Chapter 4: Routine Matters
On the surface, my goals for Omegawytch seem simple enough:
- Raise defense to 60;
- Become wealthy enough, through thievery and other means, to purchase
- The Only Item Requiring 60 Defense To Wear;
- Stroll into the Heros Guild, wearing the aforesaid Item, at the lowest possible combat level;
- Obtain Magic gauntlets.
I haven’t reached any of these goals yet. This post is a progress report, explaining how I’m trying to achieve them and some of the choices I’ve made.
To achieve these goals, I need to complete the Lost City, Family Crest, and Hero quests. In addition, I need at least 55 quest points, and to meet some minimum skill requirements: 53 fishing, 53 cooking, 50 mining, and 25 herblaw (for Hero quest); 40 smithing, 40 crafting, and 56-59 magic (for Family Crest); and 36 woodcutting (for Lost City).
In meeting these requirements, I had to consider not only how quickly I could raise a skill, but how it would affect my other objectives.
Quests: In progress
The first Member quests I did were chosen because they were quick, easy quest points– and, more importantly, because they increased my mobility. The Monk’s Friend quest reward gave me eight law runes– now I could teleport. The Fishing Contest quest gave me access to the Mountain Dwarf tunnel under White Wolf Mountain. The Plaguesheep quest gave me four quick, if not particularly enjoyable, quest points, and opened the door for the Plague City quest, which in turn makes the Ardougne teleport spell available to me (as soon as I cast a couple more spells to raise my magic to 51).
Next, I tackled Merlin’s Crystal, which must be completed before the Hero quest. I was a bit worried about this quest– not because of any danger (I laugh in the face of danger! I turn my backside in the general direction of danger! Then I run like a chaos dwarf away from danger!), but because I didn’t know if my low attack would keep me from using Excalibur. Surely enough, 20 attack is required to wield Excalibur. Happily, despite my 4 attack, I was able to “Use Excalibur with crystal” to free Merlin.
Next I tackled another mandatory quest: The Druidic Ritual, required to begin Herblaw. I encountered no difficulties dipping the four meats in the Cauldron of Thunder.
After identifying all the herbs I could, and mixing my first attack potions, I did the Jungle Potion quest to gain the Herblaw xp. I encountered no difficulty with Scorpions, Hobgoblins, Tribesmen, Jungle Spiders, or Jogres– but I did encounter an oddity: As I was returning to Trufitus with the final herb, I made a screen shot of Omegawytch’s stats, to be able to determine how much Herblaw xp the quest gave me. When I later looked at the picture, Omegawytch’s stats were there, alright– but Omegawytch was not!
I’ve never encountered this phenomenon before. Apparently I pressed Print Screen at the exact instant between frames of the animated sprite, leaving only the static background to be recorded.
(For the record, I gained 1775 Herblaw xp from the quest, raising my level to 17.)
Herblaw: In progress
I’m getting plenty of herbs by defense training on level 9 Man (see below). The sticky wicket is second ingredients: With my low combat level, Unicorns take a long time to kill, and the sources of limpwurt root (Hobgoblins, Giants, Tribesmen) are not at all practical. Much as I hate trading, I may try to trade some herbs for seconds. Or I might use Guam from my current level 18 to level 21. Using Greenmans Ale, I’ll then be able to mix Harralander with easily available red spider eggs.
Defense training: In progress
My naive hope that I could train defense while thieving turned out to be a non-starter: Once my thieving level had risen beyond the level 9 Man, the monsters simply took too long to kill with my low attack and strength.
Level 8 Rats are great training– only 5 hp– and I gained several defense levels killing them, but they didn’t get me any closer to my other objectives. Also, they retreat, which wastes time. I switched to the level 8 Cow (8 hp, drops hides I can use) and the level 9 Man (7 hp, drops herbs I can use), neither of which retreats, and the level 3 Chicken (3 hp, retreats but drops feathers I can sell).
