Welcome to F2P / Doing My Duty

I logged into F2P today and was greeted with this scene:

That set things into perspective. After muting around 20 advertisers, I sat in the Grand Exchange and just watched. Sadly, none of the players were speaking to each other, probably because their public chat was off to avoid the bots. Even worse, a new bot would log in every minute and begin advertising. F2P: It's a scary world.

I also found out today that I have members credit until August 15th for some reason. I didn't pay for it, it's just there.

800k Melee xp/hr?

Despite not having membership, I still like to keep informed on the happenings of Runescape (and I'm seriously considering becoming an avid F2P player, but I still haven't logged in for a while).

Anyway, today I found a video that shocked me. Looks like the new clan citadels had an unexpected consequence:

Personally, I'm very sure Jagex will address this "bug" and possibly rollback or ban its abusers. However, it did make for an entertaining video.

I'll sign on for the first time in a while to do the Crypitc Clue Fest III before it's removed. Must keep up with the special events. :)

Personal: I've been working hard on another website that I won't reveal yet. It's definitely a learning experience, but I'm still having a good time creating it.

Kastor's Epilogue

For now, I'm done.

Click here to read the article on my website.

Personal: I'm starting my career as a web programmer and I'm working on my first big project.

Baukunst wie ein CHEF!

Today's been a breakthrough in terms of my ability to train construction. I had been really peeved because I was having a lot of difficulty training construction quickly and efficiently, so I decided to try everything I could to speed it up. Here are the results:

Almost 785k experience per hour, and I maintained that for over 20 minutes. Yeah, I finally found my groove to 200m construction xp! Here are some tips for those interested in training construction quickly:

• Play in minimal detail with a fixed window to minimize computer lag
• Download the window's client to play. This further reduces computer lag.
• Play in a foreign language. I prefer German worlds because I can still understand most things. Because few people play on these worlds, it reduces server lag.
• Download a program like screenmarker to help you remember where to click.
• Enable MouseKeys and StickyKeys on your computer so pressing down on the numpad will jump you just enough to choose the "build" and "remove" options on furniture.

It can take a bit of prep and requires 100% concentration, but it's totally worth it for me. After I achieve 300k xp, I start to make errors, so I usually take a break here. Physical activity is probably best, but anything besides the concentrated clicking will help prepare you mentally for another session of concentration. Heck, just writing this blog is one of my breaks.

I bought 300k mahogany planks for most of the money in my bank, which won't be enough. I'll sell my purple partyhat soon to gain enough cash for 200m. I'm actually considering buying extra (by selling my third-age stuff) to stock up for bonus xp weekend. Obviously, it hasn't been announced yet, but I feel it's just around the corner and I'd like to make some money back by selling planks at around 200% of their price. :P

Personal: This week has probably been one of the best weeks this whole year for me. You know that feeling you get when you achieve something? It's a sort of warm sensation deep inside you, and it makes you want to be super efficient, clean, etc. I think it all started when I finally got around to making the "My History - 2008" video. I felt great going to bed, and decided to finish some stuff when I got up. Well, the next day I finished a website for a friend (which took a long time and a lot of tricks from my book!). That was a huge relief, since it took around 30-40 hours to build. I felt amazing. I then proceeded to clean out my room closets, which only added to that feeling of euphoria. I've also been super-active recently, too; I've gone swimming several times this week and I played tennis with a friend this afternoon, too. I've also had a huge boost in traffic to my website and blog, so if you're reading this, you make me feel amazing and I thank you!

It's been quite a change from the apathy I felt for a large part of the year. If you've been feeling like I was, I hope this inspires you to achieve whatever you want; it'll make you feel awesome. :)

So it begins...

I finally decided to spend all my money on mahogany planks and get 200m construction experience. The major event that convinced me to do this was the raise of rank 22 from 53m xp to 73m xp in the span of around a month--that scared me. I can afford this, but it will involve selling, most likely, my purple partyhat. I'd rather not sell my mask set or santa hat because those have been rising quite steadily, but under ideal conditions I'll sell my third-age armors and some other things without touching all my rares.

I'm hoping that Jagex will run a bonus XP weekend while I'm completing this goal so I can sell a large portion of my planks, then buy them back afterward with enough for all I need. It's a risky venture, but it won't ruin me if it doesn't happen.

