Month: November 2022

RuneScape: Tutorial Island

On November 22, 2022

RuneScape is a Massive Multi-player Role Playing game that has been very popular in the last few years. With the recent addition of the grand exchange, RuneScape is a changed world. Here are some tips on how to get the most out of Tutorial Island.

When you register for an account, after you fill out some stuff and create a character, you will start out on Tutorial Island. The guides will tell you what they need you to learn and train in. After you leave the first building, you are taken to the pond where you fish. Catch some shrimp, cut down a tree, light a fire, and cook the shrimp. Then instead of continuing on the RuneScape tutorial, go back to your woodcutting and chop down eleven trees. That will get you to level three, which is the highest level you can reach in anything on the island. Burn the logs until you reach level three. As you get firemaking experience faster, you should have a few logs remaining. Keep these and catch as many shrimps as possible. Then light a fire and cook all the shrimp. Discard the burnt ones and keep the good ones, as you will need them later when in combat. Continue fishing and cooking until your fishing hits level three. You’re cooking will already be at level three by then, unless you burnt almost everything. In which case, continue until your fishing, woodcutting, firemaking, and cooking levels all hit three. Getting levels up to three before you reach the mainland is very important because it is a lot easier to do anything during the tutorial than on the mainland as a low-level character.

The next part is the chef, where you will make a loaf of bread. Keep this as well; you will need it and all the shrimps during combat. I will get to combat in a minute, but first there is some mining to be done.

Then you go underground and talk to the mining and smithing tutors. Mine some tin and copper, smelt them, and make the dagger. Then proceed to the combat tutor. You can always return to the mining and smithing after combat.

You will be taken into a cage of giant rats and given a bronze sword to fight a rat with. In combat, both your character and the rat will have green bars over them. As damage is done, the bar turns red. When it is all red, the character or beast is dead. You have ten hit points, which means you must be hit ten times during combat to die. And this is where the food comes in handy. Eating each shrimp will heal three hit points. The bread will heal five. Fight rats, one at a time, eating the food between each rat as necessary. If the rats drop any bones, take the bones and bury them. That will give you prayer points. Prayer is a skill that is not easy to come. A wise player buries whatever bones he can find. Also, pick up any bronze arrows you find. You will use them later.

If you are lucky to get your attack up to three, click on the crossed swords icon to the left above your pack and switch to a slash, the one that gives strength XP. When you run out of food leave the cage. You will not be allowed to re-enter. Also, I never tried to up my combat levels in the tutorial, so there is a chance it may not work. Keep a sharp eye on your stats logo (the colored bar icon just right of the combat icon) and make sure that when you hit, your stat still is going up.

The next step is ranged. Shoot as many arrows as possible. You may not reach level three, but it’s worth it. When you run out of arrows, try to beg more from the ranged tutor if possible.

Go back to the mines, and count your empty spots in your inventory. Divide that number by two and round down, if necessary. That is the number of each type of ore you can mine. Smelt the ore and smith them into bronze daggers. You will have to make about seventeen daggers to reach level three. Drop the daggers after you make them; there will be no further use of these. Proceed to the bank. Withdraw the 25gp for the sake of it, but don’t bother to store anything in the bank, as anything from Tutorial Island cannot be taken to the mainland either by pack or by bank account. Then proceed to the prayer and the magic.

The wizard will give you a bunch of runes to use on chickens. I don’t know how far you can go with it but he will just give you more runes should you run out of them. When you can no longer get any magic experience, go to the mainland.

When you reach the mainland, you will find in your pack basically everything that you were given on Tutorial Island. Anything you used or dropped will be replaced, and anything extra you gathered or smelted will be gone.

This ends part one, Tutorial Island. In Part Two, I will explore how a newbie in RuneScape can make some quick money.

Runescape Money: Merchanting

By Reginald Mason

On November 22, 2022

In Runescape

If you know what you’re doing then buying and selling things at the grand exchange can be almost a little too lucrative but then again who said money makes people evil? Oh yes I forgot I did once but at least this isn’t real money. Now the whole idea of merchanting is going over to Varrock and heading up to the grand exchange. Once you’re there you just buy some stuff and sell it. Now it wouldn’t help if you didn’t know how to buy and sell.

