Quit before EOC, just starting up again

[Kirbyallstar]

Hey everyone, I want to start playing RS again. I have a bunch of questions to ask however.

 

1) So I heard you can buy membership with in game gold. What do you guys think of it? I see that you can buy it from the GE. What's a good price to buy it at?

 

2) What new things should I look into since EOC?

 

3) What are good ways to make money? I used to do slayer, herb farms and that misc* island thing where you manage your island.

My stats are 99 range, 88 slay, 96 mage, 95 dung, 77 hunter, and 86 farm. I'll post more stats if needed.

 

4) One of my friends just became a member for the first time. What should he focus on first?

 

5) I kinda liked the old style of playing, so when is it ok to use legacy mode and when should I use the regular mode? Are there any other modes?

 

6) Is swiftkit still a good client to use? Should I just download the official RS client?

 

7) I heard player-owned ports are a good thing to get into, what should I know about that?

 

8) I'm 99 range, 74 pray, and 81 def. I have full arma, a chaotic cbow, fury ammy, dfs, and barrows gloves. How can I improve my armor and weapons? I'm also 70 attack and str if that matters.

 

I know these get posted all the time, but thanks for responding. If you glance at my list and just want to comment on some of my questions that would be so helpful for me.

[Arceus]

Welcome back to RS! I will do my best to answer your questions :).

 

1. There are indeed in-game items now, called bonds, which can be exchanged for membership, among other things. They've generally been met with a positive reception and many players have managed to self-sustain themselves using them to pay for membership, without need to spend real cash on a subscription. If you can buy one without sacrificing a large portion of your bank, then I would say go ahead. If not, pay the $9.50 or whatever it is for a one month subscription to help you get started and maybe see how much interest you have in the game now rather than trying to stay afloat in terms of money right away. As for the price, I'm not sure exactly, but RuneScape membership prices very recently increased, including the prices for bonds, so my mercher's instinct tells me they are probably increasing in price right now. Probably something like 7.5M would do the trick.
2. Summing up the highlights of the last few years is of course no easy task, but there have been several new quests, new bosses (like Vorago and Araxxor), the Divination skill, Player-owned Ports which was subsequently added onto as well, some new distractions and diversions, and more. RS Wikia has links to all the update news pages on this page; that might be a good thing to read and see if anything piques your interest. Of course there's also the matter of learning EoC combat mechanics, which are generally worthwhile as well.
3.  Slayer can be good money, particularly when you have a higher level. If you want to farm one specific monster, Rorarius requires 81 Slayer (which you have) and I believe is still good money. Herb runs and Manage Thy Kingdom (MTK) can still generate a decent profit. The real money is in PvM/high level bossing though, so that may be something you want to get into as you get back into the game.
4. What to focus on first as a member? Probably training up skills and completing quests to start unlocking content. If he's in a clan with a high tier citadel, that can be extraordinarily good for getting a start in some skills, like Summoning and Crafting, even Smithing. Other than that just general Slayer to train up combat and whatever he finds enjoyable should be good.
5. Don't worry, I won't judge you for playing on Legacy mode :P. It can be quite helpful to get your feet again for the time being. Keep in mind though, that you are missing out on a few things which can be extremely useful for skilling. For example, if you want to drop an inventory of fish or ore to continue powertraining, in EoC mode you can just assign them to a keybind and hold it down for a couple seconds to do so. In Legacy, no such luck - you need to right click and drop one by one. If EoC is overwhelming you in terms of complexity of combat, I highly recommend you check out Revolution. It's sort of a mode in between Legacy and EoC combat, but with the customizable EoC interfaces. You essentially set up a bunch of basic skills and the automated system fires them off for you in the order that you prescribe. In many situations you will find EoC makes killing things easier and more efficient, so you should consider switching over and investing the time in it to become proficient eventually in any case.
6. Swiftkit still works, yeah. Secure your account with Authenticator before/if you store your password in SwiftKit, though. You wouldn't want to get into trouble or lose your account if it somehow gets hacked again. The official RS client is what I personally use. Of course it doesn't have all the features that Swiftkit has, but I can get my information from other sources when I need it.
7. Player-owned Ports are great to get into. You need 90 in at least one of the skills mentioned therein (on the Wikia article I linked). I see that you have 95+ Herblore, but I'm not sure about your other stats since you didn't explicitly mention it. It will take a while to get started but it can help you get tier 85 (degradable) armor from it or make a profit, either way.
8. Armadyl is the best non-degradable armor in Ranged still and is sufficient for most purposes, i.e. general purpose Slayer. If you need more power there is Pernix armor available, but be aware that it has non-negligible repair costs, which must be paid every 10 hours of combat. There is even higher tier armor that degrades to dust, but that's level 90 and another story. You don't really need to consider higher level stuff too much unless you're going high level bossing. In terms of a weapon the only real way to improve it is to get more money, lots of it, and buy a better one. There is the Noxious longbow as a 2h weapon, or dual ascension crossbows if you prefer that. There are also new tier 85 weapons released not too long ago, but the price is still high from hype and it may not be worth it for the time being. Chaotic is not bad though.

