August - The Days of Wine and Roses

Dungeoneering Guide

It is a great joy to announce that we now have a Dungeoneering guide out! Many of us never thought we'd see this day, but it's finally here. For those unaware of the situation, the Dungeoneering guide was in production hell for about four years. This is not terribly surprising. Considering the complexity of this skill, one that is often compared to a minigame, a comprehensive Dungeoneering guide is much more difficult to create than those for other skills. Many authors started the guide and then quit due to real life, leaving an incomplete guide. Eventually, the content team came together to take bits from the guides we have to create the guide that is now on the site. Thanks to Finisterra, iWild, Jacky, Rene and Wheeeeelsun, who were authors of the guides we used to complete the final draft.

The project is not done, however. Even though a basic guide being up, we still have to complete a full puzzles guide and Dungeoneering boss guide. Content team member O hai im KAMIL has started a submissions topic where you can submit puzzles and boss strategies. If you'd like to help out, see this topic. All needed submissions are listed clearly, so you can easily find out how you can contribute. And worry not; freeplayers have access to much of the content as well!

Around the Forum

Yet another invasion

On the seventeenth of July, Phoenix Rider set out to put an end to an age-old question: "Which Pony is Best Pony?" The arguments were fierce, and philosophical scholars across the land joined in to add greater complications to the discussion. While some acted upon the metaphysical proposition that the only true answer is not to participate directly in the debate, others went with a definite choice. Notable candidates for best pony included Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie. However, the question did not, and perhaps never will, come to a close.

In completely unrelated news, forum member Zooey set out to put an end to an age-old question: "Which Teletubby is Best Teletubby?" Sand Nagger generously contributed a literary masterpiece, a work of fan fiction titled "Snape Meets the Teletubbies", to provide greater insight to the discussion. In the end, it appeared that Po was a popular choice for "Best Teletubby", but a conclusion hasn't quite been declared.

Nitua's Troubles

Forum member Nitua recently posted a status containing some appalling news. He had "successfully managed to break [his] RS client." Of course, those who are familiar with the literary prowess common around this forum will understand that he was, in fact, being sarcastic when he said "successfully". That's right; Nitua's actions had, much to his dismay and very much against his will, caused his RS client to break! Such irony indeed! When will his tribulations end!?

But Nitua is a man (I think) who knows no bounds. When an impossible task is placed upon his shoulders, he takes it upon himself to solve it at all costs. This particular burden mimicked that of Atlas himself, yet Nitua set out to surmount it.

Against all odds, though somehow as expected of our beloved Nitua, he had prevailed! In declaring his decisive victory, he posted the heroic yet mellow followup: "Aaand its fixed."

We are currently arranging a kickstarter to make a movie out of Nitua's adventure.

Insult a Boss!

Ever wanted to do more than just kill a boss? Now you can!!!! Check out M a ss a's topic to have a little fun with your favorite boss.

RuneScape News

Legacy Mode Implementation

Earlier this past month, Legacy Mode was introduced. For those who have not read the last newsletter, Legacy Mode is something of a replica of the old combat system that will work with the EOC/combat abilities system. The player will have the option to pick what mode they wish to play on through the game options tab. Switching between EOC and Legacy mode is nearly instantaneous.

Overall, the update has received positive reviews. Many enjoy the relaxed feel of the mode. The general trend is that players use Legacy mode for slayer and skilling while most use EOC for other activities. According to a Jagex moderator, 30% of the players use Legacy as their main mode while many others use it occasionally. The update also seems to have brought a number of players back to the game. RuneScape activity levels seem to be about 5,000 or 10,000 more players online than they were before the update. More players is certainly what the game could use, and in this regard the Legacy mode update has been a success.

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

Vampires have only four fears: garlic, Buffy the vampire slayer, gaming companies that spell their name incorrectly, and a big spider that lives in Morytania named Araxxor.

There's a new boss on the block and it's a spider. Visually frightening for those with arachnophobia, Araxxor is one of the toughest bosses Runescape has seen yet. The boss is level 2500 has three phases - each of which has 100,000 life points. After the third phase, Araxxor gets replaced with another spider called Araxxi, which is level 3000 and also has 100,000 life points. After defeating Araxxi, the player is left with a drop. Each phase gets tougher, and by the end of the fight with Araxxi the player is dodging jumping acidic liquid, firing off abilities that deal with other spiders which wish to cocoon the players, dodging swipes by Araxxi, and of course attacking the spider. In total, there are 23 fight mechanics Araxxor/Araxxi has to offer.

