[2022] I've been back for about 1 month, and here's where I am.

Hello scapers!

Sorry for the huge wall of text. This is just a recounting of my experiences and impressions of returning to RS for the last month.

I rejoined the game on July 14th, 2022 after having not played for 5 years. My previous account was one I started in 2006, and played on and off until 2017. That account was okay with 8 level 99s and just enough quest completion to get into prif. Mostly a skiller. I was a pretty casual player.

When I rejoined the game, I decided that I wanted to start fresh and reexperience the game from scratch. A lot has changed, and I haven't played in half a decade. I dredged up an old account I made 8 years ago for OSRS. This account had no rs3 playtime, and this point matters when you consider a screenshot below as you'll see it was made nearly 3000 days ago, but only has 370 hours. When I logged into rs3, I was prompted to create my character and select a name. This illustrates that it's a brand new account. Didn't take me too long to arrive on the name: Deizknutz.

I didn't become a member immediately because I didn't know if I wanted to actually commit to playing RS again. You know how it is, you get the itch but you know it's going to suck away your life so you contemplate whether you really want to make the commitment. I enjoyed some f2p, did mostly skilling, got level 60 mining and 60 smithing on a project where I smithed and sold 100 rune ore boxes from scratch. One of the first major things I noticed was how lucrative some random activities seemed to be. I could go kill guards in Varrock Castle, the level 25 guards that most people stopped giving a sh*t about 2005. And they drop 3 grapes pretty often, which is a 22K-24K drop. From that common drop, you can make over 1m+/hour. That's absolutely wild to me as a returning player. I could also go sheer some sheep in Burthorpe, make balls of wool, then turn those into bolts of cloth. Sell the bolts of cloth and, if I remember correctly, that was also over 1m+/hour.

After about a week, on July 20th, I decided to buy 1 month of membership. Jumping back in from scratch, honestly, was a blast! It was exactly the nostalgia kick I was looking for.

One thing I want to point out up front is that as soon as I became a member, almost immediately they gave me a Lucky Chaotic Battlestaff. This is reminiscent of when I returned a while back in 2015~ and as soon as I get back the treasure hunter gave me a lucky Armadyl Godsword. This just confirmed for me that they absolutely boosted my "lucky" item luck on the account because I was a returning player. That lucky chaotic battlestaff was a free handout directly from Jagex and an attempt to incentivize me to stick around long enough to be able to use it. That was absolutely not actual luck that gave me that. It's clearly a scheme to give returning players "lucky" items on the TH and I will never be convinced otherwise. I wasn't unhappy about it necessarily, but I also realize what is truly is.

At this point, I was committed to actually playing the game. I knew I wanted to rush 99 prayer because I remember the convenience of having all those great high level curses, especially soul split, and I just wanted to get curses and use soul split for slayer as quickly as possible. I also didn't like being poor, so I bought 10 bonds and slowly sold them as needed whenever I wanted to make a big purchase. I know that's controversial and people will disagree with me doing that. I just knew that I would need a lot of gold to really hit the ground running and not have to stop and grind money constantly to do what I wanted to do and play how I wanted to play. I knew I was committing to playing again, so I just said whatever and bought the bonds with the intent that I would budget them and not have to buy any more bonds for a while. One of the first things I invested in was 50K dragon bones and 20 Powders of Burials. At 5000 Dragon Bones/hour, that was sufficient alone to get 99 prayer in about 10 hours of game time. I didn't do it all in one sitting, but it was a really light grind for getting 99. Rushing at least one level 99 was important to me because the cape is actually just way better than any other early game cape by a large margin with a noticeable damage and prayer boost.

The reason I didn't just get 99 prayer immediately though was because of the Summer Beach event. I caught the tail end of it for the last 10 days of the event. That event, for a player like me, was extremely overpowered. There are things I liked about it, and things I didn't like about it. On one hand, the overpowered exp was a dopamine kick, but on the other hand, here I am, a returning player that just wants to reexperience the game, reexplore areas and content that I've forgotten, and I have to fight with the opportunity cost of not being on the beach basically 24/7. That part kinda sucked because I'm a sucker for opportunity cost. Even though I wanted to push for Desert Treasure as fast as possible, I had to basically hold off until after the Beach was over. Additionally, I'm ashamed to admit that in a moment of weakness, I took Jagex up on their 150x2 keys deal halfway through the beach event. My reasoning was that I could tell that if I did, I'd be able to hit 90 Dung and get right to the Demon Horn Necklace which is pretty much my favorite item in the game, instead of having to actually do Dungeoneering at all. I knew that if I didn't do that deal, that I'd be stuck at about 75-80~ dung with a Split Dragontooth Necklace instead for a long time since I'm kinda slow at Dung and it's hard to find people that would genuinely want to dung with me. I'd end up having to pay for floors to get to level 90 dung in any reasonable amount of time. Another big motivation to get to Demon Horn Necklace was all the Dragon Trinkets I was given from the Beach Pinatas which really made me want to farm dragons for combat and slayer xp, which would be a lot easier if I had curses and a Demon Horn Necklace. Additionally, I heard that Double XP Live was coming up in August, so getting a bunch of proteans could be really useful for that. Finally, the kicker, was the understanding that keys are usually pretty expensive. They're like $0.40 per key usually. That's not a price I can justify and I would never pay that amount. But this deal had them at $0.15 per key which felt like it was just on the cusp of what I was willing to pay. I certainly wasn't going to trade my bonds for keys as that ratio is terrible beyond all measure. All of these factors combined convinced me to do it.

