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Showing posts with label barrows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label barrows. Show all posts

Friday, April 13, 2012

Runescape: Morytania Hard Tasks

More Morytania... We ran through the easy and medium tasks pretty much without any slowdowns. Next up is the hard tasks. This was noticeably more difficult than the first two, but nothing that really caused any major hold-ups. Bear in mind, Monique and I are quest-fiends. We do every quest as soon as we can, and try our best to get all the little hidden extras that sometimes come along. We love new content, so when I'm talking about these tasks, it's from that perspective. If you haven't done the respective quests first, it could take quite a bit of time to get up to speed.
Just a bit to the north
First was killing Tarn Razorlor. "Detarnation" is simple if you've got a ring of Slaying. Just bop in, and run a bit north. If you've already killed him, all you have to do is walk into the room. Over and done.

Doing "Runecraft Carrier" was a bit of a hiccup. Having to break a Blood Altar teleport tablet presupposes you've earned one from the Runecrafting Guild game, which Monique and I have never done. Way back when it came out, we pronounced it boring and moved on. Now we had to go back and earn Runecrafting Guild tokens. It only needs 45, and we got that after one game. Not too bad.
Shade-Shattering Ka-Bloom was a horse of another color, though. I've never gone back and done much with vyres after the quests involving them. So my Flail of Ivandis was amazingly low in burn count for vyre corpses. This took a while, but it wasn't a massive task. Seems like it only took a couple of hours to kill the vyre, then a bit of time to burn them at the Columbarium. Doing Bloom itself was supremely easy, I just needed the vyre count above 200. Ran just barely inside the Mort Myre gate, and finished with a sigh of relief.
The graphics are much better than back when I used this course!
Back to the easy stuff. In "They'll just throw it away again", all that's needed is to take a quick lap around the Werewolf Agility Course, out in the swamp area behind the Canifis bank and across the river. Ring of Charos needed to get in. Neither Monique nor I ever played Skullball, but I can remember putting many hours in here trying to level up. Long time ago. When the lap was done, we handed in our sticks and moved on.

In Time Saver, we popped over to the Slayer Tower via the Slayer Ring, ran to the River Salve, crossed the bridge, climbed up the river bank, and slipped through the fence. Then back through, because the 'trigger' to get task credit is for the other direction.
Huge Success is one of those tasks that you do by accident. It requires either setting a house teleport to Kharyrll (Canifis), or using yours if it's already set. We didn't plan for this one, just did it accidentally in the course of going to Canifis.

The Barrows task didn't really appeal to me. For "I Brought Your Stuff Back", I thought you'd actually have to go into the dungeon beneath the crypts. Used to have really good luck with Barrows, then my luck went away. So I don't really like Barrows any more. Turned out a lot easier than expected, though. All you have to do is walk into the Barrows enclosure while wearing a full set of (any) Barrows gear. Take a quick teleport with Draken's Medallion, stroll in, and it's done. Not so bad after all.
Just One More Key built from the earlier task involving casting "Bloom". We saved all our Vyre corpses from building up the kill count, took them to the Columbarium, and burnt them. You get credit for this task by just using one key in the Columbarium alcoves, but we went ahead and burned all the corpses while we were at it. Got some decent drops, nothing spectacular.
We went back to Darkmeyer again for "Raising the Stakes". If you've already done the associated quest, this is a snap. Monique had to make another Silver Sickle(b), but I was lucky enough to have spares in the bank. Sickles in hand, we cut and fletched a Blisterwood Polearm on the spot. Job well done.
In a repeating theme for the Morytania tasks, next up was a return to Temple Trekking. In "Trekkin' Ain't Easy" you have to take a hard companion through the hard route. I was very lucky. In and out with only 3 events, and kept my Companion safe all the way. Monique got the neverending route... We honestly thought the game had decided to continue throwing events at her until she failed. Eventually, she won through. and finished the task. We've played a lot of Temple Trekking and Burg de Rhott Ramble since then, and have never again seen such a long trek. Must have just been a fluke.


The last Hard Task was "Better Than Cursing The Darkness." Go to the Haunted Woods. Either use the piece of bark from when you chopped a Hollow Tree down, or just chop one off right there on the spot. The Ring of Fire is one of the rewards from doing "All Fired Up." Wear the ring, and use the piece of bark to light a Haunted Woods Torch. Quick, easy, and done.

These were called Hard Tasks. If you haven't completed all the requirements first, it could be time-consuming to become qualified. But the tasks themselves were simple enough. As a reward, you get the improved Morytania Legs 3 from the old guy at the Barrows. In addition to the benefits of Legs 1 and 2, you get:
(If wearing) Better overall keys from burning shades. 50% more experience burning the remains. A chance of getting more Blood Runes when Runecrafting at the Blood Altar. Plus even odds of keeping your Blood Altar Teletab when using it.

(All the time) Talk to ghosts without your Ghostspeak Amulet. Halve the amount of prayer drain while in the Barrows. 10% more from the Temple Trekking rewards. Double runes from the Barrows chest. And Robin in Port Phasmatys will give you 26 bonemeal and slaim each day for 26 bones. (Don't note the bones, he won't take them.)

The exp lamp from Hard Tasks is good for 20,000 exp, but has to be for skills above level 65.  There might have been a hiccup or two along the way, but for the most part, the hard tasks won't slow down a higher level player. It didn't take long to finish this set at all.  Overall, I had a good bit of fun running through these!

