Recently I was trading some unstrung magic bows in for cash at the Grand Exchange and I over heard a fellow member of the fine Runescape game speaking about getting a name change. I inquired as to what he meant exactly and he went on to explain that JaGex is considering implimenting a system which will allow for players to change their in-game-name. Now, we won’t be able to change the name we use to log in… but our character name will be able to be changed.

I am very interested to see how this will play out – considering that many of the popular names are either already taken/banned there may not be much room to move in terms of acquiring a new and unique name. However I am sure that somebody will find a way around this somehow.

Veritas Odium Parit

11

1. The Knowledge Database

This helpful database is more than just that. It is Jagex own self-structured fansite, giving their players all the information they could possible need, all in a convenient location on RuneScape.com – awesome deal for everyone, right? But let’s look at the reasoning behind this. Would Jagex really spend their time amassing all of this knowledge into one place so that their players would have a more enjoyable (and easier, which is a key part too… but I’ll get to that later) gaming experience? This is how Jagex introduced the update:

“The aim of this update is to provide better support for our players, so that if you’re stuck or just need some friendly advice, you can quickly get the help you need rather than asking Customer Support or hoping someone is talking about it on the forums.”

(News Archives – March 13, 2008)

That seems a bit contradictory to the follow up posts by Jagex Moderators on the forums saying that the intention of the K-Base was to “protect players from malicious third-party websites”.

2. The Grand Exchange Database

Being a staff member on a separate tipsite, it is not often that you will hear me singing praise of our “competition”, but there is not denying the incredible work that Ben (Goten) and the rest of the Zybez staff did when they compiled their famous market price guide. The introduction of the Grand Exchange Database is a direct stab at that project, and furthermore it seems that Jagex has gone out of their way to make it as inconvenient as possible to extract data from their databases. I have truthfully no idea why a readable format of the data has not been released, as was done with the hiscores – although that was yet another example of Jagex only helping out tipsites indirectly because they couldn’t stop it and they would prefer to save bandwidth. Is it not ironic when Jagex finds it necessary to begin each news post with something along the lines of “We did this in response to player feedback”? Read on:

“Many of you asked for the ability to view graphs of market values and track item prices as they rise and fall. Well, this week we introduce the Grand Exchange Database Beta, which does exactly that!”

(News Archives – April 15, 2008)

3. QuestHelp

QuestHelp, in summary, is Jagex taking a primary role of fansites and attempting to render it obsolete. I feel that is all I must say for this one; does it really seem necessary to make a half-ass attempt at quest guides that simply comes off as the creators of the game making the game itself easier? What is their incentive to lower the required IQ for the game? Well, the younger crowd is taking over RuneScape now, and Jagex is doing nothing to stop it (although they only recommend the game for those ages 13 or older). Why would they want to prevent potential customers from playing? As long as they are paying, it doesn’t matter what age they might be. Getting back to QuestHelp, however, it is nothing more than Jagex realizing that tipsites are having a negative impact on some of their players. Once again, they have taken steps to make RuneScape.com another contender in the tipsite world, and cleverly disguise it as being “for the players”:

We know […] that simply resorting to looking up the entire solution can take all the fun out of the quest and often results in you seeing more solution than you wanted to see. This can leave you with the feeling that you didn’t really solve bits you could have done.

(News Archives – May 10, 2006)

But well done, Jagex. You have succeeded in being the first case I have ever seen where a beta version of a feature has lasted 2 years without receiving any changes whatsoever.

The list goes on. If you look at the way they redid the forums, or how they have modeled the hierarchy of their own website, you will see the same patterns. Only once, excluding content in the Knowledge Base, has Jagex truly recognized the fan site community in a public way. It resulted in the second largest riot to ever grace the likes of RuneScape (For the record, that puts it in a close second place to the wilderness and trade updates; aka “The Day RuneScape Died”). Yes, you guessed it. The riot I am speaking of was the one resulting from Jagex’s changes to rules 7 & 9 – the rules regarding third party software, and specifically clients.

