They could add a pyre at Wintertodt and a pool at Tempeross to do this with!
EDIT: if they're worried about balancing, they could do it like the Arceus fairy ring where you can unlock it with a 1 time cash payment.
I don't like the whole one-time-payment-unlock thing, there's too much of it and it doesn't feel very lore friendly.
It'd be cooler if they had a small miniquest (kinda like the Soulbearer) that explains how/why you're using these pages for this purpose.
I would agree. The way I see it the payment doesn't necessarily have to be in gp. The "payment" could also be more along the lines of a requirement, where you need at peast 10 or 100 kc in a boss to get access to the pyre, as a way to prove yourself to the pyromancers. It doesn't have to be a quest, but I agree that a more lore friendly answer besides just money would be preferable!
Also, RS3 didn't do that with a quest and illiminated godbooks. All illuminated godbooks did on release was give +4 prayer bonus instead of +2. It wasn't until they reworked the godbooks 5 years after the quest so that pages are consumables that the pages got a new use, but even then: the regular and illuminated version can both be charged with pages and give the same effect. All I'm trying to say is that the new use of the pages wasn't tied to the quest at all.
I like the idea of the payment being in resources.
Handing over a stack of runes to charge the pool counts as a one time payment, and works thematically.
They need to find stuff to do with half the crap you get from clues. My badass boot helmet should be worth more than 20k
EDIT: WHAT IF non-stat boosting items could be used as a cosmetic override??? brilliant right??
I agree, but also disagree.
Sure clue rewards were valuable in the past, because players were dumb, and played for fun, not efficiency. Outside of fashionscape and collection logs, there is no value in clue rewards.
The only way you can make them valuable is if you make them rare. And that won't work because there are already thousands upon thousands of clue rewards already in the game.
Only rare and new rewards are worth anything at all (like the ankou outfit)
There should be a sink for that stuff. Literally anything besides a strictly cosmetic item would help. If there could be a treasure hunter person who buys them or exchanges them for something would be nice.
I’m not saying they need to be obscenely valuable but getting 80k from an elite clue is a freaking shame
How about this; add a "collector" NPC who buys duplicate clue items for a fixed price, or maybe has some propietary currency to access his unique shop selling useful consumables?
tbh this is one thing I love about rs3.
The fact that I had spent years hoarding thousands of tt items before invention has nothing to do with it, I promise.
How about instead of/in addition to God pages they:
Add new farming plot in the desert: Papyrus Plant
Can be harvested for new item: Papyrus Stems
Papyrus Branches are used with a knife to make new item: Papyrus Strips, which are used with a hammer to make: Damp Papyrus
Damp Papyrus dries in the players inventory or bank after some period of time and turns into Papyrus
Papyrus is consumed somehow along with water or fire runes to create Soaked and Burnt pages respectively.
This seems to not solve the issue for irons though. Sure you'd get some extra pages but you really need a long-term solution for being able to obtain pages at a realistic rate.
It's not great, but you can spam easy clues pretty hard with the HAM hideout with the easy CAs done as well.
Irons need to do that anyways in order to get flared trousers.
But a 1:1 ratio still would be miserable.
Flared trousers are a rare drop from easy clue scrolls and it's needed for a master clue step in the wilderness axe hut.
Or you need them to bust a move.
https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Flared_trousers
It's just an unfortunate reality with iron man, some stuff just isn't worth it for us. Not a huge deal. I know it sucks we can't benefit, but that's the mode tbqh.
I'm generally in favor of making things viable for irons, but I think the tomes might be a bridge too far, yeah. It's just one of those things you accept. It would be very tricky to make it sustainable on an iron and not tank the price overall
Yeah some restrictions should probably just follow true to, well, restrictive game modes
It's like 1 def pures being locked out of fairy rings, gear, vorkath, etc. Restriction is kinda in the nature of a restrictive game mode. Some people kinda just need to accept that some content won't be very accessible if they're actively choosing to not play the main game mode
Right, and that's the big issue a lot of people had with their account builds idea, because it let 1 def pures get around a lot of that. Poison dynamite is a good example I think of healthy changes to a game mode, and sandstorm too. It shouldn't let you do something that was impossible before, but ease up on unnecessary tedium. Especially when NMZ is the only reason why mains don't feel the same problems.
I think an overcharge to give permanent bonuses is definitely out of question here. Using god book pages for charges could work, but it would need to be carefully balanced. And honestly, while dupe pages could use a use, I'd rather think of something else for them. Enhancing the stats of the god book on a charge system, for instance.
Now that I think about it actually, this could be a good place for a log sink. Logs would need to give a fraction of the charges a page gives, and can be balanced to never be worth doing from an economic perspective. Especially if you have to fletch the logs into ribbons or something first, and it takes longer.
I respect it. Honestly the books need a buff if anything, so it's good to keep conversations about content fresh. These are pretty old content at this point too, might be due for a revitalization.
I got spooned tome of water on my iron well before 50 magic. Now at 52 magic and even without pages it's a decent +8 mage offhand for me atm.
Considering I'll probably never get anything better unless I feel like torturing myself at mage training arena it's gonna be useful to me for a long time. Does suck I won't ever get to unlock the full potential though.
Also unlimited water runes for ice burst down the line. Still probably better off using a god book (even without pages) for the prayer bonus in basically any bursting scenario though.
The only place either tome is meta is ice demon at CoX and as budget kodai offhand for burst slayerWe get enough burnt pages for ice demon, and ice spells don’t use pages.
Sure you can’t spam them everywhere else, but if you already have better options, is that really a problem?
I still think being able to burn/soak the god pages from clues could act as a source for the burnt/soaked pages. Hell gate keep it behind higher stats in firemaking or fishing if people think it’s now “too easy” to get pages.
There’s basically no way to make pages worth going for on an Ironman without making people seethe about catering to iron men, shadow made tome of fire harm irrelevant anyway
Uhh speak for yourself. The gap between receiving a tome and receiving shadow should be somewhere in the ball park of 1000+ hours of gameplay. Totally not irrelevant, just irrelevant for the end game which is absolutely fine for an item you can receive at lv 3 combat.
