Saturday, April 28, 2007

Runescape Wilderness Stealth

Stealth in the runescape wilderness is not commonly used by individuals, however, it can be employed to both gain the element of surprise on someone or to evade a group of people and hence protect items from being lost easily.

The runescape mini map normally displays your location for all to see, consequently, stealth is a task that is extremely difficult to master for an individual and many argue it has very few, if any, benefits to improving overall chances of survival in the wildy. It is true, it will only have a limited chance of helping, but it some locations it can give you the opportunity to evade people or to gain important information on numbers of people on a pk trip.

Stealth in the wilderness of runescape is normally utilised by clans whereby a PK Leader will have all people fallen in behind them and lead them around during a pk trip. It is strictly not stealth tactics that are being used as it is out in the open, although the stealth is employed in the sense that the true number of combatants get shielded from spys out to gather intelligence.

For individiual players who wish to benefit from using stealth tactics in the wilderness, they will need to rely on a lot of luck and being nearby to buildings. Generally they can hide themselves a bit if they can get right into the corners of buildings so their white dot on the map doesn't show clearly and gets mixed in with the white pixels of the building walls.

It may be a tactic best used by mage and rangers as opposed to melee based players, as melee players can only be effective in close combat. Consequently, many individuals who have scouts in the game will normally also choose to be range or mage... it gives them a little chance to take advantage of isolated people without being caught and gives them a decent opportuntity to gather up some intelligence on groups of people, or clans, who may happen to be wondering in the runescape wilderness.

Overall, runescape wilderness survival is normally down to circumstances other than stealth tactics as players who are out on pk trips will normally always be checking both the mini map and scanning the horizon for any signs of pixel movement.

Monday, April 23, 2007

Runescape Wilderness Survival Guide

The runescape wilderness is not a place for the weak minded or faint hearted. It is a place where survival is a luxury and not a guarantee. There are many highly experienced runescape pkers that have learned through time that everyone meets their match at some point.

Naturally, there are some tips that will help a player survive better in the wilderness, but will never guarantee to work 100% of the time. This runescape wilderness survival guide should be taken as a simple guide to improving player awareness so they do not make some stupid mistakes and meet an untimely end.

The guide is aimed at novice runescape players who may not have managed to explore much of the territory due to their own fears. It will not help people survive all the time - but it should make them more aware of what to expect.

  1. Hopping over the wilderness ditch will take you into a zone that other players will be able to attack you - as soon as you move. So before you step into the runescape wilderness ensure that you are prepared for a battle. Expect to lose any items you have with you and you will always minimise losses.
  2. The deeper the level of the runescape wilderness you explore, the higher the risk of being owned by other players. This means if you were in level 40 wilderness, players 40 levels higher or 40 levels lower could freely attack you. So always know what level of wilderness you are in and be able to take the correct course of action if you are looking to avoid conflict.
  3. The runescape wilderness has multiple different zones. Single zone areas and multi-person areas. In single zone areas you will fight other players 1 versus 1, while in multi-person areas it can be 10 or 20 people versus you. This is vital to understand, as even the best runescape pkers cannot withstand fighting odds of 20 to 1. In such circumstances the outcome is almost always fatal for the lonely warrior.
  4. The runescape wilderness is normally the domain of runescape clans. Knowing this, when you see 1 or 2 dots nearby, it may well be an organised clan out on a pk trip and it can quickly end in disaster if you get spotted.
  5. The combat triangle in runescape is made up of mage, melee and range. Failing to understand how this works in relation to player versus player battles will severely limit your survival chances. Many players will normally be hybrid and therefore able to attack you with different styles to gain the upper hand in the combat triangle.
Those 5 basic points will help give some understanding to players in runescape about the wilderness. I will add more points on a later post, but I do not want to make the overall posts too long so that they become unbearable to read.

In the future, I will hope to explore different wilderness locations and highlight the more dangerous areas that people may wish to avoid - if possible. In addition, I will examine some techniques used by players to avoid being pked in runescape as well as more detail on runescape pking in general. Some methods may be frowned on while others are readily accepted in the runescape clan community.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Runescape Wilderness Ditch

A Runescape ditch has been added to the wilderness that will have an impact on many players. Jagex have acted due to the widescale abuse of the system by players duping others into following them into the wild unaware. This normally resulted in vast virtual losses such as rare items like party hats or large sums of money.

