Alex’s Analysis – Sticking To It

__________________________________________

You want a level 99? Who doesn’t? Ah, but if you read my level 99 defense article, you’ll understand why not everybody wants it. Well, why I don’t, anyways.

But you want it. You wouldn’t be here, otherwise. But how to get it?

There’s cheating, of course. Macroing, sweat-shop distribution, multiple-players to one account. These are all very, VERY BAD IDEAS! They are not only against the rules, but they are not your accomplishments! That’s not how you play a game! You play a game for the fun and excitement of the journey, not to be better than the rest.

If you want to be better than the rest, then play some kind of FPS. Those let you do that sort of thing. But NOT RUNESCAPE!

No, if you want level 99 in your skills, you’ll need to earn it. You’ll need to put in the time. You’ll need to put in the effort. You’ll need to wipe yourself of your own sweat, and deodorize your own smelly body with AXE body spray if you want bragging rights.

But oh, you say, it’s just way too hard for me! Everything I do is so slow, and i don’t have time!

… read on, my friend, read on.

_______________________________________________

This is a guide to getting level 99s. But not in the way you’re expecting. I’m not going to highlight the best training methods. Instead, I’m going to highlight how to put them to use. Not the what, the how. Most of this is common sense, but strangely enough, this seems to be lacking in the world nowadays.

Don’t believe me? Youtube, you’re my witness. Have them look up “common sense” and show them your stuff.

There are 5 simple rules to training. Well, that I use, anyways. But here I am, giving away my secrets at the cost of my own time and effort in hopes that somebody, SOMEWHERE out there will read them and take them to heart. The things I do …

Off-topic. Reverting attention. *CLICK*

Throughout this guide, I am going to use this example: Imagine you live on the top of a 200-storey building, and today, the elevator broke down. It’s the start of the long weekend, and you just wanna chill out alone in your house. What do you do? Your Playstation 3 is up there, all alone, waiting for you and your attention, and you have your fridge of unlimited green onion cakes up there that desires to fulfill your never-ending craving! The only way up there now is: stairs.

Dreaded stairs. 200 floors of stairs. 20 stairs per floor. 4000 stairs!

What will you do?

…

The rules are as follows:
____________________________________

1: Pace Yourself

First off, the time factor. You can’t play 25/7 like the majority of all those so-called no-lifers you see everywhere. Sorry, guys, but major corporations (like Jagex, for example) will not hire you because you have full 99s on your resume.

You’re going up the stairs. If you try to make the full bout in one go, you will be incredibly stiff in the morning and unable to proceed with the day. Or week. Or month, for that matter.

Breaks. I don’t mean “break” yourself. I mean “break” the stress. And not just breaks. Don’t go spending every living hour on Runescape, or even doing that skill. Work on it an hour a day or so. This way, you’ll have plenty of time to continue the day job, interact with friends in *gasp* real life, and even get a little exercise! Plus, when you get back onto Runescape, you’ll be refreshed and therefore able to work at it faster.

Undoubtedly, the longer you trudge up the stairs, the slower you’ll become. If you take frequent breaks, stretching your legs and shaking it off, you’ll retain your speed. It may, and will take longer, however, but at the rate you’ll be going, you’ll technically get the goal done the fastest.

You take your time, you get more done. It’s common sense, after all.

____________________________________

2: Make it Fun

You’re trudging up those stairs, and you’re bored. You’re frustrated. You shouldn’t have to be doing this! This is a total waste of time! There are better things you’d rather do. You whip out your PSP and decide to sit on a stair and play a game while you let yourself rest.

Suddenly, you look at your watch, and 2 hours have passed. You could’ve ascended 100 floors in that time! Shoot! Even more frustration, discouragement, and then you suddenly decide to give up and just collapse there with your PSP still in your face.

Games are supposed to be fun. I know you can make “game” without “fun”, but you can’t get “time” out of it either. You need to have fun in order to burn through the required time and get that experience needed to fulfill your goal. After all, when you don’t have to think about the work itself, you lose track of time and continue the process almost subconsciously.

For example, just putting on an mp3 player while trudging up the stairs will help you not only take your mind of the work, but will also give you more energy to keep going faster (especially when you like high-paced songs like I do).

Same with Runescape. Shrink the Runescape window to only fill half the screen, as you probably don’t need to woodcut in the highest detail, and with the other, play some Youtube videos, or watch a full season of whatever TV shows you mortals treasure above life’s ordeals. Play some music. Do some jumping jacks. Heck, run on a treadmill with your laptop on the board. Time will fly, and before you know it, you’ll have gotten more experience then you’ve been expecting.

Just don’t leave your character completely unattended. Make sure you can still click anywhere on the Runescape screen. We wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to him, would we?

____________________________________

3: Set Lesser Goals

One of the most common reasons that people cannot fulfill a goal is discouragement. This usually leads to procrastination and their own downfall despite they having every capability to not only achieve it, but achieve it better than anybody else in the world.

Why discouragement? This is a game! It should be fun, not discouraging!

Look at the 4000 stairs. 200 floors of building to climb. You can’t do it, can you? No, you’ll just have to sit at the bottom, sleep on the incredibly uncomfortable bench, and pray that you remembered to turn off the stove. And what will that leave you the next day?

