Runescape Game Play

Its the end of the world as we know it!!

Ok the end of Pking has arrived, sorry you pkers its the end of unorganised pking, but hey don't worry you can still team attack a defencless players you just can't attack skillers! C'est la vie.

I have mixed views on this update, I did like the danger of the wildy, I did like killing off noobs who had a go at me, but the up date has opened a whole new world to a new group of players.

I will start off with the Bounty Hunter, this is great for the normal cowardly pker, you are assigned one player to attack you need to track them down or tele next to them, you then need to kill them, this sounds great and lots of fun? nope the chicken mentality of the pker makes it so they can group and all attack the player attacking, this is the same as clan wars were before this update but instead of a clan all attacking another clan you get a clan attacking 1 player, this area should not be multi if your not in a team you stand no chance.

I went in with Keris and a few lobbies I found my bounty and attacked, I was set upon by about 10 players all over 95 combat, even at 125 I stood no chance, this should suit the chicken pker but for the more brave adventurer without backup its not going to happen.

I went to the Clan wars area, there was a Jagex Mod trying to answer questions but most of the time he was getting abuse and people threatening to quit, he had many reasonable situation where he could have muted players on the spot, I believe they had anticipated this and will only mute persistent bad language.

I never got into the Clan Wars but will check it out later.

The rest of the wildy is fun fun fun, this has opened a whole new area for less aggressive type players, you can now mine rune ore, complete mage arena and attack the chaos elemental with controlled danger, I had 2 attempts at the Chaos Elemental and killed him on both occasions, I got 1k coins and 500 iron arrows, I can see the price of rune ore dropping and there being a flood of dragon 2 handers available, I can also see the price of treasure trail items dropping too.

There is still a great danger, the new monsters appear from no where and they are nasty, they hit hard I was hit 27 from a level 126, he heals himself and mages and ranges, it took me 2 attempts to kill 1 but I did succeed and got 800gp, what is nice is I can wear whatever I want in the wildy now so I can take on the KBD with my best gear on.

This is a massive new area for many players to explore, there are far more normal players than pkers so this is going to benefit the majority of players.

I do feel sorry for the pkers but you now have chicken central your very own chicken coop so you can pile any players who takes your fancy.

On the more serious note Jagex are taking a lot of abuse over this update, many players are threatening to quit, can't say I've ever seen an update where people haven't threatened to quit, but you do need to look at it from their point of view, Real world trading is a very real problem there is no avoiding that, people are blaming Jagex for these measures, think about it, is it Jagex who have forced these measures or is it the people buying the gold.

You only need to think of the next few days or weeks even, Jagex need to think of the future.

I went to Barrows today, haven't been for a while so thought I would stay until my next mage level (97) not far to go.

Main drops half key (loop) and Dharoks Helm and Veracs skirt in about 25 runs as normal using my barrows strategy there were quite a few people there and I was surprised how few were doing it the easy way.

The easy way is to use prayer and wear mage armour with magic dart or better magic combat spell, in my eyes magic dart is better or as good as any other spell including ancients and wave spells at barrows.

A lot of people were wearing melee armour and whips and all sorts of melee weapons, the only melee weapons suitable for barrows are dds or full veracs even those are unpredictable, you may get a quick kill one time and take ages the next.

The thing that really tickles me is the people in full melee armour using magic dart and not using prayer, there was a rumour that magic dart was not affected by your armour or equipment mage bonus, this is a false rumour but some people swear by it, the surprising thing is some high level players believe it as well.

Using Magic dart with melee armour reduces the amount of times you hit although it does not effect your max hit, so wearing melee armour killing the monster takes longer, this increases the amount of times you can get hit by your monster and the greater amount of food to eat.

This method is unpredictable, you may not get hit or you may get hit several times in a row, you may eat all your food or you may eat none.

Wearing mage gear you will normally kill the monster quicker so get on to your next brother quicker, using prayer you will not need food (Except maybe Verac) so you save expense and inventory space and you do not need to constantly be on the ready to eat.

Several times I went in today and saw player half kill their barrows brother using magic dart and melee armour, I go in and kill mine before they do.

MAGIC DART IS AFFECTED BY MAGE EQUIPMENT BONUS!!!

Perhaps its me I just like an easy life I don't need to prove im matcho, prayer and mage gear for me.

before someone says it Ahrim is easiest to range, maging him can take an eternity.

And while im here just to let you know I got 99 range eventually, I got 99 at spiritual warriors.

At long last 99 range at spiritual warriors

Perhaps I should go and get my range cape

And what the hell I also got 82 Herblore.

I got 82 herblore but couldnt screenie so here is my 81 piccy, If anyone has a screenie of the 82 herblore and the super weapon poison ++ screen please let me know.

