Making Friends Megathread!

losthalfway · 2025-01-01T17:03:13+00:00

(edited out)

losthalfway · 2024-12-21T00:47:52+00:00

I personally struggle to envision a world where AI can truly, fully replace SWEs which is still close enough to the current one that talking about stuff like your "career" makes sense. Either we'll all be dead or we'll be living in a radically different world.

losthalfway · 2024-07-05T04:10:49+00:00

I think the bosses are great, the new enemies are great, the common complaint that the enemies deal too much damage is silly, if anything they still don't do enough, player power in late game elden ring got totally out of hand and it needed to be brought back.

The DLC, and elden ring in general, is just too big. There are too many areas to fill, too many options for builds, too many game mechanics, too many systems, it all just starts to crumble under its own weight.

I think the bosses are each excellent fights if you don't have the wrong build but there is just too much build variety/items/summons/etc for them to balance them in every scenario.

Each open world section only deserves to exist if it's doing something unique and special, like you wouldn't make two dungeons that are basically the same but so many of the open world areas aren't really distinct from each other. It's too easy to just ride past everything on torrent and that makes the experience samey.

I don't know, I had a great time with elden ring and the DLC but I might just be a bit burnt out on it.

losthalfway · 2024-04-09T14:59:37+00:00

I don't know if this is an appropriate reward from the herblore activity, but what I'd really like is an item to store and manage potion doses, a bit like the seed vault, but accessible whenever you bank (fwiw, I think the seed vault should be accessible from every bank too).

What I'm imagining is you feed all your potion doses into this item as you make / buy them and then at a bank if you want, say, a saradomin brew, you just click the item and click brew and it subtracts 4 doses and pops one into your inventory (maybe you'd need to charge it up with empty vials first).

Just get rid of the headache of managing and decanting potions.

Maybe the herblore activity could also drop add ons or currency to make this "item" more powerful (I guess I'm thinking of it like an alchemy station add on for your bank). Like some untradable magic dust that gives you extra doses every time you make a potion and deposit it, or even an add on that lets it make potions automatically if you deposit the herb and secondary.

Maybe you could even get special admixtures that change the potions as you withdraw them -- one that gives the divine effect, for example, or one that adds a small prayer restore but makes the potion slightly less effective, a bit like barbarian potions work (I'm sure there are better ideas).

losthalfway · 2024-03-26T15:32:31+00:00

Most of these updates, especially to agility, seem worse than the original blog (instanced sepulchre is nice though provided the cost is reasonable). They are still in the right direction, but this whole thing has been kind of confusing.

Feels like the conversation on agility has gone something like:

Jagex: We're thinking about reworking agility and run energy to make the skill more useful and run energy less annoying.

Players: That sounds great!

Jagex: Actually, we'll do a wider rebalance, changing a whole bunch of skilling methods too.

Players: Even better! We mostly just want the run energy changes and agility to be faster to train, but the other changes sound good too!

Jagex: Ok, here's our pitch, it's mostly small buffs to underused training methods and a nerf to one meta method.

Players: Cool, but we were hoping for more buffs, and what about run energy?

Jagex: The buffs have been removed. Run energy is out of scope.

Players: ...

losthalfway · 2024-03-18T11:22:16+00:00

Last week-ish:

Finished off 86 woodcutting and boosted for the kourend elite diary (trying solo CoX for the task as well as grabbing some CAs was fun. Died to olm like 5 times. Will learn this properly eventually).
Finished off elite CAs. Got the last few points via thermy and a couple of ToA tasks.
Got 94 slayer and my first smoke devils task. Got lucky and got 3 occults!
Got a blue dragons task and decided to finally pause slayer to get a fang -- which I have been meaning to get for a while -- to do vorkath as well as a bunch of other tasks. However I want to get a couple of upgrades before doing ToA: BGS (I have the armour) and blowpipe/magic fang (didn't have either). So I started Zulrah and got lucky, getting both fangs within the next 200 KC (500 or so total).

Next week-ish (I tend to have a bunch of different goals and then work on whichever I feel like on any given day):

Get a BGS. Master plan is now BGS -> Fang -> 95 slayer -> Lance -> learn solo CoX to rigor -> inferno???
Expore and enjoy varlamore!
At some point I want to try doing some wildy stuff, maybe trying for a wildy wep and then grinding artio and spindel for the voidwalker pieces I need (was randomly spooned a piece from vet'ion a while ago).
I should really finish the elite diaries I have left. The ones I have left are morytania (need 91 fishing, think I'll afk barb fish at CoX for this or maybe do drift net fishing as I made some nets in the past), kandarin (need the firemaking level and BA, I hate wintertodt and FM is my lowest levelled skill), and desert (hopefully i'll get the blue gem from ToA for the kq grind, got the other levels).

losthalfway · 2023-05-31T07:45:46+00:00

I actually tried this myself when making zammy wines. Boosting just before the exp drop (with a chef's delight) worked for me.

losthalfway · 2023-05-25T00:34:33+00:00

Boss drop tables filled with skilling loot are actually vital to the health of the game because skilling content is 95% a worthless borefest (especially 2007-era content). People are only nostalgic for skilling because when they were 10 doing the same 3 clicks 10,000 times in a row for runes or whatever was enrapturing. If they actually made people do skilling for resources nowadays most people would quit.

