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ˆ›,¸¸¸,‹•°*ˆˆ*°¸•*ˆˆ*•„¸¸¸„‹ˆ . . . . . . . . . . ˆ›„¸¸¸„•*ˆˆ*•¸°*ˆˆ*°•›,¸¸¸,‹ˆ. .¸•*ˆˆ*•›„¸¸¸„‹ˆ . . . ¸‹ˆ The Immortal Councilˆ›¸ . . . ˆ›„¸¸¸„‹•*ˆˆ*•¸. {. ¸••¸ . ¨ˆ*°•„¸¸¸,‹ˆ . . .ˆ›„¸¸¸„‹•°*ˆ¨ˆ*°•›„¸¸¸„‹ˆ. . . ˆ›,¸¸¸„•°*ˆ¨ . ¸••¸ .} .ˆ›„„‹ˆ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ˆ›„„‹ˆ. This clan, The Immortal Council, was found on September 2, 2012, and restarted on October 18, 2012 by Savvy Savant. The goal of this clan is to have a fun, caring, and goal oriented clan atmosphere. It is our ambition to provide our members with a mature but fun clan experience.We listen, care and value our member's thoughts, ideas, and feelings. We are a skilling and minigames based clan. Here is some basic information about the clan: ¤Clan requirements: 1700+ Skill Total ¤Clan Chat: The Immortal Council ¤Clan home world: 117 ¤Clan colors:Blue/White ¤Clan timezone: Central standard time (CST) ¤Clan Size: Under Construction ¤Clan Offsite Page: clan.iclanwebsite.com/theimmortalcouncil If you have any questions, join the Clan Chat. We are currently looking for leadership positions. If you are interested in applying, leave a post here, for bumping purposes, and either visit the clan website above, or visit the QFC 288-289-692-64053423 and apply. Fair warning, there are very few members in the clan, as I have just restarted it. Right now, I am looking for recruiters to assist in rectifying this problem. If you can recruit, let me know. Otherwise, we'll start you out as a recruit. I hope to build this clan up rapidly, from the ground up, so the emptiness of the clan will last no more than a week.

Introduction: Have you been interested in being more than just a member in a clan? Have you been a member but have never been recognized for all you achieved? Have you always been interested in being a founder and leading a clan to greatness? I am currently looking for four talented, friendly, and energetic founders who are willing to take the time to not only start a clan and lead it to greatness, but to help those in need, rather they be clan member or stranger. The Clan: This clan would be focusing on Skills and Questing. How is this clan going to be different from any other clan? Simple. The members. We were all new to this game once. Do you remember how hard it was to figure out how to play? How frustrating it was to find shops, quest items, and good places to fish and mine? This is because there wasn’t a clan to give us a hand and help us out. Until now. We will be focusing on skills and quests while helping those who are need, member or stranger; beginner to expert. Requirements to be a founder: 1. Be active 2. Mature 3. Friendly 4. Have the same ideals as covered above 5. Be able to help plan/hold events 6. Have ideas to help bring the clan to greatness Interested? Add me as a friend on runescape: Daskatza Or post here. Don’t be afraid to ask questions or get to know me first.

I wasn't going to go anywhere near Gielinor. I'd logged onto Skype in utter frustration to demand that Doddsy do something to fix my game crashes. The fact that I probably know as much (if not more) about computers than him is neither here nor there. I was at the screaming stage and so I needed someone else to say, 'have you tried switching it on and off?' But it had suddenly stopped crashing anyway and once my rant was out of my system, I felt a lot better about things. Particularly when Egghebrecht posted a photograph of Cohen the Barbarian IRL. Also in the Skype call were Tabt and MFI. The former was showing the latter how to do Herblore Habitat, but he needed seeds to get his farming level up. I said I'd risk logging on to see if I'd could stay on long enough to give him seeds. I could. In fact, I didn't black screen again. >.> Even more importantly, I've been wanting to learn Herblore Habitat too. Tabt said I could join her little Karamja school. It was the perfect stress-breaking activity ever. The object of the game was to secure two pieces of the Witchdoctor outfit. Collecting all ten or so jadinkos in one week would get us either the top or legs; then finding the God Jadinkos afterwards would result in a mask. The mask sounded great. It would give us free teleports to a farming patch! Woot! I mainly wanted to be there for the costume, which is a missing piece in my POV collection. It was a great bonus surprise to find that I also gained hunting, farming, herblore and agility XP while I was there. Tabt has just been made a player moderator. Very good choice, Jagex! She certainly showed why she was the right person for the job. In between hanging out in Karamja, demonstrating things to me and MFI, she was hopping into F2P to show Rainbow_Firg how to runecraft! MFI and I were running around, planting things here, catching other things over there, mixing stuff here, all under Tabt's expert tuition. In addition to all of the things that I was supposed to be gathering, I also found a rather over-sized boot. Imagine trying to walk around the jungle with that on my foot?! It would come up to my knees! I can only deduce that it was dropped by a jogre. But it was no use to me. MFI looked it up and it was purely decorative. You would neither sell or wear it. You couldn't even pair it up with another one for the latest in gigantic fashions. I left it on the floor and I presume that a baby velociraptor jadinko ran off with it, because it disappeared later. After waiting forever for an erzille seed to grow, the rest of the run seemed to take just minutes. There were MFI and I rushing to see Papa Mambo for our prize. We both got legs and a jadinko ruined my photo by coming to peck at MFI's manhood. It was probably dazzled by the extreme whiteness of MFI's legs. Jadinko shooed away, and Tabt called over to pose with us, we were finally ready for our screenshot. Don't we look divine? LOL MFI and I went looking for God Jadinkos then. He got his fairly quickly, but I had a problem with a kalferberry bush. I'd got 11 seeds for lergberries by the finish, but none of the other. I caught my Saradomin and Guthix jadinkos quite quickly, but thought I needed a kalferberrry for the Zamorak. It took 160 common jadinko caught in my plants before I finally got a kalferberry seed. Jethraw told me that these things came in batches. He was vindicated in that belief, when I received a second seed at 166. Then nothing more until I gave up at 200. The irony was that, as soon as I poured mix onto my flowers, I was informed that the Zamorak jadinkos had been attracted! I hadn't even got my kalferberry seed in! That bush space should have been empty all along. It was hard to feel miffed, when I'd just secured my Witchdoctor mask. :P I'm reliably informed by Tabt that I'll have to go back next week to be in for a chance of getting the top. I could end up with the legs again. However, I don't have to find more God Jadinko, now that I have my mask. I'd probably go back anyway. It's a fun way of getting quick hunting XP for me every week, plus it gives strange rocks. MFI is spending his XP on farming, with the third option being herblore. Something else to add to the weeklies! Merci beaucoup, Fred, for the banner!

Kuradel, in her infinite wisdom, has given me Jad as a slayer task. In some ways, it was unwelcome, because I'm just 11k from 90 Slayer, so I wanted to just do it and call all of my friends around for a celebration photograph. But Jad needs to happen one day. Here is my outfit so far. Any thoughts? Yes, you may be ooohing and arrring at my lovely white bird armour. It's not mine. It belongs to the very lovely (and very trusting) Ix Choco xI! {{{{{hugs}}}}} It took a good 10 minutes of negotation before I'd accept it, but we have deal wherein he's on-line and in-game on Friday night, for me to give it all back. <----- In writing, Choco! That's what I call friendship! :( Choco and I got to talking about how we met. He had just been killed, when I encountered him. I replaced all of his mithril armour for him. Blink and they're all grown up, owning three sets of claws and Arma.. armour. Payback... payback... It's a bit bloody more than full mithril, Choco! -.- Also a big shout out to cpt_sparclz. He overheard Choco and I mentioning Sal's Realm and came to say hello. He uses our guides and said how useful they are. Here I am passing the message on to Sal's. <3 So back to the plot. Jad advice please? I've got to him 3 times so far and he's pwnt me 3 times, due to my lack of prayer changing speed. I'm going to put ranger boots on and MsClick has loaned me her archer ring too. <3 Final picture: Chilling out with friends at the GE Me, MsClick, Choco and Cpt_Sparclz

Was there any need to get personal? :P I was only trying to get my Castle Wars cape to have all the extra features that my Ava's Accumulator has. I showed it to Lanthus and this was the result. Sod them! I went on Sara's team instead. (Bow to the great one.) Why isn't there a Guthix team? There's a portal, but no actual team. ;_; I'm a little unsure on whether I like Castle Wars or not. It can be fun. I know that there are strategies and all sorts, but my favourite acitivity is guarding the big double doors. You can chill out with friends, pwn the occasion nub and feel like you're usefully keeping a door shut. No great plan needed. What irks me is that being on the losing side means you get nothing at all. I had two games of it earlier, with Gri3f and Arct, but we were on the losing team both times. That's no tickets towards posher armour in my house, which, to be fair, is the sole reason I'm there. After 40 minutes of it, you start to think of all of the xp that you're missing out on. I've only got 34 tickets so far. I see a lot of Castle Wars in my long-term future. In the other news, I had the penguin hunter situation from Hell the other day. I'd visited them all, but the final one didn't give me the 'woot you've spotted all of your penguins!' message that I was expecting. You're joking, right? I nipped into my quick chat and did that thing where you tell everyone in the vicinity how many penguin points you have. It said 9. Nooooo! That means that it didn't register when I spied one. But which one? With a heavy heart, I set off to check. That, in effect, was potentially doing the entire penguin run again. After finding three or four, and learning that I'd spied them already, I had a brainwave. In Yanille South Wall, the wonderful Team Penguin had trapped two penguins. When I'd turned up, one of them was right by the door. As noobs kept leaving the door open, it was only my timely arrival that (purely accidentally) stopped this penguin from escaping out into the great, wide world. I shepherded it back inside, but it refused to leave the viciniity of the door. This was a bit of a bottleneck entrance, which mean that players were constantly opening that door and running through me. That reset me, as a trap, and allowed the penguin to travel through me too. It took around half an hour to get him further inside. I had help from another player, whose name I unfortunately didn't note. We painstakingly nudged the penguin all the way to the other end of the inner wall, despite the constant traffic along it. So proud to have it finally trapped, I was. But now, a while on and missing just one penguin point, a horrible suspicion arose. I had actually spied it during all of that, hadn't I? I whooshed myself back to Yanille and checked. No. I hadn't. Some days the evidence that I'm a nub is just too overwhelming. In reality, I haven't had chance to play too much Runescape this week, as I'm on Operation Be a Writer IRL. I've been knocking out articles and blogs like an article and blog writing machine. If anyone wishes to read them too, then the Twitter alert for article is here. It's going quite well so far. Plas Teg have been in touch about one that I wrote for them. They've asked permission to use it on their site. Meanwhile, I got the Suite101 scoop on an article, written as it happened, about the riots which left Tottenham a smoulding wreck last night. If anyone is feeling particularly kind, then helping big my writing up, by publishing links to any/all of the articles in your Facebook, Twitter, Stumble etc would be very, very much appreciated. Thanks in advance! Edit: Citadel planning! Please read Teacuptime's blogs on the subject: Part One and Part Two.