On the Beach, I got the following:

1. Level 1-82 Construction, skipping the entire early and mid-game of Construction completely. Personally, I felt okay with this as early-mid Construction is kinda tedious/expensive. I just want my Armor stand and to meet all potential quest requirements. I used to care about my PoH on my old account and I experienced before what that felt like. My PoH doesn't feel that important this time around honestly.
2. Level 1-90 Dungeoneering, skipping the entire early and mid-game of Dungeoneering completely and speedrunning to a Demon Horn Necklace, Bonecrusher, and Charming Imp. I put lots of bonus xp into dung and just camped the hole for a while. To supplement the free dung tokens I got from buying keys, I also did sinkholes. By the end, I was able to get the Demon Horn Necklace, Bonecrusher, Charming Imp, Gem Bag, and an Anti-Poison Totem. I bought the Anti-Poison Totem for Pyramid Plunder to avoid having to worry about poison at all.
3. Level 30-76 Fishing, skipping the mid-game grind to get to up to Sharks and the Fishing Guild. I didn't mind this skip very much because getting to sharks was pretty important to me as my first "decent food" and I needed raw sharks to make Bunyips anyway.
4. Level 1-82 Hunter, skipping the entire early and mid-game of Hunter. This is probably the one I'm most happy about because I hate hunter with a burning passion. This skill is so tedious, so to basically skip it completely feels great honestly.
5. Level 1-84 Farming, skipping the drudgingly slow early-mid game of Farming and just instantly being able to create most herbs and meet most potential quest requirements. I'm happy with this because I was not looking forward to running trees forever.
6. Level 1-62 Cooking, skipping the early game of cooking and most of the mid-game of cooking. The barbeques were okay xp and was somewhat afkable but I didn't spend as much time at this one because the rates weren't that great and there was no special c*cktails for it to make it better. Also, I felt that the other stations were much more valuable opportunities.
7. Lots of sandy clues. I felt it was pretty goofy that I could just keep destroying clues that led me to anywhere outside of the beach and get a fresh clue for free without even losing clue progress. I must have done about 70 clues and got at least 10 semi-rares worth about 1.1-1.3m each among a few other useful things. Doing those clues altogether took about 90 minutes or so iirc.

When the beach was over, I felt so free. Finally, there was no opportunity cost keeping me from playing the way I wanted to play, which was to just do some quests that I was excited to do again, kill some dragons with the dragon trinkets to get really fast (comparatively, for me at least) off-task slayer xp, and do some skilling at my own pace and on my own terms. While the Beach was a huge boon to my account, I was also so happy when it was over. I can't emphasize this enough. The most enjoyable time I spent playing was playing BETWEEN the beach event and DXP because there was no overwhelmingly broken event keeping me from playing how I really wanted to play.

I did a bunch of questing, finished DT, did a bunch more questing and finished Temple at Senntisten for curses. Did some more questing and finished Roving Elves so I could go to the elven lands and use a Crystal Bow if I wanted to. I also did the Legend's Quest and Swan Song so I could fish Monkfish, which is slightly faster xp for me than sharks and my cooking level was literally 62 so I needed Monkfish anyway. I also finished my light grind to 99 prayer which was nice. First 99 on the account in about 2 weeks of playtime. I also did a fair bit of farming dragons with the dragon trinkets for off-task slayer xp, combat xp, and farming charms for summoning. In all, I farmed about 300 greens dragons, 300 blue dragons, 300 red dragons, and 2,000 black dragons. With that, and 40 slayers tasks, my Slayer level is level 74 at the time of me writing this. I did not do any Slayer Dummies, as I valued the thieving dummies much higher at the time since pyramid plunder is a pain in the ass.

I also sold some more bonds (from among the bonds I originally picked up, as I still had some) to pick up some key items that I otherwise couldn't afford for a long time. I picked up a Luck of the Dwarves, Grace of the Elves, and a Brooch of the Gods. Altogether cost me about 290m but worth it. Those items are fantastic and I have no regrets. The GotE and BotG together make skilling a lot more fun and enjoyable. The Brooch came latest as soon as I unlocked Invention during DXP.

Then Double XP Live came on the Horizon, and I felt urged to utilize my bonds that I bought earlier to buy another level 99. I sold a bond, and used that money to buy 55K uncut diamonds, which was sufficient to get me from level 75-99 crafting. I later went on to cut 43K of those diamonds which was sufficient for levels 75-99 and took about 10 hours. I overestimated how many diamonds it would take because I underestimated how much xp I'd get with all of the ambient xp boosts I got in DXP , from clan 5% boost, witnessing coin flips, and pulse cores.

