Words On Wednesday

I’ve read soooooooo many books since the last Words on Wednesday Book Report. Some are on Goodreads. Some, I just stopped recording. Quite a few have been from The Dresden Files. Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2b/Storm_Front.png In short, The Dresden Files is a series that follows Harry Dresden, a wizard detective in modern day Chicago. A friend at work recommended the series, and I decided to at least listen to the first of the series as an audiobook. What I expected was some Harry Potter-esque YA fiction. What I got was much darker and more engaging. I have currently read 8 of the 17 currently published books of the series, through “Proven Guilty.” Every single one of them is a deep dive in some wizarding lore, mixed with detective techniques, mixed with juicy drama. The second book was a little slow for me, but every other book in the series has just been fantastic. All of the recurring characters are interesting and fleshed out, and I personally can’t get e...

After 2 weeks of membership, my bond has expired and I am back to f2p status. Was my experience worth the 15.5 million gp I paid for the bond? Was it worth whatever the current price of a bond is? What caused me to actually pull the trigger on consuming a bond was the result of the Spring Fayre  on my inventory. Because the activities of the event required no inventory space, and I wasn’t going to waste that time doing anything else, I accrued a ton of xp items that were either p2p exclusive, or could be more effectively used on p2p skills. Since most everything else in the game requires an empty inventory to effectively participate, I was forced with the decision to either trash a lot of really useful items or use a bond to take advantage of them. May as well make the most of the situation. My initial goal after consuming the bond was making enough money to purchase another and replace the one I had used. Figuring that bonds would only go up in price until the next DXPW , I...

I finally did it. I finally got level 99 Magic. As I have discussed time , and time , and time , and time  again, this has been a long and ongoing process. Between the setbacks, the missed goals, and the distractions, I wasn’t actually sure I would ever hit 99. But through it all, I have persisted, and finally reached my goal. On 17 March 2018, I made the  final cast of High Level Alchemy that gave me enough experience to level up. After DXPW, I only had about 12,500 high alchs to go before I got 99 Magic. Even if I just did 1000 per day, I could get it in about 2 weeks. To avoid getting a third ban, I limited myself to 500 or 1000 casts at a time. Eventually I would get it, I just didn’t want to have another ban on my record. My pace may have been a crawl, but I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was 1 level away, and I had already come so far. While every skill that I have trained to level 99 has given me a sense of accomplishment from my pe...

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  Art...

After several weeks of grinding, I have achieved level 99 Runecrafting. When I got falsely banned for botting while training magic, I decided to take a break from my high level alchemy grind and do something else that doesn’t take much attention. The most afk training method I could think of was Runespan. It doesn’t yield any profit, but it only takes 1 or 2 clicks per minute, and it is considered by far the fastest Runecrafting experience. At first, I didn’t care about going for level 99. I wasn’t doing Runespan because I wanted to train my Runecrafting. I was doing Runespan because I didn’t want to get banned again. It was easy to do while working on other things because it didn’t take much attention. Even if I couldn’t pursue 99 magic, I could at least work on something without fear of getting banned. I started training at Runespan on December 5, at level 85 and around 3.5M xp, from when I started playing again in October. By December 6, I was up to 3.7M xp and got Rue, ...

I mentioned before that I started high alching  on Runescape again. I apparently did this so consistently and mechanically in my drive to get 99 magic that I got banned from the game. As I discussed last November, high level alchemy was an attractive prospect for my current situation. It yields a net profit, the materials buy pretty easily and quickly, and it requires very little attention. I figured I would keep going as long as I can. In the process of making money, I would surely hit 99 magic eventually. Per my post back in 2016  when I started playing again the previous time, I had 3,934,074 experience points (xp) in the magic skill. I know for sure that I didn’t do much magic training during that few month span of playing, especially not the magnitude of grinding that I had been doing lately. So I would ballpark and say I was still under 4,000,000 xp when I started back on October 15, 2017. On November 8, I started actually recording my current magic xp periodically...