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Runescape: Back to the Barrows

... and over all, Death held dominion...
 After all the effort of getting Baby Jad, my next goal is still a bit amorphous.  I realized, even though I finished getting 99 Slayer, it's still fun, and a good way to make money.  Since it still holds interest, and there's no rush any more, I figured maybe go for 96 Herblore.  Then I can make Extremes and Overloads.  That would be good for Slayer, plus assorted oddball things like TzTok-Jad in the Fight Caves, and Tormented Demons.  Until the Overloads/Extremes came out, Monique has always been my go-to girl for Herblore.  She's always liked the skill, and now she's 99 Herblore.  If she could make my Overloads for me, I'd skip the skill.  But, being untradeable, that's not an option now.

After dumping 22 million gold into going from level 89 to 92, it seemed like a good idea to maybe MAKE some money...  so I started flipping like I used to.  Don't know if it was just a bad time/day, or what, but after 3 days of trying, it seemed obvious something wasn't working.  Yes, I made profit, but the margin was small to nonexistent, and reselling was nearly impossible.  Maybe I just picked the wrong items.  Regardless, I started looking for alternatives.

Among many fun options (Aviansies, Abyssals, Dragons) I realized I hadn't done Barrows in years.  It sounded fun, with a lot of potential.  Plus, since I last did Barrows, a lot of new equipment and techniques have come out.  Being me, I started Googling for guides.

You know, there are a lot of guides on the net that haven't been updated in years.  And of the newer ones, even they didn't always account for new options, like Drakkan's Medallion.  There were several with good, but incomplete, information.  Wiki had the best presentation.  They included a lot of recommendations for each way to fight, what to wear, and inventories.  They had suggestions on how to face each Barrows Brother, and pray protect from each.

What I really liked about Wiki was that they had a small labeled map of where the brothers lay buried, right next to a chart showing what they attacked with.  That was good as far as it went, but the chart could have included how we should attack as well.  Another point of difference- I disagree with the recommended order of doing the brothers.  It works, but I use more prayer, and have to sip a potion occasionally.  Since I'm 99 Prayer, that shouldn't be necessary.

So I modified the chart to suit me, added the newest guy's name (Akrisae) after the latest Mahjarrat quest, and re-ordered the sequence.  Now I've got a quick-list of the brothers, what to pray, and what style to attack with.  The new order starts with the hardest brothers, and works down to the easiest.  This allows me to use prayer on the harder ones, and not need it for the last ones.  Plus, their weaknesses, purely by chance and good luck, are grouped together so that I don't have to change attack style as often. Below is the order I like, and how I fight each brother:



My route makes use of Draken's Medallion, the Ardougne Cloak, and the Ectophial.  After finishing, I take the Ardougne Cloak to the monastery for a free prayer refill.  The Ectophial teleport brings me into home territory for Draken's Medallion, which makes all of it's teleports free.  (Kind of like local phone calls versus long distance.)
From the Treasure Chest...
Where I go with the Medallion depends on if I need a bank drop.  Burg de Rhott teleport if I need to bank, or directly to the Barrows if not.  Either way, it's fast, and completely negates the old disadvantage of having to travel so far for a bank run.  Now you can make as many trips as you want, hit the bank easily, and immediately be ready to 'drop in' on the brothers again.

To the Monastery with the Ardougne Cloak
Not going to include the puzzle solutions or a full guide.  I have nothing new or improved to say about those.  Check Wiki for a complete Barrows guide.  But my modifications seemed useful to me, and thought I'd offer them here in the hopes someone else might find them useful.

To Port Phasmatys with the Ectophial. Now it's a free teleport to the bank or the Barrows with Draken's Medallion.
My first 4 runs were just trying things out, tweaking the setup.  Nothing special, but that's okay.  I've been playing with different styles and setups, and slowly honing my approach to something that works for me.  First run-through was all-melee.  It worked, but took a lot longer because some brothers are pretty resistant to melee.  Tried with melee/ranged, no magic, still wasn't satisfied.  Added magic to the mix with Slayer Darts and a Slayer Staff.  My hits were kind of low with that, even wearing Ahrim's top and bottom.  Switched to Fire Blast and a Staff of Light, and that seemed decent.  Finally moved up to doing Fire Bursts.  Now I'm happy with the equipment, still playing with my supplies.  Don't really need as much as I bring, so I may reduce the load a bit. 






After getting some experience, a typical run now takes about 10 to 12 minutes.  Below is my current setup:

Wear:
Aura
Helm of Neitznot
Fire Cape
Fury
Broad-Tipped Bolts (5,000 or more)
Staff of Light
Mage's Book
Ahrim's Robe Top and Bottom
Barrows Gloves
Dragon Boots
Ring of Wealth

Inventory:
Ardougne Cloak
Ectophial
Drakan's Medallion
Enhanced Excalibur
Lots of Fire Runes
Armadyl legs and plate
Rune Crossbow
Vine Whip
Dragonfire Shield
Dragon Plate Body and Legs
3 prayer(4) Pots
Spade
3 Rocktail
Lots of Airs (over 10,000)
Lots of Blood Runes (over 3,000)
Lots of Deaths (over 3,000)
When I say "lots of runes", it's because I didn't bother to figure out exact numbers, I just grabbed a few thousand for good measure.  The spell is for Fire Wave, from the normal spellbook.

This setup allows me to make quite a few trips.  I usually bank because of space issues, and top my supplies up while at the bank.  Just for the fun of it, I bring my pet TzRek-Jad with me.  After working so hard to earn him, I enjoy having Jad tag along as often as possible.



For a full guide, read the Wiki.  But just for a quick look at how I Barrow, this is it.  I've only been at it Friday evening, and several hours on Saturday, and I've made about 15 million in drops.  When I was flipping, I usually made 3 million gold a day.  For me, Barrows is much better profit, and lots more fun.  As a matter of fact, I'm headed back right now.  If you see someone there with a Baby Jad... that's me!