Plus, to be honest, I'm looking forward to not being able to buy everything. A friend once told me that spending his entire cash pile was the best decision he'd ever made, because it made Runescape fun again. Maybe 200m con will do that for me.

In the mean time, here's something everyone should know:

How to make money off items you aren't using!

Do you own a wearable rare or high-level armor/weapon? If so, great! You can lend that item while you aren't using it to make some money. For example, my blue partyhat is almost always in demand, and I can lend it without problem for 200k / hr in world 2. Why? Because people are willing to pay it, even though it does nothing! Therefore, it's quite logical that people will also pay a lot for items that DO do something.

Take dragon claws for example. They're worth 17.1m and one of the most popular items to lend or borrow. I see people in world 2 all the time lending them for 30k / hr, and people pay it! Imagine, if you could lend it for 24 hours each day with a 720k return, you'd pay that thing off in less than a month. That's a lot of money for not a lot of work. 

However, and this part's very important, you've got to convince people that they're being smart by borrowing your item! Whenever someone borrows my blue partyhat, I always take a few seconds after the transaction's complete to tell them thanks, and that it looks great on them. It seems trivial, but it makes them more likely to borrow a partyhat in the future, which essentially means more money for you and everyone else lending partyhats.

Personal: I've attended around eight parties in the last two days, and I had a great time. I got a lot of sun, spent time with a lot of friends, and I'm ready for summer.

I'm building a website right now for one of my teachers, and it's almost done. She even paid $50, so I suppose this means I'm a professional website designer now.

New Website, New Goal, New New NEW!

I finally got around to making a new website. I decided to make it very simple and eventually ended with THIS.
I still need to transfer some stories and perhaps old blog posts, but for now this is what I'm going to use. I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, considering it only took around 10-20 hours of work. :)

I've also decided to embark on a new, sub-goal! This goal is designed to answer the question: Is it possible to pay off a blue partyhat simply by lending it? Well, so far I've lent it for 7,000k the past three days. I bought it for ~3,000,000k, so I'm .2% there! Realistically, I designed this goal to keep me from being lazy and actually lending it every time I can so I have some money for my 200m construction goal, but I'm pretty psyched to see how far I can go with this! Here are a few pictures from my adventures so far:

I'm still trying to find that "perfect" amount per hour, but it'll be a fun adventure while it lasts. I'll keep an updated log of my progress on the blog and this website page.

Personal: I went to the library today to get out of the house while my sister got interviewed on Skype for a job. I really love my public library; it's gigantic, has free wifi, and is very conducive to studying (or, in this case, working!)

What I've been doing!

For the past three weeks, it's been very difficult to play Runescape for any amount of time. Luckily, I'm getting back into Runescape now, but I attribute my absence to two main reasons:

1. I began playing a wonderful game called League of Legends with my best friend. It's unlike any game I've ever played. I would best describe it as a combination between an MMORPG and an RTS. Basically, you control a "champion" and, along with teammates, try to conquer an opposing base while protecting your own. It's beautifully made, actively updated, and free to play (with some cosmetic content available for purchase). I highly recommend it.
2. I've been disillusioned with Jagex's recent updates. It's clear their business model places high priority on making money (which I completely understand--they are a business after all!) I suppose I simply miss the past when the homepage didn't have any ads at all, compared to today where the entire background is an ad in addition to the two prominent ads as well. Also, Jagex seems to be abandoning their previous method of letting word-of-mouth spread their popularity and now rely on Facebook and YouTube as well. They also compromised account security by allowing people to log in with their Facebook accounts. It's all very annoying when I think of how things used to be.

So I've begun slowly getting back into the game and it's been fun so far. I currently have 771m and I'm seriously considering selling a partyhat to purchase 200m construction xp before all 22 frontpage ranks become closed. This has been brooding in my mind for some time, but after a friend sold his blue partyhat to buy 200m herblore, it became my top considered option. In the mean time, I'm doing some fishing (finally trying rocktails with the 90 fishing I got months ago) and I've found it relaxing, but almost so relaxing that it puts me to sleep. No joke, I had to take a break from Runescape while fishing because I wanted to fall asleep.

