The ZhiarGM Chronicles: My RuneScape Journey from the Ground Up

Hello everyone!

In this thread, I plan to post updates to my goals and progress I make along the way in my runescape journey.
Since this is the first post and I've already progressed quite some bit on my character, I will begin from the start...

One day, I rediscovered this amazing game that I had played as a child. I was most casual for sure back then, but I still had fond memories. So I made a new character and started playing a bit. This character got the name: ZhiarGM.
But quickly, I was overwhelmed by all the possibilities this game seemed to have, and so I just played a bit in a way that felt nice.
I also began following a quest guide to progress with some quests to help me set some goals early.

But for most of my progress besides my quests, I was pretty clueless on what to do in this game. A huge world open to me... And then came the day I joined OSRS Advice. All the questions I ever wondered about when playing, and that usually went unanswered, were swiftly taken care of in here. And so my RuneScape Journey truly began.

Screenshots of my initial progress after joining OSRS Advice will be posted soon. After that, it's mainly my current progress and achievements.

See you on my journey!
ZhiarGM

Love that intro! Will be following this thread every step of the way ^^

Part one: Humble beginnings
As I became part of the clan, I really questioned myself: Where do I want to go? What are my goals?
After researching my possibilities, I set a several goals for myself:

1. Receiving the graceful outfit set
2. Receiving the dragon defender
3. Understand the farming skill and begin tree runs and herb runs
4. Raising my skill level and reaching level 50 in all skills ("Base 50s")

Just before embarking on the journey to clear these goals, I was focused on attaining lvl 50 in the Slayer skill first. Maybe in search of honor, or riches? I had heard a tale of an individual who received untold riches from Brimstone keys...

And as it so happened, I managed to reach the total level of 1000 with slayer level 50, which felt like a monumental milestone for me. For reference, I had joined the clan at a total skill level of 800.



Now, with this proud milestone I felt ready to take on what would be my first real grind in this world: The graceful outfit.
A swift outfit that reduces your carry weight and allows you to recharge your energy faster. The sound of this amazing outfit made it my priority goal because I liked traveling.

While some people suggested I do alching or something similar along the way, my stats on magic were too low to do high-alching and I wanted to have it be a more chill experience. So I climbed the Canifis rooftop and ran at it.
Slowly but steadily, I began building up my marks of grace as they sometimes appeared. While I began this grind with the agility level as seen in my total 1000 screenshot (agility 40), this practice made me rise in the levels.

And after two to three days of focused and unfocused rooftop coursing in Canifis, I finally had gathered enough marks of grace to head to the individual selling the graceful outfit. It appears as though my journey was noticed by someone, because a Genie came and gifted me a lamp shortly after finally receiving my graceful outfit. Along the way, I went from level 40 agility to level 58 agility.



With this, I had reached the first goal I set for myself. Now it was time for the next goal: Receiving the dragon defender.
This grind was somewhat chill because I wanted to get my combat skills up to 70 as well. And after farming a lot of warrior tokens, I finally got ahold of this nice addition to my gear as well!




Now that I had this defender, I felt like it was time to cool down from battling for some time, and explore the amazing world of farming.
For that reason, I checked a few guides on how to perform tree runs, herb runs etc. - and I was quickly overwhelmed.
What helped me here was taking it slow and going patch-by-patch, making my own route. After all, I wanted to get base 50s, and this included farming. I also needed coins, since I didn't have that much - herb runs sounded perfect for this purpose.

It was a learning process, but I slowly managed to rise in my farming levels and took quite a liking to farming. I also began doing my first birdhouse runs as hunter was one of my lowest skills. I didn't do herb runs every 1.5 hours but rather when I wanted a short break from my current activities, or whenever my tree run was ready. And slowly rose in the levels!

I thought now was the time to tackle base 50's in all stats. My aim with this was to learn the skilling methods for all the skills that I had put off right now. I began with the lowest skill: Runecrafting. Watching a guide introduced me to the guardians of the rift minigame, requiring just a short quest to begin. That quest put me at a much higher runecrafting already. After that, I grinded out the minigame until 50 runecrafting. The leveling went fast and it was fun. I mixed some motherlode mining and maple woodcutting inbetween. And so I reached a total level of 1200!