I've had my long, soul-destroying hours trapping penguins. The actual trapping is fun, as is much of the conversation with those around. But you always, always get the trap killers. Therefore I had a heartfelt chuckle and then applause, while reading Lady Civet's offering on the official World 60 penguin thread, on the RSOF. Here it is: (In case it isn't obvious, try reading again with your sarcasm/irony detector switched on. :( ) I always thank the trappers and spotters anyway. In addition to being a well brought up young lady (*pauses for the peanut gallery to stop laughing*), I appreciate the work that they do. The trappers especially are giving up hours of their lives, for the sole purpose of helping their fellow players. So imagine my joy when I said thank you and then read the response: THE Lady Civet! I met THE Lady Civet! And, fortunately, said 'thank you' before I knew that she was there.

Vaskor = <3 I love the Fish Flingers minigame. I really do. A few minutes there can net you a lot of fishing xp, as well as stacks of raw fish. However, the big xp/fish come from locating all six species of fish, along with their bait, weights and hook. I have pages of paper covered in little grids, which I'd redraw for the next match, then fill, then redraw. *sigh* There had to be an easier way. I tried to create that easier way myself. I have lots of abortive htm code, which I simply didn't have the skill to make work. I do have an Excel grid, which does work. However, it's huge and cumbersome. Frankly, it was quicker to use the paper, than to use that. So I turned my hound dog eyes onto Vaskor and sent him my failed attempts thus far. Yesterday, on Runewise, Vaskor presented us with his version of a Fish Flingers grid. OMG! It is absolutely perfect! It's listed there, third from bottom, on the left hand side. Clicking the link will cause a pop-up. This is a lovely size. It can be placed strategically in the left-hand corner of your monitor, while the right-hand deals with the in-game information. Before you go in, we all ask the fisherman for advice. That can be set on the grid. Then we go in and get a clue. That's added from the pull-down menu too. When you're certain about your hitherto suspected details, then you press 'apply new findings'. That turns the boxes green, but moreover, it removes the options in them from the pull down menus of the remaining boxes. Thus, by the power of deduction, the later fish become extremely easy to push to 100%. I knew, at a glance, at it was going to be perfect. But you do have to test these things. I logged in, grabbed my skills necklace, then zoomed to the Fishing Guild. At the gates, the fisherman's wife told me when the next competition was going to begin. I was back for that. I put the tool to the test. It passed with flying colours. :D Thank you so much, Vaskor. I've been waiting for a RS site to develop something like this for months! >.< (If you've never played Fish Flingers, but want to try out the grid, I blogged about my strategy ages ago.)

I've just had a bit of an eye-openers on how Soul Wars clans work. I'm not sure if it's all of them, but it's definitely Def2Slay. Just recently, I've been nipping into Soul Wars for the odd game now and again. I usually last for about two games before losing the will to live and coming out again. That's often because of the waiting around time. My rule of thumb is to look for whichever team has an artic bear in the waiting room and join that one. I don't know why Soul Wars has so many artic bears, but they seem to know their stuff and so I follow them. However, that often means that I'm one of the latter people in the waiting room and therefore it takes forever to get a game. My record so far is nearly three quarters of an hour, Runescape Soul Wars waiting room in one window and a job application form in the other. After three-quarters of an hour, I gave up and went woodcutting instead. It doesn't take long to realise that you're the last one in because most of the high levelled players are in a clan. Their clan leader has called a few minutes earlier, so they leave a game and immediately rush to the prescribed waiting room. Sometimes you're lucky and you were in there already. But in 50/50 chances, it seems that I'm usually wrong. The artic bear has gone to the opposite side of the encampment and I'm left filling in my qualifications and work history. I've taken now to hanging around and joining the first clan I find with a high-levelled player advertising it. (Artic bear optional.) It heightens my chances of being on the winning side, but it also practically ensures that I'm waiting around in an over-stuffed room, not even getting the loser's one zeal. Nevertheless, at least in a clan, you feel like you know what's going on and so you can choose to switch mid-game, if you're definitely not getting in. So I thought. This morning, I was in Def2Slay's clan, when a bit of an argument broke out. The usual 'advertise for a rank' policy, endemic to all such clans, had been going on, and one player had been practically auto-advertising. I was in there because I heard him. I did notice that the calls for team colour were a little later than I'd been used to in another clan the day before, but I just figured that I'd missed something in the mass of messages. I clicked to 'clan chat only' and suddenly saw the argument in all its glory. We were on the blue team and the players' problem was that he wasn't ranked. It wasn't an argument that I was particularly interested in, so I got on with my ranging and getting pwned. That's the weird thing too, we were losing, but I reasoned that even big clans have off matches. Then, 30 seconds before the player was suminarily kicked from the chat channel, he said something that made me blink. It was suggested that he'd got the wrong call because he wasn't ranked. I started to put two and two together. Until now, I'd thought that the point of these clans was to gather as many players as possible for your team. I did know that clan owners and ranked members often then spent their waiting time checking the stats of those joining, then kicking out the lower levels. I've been kicked out before now for being a lowly level 104, when everyone else was over 120 combat. It's not nice, but I tend to not be kicked so much now I'm level 111. I'd also sussed that the point of calling team colours, then switching those colours often, is to leave lower levelled players in the wrong team. After all, you can't have a round of Soul Wars unless there are two teams. What I hadn't worked out until now is precisely how the clans really work. What they do is tell the ranked members the true team colour, presumably early on. This is why the chat clan owner will never be seen hanging around the waiting room and they always seem to get into the game immediately. The rank and file are told a little later. This means that you get them, but they run the risk of being the ones left behind. They're still important to have in your clan, because if they were freelance, then they might make their own call preceding your own. This is inconvenient for the rank and file, but still doesn't stop them getting their three zeal when they can get in. The thing that went wrong today was that there weren't a lot of players on. Each team was averaging only 50 odd players, almost all of whom were in the clans. I saw three clans advertised and I visited each to find them packed. I settled on Def2Slay, because I'd been in there before and it seemed friendly then. However, these clan leaders are now in a situation where they're making calls, but if they made the same calls, then there would be no other team. This is where the true scam kicks in. We were all told red team, so rushed there. It quickly became ridiculously full. With a minute to go, we're told 'Switch! Current team - blue.' Off we all went. We quickly entered the game and started getting slaughtered. After the argument, I'd worked this out but still decided to give Def2Slay the benefit of the doubt. He hadn't actually called, it had been one of the ranks. I figured that he might be off fishing or something and not realising what was happening. I commented, 'Btw, that last call was bad. Reds are slaughtering us.' Def2Slay replied, "LOL! I'm on red." That confirmed it in my eyes, so I countered, "Why are you calling blue, when you're on red?" Def2Slay, "I didn't, u did." Then, "U don't earn a rank." I pointed out that I didn't call. Then challenged him on his policy. He just laughed and called me a nub, then kicked me before I could physically leave. It just surprised me a bit, because you expect merchanting clans to be a scam, but it just never dawned on me that there was profit in Soul Wars clans also being underhanded. Call me slow, but now I understand why people are so desperate to get ranks in them! At least we know now. Edit: As of August 13th 2009, Def2Slay doesn't feature in any of the Rs hiscores. Yet he's in Soul Wars every time that I'm there. How do you spend weeks in Soul Wars without ending up in the hiscores in anything?

