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TruthScape Skill Secrets - General Guide - Strategies and Techniques for Efficient RuneScape Skill Training The Time-Money Equivalence of Skills and Dealing with Grunt Work

This section of the TruthScape Skill Secrets General Guide is all about efficiency in training, and I’ll have a lot to say about various aspects of effective leveling as we go through it. But I would like to begin with the single most important concept that you must keep in mind if you care about efficiency, not only in skill leveling but in all aspects of gameplay. Ready? Here it comes:

“Time is Money”

You’ve probably heard that expression before, but what does that really mean? And how specifically does it apply to skill training? That’s what we’re going to find out.

The concept of opportunity cost describes the hidden expenses associated with choosing one alternative over another. Opportunity costs exist automatically in any situation where you must choose a course of action; since you are choosing one action over another, it describes what you gave up in making your decision. These costs can take many forms: money, items, space, time, lost enjoyment and many others.

This is a concept that’s hard to understand in words but easy to see through examples, so here are a few:

• You decide to spend an hour mining coal to train Mining and Smithing. In doing so, you are giving up the opportunity to train another skill, such as Crafting or Agility. You are also foregoing the opportunity to mine something other than coal.
  
  
• You’re killing green dragons and have two inventory spots left as you kill your final one. It drops a green dragonhide, dragon bones and a grimy dwarf weed. You pick up the hide and the bones but then must make a choice: you can take the dwarf weed home with you, but only at the cost of dropping something else.
  
  
• You get a dragonstone from the chest in Taverley: now you must decide what to do with it. If you cut it you get some nice Crafting XP, but you reduce how much you get for it if you sell the gem. If you make an amulet of glory from it, then you are, by default, choosing not to make a ring of wealth, necklace of skills or bracelet of combat from the gem.
  
  
• You have 40 million gold in the bank and you decide to use it to buy a full set of Bandos armor. Doing so means you can’t spend that money on a Bandos godsword, or a dragonfire shield, or on buying the supplies necessary to get a high Construction level.
  
  
• Your friend wants you to come play Castle Wars with him. Instead, you decide to spend an hour working on your Fishing. You’ve given up that potential hour of fun to work on your skill.

The reason opportunity cost is so important is that it is a recognition of the trade-offs that we all make every time we choose to do something. Yet most people do not understand that they are constantly making these decisions.

Of course, the same concept of opportunity cost applies just as much in the real world as it does in the game. Consider that two hours spent watching a football game is two hours you can’t spend working in your garden or taking care of those long overdue chores that you “don’t have time for”. J And of course, an hour spent playing RuneScape is an hour you don’t have to play a different game.

What does opportunity cost have to do with the notion that time is money, as I introduced this topic? Simple: time is money in RuneScape because players have the ability to use time to make money; thus, any time you spend on an activity takes the place of time you could have used to earn money. This means that time you spend on something is equivalent to money you spend on it.

What is the value of your time? This differs from one player to the next, but I generally consider it to be how much a player can earn, consistently, while performing an activity in the game that he enjoys. For example, I have no problem making 300,000 an hour doing a variety of different skills or fighting several types of monsters. Thus, I conservatively estimate my time as being worth 300k per hour. A lower level player doesn’t have as many opportunities as I do, so his or her time may be worth less—though nearly anyone can make at least 100k per hour. Conversely, someone with better skills than I, such as a level 91 Runecrafter, may have a base value of time of 500k per hour or more.

What this monetary value of time means is that any activity you perform other than trying to make money, is indirectly costing you the money you could have made in that time. Now, there’s nothing at all wrong with that! Nobody says you have to spend all your time earning money—in fact, I’d say doing so means you miss the point of the game. But you should be aware of what making those decisions really costs you, so you can avoid falling into the trap of false economies.

A lack of understanding of these concepts leads many RuneScape players to think that if they don’t have to pay money for an item, then it is free. The truth, though, is that most “free” things in the game have a string attached: time. Simply put, if getting a free item takes a considerable amount of time, it isn’t free—it incurs the opportunity cost of anything else you could have done with that time.

Suppose the price of yew logs were to double one week; if anyone complained about that in a forum discussion, inevitably there would be replies from several people saying “so go cut the wood yourself, then it’s free!” Well, no, it isn’t free. If a stranger comes up to you and gives you 100 noted yew logs at no charge, that would be free. If you have to spend a bunch of time cutting the logs and hauling them to the bank, then it isn’t free—it cost you your time, which you could have used for something else.

While time is money in terms of the equivalence described above, a good case could be made that time is really more important than money. The main reason is that money can be replaced far more easily than time can. If you think about it, time is the ultimate limited resource, and so it is wise to always try to avoid wasting it.

Just something to keep in mind… as you waste time playing RuneScape. J

I didn’t preface this subsection header because I’m trying to get your attention. Well, I do want your attention as a reader, of course. J My point, though, was more to talk about the matter of how much attention one pays while playing the game. More specifically, the different amounts of attention that various activities require can complicate the trade-off between time and money in two important ways.

First, activities that require less of your concentration open up the possibility of multitasking game activities with other activities. An example would be playing RuneScape in one window while reading and posting to the forums on another. The ability to do this potentially allows an in-game activity that has a lower overall rate of XP per hour to be worth more to some players than another activity that gives more XP but requires 100% of your concentration.

Note that I am not saying this to encourage so-called AFK (away from keyboard) training, which is against the rules (as well as being dangerous to your character). RuneScape rules require players to be present at the computer when playing the game, but as far as I know, as long as you are at the keyboard and keeping an eye on your screen, you are allowed to have other windows open. You can also certainly listen to music or watch TV while playing, for example, or do other activities where you are still physically at the PC and interacting with the game. I’ve been known to try to clean up my desk at times while playing, for instance. J

The second way that concentration matters has to do with how relaxed or enjoyable the activity is. For example, while I know that I can get a lot more XP by cutting willows than magic logs, I like the slow pace of cutting magics sometimes. The same goes for fishing sharks; there’s less running back and forth to banks, and more time for me to enjoy myself, chat with friends and so forth.

Of course, this sort of multitasking will matter more to some players than others, but it really is a valid consideration in assessing skill activities.

TruthScape Skill Secrets - General Guide - Strategies and Techniques for Efficient RuneScape Skill Training The Time-Money Equivalence of Skills and Dealing with Grunt Work