The spider interestingly allows you to choose which path the fight goes. There are two paths which have different fight mechanics and also a third path which offers a variant of the other two paths. The fight can be done either alone or with a friend. If you choose to fight with a friend, the spider will become twice as strong and you'll have to deal with everything two times over. So it's not exactly easier.

The rewards from the spider include new tier 90 two-handed weapons: The noxious bow, noxious scythe, and noxious staff. The noxious scythe acts as a halberd (can attack opponents from two squares away) and each weapon has a special attack which reduces and reflects damage for 10 seconds. These weapons can be created by putting three spider leg pieces together to create a spider leg and then adding this to another spider part. This mechanic is similar to creating the godswords.

There has been criticism of this boss - namely the 200,000 GP instance fee for fighting it. This fee more or less forces people to fork over 200,000 coins each time they fight it, along with supplies, considering the one non-instanced fight is usually very crowded. Many players are calling this an obvious attempt to drain money out of the game and reduce inflation. The rewards (excluding the weapon pieces) also do not reflect the 200,000 GP instance fee and time spent on the boss. Overall though, the reaction has been mostly positive and high leveled players are excited for this new challenge.

The Upcoming Month

This August, the Plague City quest series will be completed with the release of Plague's End, a grandmaster quest requiring 75 in ten different skills plus a few quests. There also will be improvements to clans and clan avatars and boss slayer, where Death himself will assign players to do his dirty work. Keep your eyes peeled for these updates.

One Year of Skill Competitions

This past month we celebrated our one year anniversary of holding weekly skill competitions. Regular competitions had been attempted in the past, but this is the first time there was success. To commemorate this, the site held an overall competition with overall experience counted. -Leaf- won the competition with 9,768,072 experience while xSmiley420 and Gocart came in second and third, both with close to 7,000,000 experience. Good work to all competitiors!

We'd like to use this opportunity to thank Doom, Micael Fatia, and Dei Wei for holding these competitions. Special thanks to Hunter, Zooey, and Army of One for creating skill competition banners and again to Zooey for occasionally creating banners advertising the competitions. Skill competitions are continuing to be held on a weekly basis. We are also looking into the possibility of having competitions based on something besides skilling (such as monster kills) to zest things up. Be on the look-out for these new options.

The Most August Roman Emperors

Here's the totally undebatable list of Ancient Rome's coolest emperors on the block, written by a guy who did kind of well on a history exam one time.

Octavian (Caesar Augustus) - First off, he ruled for a whopping 41 years. Plebeians those days were lucky if they lived five minutes outside the womb. Second, he probably only died of natural causes! (Because, you know, for the next 8 emperors, inclusive, about 7 were either murdered or committed suicide.) And who else could've maintained stability after Julius Caesar made all those radical political changes?

Constantine - Even if you aren't a fan of Christianity, Constantine definitely did more good than bad. He reunited the empire after some wimpy dongpipe named Diocletian was getting too lazy and decided to split it. Constantine wanted none of that shizzle, and welcomed the casus belli with which he could assert his manliness. His greatest accomplishment was at the Battle of Milvian Bridge, in which he was outnumbered several times over by Licinius (id est Captain Buttmunch). After having a vision, he decided to paint a cross on all of his soldiers' shields, an action that would make them lion food back at Rome. Naturally, Constantine won a decisive victory, and went on to rule Rome and do some other fun stuff like accidentally murder his son, inter alia. Although he was a Christian fanatic, he issued the Edict of Milan ex gratia, making all religious practices legal.

Marcus Aurelius - Before Marcus Aurelius, Rome had long been undergoing its "Golden Age". However, we all know that gold makes for terrible armaments. The Romans were all chilling out, unproductive and decadent, hanging out at the Lupanar, et cetera, while the barbarians on the northern border were sharpening their clubs for battle. Marcus Aurelius was the only one who saw the threat, as even the legionnaires had been several generations from any combat experience. In order to fund a military campaign against the Germanics, he cracked down on tax-avoiding patricians, sold some of the worthless ornaments of the imperial palace, and then stole those back from the tax-avoiding patricians to sell again. Before long, Rome was secure once again with a formidable northern boundary. However, those who saw the movie Gladiator know that his son and heir, Commodus, was a total ab asino lanam, whose laziness lost the Roman armies their edge against the barbarians.

