Magic is impressive... But now Minsc leads! Swords for EVERYONE!
”
— Minsc, Baldur's Gate
Magma2050 is a gestalt entity that has spread itself liberally across the internet creating things in its wake. It manifests itself within the world of RuneScape as Magma. It is not entirely sure why it is currently referring to itself in the third person.
I started playing this game in 2004, becoming a member a few months later after completing all of the free-to-play quests. When I started playing members I still had a Ranged level of 1 as can be seen in this screenshot of one of the last few days of my free-to-play time just before I finished Dragon Slayer (hence the adamant platebody). I had only fired three arrows in my entire time on free-to-play; all three were fired on Tutorial Island in order to pass the training and get on with the rest of the game.
Before the overhaul of the graphics to include more head and clothing options, my character was designed to look as piratey and swashbuckly as I could manage. When they added more options I tried to design something a bit better, and finally settled on something that looked just right (there is a picture, coincidentally, just right).
A couple of weeks later I was going through some of my old Magic: The Gathering cards and noticed that I had subconsciously made my character the spitting image of Gerrard Capashen, hero and saviour of Dominaria. The resemblance was quite striking, even down to the bracers.
This user likes to pick things off the floor of the G.E. and sell them on it.
This user's baby troll is named Coronation Chicken Sandwich
While playing RuneScape I try to make most of my decisions about what to do based on the belief that XP > GP. I like to make sure that I know exactly how much work I have to do to get to the next level in skills. As such, I have built a massive Excel spreadsheet that draws my XP data from the RuneScape hiscores-lite pages and filters to a sheet for each skill, designed to let me know how many operations I need to perform to reach any level I specify. On top of that I have built into it a resettable timer that lets me know how long it is until I can do any repeatable task (daily, weekly, monthly etc.). It also accounts for the user's time zone relative to UTC so that events that reset at midnight can be accounted for regardless of where you are in the world. In adding this functionality, I discovered that the International Space Station uses UTC. Kudos to you if you are playing RuneScape from there; I imagine the internet bill is quite high.
Usually, unless there's some new content that I need to get through (such as a quest or some update that can provide me with better equipment) I will do the following things before anything else:
Sort my ports out. Usually only twice a day now I'm on the last zone.
Buy up all the 80 battlestaves that Naff has for 7k gp each, thanks to my completion of the Elite Varrock Diary. Sell immediately for profit.
Equip my Seers' Headband, a melee weapon and Jack of Trades aura with melee combat xp distributed evenly among all skills. Activate aura, pick a Varrock guard's pocket, controlled-attack him, switch to a bow and shoot him to death, bury his bones, chop a tree for 2 logs, burn one, fletch the other (10 skills in 40 seconds, remove Jack of Trades aura to deplete it and give free xp :D )
Travel via the Varrock Spirit Tree to the Spirit Tree I have grown in Etceteria, keep Miscellania's peasants happy by weeding the farming patch there, and pick 4 whiteberries from the bush growing nearby.
Wednesday: Go find all the penguin spies (including the ghost penguin) and the PBJ agent in Penguin Hide and Seek. Spend all the penguin points on Dungeoneering (currently giving me 47,975 xp per week). Send Meg on her merry way and hope that she doesn't accidentally stab herself.
Friday: Go take 525,000 coins to Advisor Ghrim and collect my weekly loot of coal and maple logs. Sell everything.
Whenever: I used to visit Tears of Guthix every week, but now I only need xp in my highest levelled skill there seems little point. I'll start again when the new skill comes out.
Summoning 80: This got me into Stealing Creation with all relevant skills at 80+ making all class 5 items and resources available to me. This enabled me to get morphic tools at speed.
Summoning 93: For the Ardougne Achievement Diary. Was easier to achieve once Bork gave double drops.
