These cats and many more baddies can take a chunk out of you!

Hey Guys. Now we are familiar with “The Big City”, take a look at your map, and note that right next to the castle (see link below) is a red exclamation point (!). This is the entrance to the Varrock Sewers- which will be your first training ground whether you want to become a Magic User or Ranger or a Melee Warrior. Or be an all around badass like me who does all three of them, though my Ranging skill is only 60 simply because I dig Melee the most.

http://www.runescape.com/aff/windowsclient/worldmap/popupworldmap.ws

(If this link does not work for you, simply use the world map button at the top of your Runescape screen.)

At this point as a new player, here’s a tip and a prediction… you are going to die. So the key is to be prepared for it. Remember that you will keep the 3 most valuable items in your inventory if some mean creature does take your virtual little life. My heartfelt suggestion when learning combat is to “Three item” it. I can’t tell you how many rune full helms and other equipment I have lost just wandering about and not realizing that there are alot of ways to get killed in this game.

I’m getting ahead of myself here, and I will post an article on “3 iteming it” when we complete our tour of the game’s  geography. So point and click on your minimap to the exclamation point mentioned above and go look around this dungeon for a bit. I mentioned getting killed because you need not fear it unless you are carrying a bunch of valuable stuff- and valuable to a newby is simply - things you wouldn’t care to lose. So if you go in with nothing, and get wasted, you lose nothing.

Here in the Sewers you will find giant rats (whose meat is the same as cows in hitpoint healing) Zombies, Ghosts, Skeletons of all sorts, HobGoblins, Giant Scorpions, and if you venture to the deepest regions you will see Giant Red Spiders and Moss Giants.

After you get an eyefull of your future enemies and training foes, lets return to the surface. Knowing your way around this labyrinth will help you bunches. Training on Ranging and casting Magic spells is particularly good here in the Scorpion area where you can hurl death to creatures across waterways without getting hit back.

When you do come back here to train (build up your skills) remember, these guys will not attack you unless you attack them! This is not true of any other dungeon , where you will be attacked for simply walking or running by them. OK, now find your way out of the sewers and make your way to the west exit of the city- we are heading to Barbarian Village!

 These fellows will explain how the Grand Exchange works!

Greetings! As you have seen by wandering about in Varrock, there is alot here to see and do. The “West Bank”( The bank on the west side of the city) which is one of the most populated and widely used in the game, for many years was the place to be if you wanted to buy or sell armor, weapons, potions, or just about anything else from another player.

Hawking goods or typing in again and again “Buying full Addy” or whatever, hoping that there was a person there selling what you needed for the price you wanted was done by literally hundreds on some worlds. This was basically pure chaos, and something I hated doing. Standing around typing isn’t why I play this game.  All this has changed now that the gang at Jagex has added The grand Exchange. This is located next to Varrock Castle within the castle walls themselves.

Now buying and selling what you want is so much easier to do. You simply put in your offer of goods to buy and sell, and the game will automatically find a match for your offer, even if you are logged off and offline! And this way, also, no one can rip you off by charging way too much for something. (Many players have become rich scamming Noobs in this way, so many of those guys hate the Exchange, lol.) There are tutors right there to explain how the Exchange works, so I won’t waste space with the details, but it is a great addition to the game.

Below is a link to the world map, and I cannot over emphasize it’s importance in enjoying this game and not getting lost and frustrated. If you look at the city of Varrock now you will see there is another entrance to the Grand Exchange, and below that is the Cooking Guild. This is a good and fun place to raise your cooking skills other than just roasting fish. You are required to wear a chefs hat to get inside, which can be obtained through one of the early quests, from killing imps (found near Varrock’s North Altar west of the Lumberyard-this is all on the map) or buying one.

Hopefully you have seen where all the important things in the city are, the weapon and armor shops, the little combat training room for the really low levels, the macig shop, etc..etc.. Now your saying, OK I see this stuff but I need some money to get geared up. Well we will get to that, but let’s continue the tour of the game . I think this is very important, and if you follow my lead, you will not waste so much time just wandering around trying to ask people for help, and alot of people will not help. But, many will, and this is also one of the great things about Runescape, the ability to talk live, Character to Character with people from all around the world.

Before we depart Varrock and head west, there is one more place we should look at. Next…The Sewer Labyrinth!

http://www.runescape.com/aff/windowsclient/worldmap/popupworldmap.ws

(If this link does not work for you, simply use the world map button at the top of your Runescape screen.)

 Locating this fountain will help you immensly in navigating Varrock!

This sprawling city takes up a large area and you will be returning to it again and again. Almost everything that there is to do as far as your skills go can be benefited and supplied here in Varrock.

You can likely spend a few hours of gameplay exploring this city. For the sake of this tutorial that I hope will get you familiar with all the things you need to know to become a successful player, you will need to eventually find the fountain at the “center” of the city. It is the central point of Varrock. I will be using it as a starting point of giving directions to the useful things there in the city. You will recognise it by it’s statues around the small body of water there and usually there are people standing around it. It is where the teleport to Varrock spell takes you when you are able to use that spell.  Directly in front of it is Varrock Castle. Surrounding it is a General store, a clothing store, a Fur Trader, and an Archery shop.  A bit to the left is Smithing Anvil, probably the best place in all of Runescape to do your smithing, once you learn how to make metal bars to make into armor and weapons. By opening the World Map on the top of your screen, and clicking on the “key” button within the map, you will see the symbols that will tell you what all of these things are, and where they are in the city.