First off, a shout out to 1harryy, who is standing next to me in Yanille Bank right now, while reading this blog. *waves* With the Canting Summer Festival looming, I have been trying to upgrade my house a bit in time for the parties there. A few weeks ago, this involved completely ripping out my dungeon and starting again. It does look totally different now and, hopefully, will be enjoyed by the more blood-thirsty of my guests; however, it's not to its full glory, as I ran out of room allocation. I have three more rooms to eventually place down there, though the last of them will come at level 99. I was also a little thrown by the fact that I've now got dungeon pits to consider. It took me and a friend bloody hours to come up with the dungeon that I have got planned, but those pits look very tempting. I've still got a three more levels before I have to worry about it, but I am reluctant to spend more money, when I might want to redesign it. I'm up to the really expensive rooms now and I've already made a 1m gp mistake (it had to happen eventually). Putting things in, then deciding to rip them out again now, could cost me around 8m. The dungeon completed to the very limits of my current level, I went looking around the rest of the house. I was only one level from having a large orrery, so that cropped up on my agenda today. But before levels, there are hammers. That meant Stealing Creation. I don't mind Stealing Creation. It's not my favourite minigame in the world, but it's not my least favourite either. What annoys me are the PKers, especially when a clan descends upon one of the teams and you end up with a situation where you can't move out of your base for someone killing you. I generally spend most of those trying to pickpocket the mages, with varying success, to get their runes off them. Then they can't kill you in seconds with a blast from their staff. I have to admit that there's quite a buzz, when I pull that one off. I also get frustrated with my fellow team-mates, who just give up and cloister themselves in the base. They're not risking anything, even if they do die, but they're not prepared to pile the mages. There's power in the union and all that. Anyway, in my previous whinging about this, I've heard much talk of Fast Sc. Today, I decided to check it out. It wasn't the most auspicious start. I turned up to learn from a fellow player that a game had literally just started. It felt like we sat there for ages waiting on. Another player turned up and explained to us that you need to be in a chat channel in order to enter. The usual starting cc was 'Fast Sc456', so two of us went and sat in there. Another half a dozen players turned up, but none were willing to join us. Just on it, a swarm of players appeared out of the portal. One of them screamed, 'starting chat Dabaia!' Then they were gone. I didn't have time to even process the fact that I should be in a different chat channel, let alone that I should be in that one. None of the people waiting had gone anywhere. The lady who'd introduced me to 'Fast Sc456' in the first place just went, 'Wow. They went in fast.' Nine of us were just standing there going, 'What just happened?' She explained that a new game had started, but had begun too fast for any newcomers to enter the starting chat channel. I asked if we should be in Dabaia and apparently we should. I entered it to find only Dabaia there. I was told, 'Get into Fast Sc!!' I replied that we were still in the waiting room, then asked what we should do. I was promptly kicked. To be honest, I was a bit stunned. I just stood there wondering what on Earth I'd done wrong. Had I broken some cardinal rule of the club or something? One or two of the others had followed me in there and they confirmed that they'd been kicked out too. At that point, I thought that Fast Sc456 and Fast Sc were one and the same. A couple of those waiting suggested that we split into two groups of five and play a mini-Fast Sc. There were only nine of us, but another player was just outside. I'd been about to walk off in disgust at the whole cc and kicking malarkey, but I was persuaded to stay and join a 5 team. This took ages, as some there were highly reluctant to do so, preferring to wait another eternity for the main game to return. Eventually though we made it. I was in Oxen's team, in a scaled down version of Stealing Creation. We had the whole place cleared within about 10 minutes. Oxen, I and the other three stood in our base, waiting on the countdown, with everyone saying that that had been quicker than Fast Sc itself. Should we stay? All agreed that we should. We returned to the Stealing Creation waiting room, just in time to find the main game swarming out again. This time the cry was to enter Mr Mining's cc. I hurriedly typed into Oxen's cc, 'Are we staying here or going into that one?' A couple of people replied that they thought that we were staying. This time, the main game's people didn't disappear instantly, so I could have gone to it. We hung on for a few seconds, then they were gone. Unfortunately, so had the five people whom we'd been playing against. The five of us just stood there alone in the waiting room. Oxen sighed, "I guess that we should have gone with them after all." Had I walked away then, I'd have had a very dim view of Fast Sc. Simply because it all seemed so shambolic, with noobs shouted out and no direction given. As it was, I decided to give it a chance. I waited a few minutes and then went and sat in Mr Mining's cc. I was the only person there. After about quarter of an hour (on top of the previous quarter of an hour, then the five or ten minutes of waiting for people to agree to the minigame), the group swarmed out and into the cc that I was in. For about thirty seconds to a minute, the call was up for everyone to join Mr Mining's cc. That quick flash of people entering, then going, never happened again. And we were in the game! For the first 10 minutes, all was very industrious, as skillers grabbed as much clay as they possibly could. Without the fear of PKers, we could just stockpile it, not wasting time on depositing it. Also, with a huge group of people who knew the score, some of the earlier confusion was explained to me. The situation is that you can't enter Stealing Creation, from this large room, without a clan with a leader present. Fast Sc isn't logged on, hence we couldn't just all sit in that cc. Ordinarily, a player named Fast Sc456 is around, hence the fact that many congregate in there to get in. In the absense of that player, ordinary players were offering the use of their own ccs. First Dabaia, then Mr Mining. Once in, we all have to move to Fast Sc. Mid-game already, Dabaia was just trying to get people from his/her cc into Fast Sc. Any loiterers were kicked, for reasons that still aren't apparent. We had all left Mr Mining's cc and entered Fast Sc by now. Suddenly the call went up that someone had been PKed. He'd lost 10k worth of runes. Other voices called out that they had witnessed it. A player named Sacred Sah went to great lengths to ensure that it was an actual PKing, not an accidental hit. By now, more voices joined in. They'd been killed; they were being attacked; 'OMG! A PKer!' The shocked tones were making me really nervous, but it was also a little bit exciting. This is how it must have sounded receiving PMs about the Fally Massacre as it was taking place. Sacred Sah said, "Stand by 99." Which threw me - how was someone getting 99 in here? Then, as the reports were confirmed and a name and location settled, a player named 99 something piped up, "Do I have your permission, Sacred?" And Sacred said, '"Yes." About a minute later, there's the call, "PKer is dead." Wow! That's when it all came together. Fast Sc operates technically as a competition between clans. Unlike the usual waiting rooms, these clans don't have to be equal in number nor strength. What actually happens is that a five person team is created and this is the one that challenges the entire mass of Fast Sc to a Stealing Creation game. This five person team is made up of big, burly, combat-levels-in-red people. While their basic job is to give us someone to challenge in order to get in, their main job is the Anti-PKer Taskforce. If it is confirmed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that someone is PKing, then these bruisers get stuck in. Meanwhile, the rest of us collect clay as usual. The game finished when we'd collected all of the clay, not when the timer ran out. So that's why it's so fast! By now, Fast Sc456 had returned, so we all had to go into there to start off. Mr Mining took over as the head of the Anti-PKing squad. Unfortunately, the PKer, now banned permanently from Fast Sc, jumped into Mr Mining's cc a split second before we entered. The PKer now had the entire mass of Fast Sc people to pick off. He obviously hadn't thought ahead. Because that also meant that the entire of Fast Sc could now also attack him. This was also the game where a player called something like x Lucky Lady x (I'm sorry, I didn't note her name!), arrived. I'm assuming that she IS Fast Sc456, seeing as that openly coincided with her turning up. She and Sacred Sah had the whole thing organised in seconds. An impromptu hit squad formed from the masses, while the rest of us were banned from attacking (except in self-defence). I did see the PKer, but hurried on by. He was having the life paled out of him at the time. Lucky Lady kept everyone informed. We were to bank often. We were to avoid this area and that area. She also apologised in advance, as there would be a slight delay in starting the next game, until the PKer was definitely banned from every channel. Thereon all of the games were PKer free and very fast. Lucky Lady and Sacred Sah kept things running like clockwork. We waited in the waiting room until all newcomers were in, then we were off. They ensured that we knew to call the clay. We were thanked for our forebearance during the troubles before. It was like an entirely different clan to that which I'd encountered when I arrived! After the initial waiting around for about three-quarters of an hour, I got a ridiculous number of Stealing Creation points very, very quickly on world 99, the home of Fast Sc. I'll definitely be using it again. I then went home and hammered my way from level 88 to level 89 construction, then fitted my large orrery. I'm as ready as I'll ever be to receive my guests on July 31st! Banner by Fred Lay