Smithing 99: Morphic hammers got me the cape in a fraction of the time and for about 15 million coins from the starting point of training at level 91. The increased cost is mostly down to buying adamantite bars and bypassing the smelting process entirely making platebodies for speed - I can make the money back spending that smelting time slaying instead. This will feed back into Construction, as I am levelling using armour stands (highest xp/gp for oak planks) and rune armour stands give a better value for money than the adamantite ones. The money saved on the Construction cape won't quite make up for the money spent on the Smithing cape, but it's another cape down so what the heck.
Magic 94: Ice Barrage. 'Nuff said.
Magic 99: Achieved through making air battlestaves and alching them. Lost 1.5m gold pieces in the process.
Agility 80: This lets me use the shortest shortcut under Taverley and make water orbs all the faster, for Hydra pouches (sped up even more by the grapple routes to and from Catherby).
Agility 99: Good for running.
Woodcutting 99: It was 96 by the time I thought I should finish it off, and not too difficult to train. I had a magic tree planted in the Gnome Stronghold, which I could regrow using a Hydra if both it and the adjacent 'public' magic tree had been cut down. The proximity of the mini-obelisk enabled recharges when my hydras vanished, and the spirit tree let me get my quota of two evil trees per day easily.
Constitution 99, Attack 99, Strength 99, Defence 99: Just kind of happened naturally while fighting things. As I try with all my combat skills, I levelled them up on level 1 rats in Lumbridge (I started there, I'll finish there). I kept the 3 melee skills balanced and had a triple-cape day.
Crafting 99: 64 battlestaves a day from Zaff/Naff, 20 more from Baba Yaga and a bunch of air orbs bought every day slowly make a difference.
Prayer 92: Soul Split is a handy thing to have. Also, it got me the Elite Varrock Diary and made Bork drop double charms. This made getting the level for Pack Yaks easier, in turn making Prayer training easier still.
Construction 99: Started with the repeated mashing of planks into various items of furniture. Continued with the benefit of penguin hide and seek to save a bit of cash. The popularity of Ancient effigies and the 30k xp assist per day lent an even faster way to level.
Dungeoneering 85: I now have access to all of the resource dungeons currently in existence. All skills are now 85+.
Herblore 96: At this point, all I need is a dose of Greenman's ale and I never have to get someone to assist me with Ancient effigies ever again. Unfortunately I now never get Ancient Effigies since the drop rate has been nerfed down to practically zero, but there you go.
Slayer 99: Come on, Hexhunter...
Max Cape: The best cape I'll probably ever be able to wear. Until the new skill comes out, of course.
I've taken the Bartle Test and I work out to be 93% Explorer, 53% Socialiser, 47% Achiever and 7% Killer. According to the results, Explorers with Achiever as their secondary trait are completionists who like to tick things off as they have done them (RuneScape does that for me but I do like to see fields of green in my quest, music and achievement diary lists), while Explorers with a secondary trait in Socialiser tend to find out things and put them on wiki sites for everyone else to learn (Aaaand here I am).
How come Iceland is mostly green, but Greenland is mostly ice?
I find it odd that many food manufacturers are claiming their products are made from real ingredients. I don't recall anyone suggesting they were made from imaginary ones.
I don't understand the mentality of people that clamp cars. If the goal is to discourage people from staying in that location, why make the cars more stationary than before?
On a similar note, what is it with those notices telling people to stop downloading movies illegally, that play at the begining of legally purchased commercial DVDs? If anything is preaching to the converted, that is...
Maybe it's because I've spent a long time playing a Paladin character in Dungeons & Dragons, but every time I see a road sign that says "CAUTION: LORRIES TURNING" I get an image in my head of an 18-wheeler repelling undead with an aura of holy rightiousness.
Also the sign "HEAVY PLANT CROSSING" brings back bad memories of Day of the Triffids.
Why do birds suddenly appear, every time you are near? If they happen to be vultures it may well be because you smell like carrion.
How clever could the aliens in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" have actually been if they had communication systems that relied on sound waves, attached to the outer hull of spaceships?
