Retrospective look at Dungeoneering

Interesting retrospective look at Dungeoneering from Tip.it Times. I like when articles make me think and this one did :)
What do I think about Dungeoneering now? Hmm...

I like it, because it is relaxing and non-demanding. I like how I can log in into Runescape after a long working day and go through a dungeon, exploring all the rooms, exhausting all resources, making potions, collecting keys, opening the doors and fighting monsters. All that while listening to a good music and letting my mind wander. Just one dungeon. Then I can go and do whatever, develop something for Runewise, read a book, walk beautiful evening streets of Mexico city or even write this blog.

Yes, I know this is not how people train Dungeoneering. One ought to go with a good team and be highly efficient and ogranized down there in order to gain a lot of XP - very true. I tried it a few times and it was fun and rewarding. But not relaxing.

So yeah, I am glad Dungeoneering is there, but don't expect me to reach 99 in this skill :) Or maybe I'll get there in a few years without ever pushing for it, just like it happened with Farming. That'd be nice.

Runescape year: 2010

Full summary of major changes in Runescape during 2010 from the Informer. Amazingly Dungeoneering appeared in Runespace in April 2010 - less then 9 months ago! Somehow it feels like Dungeoneering was part of the game for a lot longer.

And here are my personal highlights of the year:

• Quests! Jagex continues to make awesome quests. I wouldn't say they outdone 2009 quests, but still I enjoyed pretty much all of them. Especially the Love Story.
• Dungeoneering - duh! A new skill which I found very relaxing.
• Bonus XP weekends - I loved the preparation for the second one (I missed three weeks before the first weekend). It also helped me to get 99 in Herblore, which was nice :)
• Canting Away summer and winter festivals - pure fun and joy
• Partnership with Sal's - very important, huge and somewhat scary step for Runewise
• Series of interviews with Ruescape and Stellar Dawn fan site founders, owners and developers - apart from enjoying the actual interviews I also had very interesting time reaching out and talking to all involved fan sites. Priceless experience.

Mysteries of Daemonheim

Intriguing summary of Daemonheim journals from the Informer. Take a look.
I like how there is still a mystery. And a big one too.

I am sure there will be a quest to explain it, but I hope it won't explain everything.

Some extra reading on the topic:

• Daemonheim History and Trivia from Runescape Wiki (with Trivia being as interesting as History)
• Screenshots of Daemonheim Journals from Tip.it

Dungeoneering Abbreviations, Guides and Questions

Well, after trying Dungeoneering in "pro-style" two days ago, I realized that I do need to learn a lot in order to be useful out there. So I found a few good guides - and my suspicion was confirmed. The way I normally solo dungeons has almost nothing in common with the "pro-style". It's like two completely different sets of skills.

I also found what the most common Dungeoneering abbreviations are (thanks to this great guide):

gd - guardian door
gs - gatestone
gt/ggs - group gatestone
gk - got key, usually followed by the name of the key (for example gk b pent means the person just picked up blue pentagon)
de - dead end
denk - dead end with no key
ht - home teleport
ml - mercenary leader
mono - monolith

I guess, I need to memorize them now :)

I also have a few questions for Dungeoneering "pros":

1. Why Gorgonite 2-hander is considered to be better than Promethium spear?
2. Is Shadow Silk Hood is so much better than other armor? Should I ditch my Promethium chainbody and get the hood even if I will probably continue to mostly solo the dungeons?
3. What does "gatestone the door" mean? Only the leader can have group gatestone, right? If I put my individual gatestone at the door, no one could use it anyway, so what's the point in doing it?
4. Should I stop and make myself some armor at some point or is it expected that everybody should simply try to unlock all the rooms as soon as possible and don't spend time making armor?
5. Does it ever make sense to go into a boss's room alone or it should always be done when at least 3 players are there?
6. How many prayer points can be restored at altars in one dungeon? I ran out of prayer (for the first time ever) during that dungeon...
7. The guide lists astral runes as necessary. Why?

Thank you!

Flaws in F2P Dungeoneering

Gee, I never realized how messed up Dungeoneering in F2P is. Take a look at this Tip.it article. Some of the flaws described there are so blatantly obvious - I can't imagine how they could still remain out there. I understand that sometimes applying patches is the most efficient way to fix the system, but in this case, it seems, there were too many patches applied and the original clean design got obscured by them...

