Death in Runescape

Absenm's post about his virtual deaths in Runescape prompted me to sit down and write down my experiences in this regard. Similarly to Absenm, I haven't died that often. In fact over the span of four years I died exactly six times (not counting minigames, of course). I suspect that players who don't PK, all have somewhat similarly low "death profile". Anyway, because of such rarity every death I had in Runescape was truly an event (maybe even a milestone) for me. Every one was accompanies by such strong emotions, that I still remember all of them vividly and, in fact, treasure these memories as some of the best moments of my Runescape life. Death in Runescape never became a routine for me and I really like it this way.

1. Dark Wizards south of Varrock.
I suspect they killed more people players give them credit for. They did kill me during my second day of playing the game while I was exploring the world and looking for a way to get to that huge unknown city on the map. That was my first introduction to the dangers of Runescape - tough but very important lesson.

2. My next death came from a random event. I was walking north from Falador and, when I was almost at the Taverly gates, somebody called me from the kitchen. When 5 minutes later I came back and logged into the game, I was in Lumbridge, missing parts of my adamant armor, which I was working my tail off for several days to obtain... Thus I learned to log off every time I was about to step away from the computer.

3. After that I didn't die for almost a year. Until I was PKed. At that time I was around 60-70 combat, was wearing full rune, ring of wealth (100K at the time!) and wielding dragon long. I started to get Slayer assignments for Green Dragons (and I didn't know about "buthorping"). Naturally that forced me to venture into the Wilderness. I've been there before collecting bones at the Bone Yard, but it was the first time I had to go there to fight. I made my first couple of trips to lvl 21 spot north from Edgeville and was fairly successful: I met only one pker on the second trip, but was able to run away without problems. This encounter alarmed me, though, and I decided to look for another spot, preferably not that deep in the Wilderness. So I found lvl 13 spot, stocked up with tuna and went there. I was careful: before engaging into a fight I observed other players down there; they were all fighting dragons. I also noticed a mage staying aside, wearing full magic outfit but having only 50 or so combat level. I disregarded him, trusting my higher combat level, full inventory of tuna, and proximity of the exit. As soon as I went down to the dragons, he attacked me, hitting consistent 10+ blows. Having my auto-retaliation on, I ran toward him, got snared and panicked. Next minute or so I spent frantically trying to reach the border of the wilderness and eating. I didn't think about removing my rune platebody or turning my auto-retaliation off. Soon I was dead and lost about 200K worth of equipment. It was a harsh blow to my finances. I contacted the PKer and bought my staff back. That was another good lesson, in fact, I was able to avoid being pked since then. I started to bring teleport runes with me, switched to lvl 32 spot for fighting Green Dragons and learned to recognize worlds with active pking going on.

4. After I got Prayer up to 43 I went on a questing spree. The quests seemed so easy to me, I felt like protection from melee prayer made me invincible. Even the Legends quest wasn't that hard - I never came even close to being dead. I completely lost respect to quest bosses. And then the Haunted Mine happened... The quest was listed as Medium difficulty, the boss was listed as 90 something combat - all that sounded very easy to me. And it was easy right until the boss fight, when I was bulldozered by the train carts and smashed by cranes into a pulp, loosing 350K of armor along the way. Surely enough, it quickly fixed my attitude toward questing.

5. I was killed by a revenant while looking for a clue in the high level wilderness. Had to spend a lot of time getting back my clue finding equipment. After that I stopped going to the wilderness unprepared. I would always wear dragonhide, have good food, energy pots and antipoison with me. Also soon after that I read Alex's article and started to go there fully equipped and actually fight back.

6. My last death was from revenants too, but it was very different from #5. Just like before I went into the high level wilderness looking for a clue and got ambushed by a revenant orck. But this time, instead of running, I fought back. The fight was going well until the point when a revenant knight joined in. I ran and died a few steps from the Mage Arena, leaving millions under the gravestone. I quickly restocked and was able to come back in time to get my stuff back. After that I singled out both the knight and the orck, killed them and proceeded to get my clue.

So that's my "death" story. What's yours?