Addition to initial post

I got 97 magic, I did about 50 barrows runs and got in total Dharoks Helm, Veracs skirt, Veracs helm, Dragon Med Helm, 3 half keys (all loops) as well as the usual runes and bolt racks, I got 170k mage xp from barrows and ended up with more runes than I started and about 2m worth of drops, although its not quick for mage xp it can be very profitable.

Getting there

You have your slayer task you know what to wear to fight them and you know where you need to go, you need to travel there in a way to minimise damage from other monsters, this must be considered when traveling there, going to the top floor of the slayer tower without a nosepeg is very dangerous, aberrant specters were put there to protect high level players from "Can I have one of your whip drops please" but they will damage higher level players chances of a quick kill by reducing your stats if a nosepeg is not worn.

Potting up
Its a good idea to use pots to increase your efficiency, you can increase the speed you kill the monsters considerably using the pot appropriate to your attack method, drinking pots can slow you down if drinking when fighting however there is a way to drink and have no effect on your attack, you are effectively getting a free turn when fighting.

When and how to drink
You will hear the sound of when you attack your monster this is reinforced by the animation of you attacking, if you get used to the time interval between hits you can judge the exact time to drink your pot, you must drink your pot at the exact time you hit the monster, when your weapon sound is on drink and you will drink and be returned to the ready to attack state before your next hit, it takes a bit of getting used to but will increase your task time by a small amount, this small amount soon adds up over thousands of monster kills.

Eating
Unfortunately when eating you can not beat the system and it will take a turn to eat, even if using the above method you will still miss a turn, this gives the monster an extra chance to cause you damage, the only way to get around this is to eat when your not under attack, if you need to wait for a monster to respawn you can eat then but if there are plenty of monsters you will waste time, eating during the fight is often the most effective way to eat if there are lots of monsters.

Guthans
Using Guthans to heal is great for melee based monsters, changing your clothing and weapon can be done in fight without losing attack turns by using the pot method above, as soon as you reach 100% health return back to your original weapon and armour to speed training again..

Next Monster
To increase your speed in leveling slayer and finishing your task quickly it is a good idea to have your next monster visible for your next attack, as you are nearing the death of your monster locate your next victim, it may be possible to just click it as your monster dies but if they move around you may find another tactic useful.

Getting ready for next kill
Towards the death of your current monster locate your next victim and right click it, move your mouse cursor just over the attack option and wait for the death sound of the monster you are fighting, as soon as you hear that sound click the attack option and you will move on and attack your next monster immediately even if it has moved from your game window sight.

Competition
Many tasks have a limited number of monsters to kill, this means you may have times you need to fight over monsters with other players, there are ways of doing this quite effectively, for example you can take runes for a magic attack spell, clicking on the spell in your spell book allows you to click the monsters as soon as it becomes available, you will get that monsters attention immediately even if you are not close to it, this is particularly useful if the monster is a higher level than you, this avoids the right click and attack mouse clicks.

Its OK to get the monsters attention this way but it can be intercepted by the other player in the time scale of you mageing it and getting to attack it melee, the easiest way in the long term is to swap worlds for a quieter world, the other player may have ousted you from your world that you like to play on but you get a place where you are not constantly trying to fight to get your monster, you are guaranteed a monster so speeding up your slayer xp.

Drops
Do not pick up coin drops,
This will cost you a lot of money in the long run, killing a monster waiting for its dieing animation then going over to pick it up will cost you valuable seconds per monster.

I will use an example to demonstrate my theory.

170 greater demons as a slayer task
You kill the demons
Dieing animation 2 seconds running over to get loot 1 second attacking next monster 1 second thats 4 seconds per monster.
4*170=680 seconds
Over your slayer task thats 11 minutes picking up cash max value of 3k.
You have 10 slayer tasks thats just under 2 hours for 30k (How much flax can you pick and spin in 2 hours?).
To get 85 slayer you will need thousands of slayer tasks, using 1k tasks as an example 1k * 11 minutes, 183 hours for 3m cash thats just under 8 days constant playing for 3m.
How many slayer tasks can you do in 8 days constant playing?
By picking up loose change you have delayed your 85 slayer by weeks of constant game play, how many whips can you get in 8 days constant, I will answer that for you its loads.

This above example is a very rough estimation there is instances where the pickup times will be quicker and other factors to bear in mind but even at half the times quoted there is still too much time wasted by collecting coins.

Clues
Clues can bring great value items running into millions for level 3 and 100's for 2's and 1's, but the chance is you will only get a few rune items for 3's and carp for the 1's and 2's.
Clues can be quite quick or they can take ages depending on you experience and combat levels for wildy trips, doing a clue will reduce your slayer time by a lot, if you are seriously training slayer you should ignore clues, I personally do them at the end of the task just for a break.

Armour drops
Unless they are mith legs or above they should be ignored, please view the coin drop example above.

