In many ways, Dragon Slayer is the final f2p quest: you wander close to the Wilderness, specifically Edgeville, to start. Your journey will take you to the Adventurer's Guild (where you must have lots of quest points to enter), across towards Rimmington, up onto the Ice Mountain, down into dwarf mines, back to Lumbridge, over to Port Sarim (maybe more than once), slide back to Draynor, and maybe even into the Wilderness for planks and nails lying around. Given that this travel was done without benefit of the Lodestone network, so hopefully one had a Magic skill high enough to speed this journey along.
Speaking of skills, you will need crafting to make an unfired bowl, high enough magic to telekinesis part of a map away from a prisoner, maybe sufficient cooking or fishing to provide healing rations, and a good mix of combat skills to get through lesser demons, skeletons and moss giants before you even reach Elvarg.
Returning to Runescape of the present, my completed quest list looked much different than I remembered. Since coming back, I'd helped druids, mages, barbarians, and Ashdale colonists. Oddly enough, I'd done Rune Mysteries and Gunnar's Ground before, but I could get credit for doing them again.
Now other quests I'd done before were gone - slaying the vampire in Draynor Manor, helping Doric set up his smithy, rescuing Ernest from being a chicken, helping the goblin generals pick a colour for their armour, repair the Shield of Arrav, infiltrate the Phoenix Gang, rescue Prince Ali, and thwart the Black Knights by invading their fortress. Good times, and it's sad to see them gone. What's funny is I can still talk to the drunk doctor in the Blue Moon Tavern about slaughtering the vampire, or chat with the people around Draynor Manor about saving Ernest. Like ghosts in the virtual machine, I keep finding reminders of past exploits. Those quests might not have advanced skills and maybe that's what players prefer, which explains the change. Nonetheless, I love the stories in the quests, not just the fights and rewards.
Disirregardless, the time had come to finish this quest - if nothing else, I needed the bank space taken up by various and sundry items to placate everyone from obscure oracles to ersatz captains. So with a full complement of adamant armor, potion buffs, a rune mace, anti-dragon breath shield, swordfish and willow logs for the bonfire HP boost. Heading to Sarim with the last few tidbits packed away, we set sail and, in an epic cut scene, draw the ire (and fire) of Elvarg of Crandor!
Shipwrecked, I leave Captain Ned and the Cabin Boy and venture up the volcano. Most monsters ignore me, but the moss giants definitely don't like me. But I like the adamant ore I can get without interference from other miners, so even before finding the wyrm's hoard, I've got some treasure. The lesser demons at the crest of the volcano ignore me too, despite being more powerful than the moss giants. Spelunking inside the caldera, again monsters ignore me, except the skeletons, which fall quickly to my crushing mace. And then I find Elvarg. I've only gone through one swordfish so far, which gives me a great feeling of confidence!
Charging in, I get hit for a few blasts, losing about 1K HP before closing into melee range. And then, trading blows, I quickly puul ahead in the war of health attrition. One swordfish later, I'm victorious, pulling off Elvarg's head and stuffing the trophy into my backpack.
Stopping for a quick selfie next to an unfortunate adventurer, I wander along the passage to find myself under another volcano, this time the familiar one on Karamja. Rather than pay for a boat trip, I magically jaunt back to the mainland. (Another erstwhile quest feature: you can buy Karamjan Rum, but you can't just bring it back to Gielinor proper.) One last discussion about being heroic, and I can buy and wear rune plate. (Well, at least I can buy the breastplate for 65K gold. Every other piece of armour must be looted, traded, smithed or bought on GE.)
So I'm going to power through the other quests - if slaying a dragon was this straightforward, then what can be so hard about the other quests?
(Cue music suitable for doomed fools.)
Good hunting!
~ Tidwin ~
No comments:
Post a Comment