Runescape: Dungeoneering, Night Spiders, Shadow Silk Hood, and Haasgenaak

Note:  Again, no pictures... When Runescape updated their client, my screencapture (Howies) is no longer able to capture images from the client.  But I didn't know this, and thought I took pictures of everything mentioned in today's blog.  Bad luck, no pics.  I have a new screencap program now... and it works!

Still working on Dungeoneering.  Soloing a Chaotic Rapier's going to take a while.  At this point, I wouldn't object to teaming for a while, but from what I see on the forums, it's difficult to efficiently team with total strangers for a short-term basis.  Between trouble finding someone who wants to do the same levels I do, and then trying to work on a schedule we can all agree on... and then just trying to work together as a team... it sounds like I'm better off just continuing to solo.

Anyway, so I just made it to level 43 for the first time last night.  It was an interesting trip.  Ran into Flesh-Spoiler Haasgenaak, who spits his eyeball at you then reels it back in on a tether.  Talk about a gross attack!  Blood squirts, his eye hits me, and I'm just wanting to wipe all the slime off before I even try to hit him back.

Then when you defeat him, he has a secondary form.  Sort of a single eyeball on a foot-stalk, and lots of little baby eyeballs attacking you.  I had a Bloodrager summons to help, he was taking out the baby eyes while I handled the main one.  It was kind of fun... but messy.

I'm not the best fighter, either.  Not so hot with the prayer flashing, or switching styles in midstream.  I mainly bull through relying on maxed stats to help me survive.  Not to say I don't try, I just don't do well at actual real-time fighting strategy.  Fighting boss monsters in Dungeoneering is helping me get better.

The other part of last night's interesting features was the Night Spiders.  I spent some major time hunting for a Shadow Silk Hood.  If you've done the same, you know how much time and effort that can take.  Not to mention how rare the Night Spiders are.  I'm always seeing people on the forums talking about not seeing a SSH until they were level 90 or higher.

After spending so much time hunting for them, I can't let go.  So when I see a Night Spider, I have to stop, take screen shots, admire him...  It's still a pretty rare occurrence.  Well, last night, I was somewhere in the high 30's, probably floor 38.  Small, complexity 6, and found not one, but TWO Night Spiders!  Yes, on the same floor.
That was cool enough, but the first one actually dropped a Shadow Silk Hood.  I've been dreading this day ever since I got my own Hood.  I really hate just 'wasting' it, but I've already got one bound.

I picked it up, and just for extend the moment, carried it to the Smuggler's room.  Offered it to him, but he was only willing to pay some 2,500 gold for it.  Not enough.  Nobody in here to share it with.  No other option.  So I finally alched it, just to be able to say I've hi-alched a Shadow Silk Hood.  What a shame.

This brings me to my one major disappointment with Dungeoneering.  Banking.  I know, they left it out deliberately.  Same way the binds are so limited.  It's a way to make you very carefully consider and manage your resources.  I get it.  But still... I wish we could bank and keep our stuff.

Not saying I want the bank to cross over into the rest of Runescape.  I'd just like to see the Smuggler willing to hold a few items for us.  Maybe to have 10 slots, and whatever we've got should stack, so if I collect, say for instance, multiple Shadow Silk Hoods, (yeah, right) than I could keep as many as I wanted to in the one Smuggler's bank slot.

Oh well.  Just my imagination.  We'll never see that happen.  But still... it would be pretty cool!

Runescape Dungeoneering: I get distracted too easily

Night Spider - Had to stop and take a picture!

I am SOOO easily distracted.  Middle of a fight.. someone says "Look, there's a Night Spider!"... I'm all "Oh, where?  Gee, isn't that neat!"

Okay, not really.  But not so far off the mark.  Like I mentioned last time, I've finally settled down to do some Dungeoneering.  Trying to get a Chaotic weapon.  Probably rapier, but haven't decided for sure.  Not like I don't have PLENTY of time before I have to decide.
At 60,000 tokens currently, I need to go as fast as I can to finish before retirement age.  I've read what little is out there.  Most everything is geared to groups, which I don't do.  Many reasons.  Mainly, I like playing on my own, without trying to match up to someone else's schedule and needs.  There's very little info about dungeoneering solo.  Nearly everybody agrees that solo is much slower experience than team Dungeoneering, so maybe I'll reconsider the solo thing.  But for the moment, I'm not even soloing that well.
To begin with, my Dungeoneering is currently 85.  It got that way through Tears of Guthix for a long time.  When I began actually playing it, every random, every penguin point, every book of knowledge, all went to Dungeoneering.
Through it all, actual time in the Dungeons has been either solo, or teaming with Monique.  That's how my level got to 85, without me actually being very good at DG.