On January 2^nd, 2007 Jagex “extended rule 7 to make it clear that it DOES now include third party RuneScape clients/world switchers” (News Archives), meaning that all runescape clients other than the official one were outlawed, as they provided an “unfair advantage” – to use Jagex’s favorite phrase. Once again let’s investigate their reasoning/justification for this radical change:

“When RuneScape fansites are distributing programs which are then used to discuss breaking the rules or result in their own users being scammed, it’s clear that our rules need revision! We don’t want to be unnecessarily restrictive, but we obviously also have to balance that with protecting our users.”

(News Archives – January 2, 2007)

…A classic example of Jagex cutting of the nose to spite the face. If your users are losing their accounts and passwords due to third-party software, sure, some action may be warranted, but severing one of your major lifelines has never been a good choice for Jagex, and they never seem to learn. When at first the update was met with incredulous pleas for withdrawing the new rules, Jagex quietly inserted another paragraph into their news announcement:

“We have done this for two main reasons: a) The sheer number of users losing their account/password to programs which pretend to be one thing but actually steal their password; b) Problems with some of these programs including extremely unsafe chat channels where large amounts of scamming go on, and users encourage each other to try to break the rules.” (News Archives – January 2, 2007)

So Jagex is now pointing the center of blame at the security issue, and has seemingly forgotten their original claim that the reason was that programs such as SwiftSwitch provided players with an “unfair advantage”. In fact, Mod Burgess on the forums would go on to say that IRC is “unmoderated” and “promotes rule-breaking” – a statement that could almost be no further from the truth. This may come as a shock to Jagex, but RuneScape players get scammed in RuneScape. If you want to fix that problem, fix your game… remove trading or something if you have to hahaha… (wait a minute…).

Anyways, now that I have discussed what Jagex has said in response to these updates, let’s look more at what some players said when those changes were made. (Quotes all taken from the RuneCrypt forums – original posters may not still hold these opinions)

“Runescape is evolving more and more into a communist state. The chat filter is already oppressive and now even things that aren’t directly part of the game are being questioned and controlled.

I could quite easily live without SS, I survived without it for a LONG time and only recently started using it. What I disagree with is the freedom of choice that’s being taken away yet again.”

(Agent Yuri)

“Banning SS because it provides a thriving clan community a source of communication, and because Jagex failed to satisfy their customers, is stupid. Jagex you were well aware of SS already, you also made numerous promises to make a clan communication system and you did NOT do that.

Jagex, you backstabbed your customers with a false promise, then you turned a safe client that was acceptable into some taboo thing that will now get you banned. SS is safe and better.

Jagex, you failed to do the obvious, and instead took the only decent means of communicating through clans over RS away from us.

May as well ban in-game trading, I mean scams happen in trades too?”

(X Sam Sam X)

The topic of freedom came up on multiple occasions during those debates and discussions, and then continued as Jagex gave Player Moderators the green light to mute any protestors. You may not come from America, but the freedoms of speech and assembly are somewhat basic rights, especially in such a “politically correct” game.

To make it easy for you to see, I have collected gathered some statistics from RuneCrypt’s user databases and public polls.

• 1 in 4 members stay active on the fansite after retiring from RuneScape.
• 1 in 8 active members changed their status from P2P to F2P, or changed it to “Retired” after the changes to rules 7 & 9
• 1 in 3 active members uses some sort of third party software while playing RuneScape.

What can we learn from this data? 1. Fansites keep players in the RuneScape community when RS itself can’t. 2. Updates targeted at fansites are generally unpopular, and result in Jagex losing members. 3. Players don’t listen to Jagex’s advice, and prefer to use third-party software.

But if there is a Jagex employee reading this article, take this as a plea. Regardless of what I just said, I believe that 98% of the decisions made by Jagex are spot on. The company as a whole has fully deserved the awards it has won, and RuneScape will forever be an MMORPG that can’t be mimicked. It is vastly different from any other game I have ever played, and I think that the 98% of good choices could be increased to 99% if more trust was put in the hands of the players, and in turn to the fansites. When it comes down to it, the upper level of the fansite community is administered by at most 25 people working their asses off to serve the most loyal fans – would it be asking too much to give us a break now and then? RuneScape wouldn’t be RuneScape without it’s players and fans. Jagex is simply shooting themselves in the foot by trying to protect their players from the big, bad tipsites who are run by… their players.