Fame and Stupidity

I am a total noob at Dugeoneering. Yeap, no point in denying it... Soloing dungeons has absolutely nothing in common with going through a dungeon with a group of experienced players. I tried it today - it was overwhelming. I could hardly understand what was going on and what I was supposed to do at any given moment. At the end I claimed "Meat Shield" and "Most Deaths" titles without much difficulty. Fortunately, Warlock (the leader of the group) was patient and the rest of the team handpicked by Merch Gwyar didn't show any signs of frustration, I am grateful for that. Yes, Merch was there too, I indeed had an honor of sharing a dungeon with her, yay :)

Which brings me to the subject: "Fame and Stupidity". There was a moment when four of us were standing in the gathering area trying to find fifth player to join the group. A few high level players walked by and Merch offered one of them (l chriss l) to come with us. What happened next was totally unexpected. Instead of simply agreeing or refusing, l chriss l uttered something like "I am too good to go with you", donned his 120 lvl Dungeoneering cape and then made an attempt (unsuccessful) to mock Merch. I looked him up: lvl 120 in Dungeoneering, 150M exp, rank 26. He was clearly enjoying his illusory high rank fame. And, for the sake of it, refused Merch Gwyar's invitation, thus passing by a chance to really get known. That was so ironic, I couldn't help myself and kept chuckling, that is right till my first death.

P.S. I did learn something else too. Apparently "pwyll" means both mad and genius in Welsh. I think it's pwyll :)

Don't turn your back on the RS community and other links

I am still catching up with hundreds of blog posts I've missed - it'll take me a few more days :)
Anyway here are a few interesting ones I found:

• Thoughtful (yet passionate) post from Jax about people tendency to see RS community in a bad light. She used Dungeoneering as an example, but it's not just about making Dungeineering teams. Made me think about my playing patterns too... Playing "solo" too much. Yet, I am usually playing in short sequences (30-60 mins) and infrequently (especially lately) and jumping into a clan chat for just a few mins feels odd. I guess it does not have to be that way - I mean, I shouldn't feel odd about doing it, should I?
• Aximili E I's blog reached two years milestone. Congratulations! Take a look at a few featured (by the author) posts.
• And finally completely unrelated to Runescape, but extremely important "Doors conspiracy revealed"! So true (and scary:) ) Enjoy.

Musical Scales in RSMV

Musical scales in RSMV from Avicile Mohaili, set up inside Daemonheim. I love the idea.



P.S. Speaking about Daemonheim, here is an inspiration post from Alex about his Dunseoneering experiences.

Dungeoneering and Other Runescape Skills

Remember complains about Dungeoneering being separated from the rest of the Runescape and other Runescape skills? A big minigame - not a skill, anyone? I remember, it was one of my concerns too at the time. But, interestingly enough, the more I train Dungeoneering the more I see its effect on other Runescape skills. Obviously combat skills, duh. But apparently the effect is much more diverse.

I should say upfront that I solo medium size dungeons and I take my time with every one of them. People who are in for quick Dungeoneering training probably aren't getting the same experiences. But what I am facing now is the fact that Dungeoneering became the main method for training several "core" Runescape skills for me - skills, such as Woodcutting and Fishing. Other skills too, but these two in greater degree. Literally hundreds of thousands of Woodcutting and Fishing XP from just a few floors.

From the other angle, Dungeoneering became a great motivator for raising specific skills. For example, I was on a self-defined "promethium spear" quest for the last month or so. Raising Attack from 85 to 90, then desperately raising Smithing from 82 to 86 (reaching 85 during the bonus XP weekend and then making the final push to 86), attempting to collect 400K+ gp in one dungeon (so I could buy 4 promethium ores - took me 4 attempts!) and finally potting myself to 97 smithing and making that spear! And now I am aiming for the promethium platebody - that'd be another few months.

So, yeah, Dungeoneering has heavily intertwined with the rest of my skilling in Runescape. No more doubts about it.

Interview with Telmomarques

Very good and interesting interview with Telmomarques from GlobalRS Herald. Telmomarques was the first to get lvl 120 in Dungeoneering.

