A double Article?!

Yep, this month I’m doing a double article of The Skillz. Why you ask? Well, one reason is because I wanted to do a double and the second is because I missed last month’s. (But you won’t tell anyone that, right?)

This month, we’ll be talking about Woodcutting and Firemaking

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The Skillz – Woodcutting

(Takes a deep breath) Ahh, the smell of freshly cut yew logs. Have you ever wondered why the woodcutting skill is even here if the only thing you can do with it is cut logs for burning or fletching? No? Oh well, I’ll tell you anyways but first let’s talk about…

Starting the Trade

It seemed like such an easy thing to do, right? You didn’t have much of a choice of tools to use, a Bronze or an Iron axe? Not much of a choice is it? Even though you didn’t have much of a choice in the way of tools you had an ‘ok’ amount of trees to choose from. You could cut normal trees, found nearly everywhere in Runescape, or you could cut Evergreens, found closer to the colder areas, or you could cut Achey trees, found in the miserable swamplands of Gu’tanoth. Achey trees, unlike other trees, do not produce burnable logs, the Achey logs can only be fletched into either ogre arrows, brutal arrows, or an Ogre composite bow. (I’m not doing a fletching article right now so you’ll have to wait for it for more information about fletching.)

The next tree is a dead tree. These, like evergreens and normal trees, produce normal logs cut, normal logs can be burnt or fletched or used for many other purposes. (Mainly unique uses for quests) When first starting this trade there really isn’t much for you, unless you want your fletching or Firemaking to stay the same level as your Woodcutting.

Making it worth it

Now that you’re around level 20 you’ve got more options. Not only can you use 5 different axes but you can also cut 7 different tree types. You can start making good money while getting paid good for it at the same time. Oak trees require level 15 to cut and give 37.5 experience per log, this makes the levels look a lot smaller. As well as getting good experience, you can now sell your logs to many people for a good price. Oak logs usually sell for around 36 GP each, or if you have some money and want to make an investment then you can turn the oak logs into planks and sell them for 395 each.

Not only that but you can now play the Tai Bwo Wania Clean up Minigame. Its not necessarily the most fun thing to do, but you do get 55 experience for cutting a medium jungle plant. Now let’s talk about…

Where to cut

Yes, I know you can chop pretty much anywhere but there are certain spots that give you a distinct advantage, such as:

Draynor Village
Both willows and oaks grow near it and since there’s a bank its a great place to cut, there is also a fairly large amount of normal trees nearby.

Varrock
This also is a good place for cutting oaks, they grow near either bank along with a relatively good supply of normal trees.

Castle Wars
Is a good place to cut Oak trees, just on the other side of the bridge are two or three oak trees along with many normal trees. (You’ll find that normal trees grow nearly everywhere.)

Seers
Has a good supply of Oak trees and Maple trees. Maple trees grow right behind the bank and Oak trees grow in various places nearby.

Catherby
Not far from Seers is Catherby which is probably the most popular area for cutting Yew trees. Oak trees grow just to the west of the bank and willows grow down by the southwestern shore.

Gnome Stronghold
Oak trees grow in abundance here but most people come here to cut Magic trees.

Legends Guild
Yew trees grow just south of here and magic tree to the Northwest, along with Oaks and normal trees dotting the surrounding area.

As you can see there are many good areas to cut at that are near banks thus letting you be able to deposit your logs and get back to work quicker. Now its time to talk about…

Advanced Woodcutting
Now that you’ve reached level 60 you’ve got a wide range of tools to choose from as well as nearly any tree in Runescape. By this time I’m sure you’ve made quite a profit from your hard labor and should’ve bought a good axe. You can chop yew logs which are one of the most wanted resources in Runescape. Yew logs usually sell for around 390 GP each, that means that after 1,000 yew logs you’ll have 390,000 GP, that’s one of the best GP per Resource ratios.

As well as being able to chop Yews you can also cut Mahogany, Maple, Teak, and Willow, all of which sell pretty good. Mahoganies and Teaks, however, can be turned into planks and sold for 900-2,200 GP each. What’s left you ask? Magic trees are the only tree left, they require level 75 woodcutting, we’ll talk about them after we look at..

The Tools
There are many different axes you can use to heed your endeavours, however, most of them require a level. Here’s a list of all the axes and the levels required to use them:

Name: Level:
Bronze 1
Iron 1
Steel 6
Black 6
Mithril 21
Adamant 31
Rune 41
Dragon 61

“What’s with the odd levels?”
I think that’s just something Jagex has never noticed, instead of requiring level 20 a Mithril axe requires 20 levels above level 1.

