Marlaine’s Musings

Well here it is………… dang it – I have to admit to having great psychic insight at times and when I was doing my smithing/mining yesterday, I kept thinking – geez you are only 9k from a summoning level girlie! Then I thought, nawwwwwwwwwwwww wait a while and then I tried to talk myself into doing summoning again but no – my instinct said wait. After all, I’ve got enough charms to get maybe two levels………. smiling…………. now let’s see what the new balance will be doing for us!

Summoning Rebalancing:

You can break Summoning 2 into two halves. The first is a rebalancing of the skill using your feedback. We have chosen to do this because we wanted Summoning to be one of the most well-loved and appreciated skills, so your help was needed to get it back on track.

What did we find out from the Forums? You told us that familiars did not stick around for long enough before they disappeared, and that renewing them was often a pain. With this update, each familiar stays out for a set period of time, regardless of the summoner’s skill level, so there is no need to renew your familiar. The period that each familiar stays summoned has, in general, been increased – the spirit dagannoth, for example, stays out for a whopping 57 minutes!

Secondly, you told us that summoning familiars just wasn’t rewarding enough. With the rebalancing, we have given each familiar a stand-out ability that makes them well worth summoning – a feature that budding Pikkupstixes have been eager for. You will now find that Summoning a creature is far more preferable to either selling the pouch or high-alching it.

Many of you felt that combat familiars should give combat XP. We definitely agree, so each combat familiar now gives XP when they cause damage. The amount is equal to how much you would have received, had you done the damage yourself. The experience will be in one of the combat skills, which depends on your choice of familiar – the spirit jelly, for example, gives XP in the Strength stat.

Taking your combat familiar into battle will reveal our next improvement: each creature is significantly tougher. They can soak up damage like never before and many will hit harder, making them more than useful for challenges like the God Wars. We can only encourage you to try them out and see just how improved their combat abilities are.

Acquiring charms has been made easier this week, with charm drops added to nearly 20 of our Slayer creatures. For those who prefer sleight of hand over the crossing of swords, we have also added charms to the Dorgesh-Kaan chests, so thieves can access them, too.

Recharging Summoning points has been made easier, with miniature obelisks scattered across the world to keep you topped up; you can now summon familiars almost anywhere and take them with you without worrying too much about having to dismiss them; buttons have been added to help you ‘dump’ items from your familiar to your inventory and your familiar to your bank; headgear and headdresses can hold more scrolls per item; many existing helmets can be enchanted to hold scrolls; and some of the familiars’ inventories have been expanded to a jaw-dropping 30 slots, so your pak yak can now hold more than you can. Phew!

For more details of what has changed with the Summoning rebalancing, visit the Knowledge Base page.

Extra Summoning creatures:

The second half of Summoning 2 is what we originally planned when Summoning was first released: an injection of high-level, dauntingly huge beasts. So, this week, the big guns arrive, largely in the form of the titans. These humanoid creatures don’t only have a killer punch; significantly increase your chance of success when Mining and Firemaking, boil adventurers in their own armour or even recharge amulets of glory! You can expect them to range all the way up to level 99, too.

A few inches shorter, but no less daunting, are the big cats from the Hunter skill. As an example of just how many things each familiar can offer you, the graahk, kyatt and larupia are capable of teleporting you to Hunter areas, boosting your chances of trapping a creature, and lending a powerful paw when you need them in battle.

We can guarantee that the other familiars do more than make up the numbers. Fans of Pest Control will know the void pests, with their ability to teleport you to the landers, while other recognisable familiars include the talon beast, spirit mosquito, pyrelord and the fearsome giant chinchompa. These familiars are spread over the Summoning skill levels, inviting you to train it that little bit higher. So, go grab your charms and get stuck in!

Holy smoly………. this is a big and amazing update! Geezzzzzzz I am not quite latching on to what this all means – It’s almost a new skill again! I had sort of dismissed the skill so much that all I cared about was how much xp you get when making them…….. now……….wowowow! I will be checking out all the droppers again and updating my charm drops list – that’s for sure.

