Igniting up the Firemaking Skill

[Erichermit]

While burning infinite lines of fire to get to 92 to use the inferno adze, I was thinking about what makes firemaking feels useless.

 

We all know what I'm talking about. The skill feels significantly less important than other skills. Most arguments for this are that firemaking training is nothing more than making lines of fire, but when it get downs to it, many skills are similar. Eventually Hunting seems like nothing more than "Chinchompa Catching."

 

 

 

Firemaking is, as of now, only trained for quests and to use the adze. The only way to make money off of firemaking as of now is cremations, which I like, but I will get more into those later.

 

 

 

I think the main problem with Firemaking is that there is little to reap as far as benefits go. There are several things I have to say about the other things firemaking has to offer than lighting lines of fire.

 

 

 

 

 

==Beacons==

 

 

 

I'm both pleased and dissapointed in this update. I think beacon lighting is good but could have been way more. Currently the only beacons worth worrying about are 4th, 10th, and 14th. There is absolutely no reason to go lighting the other beacons. It's not really a good source of experience and the rewards are only earnable once. The Inferno Adze is a magnificent object. The fire ring and fire gloves are not quite so important. A combined bonus of 5% xp to firemaking (most likely used making lines of fire.) is not the kind of reward I like. Beacons were supposed to revolutionize the way firemaking was trained, not simply make a little minigame played at most maybe three times, with most of the time the only reward is speeding up the skill very slightly. I would recommend adding new rewards. After all, it takes all the way to level 92 to actually get anything useful as far as the rest of the game goes, and that's a pretty high level. (I am NOT saying lower the req for adze, im just saying it's strange that there arent any less useful [items that actually do more than slightly boost fm xp] items along the way.

 

 

 

I'm not completely sure what kind of rewards would be nice to earn. I think Inferno Adze-like items for other skills would be nice. Things like a fishing harpoon that can occasionally give you cooking exp as you fish. Personally I'd say that you earn cooking (or firemaking) exp for the fish, but it becomes burnt, but I suppose earning a cooked fish would be nice too.

 

 

 

Other items could be earned repetively as rewards for beacon lighting. Like some Fire Orbs for battlestaves, or coins from the king. That way people will want to repeat this minigame. Perhaps magic robes (or just a hat) that provide a slight damage bonus to fire-related spells.

 

 

 

Below I will talk about hot-weapons and pyromancy. I think that the rewards from beacons could be items used to do these things too.

 

 

 

 

 

== Cremating ==

 

 

 

This is actually my favorite thing about firemaking. I personally have cremating about 1.8k Fiyr Shades and 600 or so Vyrewatch. Sadly, the rewards for this are rather terrible. Even with a maxed out flail you can't hope for more much that 100k gp an hour cremating vyrewatch, not to mention that the combat xp is rather slow.

 

 

 

But it is great fun. Cremating the remains of evil monsters is not only a fun way to raise prayer, but the most fun way to raise firemaking, in my opinion. Cremating remains of monsters with magic pyre logs is actually a little slower than burning lines of maple logs, but the prayer exp more than makes up for this (That is, if you don't factor in the time it takes to gather oil, logs, and remains. Which you often do, especially remains.)

 

 

 

I think we could do well to have a new crematable monster, most likely from the next vampyre quest. This monster would hopefully have a item specific to it to bring people to it. Nobody wants to kill shades because they give the same old addy and rune junk theyve seen a thousand times. Sure Fine Cloth is unique and nice, but face it, nobody uses splitbark anymore. Vyrewatch have clue scroll rewards, but people still arent too attracted to them as it's rather rare.

 

 

 

There are many high slayer monsters with very desirable drops like spiritual mages, abyssal demons, dark beasts. A monster with a special unique and sought-after drop would attract a lot of interest. (I'd recommend a slayer level requirement, and use of the flail, or whatever it's next version might be.) People would be able to train their firemaking level cremating these remains, and would have to train to a highish firemaking level to burn (I'd reccomend for burning requirement either yew or magic pyre logs. I'd prefer if we had to burn magic pyre logs.)

 

 

 

==Hot Weapons==

 

 

 

Flaming weapons and the sort have been suggested to death so I'll keep this short. I personally think this is a very idea, but taken to a limit. I believe only certain metal items should be allowed this benefit.

