A Bit Of Questing
Posted by teacuptime, Jan 25 2010, 06:41 AM
It's been a long while since I've been in a questing mood. Since quest content is in short supply (and I do like to do things efficiently with a quest guide at hand) I like to wait until I really feel the need for questing before diving in. I have huge respect for people who keep their quest capes with the tiniest possible gaps, but that's not my style.
First off, I tackled the Temple at Senntisten. I'd been put off by the need to do barrows, which I've never done before. It's been one of those pieces of content that I'd never mentally moved out of the 'things high level players can do but I can't' into the category 'things I'm now high levelled enough to do'. After several wasted hours trying to reconcile the differences between different guides I satisfied myself that I didn't actually need to learn how to do barrows efficiently, and I'm high enough level to ignore a lot of the details. For my one trip, I can sum up the relevant information as 'wear guthans, take lots of prayer pots, use spade on lumps, turn protect from melee on, kill pink guys, stumble about in tunnels until you get the quest item.' The frostenhorn was an interesting puzzle, but the Ice demon was a push-over - the ice fiends caused me more problems than this 'boss'. All things considered, it was a great quest, with lots of plot advancement and an excellent reward.
Next up, Bood Runs Deep. Escorting the king through the caves took 2 goes, because I packed light expecting to die on the first attempt. I liked the trekking idea, but surely I could have just used 'teleother lumbridge' on the king or given him a spare lyre and saved all the aggro? I despatched the 2 guard dagannoths that heal each other without too much trouble, but the final boss took me 3 tries. My 41 year old reflexes are not good at accurately prayer switching while still dealing with all the other potting, eating and spell swapping that is needed, which makes me worry that Jad will be too much for me despite my combat level. Anyway, it was all worthwhile because on the third attempt I messed up a few times too often and ran out of food and prayer but had a miraculous stroke of luck. My war tortoise (the first time I've used one!) casually walloped the Dagannoth mother at precisely the right moment and I emerged claiming a technical victory with just 4 hitpoints left.
Next up, Nomad's requiem. I played the required 1 game of soul wars badly, having found the game unplayably slow if I went anywhere near an avatar, and so slow I was worried that my computer had crashed if I went over the bridge to the obelisk. I went through the 'opening doors' bit of the quest without too much trouble, I did die once, but that was simply to save on prayer pots, rather than walk back out with some empty vials and find an altar, I took the quick route to getting back to the entrance with all 82 prayer points. The decaying avatar took ages, and I emerged with low hitpoints, having practice with using ruby bolts (e) - I scored some nice 200s with them, but I was doing the run on the cheap without my full ranging gear and only 50 bolts plus some broad tips, and I ran out of prayer while repeatedly diving out of the safe spot to recyle my ever dwindling supply, then I was in danger of running out of hitpoints because the ruby bolts take a toll, then I misclicked and ran into the avatar... but eventually all was well.
Next, I'll be facing Nomad, with bolts I've only used once before, and a war tortoise I've only used once before. This should be interesting! I know it can be done, as over on RuneScoop there is a player who found it do-able with all relevant stats slightly lower than mine, and the same equipment that I'll be using. The only change from my usual ranging gear is my first purchase of godwars armour. I had always though that an item like the Armadyl helm was out of my league, but I was delighted to find that it only costs 1 million gp to upgrade from a 4m robin hood hat to a 5m Armadyl helm.
Sadly, the long face-off with Nomad will have to wait, I'm off to London to do some politics. I know I've promised not to mention politics much in this blog, but there is some overlap as it's a gaming event. Tom Watson, a Labour MP, has organised an event at the houses of parliment called "taking video games seriously", and I'm going along to listen to the debate. I'll report back in a few days when I'm next at my computer.
A New Decade
Posted by teacuptime, Jan 3 2010, 01:00 PM
Time to think about the future, and the past.
Here are my stats as of 01/01/2010. My latest achievements of note are getting all skills over 2,000,00xp, and pushing my 4 main combat skills (attack, defence, strength and hitpoints) to level 92, which is of course halfway to 99, xp-wise.
A further 77k hitpoint xp should get me to 127 combat.
So, what to do next? The two recently added quests are waiting for me to be in a questing mood, and training smithing is something I've been meaning to do for a while, with the goals of upgrading to Adamant armour in my skill room (needs level 88) and of completing an elite Ardougne diary task (needs 91, or 89 with mature dwarven stout). Gold ore is cheaper than normal with the new cavern, and I can do a bit of mining training there to break things up.
In he longer term, I really ought to get round to killing Jad soon, and finishing the Ardougne elite diary which will involve a lot of summoning training (level 93 is needed).
Dungeon Complete!
Posted by teacuptime, Dec 15 2009, 06:41 AM
It's time to meet the final dungeon creature, the rather overpriced hellhound. It guards the corridor that leads to my steel dragon, and cost a horrifying 5 million gp. I raised the cash through a fair bit of runecrafting, a little bit of runite mining and a lot of abyssal demon killing, which didn't result in a whip drop, but gave me enough ranarrs, tooth half keys, assorted herbs (and a dragonstone) that I could afford a big red dog that I shall call Clifford:
My house is now complete, with the exception of the throne. I'm not sure if and when I'll spend 5, 16 or 24 million gp on upgrading to skeletal, crystal or demonic, but with just 34k in the bank, I do know that it's not going to happen soon, especially as I've just spent nearly 30 million on the dungeon.
I'm now looking forward to watching everyone die horribly in the dungeon during the party on Saturday!
I'm Addicted To You, Don't You Know That You're...
Posted by teacuptime, Dec 9 2009, 09:12 AM
Tok-xil?
