Runescape - Double XP Weekend and Second Ban
A few weeks ago, Jagex held its semi-annual Double Experience Weekend (DXPW) event on Runescape. With a few exceptions, players gained double experience for nearly any action from February 23 to February 26, 2018. These exceptions, along with the consequences of my attempt to reach level 99 Magic again, have left a sour taste in my mouth.
DXPW is always announced several weeks before it begins, in order to give players time to prepare. Players stock up on materials and items to train certain skills and take advantage of the bonus experience rates. For typically expensive skills like construction, DXPW gives players 72 hours to spend half as much, and train skills twice as quickly. Since DXPW only comes twice a year, most players like to make the most of it.
I considered what I might want to work on for DXPW. I recently knocked out 99 Runecrafting, and I didn’t really want to put too much effort into Smithing since I’d also like to get all of the Respect rewards from Artisan’s Workshop. The only logical option was Magic. As much as I was still salty and burned out from my previous ban while working on Magic, DXPW would let me cut the remaining xp to level 99 in half.
To explore the idea of grinding out 99 Magic during DXPW, I started crunching some numbers.
At the time, I had 11,329,410 Magic xp. Level 99 requires 13,034,431 xp. That gives me a gap of 1,705,021 xp to obtain before I hit level 99.
High Level Alchemy normally gives 65 xp per cast. To get 1.7M xp, I would need to cast it 26,232 times. Since DXPW doubles that 65 xp per cast to 130 xp per cast, it would drop my required number of casts down to only 13,116. If I could manage a little over 13k casts of High Level Alchemy within 72 hours, I could get level 99 Magic.
13k high alchs. Was that reasonable? Could I do that easily, or at all? It had been so long since I was regularly grinding Magic, I didn’t recall how many casts per day or per hour that I usually got. Looking back through my updates, I seemed to get between 2k and 3k casts per day on average. One time, I did manage to get 5k casts in a single day. Since DXPW was a special occasion, and I could justify buckling down on my grind, I could definitely get between 4k and 5k casts per day for the duration of the weekend.
Realizing that 99 Magic was perfectly feasible with DXPW, I started buying up supplies. I tried out a few different items from the Runescape Wikia high alch market watch page. My top priorities were items that would buy quickly enough, while still making a slight net profit, and low cost per item. More expensive items usually make a better profit, sure. But they have a lower buy limit, they typically buy more slowly, and I didn’t know if I could afford to buy 13k of them. Plus, they have gotten the high alch value wrong on occasion, so the net profit is either less, or in extreme cases, it may even result in a net loss. I didn’t care about making a ton of money (I can do that later), I just wanted to get 99 Magic.
Magic Shieldbows seemed to be the best fit for my needs. They were cheaper than most other items commonly used for High Level Alchemy. The buy limit of 5k per 4 hours was plenty high enough to get how many I needed, and they purchased very quickly at market price. I bought up enough to hit 14k in combination with my other high alch items that I had banked up from before, and got enough Nature runes to match. I could’ve gotten the exact amount that I needed, but those extra few hundred would just be the icing on the cake in celebration.
DXPW officially began on Friday, February 23, at 12:00 PM GMT or 7:00 AM EST. I was ready to start as soon as the clock rolled over and they announced it over game chat. However, I wasn’t getting the expected 130 xp per cast. Instead, I was only getting 78 xp per cast. That didn’t seem right. I looked it up to confirm my gut feeling. Sure enough, double experience was members only. Those of us with f2p accounts only got a paltry 20% bonus.
I won’t say I was devastated, but I was certainly disappointed. All of my calculations assumed a full 2x bonus experience. I had only purchased enough supplies to cover about 14k casts. With 20% bonus experience, that 13,116 became 21,859 casts of High Level Alchemy to reach level 99.
