RuneScape - The Unintentional Bond
I didn’t *mean* to pop another bond. Well, I meant to, but it wasn’t my original intention to do it so soon.
When my previous bond ended on 14 May 2018, I was genuinely content with going back f2p. As much as I had fun playing the p2p content, I got my fill of it and I was perfectly fine with returning to the f2p grind and finishing out 99 Fletching. Like I mentioned in the post before, there were a few things that I had tentatively planned for the next time I used a bond, but I figured it would be several months before I did.
Unfortunately, the week that my bond ended was the same week that Jagex ran the Mental Health Awareness Week promotional event. This event, similar to the “Going Like Clockwork” event and many others, consistent of a temporary currency that could be obtained by any sort of skilling activities in the game. Players gained Charity Tokens from just about anything that gained experience. After players have earned enough tokens to unlock all of the main event rewards, any tokens beyond the first 10,000 could be exchanged for reward boxes. These boxes could contain anything from dungeoneering token boxes, to fallen stars, and xp lamps.
I call this coincidence “unfortunate” because the xp rewards cannot be banked, and many of them are either members only, or would give much more effect on member worlds. I was put between a rock and a hard place. Do I destroy and/or consume the rewards now at a less than optimal payoff, or do I use up another bond just a week later and go p2p again to reap these items for their full potential?
Since I have a hard time turning down free xp in otherwise tremendously expensive skills, my greed got the better of me and I bought 2 more bonds. Spending money to save money; makes sense, right? I then consumed a bond, and left the other in my currency pouch as part of my growing collection of untradeable bonds. As of 21 May 2018, I became a Runescape member for another 2 weeks.
Fortunately, I had already gained 100% respect in the Artisan’s Workshop again in my first few days on f2p. While I wanted to get 99 Fletching before I used another bond, my biggest threshold was having enough respect to cash out. I bought another Dwarf Multicannon upgrade and dropped my respect back to 0% again. If I ever do decide to use the cannon again, I’ll have it fully upgraded at this rate.
The biggest and most important thing on my “I’ll do that during my next bond” list was finishing out the requirements for Plague’s End. As the gatekeeper for my Crystal hatchet, that one quest was my prime objective for saying that I got what I wanted out of the bond. Since I got 75 Herblore with the previous bond, all I had left was Summoning and Construction, at which point I would have all the requirements satisfied to begin the quest.
While Summoning and Construction can be quite expensive, they are both conveniently fast to train. I successfully reached 75 in each skill quickly, and played through Plague’s End soon after. As for the content of the quest, it had a really good story, and served as a satisfying resolution to the Plague City quest line. At long last, I could access the legendary elf city of Prifddinas.
The next thing on my list was to gain enough Harmonic dust to upgrade my Dragon hatchet to a Crystal hatchet. Playing harps in the Ithell district of “Prif” seemed to be the easiest way to get dust, so I started playing my heart out. Harps give a surprising amount of Crafting and Construction xp, so I made a mental note to myself that I shouldn’t bother training Crafting when I went back f2p. Within the first day, I had obtained the 4,000 Harmonic dust required to get the Crystal hatchet. I purchased the upgrade, added directly to my toolbelt, and went back to the Elder tree route that I had abused in my previous bond.
To say that I was disappointed with the performance of the Crystal hatchet was an understatement. I had even prepared myself by crunching the numbers for a 15% boost over the Dragon hatchet that I was using before, and I already knew that it would only give me another 1 or 2 logs per Elder tree on average. Still, with all the work that I did to get into Prif, I was hoping for a marked and noticeable difference. Instead, I got… a slightly higher average of logs per tree than I was with the Dragon hatchet. There were still trees that I got only 5 or 6 logs from, and trees giving 16+ logs still felt just as few and far between. Yeah, the Crystal hatchet was better than the Dragon hatchet, even roughly matching the numbers that I expected, but it felt like I should be getting so much more.
Disappointment aside, I still did cut quite a few Elder logs as payment for my bond. I didn’t cut anywhere near as many as I did in the previous bond, though, as my time was divided between Elder runs and harps for Harmonic dust. I got my Crystal hatchet, but there were quite a few more Crystal items that I wanted to obtain, and I’d eventually need at least 12,000 for just the permanent upgrades. Crystal equipment is some of the best in the game, so I figured it would be better to have the Harmonic dust available. Plus, harps were tremendously low intensity, and I could tap my phone just once every few minutes without paying any attention to the process.
Eventually, I did consider whether Harmonic dust could be monetized. Most Crystal equipment is not tradeable, but a few are. Notably, the non-attuned variants of Crystal weapons and armor are tradeable to other players, as are the seeds used to create them with dust. Hence, one could purchase Crystal armor and weapon seeds, use dust to sing them into gear, and sell them back on the Grand Exchange. The exact payoff per Harmonic dust varies based on exactly which item you create, but the return is roughly 300 gp per 1 dust. I’ll probably write up another post later about all of the intricacies and nuance with this practice, but suffice it to say that I’ll still be cutting Elder logs as my main source of income on p2p.
