The Mushroom Curse

A few weeks ago the younger boy and I returned to the Renaissance Faire. Turned out that it was their 'free play' week, where all types of costumes are encouraged, including time travellers. I don't know if that was the draw, or if it's just that things are opening again and people are antsy to get out and about, but it seemed like it was more crowded than we've ever seen it!!!

As we wandered towards the back, we were hailed by a wizard looking fellow. He asked if we would like to play a free game, with only either of our dignity on the line. If we failed the challenge, we would have to cluck like a chicken, but if we prevailed, the wizard would have to cluck. He laid out a loop of chain in a circle pattern with a figure eight on the inside. He demonstrated that if you pick one end, it would snare your finger. I tried first, and failed, so I did the chicken cluck.

The boy did it next, and he also failed, and he did a better chicken than I did!!!

Well, that was fun!!! We noticed that he had a large tome on the end of his table, so the boy asked about it. Wizard unlocks it and starts leafing through it. He comes across a scrap of parchment. He asks, "Do you have a friend who likes mushrooms?" He says he does.

He hands him the parchment and tells him, "Slip this into the bag of your friend, and they will never find the mushrooms they seek!"

A Noob's Ransom

Runescape has added a new feature, the Grand Exchange. Non members can put up to two different types of items up for sale, or offer to buy up to two types of items, or one buy and one sell. Basically, it's Ebay for Runescape!!! Of course, there are a few parameters. Somehow, they set what the "market price" is, and you can only go 5% over or under. The downside to all this is that the regular store prices are now tied to prevailing market rates, so the days of being able to find coal or nature runes in a store for a bargain price are now over.

But, hey, makes for trading your wares for gold much easier and more profitable. Provided, of course, you have something that anyone would want to buy. My first thing I put up was the Runeite ore I've been holding in my bank for the proper offer. $12,000, just like that!!! While working on getting my smithing levels up, I've made a lot of items. I put the 372 adamantite maces I've made up for sale, and the next time I logged in I'd sold 73, making almost $100,000!!! This was the first days that they had rolled out the exchange, and sales on that particular item have fallen off drastically. I had a buy offer for a pickax handle for quite a while to go with the rune pickax head I found, but no one is bothering to sell those off. I changed that to an offer to buy 100 dwarvian stouts at $2 gold each, and the next time I logged in I had them all. They are easily gotten for only $1 each, but it takes a LONG time to do that, and I've got the gold to not have to deal with all that. After that purchase, I put up the 1100 adamantite medium helmets I've made. These seem to be a hot item, I'm up to almost $1,000,000 gold for what I've sold of those so far. Several adamantite swords are in my bank still, the results of my quest to up my smithing level. Tonight I finally made it to level 74, with the help of all those dwarvian stouts I bought. Whoo hooo, I can now make adamantite scimitars!!! Only 1,128 bars to make and smith until level 75... Those scimitars should be a hot item at the grand exchange. However, I think I will make several other players very happy for my annual Christmas eve give away!!!