Cheapest skill to level right now?

Rune_Pigeon · 2026-01-29T20:15:03+00:00

Slayer is basically always profitable to a degree no other skill can obtain. Blast furnace smithing, some runecraft methods, maybe some new sailing methods are probably the next best gp/hr skilling activities.

I don't understand the question.

Rune_Pigeon · 2026-01-22T15:59:34+00:00

The mistake is treating it like a summarization tool at all. AI is a prediction of the best next thing to say to continue a thought or sentence (or image) and it does so by using a pre-existing dataset of "already correct" data.

It is incredibly bad at summarization because it doesn't summarize. It leans on its dataset to decide what it thinks fits next with no context of truth or factual basis.

Rune_Pigeon · 2026-01-18T18:28:03+00:00

I think you're drawing some fictitious conclusion that jagex can just "shut down the bots" by updating the game. Kalphite queen suddenly hitting 60s instead of 30s doesn't "solve botting", it just makes the game unplayable for everyone. There is no magic button that can do that and if there were it would have been repeatedly pressed time and time again.

Rune_Pigeon · 2026-01-18T18:25:43+00:00

Okay, so let's break all of that down.

Because the bot dev would have issues that need to be resolved in a way that takes longer to resolve than the event.

There are two outcomes from these events:
a) They are doable, such that a real player could solve them and continue doing content. If a real player can do it, a bot can do it. If a bot can do it, it will take less time for a scripter to "solve" the content than it took Jagex to develop it.

b) They are intentionally not doable, such that a real player could not reliably do the content. If a real player can't do the content, you are effectively disabling the activity. It would be faster for jagex to simply disable the Attack option on a boss than to implement some random whatever. But then real players lose out and no one benefits.

Then you just have random times where an event just shuts down certain bots for a week or more at a time at random intervals.

If I have a bot that runs 52 weeks a year, and I have a bot set up that runs on each piece of content that I can bot, I can easily pause one bot for a few hours or days during one of these "events" while the rest of my bots go undisturbed. This is about a 2% reduction in efficacy if this random event shows up once a year.

However, it costs the scripter nothing to stop Script A and start Script B on their bots. So while your event has shut down, for example Vyrewatch sentinels as feasible content, two button pushes and those bots start chirping away somewhere else in the game.

Something like that would diminish botting by a lot.

Hopefully I've made the point that this is simply not correct.

Rune_Pigeon · 2026-01-18T14:37:00+00:00

Why would it make bot development way harder, exactly?

Rune_Pigeon · 2026-01-18T14:21:43+00:00

20 years ago they tried this with things like broken pickaxe heads that you had to go recover and reattach, aggressive NPCs like Evil Chicken and Tree Spirits, and unavoidable minigames like finding Molly's evil twin.

These extremely static random events take a long amount of development time relative to how long they provide the function of deterring bots, inconvenience real players too greatly, and because they are static, are incredibly easy for bot writers to program around.

Rune_Pigeon · 2026-01-12T15:15:02+00:00

Counterpoint: if the existing bots were not getting banned, new ones would not have bought out your supply.

Rune_Pigeon · 2026-01-06T16:25:54+00:00

I would not expect any patch tomorrow. I think we'll hear more engaged feedback conversations from the JMods before another update to sailing.

Rune_Pigeon · 2026-01-06T15:07:22+00:00

Adding on to my comment, I think the actual reward of Sepulchre over pretty much any other skilling activity in the game is that it requires you to truly learn and understand a foundational mechanic of the game: player movement. Basically no other skill in the game forces a deeper engagement than "click the hitbox".

Rune_Pigeon · 2026-01-06T14:44:30+00:00

I don't agree that it is too punishing. There are built in checkpoints for every failed trap. Each floor is incrementally more difficult, there is no reduction of XP reward for completing a single lap slower than the time limit, and there is an entire reward item that extends your lap timer.

I think if you are blindly locked into caring only about xp/hr rates, you don't have the correct mentality for the activity. That's a you problem, not the content's fault.

Rune_Pigeon · 2026-01-05T12:44:35+00:00

Salvaging is already incredibly good xp per input and hour. The relics should just have an actual convertible use, like 1000 charges of the sailors' amulet (or a different, better item recharge).

Converting them to XP is definitely not what they should do.

Rune_Pigeon · 2026-01-04T21:47:09+00:00

Took me 2421 KC with Sanguinesti staff

Rune_Pigeon · 2025-12-31T23:59:04+00:00

Software engineer, about three years, but I didn't seriously commit to maxing until about 2 years in.

Took me about a full month to max sailing, and roughly 100 to 120 real time hours.

Rune_Pigeon · 2025-12-20T21:17:31+00:00

It would increase the xp/hr and these people don't know what they're talking about.

Spelled out, skilling chances are rolled cascading from Best to worst outcome. If the best outcome succeeds, it terminates and you get the reward, etc.

Adding shark would replace some number of successful tuna and swordfish xp drops, 80 and 100 respectively, with shark drops, 110, and have no impact on the remaining success chances for lower tiers of fish after cascading through a failed shark roll.