As I said there are hours, even days worth of things to explore and discover in this city. Once you have spent time looking around, or perhaps even getting lost within the walls of this place, it’s time to figure out ways you can make some money (Gold Pieces I mean,lol), so that you can start to upgrade your armor and weapons.

In starting out this site and it’s contents it’s my intention to basically take you on a tour throughout the free world first, and then give you my ideas on what it takes to become a good, strong player and to mostly have fun!! Once you have become familiar with the many things in Varrock, and can find your way to the Fountain in the center easily, we will move on to the next area that is very important, a killer place to do your fishing- which is the best way to stay alive training and a wonderful way to make cash.

More on the inner workings of Varrock next.

  Cows are a great source of food, Combat Exp. and hides for leather!

Now that you know how to get back to a familiar place in front of Lumby Castle, you now need to start training in order to develop your Runescape character. And in order to train you must battle - and to survive in battle you must eat. At first you will have no armor, so here we can kill two birds with one stone, meaning to train and collect food all at once. After getting to know Lumbridge a bit, and what creatures such as goblins and giant spiders around there you can combat at a low level. It’s time to head north to Varrock, where you can bank items that you collect, buy armor and many other things. Varrock is the largest and most diverse city in Runescape, either free or on members. Here you will be able to buy clothes, armor, magic runes for spells, train combat and much more.

There is also a nearby city in the desert called Al Kharid, but I would suggest getting familiar with the road to Varrock first. Having said that, cross the bridge in front of Lumbridge Castle and take the road North. Note that there are two roads heading North-to head to Varrok you will need to cross the bridge-we will discuss the other road later on. (Don’t forget you have a compass at the top of your inventory next to the minimap, if you don’t know how to read a compass ask someone in the real world!) About half way there you will see a chicken farm and a group of cattle fenced in on the other side of the road. For the first few levels of combat, this is the ideal place to obtain food and level up your combat. You should have learned in the game tutorial how to make a fire in order to cook the meat you get from killing chickens and cows. When you have gone up a few levels (this happens very quickly at first) get an inventory full of cooked meat and continue North. Next stop…Varrock.

 Learning to use the “mini-map” is extremely important!

I remember one of the biggest pains when starting out was finding my way from place to place. The map is a pretty big area and often times things start to look the same. This is why you need to be familiar with the “World Map” This is one of the icons located at the top of your gaming screen. There is a Main Menu button, then World select, which is the shortcut to changing worlds, which I’ll talk about later, and then the World Map.

At first your best bet is to become familiar with the areas surrounding Lumbridge, the “newby” playground. there are alot of useful ways to learn and become familiar with the game there. And with the recent addition of the Lumbridge Home Teleport spell, when you do get lost, you can cast this spell, and you will be taken back to a familiar place. If you look in your Spellbook, (click the little book on your inventory table) at the very top left, a spell marked with an “H” will be available to you from the first day you start.

So, my suggestion for the first few days is to explore the world around Lumbridge Castle. You will find a guide just outside the castle walls marked on your Mini-Map with a question mark. He will give you valuable help with starting out your new character.

This brings us to the all important “Mini-Map” this is the little area above your inventory that makes moving around in Runescape easy. You are the little white square on the mini-map, other players are white circles. Yellow circles are non-player characters (NPCs), such as monsters, townspeople or guards, and shopkeepers,etc. Red dots will be objects on the ground.  When you click to a place by putting your cursor on the mini-map and left clicking, a red flag will appear and your character will walk or run there.

Explore as much as you can and stay on the roads at first, the roads will become familiar to you in time. Wandering off a road will make the places on the mini-map harder to recognize because much of the forest areas will look the same on it. If you do get lost, cast the Lumbridge (often referred to as Lumby) Home Teleport spell and you will appear back at the castle. Beware though, you can only cast it once every 30 minutes.

And lastly on this post I want you to be sure to take advantage of something I never had as a noob, the tutors in the area in front of the castle, all marked with a question mark on the map(s) which will introduce you to cooking,smithing and all the basic skills you will need to succeed as a Runescaper!

Hello all you gamers out there. My name is Matt. I am an admitted Runescape Junkie. I started playing this game in 2001 when it’s graphics were two-dimensional, and I was just looking for something fun to kill time and amuse myself on the computer for free. I soon found that this was a complex little game with lots of different things to do and amuse myself. 

Free online games available back then left alot to be desired and runescape was one of the best. Now, almost seven years later, the game has grown and changed by leaps and bounds and become a personal obsession and great source of fun for me.. I am currently a level 105 melee based character named HAVOKSLINGER on the game. Feel free to look at my stats on “HIGH SCORES” on the main menu and remember, though I was a Runescape member for a couple of months, my game career has been on the Free-to-Play world (F2P) and I know it well. I still have lots of work to do building my character up.

 Enough about me. Lets get on to talking about some things that will hopefully help you enjoy your runescape experience and avoid some of the frustrations of being a “Noob”, and welcome to Runescape-junkie.com!