I think that childhood is where we spend time believing in monsters that don't exist, and adulthood is where we spend time trying to ignore the monsters that do.
I really liked the irony of the film "Last Action Hero". You have this boy explaining to a fictional movie character how ridiculous his world is by pointing out all of the impossible or highly improbable things that happen in it. This is after the boy happens to find a magic cinema ticket that lets him enter the movie world...
I bought a bag of brazil nuts one Christmas. It said:
Brazil Nuts
Contents: Brazil Nuts
Produce of Brazil
Warning - This product contains Nuts
The bag was transparent, so I could see what they were. Thoroughly pointless.
Diamonds are forever? Hardly. They chip, wear, can be burned or dissolved... To be technically correct, the song should really be called "Diamonds are a metastable allotrope of carbon".
If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? No. Absolutely not. It will create vibrational waves through the air - patterns of compressed and rarefied air radiating away from the point of impact, but these are not sound. Sound is the sensation that a being experiences when such a wave enters an ear-like structure, and the movement of that structure by the wave is transduced into electrical signals that are then interpreted by the brain of that being. Some analogies of the question:
"If something radiates light but nobody is around to see it, does it produce a vision?"
"If something makes a noxious vapour but it does not enter a nose, does it produce a smell?"
"If something produces sugar but it does not make contact with a tongue, does it produce a taste?"
When put into those analogies it is clear that the answer on all counts must be "no". SCIENCE > ZEN.
If Snake Plissken from "Escape from New York" and "Escape from L.A." was pitted in a fight to the death with Riddick from "Pitch Black" and "The Chronicles of Riddick", who would survive? I think probably both of them would survive long enough to realise what was going on, then very briefly team up just long enough to hunt down the person that kidnapped them and put them there, and teach him a very severe and terminal lesson.
Someone asked me what I thought a "cult game" was. I decided that it was either a game that everyone plays but doesn't like admitting, or possibly something like pass the parcel but with a chicken and when the music stops whoever has the chicken sacrifices it.
I am always amused by people who misspell the word "Rogue" (meaning renegade, bandit, fugitive) for the word "Rouge" (French for "Red", usually meaning powdery red blusher). Every time I read "Star Wars: Rouge Squadron" it makes me chuckle as I imagine a bunch of X-Wing pilots in heavy makeup.
Whoever said "Whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger" really hadn't given due consideration to Polio.
There are three things that make something great. They are: Dragons, Lasers and Ninjas.
"As I was going to St Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Each wife had seven sacks. Each sack had seven cats, Each cat had seven kits. Kits, cats, sacks, wives; how many were going to St Ives?" - Most people say one person, as you passed the rest and they must have been going the other way. I say that with that much of an entourage, and given the period the puzzle is set, they must have been in some kind of horse-drawn waggon while I would either be on foot or on horseback, making me much slower or faster than them. Therefore it is quite possible for one of us to pass the other while still travelling in the same direction.
There should be a word for the feeling of disappointment felt when picking up a mug to drink out of it, only to realise you just finished the last of the drink out of it last time you picked it up, and that there is nothing left. There is no disappointment quite like it.
Every time Captain Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation says "Fire at will!", in my head the entire bridge turns round and shoots at Commander William Riker, who whispers "Why.....?" before collapsing in a heap on the floor.
The man that sang that song proclaiming "I can get a record player, and a generator; generate the music that makes you feel better" really didn't think things through. In addition he would need an amplifier, some speakers, some cables to connect the three together, an extension cord with multiple sockets, and considering they are far enough away from civilisation to prevent him from plugging it into the mains he will need a hefty car to transport the lot to wherever it is going. On top of all that, it's probably going to be difficult to get hold of all that person's favourite music on vinyl, and listening to it over the generator noise would be horrible. All very impractical. I fully expect a sequel song called "Oh, to hell with all this - I'll just buy you an Ipod."
