Three More Nomad Attempts

I was minding my own business in the deepest recesses of Gielinor. I'd got 87k thieving xp (including levelling up to 79) and nearly 100k firemaking xp by running around Dorgesh-Kaan, fixing lamps and raiding chests. I can do the high level chests now, which means mega xp. All good, all sedate, all... Joshua Mack has hunted me down. He's not only followed the trail to Dorgesh-Kaan, but he's even run up the stairs and looked around houses until he's found me. I look at his new Soul Wars cape and congratulate him. The conversation instantly turns to why I haven't got one. I repeat my mantra. When I have a massive stockpile of supplies, then I'll go in. I've got enough for two attempts, that's all. "Follow me," says Josh.

The future unravelled in front of me, both trouser legs of a parallel world. In one, I could continue raiding chests until I got bored or ran out of light orbs. No doubt I would be trailing a high level mage in a Soul Wars cape, trying to reason me into pwn Nomad. In the other, I could give up now and follow him. I gave up. I don't know why. Temporary insanity?

Josh took me to the bank in Dorgesh-Kaan. Not that he actually mentioned Nomad. It was more, 'bank all of your stuff and put your dhide on'. I pointed out that I've got full void range in the bank and that was approved. There was none of this going to the digsite or Oo'glog to boost prayer and hitpoints. As soon as I was dressed, we were off to Edgeville. He'd got me dressed in void range, Zammy book, rune crossbow with ruby bolts (e), glory, beacon ring, snakeskin boots and Ava's accumulator. In my bag were 12 super restores, while the rest of the spaces, plus Shelley's entire inventory, were filled with Sara Brews. No range pot. No superset. Nothing. Just get your backside into the tent now. I tried to argue for a practice run. He told me that this was my practice run. Go.

Sometimes it works. Usually it doesn't. Today it worked. I went into the tent. I felt rusty, clumsy and too hot. My palms were sweating on a sticking mouse. There was a bit of lag. But for all of that, I got Nomad down to berserker mode with a few Saras and restores left. I really thought I was going to make it, then I made a stupid mistake. I accidentally clicked on an empty vial instead of a Sara Brew, thought I'd healed and, in the confusion of not having done so, Nomad hit and killed me. I learned to rearrange the pots in my bag during the clone time. You don't have to face them, so that time is for hiding behind a pillar sorting yourself out and refocusing.

Once outside, Josh was ready to harangue me again. We were going to Draynor to replace my accumulator. This happened with Rafftank's steel arrows, once I pointed out that I had none. With Rafftank and Josh escorting me, I was soon in the Manor and back to Edgeville. TheArcturus1 and Eman were there now too. Arct loaned me his Bandos Godsword and gave me 11 Saras. Rafftank and Eman cheered. Josh kicked my backside back into the tent.

This time it felt much smoother. However, I took some unlucky hits and that flustered me. I spam drank Saras before finding my equilibrium. It went to the wire, literally. We seemed to fight the berserker mode one in slow motion. After about half of the fight, he didn't seem to be hitting me as hard. By now, he was barely hitting at all. Maybe the fact that I'd had leech range and leech defence on throughout had a part to play in that. Maybe it was the 35 BGS special right at the beginning. But I was running out of Sara Brews! I looked anxiously at my bag and there saw the BGS again. It's a GODSWORD! These things have been the holiest of holies on the lips of great fighters for ages. Plus people talk of ruby bolts (e) not being so good after the half way mark. I switched to the BGS, but I wasn't getting any hits. I gobbled down the last of my Saras. Nomad was practically red-barred. It really felt like I was going to defeat him. One good hit from me. One bite from Shelley. That's all it would take! I hit a O. Shelley didn't hit at all. Nomad hit 10 and I was dead.

Outside, the postmatch analysis was that I shouldn't have fought the last with the Godsword. Ruby bolts all the way. If I'd stuck with them, it would have been all good. I also learned something else, this time about gravestones. As much as I love gravestones for keeping my stuff, collecting said stuff can be annoying. You click on your grave and get a long list of things to collect. Each one another right-click and another choice. Why can't there be a 'collect all' here? I anxiously grab the expensive items first, then the remaining posts, then the empty vials. (Cossack, bless him, took 350 empty vials off me yesterday and trained his mage in filling them back up again. ) Except you are guaranteed that halfway through, the list will disappear. You'll get the menu that starts with 'read Symbol of Guthix gravestone' or whatever it says, with no items at all. It can take several attempts, interpersed with 'Walk here Rafftank', before the list is back and I can continue grabbing vials. Joshua Mack watched all of this with obvious bemusement, eventually asking why I didn't just demolish the grave first? 'Because I would lose my stuff,' I replied, fretfully. He informed us that your stuff lies on the floor for 2 minutes afterwards. There was some disagreement about this amongst the assembled ranks of Arct, Rafftank and Eman. I ensured that I had the good stuff in my bag and then demolished the grave. Sure enough, there was a pile of empty vials sitting there, easily spam clicked to collect. That's going to save me a lot of hassle in the future!

Of course the conversation turned to another attempt. I reminded them that I had had enough supplies for two attempts. That was the second. No more goes. Rafftank and Arcturus were soon trading me. Rafftank gave me super restores and another 75 steel arrows for the accumulator. Arcturus gave me more Sara Brews. One more attempt. I was against it. I was wound up and this hadn't worked out well last time I tried this wound up. I didn't want to be wasting their supplies! If you think on it, I've already wasted the supplies of Shirkar, Daisyjake and H Alger. I've got Arcturus now with the Celtic gift of the gab. Telling me that my chat channel has brought today awesome people, who wouldn't have met each other if not for me. Take the potions. Then I have Eman telling me that his successful attempt was whilst wound up. Rafftank, Josh and several people in Canting are all talking me off the ceiling and into the tent. I teleported to Draynor and replaced the accumulator. I rolled some cigarettes IRL. I went back to Edgeville.

What followed was the most frustrating fight of all. I was brilliant. I was absolutely fantastic. I have never fought a boss so calmly, precisely and with such luck. The BGS hit high at the beginning. I released so many ruby bolt specials that the air seemed perpetually filled with that blood lust shriek. Shelley went at him like a demented tortoise out for destruction. It was clockwork. It was perfect. Nomad entered berserker mode and I hadn't even emptied Shelley's supplies. I had full hp and full prayer. In fact, this is what I had left, while Nomad was in berserker mode:



My computer lagged. Right there at the end. I clicked like mad trying to attack him, but I was one square back when the lag occurred. He teleported to the middle with a cry of 'coward' and there was nothing I could do. I hid behind a pillar. I resisted the urge to cry. I logged out and back in. Apologies to any Welsh speakers in Canting at the time. The rant started with a few choice words, before switching to English to spill out the story. *sigh* Even Rafftank, with his irrepressible cheeriness, had to wonder where Lady Luck was where I'm concerned. Inorite.

The Runescape Economy

Before I start, a huge shout out here to H Alger. He tracked down Teacuptime and gave him some Sara Brews for me, which Teacuptime duly delivered. I am very touched by all of these gifts, though it really isn't necessary. They are very gratefully received, but I will be able to source my supplies for myself in time. I don't want to be sponging off everyone else's hard work. At this moment in time, my Nomad pwning supplies are: 700 ruby bolts (e); 102 Sara Brews (4); 21 super restores (4); 1 super restore (2); and 200 ordinary restore potions. In short, I could have at least a couple of attempts right now. I want to leave it though until I have mega supplies of Sara Brews and super restores. It's too frustrating to have a couple of attempts and then have to stop for a few days to replenish my supplies. My plan is to wait until I can seriously go for it time after time after time, until his backside is truly kicked. Thank you again to everyone who has been sending things. You're all very lovely. Now onto the business of this blog entry.

A lot of my thoughts just recently have turned to the Runescape economy. I think that it fascinates me so much because I don't understand economics in general and therefore it's a great opportunity to learn something new. Despite my lack of understanding, the economy affects us so deeply inside the game. Even though I attempt to be self-sufficient, it's still there at the back of my mind. For example, I looted a snapdragon seed from an impling the other day. That snapdragon seed was always going to be planted up Trollheim, then harvested to be turned into super restores. The super restores were always going to be put into my bank for future use. The economy should have had nothing to do with that, yet I still checked the price of the seed (93k) and then the price of the herbs once I'd harvested (155k). At the back of my mind, potential earnings bubbled up and sank. Many people could consider that I received those super restores free, with an extra bonus of xp. I tend to see it as costing me whatever I could have sold them for. I'm not convinced that my perception here is the healthy one.

Since June 2008, I've been buying items for my treasure chest, in my POH. This means that I've kept a baseline amount of 1m in my bank, but anything over that has gone on buying things that will immediately be stashed away never to see the light of day again. This has kept me poor, but has also given me an hitherto mostly ignored insight into inflation in the game. The ranger boots used to be 7m, they are now 14m; things like that. In recent months, I've been reading Sparhawke's blog and I've learned how to flip. I also have Egghebrecht and The RS Economist feeding me items to flip or information on the greater issues within the game's economy. Finally, I had a relative stung by the mint cake crash. All of these things have fuelled my desire to learn more about what's happening out there. This is a task made more difficult by the fact that I need a running jump to even start thinking about mathematics and market forces.

There is undoubtedly a lot of spare gold coins sloshing around the Runescape economy as a whole. I've read some quite rabid rants on the RSOF pointing the finger in various directions. Chief amongst these are:

a) The introduction of statuettes into PKing, which provide a greater revenue than the losses incurred by other players being pwned;

b) The existence of the 26k and 76k tricks, which heightened further the number of statuettes being gained and traded in for money;

c) The loss/reduction of the bots meaning that a mass of cheap labour disappeared, taking with them vast quantities of raw goods (ore, essence etc). As actual players were now collecting these, the supply went down considerably, while the price for which people were prepared to sell went up;

d) The merchanting clans... to be honest, I'm struggling here to understand how they've inflated the economy, as they are basically pyramid schemes that ensure that the vast majority of members will lose money. I'm sure that the answer here is somewhere within what Zach was trying to impress upon me about following the money. If money is simply changing hands, then it's still in the game and still in circulation. It's only losing money if that money is somehow taken out of the game;

e) The 'rares' market in W2 and its cousin the 'mint cake bubble'. As the rich become the mega-rich, then they have the personal funds to totally buy out certain markets. Hence the prices of things like party hats become so high as to be unbuyable. They demand more money for things, which causes players to work harder to accumulate junk (perhaps the stock piles which they were left holding after a merchanting clan dumped too early on them), which then becomes currency and... oh! I'm lost. Here is where my mind seems to go up against a brick wall of Economy and leaves me floundering somewhat;

f) High alching creates money from thin air. If essence is also mined and crafted into the required nature runes, then this money literally is from thin air. People have been alching for years and all that money has built up;

g) The GE price caps. I've heard conflicting views on this. Some people say that the caps have destroyed the market. Their existence means that items continue to be sold player to player in the trading worlds and therefore the street prices can fluctuate drastically. This is bad. Other people say that the caps are saving the economy. This is good;

h) The lack of effective money sinks. In the past, PKing used to take a lot of money out of the game, as people died frequently in their armour and had to replace it. Skills like Construction were added as money sinks, but they have failed. I'm level 84 and I'm in the top 9000 players in that skill. That means that only 9000 people, out of a game with 8m accounts, have forked out the money that I have. Even fewer have thrown away the millions required to reach 99. Similarly, as the price of dragon bones has risen, then fewer people train prayer. Runescape players, on the whole, do not like throwing away their cash. They hoard and stockpile items until they find a bargain.

