ENERGY UPDATE!

I’ll bet those of you who have tried Powerthirst know why this update was much desired. Run longer, recharge energy faster, and even heal yourself much more efficiently then before! Potions, strange fruit, … EVERYTHING has been modified to give you more energy! You’re hardly ever gonna have to walk again!

… I can only foresee good things about this update. Indeed, one of the things I’ve never figured the human race (keyword: “race”) had an abundance of is patience. All this is going to do is let your character run places a lot faster and therefore waste a little less time doing your everyday tasks. Faster training, faster money, faster economy. Everything’s become a little bit faster. I’m not complaining! That means I can have more time to spend doing stuff like, y’know … living.

Another thing they did was make agility much more worthwhile to train, because a higher level means you can RUN EVEN MORE! With that, I suppose training agility will be a lot faster too because there will be a LOT MORE RUNNING PER LEVEL! I doubt a level 99 agility player would never have to walk again unless it was necessary.

I’ll say this. I’m a big fan of “fast”. This update’s got my full 5 out of 5 just because there really is no drawback to this one. Everyone can run more. Good fun.

MUSICIANS

A harmony on a harp. A minstrel with a melody. A bard with a beat. Finally, a source for the songs we hear as we travel the landscape. And not just considerably beautiful music (for Runescape’s music engines), but sitting next to one of these players boosts your energy and hitpoint recharge rate by 3 times! It’s just like using the Lunar Dream spell for free!

… a pity, for it makes the spell somewhat obsolete since it doesn’t recharge energy at all.

As traveling musicians are, they only stand in one spot all around Runescape. There are just a lot of them. Their melodies, unfortunately, will not be added to the songlist after listening to them, but that just saves us the need to jog all around Runescape searching them all out.

You can find them everywhere. On the outskirts of every major city, in the middle of every minor one, and everywhere in between. Each of them come with different tools of their trade, making each one interesting to just meet and listen to for a few minutes should the stress of training get to you one way of another. They are also nice to sit around with other players and chat.

Each instrument has their own melody, with several of each one scattered around (for example, though both the ones near Varrock play theviola, while the one in Al Kharid plays a snake charm). If you listen to them well enough, you’ll recognize the melodies themselves as single-instrument remakes of other popular tunes. Keep in mind that you can’t hear the songs if you manually choose a song from the list in that specific area.

Should you desire a quick and easy way to recharge hitpoints, I’ve already tried the rapid-heal prayer while wearing a regeneration bracelet while listening to a musician. You’ll restore 3 hitpoints every 30 seconds regardless with prayer or not, whereas you’ll restore 3 hitpoints in a minute with the music alone.

Oh, and one musician posted himself nearby the grotto in Mort Myre. Unlike other musicians, you’ll need a ghostspeak amulet to talk to him, and rather then explain the concept of musicians, he instead recites a poem dedicated to his love. Rather odd, since he even has a name of his own, but it is a considerably good place to have a musician should you need to get down there quickly to do the quests.

In my opinion, although throwing a bunch of musicians around does help give Runescape that nice ambiance and realism to the environment, the effect is sort of ruined due to the fact that each of these musicians apparently have no life. They just stand there playing the exact same song over and over without even stopping for a breather. not just that, but 95% of them say the exact same thing when you talk to them. If they were automated music boxes by magic or something, that’d work.

Fun fact: the snake charmer in Pollnivneach, though he doesn’t appear it, DOES count as a musician if you rest manually near him.

IN OTHER NEWS

Should you find you have an overabundance of flax and bronze wire (and who doesn’t), you can weave yourselves some seaweed nets to help you gather and carry seaweed. Not only can you carry as many as you want, but each net can hold a whopping 10 seaweed each, making your gathering ten times more efficient! They work like fruit baskets – make sure you have the inventory space to actually pick up the seaweed first.

It’s a good update, and seeing as you get 83 experience for making these nets out of 5 flax (while bowstring only gives 15 each for a total of 75), this might be a fairly potent way of training your crafting. The only thing is that you need a loom to do it (Lumbridge Ring 3, anyone?).

There are also two new potions for fletching and crafting made by a new herb and some rather obscure materials (maybe not frog spawn, but wimpy bird feathers?). They only boost the stat by 3, but it’s the thought that counts. While I doubt they’ll ever be used by the general public, I have no doubt that they will be used to aid players who directly need the levels to craft their own items rather then train or request assistance. For example, why should the level 53 crafter not get to cut his own well-earned onyx?

Aside from all that, Jagex continue their minor convenience updates here and there to keep players itching for more. Well done, guys.