Runescape 3 - Jad Revisited, more than two years later

Hello again, old friend!

After finishing Dungeoneering and Divination, I've just been bumming around Geilinor recently.  Go where the wind takes me, do whatever sounds interesting... it's nice not to have any major goals for a while.  Other than rebuilding my bank (spent a lot getting those last 99's), just following any old whim.

A few days ago, I started missing my old friend Jad.  The first time I ever beat him was March 25, 2011.  (I checked, it was on my blog that day when he finally keeled over.)  That was back when you could use Deflect Curses through the entire Jad fight.  It circumvented the healers, and Jad basically killed himself.  All you had to do was prayer switch, which even I could handle.  When Jagex nerfed the deflect technique, I learned to beat him using ranged, but it wasn't nearly as easy.  After beating him maybe 4 times in my entire life, it was over between us.

That's not to say he was no longer a presence.  His progeny, Baby Jad, is my favorite pet.  Mine were twins... one in the Player Owned Home, one to roam around with me.  After all that work, and all that hate, then adopting his kids, somehow, I wound up liking Jad.

Back to the present, 2 and a half years later:  Things have changed a lot with Jad and the Fight Caves.  After EOC, the Fight Cave changed so often that the guides online don't 'quite' work any more.  Two things stood out, though.  Ranging is bad.  Now most of the monsters are weak to water spells.  The other thing is Obsidian Armour and the Tokkul-Zo.  Both give big advantages when fighting TzHaar.  Obsidian Armour will reduce damage by around half.  55% with the shield, 45% without.  That helps all the way through the fight cave, but especially with Jad.  (More on that shortly.)  The Tokkul-Zo ring boosts damage against TzHaar by 10%.

The armour is made by collecting Obsidian Shards and making Obsidian Bars, then smithing the entire set.  It takes 228 shards to make the full armor set, including the three styles of helmet.  Wearing it requires at least 60 in one of the combat skills.  I blew it off for a long time as too 'low level'.  In reality, with that huge damage reduction, it's amazing.  To get the shards, I wore my best range gear, and jumped into the Fight Cauldron.  Every few fights, I walked out to make sure of getting my shards.  If you get killed before collecting them, you only receive half.  The Obsidian Armour degrades, but is repairable with more shards.  Since the Cauldron is MUCH easier while wearing Obby Armour, it's easy to keep enough shards in stock to repair it.  

One nice thing about the Obby armour, it's considered an 'all combat' class.  Just change out the helm, and you're good to go.  There's a melee helm, mage helm, and ranger helm.

Not so easy for the Tokkul Zo ring.  After 4000 total hits, it loses all charge.  50,000 Tokkul will recharge it completely.  That's pretty hard to come by.  But still, if it means beating Jad I'm okay with it.  Just have to remember to pick up my free 8,000 per day for doing the Karamja Elite tasks.

For my full gear, I wore the Obsidian Armour - Mage helm, plate legs, plate body, gloves and boots.  Additionally, The Chaotic Staff (from Dungeoneering), Max Cape, Fury Ammy, Vampyrism Aura, and scrimshaw of the elements (because I accidentally made a bunch non-tradeable).  In the long run, I forgot to use the Aura, but that's okay.

For inventory, a couple Overload flasks, 5 Prayer Flasks, a Vecna Skull (which I also mostly forgot to use), a bunch of Rocktail soup, and all the Blood and Water runes I have.  Overkill?  Maybe... but you have no idea what a klutz I am.

My spell was Ice Barrage, from the Ancient Magic spellbook, and Curse prayers to deflect damage back to Jad.  The Action bar is as follows:  Wrack, Impact, Chain, Combust, Dragon Breath, Metamorphosis, Asphyxiate, Deflect Missiles, Deflect Magic, Torment, Regenerate, and Guthix's Blessing.  (I'm pretty sure I saw this or something similar on several forums, but by now I can't remember where or who recommended it.)

In the fight caves, it went amazing.  No food until time for Jad.  Regenerate kept me topped up, and the monsters fell like kindling to the axe.  The waves before Jad were fast, and easy.  Then I hit the action bar glitch.  My protection prayer keybinds are W for Deflect Missiles, and E for Deflect Magic.  The W key worked fine, but the E key was dead.  By the time I figured out what was happening, I'd missed a bunch of prayer switches, and had eaten most of my food. 

The amazing thing is, Jad didn't kill me!  Came close, but with the Obsidian Armour cutting his damage in half, I still had a chance.  And wound up winning a fire cape.  First try in two and a half years, bad glitch in the action bar, and the Obby Armour still saved my bacon.