After a lot of heavy duty runecrafting, I've raised 7.7m of the 11m I want to complete my dungeon in time for the Canting Away event. I've purchased a 5m gp Tok-Xil to keep my third treasure room safe, as well as a 1m gp troll guard for the junction room. He (or possibly she?) is one of the more impressive looking dungeon monsters, so I remembered to turn anti-alaising on for this shot to bring out the detail in the image.
I now need to raise another 3.3m for a Hellhound to guard the corridor that leads to the 5th and most difficult treasure room. I may switch to abby demons for a change, since nature crafting with a graahk is rather repetitive, and I'm within 1 whip drop of my target.
I also made my first few tries at merchanting, with mixed results. I started off low-profile, buying 25k fire runes at min, then selling at mid for 25k profit. Emboldened, I put my robin hood hat and ranger boots for sale at just under max, hoping to rebuy at near mid. This worked perfectly with the hat, netting me about 250k profit, but went horribly wrong with the boots, which shot up in price as soon as I sold, and, I ended up rebuying them at a 600k loss.
In other news, I popped into Keldagrim late at night, and had a good run of luck world-hopping for runite at the 2 new rocks there, making about 500k in the process. It's not as fast as Graahk natures, but it's a nice change, and there are lots of 35 second breaks to do other things when world-hopping.
Here Be Dragons
Posted by teacuptime, Dec 7 2009, 12:56 PM
As some of you might know, I'm having an open house as part of Merch Gwyar's Canting Away Winter Festival, which promises people the chance to "See a level 99 Construction house! 
"
The only slight problem with this is that my house isn't actually finished. I've used the newly possible 31st room to put in a maxed (if not very well populated) menagerie, but apart from upgrading the second portal room to marble portals, I haven't got very far with my 'big ticket items' shopping list recently. Spurred on by not wanting to disappoint people, I've decided that my goal until the 19th will be to put all my efforts into turning my house from a nice one that happens to be owned by someone with level 99, into something I can really be proud of.
I'm not simply making everything 'maxed' as I don't always think the highest possible items are the nicest to have, as a player-owned house is perhaps the best way of having some creativity in the game, I've concentrated on what I want it to be like, rather then making it a copy of all the other high end houses. This is why I have 3 formal gardens out front, with 2 'large fountains' rather than 'posh fountains', and why I've consciously avoided the 'doughnut round the portal' layout in favour of an east wing/west wing stately home format. Here is my to-do list:
Upstairs: Complete!
Ground floor: Complete apart from the throne, which is currently just gilded. The options are Skeletal (6.175m), crystal (14.625m) and demonic (24.375m)
Dungeon: A lot to do. My eventual plan is to populate my 5 treasure rooms, oubliette, 2 corridors, staircase room and junction room with as full a set as possible of every monster, door, trap and item. Already in place are every type of trap, all the doors except marble, all the possible decorations, all 5 possible treasure chests, all possible shields and a Rocnar (an obuliette only monster). The monster list is where the problem lies. I'm starting with a decent collection (Skeleton Guard, Hobgoblin Guard, Baby Red Dragon, Huge Spider, Demon and Kalphite Soldier) but I'm missing these:
Guard Dog (75k)
Troll Guard (1m)
Tok-xil (5m)
Hellhound (5m)
Dagannoth (7.5m)
Steel Dragon (10m)
Of these, I'm using my discretion and interior design skills to remove the guard dog. I don't have enough dungeon corridors to have one, and anyway, I'm a cat person.
This leaves me with a bit of a cashflow problem, with 28.5m to find for monsters, 1.3m needed for for a marble door and between 6.175 and 24.375m to find for a throne. I started with 18.4 million in the bank. Since the throne is pretty but not functional, and I'm still dithering between crystal and demonic (which I can't afford), I've gone for monsters first. Well, there's no time like the present, so before I could baulk at the 2 most expensive purchases I've ever made, I hopped on the train to Keldagrim, then teleported to my house and installed the marble door (finishing off the dungeon fixtures and fittings) and then I blew a further 17.5m on a Dagganoth and a Steel Dragon.
Time for a big picture, showing all the creatures you'll encounter if you try my dungeon out at the party.
That left me with just 200k in the bank, which spurred me on to work on a skill I've been neglecting recently, which is runecrafting. I'm frantically making double nats, in the hope that I can raise 11 million to finish off the dungeon with a troll guard, a tok-xil and a hellhound.
All Skills 80+
Posted by teacuptime, Nov 18 2009, 10:08 AM
I've now reached level 80 in all skills. Unfortunately, I've been so disheartened by the recent runecrating update, and so annoyed by farming that it all feels like a bit of an anti-climax.
First up was hunter. I carried on with the 'surround 1 spawn' method of getting red chin shaped pillows, and had no problems with people squabbling over spots (although I did witness a lot of arguments among other players over the 'best' spot just to the north). I prefer this to falconry, it's more clicking, but the xp is similar if not faster, and there isn't any of the annoying mis-clicking and failing that makes falconry such a chore.
I've been planting a lot of palms and magic trees, in order to get farming over and done with. It's expensive, but I've been using the boring wait around parts to make some money to pay for it all. I crafted 3k nats from pure essence that the abyssal demons had dropped then fletched my way to level 86 and later alched the bows to give me both 87 mage and a tidy pile of cash. While waiting for the last few palms to mature, I polished another level that was near, getting 87 cooking. Eventually my last farming level arrived, amid some worry that I would be denied by a new skill being announced on Tuesday!
Here are my skills sorted by level order.
