Dungheim runecrafting

To craft a rune in Daemonheim, you will have to have rune essence. This can be gathered from the drops of monsters about Daemonheim. With rune essence in your possession, you can make your way to an altar - one of which is likely to be in the starting room of your dungeon - and convert the essence into your choice of rune. 


The above is a quote from the RS knowledge base. Below this quote there is a table which states how much/little xp you gain when crafting runes. For F2p this is a first: They now can craft member runes, albeit they can only used within the confine of Dungheim.


The table is as follows:

Now, this table is straitforward. You craft a cosmic and you get 1.6 xp per essence crafted.


Eh,..... No.


Craft 1000 essences into cosmics and you will get 160 xp, not 1600. In Jagex's mind 1000 times 1.6 equals 160. I guess this has to do with the fact you craft 10 essences in one go. 


But at least it clarifies the cock-up with 'double xp weekend'. They just don't know how to do easy math anymore. So let me help them along:


1*1=1         1*2=2           1*3=3           1*4=4           1*5=5
2*1=2         2*2=4          2*3=6           2*4=8          2*5=10
3*1=3         3*2=6          3*3=9           3*4=12        3*5=15
4*1=4         4*2=8          4*3=12         4*4=16        4*5=20
5*1=5          5*2=10        5*3=15         5*4=20        5*5=25
6*1=6         6*2=12        6*3=18        6*4=24        6*5=30
7*1=7         7*2=14        7*3=21        7*4=28       7*5=35
8*1=8         8*2=16        8*3=24        8*4=32       8*5=40
9*1=9         9*2=18        9*3=27        9*4=36       9*5=45
10*1=10    10*2=20      10*3=30     10*4=40     10*5=50


Maybe Fnord could take a look at this and correct either his kb article or his formula. Since formulas don't seem to be his strong point, I suggest to alter the kb article: That only involves changing words, not a formula. I think there has been enough trouble with maths since the introduction of Dungeoneering.

Dungeoneering, next installment

When I say slayer is a slow skill to level most will nod in complete agreement.

Should you do some calculations it would look like this: For every xp-point gained in slayer you would gain 4 xp points in a combat skill (or combination of skills) and 1 1/3 xp point for Constitution.

Slayer is not the slowest skill anymore, Dungeoneering is... According to RuneMonkey Simple gained 68,725 xp today. Since RuneMonkey does not have the skill added and because it would take the xp amount from high score I needed to do the math.

In other words, from that 68,725 xp I need to deduct the amount gained in all other skills to arrive at the xp-gain for Dungeoneering... I did that... With a staggering result: 778 xp gained...

Or, for every xp-point gained in all other skills I get 0.01145010081386963368507807555889 xp point in Dungeoneering... or I need 87.34 xp in all other skills to gain 1 xp point in Dungeoneering... Staggering, absolutely staggering.

Dungeoneering continued...

"Do not judge an addition to a game until you have experienced it yourself, until you have extensively undergone this addition."

This was a remark a friend of ours made a few years ago when K. was playing another MMORPG, and had problems with an addition to that game. I guess the same applies to me when I am playing RS at this moment. I truly would like to extensively research this new skill.

But up to now one thing is holding me back: I don't get it. Playing both Simple and Gwala has it disadvantages but at the same time one can learn from the other. So after Simple got her level up to 7, Gwala was about to do the same.

The complexity of the dungeons we can master is level 6. This basically means all skills are involved when traversing the room-system. I don't mind that: I will get xp in those skills which will benefit them, mostly this holds true for Gwala. What I still have to figure out if this is really the way to play: It took a staggering 4 hours of play to finally get access to floor four. With that came the amazing amount of 734 xp for Gwala and 726 xp for Simple. That is total xp, not the amount gained during those four hours, mind you.

The funny thing about this: The total amount of xp gained in all but dungeoneering amounts to 33,214 for Simple and 13,886 xp for Gwala. Gwala even got a Runecrafting and a Firemaking level from it.

So I now have a question: Should I keep playing with complexity at level 6? I really have my doubts about it and thus am going to switch to level 1... Combat only.

The other question in the back of my mind: How the hell did I get 13k+ xp with only one dungeoneering level to show for it?

One other thing: There is a basic flaw in the skill: Monsters drop stuff Gwala cannot use... and a lot of it. It took two tries traversing a level three floor to open doors: I do not have the capacity to use green, crimson, and blue charms these critters kept dropping. I need gold ones...The same with seeds, herbs, and secondaries.

