Runescape Mage training tips, alchemist playground

Drawrof visits again and saves my butt since I haven't been writing properly myself lately!! I promise I'll get some entries in that I've written, soon!!

In the mean time, here's some info on the Alchemist Playground from Drawrof :)

"I spent some time in the Mage Training minigame. In particular I went to the Alchemist Playground. I took a fire staff and 100 natures. What I thought would be a short trip ended up lasting a long time. Here was my stategy.

1 - Casting High Alchemy gains 65 experience.
2 - Waiting for "Green Arrow" allows for all of that indicated item to be converted for free.
3 - I would accumulate 8 of a particular item, those that had not been given the green arrow lately.
4 - Every now and then I would convert 30 without the arrow.
5 - the items are sorted in the cupboards in clockwise order, according to the list (Boots, Kite, Helm, Emerald, Long) So if you are looking for a long and you find a helm, more 2 cupboards to the right and you will find the long.
6 - do not save coins for big deposit. Your computer may crash and you will lose all the coins. Therefore it is best to continue to deposit.
7 - although Im level 69 mage, this method is best for a level 21 member mage. The money that you collect for low alch compare to high alch is the same. Therefore the magic bonus of 2 times the money deposited is the same.

Result.

With only 100 Natures I was able to deposit over 10,000 gp. Averaging about 10 gp per cast, or 1000 high alchs.

total Experience:
1000 High Alchs- 65,000
10,000 gp X 2 - 20,000 bonus
total 85,000

Yes you do not get the gps of high alching mith armor. However, most mages high alch at a loss. This method takes discipline and some time. However, you can cast an infinate number of alch spells with only 1 nature rune and 5 fire runes in your inventory.

This makes mage advancement abosolutely free after level 21 for all members. If you were to do the same for low alch at level 21, you could be level 45 in one after noon. try it out. "

Wow, that's quite the advancement strategy! Any other comments on Drawrof's suggestions?

Runescape Mining Tips for low levels and non-members

Drawrof has got some more great advice, this time aimed towards non-members and low level players:

"A couple of tips (low level and f2p)

1.) make sure you are naked (no equipment), wielding pick axe, and have an empty backpack. You should always mine a full load of 28 ores for each run. Raise attack level accordingly so you can wield highest possible pick.

2.) DO NOT MINE ORES YOU JUST LEARNED TO MINE. Although mining iron gives more experience than copper or tin, the competition for this product is much greater. Iron can be used for steel and iron products. So before you leap to mining and smithing iron, keep with the copper and tin for a while. Firstly, you will most likely have higher mining skills than other cu and sn miners, so in highly competitive areas you will get the ore more often than not. Secondly, you will fill your back pack much quicker. Even though you get less experience per copper or tin or than iron, you will get more experience because you will mine more.

ie. spend 20 minutes competing with other iron miners in SW Varrock, attempting to fill backback gets you 28 iron ore(980 mining experience) and avg. 14 iron bars (525 smelting/smith experience)

or spend 20 minutes mining 2 loads of copper and 2 loads of tin in SW Varrock, you get 56 copper and 56 tin ores (1960 mining experience) and 56 bronze bars(1047 smelting/smithing experience)

I am assuming that you will have less competition and will acquire more ores, because you can mine them faster. The numbers are theoretical and no actual numbers, and are used to illustrate a point.

3.) If you are mining lessor ores then do not be afraid of busy worlds. The more players in the world the faster the ores will respawn. If you can mine copper and tin in World 1, chances are that all the rocks will be vacant. "

Thanks Drawrof for your continued contributions!

Fast Runecrafting of Mind Runes in RuneScape MMORPG, comments and questions

Qopitar has some feedback and some questions. I'm not much of a runecrafter myself (boring, too much running back and forth) so anyone who has good answers, feel free to post a comment!

Qopitar wrote

"I was finally brave enough to try the wilderness r... I was finally brave enough to try the wilderness route while crafting minds and wow, what a difference! The wilderness route is *much* quicker than the normal Falador route.

Here are some tips that might make things safer for you:

When you try this route for the first time, do it naked! This way, you risk nothing but a trip to Lumbridge. If you run this route properly, you will never encounter aggressive npcs.

Go to a "market" or "running" world. People typically go to world 1 to buy and sell stuff, not to pk. I ran this route on world 66 (member's law running world) with no trouble at all.

Along the same lines, wait 'til late. Less players = less pkers.

While running this route, I always made sure that I had 50% run left in case I needed it.

I ran the route "naked" so I was only risking the essence or runes I was carrying and could maximize my running time. I read some advice that suggested one wear the best ranger class armour that one can. This makes sense to me as it's light and a mage pker using snare or entangle is your biggest threat. Maybe body armour, legs, and a decent, light weapon? Any advice from someone more experienced here?

These are just my personal thoughts and opinions, but keep in mind, I'm a rookie!! Let me know if you have any tips or I got it wrong.