There was no sense in whining about it. I had purchased quite a bit of supplies. I may as well use them while I get some bonus xp. Who knows, maybe I could knock out the nearly 22k required casts within my 72 hour window. Probably not, but it’s possible. Either way, every cast of high level alchemy that I managed during DXPW counted as 1.2 casts any other time. That adds up when you’re dealing with a few thousand casts.
I started high alching and didn’t really stop unless there was a portable forge up. Since I also had quite a few protean bars I wanted to get rid of, I figured DXPW was the best time to get rid of them. And since protean bar smithing runs for about 5 minutes without interaction, it bought me some time to forget about the grind every now and then.
By late afternoon, I had managed to get 98 Magic and several Smithing levels. Since I didn’t have the supplies to reach 99, I placed a few orders on the Grand Exchange to buy more Nature runes and Magic Shieldbows. I would need them eventually, and if I did manage to burn through all of the supplies I had originally purchased for DXPW, it would be good to have more available.
Satisfied with my progress, I decided against trying to keep high alching while cooking dinner. What’s an hour or so going to mean across 72 hours of the weekend? I could pick back up after I finished cooking.
Or so I thought. I tried to log in after dinner and saw an unfortunately familiar notification. “Your ban will be lifted in 47 hours, 37 minutes, 26 seconds.” Really? REALLY??
As much as I was disappointed when I saw that f2p only got 20% bonus xp for DXPW, I can’t quite describe how I felt when I realized that I was banned again. Disappointed, frustrated, baffled, and some other cocktail of emotions. I was playing legitimately. I always have. No bot detection is perfect, sure, and I can understand a player getting a false positive ban every now and then. But two false positives in the course of a few months? That’s just ridiculous.
Judging by the time remaining, it appeared the ban had been applied around 9 PM on Friday evening. My account would be available again on Sunday evening. While that would leave me with around 12 hours of DXPW, I didn’t even care to take advantage of it. I was so annoyed that I had received 2 bans, despite never cheating, that I didn’t even want to play again. At least not for a while. I would be missing out on 20% bonus xp, but what does that really matter?
So I didn’t play for the entire remainder of the weekend. I didn’t even think about it. It was liberating, honestly. We went to the zoo and saw the animals. It was nice to be in touch with real life, and not tethered to a game just because they were boosting the amount of imaginary points in a specific date range.
On Monday morning, I eventually got around to logging in. I wanted to see if they docked any of my experience gained. I’ve heard before that sometimes, Jagex will take away experience or items gained from illicit play. Getting banned was one thing, but if they also took away the progress I had made, it would’ve added insult to injury.
Fortunately, I was still at level 98 Magic, which meant they probably hadn’t taken any xp away. I wasn’t keeping up with it to the letter, but that was probably about right. Since DXPW was over, I decided to calculate how much progress I got within the 14 hours or so that I did manage to grind.
I started DXPW at 11,354,189 Magic xp and 3,973,722 Smithing xp. Before I got banned, I had reached 12,224,131 Magic xp and 4,632,249 Smithing xp. That was a net gain of 869,942 Magic xp and 658,527 Smithing xp, for a total of 1,528,469 between the two skills. I got almost 870k Magic xp within 14 hours. I could’ve gotten 99 Magic during DXPW easily.
It’s difficult to pin down exactly how many casts of High Level Alchemy I managed during DXPW. I didn’t record exactly how many supplies I bought, and the experience rates fluctuated over the course of the day. The base rate was 1.2x for most of the time, but Jagex occasionally boosted it to 1.25x after meeting charity donation milestones. Not only did the base rate change, but several players used pulse cores here and there, giving further busted xp rates temporarily. Going with the minimum and most frequent xp rate of 78 xp per cast, getting 869,942 xp would have taken 11,153 casts. So I probably got in at least 10k casts, if not closer to 11k casts. All within 14 hours.
I could have gotten 99 Magic during DXPW, but I didn’t. Not because I didn’t have enough time or supplies, but because Jagex banned me. This makes twice that they have banned me, and I have never once cheated while playing Runescape. They pride themselves in their bot detection, but if you’re going to get two false positives within the course of a few months for the same player, maybe you should tweak your methods some. Don’t punish honest players, even if that means you might miss a few actual bots here and there.