On many occasions I’ve forgotten to switch my combat style to Defensive, and have gained a lot of unwanted attack and strength levels as a result. To guard against this happening again, I try to remember to attack an appropriate monster as soon as possible after I log in, switch to Defensive, then kill the monster. An appropriate monster is one I can kill quickly (Man, Cow, level 7 Goblin), but which I cannot kill in one hit (Chicken, level 2 Rat). But I cannot undo the damage already done, and more disciplined players will surely be able to achieve my objectives at a significantly lower combat level than I will.
Magic: On hold
Partly because of the mistakes just mentioned, I’ve deliberately refrained from using magic unless I had to (obtaining Bat bones, nearly killing Mordred), in order to keep my combat level as low as possible. I did superheat some iron ore (can’t stand the failure rate in the furnace!), but only enough to get to 30 smithing; more about this below. I’ll have plenty of time to raise magic after achieving my main objective. Plenty of time… and plenty of runes.
Fishing and cooking: Goals met
Omegawytch was already a level 50 fisher when I got her a membership. My desire to make money made this a no-brainer: Lobsters, all the way. Sure, fly fishing would have been faster, but a glance at the Market boards quickly reveals much higher demand for lobsters than for salmon and trout– and for the feathers I didn’t use for fly fishing.
Mining: Goal met
I wanted to mine silver, because it gives the most xp per ore for a mining level in the 20s. Also, my friend Loraxx is crafting again; mining silver would let me help Loraxx while furthering my own objectives. I started in Edgeville dungeon mine, and gained a mining level there fighting skeletons, retreating whenever a hard silver rock respawned to click it. This was not at all satisfactory. I found a much better solution not far away, at the southwest Varrock mine, with its three beautiful soft silver rocks and two soft iron rocks.
I developed a routine:
- Leave west Varrock bank for the mine
- Mine the silver rocks
- Mine iron rocks and kill mugger until silver respawns
- Repeat until full
- Rest at Juliet’s bed
- Bank and repeat
This routine served me well until I reached 30 mining, allowing me to mine coal. I developed a new routine, working in my crafting objective:
- Leave west Varrock bank for the mine
- Mine the silver rocks
- Mine clay rocks and kill mugger until silver respawns
- Repeat until full
- Rest at Juliet’s bed
- Moisten clay at Cooking Guild
- Make bowls at Barbarian Village
- Mine hard coal rocks at Barbville, dropping bowls to make room
- Rest at Juliet’s bed
- Bank and repeat
After executing this somewhat cumbersome routine three times, I had reached 14 crafting. I certainly wasn’t going to reach my crafting goal with clay, and the Barbville coal mine was too slow and crowded.
Saradomin does not love low combat level coal miners. Except for Barbville, every coal mine is guarded by time-consuming monsters. Since I was spending much of my time thieving in Ardougne anyway, I resigned myself to being battered, bashed, beaten by bears.
I developed a new routine:
- Leave south Ardougne bank
- Loot the silver stall
- Go to east Ardougne mine
- Fight bear
- Retreat after 2.5 rounds, click hard coal rock
- Repeat until “too tired to mine this rock”
- Fight bear
- Retreat after 2.5 rounds, click soft iron rock
- Repeat until 100 per cent fatigue
- Loot the silver stall
- Forced march to bed
- Loot the silver stall
- Bank and repeat
After my thieving level reached 65, I modified this routine to include the Spices stall.
Smithing: Goal met
Smelting silver took me nearly to 30. As noted above, I did superheat a few iron ores; these I made into two handed swords, which I sold to Gaius’s shop in Taverly. Since then, I haven’t touched a hammer. A quick glance at the Market boards was all it took to make me realize that smelting steel bars would give me the best financial return for my smithing efforts.
Crafting: In progress
As noted above, I went from level 7 crafting to level 14 making bowls. I then switched to making leather armor from the hides of the cows I killed while training defense. This nice synergy has taken me to 35 crafting (more than needed for the Lost City quest), with 120 hides still in the bank. I may continue to 40 with hides, or I may make bow strings. I’m in no hurry, as I don’t intend to do Family Crest until Omegawytch is a certified official Hero.
