Unlocked: Ability to investigate starved Farming effigies!

t's been a while since I last posted due to schoolwork piling up. The dismal results I've received for the mid-year examinations did not exactly motivate me to blog either. Anyway, I shall try to generate a post per week, just so that I can update and track progress and share stuff along the way. Due to the same reasons, I haven't exactly been very active, only logging in for a farming round and some light training while I have dinner or when I'm taking a break from studying.

And yes, I've achieved level 91 Farming a while ago, which grants me the ability to investigate Starved Farming Effigies! Well, I don't see myself being able to help a lot of people out since 91 Farming is not that great yet but I guess I'm on my way there. Eventually. Still, I'm really looking forward to reaching 92 Farming, since it would represent the half-way point to maxing the skill.

After my failed merching attempt, which I mentioned in the last post, I've just found a new item to try out today and hopefully I'll be able to last for longer this time. As for the losses, I'll just plant the seeds and see if I can recoup my losses through selling ranarr weed. I bought 300 seeds for about 24.3-24.5k each, and that costs about 7-8m in total worth *when* I bought it. It dipped to 19k a while ago and is now falling yet again after a small improvement a couple of days ago. I suspect this might have something to do with the new resource dungeons but that's just pure conjecture at this point in time. Wish me luck on attempt #2!

This was taken a while ago (24/07/10) when seed prices were at its lowest, if i'm not mistaken.

This was taken earlier today (29/07/10). Slight improvement overall, but still experiencing a fall in prices.

On another separate, random issue of skill rankings, I was reminded of a discussion I had with a few friends who used to play RS with me about whether it is more prestigious to have many decently high skills, or a few in which one can be exceptional in terms of rankings. I remember sitting on the fence with that at that point in time and I still feel roughly the same. Though I have a slight lean towards having a few skills that we can be truly proud of instead of being a jack of all trades. I do see the merits of having all skills to be relatively well balanced and I am working towards that, but sometimes I think it is really worth it to just spend some extra time training past 99 to make a jump in rankings. This is especially so since there are many who simply stop after getting the cape and investing some more time and effort would push rankings up quite a fair bit.

That's what I did for fishing and cooking, and I'm still cooking fish every now and then when I fish my own supplies. I did the same with strength, except I didn't really have a choice in this case since I was hunting for crimson charms after I got the cape and was stuck at the Waterfiends for quite a while. I've yet to be able to train defence sadly, also since I am rarely online enough to be able to train it much anyway, but that's definitely going to happen once I am able to resume my previous level of activity.

Oh and I was finally convinced that I should not get the bonecrusher after reading this post by Vaskor.

A new addition to my cape rack.

I managed to get the defence cape about a week ago, and I invited Tim over for the screenshot. I think I'll start working towards the attack cape soon, but I am spending my time now between training ranged and hunter. Ranged for slayer tasks, usually and hunter by trapping red chinchompas. I also intend on splurging on power-training ranged with a mixture of the red chins, which I would have to buy in addition to what I already caught, as well as using the cannon during slayer tasks whenever I can.

I've also met some difficulties with my merching business. I was merching ranarr seeds previously, and a recent drop in prices have left me stuck with some of the seeds I bought, so I'll have to wait for prices to go up again so that I can get the seeds off my hands. I'll probably be switching to another item soon since I think I have enough capital to start merching more expensive items which I wasn't able to when I started.

I've also been doing quite a few treasure trails, though none has yielded me anything worth celebrating yet, considering the time and effort involved in completing level 3 trails. Keeping my eyes out for the Elite trails though, they sound really interesting at the very least, if not lucrative at the same time.

Something else interesting, I met Canada Grrl, a forum moderator, during my hunt. She seems to be in-charge of the w60 penguins' clan and the author of the weekly Penguin Locations thread on the official forums, which is handy for checking which penguin(s) one might have missed. It appears that the 100th week of penguin release is approaching and they seem to be holding some sort of a celebration so if anyone is interested, read pages 4 and 5 of this thread.

Updates I'm looking forward to seeing this month...

After reading Behind the Scenes for July, I made up my mind about which updates I'm looking forward to and which ones I really don't see affecting me.

Well, we've already seen the first promised update being released in the form of the new quest, Love Story. This is one update that would probably not affect me for quite a while, since I have neither the skills, nor the urge to complete this quest. Perhaps a little later, when I finally find time to complete WGS, and even for that I have to clear a lot of other quests before I can even start on.