99 Construction
93 Runecrafting
93 Hitpoints
92 Firemaking
91 Attack
91 Defence
90 Strength
87 Magic
87 Cooking
87 Woodcutting
86 Range
86 Agility
86 Fletching
85 Mining
85 Slayer
85 Summoning
82 Fishing
80 Smithing
80 Crafting
80 Herblore
80 Thieving
80 Prayer
80 Hunter
80 Farming
2065 total
overall rank 18,727, highest individual rank 673 (construction) lowest individual rank 201,377 (strength).
I think I'll mop up a few easy levels next, getting the speedier skills to 90, strength to 91 (and therefore all my skills into the top 200k) and see how I feel about setting 2100 total as a goal. Now that farming is over for a while (bar planting my spirit tree and checking a calquat, which I won't do until I have a bit of room to keep tears of guthix going to other skills) I'll be putting penguin points to summoning, which I find to be the toughest worthwhile skill to train at my level. I'll also get all skills to 2m xp, as that's only 15k above level 80 it won't take long.
A Bit Of Farming Xp
Posted by teacuptime, Nov 12 2009, 12:11 PM
16 Penguin points, 146 tears, 1 planted calquat, a forgotten watermelon vine harvested and some vinesweeper played has pushed me 10% of the way towards my goal of all farming level 80, with 98,778 xp to level 78 and 455,646xp to level 80.
In other news, I've carried on with collecting chinchompa-shaped pillows and now have just under 100k xp to go to 80 hunter. I'll handle this in 50k or 25k chunks when I feel like breaking up the farming. Selling pillows and managing the kingdom had brought in a fair bit of money, and once I had 19 million gold in my bank for the first time ever. I decided to celebrate by doing something expensive and long overdue, installing the final set of 3 marble portals in my house. On the through Keldagrim to buy the necessary 9 marble blocks, I noticed that the new mining area had some runite ore available. I decided to hop a bit and loaded up on runite and adamantite for a bit, which will help offset the expense of seed buying. I've bought 5 calquat seeds, planted one and have the rest ready to go as seedlings. I happily discovered a forgotten poison ivy vine by the champoins guild which I revisted for the tiny morsel of new content introduced here this week, and 2 visits were sufficient to gather 8 berries needed to bribe the calquat minder for free.
Soon, I'll have to stop procrastinating about which other seeds I should buy and simply get on with it. As mentioned last time, I expect to use 1 spirit seed at level 79 with a stranger plant pouch, which will cut my xp remaining to 80 by 19,501 and a bit to 436,145. Perhaps maple and palm will be the right way to go, giving about 67k a run of 5+5, with runs every 15 hours or so?
79 Hunter
Posted by teacuptime, Nov 11 2009, 10:24 AM
I'm quite surprised to find that hunting red chins is only mildly annoying, and the annoyance is offset by the profits. Surrounding one lone spawn doesn't seem to annoy people squabbling over the 'best' places, despite being quicker. I've stuck with it thanks to some audible distractions from the Spider Robinson podcast - not really my taste in music, but I like the delivery and the Sci-Fi content. Be aware that some content may not be suitable for under 18s.
So, I have 79 hunter, and will carry on to capture another 706 chins, which will get me to level 80. I'm using Arctic Bear pouches for their invisible hunter level boost, which make it a little faster, but a little harder to click on the right things. This will leave 77 farming as my only under-80 skill. I've so far failed to buy any Calquat seeds through the GE, but I have realised that at level 79 I will be able to use a Stranger Plant familiar's 4 level boost to grow one of the Spirit tree seeds that I have in my bank, which will knock 19,501.3 off my total. I think I'll be making daily trips to vinesweeper too, perhaps I can make a decent contribution to the goal that way by splitting it into small chunks. Tonight I'll do penguins and tears, and then I'll get back to the maths.
Thinking About Farming - Part 2
Posted by teacuptime, Nov 10 2009, 11:44 AM
Much sooner than expected, here's part 2, thanks to a very useful page or two over at Wikia that have tables of cost per xp for wood and fruit trees as well as herbs which Kuemper helpfully suggested are a good way of offsetting the cost of tree seeds.
Just to recap, I'm looking for a cost-effective way of gaining 508,660xp in farming that won't take forever. The first thing to do is try and pin down those rather tricky vague terms 'cost effective' and 'won't take forever'. Last time, I came to the conclusion that the quickest and most expensive method would cost around 8 million, which is way too much.
If I could do it for 3 or 4 million, then I'd be fairly unhappy, but I'd go ahead. Obviously, cheaper is better, if the time added isn't too much. Defining 'won't take forever' is trickier, because of the waiting involved in farming. I'm not going to find a simple xp per hour rate for these methods, as farming runs themselves don't take up the time, it's the waiting for trees to grow that does it.
Here are the relevant cost per xp rates for today's prices, including buying the bribes for farmers to not poison your crops. I've excluded low levels options that would fit my definition of 'taking forever', and worked calquats out for myself as Wikia doesn't cover them.
Wood Trees:
Willow 6.55gp per xp
Maple 9.99gp per xp
Yew 19.33 gp per xp
Magic 19.19 gp per xp
Fruit Trees:
Pineapple: 4.47gp per xp
Papaya: 7.57 gp per xp
Palm: 12.48 gp per xp
Calquat: 47,800 for seed plus 8x poison ivy bribe at 904 each, total cost 55032 divided by 12,387 (12,096 health check xp plus 6 x 48.5 picking fruit xp) = 4.55 gp per xp
From this it's possible to work out more accurately the cost of magic/palm/calquat combo runs I thought about in part 1. A Magic seed + bribe costs 267,050. Palm is 142,710, and calquat 51,416, so a run of 5+5+1 costs 2,100,216gp, so 4 runs would be 8.4 million gp.
