Summoning and Green Charms

In my continuing effort to try to justify the existence of the Summoning skill, at least in my own mind, I spent the past several days researching and trying to harvest green charms. Of the four basic charms (gold, crimson, green and blue), green comes in at number three in difficulty to find. As far as my research and experience goes, I have found no end-all-be-all solution to harvesting green charms quickly. But I have seen things that are better options than just hoping for a random drop from any old monster.

Green Dragon in the Wilderness

The talk on Internet forums and fan sites is that Green Dragons tend to drop green charms at a higher rate then other monsters. I will agree that green charms do drop from Green Dragons at a significantly higher rate.  But I think Green Dragons are too much a pain in the butt to be an effective and efficient charm harvesting tool.  First, they are located in the wild where their location poses a much greater risk to safety.  Second, though they are the easiest of Dragons to kill, they still require investments in food and potions. Third, they take too long to kill, and are heavily hunted by other players.  Don’t get me wrong, there are many reasons to hunt Green Dragons (for one, their hides turn a nice profit).  But as a safe route to train summoning, I personally would leave these monsters alone.

Fighting an Abyssal Guardian

The only creatures that seem to be worthwhile for me to spend my time killing to harvest green charms is the four Abyssal Monsters. These creatures range in combat level from 41 to 124, and are located in the Abyss or ALR plane of the Fairy Ring network. Of the four, the Abyssal Demon is the only slayer creature, and requires level 85 slayer to kill (but it does have some wonderful drops, including the Abyssal Whip.)

I personally stay on the Abyssal Guardians (level 59) because they die fairly easy for my level 89 warrior, they respawn almost instantaneously, and they have some nice drops in addition to charms. But all Abyssal monsters drop charms, and I have found that they tend to drop greens more often then the other colors.  Abyssal monsters will also drop Abyssal charms, which are required secondary ingredients for a couple of higher level summoning pouches. Abyssal charms do not stack and I have not yet decided if they are really worth collecting. In addition to charms, Abyssals drop pure essence in both physical and noted forms, talismans (all kinds), binding necklaces (which I ignore because they do not sell well on the Grand Exchange), and rune crafting pouches of all sizes.

The Abyss is accessible once you have performed a small favor for the Zamorak Mage who hangs around the mouth of the River Lum, just north of Edgeville (level 5 wilderness). This is not a dedicated quest (don’t confuse it with the One Small Favor quest). It is just a minor task that needs to be performed so the player can learn the background story. The Abyss can be a very dangerous place, and is multi-combat, so things can get dicey very quickly. I prefer to fight the Abyssal monsters on the ALR plane of the Fairy Ring network, which is much safer.  To access the fairy rings you will need to have started a little of the Fairy Tale part II – Cure a Queen quest. The Fairy Ring network provides quick access to the ALR and many locations throughout Runescape, including a nice portal squarely between Edgeville and the Grand Exchange.

As for me, I think fighting Green Dragons is a more fun and interesting way to harvest green charms. Challenging the Abyssal monsters in the ALR can be very dull, and trying to collect charms in the Abyss itself is downright suicidal.  In the end, both routes seem to produce simular numbers of green charms in simular time frames.  If you want a degree of safety, go with the ALR.  If you want something a little more interesting, but more dangerous, go with the Green Dragons.

Abyssal Leech (CL 41,HP 10); Abyssal Guardian (CL 59, HP 50); Abyssal Walker (CL 81, HP 95); Abyssal Demon (CL 124, HP 150); Green Dragons (CL 79, HP 75)

Traveling Back

Every once in a while I like to go back and play the old detail mode of Runescape just to remind me of how far we’ve come visually in the past month. A lot of people have complained about the HD update, and for various reasons. It slows down their machines. It doesn’t run at all. It makes their characters look fat. Their character’s hair looks funny. And I saw a few players on the morning of the update say things like, “I hate this, I’m gonna quit Runescape.” Comments like that raised my eyebrow as I wondered, sometimes aloud, why the hell don’t you just play the old detail mode instead of quiting all together? I know that people like to whine and pout when things don’t go the way they were expecting. I know that many of the players are children in the’r early teens who still don’t have the emotional maturity to handle disappointment properly. But really folks, just don’t play high detail if you don’t like it. It is as simple as that.

Anyway, I find myself continuously amazed when I downgrade to the old graphics. Everything in the older version seems so artificial and bland. I find it a challenge on my eyes.  Everything seems so tiny (I now play on full screen most of the time). And looking at images of Runescape Classic, the improvement since 2001 is stunning. The old Classic characters look more like cartoons than anything else. I almost need to laugh when I see them. Below is a progression from Classic to HD. The buttom picture is HD Full Screen, which gives me a near 50% increase in character size.

