The fun thing about seeking adventure is it usually seeks you out instead. This all started from looting a scroll clue and wanting to farm everything for it myself. While sure it would have been cheaper and faster to just buy what was needed and be quickly done with it. It ended up leading to one thing and then another far beyond just what was needed for the clue in the first place.
As far as scroll clues are considered I don’t know much about them at all. I know I get rewards for doing them. I also know these are things you get from performing certain actions in the game. In my case, I was out farming cows trying to get back into the swing of things again for this game.
I also recall somewhat avoiding scroll clues in the past when I played a couple of years back. They require some game knowledge and find NPCs and items in the game. Since I'm using RuneLine client I have the Clue Scroll mod which gives you some helpful tips about completing them.
The first thing to do was to find the NPC for the clue scroll. While it told around where it was in a town. These old-school games make you suffer in having to hunt down the NPC more than that. At the very least OSRS gave more of a clue where the NPC was than many older games I've played in the past.
Even better yet and why I'm already loving the Clue Scroll mod. It flat-out told me where the NPC was. Along with some helpful hints along the way. Saving me a bit of time having to hunt down where this guy was in the town. I’ve always hated the amount of time I've spent in games wandering around looking for an NPC so I was quite thankful for this.
All I needed to finish off this clue scroll was to turn in a raw trout. They sell rather cheaply on the player exchange, and it is nothing to go buy one. However, where is the fun in that? It turns out I don’t have any fishing skills yet in OSRS and I was looking for any excuses to just go out and do something to skill my character up.
I ended up finding quite a sweet spot to start skilling up fishing. It was just east of Port Sarim. Even better, which makes a skilling location amazing, there was a bank just a couple of steps away. There was also, and I didn't care for it at the time, a permanent campfire. Along with lots of people making fires since this seems to be a popular place to cut wood as well.
At this spot, I started off catching loads of shrimps. I did not think about it at the time, but shrimp would end up being one of the higher-value things at such a low level I'd end up catching as a free-to-play. It turns out this is what many free-to-play and even members use to level up their cooking skills.
While some people are just skilling to skill and are dumping any fish they catch on the ground. With how close the bank was and being quite light on funds anyway. I went and banked everything I had caught. At the time I was not even thinking about cooking it up myself.
I was also not doing this as a money maker. While I would end up selling a decent amount later for a little bit of gold. This is not a great method for making gold. It was, however, nice just to be doing something that would help slowly build my pile of gold up.
To make things go quicker dumping off at the bank. I realized I could “fill” all empty slots under the menu settings option for the bank. I then could just select to bank all. Everything then I already had a stack for would go into the bank with a press of a button. While leaving my fishing net still in my inventory. In games like these, it’s finding out about the little time savers that end up going a long way. This will come in handy in every farming grind I do moving forward.
I then was for a while a shrimp farmer! Occasionally I'd level up and I'd get told of something new I could now go out and catch. Most of the time it was for members only. Thankfully what I was looking for was for free-to-play players as well.
While fishing I looked deeper into everything that you can collect while fishing. It turns out that even as a free-to-play player I can catch lobster. Lobster however required level 40 fishing. It also requires level 40 cooking to cook it up.
This soon became a little longer goal than just fishing till I could get trout. Lobsters were something I consumed to heal with while leveling up combat. If I could go out and farm my own and one day cook my lobster as well. That be quite nice to do. Even possibly a way to bring in some money while leveling up those related skills.
At level 15 fishing I unlocked the ability to catch anchovies. What is better than eating lobsters in this game? Anchovies' pizza! That would require a lot more cooking than I was willing to do for the short term. It was, however, added to a bit longer list of goals I hope to work on during a week.
At least one of the nice things about being in one of the highest-population worlds is knowing you have found a good spot when there are so many people here. Even I was tempted at one point to go out and start chopping some trees down and lighting fires like so many were off doing in the background.
I however had to remind myself that it can be easy to get distracted in a game like this. I had to stay focused on my goals. I could always come back here later and work on some wood cutting. I also think I already have some other spots I'd rather do it at with fewer people around. It is, however, quite nice being right next to the bank here.
Over time I leveled out in a way the spot I was at. It was time to go and get myself a trout so I could finish off the scroll clue. For this, I’d need to hop over to the fishing shop in Port Sarim and buy myself a Fly-fishing rod. I was also going to need lots of feathers since those get consumed when you catch a fish. While I had a few feathers on me I went out and bought a few hundred more over time.
I then headed to a spot next to the barbarian fort. The biggest downside to this spot was how far away the bank was. It was not like it was a massive distance away. It was also not that far from the Grand Exchange so when I needed more feathers, I could go pick some up.
A lot of people at this location were just dumping fish. I don’t quite blame them as it sold for a bit less than the shrimp. There was also the matter of the bank being quite a lot further away. I even noticed a few people running around picking up fish off the ground and heading off to the bank.
If I was starting over on a fresh account and needed some quick gold, I could see myself running some fish people were dumping on the ground. It would be a quick few thousand you then could spend on some starting gear. I however was more here for the experience and a single trout. I, however, was not about to just dump any extras on the ground.
During one of my trips to the Grand Exchange for more furthers I made a quick trip to turn in my clue scroll. I ended up looting some basic items. I have no idea if this was good or not so good for these. 1k gold worth of loot was not worth the time money-wise. It was, however, well worth the little adventure this started me on.
There were then lots of trips back to my fishing spot and to the nearest bank that I could use. Often, I'd just level my character fishing away on one computer screen while doing something else on the other. I’d occasionally look over or notice the screen changed to be logged out for being inactive.
It’s a shame one of the mods I wanted to use in RuneLite used to keep you in the game longer is no longer found. Perhaps such a thing is not permitted and broke the game's TOS. I have no idea. At some point, I need to go through the massive list of stuff you can have running in RuneLite and see all that I can get that would not seem to be putting me at risk of getting any kind of ban.
Final Thoughts
I ended up staying at this location for level 40 fishing. After that, I could go fish for lobster. That would require buying a pot from the fishing shop and trying to find a location to farm them.
While fishing I did get another clue scroll. This time, however, I decided to ignore it for the day. It required me to go all the way down into some wizard's basement. That sounded like quite a pain to do. Instead, I wanted to find another location to go fishing at.
Next up I was ready to hunt down a location to farm some lobster at. That ended up being a lot more of an ordeal than I was expecting. Sometimes it’s well worth investing some time to find the right spot to grind.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Old School RuneScape