At first glance a willow/papya/calquat combo looks good. A run of 5+5+1 would give 7406.5 + 6873.9 + 12225.5 = 26404.9 xp but to get my 508,660xp that way would take 20 runs, and with the 21 hour calquat grow time that's practically 3 weeks of daily farming runs, and the bad news is that a willow/papya/calquat combo would cost 20 x ((5 x 9,703) + (5 x 47,050) + 51,416) = 335,181 a run. 20 such runs costs 6,703,620 which is still way too much.
I should factor in other methods. I don't enjoy vinesweeper, but I would rather get 55,655.2 farming xp that way over the course of a few days than buy 4 magic tree seeds and bribes for a total of 1,068,200gp. Tomorrow is penguin day, and there's tears of guthix too. 16 penguin points would give 77x25x16 = 30,800xp, and tears will knock at least another 6k off the total, reducing my 508,660xp to 471,860.
So, I want 471,860xp, and I don't want to pay more than 4 million gp. Maybe I can factor in herbs? Wikia tells me that Lantadyme seeds are probably best for me, with an average profit of 22.6k and an average xp of 1,043 each. It seems from the guides that I can't protect them from randomly dying though?
I'm not really sure which way to go yet, but I am reasonably sure that calquat are very cost effective, so I'll start by planting one now, while continuing to think about the maths and train hunter.
Thinking About Farming - Part 1
Posted by teacuptime, Nov 10 2009, 07:29 AM
Thieving was quite dull, but after a lot of repeatedly pickpocketing a knight of Ardougne for several hours, I reached level 79 and then 80. The new goals feature was actually very useful, as I was able to break the long slog down into 10% chunks, and it made me think that I could probably do the same for my last two under 80 skills, which are 77 hunter and 77 farming.
As my slightly geeky approach to the game might lead you to expect, the first thing I did was to read up on the best xp rates. Zarfot recommends training hunter by surrounding one single carnivorous chinchompa respawn with 4 (and later 5) traps, and if it manages to wander off without being trapped, kill it with range so it respawns in the middle of your traps. So, I set off to where the red chinchompas were with traps and a bow... or so I thought. I actually set of to where the red salamanders were by mistake, and had to go look up where the chins actually are. A bit later on, I arrive at the chin hunting spots, and discover they are both busy, so I hop... and I hop again because the next world is full too... and again, and again. Eventually, I give up and go back to the only hunter task I feel really competent at, falconry.
It's a long boring slog, but I work my way up from 77 to 78 hunter, and I think the xp rate is acceptable enough for me to stay here to level 80, when I will both finish my current goal and gain the ability to set a 5th trap, at which point I'll switch to chins.
The prospect of about 450k hunter xp through falconry is annoying, because it involves so much clicking to drop/bury the useless bones and furs that my character picks up despite my knowing I don't want them at all. Inspired by Jagex's decision to add bulk buy vials to the game shortly after my last rant, I'm going to have another little rant, not because I think I in any way influenced their decision, but because I'm suffering from a few twinges of RSI and I need to vent my spleen at them. Why do Jagex so stubbornly refuse to add a 'drop all' command to the game? Pouring a big unwanted pile of bones and furs our of a bag and onto the floor is something very simple for any real-world person, and so is not picking up useless junk that I don't want off the floor. So why must I risk permanent tendon damage getting rid of thousands of pointless items one at a time? If it's because falconry would be too fast without the extra dropping, then simply slow the animations down a bit, don't punish me for your bad game design, Jagex!
Right, with that out of my system, it's time to think about farming. Because I rely on tears of Guthix, penguins and vinesweeper to get farming xp, despite having reached level 77, I don't really have any idea how to farm efficiently, but I think that the 508,660xp needed to get to level 80 will take too long for my liking without taking the plunge and learning how to efficiently do farming runs. I'm hoping that I can buy pricey seeds and do a run or two a day rather then grind at the low level seeds. My first point of call is Neo Avatars excellent Farming Help Guide, which is so comprehensive that I've managed to achieve zero xp per hour over the last hour because I've spent the whole hour reading it and making notes.
Jumping into a skill at a high level isn't all that easy, I've not learned all the easy stuff, so I'm sure I'm going to get things wrong, so please comment if I'm talking rubbish from here on... The guide says that the fast but expensive way of getting farming xp at level 75+ is to concentrate on Palm, Magic and Calquat Trees. I lack the level 96 mage needed to do the optimum farming route which requires lunar magic and spellbook swap, and I'm too often annoyed by the lunar spellbook to do a lunar teleport-based route unless it's really going to speed things up, so I'm sticking to the simple regular magic route, which Neo gives as:
1. Plant Fruit Tree in Catherby
2. Teleport to Ardougne
3. Take boat to Brimhaven
4. Plant Spirit Tree in Brimhaven
5. Plant Fruit Tree in Brimhaven
6. Plant Calquat Tree in Tai Bwo Wannai
7. Teleport to Ardougne
8. Head to Khazard Spirit Tree and take to Gnome Stronghold
9. Plant Fruit Tree in Gnome Stronghold
10. Plant Wood Tree in Gnome Stronghold
11. Take Spirit Tree back to Khazard
12. Plant Fruit Tree next to Tree Gnome Village
13. Teleport to Lletya
14. Plant Fruit Tree in Lletya
15. Teleport to Lumbridge
16. Plant Wood Tree in Lumbridge
17. Teleport to Varrock
18. Plant Wood Tree in Varrock
19. Teleport to Falador
20. Plant Wood Tree in Taverley
21. Teleport to Falador (House if located in Taverley)
22. Plant Wood Tree in Falador Park
23. Wait and repeat
I can't do spirit trees yet, but counting the rest up I'll need 5 fruit trees, 5 wood trees and 1 calquat. Cross-referencing the normal farming guide I find that the best fruit tree is the palm, 5 of which will provide 51,303xp in 14 hours 40 minutes, the best wood tree is the Magic tree, 5 of which will give 69,569xp in an unknown length of time (7 hours 40 mins if another site is to be believed). The calquat gives another 19,501.3xp for a grand total of 140,373.3 xp per run.