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The Evolution of Runescape Graphics

Because Classic is no longer open to new players and I let my membership lapse years ago, I needed to search the net for some old classic images.  The little dude in the upper left hand image is from the Runescape Classic photostream on Flickr.com.

Don’t Forget The AntiAlising

Well, I feel like an idiot. When the recent graphical update occurred, I never really paid attention to the graphic options.  I just assumed the settings were set to their max (as suggested by Jagex). I didn’t realize that antialising was still turned off by default. I won’t say that the difference is stunning, but it is subtle and a little more pleasant on the eyes. I recommend turning antialising on for those players who have computers with the power to handle it. Those of you whose systems really can’t handle the extra strain aren’t missing much, but if you can do it, I say go ahead and do it. Below is the same scene, the one on the left is without antialising and the one on the right has antialising 4x. You will need to click the picture and view it full size to see the differences.  Notice how the lines seem straighter.  The armour smoother. The shield edge, the dragon longsword, and grass are less jagged.  If 4x feels a little blurry, there is a 2x option which seems to be a nice middle ground.

Kudos to Anubis’ Blog for pointing this out.

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A Horse is a Horse…

This next idea is one that just recently started formulating in my brain, unlike my other ideas about weather and healthcare that have been festering for years. I think we should have true beasts of burden, not just the nominal activities we get with the Summoning skill. Wooooo… imagine wavy lines going down the screen as I go off on a brief tangent…

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Cheerleading Reindeer

The Runescape Cheerleaders!

Every once in a while I will stumble upon something in Runescape that will just make my jaw drop.  Just now I was in the Grand Exchange when I came across these five players dressed as cheerleading reindeer doing every dancing emote they could find. I literally stood there mesmerized for three minuted watching them (granted, most of that time I was trying to get my print screen to work properly). Anyway, it is always fun to see a team effort.

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Whether to have weather?

The Runescape Channel

If I had to name one thing about Runescape that truly disappoints me, it is its complete lack of weather. Other quality MMORPGs incorporate weather systems, and I even fondly remember playing a text based MUDD in the early nineties that attempted basic weather features. Weather is long overdue in Runescape.

Weather should have many wide ranging effects on day to day life in Runescape. Imagine not having to water crops if you plant them while it is raining. Or better yet (or worse depending on your opinion), crops in a drought stricken area may need additional watering to ensure proper growth. Maybe a freak snow storm could block the pass up through White Wolf Mountain and force players to go around another way till the weather clears. Rare rains in the desert would allow players to walk freely without needing water sacks. And forget about having a high success rate on making fires if it is raining.

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Wanted: Dynamic Stat Side Bar

I would really love to see one of the major Runescape fan sites, those who already provide dynamic signatures and dynamic avatars, design a dynamic blog side bar. It shouldn’t be all that hard to do as it simply would be a reworking of a dynamic signature, but sized taller than wider. Many blog sites allow images in the side bars, including WordPress.com and Blogger.com. For now I am working on a simple design but it is not dynamic and I have to manually update it in PhotoImpact if I want it to be current. So if there is anyone out there who is, or who knows someone, at Runescape Bits & Bytes, SXSSniffer, RuneUniverse, LeetScape or the many other sites that already provide dynamic signatures, please get this idea out of my head and into a working environment.

On a side note, on my own site I developed a “widget” that does load my stats automatically.  But a dynamic side bar image like the currently available signatures would still be a nice option.

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Summoning and Gold Charms

Ice Warriors on White Wolf Mountain

I’m not too fond of the Summoning skill. I don’t dislike it because its too expensive (which it is) nor because charm harvesting is too big a burden (which it is). The skill in and of itself feels all wrong.  It is like someone in the development department at Jagex had a burr on his butt to get this skill implemented without thinking it through and having it make any sense what-so-ever. The complexity of this skill really does boggle the mind.  Worse yet, the skill seems like it is ultimately more work than its worth.  For me, its only value to date has been allowing me to have a pet other than a cat.  But enough about my dislike for Summoning…

In Summoning there are four items that are needed to create pouches which in turn are used to summon the assistance of specific creatures which may or may not be of some additional value to the player.  Plain pouches can be bought fairly cheaply, but need to be infused to have any use. To infuse pouches you need shards that cost 25gp each (which at first seems inexpensive until you get over level 30 and start needing well over 1800gp worth of shards to infuse one stupid pouch for a piddly 60xp). Then a secondary ingredient is needed, like the bones of a specific creature, a bucket of sand, your first born (okay, maybe not that) or practically anything else in the Runescape world. The last item is one of four types of charms (gold, crimson, green, or blue) which can only be obtained by killing creatures and through certain limited kinds of thieving.  Charms are untradeable and not available for sale. Any charms you get, you get on your own and no amount of money will help.