Before I start on my latest in-game addiction, I'd like to scream a happy birthday at one of my oldest Runescape friends. Happy birthday, Zach! :D Hope it's a good one! Now Fish Flingers. :D I do like to try out new things, if I've the level to do them, once they're introduced to the game. Sometimes, like Mobilising Armies, I go in and I'm decidedly underwhelmed, so I come out again. At the opposite end of the scale is Fish Flingers. It's taken over my Runescape life. I've tried sobbing and begging at the feet of the fisherman and his wife for more tickets per week. But they just give me strange looks and make me come back on Tuesday. Usually I've used up all of my tickets by Wednesday, though I've been IRL busy this week, so I managed to eek them out until yesterday. Two more sleeps and I can go and play again. Fish Flingers was released a couple of Tuesdays ago. Vandyballer and I went into what must have been one of the first ever competitions. It was great fun. It was full of people who had just returned from the system update and hadn't had time to even read the knowledge base correctly. We pooled our skim-read information and set about trying to work out what we were supposed to be doing. It took me a good few seconds to even find the cast button. ^_^ At that point, we only had the vaguest notion that we should be getting 100% fishing efficiency for the best xp. It was probably the worst game that I've played in there, but also the most fun. The minigame caught my imagination though. I was there as Tune created the cc Fishfling, into which I was introduced by Mister Tulip. I struggled through the early games, before Fishfling had even worked out that we're better off all being in the same world. I was amongst those original voices suggesting that, instead of shouting the range of the weights, we'd be better off counting them. A week later, you can enter Fishfling and it's all so professional. The cc is a sea of green, as everyone lives in world 84. The shouts tend to follow the same format, saying something like 'trout, docks, slim, maggot, 013'. Translated: the trout can be caught from the docks. You need to use the slim hook, the maggot bait, then attach no small weights, 1 medium weight and 3 large weights. It really works! These days, I have my first fishing tackle box, which tells me when the next competition is running. I'm just a few medals short of my upgraded tackle box. I've gained two fishing levels in two weeks, mostly from the excellent xp that the game affords. I've got a pile of raw fish that I could be taking out to cook, but I want to get all of my tackle boxes first. Bankspace savers ftw! But it's more than the rewards that I'm getting from the minigame. I'm having fun. Real, unadulterated, great fun. :D It's not about actually ending up on the podium. In fact, those up there might well have received less xp than some of those on the floor. They might not. If they really are on form, then they might have got a lot more xp. It's all about strategy. This works really well when the cc is full. We just all spread out and allocate at least one person (usually many) at each station. I've been in games where we've had every combo within the first minute, because the (two week old) veterans know what we're doing. These combos are then screamed into the cc and everyone rushes to capture every fish. Two medals right there! My strategy is this: * Before I even go to the fishing guild gate, I make my template on a pad beside my keyboard. It has five colums. In the first column, I list the fish - pike, cod, herring, salmon, bass and trout. * I then enter the Fishfling cc (only useful for W84, if anyone is joining us). Everyone waiting then turns purple on my minimap. ^_^ When the fisherman arrives, I first ask his advice on the fish. He will give a sometimes cryptic clue, which tells you one or two facts about a single fish. This is useful when you're later trying to work out your combo for that fish. However, I'm also typing this clue into Fishfling where, and this is important, everyone else is doing the same. If enough people get different clues, then you can go in with a lot of information. For example, a couple of days ago, the Fishfling cc people walked into there knowing this: The herring was at the beach and needed a mid-range weight; the trout were at the docks, required cricket or locust bait and a light weight; the cod were at the river, requiring grey moth bait, slim hook and a heavy weight; and the salmon were at the lake, needing a bone or wooden hook. In short, there was only pike and bass that we knew nothing about. That's because everyone there had pooled the advice given from the fisherman. * Advice given, the fisherman then teleports you into the competition. This is the big moment where Fishfling organise themselves. When you've been in there a while, you start to recognise names. You know where the weaker areas are and where an area is in safe hands. I tend to rush where no-one I know is looking for a combo, because I can usually find it quickly. I note the show of respect when none of the 'names' then announces that they too are heading into that area first. * We wait and five minutes later the gates are opened. Everyone rushes to their stations and the fraught first fish combos are sought. We all choose a bait and a hook, then I start with just one heavy weight. We press cast and watch to see what happens next. Note that the bait and hooks will never be used twice. For example, if a herring gains 100% using a shrimp and slim hook, then both shrimps and slim hooks can be discounted from the combos of every other fish. This means that we generally know the combo for the last fish before anyone has even discovered its location. * Everyone is aiming for 100%. This can be quickly worked out from the movement of the percentages as you change things. In the picture above, I've got 66%. This means that something is right. Two other things might be half right or else one is wrong and one is right. In short, of the three elements of this combo, I have two things bang on. * I start with the hook. These are in pairs. Standard and Slim. Bone and wooden. Double and large. I select standard and cast out. I then select slim. If the percentage doesn't move, then neither are right. I select bone - the percentage goes up by 33%, I have it right; it goes up by 16%, then it's wooden. If I had tried large or double, neither would have moved. So within three casts, you can usually work out the hook. 0% = wrong pairing; 16% = right pairing, wrong hook; 33% = correct hook. * I move onto the bait. These come in triplets. Each bait is linked to two others, one of which looks like it and one of which is the same colour. For example, the grey moth looks like the green moth, but is the same colour as the crayfish. If the correct bait is grey moth, then both the green moth and crayfish would give me 16%, while every other bait would give me 0%. The grey moth would, of course, give me 33%. There are eight baits to choose from, but once you are in your triplet, then you can get it within two more clicks. Bear in mind that the triplets overlap. For example, the green moth is both in the above triplet, as it looks like a grey moth, and also in a triplet with the cricket and locust, as it's the same colour as the latter. * The trickiest bit is always the weights. This is done last, as we know that the hook and bait are correct. I start with one heavy weight, then add another. You're on the right lines when the percentage goes to 83% or 100%. If it goes to 83%, add another heavy weight. If it then dips to 66%, clear your line, add the hook and bait, then stop just before your nerfing heavy weight and add a medium weight instead. If you've reached 5 heavy weights with no 100%, then clear the line and try with medium or small weights instead. * As soon as I have 100%, then I type it into Fishfling. Hopefully, by now, five other people have done the same and we have all six combos. As I've been doing the above, I've been filling in the columns on my pad. If the other combos haven't been found, then this is where my pad comes into its own. Column one lists the fish; column two lists any advice given by the fisherman; column three lists the hook; column four lists the bait; and column five lists the weight combo. My pad is full of things like that. :D As you can see in the middle one, there was a game where we didn't find the salmon. To be honest, I believe that it was glitched, because when we got the combo later, it was one that I'd already tried. This does happen occasionally. But without any sign of that salmon, we knew a lot about it. Someone had taken advice from the fisherman, so we knew that it was at the docks and required a wooden or bone hook. As the pike had already used the bone hook, then we knew for certain that the salmon needed a wooden hook. The bait had to be crayfish, green moth or shrimp, as none of those had been used. Getting three combos correct = a junior angler medal; getting all six combos correct = a master angler medal. Hence we all want all six as quickly as possible, because that is two medals in the bag. That not only adds towards gaining the tackle box, but it provides a boost on the xp that we gain at the end. * In an ideal world, we have every combo within a minute and we're all sitting pretty on two medals for the next 14 mins. Here's where we stop being quite so co-operative. Ok, it's light-hearted and the winners are all congratulated later. Somewhere along the way, someone will have discovered the heaviest species of fish and let the cc know. If no-one has, then look at your catches. The weights of two will end in a 9. One of those species will be the heaviest, at 199. We all flock to find it. If we know it already, then we all rush there. We've played for our bonuses, now we're playing for xp and a possible place on the podium. If someone is lucky enough to have 80% of their overall catch on the heaviest fish, then they will get a medal for it, as well as all of that xp from the heavy fish. That's when strategy dilemmas kick in. If your first fish is the heaviest, then do you rush about getting the other five? You miss out on the two medals and their boosts, but if you go, you might miss out on this one medal and the mega catch. There's no easy answer. It really does depend on the way the cookie crumbles and the good nature of your colleagues. I was in a game the other day when someone openly stated that they had the heaviest and they were staying with it. There was only me and him as veterans in there, so that left me considering my options. I could rush around getting all of the combos. He could stay at his spot until the very end, then rush around, using my information to gain two medals. I would be doing this whilst nerfing my own game, because it takes time to do that and I'd be losing out. My decision was to get the combos anyway, but I noted mentally noted his name. I will never, ever do a game alone with him again. He's unreliable. I don't mind at all about the newcomers finding their way. They are the veterans of next week and so can freeload all they want this week. As they learn their craft, then maybe I will be the one hanging out at the heaviest catch until the eleventh hour. :P Usually though you'll witness a mass exodus to the site of the heaviest fish after all of the combos are found. I had to smile yesterday. The beach, with the heavy bass, was awash with purple dots. Behind us a lone white dot fished the river. He'd been invited into the party, but he kept ignoring us. He wasn't on the podium. Anyway, I hope that's shared my strategy and bigged up my favourite new minigame. It also explains why I disappear out of Canting for 20 mins every 90 mins. :P Canting ftw, of course, but for Fish Flingers, its Fishfling! We own.

I thought it was a fluke. On the first day that I Temple Trekked, I seemed to have nail beasts on every other trek. I was raking in the charms. Then it all seemed to stop. I wasn't even getting Fred Lay's estimate of 3-4 treks for nail beasts. It was every 7 treks, then they seemed to disappear of the face of Gielinor. In two days of practically no lifing the minigame, I'd gained only 20 charms. Before that, I was getting 60 charms per day for just a couple or three hours trekking. Then it happened again. Yesterday evening, I got the nail beasts five times in six treks. I was unbearable to be with! That was twenty-five charms in about 20 minutes. I had to log off then, as I was already running late for a meeting on another forum. Around half past midnight, I was falling asleep over my keyboard, but, as I went to close down the tabs, I paused over the Runescape one. It had been sitting unused for hours, but I figured that I'd just nip on to plant a seed up Trollheim, then go abed. I logged on. I was in Burgh de Rott. I could have teleported out to Trollheim, but that addictive niggling kicked in. One more trek... It happened again! I got nail beasts as my first event and it was rude not to go back then. Same thing, five nail beast events in six treks. In short, I got 50 charms in about 50 minutes (split into two, with a long break between). The day before, I'd only got 10 in hours of playing. I'm now sitting here with 286 talon beast charms, ready to make up on bonus xp weekend. Temple Trekking and farming is mostly all that I've been doing. I haven't even caught up with Shattered Heart fever yet, despite the incentive of a statue in my house. Canting has been full of people training everything under the sun, just to get the stones. I've managed the two for woodcutting and one for cooking. There are two farming stones in my bank, but I figured that if I wait until next week for those, I'll get more xp, as I'll be a level higher in farming. Personally, I don't want to spare one second away from Temple Trekking and farming, because I really, really want my herblore and summoning levels. Kitt Fox and Joshua Mack did loads of maths for me yesterday. I've been beavering away like the Sorceror's Apprentice in the background, so they kindly reckoned up the materials that I've collected, then astounded me with the answers. I was aiming for 80 summoning. It's going to be a lot more. I was aiming for 81 herblore. I think it's going to be 83. :lol: So yeah, if anyone's lost me, try Paterdomus or Burgh de Rott, world 83. You'll see me and Smecktacular eventually. He's always there too.

Your Temple Trekkers need YOU! Recently, I've been no lifing Temple Trekking. It's hard to concentrate on that and be in Canting, where many questions are directed at me just when I'm trying to pwn something big. Therefore I've been playing as a loner and slowly going insane under it. If I have the bog event again, I'm calling Amnesty International. In order to stop actually dribbling and rocking though, I've been keeping data. The official line: All Temple Trekking events are randomly generated. You can get anything on any spot. Any attempts at seeing patterns is merely paraidolia. The lumberjack top is no more rare than any other lumberjack item of clothing. The reality: There are patterns. They are randomised patterns, but there are definitely patterns. Also, though I have full lumberjack, I know that the boots and caps are dropped regularly. I've therefore taken to carrying a cap with me. When I get the lumberjack event, I drop the cap in order to no longer have full lumberjack. This means that I'll get another item of clothing now. I'll then pick my hat back up. Since no lifing, I've got an extra 7 boots, 3 caps and 6 legs. No spare lumberjack top as yet. From my data so far, I think that: * the events, the rewards and even the lumberjack clothing drops are running on a cycle. * everyone in the same world will be getting the same events. * the cycle keeps on running while you are off banking/praying/cooking food for your noob etc. I just need to prove this. Two experiments that I want to run: 1, Two people, at least, in one world set off together, same route, same noob. Where possible, they keep synchronised, communicating via the chat channel. Simultaneously, at least one other person is doing the same in another world. Ideally, there would be someone in every single other world, but just one or two would give us a hint. Rationale: I want to prove that we're all getting the same event inside one world. I also want to discover whether world hopping is worth it. If every world has the same cycle at the same time, then you're better off sticking with one that has a low ping count for you. 2, Lists of events. It would be helpful if those doing Temple Trekking would keep lists for me with this information: a) world; b) time started; c) which events you got per trip; d) the rewards (inc any LJ clothing); and e) any comments (ie teleing out because you got another bog event). Rationale: I want to see if there's one big cycle, perhaps a 24 hour one, longer or shorter. I want to see if, at any point, the patterns that I've already got noted start repeating themselves. Alternatively, I'm looking to see if there's a kind of packet of events. As in, at 'x' point on the cycle, you'll get a choice between 'x' 'x' and 'x' events, but you'll never get 'x' and 'x'. That sort of thing. I'll keep my own data in the comments here, so that it doesn't make this blog too long. If everyone else could add theirs too, then that would be groovy. In the long run, it might save us all hours of trekking. Thanks in advance. ******************************************************************************** Area saved for conclusions (to be added in when we have any): Josh and I synchronised our treks on World 83. We did three runs. Run 1: I had the lumberjack event (and got a top) and the starving people event; Josh had the bog and nail beasts. On reflection, we didn't press 'go' at precisely the same time. Run 2: Josh typed 'go' and I pressed it. I got the tree zombie event. Josh got snails, then the tree zombie event in the same spot that I did. On reflection, Josh pressed 'go' as he sent the message, so I was a second behind him. Run 3: Another person typed 'go', so we were as synchronised as we could be. I got vyrewatch and Josh had no events at all. It seems that they're not the same events for everyone on the trek at the time.