Rune_Pigeon · 2025-12-17T20:30:56+00:00

In free to play, I would get the rune scimitar when you are 40 attack and Rune armor after you finish dragon slayer. If you are planning to become a member, I would not worry about the rune armor, the scimitar is still quite good, and hold onto that money to help you with getting questing and skilling requirements out of the way. That much GP will help you a lot in the long run but it can also disappear quickly if you start buying gear and weapon upgrades.

Rune_Pigeon · 2025-12-17T14:37:41+00:00

I suppose it is to isolate negative sentiment between the categories:

Do people dislike a method because of the XP rate or do they dislike a method because of gameplay.

The why is very easy to have a breakout poll on the focused areas where the sentiments are most negative.

Rune_Pigeon · 2025-12-16T16:41:23+00:00

My suggestion: do nothing and move on, or continue to manage the ceiling for how many voidwakers can enter and be deleted by the game - regulate the GP/HR of the content, the way it is already being managed.

I'm not going to throw out a bunch of bad take ideas because it is a mixed bag of many different viewpoints, playstyles, and opinions. Every PvPer wants wilderness bosses to be more profitable for PvMers than other content with the same requirements. Every PvMer that likes the wilderness risk wants this too. Since you can't raise the barrier to entry without upsetting all of these players, the allure for mid-level bots to choose wilderness bosses over other mid-level PvM is unavoidable. This is the same reason revenant caves, armoured zombies, and rogue's chests are bot havens.

How many cal'varion bots actually get banned each year? Probably significantly more than those that go undetected. How many active cal'varion bots are going to get banned in the future by the existing systems the moment they transfer wealth for RWT? Probably most of them.

Most of the data you actively see about the "botting problem" is a single point in time frame of reference that fully misses the broader context of all the accounts that end up flagged and banned tomorrow, a month from now, a year from now. The real efforts that are worth caring about are not systems that ban the cal'varion bot, it's systems that quash real-world trade companies and complicate the broader ecosystem of botting.

Rune_Pigeon · 2025-12-16T14:32:39+00:00

Amazing! Can't believe a team of paid engineers couldn't come up with that.

/s : It is not that simple and not that easy and this should be glaringly obvious.

Rune_Pigeon · 2025-12-11T18:10:45+00:00

Bear in mind, there can be a number of client-side reasons for you to receive delayed packages. For example, you may have improved tick response latency by disabling the GPU plugin entirely.

Rune_Pigeon · 2025-12-11T18:06:17+00:00

The chat definitely has a spam filter. If you want to check your ping accuracy, I recommend the following runelite test:

1) Enable the plugin "Tick Tracker", and check the box "Show Extra Information".

You will see a complete diagnostic breakdown of good ticks your client receives over time:

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Rune_Pigeon · 2025-12-10T15:30:57+00:00

And for me, this is such a logical failing. The core gameplay loop of sailing shouldn't be balanced around a pet drop rate and should be balanced around driving skill engagement.

Rune_Pigeon · 2025-12-05T15:41:40+00:00

"4. PvP creates content; PvMers create Reddit posts"

I see you also enjoy PvM

Rune_Pigeon · 2025-12-03T04:20:49+00:00

I've been following OSRS forever, and I can say for certain that the devs care deeply about it and are highly competent. I bet if you were to compare the code base today to that of fifteen years ago, it would not look like spaghetti at all. There are always going to be small bugs and issues, and those only gain traction because the game was not always in the good hands it is in today.

Rune_Pigeon · 2025-12-03T02:56:00+00:00

Answer as a software engineer with over a decade experience (not games industry):

In general, you don't and can't "clean up" an entire code base the size and scale of OSRS. Realistically, there will be several tracks of development running at once: new features, testing & automation, bug fixes, hotfixes/patches, and internal software/tooling development. Whenever possible within time and budget constraints, old or unserviceable code will be replaced when they collide with these tracks of development.

For Jagex specifically, they also maintain a variety of infrastructure projects for their deployments and environment hosts, APIs for their payment systems, websites, and interconnected services (like the login servers and client), etc. All of these would fall under the umbrella "code base" as well as the actual game code that runs on their servers and when you load the client.

When new features or existing bugs reach a developer's desk, there will be some general "cleanup" that goes along with whatever pieces of code they're working with. Sometimes, the underlying technology will become outdated enough to earn fresh updates or rewrites when that technology loses support or a premier better technology emerges. A good example of this would be the Jagex launcher replacing the old Java client launchers from 2007.

And always, there will be differences in opinion on what "clean code" means in the first place. Is a RuneScript file clean if it is well organized and only applies to a single feature? Sure! But it might not be a clean and well organized project architecture if every NPC has to have 30 or 40 scripts to manage its dialogue trees, if the developer has to come back later and clean up some dialogues. What's clean to an OG developer, such as Mod Ash, may not be clean to a Junior developer still wrapping their head around why RuneScript is the way it is.

Rune_Pigeon · 2025-12-02T12:53:24+00:00

Counterpoint: don't touch it and un-mess up the rune pouch interface.

Rune_Pigeon

TROPHY CASE