DXPW is always announced several weeks before it begins, in order to give players time to prepare. Players stock up on materials and items to train certain skills and take advantage of the bonus experience rates. For typically expensive skills like construction, DXPW gives players 72 hours to spend half as much, and train skills twice as quickly. Since DXPW only comes twice a year, most players like to make the most of it.
I considered what I might want to work on for DXPW. I recently knocked out 99 Runecrafting, and I didn’t really want to put too much effort into Smithing since I’d also like to get all of the Respect rewards from Artisan’s Workshop. The only logical option was Magic. As much as I was still salty and burned out from my previous ban while working on Magic, DXPW would let me cut the remaining xp to level 99 in half.
To explore the idea of grinding out 99 Magic during DXPW, I started crunching some numbers.
At the time, I had 11,329,410 Magic xp. Level 99 requires 13,034,431 xp. That gives me a gap of 1,705,021 xp to obtain before I hit level 99.
High Level Alchemy normally gives 65 xp per cast. To get 1.7M xp, I would need to cast it 26,232 times. Since DXPW doubles that 65 xp per cast to 130 xp per cast, it would drop my required number of casts down to only 13,116. If I could manage a little over 13k casts of High Level Alchemy within 72 hours, I could get level 99 Magic.
13k high alchs. Was that reasonable? Could I do that easily, or at all? It had been so long since I was regularly grinding Magic, I didn’t recall how many casts per day or per hour that I usually got. Looking back through my updates, I seemed to get between 2k and 3k casts per day on average. One time, I did manage to get 5k casts in a single day. Since DXPW was a special occasion, and I could justify buckling down on my grind, I could definitely get between 4k and 5k casts per day for the duration of the weekend.
Realizing that 99 Magic was perfectly feasible with DXPW, I started buying up supplies. I tried out a few different items from the Runescape Wikia high alch market watch page. My top priorities were items that would buy quickly enough, while still making a slight net profit, and low cost per item. More expensive items usually make a better profit, sure. But they have a lower buy limit, they typically buy more slowly, and I didn’t know if I could afford to buy 13k of them. Plus, they have gotten the high alch value wrong on occasion, so the net profit is either less, or in extreme cases, it may even result in a net loss. I didn’t care about making a ton of money (I can do that later), I just wanted to get 99 Magic.
Magic Shieldbows seemed to be the best fit for my needs. They were cheaper than most other items commonly used for High Level Alchemy. The buy limit of 5k per 4 hours was plenty high enough to get how many I needed, and they purchased very quickly at market price. I bought up enough to hit 14k in combination with my other high alch items that I had banked up from before, and got enough Nature runes to match. I could’ve gotten the exact amount that I needed, but those extra few hundred would just be the icing on the cake in celebration.
DXPW officially began on Friday, February 23, at 12:00 PM GMT or 7:00 AM EST. I was ready to start as soon as the clock rolled over and they announced it over game chat. However, I wasn’t getting the expected 130 xp per cast. Instead, I was only getting 78 xp per cast. That didn’t seem right. I looked it up to confirm my gut feeling. Sure enough, double experience was members only. Those of us with f2p accounts only got a paltry 20% bonus.
I won’t say I was devastated, but I was certainly disappointed. All of my calculations assumed a full 2x bonus experience. I had only purchased enough supplies to cover about 14k casts. With 20% bonus experience, that 13,116 became 21,859 casts of High Level Alchemy to reach level 99.
There was no sense in whining about it. I had purchased quite a bit of supplies. I may as well use them while I get some bonus xp. Who knows, maybe I could knock out the nearly 22k required casts within my 72 hour window. Probably not, but it’s possible. Either way, every cast of high level alchemy that I managed during DXPW counted as 1.2 casts any other time. That adds up when you’re dealing with a few thousand casts.
