Interesting how one day’s news can change something dramatically. At first, the only pet item in anybody’s house was an unused pet basket in the corner of the kitchen. Now, with some good planning and good design work, there’s now an entire room dedicated to them!

Of course, being such an avid constructor, I had to sacrifice one of my rooms just to build the place right outside my combat hall next to my mysterious floating room (No, really! Come to Pollnivneach when I’m online and see for yourself!).

That’s right, folks, you can now turn your house and garden into a virtual petting zoo. Each menagerie can sustain, with a high enough construction level, 10 pets. Not just that, but they don’t count as your summoning pet count when you store them! That means that a psychotic player with 99 construction and a poor sense of humor can build 29 of these things (30th needs to be the house portal) and unleash a whopping 290 different pets upon whoever dares set foot within!

A pity, though, that you can’t interact with them. They’ll fly or bounce around the house unless the door’s closed, but that’s practically it. Guests can’t pet them or hand-feed them, nor can they chat with them or swap recipes. I dare-say that’ll soon change, but for now, I still stand a tad disappointed in the interactivity of the room.

Looks altogether are, for a pet play-pen, pretty darn good. Customizable scenery, ranging from a freezing cold slow patch (don’t know how that works) to a miniature volcano (made with real obsidian!). Because I was too lazy to go for the 100 lava runes needed for the volcano, I stuck with the snow patch. My gecko just absolutely loves me for that …

As for general usefulness … well, if you’ve got grown animals like Boravs and whatnot hogging your bank space, this is a good way to save 10 or so spaces. And hey, I’m always good with extra bank space. Even gives me reason to get that annoying Borav back. And double-reason to get a pet phoenix.

Oh, and did I mention that Jagex finally appeased the popular fan-base’s request for an in-house obelisk? That’s right! With the sacrifice of a thousand shards and 10 of each charm, you too can have your very own small obelisk inside your own home, with which you can recharge your summoning points with. Again, I’m expecting that in the future, a higher construction level will net you the ability to build a much bigger one that can be used to actually train the skill more conveniently.

… who am I kidding? No way that’ll happen!

In other news, you can now set your left-click action on your summoning icon just like your prayer icon. Training summoning, set it to “Withdraw BoB items”. Fighting multi-combat enemies or anything else in general, set it to “Special Attack”. And, for reasons I can only speculate as “a waste of time and money”, you can even set it to “dismiss familiar” with a single instant click for … whatever sadistic and heartless reasons you want. Nevertheless, it’s a good idea to let us choose what we want our buttons to do.

Another nifty thing is that you can now sic your familiar against specific targets, meaning they’ll fight . Familiar battles, anyone? *Hums Pokemon theme*

Which brings me to a speculation (if I may use that word). Once upon a time, there was a bit of a fuss about Runescape turning into a “Runescape-x” due to the mass increase of gameplay automation derived from “plz mak Smith-X”, which ironically was one of the last to appear. It may be nothing, but I’m beginning to see that Jagex are beginning to implement newer forms of shortcuts to our everyday tasks.

I like the concept of simplicity and our own pre-set standards, but at the same time, I’m not too sure I’ll ever get used to them the same way I have gotten used to the original settings over the years. It appears that the public would rather they update something over and over again until it satisfies the majority before messing around with something else. Sort of ween us into this new change rather then altogether mess it up for us and see how we adapt to it. They say that Runescape is being ruined with all these changes.

I say this: “seriously”? I mean, you guys are all humans. Isn’t adaptation something you’ve been doing for millions of years? The whole concept of change is to combat the essence of boredom! Why else did you think Jagex went through all this time, effort, and money to create HD mode? Runescape 2? Tweening updates? Jagex are NOT ruining Runescape with these updates! It’s like covering up a cracked stone wall with plaster. Sure, it’s not appealing to some, but I’d rather have a smooth wall then a cracked, destroyed one. Sometimes you just have to add the plaster before you can paint it, you guys. Deal with it, and adapt to these changes. It’s what makes a game fun and repetitive, after all.

Now that that’s over with, more news. The butler system has been improved to provide … yes, more shortcuts. You can quick-click on them to instantly get you stuff from the bank, skip their snide remarks, and conveniently get them to do much much then they could, except not as much. … that’s what I thought of it, anyways. Thanks for the shortcuts, but no thanks for the personality removal.

And, constructors rejoice, you can finally FINALLY make-x flatpacks! NOW, after all these … months, I will finally be able to get back into action and strive for that elusive level 90 construction! Now, how to get 15 million coins quickly …

Oh yes, one final note. Rsbandb is officially on the Jagex-Recognized fanbase list to be talked about, so long as we don’t openly advertise it. Check out Quick-Find-Code 14-15-293-59239903!

… and yeah, that about does it for this update. If it ain’t broke, fix it. … or something like that. … actually … never mind. That’s it. Stop reading, because I can’t stop typing.