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OSRS: Newcomer’s Adventures in RuneScape – Days 2 and 3

Posted on March 23, 2024 by Aywren

When I left off in Old School RuneScape, I was working on the Path quests provided by Adventurer Jon. These asked me to reach level 5, then level 10 in certain skills. I realized after taking a better look at the Path window that the Path quests also included archer and magic skills. So it was time to work on those!

I also realized somewhere down the line that Jon offers a combat path starter kit, which I’d missed out on but could have been using all that time. Essentially, this crate is full of starter gear, including the armor (that I actually needed) to help be more effective in staying alive while leveling my skills. I recognized instantly that some of the gear was better for archers and some better for magic.

So, having that equipment, I was doing a lot better at staying out in the field during my skilling. I also finished up the very short gathering path for fishing, mining and forestry.

Old School Frustrations

I did run into a few frustrations the longer I played.

• Magic requires runes, which I couldn’t make at that point. No runes = no way to skill your magic. I did find out (after searching online) that the local magic trainer would allot you a free stack of runes every 30 minutes, but only air or mind, and only one type every 30 minutes. I was blazing through these runes as I skilled, so this was a minor annoyance.
• Archery requires arrows which are only slightly less annoying than requiring runes. You can often reclaim arrows from the ground after a fight, which is nice considering how often I missed my target. But this did require the effort of running over to pick them up off the ground. Every step in this game is sometimes difficult because…
• The stamina system is brutal. I will never complain about my Sprint skill in FFXIV being down again. You literally cannot run in RuneScape until your stamina trickles back over time, and this is extremely slow. Walking is almost the default, and learning to toggle your sprint off when you don’t need it is a mind-shift.
• There are ways to train agility (paid Members only) to help with the stamina issue, but the starter obstacle course is on the other side of the world, and I had no idea how to get to it.
• The quests that every long-term player on YouTube suggests you do on a new account (ie. Waterfall Quest) are also located far away, and it doesn’t seem like guides, or even the wiki, tells an absolute new player how to reach the quest location to start the quest.

Eventually, after doing MORE research (this is a game that requires good research skills), I did learn what I needed to know (I think) about buying a Games Necklace which folks use to teleport places.  

But I’m getting ahead of myself!

Basically, I wanted to try things that were way out of my small knowledge base. I trekked across the land (very slowly) trying to figure out how to get to this other kingdom, only to be stopped by powerful (to me) wolves on what seemed an impassible mountain.

Finding myself frustratingly blocked, I headed home in defeat. I didn’t realize I had a warp back home until a bit later, and once I discovered that, it was much nicer.

However, this time spent wasn’t a total failure. In my attempt to go to a place I couldn’t go just yet, I started to discover other locations – Draynor Village, Falador, and most importantly, Varrock. These were all quite close to Lumbridge, my home location, and figuring out where they were was a good thing.

Figuring out Runescape, One Quest at a Time

I settled back into questing around Lumbridge instead of trying to do something out of my league. This turned out to be a good thing to do.

Not only is there an Optimal Quest Guide for both Members and F2P on the wiki, but the Quest Helper plugin on RuneLite also has a way to list quests in an optimal order and helps you get them done. I opted to do this, and slowly started working through some of the quests around Lumbridge.

I also took a detour and started working on a quest to unlock player-owned housing (which is Member only). However, once I got into the thick of it, the quest was asking me to put more money into it than I could afford at that point. I had maybe 1,500 gold in the bank… there was no way I was using what little I had to craft 10 planks at 100 gold each or fork over 650 gold for some cloth.  

I just bought the house from the Estate Agent for 1,000 gold and was done with it. I haven’t actually gone to my house to do anything with it yet, though, because that requires a walk to Rimmington (gotta figure out where that is). And I wasn’t interested in another long walk that day.

So, back to questing it was. I finished up a few around Lumbridge, unlocked the ability to make runes for casting (nice!), and then began to undertake a quest called Imp Catcher. Basically, it’s an old school killing fetch quest with a very low drop rates for the items you needed – in this case, four different colored beads.

Looking at the description for this quest, guides say that most people just buy the items off the Grand Exchange (market) and be done with it. Well, I didn’t know where the GE was (spoiler – it’s in the city north of Lumbridge, called Varrock), and even if I did, I didn’t know how much they’d cost (spoiler – well over 1,000 gold each).

So, I spent hours farming imps just near the south entrance to Falador (which I read was a good location to find them). The thing about imps was that they pretty much never did any damage to me, but they would annoyingly randomly teleport and sometimes try to run away. This teleport may never happen during a fight, or can happen up to three times (that I’ve seen) during a fight.

Add to that the fact that my stamina was almost always low, and chasing these things down was a real pain (even as an archer). Especially since they were so close to the city walls that sometimes they teleported into the city (and I had to run all the way around the wall through the city gates to find them), or INTO the wall itself (lost cause, no finishing that fight).

Interestingly, the city guards did nothing to interfere with the fights, even when I was just a block away.

As I noted, these beads had a low drop rate, and I feel like I got exceptionally lucky that I only spent a few hours out there farming for them. I did take a break during this quest, and came back to the farming later at one point. Especially when I got down to my last color bead. What was the chance that of all the four that would drop, I’d get the yellow?

But it happened sooner than I expected, and I came away from the quest with a few duplicates and some rare-ish imp heads. Little did I know that this would be my momentary money maker.

Discovering the Grand Exchange

Once I completed this quest, I somehow ran across the information that there was a GE in Varrock. I raced there as quickly as I could and figured out the market system. It’s very limited in the number of items you can put up, but I do like there’s a bank right next to the seller.

I put up the three duplicate beads, some other drops and the imp heads, and was surprised to see that they almost instantly sold! Well, the black beads did, I still need to check and see if the red bead sold when I log in next.

This gave me some much-needed gold – I had over 7,500 now!  (This is where the long-term players "aww" at how cute I am to be excited over 7,500 gold…)

Now that I had some money, I started to search for information on how to get over to that other kingdom, where I could not get before. That’s when I learned that you could either take a charter ship, or buy a Games Necklace. The necklace allows for 8 warps, and was far, far cheaper than using the boat. So, I bought one while I was at the GE.

I like that the GE pulls from the money in your bank when you purchase. This means you don’t have to carry money on you unless you really need it for something.

So far, I haven’t died, but I do know the death system requires tombstone runs and results in lost items. I certainly don’t want to carry gold and lose it to death. With so little inventory, I’ve already made it a habit to drop everything in my bank that I can.  

For now, I’m on track to finish up the remaining quests around Lumbridge, and maybe make that trip I’ve been trying to make for the past few days! I’ll let you know how that goes!

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