Jagex have stated that there is a safe spot directly north of the newly introduced ditch, thereby enabling players to easily hop over the ditch and prepare themselves for any imminent battles. This will help ease the volume of complaints received by runescape customer support as players will not be able to unwillingly enter the wilderness. It is now solely in the hands of the player and it is their risk entirely.

The introduction of the wilderness ditch will obviously reduce the types of runescape scams in the wilderness, but it will not totally prevent them all. Specifically, it will address the follow-player scam and eradicate it effectively. However, other ingame wilderness scams still exist, such as people in low level wild asking to be attacked or people attempting to lure others in with the promise of valuable items as a reward.

Overall, I believe Jagex have acted in the interest of all honest runescape players as they were burdened with sufficient quantities of complaints from people who were duped into unwittingly entering the wilderness. At the same time, it will make it just a little bit more annoying for regular pkers that love to hover around the edge of the wild, although it can now enable players unfamiliar with the wild the opportunity to safely watch more experience pkers in action.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Runescape Macro or Bots

Runescape macro users are ruining the whole runescape economy through their automated actions. Jagex have banned several characters and will continue banning them when they catch them.

Personally I think it would be funny if Jagex introduced a new random event that was only used on suspected macro abusers. This random event would be triggered to appear whenever people reported a potential macro or bot abuser. Obviously it would be random and would appear with a multitude of sayings in order to combat any macro running.

This runescape macro anti-bot would have some consequences. To summarize the idea, the macro anti-bot detector would do the following:

  • Appear to players reported via the ingame report abuse
  • Randomly appear and ask players to input an answer
  • Answers would be obvious to any real person, but hard for a bot to detect
  • Each time the random event appeared to a user it would be a different question
  • If a player got the question wrong they would be teleport randomly
  • Best part, the teleport would be into deep wilderness
  • In addition, players would be frozen for up to 30 seconds
I feel if something like this was introduced and applied to people suspected of being a runescape macro, then players would soon stop trying to outfox the game. It would also bring some more fun back into the runescape wilderness as it could enable the cheats to be killed by any pkers that happen to be wandering nearby.

Obviously there is some potential for abuse of the system and Jagex would make exceptions initially, but in the long term they wouldn't as it is against another of their rules to falsely report someone. Overall, I feel this would bring some hilarity to everyone in the game apart from the runescape cheat that was intent on abusing the game.

Runescape members could be transported up to busy locations or almost to within range of the chaos elemental, whereas free to play people would be transported closer to the greater demons in the multi combat zone.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Runescape Pking

Runescape pking is not just for clans in runescape as many individuals love the player versus player action that they can get on the edge of the wilderness. Granted, pking in deep wilderness is still very much clan dominated and will continue to be so, however, individuals can accumulate wealth in the low level wilderness easily. Where individuals can excel is in mage bank pking where skill is important.

It will require some skill and guile to be able to avoid the throngs of people hovering on the borders of the low level wilderness. However, if a players luck holds out they can quickly gain some victories and dash back into the safety zone.

Players unfamiliar with locations in the runescape wilderness may need to observe first before venturing out into it. If they don't, they can risk going into a multiple combat zone and quickly get taken out without learning anything.

Pking is a skill but it is also a feature of runescape as a game. Many players will avoid the wildy at all costs while those players who prefer clans will always strive to excel, both for personal dominance and for overall clan reputation.

Free to play runescape is an ideal training ground for players to hone their pking skills and is a way to limit overall monetary losses in the process. Players who have learned how to pk effectively will normally join clans of friends and work as a group in deep wilderness. In particular, members may really enjoy mage bank pking and end up making a fortune. However, in all cases, players should be aware that they cannot win every battle or war, but they can always carry themselves with dignity and honour and build up a good relationship with the regular runescape pkers.

There are many wilderness tips available to help players both improve as a pker or increase their virtual wealth through skills in the game.