Oh, I took one pic to help Slei out: Mining a wall to get a stone in order to carve an item which needed to equip a statue

I forgot something:

REMEMBER, THIS IS A SAFE SKILL, IF/WHEN YOU DIE YOU WILL NOT LOOSE YOUR ITEMS.

RS 3 has arrived!!!!!!!

Or, RS2 has a new skill.

Dungeoneering it is called. Picture this; enter a closed area where you can't take anything related to all your other  skills, and play a game. A game that will gain you xp in all those other skills I just mentioned. Outside this enclosed area you will NOT benefit from this skill, other than by the rewards bought from the reward trader.

When one fletches an arrow, range will benefit. When one cooks a lobster, cooking will benefit and with the end-product your fighting will become easier, your thieving not as life threatening as it can be now. With mining your smithing will benefit and consequently your combat, as a bar can be turned into armour.

But not with this new 'skill'.

More akin a mini-game, this skill even supports an honest-to-god waiting room... Waiting room??? In a skill???
Within this mini-game skill you will need all your present skills in order to survive, at least that seems to be the case at higher levels. You need to be able to smith your own armour, make weapons, fish for food, farm for food, cook, fletch, you name it all skills are there. You will even get xp in those skills when you use them.

However, since this is not RS3 but RS2, how am I meant to see this new skill?

What can I do with it, when using it in combination with other skills? At level 6 presently, I cannot see anything usefull. To be honest I haven't looked at the rewards yet. But if the knowledge base is anything to go by you will need to buy the effects helping other skills by buying them off the reward guy. And you will need a lot of tokens/money to do so. Money won't be an issue, tokens will be.

I'll reserve the right to review my present opinion of this new mini-gam/skill; I do, however, feel this is more like an introduction to RS3: A new RS where you would need around 105m xp for a skill cape at level 120, you can choose to play as a loner or as a member of a team, where the wild has been abandoned completely, where quests are something completely alien. In other words: Where RS2 will be killed off.

The only thing one needs to do now is to wait till Jagex introduces Classic2

Ranting again

And now the end is near, and so I face...

Well, not exactly. Last week I had seven full days of free, nearly uninterrupted time off, and thus I played a bit more than usual. Of course this yielded some results. I'm chaffed to bits by 73 range (maybe even 74 as I write this before the end of the free-time period). I think I need not explain that range is my favorite combat skill.

Range, however, does have some drawbacks when compared to magic or the melee style of combat. I think I did rant on that a bit before this, but I still don't understand why some people think range is overpowered. As of this moment my combat level is 76, of which three levels are due to 24 summoning. In the olden days the fabled 23-23 hit with a magic short bow was enough to convince the average warrior range was way overpowered. That this combination rarely happened was not taken into consideration, the numbers are there so it has to be true.

Well, not really. You see, where a special attack with a ddp has an increased accuracy, the mage short attack benefits from a decreased accuracy. Not to mention the fact the special bar ends at 4 attacs for the ddp and 2 for the mage short. In all, that fabled 23-23 takes 99 range and a lot of luck.

I'll readily admit the blokes at Jagex towers have changed a bit in favour of the ranger, whether it is enough I don't know.
Most warriors counter any arguement with a number of 'facts': Range is cheap, Range doesn't need food, Range has loads of weapons to choose from at low levels, and a number of other bullshit facts. I'm not going to repeat my counter arguement but: Range isn't cheap, range does need food, and the weapons are limited. Should you be interested you can find it here (a bit dated but still valid).

So, why would I want to bring this subject up again you might wonder. Well, like I said, I've been playing a bit again. And, to me, it looks as if the differences have increased instead of decreased. Little me with 76 combat was given a Lesser Demon assignment. Next to me was a level 78 warrior fighting the same critters with a Godsword. Now, in order to wield said sword he must have had 75 attack, and thus was 2 levels up on me on his highest combat-skill level. So he would be able to kill them faster... But a 3 to 1 ratio? Seems RS is still favoring the warrior.

As is made evident with one other update: Hex crest and Focus sight. Ever made your own slayer helmet? No? The procedure is quit simple, add all available head gear for the slayer into one object. Piece de resistance was the black mask (another warrior item :P).


Now two new items can be added. But not on their frigging own. You NEED to have both to add them to the slayer helmet. For heavens sake, why would a ranger need a black mask added to his helmet? Why would he need a fucking hexcrest? 

