Questions for all you Runescape players:
In general, the rate at which your character can gather Runescape resources is determined by:
- (1) your skill level: the higher your mining skill level, the faster you can mine ore; the higher your woodcutting skill level, the faster you obtain logs; the higher your fishing skill level, the faster you get fish while fishing; and
- (2) the speed at which you mine ore and obtain logs is also affected by the type of pickaxe / hatchet that you are using.

I find that when I haven't done mining for a while (because I was working on one of the other skills), that the first few rocks I mine are incredibly slow. Then after the first few rocks, I get back to collecting ores at the usual rate... Same thing with woodcutting (the first few logs take an unusually long time to obtain, but then the rate at which I get logs goes back to normal), and same thing with fishing.

Question #1) Has anybody else noticed the same thing? Where if you haven't trained a skill in a little while, your character is actually "rusty" at the skill to start, but then goes back to normal speed after the first few ores/logs/fish?

Question #2) Is there a Runescape "rusty skill" subprogram, where if you haven't trained a skill in a little while, your character will be rather slow at the skill for the first little bit, before your resource gathering ability rate returns to normal, and is again only determined by your skill level and the type of pickaxe/hatchet you are using?

1. No.
2. No.

Same, RS is all about level and type of hatchet/pick. The time you play doesnt matter at all. You can mine 1-99 in a month then not mine for a year and 1 year later you will mine at the same speed.

@Lol, are you sure that mining level does not increase speed of getting ores?
Why is it that people say granite is only worth doing after 70? If it's the same speed all the way I would assume that it would be worth doing from whenever you can?

Yes, i had that when i started mining mithril after a while, maybe you are onto something.

So how come people with 15 Mining take ages to mine iron, but those with much higher can pretty much one-hit it?

I've noticed the same thing before that the OP is saying, but I think it's more of a coincidence than anything.

It is completely incorrect to say that skills like Woodcutting, Fishing, and Mining do not increase the rates of getting items. I documented the rates myself from about 60-65 with a rune pick (lost it though, cause my laptop crashed ), and they clearly went up.

Several times I've felt I was noticing the same effect the OP describes, but I dismissed it as a psychological thing and forgot about it. Now that this topic's reminded of it, I've come up with a theory about it, but, before I describe that, I find it hard to believe that an effect like "rustiness" would have been coded purposely into the game, because the added realism would be so insignificant as to be unnoticeable by most players. And, if not for realism, why would Jagex add a penalty just because a player laid off of doing a particular activity for while? If somehow the effect could be shown to be really there, I could only buy it as an accidental byproduct of some other thing they were doing with the code. I don't think it's there though, because...

Here's my theory: In the break between the last time I woodcut a lot and when I start again, my memory has "compressed" my past experience into a simplistic pattern of three activities that rotated, namely, chopping, getting logs, and seeing trees "fall." It recorded/remembers the last two incorrectly as "equal length of time" activities, averaging their durations because the actual times they took varied so irregularly that it would have been a total waste of memory and brain power to try to record, in my long term memory, exactly how long each particular set of logs took to get and exactly how long each particular tree took to fall.

So, when I take up woodcutting again after a fairly long break, my averaged, compressed memories of woodcutting get compared to the actual, irregular patterns of time between logs, and the longer intervals between logs appear much longer than the averaged, incorrect memory of how long the intervals were in the past. After I've cut a certain number of trees, this effect fades because new, real-time experiences of irregular log intervals are being "written over" the old, inaccurate, compressed memories. This fading of the effect produces the feeling of getting back up to speed. </theory>

I wasn't going to bring it up, but when I train melee on monsters after not using melee in a while, I have also found that to start, it takes a few swings to connect at lower-than-usual damage, before I start hitting the creatures for typical levels of damage again.

I think it is a psychological effect. I get streaks of bad luck all the time. I hunt for clue scrolls a lot, the longest interval so far is i had to kill 544 Blue dragons to find a new clue scroll.

I've often wondered the same, but I tend to agree with few of the last writers that it must be psychological. You only notice this at those times your don't get the ore, fish or log in the time you expected it to come. The other times you get it almost immediately you don't pay any attention to it.

The only way to test this would be someone to record something.

I'll do a test recording tommorrow.

I haven't fished in several months, so I'll do a test video recording and see if the rate is modified starting at max with lobsters.

I'm abstaining from video games except on Saturdays so wait.

It's psychological, like when you see a commercial for the first time. It normally seems like forever that's it's on, then the next time you see it, it seems to be a lot faster.

If you just go back to a skill, it's like you're a waiting for ever. Then you adjust to the time and it seems a lot faster.

A higher Skill Level is supposed to give you an advantage over other players, but then again you could get unlucky and they [lower-levelled player] beat you to an Ore.