Those are the main places where people seemed to be placing the blame.

I've been revisiting historical periods, like the Weimer Republic, where hyperinflation meant that people needed wheelbarrows to carry the cash necessary to buy a loaf of bread. I've been haunting Wikipedia, looking up precisely what words like hyperinflation and inflation generally mean. They all look very familiar. I was particularly struck by the realities of hyperinflation, where the governments attempt to stem it with price controls (GE anyone?), whilst printing money to cope with the spiralling costs of everything (drops, high alching, raw materials etc), resulting in a devaluing of the currency leading directly to people putting their trust in assets (like those items in my treasure chest?) and ignoring the usual flow of hard cash in order to barter with goods (mint cakes and junk trading). I was also looking at the causes of hyperinflation. This often occurs after a war, as in the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hungary, Germany etc. While it may not look like we've been at war in Runescape, we most certainly have. We went to war on real world trading. I've drawn direct parallels here between the loss of mineral rich areas and means of production, after the Versailles Treaty, which so crippled the Weimar Republic, and the loss of the bots in Runescape, which has had an almost identical effect on the Runescape economy. The Germans in the 1920s were wallpapering their walls with marks; the modern Runescape equivalent would be to melt down down mint cakes to make a huge chocolate fountain in the middle of Varrock.

I didn't think that the Runescape economy affected me too much, except as general background noise. With all of this information buzzing around my head though, I've looked to my gameplay. I'm no great merchanter and I have no real awareness of market forces, so this, I think, would be the chronicle of many players. Those who are just reacting without considering the bigger pictures or trying to predict the future of their assets. I've found that I need more money. I had two things factored in here: unsuccessfully fighting Nomad nearly bankrupted me (was Nomad a money sink? He's cost a lot of players a lot of money); and my desire to buy ranger boots.

The former caused me to stop, take stock and then think about how I can create the supplies without spending so much money. If it was a money sink, therefore, it was temporary. It was a short, sharp shock to the economy, but the long term might even be detrimental. Why? Because if I defeat Nomad on my first attempt with all of these 'free' supplies, then what am I likely to do next? Flood the market with excess supplies, because they are all things that are currently selling at a premium and I have acquired the knowledge of sourcing them cheaply/free. Give a woman a Sara Brew and she will be good for one fight; give a woman the knowledge of sourcing her own Sara Brews and she will not only be good for life, but will also swamp an already saturated market with goods.

The ranger boots are in a different class. I've watched them shoot up from 7m to 14m in a short period of time. I momentarily watched them go to 18m, but then they settled back to 13m-15m and have stayed put. A year ago, I would have had to save up 7m. It would have taken time, but I would have got there eventually. The same could be said about 14m, you just double the time. But the damage comes in watching how quickly it rises. If I wait too long, will I have to save up 21m? That causes a low level panic, so I looked for other means to make money faster. Thus it is that, after 3 years of playing, I've finally been dabbling in merchanting. I've been flipping items and raking off the profit. I've also taken advice on managing my kingdom, which is a facet of the game that I've ignored for years. Merchanting has seen my initial investment of 1m grow into 12m over only a couple of months. Meanwhile, look at my second foray into Miscellania:



That represents two days outlay at 75k each and there was also a clue scroll, which netted me a blue elegant skirt and a studded leather body worth around 68k. In short, I just made about 1.1m after spending 150k. It's printing money!

I've also looked at my hoarding practices. With inflation having taken law and death runes over the 400gp each mark, I'm loathe to cash in mine now for much less. This had led to me still runecrafting, but stockpiling the resultant runes in my bank until the price is right. I'm guessing that I'm not alone in that. This means that the supply is becoming a little more scarce (until the runecrafting update caused a flux in the opposite direction, of course), but also means that one day, when I'm desperate, I'm going to flood the market with 1000s of runes.

I'm not quite sure what the solutions are. Zach suggested that everyone in game dump half of their money. Teacuptime came up with a wonderful idea about an auction room. I came up with the next holiday event giving us all party hats, so that the only way that you could tell that one was an original was to store it in a player owned house (with an update to facilitate that), hence loads of people would train Construction. You can see now why Zach and Teacuptime are seen as better sources of economic advice than I am. I have heard a lot of people hoping and praying to their Gods that the next skill will be a money sink, but Andrew Gower's last Q&A said that it wouldn't be. I guess that we wait and see.

Canting Away On The Radio :o

After the success of Aximili E.I.'s radio show last night, so much talk in Canting today has been about Runescape radio. What started this afternoon as a vague, 'we should do a show!' gained momentum very quickly. So much so that when Aximili himself came in, the idea was as good as set in stone. Seconds later, he had booked us a slot.

Canting Away Radio Show!

It will be tomorrow night, at 9.30pm GMT, at the above link.

This is obviously everyone's cue to turn up. I called into Aximili's show last night and it wasn't difficult with a Skype account. When the show is live, there's a button which says 'talk'. You click it and it puts you through via your Skype. Multiple people can be involved in the same conversation. It's basically a glorified Skype meeting, except that it's recorded and can be heard as a podcast later.

He's booked us for an hour. This means that we have 60 minutes to fill with much talk. Canting Away members can fill 24 hours, 7 days a week with typed messages, can we do it verbally?

Wish us luck and please, please turn up and talk with us. Thanks in advance!

Edit: The show has happened. You can listen to Aximili, Zach, Tabt and I gabble on here.

Edit 2: Here is the transcript from the chat channel linked to the radio show:

The Mint Cake Fiasco

I saw a quite remarkable sight last night, as I nipped in to check on my GE bids just before bed. It was world 84, so not a big merchanting world, but every second person seemed to be trying to buy or sell mint cakes. I was already aware that there was an issue, because I read The RS Economist. I'd made a mental note to mention the situation to Jdeh Rhyfela and ODST Isaac, both of whom I know have mint cakes, but then put it out of my mind until then.

For those not in the loop, the situation seem to be that mint cakes are worth about 20k on the GE, but several million in world 2/street prices. They weren't particularly rare, but were highly uncommon. Everyone finishing 'The Path of Glouphrie' gets a free mint cake. It's also a semi-rare reward from the Gnome Restaurant minigame. I had one after the quest and nommed it there and then, thinking of Kendal. It wasn't even thought of as a merchanting gem back then. I'm not savvy enough about the lores and tides of junk trading to know why it ever became such a sought after item. I certainly don't understand how such a difference in price can exist between GE and street. Nevertheless, it happened and that's been the way of the world until this week.

One of the updates on Monday made the mint cake a more common reward in the Gnome Restaurant. In all honesty, that didn't even make a blip on my radar. I don't have a mint cake and I was too busy happy dancing over the increased trade limits. I'd heard that, if both parties had completed all quests and had been friends for over 3 months, then the trade limit was now 180k. Hurrah. I should have been paying attention.

Last night (Tues), I stood in shock watching the mix of emotions in the GE. It was a crowded world, though not a trading one, and the thing that was starkly apparent was that there was no consensus of opinion. One person was selling mint cake for minimum in the GE and telling us so; next to him was someone else selling mint cake for 1.4m each, via junk trading. Others were rushing around buying every bargain mint cake that they could get their hands on. To the credit of the sellers, I didn't see a single transaction taking place without the seller warning the buyer that mint cakes were crashing. The bubble had burst. I saw one high level player laughing in glee, as he bought up 35 mint cake at 100k each. He told them that they were idiots, because it would stabilise. Mint cakes were rocking right now, but they would resume their original position. Someone else agreed, comparing them to strange fruit. Three strange fruit spawn every 15 mins near Brimhaven. Apparently strange fruit are another favourite of the junk traders.

Here and there, though, were upset players screaming vengeance upon Jagex and all who sail in her. There was a sole player moderator standing in the middle of it all. She didn't appear to be alching, fletching or anything else. She was acting as a public information service. She calmly answered every question, however confused or angry; stating with infinite patience, over and over again, 'Mint cakes were traded as rares. They are freely available by playing the Gnome Restaurant minigame.' I wish I'd taken her name, as she really did meet a lot of abuse with simple facts and calm. 'If you can keep your head, while all about you, people are losing their's and blaming you...'

As I said, this doesn't directly affect me, though I do have a upset relative for whom it has. I just wanted to record it here, as a moment of Runescape history. We all get so used to a consensus in merchanting. When things crash, everyone sells. This is the first time I've ever seen it where no-one seemed entirely sure what to do. As many mint cakes were bought as sold, though none of them for millions. For those affected by it, what are we advising them? The RS Economist says to sell. So far, that's the message that I've passed on to mine.

Many thanks to Wafflezor and the other members of Icey Dan1's chat channel, who went through the issue in detail with me. I feel much more knowledgable on it now.

Rune Mechanics

That's more like it! A noob quest that had nothing to do with combat whatsoever. Ok, it was a little below my level (a lot below...), but it's something that's more inclusive than has been out in recent updates. I got to have an enjoyable romp through a fun quest, without stressing over anything. This is what questing should be like. I don't mean this quest precisely, but the variety that it engenders. Hard one last time, easy one this time; fighting one last time, skilling one this time. All good.

Jagex have continued their theme of working through the minigames though. This time it's pushing the Mage Training Arena in Al-Kharid. You don't actually have to play the minigame nor do you have to collect any points from there, but it's in the vicinity. It might encourage people to see what's going on here when a quest isn't happening. What do we reckon the next quest will direct us to? Trouble Brewing? Fight Caves? Castle Wars? My money is on Trouble Brewing, as that's quite out of the way and underplayed. Even on world 104, there's usually only a handful of people playing, which is a shame as it's a great minigame.