 

 

 

My idea is that you somehow can heat up a weapon (lighting a sword on fire doesnt make sense, but making it very hot does.) to increase the strength bonus slightly (I'm talking +2 or +3. This may seem like very little, but think of how much people will pay for Bandos Platebody, or what they'll go through for a fighter torso.) Different firemaking for different weapons would be nice. Such as 10 for bronze, 20 for iron, 30 for steel, 40 for mith, 50 for adamant, 60 for rune, 80 for dragon, etc. Hot weapons should only stay hot for an hour or so, before they need to be warmed again. This could either be done by using a tinderbox on them, lighting a fire on the floor and using the weapon on the fire, or using a special fire-making object for heating weapons (hopefully from a quest?)

 

 

 

Many people have suggested a "Burn Status" to be able to be inflicted upon people. I kind of like this idea. I don't think hot weapons should be poisonable though. It'd be a bit overpowered, plus the heat would boil the poison off.

 

 

 

==Camping Purposes==

 

 

 

Firemaking is pretty much only useful in the newbie times. You're in the varrock sewers, low on health and full of raw rat meat. Luckily you brought some logs and a tinderbox. You light a fire and heal up!

 

 

 

This doesn't happen anymore when you become stronger though. With so many healing and travelling options available, side by side with the fact that there are no raw animal meats worth eating later in the game for a high levelled player makes this original purpose obselete.

 

 

 

It doesnt have to be though. I think it'd be nice to see some more monsters dropping meats along with their death that could be cooked for decent amounts (but not enough to constitute camping for meat to sell. We don't want to put fishing out of business now.) Im thinking numbers like 10 and 12 for high levelled monsters.

 

 

 

Of course, this doesnt encourage people to train the skill, simply to use it, which would be just the same at level 1 as it is at level 99. Making hard to burn logs spawn / have trees in the region may encourage this though, as someone camping at a monster like this would need to be able to burn say.. a yew log, that being the only tree in the area (and this area is far away from a bank that no woodcutter would dream of training there.), to cook his food to be able to stay in the region longer.

 

 

 

Things like Unicorns, Titans, and Bunyips make this idea pretty worthless though. Still an interesting though though, I suppose.

 

 

 

 

 

== Pyromancy ==

 

 

 

If melee gets a bonus from hot swords, magic could get a bonus too. My idea would be boosting the power of fire magic spells by lighting a fire underneath you. I don't have a lot of to say about this skill as I think Jagex could balance it better, but my idea would be something like.. if you light a fire and stand in it, fire magic damage is boosted. You may have to use special kinds of fire for this (with logs treated with something like firelighters, but magical.) or something.

 

 

 

== Fire Arrows ==

 

 

 

I feel obligated to have a suggestion for all types of combat. Fire arrows are already in the game actually. I can't think of any reason as to why they don't do more damage than a normal arrow. That's all I can say about that I suppose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Well I feel out of ideas. All my suggestions are just merely suggestions, but I really want to see firemaking become something more than it really is. There is pretty much no difference between a lv20 firemaker and a level 91 firemaker. Only at level 92 do we see something useful for non-firemaking purposes.

 

 

 

Please Jagex, give this skill more reason to be trained. Making firemaking useful would be like adding a whole new skill to the game.

[FreezePop91]

All I saw was Fire Arrows and I Freaked. I have always wanted a new way to inflict pain, and that just screams PAIN with a sidedish of giggles. And you know that as soon as you light your first arrow on fire and shoot your target and light them on fire, your going to do one of 2 things, cry from laughing too hard, or wet your self.

[sirlonewolf]

I agree with u firemaking need a major update to make the skill more useful and fun to train ( and no i don't want them to make the skill easier to train ) and maybe a new name with a redesign of the skill.

[Daedalus127]

I feel your ideas for "hot" weapons and fishing items that have a chance to cook caught fish are good. They are simple enough to be implemented, useful enough to be used, and not imbalanced.

 

If this update was added to RS, I would train firemaking.

[sandycat0]

The problem with firemaking, as i see it, is that there is no real benefit. you might be able to do different methods or obtain items that let you train firemaking faster, but they still dont give you a reason to.