I suppose I'll just go across each row and tell what they are all for. First up is my attack level, 73. This is one of the four five stats that affect your overall combat level, of which mine is currently 95. Next is my hitpoints, another component of the combat level. The next one is mining, my highest stat!!! It's high level is indirectly related to the one below it, which I will get to in three!!!
Row two starts out with my highest combat stat, strength. Next is the first members skill, agility. As it gets to higher levels, you are able to use various short cuts. I don't tend to train this skill as much anymore. Next is the one related to my mining level, smithing. In my opinion, this is one of the best money making skills. However, in order to do it, you need raw materials, which you can either buy or mine. I tend to mine mine.
Row three starts with another combat stat, defense. This is followed by another members skill, herblore. Many useful potions can be made with this skill. I don't train it extensively, but I do dabble a bit, as well as growing and cleaning some of my own herbs with the farming skill. Cleaning the herbs gets some experience in this stat. Next is fishing. As a free player, I worked this skill up to the level required to fish swordfish, one of the highest level free play food items, and the highest healing one-bite foods for non members, at 14 hitpoints. I've leveled it up some since I became a member, in order to fish the karambwan, which heal 18 hitpoints in one bite.
The next row starts out with a skill I didn't use a lot as a non-member, ranging. This involves using a bow and arrows, or crossbow and bolts to attack. It also encompasses throwing knives, spears, and the epic dwarf multi cannon!!! I would not have such a high level if it wasn't for that multi cannon!!! Next is another members skill, thieving. Level 39, another skill I don't train a whole lot. It doesn't seem like a respectable way to make money. I think I needed the level up to a certain point to do a quest. The last for this row is the very useful cooking skill. If you want to heal your damage, eating good food is the way to do it, and the higher level you have in this, the better food you can cook. I spend a lot of my time making tuna potatoes, which heal 22 hitpoints in one bite.
Row five starts off with prayer. This is a handy skill you can use to protect from various attacks, or to temporarily increase stats, or even to heal more quickly or inflict damage on opponents, or to preserve an extra item if you die. The main way to raise this stat is by burying bones of the monsters you (or others) kill. It can take a while to raise, but if you're in the habit of burying the bones of your kills, it comes along. It always amazes me how many people can't be bothered to bury their bones!!! Following this is the crafting skill. Much like the smithing skill, you can make useful items to sell for a decent amount of money. Making and enchanting jewelery items is my primary use, although I will also make pottery items and glassware if I need it. Firemaking ends this row. Pretty self explanatory, and it doesn't seem like you need that much of a high level, but in order to light higher level logs, you need higher level firemaking. Also necessary for some quests.
The next row starts with another very useful skill, magic. This is the skill that requires the rune stones from which the game derives it's name. You can do various attacks (often from a safe distance), teleport to another location (very useful, as the realm of Runescape is rather large), enchanting jewelery made in the crafting skill, and even working alchemy spells on various items. The superheat item is particularly useful in smithing higher metals, as these will require several coals to one ore, and with only 28 available spots in your inventory it would take many more trips to the mines. Next is another members skill, fletching. With this skill, you can make arrows, bows, crossbows, and many other ranged weapons. It seems to be a fairly easy skill to train, too. Next is the wood cutting skill. I recently got this skill to level 60 while training my fletching skill, and from this point it easily rose to 70. At 60, you can chop yew trees, and one inventory of yews will yield 4900 experience, and sell for a pretty penny, too!!! This skill is convenient to train while you're doing something in another window.
The next row starts out with another useful skill, runecrafting. This skill is a good way to manufacture the rune stones necessary to train your magic. Following this is a member skill, slayer. A pretty good concept, where you are assigned a number of a certain type of monster, so not only does it train you slayer skill, but also your other combat skills. The next skill is another member skill, farming. In this skill, you can grow various crops for food and herblore, as well as various trees. A fairly easy skill to train, as you can do the planting then pay a gardener to watch over your crops, usually with another crop you've grown!!! Sweet corn is one of my primary crops to grow, for use in the tuna potato.
The final row is all member skills. It starts off with the fairly interesting skill of construction. You can make your own player owned house with this skill, but it seems to be a skill that is primarily a skill that you buy your way up in. None of the tasks are especially difficult, but most of them cost a good amount of coin. I did some construction, but have gotten a fairly bored with it. Next is an amusing skill, in the way I've attained the level I'm at. Hunter, which involves catching animals. The funny thing about this, I've never actively pursued this skill. In the farming skill, you can teleport to Winkin's farm to participate in Vinesweeper, a variation of Microsoft's minesweeper game. I'm quite good at this, and the rewards are points that can be traded for the necessary seeds for farming. During this game, there are rabbits that can thwart your efforts, but you can counter them by feeding them strange roots that you dig up. This is the ONLY way I've ever gotten any hunter experience!!! The final, and my lowest statistic is the summoning skill. With it you can summon a spirit animal to assist you, in combat or as a beast of burden. While it could be useful, I just haven't trained it much.
Just today I was admonished by a non player character to raise that stat up some!!! Guess I'd better do that!!!