And while on the topic, check out this video from Avicile Mohaili. Lvl 8 Gluttonous Begemoth! What a cutie :)

Dungeoneering Developers' Blog

Thanks to Josh for the reminder, here is an awesome Dungeoneering Developers' Blog video. Very interesting and engaging - maybe even the best one so far. I don't know about you, but I am glad to see that Jagex's developers are actually having so much fun developing the game - it really shows.

The first level 120 in Dungeoneering

Telmomarques getting 120 Dungeoneering as reported by Neo Avatars. This is crazy.

Though I bet it was just like that for every single skill.
The funny thing is that people don't really remember whoever got first 99 in a particular skill. Like, do you remember who got the first 99 in Farming? Or in Construction? Or even in Summoning? See, what I mean?

Actually, in my opinion, people don't even remember names of the top players, cause they change so often. You got to stay on top for very very long time in order to really get into Runescape folklore (like Zezima did) or be responsible for something very nasty (like Durial321).

Bonecrusher Review

Graham posted very nice review of Bonecrusher, take a look. Incidentally, this is the only Dungeoneering reward item I got so far (and with all those ring upgrades it might stay this way for a long time). To tell you the truth, I am somewhat disappointed by the lack of usefulness of Bonecrusher. At 80+ prayer, the bonus is so insignificant, that it hardly worth a space in the inventory. Apparently regular and even big bones don't add up that much anymore and I don't want to waste dragon bones this way. Plus I keep forgetting Bonechusher when going to remote slayer locations. As Graham mentioned, it would have been nice if Bonecrusher could be wielded and had some kind of extra stats. I personally would like to be able to attach it to a weapon instead.

P.S. Oh, and by the way, Bonecrusher does not work during falconry. (Edited: ignore this P.S. Apparently falconry with Bonecrusher was fixed sometime in July)

Mod Mark - Twitter Q&A Summary

Summary of recent Mod Mark's Q&A session in Twitter from Neo Avatars with comments. Good stuff. But I have to admit that I was more excited by the very fact that such Q&A session was conducted via Twitter. I don't recall anyone using Twitter this way. IMHO, it's pretty cool.

Checked the Dungeoneering update yesterday. It is indeed awesome. Soloing medium size dungeons with group gatestone - yummy.

Dungeoneering: taking newbs along for a bonus? Why not?

Interesting post about Dungeoneering in groups from Jax. Who would think of taking inexperienced players along into the dungeon because of the exp bonus?

Eastern Lands in Runescape

Apparently, there are Eastern Lands in Gielinor, which are not yet on the map, but quite a bit of information was already collected. Here is the summary.

Suddenly the lonely Saradomin statue on the Dragontooth Island makes a perfect sense.


P.S. I finally received and published the syndicated Dungeoneering interview. Take a look, you probably saw the answers already, but there are some exclusive concept art pictures as well.

Follow ups

A few links today.

• First Xela's response to Qeltar's suggestions on resolving items binding problem in Dungeoneering. Xela has a good point about potential temporary slots being filled early by players made items and offers new approach of separating players made items and pure drops. If such separation could be made, extra binding slots could be applied to such dropped items only. There is more in the article, but as far as I understand that is the key idea. I like it, but think it is highly unlikely that Jagex would add such distinction between players made items and items dropped by monsters.
• Secondly, G turned my post about teleports into action and actually walked Runescape from one side to another. It took him 26 minutes - so here we go, the size of Gielinor. Thank you, G.
• Finally, Canting Away has a dedicated forum now.

Binding in Dungeoneering

Great suggestion from Qeltar on how to solve the problem with limited item binding in Dungeoneering. I too find it frustrating that the only items I can afford myself to bind are sword and plate body. I'd welcome temporary binding with both hands, even if such binding would last just for one or two floors.

Syndicated Dungeoneering Interview

Well, the syndicated Dungeoneering Interview is out. This interview is different from ones given to Sal's, Tip it and Rune HQ in the way it was conducted. Jagex collected questions from multiple fan sites, picked a few from every list, answered those and distributed the resulting interview to all fan sites involved. That is to ALL fan sites, but Runewise (due to some technical problem or whatever). I am quite upset about it. The interview is out already, so even if I receive it tomorrow, there is no point for me to put it on the site. I can just as well reprint it from other sites, or simply point to one of them. So here we go, RuneTower's version of it.

It's good though. Enjoy.

Dungeoneering Essay

Absolutely beautiful essay about Dungeoneering.