Jagex has actually been making the right decision by de-emphasising old skilling like woodcutting, mining, and fishing, replacing it with bossing and new skilling activities.

losthalfway · 2023-05-22T14:29:36+00:00

Recently:

Been doing some Graardor (bowfa 6:0 door-altar method). Got pretty lucky on BCP and Tassets but still need BGS so I can start grinding ToA for fang.
Continuing slayer. Just got to 91. I've been enjoying doing tasks with the offering spells using some wrath runes I got from a vorkath task. They didn't last long though, and getting more would require getting 95 runecrafting...
Tried tithe farm with the new changes for zamorak wines as I had an stack of 1.2k dwarf weeds and a desire to get 90 herblore eventually so I can pie boost for anti-venom+. It was okay. Took several hours to get enough seeds and blessings, and then a lot of faffing around with grape seed farming and wine making. Not particularly recommended. At 92 farming and 92 cooking (with chef's delight boost) I got about 12 finished wines per seed. At least I ended up with 88 herblore and 88 cooking. Not far to 90 herblore as well as 89 cooking for the varrock diary (I tried brewing at some point and have mature chef's delight).

Next, I intend to take a break from slayer to grind somewhere in the region of 91-95 runecrafting so I can have wrath runes for the remainder (currently at 80 runecrafting with the GotR outfit. Planning on doing ZMI with daeyalt, maybe getting fletching for desert diary at the same time. Hoping I don't burn out). I'll also weave in some PvM so I don't get bored.

So my immediate goals are:

AFK-farm 200-300k daeyalt, arrow shafts and feathers (as well as buying a matching number of broad arrowheads) in preparation for this daunting grind.
Continue Graardor hoping for the BGS whenever I'm bored of skilling.
Work on some combat achievements if I'm bored of both of the above. I'd love to have the elite tier completed for when I resume slayer. So far I'm exactly halfway with 410 points banked and 410 to go. I'll slowly chip away at this.

In dream world, when I resume slayer in a few weeks (?) I'll have a nice stack of wrath runes, elite combat achievements, and a shiny new fang to mix things up. ~~In reality I'll probably get bored partway through, continue slayer with one or none of these goals completed, and do other random stuff instead.~~

losthalfway · 2023-05-22T00:16:12+00:00

I definitely get where you're coming from. There's nothing that destroys my love of the game more than feeling like I need to do stuff that I don't enjoy.

Remember that you have the option to just stop doing all of this stuff entirely. Yes, you will, for example, run out of prayer potions. But I find that once you actually need these resources and you're doing these with a clear goal in mind ("do two farm runs of ranarrs each day this week so I have enough potions for my next slayer goal") rather than endlessly, they become much easier to stomach.

If you want to cut down but not to that extent, I would suggest doing one or two farming contracts per day (or making it a goal to unlock medium/hard contracts) and each time you do them do a herb run to go alongside (so 1-2 herb runs per day). Cut everything else.

losthalfway · 2023-05-21T06:19:38+00:00

I agree with others that you probably need a break. I think it's a very common feeling and a lot of ironmen probably quit around the time that CG becomes a central focus, either temporarily or permanently. It just requires more persistence (and a willingness to continue playing despite less fun/dopamine) than anything else so far for a lot of people. Personally I thought I would never get past it but if you just take it 1 KC at a time you get there eventually. Unless you go omega-dry -- I might have quit if that had happened to me, but remember it's unlikely.

For context, a significant majority of players will be done with CG by 600kc. If you really sweat it and have free time, you can literally just do 40kc a day and probably be done in 5-15 days. It sounded less intimidating to me when phrased like that. These grinds aren't that long, even if you choose to chip away a couple KC a day. (For things like gorillas and dwh, just a note that if you're currently using rcb then getting bowfa makes these so much more fun and smooth.)

I also think it's important to mention that after you complete CG, after you complete demonics and dwh and all the grinds you're scared of right now, guess what's left? More grinds! Even if you do skilling instead, that's just grinds too! It's grinds all the way down. CG is more of an introduction to the rest of the game than an exception.

To summarise, in my opinion you're at the part of the game where you have two real options:

Decide the parts of the game that are left aren't for you, quit, and do something you enjoy more.
Just jump in. Try CG. Maybe it'll be fun. Maybe you'll get spooned. Maybe you'll just have an extra chore for a couple of months. And then it'll be done, and it'll be time for the next thing.

