Runescape is based upon Runequest

Everybody knows about the old-school pencil and paper role playing game called Dungeons and Dragons which came out in the mid 1970's. Most computer RPGs are generally based on that original classic. Some, like Neverwinter Knights, explicitly try to recreate the entire game system. Even people who never played D&D will be familiar with many of the concepts and mechanisms used in the game: character classes, player levels, and so on.

Shortly after D&D came out another RPG system was published that did things differently - RuneQuest. The manual said that the name of the game came from the fact that magic could be performed by using runestones. People who wanted to gain magical power would seek out these stones i.e. quest for them, and thus the name RuneQuest was born. Sound a bit familiar?

The game mechanics of RuneQuest ended up not really using the idea of runestones very much, however, even though they were used in the illustrations and cover art a lot. But there are several other things RQ did that a RS player might recognize:
In D&D a character's abilities were based on an overarching "level" and all his abilities improved at once. In RuneQuest characters did not have levels but instead had individual skills, each skill had a value of from 0 to 100 (hmm . . . ) And instead of getting better at a set group of skills when you leveled-up, you got better at the things you actually did during game-play. D&D used character classes which is an idea still used by most computer RPGs today - RQ had no character classes. In D&D a character had a general Armor Class for his whole body but in RuneQuest you could mix and match armor. And so forth and so on.

You could make your own game-world in RuneQuest or you could use the game-world the company created for you - their world was called Glorantha, which to me sounds a bit like the real name for the Runescape world: Gielinor.

RuneQuest was an "also ran" in the United States but it was very popular in the UK -- hmm . . . Jagex is based in the UK . . .

Varrock Achievement Armor

It took me longer to get the level 2 achievement armor than I had thought it would. I'm not a big fan of Runescape cats, so doing the cat related stuff was a chore. But I finally got the armor and gave it a quick try.

The armor is supposed to help you mine by sometimes giving you 2 ores instead of 1. This works, but it only happens about 4% of the time. Not much, but it is still worth wearing the stuff whenever mining.

The second thing the armor does is let you use the forge in Edgeville which sometimes gives you 2 bars instead of 1. This forge is nice and close to the bank but the door is always closed so it requires one more click than the ghost town forge. Unfortunately, the 2 for 1 thing with bars does not happen very often(I'm guessing it is also about 4% of the time). I think I will go to Edgevile when making steel or gold bars, but use other places for other metals.

Lastly the armor is supposed to make you smith faster sometime. This works as advertised but, again, only every once in a while. One cool thing is that the hammering sound also happens faster when the advantage occurs. I never minded the speed of smithing but I hate how long it takes to make cannon balls - - - but the armor does NOT help you in any way when making cannon balls.

So . . . I plan on using the armor whenever I go mining, use the Edgevile forge when I need to make a bunch of steal bars, and not worry about the armor at any other time. Its not bad, and it is certainly better than the jungle gloves you get for Karamja.