Free Gaming: Runescape, the Adventure Continues!

by Richard Rowell, Gaming Successfully Staff

After my initial experience rejoining the free-to-play MMORPG, Runescape, I decided to continue playing. There is a membership available, so I wanted to see what was available for free. It does appear that many skills, items, and parts of the world map are only accessible to members. I don’t remember half of the world map being restricted to members only, but the game is so much more expansive now. In any case, it may be quite a while before I hit a paywall. So I’m going to play as much as I can before it simply won’t let me get much further.

The good news is I’m enjoying it. It’s definitely a much deeper game than it used to be. One of the cool things about Runescape is that when you kill enemies, they leave bones behind. You can bury them and gain a little bit of experience. This allows you to level up in prayer. Prayer is a skill that can become very helpful later on. Also, the cultists I killed dropped a bunch of cooked meat. As it turned out, I would need all but one for the boss fight against the demon Delrith.

After barely defeating Delrith, I got to keep the awesome demon-slaying sword Silverlight. I also worked on completing my Pathfinder set. It’s making me look like sort of a generic adventurer, but the stat increases are important. You do this by doing basic challenges that have to do with some key skills in this game. These include combat, fishing, mining and woodcutting. I also was working on my cooking. Cooked meat is very helpful in regaining health in this game. I acquired 8 pieces of raw meat, but when I went to cook them, I burned 6 of them. This is because my cooking level is so slow. I recall that when I first played this game, you had to get your cooking level fairly high. Burnt meant is useless, but can be sold for 1 gold a piece to a shop.

Then, there was one major story quest to complete that was actually fairly challenging with a mix of puzzles. The creatures were challenging to defeat, but they always dropped minnows, which are the fish equivalent of cooked meat. This helped me complete my Pathfinder set and gave me lots of experience lamps that you literally “rub” to level up your stats. In Runescape, your attack, constitution (health), strength, and defence are all separate. Also, Runescape values you being able to use melee, ranged, and magic attacks throughout the game, as different monsters are weak to different types of attacks. You level up melee, ranged, and magic separately as you use them, as well. I’ll get more to that later.

When you complete the tutorial quest, the Silverlight quest, basic skill quests, and Shadow over Ashdale you get the chance to choose your path. What’s different in this case than in many MMO’s is that you don’t actually literally choose one. It more guides you in the direction you want to go. While I enjoy doing quests, the adventurer mode asks a lot of you. It’s actually pretty cool when you consider how basic many quests really are in many popular MMO’s. The Skiller path sounds pretty cool. I like leveling up in skills and being able to create new stuff out of raw materials. The Combatant path, however, is the one I began with. I decided to visit the Combat Academy to learn the ins and outs of the combat system. Believe me, it’s worth it.

When you go to the Combat Academy you have to put all of your gear and anything in your backpack into the bank. There’s a chest nearby so it’s not inconvenient. I didn’t realize you had to throw your gold in there, too, though. Fortunately, the bank was able to store what I had at this early point in the game.

While a lot of the combat academy stuff is rather basic, these tutorials teach you about the ins and outs of the combat system of Runescape. As it turns out, the most important part to understand is the Combat Triangle. Essentially, melee is strong against ranged, ranged is strong against magic, and magic is strong against melee. This is why I’ve been taking a balanced approach in the game so far. Balancing your skills out among the three types is important as you’ll face many different types of creatures in the game.

It’s not just a tutorial, either. When you complete each tutorial, you get “graded.” Based on these grades, you get a certain amount of reward books. These give you a decent amount of experience in the combat skills of your choice. I simply evened out my strength (melee), ranged, and magic skill levels. I didn’t grade out perfectly on some of the tutorials, so I may return later and get some better rewards. However, at this point, the experience may not be worth it.

My goal right now is actually to return to the first story quest. It takes quite a bit of effort as there are many items I need to collect. My thinking is that I’ll follow each path in a row. I don’t regret at all doing those Academy trials first. That experience should prove very helpful in my adventuring. Hopefully, I’ll be playing this game for awhile longer and give you my thoughts on if this game is worth playing for free in the long run.