Trajan - This guy's territorial expanses were comparable to those of Julius Caesar, and his infrastructure comparable to Lyndon B. Johnson's. Rome was at its horizontal apex by the time Trajan was done kicking buttocks. Unfortunately, his killing streak stopped when he failed terribly in invading modern-day Afghanistan, which is apparently a detail unknown to many other leaders throughout history.

Hadrian - Ain't no wall like Hadrian's Wall.

Tacitus - Tacitus was another guy who took the initiative and reserved a front row seat to beat up filthy philistines. After decapitating a reasonable quantity of Goths, he rightfully gained the hardcore title Gothicus Maximus.

Claudius - Considering how screwed up things were at the time, Claudius deserves some credit. His evil predecessor Caligula, who once tried to make his horse a consul in order to secure his power (unfortunately unsuccessful), left things in a rather miserable state for everyone. Claudius was only the fourth emperor yet, and two out of three of the previous ones were totally quisquilian. Claudius took the throne, somewhat against his will but still de facto, and helped improve precarious territory that was still ridden with filthy barbs.

Nerva - Nerva's position was just a filler spot for two years, so he didn't really do anything bad. But not doing anything bad is quite a compliment considering how many personae non gratae there were among Roman emperors.

Gordian I - This guy solved the Gordian Knot. Wait, you're saying he had nothing to do with that? Well, he has nice facial hair, so let's keep him here.

And that's 10! Wait, that's 9. Okay, here's some other guy:

Horatius Cocles - According to the National Latin Exam every year, this guy had some really important relation to a bridge. And according to this picture, he apparently was either 12 meters tall, or artists didn't know how to use perspective back then. Also had a nice Bismarck mustache.

Clanning in Legacy

Considering Sal's Realm once had a substantial clan community (surpassed only by Zybez), we thought we would delve into the future prospects of clanning now that Legacy mode has been put into place. We'll also mainly discuss freeplay clanning, which was much larger than members clanning. To test this out rather than just theorize, we set up a make shift group of members to act as a clan. The clan spent most of its time in high level wilderness locations, such as Greater Demons and Moss Giants.

There are several differences from EOC clanning. The first (and most notable) thing with Legacy clanning is the lack of the action bar. This allows you to type without having to interrupt your attacks. This was one of the biggest problems with EOC clanning and is no longer an issue. Another (more general) difference is gear - rune scimitar + rune kiteshield is no longer the top choice. Two handed weapons are generally better as freeplay can't dual wield. New gear (magic shortbows, batwing) has been introduced into the scene. Elemental staves also provide no defense bonus now and thus are useless to tanking. So visually clanning will look different.

The hotspots for activity are also not the same as they were. Earlier hotspots for group PKing included Greater Demons and the Hill Giants area around level 20 wilderness. Now the two big hotspots seem to be Rune Rocks (which is single zone) and around Moss Giants (multi zone).

There is still a big problem with Legacy in that DPS (damage per second) is still rather high. Although not as high as EOC DPS, Legacy DPS is significantly higher than pre-EOC DPS, which will be an issue when tanking a multitude of people. Food has not been adjusted well to this; food heals either the same as it did pre-EOC or less (in the case of anchovy pizzas, which heal only 68 per bite instead of 90). To counteract this, freeplay food needs to be buffed or new foods need to be introduced to freeplay.

Will clanning make a comeback in Legacy? It's possible, but not likely. The aforementioned DPS problem is a major issue. However, there is bait large clans can go after. From our brief experience in the wilderness, it appeared that high level wilderness was plagued with large yet unorganized groups of PKers (comparable to welfarers) that could easily be extinguished by an organized clan. Will the great clans of old find themselves in the main game again? We'll have to wait and see.

If you would like to read more about the small PK trip we had, you can read Guitarguy's exposé on it.

Yolk of the Month

_{^{Huh? What do you mean, it isn't yo- I'm fired!? I've been making these for almost three newsletters, now! You can't just- Oh, sure, go ahead and call the police. Real mature. Oookay, I'm leaving. Noob.}}

Contributors