dropped my guthix/zammy books/ill. books to avoid getting blasted (the idea was to drop em, get the thing, pick em up, and leave, saving a trip, but noooo....). I'm gonna try again later tonight with a sara cape and staff equipped, full prayer points, and no other god books in sight.

I don't especially like it - as I've said elsewhere, I think it's a rather silly person in their marketing dept going "omg look wat we can do with dat facebook thing" - but it really doesn't matter to me. I barely keep up with the game at all when I'm going through inactive phases; I certainly don't pay attention to who's famous for doing what then either (and during my active phases, I'm too busy playing, lol).

I think it was mostly a publicity thing - "let's advertise this on Facebook and it'll be cool and stuff!" I think it was part of their 99 week thing as well, where they got a bunch of maxed people to give advice on specific skills to those who wanted it. I have little respect for many people who try to do marketing, be they at Jagex or elsewhere. A handful are actually really good at it, and I like them, but some folks try and just faceplant miserably...

Yeah, I always prefer text to videos. That being said, it's an interesting idea; not sure I'll use it myself, but it's worth knowing.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it this update required some major rewriting of the code to put everything into apparently random cluster addresses, but readdressing the items within the cluster is relatively minor so if someone like RSBuddy figures out where everything is they can simply move it again. Heck, it wouldn't surprise me if they were already planning to incorporate this readdressing into future updates every so often just to stay ahead of the bot makers. This. I'd expect them to spend a month or two writing a program to go through and fix their internal object references automatically when they re-scramble their object listings (something they just run the game code through before they update, not something they put into the code, so bots don't get their hands on it), and at least every month rescramble everything just for the hell of it. And who knows what else they have hidden in that giant object array; I haven't paid a *ton* of attention to it, but I don't think anyone's said a whole lot about just what's in there. They could have stuff randomly sorted into layers; that'd be terrifying to try and hack. Again, all that Jagex needs to do is find a relatively easy way to make hacking their system more difficult than its worth, and then deal with the occasional fellow who does it just to see if he can and not to make money off of it.

RSN: Sorator P2P Add pl0x? Kthxbye.

My understanding of what they changed (going off of what others have figured out; was somewhere here but I can't seem find the thread) means that it's a LOT more work for Jagex, though they may have semi-automated the process. It makes the most common form of bot unusable without putting in a ton of effort to get past the effective wall that Jagex has put up to even tell more specifically what they did, and to counteract that may take even more work. I think it was commonly agreed that Jagex couldn't make it impossible for bots to function and find a way around anything they put up eventually. But, many (including myself) forgot that it's not necessary to make botting impossible - they just need to make it take more work that it's worth to the folks who make bots. Yeah, sure, there's gonna be a few to find a way through anyway (probably more due to curiosity than anything else), but that's much more manageable than having entire businesses operating off of it. This is, incidentally, part of why Jagex mentioned there's still some bots that this update won't catch. Not all bots work the same way, but there's other ways of handling the rest of em (and I'm guessing they're harder to make and run than the most common type, and Jagex is probably also working on a way to handle those more efficiently than spot reporting).

It took me several (at least 8, if not more) tries to kill him with my current stats (well, couple less prayer levels, maybe one less ranged level) - one or two of those were just learning how Nomad works, then I had to learn that I needed a kyatt and not just a tortoise, then I had to stop making mistakes, heh. I finally did it with a full tort & kyatt + 150 or so scrolls (I tried dismissing the tort and working off what was left on the ground, but I was way to slow; so I kept the tort till it was empty, then dismissed it and summoned the kyatt. (Make the summoning button thingy "take BoB" while you have the tort; clicking will fill your inventory with your tort's stuff - it helps to put it in the right order beforehand, so you don't wind up with a bunch of brews and no restores, or vice versa; when you summon the kyatt, change the button to be 'use scroll' or 'use familiar's special' or whatever, and spam-click that whenever you can). The kyatt *really* helps when you're doing this with a lower ranged level, though sometimes the game glitches and says that your familiar can't attack what you can't see; just move a few squares and try again, if that happens. I would say, though, you probably need at least 75 range to take him on successfully, and as the others have said, higher levels = more forgiving of mistakes. Most of the time, at least for me, I didn't fail because I ran out of supplies or I was too slow; I made mistakes, and either died or had Nomad reset and had to leave and start over.

I think I've participated in a Jagex-organized community event once, maybe twice. The BXP Weekend thing was the only one I can say for sure I participated in. But yeah, for the most part, not especially interested in community events of any kind, be they held by Jagex, Tip.It, or any other group. In Runescape, I am rather solitary, heh.

Gotta vote for Myu; very nicely done.