4 such runs would give 561,493.2 xp, well over the 508,660 I need to get level 80, but at a high cost.
At today's GE mid prices:
20 magic tree seeds at 226.1k each would cost 4,522,000
20 palm tree seeds at 99.5k each would cost 1,990,000
and 5 calquat seeds at 47.2k each would cost 236,000
...so I'm looking at about 8 million gp, without paying for any farmers to look after the trees. Frankly, that's way too much for me, so I'll have to cut back on xp per trip and do a few more runs with cheaper seeds. Working out where that right balance is between speed and cost is going to be complex!
Autoblog
Posted by teacuptime, Nov 6 2009, 12:48 PM
I was going to say I passed 100m total xp and 2050 total level by getting levels in hitpoints (with a whip drop on the way), summoning, smithing (twice) and then farming, meaning I now have all my skills at 77 or more, but somebody beat me to it...
They missed me getting into the top 20k players though, which I briefly did (but I'm now back down to 20,011th).
So, what's next? Farming and Hunter on 77, and Thieving on 78 are the last ones below 80, so I'm thieving for a bit, but the idea of actually doing farming rather than vinesweeper, tears and penguins is so offputting that I'm thinking of going for top 200k in all skills first, I only need to overtake 880 people for strength and 15,189 in fletching to get there.
A Price Fixing Rant
Posted by teacuptime, Nov 2 2009, 07:38 PM
I've been edging towards getting every skill to 80+, with crafting and herblore being the most recent. Crafting is annoying because Jagex has put a limit on how many battlestaves a player can buy, which means lots of very dull waiting for the GE to let you carry on. Normally, I'd be launching into a rant about that, but I'm saving my anger for something much worse.
Herblore is practically impossible to efficiently train anymore, because Jagex have yet again decided, pretty much at random, to set a totally absurd GE price cap. Vials used to trade at around 200 gp each, but suddenly the GE price is capped at 102. This of course means that they are junk traded on the forums for about 500gp each, and because herblore requires an unlimited supply of vials, it's become all but untrainable for all but the richest players.
I did manage to train from 78 to 80, but only by making harralander tar, which doesn't need vials. What it does need is quite absurd quantities of swamp tar (15 are needed to gain 72xp) and a vast investment of cash. I lost around 5 million gp on those two levels.
So, well done Jagex, you've ruined herblore completely. The only way to get vials without junk trading or ripping other players off is to buy 27 at a time from one of 2 shops that don't sell them noted, so hours of xp-less running back and forth are needed. The huge gap between the cappped price on vials and their actual value means more junk in the economy, a massive opportunity for real-world trading, and of course it means any player unfortunate enough to believe the GE price is ripped off monumentally when they sell vials at GE prices. Oh, and because there is a huge demand for swamp tar, the bots are back, both doing the mind-numbing task of gathering 15 tar for each batch and doing the run back and forth to vial shops.
I was going to say some positive things about the halloween quest, but frankly, Jagex have made such a colossal mess of herblore that I really can't bring myself to compliment them on the massive amount of work that went into making the quest, because I'm so angry at the fact that they clearly didn't spend a minute thinking through the implications of setting such a bizarre price limit on vials.
It's Been Way Too Long...
Posted by teacuptime, Oct 22 2009, 05:14 AM
...since I last blogged here. I've been horribly busy with politics, and a lot of other real life things, and I've been playing runescape to get away from all that, when I need to stop thinking about the finer details of copyright law, or how to organise a constituency party structure. I have also been doing a fair bit of political blogging, but strangely that hasn't really satisfied my desire to blog. I suppose it's because I have to be so careful not to offend anyone, or express any views that don't match up exactly with those of the party.
So, I've made a decision. I'm going to blog here a lot more, and I'm only going to mention politics very rarely here. I want this to be a place (like runescape itself) where I can escape into a little fantasy world for a bit and play at slaying dragons. I have been talking a bit about politics in Canting, so here's the last bit of politics you'll read about for a while: As requested here's a link to a BBC radio 4 programme I was on, talking about copyright law: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00n8...ies_5_Episode_3 . My bit starts at about 6 minutes 15 seconds. Apologies if the BBC have blocked it in your country, all I can say is that I'm the leader of the only political party that opposes this blocking, so don't blame me!
Right, let's talk RuneScape! Last time I mentioned the game I was celebrating 2000 total level. I've kept my quest cape of course, and progressed another 44 levels since then, mostly in combat related skills. My main goal was to reach 85 slayer, the point at which killing Abyssal Demons becomes possible. In the process of slaying my way from 80 to 85, I gained 4 attack, 3 defence, 2 strength, 3 hitpoint and 6 range levels. I put the profits from slaying into buying better equipment, and I now have a robin hood hat, matching boots, archer ring, amulet of fury, and so on. I've also started doing something I really should have been doing a lot earlier, potting up when killing things. Super attack and strength pots definitely pay for themselves when slaying, and make training a lot faster. All that slaying allowed me to gather the charms to get from 80 to 84 summoning too.
