I thought I'd start off the year with a quick and simple little article, and what could be simpler than a top-ten list? Yeah, go ahead and hate me for this; they sort of are the "easy way" to write. At the same time, though, they are also very simple to read and they illustrate the writer's point in a clean, organized fashion rather than a full-on essay that counts on the starting sentence summarizing the argument about to be made.
Really, now. Who in their right mind would want to do something like that? It's silly!
Anyways, the topic I've chosen for this top-ten list is Skill States. The state a skill currently is in to train, judged by ease, accessibility, time, and fun factors as it currently stands while I write this article. I'm not counting training through means of choice or temporary benefit, like prismatic [things] or world events. If I was to log on into a perfectly normal, ordinary, unexciting day on Runescape, how would training each skill fare if I did it normally?
And I'm not going to include any combat skills; that's always been easy to train. This includes attack, strength, defence, ranged, magic, and hitpoi- sorry, constitution.
Let's rock!
10: Runecrafting
Runespan. Done. Runecrafting has been officially won. Or, you can go for bragging rights and say you got level 99 Runecrafting using the old fashioned method (though we are still waiting on that Soul Altar). But even still, nowadays the player owned ports are my only source of experience. Until there's something worth training runecrafting up to level 99 for, seeing as blood and death runes no longer have any real value, it's really sort of boring to train. Still, though, I'd prefer it over some other skills I know.
9: Construction
Yes, believe it or not, my favourite skill made the list. Again, I'm not counting the huge bonus from the second World Event. It's got its own little monthly D&D that nets a considerably huge bonus that's quick and easy to do. As much of a money-sink skill as it is, planks are something that have stood somewhat still in price while other things soared due to how ridiculously easy they are to obtain (Lumber Yard's even got its own teleport scroll, you know). An upside to the otherwise is that you can make a profit getting planks made yourself and selling them, then buying a greater surplus once prices go down. Plus, with the help of summoning familiar Beast of Burdens or a relatively inexpensive servant, training it is fairly quick and easy. Plus, there's almost always something new and exciting with every single level, and if you're impatient, there are plenty of ways to boost the level enough to build that one thing you were saving up for. Alas, if it wasn't so repetitive making flat-packs and teleporting, it could've scored just a little higher. Though there is talk of an upcoming update that we may so desperately need in regards to its more visual and application aspect...
8: Woodcutting
Another simple skill with a whole lot of variety. Upon training it, you get logs. In order to train it, you can chop a great variety trees, wrangle with ivy, work at the sawmill, assist your citadel, harvest crystal trees, rebuild Tai Bwo Wannai Village, and almost every second Daemonheim room's got a tree or two to gather from. Resources running out after a while keep the skill interesting, especially when competing with other players for the goods. Easy to train, and with the toolbelt, you can do it pretty much any time you want.
7: Firemaking
Despite its looks, this one's been given plenty of updates to keep things interesting. Add logs to a fire, or manually light fires for a faster, but more attentive method of exp. Which can be done virtually anywhere. Throw in Char's training cave and the beacons that nobody ever uses except for the daily challenge and a hatchet that trains firemaking as you chop trees, and you've got enough variety for a skill whose only focused return is a portable means of cooking food. But that's all a skill needs, isn't it? A simple, selective outcome. Wish it was a little more fun, though (maybe an exciting random animation of the logs transforming into a fire or some neat little random animations.
6: Mining
Yeah, I'm going on a bit of a leeway whim with this one. Initially we would training mining by clicking back and forth between iron ore rocks and dropping them all. Or trading them to guys who wanted to train their smithing. Now we have the Runespan of mining: the Lava Flow Mine. We've got concentrated ore deposits for those who don't like clicking much.
5: Smithing
Yup, smithing's in a rather stable state. It's not so much as how easy it is to train, but how easily available the resources are. There are plenty of enemies out there with noted bar drops, like avainsies. Gold is an inexpensive commodity gotten from the Grand Exchange and concentrated deposits. You can harvest adamantite and runite from divine rocks should players drop them (or you create them yourself and double your inventory, you high-level diviner, you). Heck, there's a whole Artisan's Workshop I would've otherwise called the "smithing guild" devoted to the skill for those who really like a bit of fun. Even comes with a free, albeit somewhat slow method for newer players.
4: Invention
Absolutely incredible variety to train it with. There's always something new to do with every new level, and the rewards are more generous than the 1,000,000 exp event a couple summers ago. Never did I have so much fun-... oh. Wait, it hasn't come out yet. .... then what skill was I thinking of? Huh. Did I dream it? Or maybe I travelled forward in time for a day or something. I dunno. Reckon I should just delete this and put in another skill, then. Yeah, I'll do that. Let me just add a note to my agenda that I always check all the time.
3: Prayer
Ages ago, you had regular bones, and you had big bones. Nothing else. Now, we have dragon, ourg, frost dragon, wyvern, dagannoth, airut, and more. All of which we can train at the ectofunctus, or at a gilded home altar for a 3-4x multiplier. Stir in some prayer-giving activities like Shades of Mort'ton, Barbarian pyre burning, and concentrated rewards from games like Pest Control and Soul Wars... well, mine's a higher level than my ranged. Figure that one out. For a once well-respected skill (and it still is), it's gotten really easy to train now, if not rather expensive. Ah, but dragons go down quickly thanks to the EoC, so there's no problems there.
2: Dungeoneering
Goes up to level 120, and experience can come in bundles of 100k for 20 minutes at the higher levels. There's plenty to do, and its replay value is just as stable as its economy of leechers. Always a fun skill to train, as well (even more so with the new task system and aura). ... I know, I should've made this a top five list. What was I thinking? Did I mention it goes up to level 120, and it's still less tedious (and a lot more fun) as Old School Runescape's level 99 rune-crafting?
1: Cooking
Well, let's face it. Cooking's always been easy to train. I started playing RS07 for a while, and after picking up some fish from all those bots and cooking them, I was growing levels with each inventory. With every fishing update, cooking gets a little extra. And we've got a huge variety of stuff to cook similar to construction. No worries; pretty well every beast and fish update to come will include some new dishes to mess with. The Grand Exchange has also made it incredibly easy to get stuff to train with (and sell it off afterwards for most of your money back). Plus, there's a whole cooking station at the Player Owned Port to mess with in the upcoming future.
Well, there you go. My personal opinion. If your favourite skill wasn't mentioned here, here's hoping it will get a good, fun update in the future. I know mine will.
Until next time,
Cheers, cannoneers!
This was originally posted as an
Informer Runescape article.
rising price has helped make fishing sharks very profitable again as well as rocktails.