A RANGER IS A RANGER, NOT A WARRIOR WITH SOME ADDED BONUSES.

Serious Jagex, if you take your game seriously, you better get your combat triangle update out there asap...


Oh one more thing, got past 1200 total. Guess I will get my goal of 1250 before the end of the year :P

A wild goose chase

I guess you could say I am running around runescape like a headless chicken at the moment. Here I was, minding my own business in Tirannwn, happilly killing Elves since Chealdar ordered me to do so. I am one of the types that does what one is told. Number 31 of these warriors was so kind to drop a clue scroll. Since they are level 3 I just had to follow the trail that would lead to great treasure.

The first four steps in the trail went off without a hitch. The next one got me in a bit of bother, and the reason for the headless chicken part. You see, I have to access the Southern part of Karamja, and there is only one way to do that: Hack your way through the jungle separating the 'civilised' part from the legendary part.

Legendary part. For those who didn't get the refference: In order to gain access to said part of Karamja one has to start Legends. And that is where the trouble began.

In order to start a quest one has to meet the requirements of said quest. For legends that means a lot of skills in the 50's area and a few 'must have' quests to boot. Safe to say I do not meet those requirements. Not skill wise, nor quest wise. Hero's quest is one of the req's as is Shilo Village. And I didn't get around doing those 'till today. Hero's I hadn't done because of one big reason: One needs to have a buddy in the opposite gang from the Shield of Arrav quest. Since I am, by nature, somewhat shy to holler for help I haven't gotten around doing it. Now I had to. Charging glories always has been a simple task. Now, for the first time in ages, I looked at Simple's quest list, more specifically Shield of Arrav, and made an astounding discovery: She is in the opposite gang.

Worries over, I set out to collect a Feather, an Eal and a wrist band. The first two were no trouble at all. The third one only marginally harder, courtesy of a 6 year old laptop, not fit to handle the stream of bits and bytes that constitutes Runescape. In the end it was all ok, and I now am able to charge my own glories.

One quest out of the way and one more to go. Shilo Village.That one took a bit longer, much longer actually. When you do something from memory you tend to forget things. The first thing forgotten was a torch, needed to throw down a fissure. Ah well, a quick teleport to Ardougne, a brisk boat ride, a visit to the jungle shop close to Tai Bwo Wannai solved that problem. Notes gathered and back to Truffles... (I know, not his name but close enough) only to find I missed something: The gallows and the corpse hanging down from it. So back to Zahadum, collect corpse, and a visit to Truffles once again. After that Cairn Island and finally Shilo Village was another quest for the books.

So, quest worries over it was time to look at the skill requirements, 52 mining, 50 smithing and 50 crafting are the ones missing. Since I can change my gauntlets to benefit from smelting gold it would only take 523 ores-turned-into-bars to take care of the smithing level. Mining would only need  294 ores to get to 52. Crafting would need 800-something gold amulets to get to the desired level. So a shortcut was needed.

And I found one, two 10k lamps. That is why I am running around like Wyandotte Miracle Mike. I am doing people favours. Small Favours no less.

55 slayer... but one achievement this day beats all

Yup I got my 55 slayer. So now the Slayer staff, broad arrows and broad tipped bolts are available. As are Kurasks and Turoths. Kurask I like, which is diametrically opposed to the way I feel about Turoth. Yes, they do drop some decent amount of herbs. But its a pain to bank.

Today was also the day Kitt Fox got her well deserved 99 range. Sadly I wasn't there when it all happened. But it is great she got it. So, once again Kitt, Congratulations on a job well done.

Big fish, small fish. Small net, big net

At times I don't get the way some graphic things are done by the blokes at Jagex Towers. Or even the reasoning behind the how and why of certain things.

Fishing is one of those examples. When we start out we obviously start with a small fishing net. This net catches shrimp and ansjovis. A bit later on the level list there appears a big net. This one catches mackerel, cod and bas. Tasty, healthy and, as the level-logic dictates, the next step in the fishing (r)evolution. Were you to look at a picture of both the nets and the catch all makes perfect sense. The size of the catch increases with the size of the net (even though most fish are larger than their instrument of death).

But at 62 it goes haywire. At that point the small net is used to catch monkfish. Large critters they are too. Larger than the net even. So how does that work? Catching tasty, high healing fish with a net that is physically too small to even hold a mackerel.