But dang it – I am going to get that smithing level before I go on to summoning because I am just too close to ignore the smithing now!

Prime and I have a lot of rl stuff to do today too – drat it!

I went over to check the skills manual to see how the familiars might have changed and they have even changed the pages with pouches and creatures, putting them together on one page which makes a whole lot more sense than separate pages! I kept both open with my Firefox tabs and always restore all my Firefox sessions when I boot up for the day. (Yeah yeah – I’m lazy in good ways!) Oh sorry – they only show the pouch that goes with the scroll – Jagex hasn’t combined them……….sigh…………..

I see new creatures but again I really lost interest in summoning so I really don’t remember most of the creatures on the old list. I was only concerned with the best use of the charms and how many shards to make things. Wow, I admit that I see uses for this stuff now. I noticed they are using Mosquito stingers now – how many did I drop while doing the village cleanup? Sighing more…

I haven’t done Pest Control very much. I did at first but people were still being dopey about leaving gates open and such – made things very frustrating! I don’t need or want extra combat stuff now so I am still not interested in going to PC. I do see that the scroll to tele you there would be great for those who want to do it. Still………. it only teles you there? How many of those would you need in a day?

I see a lot of changes in the list and it is sort of confusing. A lot of new seconds (obsidian & nail beast charms, too) to figure out where to get them…….

Ok – for the moment, my fav summoning thing is the Macaw. I have a few pouches and a lot of scrolls for it so I’ll try it out to see if there are any differences. I have it out while I am smelting and it will stay 30 minutes now without messing around with it!

Butttttt………………….. it automatically drops your summoning level the longer it’s out. In 30 minutes, I will obviously be zero summoning without recharging (No – I had 11 minutes left after it disappeared). Even though the special move bar regains full power, the macaw is too tired to look for herbs – so what is the point of that bar turning all blue? After 10 scrolls, I’ve gotten one harry, two tarrys and one irit. Did they say they improved the Macaw’s herb drops? Shaking head……… now less than 50% and the herbs are not very high? How is this improved? After 17 scrolls, I had the same amount of herbs……….. not improved and, in fact, worse than it used to be! I sent the Macaw out as often as I could in that half hour and still keep smelting……… I used about 17 scrolls in half an hour and only got 4 herbs. Not only that, the goofy bird can not keep up around the curves to the furnace and back to the bank in Ghost town. It stayed in the bank most of the time and was a pain to get it outside the bank.

Good thing I have some pots because I have no idea where those little altars are. Wait….. I’ll see if they show on the map….. Ok the altars are easy to find using the Runescape map. The icon is clear and they are in very logical places for the reasons you would use them, like on the way to the slayer mansion or near the place when you tele to the ecto altar.

I guess we will all just have to see if some familiar works the way it says or if it will actually help. Trying one creature doesn’t exactly yeah or nay it, but it USED TO BE my favorite familiar and it is worse than was.

Shrugs………….. I’m smithing now…………………………….

I want to say Thanks to Axemankev for telling me he likes this blog! I was in the Draynor bank and when I saw what Axe said, I was nicely surprised but then misspelled my reply – geezzzz! More and more people say hi and I want to apologize if I don’t answer. I really appreciate the compliments! Smiling! Thanks to everyone who says hi!

I’ve been cutting and cutting oak logs for planks and, soon, I’ll have enough for a construction level. I put a few loads away a day so it’s a bit less painful to get enough logs for a level. I only do the oak larders and I use the demon butler because it’s a lot faster.

I am also working on the smithing………. I’ll mine after I get more bars made from the ore I’ve been mining. I am getting really close now. I still have a lot of iron ore and coal…………so I have enough to get my level – after I do a lot of smelting again……….. sigh……….. I did get more than 100k xp today so that’s pretty good!