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Monday, March 25, 2013

Runescape: POP Logbook Update... Finally!

Today Wilderness Warbands came out.  To be honest, I'm just not interested.  I don't like pvp, do not enjoy going into the wilderness, and don't need any of the skill exp offered by it.   For now, not going to try it.  If I change my mind, I'll let you know.  But the actual thing that caught my eye was some of the items in the "In Other News" at the bottom of the update page.


Of minor interest, the increased chance of winning Slayer Masks and boosted exp Slayer Lamps (from Squeal of Fortune) will now last until Thursday, 03/28/13, just before midnight.  This gives a 3-day extension beyond the original schedule.  Having won a couple of the masks, they're a fun distraction from the usual stuff.  Sort of cosmetic, and sort of functional, looking cool and with a neat emote when upgraded.

Higher-end capes had their armor values 'corrected'.  I was thrilled, until reading the rest of the sentence, stating they've LOWERED the value of the capes.  Darn it.  I thought they meant the Fire Cape was actually worth using again.  Too bad.

For Barrowers, Akrisae became much tougher after EOC.  Now we can use the Smash ability to briefly turn his protection prayers off.  I haven't tried it yet, but that should balance him out much better.

Here's a good one:  The "Tribute to Guthix" event was extended an extra week.  Yay!  I love catching those butterflies... they give me 2,244 experience in my lowest skill every time I catch one, up to 20 butterflies per day!
(Since my only unfinished skill is Dungeoneering, that means an easy 40k DG exp per day for catching a few butterflies while going about my business.)

All of that is nice.  But that's STILL not why I'm writing today.

 POP.  Player Owned Ports.
That's the reason.  If you're an avid POP player, there's reason to rejoice today.  Firstly, the totems have been reworked to be consistent, and to offer more benefits.  Now THAT ought to be useful.  I can't stress enough how useless the original 1% better odds was.  It's about time Totems actually earned their expense. Now, if you have all 4 totems the same thing, you'll get a 10% boost to your odds.  That's decent.

Second, and the main thing, is the logbook.  A simple thing, really.  If you don't play POP, you won't understand how big this really is.  The logbook will now tell you (pay attention, this is important!) WHEN YOUR SHIPS ARE DUE BACK!!!
Seriously.  This took a long long time.  Many POP owners are in the final stages of their endgame.  Even so, this is an excellent improvement.  Finally, we don't have to teleport to the port to find out when our ships are coming back.  No idea why they didn't do this long ago, but that's okay.  I'm glad it's here now.  Now I just check my logbook, wherever I am, and it tells me how long until each ship is due back at port.  That's really cool.

Next update, it needs to show us what the mission reward is.  In the logbook, at a glance.  Just something brief, like "700 stainless steel", or "Scroll Mission", or "5 Plate".

I know... players are never happy for very long, are we?

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