I was looking at some of the Activities and Mini-Quests and noticed that you have some minor errors and inconsistencies regarding your risk ratings. Blast Furnace, Chompy Hunting, Games Room, Kingdom Managing, Rogue Trader, Balloon Routes, Sheep Shearer, and Witch's Potion are all listed on the main page as Low Risk but do not have risk listed in the article itself. Ancient Effigies, Abyss, and Shadow Sword are listed as High Risk but do not have the risk listed in the article itself. Treasure Trails, Bar Crawl and Ghostly Robes are listed as Standard Risk but do not have the risk listed in the article itself. After looking at all of the guides, I think some tweaking of your risk definitions is in order. It seems that things that are Low Risk tend to either take place within a specific area which does not have anything to damage the player (Impetuous Impulses, for example), or death during that activity involves no loss of items and an immediate re-spawn within the activity (classic Castle Wars). High Risk actively requires combat (Barrows) or travel through dangerous areas (The Abyss miniquest). Standard Risk does not directly involve combat or dangerous areas, but also has no death guarantee, and often does not take place in a specific area (Penguin Hide & Seek, Shooting Stars). The following are... somewhat more complicated than the list above, though some of it is listed both above and below.. The Beacon Network is listed as High Risk in the article itself, but the main page lists it as standard risk. It probably should be listed as standard risk (though it does involve some wilderness travel, so... debatable). The Gnome Delivery Service says “This activity has ordinary risk as it requires travel to different areas of Runescape.” The main page lists it as Low Risk. It should probably be listed as Standard Risk, since it involves travel all over Runescape (and have the language corrected in the article itself to match the standard). The Lava Flow Mine is listed as Standard Risk. It should probably be Low Risk with a note that there are the occasional level 50 Possessed Pickaxes that can be aggressive to anyone under level 100 (assuming they follow the normal aggressiveness formula?). Since that is the only danger to players during the activity (barring, as always, someone coming in poisoned), it probably deserves a special listing like that (the same way that Clan Wars is Low Risk with a note that you can choose to risk your items, or the way Witch's Potion is low risk despite involving minor combat). The Livid Farm is listed as Standard Risk when it should clearly be Low Risk. In the activity itself there is nothing to cause damage to the player (‘real’ Suqah’s do not come inside the fences area; the one that does only attacks Pauline). The only reason for it not to be Low Risk is because of the aggressive Suqah’s on the way to and from the Farm, and even then it should probably be Low Risk with an added note, since during the activity itself there is nothing to cause damage to the player. (Compare something like Herblore Habitat, if you like: if you’re getting there by walking through the jungle, it can be quite dangerous, but once you’re there, there’s nothing to harm you.) The Rogue’s Den article says “The activity (the maze) has been rated as Low Risk. Thieving the safes has ordinary Runescape risk as they randomly inflict damage.” That should probably be tweaked; something more like “The activity (the maze) has been rated as Low Risk. However, thieving the safes can sometimes inflict damage.” would be more appropriate, since ‘ordinary’ risk is not defined on the main page, and the implied Standard Risk doesn’t exactly cover that either (occasional damage doesn’t exactly fit with the definition of “Standard Risk activities do not directly involve combat, agility tests or travel to dangerous areas.”) The Rogue Trader activity article doesn’t list a risk; the main page lists it as Low Risk. You may consider changing it to Standard Risk, since it does involve travel through the desert… Evil Tree is listed as Low Risk – you may want to change this to Standard Risk, since the activity necessitates traveling throughout Runescape, and some areas can be dangerous (trees located near Oo’glog or McGrubor’s Woods, for example, have aggressive monsters which can attack players chopping the tree itself). Note that its ‘companion’ activity for Mining, Shooting Stars, is listed as standard risk, presumably for these very reasons. The Treasure Trails article itself doesn't mention a risk level, but the main page lists it as standard risk (though it can involve significant combat at times, so it's debatable - if you do list it as standard, then you should definitely add a note saying that it can be very dangerous at times). The Barbarian Training article lists each section as Low Risk except the Ancient Cavern, which is Extremely High risk; most sections should probably be Standard, not Low (though it is debatable). Also, the entire article sorts as Standard Risk; it probably should be included when sorting for High Risk as well as either Low or Standard (whichever you decide most of the sections are). The Mjolnirs/Enchanted Key article doesn’t mention a risk; the main page lists it as Low Risk. It should probably be changed to Standard Risk, since it requires travel across all of Runescape. (Also, you should probably combine this with the Meeting History treasure listing and rename it Enchanted Key or somesuch…) Tarn’s Lair uses the wrong format to list its risk; it should be listed above the introduction with similar wording as the others, instead of being in the first paragraph of the introduction with no formatting. The Varrock Museum guide does not list a risk – the main page lists it as Low Risk. You may want to add a note along the lines of “This has been rated low risk, however, completion of the Timeline requires completing certain quests throughout Runescape, some of which are dangerous.” Alternatively, list risk by section and stick a note on the Timeline section itself. The Witch’s Potion article doesn’t mention a risk; the main page lists it as Low Risk. Note that it does involve minor combat (a cow and a rat), so technically it’s mildly dangerous, but I doubt the rating needs to be changed for that. Side-note: The Jade Vine, The Phoenix Lair, and the Wizard Burial links all redirect to a portion of a quest guide. These don't have the standard format High Risk listings, probably because they are part of a quest guide; you should probably either add in the standard language to the relevant subsection of the quest guide, or give them their own separate article with the usual set-up. My apologies for the length; I got interested and wound up looking at a lot more than I thought I would, heh.