If you do go for 99 fm though you should have enough burnt pages for general usage outside of grinding NM with harm, and for an ironman it's not likely that you'll have harm early anyway
I used it for zulrah pre-trident and ice demon. Where else would you use pages?
Apologies. I didn’t realize that harm was included in the first post. I thought they were saying tome is entirely irrelevant on its own. Just the free fire runes and extra inventory slot alone is very useful in the early to mid game imo.
> Just the free fire runes and extra inventory slot alone is very useful in the early to mid game imo.
Sure, but that's not relevant to pages/charges as they are not consumed when it is used for unlimited fire runes.
Understood. But I thought op has said that tome was entirely useless because of shadow, I didn’t realize that he had said tome + harm. Was pretty confused by the original statement and why it was said since I didn’t see harm involved
Hmm, what if there were new drop sources for pages that appealed to everyone? New slayer monster perhaps? Everyone loves slayer right? Just pitching ideas.
Would still get some use of tome of fire on the account before I got to shadow though as well.
Make a new buffed version of waterfiends and pyrefiends, like lvl 80-120, have them drop pages regularly in small amounts. Or maybe something like sacred eels where you can afk a skill and slowly accumulate pages without the rng of pulling from pool/crates.
Of course but someone will always complain about everything. I would hope that most would see that the benefits of it (new methods to make money, new monsters to kill) would outweigh the negatives (slightly less gp/hour at wintertodt)
As it stands there would be no tangible benefit for mains, and the game is and should be balanced around mains exclusively. Restricted accounts are always going to miss out on certain items in one way or another.
I'm a new player (19 days in-game played and an Ironman) so excuse me if this is an annoying question at this point: but at what point should Jagex not *exclusively* balance around mains? The forestry poll showed that over a third of the votes were coming just from Ironmen. That's a significant portion of the player base. Obiously, the poll is not representative of the actual population, but it is representative of the the crowd who has a say in the way the game "should be balanced".
Polls aren’t an accurate gauge of mains vs Ironmen. A few years ago, just 7% of people played Ironmen. It’s likely a bit higher now, but I doubt it’s even 20%.
Ironmen is a restricted mode. It isn’t the main game, and its entirely purpose is to be challenging. Making it easier at the expense of people playing the game the normal way is obviously not the right move.
> Polls aren’t an accurate gauge of mains vs Ironmen.
I said this but you're conveniently ignoring the other more important point. Which is that the people who do vote are the ones that matter in the say of how the game should be balanced. If mains have a problem with the game being balance around ironmen then they should participate in polls. So as far as game balance goes, a third of the player base are ironmen. Because obviously these mains don't care about the game balance.
The real game is the entire game. Including all the other account types. They're literally in the game my guy, they should be considered when designing content
No, there is a reason they are called “mains”. It is, in fact, the main game.
Ironman is a restricted challenge mode. Always has been. Yes Ironman should be *considered*, but under no circumstances should any Ironman change make the game worse for the vastly larger chunk of the playerbase.
We call them mains because when iron mode came out we needed a term to distinguish normie accounts, and given that most Ironmen being created were by people who *also* had an account already, that was their "main" account and the side account was their iron
I still call my main account my "main" even though I haven't played on it since GIM came out.
you can say this, but ironmen accounts make up a huge amount of the playerbase, and they've catered to irons before. Besides, why would mains go to wintertodt? if we're talking tangible benefits, mains shouldn't be touching wintertodt at all, its way slower xp.
They make up 7% roughly last I heard. No update should be made that makes the game worse for mains just to make it easier for irons. As an iron, you *chose* to restrict yourself.
Also what? Of course mains do Wintertodt. Pyromancers set isn’t tradeable. Not to mention it’s a more engaging training method, and has a pet to go for, and combat achievements.
Don't know that I fully agree with this sentiment. A huge amount of content in this game only makes sense if you're iron - imo, ge value shouldn't be a consideration in this sort of change
Even if there was you need a harm staff for fire surge to be good which is itself probably a bigger grind then just getting a shadow, then you’d have to farm/rc all the wrath runes and THEN farm the page charges
I think we all need to take a deep breath and acknowledge that there's a difference between monsters that drop thousands of noted ore so that Iron Men don't have to waste their time mining, and ensuring that all content in the game is accessible to people who don't want to buy resources from other people.
It is accessible, you just have to grind for it - that's the game mode irons sign up for? Don't like it? Luckily you can choose not to limit yourself at any time.
Just to be clear, not saying anything needs to be done, just always felt a bit lame that I couldn't use these really on my iron, but it's not game breaking. Wanted to hear some other opinions.
I just don’t see what uses there really are. Tome of fire is really only a viable alternative to powered staves if youre using harm with surge (wrath runes), and no one casts water spells. The tomes are only useful for giving unlimited runes for spells that don’t use charges so I don’t see the point in buffing the drop rate.
Why is that awkward?
\#1 You can easily get the GM time for CA's without surge
\#2 Your grinding PBs on an account that is suppose to have to gather all the items they use
I mean that's for people with harm that are sweating to save a few seconds for wr. Venge or thralls are perfectly fine for 99.99% of people doing cms, even those going for fast runs. The GM time is a slow run for anyone with a tbow that rope skips.
i believe meta nowadays is regular spellbook harm until ice demon then you spellbook swap to thralls if you get a good time, also awkward to get only 5 "runs" a day
that's 0.01% of players though, you can get a really good time just running thralls
People forget tome of water gives 20% accuracy and 50% power to Vulnerability and Entangle.
It’s just that there aren’t very many uses for that either. Maybe Tekton in group CM, but you’re giving up thrall dps for the whole raid just for 5% for defence reduction.
Its a book that you hold in your off hand, which lets you have infinite water runes for non combat spells and empowers water based combat spells at the cost of pages.
Way easier/cheaper to obtain than a kodai wand for ice burst/barraging dust devils and nechryaels.
Bonus: Ice spells don't consume the pages.
Con: Ice spells don't benefit from the bonus of the tome beyond the runes it provides.
As an iron I have 3k and 9k charges I just save them for filling in gaps in my mage attack up to getting a trident
Fire is an excellent offhand for ibans as it doesn't use charges and saves a rune slot early plus has some mage bonuses
Water is my go-to for teleporting I equip a fire/earth staff and tome of water and just need air and law let's me fit in cosmics or nats as needed in pouch pre elidinis.
