A player of the MMORPG Oldschool RuneScape has set himself an extremely laborious task, which became even more difficult due to a handicap: He has spent three years on this Sisyphean task and is now lamenting his plight.
What did the player set out to do?
- The player wanted to obtain an “untrimmed Herblore cape” in OldSchool RuneScape’s “Ultimate Ironman” mode.
- Translated, this means: He had to level the skill “Herblore” (i.e., herb lore) to the maximum of 99 without leveling any other skill to the maximum level first.
- And he did this under extremely strict conditions: Because in “Ultimate Ironman” mode in Oldschool RuneScape, you have nothing at all: You cannot trade, not even deposit items in the bank, and are limited to 28 inventory slots.
Shoveling 2 tons of sand with eyelashes
Why is this so hard? The skill “Herblore” is considered the hardest skill to level, especially in Ultimate Ironman, due to the limited inventory space – moreover, the player wanted to level this skill to 99 as the first and only skill, making it even harder because he had to restrict himself to the methods he could use to level Herblore. Normally, one would mix potions to level the skill efficiently.
The website “Gamesradar” compares the grind to shoveling two tons of sand with one’s eyelashes.
The player has detailed (via reddit) what he had to do to achieve his goal: A key component was to kill 150,000 to 300,000 chaos druids. He is not so sure about the exact number, as his tracker broke down at some point.
How long did it ultimately take? In the end, he took 3 years for the grind.
Does he regret it? He says: He does not regret the grind. It was “really interesting.” Because it is not a grind where you just sit in a room pressing the same button 500,000 times.
It is a “complicated series of intertwined systems.” He learned a lot about OldSchool RuneScape.
At some points, he thought he would give up and never make it, but then he distracted himself with another grind and got back to work refreshed.
“In a weird way, it was fun. Would I recommend it to others? “No, unless you are a bit of a masochist.”
He says he kept considering giving up, but then all the time he had invested in the task would have been for nothing. And that wouldn’t work either.
How is this being discussed? The top comment is: “Just playing Ultimate Ironman is a torture chamber. You are crazy.”
The comment has over 700 upvotes.
OldSchool RuneScape keeps coming up in stories where players invest a truly insane amount of time into certain tasks:
Player invests 19,100 hours and 8 years in MMORPG – Must justify that he is not a “loser”