TL;DR; - If you want Talon Beast Charms, use world 83, route one. Take the little girl from Burgh de Rott and the Woman-at-Arms from Paterdomus. I wasn't going to go Temple Trekking. After the collective wisdom of Canting had penetrated my skull about the insanity of attempting 700+ talon beast charms and the knowledgeable summoners had talked about better xp just getting more charms, then I put it on the back-burner. Kuemper had said, 'I'd not do any trekking because it's coming across as a big fat cherry on the Hassle Merch Gwyar sundae', and I was inclined to agree with her. However, my next main option was praying mantis and that involved, at the time, red flowers. I looked at my money situation, ever mindful of the fact that I still needed to buy shards. I didn't think I'd have enough money to both buy the mithril seeds and buy the shards needful to process the pouches. I decided to go Temple Trekking, not for 700+ talon beast charms, but just for a handful. Maybe 10 or 20, just to feel like I went for the big one to start. What I didn't anticipate is how much I'd get into the minigame. This happens occasionally, just look at me and Barbarian Assault that time. It's extremely fortuitous that it happened with Temple Trekking now. I didn't think it would happen. I'd played Temple Trekking ad nauseum over a year ago for my full lumberjack outfit. I swore at the end of that that I'd never be back. However, I was now getting nail beasts every other trip, not even the 3 or 4 trips anticipated by Fred Lay. The charms were stacking up. Moreover, I was collecting enough coal to smelt my addy ore; enough toadflax to match my prepared crushed nests; and other useful things. Experience tomes are always handy. Full of Pie is after raw fish at the moment for her 99 cooking plans and I was getting raw lobsters as rewards. Life was very good! After the end of about 2-3 hours, I had 60 talon beast charms and a pile of stuff to use/sell. I went into a calculator to see if that would help matters with my summoning levels. What I read there put a huge smile on my face. I'm not going for 700+ charms, but 80 would get my next level. 220 would get me to level 80 summoning. If I could get 60 in that time, I could get 220 by March 12th easily. Hydras! Here I come! Next day, I did all my real life things as fast as possible, then logged on. A quick farming run, using all the watermelon seeds from Temple Trekking, and I was back in the minigame. It was awful. After 2 hours, I had just 15 charms. I'd had the bog event practically every other trip. I kissed goodbye to the hydra dream and went farming instead. That's when I remembered something from my lumberjack outfit hunting days. The events in Temple Trekking are supposed to be random. There are some circumstantial factors, for example, you can evade anything but the bloody bog, the river and the zombies on route one; you can evade 50% of them on route two; you can evade nothing on route three. If you get something to fight, then the number of them depends upon your follower. If you've taken the highest level follower, then you get three assailants; if you take the mid-range follower, you get four assailants; and if you take the noob, then you get five assailants. For this reason, if you're after lumberjack items, then the strategy seems to be to take the highest ranking follower, so you can get those events over with faster. If you're after charms, then you need the noob. Then, if you get the nail beasts, then you're getting five charms at a time. This is all known, but what I was remembering now was the speculative knowledge. Going for full lumberjack involves either a tremendous amount of luck or else a lot of stamina. Jagex always denied, until recently, that the lumberjack top was harder to find than the other items. Over a year ago, when I was playing for one, there was a thread several pages long disputing this fact. People constantly listed how many trillons of hats and boots they had, then the lesser amount of trousers. There were woots when the top finally showed up. Very few people have more than one lumberjack top. Data flowed through this thread and some things started to become blatantly obvious. For a start, the events aren't random. The pattern of events seems tied in with certain followers and certain worlds. As each person was finally successful with the lumberjack top, we listed our followers, our route and our world. The same ones came up time and time again. If I remember right (and check this before using it as fact), it was the mid-range followers, route one and a certain world, where the most success with the lumberjack top occurred. Most of all, it was a world where the lumberjack event happened a lot. That's mostly what tipped the odds. With this in mind, I tried to recall what world I'd been on the night before. Usually I'm on world 84, as I was at that moment. I made a mental note - 84 is a world where the bog event happens a lot. The night before, I'd been in an auto world. That was likely to be a British one. I experimentally switched to world 83 and went Temple Trekking. In my first event, I got the nail beasts. They arrived with utter regularity thereon. I'm now sitting here with 121 talon beast charms in my bank. 60 came from the first two hours. 15 came from the next two, on the wrong world. The rest came from about 3 hours on world 83, where the event happens often. Route one, so you can evade anything but nail beasts (unless it's the non-evasive events). Noob followers, so that you get five nail beasts in one session. Incidentally, it also seems to be a world where you get Abidor Crank a lot. Happy charm hunting! Edit: Finished writing this, logged onto world 83, went Temple Trekking. Very first event: nail beasts.

I've never really taken much notice of the Gnome Restaurant. I hadn't even done the little test thing at the beginning in order to play it. I have a vague recollection of Pen Knee making a lot of deliveries at one point. Kayla must have too, because she gave me a present of some gnome goggles, years ago. It wasn't so much something that I knew was there and ignored, but something that I'd completely forgotten about. It came to the fore just recently, when the drops were tweaked to enable more mint cake to flood into the game. That caused the mint cakes to crash in street trading and the GE to be swamped with dispossessed players desperate to sell their stock. Even then, it never occurred to me to go and check the minigame out. That happened only when I was looking at the forums and saw a post whereby someone listed the items they had had as tips. It seemed that every other delivery resulted in a snapdragon. He had my attention. I started off reading Faradomir's guide 'The Gnome Restaurant', which included a tip about making two of every item on the menu. It took me an hour to do that using the recipes from Nogger Mint's guide. That's because I had to buy each item, read each recipe, then work out fundamental things, like how to cook them. Once I was in the swing of it, it took nothing like that sort of time to cook everything. I'm glad that I did have two of everything to start with though, as it did expose me to every recipe going. If I was starting again now though, I wouldn't bother. I'd just cook as the order came in. You can buy every ingredient, except for toads and worms, from one of two shops in the Grand Tree. The toads and worms are just lying on the floor around the back of the mound, upon which the Grand Tree grows. If you come out of the door, then around the back, head north-west down the slope, you'll see the enclosed pond, with the toads and worms surrounding it. With access to every teleport in the game, I mostly made my deliveries within the first minute or two. If I had to cook first, or if it was Brambickle, who lives in the middle of nowhere north of Trollweiss, then it might take me three or four minutes. I must have now done over 100 deliveries and in that time I've only come close to failing twice. The first was trying to find Wingstone, who wanders around the Southern Desert. That was basically just the logistics of finding one small gnome in a very large desert, but I succeeded with about two minutes to go. The second was in Falador Castle, with all of its dead-ends and no through ways. I spent a good five minutes searching the second floor, because that's where Sal's guide said the gnome would be. With time ebbing away, I came down the stairs again, meaning to head to the ground floor and cross the courtyard to the other side of the castle. As I descended to the first floor, I just happened to see my quarry walking by. *facepalms* Sal's guides are written in American English! The American second floor is the rest of the world's first floor. >< I was wise that that one thereon. At one point, Joshua Mack mused that it would be impossible to fail a delivery based on time. He muttered away about having way too much time to deliver everything and so started to challenge himself. He would only walk to deliver food from now on. LOL He didn't fail one. I am going to list my first 40 deliveries, just so that people can get an idea of the tips that you receive. Please note though that some of these rewards have been subject to firstly hiked up prices from street trading, followed by crashing prices, as Jagex made the tips more common. For example, the mint cake won't sell and neither, in my experience thus far, will the goggles. I haven't tried the scarf on the GE. It's still worth it, I think. The prices in brackets are the current GE price for the total tip. Basically I just used my price checker on whatever I was given. <_< Penwie - Chocolate Bomb - 2 Uncut Rubies (12,622) - 3 credits Prof Imblewyn - Chocolate Saturday - 8 Seed Pods (43,440) - 3 credits Captain Bleemadge - Chocolate Bomb - 3 Toadflax (16,053) - 3 credits Lt Schephur - Chocolate Saturday - 1 Snapdragon (19,520) - 1 food delivered token Wingstone - Wizzard Blizzard - 3 Uncut Rubies (18,933) - 3 credits Cpt Klemfoodle - Fruit Blast - 8 Mint Cake (139,672) - 3 credits Lt Schephur - Blurberry Special - 18 Addy Bolts (4,734) - 3 credits Cpt Ninto - Worm Crunchies - 3 Uncut Emeralds (13,728) - 2 food delivered token Cpt Daerkin - Toad Crunchies - Gnome Goggles (415,882) - 3 credits Cpt Daerkin - Blurberry Special - Loop Half a key (22,391) - 3 credits Cpt Bleemadge - Toad Batta - 3 Toadflax (16,053) - 3 credits Cpt Ninto - Worm Hole - Gnome Scarf (1,473,191) - 3 food delivered token GLO Caranoke - Chocolate Chip Crunchies - 3 Uncut Emeralds (13,728) - 3 credits Professor Manglethorp - Vegetable Ball - 9 Seed Pods (48,870) - 3 credits Professor Onglewip - Blurberry Special - 3 Uncut Rubies (18,933) - 3 credits Captain Dalbur - Spicy Crunchies - 3 Toadflax (16,053) - 4 food delivered token Lt Schephur - Chocolate Chip Crunchies - 8 Mint Cakes (139,672) - 3 credits Garkor - Drunk Dragon - 8 Mint Cakes (139,672) - 3 credits Cpt Daerkin - Short Green Guy - 1 Snapdragon (19,520) - 3 credits Cpt Klemfoodle - Spicy Crunchies - Tooth Half of Key (65,362) - 5 food delivered token Penwie - Drunk Dragon - 2 Uncut Rubies (12,622) - 3 credits Professor Imblewyn - Toad Batta - 7 Blood Runes (2,639) - 3 credits Professor Onglewip - Spicy Crunchies - 4 Uncut Emeralds (18,304) - 3 credits Ambassador Fernook - Worm Batta - 3 Toadflax (16,053) - 6 food delivered token Cpt Dalbur - Chocolate Saturday - 3 Toadflax (16,053) - 3 credits Professor Manglethorp - Worm Hole - 9 Uncut Sapphires (20,277) - 3 credits Ambassador Fernook - Spicy Crunchies - 1 Uncut Diamond (17,204) - 3 credits Cpt Bleemadge - Chocolate Saturday - 3 Toadflax (16,053) - 7 food delivered token Ambassador Spanfipple - Cheese and Tomato Batta - 10 Seed Pods (54,300) - 3 credits Ambassador Gimblewap - Blurberry Special - Tooth Half of a key (65,362) - 3 credits Cpt Klemfoodle - Spicy Crunchies - 10 Mint Cake (174,590) - 3 credits Cpt Klemfoodle - Blurberry Special - 23 Addy Bolts (6,049) - 8 food delivered token Garkor - Blurberry Special - 3 Uncut Emeralds (13,7280 - 3 credits Cpt Dalbur - Fruit Batta - 9 Mint Cakes (157,131) - 3 credits Brambickle - Tangled Toads Legs - 10 Seed Pods (54,300) - 3 credits Ambassador Spanfipple - Toad Crunchies - 14 Addy Bolts 93,682) - 9 food delivered token Cpt Bleemadge - Worm Crunchies - 8 Seed Pods (43,440) - 3 credits Professor Manglethorp - Wizard Blizzard - 5 Uncut Emeralds (22,830) - 3 credits GLO Caranock - Chocolate Bomb - 18 Mithril Bolts (2,034) - 3 credits Cpt Ninto - Chocolate Chip Crunchies - 9 Mint Cakes (157,131) - Food token maxed out