A popular and cost effective way of low level training Summoning is by infusing Granite Crab pouches using seven shards, a gold charm, and an iron ore to gain a total 21 Summoning experience. Sure, a Mosquito pouch may only require one shard and one gold charm, but the Proboscis secondary ingredient is cost prohibitive at over 3000gp each for only 46xp.  What training Summoning boils down to is either a lot of combat to get a lot of charms, or a whole-hell-of-a-lot of money to buy the shards and still needing to use the hard to find charms. The problem with using a lower level xp technique to train Summoning is obviously a lot more time needed to obtain more charms and then the time needed infusing the pouches.  But this low xp technique does save money and only requires gold charms which are the most common to find.  I recommend Ice Warriors to anyone training Summoning and in need of gold charms.

Ice Warriors can be found in the Ice Caves south of Port Sarim or the Ice Plateau in the wilderness. My favorite spot, however, is on the top of White Wolf Mountain. There are two Warriors up there, and several more can be found in the dungeon below.  Remember to bring a Pick Axe with you to the mountain as you will need it to clear a rock slide to get to the Ice Warriors.  Also, the area sounds start out cool and creepy, but quickly become a little annoying, so you may wish to turn down or off the area sounds in this spot.

At combat level 57, Ice Warriors are not wimps, but most mid level players should have little problem with these guys given enough food. At my current 89 combat level I still require some food to harvest from the Warriors, but I usually only bring cakes I have thieved from the stalls in East Ardougne. Weaker players may need lobsters or swordfish. It should also be noted that the Ice Warriors on White Wolf are in a multi-combat zone and will gang up on players, but after fifteen minutes of constant fighting they will start to ignore you unless you attack them first.  I use a Dragon Longsword against these guys, but just for fun, every once in a while I will use my Rune Pick Axe with almost identical effectiveness.  So if you can’t wield Dragon, try a Rune Pick Axe.

Charms are the whole reason to fight Ice Warriors. More often than not they will drop charms, and most of those charms will be gold with an occasional crimson and very rarely a green or blue thrown in to mix things up a bit. Still, in my admittedly non-expert experience in Runescape, Ice Warriors are the most prolific and consistent droppers of gold charms.  Other than, and in addition to charms, they also drop a wide range of other mid value items. I like to think of them as the WalMart of Runescape. They tend to drop a lot of different types or herbs, seeds, and runes. Uncut gems and arrows are also fairly common. I even manage to get a half key every once in a while. You won’t get rich off Ice Warriors, but you will get the charms needed to train up summoning.  I mainly fight them for the charms, and once I deplete my food, which takes a good hour, I’m off to the Catherby bank to make my deposit and get more food. Typically I can get atleast 40 gold charms in an hour.

Ice Warriors: CL-57, HP-59

Quicker Money: Unicow Creature Creation

Unicows under the Tower of Life

One of the joys of being a mid level player in the world of Runescape is that I still learn something new almost every time I play. Take for example my most recent discovery; Unicows. A few days ago I wrote a blog article about Unicorns and the value of their horns. While doing research for that post I discovered that there was another beast, the Unicow, that also drops Unicorn Horns. This discovery set my course in Runescape for the following couple of days.

The Unicow is a creature created by players after they have completed the Tower of Life quest. This particular quest is fairly easy and most members should be able to complete it without too much difficulty. If you want a little bit of a head start, I would recommend bringing along some construction tools like a hammer and saw. To start the quest talk to Effigy just outside the Tower of Life which is located just south of Ardougne, east of the Monastery, and north of Port Khazard. I use a charged combat bracelet to teleport to the Monastery and then walk to the tower, but there is also a nearby Fairy Ring and a couple of boat docks.

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My Kingdom for a Water Talisman!

My kingdom for a stupid freaking water talisman! This Lumbridge achievement diary is really making me rethink all those things I threw away because I figured I would never need them again. I haven’t runecrafted in over a year!  I can’t even find a talisman or tiara on the grand exchange. I’ve spent an hour killing goblins with no luck either. But, on the bright side, I did earn a bunch of gold charms and a nice load of basic runes.

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