Merchanting has one very good thing about it and that is that you don’t need any levels to be successful. Sometimes you might make more money through merchanting than through any skills. I will assume you have enough money to buy some god armor. Let’s start with a guthix full helmet. One may cost anywhere from 350k – 450k.

Now you might start asking how in the world do I know what price to buy it for? Well it is simple for god armor. When the price of god armor goes up then you buy it for the market price and sell it for the highest price. When the value goes down you buy it for the lowest price and sell it for the market price. If you really want to then you can wait until the items value is falling and buy it just as it starts going up and then sell it when the price is much higher for the max price. Usually you just buy the item and sell it back as soon as possible.

This is almost a miniature stock market but you should know that you should not ever buy any rare items like Santa hats if you’re a member since they do not sell well. If you don’t have the 400k then you can start out merchanting air runes which trade in huge volume so they should sell a bit faster. Eventually you should get the feel of the grand exchange and hopefully you will be able to make a couple billion gold. Good luck and happy merchanting!

How to Make Gold Fast in World of Warcraft Cataclysm

By Reginald Mason

On November 22, 2022

In World Of Warcraft

The best way to make money in WoW is just like making money in real life, hard work. If you are making 1-200 gold per day then I urge you to continue reading and learn how to make more like 1000 – 5000 gold per day.

Obtain a Money Making Profession:

This is easier said than done. Right away you might think Jewel Crafting is the money maker of the expansion. This is not necessarily true because other players think the same thing and the posting competition brings gem prices below par.

Try Alchemy, Inscription, Tailoring, and Leatherworking. All professions have something to offer, so pick two main professions if you have an alternate character. Since you can now see herbs and minerals on the map at the same time, these are best utilized on an alternate character.

Alchemy Transmute Master: Yes, transmute instead of potion or elixir master. When you proc 5 gems at a time even the raw gems are worth good money. However, in Cataclysm they made it so you can transmute Volatile Life into Volatile Air (important: you must be in Uldum for this to work). Buy Life on the AH, and turn it into Air for double or triple profit depending on current AH trends. If you have an alt character with herbalism, then obtaining your own Volatile Life can take some time, on days you only have a few minutes to play just buy it, port to Uldum and you will still double your profit.

Inscription: Make cards, enough said. Really though, if you only have one character and can afford herbalism and inscription buffs on your main toon, then make the cards. Individual cards can sell over 1000 gold each, and full decks over 15000 gold (of course that will change as we get closer to the next expansion). This requires farming a couple hours each day for Twilight Jasmine or Whiptail. The payoff can be huge though, and if you make enough cards over time (usually 20+ cards) then you will get a full deck eventually worth 15-20k.

Tailoring: Every expansion there is a way to make money through tailoring a spellcaster thread needed for pants. In Cataclysm it’s called Powerful Enchanted Spellthread or Powerful Ghostly Spellthread. Making this each day is your best bet for gold. Check out cool downs on dreamweave though as this restriction will make you less gold than other professions. Also you can craft epics at the start of every expansion and make good money, but it usually requires running dungeons or partaking in raids to do so.

Leatherworking: The same for tailoring applies to leatherworking. Every expansion has a pant enchant for leatherworkers, and this time it is Charscale Leg Armor and Dragonscale Leg Armor.If you want to make great gold run a dungeon every day, roll on the chaos orb and check the auction house to see what epic items are selling for huge prices. Craft one and sell it yourself.

Play the Auction House Game: One way for a brand new character to make money is to start on the auction house. When joining a new server always get skinning and mining or herbalism in order to make money along the way. Get extra bags, you will need them to carry all the leather and minerals. Herbalism pays off later, but initially minerals and leather sell the best because not a lot of people like to be skinners.

In order to play the AH game you will have to buy low and sell high. If you see items selling for just a few copper, often you can buy and resell. One method is to buy out all the fish that help people leveling cooking and resell them for 1g each. 1G is not a lot to a level 85+ character, so you will make a good deal of money if you can find them really cheap. Good examples of this are raw brilliant smallfish. Alternately you can fish this up yourself in Stormwind.

Make Alts: If you play this game enough to have a max level character, then it might be time to make an alt to make more money. I have had up to four transmute alchemists at one time and found it to be extremely profitable. It really doesn’t take long to level an alt (about 4-6 days of /played time if you are focused). Transmute Alchemists are awesome because they require no work. You transmute Volatile Life to Volatile Air once each day and make profit. One final method is to farm motes in outlands and transmute to primal mights which are infinitely needed and sell for over 200g at times.Corner this market by buying out all primal mights and reselling 50-100g higher.

