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The RuneScape Assist System - Introduction, General Description and Limitations The RuneScape Assist System - Skill-Specific Information and Tips

As we saw on the previous page, the mechanics of using the Assist System (AS) are rather simple and straight-forward. Now I’d like to talk a bit more about some of the practical aspects of using the AS, both for those who need assistance and those who want to offer it. I will talk about good ways of finding people to help or give help, and also cover some of the etiquette and politeness issues in requesting help. I’ll also give you a few thoughts on the use of the Assist System for training.

As with any new feature or update, lots and lots of people are quite excited about the new Assist System, so there are plenty of folks just about everywhere looking for “help”. Some uses of the system are entirely reasonable, and you will find the AS very useful if you go about finding help the right way. Other people seem to be exploiting the AS for little more than begging—I’ll assume you don’t want to be one of these, and advise you accordingly.

First things first: if you have a friend you know personally who has the levels you need in the skills you need, asking that person for help is the best option. Most players, though, will need to be more creative.

The most appropriate uses of the AS are for skills that require a particular level to transform a raw material into a finished product. To me, this means that it is best used for the following skills: Cooking, Crafting, Fletching, Herblore, Runecrafting and Smithing. All of these are skills where you basically start with a raw material and use a skill to make something else for it. They are the sorts of skills where the temporary help of another person can be useful, and most high-levels won’t mind aiding you in exchange for XP.

To get assistance with these skills, it makes sense to go to the more common places where people engage in them. For example, smithing generally takes place at anvils; crafting is often done in and around the bank in Al Kharid, cooking at the Rogue’s Den, and so forth. Go to one of these places on a busy world, and either look for people offering assistance, or politely announce that you are requesting help of a particular type. For example, you might say “Requesting help from level 82 smith” or “Need level 71 herblore assistance”. Then see if anyone responds. As you’d expect, being polite increases the chances of getting someone to respond (Figure 40).

Another option is to use the RuneScape forums. The RuneScape Skills forum seems to have become the place to both offer and request assistance with different skills, so that’s a good place to start looking. If you see someone willing to assist with the skill you need, then reply to the thread or contact that person in game (depending on what the assister prefers) and meet up to do the exchange.

At first, the Assist System allowed you to ask for “assistance” with skills that involve getting products but that don’t have raw materials: Fishing, Hunter, Mining and Woodcutting. If you think about it, someone who is “helping” you with one of those skills is basically just going to stand there getting XP while you get the items, when he or she could be standing there getting XP and the items. Is asking someone for “help” fishing 100 sharks or “assistance” in cutting 100 magic logs any different than just begging that person to give you 100 sharks or 100 magic logs? I don’t see any distinction between the two scenarios, and their presence was just leading to the harassment of high-levels who only want to train in peace . Fortunately, Jagex chose to remove these skills from the system a week after it came out.

One final note: as I said in the section “Impact on Scamming” on the previous page, beware people asking for payment in order to use the Assist System. This basically boils down to a trust trade, and leaves you vulnerable to being scammed.

Also see the skill-specific discussions for more details.

One of the few major drawbacks of the Assist System is that large numbers of obnoxious, selfish players are using it to harass high-level players. It’s important to remember that the person assisting is the one doing the favor here: nobody is required to help anyone, either with or without the AS. Annoying high level players just means they will get upset and turn off Assist, and then neither you nor anyone else will get help.

Here are some specific ways you can be a considerate Assist System requester:

• Be Reasonable: Asking someone to use the AS to let you make a couple of potions is reasonable, but expecting them to stand there while you clean 2,000 grimy herbs is not. Respect other people’s time, and remember that even though the person is getting XP, they could generally be getting that XP doing something else instead of helping you.
  
  
• Don’t Beg: People hate beggars, and the higher level they get, the more they hate them.
  
  
• Respect Others’ Choices: If a high-level player has Assist turned off, there’s a reason for it: they don’t want to assist anyone right now! Don’t bug them to turn it on.
  
  
• Remember That a Skillcape is Not a Matador’s Cape: Some people seem to think that as soon as they see a person with a skillcape, this is open season for them to charge that person and harass them for “help” in whatever skill the cape is for. It’s not. Skillcapes are something that players earn for hard work, so let these folks wear them in peace.
  
  
• Tell the Assister When You’re Finished: The game has no way of knowing when the assistee no longer wants help, so if you are done using someone’s help and don’t say anything, the assister may be left standing there wondering what is going on (Figure 41). Be considerate and tell them when you’re done so they know they can do something else (or help someone else.)
  

  Figure 41: Don’t Leave Your Assister Hanging

  I offered to help this person cook some sharks. I was then left standing there wondering if he was really done, until he logged out.

  If someone is willing to take the time to help you, the least you can do is to tell them when you’re done, so they can go do something else!

  
  

Finally, while you certainly don’t need to pay anyone for using the AS, if a high-level player spends a lot of time helping you out, a small gift would be a nice gesture of thanks.

If you are a high-level player and want to offer assistance, you will not have a hard time finding people who want to use your services. As with those looking for help, the best way to help is to either go to one of the “skill centers” where people training that skill are often found, or to advertise your offer of assistance on the RuneScape forums. In both cases, announce what skills you are offering help with, such as saying “Level 81 smithing assistance here”, as I did in Figure 42. Those who want your assistance will then request it.

To be able to accept help requests from others, you must set the “Assist” button to either “On” (for anyone to be able to request assistance) or “Friends” (for just those on your friends list). You also must specifically enable each of the 9 skills you want to offer help with: the first time that you use the Assist System, you’ll find that they are disabled by default. Click on the rectangle associated with each skill that you want to offer help with, and it will turn on. You can also move your mouse over each skill’s rectangle to see what its status is (see Figure 43).

While you are assisting, you can watch the screen to see the XP you are gaining from assisting someone, but you can’t do anything else involving your skills. If you are going to be assisting someone for a while, this is a good time to chat with friends, for example. Assisting is also a good activity to engage in when you are not paying a lot of attention to the game (say, you are also reading the RuneScape forums.)

Note that if you are receiving XP as an assister and get enough to go up a level, you don’t actually level up until you finish assisting.

Another tip to be aware of is that enhancing and boosting potions do work. If you are level 92 Cooking and drink a Chef’s Delight, then you can assist someone in cooking summer pies until the brew wears off.

For more ideas on how to make the most of this feature for particular skills—and which ones to avoid using it for—see the skill-specific discussions.Finally, I recommend against offering assistance in exchange for payment. As I said earlier, this is really no different than requesting a trust trade, and could result in hard feelings—or worse. (What happens if you take the payment and then your Internet connection dies before you can help the person who paid? Guess what, you’re going to get reported for scamming, when all you wanted to do was help.)

As I mentioned in my overview of the Assist System, Jagex has done a good job of setting up this feature to make it difficult to abuse. In particular, the 30k XP limit per 24 hours means that this is not a method you can use to power-level any skill. Also, in every case, you can’t get XP from this system any faster than you could get it in some other way.

That said, I think the AS can be useful as a supplement for certain types of training. This is particularly applicable to skills that would normally require a lot of interaction from the player, such as Magic. In these cases you can get some XP while devoting a minimum of attention to the game. In essence, then, this system is of most use to high-levels who want to get some XP during what would otherwise be “down time”. It is also a way to train skills that often involve losing money, such as Herblore or Smithing, for free.

There are also currently some exploits that can make this system useful for certain types of training, but I hope Jagex will plug these holes soon.

The RuneScape Assist System - Introduction, General Description and Limitations The RuneScape Assist System - Skill-Specific Information and Tips