43 Prayer

Yesterday I decided to join the big boys and get 43 prayer. I used the skill calculator and saw that I needed either 2800 regular bones, 850 big bones, or 425 baby blue dragon bones. I'd heard that baby blue dragons were frequently killed for prayer experience so I thought that now would be as good a time as any to see for myself. Furthermore, I saw that I'd only need 107 bones if I ectofunctused them. It was settled, I had a plan.

Starting from Falador, wearing full rune w/ anti-dragonfire shield, I made my way northwest towards Taverly. I had a dusty key from a previous visit to the member's dungeon and I wore my trusty duel ring for an easy exit from the dungeon. I took lobsters for food. I made my way through the dungeon and started in on the baby blues. The dragons didn't prove to be much trouble at all and I never even came close to being attacked by an adult blue. My combat level is about 67 with my individual melee stats being 60 attack, 52 strength, 48 defense and I found that I only needed about 4-5 lobsters per load of bones. I collected my goal of 107 bones quickly enough and without incident, so it was time to ecto them.

What a pain in the rear.

After some fumbling around, I settled on the following procedure.

Buy as many buckets as you have bones to ecto, the shop in Port Phasmatys keeps 100 in stock. If you plan on using the store in Port P, be sure you are wearing a ghostspeak amulet! You don't need an amulet if you just want to use the bank there though.

Grab the ectophial and 27 buckets.

Teleport to the ectofunctus.

Fill your ectophial. Every time you teleport using the ectophial, immediately fill it. Make this a habit. There's nothing more annoying that ending up at castle wars and realizing that you forgot to fill the phial.

Run downstairs and fill the buckets with slime. As far as I know, the buckets must be filled one by one. Click a bucket, click the slime, repeat.

Teleport to the ectofunctus.

Run to the bank in Port P, bank the bucks, and grab a load of empty buckets. Repeat this process until you have as many slime filled buckets as you have bones.

Withdraw 8 slime filled buckets, 8 bones, 8 pots, and the ectophile from the bank in Port P. Tele to the ectofunctus, refill your phial, and then run upstairs.

Grind your bones, tele to the ectofunctus, fill the phial, and then pray to the ectofunctus.

Pray like you've never prayed before. It took me a few runs to figure out that you can just left click on the ectofunctus over and over without pause when praying. You can pray 12 times and then you have to talk to a ghost desciple to collect some tokens.

Tokens? Yeah, ectotokens, they're great, you can use them to.. Uh.. Hmm.. What can you use ectotokens for? Well, if you've done the Ghosts Ahoy quest, they are completely worthless, give them away to someone who hasn't yet completed Ghosts Ahoy. If you haven't done the quest yet, the tokens can be used to gain entry into Port P and also as payment for petition signatures needed to complete the quest.

Some people choose to use a duel ring rather than run to the bank in Port P, but I thought this was a waste of dueling rings.

Anyhow, although the process was tedious, but it was better than burying 2800 chicken bones and now I'm done with prayer for good. Well, at least for a long, long time.

I Love Snelms!

While killing vampires as part of a slayer assignment, I stumbled on a snail. I remembered reading about snail helms at some point, so I decided to kill the little guy. I collected the snail shell, took a chisel to it, and presto, I had a shiney, new snail helm. The one I happened to get is black and red and it looks like a knit cap, very cool! I think I'll finish the Nature Spirit quest later, I have a feeling that I'll run across more snails then..

Just an update : I followed through with my promise to finish the Nature Spirit quest and, as suspected, came across more snails. There are snails with tall, pointy shells and there are snails with short, fat shells. There are about 5 total colors, so roughly 10 types of helmets possible (don't hold me to this though, it could be 8, it could be 10).

Chiseling a helmet from a shell gives 32.5 crafting experience so I may be visiting these guys again to train combat and level my crafting!

Final Words on The Green Dragon Pit

Well, after killing about 24 green dragons, I threw the towel in on my 152 green dragon slayer assignment. The green dragon pit is obviously a prime pking spot, I ran into pkers on all but one or two trips there. I haven't suffered any more deaths since obtaining the ectophial, but I did have one close call when I was teleblocked by a pker. I think that I'm going to search around a bit and see if I can come up with some screen shots of various spells flying through the air (teleblock, entangle, snare, etc). By the end of my stint killing green dragons, these are the tactics I was employing:

Preparation:

Auto-retaliate : off
Private chat : friends
Run / Walk : walk

Inventory and equipment:

dragon long
rune plate
rune legs
gnome amulet
anti-dragonfire shield
boots of lightness
dueling ring
ectophial
anti-poison potion
15 tuna

Tactics:

Starting from the gnome stronghold, I'd teleport to the tree north of Varrock and start walking west. Once I reached Edgville, I'd start heading northwest until I reached the green dragon pit. If there were players standing at the edge of the pit, I'd get close enough to them so that I could see their levels. Assuming the coast was clear, I'd switch my run / walk to run so that I could move quickly if needed and then I'd start killing the dragons.

