Back during the release of Nomad’s Requiem, players encountered two new requirements to be able to wear the Quest Point Achievement Cape. The first one is the obvious fact that they must be able to defeat Nomad, an insanely powerful NPC with a devastating maximum hit capability and a vicious set of special attacks. This set a new standard for the combat requirement, as not just everyone could cruise in and defeat Nomad. The second requirement, which is not as intense as the first requirement, but received much more criticism, is the fact that in order to begin the Nomad’s Requiem quest, it was required of the player to have completed at least one full game of the Soul Wars mini-game. People said that this was Jagex’s lame attempt at making their players experience other aspects of the game, and claimed that Jagex was forcing people to partake in an activity for a particular, unrelated reward instead of making the activity interesting enough for people to participate in it voluntarily.

Jagex’s response to this was unyielding. A player moderator declared that playing a game of Soul Wars was important for learning some background information about a quest directly related to the quest in question. Jagex refused to lift the mini-game prerequisite from the quest. After a while, the complaints eventually died down; playing one game of Soul Wars only took twenty minutes, and players were still rewarded with 1 Zeal, even if they lost the game. (This is different than games like Castle Wars, where the losing team gets 0 Tickets; after losing a game of Soul Wars, a player still gets something out of it, while after losing a game of Castle Wars, a player has simply wasted his or her time.)

Not long ago, another quest was released that had a mini-game requirement: Quiet Before the Swarm. The first quest in an upcoming series, it directly relates to the Pest Control mini-game, thus requiring that the player complete at least one game of Pest Control before starting the quest.

Contrary to popular belief, I actually think integrating min-games and their storylines into quests, both in the case of Nomad’s Requiem and Quiet Before the Swarm, is a good idea. In my opinion, quests should cover every aspect of the game, and in order for a player to proudly wear the Quest Point Achievement Cape, they must have completed sufficient adventures in RuneScape as a whole as Jagex deems necessary. The Quest Point Achievement Cape is unique in its own way, and should remain special, both by methods of acquisition and by the level of honor one feels possessing and wearing it.

With a little luck and a lot of determination, you can get yourself a brand new Ancient Effigy, a valuable item holding over 90,000 potential experience points. The monsters that drop them can be killed by anyone with decent combat stats. It seems like an easy way to get some extra experience, but that’s the problem – with these new updates, is RuneScape becoming too easy?

What are Ancient Effigies?

Ancient Effigies are items dropped by medium- to high-leveled monsters, and are part of the Distractions and Diversions. When a player receives an Ancient Effigy as a monster drop, it will start as a Starved Ancient Effigy. To unlock the Starved Ancient Effigy, one must have Level 91 in at least one of the two skills randomly selected by the Effigy. If this condition is met, the player with the Starved Ancient Effigy will receive 15,000 experience points in the specified skill and the Starved Ancient Effigy will turn into a Nourished Ancient Effigy. If this condition is not met, the player with the Starved Ancient Effigy can request assistance from someone else with Level 91 or above in at least one of the two stats and use them to unlock the Effigy. If the request method is used, the person giving assistance will receive 15,000 experience in the specified skill and the Starved Ancient Effigy will still turn into a Nourished Ancient Effigy, remaining under the ownership of the person who originally found it. Once this is done, the whole process repeats to unlock the Nourished Ancient Effigy into a Sated Ancient Effigy. For this transition, a minimum level of 93 is required for one of two random skills, and the experience given is 20,000 points. For the next transformation, the Sated Ancient Effigy becomes a Gorged Ancient Effigy, requiring a minimum level of 95 and giving a total of 25,000 experience points in the specified skill. Finally, the Gorged Ancient Effigy unlocks into a Dragonkin Lamp, and in the process, a skill of level 97 or above is required for one of two skills selected, and that particular skill receives 30,000 experience points. And as a reward for all of this, the Dragonkin Lamp can be opened to reward a stat of any level with a particular number of experience points, the amount depending on what the desired stat’s level already is. The amount of experience received can range anywhere between 4 for a Level 1 stat to 85,560 for a Level 120 stat.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Ancient Effigies

The advantages of introducing Ancient Effigies into the game are obvious. As Distractions and Diversions were originally intended, they provide a break in the monotony of training, particularly during combat. For example, at the end of a Slayer task, it’s always nice to get some skilling experience and go around interacting and socializing with other people instead of going straight to a slayer master to get a new task.