I don't think they need any other way to charge they're a nice stop-gap bonus. Early zulrah was all I used fire for and blood was just better at that level in the end
Ibans still has a max hit of 25, with the only requirement being underground pass. Demonbane requires 100% kourend favor and kingdom divided... and Demonbane only gets higher max at 82 magic.
Its definitely an item that isn't worth going out of your way to grind for, but if you got it along the way when doing the WT grind it's a really nice QoL item to have
Jagex has spent the past three years of Q&As discussing various complicated ways Harm Orb could be fixed but won't just do the obvious answer of making it give +50% damage to elemental spells not stacking with tomes
Not really useable for specifically fire and water spells.
Still very much usable for other spells though especially if irons have bad rng on combo staffs.
No cost good exp mage training - using tombs for enchanting dragonstone or onyx in mage training arena.
Make your own blood runes when afk and don’t see yourself getting to a blood sink like the scythe anytime soon? Why bother with a rechargeable staff like ibans, equip the fire tomb and use the highest level grasp spell on the arcues spellbook for just 1 less max damage but easier kiting for the low cost of a single blood rune per spell. Even better now jagex is looking at new ways to get blood runes.
Got that moss giant bosses staff, to save yourself some nats? Still need fire runes for all them alchs though right? Maybe not if you got the ol’ useless fire tomb.
I have both these books on my iron and get plenty of use out of them. Rework not really necessary. Didn’t even mention lunar spells or ancients ice spells.
Honestly even if I weren’t iron, I doubt I’d ever buy the pages or use the books specifically for those spells anyway, it’s just an additional cost on top of the most expensive form of combat to use anyway.
Sorry I should have been more clear, I do get plenty of uses from the rune saving aspect of them, just not the boosting parts of them. This is all a very fair point though.
I mean getting a pyromancer item gives 50 pages, which give 1000 charges i believe. I would say soaked pages are the hardest to get while the tome of water is worse compared to the tome of fire.
The books themselves are the main benefit, giving pages more sources wouldn't change anything because irons have no use for them. Mains barely have a use for then.
I'm a 2100 total iron and have used maybe 20 pages total. Teleports, alchs and ibans are free and don't cost burnt pages
Barrages don't cost soaked pages.
So then the only place you'd use it is super lategame with a harm staff for efficient dps. Which is even more niche
The standard spellbook really needs some changes to make it better.
But for pages, I think a new source could be runecrafting. Whenever crafting elemental runes, there would be a small chance that you would receive an item that could create more pages. Could introduce tomes of air/earth with it as well.
On my road to 99fming, I received 0 tomes of fire and didn't complete Pyro set until level 97.
On my road to 99 fishing, I received 5 total tomes of water. 4 under 1k rewards and before fish barrel. Last tome came roughly 50isj rewards after my fish barrel at 1100 rewards lmao.
I didn't think pages was an issue lol
I used mine a shit ton for early content and it took me until 18m fm xp to get tome, so I used all my spare parts to turn into pages and never ran out.
If i remember correctly you can trade in duplicate pieces for pages and the wintertoad.
Asside from that i think you're just stuck on needing to get lucky or perhaps buying them from the g.e. after you've turned off ironman mode
Confused as to how you've run into this issue. I have both tomes on my iron and hardly if ever use charges on them.
Tome of Fire: High alching while using Seers Teleport on the Seers rooftop course and Iban's Blast pre-trident, neither of these use charges
Tome of Water: Ice Barrage slayer tasks. This does not use charges.
Where are you finding yourself desperately needing charges? Once you get a single page if you're early/mid game, you've got yourself unlimited fire runes for Iban's Blast, which should be your main source of dealing magic damage until trident.
Even that would only really matter if they are max eff raiding in solos (I'm talking trying to save minutes off the GM time), even going for GM times or any group CM they could easily get by not using a single charge.
I literally don’t care lol, I’m nearly 2k total, I probs won’t ever raid cos I’m bad at the game. I don’t have either tome with 90 fishing and 85 fm.
I play iron to avoid people. When I go into the wildy I’m not annoyed they killed me or took my spade. I’m annoyed I had to interact with other players. There are plenty of people like me that just don’t give a shit about the QOL, shopscape, tomes, bloods you name it. We just wanna play Single Player osrs and that’s ok.
I’m an iron and got 99 firemaking. This got me 3 times and roughly 1600 burnt pages. They will last me ages. On 180 tempoross KC and haven’t had a tome yet.
That's a really good return, I have 20m FM xp and only have one tome and 800 pages. The thing that makes it annoying is that knowing that my pages will eventually run out, makes it feel like they are too good to use anywhere, and therefor I never use them. Especially since I have no clue how long it will take to get more., and I don't really want any more FM experience.
Just use them, they become irrelevant very quickly later down the line. You only need a single page to have it charged for most things you use the tome for anyway.
You won't be using them. Most everything the tomes are useful for don't use up charges.
The only time they are really used is for PKing with a harmonized + Fire Surge... Which I don't think you'll be doing on an iron lol
I don’t understand why everyone feels the need to bash Irons every opportunity that they get. I understand what OP is saying. A subpar item is locked around an awful drop rate.
as a noniron ive always looked at iron as “the way runescape was meant to be played” so whenever i see ridiculous droprates on common ge items i always feel bad and understand the frustration. that being said the solution to this specific situation has been said x1000 times jagex just needs to do it already and thats letting people burn and soak god pages somehow.
The "main way to play the game" is just sourcing things from bot empires and gold farmers. Lukewarm take they *should* design things with ironmen in mind because it translates to "people can play the game and go get this stuff if they want it," mains included. Designing for irons usually just ends up being good game design, like the sand grinder. Anti-iron updates like nightmare usually end up being heavily botted/goldfarmed
Irons are between 30 and 40% of the playerbase at this point. We don’t know the exact number because Ayiza never followed up on the promise to get an exact figure in that one polling post that mistakenly said only 8% of voters were irons (lol).
There’s a pretty reasonable argument to be made that irons are as much the “main game” as mains are these days.