Back to this quest. It is a novice quest, but for all that, it had charm. There was a story and there were a couple of nice puzzles. The first was a maze, using portals. It reminded me of a big game of chess, but mostly because one of the moves was a bit like the move you make with the horsey. I plunged in and just used a few portals to learn how the grid marks worked. I quickly sussed them, but the challenge then was to get to where I needed to be. Within about a minute, I could see the room that would take me to the green spot, but I really couldn't get to it. I zoomed around the room, always knowing where I was going, but unable to work out a route. Eventually I sussed that the best place to do it was from the start. I couldn't get back there either. LOL I was greatly thwarted by having the giggles so much at this point, that I could hardly see the screen through tears of laughter. Finally I grew a brain and used the escape exit to get out again, then entered straight away. Within 3 moves, I was at the end and out.

The solution is:

Hiscores For Jan 2010

I'm still working on moving everything to the 80s. The range level was a surprise one, that happened somewhere between lots of Nomad attempts and doing the circus every week. I just finished off the last bit of xp at Soul Wars, as it was silly to be close to a level. You couldn't hit a castle war with a brutal arrow in those circumstances, let alone Nomad in berserker mode.

Usually I have infinite patience on raising levels. I'm in no great rush to max anything out. In fact, I think I'm in a great position through taking it slowly, as I tend to benefit from all of the updates that give different ways to train things quickly/efficiently/by playing BA instead. However, I really want level 80 herblore now. It will help enormously with Sara Brews, as I can make them at that level with Greenman's Ale. Though it's cheaper to buy Sara Brews than to get the ingredients, there's still the factor that the brews take so long to be sold to you. Generally, I'd have been moving everything up to level 77, then 78, then 79, then 80. I'm thinking of just going all out on herblore (by which I mean spending all of my penguin points there) until I have 80. Then worry about the others later. I know I could just make potions, but they tend to lose money. I'm still saving up for some green wellies here.

The only other skill that takes up a lot of thought is runecrafting. I've got a stockpile of laws, deaths and pure ess in my bank. The prices of laws and deaths dropped dramatically, at around the same time as Sparhawke was making me hyper-aware of market forces. Consequently, I'll runecraft but not sell. That feels like a waste of effort, though I know I'll be happy one day when I sell a huge amount for lots of money. In the meantime though I lack the motivation to runecraft. The other problem there is the volume of choice that I have in what to runecraft. If I'm doing it for xp, then the ZMI altar or deaths through the abyss is the way forward. But runecrafting to me tends to involve BBC iPlayer on and me watching a programme. For that, I need to be runecrafting things which don't need my absolute focus, like laws or nats. I start looking at the maths involved v the time v the efficiency, then get all tangled up in sums and so default to laws on the balloon route. All with a nagging suspicion that I'm doing it wrong. >.>

But anyway, my plan for the next month is to use penguin points solely on herblore. I'm only 100k xp away from 80 crafting, so that will come soon. Then I'll probably spent some more time in the living rocks caverns, mining gold for smithing levels. I have a fully charged master horn from BA, which will be used training agility. I wouldn't be surprised to see that at or close to 80 by this time next month. I'm also planning to go to Dorgesh-Kaan now that I can steal from the high level chests. Thieving and firemaking levels may follow. I'm up for going to hunt more grenwall, so that will have a knock-on effect with hunting. Once I have my green wellies, then I'll start putting money back into Construction for the first time in months.

The only skill that I haven't plans for is Summoning. I think that will just have to wait until I've got 80 herblore, then I'll start using penguin points on Summoning instead.

A Rollercoaster Day Of Epic

Happy birthday, for yesterday, to Fuge and, for today, to AquarianPixi!

Last night, as I started to get tired and my mind circled, as is its wont, the day's events looking for something blogworthy, I was stumped. I commented into Canting that I could get about 12 blogs out of one day alone. It had been a rollercoaster day of epic proportions.

Let's start then with the most amazing moment of all. It all began unassuming enough. Eman was in his house and realised that a star was nearly hear. We had about 8 minutes and enough people were interested that we were able to have someone placed at each Karamja and Crandor location. This in itself was a first. I don't think that Canting has ever transformed into a star clan, however briefly! As it was, the star fell on the one place that we didn't have covered, the mine by the nature altar. I'd not been alone in Crandor though and the other person, Ritheskiller, was told by his clan where it was. He told me and I told Canting. So many of us descended upon the star that Full of Pie suggested a photograph, once it was done. We all lined up on the ridge. Full of Pie asked us to say our names. She did a countdown.

Then it happened.



(Full of Pie has a better photo than me, which you can see on her blog. Also Rafftank has a much better picture too, so please see his blog.)

Sparks began. Someone had obviously levelled, so I started to spin around to see who was behind us, as it patently couldn't be one of us. For a start, we'd have had warning; and secondly, we weren't training anything. The sparks carried on coming. They were the firework extravaganza of someone maxing out a skill. A 99! By now, I had the presense of mind to gush out a 'congrats' with no real idea of where that was being aimed. All around me, Canters were going, 'congrats', 'wtf?' and 'who's levelled?!' The response made my jaw drop. I think that all I said was, 'wow!' for whole minutes.

Dr Leviathan had brought a lamp with him. He had secretly been within a lamp's worth of xp from 99 Slayer for two days. He'd seen his opportunity for a lot of us to be gathered, then observed as the perfect moment presented itself in the form of Full of Pie suggesting a group photo. I asked him later what he'd have done if Pie hadn't done that. He said he'd probably have taken the lamp back with him and waited a few days for another good moment. The man is so laid back, he's practically horizontal! This is the most prestigious cape in the game! I think that just showed such style and class. Dr Leviathan is a legend, it has to be said.



He'd already made me laugh earlier in the day. I'd arrived in Ardy and saw a green dot in one of the building. It was Dr Leviathan pick-pocketing a Hero within. I made my report to Canting, 'I've just found Dr Lev mugging someone inside a building'. He rushed across, opened the door, said, 'Hi!', then quickly closed it and resumed his activities. I was just in bits. I guess you had to be there.

While we're on funnies, there was the conversation that occurred much earlier in the day. Xer Man1 was attempting to get me to try Nomad again. I really wasn't in the mood, but he was going on and on. At the time, the only people in Canting were all Welsh. I reached into my Cymric mythology to find a good reason why Nomad is so impossible for me.



I just found it hilarious that, after I'd painted this huge picture of why it's so much more difficult for someone with Welsh to fight with Gwrach-y-Rhibyn screaming doom in the background, Xer just asked Arct to go and prove it wrong. He didn't even stop to go, 'so how come no-one else is mentioning this entity, Merch?' Which, of course, would have given me pause and perhaps blown my whole cover. >.>

You should be able to see through the text to a botter standing by the rocks. Let me show you a close up of him:



You can see me mining where we should be, while he is standing just to the side. I know sod all about botting programmes, but there was some suspicious knowledge amongst the 100s of people who witnessed him. The perceived knowledge was that there's a dodgy botting programme going around, which hasn't quite got the co-ordinates right. It's supposed to bring the player to where I'm standing, but instead deposits them where he is. There he stands, because the programme has something which stops him logging out after five minutes of inactivity. He was confirmed there for five hours to my knowledge. I left with him still there, so I don't even know if he's logged out yet. This was in the living rocks world so, in that time, countless players saw him and the air was rife with newcomers spotting and announcing that they'd reported him. Mods assured us that he'd been reported hours ago.

Players attempted everything from using teleother to send him somewhere else to dropping gold ore around him, so that his programme would pick it up, to luring living rock protectors onto him. That worked with several other people using, apparently, the same programme, but not on this one. The wisdom around the ore was that he'd been there too long and so that tactic won't work. I watched it nearly work with someone else though. He'd been stuck there for quarter of an hour, when the protector was successfully lured onto him. He had some kind of safety thing on him, which healed him when a percentage of damage was done. However, that started to fail. He was nearly dead, when suddenly there was a real player there (some kind of alarm?). He berated those luring attackers onto him and stated firmly that he had just been afk for a couple of minutes on the toilet. In real life, I laughed aloud. I'd timed at least 15 mins!

I've not taken a huge amount of interest in the whole botting epidemic before. I hate it for what it led to in the trade restrictions. I dislike the fact that they swarm resources. I know that being caught using one means that your account is instantly and permanently banned. This incident, with the player stuck there for so many hours, did distress and fascinate me in equal measure. The fascination was partly my general interest in all things technical; but mostly it was watching how other players dealt with it. All the anti-bot things that they did, like the luring protectors. I only went into the living rocks cavern for 705 gold ore. I came out with 1.8k of the stuff! The extra was me watching hours of different people trying to do something to the trapped botter.

I say distress because I looked up his stats and saw what he was about to lose. This player has 10 skillcapes, 10 levels at 99; he's in the top 20k players; he has 185.6m total xp and 2072 levels. So much work! He's about to lose an account like that over a moment of stupidity? My heart was breaking for that, though I had others telling me that I'm way too soft-hearted and compassionate about such things. It was pointed out to me that, if he's botting now, then how did he get those skillcapes? In Canting, Simple was leading the charge on absolutely no sympathy for him whatsoever. I concurred that what he was doing was wrong, really wrong, but I still couldn't bear the thought of all that work gone to waste. Did I want a reprieve for him? No. I wanted him never to have been so stupid as to use a bot in the first place. ;_;

While we're lingering on unhappy things, then let me go onto one of the few moments in Runescape when my temper has risen. Fortunately not during the moment. I was deathly calm then, but after it was over. I'd been to Barbarian Assault and returned to Varrock via the spirit tree in the Gnome Stronghold. As I traversed the platform to check on my bids/sales, I saw someone making shapes with burning logs. At first, I though he was spelling out a h or maybe a y. Then he placed the last logs and I knew precisely what I was looking at.



I was very calm. I thought I would give him the benefit of the doubt, after all, that symbol was stolen from the Hindu people in the first place. It might not be what it's come to mean in the West. I asked him first if he was Hindi. He didn't know what a Hindu was. I informed him that it was a religion and a way of life. I then moved to stage two of his get out clauses. After all, he might be very young and ignorant. I asked him if he knew that that symbol meant. Yes, he did. It's a 'Nasi' symbol and it's 'funny lol'. Despite the fact that he'd spelt Nazi incorrectly, it did inform me that he knew precisely what this was. I did not share his view that it was 'funny lol'.