So, if you're wondering... it's really really worth the effort! 

Now, I'm feeling the urge to try again, and will hopefully do better as I know to watch out for the glitch.  Wish me luck.

Dungeons and Divination - Finishing the last two Skills

Had a landmark week last week.  On Thursday, 120 Dungeoneering.  Friday, 99 Divination.  Saturday, got the "of Daemonheim" title.  

Getting 120 DG took a long time.  I've always played solo or duo (on those occasions when my wife joins me at Daemonheim).  She's got her 99 cape, and is getting closer and closer to the 120 as well.  When Dungeoneering first came out, I liked it, but didn't spend any time on it.  All my bonus experience went to it, like penguins, and Juna, and I wound up in the mid-80 levels without having played it.

After that, I started soloing dungeons.  Don't have the temperament to play in a team.  When daily challenges and sinkholes came out, well, it certainly made gaining exp much easier.  Not to devalue the hard work of those that came before, but I'll take what I can get.  As long as it's from honest playing.

Getting the "of Daemonheim" title wasn't quite as major as maxing a skill, but it was a solid effort.  I missed the easy week.  Remember?  The first week, when players could do Hard Mode on small dungeons?  By the time I began, it was Hell Week.  That was the week when every hard mode floor was a Large.  Finally, it settled to mediums by default for solo and duo adventurers, and larges only for bigger groups of players.

Regardless, I finally did all 60 floors.  Picked up all the cool drops along the way... the Primal gear, the Blood Necklace, the Hexhunter Bow, Celestial Catalytic Staff.  I know, some of that stuff was nerfed when EOC came out, but who knows - some day that Hexhunter might be a mighty weapon again. 

By the way, I've seen plenty of Night Spiders since the EOC, but have never seen a Shadow Silk Hood drop since then.  Before that, I've had 3 SSH drops.  Does anybody know if they aren't dropping any more?  Or is it just a super-super-rare item now?

Been working as hard as I can on Divination, which came out 8/20/13.  At this point it's been nearly three months.  Wow.  I wanted the Max Cape back, thought this would only take a short while.  After all, with so many 99's already, it shouldn't be that hard to do another... right?

 Actually, levelling to 99 is a lot more time-consuming than I remembered.  No idea how the first players to 99 got there so fast.  Now that I'm face to face with how much time and effort it takes, the upcoming Inventor skill seems less and less interesting.  Maybe that'll change once the skill is out.

In the meantime, it's been a long slog.  Especially levels 90-95.  Getting out to the desert behind Sophanem is a pain.  Wiki recommends not even training there, but going back to the old place on Dragontooth Island  just isn't any fun.  Even if it's faster.    The final rift out near the Poison Wastes isn't exactly 'convenient' to get to, but it's not as bad as Sophanem.

I've been pretty grateful for any and all exp lamps and boosts along the way.  Using the Jack of Trades Aura daily, getting about 10k exp for just a minute or so of effort.  Any Squeal of Fortune prismatic lamps go directly to Divination as well.  Best of all, the prismatic pendants.  They were released a year ago (13 November 2012).  Knowing two new skills were on the way, I've been stockpiling them.  Plus the recharge gems.

At level 96, I used them all.  The new system of storing bonus experience is pretty cool, and every pendant from the past year went on Divination.  Came to something like 1,200,000 bonus exp.  Yes, that's over 1 million exp points.  As long as it lasts, all my Div exp is doubled.  I went from 96 to 97 in one single day.  It was a very long, very dedicated Saturday, but just the same, it was one single day.  By Monday night, it went to 98.

The bonus exp ran out with about 400k to go.  Slow and tedious again.  But while the bonus lasted, it was a lot of fun.

It feels really, really good to have all those goals done.  Haven't decided what to work on next, there's still plenty I haven't done yet.  For the moment, I'm rebuilding my bank.  Spent close to 100 million gold buying memories to speed up training.  And, I have to admit, some spins on SOF to get the exp-boosting Divination costume.  Got all but the headgear.  It helped.

Now I've got the Max Cape back.  Since my current look sports a lot of Gold - thanks to Super September and the super-hero costume - it's set to a matching gold/yellowish theme.  The costume is pretty much a mash-up of several different pieces.  When gold gets old, it'll be time for a new color scheme.  The cosmetic overlays are totally impractical, but a lot of fun.

At the moment, I've earned back around 20 million gold, and going strong.  After that?  Who knows... it's a big world!