Xenowars | Defense, Dungeon, And Dung
Old School RuneScape | Cold War And The Slayer
Often, I find myself just doing a little bit of everything. From doing a quest that turned me into a penguin. Slaying more monsters for Slayer. I even worked on a dairy achievement and made a small impartment to my house.
Quest: Cold War
Of silly things I've done for questing in this game so far, this one wins them all. I never thought I'd be dressing up in a penguin suit and attempting to gain access to a secret penguin facility. Yet that is what ended up happening.
This all starts at quite an innocent place as well the Ardougne Zoo. Where you would never expect anything odd going on there. Expect, the zoo keeper there who is a bit nuts swear the penguin that is being held in captivity is evil and doing some strange things.
I was first tasked with going out to an iceberg and building a bluff to hide in to gather some information about penguins. At the time I did not think anything of it. I just thought I was there to study penguins in a more natural habitat for the zoo. The penguins that I ended up observing ended up acting a little strange but I did not see anything wrong with the interaction they were having with each other. The zoo keeper on the other hand almost lost his mind.
Next, the zoo keeper wanted me to help gather and build plans for a penguin suit. It just so happens that at one point I had upgraded my house to have the required bench to work on things that are considered toys. For some strange reason, a penguin suit was considered a toy. So, I gathered the required materials and crafted it.
I then returned to the zoo and got into the penguin suit. The zoo keeper then shrank me down to the size of an average penguin. I then got into the area of the zoo that had other penguins inside it. They to my shock were having quite a conversation I could not believe.
They were hinting about operatives, secret codes, meetings, passphrases, and all sorts of stuff. I did not learn all of this at once. It took a little while and me having to go to another location. I even discovered they were working with the sheep down in Lumbridge of all places.
One thing ended up leading to another and then another. Before I knew it I was back on the iceberg where I had set up a bluff on. It turns out they had a secret base there all along. It took using some tricks and the knowledge I had gained but I managed to be given a base ID and some other critical information to get inside.
At this point, I was just in total shock. I thought the zoo keeper was crazy. I'm still quite certain he is. It just turns out he was not crazy about the penguins being up to no good.
Once inside the base, I attempted to press my luck as much as I could. I needed to gather as much information as I could about the penguins. I wanted to learn more about the war they were planning. The layout of their base. If they had captured anyone to gather intel out of them.
Let’s just say they were doing a lot more than trying to learn how to fly. They were planning a full-on invasion. I also ended up overstaying my welcome. They realized I was not a real penguin and I had to flee for my life. I told the zoo keeper all about it. It seemed that day he was vindicated.
Further Slayer Tasks
While I could keep leveling up my defense levels by doing some rather AFK camping of Sandcrabs. It was in my best interest to keep grinding out slayer levels. At some point, I'm hoping this activity ends up being a great money-maker for me. For the time being it was still rather lackluster.
Something I was rather starting to love is a lot of the creatures I can take out with melee end up dropping bones. This allowed me to keep working on some further prayer experience without having to spend money or be more committed to activities that purely focused on getting prayer experience.
This ended up being one of those skills I tried to work on a couple of hours a day two or three times a week if not more. I rather love the activity. I however did not want to go overboard with it either since I had so many quests still to work out for the combat level I already have.
While my melee and magic skills have been moving along quite well. I have been heavily slacking in my ranged combat. Since I had an Ava’s to collect most of my arrows, I had no excuses to not attempt to level it up some as well.
One slayer creature I still struggle with quite a bit are fire giant. They require quite a few trips to the bank to restock on food or attempt to safe spot them with ranged or magic.
In the past, I tried to kill them with magic at a not-so-great safe spot. That ended up costing me an arm and a leg to do. While it’s tempting to want to blacklist the creature from my slayer tasks. I ended up finding a better solution.
It turns out there are some much better locations to safely spot them and hunt them in the Waterfall Dungeon. Even better after ten minutes here they become none aggressive unless I hit one. Making it easy for me to walk out and get some loot. Then I got back into my safe spot and kept taking them out with ranged weapons.
I even went and spent some money before finding this spot on some better-ranged gear. A new bow and better dragon hide were not that costly. At these lower combat levels, it can be a bit easy to overlook making some needed upgrades gear-wise. As I'm just not thinking about it between ranged, magic, and mele among all the other skills I'm slowly leveling up over time.
Once I was done, I had collected almost 8k experience from all the fire giants I needed to kill. Gaining myself another slayer level. Along with some further ranged levels. I did however have my ranged combat experience split towards defense as well. Since leveling up defense is my main combat focus for the time being.
It would seem that day I'd end up with more than one slayer task I did not care much for. In another one, I had to kill a bunch of crocodiles in the desert. The issue is heat damage and needing to drink water.
Improving My House
While I've not done much regarding construction. I did end up needing to expand my house slightly. At the time I was getting slayer tasks from the dungeon under Edgeville. It also turns out there is a piece of jewelry that is called an amulet of glory that can teleport you there.
While that dungeon is not that far away from a fairy ring that I usually take to get to the Grand Exchange. After finding out I could build a quest hall and, in that hall, I could mount an amulet of glory on the wall. I thought that sounds like a great idea.
Now every time I teleport to my house. I only need to quickly run over and click on the wall where I have a mounted amulet of glory to get teleported close to a bank, the dungeon, and not that far from the Grand Exchange as well.
I also find as I take on more challenging content that I'm teleporting to my house to use the altar to restore my prayer points as well. At some point, I'll need to make quite the investment to level up my construction further so I can build some healing pools in this place as well.
For now, I feel like this small improvement to the house has saved me a bit of time and even changed how I think about getting around and recovering after being in combat. It's always fun when such a little change ends up having a bigger impact than this one did.
Easy Kandarin Diary Achievement
The highest skill requirement for any of the Kandarin diaries was level 20 agility. Which I more than had for quite some time now. All the tasks here were also quite easy to do. Some of which I already had done without even putting any focus on this place.
You also always have those odd ones that you just don’t find yourself doing normally. One such task was just planting some jute seeds. To fill a giant plot like this requires three seeds. The best part was I did not even have to wait for the plant to grow. I doubt I've ever gone back to harvest this patch either. So, it’s just sitting there waiting to be collected.
While I've done a decent amount of fishing. I tend to just farm for something of use or the best experience I can get for my level. So, it was no shock I had yet to get the achievement for farming in this region using a big net. I ended up catching some mackerel.
The next task I worked on was a bit of a fun one. One I had no idea you could even do. Turns out you can fill a fishing bowl with seaweed and water. Then pay a shopkeeper so you can collect a fish from a larger aquarium to put in it. Make yourself a little fish tank.
Next up I was off to play on a giant church organ. I always thought all churches in this game only had plays to pray at to store prayer points. I had no clue one had a massive organ in it to play.
There were also just some of the normal things you would expect. Like buying a special kind of stew the area is known for out of a shop. Get a cup of tea.
There was also a bunch of stuff I had already done. Such as using an agility shortcut, talking with certain NPCs, killing an elemental in a basement which I had to do for a quest, and collecting some flax out of a field.
While I find many of the easy tiers for diary rewards to not be that great. This one ends up giving you an item called Kandarin headgear which can be used as a light source. There is no requirement to wear it just needs to be in the inventory. It’s also not a candle so I don’t have to worry about using it in unsafe mines and causing an explosion that kills me.
Final Thoughts
Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Old School RuneScape.