Runescape Oldschool

I barely ever play on my regular account, Obsidian Age, as Jagex have massively increased the price for membership. Fortunately, if you had a pre-existing subscription, you could continue to pay the original rate. There has since been an introduction of Bonds, the ability to pay through in-game cash. If my other account ever gets rich enough, I may reinstate membership for Obsidian Age.

UIM Brony is my Ultimate Ironman. As an Ultimate Iron Man, he is completely self-sufficient. He cannot trade with any other player through any means. This includes regular trading, drop-trading, staking and even the Falador Party Room. All shops are 'instanced', meaning he cannot purchase items that other players sell to shops. He also cannot pick up drops that other players have left on the ground and chosen not to pick up. Also, if he is to obtain the loot form a monster, he must do 100% of the damage to that monster -- otherwise he will be unable to pick up the drop (even if he does the majority of the damage).

On top of this, UIM Brony takes things a step further by never being allowed to BANK with the NPCs. This means that EVERYTHING that UIM Brony owns MUST be carried with him at all times. Considering there are only 28 inventory spaces and no Summoning familiars, this proves very challenging. The Player-Owned House allows for storage of some costumes and armour, but usually requires the entire set to be obtained before being stored. The Looting Bag is practically a necessity for Ultimate Ironman Mode, as it allows for an extra 27 inventory spaces. There are drawbacks to the Looting Bag though -- you cannot deposit items into the Looting Bag unless you are in the Wilderness, and you cannot withdraw items from the Looting Bag unless you die. Also, you lose the Looting Bag on death, meaning that you have to re-obtain another one each time you want to withdraw anything. Finally, not everything can be stored in a Looting Bag -- only tradeable items can. Non-tradeable items cannot be stored in the Looting Bag, or even placed on a table in-game.

Fortunately, due to a recent surge of DDoS attacks on the game client, Jagex have implemented a change in death mechanics. This change means that you keep all untradeable items on death. Some untradeable items changed form on death -- Barrows Gloves turned into 64,000gp and a completed Slayer Helm turned into the original components. This is no longer the case, as these items now remain in your inventory upon death. Items that have no right-click 'Drop' option (such as Ava's Accumulator) *were* simply lost upon death, although appear to have been made to remain in your inventory after a silent game update. These death mechanics may sound incredibly useful for Ultimate Ironmen, but actually provide some drawbacks. One notable drawback is the fact that the quest Devious Minds becomes *much* harder to work around. Check out my quest guide for Devious Minds for Ultimate Ironmen here.

Quests in general become much, much harder for Ultimate Ironmen. I've written an entire guide covering the differnces in questing for Ultimate Ironmen, which can be found here. Suddenly the most trivial of quests, such as Death Plateau, are turned into the most complex in terms of planning. In Death Plateau, for example, you are required to have 21 different quest-related items in your inventory at the same time. Even if an Ultimate Ironman was to store the majority of their items in a Looting Bag, they would still only have 6 spaces *spare* to carry any untradeables they wished to keep while completing the quest. There are a total of 8 quests that require trips to Entrana, where you are not allowed any weapons or armour, so planning must be taken when conducting trips there. Some quests, such as Recruitment Drive and The Fremennik Trials have segments that require having absolutely no items at all equipped or in the inventory whatsoever. Fortunately, in addition to the death mechanics and Looting Bag, there is a third alternative -- Zulrah.

Exclusive to Oldschool, Zulrah is a new boss that provides a challenge for players. Because the boss is so challenging, its release came with a unique death mechanic. Upon death to Zulrah, an NPC holds all of your items for you until your next death, or you retreieve them from her, even with the death mechanics in place. This *includes* untradeables. I've written a guide purely for Ultimate Ironmen that makes use of Zulrah. Check it out here.

My current accomplishments for UIM Brony include:

• Quest Cape
• Slayer Helmet
• Dragon Defender
• Guthix Platebody and Guthix Platelegs
• Holy Sandals
• Barrows Gloves
• Rune Crossbow
• Full Void Range
• Full Graceful
• Odium Shard 2
• 3 stacks of Zamorak Pages, 3 stacks of Ancient Pages and 3 stacks of Armadyl Pages
• Over 1 million gp in cash
• Over 10 million gp in item value

You can compare my two accounts here.