Making Holy Symbols was never a consideration. I’ve previously posted about how much I dislike making Holy Symbols, and I’m not going to make any more, ever, unless and until Saradomin lets us throw them. Besides, as noted above, my silver is committed to Loraxx.
Thieving: Perpetually in progress
Thieving is my favorite skill in RuneScape, and the perfect career for a high-defense, low-combat mage such as Omegawytch.
Looting Nature rune chests is boring as dishwater, but too rewarding to ignore. I’ve developed the habit of checking the chest next to the north Ardougne bank whenever I’m in the neighborhood. If it’s vacant, I loot it while reading Scapeboard or surfing the Web until someone else shows up. If someone else is looting, I do something else; my life is too short to waste any of it competing with someone else at the Nature chest.
Looting Blood rune chests is probably my favorite activity in all of RuneScape. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly as rewarding for Omegawytch as it is for 56warrior, who can train on Ogres and bury Big Bones while waiting for the chests to respawn. Nonetheless, the runes, the gp, and the thieving xp available make the Blood chests impossible for Omegawytch to ignore. Naturally, I developed a routine:
- Check chests to see if someone else is looting
- If someone else is looting, do something else
- If no one else is looting, loot a chest
- Pick lock, return, loot the other chest
- Train defense on convenient Man spawns until chests respawn
- Repeat until another thief shows up; then do something else
Picking pockets, though, is what Omegawytch does best. With her low attack and strength and high defense, she can literally pick a single Knight’s pocket for hours before running out of cake, leaving the Knight in near perfect health.
My friend Cydewinder’s enthusiasm for picking the pockets of Yanille Watchmen was contagious, and I actually took Omegawytch to the Tree Gnome Stronghold agility course. After reaching level 16– just a tenth of the way to the level 42 required to scale the wall to pick the Watchpersons– we decided we’d rather be thieving. 56warrior reached 70 thieving without them; Omegawytch could do the same.
I wanted Omegawytch to reach 70 thieving (Paladins– yes!) the same way Cydewinder had a few days earlier– by picking a Paladin’s pocket. So we hiked up to the Baxtorian mine for some Poison Chalices.
(In case you don’t know, Mr. Stankers, the operator of the coal trucks west of Seers Village, will offer you a Poison Chalice if you greet him by name. Like kebabs, the effects of Poison Chalices are unpredictable: A dodgy one will make you sick (reduce your hp slightly), but a good one will boost a random skill by one level, as a Dwarven Stout increases mining and smithing.)
We returned to Ardougne with half a load of Poison Chalices, parked near a Paladin, and started swilling.
As luck would have it, the very first Poison Chalice boosted Thieving.
As luck would have it, the Paladin caught Omegawytch on every attempt until thieving ability returned to normal.
The next half dozen Chalices were dodgy, except one which boosted Crafting. Finally, another one boosted Thieving. Bingo!
(This picture shows why I chose this hair color for Omegawytch: It looks like a fringe of rune, hanging down from the back of the helm to protect her neck. I call it my Runitic Fri… Nevvermind…)
Becoming wealthy: Doing pretty well, thanks…
Here are Omegawytch’s “liquid assets” immediately after the Paladin pocket picking portrayed in the previous picture:
NOTE: I am not selling anything at this time! Please do not post to this thread offering to buy anything! When I want to sell something, I will post in the appropriate Market forum!
As mentioned previously, my silver is committed to Loraxx, and I’d rather keep the runes for Omegawytch’s use. However, I think it worth noting that, if I were to sell everything in the picture at prices currently offered on the Market boards, I’d probably have enough gp to meet prices currently being asked for The Only Item Requiring 60 Defense To Wear.
56warrior
Notes
Two images in this chapter sadly seem to have been lost; they are not present in the RsInn archive.