I hate PKing and therefore try to avoid it whenever possible. I don't mind it as a concept; it has to exist in the game to keep Sabre Grief smiling. When I don't like it is when I'm forced to engage. I ended up in a PKing world yesterday. Josh had many brilliant (and unsuccessful) ideas to storm the gates of the new castle, that appeared in the Wildy yesterday. Several members of Canting went up there to watch his attempts, myself included. The Fremmenik guards were having none of it. However, some kind of tannoy system must have sounded throughout Gielinor, screaming, 'Merch Gwyar is in PvP!' Because suddenly we had a succession of PKers scrambling over themselves to kill me. They totally ignored the like of Rilkar Spine, Dr Leviathan and Neo Avatars. I lost my camera the first time; my green hat the second time (don't fret, I have another 10 in the bank, Josh ensured long ago that I'd never run out of green hats); and nothing the third time. The third time was notable though, because at the exact second that I was killed, Aximili EI chose to connect me live to his radio station. I'm mid-expletive and he's saying, 'Merch Gwyar, you're live on the air'. My face was a bit like D: but apparently I'd faded in and out anyway. No-one mentioned it, though I don't know if there were any Welsh speakers listening. I might have got away with it. Anyway, that was mildly untraumatic PKing. I expected to die and I died. Just need to buy myself a new camera and reaffirm my vow never, ever to follow Josh into PvP again. What is annoying is the PKing in 'Stealing Creation'. I know it's part of the game, but usually I can ignore it. While vicious, little creatures snarl slaughter amongst me and my team-mates, our valient heroes defend and fight to cover our backs. >.> Just recently, I've been in a few games where there are no defending warriors on our team. The first game I had this evening was particularly bad. The other team were swarming all over us, while we were still on the collecting a fragment to make tools stage. The game must have started and they burst out of their base to immediately attack us. With fists and feet at this stage. A second swarm arrived with barriers. Suddenly every processor and source of clay for miles around our base was inaccessible. The original PKers were being handed weapons by their skillers, while we were bleeding all over the base floor. We were well and truly owned. We finished on about 5700 points... The next game was almost as bad, but we did have a couple of PKers defending us. Unfortunately their combat level was quite low, so they got beaten up more often than not. At least they were great as decoys. While the opposition was busy engaging with them, us skillers could get through with our stash of stuff once in every four attempts. You might be asking where my familiar and clay deposit scrolls were at this point? You're assuming that I could stay alive long enough to make one! However, towards the end of that game, when I'd started to give up on ever depositing another clay again, I pickpocketed Ice Cube Man. I found a lot of runes in my bag and I deposited them very quickly. Suddenly there was no Ice Cube Man. There was a smirking Merch Gwyar though. By the next game, I was on such a roll! For the first part, I skilled as normal. We had a full cohort of PKers this time, but they had bigger ones. (I did swop teams in the middle of all of this. That was a failure. I forgot what colour cape I was and tried to hide amongst a gang of burly PKers. They didn't do anything for whole seconds, then one commented, "You are absolutely nuts!" I kind of remembered what colour cape I was around the time that they were piling me. I only lost 600+ level 5 arrows and some level 5 barriers... and some tools... and a summoning creature... and some scrolls...) During the second half of the game, I noticed the usual routine starting. Me and the other skillers were now running the gauntlet of death and destruction. I made it through. I deposited everything I'd got, then walked out into the midst of the fighting. TWICE I stole all of the runes from the mages! I took untold numbers of food, potions and weapons. I became adept at hiding in clouds, when someone tried to kill me. I had trails of dispossessed mages and melee fighters screaming abuse at me, as I hurtled into my base. Our Pkers just picked them off one by one as they followed. It was fun. :D

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. :P 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. :P 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.

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!

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 :P) 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. :P 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. :P 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. :P 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! :P

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'. :P 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:

I have to say that I seriously respect anyone with a fire cape at the moment. I've just been in a marathon slog through the fight caves. It was easily 3 hours, if not slightly more, but Jad killed me. I was actually doing ok. I'd got him down to three-quarters of his health, but it seemed to me that my swopping prayers was more luck than remembering which actions matched which prayer. He hit me twice, but not for very much. I tried to calm, breathe and recall what Den the Men had told me not two minutes ago. But my head went blank and then I panicked. You can't panic at Jad. I did and so the inevitable happened. Even so, those in Canting at the time were saying that it was quite an achievement to get all the way to Jad on my first serious attempt. Many thanks for all of the moral support coming from the chat channel. There were many times that I was sitting there resting, keeping myself entertained with all of the conversations in there. Particularly thank you to Den the Men and Arcturus, who were waiting for me at the door, when I finished. It was nice to sit down with you both and have a bit of a postmatch analysis. I'm partially disappointed that I didn't make it, but only because I know that one day I'll have to do that marathon fight again. I really don't want to do it. It's just too long to be in one place and combat related things have never interested me too much. As I took on Jad, the reward foremost in my mind wasn't the fire cape or the 25k slayer xp, nor even the prestige that comes with such a notch in my sword. The reward would have been never having to go through another 3+ hours like that again. It just bores me. Mostly though, I am proud of reaching wave 63. Early on, I was a real noob at trapping and so I'd used half of my Sara brews by the time I reached wave 45. After that, necessity taught me to conserve my energy and rest between waves. Most of the last two hours was spent resting between waves. I do feel that I'm more experienced now and could have survived longer with more Sara Brews, if I'd known early on what I knew by the end. I also learned that I prefer the Long Rock to the fabled Italy Rock. Every guide bigs up the Italy Rock, but I found it far easier to trap creatures around the Long Rock. Just for the record, my worn and carried inventory were: Full Guthans (invaluable; I'd repaired it to 100% before I went in, so I knew it would last. It was a great asset); dragon boots; amulet of glory; black dhide body and chaps; barrows gloves; ring of recoil (this was an error, I didn't know that it crumpled after a certain amount of time); Ava's accumulator; Fally3 shield (in honesty, I didn't use it. I had it there as a prayer restore back up, but I didn't have time between waves at the end); 6 Sara Brews (I needed more); 1 range potion (I needed more); 16 super restore potions (I used an expensive majority of them, but brought some back out with); rune crossbow; broad arrows (did the job very well); and fully charged crystal bow (only got it out for Jad and I was too frightened to really note how I did with it). As for the latter, *waves to Tankmau5* Me and Tankmau5 met by the magic trees just outside Lletya. We were both after recharging our bows, but we'd both gone to the wrong place. I checked on Wiki and found out where we should have been, so we hopped back to Lletya for anti-poison, then went on a spontaneous expedition together to find Ifleen. It was short, but fun. Nice to have met you, cariad. Didn't we look great with our shiny bows afterwards? :lol: Edit: Completing the Fight Caves, including killing Jad, will leave you with just 8 volcanic creatures to kill in order to complete your slayer task.

I fancied doing something different yesterday morning, so I hunted through the guides trying to find somewhere that I'd never been before. The Werewolf Agility Course jumped out as the top contender. I logged in and rushed into Canting to see if anyone wanted to come and play. Tumbleweed rolled through the chat channel, as everyone was apparently sleeping off their hangovers. Undaunted, I set off to the Werewolf Agility Course by myself and chatted with the werewolf to see what I needed. I took some cake and lobsters, then had to go back for my Ring of Charos. All done, it was with great excitement that I set off across the stones. It got a bit old after the third curcuit, though the death slide was amusing to watch. It didn't take any great concentration though, so I opened up BBC iplayer and used the pop up. I caught up on all the programmes that I'm too deaf to watch without headphones. 'The Royle Family' and 'Dr Who Confidential' passed by before I got level 77 agility and left the werewolves to their course. It was fun, but the xp is better up Ape Atoll. I'm glad that I went though. There was still no-one in Canting, so I mused on what to do next. Pierito90wns filmed me for his skillcape video (it'll be on You Tube channel: TheKingRomio2), which had me in my costume room, seeing what costumes were missing. I decided to go to Pest Control and grab some points for one of the two missing Void hats. I only intended to get a handful of points, but Killler Fury invited me to a 115+ world and it was great! People didn't kill brawlers nor did they leave gates open. I'd got 100 points before I even thought to check on my progress. I disappeared to do real life stuff, returning several hours later to find myself automatically entering Killler Fury's cc. They were all still there! I apologised for being so long and dived back into Void Knight defence. However, the world had grown much bigger and had been leaked to the sort of people who leave gates open. It was still good, insofar as everyone was in the same chat channel, so the veterans could scream at them, 'Stop killing brawlers' and 'please shut the gate!' There were always a couple of people left in the lander, so they'd take over, explaining why these things were important. I still got the remaining 100 points very quickly. I was, however, exposed to an elitist phenomenon. There were several people who were very, very uppity about the fact that some people present were under level 115. We're not talking much here. The lowest levelled person whom I saw was 103, which is hardly low! They were turned upon like the Bacchae had arrived. Whenever it was my turn in the lander, I'd try to argue that it's not combat level, but game knowledge which is an issue. Who would you rather have on your side? A level 103 who knows how to play Pest Control; or a level 115, who just kills everything in sight, willy nilly, including the lured brawlers, and leaves every gate open? I would have an army of the former, trust me. I hadn't seen the Void Knight die once, but suddenly he started doing it three games on the trot. Each time, it was because all three gates were open and we defenders got quickly overwhelmed, but the cc erupted. It's the fault of the 100s! (What about the level 129, who killed a brawler being brought up the stairs?) Anyway, the general present gave into peer pressure and moved us to another world. The games didn't change much for it. LOL They improved dramatically though, when it was suggested that anyone leaving gates open or killing brawlers get kicked from the cc. When Killler Fury and another general returned, it was with amusement to find that we'd hopped. 'World gone bad?' 'No.' 'Oh! You gave into the whingers.' ':)' All in all, I really enjoyed my sojourn into Killler Fury's chat channel. I'm outing it, as I doubt that it'll be up for another day's Pest Control. He was there most of yesterday and only after Void armour. Which is a pity, as I still need the Void Mage Helm, in order to have full Void. Some congratulations were in order though as, late in the evening, M4gic S0ul got 99 attack. Some of us left the boat to go and share his moment. Congratulations again!