Take a look at this picture. On the left the fish you can catch with the net next to it. Big monk, small net. Compare that to the fish caught with a big net next to it. All those fish fit their doom machine. So the question is: How do monkfish get themselves in such dire straits when all they need to do is swim a tad faster to avoid being caught?

Well, that is only the question for the day, should you know the answer, however far fetched it might sound, let us know.

With regards to the adventures of both accounts I did some questing. Even started ME2 on Gwalagwic. That, obviously, lead to some trouble. The maze has one big, big problem: Shadows. Praying against them obviously helps and thus they can be overcome. Not so with agility: Fall down and you get hit. Enough to hit a large dent in 61 hp (or 610 constitution points, if you preffer that). This means food to heal. But the inventory also needs to hold quantities of mirrors, a full mourners outfit, prayer poitions, the odd weapon, some armour should prayer run out. And that, dear readers, was just too much to deal with. So now Gwala is on a quest. Not a runescape quest but the quest for 70 agility. What I was trying to avoid has come true once again: At time some form of grinding is needed. I'm well on my way, 62 now, and Ape Atoll course is becoming somewhat bearable. From 53 I used the Wilderness course because the frustration of being attacked was way less than the amount of failure instilled.

Simple got her first level up since double xp weekend: 91 cook.

Keeping in character, that is trusted Jagex for you

Or, to put it more bluntly, they fucked up once again. As with all games companies Jagex has its Q&A team. Quality control and Assurence this normaly means. They are supposed to test new additions to a game. Or a complete newly developed game.

This Q&A team tests various changes to a game, to see if it all works as it is supposed to. Soon after the start of what is called 'double xp week-end' one thing became obviously clear: This Q&A team forgot to do their job. Even playing for less than 30 minutes would have made clear mod Fnord (god, what a name) made a grave error. His formula didn't work as it was supposed to. The multiplier had a downward curve way steeper than was shown in the graph on the website. And thus the player didn't get the 10 hours before the lowest multiplier of 1.1.

In all honesty I don't really care about it dropping down to 1.1 in 7 hrs instead of 10. But those who did their calculations to maximise their xp-gain got caught out pretty bad. Spending millions upon millions to have their levels rise to a predicted one. They are the ones who should really be angry. And why this fuck-up? Because a formula seems to behave differently when it's numbers are rounded down. Or is the reason to be found in a different place?

You see, a formula is just that. It is a mathematical certainty it will behave a certain way. And fiddling with the numbers behind the decimal point has its effects. Supposedly that is where the test team comes in. Those who play and test the game. Maybe they should take their job seriously for once, and do what they are there for. TO FFing TEST THE CHANGES. But no, not the Jagex test team, they operate on a different plane of existence. They play the game, see where it goes wrong and then have mod Fnord try to save the day: "Yes, dear players, I made a mistake in my formula."

Well duh. It are the testers that should get their behinds kicked, and kicked hard. What on earth were they doing when testing the xp week-end? Sleep? Eat? Drink? Fuck their neighbours wife? Incompetence all around. If a player sees the mistake within 15 of play, all those highly educated nitwits should have caught it within 5 minutes. But no, they again failed to comply with their job-description: To test...

Truly in keeping with the Jagex dedication to exelence; exelence in botched-up updates. And the guilty party, once again, is not the one who took the blame. Q&A my foot.

The one responsible for the disaster:

Dean Olive

Dean Olive - Jagex

00:00:02 My name’s Dean Olive, I'm RuneScape QA Unit Lead, and basically that means organising all the testing of the games, make sure there’s no bugs, and any mad glitches that might come up. You have to find all that, report it, get it fixed, before it goes out to the public. There’s much more to it than just playing the games, we basically have to go into it and look at it from a really logical point of view, how you could break it. Sometimes it becomes really mundane, I mean we’ll have to check thousands of items. For instance in a previous company I had to go through the whole of one certain game without saving or dying, and I managed to do it in 45 minutes, when it was guesstimated at 8 hours approximate game-play time.

Video: http://icould.com/tags/primary-skill-sector/audio-visual-industries/dean-olive/

Rant over


The start of play itself got off without a hitch, that is for the first minute on Simple. Planning had me do a tree run: 5 magic, 5 palm, 1 spirit, 1 calquat. That should (and did) get me one farming level. But there was a hitch:  a random event within the first minute of play. Apparently, according to Merch's blog, a random event is triggered by xp-gain. I don't think so. I got my first random logging in. The second after checking my calquat and the third after checking the 2nd tree: my palm on Karamja. XP-driven? Then why can I gain large quantities of xp by finishing WGS without getting a random? (this was after asking around: Did you get a random after WSG? Since I have yet to start it.) At the end of the run I switched to herblore and finished the potions I had prepared. 2 planned levels gained and time for one I didn't plan but I had hoped for: 96 slayer.