By the end of the bond, I had obtained the Crystal hatchet (4,000 dust), Attuned teleport crystal (4,000), Attuned crystal bow (2,000), and Crystal dagger (375), in addition to keeping 18,274 unused dust in my bank. I planned on getting the Crystal pickaxe as well, but my purchase for a Dragon pickaxe never went through, and it wasn’t something I was as keen on as the hatchet. Collectively, I got 28,649 Harmonic dust during my bond.
More and more, I’m learning of skills and activities that opportunity cost prohibit me from reasonably doing on f2p. Eventually, I might use bonds more regularly and consistently, or even use 2 or 3 at a time to take advantage of those extra days. For now, though, there is enough to keep me occupied as a free player, even if that just means running dungeons for xp and tokens. I’ll still try to buy 2 bonds for every 1 that I use, to continue stocking up. I don’t expect them to drop in price any time soon.
With the timing of the bonds I’ve used, I caught the beginning and end of the Postie Pete event. During this event, I received 4 Deathtouched darts, among other rewards. Since the darts work as 1 hit kills against basically any enemy in the game, I want to use them to kill TzTok-Jad and get a Fire cape. I didn’t get a chance to before the bond ended, but I’d definitely like to use all 4 darts during my next bond. If I get notice that the darts will be removed from the game the way I lost my last few darts, it would definitely spur me to use another bond and use the darts before I lose them.
My bond was set to expire sometime around 9am on Monday. For the previous bond, I seemed to maintain membership until I logged off. I decided to experiment and see how long I could stay online, on a members only world. With harps, I could avoid timing out with very little effort. I ended up staying on until around 5:30pm, at which point I decided to intentionally log out and avoid trying to stay logged in through a busy afternoon. So ultimately, I ended up getting about 8 more hours of membership just by maintaining that last session of p2p time. Next time I use a bond, I’ll definitely consume it early in the morning so that I can try to squeeze as much out of it as possible.
All in all, I’m glad I got into Prif during this bond. It was worth the 16M, give or take, that I spent on it. However, I really do want to stay f2p for a while this time. I have plenty of things that I can do on f2p that will better prepare me for the next time I use a bond. My goal of 99 fletching is still hanging around, and there are a few Wilderness and Daemonheim exploration achievements that are available to f2p players.
When my previous bond ended on 14 May 2018, I was genuinely content with going back f2p. As much as I had fun playing the p2p content, I got my fill of it and I was perfectly fine with returning to the f2p grind and finishing out 99 Fletching. Like I mentioned in the post before, there were a few things that I had tentatively planned for the next time I used a bond, but I figured it would be several months before I did.
Unfortunately, the week that my bond ended was the same week that Jagex ran the Mental Health Awareness Week promotional event. This event, similar to the “Going Like Clockwork” event and many others, consistent of a temporary currency that could be obtained by any sort of skilling activities in the game. Players gained Charity Tokens from just about anything that gained experience. After players have earned enough tokens to unlock all of the main event rewards, any tokens beyond the first 10,000 could be exchanged for reward boxes. These boxes could contain anything from dungeoneering token boxes, to fallen stars, and xp lamps.
I call this coincidence “unfortunate” because the xp rewards cannot be banked, and many of them are either members only, or would give much more effect on member worlds. I was put between a rock and a hard place. Do I destroy and/or consume the rewards now at a less than optimal payoff, or do I use up another bond just a week later and go p2p again to reap these items for their full potential?
Since I have a hard time turning down free xp in otherwise tremendously expensive skills, my greed got the better of me and I bought 2 more bonds. Spending money to save money; makes sense, right? I then consumed a bond, and left the other in my currency pouch as part of my growing collection of untradeable bonds. As of 21 May 2018, I became a Runescape member for another 2 weeks.
Fortunately, I had already gained 100% respect in the Artisan’s Workshop again in my first few days on f2p. While I wanted to get 99 Fletching before I used another bond, my biggest threshold was having enough respect to cash out. I bought another Dwarf Multicannon upgrade and dropped my respect back to 0% again. If I ever do decide to use the cannon again, I’ll have it fully upgraded at this rate.
The biggest and most important thing on my “I’ll do that during my next bond” list was finishing out the requirements for Plague’s End. As the gatekeeper for my Crystal hatchet, that one quest was my prime objective for saying that I got what I wanted out of the bond. Since I got 75 Herblore with the previous bond, all I had left was Summoning and Construction, at which point I would have all the requirements satisfied to begin the quest.
While Summoning and Construction can be quite expensive, they are both conveniently fast to train. I successfully reached 75 in each skill quickly, and played through Plague’s End soon after. As for the content of the quest, it had a really good story, and served as a satisfying resolution to the Plague City quest line. At long last, I could access the legendary elf city of Prifddinas.