.... .... .... Ok, talk me through this. What do I need to buy/take to make it to Jad? How do I kill him? And what in the name of all that's holy was I doing accepting that as a slayer task? >.> Oh yeah, it's because I was under the influence of watching solo the corporal beast, when I logged on. Oh dear. In the other news, I had a first yesterday. I crafted my very own amulet of glory. It took a Crafting Potion to boost me enough to make it, but even so, I still handcrafted my own glory. I'm so proud. :D

I've been ridiculously close to a hitpoints level for days. It's dripping down from 13k to, currently, 5k. I decided that I really want this levelled before I next face the KBD, on the basis that you tend to fail more close to levels. I could go and see him with a shiny new 85hp, instead of the tail end of 84. As I'd enjoyed the last game of Castle Wars, I figured I'd do it there. After all I ultimately do want enough tickets for posh armour. Last time I whinged about Castle Wars, I had people telling me that it's not about the killing per se. It's about strategy. I don't want to be a noob in this game. I want to be useful to my team. Most of all, I want to be on a winning team, which would be more likely with me helping constructively, rather than being whatever the Castle Wars equivalent of a brawler killer is. To start then, I entered a team at random (the blue team) and set about asking advice of the other players. Here I am with 82 range, a bow and some arrows. Where would you most usefully deploy me? The first person I asked had CWer in his name, but he confessed to being a noob there too. I was directed to someone who apparently played it 24/7. His advice? Just kill all of the brown people. Brown? >.> Then we were in the game, so I translated his advice into 'red-cloaked people' and went up to the range platform. It was how I've got through the majority of games. Up there, ranging any of the opposition who come into view. However, I was being observant. I was looking out for the things that thwarted our team. Someone came up and set fire to our catapult. That interested me. I went into our storeroom looking for the means to do it. The Molotov Cocktail seemed like the way forward. I took a rope and one of them, then went underground to their castle. I was soon killed. However, my inventory was intact, so I went over the stepping stones, ninja-ed across the back and threw the rope up their wall. I managed to blow up their catapult before I was killed. An even bigger annoyance was the fact that our large door was constantly left open. I noted how many red-cloaked players regularly streamed through it; one in particular often reappeared a couple of minutes later with our flag in his hand. He was out, alongside the back wall and into the mists towards his stepping stones. I called several times for people to close the door, but no-one was listening. They were too busy getting out into the middle battlefield, getting killed, then repeating. I listened to my own advice, went and collected a couple of barricades, then closed the large door. I'd just got the two barricades up, when a level 77 player appeared beside me and promptly destroyed them both. She opened the door, left it open and it was away. Before I could even get out a 'stop!', I was trampled underfoot by a herd of high levels, stampeding through the door. They didn't even bother to kill me first, they just carried on and up into our castle. We lost that game. By now, though, I had my strategy. I positioned myself, not on the range platform, but just outside the large door on the battlefield side of it. Every time that door was opened, I closed it. There was a steady trickle of the opposition players coming to see it, then rushing off around our castle, through the bombardment from above. Occasionally, one stopped to kill me, but mostly they didn't. Mostly they took one look, then raced off to find an alternative route. Once one killed me then, once I'd returned, I discovered that he'd somehow broken our door. I tried to repair it, but found that I needed a toolkit. I grabbed one of them from the storeroom and fixed it easily. Thereon, a toolkit in my inventory became something I always picked up. Realising how effective this defence of the door seemed to be, next game, I called out to everyone in the waiting room. 'Please can you close doors behind you? They are our defence. Lock the small door and close the large door.' To my shock, it worked. Every time I died, I ran to the small door and 9/10 times, it was locked. I'd then run to the large door and it was closed. As I was stationed by the large door anyway, I noticed that people tended to close it after themselves, after I'd shut it in their faces a few times for loitering. Open, run out, close. If you open, then stand there posing, you're going to end up with a door in your face. I was also almost constantly fighting. Opposition players would come to my door and find it closed. They'd then run away, returning less than a minute later, presumably upon finding the small door locked too. Then it was a battle to the death. Usually, I was alone, but towards the end, I ended up with a small group of people helping me defend. We were winning 5-0 when, in the closing minutes of the game, a player named ganon3999 started expleting. 'Stop closing the ******* door! Noob!' >.> I calmly responded that it was our defence. He argued that it was slowing our team down. I replied that, if our flag holder comes through, I open the door for him/her. Ganon3999 wasn't having it. He demanded that the door be left open. There ensued a door spamming. By which I mean that he opened it, I closed it, he opened it, I closed it, etc etc. After he'd let through a few reds, I went on a rant. 'Do you want the red team in? Why don't you weave them a welcome mat as well? Please come in, red team, let me make you a cup of tea, while you steal our flag. You are all very, very welcome.' The red-cloaked player, whom I was currently fighting, thanked me for that. He appreciated the sentiment. Ganon3999 replied, 'Yes, we do want them in.' He argued that the door is no defence, as the opposition can open it. I responded they can only do so with difficulty. They have to force through it, breaking it open, they can't just click onto it, as we can. He didn't care. Another door spamming ensued, during which both sides had clear access through. Fortunately, the game was in its dying seconds and so it was all academic by this point. I did explain to Ganon3999 that he was quite ridiculous and I was screenie-ing him for my blog. He was quite alright with this and asked me where my blog is, so he can see it. Unfortunately the game ended before I could direct him into Sal's. Oh well.