Late Saturday evening, make that Sunday morning I got it. Finally.

Onward to Gwalagwic. And for her Herblore was the main and only planned event. Starting at level 32 it ended at level 47. 2 levels more than originally planned. After that I drifted to different skills. Some cooking got me from 49 to 57. Agility ended at 52 and access to the wilderness course where a revenant ork took Jagex's revenge on the bit written earlier. Some hunteringtingding raised that 13 levels to 25, and finally a few magic levels got me 4 levels to be able to teleport to Trolheim. All I need to do now is to finish the quest needed for that one and the Ardougne teleport.

To sum it all up, both Gwala's and Simple's stats as of this moment. Maybe I'll do some stuff later on, but for now these are the results:

XP weekend around the corner

And in all honesty I truly don't know what to expect. Well, I do expect a few things; apart from the odd level or two, for Simple, Gwala will try to reach somewhere around herblore 45. But that is not exactly why I am somewhat bothered by the whole thing.

You see, I think there will be loads of trouble. I haven't read anything about how Jagex is going to cope with the influx of players. Think about it for a moment: There are 84 member worlds and each hold at maximum 2000 players. Now we calculate, 84 times 2000 equals 168,400, and so a maximum of about 168k players can be on-line for the duration of the weekend. Sure, not all will no-life for the total period, but there will be players around who will do their best to maximize their investment in prepared items. And rightly so, it is after all the sole reason for the xp weekend: Try to get your levels up as fast as you can. So we prepared.

Gwala got her grubby hands on enough tarromin, viles and ashes to get that 45 herb. Simple only prepared by planting as many trees as possible and enough d-bones to ecto her to the next prayer level (even if double xp doesn't work with the ectofunctus enough bonemeals/buckets of slime are around to get it), and enough "unf potions" to get one herb level. For the rest I will just play as I always do: For the fun of it, not focussing on anything else but on 'am I having a good time'.

But I cannot help but wonder if I will have the opportunity to play. Will I or won't I be squeezed out by those who really prepared... Those who invested millions upon millions to get to 99 summoning or prayer, or herblore, or crafting or any other of the skills we have. 168,400 players at maximum... will it be enough? Or will there be a lot of disgruntled players after this weekend because they couldn't get enough playing time in to reach their goals.

One more thing that worries me: Lag. With that number of players around it stands to reason the amount of data sent all over the world could result in Lag... Ah well, we will see...

Good luck to all who really prepared...

A Grand Total

Or, it took me 7 days, 13 hrs of playing time to reach the 1000 level. Construction did it and got all my levels above 9...

Apart from that I have been fishing.... a lot. A lot for me that is, and with around 800 lobsters banked that should be enough for a reasonable cooking level come xp weekend. Planning for that: There is no planning. I will prepare by planting whatever seed I can but for the rest nothing. I might have a go at agility though. 52 sounds nice since it would give me access to the Wilderness course. The other thing might be range/slayer. I just don't know. We will see it when we get there.

For Simple I only have one thing planned: One farming level, courtesy of 5 magic trees, 5 palm trees, 1 calquat and 1 spirit tree. Since they are all protected it should be enough to get one level.

Monkey Madness Continued.....

Guess this is it; the last installment of the MM-saga. In short, I finished it. Not without some trouble though. Traversing the tunnels twice was, eh, heart stopping. That would be the best description I can give. The first one, to get the gold bars enchanted was the worst. Of course I had the benefit of having done it once before. Still it got on my  nerves. That said, I think I found a new trick.

I entered the tunnels and clicked on the radar as far ahead on the route to take as I could. Once again I used the tactic of taking the damage by falling rock, healing when needed. I only turned on protect from melee when I reached the skeletons. And that is when the clicking way in front seemed to pay off: I didn't get hit by the floor spikes. It almost seems the 'automatic route' avoids them. The only time there was a hit from a trap: The one you can avoid using a plank, but that one dealt a hit of 7 which was manageable. At the end the sorry, but welcome sight of a gnome: Zooknock.