Eventually, I did reach 85 slayer, and decided to camp out at Abyssal Demons for a while. They are perfect for killing with guthans, as they don't do enough damage to outweigh the healing effect, and while they are not all that easy to kill, potting up helps and they drop a lot of crimson charms.
Reading up on the subject of abyssal demon slaying indicated that I would probably have to kill about 450 to 700 of them before something very wonderful happened, so I was overjoyed when it took just 110 or so to get a very, very nice drop indeed:
I spent the 3.1 million on skills, raising my prayer and then crafting levels to 80, both fiendishly expensive skills to do quickly, with dragon bones priced at an outrageous 3,869gp today. 550 or so kills later I received a second whip, which sold for 3.4m. Perhaps it's the good combat xp and charms that attract me, but I think that while whips are 3.4m rather then the 1.4m I remember recently, I prefer this method of moneymaking to double nats and runite mining.
Crafting isn't actually all that expensive, but the method I used for quick xp does require a major investment of capital. I placed an order for 1k battlestaves on the GE. Due to Jagex rigging the system, despite the large number of players willing to sell battlestaves and the large number of players wanting to but them, the GE won't hook the 2 up properly. Players can only buy 100 battlestaves per 4 hours. Laving the offer there for a while, keeping it topped up to 1k when nearly finished and buying air orbs to attach to the staves when the GE (or Zaff) decides I'm allowed to have them meant that I was eventually rewarded with 80 crafting, hardly any money, and a stack of 18m worth of air battlestaffs.
I'm currently making double nats and alching the staves, while waiting for the initial hubbub to die down over the new Ardougne achievement diary. When the necessary items (such as watermelon seeds) become buyable on the GE, and there is a nice guide or two around that shows an optimal order to do all the things in, then I'll have a go at doing it.
What's next after I have tuned the battlestave notes back into cash? Well, I've not decided yet. The lure of all skills 80+ is tempting, 2 smithing levels shouldn't be that hard, but 3 herblore will be horribly pricey, 3 thieving dull, 3 hunter annoying, and slogging through another 4 farming levels is quite frankly a hugely depressing prospect. With 18 million in the bank and whip drops a possibility, I'm tempted to go for the 24m demonic throne, or invest in at least the Steel Dragon and other expensive nasties I have planned for the treasure rooms in my dungeon. I had planned on high prayer, but the absurd price of dragon bones is very offputting. Perhaps I should go for 2100 total by training the quicker skills to 90/95 ish?
On balance, there is one thing that I do want, but can't buy... the last item needed to make my abyssal demon slaying outfit as good as possible. I've maxed out my outfit (apart from godwars items) with a rune defender (well worth the time invested, and quite quick to get because of my combat level), and I can afford a dragon platebody for non-guthans runs... but I don't have the best cape. The one with lava animation.
I think that, on balance, what I really ought to be doing, but am scared of finding out I can't do because my ancient 41 year-old reflexes and pk-avoiding skiller mindset can't manage is... killing Tz-Tok Jad.
Yikes!
Posted by teacuptime, Aug 14 2009, 05:33 PM
Last 48 hours have been a whirlwind of interviews. I've been on Russian TV, and had a feature in the Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6028...UKs-leader.html
Radio 1 DJ Scott Mills said he would vote for us.
Stephen Fry twittered positively to 707,000 people about us.
Our Facebook group got more new members today than the Conservative facebook group has in total.
...not much time for Runescape though!
Launching A Political Party
Posted by teacuptime, Aug 12 2009, 08:08 PM
A few months back, I voted in the European Parliament Elections. At the time I was rather envious of Swedish and German voters, because they were able to vote for the Pirate Party. Their views on copyright, patent and privacy laws appealed to me much more than any of the choices available to me in the UK.
I wasn't the only person who was wondering why I couldn't vote for the Pirate Party. The reason was simple, there wasn't a UK Pirate Party, but there was a web forum for people interested in forming one. Enough like-minded people gathered on the web to get things moving, and I found myself getting more and more involved in pushing things forward.
Since then, things have been continually building. Yesterday, we made an announcement to the press launching Britain's newest political party, approved by the Electoral Commission and able to field candidates in the next General election. The party leader is Andrew Robinson, better known to you as Teacuptime.
As you might guess, I may not find as much time for Runescape over the coming weeks! I spent most of today being interviewed by newspapers (and I had to turn down a TV interview too), and our publicity drive is just beginning.
Interviews and press coverage so far:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/interviews/350...he-pirate-party
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news...Commission.html
http://www.nme.com/news/nme/46646
http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-party-uk-of...istered-090811/
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/08/12/uk-pi...party-laun.html
http://www.itpro.co.uk/613852/pirate-party...ht-surveillance
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/au...rty-uk-politics
Pants, Piracy And Politics
Posted by teacuptime, Jun 24 2009, 11:41 AM
I've been killing time while on the phone to customers who's conversation is going round in circles by going round and round in circles myself. Having 85 agility fitted in very nicely with the announcement of new agility courses for levels 85 and 90. The new gnome course is quite pleasant once you've found a camera angle that allows you to click all the obstacles without continual adjustment, and reaching the target of 250 'perfect' laps was slow but not too aggravating. Once I had my 250 laps done and was given the gift of 'agile legs', I carried on a little further to level 86. I now have some incentive to carry on to 90 when I can try out the new barbarian course variation and get the matching top.
The agile armour isn't all that much use day to day, as weighing more than zero barely matters now that run energy restores much faster (so fast that energy restore potions are not even needed for the agility course), but it does seem to have some nice uses, thanks to it's high mage defence it should be good for killing abberant spectres which would normally be meleed in black dragonhide, and I expect they will be good for abyssal runecrafting too.
