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RuneScoop.com  >  The RuneScoop Laboratory - RuneScape Gameplay Testing and Myth Busting

The RuneScoop Laboratory - Report #4 - Does It Actually Have a Use? The RuneScoop Laboratory - Report #6 - The Fascinating Truth About Kill Count at The Barrows

Published: March 19, 2010

I hate training Agility. Really hate it. How much do I hate it? I used all four of the 100k XP rewards from While Guthix Sleeps on Agility. When I get a random reward box, I’ll take 750 or 800 Agility XP over noted grimy ranarrs or an uncut diamond. Yeah, that much. (The only reason I train it at all is because I need high Agility for some of the guides I write for RuneScoop.)

So naturally, I was intrigued when Jagex revised the Barbarian Assault minigame... er... activity, to allow you to earn “potential” that could be used to earn double XP while doing Agility courses. I’ve never been a huge fan of BA, mind you, but I certainly prefer it over mindlessly running in circles for hour after hour. So I had to give it a try.

After doing it once, I realized that I really wasn’t sure exactly how much of an XP benefit I was actually getting, so I decided to do another test under more controlled conditions. The idea was simply to figure out how much time was saved by doing this instead of using the time in BA to run more laps.

To conduct this simple test, I went to Barbarian Assault to play the game with a handful of other high-level, experienced players. I started with an empty penance horn, and we went through the entire set of ten waves twice, killing the queen each time. We played quite efficiently, but I don’t think we were necessarily as “perfect” at it as some players are—I for one am hardly an expert!

A couple of days later, I recorded my current Agility XP level, wielded my horn, and set out for the Ape Atoll course to run some laps. Over the course of about three or four hours I used up the potential stored in my horn, working on and off—I just can’t run laps continuously for hours at a time. Since the penance horn gives its bonus based on XP, not time, the exact amount of time used didn’t matter that much. I then recorded my final Agility XP figure.

After completing two full sets of ten waves at Barbarian Assault, checking the penance horn’s potential indicated that it was “less than a quarter full”. However, despite that, I was able to accumulate a whopping 191,296 Agility XP until it ran back down to empty. This means that I earned 95,648 bonus Agility XP.

That’s a pretty impressive number, but to put it in context we need to look at how long it took to earn the potential, and how much Agility training it saved. With a good team like the one I was on, we were able to do all ten waves of Barbarian Assault in about 45 minutes. However, there is overhead to take into account as well: time spent gathering a team, waiting for players to show up, wasted time when someone leaves and a replacement is needed, time spent between games to buy rewards, etc. I think a reasonable conservative figure to use is one hour for a whole game.

Now, the Agility course. I’m told that the maximum XP on the Ape Atoll course if 55k per hour, if you run at peak efficiency. Well, I don’t: I would estimate maybe 40k per hour for me, taking into account typical inefficiencies like having trouble clicking an obstacle, getting distracted, and simply “nodding off”. :)

Given these figures, then, I spent about two hours at Barbarian Assault, and in so doing, saved myself roughly two hours and 25 minutes of Agility training.

Simple conclusion this time around: doing Barbarian Assault to help in training Agility is definitely worthwhile! Heck, even if the time spent in the activity was the same as the time saved running laps, it would be worth it to me, since it’s much less boring. But for me, it’s even a net savings of time as well. In fact, if I had to spend two hours at BA to save one hour of mind-numbing laps, I’d consider it!

Of course, this all assumes that you have a good team that knows what it’s doing. Barbarian Assault is complicated, and if you just try to play with random players, you are likely to waste a lot more time. This can also get very frustrating, which may tip the scales back in favor of just running laps. But if you get a decent team, it’s worth it.

The RuneScoop Laboratory - Report #4 - Does It Actually Have a Use? The RuneScoop Laboratory - Report #6 - The Fascinating Truth About Kill Count at The Barrows