simshadows
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OSRS - Main Character Progress Diary

WARNING: This page will contain many quest spoilers.

Goals Of This Character

My main character: simshadows

My focus is on experiencing the game. Specifically:

My approach to questing is to take suggestions on optimal quest order, but proceed with each quest unguided. The only external hints on quests I get is anything written in OSRS Wiki’s Optimal quest guide (approximately this revision from 09:53, 24 November 2025). Everything outside of quests will usually involve looking up guides.

My approach to skill grind and moneymaking is to prefer the laziest methods possible (so-called “zero time” methods). I also prefer to rely on quest XP as much as possible, and only manually levelling up if necessary (e.g. melee combat is really nice to level because it makes the game comfy, and mining is nice early-game money).

I am also currently doing almost all quests alongside a friend who has never played Runescape before, so some aspects of this unguided quest progression will be accelerated by us bouncing ideas with each other as we play. I will also try to share any differences in our experiences with the game.

Ideally, I’d like to record video footage of me going through some of the more interesting quests and posting them on one of my YouTube channels, but since I’m playing most quests with a friend, I probably won’t.

I enjoy experiencing as many fail states as possible in videogames within reason, though for particularly frustrating fail states like those of the quest The Tourist Trap, I eventually leaned towards avoiding fail states when I was too far ahead if there is a high risk of time wastage.

Before 2026-01-06, I took the time to read through all the possible dialogue options. This really consumes a lot of time, and I eventually found out that the wiki has comprehensive dialogue transcripts (such as this one), so as of 2026-01-06, I would try to just solve the quest quickly and then read the transcript later (and probably check out the fail states on YouTube).

Skill Milestones

Level Strength Hitpoints Defence
1 2025-12-25 2025-12-25 2025-12-25
⋮ ⋮ ⋮ ⋮
88 2026-01-09 2026-01-17
89 2026-01-09 2026-01-19
90 2026-01-09 2026-01-20
91 2026-01-11
92 2026-01-12
93 2026-01-12
94 2026-01-13
95 2026-01-14
96 2026-01-15
97 2026-01-16
98 2026-01-17
99 2026-01-18

Diary

2025-12-25 Quest: Tutorial Island

I initially started as free-to-play with my friend when I found out that they’ve never played runescape before.

2025-12-25 to 2025-12-26

Right after Tutorial Island, we went straight to the cows east of Lumbridge to farm melee combat XP and cow hides. I became quickly disappointed when I found that my account can’t sell cow hides in the GE until I pass certain milestones (such as some 20 or so hours of gameplay). Oh well.

Me and my friend just randomly explored the map without quests for a while, and in my free time, I just multtasked farming cows (and later, giant frogs) while doing something else IRL. I knew from the start that this game would be extremely multitaskable since you can do a lot of low-intensity things that might only require a click every now and then, and you don’t even really need to spend too much effort to maximize combat uptime.

On 2025-12-26, I’d get so frustrated competing with the bots for the giant frogs that I started Membership, I immediately sold all my cow hides in the GE for a nice profit, and proceeded to farm the giant frogs in a member world’s Lumbridge Swamp that was fully devoid of players. I collected the Big Bones in the bank to sell at the GE.

2025-12-26 Quests

Since my friend still didn’t have membership, we started by following the wiki’s F2P optimal quest guide.

Quests completed:

X Marks The Spot had a cipher (“ESBZOPS QJH QFO”) that I found frustrating because I made mistakes with my attempts to decipher it, and wouldn’t realize it until my friend redone my work and got the right solution.

X Marks The Spot and Pirate’s Treasure was great introductions to show my friend the basics of how Runescape quest design works. Both quests had a lot of interesting ideas.

Romeo & Juliet’s ending confused us because it was a sudden random departure from the original Shakespeare story.

We “accidentally” started Doric’s Quest very early because we wanted to use the anvil, but we wouldn’t complete it that day.

2025-12-27 Quest: Misthalin Mystery

This quest was such a fun puzzle! It was fun to piece things together, and the storytelling and visual design was so cool!

The piano puzzle stumped us more for longer than we’d like to admit. My immediate first idea was “DEATH”, but it obviously wouldn’t fit, and I wouldn’t realize that I should try the variant “DEAD” until a lot later.