Also I will have alts with herbalism, mining, and skinning just to make life easier. Selling leather at a high level will make you tons of money. You could do that alone and make over 3000 gold each day. That takes a lot of time though, so I’m lazy and use transmuting alchemists.

Farming is Your Friend (Sometimes): Perhaps you just want to kill stuff all day, and if so then find out what drops Volatile Air and Volatile Fire, and get some. Perhaps you like to fish, and the best place to fish is in Uldum because you will get Volatile Water and excellent money making fish. Sell fathom eel raw or turn them into agility food and you can’t go wrong on pvp or pve servers.

If you have a fast mount and want to fly around all day dive bombing into herbs and minerals, then pick those two gathering skills and do so. It can be hugely profitable, but still not as much as skinning. If you don’t want to spend any money leveling a profession to max level (which can cost as much as 3-7000gold), then try mixing two gathering professions. This will be direct profit, but only if you go out farming for herbs, minerals or leather over an hour each day. Skinning is great because you can sometimes do it in dungeons (but your group will not enjoy waiting for you).

Never forget while leveling: That low level items are worth sums of gold (especially leather, gems, and silver ore/bars which can be found in chests). Some examples of low level items worth a lot of money are Moss Agate which is needed to level jewelcrafting, Aquamarine, Citrine, and all of the motes or primals (such as life, fire, air, mana, and water) found in outlands are huge sellers because they are needed to make primal might (four of which are needed to become a transmute master). Any low level blue item could be worth money depending on current auction house prices, but these have lowered significantly in price since the dungeon finder made finding groups easier. All low level epics sell around 80-100g. Once past level 60 those numbers vary greatly.

Don’t Forget Daily Quests: About 2-400 gold can be made every day by doing up to 25 daily quests. It’s a cop out, but sure way to make gold and sometimes you can skin while doing them and make extra money, or gather herbs or minerals so it might be worth your time to check them out (debatable).

Strategies to Raise Your Archaeology Skill Quickly and Efficiently in World of Warcraft

By Reginald Mason

On November 22, 2022

In World Of Warcraft

Archaeology is the new secondary profession added to World of Warcraft in the Cataclysm expansion. Some people may like doing it for the lore aspect of learning more about the history of the Warcraft universe, but some people will only be interested in the good items you can get from it. If you lean more toward the latter, then this article is for you. I will outline a strategy to maximize your results so that getting the good items from the Archaeology profession is less of a grind.

What Good Items Can Be Gained From the Archaeology Profession?

Most of the artifacts that you complete will be useless gray items that you sell to a vendor. There are, however, a few good rare items that you can obtain, including the Zin’Rokh two-handed sword that has a whopping 623 damage per second, two epic staves that have around 2000 spell power, a few epic trinkets, and a Fossilized Raptor mount. The best part is that the equipment is bound to your account, so you can send the items to your alts if you want. The only catch is that the chance of these projects showing up for you is quite low, and the grind might be very long to acquire them.

Beginning Strategy

If you are just starting out in raising your Archaeology skill, you should wait to complete any of the projects until you have reached a skill of 100. This is when you will stop gaining skill points from gathering fragments. After this point you can only gain skill points by completing projects, with common ones giving you 5 skill points, and rare ones giving you 15 skill points.

Number of Fragments Per Dig and Keystones

It may seem like leveling your Archaeology skill will take forever since you only get 2 fragments per dig at the start, but the number of fragments gained per dig goes up to a possible maximum of 6 at level 375. You will also get keystones on occasion which count as 12 fragments. I would recommend using your keystones as you get them instead of saving them, so that you can raise your skill faster and hit the higher maximum fragments per dig sooner.

Speed of Travel is Key for Efficiency

Archaeology is best done with maxed Riding skill, and with a class that can move around the continents quickly. Mage is far and away the most efficient class to level Archaeology with because of the ability to teleport. Death Knights and Druids are attractive alternatives if you don’t have a Mage, with their teleport spells to Eastern Plaguelands and Moonglade, respectively. The bulk of the time spent doing Archaeology will be traveling all over the continents many times, so any way to speed it up is good.