Still on the bottom, elevator’s still broken, and you haven’t even ascended a step. If you had been trudging up the stairs all this time, you probably would’ve made it to the top! So why didn’t you?

That’s because you looked at the problem as a whole. You can’t climb 4000 stairs. Impossible. You can only climb about … 100 stairs. Right? And 100 stairs are easy. You could probably do it 3 times before stopping for a breather. After you’re refreshed, you can do it again, no problem. There, 600 steps. You’re on the 30th floor now. That wasn’t so bad, was it? Just do that 6 more times, and you’ll be there!

Same with getting a level 99. 13 million experience. That’ll take forever.

So don’t get level 99! Get level 70. That’s so much easier, isn’t it? Only about 800 000 experience. Not even. In fact, totally forget about level 99, and just go for level 70. 70’s the new max in Runescape. Do it!

There. See, it’s become easier already! You’ve worked a couple of days, and now you’re level 70! Awesome! You can go around and brag.

Oh, guess what? The new max is level 80. Same amount of experience you needed for level 70, and level 70 got you something that gives much faster experience. Level 70 only took 40 hours. You’ll have this one done in no time!

Now you’re level 80. Let’s go for level 85. Again, you got a new training method that makes it twice as fast. Use it.

Now for level 90. Hey, you’re used to this. You can get experience like there’s no tomorrow.

Hmm, if you get level 93, you can get this awesome new gear. Let’s go for that. It’ll be tough, but you can do it.

So, after all that, where are you now? Level 93? Wow, you’re more than halfway to level 99! You’ve climbed up more than 100 stairs! You can easily do it all again because you’ve already done it before! And you’ve got some new gear to wear and show off as you do it (or some better leg muscles)!

You see? You need to pace yourself to prevent discouragement. Don’t strive for the gold, but rather the many checkpoints in between. They’re not only easier to accomplish, but they’ll help prevent you from being discouraged and not only to help get you to do it, but it will also improve your will towards getting other things done.

Practice makes perfect, after all. This is why setting realistic goals is so important.

____________________________________

4: Take Your Time

I will say it once again. If you take your time, you get more done. If you immediately dash up the stairs 3 at a time, you’ll get tired out way too quickly. And you just had McDonalds, so you’re going to give yourself an immediate heart attack, and you’ll never get up there!

No! Before you do something extraneous, you need to first warm yourself up. Go up the stairs one at a time for about 40 floors, and then try for 2 at a time. You’re warmed up, your blood is pumping, and your energy is burning. A slow start is sometimes a good one if time is not a factor. And really, time isn’t a factor when you’re training a skill in Runescape.

Same idea. Don’t go ballistic on trying to chop as many trees as possible. Take your time and find a good angle to click them at so that when they do down, your hand will almost subconsciously click the next one. Before you know it, you’ll become your own auto-bot, able to click on the different trees without even looking at the screen and chopping away while you flawlessly enjoy Firefly or solve a sudoku with your other hand.

Start slow. Take your time, and get into it, and you will automatically speed yourself up. Again, in the long run, you will maintain your faster speed a lot more longer and effectively then trying to burn through it, and it will technically take less time to achieve the goal.

____________________________________

5: Find a Favorite

Sure, you can climb those steps. But there are multiple staircases in the building. Maybe one had carpeted steps. Maybe one has a bunch of wonderful murals every fifth floor to look at. Maybe you feel epic and decide you’re going to ascend the fire escape ladders. Heck, there’s a convenient rope dangling out your open window you can climb for just such an occasion, and your friend’s got a video camera pointed at you for an awesome Youtube video. Either of these methods will get you up there. But which would you prefer?

Sure, it will get you the level the fastest. But it’s also the most expensive, or the most boring. You don’t have to do that. Again, we want the fun factor to help us not only mentally speed up the process, but to also allow us to enjoy the experience.

Don’t follow a guide to training the skill. Follow the knowledge base. Before even starting your training, do this:

Make a list of all the different methods to train your skills. At least, ones you can do. And don’t be absurd, like chopping the Miscellania maples for woodcutting experience.

Now, do every item on your list for an hour. It doesn’t matter if you really enjoy one method, or if it’s really fast. Do them ALL. An hour passes, just drop what you’re holding (or give it to me), and try the next one. You may enjoy the training method, but the next one might be even better!

Once the list is done, NOW you can make your choice. Which was the faster? The funnest? The most profitable? Balance these out and make your choice. Not only that, but since you now know how to do the other options, you can even diversify.

Your arms are getting tired from climbing the rope ladder, so you dive into somebody’s window and start taking the stairs again. You can keep going because your arms did all the work, and now your legs are doing it. You avoided needing to take a break! Well, one potentially as long, anyways.

________________________________________

And there you go! You’re up the stairs! You didn’t have to sleep on that Saradomin-Awful bench! You get to spend your weekend in style! Awesome!

Remember. This doesn’t just apply with Runescape. This applies to anything and everything you do. Homework. Work projects. Projects. Anything! Get something done! Get that achievement! Become something incredible!

I imagine there’s one more question out there. How do I get myself to actually start it?

Only one answer to that, my friend:

JUST DO IT! Doesn’t matter if you hate it, JUST DO IT! You really hate it, who cares? JUST DO IT!

There. Done. Have fun, you guys!

And I mean it this time.