Your axe won’t get you very far in the jungle, for navigating a jungle you’re going to need to use a machete. There are four kinds of machete, Normal, Opal, Jade, and Red Topaz. Now its not known for sure but I’m pretty sure the higher grades (Opal, Jade, and Red Topaz) help you chop faster.

What’s the use of buying a higher grade axe? The higher grade axes help you to cut faster, an adamant axe will cut much faster then a bronze axe however a dragon axe will only cut a little faster then a rune axe.

Now that you know a little more about your tools and are hopefully using the highest grade axe you can we can move on to…

Magic trees
Why does it need its own title? Well, it doesn’t. I just didn’t want to talk about it in Advanced Wood Cutting.

The Magic tree is the highest level tree in the game however it isn’t always the best thing to cut. Though a magic log can sell for up to 1200 GP each they take a very long time to cut at level 75. When you get into the 90’s magic logs come faster though still not very fast. Yew trees are better then magic trees both experience-wise and GP-wise.

Well, I think that’s all about the trees and the tools used to kill-err, cut them. Now its time to talk about…

The Use of the skill
All right, now we’re at the question “What’s the use of the woodcutting skill beyond cutting logs to burn or fletch?” Well, there are many quests which require you to cut down either a tree or a vine, the Legends quest for one, requires you to use wood cutting to carve a totem pole whereas the Grim tales quest requires you to chop down a huge vine. Aside from quests there are mini-games like Tai Bwo Wania Clean Up and Temple Trekking / Burgh de Rott Ramble which require woodcutting to do certain things.

Aside from that…There’s fletching. Now I know in the question it says “beyond cutting logs to burn or fletch.” Fletching is one of the largest activities in Runescape, though you wouldn’t think so, and because of this the demand for logs is very high, mainly Yew logs. Most of the people buying logs from woodcutters are fletchers.

Is that a good enough reason for the woodcutting skill to be in RuneScape? ok, now to talk about the…

Rewards of Woodcutting

There are a fair bit of rewards from woodcutting, the main one is Nests. Nests are things which randomly drop from tree to the ground near you while woodcutting. These can hold anything from an acorn to spirit tree seed or even a Diamond ring.

Another reward is the ability to wear Lumberjack clothing. This clothing gives you a slight bonus to the amount of experience you gain from woodcutting. The only way to acquire Lumberjack clothing is to do the Temple Trekking / Burgh de Rott Ramble mini-game mentioned above.

There are various other rewards like the ability to do certain other quests but I don’t want to list those quests here.

Conclusion

Well I think we’re at the end of this article, when I was writing it it didn’t seem to come out exactly how I wanted it but I think its pretty good. If you don’t like it then oh well! Actually I’d love to hear any comments you might have.

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Now…Its time to start the Second article!

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The Skillz – Firemaking

Nothing is better than sitting in front of a nice Oak fire in the winter-time, unless of course you get some hot chocolate. Unfortunately we can’t sit in front of a nice Oak fire, we can’t even sit for that matter. (Well I guess you could sit in front of an Oak fire in your parlour, wait a minute, you can’t use oak logs for that, oh well…)

In this article we’re going to look into the Firemaking skill which is rather appropriate since we just looked into the Woodcutting skill. A lot of people don’t know that Woodcutting isn’t the only way to attain ignitable objects, this we will talk about a later on. Right now let’s…

Put a Spark into it
Many of my articles start out talking about what to do when your first starting the skill but this time we’re going to start off talking about the many different ways you can start a fire. I’m sure everyone knows the basic way of using a tinderbox to start a fire but did you know that you could use a bow? If you travel up to Otto Godblessed near Baxtorian Falls then you will be able to learn how to start a fire by using a bow, and one of the neat things about this is that nearly any bow will work. You can use any bow from normal short to Magic long as well as the Seercull bow, A crystal bow cannot be used because it does not have a string to create friction, and a Dark Bow cannot be used because it is so evil, the darkness inside it steals the heat before enough heat accumulates to start a fire. There’s another way to light fires that most people don’t keep, the reason I say ‘keep’ is because must people have done the Sea Slug Quest. When doing this quest you acquire ‘Dry Sticks’ these can be used with logs (any type unless they changed it) to start a fire.