How to pick up drops
When you kill a monster it may drop a good item, unfortunately Jagex like fancy dieing sequences for their monsters so it will take a long time before you see it on the floor, this time is wasted if you stand and watch so you should attack your next monster and while you are fighting watch the monster you just killed go through its dieing sequence and the drop appear, if it is good run over and pick it up during your fight, this will minimise your non fighting time your monster you are attacking may follow you so you can attack sooner and auto attack will get you back on track quickly.

Alching
When training on some monsters you will get good armour drops, mith bodies, addy legs etc, selling these is time consuming and is not worth the time involved and they can take up too much space in your inventory, this is when alching comes in handy, having nats and fire runes in your inventory you can hi alch them and turn them into stackable gold pieces when you are fighting, it takes up an attack turn but you will resume fighting as soon as you have finished.

Randoms
Love them or hate them they are there for good, randoms are not totally random, they can be induced and usually at the worst possible time, if you are fighting a monster and they drop bones, if you have been fighting for a long time you are likely to get a bone random if you bury them, grave digger, shade, zombie, be prepared that if you bury a bone you may well get one so watch your health before.

Teleing from the place may also bring a random these are particularly dangerous if you are fighting dangerous monster with prayer, for example you are meleeing metal dragons your prayer runs out so you tele, mad molly the evil twin random whisks you away and gets you to catch her sister, if you catch her sister you are dumped back in the dragons lair with no prayer (not healthy) there is an easy way out of this, catch the wrong one and you are teled to safety.

Alching can also bring on randoms so be prepared for an evil chicken or any other random that can cause damage.

If you are caught fighting and a random appears you can deal with them without stopping, security guard, MOM (Non box 1) and cap'n hand can be dismissed with a click they will stand and watch you but will not attack or tele you even if you don't complete the conversation.

The MOM with the box and sandwich lady can not be dismissed so easily.

Before the cut all option for gems you could cut them while fighting, this was great because this would often call the genie random and free xp pressy, you need to stop fighting now but could be worth it for you.

Escaping
Tele after completing your task watch out for randoms as mentioned above.

What equipment to take and wear to each task is dependent on your combat and slayer level the type of monster you are fighting and the combat method you want to train.

After you have been given a new slayer task you will be given a few more dialogue options, one of these is any tips, ask your master this and he will give you some fairly useless advice, he will however give you an indication of special precautions/requirements to take into consideration when attacking these monsters, this can be like using slayer gloves for attacking fever spiders, anti poison for cave crawlers and mind or elemental shield for Skeletal Wyverns etc.

You will need to understand the attack style of the monster you are attacking, whether it be mage, range or melee, and plan your attack method and armour accordingly, it is not alway evident what their attack style is so trial and error or copying what others use and wear is often your only way of determining this.

How to determine best armour to wear
This is easier than you might think, Jagex have given you all the tools you need to determine your best armour weapon combination, there are things to take into consideration and balances to make between different armour weapon types, only you can decide which is best for you.

It will take a while to get used to what type of armour to wear but as a rule of thumb, range armour protects from mage attacks, melee armour is good for protection from range and melee attacks, there are always exceptions to this rule but I will tell you how to determine the best way to use the easily available tool to decide.

I will use mage defence as an example this time but the same principle works for all attack and defence types.

Supposing you have a task for infernal mages, this is easy mages use mage attack normally and infernal mages being no exception, select all your items you expect to have high mage defence, as already said this is normally range gear and have them in your inventory. click on the little man icon next to your inventory icon this will show what your wearing, clicking on the shield and helmet icon towards the bottom will show you your items and the associated stats for what you are currently wearing.

You are going to attack a mage based monster so you need as high a mage defence as possible, under where it says defence bonus you need to concentrate on the magic stat, by clicking on the items in your inventory you should aim to make this as high as possible.

Having this as high as possible will allow you to stay on your task as long as possible by reducing damage received and saving you food.

Obviously for range defence work on the range defence stat and for melee you have the stab, slash and crush options these can be optimised for each melee monsters attack style/weapon but it starts to get complicated so normally it is fine to stick with your best general armour.

Wearing armour with a negative mage defence against a mage type attack reduces your resistance to mage so you will take more damage than not wearing anything, in this situation run away as fast as you can or take your clothes off.

Likewise wearing some armour will reduce your range and mage attack bonus, wearing rune while attacking with mage will cause most of your spells to splash, this means that you will not damage the monster you have waisted a rune or 2 and you will not get XP for that cast, there was a rumour that Magic dart could be used with armour with a negative mage bonus, this is not true and will cost you time and money even at barrows.

