Fairy Tale Pt 3: Battle At Ork's Rift
Entry posted by Merch Gwyar
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(Sorry I've abandoned you for a few days. I've got access to Ancestry.co.uk again and I've just made a massive breakthrough in my family history. It distracted me. :P)
I'm a few days late on reporting about Fairy Tale Pt 3, but I loved it! Loved it! A glance at the title made me have to resist the urge to sing, 'Men of Harlech', which then turned into the tune that I sang in my head all the way through the quest. I'm guessing only the old gits reading this will get the reference. For the young pups, here's your clue:
Not the most historically accurate film ever produced and apologies for likening orks to zulus, but Jagex started it. (Just checked the comments to the previous blog entry. Boom called it. :P)
My first 'oooh this is nice' came not from the quest, but from the graphics. As I logged in there was a notice telling me that Jagex were hacking my computer to find my optimum settings. Was this ok? Yeah, whatever, just hurry up so I can do the quest. When that had finished, suddenly I was staring at a transformed Gielinor. There were bumps in the landscape, ditches and small hillocks, that hadn't been there before. There was light and shade on an epic scale. Fire left flickers on the walls. It was all a lot darker, but that's ok. I think I'm a closet Goth anyway (at least, I like the Cure and the colour black). It was all very pretty. Moreover, the game doesn't seem to lag so much. How can it be that I have more graphics and less lag? Very strange.
All very pretty, but I had a quest to do. I grabbed my dramen staff and headed for the fairy ring by Edgeville. I now disappear through it in a whirl of purple and blue-green particles, as opposed to the multi-coloured flowers. I like it! I was immediately waylaid into the quest start, bypassing Zanaris completely. This was fine, as that's where I was headed anyway. The Queen's HQ was heaving with people, so it was difficult to find anyone, but that won't be a problem for anyone not doing it 30 seconds after it was released. The downside of this was that the general public were shouting out clues and spoilers. I do like to do quests on my own, but the running commentary was like having a gaggle of guides in game. I came close to switching public chat off, but just on it the lads arrived IRL, so I logged out anyway. By the time I was back, there were fewer people and it was ok.
Before that though I laughed until I cried. I don't know why it was quite so funny, but it just tickled me. It was this picture:
It's not really so funny without the animation with it, but I howled at the time. :P
There's not much to report on the middle section of the quest. It was all very straight forward and I soon had all three teeth. As long as you read your dossier, they were easy to find. Later on, I was by the fairy ring in Zanaris and a surprisingly number of people were asking me for advice on that part. I stood there for about 10 minutes helping various questers. But honestly, just read the dossier. It's practically a 'how to' guide on teeth collection. Once I'd got my teeth and reported back, I did think that the narrative was a little confusing. I got the fact that I was supposed to arm myself for battle, which I did. I got the fact that I needed the teeth and the wand, so I brought those. What was puzzling was the farming of the teeth. The briefing had made it look like I had to go and farm those first, then proceed to the battle. I ran around the HQ for a while, looking for the family patches, before returning to the tooth fairy to see if I'd missed something. She just repeated that I was to go to the battle. I considered going to one of my farming allotments and pulling up my veg to try and grown them there, but the briefing had shown some very distinct patches, which didn't exist out in the world. I actually set off there, with the teeth unplanted in my bag, thinking that I'd missed an important part of the quest. I figured that I'd get there and be sent away to go and plant them, but at least there might be information there as to where.
En route, I spotted a wonderful glitch. The two players creating it had discovered it by accident. STFU NAISE and Oo Elixir oO had simply donned their greegrees and attempted to go down the hollow log, when this happened:
The triangular 'wing' that you can see clearly in the first picture kept swinging from side to side. When the topmost player took his rune armour off, to reveal a brown top, he looked like some kind of locust perched up there. :P It was all very hilarious, but then another player arrived and said that he was reporting them for bug abuse. Both players said that they'd already reported the glitch and anyway, it was a graphics glitch from which neither were gaining an unfair advantage in-game. Their heckler assured them that they'd be banned by morning, then went on his cheery way through the fairy rings. That really did leech the fun out of the moment. I told them that I was certain that this wasn't a bannable offence. After all, they'd just done Jagex a favour by finding it and reporting it. No-one was getting rich out of this. No extra gain was being had. It was just a graphical glitch. We broke up and went on our way.
Once at the battlescene, I still couldn't immediately find a farming patch. I decided to just carry on with the quest and that was the correct thing to do. I peered through the vines and watched the cutscene. The Tooth Fairy appeared behind me and finally it all became clear. I took the teeth into the battlezone and the farming patches were in there. The first thing that I did upon entering was to plant my teeth. I've since learned that others fight the orks first and then plant the teeth. It did me no harm. I had allies in the immediate fight, who took out orks on their own. It did mean that I had a short period with the Fairy Godfather, where he had two shields down and one still remaining. My spirit ork had died (I'd been so busy fighting that I'd forgotten all about the healing wand. I r nub), so I just impotently hit the Fairy Godfather, whilst staying alive long enough for the ork to grow again. Then it was plain sailing.
I have to say that the rift itself reminded me of the current series of Dr Who. That crack is surely the same shape.
I was very, very pleased with the rewards. A watering can that fills itself up! :o No more will I design my farming run around where the easy access water sources are. Fairy rings that can be used without a dramen staff! :o This is great and I really appreciate it. However, I'm loathe to dump my dramen staffs and lunar staff. I've had those dramen staffs for years! I remember the quest where I got them, which was really hard for my level at the time. It was such an achievement to wield the staff. Now they are just spacehogging in my bank. I really should get over the sentimentality and dump them. Is everyone else dumping their lunar staff? That's another spacehogger now, but it's not like it can be stored with the rest of the lunar outfit in my house. For the moment, both dramen and lunar staffs are still in my bank, as I can't bring myself to dump them.
The xp rewards were lovely too, but then there were more! Josh asked if I'd got all of the extras. I'd been to Martin and received the weeding reward. I haven't fully checked that out yet. I'm assuming that, once I've spoken to the gardeners, my allotments will never grown weeds again. Josh assured me that I hadn't found all the rewards, so led me on an expedition to recover them. I got 250k gp worth of herbs from the cave in Feldip, plus a fairy ring there which is close to the summoning obelisk. I got 10k xp firemaking and a fairy ring in Mos Le Harmless, after I'd lit a fire and repaired the bridges. I think that was it, but lovely rewards they were!
Afterwards, I took the time to explore the new look Zanaris fully. I even switched 'run' off, because the place is so hippy now that you naturally have to slow to a Glastonbury pace. I really love it. I love all of the secret pathways, which always existed, but now look like secret pathways. I even wandered into the market, where I've only been about twice in my life before. I don't have to pay a diamond's entry now, so I just wandered in and out at will. Well done, Jagex, it's one of my favourite places in Gielnor now for real.
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