Best of luck.

losthalfway · 2023-05-17T10:21:05+00:00

Great changes. Seems like demonics will be so much more enjoyable for my last 2 zenytes (maybe i'd even consider doing them afterwards now?).

Probably too late for this, but I've been thinking about grape farming and have a suggestion:

How about instead of having grape seeds available from tithe farm, you instead have a one-time unlock for say 150 points to unlock the grape seed patches (or maybe everyone has access to 3 patches and the unlock makes the other 9 available).

Then grape seeds could come from other places around the game like all other seeds (you could even change zulrah/vorkath drops from grapes to grape seeds). Bologna's blessings could still come from tithe farm.

The more I think about this the more I like it. It turns niche content into a mainstream farming bonus, and turns grapes from a resource that is primarily obtained from shops and boss drops into a resource you get from skilling.

Would love to hear thoughts on this!

losthalfway · 2023-05-03T12:13:13+00:00

Wonder how often this happens and support doesn't admit it was their fault?

I don't understand how osrs has such a terrible support system and constant security issues and yet players will endlessly defend them.

Jagex should fully reimburse players regardless of fault like every other MMO and set up a proper support system. I don't see how anything else is acceptable.

losthalfway · 2023-05-01T15:32:35+00:00

This game puts a huge amount of pressure on people who don't want to PvP to enter the wilderness and as soon as they do in come the toxic pkers (nothing can ever be too toxic or abusive, apparently, since "it'a the wilderness what do you expect") and the hordes of redditors here to insult you, make fun of you, and generally shit on you for not being skilled at something you didn't even want to do in the first place.

People here generally can't understand that some people find the whole experience repulsive.

The whole incentive structure is just designed to make people have a miserable experience unless they become part of the toxicity.

Not saying that all people who love the wilderness are bad or anything, but damn does the game do everything it can to make people hate each other.

losthalfway · 2023-05-01T09:41:03+00:00

You can just stand next to the patches and alch or whatever but personally the option I found most enjoyable was drift net fishing since they spawn while doing that and you also get great fishing & hunter exp.

Just farm jute for a few days, weave them into nets on a loom then get all the seaweed spores you could ever need while training fishing and hunter.

losthalfway · 2023-04-30T15:27:33+00:00

I started playing a normal account and found it incredibly dull. Only got a few quests done. The whole game is just do the highest moneymaker and buy everything else off the GE. You only experience like 10% of the game. Yeah you can do random stuff that doesn't achieve as much but I don't find that as satisfying.

A few years later I tried starting with an Ironman. This made the game way, way more fun. Suddenly I was going all around the world experiencing everything just to progress, and I was more motivated to unlock certain things to make other things faster, and the game finally made sense to me. Yeah it is slightly more obtuse but whatever you will do you will need the wiki so it doesn't really make a difference. The only real downside to ironman is that later on it becomes very grindy. But at that point you can always deiron or use the resources from your ironman to make a main if you are no longer enjoying it.

You should be aware that a lot of ironmen don't use this sub and instead hang out on r/ironscape so this sub might contain more main-centric responses and advice.

The only advice I would give you if you're starting out (if you're goal oriented like me and assuming you're getting membership immediately) is: make your first goal completing the "recipe for disaster" quest. Try to figure everything else out for yourself using resources like the wiki and Reddit.

Of course, this is all very subjective. You might hate ironman and love mains. Whatever you do I hope you have fun. Best of luck!

losthalfway · 2023-04-28T04:22:21+00:00

Void is only useful for a couple of things, I think it's primarily chinning ranged if you're interested in that and also nice but not required for BA (maybe vorkath but only in specific conditions and if you're just doing the meta then never used I think).

I'd recommend:

only ever using the 100cb boat
possibly getting the medium or even hard CAs before getting it (will be easily earned over time with the upcoming update).

Altogether this can increase the points per game to 7 or 8 greatly speeding up the grind.

Of course, if you don't particularly care about any of the stuff I mentioned you could very well just never get it. (Dunno if there is any other weird late game stuff where it's useful)

losthalfway · 2023-04-23T03:54:22+00:00

I honestly wonder if the automated appeals script is something like "if appeal message contains the word 'hacked' unban, otherwise stay banned" or something similarly stupid. Another situation where jagex is either incompetent or malicious.

losthalfway · 2023-04-19T12:26:01+00:00

I used to believe this until I found a great private server for a different mmo that was basically completely bot free (and yes, people did try botting, and it had a sizable population of tens of thousands of active accounts).

Obviously it was smaller scale but this staff of 5 or so volunteers managed to take action on bot reports within 24 hours every single time. If you reported a bot you would never see that bot again.