Choosing a Weapon
The quickest way to kill most monsters for a balanced player is melee, you can hit harder with melee than any other weapons (With the exception of expensive dragon bolts arrows and some other enchanted bolts) the same as the defence bonus above you need to look at the attack bonus part this time, to attack using melee you need to concentrate on slash stab and crush options, this varies considerably for each weapon so should be checked regularly until you are used to them.

Weapons like the dragon scimmy can be used on all attack styles, slash, stab and crush, weapons like the hallies are very low crush bonus so is not suitable to train defence.

Some monster are better to range than melee, bloodvelds use a melee based mage attack so you need to wear range gear and at any level you will take damage, for lower level players you may not be able to complete this task in one visit so a trip or 2 back to the bank will be required, taking a bow and arrows will make it so you can complete this task in 1 visit saving you time walking too and from the bank.

Another option is to use prayer, this is advised or sometimes essential to use to fight some monster, for example metal dragons, to melee these you will not last long without prayer, without prayer a task of 60 irons will take days because you may not be able to kill 1 on one visit, dark beasts praying on these is again essential, guthans can be used on these but they hit hard and fairly often so you will constantly be using the spear to heal and that is a very slow weapon.

Canon
The use of a canon for slayer is a very effective weapon, a canon can be used to turn a single combat area into a multi combat area, if you can set up a canon and not be attacked by any monster the canon will hit every monster not being attacked by another player in that area, you can have a canon firing and range or mage or even hally the monsters and still be hitting all free monsters in the firing range of the canon.
Use of a canon is not very popular with other players but you are entitled to use whatever weapon you want wherever you want, I personally prefer to find a quiet world so not to annoy anyone, but it is also better when there are no players to take your available monsters.

To help you along the way to identifying good defence for all fighting classes here is a non exhaustive list of advised armours.

For Mage defence

Snake skin, frog skin, dragon hide (Best you can wear), karils, elemental shield, sara book.

Melee defence
All metal armour from bronze to dragon (best you can wear), Torag, Dharoks, veracs, granite.

For range defence
very few monster fight with ranged attacks, I would wear the same as melee defence but check with your stats screen.

Defence using prayer
Monks robes, initiate, proselyte armour, veracs.

Now you know what armour to wear you know what weapon and attack style you want to use, what else is there to take?

Food
This is totally dependent on you ability as a player, take as much food as you believe you may require to kill your assigned amount of monsters, ranging or mage just take a bit in case you get caught by accident.

Guthans
Guthans can be used on melee based monsters, this will heal your health by the same amount as you take off your victim when the special kicks in, the special is very random you can get lots in a row or go for ages without any so take some food just in case, Guthans reduces your mage defence a lot so when used on a mage based attack you will take a lot of damage, this will require you to use it a lot to heal and with the spear being so slow will slow down your task considerably.

Pots
Hitting harder and more often will speed up your task, take attack, strength and defence pots or the super version if you have them if training melee, take mage pots if attacking with mage and range pots if using range, for training using prayer take the above pot depending on your attack style (Defence pot is not required) and of course prayer pots if you intend going to be there a long time.

Extras

Chisel (not so good now)
Take a chisel to cut gem drops for crafting XP, this was a good idea until the cut all option was introduced, before you could cut gems without slowing down your attack, now you can not cut when fighting.

Alchemy runes
Taking Nats and fire runes to alch any high value items is ideal to save space for other drops, you can take a fire or lava staff but this will slow down your task a lot, alching will cost you 1 hit swapping from weapon to staff can take 1 hit away and swapping back will, all this time you have taken hits from the monster and not been able to hit back or if you alch when you are not in combat wastes even more time.

Quick tele
If you are on a dangerous task take a quick tele just in case you get in trouble if not take runes or item to tele you near your slayer master for your next task.

Enchanted Gem
Essential, there is nothing worse than teleing from a slayer task with low health and no food to find you only had 1 left to kill, its also handy so you can plan when you take a break, if your tired and and have 160 left go, make a cup of coffee and take a walk, if you have 4 to go finish your task then take a walk and make your cuppa.

Next slayer installment will be called fighting your slayer monsters.

BTW piccies to follow shortly

This is just a continuation of my luck over the weekend and more information to back up my money making tip from spiritual warriors.

I had 156 Spiritual warriors for slayer, as normal I went equipped for a boss solo fight after I got my 40, fighting the warrior for my first 40 I got a rune longsword and a rune kite shield, pretty good you might think! well it gets better after killing K'ril I got a god sword shard, shard 2, only worth under 2m but who cares its a shard, part of the God sword, two more to go then I need to get the expensive part, it will come sooner or later.

2 rune drops from spiritual warriors and a god shard from killing K'ril

Then after my second 40 I got a rune hally and a rune longsword and some cash from K'ril.

My next 40 Warriors got Rune Hally and Rune Longsword and some cash from K'ril

I haven't finished there yet but im sure to get some more rune weapons.