Getting the 4 levels for the new course will require a lot more circling though. I'm at 3,605,447xp now, level 90 is at 5,346,332 xp, leaving me 1,740,885 xp to go. Using the new gnome course at 725 xp per lap, that means I'll be going round another 2402 times to get to level 90.
As I'm not sure I can face so much dizziness right now, I'm going back to slaying for a bit, and will probably try graahk nat crafting to see how the trousers, extra level and rebalancing affect my energy usage.
In other news, I'm getting very involved with setting up the UK Pirate Party, and spreading their message in favour of copyright reform. Yesterday, I was invited to take part in a BBC Radio 4 phone-in discussion, which was quite nerve-wracking, but fun.
2000 Total Level
Posted by teacuptime, Jun 4 2009, 04:29 AM
Thanks to a lot of penguin points, and a lot of slayer tasks giving me charms, I have reached level 80 in summoning, making me the 22,740th person to get to 2000 total level.
Here are my levels:
I'm enjoying slaying at the moment, so I might push onwards towards level 85 where whip drops become a possibility, which will help another goal of getting my four main combat skills to 90, provide charms for summoning and the drops will pay for prayer levels (78 looks low against 80+ in all other combat affecting skills). I'm still not a great fan of summoning, and it's a very, very long way to the 3 familiars that I can't summon but would probably find useful (Geyser titan at 89, Abyssal titan at 93 and pack yak at 99), but if I'm working on my combat level, I might as well take the charm drops and boost my p2p level as well as f2p.
All this concentration on 'tough' skills like summoning and slaying makes me slightly tempted by the 'easier' skills. On my way to 2000 I briefly dipped into fletching and cooking, and I've recently woodcut and mined to 85 too. I want my second 99 to be one of the tough skills (possibly runecrafting), but the shocking speed of fletching and cooking are dangling the carrot of a few quicker capes infront of my eyes. I've done firemaking from 77 to 92 in practically one solid lump, so I could probably do fletching or cooking from 85 to 95 in a lump and then go on to 99... hmm.
In other news, the European Elections are happening today, and I'm off to vote now. I'm still not sure which way to vote, I'm considering UKIP (for the Americans, UKIP are a single-issue party who want us to pull out of the European Union, a position taken by the majority of the public, but none of the main political parties) and Jury Team (a no-hope party that's only just started out, but I like their idea, which is that anyone can stand for election in open primaries, there are no party policies at all, their candidates will each make up their own minds on issues).
Really, I'd like to be voting for the Pirate Party, but they will probably only get seats in the EU from Sweden, the UK Pirate Party is still trying to get itself set up, they have no candidates and need to raise money to get going, and worse, they have no candidates for their leadership election. Perhaps I should stand?
Towards A Business Plan
Posted by teacuptime, May 7 2009, 07:26 AM
In my last blog, I promised to write about my music business plan. As always when I promise to blog on a particular subject, this led to me putting off blogging for ages. In this case I haven't really got all the ideas worked out in my head, but the pressure of my promise and the idea that putting my thoughts into words might help me make more sense of them have finally made my start typing. If you're not interested in my ramblings abiout the state of the music industry, feel free to skip to the last paragraph when I get back to the topic of Runescape (at least for a bit).
Still with me? Right, here goes... I've been following the music biz and trying to work out how it works for longer than I can remember (actually that's a lie, I can remember almost exactly when it was, my first curiosity about how it worked was wondering why the TV show "Top of the Pops" always ended with the same song. Actually, it always ended with the current number one single, but at the age of seven I started watching the show just as Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" was enjoying it's 9 weeks at the top, so I'd never seen anything else at number one. Now where was I? Oh yes, in brackets...). Anyway, I watched the rise and fall of the vinyl 12" remix in the 80s and 90s, bought a small home recording studio set up, contemplated following the KLF's tactics in "The Manual (how to have a number one the easy way)" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manual ) but chickened out despite living only a few miles from the recording studio they used due to the requirement to start on the dole and the worrying problem of being about £20,000 in debt at the end of the process of getting to number one.
Since then I've amassed a collection of over 4000 CDs, boiled my studio down to a lot of forgotten synths in my parent's loft and a top of the range Mac with good software, got over my obsession with acid house and drum and bass by proving to myself that I can only make average tracks in those genres rather then anything I'm really proud of and settled down to make my own sort of quirky bleepy geek music under then name LX Nen. I'm now very close to having finished making an album I'm proud of, which is something I've been conspicuosly failing to achieve for over 20 years.
So, I'm ready to get signed to a label, who will press up my album on 12" vinyl and distribute it to record shops...
...which is how I'd though it would happen 20 years ago, but of course the record shops have closed, vinyl was killed by the CD, which in turn was killed by iTunes and the record labels (under the blanket term RIAA) are evil incarnate.
Of course I could just throw my mp3 files up on the net and let people grab them at will, or find a netlabel who would do that bit for me... but I want to make something more than just a download. Call me old fashioned but I want to hold a proper physical CD (pressed, not burned CDR) in my hand and say to people "I've worked long and hard on this, I think it's worth you buying it". I could (until recently when all my web design work dried up) simply have raided my bank account, paid to have the CDs pressed out of my own pocket and made a loss on selling a few to my mates, but that's not a viable business plan in this day and age, and it would take a miracle for anyone outside of my circle of friends to hear my tracks. Somehow it wouldn't really be a satisfying end to 20 years work to lose money on the deal and have a stack of unsold CDs in the loft. Even though I'm approaching my 41st birthday, I still want the possibility of giving up my day job and being some sort of 'rock star'.