However, the disadvantages are just as obvious as the advantages. When people are able to get experience in a skill that they didn’t even train, there’s a small problem. Obviously, players don’t even have to put the effort into training skills anymore; they can simply focus on training combat, and the skill experience will come naturally. Some of the RuneScape Classic players refused to continue playing RuneScape 2 (or, as it is known now, RuneScape) because they believe the game became too easy. Back in RuneScape Classic, all the small conveniences implemented to RuneScape 2 did not exist, and players had to do some hard work to be able to train their skills. RuneScape Classic required a lot of clicking, and classic players think the game is now unfair to them.

The Last Strand of Hope

Although this may seem like a complete disaster and an update that simply rewards people with free experience with no effort, some of the restrictions on the update still make it somewhat acceptable. The fact that the skill receiving the reward from the effigy has to be a minimum of 91 makes it tolerable. By the time someone reaches Level 91 in a skill, they have done it enough to have a good understanding of the skill, and it could be argued that they deserve a boost for all the hard work they have done. In addition, Level 92 is the half-way point to Level 99 based on experience, so the long sprint to Level 99 could be aided by some boosts. Finally, the limit of 30,000 experience receivable via the Assist System per day prevents people from standing around the Grand Exchange or other populated areas, pouncing all day on people that need their effigies unlocked to the next level.

Final Words

Obviously, now that the Ancient Effigies are in the game, I have no choice but to play along and take advantage of them, or else I will fall severely behind. I have yet to encounter an Ancient Effigy yet, but when I do, I hope that it’ll be a skill that I already have over the required minimum in. If not, a lot of my skills are already near or in the 90s, so I may end up getting enough motivation to train that skill up to the required minimum in order to keep all the experience from the effigies to myself.

Jagex recently held a Castle Wars competition to attract more people to the mini-game after its first update in years. To celebrate the new features, Jagex decided to give away six months’ worth of free membership to the person who could kill the most people before dying his or herself. As people started flocking to Castle Wars with their best armor and weapons, others laid back while they contacted their friends and clan members for help.

Our main character for today, Bob, has tons of RuneScape friends, and is in a massive clan. When he’s not training with this friends, he is standing at the Grand Exchange merchanting. To put it simply, Bob is rich and popular. What more could a RuneScape character ask for?

One day, Bob is browsing on the RuneScape home page when he learns that Jagex is offering free membership to the person who has the largest kill streak over the span of a two-day weekend. Bob loves free stuff, especially in real life. Bob starts scrolling through his friends list and begins to private message his friends and clan members.

”Hi.” “Hi Bob, what’s going on?” “I’m trying to win the Castle Wars kill streak competition, and I was wondering if you could help me out.” “What will I get in return?” “One million coins.” “What about trade restrictions?” “You know that I have the Quest Point Cape, so my trade limits are as loose as possible. Also, Jagex made a new update that lets friends that have had each other on their friends lists for a long period of time have even looser trade restrictions. I’ll be able to get the money to you without a problem, I promise.”

Bob carefully picked out nine more friends and convinced them to join him at Castle Wars on a non-designated world. Bob and four friends joined the Zamorak team, while Bob’s six other friends joined the Saradomin team. Bob headed over to the Saradomin base. When he arrived in the respawn area, his six Saradomin friends were clustered around in a small square. Bob began casting Ice Barrage on them. Bob had selected his friends wisely; he had picked his ten weakest friends, most of them being Level 3 skillers. He took out all six of them with one shot. He repeated this process over and over again.

After the 20 minutes were up and the game ended, Bob had managed to get hundreds upon hundreds of kills thanks to the cooperation of his friends. For a mere 10 million coins, Bob had essentially secured his position in acquiring six months of free membership from Jagex. Ten million coins was nothing for Bob – he could make three times that amount overnight on a good merchanting offer.

Hopefully by now, we see the problem – this Castle Wars kill streak competition heavily favors those with lots of coins, and encourages people to cheat the system instead of enjoy the game. It’s nice that Jagex is holding competitions like this Castle Wars one, but they need to be careful how they organize it, and make sure that the people that earn the prizes, especially if they have real-world value, are actually deserving of them. A simple fix for this competition? Jagex could have added a stipulation – the kill streak run must be completed on a world designated for Castle Wars. That way, people like Bob cannot simply gather a group of friends on an abandoned world; on a designated Castle Wars world, he has plenty of other people to worry about.