I started high alching and didn’t really stop unless there was a portable forge up. Since I also had quite a few protean bars I wanted to get rid of, I figured DXPW was the best time to get rid of them. And since protean bar smithing runs for about 5 minutes without interaction, it bought me some time to forget about the grind every now and then.
By late afternoon, I had managed to get 98 Magic and several Smithing levels. Since I didn’t have the supplies to reach 99, I placed a few orders on the Grand Exchange to buy more Nature runes and Magic Shieldbows. I would need them eventually, and if I did manage to burn through all of the supplies I had originally purchased for DXPW, it would be good to have more available.
Satisfied with my progress, I decided against trying to keep high alching while cooking dinner. What’s an hour or so going to mean across 72 hours of the weekend? I could pick back up after I finished cooking.
Or so I thought. I tried to log in after dinner and saw an unfortunately familiar notification. “Your ban will be lifted in 47 hours, 37 minutes, 26 seconds.” Really? REALLY??
As much as I was disappointed when I saw that f2p only got 20% bonus xp for DXPW, I can’t quite describe how I felt when I realized that I was banned again. Disappointed, frustrated, baffled, and some other cocktail of emotions. I was playing legitimately. I always have. No bot detection is perfect, sure, and I can understand a player getting a false positive ban every now and then. But two false positives in the course of a few months? That’s just ridiculous.
Judging by the time remaining, it appeared the ban had been applied around 9 PM on Friday evening. My account would be available again on Sunday evening. While that would leave me with around 12 hours of DXPW, I didn’t even care to take advantage of it. I was so annoyed that I had received 2 bans, despite never cheating, that I didn’t even want to play again. At least not for a while. I would be missing out on 20% bonus xp, but what does that really matter?
So I didn’t play for the entire remainder of the weekend. I didn’t even think about it. It was liberating, honestly. We went to the zoo and saw the animals. It was nice to be in touch with real life, and not tethered to a game just because they were boosting the amount of imaginary points in a specific date range.
On Monday morning, I eventually got around to logging in. I wanted to see if they docked any of my experience gained. I’ve heard before that sometimes, Jagex will take away experience or items gained from illicit play. Getting banned was one thing, but if they also took away the progress I had made, it would’ve added insult to injury.
Fortunately, I was still at level 98 Magic, which meant they probably hadn’t taken any xp away. I wasn’t keeping up with it to the letter, but that was probably about right. Since DXPW was over, I decided to calculate how much progress I got within the 14 hours or so that I did manage to grind.
I started DXPW at 11,354,189 Magic xp and 3,973,722 Smithing xp. Before I got banned, I had reached 12,224,131 Magic xp and 4,632,249 Smithing xp. That was a net gain of 869,942 Magic xp and 658,527 Smithing xp, for a total of 1,528,469 between the two skills. I got almost 870k Magic xp within 14 hours. I could’ve gotten 99 Magic during DXPW easily.
It’s difficult to pin down exactly how many casts of High Level Alchemy I managed during DXPW. I didn’t record exactly how many supplies I bought, and the experience rates fluctuated over the course of the day. The base rate was 1.2x for most of the time, but Jagex occasionally boosted it to 1.25x after meeting charity donation milestones. Not only did the base rate change, but several players used pulse cores here and there, giving further busted xp rates temporarily. Going with the minimum and most frequent xp rate of 78 xp per cast, getting 869,942 xp would have taken 11,153 casts. So I probably got in at least 10k casts, if not closer to 11k casts. All within 14 hours.
I could have gotten 99 Magic during DXPW, but I didn’t. Not because I didn’t have enough time or supplies, but because Jagex banned me. This makes twice that they have banned me, and I have never once cheated while playing Runescape. They pride themselves in their bot detection, but if you’re going to get two false positives within the course of a few months for the same player, maybe you should tweak your methods some. Don’t punish honest players, even if that means you might miss a few actual bots here and there.
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