I took a few weeks away from leveling to get a Shadow Silk Hood.  It only took about 7 Night Spiders (if I remember correctly), but they were extremely rare for me.  I consider it pretty lucky to get one that quickly.  Other people report making it to level 90 and STILL not seeing one.  As a matter of fact, last night was my first Night Spider sighting in a couple of months.  He didn't drop a hood, but since I already have one, that was okay.  Actually, it seems like it would kind of hurt to get one, and not be able to use it!  I wish Runescape had an in-dungeon bank expressly to store dungeoneering items.  We could ask the trader to hold our stuff?  Oh well, that would be too easy, I guess.

So now, I'm trying to get the hang of solo rushing.  If I don't lose concentration, I get through a Small, C6 Dungeon in the 20's to 40's with about 20 minutes.  But it's so darn fun to play... I love the combat, and am a very thoughtful, plan-ahead type of player.  So I'm constantly stopping to fight something because it's there.  Don't need to kill it, can run right on by, or just leave it alone in an end room.  But nope, I've got to wade right in and kill them all.  I'm slowly breaking that habit, but it's very hard to stop attacking everything.

I'm also pack-ratting everything to the main room.  I just can't stop myself.  I'll pick up food, okay, that's cool.  Oh, and maybe some firewood, in case I have to cook some food.  And let's grab that bag of runes, because I might need more than I already made.  Herbs, seeds, junk that can be sold, it's all fodder for my stockpiles on the big rug.

Oh, and don't even get me started on mining and smithing.  Oops- too late.  I got my smithing to 99, and mining to 90, just for Dungeoneering.  I wanted to make my own Promethium gear, without having to ask for help.  Boy, did that Smithing take a long time!  But now that it's an option, I can't pass by any Promethium or Gorgonite (sometimes even Katagon) without stopping to mine it.  Being kind of a bull in a china shop, and since my only bound items are a Promethium 2H and the Shadow Silk Hood, making melee armor is just irresistible.

All that is kind of the long way around to my starting point.  I'm way too easy to distract.  Trying my best to learn how to speed through a dungeon, but just having too much fun to do it right.  While I really want that Chaotic, there's just something ... right... about having fun.  It's a game, if it was all just work and drudgery, there'd be no reason to play.

Runescape Night Spider: Finally the Shadow Silk Hood!

Finally.

In reference to my post of nearly 2 weeks ago, I've been dungeoneering consistently since then.  Some of the time has been dedicated to Night Spider hunting.  Some time spent Duoing with Monique to have fun, raise our levels, earn tokens...

In all that time, I've seen a total of 7 Night Spiders.  At first there would be maybe one or two a day, or every other day.  Then a long dry spell.  My last one was a few days ago, and Monique actually found and killed it.  Up until tonight, no Shadow Silk Hood.  No wonder.  At this rate, it seems the Night Spiders are more rare than the Shadow Silk Hoods!

Tonight that changed.  We had just finished duoing a couple of floors, then rushed  a few to get our floors evened out for prestige.  Monique took a break.  As she was walking out of the room, she saw me going back to the dungeon.  She asked if I was "Doing the floors she can't get to yet?"  I said "No, just Night Spider hunting."

Same dungeon.  Minutes later.  Went through a door and saw a Night Spider!  I quickly backed out in order to take a few screenshots of it.  Then the fight was on.  Easy kill, it's not like they're a boss or anything.  Just a little poison, which was easy to fix.  And when the dust settled... there, on the ground... on top of a huge pile of stuff... was the Hood I've been trying to get for the last two weeks!


By the way, that's a HUGE pile of junk.
Where do spiders carry all that?










So, 2 weeks, 7 Night Spiders later, I got my Hood.  When you think about it, 2 weeks isn't horrible.  I've gone longer than that trying to get an Abyssal Whip.  But only 7 Night Spiders?  On the one hand, that's phenomenal, to get a Shadow Silk Hood in 7 spiders.  On the other hand, 7 spiders in 2 weeks?  Holy cow.  That would take forever if my luck had been worse.

Shadow Silk Hood sitting on top of the pile behind me!

However you look at it, the search is over.  Now I get to play with it!
(Yes, that's Gorgonite and Katagon armor I'm wearing... I couldn't find any Promethium on that level, and I was too excited to keep looking - I wanted to get this blog posted!!