Now, this may not be the case with all players. I know some people just simply enjoy the simplicity of playing RuneScape in a webbrowser with java. Yeah, everyone has their own preferences. But wow, im actually quite impressed with Jagex. I have looked at some of the screenshots they released and i certainly am impressed. Although we currently don’t know how they plan to release the high resolution version of the game, im quite firm in believing that the next generation of RuneScape will not be running on java. Simply because java is not good enough.

Ok so, Jagex releases a new graphics update. So what you may ask? I think this is what all those long lost rumors of RuneScape 3 was. They have been working on this update for a very long time. Theres no possible way to reconstruct all of RuneScape in a matter of a year or less. Its just too much work. Ladies and gentlemen, cheers to the next generation of RuneScape!

Now.. we sit and wait, we don’t know much about this mysterious update..yet. But ill be sure to rewrite another article once it is released.

Now then, where to begin. I’ll just start with the issue that comes up most often: charms. As you probably know by now if you’re reading this, there are four types of charms: Gold, Green, Crimson, and Blue. In most cases, the successive color gives more Xp in general than the previous, while in turn being more difficult to obtain, either through rarity of drop or through the difficulty of monsters which drop them. In an attempt to cut down on less important and somewhat dull information, I’ll go right to the most important of the four as far as training is concerned — Crimson. This will be the main charm you use in training up your Summoning without a doubt. It’s good Xp with a decent ratio of spirit shards to go with it. Among the best monsters to kill for obtaining Crimson charms are Greater Demons, Abyssal Demons, Dust Devils, Rock Lobsters, and Waterfiends. These are all of the monsters I experimented on along the way. If done correctly, both Rock Lobsters and Waterfiends can drop Crimson charms at about the same rate, and are two of the fastest monsters to obtain them from. As I mentioned previously, however, the better charms are typically more difficult to obtain due to a monster’s difficulty. This is the case with Rock Lobsters and Waterfiends, which I will cover in the next two paragraphs.

Rock Lobsters are located in Waterbirth cave in the rooms surrounding the ladder that leads down to the Dagannoth Kings. You pass several on the run to the ladder, but what I was not aware of, and what most of you will probably find interesting is, if you go past the DK ladder to another ladder, then run down a passage and go up yet another ladder, you’ll be in a room of seven Rock Lobsters (and if you continue down the ladder past these, and up the ladder in the next room, you’ll appear in the water under the lighthouse, where all the level 74 and 92 Dagannoths are. Crazy, huh?). The best way to kill these is to gather a bunch of them together and Ice Burst (or Barrage) them while standing in a safe spot. A friend recommended that I stand near the ladder that I came up to get to this room as a safe spot. If you do that, you can get up to six of the seven to follow you there and Burst (or Barrage) away. A couple tips to help: When you right-click a pile of them, it will never show more than five, but believe me, there is a sixth there if you went and got it to attack you; also, they can hit fairly high, up to 11 I think, so either bring some Blood Burst/Barrage spells, or some good food (I recommend the Blood spells). Rock Lobsters are the expensive, but relatively easy method for obtaining Crimson charms quickly. In about 10,000 Ice Burst casts, I could get 2,000 Crimson charms. Next, I’ll cover Waterfiends, a lot less expensive, but considerably more difficult.

Waterfiends are located in the swirling whirlpool near the Barbarian Outpost, where Mithril Dragons, Brutal Green Dragons, and skeletal Barbarian Warriors also reside. I didn’t use Waterfiends until the last three levels of my feat, but they turned out to be an invaluable source of Crimson charms. They use both Ranged and Magic attacks, so it’s probably best to wear dragonhide or Karil’s armor and use the Protect from Missiles prayer when fighting them. They’re weak to Crush attacks, so good weapons for that are Godswords, including the Saradomin sword and Zamorakian spear. In polling a few of the other high level Summoners, I found that the Saradomin sword is most likely the best weapon to use there. It’s quite fast and is capable of hitting high amounts of damage frequently. Plus, it’s a lot cheaper than the Godswords. Using the Saradomin sword, I was able to get upwards of 90 Crimson charms per hour with a decent amount of effort, meaning I could get all the charms from 96-99 Summoning in just a single week. Needless to say, I was very impressed by this, especially considering I was used to getting a mere 35-40 of them per hour in the other places I listed earlier.