I hope that was helpful, and sorry if I missed anything :P.

[Kirbyallstar]

Wow Arceus, you are amazing. Thanks for taking time and answering my questions. They helped out a lot. 

 

One more thing, what's the best ranged weapon for slayer? I'm guessing it's something non-degradable. Also, what is the best non-degradable ranged weapon?

[Blaze The Movie Fan]

One more thing, what's the best ranged weapon for slayer? I'm guessing it's something non-degradable. Also, what is the best non-degradable ranged weapon?

 

I use royal dragonhide armor with black salamander and harralander tar.

 

This outfit in total costs less than million, so you will be able to afford it very easily.

 

And if you use abilities, you won't be using harralander tars in the meantime.

[Arceus]

I think the best non-degradable would either be Armadyl or Karil's pistol c'bow. The latter is quite popular but be aware that it only carries bolt racks, and has an offhand counterpart. Armadyl does not have an offhand.

 

Another option is salamanders, of which black salamanders is the strongest. They need to be paired with tar of course.

 

If you're willing to spend a little on a degradable weapon, the Royal Crossbow is T80 to equip and relatively cheap to repair. Assuming you don't let it degrade fully, you can cannibalize the pieces that make it.to add charges, and it costs about 70K gp in repairs per hour of combat with this method. Actually forging it does entail some effort but judging from your other combat stats you would be able to do it. Royal Crossbow can then be pretty effective for Slayer.

 

Above that are ascensions and noxious as I mentioned before, and I believe that's pretty much it.

[Kirbyallstar]

Awesome, I'm using a black salamander now.

 

So I just got grifolapines as a slayer task and I've never heard of them or the place their located. What should I know about them and what should I bring? I'm guessing I can't range them so is using water spells the best way to kill them? Also how do I safe spot them? And why are staves of light so cheap now? I need a new mage weapon so I was looking into SoL.

 

What are the best items to get in MTK?

 

Also are herb runs still a good way to make money? What are the best seeds to plant to maximize profit? Also what's the most efficient way to get to all the farm patches? It's been years since I've done this so I forgot. 

 

Do Grimy's spreadsheets still work?

 

I'll use this thread to ask all of my questions that come up.

[essiw]

^I am not sure if it changed, but going for maples on MTK is awesome, because you often already make profit from just selling the logs. But you will also get a lot of bird nests, which you can crush and sell, and often you get high tree seeds in there as well.

[Sy_Accursed]

^I am not sure if it changed, but going for maples on MTK is awesome, because you often already make profit from just selling the logs. But you will also get a lot of bird nests, which you can crush and sell, and often you get high tree seeds in there as well.

 

Maples haven't been consistently top 2 for quite some time thanks to nests crashing. Plus you don't actually profit on the logs you 'pay' 56gp per log on maples at mtk, they are only worth 25gp each; they only break into profitability as tree seeds outweigh this, but usually not by enough to reach top 2.

 

Top 2 is usual coal, herbs and fish in some combo -  that being said as of right now top 2 is coal and maples as bxpw spiked tree seeds nicely and herbs have fallen back down quick then the seed values.