Runescape Dungeoneering: Night Spider and Shadow Silk Hood Hunting

Searching for the Elusive Shadow Silk Hood

 After that last big mess, I'm not setting any hard and fast goals.  Just going to do whatever sounds fun, or maybe work toward something for a little while, then something else.  Currently working on Dungeoneering.  Putting some time into getting a Shadow Silk Hood, and alternating by doing prestige runs.  Right now my deepest dungeon level is 39, so I've got a long way to go.

Read a lot about the Shadow Silk Hood, and it seems like a pretty cool thing to have.  Especially now that I can mine Promethium and smith at level 99.  I've been hunting for about a week.  Seen 6 Night Spiders.  No hood.  Averaging 1 Night Spider a day.  No big deal.  If it gets too boring, I'll move on to something else.  But it would be nice to have one...

There's not much in the way of guides for finding Night Spiders, or getting Shadow Silk Hoods.  Apparently Night Spiders are fairly rare, extremely random, and just not that easy to predict.

Close-up of the Night Spider

Best general Night Spider hunting advice I've seen (at least to match my playstyle) is to Solo, or Duo with a good friend, on the Abandoned Floors (30-35, the deeper the better).  Set size to medium, complexity 6.  Guide Mode on.  Don't waste time eating, just buy the tool pack, and run through the dungeon as fast as you can.  Only fight when you have to for clearing a door.  Don't waste time on over-complex puzzle rooms.  When you' ve worked the dungeon as much as you can, exit without doing the boss, and go right back in at the same floor. 

Just to go into a little detail on Night Spider Hunting:

• - Solo or Duo.  I prefer to solo, but Monique Runescapes too, so I could see dragging her into my spider hunt.
• - Abandoned Floors (30-35).  These are known to be the most common floors Night Spiders appear on.  That's not to say you'll see very many... After a week, I've seen 6 total.  But your  best odds of seeing one will be f30-35.  I choose f35, and just keep going back to it.
• - Medium Size.  The larger the better.  Since I'm soloing, medium is my largest size dungeon.  It's not because you'll see more spiders per room, but that spiders appear most often in the offshoot, dead-end, side rooms.  You have more of those rooms in a bigger dungeon, so you get a better chance to see a Night Spider.
• - Complexity 6:  It's accepted common lore that you see more spiders on complexity 6 than on the easier ones.  It may be fact, or just rumor, but if it can improve my odds a bit, I'm there!
• - Guide Mode On:  Face it, you're not here for experience.  So turning on Guide Mode won't really hurt anything.  But it does offer an easier route to explore, making it that much faster to clear a floor and begin the next.
• - To begin with, buy the tool pack, make sure you've got a few Cosmic runes to teleport with, and go.  No food, no eating.  This is all about speed.  If you get killed, your group gatestone will be dropped where you died, and you'll be fresh and new in the starting room.  Dive through the portal, pick up your rock, and resume fighting.  This is faster than picking up and eating food, and renews your prayer too.
• - Don't fight unless you have to.  Only clear a room if you have to to open the guardian door.  Turn Auto Retaliate OFF, so you won't constantly be dragged into fights while you're opening doors.
• - Don't waste time.  If a puzzle room is too time consuming, skip it.  Once you're explored all the dungeon you can reasonably get to, exit the dungeon.  No boss fight, just leave.  Come right back to the same floor, and do it all again.

This technique is wasted time for exp.  You'll get nearly none.  I thought it was actually none, but last night as soon as I left the dungeon from my last trip, I leveled up.  Took me by surprise!

Some people claim a SSH drop is quick and easy if you follow the general hunting advice.  Others claim you can be over 100 Dungeoneering and still have never seen a Shadow Silk Hood drop.  I've seen people estimate a Hood drop of 1 for every 15 Night Spiders, and others say it's closer to 1 Hood for every 50 Night Spiders.  Even saw one person claiming it's based on your actual kill count, and you can't share a kill with someone else.

Truth is, it's just random.  If you're lucky, you'll get a Shadow Silk Hood reasonably quick and easy.  If not, it could be a long and frustrating trial.  You could get that "Banging my head on the wall" feeling pretty easily.

So, what the heck... I'll try for a while.  Maybe do some other things at times.  If I get really tired of it I'll give up for a while and just Dungeoneer with what I've got.  Either way, it's a game, and I'm having fun.  No more stupid 99 no-lifing.  Except maybe for my fishing... I'm 96, it wouldn't take much to finish it...