Following the Pirate Bay Trial (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrial ) I'm both morally inclined to take the side of the priates and with my businessman's hat on financially inclined to believe that a new business model is needed, bittorrent will never go away, it's a fact of life and the music business will have to use it instead of pretend it can be stopped. Using myself as an example, I know that pirates do buy CDs - the difference is that they try before they buy by downloading rather then hearing songs on the radio. This means that nowadays people won't buy the whole album if the single is the only good track on it anymore, and it means that obscure acts can get themselves heard through recommendations. I've bought everything that Kattoo has ever done, and spent a fortune tracking down american-only releases by Ulrich Schnauss because I found out about them on illegal torrent sites, neither of those acts are famous enough to get much radio play, and the same goes for Discuss, Tycho, Venetian Snares and many more.
So, piracy is the new radio play. My basic plan is to get my CDs ready, then give away the content on the net in order to find the very few people in the world who will like my odd niche music enough to buy the CD.
But there's a snag, the CD will cost a minimum of £500 to press... and that's for a cheap package with a small inlay card, but that's not a great product, and I want to be selling a great product! So I'm finessing my plan, I'll sell at Apple's lower iTunes quality while giving away the same files on bittorrent sites in order to fund a later CD release if it sells well enough, when the CD is ready to be sold, then the full uncompressed version will be released on bittorrent to coincide with the CD release.
Luckily it's not all that hard to get onto iTunes these days, using http://www.tunecore.com I'll only have to invest about $30US to get the album on sale, no record label needed.
I could write a lot more, but I'd be rehashing this article (http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php ) which makes an interesting proposition that boils down to 'A True Fan is someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. If each True Fan spends at $100 per year and you have 1,000 fans, your income is $100,000 per year. Find 1000 true fans and you can quit your day job.'. I believe this is true, I recently spent $80US on the box set version of new Depeche Mode album, and if it wasn't for the horribly huge postage costs I'd have spent $300 on the NIN ghosts deluxe box a while ago... which is an excellent example as the music was given away on bittorrent by NIN with no obvious loss in sales, all 2500 box sets sold out in a day at $300 each. While those sort of extravagant boxes are out of my league as a beginner, I want to make my CD a bit special, so I'm looking at adding a bonus CD of mixes and demos, maybe a poster, a signed limited edition card and so on. My business model will basically be 'here, have some free music, you might not like it, but hey it was free... if you are one of the few people who really do like it a lot, then get in touch, I have a really nice CD package for sale'. I'll try to get publicity for free on torrent sites, and by pushing the angle of niche marketing in a post record-label world as a news story... the 'can I make a living from my odd music' question has hints of the 'one red paperclip' story about it.
In other news, I've been slaying a lot in Runescape, reaching combat level 118 in the process. My total level is 1983, which is the year when I really got into music in a big way. I originally planned to accompany levels 1983 to 2009 with selections from iTunes that were recorded in the corresponding years, but I quickly became distracted by Depeche Mode's new album "Sounds of the Universe", which is great in places, and the unreleased Ulrich Schnauss mix of "Setting Sun" by Howling Bells, which through some very clever use of effects turns a nice, lightweight pop ballad into something oddly sinister and strangely powerful ( http://www.last.fm/music/Ulrich+Schnauss/_/Howling+Bells - then hear how insubstantial the original is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbBepI5FVgo)
85 Mining - Runite Time
Posted by teacuptime, Apr 10 2009, 08:39 PM
So, I have at last slogged through the dull but necessary 307k to get my mining level up from 84 to 85. I tried a few more methods, but powermining iron was only getting me 37k per hour, even with the varrock 3 armour giving me extra ores, so I ended up back at the granite. Eventually...
...I became the 33,425th person to be able to mine runite.
Of course, the next thing I did was to try out my new ability. I headed over to the heroes guild, and was lucky enough to find the 2 rocks there had ore available. I was quite surprised by how long it takes to get the ore - I suppose the slow cutting rate of magic logs should have prepared me for the slow mining speed of runite, but I was shocked to find that it took 2 minutes of watching the mining animation before I eventually managed to mine my first piece of ore. The second ore was just as slow, but 30k worth of ore for 4 minutes of mining isn't bad. I then hopped worlds and again I was lucky, and this time the mining was faster too. After a lot more hopping I'd visited 17 worlds and found 16 out of a possible 34 rocks that I was able to mine (and I also found a diamond!). Unfortunately the varrock armour doesn't grant double ores for runite.
So, I have access to another of the most highly regarded money making skills in the game... but there's a lot of world-hopping involved meaning it's less profitable than double nats - but it does make a nice change from doing that so I expect I'll be doing a fair bit more of it.
Next time... business plans for my music!
84 Mining
Posted by teacuptime, Apr 6 2009, 05:29 AM
After a lot of very boring mining, and some timed runs that showed I am faster at drop 1, mine 1 than mining a whole inventory and dropping it (40k per hour instead of 38) I finally slogged my way to level 84 mining. Just 1 more level to my goal of being able to mine runite, but that's a whopping 307k xp which will take over seven and a half hours at top speed.
When doing a long boring slog like this, as well as taking a break to manage Miscellania or do another skill, I like to look for smaller mini-goals and the run from 84 to 85 has lots of them.
starting at 2951k, there's 307k to go.
at 2958k there's a nice round 300k to go.
next is 3,000,000 xp
then at 3008k there's 250k to go
at 3034k there is exactly 10m to the cape (although I really don't expect to waste 250 hours getting it, since mining is effectively over at level 85)
at 3058k there's 200k to go
and so on...
on A Bit Of Questing