The HEARTH part of the puzzle took unnecessarily long. I realized that the left edge of the riddle spelt HEARTH the whole time, but when I tried all the fireplaces, none of them could be interacted with, so we proceeded to be extremely stuck for a while until we tried interacting with the empty fireplace again.

The final boss seems to require a lot more fast reaction time and fast clicking than it probably should require. But still, the final boss was quite quick and easy to do anyway.

2025-12-28 Quest: Children of the Sun

I finished this quest quickly solo because I wanted to just quickly get access to the Gemstone Crab for melee XP.

I found the “stealth follow” section extremely annoying. It required you to follow super-closely, making it really easy to fail. The NPC moves really, really slowly, so failure means you have to redo the entire thing all over again.

My friend would finish this much later. They absolutely hated the “stealth follow” section as well.

2025-12-28

I’d begin an intensive XP grind on the Gemstone Crab! I start the grind at 44 Attack, 45 Strength, and 40 Defense.

2025-12-29 Quests

Quests completed:

2026-01-01 Quests

Quests completed:

2026-01-02

The optimal quest guide says to level up Fletching to level 10, we cut down a load of trees outside the south gate of the GE and turned them into arrowshafts and headless arrows, and got to level 10.

We also got Construction to level 10 by going to the free house we got in Rimmington and building the stuff that the wiki says to build.

While waiting for my friend, I also randomly run into the Draynor Village Rooftop Course and levelled Agility to level 5.

2026-01-02 Quests

Quests completed:

We also technically completed Prince Ali Rescue, but we don’t turn it in until much later (since it’s so out-of-the-way).

2026-01-03

I wanted the Gem Bag to use with the Gemstone Crab, so I spent 3 hours (on-and-off because I was multitasking) levelling up mining by repeatedly mining copper/tin and then iron south-east of Varrock, and depositing into my bank for a bit of GP when I sell at the GE. I eventually reach level 30 Mining, which unlocked Motherlode Mine. I’d proceed to multitask by doing Motherlode Mine while doing something else IRL.

2026-01-04 Quest: Gertrude’s Cat

This quest was so supremely frustrating. I kept thinking the cat in question was on the ground level where “meow” speech text would keep appearing above various crates. I tried all sorts of things like camping a crate until a meow appears, and luring the cat out with fish.

My friend didn’t even realize I was having trouble. They already saw the actual cat up the ladder!

My friend figured out for me that the cat needed a bucket of milk.

For the part where we had to feed the cat, we were so hard-stuck here for the longest time. I had a chat with Gertrude and the other NPCs in and around her house, and I tried exploring everything that can be seen in the house, but got zero clues. We literally tried every fish that can be obtained with a fishing level under Lobster (and we also tried Lobster), we tried both raw and cooked variants, and we tried all sorts of meats both raw and cooked. We tried all sorts of other random stuff like herb leaves. We were absolutely hard-stuck.

But then my friend went back to Gertrude and got useful dialogue that led us straight to the food the cat wants. I must’ve talked to Gertrude before I interacted with the cat?

2026-01-04 Quests

Quests completed:

For Witch’s House, my friend went through the basement door perfectly fine, but I kept getting electrocuted. Then we had the lightbulb moment of having my friend trade their leather gloves to me so that I can also pass through.

We duplicated the sword from The Knight’s Sword lol. It’s such a cool-looking sword. I wish the game would still allow you to have it made.

2026-01-05 Quest: The Tourist Trap

This quest was a really interesting puzzle! The fail states made things very tense, the quest design was very immersive, there was a lot to explore and try to piece together, and the dialogue was really entertaining. It took me about 4 hours to complete, though a lot of that was because I was going through all the dialogue options and intentionally exploring the fail states.

Getting to this quest was the first time I’ve ever visited the Kharidian Desert (since 2010). I went through the gate with full heavy melee armour, a single waterskin, and some random water-filled containers I bought from Shantay. I walked through the gate, talked to the quest start NPC, then realized that I only had about a minute of water in total, then went back through Shantay pass. All water containers were empty when I checked.

I guessed correctly that the desert clothing sold by Shantay would improve the situation. I looked up the wiki on the water mechanic to confirm. I bought the available desert armour pieces from Shantay and a full inventory load of waterskin 4’s. I got a bit worried that I’m not familiar with the desert mechanics, so I removed all valuables except for what I can keep on death, and about 5k gp worth of stuff that I’d lose (mostly in gp actually lol).