The Man involved in the clue scroll sequence (you give an onion to him) is now found near the south entrance to the Clan Camp; updating that should save folks a bit of time wandering around the area looking for him. Also, just so you know, you never did update the barrel puzzle solution; it still says "Tip.It is currently working on complete instructions for this puzzle, which we expect to release within the next few days.". The video you have embedded works fine, but if you're not actually working on a separate solution then you should probably remove that note.

The description for the miniquest after Dealing with Scabaras (gathering research notes for the archeologists) states that duplicate notes can be dropped. However, the enemies will only drop notes that have not been added to your 'scabaras research' journal - if you use the notes as soon as you get them, before killing another creature, then you will not receive any duplicate drops. You'll only get duplicates if you don't add them to your journal right away. Also you might want to mention (in the main part of the walkthrough or in the miniquest portion) that one good spot to kill enemies for research notes is the swamp area just east of the plateau - in the swamp, you don't have to drink water constantly, and there's a small number of scabarites that can easily be trapped and killed one at a time. Also they do become non-agressive if you stay there long enough, which makes things easier - the locust-riding ranger seems to be the easiest to kill of the group, if you get to that point.

Your last sentence kind of exemplified the most striking thing about your article, to me at least - that is, it felt like it didn't have a thesis. You nicely summed up some recent events in Runescape, but you failed to tie them together or draw any sort of conclusion from them. Your ending in particular felt as forced as some of my conclusion paragraphs from school papers I didn't want to write. :P I hate to sound like my former English teachers, but between brainstorming a topic and writing the article you gotta have some outlining beyond just your three main points. :) (I'd talk more about the substance of your article, but there's not much to say because you didn't really present any opinions with your facts; you summarized recent events and that was pretty much it. And there I am not talking about the substance of your article some more, so I'll stop now, heh.) The second article raised some excellent points that I never really thought to consider, mostly because I'm still stuck in the early-ish levels of DG and I can't bring myself to care enough about it to move past them. The rewards look excellent (tome of frost? new prayers? coal bag? YES PLEASE!), but I really can't bring myself to slog through the dungeons to gain XP to get to the point where I can slog through even larger dungeons to gain enough XP and tokens to actually get any of the rewards! I've fallen back on letting Tears of Guthix catch me up a bit, and maybe I'll spend some penguin points on it as well - once I use that (and the occasional dungeon delve) to get up to those higher more profitable levels, maybe it'll be more tolerable for me, though from the looks of this it won't be.

My problem is that I can't find many EP'ers within my attack range, heh.

I like it, but you could be more in-depth about alternative methods. If you walk a few steps east of your recommended location, for example, there's a spot with 3 logs, a bush, and a branch - I find that with 70 prayer, I can sacrifice one to three potential fungi in exchange for refilling a druid pouch, enough to keep me from getting hurt while harvesting fungi. In my experience, if I have at least 3 branch or bush harvests when I click 'fill', I only use those to fill the pouch, not the fungi. Also, having completed Fairy Tale pt 3, I don't need to wield a dramen staff - so I use an air staff instead of using air runes, which saves me some money, and replace the now-empty inventory space with the druid pouch. Is there a way to take advantage of the falador shield prayer recharge here? Could you use a canafis portal in your house instead of a glory ammy + fairy ring? What prayer level would make a better BoB worthwhile? There's still more methods you could include in here. I give you a 4/5 - if it weren't such a good method, it'd only be 3/5, because it is a pretty short guide without much attention given to alternative methods.

From what I've heard, the "pre-paid membership cards" in the US are very, very crappy compared to this Wallie thing you have in the EU. Friends have told me that the cards cost much more than the cost to pay via other methods, and that it simply isn't worth it. I don't know for myself, and I've yet to see such a thing in any stores near me. Interesting deviation from the usual trend of things, but as others have said, it would have been nice if you included something for those of us outside the EU.

