Runescape Hard Desert Tasks

Hurry up... I'm late for my next task!

Time for the Hard Desert Tasks.  We've been doing one set each night.  Last night Monique and I ran through the hard set.  Mostly, anyway.  The majority was easy enough.  Get on Lunar spells, cast Humidify on an empty waterskin.  Wearing a charged Water Tiara we did by accident.  Never head to the desert without one, so we actually were credited during the easy tasks.

Same with Broad Bolts.  I did a lot of them recently, working on Fletching.  You can just teleport to Sumona with the Slayer Ring.  She sells Unfinished Broad Bolts, bring feathers.  Making the Ugthunki kebab was a pain, but not really hard.  There's an ugthunki camel just north of the desert lodestone.  Kill him, get the meat.  Take all the ingredients to Nardah.  Meat, pot of flour, bucket of water, onion, tomato, empty bowl. Combine them as needed, cook in the range south of the bank.

Used to kill a lot of Dust Devils, back in the day when Dragon Chain was the ultimate armor.  Never got one, but sure logged a lot of Dust Devils.  So this one was easy, and kind of fun.  Blast from the Past.

Filling another waterskin... this time at Enakhra's Temple.  Easy enough.  If you change to Ancient Magic while you're there, then kill the Ugthunki with Ice Burst, it gets three things out of the way with one trip. (For an efficient step by step guide, check the Wiki.)

Harvest Cactus Spines that you grew yourself.  Quick question... is there anywhere you can harvest cactus spines that you did NOT grow yourself?  Anyway, I collect mine at least once a day.  This was one of those tasks I did by accident.

Listening to Al the Camel recite a poem while wearing a completed Cramulet.  Entertaining, and easy enough.  Though I wouldn't want to listen to him all the time.

Going to the Sophanem dungeon and killing a Locust Rider was kind of fun.  Monique got the Scarab Mage, so I had to wander a little farther in.  Be sure to wield Keris. It was a quick and easy kill.  The part that made it fun was re-visiting places I haven't been to (or thought of) in years.

Using the deposit chest north of the Bedabin Camp?  Maybe too easy.  I don't remember there being any requirements to access it.  It doesn't really seem to qualify as a 'Hard' task.  Much more appropriate was the assignment to enter the Al-Kharid Resource Dungeon.  Easy if you've got it, but at least it has a fair Dungeoneering level required.

Doing the Pyramid plunder was easy enough.  While we were there, we went on to do the Elite version of this task too.  Only for Monique to discover you can't boost the skill level needed.  She's only 100k from level 91 thieving, so she'll finish this one soon.

We saved "Nipped in the Bug" for last.  For that, you have to use a Dreadnip on the Kalphite Queen.  Monique hasn't messed around with the Dominion Tower yet, so she's going to have to win 450 fights to get a Dreadnip.  I was lucky enough to have done that already, because I really wanted Dreadnips at one point for a boss fight.  She's currently training at the Tower to get her Dreadnips.  I went ahead and did the task.  Run through the Kalphite Lair, jump down the hole, sprint past the guards, and attack the Kalphite Queen.  Don't have to defeat her, just use the Dreadnip on her.

From there, it was on to Ali the Mayor in Pollnivneach.  He's usually wandering in front of the big mansion by the town square/water fountain area.  He upgraded the amulet to Desert Amulet 3, and gave me a 20k exp lamp.  This was a fair exp lamp.

As far as the amulet, the Desert Amulet 2 had the best reward... unlimited Nardah teleports.  The only thing I really liked from amulet 3 was that it doubled my cactus spines.  That's useful, because even if you don't need them for farming, they always sell well.  (Let's hope this doesn't change anytime soon.)

If you use them, the double charges on a Pharaoh's Sceptre or a Sceptre of the Gods could be a good bonus.  By the same token, if you like doing Pyramid Plunder, it'll be nice to have fewer Mummies and Scarabs popping out at you.

The buff to Keris, by all accounts on the forums, is underpowered.  I wouldn't know, haven't used mine in years.  Not since finishing the related quest.  10% cheaper items at the Pizazz store?  Maybe someday that'll be nice.  But I quit using the mage training arena as soon as I got Bones to Peaches.

One last deal - we get 30 noted potato cacti from the Weird Old Man every day.  If you do a daily money run, this can be incorporated while doing anything with Fairy Rings.  Code B I Q, run north-west, grab the potato cacti, and  either teleport out, or run back to the fairy ring.  They're worth about 25k at the moment.  Though that changes over time.  I used to get 50k for buckets of sand, now they're around 20k.

My daily money run depends a lot on my mood, but if it's quick and easy, I'll usually include it.

Cool teleport animation!

That was it for our Hard tasks, though.  On the whole, the Desert Tasks seems a bit random.  The tasks, their difficulty levels, and the rewards are oddly mismatched.  I'm not complaining about the rewards.  All I really wanted was the teleport.  Everything else didn't really matter.

This set of tasks just doesn't have the smooth gradation that the other sets had.  I guess there's just not that much in the Desert to pick from.  It feels like they had to scramble to find stuff for us to do.  The one place where that doesn't hold true, is the elite task requiring completion of the Dominion Tower.  Those who have already done it obviously don't mind.  But the rewards versus the time and effort it's going to take just isn't justified.  It would have been more reasonable to break it into a more manageable requirement.

I'm going to do all the other Elite tasks, maybe this weekend.  But going to skip the Dominion Tower.  It will literally take a month or more away from my normal play.  For now, I'd rather work on other goals.  I'll be getting the max skill cape once I finish Hunting and Farming.  That's more important at the moment.  After that, it might catch my fancy to do the Dominion tower.  But not sooner, and maybe not even then.