RuneScape

"This is a guide AND a review, and I loved this game!"

INTRODUCTION- Runescape is an online only Role Playing Game (RPG). People that have played everquest will instantly become familiar with the way this game plays. There is no storyline to Runescape, and so I will not leave ANYTHING out in this review. There is a member and a non member version of this game, so I will first post all there is to know about non-member, and then I will post about membered versio

GAMEPLAY- 8/10

Runescape is a point-and-click online game, but within that lies a GREAT game. Clicking on a spot causes your character to move to the point you click, and with a map in the corner, you can travel about half a mile in 1 click. Right-clicking brings up a menu of options, and depending on what you right-click, you will get different options. It is in the right-clicking that I will speak of mostly.

Runescape starts you off with about 30 different skills, each of which begins at level 1 (and level 10 in health, or 10 HP). Each skill is raised by performing certain actions. I will be tedious, and explain EVERY SINGLE ABILITY. If you want, use ctrl+F and type in graphics/sound to skip to the next section.
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NON MEMBERS:

COMBAT- This is the biggest part of Runescape, to fight enemies and raise your combat. This serves 2 purposes: stronger monsters give better stuff, and once you're strong enough, you can even challenge your friends to a friendly fight.
There are 3 attributes to fighting: attack, defense, and strength. Attack determines how often you hit the target for more than 0 damage. Defense is what counteracts the attack. Strength is different. People who played Dungeons and Dragons may remember how once you hit the Armor Class, you rolled a dice to determine damage. Strength is that dice. The higher your strength, the higher your dice goes. You can hit for a maximum of 36 damage.
To raise your attack defense, or strength, you must choose a stance when you fight an enemy. If you choose balanced, you gain equal experience in each category. If you choose accurate, you gain only attack points. If you choose defensive, you gain only defense points. Aggressive only raises your strength points. Now here's the thing: you gain 3x the experience if you only train 1 stat. SO, if you want to beef up your defense, you can level it up 3x faster by choosing defensive.
Hit points are the only ones that start above 1, and they aren't gained in a particular way. For every 4 experience you gain, 1 of it goes to your health, and the other 3 either go to attack, defense, strength, or all 3. So, health is the average of the 3 combat stats, plus what you start with.
Your level is known as your combat level, and for every 4 levels you get in an attack skill, you gain 1 combat. For this reason, the 10HP gives you 3 combat in the beginning.

MAGIC/PRAYER:

These also affect your combat, but are VERY different in terms of raising. Also, although it contributes to combat, each magic/prayer level is only worth half of an attack level.

Magic is raised through spells. To cast spells, you must buy or collect runes that are needed for the corresponding spell. For example, to cast Wind Strike, you need 1 mind rune, and 1 air rune. When you have the necessary runes, you can click on the spell in the magic menu, and click on your target. Sometimes it doesn't work, and you must wait 20 seconds to try again. If it works (in the case of wind strike), a little blue ball will fly at the target and cause damage. Runes are used up with every successful spell cast, so you have to buy a lot of runes to get to the higher levels.
Magic is popular, but it is EXPENSIVE. At the levels above 65, it costs in the upwards of 100,000 gold to get enough runes to gain a level, spiraling into the millions. BUT, a high level magic user is much respected, and a good magic user is often a deadly fighter.

Prayer is much more simple, but much less interesting. What prayer does is use a blessing of the gods to bestow a benefit on your character. These blessing drain your prayer, and when your prayer reaches 0, you cannot use prayers again until you pray at an altar.
Leveling prayer is simple and tedious. Every enemy (except demons) drops bones when you kill them. Right click to bones and choose to bury them. Burying them gains prayer experience. It takes about 100 hours of nonstop burying to get to level 99 prayer, and no one has yet done it. However, the benefit is HUGE, and means the difference between life and death in MANY situations.

FISHING/COOKING:

This is one of the 2 moneymaking duos. You fish lobsters, shark, and swordfish and you cook them. They sell from 100-1000 per fish, making an easy, profitable way to make money.

To begin fishing, you need a net and a good spot to fish. With the net, you catch shrimps and anchovies. Once you have 5 fishing, you’re allowed to use a rod and bait. You can catch sardines, herring, and pike. However, you have to right click to use bait fishing rods, so it’s not the most popular way to fish.
At level 20, you can use a fly fishing rod to catch salmon and trout, the basic ‘midlevel’ of fishing. At level 35, you get into the pro levels. You can use a harpoon to catch tuna and swordfish, and you can use a lobster pot to catch lobsters (imagine that!).