More often than not, at some point while fighting a dragon, I'd see an omious white dot appear near the edge of the pit.

The attackers always waited until I finished killing the dragon before attacking. Initially I thought this was because they wanted my hit points to be as low as possible and also wanted the loot from the dragon, but I think the true reason is : They have no choice but to wait as the area is not multi-combat.

While continuing to fight the dragon, I'd adjust my view so that I could get a look at the pker in an effort to determine their level and their equipment. If the lurker was wearing mage or range gear and was within 12-14 levels of me (the pit ranges from lvl 12 to 13 wildy), I knew I was in for a fight. I'd keep my health up while fighting the dragon, and just before it died, I'd switch on my protect from magic prayer.

Once the dragon died, the pker would rush in and usually start the attack with spell casting. My goal would be to grab my loot and hit the ectophial, and usually, this went without a hitch. In one case, I got hit with a teleblock, so I bolted south, eating while I ran. That one was a very close call, and I'm guessing that my prayer saved me by blocking a follow up snare or entangle.

After teleporting using the ectophial, I would tele to Al Kharid using my ring and then ride the gnome glider back to the gnome stronghold. From there, I would repeat the process.

PKers foiled

I did Ghosts Ahoy and obtained my ectophial. Wow, what a difference that makes! First sign of trouble, all I have to do is manage to click the phial and I am out of there. I've noticed that the PKers at the green dragons operate in the following way:

A scout hangs out near the pit checking people out. Sometimes he will try to goad me into attacking him so that I'll be skulled. Wherever there is a scout, a mage is sure to be lurking somewhere near in the shadows. As I'm fighting dragons, I'll see the two white dots at the edge of my minimap. So far, they've waited until I've killed the dragon and then rush in for the attack.

PKed

Well, I got PKed for my first time today and I'm sure it won't be the last. Recently, I've been taking my slayer assignments from the master in Edgeville and my lastest was 152 green dragons. Rather than go to Burthope for a new assignment, I decided to use this as an excuse to venture into the wilderness. I'd been there before while crafting mind runes and also to do the Zamorak mage miniquest, but those were very quick excursions.

For equipment, I decided on rune plate, rune legs, a dragon long, an anti-dragonfire shield, boots of lightness, a steel medium helm, red gloves, and a gnome necklace. The plate, legs, and dlong would protect in the event of a pk while the necklace and boots are quest items and can be obtained freely. I come accross the helms all the time while ranging moss giants and I have a boatload of gloves from crawling hand slayer assignments. I wore a partially drained ring of dueling as a means of teleport and grabbed about 20 tuna to eat while I killed dragons.

From the mind altar, I walked straight up into the wilderness, trotting past the dark mages. There was a level 81 already in the pit fighting dragons, but we weren't deep enough in the wildy for him to pose a threat (only level 12 at that point). After killing a couple of dragons, a skulled level 61 ran up on me and asked if I wan't to fight. I politely declined and was called "noob" several times in return. The 61 ran back off to the edge of the pit and I saw another dot appear near him. In hindsight, this is when I should have teled, but I didn't. Suddenly, the spells started flying.. First a failed spell and I started running towards my attacker, uh oh, I had forgotten to turn auto-retaliate off, a fatal mistake.

Next I was bound, and started taking damage very quickly. Things happened very quickly, I ate, but since I was already low on hit points from fighting dragons, it was over quickly.

Back in Lumbridge..

Well, at least I was close to the Duke so I ran up and grabbed a new anti-dragonfire shield. I guess I should have grabbed more than one (get shield, drop, get another, drop, etc), but I didn't. At some point, I'll go see the gome king at the center of the maze and get a new gnome amulet. All in all, not much lost except for a little pride.

I think that before going back into the wilderness, I'll do the Ghosts Ahoy quest to get one click teleport by way of the ectophial.

I'll also be sure to keep my auto-retaliate set to off.

I should have thought to activate protect from magic prayer immediately.

Lastly, I think I may try using lower quallity food, maybe some cakes. The dragons are fairly easily managed and food was my biggest loss.

First day in Lumbridge

I Tumble out of the ether and land in the grass with a thud. Forcing my eyes open, I see blurry images. A boot, sheep, and two figures. I look up at the figures and they slowly draw together to become a single person, a man. "Uhh.. hi" I say. The man bends down, picks up the boot, and walks away chirping "lol, thx for the boot noob". "Where is this place?" I shout after this strange person. "omg, Lumbridge noob" he replies.

A once avid reader of Valdesta's Newbie Guide to Wealth, I thought I'd check out her RL brother, Linkbuilder's, blog. After reading the article, "What is Power in RS", I wrote my comment and then searched for the anonymous checkbox.. Hmm.. There was none, my only choice was to turn back or create an account.

I'm a fairly new Runescape member, my name there is Qopitar. I started playing back in October '05 and I became a member in December when Valdesta told me how much easier life as a member would be.

I intend to use this blog to document my experiences in hopes that it will help me as well as any other new p2p Runescape players.