I recently downloaded a version of editing software that's good for 30 days, so I may put together some videos before that trial ends. I guess making my history video for 2008 would be appropriate, given the sentiments I addressed above.

Personal: Tomorrow is officially my last day of school. I'm exempt from all my final exams, but I keep going anyway to ensure I have 13 years of perfect school attendance at graduation. It'll be nice to stop going to school though, because it's really a very inefficient waste of time--I have nothing to do so I find myself derping around on the library computers if I don't have thank-you letters to write or something.

I made $0.98 from my Google Adsense account in May! This really surprised me because I only have ads on this blog and one YouTube video. It's a great motivator to start a website to see if I can actually make a decent earning on ads alone. I'm thinking it'll be a great project to maintain during my time in college.

Making a Name for Myself

Over the past month I've spent firemaking in world 78's Grand Exchange, I've noticed many things.

First off, there are a ton of regulars. Everyday, I see the same level 138 wearing an herblore cape training random skills. He's a pretty nice guy. I guess I've become a regular to some people, too. Today, some person I'd never seen came up and asked me questions because he knew I was a player mod. I've had countless people start following me and ask me about how my firemaking is going and that they've seen me there a lot before. It's all pretty interesting.

...That, or they recognize the bald head.

Another thing I've noticed is how great the Runescape community actually is. People always seem to see the dark side: the trolls, scammers, etc. However, I've come to realize that the vast majority of Runescape players are decent people. If there's a scammer in the Grand Exchange, people usually gang up to fight injustice. It's like if someone was robbing a store and every customer allied to stop the robber. Again, I find it interesting.

...And then there's the bot-catchers.

I'm sure you know one. They're the people that go out of their way to hassle bots. Well, it's funny how many times I've been mistaken for a bot. I'm not sure why people think I'm a bot, I wear pretty nice stuff (so I'm obviously not afraid of dying from something), I talk to people when they follow me, and I have the craziest method of firemaking available ( I go east 13 logs, then 14 west.) Still, people seem to enjoy putting hunting equipment in my way to "check." I've had one guy say, "Wow he has a good bot" when I dodged the box trap, and he was speechless when I replied, thus showing the silver crown. Another person was particularly persistent, saying I simply must have botted my skills because "everyone bots." Right.

Well, that's enough rambling for one day.

Today I figured out the costs of getting 200m construction experience: 2,300m. I'm not sure how I'll make enough money before my opportunity at being immortalized in the top 22 is taken from me. To be honest, I might have to sell my green or purple partyhat and hope to buy it back after. Regardless, I'm getting pretty nervous that the ranks are closing fast; my time to act must be soon.

Personal: I had a great weekend. I went to my school orchestra concert and they were amazing. I never knew our school was so musically talented. After that, I went to a friend's house and played Just Dance 2; I wasn't very good at it, but I do love dancing, and it was a lot of fun making a fool of myself.

While lifeguarding today I got to work in the rain. At first I thought I might be sent home because it was raining pretty hard, but it ended soon enough, and people came back in droves. I guess you can't keep the pool closed in the spring.

More Fires and More Advice!

I had a pretty good day today. I finally passed 23m firemaking xp after I decided to buy 10k yew logs. I still have 9k left, which should give me around 2m more xp, putting me at 25m firemaking xp. I'm still not sure how far I want to go with this, but I'll keep going until I get bored, I suppose. My exams are over, so I have a lot more time now to dedicate to computer time!

Flipping Tip #2: Empty Your Offers!

Unless you like taking risks, it's usually best to keep your Grand Exchange offers empty overnight. The exception is if an item is rising and you think you can sell them for a massive profit if you buy some overnight. However, if an item shows unstable signs or is evidently falling, don't keep an offer in for the item overnight. You never know when an item will start falling unexpectedly quickly!

I recently took a risk on arcane spirit shields. I decided to buy some overnight, and found the next day, to my dismay, that they had begun crashing. The result was a loss of 3m per item, which could have easily been avoided if I hadn't bought them before I went to bed. In a way, this feeds into Tip #1: Don't be greedy!