The GE is really not the best place to be arguing facets of history and social politics, insofar as it's difficult to follow a conversation over the cries of people selling stuff. It is, though, probably the best place for getting your message across to a large crowd. You end up with conversations like these:





Sorry that the screenies are a bit random. I was concentrating more on the discussion itself. Ddawg4750 stated, variously:

* that this was his clan's symbol and that they show it whenever they mass. I suggested that he ought to educate his clan leader as to its meaning and state that it's getting the members into trouble. I would be happy to discuss this with his clan leader on his behalf;

* that you take the power out of a symbol by ridiculing it. He was using it here with humour. I agreed with his original statement, but did not share the view that using the swastika here, in this way, was humourous. I did not see how it was ridiculing it;

* that the Holocaust didn't happen anyway. The facts keep changing, including the number of people killed. When he told me the figures that he'd heard, I reminded him that there wasn't just a Holocaust here (that relates solely to the Jews, as it is a cultural/religious term), but also millions of others killed there. The Porojomas is the term used for all of the gypsies killed at the same time, while the death camps also slaughtered political people, disabled people, homosexuals, Catholics, prisoners of war etc etc. This accounts for the differing figures (which will always only ever be an estimate anyway, as record keeping got a bit sketchy during the final push), as he was originally looking just at the Jews, not everyone else;

* that, even if it did happen... I stopped him there. I used to organise Holocaust Memorial Day. I have personally met several survivors. I told him about one of them, Eva Moses Kor, who had entered as a very small child with her twin sister. They were experimented upon by Mengele, in Auschwitz. I saw, with my own eyes, the tattoo on her arm. I heard her story first hand, as she related it. You cannot fake the look in her eyes. In fact, if Ddawg4750 had waited just a minute longer before teleporting off, he would have been challenged by CJR. He was en route ready to explain what his own grandfather had experienced.

* that, even if it did happen, then the Jews deserved it. You only have to look at what they do with money, finding all of the loopholes and stealing billions from the American people. Here's where it got a little messy, as I didn't know the reference and the text was moving so fast with the general discussions in the GE. I did, however, know the history of the Jews in the West and so informed him about the laws in so many countries, which forbade Jews taking any other work except money-lending. That job was forbidden to Christians and so it was a nice loophole for the Gentiles. Ddawg4750 stated that I had to check out aigs CEOs. I've since looked this up and it appears to refer to the American International Group. This is an insurance company which went under a couple of years ago. The CEOs surnames do seem to be Jewish. Therefore, in retrospect, I think that Ddawg4750 was saying that the Jews deserved to die in the death camps 60 years ago, because their modern day counterparts caused an American insurance company to go under in 2008. He also mentioned 'look what happened to the Americans in the desert', but didn't elaborate on that, even as I questioned it.

* that it's ok to burn symbols like that in Runescape, because most people just ignore it or say 'lol'. I am the FIRST PERSON EVER to challenge him on it. That finally left me speechless and Ddawg4750 left.

I looked around then. Though this was a busy evening, peak time on a Saturday in the GE, he was right. I was the only person kicking up over this. All around me, wares were being traded as normal. True, no-one else had rushed to Ddawg's defence either, but certainly no-one else was telling him that this is acceptable. Do they not see what they're doing?

SILENCE MEANS APPROVAL!

By their silence, every person there was tacitly implying that this was fine. That he can say, in a crowded place, that the Holocaust did not happen and that he can burn swastikas into the floor. This is fine, says the crowd, because by their silence that's what they said. CJR arrived then, but too late. TheArcturus1 also came to say his peace, but also too late. I was trying to talk with them, but it was so noisy that I suggested we move to Edgeville. We ducked under the short cut and resumed on the bridge. Arct had challenged Ddawg4750 via pm, but had been called a Jew and basically told to shut up. Why is 'Jew' hurled as an insult?

It's at this moment when my temper, held tightly with a leash deep inside, finally erupted. Why had I not taken a screenshot when he'd said that the Holocaust didn't happen? Why hadn't I reported him there and then? Could I still report him? I charged away, towing Arct behind me, into Edgeville Bank, shouting, 'Is there a Mod in here?' There wasn't. I repeated it. There still wasn't. I streamed into the smithy and asked again. 'Is there a Mod in here? I need a Mod!' Kortjakje disentangled herself from the spot by the furnace and asked what was up. I gushed out that someone had just been unacceptable in his behaviour and language, being extremely racist. Could I still report it after the event? She asked how long it had been and, when I said '10 mins', she said that I unfortunately couldn't. I told her that I'd got screenshots, but she explained that these would be inadmissable as evidence, as they could be faked. She further apologised for me having to encounter such an individual within the game. It wasn't her fault though. I thanked her for her time and let her get back to her game. By now, half of Canting was already attempting to report him nontheless and I was amongst them. Kortjakje was right though. The invisible narrator kept telling me that I couldn't report anyone for such things, if I hadn't recently talked or traded with them.

Several of us were also congregated in Edgeville by now. I had a dance with Full of Pie, then sat with Karl and Raven, watching up to 8 woodcutters (including Arct and Sam) sychronise the skillcape emote. By stages, I calmed down. I may not have been able to report him, but that was solely revenge on an opposing point of view anyway. In retrospect, how I did do it was probably better. I argued the case with reason, historical referencing and statistics. I did it, at the time, extremely calmly. I made the point, in front of a lot of witnesses, that this was unacceptable behaviour. I was not silent.

Onto nicer things now, in the form of Daisyjake1. This beautiful Irish lady is possibly even now drying her hair as she reads this blog. Dia duit, Daisyjake! Yesterday though, she entered Canting Away in the wake of all that upset and tracked me down in Edgeville. There she handed over the trade limit's worth of Sara Brews and ruby bolts (e), in thanks for this blog and to aid the fight against Nomad. Tears were pouring down my cheeks! I tried to pay her for them, in gold bars, which I'd been smelting for much of the time between coming from the caverns and playing BA/arguing with Holocaust Apologists. She refused point blank to accept any payment. That was for the enjoyment that I gave her each morning, as she dried her hair whilst reading my blog.

She hung around in Canting then and was lovely. She even travelled out to where Isaac was farming and gave him a load of seeds; as well as simply sharing herself in conversation in the chat channel. Even without the gifts, she'd be welcome there anytime. Then, much later on, as we gathered in Dr Leviathan's house for his impromptu 99 slayer party, she turned up again. This time she had even more Sara Brews and ruby bolts (e) for me. I didn't know what to say, other than thank you and furthermore thanks for reading my blog. I don't write this for free stuff. I write it because I enjoy writing it. To have this happen is wholly unexpected and extremely touching. Thank you.

Lovely Moments

My blogs have been a bit depressing recently, so I thought I'd write about some lovely moments instead.

The first comes from Soul Wars. I was still ridiculously close to a range level, so I figured Soul Wars was as good a place to get that xp as any. After all, I'll need 30 zeal to add to the 70 that I'll get when I eventually pwn Nomad. I was up to 19 zeal and had been on the losing side for a couple of games, when a high levelled player suddenly started killing me. Fair enough. I was trying to kill him at the time, so it evened out. I did my usual dying, waiting for 15 seconds, then coming back out. The same player made a beeline for me. This was a little more surprising, as the avatar was right there and there was also a massive press of people. I was amazed that Shirkar even spotted me, let alone abandoned the avatar killing to come and take me out. The third time it happened, I was wondering if my ancient curses were making so much of a dent that I was now the new priority to remove in that 'hood. But Shirkar had something to say. He quickly gushed out, 'Meet me by the bank chest afterwards', shortly before I died.

The game only had a minute or two left. This was all very intriguing! Soon as it was over, I ran to the bankchest, if only to solve the mystery. I didn't see Shirkar until a trade request popped up. I responded to it and up came 11 Sara Brews as a present. I was floored. It turns out that Shirkar reads my blog and wanted to help out re Nomad. I admit that I filled up with tears in real life. That was such a random act of kindness. Moreover, those 11 Saras now bring my total supplies up to a level where I could attempt Nomad again (just once), if I wanted to. Thank you, Shirkar!

Incidentally, I did get 85 range at Soul Wars, though I did use a couple of zeal at the end to get the level. The irony is that most of that level has been earned in attempting to kill Nomad! LOL

Secondly, I've realised in retrospect that I might have met and chatted with a famous Runescaper without knowing at the time. This was the day that the nature runes had an update and I'd just been on a test run. Back at Castle Wars, the place was filled with runecrafters speculating on what was going to happen. One player logged on in front of me, wearing a runecrafting cape. He asked if anyone knew the percentages etc. I chatted with him, giving him the data from my blog, to which he politely responded, then asked a couple of questions, which I was able to answer. We said goodbye and went on our merry ways. His name stuck in my head though, because I'm a Pagan. It was Phoenix Odin. I've only just realised that (s)he is the number one ranked runecrafter. ><

Thirdly, a huge congrats to Vykonne on 99 cooking! Shelley and I nipped to see the sparkly new cape and to watch the emote in action, though we unfortunately missed the big event.



And finally, I'm really enjoying the conversations in Canting at the moment. I was so rapt in discussions of Blue October and learning about Benedict Arnold last night, that it was suddenly 2am and I'd mined, without noticing, nearly enough gold to get me to my next level! This morning, I figured I ought to carry on with that, so I can gain level 77 smithing. The discussions were more surreal this morning, but still highly entertaining.



Incidentally, Icey Dan1 is in that crush of miners somewhere. He must have had public off though, because he repeatedly ignored my fevered fangirling cries of, 'Icey Dan! Hiya!' LOL Time to cook some noms, then log back in to get that smithing level. Hurrah!

Three More Nomad Attempts

I had absolutely no intention of attempting Nomad yesterday. Instead I was meandering along my daily route, collecting freebies and doing farming. Den the Men was slaughtering things in Kuradel's Dungeon and the sun was shining. I ended up in Catherby Bank just looking through my stats, looking for anything close to another level. I found it: ranging was only 36k from level 85. Den the Men and I started discussing the feasibility of me ranging skeletal wyverns, as they are my current slayer assignment, when I commented that the best range xp in the game at the moment comes from Nomad. LOL He's the reason that I am so close to another level. I quipped that I ought to go in there with inventories of sharks and just use him for range xp, with no serious attempt to kill him.

During the conversation though something clicked in my mind. I actually spotted a will to go into Nomad that had been entirely missing for days. I pondered on the fact that, if I did go in for range xp rather than a questcape, then sod's law might kick in and I would kick Nomad's backside. The more I thought about it, the more I was up for doing it. Den the Men met me in Falador and lent me his Bandos Godsword for 3 hours. The attempt wasn't a completely epic fail, but was close enough to one. The trouble this time was how rusty I was. I hadn't done a practice run, because I've already been in there loads of times and I've watched videos in the meantime. That was wrong. I kept falling over my own feet, not standing in the right places and then having to spam eat Saras. I also kept getting confused as to Sara v restore brew ratio, unsure whether I'd had one sip or ten. In the end, Nomad was down to the last quarter of his life and I ran out of super restores. I loitered behind a pillar, while Den the Men recommended a tactical retreat by logging off.

That should have been that. I commented that I wasn't going in again, but then logged off for a comfort break. LOL I love the phrase 'comfort break', so polite when 'just nipping to the loo' could just as easily fit into that sentence. By the time I was back, Den the Men was going, but Boombaye1 was there. I had several things I could be doing (more Grenwalls was an attractive idea), but it felt like a waste to have a BGS for another couple of hours without using it. I mentioned that I could go and kill skeletal wyverns with it. Fortunately, Boombaye was on hand to stop me being a disastrous noob. He patiently asked me to consider why that might not be a good idea. I eventually remembered the small detail of needing a shield with the wyverns. I went to Soul Wars instead.

