Gameplay and getting going

I love the Sacred clay tools, I like the extra xp when using them, I have fished 2k Sharks using the harpoon and chopped 1K yew logs and I have noticed something very strange.

No Randoms, in the whole time I used the harpoon I never had a troll, big fish, MOM or Dr Jekyll in fact I have not had any randoms.

Jagex said that they are going to get rid of some randoms because the bots have gone, I could see this being a problem because the likes of grave digger, drill sergeant and mime give clothes as a reward and these are fun for a while, I can understand people being upset at not being able to have them.

Have Jagex decided to use the new tools as a way to stop randoms, you still get randoms when using the Adze.

It may just be that I was lucky never getting randoms but it seems too much of a coincidence, especially when fishing, randoms come in phases and everyone around me was getting randoms on numerous occasions and I never had 1.

Even when chopping I had no randoms except the ones started by other players the ent for example, when you get the ent you cant chop it with a clay hatchet anyway.

I welcome comments from other players here.

Runescapes Distractions and Diversions includes Penguin Hide and seek, Balthazar Beauregard's Big Top Bonanza and Shooting Star, I have already covered the last 2 so here we have the Penguin Hide and seek guide, if you can call it a guide that is.

I have a goal to get all my stats to 80, I now only have hunter and runecrafting to go, having recently managed it with construction, smithing and mining and getting a total level of 2200 in the process, hunter is easy to level I just haven't trained it because of the amount of nubs at chins but I will level that shortly, I have a way of dealing with the anti social nubs so watch out.

Runecrafting is a different matter, I cant say I enjoy Runecrafting, I don't hate it but I am not its greatest fan, I have days I can train it happily and others I cant, I never train things if I don't want unless there is a good reason so it has fallen behind a bit.

I have never much bothered with penguin spotting, just spying them If I come across one on my travels, which I have quite often, trading in I noticed that you get a lot of xp per penguin, I opted for runecrafting xp because it is my least trained skill and as already mentioned one of my under 80's, the cash option was never considered, I do not know how much you get but xp is worth so much more than cash.

I have heard of a clan channel that goes around spotting penguins, I looked on the Runescape Official forums for information and found the world 60 penguin chat, at first I was reluctant to join and just used the forum post to find some with mixed success, I eventually signed on and there were a whole list of people hunting the penguins, there were regular updates of their whereabouts and people requesting locations, within half an hour I had found 9 penguins, the last, a desert penguin was a bit tricky but eventually found him pretending to be a cactus.

I don't like to post clan chats or RSOF links because they are subject to change but a search on the RSOF should find them.

The world 60 penguin hunter clan chat is very helpful, there is more than just people hunting penguins and reporting them, there are players staying with the penguin trapping them or directing people to them, these are players who like to play Runescape just standing around to help others, what a great load of people.

A few rules are to try and not walk through people who have the penguin trapped, this will release them, always shut doors if they are trapped in a building, hardly rules but will help other players who arrive after you, there are lots of help on the RSOF take time to read it and it will make hunting fun.

And most important say thank you to the players trapping the penguins and the guys on the chat channel for helping you get your xp, they are doing it instead of training their skills just for you and other players.

It is fun hunting penguins and the xp is great it will take 4 weeks hunting penguins to get 77 runecrafting, then I can make bloods as a bit of motivation to get level 80.

I have now played Stealing Creation quite a bit, getting used to the idea that you need to make your weapons and Ice barrage the other team as quickly as possible to win.

Some improvements to the game would be to remove Ancients and to only thieve a certain amount of anything in 1 go, say 100 runes, removing ancients will allow fighting skill to win the game not just the most level 94 mages, and thieving only 100 runes at a go to give the mages a chance even at the mercy of my thieving level.

The Idea of skillers not getting xp must remain or be a minimal amount of xp, this is a requirement to keep the skills themselves worth training, skillers do not get a raw deal in fact they get a better deal than the fighters, having used the morphic tools a bit the benefits from them are amazing, I have tried the hatchet, hammer and harpoon.

