Runescape has always been a game about setting your own goals. It does very little in the way of telling you what to do. There are some “Adventure Paths” in the beginning that give you some ideas but for the most part it’s up to you.
To keep everything managable and relearn the game I decided not to get a memebership off the bat. While the free to play version is a very tiny percentage of the total game, there’s still a lot to do. Plus, holding off on the membership let’s me see if this is a passing interest or if this is something I want to stick with for a while. So far, I can say it’s the latter.
My goals before I subscribe are to complete all the free to play quests and visit all the old locations I remember from back in the day. I have the most nostalgia for the free to play area a that’s where I spent just about all of my time as a kid. I figure, if I get through all of that and still want to play then I’m actually interested and not just riding the nostalgia train.
There is a fantastic wiki for Old School Runescape that is helpful beyond belief. It even rivals the amazing Warframe wiki. Even so, I’m trying to complete quests without going straight to the wiki. Runescape’s quests usually have a lot of moving pieces and items to gather to complete them. However, it’s also notoriously obtuse sometimes. If I can’t figure something out in a resonable amount of time I’ll go ahead and use the wiki.
Without any prior knowledge, it leads to a lot of walking back and forth between spots of the map. This can be a pain when you get an item walk across the free to play map and then are told you need another item form the place you just came from….But it also adds to the sense of adventure! At least for me.
The last goal is to play the way I want without looking up to many guides. I have a bad habit of rushing to a games subreddit and sponging up all the knowledge there on how to “play correctly”. OSRS is more about the journey than the destination, as it were, because reaching end game takes so dang long.
In the back of my mind, I keep thinking I should have made an Ironman character. This limits you to not being able to trade with others and you have to do everything yourself. But at it’s core, I have fond memories of trading and selling materials in Runescape so playing without trading just wouldn’t be the same game. For now, I’m playing a kind of semi-ironman. Gathering most of my materials but buying things from the Grand Exchange that I either can’t by from a shop in the free to play areas or would take to long to get my skills up to craft myself. So far I’ve only bought an adamant platebody and a rune scimitar. I enjoy the crafting skills in Runescape so it’s not a chore to gather and craft my own materials most of the time.
I’m enjoying my time in OSRS much more than I thought I would. I have a habit of playing something heavily for a week and abandoning it. But with OSRS I feel like I’ll be playing for quite a while.
Many Welps 