Personal: Today we had an abstinence-only sex education talk in one of my classes. Although I don't have any plans to have sex anytime soon, I was still quite offended by this. They propped up abstinence as the only "right" thing to do, then showed us some very shifty statistics concerning condoms, like their 50% protection rate against STDs like gonorrhea. I was dying to be a smart-alike and ask how the test was conducted, how many subjects they surveyed, and how long the test period lasted. They liked the fact that condoms have a 98% success rate (which makes them seem very risky over long periods of time!), but what they fail to mention is that this test was conducted over a year-long study. That means the success rate per encounter is much, much higher than 98% In fact, it makes their effective rate at around 99.7% per encounter. Yeah, they didn't mention that.

So why did this make me so angry if it doesn't affect me? Because it's stuff like that that causes stuff like this. Kids in the Bible Belt of the United States are simply taught to never have sex. Therefore, when they finally decide to go and try it, they have no idea how to protect themselves and end up with unwanted pregnancies and STDs. The rest of the developed world seems to understand that teaching alternative methods to abstinence helps stop these trends--why can't we?

A Successful School Day

Despite having an exam on European history tomorrow, I was quite productive on Runescape today!

I only burned 1k magic logs today, but I made over 7.5m from flipping! I've found that arcane spirit shields are one of the best items to use because I can sell them for around 100k profit per item. However, there's a 2-item limit on buying them, so I need to continuously keep up with the offer in the GE. Other than those, I used my traditional Bandos chestplates, tassets, armadyl chestplates, and saradomin swords. I was actually making a lot of money on the armadyl chests--around 39k per item per flip! Which brings me to my next point...

Flipping Tip #1: Don't be greedy!

Whenever I try to explain how to flip to people, one thing they seem to miss is that they cannot be greedy when flipping. Flipping is all about making quick profits, not going for the long haul. Therefore, instead of trying to squeeze every GP out of a flip, settle for lower, quicker amounts.

For example, I'm perfectly happy to get even 20k for a flip of bandos chestplates--worth around 20m. Yes, I just said I'm happy to receive a .1% profit on items. It may not look great on the GE history page, but flipping 20 of them at a time is a cool 200k every 10 or so minutes. Under ideal circumstance, that's around 1,200k per hour! Multiply that by six GE slots, and you're looking at over 7m per hour. From experience, I can say that flipping over 7m per hour takes practice but it's possible. 

So what does this have to do with greed? If I tried to get even 5k more for those chestplates, chances are someone else would outbid me, thus forcing my time to buy and sell to take longer or even never complete! That's really what flipping is all about: Outbidding your opponents and taking advantage of the players that don't want to take the time to buy/sell at the best prices.

Personal: I took the AP Calculus exam yesterday, and I thought most of it was pretty easy. The first portion was a mutliple-choice section without the use of a calculator. I knew around 90% of them and made logical guesses for the others. The second portion was multiple choice with a calculator, and I'm almost positive I got every question on that section right. After that, we got six word problems with multiple parts, and I felt great about five of them. However, one of them took me completely by surprise, and I did my best to remember the little time we spent on the problems in class. Overall, I felt it was a pretty strong performance and I'm glad it's over.

It might've helped if I had taken a math class in the last five months, but I guess I can't complain, since reviewing the content was up to me.

AP Exams Coming up!

I didn't log in to Runescape today because of some priorities I have with school.

Personal: Tomorrow is my first Advanced Placement text. AP tests are used by some school and count by many colleges and universities as credit, so students don't have to retake the class. I'm taking four this year: Art history, calculus, European history, and US government. I've got my art history exam tomorrow and that's the one I'm most nervous about because I don't have a large interest in the subject. However, I have studied hard over the past few weeks, and I'm confident I'll get a passing grade and better.

Until these are over, my time on Runescape will be much reduced.

May's Bank and Stats Pictures

Hi everyone!

For those who don't already know, I've made it a regular tradition of taking bank and stats pictures at the beginning of each month to track my progress in Runescape. Here are my pictures for the beginning of May:

Bank | Stats

Today was uneventful. I got around 500k firemaking experience, burning just under 2k magic logs. I also only merched a bit; only enough to cover my costs.

Personal: I work as a lifeguard at my local pool.

There's a regular patron there, we'll call him Larry. Larry first met me when I was in 8th grade as a member of the pool's swim team. He was friendly enough, and I talked to him whenever he approached me. My guess is he was in his early 20s.