Much whacking people with a Godsword later, I logged out as Daz Rhyfelwr and Jdeh Rhyfela were here. By the time they'd gone home again, I logged on to find myself alone by the Soul Wars tent, still dressed for Nomad pwning. I didn't log onto Canting. I just grabbed an inventory of sharks, my crossbow and some broad bolts and went into to see Nomad. This was only ever a practice run, so it was more about cleaning away the rust from my strategy than anything. Nevertheless, I acquitted myself well and felt happy to try it again for real. This I did and it went absolutely like clockwork. Nomad said, 'This. Ends. Now.' and I quickly switched on 'protect from melee'. Within seconds, Nomad had teleported to the centre and healed himself. I was downhearted! I've been that close several times before as well.

I logged out and back in, then tried again. The result was almost an identical repeat of the previous attempt. Again, Nomad said, 'This. Ends. Now'. This time, I stepped forward into the place where he could ordinarily hit me. He didn't. I reached for 'protect from melee' and, as I was doing so, Nomad teleported away and healed. I had plenty of supplies left, so I'd been so confident. Standing by the tent was another player, who had just succeeded. She said that it's better, during the beserker part, to step right away from the pillar. Though I was on the next square, there had been a corner of pillar there too. She reckoned that he couldn't melee me because of it and that there's no 'face me' and five seconds grace at the end. You just have to get next to him and take what's coming, then worry about protect from melee.

I was gutted, but I think I might have gone for one final try right then, had it not been for one small detail. I had no bolts left. I'd been pushing it on that last go anyway and had taken in some broad bolts as back up. I needed them too. Fortunately, I learned that things don't tend to disappear as fast on the floor there. During one dash, I'd picked up the fallen ruby bolts to find that there were 75 of them in my inventory now! If I'd had more ruby bolts in my bank, I'd have gone in, but the thought of going to buy or make some, then coming back just made me sigh. I left it, all will to go back in draining away.

I have learned something though. Once the clones are out, don't move. Stand behind your pillar and sort yourself out. Drop vials, heal yourself, talk strategy with your familiar, roll a cigarette, whatever you fancy doing. Nomad does heal. You don't even have to rush across to the next pillar. Just stand out of range and have a break. As soon as you see the clones teleporting away, rush across to the next pillar, just to put yourself momentarily into view. Nomad will be rushing back anyway, but you have to place him again. Subsequently running back to your original pillar will do that. Then the fight can go on.

In short, 90% of my fights with him now are clockwork until the beserker mode. Then they tend to end with him healing himself because I'm, presumably, not standing in the right place.

Good News From The Mod Mmg Q&a Session

I'll Bring Back The Goods...

Hunter is traditionally my least favourite skill. Actually, that's not entirely accurate. It's my most ignored skill. Despite the fact that I've been wantonly slaughtering everything from cows to KBD since I started playing, the idea of hunting just didn't sit right with my conscience. I spent most of my teens and twenties opposing fox-hunting in a variety of ways and so my mind just wouldn't make the leap from 'bad' to 'it's only pixels'. However, I seem to be coping alright now. LOL

Hunting red chins, like the smart hunters seem to, didn't work for me. I know that you're helping chins by sending them to Chin Land, but it was just annoying running around your four box traps having to concentrate. I was much happier with the black sallies, even though they were up in the Wilderness. I learned to use only three of the stick thingies, then listen to radio plays while I was adding nets and ropes. The Seventh Hour was a particularly rich source of entertainment, as their supernatural stories fitted very well with my in-game surroundings. Nevertheless, I'd still largely just limped to level 76, with the majority of my hunting xp coming from years worth of Tears of Guthix.

Two days ago, I was choosing something to bid on in Grand Exchange Central. I spotted that black sallies are currently being merchanted by a clan. Oooh! Time to grab my nets and rope and head north. I'd got to within 30k of level 77, when I lagged out and lost all of my nets. I wouldn't have minded too much, but they were my last. *sigh* I teleported to the GE and gaped in indignation at the price of small nets these. 140gp? That's extortionate! I went to Catherby instead (probably using more in runes to get there than the savings I was making on the net, thinking about it) and bought them for 40gp from the fishing shop. I'm so easily side-tracked by farming allotments though...

It was yesterday when I dragged my new nets and rope up to the Wild with the intention of just grabbing that last 30k. That decision led to a whole day hunting or preparing to hunt. I hadn't realised that level 77 is the fabled Grenwall level. I know that high level hunters speak very highly of the spikes. I read up on them and noted that I was going to have to hunt pawya first, but to do that, I was going to need papaya fruit. I've got a tree, but just the one and six didn't get me very far. I emerged from the pawya hunting grounds with just four raw meat.

I used to love hanging out in Edgeville Bank, but that clinking money sound in there really hurts my ears. Coupled with that is the almost perpetual whooshing and plonking of people outside using fruit bats. I figured that if fruit bat noise pollution had to be anywhere, I'd go to Edgeville, where it's expected. I went via the obelisk in the ogre city and ended up with 100 scrolls. When they were too quickly used up, I returned and got another 300. In the meantime, I was just outside Edgeville Bank for ages, sending Leslie up after fruit, then collecting everything that he dropped. Did you know that while you're using scrolls, your fruit bat isn't losing time? He was stuck on 33 mins for about an hour.

In the end, I had about 275 papaya to go back to Isafdar with. I suppose that I could have been more socialable, but one of the ghost stories had ended with a advertisement for a dramatisation of 'Guards, Guards' by Terry Pratchett. I found and listened to that, only to discover 'Small Gods' in there too. By the time I was on the first episode of Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World', I had over well over 100 raw pawya meat and no papaya fruit left.

It was quite exciting to set off on a grenwall expedition. I had to study the map to see where they might be, then I carefully overpacked and had to do better next time. Tips for packing for grenwall: you only need one torch to smoke them out; you might as well only use two box traps; you don't need a cup of tea. En route there, I discovered a little grove where an impling spawns. It can't get out, so you are guaranteed to catch one each time you go. I found the grenwalls up by the bridge to Prifddinas and learned that you have to have a bit of strategy in successfully capturing them. You can't just set up box traps anywhere and hope for the best. Over my several journeys there, I learned good places to pounce on them and where I should set up, if they'd gone into a certain nook or cranny. It was fun!

Somehow level 78 hunter happened. I was really pleased with that, but what I hadn't been noting was the price of the spikes. I'd just been collecting them, shoving them in my bank and going back for more. It was only when I ran out of pawya meat and went to the GE, that I discovered how much money I'd just made. 2.6m!! There were about 1800 spikes there, but they're worth nearly 2k each!

To add to this, I'd just made 500k on my latest merchanting. I started with 1m and I've been doing the 'flipping' method, that Sparhawke taught us about in his blog. I'm now up to 5m! Added to my hunting money, I've got 8.6k towards my ranger boots. That's over halfway there! In fact, I've got stockpiles of law and death runes too, which I haven't sold because the prices of both have been falling a lot. Sparhawke has made me so aware of the historical and current prices of things! Actually laws and deaths have been falling forever. Should I be selling mine?

I'm so close to my ranger boots, that I can practically see them on my feet already!

A Vague Plan

I haven't been playing a great deal the past few days, because real life has been intervening too much. When I have been on, I've been mostly working towards two vague plans.

The first is to get everything over level 80, in preparation for the Grandmaster quest.... yes, that feels very ironic now. We've had the grandmaster quest and, if I hadn't been messing about training everything, then I might have trained combat and been ready for the quest. *sighs* To be honest, I am a little bitter about that. Partially because the last handful of quests have been combat related, while I continue to think of quests as suitable for Jack/Jill-of-all-Trades. I've heard the questcape nicknamed 'The Combat Cape' in-game and I almost agree. Ok, there are a lot of other requirements, but you could pretty much get by with training combat above all else. That's annoying. It's like Jagex is pandering only to the fighters. Mostly though I'm bitter over the comments I'm forever encountering, in game and on the RSOF, where supercilious high combat levels sneer, 'Train your levels, like I did.' I would love to see the next Grandmaster quest require, say, 80 Construction, 80 Runecrafting, 80 Farming and 80 Agility. If only to wipe the smile off the faces of those who think that Runescape is only about combat.

Let me make my position clear here. To me, Runescape is a medium which facilitates many different forms of gameplay. Some of the biggies are combat-related, with or without PKing; skilling; merchanting; social/community; then those, like me, who like to dabble in a bit of everything. Ideally, there should never be a requirement for a PKer to go farming or a crafter to go near Jad. I'm personally thrilled to bits that there are creatures, like Jad and the Corporeal Beast, for Joshua Mack to go fighting; I'm thrilled that Sabre Grief can challenge another player to a fight in the middle of Falador; I'm not anti-combat. However, I don't necessarily want to join in. I believe that updates should be made on some kind of rotation basis. If there has been a combat related update last week, then this week's should focus on a skill etc. Unfortunately, right now, Jagex is about combat, combat, combat and that's disappointing. Moreover, it's leeched the fun out of quests for me.

I remain just one boss fight away from getting my questcape back. I have the supplies in my bank and, between Eman and Rachie, I've got the tactics firmly entrenched into my brain. Last week, before I ran out of supplies, I did get Nomad to beserker mode several times. Each time, it was a silly mistake that killed me. I know damn well that luck and focus might be on my side right now, should I go in. I know that I probably could kill him. I have, however, completely lost the will to try. Whatever I do, in Runescape, has to meet certain criteria for me to do it. At the top of the list is fun. I pay my membership fee to have fun and chill out. I wasn't having fun fighting Nomad and I was getting stressed. That pretty much invalidates the experience for me and therefore I've stopped trying.

I was left without any plan at all, if I wasn't concentrating on getting everything over 80. So I've carried on with that. In the meantime, I am also stockpiling supplies for Nomad. The reason being that creating those supplies gives me experience in the skills currently under 80, plus I know that one day I will regain the will to fight him. One of the frustrating things before was having a few fights, getting nearly there, wanting to have another go as I learned by my mistakes, then running out of supplies.

First of all, I lived in Barbarian Assault for a while. My master horn is completely full, though it took 9 and a half full waves (1-10) to get it to that state. My position in the BA hiscores has tumbled from the top 100 to the top 2000, because you don't get honour points to be incorporated into that, while you're filling your horn. That wasn't supply hunting, that was stopping being so stressed. Shout out here to Cahmstr, who I know is reading. She told me so in the middle of a wave there. I did have plans to carry on there, raising my hiscores while I get a trident to complete my penance outfit. However, someone said those words to me, 'train your levels!'