I've finally got level 80 prayer. It's been so bugging me, sitting amidst all those level 82 combat skills. Then there are all those strong rumours of Jagex bringing in high level prayers, which I'm guessing are going to start at level 80. I got nearly 80k prayer xp today though to make it happen. Today is only the coda of weeks of a war of attrition on my prayer xp though. I've been randomly picking up bones and burying them every day. If I see a bone, it's picked up and buried. Then, a few days ago, I was on one of my habitual bank clearances, which involves processing raw materials into stuff. I had 13 turtle shells, so needed 13 gold charms. I took my whip to the ogres that live just outside the Yanille gates. They don't drop as many gold charms as I'd previously thought. It took about 120 kills to get my 13! However, that did leave me with loads of big bones to use on my gilded altar. I even had a random in the middle of that session, with the xp lamp going on prayer. I've also had days when I've been into Soul Wars, though three games is usually my limit. After that I tend to get Dying at the Hands of Clans Fatigue, that well known syndrome. Yesterday though, I spent those three games with friends. Wolfhe came into the first game, but didn't like the minigame, so left thereon. AquarianPixi and I stayed on and it was fun to experience Soul Wars with a friend. Those 15 seconds in the graveyard go much more quickly, when you're canting. I logged out then to do real life stuff. When I came back, I logged straight into Canting. Several round of Soul Wars just whizzed by then. It was also wonderful to welcome the gang from Blesschat: Im Matman, BlessTiz and Aramil112, who were then followed by prolific blogger, Timothy Gold. Alongside the familiar Canters, like Teacuptime and Tarsan, they all kept up such banter that I was entertained through several Soul Wars rounds. Thanks all. By the time I logged back on later, I'd worked out that I only needed 12 zeal to secure level 80 prayer. That's only four games on the winning side (or twelve on the losing side, obviously). I logged into Canting again, but there was no-one in there, so I came out again and concentrated on the games. That was an error. It was late and I was getting tired, so I got irritated quite quickly by the freeloaders. Usually, freeloaders don't bother me too much. If they can stand to be bored stupid for 20 minutes, then I can stand to cover their low levelled, little heads with my arrows. Fine. However, something quite unusual was happening with these rounds. We were drawing. No less than three times in a row, those bouts ended in hard-fought draws. By this I really do mean hard-fought. Right up to the dying minutes, we were rushing around doing whatever was needful to ensure a draw, whether that be running to fight or defend an avatar, collecting bones to raise the health on our own, rushing to the obelisk or fighting to the death in some far-flung corner. Pyrefiends and jellies were almost lost in the battle for fragments, with others rushing over them snapping up bones. Moreover, ownership of the obelisk seemed to swop with dizzying speed, spending more time in the hands of neither than either. I often rush straight to the graveyard, when entering, so to secure it until the hordes of dead players keep it in our possession until the end of the battle. However, for many of these bouts, I was pretty much stationed there. Waves after waves of high-levelled opposing players kept coming. Ice Cube Man was frequently amongst them, making it difficult for our warriors and collectors to even leave the grave without ending up back in it for another 15 seconds. In response, many of our own high-levels were making constant forays over to their graveyard. The fighting was ferocious, constantly. I'm simply not used to Soul Wars games where it actually feels like some almighty teamwork is going on here. In short, I'm not used to evenly matched teams. Moreover, I kept seeing the same names, on each team, as if loads of people were sticking with one colour. The activity in the waiting rooms didn't support this. I still saw the titans and bears crossing from colour to colour, as the clans swopped and changed. But it didn't matter, the draws kept on coming and it felt, inside the battleground, like a lot of people were sticking to one team. My patience with the freeloaders was lost after a particularly close shave. The opposition had the obelisk and our avatar was sinking fast. I'd given up on defence and I, along with no less than seven other players, were rushing out collecting bones and careering back to bury them. Buried bones have a 50/50 chance of healing our avatar or else doing nothing. The health raises the slayer level needed to do damage upon him. I'd been out to the jelly compound and had a full bag of bones. I was running back, when two 130+ players pounced on me and killed me. I waited 15 seconds, then ran out again. I picked up all of those bones that had been dropped when I died. I ran back. The two were still in view. They encircled like velociraptors and killed me. A third time, I raced to reclaim my bones. I got them, I fled, I buried them. The result was that it raised the health of our avatar just above the apparent level of their highest level slayer. With just 2% health left in him, no more damage was done and our team had the obelisk back. I was so proud of myself! But while all of this had been going on, three freeloaders were standing just outside the graveyard, up the back. Earlier on, I'd spotted them and exchanged pleasantries, as I killed an intruder just the other side of the wall. They were only little things, with an average level of 30-40, and had built themselves a barricade. I had no idea how they were keeping themselves from being kicked out of the game in there. There was nothing I could see that could raise their timer strip. By now, their barricade had gone, but while we had been collecting bones, our graveyard had been so over-run by the opposition. You need to have a critical mass of people in there. It doesn't matter if that person is level 3 or 138, if they are inside an area, then their presense counts. People were so worried about us losing the graveyard, that there was a chorus of people screaming, 'don't leave the graveyard until you have to!' or shorter variations on a theme. While they were in the inner sanctum, nothing but time could touch them, but their presense was keeping the graveyard for us. Meanwhile, our freeloaders were standing a single square outside the graveyard, on its wooded side. They were right by the gate. They were no safer there than one step inside, only their presense wasn't being counted. I did ask them to step inside, with the promise that I'd defend them. They refused. Another time, I explained to them that it was a safe game, they wouldn't lose anything. They knew. I have to admit to cheering when Aviagotmybar and 1 love Scott, two opposition players, rushed in and killed them. I was too busy attacking the barrager, Facepunch, to even think of intervening. Then came that crunch time, when all were rushing around collecting bones. It didn't matter the level. People who might have been more usefully deployed up the obelisk or rushing their avatar, were out and around the graveyard collecting and burying bones. I'd just done my thrice reclaimation of the bag of bones and the avatar was saved. With the obelisk in our hands and our avatar regaining health, there was a brief lull. I ran around to the gate and leaned out. 'Excuse me, would you mind collecting bones please?' Knickers Ltd, Oh G O D and Aww Luv U 2 paused in their scintillating conversation, about clothes and some girl they disliked, to stare at me. You could practically hear the 'eeewwww' in the air. Aww Luv U 2 huffed, 'Yes, I do mind actually'. Then they continued with their conversation. Our avatar had just survived by the skin of its teeth and they were acting like they were doing us a favour just by being present in the trees. I counted to ten and ran back into the melee. Our people had stripped the entire land hereabout of bones. I thought of that great depository of them, the obelisk itself. I dashed up the slope, in anticipation of the next twist of fortune, when having plenty of bones ready would be a great boon. It naturally wasn't to be. I was immediately targetted and set upon. However, I have reasonably high defence, so I had time to gush out a request of the dragon clawed player laying into me. 'King Heathen, will you do me a favour?' 'What?' He asked, as his claws sounded my heartbeat in my ears. '3 noobs behind the blue graveyard. V obnoxious.' I died then and my retribution prayer took him out too. But he'd got the message. Less than a minute later, I was engaged in hand to hand fighting in my graveyard, just a few squares from our freeloaders. I glimpsed a familiar red apparition looming up around the corner. It was King Heathen, all in dragon armour, with his dragon claws still dripping with my blood. He stalked around me and behind the wall, where Knickers Ltd, Oh G O D and Aww Luv U 2 all died a moment later. Of course, King Heathen then returned and killed me, but with my dying breath, the words floating above my head were, 'Ty! <3 you, King Heathen!' Another honourable mention should go to Il Sp3ck Il. I met him as I was rushing to try and kill his avatar, but only got as far as the jellies before the avatar died and my bow was surplus to requirements. I decided to randomly start shooting at a higher level, who was fighting in Bandos and therefore probably was less concerned about my iron arrows, than with the dude with the Godsword in front of him. As I ranged away, suddenly I became aware of a level 47 player hitting me. 'Eat my Os!' Il Sp3ck Il proclaimed, taking me on quite alone. I just burst out laughing at his comment, then got the giggles and could barely see the screen. I could have taken out the whip, that was in my bag, or swopped to higher level arrows and pwnt him easily, but I just had to respect the lad. He was here with little hope of success, coming out with really hilarious comments, as a thorough antidote to the three freeloaders I'd just left. I let him have his moment and his xp. I just hit other people, until Il Sp3ck Il's colleagues appeared and piled me. It was all good. It was such a sweet feeling to leave there and cash in zeal. 80 prayer ftw!

Before I start, a huge happy birthday to Kuemper. :( :( Over my first cuppa and smiley face, I decided to do a farming run. I arrived at Trollheim without a seed in my bag. A player named Neo Ulfy was there, pulling nine ranarrs out of the ground, while I was there just staring at my patch going, 'Mmm'. :( It gave us a laugh anyway. After trying that again with a seed, I meandered over to the Canifis patch, where three out of my four crops were dead. I figured that this was Guthix's way of telling me to stop farming and go and do something mindless instead. Like Soul Wars. My previous strategy at Soul Wars has been unthinking, which isn't to say that a lot of thought hasn't gone into it. Mostly I'm there agonising over which team to join, because 3 zeal > 1 zeal. That's often just me looking to see which team has the artic bear, because that's generally the winning team. If there are no artic bears, then look for titans and golems. If it's big and spitting stuff, like water or fire, then that's the one to follow. Unfortunately, by the time you've spotted bears and their ilk, you're a few seconds late getting into the waiting room. This renders you standing around being told that you have a higher priority to enter for about half an hour. Once I'm in, I've taken to hanging out around the obelisk. If I'm on the losing team, then that's not for very long, as I tend to get pwnt within seconds. Therefore I have a game where I'm constantly clicking on barriers and being told to wait for 15 seconds (15 seconds is a lot longer than you'd think), rushing up a ramp, dying, clicking on barriers being told to wait for 15 seconds. It's not been condusive to gaining range xp. If I'm on the winning team, then that's better. I stand there pwning people and often manage to stay alive to do so for whole minutes. Sometimes even longer. I often get to the stage, late in the game, where I'm picking up bones, just to stay in said game long enough to get my three zeal. Soul Wars is only fun when you've been playing a lot of Castle Wars. The comparison means that you're just grateful for any bone tossed in your direction, even if you're a loser. One zeal > no Castle Wars ticket. Today though, I re-evaluated this situation. I arrived at Soul Wars midway through a game, so let Guthix decide which team I should join. It was obviously the losing team. Thrown out at the entrance graveyard, I could see my team's avatar in his death throes next to us. Sighing, I took my bow and arrows into the mix and let them fly. Against all expectation, we were holding off the clan-heavy, high levelled other team. In fact, right up until 6 minutes to go, they hadn't quite managed to kill our avatar. He languished on a slither of health for ages, until one of their level 138s came running in with a Godsword and it was all over. I decided to stay with the same colour team. Yes, we might be losers, but I was right next to the entrance to that waiting room and eventually the clans would have to swop into my favour. That's my first big change to how I play this game. I'm going to stick with one colour. The clans swop colours at random times, so I will be right as often as I'm wrong. Plus just nipping into the nearest waiting room means that I'll always get a game, even if I'm losing in it. While I was standing there, I had a quick look to see how much range xp I'd got and I was pleasantly surprised. Because my arrows had been constantly flying, instead of stashed while I regularly died, I'd got three times the range xp that I normally had. Wow! Second match, I ran straight into my avatar's enclosure and waited. I knew in advance that I was on the losing team, as I'd seen an artic bear heading into the direction of the opposition. Basically I was here now for one zeal and as much range xp as I could squeeze out of the minigame. Bring on your level 138s! I need to shoot them! I didn't have to wait long. We were quickly beseiged and thus ensued the most frantic battle I've been in since Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf. It was madness in all its forms. The ground beneath our feet was slippery with the debris of bows and swords, bones and arrows littering every square. It was easy to know where to shoot. I'd right-click the melee of players and aim at anyone whose combat level was red. It never failed. They were the opposition. Remarkably, despite their artic bears and red numbers, we were holding them off. Right up until two minutes before close of play, they hadn't killed our avatar. Ok, so we hadn't had control of the obelisk once either, but we were fighting for a draw now. No word, of course, there were no generals on the noob team, but each avatar killer was piled, while other players raced to set up barricades and bury bones. I kept seeing our avatar's health rising, then falling, rising and falling, rising and falling. You could sense the shock in the air, over cries of 'nooobs!' and 'wow!' As the bookies would have lost a fortune predicting the outcome of this. Then it was over. They rushed us a second before the latest barricades were up and our avatar died. One minute to go, they had won. It didn't matter. I know that it should have, because I went from two to one zeal in one synchronised swooping whoosh of a dozen Godswords, but the sheer exhilaration of that fight had me gagging for more. Usually, by now, I'm forcing myself into a third game, as an hour of Soul Wars is generally my limit, with the last one played through sheer will. This time, I raced as fast as my mouse could press, into 'our' team. After two matches of near misses, it was 'my' team now. However, the artic bear's team followed and suddenly I entered into two games where we won. Strangely, for the extra zeal that generated, it wasn't so good. There was none of the excitement of the rush. I had to race from my avatar's side to quickly find someone to kill, as my green timer went down to a pus coloured orange-yellow. In short, the winning teams were boring. So here I am, re-evaluating Soul Wars. I'm usually only ever in there for prayer xp, which is what I spend my zeal on. I generally whisper a quick prayer to Guthix before going in, just to have the stamina to survive more than one game without losing the will to live. Now though, I'm almost excited to go again. I'll stick with one colour team. If the artic bear's gang happen to be in my team, then I'm playing for zeal and ultimately prayer xp; if they aren't, then I'm playing for range xp and a lot of fun defending the avatar. :D