 

I dunno if there's a new version I missed but Grimy's spreadsheet seems to be broken lately.

I made my own with like 2 yrs worth of data thanks to beta server data mining

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiiWNnszLqVydDBJUmxROUNJLVpwR3YwckhDeGk2RXc&usp=sharing

 

Not sure how useful it will be to external users though as I find I hit the same issue as Grimy's sheet that I have link to - importing GE data glitches out these days breaking the sheet.

I always have to go into my ge data sheet and change search terms (add and remove capitals) to fix them everytime I go in cause for some reason it finds no data or returns a different search.

 

 

Also @Arceus advice - god no on Armadyl Crossbow it suffers from the fatal flaw on no-matching off-hand within the tier. It fires normal bolts, but not bolt racks the only t70 off-hand (karils pistol) fires bolt racks but not normal bolts.

[essiw]

Ah well guess it has changed since the last time I used it :P

[Kevjumba]

How good is Manage Thy Kingdom? Last time I checked, it wasn't too good for the effort. Thanks.

[Sy_Accursed]

Around 1m+ profit a week if you visit once a week to top stuff off.

 

Kingdom has always been worth the effort for a little bit of extra cash.

[Kirbyallstar]

Some recent questions I have:

 

So I just got grifolapines as a slayer task and I've never heard of them or the place their located. What should I know about them and what should I bring? I'm guessing I can't range them so is using water spells the best way to kill them? Also how do I safe spot them? And why are staves of light so cheap now? I need a new mage weapon so I was looking into SoL.

 

Also can you still use the dwarf cannon on frost dragons? Are they still worthwhile to use at frost dragons? What would be the best way to kill frost dragons with range now?

[Ammako]

Hand cannon is an option as well, non-degradable and better than the options listed above, but they can explode and you would have to buy a new one.

They're pretty cheap though, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem. Unless you got killed by the cannon when it explodes or something.

[Kirbyallstar]

Hand cannon is an option as well, non-degradable and better than the options listed above, but they can explode and you would have to buy a new one.

They're pretty cheap though, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem. Unless you got killed by the cannon when it explodes or something.

 

So should I use a hand cannon over ccb and something else? I don't have the off-hand ccb yet.

 

 

New question: Why is the staff of light so cheap compared to the abyssal wand and polypore staff? Which one should I use for the grifolapine task?

 

 

So I just got grifolapines as a slayer task and I've never heard of them or the place their located. What should I know about them and what should I bring? I'm guessing I can't range them so is using water spells the best way to kill them? Also how do I safe spot them? And why are staves of light so cheap now? I need a new mage weapon so I was looking into SoL.

 

Also can you still use the dwarf cannon on frost dragons? Are they still worthwhile to use at frost dragons? What would be the best way to kill frost dragons with range now?

[Ammako]

Nah, Chaotic crossbow + another offhand is better. The only thing is, it degrades and you have to pay to repair it.

Or Royal Crossbow like already suggested. But Hand cannon would be the best non-degradable (not sure how often they explode)

[Arceus]

My guess on prices is simply that the Staff of Light has seniority and the general power creep/introduction of weapons into the game as bosses are farmed has had more of a chance to drive down its price. If I'm not mistaken, it was really popular back in the day though, and quite a bit more pricey. To be blunt though, even 1M is not bad to spend on a good weapon at any rate, as you can generally earn that back in a couple of hours.

 

By the way, in the future it would probably be good if you could make a new thread if you have different questions. Of course you don't need a new one if you want to ask a follow-up question or something, but it generally makes it easier for people to see and answer things if there is a thread with an appropriate title rather than relying on them to look at the last replies. It is also helpful if someone happens to have a similar question in the future as they might do a search and find it more easily. :)

[Ammako]

Staff of light is cheaper than Abyssal Wand/Orb because the latter are much rarer, and dual wielding is generally better than using a 2h weapon for Magic.

As for Polypore staff being more expensive, I guess it might be because Polypore staff degrades so people have to buy spores + fire runes all the time to recharge it, while Staff of Light doesn't degrade. People keep getting them as drops from Ice Strykewyrms, but the demand doesn't really increase.