Post
by Dima » Tue Aug 12, 2008 9:57 pm
Blimey. I just checked the place myself, and I actually have a lot to say. This update has the potential to change Runecrafting into a self-sustaining skill as well as truly connect it to the Magic skill.
Well anyways, the place itself looks awesome. Let's say that this, is how the first quest (that wilderness waste of time) should've been. The graphics are great, the music is very unique (good compositions and samples this time), the NPCs aren't as lame and the general feeling is of a unique area. The altars themselves and their area got a rework as well, like animated grass (wind effect) over the air altar and birds nesting over the pillars in the nature one.
As for the minigame, it's quite nice. I didn't expect much judging by the previous minigames, which both sucked, but this is actually a fun speedy game which gets you clicking on things like a madman. It's basically divided into 8 rounds of 2 minutes each, where your goal is to attract orbs of your team's colour, and repel the opposite team's orbs away. It's pretty easy to figure out, and by the time you're done with your first minigame you'll already know what to do. You get 50 tokens per winning a round, nothing for losing, 25 tokens (I think) for a draw, 100 tokens bonus for winning more rounds than the other team, and 50 tokens bonus if the win count is a draw. In total, you could get 500 tokens per round (probably more, played it only a few times), which brings me to the next point - how this will affect the game.
Apart from the seemingly useless robes, the shop offers a handful of rewards, and surprisingly, these are actually cheap! The blood altar teleportation tablet for example costs only 50 tokens, and that's the highest level altar currently available. But the most interesting thing is the price of essence. 1 token per one essence - pure essence. I got 400 tokens my first time while drawing, with a relatively bad team, and that's pretty much when converting to essence. This of course makes sense, since pure essence, and essence in general, wasn't supposed to be expensive (used to cost 90 GP when the bots were around), but at this rate, you can make enough essence and teleportation tablets to cover your personal rune needs. Basically, a runecrafting newbie can play this game for an hour, and get enough essence and tablets to cover his needs for a whole week! This turns the Runecrafting skill into a self-sustaining skill much like Fishing and Cooking. As much as I don't like to see my primary way of making money demises before my eyes, this is a very well-needed update that should've been there in the first place. Runecrafting and Magic should've been together like bread and butter and there you have it.
Anyways, more updates are to be seen. I find it hard to predict how this will affect the price of essence and runes. Looking at it from one side, people have a very quick way of crafting runes now, but on the other hand, Runecrafting is skill an awfully slow skill which might still be considered as 'boring' by most.
Edit: So playing a bit more, it seems that if you win every round, you get a whooping 1,000 tokens, which is an awful lot. It also looks like for every win you get 100 tokens rather than 50, but I still can't really figure out the formula. Thinking it through, it probably won't totally ruin the good old fashioned way of crafting. I've been there for about 2-3 hours, and there weren't much people over there. Additionally, even if you do win a lot (lets assume 800 tokens per round), it still can't completely replace the Graahk nature crafting method (speaking business here). Taking 3,200 tokens and dividing them between rune essence and the nature altar teleportation tablets (at 61 essence crafted per tablet), and you craft about 1,900 essence per hour of playing the minigame, which is actually less than what you get via the Abyss route. The advantage here though is that you get some exp in the process, and the ability to craft a whole bunch of essence in a very short period of time. In fact, you can save these tokens for a rainy day, when you need a lot of money, and fast.
Last edited by
Dima on Wed Aug 13, 2008 12:35 am, edited 1 time in total.
I had an awesome signature, but the internet went bankrupt.
I'll have to try it out soon.