One thing that I need to learn more about is the escape routes while running this route. Right after leaving Edgeville, I'm pretty sure that if I ran south, I'd end up in the Monk Sanctuary (which is good). Moving further west, I don't think one would want to run south and end up in the Black Knight's fortress, this would be bad, right? "

Yep, I think people in Non-Member worlds are looking for unaware people to wander by the Black Knight's fortress so they can PK 'em!

Members high-level Runescape Mining Tips

Wow! Drawrof strikes again with more great information!

Drawrof1 / Drawrof writes

"Mid to High Level, member advice.
Please note that I am a level 90 jack of all trades.

I have the following stats:
73 attack (can wield rune pick axe)
72 mining (can mine adamite)
62 smithing (can smith mith kite or mith claws plus draven stout)
57 crafting(can craft Diamond Necklace but never do, i make rings of life)
67 Magic(High Alch and Enchant Diamond or Dragonstone with magic pot)


Here are some Tips
1.) Follow the yellow brick road. Having completed the Family Crest and the between the rock and... quests, one has access to very quick smithing experience. Choose the Gold Gauntlets from the brother in the scorp mine and you now gain 56.2 smithing experience for each gold bar smelted. This is a little less than the combined smelt/smith experience for a mith bar. However, one load (28) gold bars gives 1574 smithing experience, while one load of mith(5 mith and 20 coal) gives 400 smithing experience, admittingly it take less time to smelt. Futhermore the gold mine in the between a rock has tons of gold and takes no time to fill backpack.

2.) Superheat Swamp Mith Sorties.
Wield a fire staff and ring of dueling, carry in back pack rune pick, 24 nature runes and Lumbridge Tele runes. Tele to Lumbridge, take short cut through fence, and run to lumbridge swamp mine. Normally this mine is pretty empty. Now mine the 5 mith rocks, and then the coal while waiting for respawn. When you have 4, 8 or 12 coals, use superheat to make a mith bar. Continue to do so until you have 24 bars. It will get tight at the end so you may have to drop one or two bars for a bit to allow for 4 space for coal. Once all mith is full, fill two more spots with addy, mith or coal, then unwield ring and tele to CW. Note if you are wearing the Ammy of Glory make sure you bring a chisel. You get experience for cutting gems, and you may as well if you are going to drop the gems. Just drop your chisel when things get full.

3) Maximize your High Alchemy.
When you are smithing an item, make sure that it make the most bang for your buck. Smithing experience depends on bars smithed rather than items created. 1 bar items increase in value, then you can create 2 bar items, however it sometimes makes more sense to continue to make 1 bar items because they make more money. Note that I dont put a value on the cost of a nature runes for I counteract this with the magic experience I gain from casting the High Alch spell. It is a personal choice. I also runecraft my own natures.

So for example. at level 55 smithing you can smith a 1 bar mith Sword or a 2 bar mith Scimitar. When you high alch you get 507 gp per sword or 1014 gp for 2 bars. However, the scimitar only gives 624 gp. This is a 390 gp deficit. Which if you allot a 300 gp value to the nature, it pays for itself and give bonus magic exp. So look to smith items that give max. high alch values for there bars. Certainly avoid the "first" step ups in bar categories.

eg. Mithril bar level maximums.
1 bar - Swords (507 gp per bar)
2 bars - Sq. Shield (468 per bar)
3 bars - 2-H Sword, Skirt or Legs (520 gp per bar)
5 bars - Always more value in a category, Platebody (622 per bar)

AVOID
2 Bars - Scimitars and longs
3 bars - Warhammers and Battles Axes"

Great stuff!!

RuneScape Player Market not player-friendly

Now, don't get me wrong - the Player Market is where all of my major cash has come from, so I know the Player Market WORKS for getting some kind of value for your goods, but I'm just saying that it's not a system that is all that friendly to players... especially new ones, or ones with slower connections or computers.

Over the Christmas break, I gained access to a 10-day trial membership for World of Warcraft, and as I've advanced and explored, I've gotten a chance to see their solution to, and support of, the Player Market.

You see, the Player Market isn't anything that was really planned into most Role Playing Games... it evolved partially because of the introduction of unique game items for which the in-game shops didn't properly reflect value. Party Hats, for example, sell for a mere pittance at the shop but we all know they go for millions when sold directly to another player.

Unfortunately, it looks like RuneScape has chosen the "unique items are now untradable" route instead of realizing the inflated values of unique items is a symptom - not the problem itself.

In WoW, the Player Market is recognized as an integral piece of the game and it's been given programmer time. There are Auction Houses in the capital cities where players can buy and sell from other players.

There's no mass hysteria in the banks with 20-50 people using Autotypers like AutoHotKey (which are illegal to use of course, but who wants to type "Selling 1k mith arrows for 50k" over and over and over in a busy bank?) .

There are expensive items, but because multiple players may be selling the same item, there's no word of things that sell for stupid amounts of money.

Plus, the Auction Houses are useful for regular every day players. They're not intimidating, either - you bring your items to the auctioneer, he sets the minimum bid price and you set the buy out price (to end the auction early and get the items right now) and then you go on about your business which even includes logging out, because the mail system on World of Warcraft enables the sending of money and items.