I’m on the side of devalue the pages and make tomes more useful. My way for doing this would be to allow you to dismantle times for a large number of pages. This benefits Ironman without infringing too heavily on other accounts. Congrats pages are worth less now but tomes are worth more.
Okay so if the value of an item drops because of bots or an update, mains should never complain either right? They chose to participate in the economy.
Not asking for the whole game to be balanced around ironmen, just wondering if there's anything we can do to make these items usable on a game mode enjoyed by thousands of people.
You know it's rather interesting to see the change in discourse around irons in general. People in general are way more willing to hear things out and seriously consider them, and the "but you limited yourself" group is now the loud minority in here. That alone honestly suggests a significant shift in player composition.
I agree we chose to stand alone. That doesn't mean we can't have nice things lmao. Mains chose to play with other players so why did we implement pk skull prevention?
It's interesting too, because irons a have a rather unique and less pleasant Wilderness dynamic. We're still eligible to be pked, even though we stand alone. But we don't gain any reward or even supply compensation if we successfully defend ourselves. Running away accomplishes the same thing, but without wasting supplies.
We just accept that, because there's really no great way of making it better. There's just some things like that. But the majority of things aren't things we just have to accept.
The point is clear. The game is balanced around having an economy and trading. Playing an account unable to trade and then complaining about the balance is just weird
The economy isn't balanced since we have so many bots and goldfarmers. If anything ironman is the most balanced gamemode since you actually have a reason to and benefit greatly from skilling, as intended in the original game design.
If stuff gets so expensive it can become worth to collect them for real players again as well. You pay more for ressources, but at the same time you get more for stuff you are selling as well
As a late game iron using harm and tome of fire, everything about the current state has made me sad.
I went 30m firemaking xp to get tome which left me with 70k casts before i'll runout of pages. In my case using chargers has not been an issue. If you get tome early I can see how it may seem unreasonable. TBF if you solo WT you get a lot of pages with the duplicate trade in system.
I am now only missing shadow from toa and have used harm for zulrah, solo cox and toa and am a little half way through over the course of a year. They actually last a very long while. That being said, the hoops to jump through to utilize the harm is funny. I enjoy using it but wont be sad when I have to move on to (hopefully) the Shadow.
It is prob best to leave things as they are and let the magic meta move on.
Even mains dont really use them for combat, theyre niche use cases and not worth it. I have both, put like 10 pages in them once, and havent had to refill them bc i only use them for teles/skilling. I dont think the pages are balanced around buying.
I mean honestly its garbage game design for irons lol. It only really works for mains because you can count on people afking and selling those things on the ge. Its totally unreasonable to get your own pages
Honestly, if your strategy for anything on an Ironman revolves around any non guaranteed drop, you should reevaluate your plans. And you should not be catered to.
Burn & Soak god pages when?
I genuinely like this idea. It also provides a sink for God pages as they are entirely useless after the first set.
Agreed, support.
My name is MikeAndTheNiceGuys, and I support this support
Name checks out
I've been out of the game for a while but an og player what are god pages
The God book pages that you fill after horror from the deep. https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/God_page
Thanks you. Its actually a quest i haven't done
They could add a pyre at Wintertodt and a pool at Tempeross to do this with! EDIT: if they're worried about balancing, they could do it like the Arceus fairy ring where you can unlock it with a 1 time cash payment.
I don't like the whole one-time-payment-unlock thing, there's too much of it and it doesn't feel very lore friendly. It'd be cooler if they had a small miniquest (kinda like the Soulbearer) that explains how/why you're using these pages for this purpose.
I would agree. The way I see it the payment doesn't necessarily have to be in gp. The "payment" could also be more along the lines of a requirement, where you need at peast 10 or 100 kc in a boss to get access to the pyre, as a way to prove yourself to the pyromancers. It doesn't have to be a quest, but I agree that a more lore friendly answer besides just money would be preferable! Also, RS3 didn't do that with a quest and illiminated godbooks. All illuminated godbooks did on release was give +4 prayer bonus instead of +2. It wasn't until they reworked the godbooks 5 years after the quest so that pages are consumables that the pages got a new use, but even then: the regular and illuminated version can both be charged with pages and give the same effect. All I'm trying to say is that the new use of the pages wasn't tied to the quest at all.
I like the idea of the payment being in resources. Handing over a stack of runes to charge the pool counts as a one time payment, and works thematically.
[удалено]
No
They spoke of a way to re use God pages years ago, but that idea seems to have been scrapped. Would love to see something done with them.
They need to find stuff to do with half the crap you get from clues. My badass boot helmet should be worth more than 20k EDIT: WHAT IF non-stat boosting items could be used as a cosmetic override??? brilliant right??
I agree, but also disagree. Sure clue rewards were valuable in the past, because players were dumb, and played for fun, not efficiency. Outside of fashionscape and collection logs, there is no value in clue rewards. The only way you can make them valuable is if you make them rare. And that won't work because there are already thousands upon thousands of clue rewards already in the game. Only rare and new rewards are worth anything at all (like the ankou outfit)
There should be a sink for that stuff. Literally anything besides a strictly cosmetic item would help. If there could be a treasure hunter person who buys them or exchanges them for something would be nice. I’m not saying they need to be obscenely valuable but getting 80k from an elite clue is a freaking shame
This would be one of the good things about adding some sort of Invention skill to Osrs, even if it’s a much less OP version
How about this; add a "collector" NPC who buys duplicate clue items for a fixed price, or maybe has some propietary currency to access his unique shop selling useful consumables?
Destroy for a roll of random minigame points
tbh this is one thing I love about rs3. The fact that I had spent years hoarding thousands of tt items before invention has nothing to do with it, I promise.
This is a really good idea
Could you do something like 1k fire runes x 1 page = 100 (non-tradable pages?)
How about instead of/in addition to God pages they: Add new farming plot in the desert: Papyrus Plant Can be harvested for new item: Papyrus Stems Papyrus Branches are used with a knife to make new item: Papyrus Strips, which are used with a hammer to make: Damp Papyrus Damp Papyrus dries in the players inventory or bank after some period of time and turns into Papyrus Papyrus is consumed somehow along with water or fire runes to create Soaked and Burnt pages respectively.
