Assist System
Have you ever wanted to make that one item that was always levels away from you and your friend just keeps bragging how he loves to keep smithing or crafting? Well, now you can get a friend to assist you with your skills! With the new update released by Jagex in November of 2007, you can actually "borrow" other players' stats while giving experience to the person assisting!
At first thought, you may think that you can go around assisting people all day and night for an easy 99, but it's not that easy. You actually can only earn 30,000 experience per day by using the Assist System. So it would make gaining experience a little easier, but actually doing the skill yourself is probably better. That's because if a person had 4 farming, and wanted to assist someone who wanted to plant a yew tree, they wouldn't be able to because they only had 4 farming, not the required level. Now, let's learn how this works!
Getting Started
Now, as anxious as you are, the first thing you probably want to know is how to start all of this great stuff! Well, right you are, so we must begin! Now, go get a friend who has the required stat of your choice in one of the skills that follow:
Skill Restrictions
Now, in most cases, there are going to be some restrictions to those skills as some of the things you can do in skills do require quests for certain objects. For example, if you do the Knight's Sword Quest then you have the ability to make blurite items. If the person you are requiring assistance from has not completed the quest, you wouldn't be able to make it. You would also need to complete the quest, so you wouldn't need to get assistance for that. Below is a chart with all the information you will need.
| Restrictions on Skills | |
|---|---|
| Skill | Restriction |
| Construction | You can only create Flat-Packed items. |
| Cooking | You can not cook any food from gnome cooking. You also can't cook lava eels. |
| Crafting | You are not able to make demonic sigils, lightning rods, or silvthrill rods. |
| Farming | Do not have the ability to plant bushes, cactus, or calquat trees. You will not be able to harvest your crops if you don't have the required amount. You will need to find someone to assist you so you can harvest. |
| Fletching | You can not fletch ogre arrows. |
| Herblore | You can not make Sanfew serum, Guthix balance, blamish oil, Magic essence, or Relicym's balm. |
| Magic | If you require help with lunar spells, make sure your spellbook is set correctly, You can only cast the following spells: |
| Runecrafting | You will only be able to craft multiple runes per essence, only if the person you are assisting has a high enough level. |
| Smithing | You must have completed the Tourist Trap Quest to smith darts or the Death Plateau Quest to smith claws. You can't make blurite items. |
Now you know a lot about the Assist System now, correct? Well there are a few other notes that you might want to know. These are pretty well set down, and pretty logical. These are to not make the game a one click option sort of thing. These things range from getting inside a guild or free players using member skills. You can find these special "notes" below:
- Free players can not be assisted with member skills.
- You can not assist people with a quest, Task, or Activity.
- You can not access skill restricted areas (i.e. Guilds).
- You can only earn 30,000 experience in a 24-hour time frame. Once you have earned your 30k experience, the person you are assisting will not be able to gain your assistance and the text in the Assist Interface will turn Red.
Using the Assist System
Now you know everything about the Assist System, except for one detail. How to use it! Now, it's fairly simple. If you want to be an "assister," someone who helps other people, and in return you get the experience that they earn, you would just have to wait for someone to "Req assistance" from you. You could also go around saying that you'll assist people. If you are a person that needs help, you would try and find a friend or someone offering assistance, Right-click on them and select the option "Req Assistance," which will then send a message to the person, in pink lettering, letting them know that you need assistance. It works exactly like trading. All you do is click on the pink message to accept, or ignore it to decline.
Now, you must be wondering, "I really don't want to assist people, I'd rather play. I do not want to be bothered by people." Well, like all the different interfaces at the bottom near the chat box, you can put your Assist System "Off" or on "Friends" to make sure no one will interrupt your game play.
One of the bad parts to using this system is that the person assisting you has to have the window open the whole time that person is assisting you. Once exited, you will then cancel the assisting time. But, you can watch your experience go up in the box, which honestly is kind of boring. So when assisting you might want to listen to some music from your iPod and keep watching and spinning the screen around so you don't log out. This will make time fly if you have a lot of music. But remember, you only can earn a maximum of 30,000 experience a day from everyone you assist, not just one person.
![Assist system xp display [all skills disabled]](https://salsrealm-assets.salmoneus.net/images/tips/assist-system/assistdisplay1.gif)
Now, in order to let the person "borrow" your stats, you must have them turned on. To make it easier on yourself, click on each one so you don't have to do it separately each time you assist.
![Assist system xp display [all skills enabled]](https://salsrealm-assets.salmoneus.net/images/tips/assist-system/assistdisplay2.gif)
When being assisted, in your bottom right hand corner, the following symbol appears: 
When you "borrow" another persons stats, you see basically a "soul" version of them/you going into the other players body, like shown below.
Now obviously, if the person you are assisting wanders off and tries to do whatever they are trying to do while you still have your assist window open, they won't be able to do it because they weren't in the 20-square radius. So, make sure the person you are assisting knows to stay in that specific area while they get the items they want.
Now that we've covered the obvious, go on RuneScape and start using this wonderful tool! Have fun, and remember asking for money or gp to help someone is highly suggested against, so do not do it. These form many ways of scamming. Now, go and help some people out!