I really am sick to bloody death of hearing that. I was in BA to get away from that crap. I know I should have let it go and, out of deference to the fact that he's a friend of a friend, I won't name and shame. But you have to realise that 2 years ago, I had all that I needed. In the past 18 months, I have lost my job, my savings, my security, my social life, my holidays, my self-esteem, my independence (to a certain extent) and this has the knock on effect that I don't see most of my friends anymore. I've also had two people die recently. I deal with that. I've done the stiff upper lip, Dunkirk spirit thing very well. Then I come to Runescape to escape the stresses of real life and I lost my questcape. In real life, I've learned that a Masters degree, a BA Honours degree and more qualifications than probably anyone on my estate, aren't good enough. I've learned that 23 years of work history isn't good enough. I have well meaning, but utterly patronising people, mostly with middle class accents and a pitying look in their eye, ask me if I think that literacy and numeracy classes might help (I have two English A levels, grade A in both, and a C in my maths GCSE). I have the job centre ask me to pretend that I have no qualifications at all, as they send me, with 600 other people, for a single job as a carpark attendant. I have not shed a single tear for that. I come to Runescape to relax and forget it all, so that I don't start screaming. Then I lost my questcape and suddenly having between 76-89 in all of my levels isn't good enough. I have higher levels repeatedly sneering, 'train your levels!' For the first time, I actually did cry. I didn't do it over the real life thing, though that was obviously a factor; I did it over a silly boy in Barbarian Assault telling me that I was too slow as an attacker and that I should go and train my levels. I completed the wave, fortunately wave 10, and had a short conversation with our mutual friend, who apologised for his friend's behaviour. Then I logged out and broke my heart.

Since then, I haven't been to BA either. I took my horn into the serene tranquility of the Brimhaven Agility Arena. Each 10th ticket is a snapdragon, which is turned into super restore potions and added to the stockpile. It's a free way of replenishing the most expensive thing needed to defeat Nomad. Moreover, it's very theraputic just dashing away after arrows, especially at level 77 agility, when I rarely fail an obstacle. It took me about 200 tickets to realise that my horn wasn't giving me double xp though. It doesn't say in the knowledge base that Brimhaven is exempt, but it apparently is. Nevermind, that means that it's still full for when I take it to Ape Atoll or the Wilderness. I've got nearly 30 super restores (4) now, but I wouldn't mind going to do some more training at Brimhaven. Because of this, I'm a lot more laid back about the prospect of wasting super restores fighting Nomad.

My next task is to go robbing safes in Burthorpe, looking for rubies, which can be crafted, fletched and smithed into ruby bolts (e). I've been stashing addy away for days, all carefully made into bars after the castle chests in Ardy give me the ore. They will be the bolts. I have bought just over a 100 Sara Brews, though I'm also working on raising my herblore through the remaining levels to 80. I've got it to 77 now. At 80, I can use the Greenman's Ale, which I have in a barrel in my kitchen, to create my own Sara Brews. It's all slowly heading in the right direction.

This morning, I listened to radio plays, while I secured 77 hunting. This opens up the Grenwalls that I've heard so much about. In short, I am training my levels, just obviously not the ones that Jagex and the high combat levelled players seem to think are the important ones. I'm almost perversely tempted never to train combat again, though I assume that the only person left hurt by that one would be me.

Rachie Gives Us Hope

Anyone want to watch a combat lvl 109 pwn Nomad? Rachie sent me this privately to give me hope. It's so good that I want to big it up here:



Go Rachie Yea!

Our Theory Is....

Den the Men, Bass Daddy and I have just been putting together the clues for the coming event and we now have a working theory. It's that there will be some kind of natural disaster in Gielinor, that beholds players to work together for a week or so, to rescue ourselves/our land/our popular areas etc. Perhaps a tsunami that threatens to take out Lumbridge.

Either that or a new sea slug quest. Or the new skill.

Our evidence is thus: first of all there was a worldwide phenomenon on Saturday. As sod's law would have it, I actually had a life that day and was therefore at a friend's house drinking cocktails. Those logged in were simultaneously attacked by a red mist, which lifted them off their feet, then turned some of them momentarily into skeletons, ala the Hitpoints skillcape emote. It finished with everyone facing a certain direction, depending upon where they were at the time. I've looked at the directions, but they're contradictory, unless you assume that they were all looking towards the nearest bit of ocean. Villandra was making a smithing video at the time, unaware that she was about to capture it. This has the potential to be one of the most well-watched videos since that dude who filmed the Fally Massacure.



Then you have those in Seers' Village telling you that they felt a dark force pass overhead; while the Sin Seer states that there's too much darkness for her to see. Very Obi Wan Kenobi with his 'I felt a million voices cry out'; or Torchwood, 'Children of the Earth'.

However, the biggest clues are in Witchhaven and on the fishing platform. There we are told that the sea slugs are planning a big assault. We are also told that the mother is free and that she is coming. Sometime in the past 'she' was overwhelmed by 'too many, too many' people armed with 'fire and faith'. They trapped her for all eternity in 'stone and darkness', 'trapped by the light'. The fishermen tell us that their family are there, under the 'blue, the deep, deep blue', and that they are all together. We're further told that we will join them. We will all be under the 'blue, the deep, deep blue'. She is coming. She is free. In the meantime, Kennith says that the sea slugs are planning a big assault.

It sounds like a sea slug quest, but the phenomena occurred in f2p too. That points to it being the new skill; or else a Distraction and Diversion for both p2p and f2p.

Den the Men, Bass Daddy and I have come up with something different though. It could be a natural disaster. It'll be something that interferes with normal gameplay, whatever we do, for a week or so. It'll be inkeeping with Jagex's big push at the moment for community activities. Gielinor won't survive unless we all work together. What do you think?

Educational Runescape

I've recently completed a PTLLS course, which qualifies me to teach adult learners. Part of that course talked about embedding fundamental skills. This is something that should be happening in every class across Britain, regardless of the age of the learner. So, Brits, next time you're in your lesson, look out for the sneaky way that your teacher does it. Fundamental skills can be broadly broken down into: English; Mathematics; ICT. I was thinking earlier that teachers could do much worse than allow their learners to just log onto Runescape and play for a bit.

English is one of those misleading catch-all terms that mean reading, writing, skim-reading, verbal communication, written communication, group discussion, forming an opinion etc. I did query whether this was called Welsh in Wales, but the teacher didn't think so. This category is firmly embedded into Runescape. Reading skills are everywhere. Even if you're the sort of player to hurry through NPC conversations in quests, then reading is there. Each time someone buys something on the GE, they have to write the item's name. Sometimes they then have to skim-read it off a list and select the correct option. Even the most anti-social player would find it hard to not communicate ever in Runescape. Barbarian Assault is all about communication for a start. Opinion forming occurs around every aspect of the game, especially around new updates, where the forums swell with people writing out their opinion. I know that there is nothing intrinsic to the game allowing verbal communication, but I also know that players have used Vent and Skype to do so. The Salcast wouldn't exist if it wasn't for Runescape.

Also in this category is language. Over my years in Runescape, I've encountered Dutch, Welsh, Finnish, German, Spanish, French and a whole host of other languages, communicated by native speakers. In the past few days alone, I've witnessed conversations in Dutch, English and Welsh in Canting. They might be short, but they were there and the potential is there for longer ones. Non-native English speakers get to converse with native speakers regularly there. I also recall a moment, a couple of years back, when a player was chatting away, but got into difficulties. He suddenly asked, in Spanish, if anyone spoke the language. About 5 different people responded to him and he was able to ask his question in Spanish. Not only did he have English practice there, but the five who replied had Spanish practice.

Mathematics is everywhere. I'm not a natural mathematician, so perhaps I notice it more. I had to sometimes sit back and work things out, instead of just doing it, as I can with writing. The formulas for maths can sometimes be quite complex or, at least, long and involving several sums. Take the one that I've just worked out. I want to go to the Brimhaven Agility Arena and collect agility tickets for snapdragon herbs. 10 tickets = 1 snapdragon herb. 1 herb = 1 super-restore(3). However, I want four dose vials. 4 super-restores(3) = 3 super-restores(4). (Still following me?) So 40 tickets = 3 super restores(4). I want about 60 super-restore. How many tickets do I need to collect? See what I mean? We don't even think about it. We just start with in-game knowledge of things like 10 tickets = 1 snapdragon and end up several sums later knowing that I need 800 tickets for 60 super-restore(4). Well, by my maths anyway. The point being that we work things like this out every day. How much xp for my level? How many of x ingredients to make y final product? How many laps around the arena to get x reward? Even something as daft as someone looking into their bank and saying, 'ah, I haven't got enough food to go and pwn that boss' is mathematics. The player has subtracted the likelihood of damage from the healing potential of the available food, then made a conclusion based on whether that was a negative number or not.

ICT is just too obvious to go into. We play the whole game using ICT skills. Though these are extended by those who make podcasts and RS videos.

It's not just fundamental skills that you can learn in Runescape. Someone a few weeks ago had a query about their history homework subject. I'm an historian, they asked and had a reply. There's access to a real life politician in Canting. There's hands on experience with a stock exchange. I walked into Canting the other day to watch a conversation about what makes volcanoes erupt. I've witnessed careers' advice; life advice; driving advice; even which airlines are offering discounts at the moment. It's all there, because there's such a diverse community of all ages. Someone, somewhere, is likely to know the answer to most of the things you could ask. I personally learned recently that Mandarin isn't the first language of Singapore. It's English.

Perhaps the question that parents should be asked their off-spring isn't what they learned in school today, but what they learned while playing Runescape. So, what did you learn today in game?

Barbarian Assault For Noobs

With all the hype this week, there are a few people planning to play for the first time. As I've been asked a couple of times in Canting, I thought I'd write a blog about the very basics. There's a lot to take in, so these are just the couple of points needed to get you through your first foray into the arena. Thereafter, do your research, get a feel for the game and perfect your strategy. It's all good.

Preparation

Clothe yourself in your best melee protection armour. Leave your cloak in your bank. Your weapon of choice is a scimitar. You'll find most high level BA geeks clutching a dragon skimmy, but any will do. Failing that, you're after any weapon with four options: controlled, accurate, aggressive, or defensive. Alternatively, bring a bow. Don't bring arrows, runes or food. Runes and arrows are provided in-game and food isn't allowed. In fact, leave your inventory completely empty. Switch off auto-retaliate. Switch on accept aid.