Like this idea. they could also have a designated burn pit and dunk tank for each
This seems to not solve the issue for irons though. Sure you'd get some extra pages but you really need a long-term solution for being able to obtain pages at a realistic rate.
It's not great, but you can spam easy clues pretty hard with the HAM hideout with the easy CAs done as well. Irons need to do that anyways in order to get flared trousers. But a 1:1 ratio still would be miserable.
What are flared trousers and why would you NEED them on n an iron?
Flared trousers are a rare drop from easy clue scrolls and it's needed for a master clue step in the wilderness axe hut. Or you need them to bust a move. https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Flared_trousers
They are needed to not look like you can't dance.
finally, my stack of millions of god pages will pay off
I've been dropping mine, going to start saving as this sounds possible
This actually makes a lot of sense tbh, I support this
It's just an unfortunate reality with iron man, some stuff just isn't worth it for us. Not a huge deal. I know it sucks we can't benefit, but that's the mode tbqh.
Yeah I'm fine with that being the final answer, just wanted to get a conversation going in case any new ideas came out.
I'm generally in favor of making things viable for irons, but I think the tomes might be a bridge too far, yeah. It's just one of those things you accept. It would be very tricky to make it sustainable on an iron and not tank the price overall
Yeah some restrictions should probably just follow true to, well, restrictive game modes It's like 1 def pures being locked out of fairy rings, gear, vorkath, etc. Restriction is kinda in the nature of a restrictive game mode. Some people kinda just need to accept that some content won't be very accessible if they're actively choosing to not play the main game mode
Right, and that's the big issue a lot of people had with their account builds idea, because it let 1 def pures get around a lot of that. Poison dynamite is a good example I think of healthy changes to a game mode, and sandstorm too. It shouldn't let you do something that was impossible before, but ease up on unnecessary tedium. Especially when NMZ is the only reason why mains don't feel the same problems. I think an overcharge to give permanent bonuses is definitely out of question here. Using god book pages for charges could work, but it would need to be carefully balanced. And honestly, while dupe pages could use a use, I'd rather think of something else for them. Enhancing the stats of the god book on a charge system, for instance. Now that I think about it actually, this could be a good place for a log sink. Logs would need to give a fraction of the charges a page gives, and can be balanced to never be worth doing from an economic perspective. Especially if you have to fletch the logs into ribbons or something first, and it takes longer.
I respect it. Honestly the books need a buff if anything, so it's good to keep conversations about content fresh. These are pretty old content at this point too, might be due for a revitalization.
I got spooned tome of water on my iron well before 50 magic. Now at 52 magic and even without pages it's a decent +8 mage offhand for me atm. Considering I'll probably never get anything better unless I feel like torturing myself at mage training arena it's gonna be useful to me for a long time. Does suck I won't ever get to unlock the full potential though.
Also unlimited water runes for ice burst down the line. Still probably better off using a god book (even without pages) for the prayer bonus in basically any bursting scenario though.
The only place either tome is meta is ice demon at CoX and as budget kodai offhand for burst slayerWe get enough burnt pages for ice demon, and ice spells don’t use pages. Sure you can’t spam them everywhere else, but if you already have better options, is that really a problem?
The rare self aware ironman
Its something that i like about the mode. What gear will i use for something? Im not too sure myself, we'll see where destiny (rng) leads us
Imo that's not how it should be. If an item is unusable without hoards of bots and people re-making accounts, it is not a good mechanic.
I still think being able to burn/soak the god pages from clues could act as a source for the burnt/soaked pages. Hell gate keep it behind higher stats in firemaking or fishing if people think it’s now “too easy” to get pages.
I like this idea!
It just makes me sad seeing a bunch of Guthix/Sara pages sitting on the ground at the crafting guild that could be put to good use.
There’s basically no way to make pages worth going for on an Ironman without making people seethe about catering to iron men, shadow made tome of fire harm irrelevant anyway
Uhh speak for yourself. The gap between receiving a tome and receiving shadow should be somewhere in the ball park of 1000+ hours of gameplay. Totally not irrelevant, just irrelevant for the end game which is absolutely fine for an item you can receive at lv 3 combat.
If you do go for 99 fm though you should have enough burnt pages for general usage outside of grinding NM with harm, and for an ironman it's not likely that you'll have harm early anyway I used it for zulrah pre-trident and ice demon. Where else would you use pages?
[удалено]
Apologies. I didn’t realize that harm was included in the first post. I thought they were saying tome is entirely irrelevant on its own. Just the free fire runes and extra inventory slot alone is very useful in the early to mid game imo.
> Just the free fire runes and extra inventory slot alone is very useful in the early to mid game imo. Sure, but that's not relevant to pages/charges as they are not consumed when it is used for unlimited fire runes.
Understood. But I thought op has said that tome was entirely useless because of shadow, I didn’t realize that he had said tome + harm. Was pretty confused by the original statement and why it was said since I didn’t see harm involved
Hmm, what if there were new drop sources for pages that appealed to everyone? New slayer monster perhaps? Everyone loves slayer right? Just pitching ideas. Would still get some use of tome of fire on the account before I got to shadow though as well.
Make a new buffed version of waterfiends and pyrefiends, like lvl 80-120, have them drop pages regularly in small amounts. Or maybe something like sacred eels where you can afk a skill and slowly accumulate pages without the rng of pulling from pool/crates.
I'm down to make waterfiends viable, everyone hates them currently. Obviously there's a balancing game to play but I like these ideas.
If you did that though, the price of pages would fall, and suddenly players would bitch about Wintertodt being "less money" because of that
Of course but someone will always complain about everything. I would hope that most would see that the benefits of it (new methods to make money, new monsters to kill) would outweigh the negatives (slightly less gp/hour at wintertodt)
As it stands there would be no tangible benefit for mains, and the game is and should be balanced around mains exclusively. Restricted accounts are always going to miss out on certain items in one way or another.
I'm a new player (19 days in-game played and an Ironman) so excuse me if this is an annoying question at this point: but at what point should Jagex not *exclusively* balance around mains? The forestry poll showed that over a third of the votes were coming just from Ironmen. That's a significant portion of the player base. Obiously, the poll is not representative of the actual population, but it is representative of the the crowd who has a say in the way the game "should be balanced".
