So you’ve been away a while and you remember playing this weird game back in school where you mined coal and killed cows for hours on end. After logging in you wonder: is this is still the same game?

Worry not, this is still the same Runescape you knew and loved, just with a few new and awesome things added! In this article I will go over the top 10 things for returning players to have a go at to really catapult themselves back into the game.

10. Check your kingdom!

This is at number 10 mainly because it might not apply to everyone but it’s likely that most people have done this quest at some point and invested some cash into it. If you’ve been away a while then your workers have been busily gathering the items you set them to and the result can easily be a few million coins in today’s prices. For easy access, simply grab a charged ring of wealth and rub it for the teleport option to Miscellania.

If you’re interested in getting started with this regardless the quest you must complete is called “Kingdom of Miscellania” and it’s just a very simple management simulation with very little input required for some decent rewards.

9. Hit up Solomon’s store

So this is the core of Runescape’s microtransaction feature and the central focus for a lot of people’s discontent about RS3. However! It offers a good chunk of free upgrades and sometimes cosmetic items for members such as bank slot upgrades which can be pretty handy for anyone regardless of your attitude towards cash shops 🙂

8. Check out the loyalty shop

If you happened to have been subscribed to Runescape for any length of time after you left, it’s likely you will have had loyalty points building up. These points are currently the only way you are able to purchase auras, which are hugely beneficial to the skill they affect. To open up the loyalty shop you simply need to head to a guy named Xuan either in Burthorpe:

or Varrock:

The shop interface is shown below:

For general purpose auras I highly recommend jack of trades, penance and dark magic. If you feel like you specifically want to train a specific skill then getting the aura related to that. Some of the better skilling auras include greenfingers and five-finger discount.

For the love of god do NOT buy vampyrism. It’s effect is capped at 50 hp per hit since it was never updated with the new hp pool since EoC was released. It’s quite obvious that 50 hp out of 9900 is not very significant.

7. Combat Academy

So depending on how long of a break you had you may or may not have done this already. However this place is so good that it’s a bit higher up on the list and you may want to do it again even if you have completed it just for a refresher.

It basically just teaches you the fundamentals of the current combat system in a few short and sweet tutorials as well as giving you a TON of experience awarding books at the end (Just speak to her after you’ve finished the training) in any combat-related skill (including summoning/prayer/herblore!) and also scales with your level.

She also provides free training dummies for you to practice your abilities on. They last forever and you can customise them to change their weaknesses and an assortment of other configuration options such as making the dummy retaliate or forcing it to take maximum damage every hit.

6. Daily challenges

So this came out with the big combat overhaul (Evolution of combat) and it gives you a new task every day (up to 5) that awards you a chunk of experience in the related skill. There are a variety of different challenges that sometimes take you away from your preferred training method, however the experience rewarded for handing it in is usually worth the time.

As well as experience you’re awarded a treasure hunter key for possibilities of even more experience and also if you handed any items in (for example shieldbows for a fletching challenge) you will get rewarded with a mystery bag that contains items which are roughly equal in value, effectively making the experience free.

If you don’t like the challenge you’re given (some are not very fun or do not reward as much xp) then it’s possible to reroll a challenge once using vis wax. On the other hand if you DO like the challenge, you can extend it twofold with vis wax to receive double the reward.

5. Distractions and Diversions

Often referred to as “D&Ds” these are activities that are usually limited to daily, weekly or monthly lockouts and almost always reward a large amount of experience relative to the time invested, daily ones giving the least and monthly ones the most. Some of them you may recognise as they have existed in the game for a very long time

These are great ways to reduce the monotony of training some of the slower skills and the extra rewards apart from the experience can be pretty good sometimes.

As a small side note the same interface contains the minigames as well. These give out specific rewards from their own table, some of which are useful and some of which are outdated. The main draw of it however is the thaler system, this is a universal minigame currency you receive for playing any minigame (and at 5x the rate while playing the one on spotlight).

4. Quests!

Over the years or months that you’ve been away, there will probably have been a whole slew of quests released since. Not only do most of the recently released quests grant an enormous amount of experience and useful items, they also give you treasure hunter keys which is always fun.

If you’re a lorehound then all of these new stories are bound to keep you interested for a long time and even if you’re not too fond of questing, there are a few that can unlock some really useful things like Plague’s End.

3. Check out new skills

So depending on how long you’ve been away, it’s likely you’ll have one or two new skills at level 1 in your stat sheet. These are divination and invention and both are powerful in their own right with many useful items within their respective skills. Just be aware that invention requires level 80 in smithing, crafting and divination before you are able to level it as it’s classified as an “elite” skill.

Divination is a gathering skill and artisan skill combined, which means you gather a resource (energy) and also make it into a bunch of useful stuff at the same time.

Items you make include pocket-slot items that automatically bank certain resources such as fish and ore, skilling locations that grant a huge chunk of experience and resources for a limited duration and even an item that can protect you from dying! Once…

2. Join a clan/friendschat

I’m not going to pretend I know every little detail about Runescape, that would be completely arrogant to say the least. However a lot of what I do know comes from my clan mates; there are many different kinds of people who play and plenty of them have different interests within the game, some to the point where they have become certified experts in that particular area.

So being able to access this wealth of information is obviously a great advantage to a returning player, you can even refer them to this article to see if they have any to add or correct 🙂

The way I joined a clan was through the Runescape forums, scroll down to the clan section and look in the subforums that most suit your style of play. I was looking in the 100+ one as I love to do slayer and PvM, so I just quickly flicked through some of the advertising threads and saw if any tickled my fancy.

Once you’ve found one you like it’s always good to join their clan chat as a guest just to get the general feel of it and see if it’s exactly what you’re looking for. Most clans will have their guest channel open and are welcoming to their guests.

Joining a Clan chat is extremely easy, once you know the name of the clan just simply click on the guest clan chat tab and then the join button. Once the dialogue box pops up just type it in and press enter, then you just say hi!

The process is exactly the same for a friends chat, just click on the tab with the blue person behind the green one and go through the same process.

As well as the obvious benefits of being a community, the clan itself can give you actual material gain as well. Some of the higher ranked players within a clan can summon an avatar that grants 3% increased experience in almost anything you do as long as you’re on the same world as them. If you’re close to the avatar itself you get a 6% increase. Not all clans will have this however and it’s usually specified in the recruitment thread how many (if any) they have available.

There’s also a clan citadel which provides skilling areas, some of which are great to train some skills in a more relaxed manner and some will even save you some money (crafting, summoning). Skilling in the citadel also benefits the clan itself and if you do enough of it every week you get awarded more experience from your clan cloak and the quartermaster also grants you a hefty chunk of bonus experience in a skill of your choice (limited to the skills trained in the citadel).

and finally number 1……………

1. Customise your interface!

While some may tell you they don’t like the new interface, objectively and practically it’s leaps and bounds ahead of the old one. The level of customisation it allows you is absolutely insane, however don’t let that scare you off: it’s really easy to do.

There’s too much to really cover in text so I’m currently working on a video guide to show everyone how to get the most out of the new interface, expect that to be out in a couple of days in the next blog!