The following experiences are for the morphic not the volatile tools, apparently volatile give better skill xp but you can not select what item it turns into, that is not a great deal of help for me, it can however help you decide what to train if you cant make up your mind, its like a skill slayer task, you get a hatchet you chop trees, you get a pick you mine etc.

The Sacred Clay Hammer was the first thing I used, I wanted 80 smithing as part of my task to get all stats 80, I had 1 level to go so I bought addy bars, using the morphic proto-tool as a hammer I made addy bolts, the xp I was getting for each bar was 93xp, that is a 50% increase over the 62xp using a normal hammer, I therefore needed less bars to get to my goal of 80, quite a substantial saving, mith was 80xp per bar instead of 50xp, smithing is expensive so the saving with these tools are substantial.

The Sacred Clay Hatchet was next tool to have my attention, I went to yews and tested it, it appears to chop the same speed as a Rune axe, I noticed I was getting 29xp more per log so again a substantial xp increase and no loss in speed compared to rune axes, I would also rate the extra xp more beneficial than the extra logs chopped by a dragon axe if you are training for levels, stick with the dragon if you want cash, my conclusion the Clay hatchet is a free Rune axe that gives you extra xp, will the Rune axe become redundant in P2P?

The Sacred Clay Harpoon, I tested this on sharks, its great that you can wield it so you have an extra space for another shark between bank trips, the extra xp was 19xp per shark, not as great an xp increase as the hatchet and the hammer, I didn't have long to test it I will re check the xp when I get some more time, even with an extra 19xp your still going to get 99 fishing 20% faster.

The Sacred Clay Pickaxe was my next thing to try I took it to a star to test it, I got 1 dust and it wouldn't work any more so you can not use the clay pickaxe on stars, never had chance to test it on ore, I guess the xp would be a 30xp boost but I will update later when I have tested it.

The Drawbacks
The clay proto-tools have 10 charges, each charge has 100 actions then it disappears, I was making addy bolts so the hammer was being used 1 time for each bar, after 100 bars it would revert back to a proto-tool, you then needed to make it into a hammer again, you could do this for the 10 charges then it disappears, you can therefore get 1000 actions from each new proto-tool before you need to get another, had I used it for addy bodies I could have gained a lot more xp with the 1 tool and been able to use 5k bars for each tool, I made bolts because they sell on ge, its the same with logs, you can only chop 100 logs at a time so 1000 logs with all charges, great with yews and mages not so good with willows and oaks unless you get the extra 30xp for each log then its mega quick xp but your going to need lots of tools, I will check.
The proto-tool can only be bought for 20k points after a game, if you log out after a game you need to play another game to buy one even if you have sufficient points to buy them, you can only buy 1 at a time so play a game buy a tool play another game buy another tool, you can not take anything into the game so you should bank in the deposit box at the game area (at time of writing proto-tools do not stack in your bank so each one takes a bank space).

The Salvation
The tools cost 20K points, when you get used to the game getting 20k points in 1 game is easy so you only need to play a 20 minute game to get great xp on your skills.

The Fighters rewards
The fighter armour looks good but has minimal stats, I have a set but I will not wear it for battle because it does not perform, it can be treated as a cheap set of rune armour, would be good for PVP because it costs nothing to replace just a few minutes play.

Unfortunately it can not be stored in your house so just takes up 4 bank slots per set, melee, range, mage.
It is a great update for skillers not so good for fighters, contrary to popular belief, although you do not get xp in game you benefit from the rewards better.

Tidbits
The Morphic Sacred Clay hammer can be used for construction but does not give extra xp.
The Morphic Sacred Clay Pickaxe does not mine stars.

Stealing creation is a few days old already, It didn't appeal to me much so I didn't try it immediately, been chasing stars instead.

Yesterday I gave it a go, I watched my son play before so I had a general idea what to do.

I did the little tutorial, all appeared to be OK so I decided to speak to the goblin to be put into a team

I stood in a square with some other players, lots of stats and numbers about not sure what it meant but the general idea is its trying to balance skill levels between teams, I guess its so the strategy would win the game not a 1 sided team, I believe this happens at Pest Control in the background trying to match similarly speced players.

