The Great Orb Project

By: Twist of Fate
Special Thanks to: -Nacho Ninja-, Damaged500, Egghebrecht, Ekwm, Kimballtiger, Luckyx, Mtoff, N3wb, Neo Avatars, ninjablade22, Potato-Cheezrox3, powerninja88, ReM, Roy, S comet, schmoofemo, Sr H Potter, Thost, Twilight Knuckles, Uther, XmoneyX, Zeratox900

With the release of the RuneCrafting guild came RuneScape's first RuneCrafting-based Activity: The Great Orb Project. It is a tactical Runecrafting Activity between two teams of five. The yellow team is led by Wizard Vief and the green team is led by Wizard Acantha. The game revolves around a study to find where the true power of Rune Altars come from, the Yellow or Green Orbs.


Essential Info

Required

Getting There

The start of the game is located in the Runecrafting Guild through the portal on the second floor of Wizard's Tower across the causeway south east of Draynor Village. To get there, you can either home teleport or the level 31 magic teleport to Lumbridge and walk west, if you've started Fairy Tale Part 2: Cure a Queen you use fairy ring code DIS to go behind the tower, teleport to cabbageport if you've completed all Lumbridge Tasks and walk east through Draynor Village and then south along the coast, or teleport using an Amulet of Glory and walk south on the coast across the causeway leading to the tower.

Routes to the Great Orb Project

How to Play

To start the game, you must talk to either Vief or Acantha. They will give you a short briefing on what you'll be doing.

Wizard Vief (Yellow Team):

Wizard vief

Wizard Acantha (Green Team):

Wizard acantha

After that, you can right click on either of them to start the game. You cannot have anything on your hands or head because they will give you equipment to be used in the game. Make a note that the closest bank is in Draynor, or if you have your Dramen or Lunar staff, you can use the Fairy Ring to go straight to Zanaris bank. When you join the team, an interface comes up to your right. The large, green circle is a timer, and displays the time remaining in a certain round. The green and yellow orbs display the scores of the Green and Yellow team. When the game starts, a portal will appear. Everyone from both teams will have to walk in it before the orbs are released.

Waiting for the orbs to appear

There are 8 levels to this game (Only 6 in freeplayer worlds):

  1. Air
  2. Mind
  3. Water
  4. Earth
  5. Fire
  6. Body
  7. Chaos (Members only)
  8. Nature (Members only)

Each level lasts 2 minutes. In that time, the teams will have to attract their color orbs onto the runecrafting altars and stop the other team from getting their orbs on. To do this, you are given 3 types of wands which you'll learn how to use in the next section.

  • Barrier generatorBarrier generator
  • Attractor wandAttractor wand
  • Repeller wandRepeller wand.

Gameplay and Strategies

So you know you have the three weapons. A repellent, an attractor, and a blockade. Here are the most effective ways to use them. You should also know that you can right click on the orbs and select swap. This switches between repelling and attracting. But what ARE orbs? Orbs are small particles of energy that give rune altars their power. They also respond to your magical wands in certain ways. The point of the game is to use these 3 wands in order to get as many orbs of your color on the altar as possible in each 2-minute round.

Repelling

This is best used if you are facing the altar with the orb in front of you. You would be pushing the orb forward towards the altar.

Repelling

It's also a good idea to repel the other team's orbs to make it harder for them to score. However, when the timer starts flashing the opposite color orb won't respond to you.

Attracting

This is best used if you are standing behind the altar and the orb is on the other side. You would be pulling the orb towards you making it cross over the altar.

Attracting

Forming a Blockade

This is used against opposing orbs and to stop your orbs from moving. Simply click on the weapon and a barrier will set up. They can be destroyed by anyone in the game. They are best formed between the stone arches surrounding the altar or the spaces between them. That way, the enemies attracting their color's orb cannot get it passed your blockade. However remember that they can destroy it and there's a short limit on how many you can set up at a time and you can't set them up too close to the altar. To destroy a blockade, you must right click on it and select destroy. You can fail at this.

Forming a blockade

Here are some more things worth mentioning about gamplay.

  • The orbs only respond to the person who clicked it first.
  • There are some obstacles such as stone slabs and rocks. You will have to attract and repel the orbs to move them around these.
  • If you destroy any of the wands, you will exit the game.
  • If you have too many items in your inventory when you're awarded essence, the extra essence will fall to the ground instead of appearing in your inventory.
    The higher your RuneCrafting level is, the faster Orbs will move when you repel or attract them.
  • If one world is hosting two or more seperate games, only the first one will be shown to the real world. If another game starts after that, the game genrates a seperate world to play in.
  • If you need to leave the game for any reason, simply click on one of the regular exit portals. This will teleport you back to the guild and you won't be able to enter another game for 10 minutes.
  • The official worlds for the game are 60 and 61.

Rewards

After you complete a round of the game, you receive a few pieces of essence for you to craft into Runes at that altar. When you craft these runes, you receive two times the normal XP you would, but you do not have to craft them at that altar. You can save them for just one altar. For example, you would keep your inventory empty except for your pouches and the pure essence. When you get the pure essence, you'd put them all in the pouch and save them for lets say the nature altar. At that level, simply withdraw all your essence and craft it at that altar. Once the round is over, a portal will open into the next round, and all the team members have to step through the portal, then the next game will begin.

The portal

TokenWhen the game is over, you get a number of tokens that depends on how well you performed. You can't exchange the items back for tokens.

  • When it's a tie, you get 500 tokens
  • If you lose you'll get 0-200 tokens
  • If you win, you'll get 100-1000 tokens.

If everyone on one team leaves and ends the game then you will get 100x the level you ended on. For instance, the game ending on the 5th level will give you 500 tokens.

The max amount of tokens you can get from one game in Free play worlds is 800, and max for members is 1000. The formula is Altars won*100+200 for a win. You also get -100 for every altar you lose.

Go to Wizard Elriss near the entrance of the guild to cash in your tokens for rewards.

Wizard elriss

You can only buy 50 of an item at a time.

Here is a picture of all of the rewards and their costs:

Runecrafting guild rewards

Here are further things you need to know about the rewards:

  • The Talisman Staff can be used with a talisman to create that specific staff, and can then be used to travel to the altar without a Tiara.
  • The tablets used for teleportation and robes can not be traded. Robes give a slight Defence bonus and make orbs react faster towards your wands. They can be stored in the Magic Wardrobe of your Player Owned House.
  • Rune Essence bought from the guild store comes noted

Here is a player wearing one of the full sets, showing the bonuses:

Equipment screen for the full yellow set

RuneCrafting robes can be bought as a reward, and will help boost your RuneCrafting within the Activity.

  • The Top will give you a 3 level bonus within the game.
  • The Skirt will give you a 3 level bonus within the game.
  • The Gloves will give you a 2 level bonus within the game.
  • The Hat does not give any bonus, as you cannot wear your own hats inside the Activity. They are purely for decoration.

You can pull the goggles down by right clicking and selecting goggles down.

The Omni-Staff with stats

Equipment screen for the omni staff

To get the Omni-staff, you must show Wizard Elriss all of the talismans. This has the ability to let you enter all of the altars except for the law altar because of it's attack bonus.

Fusing Talismans Into Staffs

To fuse a talisman into a staff you must bring it to Wizard Korvak and he will gladly fuse them together. Fusing a Law talisman into a staff will cause the staff to lose all bonus so you can bring it to the altar.

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Published on: September 08, 2008 01:00 AM UTC by Salmoneus
Updated on: July 12, 2011 10:29 PM UTC by Salmoneus