When I began working there, he continued talking. No biggie. Well, over the past year, he's become a bit... creepy. It began when he suggested we should hang out outside of the pool. I didn't directly say "no" to him, because I thought that would hurt his feelings. However, as time went on, he became increasingly obsessed with the idea, and I began to think he may have been coming on to me. I tried giving him subtle clues by brushing him off and giving him only minimal attention, but that didn't seem to work. That led me to believe that he may be slightly mentally ill.

Today I realized it must stop. Me mentioned that he's a custodian that does work in the schools after hours, and that he had been looking for me. He also told me he had looked me up in my school's 9th grade yearbook, and that I "hadn't changed much." Creepy!


After he again mentioned hanging out (seeing a movie at my house would be cool!), I decided enough was enough. I told him (in my politest way possible, given the circumstances) that I didn't want to. He seemed deflated, but I figured it was better to let him off now before things got... weirder (if that's possible.)

I felt kind of bad, but it didn't seem to having a lasting effect. He was back, following me around, only 30 minutes later. I'm not sure what will happen from here.

My Birthday and How I Spent It

Today, I'm 18 years old. Scary.
Well, I began my time in Runescape today by firemaking. It's amazing how enjoyable the skill is, despite there really being no point in doing it. I began the day by passing the 20m xp marker, and eventually passed 21m xp, too. My system of firemaking, despite burning magic logs, is actually making me money.

For those of you who don't know, I make a majority of my money through flipping items in the Grand Exchange. Until free trade was rereleased, I could make pretty good profit margins on items, like 300k per flip of a Bandos Tasset, for example. Since I can buy 10 at a time every four hours, I would buy 10, sell them four hours later, and make a handsome profit. The benefit of this system is that I could essentially do anything else between the time it bought and sold, including log out.

However, with the return of free trade, that system died. I now don't have to wait four hours between buying and selling, but I can't get the insane profit margins I was getting. Today, I'm happy to get 30k profit per flip of an item, even though many of them cost over 20m. This may seem inefficient, but I think I've mastered the system.

By filling all six slots with varying items costing 5-22m, I can use all 750m of my current cash to its maximum potential. Instead of standing around talking or waiting, I decided to grab my tinderbox, fire gloves and ring, and get busy! Today, I bought 4,000 magic logs (costing ~5.4m) and burned them all (my self from 2007 would be cringing just thinking about this.) The funny part is that I began the day at around 754m in cash, and ended at 766m. So...

Total Expenditures: -5,400,000gp
Total Profit: +12,000,000gp
Total Income: 17,400,000gp


This dwarfs my standard days with the old system, where 5-10m was considered a great day.

That led me to think. If I had gained over 17m in one day, then how many items were passing through my hands each day? Well, assuming each item gives a profit of around 22k each (remember, items like saradomin swords I was content on flipping at a mere 9k profit per item), that means around 790 items were bought and sold by me today. Assuming I equally spread this among all six slots (and I know I didn't here; dragon claws were hot for me today, while bandos tassets and dragon platebodies were jerks) that's around 132 dragon claws, bandos tassets, dragon chainbodies, dragon platebodies, dragonfire shields, and saradomin swords.

But wait! Let's go one step further and assume each item has a value of around 12.5m. That means in one day, I single-handedly influenced almost 10 billion gp worth of items. I don't know about you, but to me, that's mind-boggling.

Personal: So, as I mentioned, today was my 18th birthday. I woke up around 9 o'clock, and after a short treasure hunt for my presents, I unwrapped them to find a shirt with the name of my college, a sansa mp3 player, and other goodies. Unfortunately, the upcoming AP exams forced me to buckle down and study a bit today, so I read a few pages in my AP Art History book and completed a practice exam. I haven't graded the whole thing yet, but I think it's on par for a low four (the test deems that "Highly Qualified" in the topic), which I was pleased to see. I also watched a few videos from the Khan Academy about calculus as a refresher. Finally, I responded to all 67 of my birthday wishers on Facebook with a personalized message, which took around an hour and a half. I hope they appreciate it, though.

Good day!

A Possible Alternative

Instead of making my own format, it may be easier to simply use this service. We'll see if I keep up with it.