For construction, I began doing oak larders until 50 construction. It went by pretty quickly. Mining became 50 along the way through motherlode mine, and next I began leveling thieving by stealing from the hosidius fruit stalls. It felt somewhat tedious but after a few hours, I was done with thieving as well.

For fletching, I made darts which was super click intensive but also super fast and got me to 50 fletching in a breeze! So once I got that out of the way, I began leveling smithing in the blast furnace. Before doing this, I unlocked the goldsmith gauntlets doing the quest (watched a guide for smithing leveling) and then did gold bars there. I believe it took less than an hour until I was 50 smithing using blast furnace.

The next skill was Hunter. I knew I could passively level it up using birdhouse runs, but I wanted to progress it actively. I went to the the eagles peak in Piscatoris and began leveling there. Inbetween all this leveling, I made sure to do some tree and herb runs inbetween, and sometimes a quest too.

Finally, only fishing and cooking was left. I watched a guide on YouTube regarding fishing and discovered the Tempoross minigame. This activity was very fun and leveled up my fishing quite fast! But to my dismay, I read about the angler's outfit. I knew I would have to get it, and so I made this my goal inbetween Base 50's. I leveled up fishing doing the trawler until I finally got the complete angler's outfit.



As it so happened, I had enough fishing XP now and was already a level past 50 fishing. So I did not do anymore Tempoross after that.
Finally - Cooking. I knew from guides that this is a relatively fast skill to level. I got to make jugs of wine, and banked the fermenting wine for big XP drops. Finally, reaching level 51 cooking following a big drop, I had attained Base 50's and a total skill level of 1300!



With my initial goals reached (10th of January 2024), I chilled a bit and did some farming, slayer, and questing.
After seeing many proud owners of the elusive fire cape however, I got enticed to look into this. And I began dreaming.

More will follow soon.

you go boy! im working on my own base 50s myself hunt an rcing left but taking a break for some barrows and slayer again.

Great writingggg!! Looking forward to the rest mate!

Not gonna lie, I love the narrative and pictures in this. Makes it really feel like a journey rather than a check list. Keep it coming!

Nice progress, looking forward to seeing more keep up the good work

Something that kept catching my eyes at the back of other people was the Fire Cape. It felt like a mystical item, almost unobtainable. My curiosity got the better of me, and so I looked up how to obtain it. Defeat TzTok-Jad in the Fight Caves. A solo challenge where the player has to traverse through many waves until they finally reach the wave with Jad as the final boss. Defeating him grants the fire cape, but one misstep among this battle easily means the end for me.

I got to planning. What do I need for the fight caves? My conclusion:
1. 70 in Attack, Strength, Defense
2. 75 in Ranged
3. Practice in fighting Jad (more on this later)

With this in mind, I continued training my combat stats through Slayer tasks. I switched from Konar to Nieve once my Combat level reached 85. To level up my ranged along the way, I always took with me the dwarven multicannon, while using a shortbow for combat.
Slowly and steadily I built up my combat stats and as a bonus, levelled my Slayer. That felt very nice.

My journey to 75 ranged was progressing smoothly. Along the way, I always remembered to do my tree runs as well. And then came the day I reached 1400 Total:



This achievement was almost the cut-off point for the first two goals on my list. I only missed one defense level and three ranged levels. And they came quick. The final tasking I had was to kill Dagannoths, so I went to the lighthouse, set up my dwarven multicannon, and just kept pushing through until I reached 75 ranged and 70 defense. And when those achievements came, I was ready to take on step three: Practice in fighting Jad.

I watched a guide for the fire cape that recommended you go onto a Quest Speedrunning World. There, select the quest "Beneath the Sands". You can then use the grouping teleport to the Fight Caves. Show your cape to the TzHaar guarding the barrier to pass through. And then go all the way to the back of the area, to take on the "Inferno challenges". These challenges allow you to fight Jad without having to pass all the waves beforehand. This allowed for a way to practice fighting him without much to lose. And if you ever died or lost your resources, you could reset the quest and go through those steps another time to try again.