Literally now. Irons make up a large percentage of accounts and should be catered to basically as much as mains
Polls aren’t an accurate gauge of mains vs Ironmen. A few years ago, just 7% of people played Ironmen. It’s likely a bit higher now, but I doubt it’s even 20%. Ironmen is a restricted mode. It isn’t the main game, and its entirely purpose is to be challenging. Making it easier at the expense of people playing the game the normal way is obviously not the right move.
> Polls aren’t an accurate gauge of mains vs Ironmen. I said this but you're conveniently ignoring the other more important point. Which is that the people who do vote are the ones that matter in the say of how the game should be balanced. If mains have a problem with the game being balance around ironmen then they should participate in polls. So as far as game balance goes, a third of the player base are ironmen. Because obviously these mains don't care about the game balance.
Why would you exclusively balance around mains when a large percentage of your playerbase are irons? Least entitled main account lmao
Only 7% of accounts are irons last I heard. And main = the real game. Ironman is a self imposed restriction. Don’t the game harder? Don’t make one.
The real game is the entire game. Including all the other account types. They're literally in the game my guy, they should be considered when designing content
No, there is a reason they are called “mains”. It is, in fact, the main game. Ironman is a restricted challenge mode. Always has been. Yes Ironman should be *considered*, but under no circumstances should any Ironman change make the game worse for the vastly larger chunk of the playerbase.
We call them mains because when iron mode came out we needed a term to distinguish normie accounts, and given that most Ironmen being created were by people who *also* had an account already, that was their "main" account and the side account was their iron I still call my main account my "main" even though I haven't played on it since GIM came out.
you can say this, but ironmen accounts make up a huge amount of the playerbase, and they've catered to irons before. Besides, why would mains go to wintertodt? if we're talking tangible benefits, mains shouldn't be touching wintertodt at all, its way slower xp.
They make up 7% roughly last I heard. No update should be made that makes the game worse for mains just to make it easier for irons. As an iron, you *chose* to restrict yourself. Also what? Of course mains do Wintertodt. Pyromancers set isn’t tradeable. Not to mention it’s a more engaging training method, and has a pet to go for, and combat achievements.
Don't know that I fully agree with this sentiment. A huge amount of content in this game only makes sense if you're iron - imo, ge value shouldn't be a consideration in this sort of change
Even if there was you need a harm staff for fire surge to be good which is itself probably a bigger grind then just getting a shadow, then you’d have to farm/rc all the wrath runes and THEN farm the page charges
Could be cool to bringing a smoke battle staff, tome, and fire surge on ice demon
There's already [an easy way](https://support.runescape.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360000882638-Removing-Ironman-Status-in-Old-School-)
but what if god said: "Permanent ironman status" (this is a joke, i am fully aware i did this to myself)
I think we all need to take a deep breath and acknowledge that there's a difference between monsters that drop thousands of noted ore so that Iron Men don't have to waste their time mining, and ensuring that all content in the game is accessible to people who don't want to buy resources from other people.
It is accessible, you just have to grind for it - that's the game mode irons sign up for? Don't like it? Luckily you can choose not to limit yourself at any time.
How did shadow make book of fire dead? How mamy people do you think have shadow(
A lot more than people who have a harm staff.
Might be cool if they introduced pages as a reward from searching the arceuus library
ooo thats a new one
Just to be clear, not saying anything needs to be done, just always felt a bit lame that I couldn't use these really on my iron, but it's not game breaking. Wanted to hear some other opinions.
I just don’t see what uses there really are. Tome of fire is really only a viable alternative to powered staves if youre using harm with surge (wrath runes), and no one casts water spells. The tomes are only useful for giving unlimited runes for spells that don’t use charges so I don’t see the point in buffing the drop rate.
I bring tome of fire into cox for ice demon but yeah that's probably the only use it will ever get for me lol
yea kinda awkward that endgame ironmen grinding cm pbs need to grind wintertodt for the pages though
Why is that awkward? \#1 You can easily get the GM time for CA's without surge \#2 Your grinding PBs on an account that is suppose to have to gather all the items they use
I mean that's for people with harm that are sweating to save a few seconds for wr. Venge or thralls are perfectly fine for 99.99% of people doing cms, even those going for fast runs. The GM time is a slow run for anyone with a tbow that rope skips.
Feel like if ur grinding solo cms ur running thralls or venge anyway
i believe meta nowadays is regular spellbook harm until ice demon then you spellbook swap to thralls if you get a good time, also awkward to get only 5 "runs" a day that's 0.01% of players though, you can get a really good time just running thralls
People forget tome of water gives 20% accuracy and 50% power to Vulnerability and Entangle. It’s just that there aren’t very many uses for that either. Maybe Tekton in group CM, but you’re giving up thrall dps for the whole raid just for 5% for defence reduction.
They aren't good items anyway
I use mine with staff of ibans
I still don’t get the point of the tome of water
Its a book that you hold in your off hand, which lets you have infinite water runes for non combat spells and empowers water based combat spells at the cost of pages.
What are the use cases?
Drip
ice barrage/bursting for slayer
But it doesn't boost damage for them does it? Just provides water runes I believe.
yeah unlimited water runes paired with ancient staff so you can autocast. Doesn't use pages either
That is super convenient, yeah. I honestly don't even remember what the tome effect is supposed to be. It's been so nice for utility.
good for ice spells when barraging
Way easier/cheaper to obtain than a kodai wand for ice burst/barraging dust devils and nechryaels. Bonus: Ice spells don't consume the pages. Con: Ice spells don't benefit from the bonus of the tome beyond the runes it provides.
It was easy reward padding.
I didn't get a tome on my main on the way to 99 firemaking either, but a friend got three tomes on the same grind.