At this point, I've sold all my bonds and have about 115m left. I'm just going make that last for as long as possible since I feel like I've given Jagex way more money than I should have already at this point and I really don't want to give them any more outside of my basic monthly subscription.

BTW, I got to level 75 crafting pre-dxp by cutting gems here and there between projects. I found it amusing that I could buy uncut rubies, cut them, and then sell the cut rubies at a profit. Other gems were pretty much break even. Literally profiting off of gem cutting was completely unheard of 5 years ago, so that was an easy decision. I also found it equally amusing pre-dxp that I could buy unfinished potions and their secondary ingredients, finish the potions for huge xp, and profit off of it. That's equally unheard of from my past experiences, so that was an easy level 1-78 herblore fast and with profit. During dxp, I was able to get some more levels into herblore up to mid-80s but this wasn't profitable. It's more break even or so with the Brooch and portable well giving 10% extra finished potions. I'm still happy with break even herblore xp since I'm used to the days of having to spend an arm and a leg for herblore xp.

I want to take a brief moment here to mention that as soon as I got membership, I looked at the oddments store and noticed that Silverhawk Boots are basically free now for everyone. I remember playing before and never getting them on the TH. My old account actually grinded Agility from level 1 to something in the mid 80s without the boots. On this account, I've maybe run a total of 10 laps on courses total just for daily challenges, and I'm already level 92 agility. While I'm thrilled about being able to not have to run laps on courses at all, I wholeheartedly believe that these boots should be locked behind invention somewhere like the Spring Cleaner is for example. These boots undermine the entire Agility skill right from the get go. It's my 3rd highest skill and I basically never looked at it. I also think that Agility should be made more interesting by giving a gargantuan xp boost for the first time each shortcut is discovered and taken. I wish that was the way I primarily trained Agility, because looking for shortcuts and taking the time to hunt them down and use them for the a huge pile of Agility xp on first use seems like way more fun than running laps. Running laps SUCKS big time.

Okay so back on track, DXP Live comes around, and from the 150x2 keys I bought, along with the 200+ keys I got from questing, 75~ keys from dailies, 40 keys from just logging in, I had a pretty good pile of resources. Here's a rough summary.

• 120 Elite Combat Dummies
• 1000 protean logs
• 1500 protean cogs
• 2000 protean planks
• 2600 protean memories
• 1800 protean traps
• 900 protean bars
• 1263 protean hides
• 40+ spirit dragonstones
• 40+ spirit onyxes
• 120 thieving dummies

That's just what I entered dxp with. That doesn't account for what I was able to get during dxp which includes some more proteans and significantly more combat dummies obviously due to the combat dummy event.

I did thieving early on in Lumbridge stalls from levels 1-57. There's a spot you can stand there that gives you 31K xp/hour and also like 1m gold per hour and is arguably the best thieving method early game until you at least get a few rooms into Pyramid Plunder. I plundered from 57-66 thieving. Then I did DXP thieving dummies from level 66-81 thieving. The Thieving dummies during double xp is broken to the point that there was no reason for me to even train thieving prior to that moment. I multiplied my total thieving xp by 5 in a matter of about 90 minutes.

I used the combat dummies to train these combat stats.

• Level 61-75 attack
• Level 64-74 strength
• Level 62-76 magic
• Level 60-78 defense

I didn't use combat dummies on ranged because I already had a ranged training method with the dragon trinkets and black dragons since they're weak to bolts. I figured I'd just stick with that and focus the dummies elsewhere. I will note that I feel like the combat dummies during double xp were extremely high exp with each dummy for me being worth about 20K combat xp and the ability to use 3 at a time made it feel like about 20 times faster than any other combat training method for my level. As a returning player, that felt fine because I've already experienced the low level combat grind and it wasn't exciting to me. Being able to rush to GWD1/barrows gear was nice for me particularly, but would definitely spoil the experience for actually new players. A new player could genuinely skip multiple tiers with those dummies with very little effort, like going from Mithril to Bandos.

I also trained summoning from level 73-80 in about 10 minutes thanks to the charm farming from dragons, the absurd amount of spirit gems from TH, and the absurd xp rates of selling your secondary items to the store owner and buying them back, noting all pouches with notepaper, and never having to bank, on top of dxp.

Leveling to 80 firemaking and flecthing was basically free with the protean logs. Leveling to 86 smithing felt pretty much effortless with the protean bars, + I actually did do a lot of smithing in my free time between events because I like mining/smithing. 80 Divination was just a matter of getting through starter levels up to about mid-40s, and then skipping all the way to 80 divination with protean memories. I went ahead and used my protean traps to level up from 82-86 hunter at grenwalls where I didn't need to load the traps with bait because they're protean. Since I unlocked invention, I did some invention things, but only level 37 on that so far. That's about where I am now, here's some screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/ZL74XHF

Now that I've used all my dxp time, I can finally get back to playing how I want to again. I still have some goals I want to complete, like I want to get back into prif and run a few more quest lines, and I really want to shoot for maybe getting 99 mining/smithing since I really like those skills. For anyone that has read up to this point, thank you! If you have any tips for goals I should consider, I'd be happy to hear them!

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