Aug

31

Starting a new character

August 31, 2005 | 38 Comments

Sept 2007 update: NOTE! Some of what may have worked here doesn’t seem to work that way anymore - namely, you can’t stock up on things from Tutorial Island to use later, nor can you advance past level 3 on the island. See the notes at the end of this post for more detail

So, you want to play Runescape, or have played it for a while already but are dirt poor with no belongings and you want to start over. That’s cool, stuff happens, sometimes it’s just so we can change our names.

You venture over to http://www.runescape.com and click on the “Create Account” button under “Main Features”. You agree to the terms and conditions (please read them first), and you select your player name. The system will let you know if your player name isn’t available and give you some options for related names to select instead if the one you want is already taken.

Remember, no profanity in the name, or you may get your account cancelled.

When you first connect to the game, you’re asked to select a gender for your character (we are all human, no orc, troll, etc races here) configure the look of your online character (aka Avatar) by cycling through the options for the various body parts. You can change the color and the look of your clothing, hair and body. You can change this later in the game but it costs money and requires some looking around to find, so choose carefully!

Once you are satisfied with your Avatar, click on ‘Accept’.

The view you’re put into now is “the standard view” for the game. At this time it’s great to use your arrow keys to see the effect on the view, so you know how to adjust your perspective of the area you’re in.

The Runescape Tutorial is designed for all new players, and all new players (ie: any “new character” you create) are required to go through the tutorial completely in order to get into the rest of the “game”. Unless you’ve been through it before, don’t rush through this part of the game - you can gather valuable tools and materials that will be tremendously helpful in getting you going once you hit the “real world of Runescape”.

One of the clicking challenges of the game is that sometimes there are things in the way of what you want to click - the fire for cooking the shrimp, the various NPC’s (non-player characters) you interact with, etc. The simplest solution is to employ the right-click strategy, and instead of left-clicking on something that is obscured, right-click and then select the correct option from the list that appears. This can be especially important when you’re sharing your cooking fire and someone stands in the fire to do their cooking (and no, they don’t get burned, it’s a funny quirk of the game).

There are areas in the tutorial area that could be quite lucrative for a new player starting out - don’t be afraid to smelt a bunch of copper bars and smith a bunch of daggers for sale later on.

While killing the rats with the sword, feel free to stick around and kill as many as you can before you exit the cage that first time, as you cannot return. Eat your cooked shrimp and bread to help you heal so you can kill more. You are gaining real experience and can advance skill levels while in the tutorial, and you know you’re attacking safe monsters that way as well! Before you leave the cage, be sure to run around and pick up any arrows laying around. These arrows will stay with you when you leave Tutorial Island.

Once you get your bow and arrow set, don’t waste your arrows killing more than one rat at this time. You can’t get back into the cage to retrieve the arrows, and you want to bring as many off of Tutorial Island as possible.

Once off of Tutorial Island, do yourself a favor and talk to the Lumbridge Guide. Read all he has to talk about, but especially the information about where to find a bank. As a new player with very few belongings, you want to protect your belongings by banking everything you don’t need to be carrying around with you. Even as a high level player, I keep my inventory small and focused on the specific task at hand.

Visit the bank in Draynor Village, following the directions the Guide offered you, and stow away everything but your bronze axe. Whatever you do, don’t go into battle until you’ve stowed away your items! Without money you can’t purchase replacements, and NOBODY likes beggars. It’s important to be self-sufficient and that includes being able to go on without great pain if you die and lose everything you were carrying.

Now your inventory is ready to be filled with logs that you can store in the bank until you can find a player willing to buy the logs. And for 100 logs, you should be able to get 3,000-5,000 coins! That kind of money will be great for buying armor for your upcoming battles.

You’re off to a great start!

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Aug

24

Strategies For Handling Competition in Skilling Areas

August 24, 2005 | 3 Comments

Runescape is a very popular online game, and as a result, you may find yourself competing with others both in your battling areas and while you gather raw materials like logs and ores.

Simple strategies to lessen the frustration you’ll feel from this competition are as follows:

  • Become a Member if at all possible - the accessable part of the world is larger and thus there are places to gather your raw materials and build your skills.
  • Find a bank far away from the main cities and gather your materials from that location instead. Many players are too lazy to leave the main cities, so the competition is inherently reduced.
  • Find a time of the day when there are reliably less people playing, and spend that time gathering materials that are the most frustrating with other players around: mining, log gathering and fishing for example.
  • Invest the time in improving your ranging ability (bow and arrow use), because when you’re fighting in competitive areas, quick-clicking rangers have an advantage, and in some areas a ranger can stand out of the reach of a large monster, yet still attack and kill that monster.
  • Make your own arrows - this goes with the above point - if you try to buy enough arrows to improve your ranging ability, you’ll spend all of your money and still not have enough arrows. It’s better to advance your mining, smelting and fletching skills so you can create and use your own arrows. Plus, hey, if you have an extra 1000 laying around after all that work, you can sell it for a profit to others who are too lazy to create their own!
  • Explore the wilderness when the game server isn’t full - there are a lot of great skilling places, like mines and herblore-component things, in the Wilderness. But of course, there are inherent dangers in the Wilderness - other players looking to kill you for sport or for your equipment. Explore when the game server is quiet and you’ll be a lot less stressed.
  • Save every rune you come across - then build your mage skills periodically. Building your mage skills is rewarded by the teleport skills you will get at mid-to-high levels, which make transportation around the world a LOT EASIER, and provides for quick-escape within certain parts of the Wilderness in case you find yourself under attack.
  • Sell law runes 1, 2 or 5 at a time when players are specifically desperate for the runes - don’t sell large quantities at any one time as you won’t get a good rate for them, and law runes are valuable (being a key part of the mage teleports above). If you sell 1, 2 or 5 at a time, you can ask 1000 coins for each and players will pay. Watch for their advertisements in the bank.

I hope this helps!

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