First Visit

Before you can play, you will need to do the Tutorial. To do this, speak with Captain Cain in the foyee of the arena. He'll be by the blackboard. After watching it, please do not panic. Like all Jagex minigame tutorials, it's designed to scare the crap out of you. It bombards you with information, none of which you can remember afterwards, and displays the game like it would be played if everyone had master level and 100 years experience. In short, pretty useless for noobs. Get it over with and don't take notes. Some details in the Tutorial are wrong. There's a thread right now, in the RSOF, about how the Tutorial shows runners spawning from the wrong place. It also takes several minutes to complete the Tutorial, so it might be worth just nipping there now to get it over with, so when you want to start playing, you can just get on with it.

It is worth finding Commander Connad in the foyee and getting a free horn off him. Just shove it in your bag for now.

Find the Wave 1 Waiting Room

Go down the ladder and along a long, long corridor, turn left and it's right up the end there. Go through the sparkly pink door and wander across to the statue. Rotate it. This is now going to charge your horn with xp potential. Rotate it again. This is now going to charge your horn with honour points. First big question to ask yourself - why are you here? If it's to get the latest in fashion accessories, ie the penance armour; or else master the levels, then you need to rotate the statue until it says it's giving you honour points. This will also add to your BA minigame hiscores. If you're here to charge the horn, so that you can get double xp in firemaking, mining or agility, then rotate it until it's giving you xp potential. This does not add anything to your BA minigame hiscores.

If you have a bookcase in your POH, then also meander over to the BA book lying on the floor. Skim through the pages and drop it. That will now be in your bookcase at home. Hurrah.

Getting on a Team

Now you need to sort out a team and a role. You could go and pick up a scroll from the table and create your own team. Do you really need that stress on your first visit? Better to join someone else's. Stand there and say, 'Att here', 'Coll here', 'Def here', 'Healer here' or 'any here'. Eventually someone will use a scroll on you and you'll get an interface pop up. Click on the icon for your role, press accept and you're in. This won't work if you don't have accept aid on, as they can't use the scroll on you.

The Best Role for You

All roles in Barbarian Assault are vital. Don't let anyone tell you any different. Without each person doing their job, the wave would fail. That said, if you are brand new to the game, then you are best going for either collector or attacker. This is because there is less to remember and will give you a feel for the game before you start with the more strategically demanding roles of healer or defender. However, every player and his dog will be trying to be collector or attacker, for exactly the same reasons. It may take you a while to be accepted onto a team, particularly if you have a low combat level. That's because there aren't many master healers around. The master healers will snap up a low levelled player in an instant, as you represent lots of healing points for the team!

Pick out the best role for you from the list below and if you remember only the couple of points mentioned, you'll be fine.

Important Things to Remember in Each Role

Collector:

Win: Pick up the correct colour egg, as shown on the list on your screen when you are in the game; call for the attacker by right-clicking the game horn in your bag and selecting, from the menu, what is written beside the mouth on your screen list.
Fail: Pick up the wrong colour egg; not calling for the attacker

Attacker:

Win: Pwn rangers first, then fighters, using only the mode of attack told to you by the collector; call for the collector by right-clicking the game horn in your bag and selecting, from the menu, what is written beside the mouth on your screen list.
Fail: Using the wrong mode of attack; not calling for the collector

Defender:

Win: Stopping runners from leaving the arena by dropping any food on the floor; luring runners to a trap, where they'll be killed if you drop the right food as told to you by the healer; calling for the healer by right-clicking the game horn in your bag and selecting, from the menu, what is written beside the mouth on your screen list.
Fail: Letting the runners leave the arena; not calling for the healer

Healer:

Win: Keeping your team-mates alive by filling up your vial from the healing pool, then using it on any injured colleagues; poisoning the penance healers using the correct food as told to you by the defender; call for the defender by right-clicking the game horn in your bag and selecting, from the menu, what is written beside the mouth on your screen list.
Fail: Letting a team-mate die (wave over); using the wrong food on a penance healer; not calling for the defender.

Starting the Game

The game will start when your team captain leads you all down the ladder. First thing that you do, in any role, is to right-click the game horn in your bag and select, from the menu, the item that is beside the mouth icon on the list on your screen. Get into the habit of doing this whenever that changes colour to white. It will change several times during the game.

Defenders and healers, use the dispenser machine by the wall to fill up your bag with food and, for the healer, a vial. Attackers, if you are ranging or maging, do the same, if not just run off to meet your foe with your skimmy. Healer, go and fill your vial from the healing pool. Other than that, just look at the points for each role and do your best.

Please note that using the cannon is good. It loses no points and could gain them.

Most important thing to remember: It's a game! Have fun!

Barbarian Assault For The Win!

Please note that you're probably going to hear nothing but Barbarian Assault for a while. I've renewed my obsession with the minigame with a certain amount of gusto. It is so easy for me to get on a team these days too. I walk into a waiting room in full penance and blow my horn. Four master shields spin around my head and I say, 'Any role, you choose'. I'm practically mobbed.

That said, I've mostly been playing Defender, as each time someone has used that scroll on me, there are no Defenders on the team. That thoroughly suits me. I've been through two full waves 1-10 as Defender, then a third 1-9. I'll come to why I wasn't a Defender with the queen on that last one in a minute. During that time, I don't think I've let a runner through once.

That's not to say that I was always the first to finish. There was one wave in particular that will haunt me. It was quite early on, only about wave 5 or 6, and I'd done my usual luring, baiting, entrapping routine. All was going well, but I hadn't seen that 'all the runners are dead!' notice. Puzzled, I ran up and down my side of the room. The barricade of food at the bottom was untouched. I ran along the centre. No sign. I'd just decided that I must have missed it, when the healer finished killing the penance healers and we didn't go anywhere. I knew that the rangers were dead. I also knew that the fighters were dead. I blinked, startled, wondering where the proverbial the runner was. I ran all along the top wall, no sign. The other four were just congregated on the platform laughing at me, catcalling things like, 'Need any help with Defender, Merch?' or 'in your own time, Merchy.' Each comment punctuated with a lot of LOLs. I suppose that I'm lucky that each player there had played with me before. You'd more likely expect a tantrum, spat out 'noob!'s and someone walking out. They just found it funny. I eventually found the thing right at the other side of the arena. As I hurtled down there, I saw his yellow dot pattering beside the healer pool. By the time I was level with it, it was one step away from the gate and the barricade food had disappeared! I quickly dropped another piece of food at my feet. Fortunately, at level 5 you have a huge luring range, so the creature looked back from the very brink of the gate and came back to nom. From there it was a simple task to drop a trail back to my waiting trap, where the attacker took it out with red eggs as soon as it was in range.

I was in some good, some bad and some indifferent teams. In the bad team, there was an outstanding player. F Ork is a great collector. Never let anyone tell you that collector is the noob position. Those eggs are gathering most of the points for the team. He was up against an attacker who didn't call, which is always a git. However, F Ork did everything right. He didn't randomly pick up eggs in a gamble to find the right one (thus losing us points if he picked up one of the 2 which weren't right). The very instant the legend came up 'all the runners are dead', he ran to me and told me the problem. I ran to the Horn of Glory and called for him. He picked up eggs to the very bitter end, instead of giving up when his inventory and the cannon were full. So what, you're asking? But this was also the team where the Healer wasn't healing nor was he poisoning the penance healers. I'm not sure what he was doing to be honest. From my vantage point on the Horn of Glory, I watched F Ork directing play down the bottom. All the time, he was usually close to death. He's level 63. Those creatures were hitting him hard, but he had a job to do and he did it to the best of his ability in the circumstances.

The team obviously fell apart in the next round. The team leader (the healer) cleared the team and I was immediately swooped up by someone making a 100+ team. *sigh* 100+ what is the point? I encounter this in several minigames, where having 100+ or 115+ or 120+ combat level seems to automatically confer game knowledge on the player. Yes, it does have the advantage that players are less likely to die during that wave. However, their lack of damage isn't necessarily a good thing. The healer gains points for the team with each hp healed. As long as you have a good healer, then, with the healer's permission, get someone with low combat! This is going to ensure that the team gets more points. I've known instances in the past, where the team is all knowledgeable and competent in their roles, when we've all taken our armour off. This means that we're battered, but it also means that the healer has something to heal. NB That should only be done with players who really know what they're doing in game. Those establishing a 100+ team, without even checking on game knowledge (which can be obvious if a player is wearing a penance item or calling out their level), are really displaying their own lack of experience. As my captain assembled all but a collector, I followed him around, 'Take F Ork, he's brilliant in his role'. The captain looked disdainfully at the level 63 and dismissed him in favour of someone in full dragon armour, all pointy bits and awesome combat levels. Once in game, I really missed F Ork. The collector we had now didn't have a freaking clue. The round disbanded as the attacker left, because he wasn't getting calls. By then, of course, F Ork had gone.

I was in two brilliant teams though. The one which will stick with me was the last: myself, Barbie Asult, Luffwester58 and Irit Smoker were the core of it, but the final player kept changing. The fact that we stopped for a cigarette break in the 7th wave probably didn't endear us to the collector at the time, though we had just gone through the previous waves at the speed of knots. Another player just abandoned us in the next wave. Presumably he'd got his honour points or his Mum had called or something. I don't know. He just left, despite the fact that he was in a team where everyone had level 5 in their role and everything ran smoothly. We finished up with Sergio the 1 as an Attacker and that's the team that I'll remember us as: Barbie Asult, Luffwester58, Irit Smoker, Sergio the1 and me. Premiership level team, oh yes!

It was mainly memorable for the fact that we reached the wave 10 waiting room and Barbie Asult petitioned me to swop. He'd maxed out healer, attacker and collector, but needed defender points. Ok. I left the room and came back in, but so had a couple of the others. We reconvened, just inside the door, to reallocate roles. Again it was easily done, I think the whole team were level 5 in each role. I chose Healer, only for the others to choose and the final sheet to read that I was it. The only Healer in wave 10. 'Stop!' I screamed. 'You need two Healers against the queen'. I had four people grinning cheekily at me. Barbie Asult began the charm offensive, 'You'll be fine, Merch. You can do it.' As no-one appeared to be as worried about this as I was, I figured that I'd show them with a physical demonstration. We played the wave.

Oh my freaking Guthix! Have you ever soloed wave 10 as a Healer? All the other roles, I have, but Healer?! Intense doesn't cover it. You have to rush out, calling to the Defender, poisoning the Penance Healers, healing everyone in the team and processing the eggs on your own! I'd said that I'd do my best and so I did. By the time that the queen arrived, there was just one rogue healer out there, but my team were getting battered by the pool. Muttering expletives, I healed them all, then rushed out. I was flanked by, I think, Luffwester, though it could have been Irit Smoker. I was too busy focusing with grim determination to take much notice. I dived in, attempted to poison the git with the wrong food. Actually, it was Barbie Asult with me, because I remembering him screaming out the right food and only he'd know that, seeing as he'd stolen my Defender role. >:( That poisoned, I raced back to save the team from the brink of death with a quickfire round of healing.