I beelined straight to the mercenaries, proceeded to try to fight one, then the quest script put me straight into a fail state where I teleported to some random location with all waterskins taken off me except for one empty waterskin.

It took a while to figure out how to get through that first gate. I kept making the assumption that you can’t fight or talk to the mercenaries, but after realizing that there’s no other option, I went ahead and talked to the Mercenary Captain, and to my surprise, I got “safe” dialogue. For fun, I explored all dialogue options, including fail states (where I only carry one waterskin so that I don’t have much to lose. I assumed the whole time that the “mining” dialogue option would be correct, but it wasn’t. I don’t actually remember how the dialogue led to me fighting the Mercenary Captain, but I remember being very surprised that I wasn’t put into a fail state. I kill the Mercenary Captain and take the key.

My friend went straight into the gate with the weapon drawn. They immediately went into a fail state where they were trapped in the prison cell and the key was taken. I took the time to read the extra dialogue options at the gate where I found the hint that you’re not meant to have a weapon drawn. I proceed through the gate perfectly fine. I think I intentionally put myself into a similar fail state as my friend and got locked in the cell with them. We were genuinely lost trying to figure out how to get out, until my friend randomly found that you can click somewhere on the ground to escape by climbing out of the ditch. I probably wouldn’t have found that if my friend didn’t find it.

(Now that I think about it, I think I ran into the same situation some time before 2010, except I think I did find the solution to climb out of the ditch. I don’t remember anymore.)

The rest of the quest pretty much followed this pattern. I found it to be really fun!

Unfortunately, my friend rage-quit this quest near the very end after getting caught by a guard and having the keys taken from their inventory. In general, the fail states of this quest have been brutally frustrating to the point where they were just constantly verbally upset and frustrated throughout the quest from the very beginning when they entered the very first gate after killing the Mercenary Captain. In my opinion, their frustration towards the quest is very valid. This quest seems to like to reset very significant amounts of progress, which is especially frustrating if the fail state happens too long after a “checkpoint”. Such resets were especially frustrating for my friend since they were low-level and had a hard time killing the Mercenary Captain, whereas I was vastly overlevelled with Saradomin Sword thanks to Gemstone Crab.

Some other random thoughts about the rest of the quest:

I looked up the guide on the wiki after completing this quest fully unguided because I wanted to see if all the dialogue options are available. I really enjoy reading all the dialogue options in the games I play. It turns out that they are available, so I will probably avoid manually going through all the dialogue in-game now, and just referring to the guide once I’m done.

2026-01-07

I ended the day with 87 Strength.

2026-01-09

I got to 90 Strength before we started questing this day.

2026-01-09 Quest: Druidic Ritual

Nothing to say about this one.

2026-01-09 Quest: Black Knights’ Fortress

This quest was a bit awkward because we thought we were meant to go to Draynor Manor to sabotage the goblin trying to grab a Draynor Manor cabbage. We never found Helda or the goblin there, but we did have fun having a look around Draynor Manor. We asked Sir Amik Varze but he gave no hints.

My friend noticed a difference in the shading of the cabbages we got from Draynor Manor and cabbages we picked elsewhere, and we noticed that the Draynor Manor cabbage examine text doesn’t show GE pricing. We picked Draynor Manor cabbages for fun to see what would happen.

We went back to the fortress to explore some more. We quickly stumbled upon the room with the hole to drop the cabbage in. We did get a little dialogue acknowledgement when we tried the Draynor Manor cabbage, which was fun. After dropping the cabbage in, we went back to the grill to see if the dialogue updated.

2026-01-09 Quest: Goblin Diplomacy

The last goblin armour was so awkward to find. We seemingly searched all searchables, and randomly ran into a sack that we could prod and seemingly had somebody in it.

We went into the cave to the west and did the slide. It was kinda fun seeing an Owl City Fireflies reference in there, but no goblin armour.

My friend eventually found a searchable crate hidden in a corner behind the back-most building. So sneaky. We got the goblin armour from there and immediately turned it in to finish the quest.

2026-01-11

I got to 91 Strength before we started questing this day.

2026-01-11 Quest: Recruitment Drive

All the puzzles except the chemistry puzzle were trivial and basically instantly solved.

The chemistry puzzle was… interesting to solve I guess? But it was a little too moon-logicy.

Me and my friend agreed not to spoil anything and only talk about it after the quest is complete.