The game started and I ran out grabbed some clay made an item to be able to get better clay then repeated until I could get some good level 5 clay, I then collected clay made stuff and banked it in our base, sometimes just taking clay and dumping it on the table for other to make stuff with.

I played 2 games and was pretty bored with it so decided to just have a play I tried pick pocketing people, this is when it started to be fun, there would be ancient mages there using Ice spells freezing everyone killing them very quickly (ancients is far to powerful for this game) I would jump out of a cloud and pick their pockets, often pinching their runes so they could no longer fight, bearing in mind I am 99 thieving so I can pick pocket anyone and only players over 79 thieving can pick pocket me.
I would then take the runes back to the base for points.

It is a very fast paced game, you do get time to think but the game seems to be over quickly because you are constantly doing things.

It will take a while to work out tactics but I personally don't think it has much to offer, certainly not enough to keep me at it.

The main complaint I see is that you don't get skill xp from it just combat, I am sure there was a reason for Jagex not giving skill xp in the first place but I would be very surprised if they don't change things so that the skilling aspect of the game is recognised.

A tactic I picked up when playing to get huge amount of points is to runecraft, get the clay and make runes you can do this without returning to base for as long as the clay source is there, when you have exhausted the clay go back and bank, there is a slight drawback to this, if you are killed returning to base you will lose all your hard work and the other team get it.

There is also a problem with the game in the fact you can collect all runes from your base, this will guarantee your team losing so anyone can sabotage the game for their friends on the other side.
Having said that the winning team gets a 10% bonus in points, not enough to be that bothered about winning the game.

The prizes are low spec armour that looks good but has no real place for fighting, some good tools for skillers that give extra xp when using them, hatchet, butterfly net, hammer, harpoon, knife, needle or pickaxe, this sounds fine but is the hatchet as good as a dragon with the extra xp or is it a rune one? same with the pick is it a rune pick with extra xp? if it is dragon and rune items will plummet in price, because it costs 20k points for the tools, 20k points can be obtained easily in 1, 20 minute game, the butterfly net, hammer, harpoon, knife, needle can only give better xp, I am looking forward to trying them.

I have been doing a fair amount of Shooting Star Hunting, I use the world select page to find a quiet world and go to my house and look for a shooting star in an area I want to go to.

I have often seen a quiet world only to find out it is a PVP world, even at peak time its not unusual to have just 200 people on a PVP world, some of these are just skillers looking for a quiet world doing minimal loss skills, off peak 65 players on a PVP world is the norm.

When pking was removed from the wilderness thousands of players protested and threatened to quit, a few even did quit, If you believe the hype billions quite Runescape because of the abolition of Pking, there were mass protests and chat spamming all around Fally, Varrock and the rest of Runescape.

Jagex brought back Pking because it is what some people wanted, it was the sole reason for them playing Runescape, well guys its back, use it, according to popular belief every one was a pker and wanted pking back its back on your very own world so why not use it.

I know there are going to be the excuse that the drops are carp, If you get carp drops play, learn and get better, I have seen players get great drops, Dragon Full Helm was amongst the millions worth of drops from one player, if 45m isnt enough for you then what do you want?

To tell you the truth I knew this is how it was going to be, the protesters were a small minority, they just did the most shouting, the wilderness was always a quiet place with very few people wandering around looking for a good fight, pking was limited mainly to world 18 where a handful of people had a sparring match restocked and returned, the odd pking clan and organised clan fights would sometimes have events in the wilderness but pking was and always will be the minority.

I am as convinced as I always was that the majority of PK abolition protectors had never pked in their life just jumping on the bandwagon for a protest and for people to think they are born killing machines.

Jagex have made a number of worlds with special rules for a minority group, there are restrictions and specials rules to avoid RWT but Jagex have gone to a lot of trouble to make a system that can satisfy as many people as possible, if you don't use the worlds they should be reclaimed and handed back to the normal players.

I am glad Jagex have given you your pking back, I hope it gives you a lot of pleasure and great rewards, if things are not good about pking give Jagex feedback through the forums, don't just avoid pking because of problems, constructive criticism and praise when its due will get it as close to how you like it as possible.