M-speak amulet made, child's toy acquired and the 2nd run. Not hard since I now knew what to expect, and Zooknock made the gree-gree. Instead of teleporting out I took the scenic route. A Karamja monkey on a leisurely walk, avoiding traps, but taking damage of falling rock. It seems the road-sign was missing. A short interlude where the diplomatic mission to Awowogei took place (and I can assure you I am not cut out for diplomatic missions), a cut-scene to reveal the machinations of gnome-monkey politics, a rescue of a fellow Karamja monkey and finally the battle between yours truly and a demon.

That was a tad harder than I thought it would be, and thus I bought a farm. I was careless and thus the first mission to save the 10th squad went down in flames. Magic flames. The ruddy demon had me for lunch. With 49 def one does not want to face this one head on. The second attempt went down without a hitch. Again, knowing what to do makes it easy. And so Monkey Madness is finished. It even got me past a few milestones:

And the 100 quest points:

Economics

Merch Gwyar posted her insights on RuneScape's economy and in all honesty I am a bit flustered about it. You see, I don't believe it. I don't believe there is such a thing as hyperinflation in the RS economy, however nice it sounds. I will concur there are price changes that defy the 'norm' (if there even is such a thing as  'norm').

The example given as proof of hyperinflation is the price of ranger boots, and of course they have changed dramatically over a period of time. But hyperinflation? I don't think so. Let's take a look at something that is considered to be a normal item. Iron ore for instance.

When I started playing (in 2005) iron ore could be had for 90-125 gp. The current price on the GE is 203gp (down 3 from yesterday). That doesn't sound like hyperinflation to me. It sounds more like a steady raise of around 8-10% per year. Still inflation, but hyper?  So maybe another article? Cowhide? Again the comparison with 2005: 100-150 back in the days where the listed GE price is 212 at the moment. That, once more, doesn't sound like hyperinflation to me.

Maybe I am looking at the wrong articles, so let me change directions. Guthan's Warspear used to be around the 6.5m mark, and I am sure about that, I got killed, lost one, had to buy it again; but now it sells for 1.5m. That is deflation, not inflation. Dharok's helmet shows the same decline in price.

Let's go back to ranger boots. Again 2005: 600k back then, and again I am pretty sure about that price: I did my lvl 2 clues faithfully and training range at Pyrefiends got me a fair number of them. Three of those resulted in ranger boots: One I sold, one I died with (and subsequently lost), one I still have. Yup, that is inflation, and you could call it hyperinflation since the price rose way more than, say, 10% per year.

But does that mean the whole economy is burdened by hyperinflation? Or are it just a few items that, for one reason or another, suffers from increases beyond what one would expect?

Are price changes dependent on other factors than 'mere economy'? Again 'if memory serves': there was a huge increase of the price of raw material when skill capes were introduced. With the introduction of the GE, to combat RWT, the general economy lost the input of raw materials by botting. And we all applauded that action. The funny thing is this: It doesn't seem there is a substantial impact of the loss of those raw materials: Prices are higher than before the 'extinction' of bots, but not by a zillion percentage.

So the only thing suffering are rare and semi-rare items. Rares I won't look at: Since the supply of those doesn't change (the number stays the same/will only decrease when one owning drops out of the game or dies with one) it can only be expected the price of those will rise more than items that have a renewable source. That leaves us with the semi-rares. The ranger boots, the god swords, the 3rd age items and all those other items that take hard work, zillion of tries, and multiple deaths to acquire. In short, items that take hard work, perseverance, to get. And therein, in my humble opinion, lies the crux of the matter. Hard work.

The work you need to do to get such an item. And, if the price rise is the way to judge it, more and more players are not willing to put in the work to get it, and so the price goes up. But that is not hyperinflation... That is the economy at work...

MM update, defeat is mine

I will admit defeat. I'm not doing that gladly, I really thought I had a shot at completing MM; maybe it just wasn't meant to be.

So, you might want to know what happened. In short I died four times. Four times trying to reach Zooknock, and four times reaching different parts of the dungeon. All of the times it were the level 142 skeleton monkeys that did me in.

Reconnoitering the dungeon with Simple gave me a few difficult passages. Basically there are four main threats. The first one are the Zombie Monkeys, followed by a few traps, some environmental problems like poisoning and falling debris, and lastly the Skeleton Monkeys. The environmental problems were the least of my worries. I can deal with those using anti poison and, at certain intervals, gobble up a buttered potato or two.