Firstly, I found it really weird that you can’t find the book when you just arrive in the room. You’d only be able to find the book after speaking to the NPC once and then searching the bookshelf. You have to speak to the NPC twice for the dialogue to actually explain that the book exists, which is a little weird.

After a quick skim of the book, the immediate thing that came to mind was to make a cast of the key, and then somehow use the cupric ore powder and/or tin ore powder to somehow create a key out of the cast. The sections of the book talking about making plaster and how easy it is to melt cupric ore powder and tin ore powder together really stood out to me, but with only one tin pan, I wasn’t too sure how we were meant to melt them together to form bronze. I tried putting both ore powders into the tin, but then there would be a “strange concoction” int he tin and I couldn’t do anything with it so I got stuck trying to figure out how to form the cast of the key.

I decided to just make a cast first. I somehow (on the first try at this stage) tried putting the gypsum and water into the tin pan and successfully getting a cast of the key, but then I’d be stuck on how to pour molten metal into the cast. I tried using the spade with the idea being to mix the ore powders together on it and put the spade on the bunsen burner, but that didn’t work.

I’d fumble around a bit before realizing I actually had to put both ore powders into the tin pan with the cast and put that on the bunsen burner, then use the knife on it to retrieve the key.

I’d try a bunch more random stuff (mostly not worth talking about), then I’d have to reset the puzzle by walking out the entrance portal, but then having to redo a bunch of other puzzles before getting to the chemistry puzzle always takes a bit of time, which is annoying. One of these times was where I put the cupric sulfate with water, which made a hot substance. I’d be quite confused and what I was meant to do with it.

After being confused for a very long time, I saw my friend walk up to the bunsen burner and make a fireball animation before walking up to the stone door, and then their character clipped through the stone door to get to the other side. Presumably, they solved this section of the puzzle.

Unfortunately, that spoiled a part of the puzzle for me because I immediately pieced together that you’re meant to use something on the bunsen burner, and eventually, I randomly used the spade on the burner, causing the fireball animation, and giving me a spade without the wooden handle. There is no way I could’ve figured that out without just fumbling around trying any random item interactions. It’s very moonlogicy. So I’ll be honest, I’m not too disappointed that I got spoiled on that. It’s not something you’d be able to figure out logically.

I put the woodless spade on the stone door then pulled on the spade, but the spade would only fall out. It seems rather clear that the spade is meant to be on the door, so how could you make it stuck in the door?

The first thing I tried was mixing the gypsum and water together in the vials, but then when I try to pour in the door hole, it says “But the substance inside the vial has dried up, and won’t come out!”.

I’d actually accidentally keep mixing gypsum and water together in the vials, so I’d needlessly redo the puzzle a couple times.

(I feel like I would’ve tried putting the gypsum in the door first, then pour water in, then try to jam the spade in, but reviewing my video recording of the quest, I actually didn’t. This actually would’ve made sense to try though because I would’ve thought you can use the gypsum to get the spade stuck in the door.)

The second meaningful thing I tried was putting spade into the door, then “Use” the gypsum on the door, then “Use” the water on the door. I expected this “Use” to mean putting the gypsum into the door hole, but I noticed the dialogue say that I’m actually pouring the gypsum and water on the flat part of the spade. I got confused and actually missed the dialogue that said that the spade got hotter and expanded slightly, so I was a little confused when I managed to open the stone door, but I quickly notice it, and then realize that I needed to use the cupric sulfate and water instead of the gypsum and water to generate an exothermic reaction without using up the gypsum.

From that moment, I immediately knew that that was the solution, and then you’re meant to make the key and use the key on the wooden door behind the stone door. Though for fun, I still went over the book to check what reactions are exothermic. Interestingly, only the gypsum+water and the cupric sulfate+water reactions are exothermic.

I carried out the solution and finished off the quest.

It’s such a difficult solution to organically arrive to without so much trial and error that I still don’t know how I feel about this chemistry puzzle. A lot of stuff feel like they should’ve worked, like putting cupric and tin ore powder on the spade to form bronze with the bunsen burner to pour into the cast.

2026-01-12

I got to 93 Strength before we started questing this day.

2026-01-12 Quest: Sleeping Giants

Quest complete!

2026-01-13

I got to 94 Strength before we started questing this day.