Of course, the mail system likely wouldn't work as well on RuneScape if directly applied, because of the very big difference of how WoW has chosen to handle player-to-server load compared to RuneScape.

But it really does fit together well, and makes for a more pleasurable experience for those who don't want to stand in a bank and watch the scrolling text to catch someone trying to trade them for the items they have for sale.

I wonder if RuneScape is planning to spend some programmer time figuring out how to make that whole process easier and more relevant for everyone? That's the only time I've ever wanted to have an AutoTyper (which is against RuneScape rules to use)...

RuneScape Mining Tips

Here are articles written in this blog as of January 13, 2005, that have to do with the topic of Mining on RuneScape. There is also crafting information tied in, but mainly the topic is Mining.

• Gaining Wealth in RuneScape
• Strategies for Handling Competition in Skilling Areas
• RuneScape Mining Provides Good Wage
• Wilderness aka Wildy
• Fast RuneScape Mining Experience and Related Fast Cash Opportunity
• Coal Trains: Becoming RuneScape Member, Valdesta's Reason #3
• Quick RuneScape Money Running Runes
• Mining And Working With Iron
• RuneScape Tips, Air Runes and Iron Ore (Gyros)
• RuneScape Quick Experience Crafting Tips (Drawrof)
• RuneScape Smithing: What Should You Make?
• Question About Raising RuneScape Crafting

Member Runecrafting advice from Drawrof1 (fire runes)

Members get a lot of benefits that Non-Members can only drool and dream about. Some of these things make it easier for Members to do things than it is for Non-Members. Here's one of those tips, from regular reader and commenter, Drawrof1 :)

Drawrof1 says:

"Member Runecrafting experience is gain fastest by the Fire Rune/Dueling ring circuit.

1.) From any bank with dueling ring in backpack and wearing Fire Tiara, withdraw 27 ess. (also fill all abyss pouches)

2.) Rub dueling ring and tele to Al Kharid.

3.) Run north to Fire Altar, create fire runes.

4.) Rub dueling ring and tele to castle war.

5.) Deposit runes in bank

6.) Repeat 1 to 5

I find this technique is great for raising runecrafting levels for high level crafter/mages who have access to the Shilo gem rocks. I never have a shortage of emeralds or dueling rings in the bank. The creation of the rings give experience in mining(both gems and gold), smelting(gold), crafting(cutting gem and ring), and magic(Enchant Jewelery level 2)."

:) We love Drawrof1!

Additional runecrafting thoughts, from Drawrof

Regular reader and commenter Drawrof / Drawrof1 has a few things to add about my initial Basic Runecrafting Guide post. Check it out!

Drawrof1 writes:

"Firstly, you must decided if you are in the rune crafting business for making money or facilitating your mage advancement.

If it is about money, stick to mining ess. You can get 20 to 30 gp per ess, with the higher end associated with 1K plus inventories. (Rune Crafters dont want to waste their time with small orders) Making money in the F2P worlds from rune crafting is tough at best. Firstly, the elemental rune, air, water, earth and fire are cheap. This is mostly due to the fact that staffs replace their role. However, the most common of these rune is the Air. Most spell requires an air rune. Secondly, Mind Runes are required for the "strike" spell and are good for early advancement of magic. However, the demand for this product is quickly deminished when the mage advances to the "Bolt/Chaos" and "Blast/Death" which can make a rune crafter good money. However a f2p rune crafter does not have the luxury to craft either chaos or death runes. At the end of the day, you can mine ess and sell it for 20 gp. Or you can mine ess, then run to an altar, make a rune and sell it for 20 gp. So unless you are planning on becoming a member, do not rune craft for money making, just mine ess.

Rune Crafting for Mage advancement ,on the other hand, for the f2p world is beneficial. Even if the air rune are only 20 to 40 gp that mean a 1000 airs will cost some 20,000 to 40,000 gp. This is pricey stuff to advance a level. Unlike advancement of skills such as mining, raising mage cost more than what you gain at first. Making money as a mage occurs at level 54 with High Alchemy. It take alot of spells, ie rune to reach that lofty goal.

So mine your own ess (Several K's), make your own air and mind runes (try to maximize efficiency by making airs when you can make 2x's then switch when mind are 2x's etc), and buy a fire staff. Then get busy killing stuff that drops runes, (dark wizards south of Varrock are a nice start)

Drawrof1"

As always, thanks for sharing the excellent info!

PS, Drawrof1: Wow, congrats on the Zammy plate from that treasure trail!! Nice reward for the dangers you had to face, for sure!!

PS: Others who want to read what I'm talking about, check out the comments on this post about PKing.

Video Game Design Degree(!!) - Online Education

Happy New Year!

Since we're all gamers and have all probably thought about how cool it would be to make gaming more of a "lifestyle" and "career choice" than a hobby, I thought I'd share this site, which talks a wee bit about some of the video game schooling options available for those of us who like to take our degree programs online.

Also, on a similar topic, there's a blog on Blogspot.com (where I used to host this site before I got my own domain) that is getting a lot of attention in Sydney, Australia. The article linked here says something about "Granny Gamer" - check it out.