The long road...

It was a long, dusty road encompassing nearly a week of hard labor. Despite the obstacles standing in my way, I persevered and was triumphant! Yes! I finally reached level 33 in crafting and can now make vials so I can mass produce potions. Ahh, runescape...:)

Some of you are either a) laughing, b) shaking your head, c) rolling your eyes, or d) moving on to the next post. LOL This was a major goal of mine. It's hard to find vials in order to make potions (attack, defense, strength, anti-poison, etc.) and if you can manage to achieve level 33 in crafting experience, you can then MAKE the vials yourself. I was challenged, however, by many obstacles. My crafting was at a 20, but with crafting glass products (candle lanterns and oil lamps), I was able to get my level up to 28. --Note: With each subsequent level, the amount of experience points required to advance also increases, sometimes substantially. It's like a constant uphill battle.-- I had over 50 of each in my bank account and was tired of making an item that I had no idea if I could sell. Jewelry is also a crafting activity, so, because I had gems in my bank account, I decided that I would make jewelry then enchant them for magical purposes (teleporting mostly). Problem: my mining was at a level 37 and I had to get up to level 40 before I can mine gold ore. So I worked on that for three nights. This wasn't without some benefit because I could collect the lesser ores (iron, coal, copper, tin) and smelt bronze, iron and steel bars. Those can then be smithed into arrow tips for use in fletching arrows (another skill area). Finally I could mine gold. Next Problem: My smithing level was still at 38, which isn't high enough to smelt the gold ore into bars, which is required before making jewelry. *SIGH* Back to mining lesser ores, but using the bars to make armor and sell at the specialty shops, earning about 5000 gold pieces (gp). I thought I'd take this money and buy some feathers to attach to my arrows. Eventually I reached level 40 smithing. So, I used what little gold I had accumlated (takes a long time to mine it) and made some sapphire rings, necklaces, and amulets. I enchanted a few of the rings and necklaces so they'd have a useful purpose and stashed them back into my bank account. Now I was at a level 30 for crafting. I still wasn't prepared to go back to makeing candle lanterns and oil lamps so I decided to pick flax to spin into bow strings. (Part of my fletching xp was earned by making unstrung bows so I needed to string them before selling to the stores.) That took another few nights to do, but I managed to get enough accumulated to string 30 bows, and store up 150 strings for future bows. I sold most of the bows to the archery store, earning about 2000 gp. Now I was a level 31 for crafting. I decided that I'd just go back to glass making and bought more supplies for that purpose. It took about 3 load fulls of oil lamps before I finally reached level 33 (last night). Oh happy day! I made a few loads, then worked on potions for awhile. When I stopped last night, I had used up all of my empty vials and was working on ranging (archery) by shooting chickens. My ranging skill was at a 2 when I started but ended at a level 10.

So now you have had a glimpse into the foundations of runescape character development...the development of skills. Skills in runescape work in synergy. What increases your experience points (xp) in one area, can benefit you in another. You can also do quests that increase your skill xp's but I have to work on a few of my skill areas in order to meet the minimum requirements to succed in those quests. I don't want to die...when you die in runescape, anything you're carrying is usually lost, and considering how much I've paid and the work I've done to accumulate some items...well, I'd rather be overprepared for a quest than underprepared. You won't see me foolishly charging in to fight high-level demons. I'm not crazy!