2026-01-13 Quest: Tree Gnome Village

Oh my god the Khazard Warlord was so frustrating to find. We were so hard-stuck searching all over the place for hours. We’d log off for the day before finding the warlord. The next day, my friend finds the warlord, gives me a clue (which I didn’t understand the meaning of until after I found the warlord myself), and then later that day, I log on and pretty much immediately find the warlord by chance. The reason I didn’t find the warlord was that I did go west along the wall, but I think that due to draw distance, I saw nothing around the corner where the warlord is, so I assumed there was nothing there and I never came back to check. So frustrating!

2026-01-13 Quest: Fight Arena

The very beginning of the quest was so annoying. We first tried iron med helm, platebody, axe, and leather boots, but that didn’t work. Then we thought maybe changing the platebody to steel might work, but it didn’t. We actually tried to do this all by mining and smithing locally, but we didn’t have the smithing level for steel platebody in the end so we went to the GE to pick that one up. That didn’t work either. Then we tried walking around the fight arena to see if there’s an alternative entrance that we should’ve used instead, but we didn’t find anything.

My friend noticed the guard armour has different-looking arms to the iron/steel platebody (I think the elbows are uncovered?). They eventually found the Khazard armour in a chest in a random building while I was still running around the outside walls of the fight arena.

I’m very lucky that I over-levelled my melee combat skills, so I just overpowered all the fights.

2026-01-13 Quest: Waterfall Quest

This one annoyed us at the beginning. We thought the door in the waterfall was the first thing we should try to enter after finding the pebble. At the point where we interact with the raft and crash into the island, we tried all sorts of interactions (clicking on the water to swim, and clicking on the rock at the other side, which seems quite obvious that it’s meant to be part of the solution), only to keep failing. We tried bringing wooden logs/planks (maybe we’re meant to float on the logs?), we tried emptying our inventories, and we even tried the whirlpool. Only after all of that did we take the uninteractable rope on the ground as a hint that we’re meant to bring rope, and we quickly found that we can use the rope on the rock. We tried interacting directly with the tree, only to fail again. We then used the rope on the tree and succeeded.

At the waterfall door, we tried interacting with the door directly, only to fail again. We try all sorts of other things, like using the rope on various things, using the pebble on various things, etc. We even tried stuff like banking all gear/items, which also failed.

My friend notices the wording of the quest log, which prompted us to look at the tomb south of the dwarf cannon. When we use the pebble, there’s dialogue so it’s clear that it’s meant to work. The idea of being “pure of heart” got us to try unequipping all gear, but that failed. Only after banking all gear and items did it succeed to get us in the tomb (I’d learn later on that runes would also prevent us from entering the tomb).

The monsters in the tomb are quite brutal because you’re not allowed to bring combat gear in (presumably). We both almost died for various reasons. (We’d learn later that you can LoS the monsters, allowing you to take your time to loot - important when you’re duping the quest items so that you’d have a copy of the items whenever you fail.)

After looting the tomb, we were able to enter the door in the waterfall.

Everything through the door is very straightforward. We had to leave though to grab more runes from the bank.

However, just when the chalice appears, we immediately interact with it directly (without items), resulting in a fail state that required us to go back to the tomb to get another copy of the necklace (and we got extra ashes too) and return to the chalice. Using the ashes on the chalice got us the quest complete.

2026-01-14

I got to 95 Strength before we started questing this day.

2026-01-14 Quest: Plague City

Quest complete!

2026-01-15

I got to 96 Strength, and about 7/8 of the way to 97!

2026-01-16

I got to 97 Strength and about 3/4 of the way to 98 before we started questing this day.

2026-01-16 Quests

Quests completed:

We wanted to start sailing ASAP, so we went straight for Pandemonium (and also Sea Slug because I was still at level 1 fishing).

The torch in Sea Slug was so annoying. I feel like I already tried using the glass on thedamp sticks, but because nothing happened, I didn’t bother trying again. I randomly stumbled upon the solution to light the torch by randomly clicking on things. When I realized that I had a lit torch, I tried to reverse-engineer what happened, which was how I discovered the glass + damp sticks thing.

2026-01-17

I got to 98 Strength before we started questing this day, then got halfway to 99 by the end of the day.

2026-01-17 Quest: Tower of Life

Quest complete!

2026-01-18

I got to 99 Strength! I moved on to training Defence afterwards.

I probably won’t specifically write about any more intermediate progress. I just wanted to write about my first ever 99.

Stuff I want to try in the future