First guide I've found with a method well suited for me. All the others I've seen are specifically for noobs, or for people with godswords and the like... none for the 'average' lvl 90-100 player. So thanks! Definitely will be trying out the rune method. Also, AOW for sure.

I took your glassmaking idea and sort of continued it; thought you might like to see the results. I bought about 950 soda ash and buckets of sand (because seaweed wasn't selling, and the amount was kind of random, as I bought it in small steps) (these supplies cost about 470k). Used superglassmake to wind up with about 1240 molten glass (the runes cost 28k). I made those into unpowered orbs (which cost 600k for the cosmics), then wanted to see which method of selling them would be most profitable. I figured I had three options - 1: buy what battlestaves i could from Zaff and the rest from the ge, make air battlestaves and sell those; 2: buy what battlestaves I could from Zaff and make those, then sell the rest of the orbs as orbs; or 3: add this to my list of dailies and slowly process all of the orbs into battlestaves, buying them all from Zaff. The first method would be relatively quick, but had a net loss of 80k. Not bad, considering the crafting and magic XP involved, but I'd prefer a bit more of a return than that. The second method would be almost immediate, and earn 315k. The third method would take a long time (I have varrock armor level 2, so I can get 36 staves a day; that would take 35 days, or a little more than a month), but would wind up earning 1.5mil. As you might expect, I'm taking the long route, to earn 1.5mil gp, 248k Crafting xp, and 99k Magic xp. If we took the same formula and applies it to your 450 casts, you'd be getting 35k Magic xp, 76.5k Crafting xp, and about 393k gp. But, if you made the same amount into air battlestaves, buying them at 7k each from Zaff, you'd get 616.5k Magic xp, 1.5mil Crafting xp, and 9.4mil gp in profit. Depending on what level of varrock armor you have, that would either take 957 days (no armor), 479 days (armor 1), 240 days (armor 2), or 120 days (armor 3). Or, you could make them into air orbs and sell those, earning 616k Magic xp, 478k Crafting xp, and make 1.5mil gp (and you wouldn't have to wait on getting battlestaves to make your money). Actually buying the battlestaves off the GE, however, would cause you to lose about 1mil gp, though you'd still be getting 616k Magic and 1.5mil Crafting xp. If you want to put this in your guide, feel free (and edit as you like). Just thought you might be interested in seeing an alternative to just selling the molten glass (though it would/will admittedly take a while, it might be worth the investment). Oh, by the way, your formula is a tad bit wrong for the xp - you only get 78 Magic xp per cast of Superglass Make, not 87. So you'd get 35k magic XP your way, not 39k. Also, you get 10 crafting xp per glass you make with that spell, and you're making (450 casts * 17 per cast = )7650 glass, so you'd get 76.5k crafting xp.

Yeah, the rings are worth a decent amount, but I haven't been able to get information on how often you get which types. Eggs can be changed into summoning seconds, yep. But, not everyone has the levels to do that. Likewise, maple logs can be fletched into maple longbows, but it isn't really mentioned in the guide because not everyone has the levels fo rit, and because that takes a lot more work than simply collecting, restocking, and selling.

I don't think you can do that anymore; I remember that the last time I was using maples and selling the seeds, it didn't matter what seed was in the nest. Once I got a full inventory, they would all say I didn't have room. Interesting idea, but I'm quite certain that would count as bug abuse if it worked. ;) Oh, also.. (emphasis mine) Nests only give tree seeds and fruit tree seeds, not herb seeds. Though you can get those from putting workers on flax or herbs. Hmm. Well, that is mildly disappointing. However, my numbers are somewhat different than theirs... I trust mine more, especially since I can't see the method they used to find their amounts. Furthermore, my guide does contain a bit more than just the calculations of profit per resource, so I'll leave this here. So, while that's certainly your choice, the only reasons to do that are 1) if you dislike having to buy seeds on the GE or have a hard time getting the seeds you want, or 2) you want spirit seeds or god bird eggs, which aren't tradeable and can't be bought of the GE at all. Or I suppose 3) you enjoy paying 20k for the fun of getting random seeds is always possible as well. "More than 100k profit." Problem. You're also putting in 75k to the coffers, so you lose that 75k, so 100k - 75k = 23k profit per day. No, the profits for each different resource has already factored in the 75k, to it is 100k. ;) Quite true - it is already factored in, and that is indeed 100k profit. Beat me to it. I assume you do know that 100-75=25, not 23, and that's just a typo. Or that you were tired when you posted. I know my math skills go out the window when I'm tired, heh. (I promise I double checked all my math in the guide multiple times, when I was not suffering from fatigue. :P ) Thanks for the comments! It's nice to know this does get read, and that it isn't completely overshadowed by that calculator. ^.^