The first few traps were not a problem either. Same procedure as with the environment, anti poison and potato. Zombie Monkeys posed a bigger problem but the combination of running and eating those potatoes again meant I got past those. Then the big problem arose: Floor spikes and Skeleton Monkeys in one go.

I'll admit here and now I didn't have energy potions on me: I can't make those (well, I couldn't, I can now). So, down on run energy, I had no other recourse than to rest and hide from the Skeletons. There is this one spot where you can hole up without being attacked by Zombie Monkeys or Skeletons and just taking the hits from falling debris. Since that takes only 2-3 hp away while resting to get run energy back it is do-able.

Then the real trouble starts: The mad dash round three corners, each littered with floor spikes and skeletons trying to do you in. And in all four tries that did it. Floor spikes hit you for 7 and will keep hitting for 7 when you stand on them. With 40 hp that means I could be safe if I got hit a maximum of five times. Not counting the skeletons...

And that is where it went horribly wrong... Getting hit for 7's from the floor, and way higher by skeletons meant I just couldn't gobble up potatoes fast enough to get me through it. Four times I tried, four times I failed.

Out of pure frustration I did another quest: Shades of Mort'ton. That got me 22 herblore and the possibility to concoct energy potions. Maybe I'll give it one more go with a few energy potions on me.

One thing that still amazes me. Sabre Grief. Apparently, by his own admission, he completed the dungeon on his Grief account while being combat level 30 with 1 prayer. I can't for the life of me understand how he managed to do that, since it would mean even less hp to lose than the 40 I have, and a lower def level so the monkeys hit higher... Nope, I just can't imagine how he did it.

Can I? Should I? What the hell.. I'll just have a go

I finished Dragon Slayer yesterday. Range in melee-style. In all honesty I didn't like ranging as if I was a warrior. It just isn't my 'style'. I like range for what it is: Stealth, sneaky, long distance. Since the safe spots aren't there, or maybe they are, just didn't look around for them, I resorted to melee-ranging. Buttered potatoes kept me alive, with about 12 left at the end.

It raised defence to a staggering 46, and strength to 35. With attack at 40 it also made me a melee combat perspeop at cb 50, and though I don't like being a warrior I'm seriously considering talking to a king.

A Monkey Madness king. A gnome king. A king that probably will lead to my demise. Still, I am going to have a go at MM. Not the smartest thing to do, if you don't like to die, but I'd like to see if the experience of a 'Simple-life-time' will see me through it. My biggest worry is traversing the maze with a prayer level not suited for it... Not being able to rely on protect from melee will probably do me in. That said: I think I can finish it, be it with a lot of perseverance. Since I can make anti poisons, that would take care of one thing. With 38 agi I probably will have a hard time keeping run ability up, but not trying is just not in the cards.

So I am off to see the wizard, the wonderful of Oz the king.

Oh, stats at the start of this voyage:

You successfully burn a salmon

Before giving you an update about the life and times of both Gwalagwic and Simple I'd like to wish you all the best for 2010. May the Gods of Gielinor smile upon you.

I cannot get over the fact levels come as fast as they do on the Gwalagwic account. This morning I stumbled over some roots while hurrying to Ardougne from the quaint Seers homestead. Of course I had to investigate and I came upon an Evil Maple tree. That is the highest tree I can tackle and thus started chopping away at it. Doing that I raised my level to 53 and with the time rewarded to use the auto-banking feature I managed to get that even to 54. TWO levels thanks to one tree...

Since I was short only a few xp to level 35 fletching I had to have a go at that. 290 Iron arrows got me that level and that made it possible to use some of the willow logs I had stashed away in a far corner of the bank. Willow shorts, and no stringing. Soon, after 374 willow short bows, I had the capability to make willow longs. And I just had to try that out. Resulting in another 3 fletching levels and one free spot in the bank... gone were the willows.

Normally on the Simple account I would have dropped the bows (u) but Gwala just is strapped for cash and thus I sold the bows to the general store: I truly was amazed at the 20k I could add to my coffers. Well, not all of it... I invested in 1000 feathers and after using 180 of them I reached 34 fishing, and, after cooking the fish on the range at Lumbridge Caste, 36 cooking. This resulted in a grand total of 604 levels. I can only say I am pretty pleased with that.

Simple doesn't fare that well. With all the festivities I just couldn't bring myself to do some work on both accounts and thus she only had a go at the Christmas event.