The absolute worst part was dealing with the eggs. I was being handed them, but with everyone taking constant 15 hits, I was also in danger of someone dying if I left the pool. 'Merch, don't safe!' Barbie Asult appealed, even as he dropped to his last 20hp. I healed him and plunged off towards the poison crater. I'd only poisoned three eggs before I was in danger of dying myself, let alone the others. Somehow though, I kept them alive and got all of the eggs safely into Luffwester's bag. There was a brief panic at the end, when Irit Smoker's life dipped dramatically. As collector, he was taking the omega eggs to the cannon. I'd expected him to come back for healing, but he didn't. I quickly healed those with me, then raced up there. I was just applying the vial to Irit Smoker, when the wave ended. The queen was dead. Woot!

Back in the waiting room, everyone was eager to do it again, but I had to go. Utterly stunned by the fact that I'd successfully solo healed a wave 10, I waved them goodbye. Irit Smoker had some final words, 'Now you know you can do it, you should try solo healing wave 10 with a noob team...' Yes. Go away, Irit Smoker. >:( He added, 'It's fun.' Then disappeared into the waiting rooms to do it all over again. LOL

Love Barbarian Assault.

Full Penance

If there's one activity guaranteed to wash away the pain of Nomad and render me happy in the game again, it's Barbarian Assault. I'm amazed that I didn't think of going there sooner. I couldn't get into World 6 while the riots were going on. I had to make do with World 71, which is mostly full of British people at that time of day and therefore more likely to have muttered discordant notes, than all out screaming for our rights. By the time that I did make it into World 6, the update had already happened (I was quick off the mark to log back in ) and peace had broken out in the foyee. I had a little wander around, but I had things to do irl, so logged out until later.

Around 9ish, I was back in there. It had been ages since I was last in a proper game, so I didn't know where I'd left my stats. I knew that I'd mastered all roles and that I owned a runner hat, torso and penance gloves, but what next? It appeared that the last time I was there, I was fulfilling Defender and Healer roles. No great surprise there then! They were practically maxed out again for points. I had enough attack points for penance boots, but not enough collector points. I picked up a horn and went to play.

I was apparently doing it wrong. I set my horn for xp potential, not honour points, so I emerged from collecting through two waves to discover that I was still no nearer to those boots. Oh dear. Working that one out, I started again. The team I was in was very argumentative. We ended up in a situation where the healer wanted to leave, so he'd go up the ladder as soon as the wave started. However, the team captain liked his level 5 healer skills, so as soon as we were in the room, the captain took us back down the ladder. This was before the healer had had opportunity to leave the door, thus leaving the team. This merry-go-round carried on five or six times, before I was quick enough to step out of the door myself. Not wanting to do that again, I surrendered to the inevitable and grabbed my own scroll.

I assembled a team but for the healer. Looking around, I saw a player call out his availability for the healer role. I pounced on him. It wasn't until we were actually in the wave that I realised that I'd netted Zvi5! He was under another name, Mzvi, so I hadn't sussed at first. It was his cry of 'Merchy!' that really gave it away. That worked! I'd actually seen loads of my friends there. I only missed being on a team with Neo Avatars because I wasn't holding a scroll at the time and couldn't get my captain's attention. It was amazing that he hadn't seen him, because Neo was being mobbed by adoring fans at the time. LOL Also I came close to getting I Choclate. He called out his role. I had a scroll and needed someone in that role, I dived in, but someone else was quicker. It was only as I tried to use the scroll on him and saw the name, that I realised who it was. I screamed, 'Choccy!' but he was already down the ladder and into his game. I also saw Dannymedboy in another room. In short, I could easily have populated a team with friends and BA experts. Nevertheless it worked out fine.

With my team assembled (and Zvi5 doing his usual great job in it) and my horn set to honour points, it felt wrong to leave after a couple of waves just to buy some boots. We went all the way, only losing a couple of people in the latter waves. I unfortunately lagged out during wave 10, but everyone was fine about it and allowed me to sign them all back up. We completed the next time. The queen has got so ugly during this update! She's all slimy and spotty and urrrrgghhhh! Once she was dead, I was free to go and buy my penance boots. Yay!



Don't look for Zvi5. Commander Connad stepped on him, just as I was taking the picture and I didn't realise until I've just come to crop it. ><

Zvi and I were still up for more BA though. We'd only done one full ten waves! Off we went again with me ready to be attacker this time. He levelled up his healer after the second wave, while the team was quite professional and only lost personnel once. There's nothing really to report, as we sailed on through to the final wave, killed the queen and meandered out wooting. I dashed upstairs to get my penance skirt only to find that I was 25 collector points short. I looked around for Zvi, but he'd disappeared into the crowds. I hurried along corridors, crying out his name, but he was lost. *sigh*

So how does one replace Zvi as a Healer? It's hard, but I had to make do with him:



What do you mean you don't know who he is? At the time, BarbAssualt was third in the Barbarian Assault hiscores for healer. I've just checked and he's down to 8th now, but no doubt he'll be back up there later on today. So yes, you had a healer ranked third amongst all players and myself ranked in the top 1000 for all roles in BA. Wouldn't you have liked to have been on that team?

The upshot, of course, was full penance for me.



I've also got the master horn with all four shields spinning around my head. Once I was out of BA, I was immediately trying to find people to show it off to. AquarianPixi and Kamou both indulged me and said all the right things about my new toy. Kamou even said that I look shmexy.



Having tried out wearing it today, I have two observations. The first was that you can hang around indefinitely in Mort Myre Swamp. As you are constantly having your prayer renewed, you just cast blooms to your heart's delight, then pwn ghasts as they appear. There's no reason to leave, other than the fact that you're standing in a swamp and therefore risking all kinds of disease and pneumonia. The other is that, if you have your prayer boosted by, say, the Nature Temple or the Digsite Temple, then the first time your penance prayer renews, it'll drop it back to your max level. LOL Mostly though, I'm having fun rushing around, doing my master horn emote and generally looking like an idiot. I'm proud of it though!

Barbarian Assault Update

I've just seen that there's been an attractive update to the Barbarian Assault Minigame. Seeing as this is my favourite Rs minigame, I've been known to play it a lot and I think people know that of me. With that in mind, I thought I'd pre-empty all of the people asking advice on how to play it by directing people to my previous blog entries about it. Cheating, I know, but I'm figuring that it'll save time in-game if I can just say, 'Go and look at my blog'.

Barbarian Assault: Collector Role
Barbarian Assault: Defender Role (my favourite!)
Barbarian Assault: Healer Role
Barbarian Assault: Attacker Role (Strategy)
Barbarian Assault: Attacker Role
Barbarian Assault: Being Called a Noob
Barbarian Assault: Being Called a Noob 2
Barbarian Assault: Not Panicking in Wave 10
Barbarian Assault: Bad Defenders
Barbarian Assault: Wave 10 as a Healer (scroll down past the God Wars stuff)

There are loads more blogs about it, but those, I think, give a good feel for the game.

And for the record, yes it is safe for anyone to use the cannon and no, it doesn't take away points from the team.

Edit: Oh cachi. I just realised that Jagex have nerfed the fighter torso. WHAT?!

Edit Two: Panic over! I think that the outcry on the forums did the trick, as there's just been a second announcement:





OH MY GOD! WE KEEP IT UPON DEATH AGAIN!

Edit Three (5pm): Jagex are reversing the torso changes. There are riots in World 6 and the forums are very volatile. From nerf to unnerf it took 2 hours. I snapped a picture of the torso stats during that time:






Edit Four (5.15pm): Merchanters on the forums are going yampy now. Many of them bought quantities of Bandos Chestplates in the interim, as they were bound to rise in price with the nerfing of the torso. With the unnerfing, the BCPs are likely to... what? Stay the same? Go down? Surely there hasn't been enough time for them to change price in the GE.

Edit Five: We've had the system update and World 6 has calmed down again.



So what changed. Here are the before and after pictures for three penance items. The first is during the few hours it was changed and the second is after the system update:





It retained its 'drop' option too!











And incidentally, it's not over yet:

Combat: What Does It All Mean?

I've never really paid too much attention to combat in the game. To me, combat levels are something that mysteriously happen while I'm busy doing slayer. However, all of this stuff with Nomad has had me looking into it.

My combat levels are currently: Attack 83; Strength 83; Defence 83; Range 84; Magic 84; Prayer 83; and Summoning 77. Overall, my combat level is 115.

Looking at those, I would assume that I'd be viewed as a ranger or a mage. A little more digging would tell you that I am 60k away from 85 range and that a bow and arrows are my weapons of choice. It would also inform you that mage levels also happen mysteriously somewhere between crafting air orbs, alching air battlestaffs, teleporting everywhere and the circus. In my own head, I'm a ranger first and a balanced combat woman second. I've been looking at combat calculators, which uniformly tell me that I'm melee based. O.O So there's my first question: why am I melee based? I'm assuming that only attack deals with melee, as I need strength to draw back a bowstring and I need defence to stop the enemy pwning me while I'm reloading.

I also looked at where my next combat level is coming from. This made interesting reading. Range doesn't figure at all. I can go ahead and get that 60k xp, but I won't be 116 combat at the end. The same story for mage. Another mage level won't make a difference either. However, I can get a single level in any one of the others (att, str, def, prayer and summoning) and I will be 116 combat. Why? Are mage and range somehow handicapped in the reckoning?

My big 'what does it all mean?' is in the difference that combat levels make. I understand that a level 3 hitting something won't cause as much damage as a level 138 hitting the same thing. But what is the difference between just one or two levels? Say we've got a moss giant in front of us. If I had level 50 in all combat skills, would I hit that moss giant half as accurately and with only half the strength of someone with 99 in all the same? Assuming that the level 99 will be accurate with all of his/her hits, then should the level 50 be accurate with half of the hits? What then for the level 51? And the level 52? Or can they be rendered as percentages? The person with level 51 attack will be accurate 51% of the time?

Finally, as I've crafted my air orbs and mused on the revscape below, I've been pondering the different colours. The obelisk of air is in level 7 Wilderness. In the old days, I could have been pwnt there by anyone with level 98-122, as that is 115 give or take 7. I understand that the colours are a representation of this. Can I just clarify that I'm therefore safe from any revenant who is green or red? However, I'm in trouble if there are any shades of orange in their name and combat level?

Here's hoping that anyone reading this is more knowledgable than me!

Incidentally, I got 79 crafting today! Woot! I had to then go and do a nature rune run, so that I could alch the resultant battlestaves. That, at least, gave me enough money to give Den the Men his warrior ring back. (Its value and the value of my dwarf cannon had a 100k difference. ) I'd literally got down to my last 30k in the bank, through the endless buying of Sara Brews.