Changing Light Bulbs

I hate grind. It's the sort of thing that I only do when I've exhausted all other possibilities and/or the incentive is strong enough. I have to factor in incentives sometimes, like pausing when I've cut enough logs to buy another treasure trail item, just to grab it and return to the tree. Done often enough, even minigames can start feeling like grind. I've got several thieving levels in Pyramid Plunder and, even though I've just got level 71 through the penguins, the thought of going to get more levels at PP made me pout somewhat. I play Runescape to have fun, but grind feels too much like being bored stupid.

Amongst my short-term Runescape goals were to raise thieving to level 73, basically so that I have over 1m xp in it. I'm vaguely aiming for 1m xp in all of my skills, because it makes the hiscores and the Runemonkey lists look pretty. >.> Another one that I'd love is level 85 firemaking. Every time I turn up to chop down an evil elder tree, I feel like I'm being robbed of xp, because I can't set fire to it. I have logs in the bank. I have well over 1000 maples, plus some odd bits and bobs, like 27 oak logs and 15 eucalyptus. I should be hanging out in Piscatoris, setting fire to them, but I keep using the excuse that I'm out of pyrelord pouches and using a tinderbox is robbing me of xp. I can't get more pyrelord because I'm out of shards. I can't buy shards, because I'm buying treasure trail items. Yeah, you can see why those maples are stacking up.

I stand around evil trees, looking at all of those people with adzes and firemaking capes. Invariably I'm after tips. I explain that I get bored just setting fire to rows of logs, is there more xp anyway in lighting beacons? 'No' reply a chorus of pyromaniacs. People patiently explain that nothing replaces simply lighting rows of logs. But then, occasionally, as the sparks fly from an inferno adze, someone will mention the Dorgesh-Kaan Lightbulbs. 1000xp per fixed lightbulb, don't you know? But there will generally be dissenters. People telling him or her to quiet, as the timing is slower or the blown lightbulbs too rare to find. Nevertheless, enough people mentioned these lightbulbs for a critical mass to grow in my mind. I was off to Dorgesh-Kaan.

I went there several times in fact. I'd walk up and down the marketplace peering at the lamp-posts. Sometimes you find one with just the spiked top with no bulb attached. I'd stand there for ages, examining it, trying to get it to tell me if this was a blown lightbulb or not. I'd research it on the internet, but every site just says the same. Take a lightbulb, add a wire, find a blown light and apply. I read the views of the critics. This event is so ridiculously rare that you would be better off just lighting rows of logs in the marketplace, just hoping to spot a lightbulb to fix. Then one site mentioned that you can sometimes get lightbulbs thieving from the chests. This was good, as I had no lightbulbs even if I spotted one.

Yesterday, I was there, giving some perfect shells to Barlak in return for hard cash and crafting xp. I spotted another of those spike-topped lamp-posts and decided that this had to be a blown one. The matching area next door had four lights. This only had three. I hunted around for chests and eventually found one in a house along the edges. I couldn't break in without a lockpick. One quick trip to Burthorpe and back, I had 57 lockpicks and set about that chest with gusto, determined to get my paws on a lightbulb to fix that one in the marketplace. It turned out that I didn't need an inventory full of lockpicks. I needed one and that didn't break. However, the chest didn't get me a lightbulb, so I moved on. I searched the next house, then the next.

About five houses on, I found a blown light. Once you see what one looks like, they are very obvious. They aren't in the main walks, they are secreted in buildings on the outskirts. Sometimes one will go in the bank or library, often they will go in the nursery, otherwise, they are in the living quarters of the civilians of the town. A lit lightbulb is pink and glows. A blown lightbulb looks like someone stuck some pink chewing gum onto a stick and left it standing in the corner of the room. Ignore the lamp-posts with spikes. They are just lamp-posts with spikes.

Fully believing that I had spotted a rare thing, I desperately researched how to get light-bulbs. They are tradeable. The GE sells them for 159gp. I zoomed over and brought 100, thinking that that would sort me out for the rest of my Runescape life. I returned to Dorgesh-Kaan and learned a circuit around the relevant buildings. On average, I was using 8-10 bulbs per circuit. I thieved 122k worth of items that sold easily on the GE; several Dorgesh-Kaan food items; loads of runes, including laws, cosmics, natures and deaths; plus roughly 100k of coins. I discovered that wearing a ring of fire and flame gloves gives you extra xp when lighting the bulbs. 100 bulbs (plus about 3 that I recovered from chests) left me with 112,950 firemaking xp, including the 5000xp you get for lighting 100 of them. I didn't note my starting thieving xp and, unfortunately, Runemonkey was down yesterday. I know that I went in having just got level 71, but now, after 150 lightbulbs, I'm very close to level 72.

It might be a lot slower thieving xp than Pyramid Plunder, and I have no idea how that compares to setting fire to logs, but it's got my interest and I'm enjoying the running around. I haven't seen anyone else doing it at all, so I've had all of the chests and lightbulbs to myself. Much fun! So that's me now restyled as a part-time electrician, part-time thief. Sounds like one of those Chaotic Neutral posters: Might save your life, might steal your car...

Edit: Just done a curcuit. Bear in mind that, at the end, I stop to pickpocket goblins until my inventory is full. It took me roughly 20 mins, maybe slightly less. I got 8,400 firemaking xp, 4,320 thieving xp, 951gp and an inventory full of items (water talisman, H.A.M. clothing, loads of lanterns and mining helmets, frogspawn gumbo, iron ore, frog-leather body, body runes etc.).

Edit2: Thanks to Vaskor for indirectly showing me that I'd made up the name of the city. It's Dorgesh-Kaan! I've amended this. For a picture of the light-bulbs, please see today's Runescape Reader's Digest.