Jagex’s new content is – well – very promising!

I was getting more and more disheartened by the direction Jagex was heading with Runescape. However, since their new Head Of Content has taken charge, things have changed! After getting in, he spent a lot of time fixing a lot of small details and bugs in Runescape that have existed for a long time. Even now, after fixing lots of things for around 8 months, he’s still paying attention to the small details. Example – Take a look at the compass … click it to instantly set it to proper N/S/E/W alignment.

What really concerned me about Jagex’s direction was the minimal care they were giving their older higher level players. Basically, they were giving high level junk items while giving better low level stuff. That gave the low levels an equal footing or even better ground, comparatively. It really wasn’t fair when you consider the time spent training those levels for those who have played the game nearer the start of Runescape when there were a lot less of the right click shortcuts that are in the game now. And lets face it, make it more interesting and more players will keep playing until they are also higher level players – which translates into longer membership fees for Jagex!

Now the HOC (hehehe) is going through and re-balancing all the skills. The first of which was the new Living Rock Caverns which gave fishing a huge boost in xp and interesting things to do. It has been given higher leveled fish – Cavefish (level 85) and Rocktail (level 90) – which I’ll give a proper description of later in this post. Even the bait required for the Rocktail has a requirement of level 73 just to get it. Whether you fish for Rocktail or Cavefish, it’s fast fishing and great xp! These are absolutely superior to fishing monks!

Also in the Caverns, there are mining spots of concentrated coal (level 77) and gold (level 80) rocks that actually let you mine multiple loads of ore from them before they collapse for about a minute. (I haven’t timed them but it seems like they let you mine for about five minutes.) There are multiple deposits around so no huge hassle. Here’s Marlaine’s Living Rock Caverns Guide and Map with all the mining spots color coded. BTW – it doesn’t matter how many people are mining there. Numbers don’t effect how fast or how much gold people get since the collapse is time based – not how much ore has been mined. In fact, these things collapse even when no one is mining them – I see it often myself while fishing close to the mining spot. All of this equals terrific mining and fishing xp for those with the levels to do these.

Next was the woodcutting re-balance. Even though it doesn’t offer new logs, it has offered 2 new ways to train woodcutting that is absolutely phenomenal xp! Training in the lumberyard mini-game and cutting ivy – both give around 80K per hour xp. Of the 2, I think ivy is the better. It requires no interaction beyond clicking again when a vine has been cut down, then respawns. When there aren’t a lot of people cutting, it doesn’t happen very often, so you can surf forums, read blogs or whatever else you want to do while power cutting. I wonder if we’ll ever see Elder logs released into the game? Perhaps they could be used to craft and fletch, (both would have high requirements, of course, in addition to high woodcut…), battlestaffs…..

Now – the super high leveled potions Jagex has just released really give higher Herblorists an edge on the competition. You can read more about these great potions on Marlaine’s wonderful blog – Extreme Untradeable Potions page and her New Herblore Potions post. There are a small minority of players complaining about these potions on the Runescape forums – either wanting them to be tradeable or to have them removed altogether. I say these potions are fine just the way they are, for the simple reasons that…
1.) This finally gives a serious advantage to high level herblorists that only they can use, and…
2.) If they were made tradeable, well, everyone would be running around with these pots, which would just unbalance things.
3.) If you’ve ever done herblore at higher levels, you would have seen how slow it is from about level 90 to 99!
As it is now, even with these updates, herblore is a hard enough skill. Herblorists are being rewarded for their hard work by getting an advantage only they can have. In fact, now I am actively working on my herblore levels so I can make and use The Super Antifire pot – wow – talk about an advantage that is one heck of an incentive to do a skill!!! Oh – you don’t think that’s why Jagex did it – do you?

With updates like this coming out, I am seriously interested in reading all the new updates now – which is something I have never really been interested in before. The new Head Of Content truly gets what his predecessor didn’t – those who work hard for their levels actually do deserve advantages over those who just do quick skilling to 60. Let’s face it, Level 60 in any of the skills is practically nothing, yet those lower levels expect to have everything handed to them on a platter……
and until now – they were getting it almost every time they whined.

When a lot of new supposedly high level content was release by the previous idiot… errr, I meant to say, person, he’d slap on high level requirements but the advantages wouldn’t be worth having. Hell who needed a level 85 dagger that a mith dagger could beat? Or a 5 million dollar hatchet that was only the same speed as rune? That’s right when the dragon hatchet was first released, it only looked different, but it really only cut at the same speed as a rune hatchet! It was only after serious complaints by the players that the dragon hatchet’s speed actually increased, to give the higher leveled woodcutters a slight advantage. Hell, what was the bloody point having a dragon hatchet that was no better than rune?!? All newly released content was heading in that direction….

Now that we have someone decent at the head of Jagex that actually gets it, and is doing something about it, some of the lower leveled players are whining that high levels are actually getting content. Please note, I am not targeting low levels really! Most are honest, hard working Runescapers who are headed for high things. I’ve known some who are so flat out efficient, I think a lot of us dinosaurs may have serious problems keeping up with their pace….. In truth, even though there is a whole lot more content on this game now than 4 years ago and it can be confusing, new players have more advantages than they could ever appreciate without going through the all old ways of leveling up. I almost envy them being able to start out new without all the old rules and steps cluttering up their thinking about how to do get something done. They sure won’t have to do things like buy a single inventory of vials without a beast of burden, run all the way to a bank and then running all the way back to the shop again and HOPE there are still some vials to buy!

On another note – I got a level in fishing today :-) , level 91 now :-) . I got the whole level fishing just the rocktail that I mentioned earlier…..
a nice weekend fishing

For reference, these great fish heal 23 hitpoints and that healing can take you above your maximum hitpoints level by 10 ten points. For example – say your max hp is 98 as is mine, and if I am down to 80 hitpoints, when I eat a rocktail, my hitpoints will be raised to 103. If I eat another, it’ll boost my hitpoints to no higher than 108 – wasting a perfectly wonderful rocktail! This boost is temporary and will slowly decline, but I can see this being massively useful when fighting tough bosses and such in the game. I might just give the Fire Cape a shot now!

Here is the dialogue banner of me getting my new level….
level 91 banner
….which brings me to the total level of 2114 skill points.
Total Level

4:42 pm on October 10, 2009 by Primefalcon

Posted in Runescape - Leveling,Updates/New Content | 1 Comment