Almost to the end of the first month the first month of the New Year and since it’s a new year I thought I thought I might start things off with a look at the most popular and one of the oldest PVP mini-games in Runescape. Castle Wars!

Castle Wars has been around since December of 2004 and is still very popular with high levels. Players will join either the Saradomin side or the Zamorak team to play. There’s also a Guthix portal to split you up in case you don’t mind which team. No matter what team you are on in a few minutes the game will begin. This is a game mostly built around capture-the-flag. So basically the higher 120+ levels will run over to the other castle and capture the flag, bring it back (while defending off attackers). The team that does that the most will reign victorious!

Now it isn’t very hard to figure out why this game is so addictive as I’ve said. It isn’t just because of the original theme of capture-the-flag. Castle wars is a great mini-game to test out endurance and to just have fun hitting high numbers with godswords in maxed out gear all while being a safe mini-game. With Maxed strength bonus armor, castle wars bracelet (an enchanted emerald bracelet), and extreme strength potions a player wielding an

Armadyl god sword a player could max out to hit 104 damage on a flag bearer. Unless a that player has been brewed to above that hp level then its an instant kill. The game doesn’t always require players to be either really tough or real high defense. If you mostly want to go offensive you grab your range/mage armor bow/staff and go annihilate the competition that’s trying to steal your flag. On the outer wall is where most mages or rangers will stand and fire at anybody on the other team below. If your on Ancient Magicks and you have a few extra runes on hand this is a great mini-game to use them on. Most players wear the highly conductive melee armour and are just sitting ducks. As for rangers set up it is best to bring arrows/bolts you can afford to lose. Instead of going to your outer wall it would be great to help out your melee friends and go to the opponents outer wall with seercull and spec the runes outta the mages. This will effectively lower their mage level and they will have to switch to a lower spell and not be able to hit as accurately.

Another reason is to get the rewards that are mostly just to show off in player owned houses. The rewards system is simple. The winning team gets two tickets while a tie would end up giving both teams 1 ticket each. As you would guess the losing team would earn no tickets. These tickets can be used to earn the coveted “navy-gold decorative armor.” A full set is 2.9k tickets. This said, it would take a great team to win every single game a total time of 484 hours. or approximately 20 days. This though is hardly possible though so giving it about 1 thousand hours would be more realistic. So if you’re setting out to play a game of castle wars and see someone wearing full navy gold armor. You know they’ve spent countless hours finding the tricks of the game and know you’ll be on a winning team if you’ve got enough of them on your team.

Castle Wars is very versatile when it comes to having a great time on Runescape also. Clans can come up with how they want to play the game. Be it trying to kill the most people in a single game (my personal favorite), or create rules such as no armour and weapons just to see how many flags each team can capture before being kicked to death.

Putting versatility and Pvp together, Castlewars has a lot to offer. Veteran clan war players have learned tricks such as the underground rock fall trap. Players will set the trap, stand there with a dragon spear and if someone comes near they will spec with the dragon spear and collapse the trap. Any players caught in the trap will be instantly killed. Using high ground for ranging and maging is also advised. The island in the center has 4 towers that can be used to gain this advantage over the other team choosing that route. Stepping stones are placed on either side of the river to either slow down or speed up crossing to the other side. You might be met with some ice spells and rangers eagerly waiting to kill you. Rarely on some smaller worlds these stepping stones could pose a benefit. Less people could be guarding them and thus destroying the opponents flanks.

So with being one of the oldest mini-games it seems like it hasn’t lost its sparkle.. Well at least looking at the flag poles stand point. The castles limestone might have corroded a tiny bit over time. But its always a great game to visit and maybe even get hooked onto for a few hours at a time and make a few allies. The last question though you should ask is..

Which side will you choose!

With that said I would like to say have a great February and ill see you all later while i go play some castle wars. Comments are always welcome of course.