Those who follow me do so for their desire to see balance, and balance is its own reward for those chosen few. – Guthix
Without even knowing it, I've found that I follow the way of Guthix even in how I work my skill experience. I've forever had other players messaging me with things like "Why are you using controlled method?" when meleeing my slayer monsters and "Go for a skill cape, you can blaze cooking and fletching easily." We all know of "pures" and "skillers", but what of those who choose to neither focus on combat or skills exclusively? While "pures" and "skillers" are necessary for the overall balance of the RuneScape world, I strive to keep my levels relatively balanced. I've found that there are but few with balanced skill levels and most are found at the top of the Highscores with all level 99s. The laws of Guthix are supreme. The universal goal is a perfect balance level 99 skills. The real challenge lies in maintaining balance on your journey to achieve that goal.
So, what does it mean to pursue balance in all skills? Statistically speaking, it means you are pursuing a low standard deviation. The Editor mentioned standard deviation in It's All About The Levels, and it is the best calculation for skill balance. Standard deviation shows how spread out the values in a collection of values (skill levels in this case) are. The lower your standard deviation is, the closer your skills are overall to your skill average. Many spreadsheet applications can calculate this for you, so I won't bore you with the mathematics here. After all, you really don't need to calculate anything to know if your skill range is tight.
I am balance, not neutrality - neutrality doth suggest inaction, when the opposite is the truth. - Guthix
Staying balanced allows me to enjoy all facets of the game. I feel that if I were to hold back on either combat or non-combat skills, it would limit my enjoyment. There is constant peer pressure to join the craze of blazing skills to 99 to acquire the coveted skill capes. Blazing any one skill to 99 would upset my balance and probably cause a great deal of boredom. I choose to keep my leading skill within 20 of my lowest skill and the only cape I have is the Quest Cape. Completing all the quests has given me a better understanding of the RuneScape world and the great history of the gods and their influence. I can only assume that Guthix favors the Quest Cape because each quest point allows us another second to collect his tears. After all, the experience we gain is applied to our weakest skill, further balancing us. I enjoy that I must complete new quests in order to keep wearing my cape, because it ensures that I never stop questing.
In terms of skill work, the pursuit of balance often means generating your own raw materials using the skills that produce them. After all, self-sufficiency is the way of Guthix. Consistently using coin instead of skill to purchase raw materials can easily cause skills like Fletching and Firemaking to surpass the level of Woodcutting, or Smithing to surpass Mining. Another skill that is often left trailing behind is Slayer. You can keep Slayer fairly close to Combat if you try to keep yourself working on a slayer assignment while building your combat experience. I only use Magic for alching and teleporting; otherwise it would be well ahead of my other combat methods. Overall, I try to work multiple skills at once whenever they are linked to one another.
Here are some tactics I use to maintain balance:
- Work a slayer task while building combat levels. If you are meleeing using controlled method, you can work Attack, Defense, Strength, Hitpoints, Magic (alching drops), Prayer (if there are bones) and Slayer all at once.
- Favorite Monsters to Range: Bloodvelds, Jellies, Turoth, Fire Giants, Dust Devils.
- Favorite Monsters to Melee: Dagannoth, Elves, Shadow Warriors.
- Crack the gem safes in Rogues Den to work Thieving and Crafting.
- Cut enough logs to for your next Construction, Firemaking and Fletching level so you can level them together.
- Superheat as you mine to work Mining and Smithing.
- Plant herbs to work Farming and Herblore.
- Work to build all skills to a certain minimum level. I went for level 70.
- Fletch/Smith all of your own Range ammunition.
- Take a chisel with you to work slayer assignments to cut/bolt gems before you drop them.
Whatever method of play you choose, enjoy it. As Guthix would say "I trust that you all might see the beauty of balance, as I myself do, and mayhaps strive hard along with me to spread it across the lands."
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