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

The RuneScoop Laboratory - Report #8 - Veracs Versus Zamorakian Spear, and the Value of Large Sample Size The RuneScoop Laboratory - Report #10 - Still “Strongly” Overrated

Published: April 6, 2010

For years, players clamored for Jagex to release a dragon pickaxe, the Mining complement to the popular dragon hatchet for Woodcutting. And in late 2009 the company obliged, but they made the item an extremely rare drop, which has kept its price above 10 million gp for the entire time it has existed. This has led many players to wonder if it is really worth getting.

In this report, I set out to determine for myself exactly what benefit the dragon pickaxe provides over the standard rune pickaxe most often used as an alternative. I’ll show you the results of my mining tests, and also try to put the difference in speed I observed into perspective.

Skill-based tests are usually easier to conduct than one related to combat, since there are fewer variables to try to control and compensate for. All I had to do was choose some rocks to mine, then time how long it took to get a given amount of ore for each pickaxe. As with most of my tests, only the time actually spent mining was counted, in order to avoid introducing inconsistencies into the measurements.

I wanted to test the two picks on a variety of ores, but mainly ones that are commonly mined these days. I avoided items that are very fast to mine at high levels, such as iron ore, since it would have been very difficult to measure any difference there. My choices were pure essence, concentrated coal and gold (in the Living Rock Caverns) and adamantite ore (at the Keldagrim north mine).

I wore Varrock Armour 3 when doing my testing, which occasionally provides an additional ore. In the Living Rock Caverns, I mined a large quantity of gold and coal, so I didn’t take into account the random small speed-up associated with this armor; it wasn’t a big factor, and there is already a random “double ore” effect there anyway that I can’t control. But when mining adamantite I deliberally did not count any instances of getting two ores from a rock, since the slow nature of addy would have caused this to skew results.

My Mining level at the time of this test was 81, putting me in the “high but not very high” category, where many players find themselves.

Please refer to Table 14 for the results of my mining tests.

Overall, these numbers are about what I expected. I wouldn’t draw too much of a conclusion about the d pick having more of an impact on some ores than others, though, because there is of course a lot of random chance involved in any test of this type. This was especially true with adamantite, where I was surprised at just how much the time required varied from one inventory load to the next—on consecutive tests of 25 ore using a rune pickaxe, I timed 14:43 followed by 7:42! Such wild swings make it hard to have high confidence in any sort of test, though I think in the end, the numbers came out about right.

Speaking of randomness... I also observed another interesting phenomenon when testing pure essence. In every prior test, I had always noticed that pure essence was different from regular ores in that it was not random—it took the exact same amount of time to get each inventory load. And while that was indeed true when using the rune pickaxe, it was not the case with the dragon pickaxe. Every time I did a load of 26 essence with the rune pick, it took 48 seconds; with the dragon pick, the time varied from about 40.5 seconds to 43.5 seconds. Why this is, I have no idea.

Okay, so if the dragon pick is 10% faster than the rune pick, is it worth it? Obviously that’s a personal answer, but we can look at some numbers to help us decide. We need to take into account both money and time in assessing the difference; if we assume the speed differential is roughly the same for all ores, then that is consistent, but the money difference will depend on what you are mining.

Since concentrated gold is such a popular option these days, let’s consider that. I was able to mine the equivalent of about 900 ore in an hour, but that considers only the time that the pick was swinging. We also have to allow for overhead—running back and forth to the deposit box, swapping between mining spots, dealing with the annoying creatures—so let’s say we use a figure of 750 ore per hour at my level.

First, the experience equation. Gold ore grants 65 Mining XP. At my level of 81, to get to 99 Mining, I would need to mine a whopping 167,000 gold ore. At 750 ore per hour, that would require 222 hours; speed would increase slightly as I leveled up, though, so let’s round that down to 200 hours. The dragon pick would save me 20 hours of time.

From a monetary standpoint, I am effectively getting about 67.5 free gold ore per hour. This works out to around 20k per hour, which doesn’t sound too impressive; but over the course of 200 hours, that’s 4 million gp right there.

The short answer is that if you plan to do any significant amount of Mining, the dragon pickaxe is a worthwhile purchase. Being able to get 10% more experience and make 10% more money is valuable in any skill, and the XP and money will both add up over time.

If mining from around level 80 to level 99, the dragon pickaxe could save over 20 hours of time in the mines, which alone is worth more than the entire cost of the item. On top of that you’ll make several million of extra gold per hour, depending on the item mined (and this could be even better with runite—I can’t mine it yet, so I don’t know).

Finally, keep in mind that when you buy a piece of equipment like this, it doesn’t get used up. You can buy a dragon pickaxe, use it to level up for a long time, and then resell it. As long as the item continues to have value and Jagex doesn’t greatly increase its commonality, the most you will lose is a few million as the item gradually decreases in value over time (as the majority of items do). And if you buy when it is in a down cycle price-wise, you could even make money on the transaction itself.

The RuneScoop Laboratory - Report #8 - Veracs Versus Zamorakian Spear, and the Value of Large Sample Size The RuneScoop Laboratory - Report #10 - Still “Strongly” Overrated