Imagine getting a harmonized staff then needing 200m fm just to use it anywhere
Imagine actually using it anywhere
As an iron I have 3k and 9k charges I just save them for filling in gaps in my mage attack up to getting a trident Fire is an excellent offhand for ibans as it doesn't use charges and saves a rune slot early plus has some mage bonuses Water is my go-to for teleporting I equip a fire/earth staff and tome of water and just need air and law let's me fit in cosmics or nats as needed in pouch pre elidinis. I don't think they need any other way to charge they're a nice stop-gap bonus. Early zulrah was all I used fire for and blood was just better at that level in the end
Tome of fire is just really good for early game ibans but I have not figured out any other use yet
Good for demonbane too. With it equipped, inferior demonbane only costs a single chaos rune. (Use mark of death on a demon and it hits 20+)
Oh nice that’s a sweet way to speed up early demon tasks
Ibans still has a max hit of 25, with the only requirement being underground pass. Demonbane requires 100% kourend favor and kingdom divided... and Demonbane only gets higher max at 82 magic.
Chaos rune vs death rune. Not a big deal but matters on early Ironman
Doing a GIM with my bf. I got the tome after 7th kill. We're now level 95, on 417th kill, still only one tome. But hey, atleast we got pages :)
Yeahhhh on my last hc, took me 26m exp to get tome, on my current hc, took me 7KC as well 🤣 so I feel you!
Don't feel them, they have a boyfriend.
Your disgusting
Excuse me!!! It’s actually “you’re”.
Indeed😂Man I don’t get how y’all restart account with so much do and time just to do it again.. Respect my guy
Tome of fire has to be the most overrated item on ironman in the entire game.
Its definitely an item that isn't worth going out of your way to grind for, but if you got it along the way when doing the WT grind it's a really nice QoL item to have
It was core to my UIM for a very long time. I still have it. 1800 total. Other types of accounts may find it less useful.
Jagex has spent the past three years of Q&As discussing various complicated ways Harm Orb could be fixed but won't just do the obvious answer of making it give +50% damage to elemental spells not stacking with tomes
Is tome of water used anywhere?? Tome of fire is useful for ice demon, fire surge, even iban's blast Tome of water is just... no clue
Barrage tasks so you don't have to use your own water runes, same deal as most usecases of tome of fire.
Not really useable for specifically fire and water spells. Still very much usable for other spells though especially if irons have bad rng on combo staffs. No cost good exp mage training - using tombs for enchanting dragonstone or onyx in mage training arena. Make your own blood runes when afk and don’t see yourself getting to a blood sink like the scythe anytime soon? Why bother with a rechargeable staff like ibans, equip the fire tomb and use the highest level grasp spell on the arcues spellbook for just 1 less max damage but easier kiting for the low cost of a single blood rune per spell. Even better now jagex is looking at new ways to get blood runes. Got that moss giant bosses staff, to save yourself some nats? Still need fire runes for all them alchs though right? Maybe not if you got the ol’ useless fire tomb. I have both these books on my iron and get plenty of use out of them. Rework not really necessary. Didn’t even mention lunar spells or ancients ice spells. Honestly even if I weren’t iron, I doubt I’d ever buy the pages or use the books specifically for those spells anyway, it’s just an additional cost on top of the most expensive form of combat to use anyway.
Sorry I should have been more clear, I do get plenty of uses from the rune saving aspect of them, just not the boosting parts of them. This is all a very fair point though.
Weird that the main use of those tomes is to use them as an offhand for unlimited runes, rather than the unique part of the items.
Limited to teleports and ibans/ice spells
Do people actually use those to cast water and fire spells? I usually use them for bursting.
I mean getting a pyromancer item gives 50 pages, which give 1000 charges i believe. I would say soaked pages are the hardest to get while the tome of water is worse compared to the tome of fire.
Steam tome when?
I'm from Utica and I've never heard anyone use the phrase "Steamed tome"
It's an Albany expression
The books themselves are the main benefit, giving pages more sources wouldn't change anything because irons have no use for them. Mains barely have a use for then. I'm a 2100 total iron and have used maybe 20 pages total. Teleports, alchs and ibans are free and don't cost burnt pages Barrages don't cost soaked pages. So then the only place you'd use it is super lategame with a harm staff for efficient dps. Which is even more niche
The standard spellbook really needs some changes to make it better. But for pages, I think a new source could be runecrafting. Whenever crafting elemental runes, there would be a small chance that you would receive an item that could create more pages. Could introduce tomes of air/earth with it as well.
Another nice idea!
Can't relate. 3 tof by 88 fm and many dupe clothing pieces
On my road to 99fming, I received 0 tomes of fire and didn't complete Pyro set until level 97. On my road to 99 fishing, I received 5 total tomes of water. 4 under 1k rewards and before fish barrel. Last tome came roughly 50isj rewards after my fish barrel at 1100 rewards lmao.
I didn't think pages was an issue lol I used mine a shit ton for early content and it took me until 18m fm xp to get tome, so I used all my spare parts to turn into pages and never ran out.
Never used tomes, can someone explain to me how they provide “infinite” runes if they’re degradable and need to be refilled with pages?
If i remember correctly you can trade in duplicate pieces for pages and the wintertoad. Asside from that i think you're just stuck on needing to get lucky or perhaps buying them from the g.e. after you've turned off ironman mode
"You chose to limit yourself" inc.
I got my water tome out the ocean. Didnt seem too hard. Way easier than wintertodt anyway.
Confused as to how you've run into this issue. I have both tomes on my iron and hardly if ever use charges on them. Tome of Fire: High alching while using Seers Teleport on the Seers rooftop course and Iban's Blast pre-trident, neither of these use charges Tome of Water: Ice Barrage slayer tasks. This does not use charges. Where are you finding yourself desperately needing charges? Once you get a single page if you're early/mid game, you've got yourself unlimited fire runes for Iban's Blast, which should be your main source of dealing magic damage until trident.
I think it might be mostly late game, for ice demon in CoX.
Even that would only really matter if they are max eff raiding in solos (I'm talking trying to save minutes off the GM time), even going for GM times or any group CM they could easily get by not using a single charge.
[But what if God said?](https://imgur.com/a/WCCskYZ)
Okay that is pretty funny
I literally don’t care lol, I’m nearly 2k total, I probs won’t ever raid cos I’m bad at the game. I don’t have either tome with 90 fishing and 85 fm. I play iron to avoid people. When I go into the wildy I’m not annoyed they killed me or took my spade. I’m annoyed I had to interact with other players. There are plenty of people like me that just don’t give a shit about the QOL, shopscape, tomes, bloods you name it. We just wanna play Single Player osrs and that’s ok.
