"Skill Kill" rant

This is an old rant that I had originally written for my first email to the podcast. I recently found it on my hard drive and copied it into this topic. I haven't changed the skill levels one bit. Read on to find out why.

This rant is about “skill kills,” or things that JaGeX has done to make a skill completely useless from, say, the Grand Exchange, or some other source. My first part has to do about Smithing. When I was a lower-level player, Smithing seemed like suck a cool skill to use. I was actually making armor and weapons that I could use! Granted, yes, they were made of bronze, but I still thought it was the coolest thing in the game.

These days, I hate strongly dislike Smithing (current level: 34). I really do. It has become one of the costliest skills to level up, with no really good place to train it. The only reason I mine anymore is to sell the coal, gold etc. and make a profit off the raw ores. Why would I ever smith them? That would be stupid. Think about it- two coals, one iron to make a steel bar. One coal is, like, 200. So that’s approximately 400 GP alone for just the coal. Then you add about 100 GP from the iron and you get around 500 GP cost for each steel bar you make. If you smith that into a steel platebody, that’s 5 bars, or about 2.5k GP. A steel platebody is worth nearly half that much! Even if you don’t make a platebody, even a dagger, which requires one bar, barely makes profit.
If you mine the materials, you’d make more profit from just selling the ores. That’s a skill kill for Smithing, as its provider skill, Mining, is better than the product the provider skill can make.

Sure, I have a pretty okay-ish Firemaking level (it’s 60 currently), but let’s face it, Firemaking is a really lame skill. Let’s see- withdraw tinderbox, withdraw logs, click 54 times to light the logs, withdraw logs, click 54 times to light the logs, withdraw logs, click 54 times to light the logs… you get the point. Firemaking is soooooo boring, so let’s hope JaGeX pulls through with that new quest that promises an “advanced” method of training Firemaking… though I doubt they will. It has no way to gain profit whatsoever, and it’s just a waste of those nicely chopped logs that could be easily sold for profit. The only upside is that the pyre logs can be burnt for Prayer XP, but that still requires Crafting levels to make the logs, which brings me to my next skill kill…

Another skill I also dislike? Crafting (current level: 40). Take this- I slowly got my Crafting up to 31 over the months so I could do Lost City when I would become a member again. Just recently, I got 40 Crafting to enter the Crafting Guild to mine bucket loads of gold ores. I bought around 400 silver bars and made them all into tiaras. The steel bars cost about 200 GP each, while the finished product- the 300 some tiaras- sold for only 45 GP each. I only got 12k off the tiaras whereas I spent around 65k to get the bars. Oh sure, I got the 65k back easily mining gold ores in the guild, but I was annoyed about the lack of profit.
The materials cost more than the product- just like Smithing, a skill kill for Crafting.

But that’s not all I have to say. I also have ways to fix these skills.

Smithing: Make it worth training to higher levels. Maybe, like, an exclusive, non-tradable armor set that requires a higher Smithing level to make, an armor set/weapon that would be very powerful but could not just simply be bought at the Grand Exchange. This would drive more people to smith so that they could get their greedy hands on some cool armor. Also, make another, easier way to train it. For example, make smelting bars from the ores give better XP. That would actually drive me to smelt my ores, because 600 GP from a steel bar is better money than just selling the two coal and one iron ores and getting about 200 GP less. It would take more time, but more money would be gained and more XP earned.

Firemaking: Let’s just hope JaGeX pulls through with the new quest and Firemaking update, but we can only hope. The thing is, how do you improve a skill like Firemaking? The name says it all, so what else can you do from burning logs? I think JaGeX should delete the skill altogether and place it under Woodcutting, or even a new concept skill I have- Woodcraft, which would combine Fletching and Firemaking together, while also offering new possibilities for both skills. Obviously, F2P people like me would only be able to do Firemaking and members could also do Fletching, but it would be a nice start to improving both Firemaking and Fletching.

Crafting: My suggestion? Improve the whole game with a simple Gathering skill. This skill would allow you to gather items to use in skills that make use of materials, like Crafting, Smithing, Herblore and Cooking. Imagine- you search some bushes with your level 52 Gathering to find some Herblore ingredients for a potion, or use your Gathering skill like Smelting to smelt ores into bars for use in Smithing, or even use your level to gather exclusive materials to be used in Crafting. The possibilities are endless, so what are you waiting for, JaGeX?

Thanks for listening. I hope you guys agree on the points I’ve touched and you feel like JaGeX should improve the game in the ways I’ve mentioned.

Ya i really like the woodcraft idea is would be very interesting.

hmm.......long but interesting