Cooking is much simpler. Find a raw meat of any kind, and find a range (stove) to cook it on. Right click and choose to cook. The more times you successfully cook the meat, the higher your cooking gets. As you get higher cooking levels, you can cook better foods (you need 45 cooking to cook swordfish, as an example).

MINING/SMITHING:

This is the most profitable, most annoying skill. Once your smithing is 99, you can make around 100,000 an hour, but it takes about 100 DAYS to get that much experience, and yet people have done it.

To mine, you click the rock and you’ll mine it. Sometimes you miss, sometimes you just chip the rock. Most of the time, you get an ore. There are many levels of ore, from tin to rune. Each level of ore has a corresponding pickaxe, to make mining easier (I don’t get it, but that’s what they say). You can’t mine anything but tin and copper until you gain more levels.

Smithing is a bit more complicated. You have to choose certain ores, and take them to one of the 4 furnaces in the world, and smelt the ores into a bar. Once you have the bar, you can go to an anvil, and using a hammer, smash the bar into a weapon or armor. At level 1, all you can do is smelt tin and copper together into bars, and then make bronze daggers. As your level increases, you can make more valuable things.

CRAFTING:

This is a less popular thing at the low levels, but like magic, it’s a highly respected thing to be a good crafter, and you can make 200,000 GP with a single amulet when you have around 80 crafting.

To craft, you begin by mixing clay (can be mined) with a jug of water to make wet clay. Using a potters wheel and a potters oven, you can craft bowls and pie tins. You can also kill a cow and take it’s hide. Take the hide to a tanner and ask him to tan it for 1GP. Get a spool of thread and a needle from a shop, and make a set of gloves.
At higher levels, you can make gold rings and gold necklaces with magical powers.

RANGE:

This is a combat skill, but it doesn’t affect your combat level unless it’s all you use. Range is the use of the bow and the crossbow, and is an essential part of killing teams.

To raise your range, all you need to do is buy a bow and some arrows, and kill a creature with the bow. You’ll do more damage with higher range levels. THE END. Pretty simple and straightforward in that skill.

WOODCUT/FIREBUILDING:

Another straightforward skill. To raise woodcutting, use a hatchet to cut down a tree. To raise fire building, take the wood that you chopped, and use it with a tinderbox to create a fire. Again, plain and simple.

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MEMBERS:
Here are some special skills that you can get if you pay Runescape to be a member:

HERBLAW: the most boring thing you can do is herblaw, but you can get rich quick, and people with good herblaw are rare and are paid well. Herblaw is the making of potions using plants. First, you must find a plant and identify it. Then, you must find a special ingredient. Put them both into a vial filled with water, and you will make a potion. Simple, right? WRONG. It takes a long time to gain XP, and you don’t gain much XP. Not my favorite skill, but some people love it!

FLETCHING: Sort of a second smithing. Taking the wood that you cut, add some feathers to the wood. Make some arrowheads (requires 1 smithing to make bronze ones), and TADA! You’ve got arrows.

Thieving: Some say that this is the most fun skill. You pick locks, pick pockets, and steal from vendors. All you do is right click and choose to steal. If you have a high enough thieving level, you will try to steal. If you fail, you must fight the person, and that person is sometimes level 70 or higher! It’s fun and risky, just like a real thief’s job is.
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GRAPHICS/SOUND: 5/10.

This game is free, and as a result the graphics are poor. Sometime in the next 20 years (no one knows when), the graphics will become ‘3D’, and it will look much better. Until they, we all wait and hope that it will become beautiful soon.

Sound is only in the members version, and it’s weak. It’s limited to noises when you perform an action. It’s better than silence, but most people just listen to music.

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REPLAYABILITY: 0/0, because the game never ends. HOWEVER, if you create a new character, I’d say 10/10 for fun in creating a character with only 1 stat leveled up. The most highly respected people have dozens of these characters, known as ‘pures’.
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OVERALL: 7/10
A great game that I have put hundreds of hours into (I’m in the top 1000 almost all-round), and the only reason it’s not getting 10/10 is because the game play of clicking gets repetitive, and the graphics are corny. I say it’s a must play game that you’ll never regret playing!

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/09/03, Updated 07/09/03