So, that was charms. Now, the real drag of the skill — cost. This is a close second in the questions most asked, and the answer is pretty simple: about 200 million. But before you claw your eyes out just thinking about having to spend that much, consider that this is the gross amount of money spent, and not the net amount. You can actually make quite a bit of it back from just alching the pouches you make. I estimate somewhere in the vicinity of 70-80 million was made back from just alching the pouches I’d made, which leaves an actual net cost of around 120-130 million. ‘But what was it all spent on?’ You ask. Believe it or not, a large majority of the money you’ll spend on Summoning goes into spirit shards alone. Unlike with Construction, Jagex found a foolproof method of getting you to dump huge sums of money back into the game, instead of it simply trading hands. Spirit shards alone will cost you in the area of 120-130 million+ should you decide to get 99. Then, when you factor in secondary ingredients, equipment for killing monsters, etc., you get up around 200 million. Fun!

I’m sure I know exactly what you’re thinking now. “But is it all worth it? Do you really make any of your money back using the creatures?” I’ll be honest, it’s really a matter of opinion. Since the second batch came out, it definitely seems like Jagex has made a concerted effort to improve on the skill, and to encourage people to use it the way it’s meant to be used. There are at least a few familiars that I have found to be very useful. The first is the Bunyip at 68 Summoning. This thing will heal you for 2 HP every 15 seconds for its entire 44 minute duration, unless of course you’re already at your max HP. It is very helpful when killing just about anything that isn’t immediately deadly (i.e. Kalphite Queen, Godwars Bosses, etc.). In other words, it’s very handy for most Slayer tasks, at Bandits, or even for Thieving (*writes that down*). In addition to this wonderful ability, it can also allow you to eat raw fish with its special ability (using scrolls), assuming you have the cooking level required to cook the fish. Next are the Beasts of Burden (BoB) such as the Spirit Terrorbird (52 Summoning), War Tortoise (67) and Pack Yak (96). Their inventory space has been tripled giving you tons of extra space to bring more materials for whatever and wherever you’re going. Plus, the Pack Yak’s special ability allows you to bank any one item in your inventory, extremely useful for killing Spiritual Mages for Dragon boots. And the last familiar I want to promote is the Spirit Kyatt at 57 Summoning. This is one of several Hunter related familiars. This one, however, possesses a very unique and incredibly useful ability. It can teleport you straight to the Hunter area near Piscatoris, which puts you a mere three seconds away from a ladder leading down to a Summoning obelisk where you can then make pouches. Once you’ve made the pouches, just teleport anywhere with a close bank, then teleport back again with the Kyatt. Extremely fast training.

All right, those were the really pressing issues, now I’ll throw in some of my own observations and tips that I’ve noticed along the way. When making pouches, it’s usually best to make the highest ones you can, unless the secondary ingredient is considerably difficult to obtain in bulk (i.e. Red flowers, Talon Beast charms, etc.). If you plan to alch the pouches you’re making, don’t make ones that require only a single spirit shard, they alch for very little and you’d lose a lot of money. Also, Pets are a nice addition for when you’re alching. In most cases you only need about 15 pieces of food to maintain your pet until it’s fully grown while you’re alching. My pet baby black dragon finished growing early this morning, after finally getting an egg drop after more than 600 black dragons. Bleh. I didn’t even get a Visage during that time either.

I think that about wraps up everything I can think of to talk about. Hopefully this quenches your undying thirst for knowledge from all of us master summoners. You’re welcome to leave any further questions in a comment and I’ll attempt to add them in at the bottom of this article if I feel it’s necessary. Enjoy Summoning.