Now its time to talk about…

The Fuel of the subject
Logs, pretty basic, you use one of the three Firemaking implements on a pile of logs and they’ll eventually light.(Hopefully it won’t take too long, the higher your Firemaking level the quicker they light) The question is: Is there any point in burning logs higher then normal? Well yes there is, for one higher level logs burn longer so if you’re cooking on your fires you don’t have to worry about it going out as often, secondly they give more experience, even an oak log gives 50% more experience then a normal log.

But still, is experience the only reason? Or is it a good enough reason to use higher logs? As I’m sure you’ve noticed when woodcutting normal trees only give one log, this makes getting an inventory of logs to burn very difficult. Higher grade trees give more then one log per tree, usually a minimum of three but could fill your whole inventory up. Now higher grade trees usually take longer to cut but you don’t have to run around to multiple trees for a full inventory.

Now, about other fuels, Pyre logs are another fuel but they can only be burned on a certain area, because of this they give a special reward and more experience. Pyre logs are made by using sacred oil on any type of normal logs. (not just normal logs, I mean any unsacred logs like magic, maple, or normal) When you burn a pyre log you don’t only get more experience then when you burn a normal log of the same type but you also get prayer experience alongside either coins or a special key.

I think that pretty much covers the fuels, yea I know there’s mainly only logs but there’s lots of them and many ways to burn them. Now its time to talk about…

Alternate items to Light
Lanterns are used as light sources for many of the caves in Runescape which means that they’re very popular. (but only because you need one to be able to see) Most Lanterns use oil as their fuel instead of wood. (because wood doesn’t burn as good and is hard to get into small lanterns) Oil, unlike wood, does not grow on trees(oh well) to make oil in Runescape you must bring swamp tar to the still at the Chemist’s in Rimmington. Once you fill a lantern with oil you can use a tinderbox to light it, then it can be used as a light source.

Slightly different from a lantern is a torch, a torch gives off just as much light as a lantern but can go out much easier, a torch can be lit by tinderbox or dry sticks.

Candles, like torches, give off good light but can go out easily, candles can be lit by tinderbox dry sticks.

Another big use of the Firemaking skill is lighting Harpy bug lantern. Harpy bug lanterns are used to distract harpy bug swarms so that you can land a hit on them. Harpy lanterns don’t require any type of fuel to light and can be lit only with a tinderbox.

There are various other ignitable objects which you’ll find during quests, these are usually one time lightings.

I believe that’s all main alternate items that can be lit, when I tittle this category I didn’t mean to say ‘Light’ as in illumination though it does kind of sound like that. I believe the next subject would be…

The Extras
If your lucky enough when doing a treasure trail you might be rewarded with some fire lighters. These, unfortunately, do not automatically make fires but they do color your fires. If you use a fire lighter on a normal log (for this you must use normal logs) then you will turn the log a shade of that fire lighter’s color and when you burn the log it will create a fire the color of that lighter.

With the use of an iron spit alongwith level 20 Firemaking you can cook rabbit, bird, beast and chompy meats, providing you have the correct cooking level.

If you have level 52 Firemaking you can install Dorgeshuun lightorbs, doing so will grant you with 1,000 Firemaking experience. And if you repair 100 lightorbs you’ll be granted another 5,000 on top of the other 100,000!

Another light source which I didn’t mention above is Goblin mining helmets. These require level 65 Firemaking to light and can only be lit using a tinderbox. They can be worn to save yourself an inventory spot when in dark caves.

The last extra is lighting Funeral pyre ships up by Baxtorian falls, this is another reward from doing the Barbarian training mini-quest. Lighting Funeral pyre ships gives the normal amount of experience but gives you a 300% bonus to the prayer experience you receive from the next few bones you bury. When you light a pyre ship you might also be rewarded with an item.

I believe that’s about all for Firemaking, I know it was pretty short (only 4 categories) but that’s pretty much what Firemaking is, there’s not much to it. (Put a log down, choose your utensil of ignition and then bang you’ve got a nice fire going.) I hope I’ve told you something new that will help you make fires a little faster.

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Well, now we’re at the end of the double article, how’d you like it? I know the Firemaking part wasn’t very long but like I said there isn’t much to Firemaking.

I’d love to hear any comments you might have, just post ’em on my topic in Informer Article Discussion.

And if you’re not going to do that then you might as well go cut some logs and make a few fires!