As for the addition of hidden resource dungeons, I have a feeling the ways I can benefit from this updated would be quite limited as well, seeing that my dungeoneering level is nowhere decent enough to be able to access the better dungeons, assuming that the more useful ones only are made exclusive to the higher levels. This gives me the incentive and reason to continue training the skill though, not only to get the bonecrusher I've been going for, but also for the access to these resource dungeons when they are released.

The class rings rewards are definitely the update I'm the most excited about. I have always assumed the role of a warrior in most of the raids that I go on, some little help in gathering extra defense, especially against those pesky mysterious shades would certainly thrill me. I'm sure that it would be very useful for me when I go on my solo raids in terms of gathering resources as well, not to mention group raids, where extra armor always helps.

The prospect of incorporating the Construction skill into Dungeoneering, especially that of being able to build my own altar in the starting room sounds like a very practical use for the skill to me, not to mention saving myself the effort to search all over for altars. Hopefully I'll able to build the altar at my level.

Improvements to the Single-Player instance dungeons is pretty appealing to me as well since I do go on solo raids very often, and sometimes it is really nice to be able to log off and know that my progress would be saved if I needed a break.

The re-work of the treasure trails and the new elite trails do sound interesting, but that's all I feel about them, I do trails only for the potential to earn some huge money, so it doesn't really matter to me whether I get a trail specific item or not, especially if it becomes so common due to the guarantee that one will be given for each trail and results in it having a low price. As for the elite trails, the puzzles sound difficult, and I've always been rather inapt at puzzles, so I foresee the Celtic knot puzzle being a real challenge to me.

I've also recently reached 100M total experience, which is quite cool, I guess. I've managed to get move even closer to 99 defence as well, and I'm only 700k away from it at this moment.

As for merching, it seems pretty successful and promising so far, I've made 1.2M in the past 10 days, which is pretty decent, considering that it barely takes 5 minutes of my time daily.

Recent activities.

I've took a break from dungeoneering a few days ago to concentrate on getting 99 defence. At this point, I'm just 2 levels, or 1.8M experience points to go before I can get the cape. I've been splitting my training between Slayer and camping at the armoured zombies. To be honest, both are rather profitable, and I do take away a lot of loot even from camping at the armoured zombies. Usually, I've be able to bag a respectable amount of charms, oak and teak planks, rune essence, mithril arrows as well as an assortment of herbs. Most importantly, the experience there is amazing, and I used to get 200-300k experience daily just camping there for a few hours whilst I study for my mid-years (which, by the way, I foresee myself doing really badly in). So, with any luck, hopefully I'll be able to get the cape in another week or so. I've added slayer to my training routine to get some extra cash to fund my camping trips at the zombies as well, since camping at the armoured zombies can be quite costly seeing that I heal with Guthans so that I don't have to constantly run to a bank for food and I plan on keeping the resources gathered for training, so I am making quite little from camping at the armoured zombies. But the zombies are still a fairly good spot for getting fast experience and some cash if one is willing to sell the loot, or bother to pick them up in the first place.

I've also started merching after re-visiting one of Vaskor's posts. I've been using the 'fundamental trading' method, and results have been rather positive so far. I'm not making big profits, neither am I aiming for that at this point, but merching, as I found out, is quite fun, takes very little time to buy and sell items once I found the right items to trade, and the graphs on the GE database helps quite a bit in my selection of items. Hopefully, I'll be able to move on to other types of merching after I become more acquainted with the 'fundamental' style, and built up enough capital to move on to bigger items. I've also been considering selling my d-claws in exchange for prayer experience but the soaring prices of dragon bones have been stopping me from buying them in bulk at this point, hopefully the prices of d-bones would fall soon and I can get started on prayer training. That might take some time though, since the prices are still steadily rising right now.

Another thing, I've always noticed these weird looking like objects seemingly stuck to the side of my d-hide chaps, and I've never been able to make out what they are. I was finally able to do so today. I found out that those are arrows! They look like steel arrows, if I'm not wrong.

Oh, and before I forget, these are some screenshots from my 99 fishing, taken before I went for the long break a while ago.

I've also finished up some treasure trails since I'm back, as well as a quest, Fairy Tales III, my personal favourite.