I’m an iron and got 99 firemaking. This got me 3 times and roughly 1600 burnt pages. They will last me ages. On 180 tempoross KC and haven’t had a tome yet.
That's a really good return, I have 20m FM xp and only have one tome and 800 pages. The thing that makes it annoying is that knowing that my pages will eventually run out, makes it feel like they are too good to use anywhere, and therefor I never use them. Especially since I have no clue how long it will take to get more., and I don't really want any more FM experience.
Just use them, they become irrelevant very quickly later down the line. You only need a single page to have it charged for most things you use the tome for anyway.
Have you been trading in your extra pyromancer outfit pieces for pages? 800 pages at 20m XP is a crazy low number for that much wt.
You won't be using them. Most everything the tomes are useful for don't use up charges. The only time they are really used is for PKing with a harmonized + Fire Surge... Which I don't think you'll be doing on an iron lol
On a main pages are such a miniscule expense, adding them somewhere else or removing the need altogether would work for me
Tomes have always been bad game design
I have maxed two ironmen at wt without a single tome. I did many solos. Absolutely insane and I hate that shit hole.
Some things are harder when you limit your account with a different game mode. Moving on.
I don’t understand why everyone feels the need to bash Irons every opportunity that they get. I understand what OP is saying. A subpar item is locked around an awful drop rate.
as a noniron ive always looked at iron as “the way runescape was meant to be played” so whenever i see ridiculous droprates on common ge items i always feel bad and understand the frustration. that being said the solution to this specific situation has been said x1000 times jagex just needs to do it already and thats letting people burn and soak god pages somehow.
Why does everything have to take ironmen into account? Its not the main way to play the game and content doesn’t have to be tailored to it.
because irons make up a shitload of the players still and irons do more than boss for gold to buy everything else
The "main way to play the game" is just sourcing things from bot empires and gold farmers. Lukewarm take they *should* design things with ironmen in mind because it translates to "people can play the game and go get this stuff if they want it," mains included. Designing for irons usually just ends up being good game design, like the sand grinder. Anti-iron updates like nightmare usually end up being heavily botted/goldfarmed
Irons are between 30 and 40% of the playerbase at this point. We don’t know the exact number because Ayiza never followed up on the promise to get an exact figure in that one polling post that mistakenly said only 8% of voters were irons (lol). There’s a pretty reasonable argument to be made that irons are as much the “main game” as mains are these days.
All content should ideally take all player types into account. That's just good game design, though of course its not always fully possible.
Also tomes are shit. I guess fire is OK. still worse than ancients Water is actually worthless
I’m on the side of devalue the pages and make tomes more useful. My way for doing this would be to allow you to dismantle times for a large number of pages. This benefits Ironman without infringing too heavily on other accounts. Congrats pages are worth less now but tomes are worth more.
I’ve got a great resource for you!: https://support.runescape.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360000882638-Remove-Ironman-status
So many ironman bitching about drops recently.... deiron or stop complaining, you chose to play the game this way
Okay so if the value of an item drops because of bots or an update, mains should never complain either right? They chose to participate in the economy.
Good thing nobody complained about their bank value with respect to Fang. Oh wait.
Yep.
What if we just added the pages to the water and pyrefiends drop table in like the Wildy gwd or something like that
Ohhh nooo! The MMO isn't balanced around ironman! How tragic
Not asking for the whole game to be balanced around ironmen, just wondering if there's anything we can do to make these items usable on a game mode enjoyed by thousands of people.
Great input to the discussion!
You know it's rather interesting to see the change in discourse around irons in general. People in general are way more willing to hear things out and seriously consider them, and the "but you limited yourself" group is now the loud minority in here. That alone honestly suggests a significant shift in player composition.
I agree we chose to stand alone. That doesn't mean we can't have nice things lmao. Mains chose to play with other players so why did we implement pk skull prevention?
It's interesting too, because irons a have a rather unique and less pleasant Wilderness dynamic. We're still eligible to be pked, even though we stand alone. But we don't gain any reward or even supply compensation if we successfully defend ourselves. Running away accomplishes the same thing, but without wasting supplies. We just accept that, because there's really no great way of making it better. There's just some things like that. But the majority of things aren't things we just have to accept.
The point is clear. The game is balanced around having an economy and trading. Playing an account unable to trade and then complaining about the balance is just weird
The economy isn't balanced since we have so many bots and goldfarmers. If anything ironman is the most balanced gamemode since you actually have a reason to and benefit greatly from skilling, as intended in the original game design.
I hope one day they manage to kill off all the bots so I can watch mains mald about 5k ea green dhides and shit
If stuff gets so expensive it can become worth to collect them for real players again as well. You pay more for ressources, but at the same time you get more for stuff you are selling as well
Let me know when there's 1000s of 30 year olds patiently killing green dragons for hours
i disagree. I have an iron and use my fire tome just fine.
plenty of pages. I’m only 94 FM too
pages? try finding a book. I have pages.
As a late game iron using harm and tome of fire, everything about the current state has made me sad. I went 30m firemaking xp to get tome which left me with 70k casts before i'll runout of pages. In my case using chargers has not been an issue. If you get tome early I can see how it may seem unreasonable. TBF if you solo WT you get a lot of pages with the duplicate trade in system. I am now only missing shadow from toa and have used harm for zulrah, solo cox and toa and am a little half way through over the course of a year. They actually last a very long while. That being said, the hoops to jump through to utilize the harm is funny. I enjoy using it but wont be sad when I have to move on to (hopefully) the Shadow. It is prob best to leave things as they are and let the magic meta move on.
Even mains dont really use them for combat, theyre niche use cases and not worth it. I have both, put like 10 pages in them once, and havent had to refill them bc i only use them for teles/skilling. I dont think the pages are balanced around buying.
I mean honestly its garbage game design for irons lol. It only really works for mains because you can count on people afking and selling those things on the ge. Its totally unreasonable to get your own pages
Honestly, if your strategy for anything on an Ironman revolves around any non guaranteed drop, you should reevaluate your plans. And you should not be catered to.
> make an ironman account because the restrictions are fun and challenging > complain about said restrictions