And that's what I did. I took on the Jad on the quest speedrunning world. The first times I died very fast to the first attacks of Jad, due to not reacting properly. I continued watching guides on Jad on my second screen, with tips on taking him on. One tip I took to heart was the "one action per Jad attack", which greatly reduced the mistakes I made. In simple terms this means, every attack from Jad I am allowed only drinking one potion, for example, until I switch back to the prayer window and get ready to switch protection prayers.
This was also the first instance that I ever rebinded my menues to the F-keys, as was recommended in all the guides I watched.

Then came the first time ever that the healers spawned. And hell, this made me nervous. I quickly got killed because I couldn't keep the self imposed rule of 1 action per attack from Jad. At other times, I ran into Jad and died from his melee because I clicked a healer that spawned behind him. But once I cleared those mistakes I finally beat Jad, although on the quest speedrunning world. It felt like a huge success, and so I took this feeling and continued practicing him.

After a while of practicing, I felt ready to take on the Fight Caves itself. And I prepared the following build:



A toxic blowpipe filled with enough scales and 5000 amethyst darts. Another 800 dragon darts to switch once Jad spawns. And hopefully enough supplies to survive all the waves and have prayer left for Jad. And so I went through the waves of the fight caves. One by one. My best friend were the safespotting positions like Italy rock, which allowed me to take a breath sometimes and clear my head up. Sometimes, I was so scared of burning through all my supplies that I just afked there and let my health regenerate if it was down by 20-30.

It went smoothly although I had some risky moments. One time, a mager hit me because I clicked the wrong protection prayer, for like 40 damage. These somewhat served as a wake up call to me and made me be even more wary. The last waves got ever more intense as I knew that Jad was coming so close and I had to make it. On my second screen, I had the OSRS Wiki open constantly with a table showing the waves and its enemies. Run energy became a problem at the end because I had to circle around so much to get the melee stuck behind the mager, while killing off the ranger. Once wave 61 arrived, I killed off everyone except for one melee and then put him behind the safespot, waiting to resupply all my lost run energy. I knew, the next wave would be very simple: Two magers. And I had to look where the orange would spawn, since this indicates Jads spawn point. He spawned north-west of the cave.



And then, Jad spawned.



I was already shaking, because of both excitement and the fact that I was scared to lose after progressing this far. I took the fight one step at a time, from attack to attack. Just like I had learned on the guides and the speedrunning world. Sometimes not attacking for several ticks due to the fact that I had auto retaliate off. But I had enough resources to take my time and slowly take him down. At least do it like that until the healers spawned, which should be focused off.

Now, I watched several guides at this point. There are several tactics I saw about dealing with the healers. One I saw was going to a safespot and luring the healers there. I did not feel comfortable doing that. Another one was attacking all the healers once, then running through Jad while having protect from melee on, switch back to the other prayers, and the healers are stuck. I did not feel comfortable doing that either. So what I did was hitting them all once, then killing them one by one while focusing on protecting from Jads prayers.



I saw my HP fall quickly through the healers, but I still had one saradomin brew and I felt like I could make it. And then I finally killed off the healers. Now, my nervosity shot through the roofs. I had just this one final obstacle in front of me, killing Jad once and for all. Through all the shaking, I managed to keep up the protection prayers correctly somehow.



And then Jad fell. This was an incredible moment, I felt pure joy, and I kept shaking. I was an owner of THE fire cape. Something I never imagined to clear. And I proudly equipped it. [21th of January 2024]



Completing the fight caves and defeating Jad was an ecstatic moment and it showed me how incredible some challenges in OSRS are. I was so happy I beat this goal. And now I can wear it everywhere and proudly display it.
The next goals I have in mind are questing and preparing for the upcoming Skilling Competition.

But that is a story for another day.

My favorite read atm. Looking forward to it everytime! CONGRATZ ON THE FIRE CAPE!!!!

I love things like this! Looks like you are making some solid progress. LOL I have NEVER gotten a fire cape! Very nice!