The next thing on my list was to gain enough Harmonic dust to upgrade my Dragon hatchet to a Crystal hatchet. Playing harps in the Ithell district of “Prif” seemed to be the easiest way to get dust, so I started playing my heart out. Harps give a surprising amount of Crafting and Construction xp, so I made a mental note to myself that I shouldn’t bother training Crafting when I went back f2p. Within the first day, I had obtained the 4,000 Harmonic dust required to get the Crystal hatchet. I purchased the upgrade, added directly to my toolbelt, and went back to the Elder tree route that I had abused in my previous bond.
To say that I was disappointed with the performance of the Crystal hatchet was an understatement. I had even prepared myself by crunching the numbers for a 15% boost over the Dragon hatchet that I was using before, and I already knew that it would only give me another 1 or 2 logs per Elder tree on average. Still, with all the work that I did to get into Prif, I was hoping for a marked and noticeable difference. Instead, I got… a slightly higher average of logs per tree than I was with the Dragon hatchet. There were still trees that I got only 5 or 6 logs from, and trees giving 16+ logs still felt just as few and far between. Yeah, the Crystal hatchet was better than the Dragon hatchet, even roughly matching the numbers that I expected, but it felt like I should be getting so much more.
Disappointment aside, I still did cut quite a few Elder logs as payment for my bond. I didn’t cut anywhere near as many as I did in the previous bond, though, as my time was divided between Elder runs and harps for Harmonic dust. I got my Crystal hatchet, but there were quite a few more Crystal items that I wanted to obtain, and I’d eventually need at least 12,000 for just the permanent upgrades. Crystal equipment is some of the best in the game, so I figured it would be better to have the Harmonic dust available. Plus, harps were tremendously low intensity, and I could tap my phone just once every few minutes without paying any attention to the process.
Eventually, I did consider whether Harmonic dust could be monetized. Most Crystal equipment is not tradeable, but a few are. Notably, the non-attuned variants of Crystal weapons and armor are tradeable to other players, as are the seeds used to create them with dust. Hence, one could purchase Crystal armor and weapon seeds, use dust to sing them into gear, and sell them back on the Grand Exchange. The exact payoff per Harmonic dust varies based on exactly which item you create, but the return is roughly 300 gp per 1 dust. I’ll probably write up another post later about all of the intricacies and nuance with this practice, but suffice it to say that I’ll still be cutting Elder logs as my main source of income on p2p.
By the end of the bond, I had obtained the Crystal hatchet (4,000 dust), Attuned teleport crystal (4,000), Attuned crystal bow (2,000), and Crystal dagger (375), in addition to keeping 18,274 unused dust in my bank. I planned on getting the Crystal pickaxe as well, but my purchase for a Dragon pickaxe never went through, and it wasn’t something I was as keen on as the hatchet. Collectively, I got 28,649 Harmonic dust during my bond.
 |
| As of 04 June 2018 |
More and more, I’m learning of skills and activities that opportunity cost prohibit me from reasonably doing on f2p. Eventually, I might use bonds more regularly and consistently, or even use 2 or 3 at a time to take advantage of those extra days. For now, though, there is enough to keep me occupied as a free player, even if that just means running dungeons for xp and tokens. I’ll still try to buy 2 bonds for every 1 that I use, to continue stocking up. I don’t expect them to drop in price any time soon.
With the timing of the bonds I’ve used, I caught the beginning and end of the Postie Pete event. During this event, I received 4 Deathtouched darts, among other rewards. Since the darts work as 1 hit kills against basically any enemy in the game, I want to use them to kill TzTok-Jad and get a Fire cape. I didn’t get a chance to before the bond ended, but I’d definitely like to use all 4 darts during my next bond. If I get notice that the darts will be removed from the game the way I lost my last few darts, it would definitely spur me to use another bond and use the darts before I lose them.
My bond was set to expire sometime around 9am on Monday. For the previous bond, I seemed to maintain membership until I logged off. I decided to experiment and see how long I could stay online, on a members only world. With harps, I could avoid timing out with very little effort. I ended up staying on until around 5:30pm, at which point I decided to intentionally log out and avoid trying to stay logged in through a busy afternoon. So ultimately, I ended up getting about 8 more hours of membership just by maintaining that last session of p2p time. Next time I use a bond, I’ll definitely consume it early in the morning so that I can try to squeeze as much out of it as possible.
All in all, I’m glad I got into Prif during this bond. It was worth the 16M, give or take, that I spent on it. However, I really do want to stay f2p for a while this time. I have plenty of things that I can do on f2p that will better prepare me for the next time I use a bond. My goal of 99 fletching is still hanging around, and there are a few Wilderness and Daemonheim exploration achievements that are available to f2p players.
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