I'm not entirely sure how a savannah-dwelling creature like the lion gets to be "King of the Jungle". Maybe it commutes.
Whose bright idea was it to make it so computers that have no working keyboard attached say "Keyboard Error. Press F1 to resume"?
I think that for the sake of innovation in music, anyone who wishes to use a sample of someone else's work should first be forced to wrestle a copy of the original free from its position after it has been glued to the chest hair of a hungry bear.
Why is it that the more incapacitatingly strong an alcoholic drink is, the more top heavy and precarious the glass is that it is traditionally served in?
I've been playing Final Fantasy XII recently, and the plot seems strangely familiar... You start off following the life of a blond kid who lives in a desert settlement, living with an adoptive family since his homeland was taken over by the evil Empire. The Emperor has a second-in-command who is a cruel man in dark, imposing armour. The blond kid eventually gets sent on a quest by this old wise man, which gets him caught up with a sky pirate who owns the fastest ship in the local area. This pirate has a furry, nonhuman copilot, and a massive bounty on his head. One particular bounty hunter decides to make it his life's duty to capture this pirate, pursuing him to a city in the clouds where a mining operation is run by a debonair man who is trying to keep the Empire happy while secretly helping the rebellion against them. Eventually the bounty hunter gets eaten by a creature in the sands. I've just helped break a princess out of an imperial detention block, who happens to be a leader in the rebellion. The Empire has a massive orbital strike platform capable of laying waste to whole cities. I am fully expecting at some point to fly along a trench on it, and fire a proton torpedo into a thermal exhaust port.
Glen A. Larson should have learned by now the immutable fact that it is impossible to create a successful remake of Knight Rider. I think he should be happy that Battlestar Galactica worked and try something else. Maybe Buck Rogers.
On a similar note, Phil Silvers was Sergeant Bilko, and Peter Sellers was Inspector Clouseau. I think Steve Martin should have avoided starring in the modern film adaptations like the plague.
I think the TV show "24" would have been much better if each series followed on immediately from the last. 24 hours without sleep after the first series, 48 after the second, 72 after the third, and then the hallucinations start setting in.
If I could travel to parallel universes, I would primarily do it to collect complete series of my favourite TV shows that were cancelled in their first season by stupid TV executives. For example:
The Event
FlashForward
Dark Skies
Code Name: Eternity
Space: Above and Beyond
Threshold (Foothold and Stranglehold)
Defying Gravity
American Gothic
The Tripods (Okay this got 2 series but for heaven's sake, it's a trilogy!)
Babylon 5: Crusade (Though I would make sure this was in a universe where Warner Brothers told JMS he could make the show he wanted without restrictions)
Andromeda (The version where Robert Hewitt Wolfe was allowed to make the show he wanted instead of turning it into a Kevin Sorbo ego-fest. As far as I'm concerned the series died when he left mid-second season)
The TV series "Outer Limits" should be released as a complete every-series boxed set in two halves:
The Outer Limits: Just the happy endings
The Outer Limits: The ones where they end with humanity being doomed
Band Aid was of course, well intentioned, but the record they released had some glaring inaccuracies that really should have been addressed:
"And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time"
Apart from Mount Kilimanjaro which has a permanent snowcap.
"Where nothing ever grows"
Apart from the rainforests around the Congo region and arable land in the sub-Saharan region.
"No rain or rivers flow"
Apart from over the rainforests again, and the Nile - the longest river in the world.
"Do they know it's Christmas time at all?"
In the half of Africa that follows Islam, probably not. In Ethiopia, where the song was directed, they actually celebrate Christmas on January 7th so that's a no there as well.
Don't even get me started on that Katie Melua song about bicycles.
On top of that, Tinie Tempah said something was written in the stars a million miles away. Considering you have to travel 92 million miles before you even get to one star (the Sun), he's way off before he starts encountering enough to pluralise.
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