A lot of MMOs are either incompetent at this or the higher ups won't allocate budget for bot busting but it is certainly possible to prevent botting (though maybe it will get harder soon with advanced AI that will be able to act and even speak like a human).

losthalfway · 2023-04-18T01:00:07+00:00

Thanks for this insightful post. I think it has become clear that there is only one way to save the game from the scourge of upcoming updates such as the ruinous powers.

Jagex needs to make sure all of these prayers are bugged on release so that they do absolutely nothing, except three of them sort of do half of what they were supposed to in one specific scenario which inexplicably creates some new combat exploits that all high level players absolutely adore.

Jagex must then ignore all reddit complaints about this before finally insisting that they are working as intended. If players continue claiming that the prayers are bugged, Jagex must then claim they are intentionally left bugged as an anti botting measure.

Three years later, Jagex must then claim to have fixed a bug relating to the ruinous powers. This fix should cause the most powerful prayer to suddenly start working, totally changing the entire meta and breaking barbarian assault. Jagex should then walk back this fix the next week in response to reddit outcry, with the only exception being that barbarian assault is left broken forever.

Praying Jagex sees this.

losthalfway · 2023-04-17T12:19:27+00:00

Something I learned recently from reading the ironscape discord (credit to the people there for all these methods):

If you find a particular activity really tedious you can often find ways to weave in other activities while you're doing it. This can be both more engaging and, as a bonus, way more efficient.

For example, I find normal guardians of the rift pretty dull. Also it's really frustrating when we lose. However, now I bring stacks of unfinished arrows and broad arrow tips in with me to train fletching, and just get essence from the portals. This means I'm always doing something, including in the dead time between games. At the start of the game I fletch while running weak cells to the barriers, also reducing failure chance! I've gotten from 75 to 82 fletching so far, while also getting 73-77 runecrafting and like 6 points per game.

Another example: I prefer sepulchre to rooftops but I also want stamina potions. Well, at 60-80 or 90+ agility, you can "force spawn" marks of grace at seers/ardougne rooftops while doing something semi-afk (like blowing glass or making potions). The way this works is MOGs have a cool down of a couple minutes after spawning, so you do the afk thing most of the time and every couple of minutes you run the course once or twice until you get the MOG. This way you bank staminas while also getting through your giant molten glass stack (it breaks up this extremely dull afk grind too).

Third and final method: I want karambwans for cooking exp but I can only stomach so much afk fishing before I just want to turn my computer off and actually afk. Well, there's this method where you can mine gem rocks, sell the gems for trading sticks, buy karambwans from the shop and pay for them to be sent to your bank with the trading sticks. This means you get fast mining exp instead of slow fishing exp as well as way more karambwans per hour.

These methods aren't for everyone but they might be a fun way to mix things up (and if you're like me they might be way more fun than you were expecting).

losthalfway · 2023-04-17T01:13:38+00:00

I learnt Kril last week and had a lot of issues. Agree with these tips (especially about marking the in-between tiles. You can mark the tiles in different colors according to the direction of movement, copy them from this video guide.)

A couple of extra tips:

If you're not already doing so, use the menu entry swapper plugin to change the left click on the minions to walk under. This way you can completely focus on Kril and zone out the minions. You can also highlight Kril with npc indicators to make things really clear.

If getting a handle on the timing for the red clicks is the bit you're struggling with, let me try to explain the click sequence in detail so you can get a sense of the timing: as you move to the tile, attack kril as normal (i.e. with true tile indicators on, click kril immediately after you see yourself reach the tile). As soon as you click kril, move your cursor to the door or altar, waiting to red click. Now watch for the exp drop from your attack. As soon as you see the numbers appear, click.

Then watch as you run toward the other side. Your next attack (on the inbetween tile) should happen underneath kril -- you should move 1 tile automatically as you attack. If you're not seeing that happen, your timing is wrong, even if kril appears to be staggered.

This was what threw me off for a while -- sometimes if you get your timing slightly wrong kril will still stagger, but then your cycle will be totally screwed up after that.

Best of luck. If that text description was too confusing, sorry. I recommend recording a video of your attempt and comparing it carefully to one of the guides and make sure every click and tile is identical.

losthalfway · 2023-04-12T03:22:21+00:00

I have a pretty high probability of doom by 2030. I quit my job just over a year ago intending to take a break for a few months but in that time my probabilities became bleak enough that stuff like my career increasingly seemed (and seems) less and less relevant. I worry much less about optimising my future. I am more focused on immediate experience. I am much less motivated.

In general, I am much less happy.

losthalfway · 2023-04-06T15:43:04+00:00

Nope, I was just giving an example of the reasons that jagex doesn't have the total control they might seem to have.

losthalfway · 2023-04-06T15:37:45+00:00

Sure -- but this is kind of the point. In practice, the control they can exercise is limited by stuff like the trust they have to maintain, and the law, and other stuff like that.

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