RuneScape

To those who do not know, yes I am a RuneScape fan. I won't go into detail why here, but I will if someone asks me to divulge.

This post will be going into detail some aspects of the game that have taken me years to find (though others might not have that much trouble), so if you wish, you can "leap ahead" in experience to know how to play the game well. In here, you will find...
Basics
Over-view of Skills
Power Training (What It Is and How To Use It)
Money Making
Combat


BASICS
Essentially, the game of RuneaScape is an RPG (Role Playing Game) set in medival times, in which humans, dwarfs, elves, dragons, and a range of other creatures roam the land. You can do anything from making potions and building houses, to squashing spiders and devouring mountains of pizza. If you want a guide on how to "move around" and other rudimentary skills like that, please, reffer to the tutorial on RuneScape. The current (and permenant) currency in RuneScape is the gold piece, a.k.a. "GP". 10,000 GP would be 10k, 10,000,000 GP would be 10m, and 10,000,000,000 (for those who cannot read numbers, 10 billion) GP would be 10b.

The only thing that you will need to know is the Grand Exchange (a.k.a. the GE, for short). This is a market in which you give an item to the Cashier that you wish to sell, and someone else on RuneScape gives a Cashier money for that same item. You can leave offers inside the GE for as long as you wish, but be weary; the market for items will rise and fall often, so you may want to change how much you wish to buy or sell an item for. For an explanation on how this all works, refer to the Grand Exchange guide under the "Game" tab, on the RuneScape home page.


Over-view of Skills
In RuneScape, there are 24 skills. I will list each and give a brief explanation of said skill. Skill levels range from 1-99, 99 being the highest and considered "mastery" of a skill. You increase your level in a skill by performing some act of that skill (or with the exception of Prayer, by burying bones).

Attack: Directly affects what type of melee weapon you can wield (the higher Attack level, the better the melee weapon) and how likely you are to damage a monster (which basically means that, the higher your Attack level is, the more likely you are to actually hit something, and the more likely you are to hit the max amount you can). [melee only]

Strength: Directly affects how high you can hit.

Defence: Directly affects what type of armor you can wear, and reduces the likelihood of an enemy hitting you.

Hitpoints: The higher your hit points, the more you can be hit before dying.

Ranged: Directly affects what kind of ranged weapon and armor you can wield, and acts like Strength and Attack, but affects ranged based attacks instead of melee. [ranged only]

Prayer: The higher your prayer level, the better prayers/curses you can use. I.E. if you wanted to use the prayer "Protect from Melee", you would need level 53 Prayer. Prayers help your character in battle, curses inhibit your opponent.

Magic: Directly affects what kind of magic weapons and armor you can wield, and acts like Strength and Attack, but affects magic based attacks instead of melee. Also can be used for miscelanious things, such as enchanting jewlry to teleport you somewhere, or to turn an item into gold pieces. [magic only]

Cooking: Cooking is, well, the art of cooking foods! Not much to be said here, besides the higher your Cooking level is, the better food you can cook and the less likely you are to burn foods.

Woodcutting: The higher your Woodcutting level, the higher leveled hatchets you can use, and the better trees you can cut down. You can sell the logs for money or use them in other skills.

Fletching: Use to make bows, crossbows, arrows, and other Ranging weapons and ammo.

Fishing: The higher your Fishing level, the better fish you can catch and the more likely you are to catch them.

Firemaking: The art of lighting fires!!! The better your level, the higher level the log you can burn. Mostly used for Cooking.

Crafting: Use to make Range armor, battlestaves for Magic, jewlry, pottery, and a whole range of other miscilaneous things.

Smithing: Use to make Melee armor, weapons, nails for construction, arrowheads for Fletching, and a few other items. (take ores in the correct amounts [listed in the skill's menu in-game] to furnaces to make bars, then hammer on anvils to make items)

Mining: Use to mine ores for Smithing, bait for Fishing, and stardust (minigame). The higher your Mining level, the better the ore you can mine.

Herblore: Use to make potions to help in other skills, and temporarily bring up certain skill levels from drinking the potions you have made.

Agility: Use to access shortcuts and secret areas. Also assists in other skills to get better experience, and makes your Run last longer.

Theiving: Use to... well, steal. The higher your Theiving level, the better loot you can steal.

Slayer: Get assigned tasks to kill a certain monster a certain amount of times. You get experience for each kill (half for getting the most damage on it, and the other half for getting the finishing blow). With a higher Slayer level, you can kill monsters that you normally wouldn't be able to kill, giving access to unique, and quite often expensive, drops.

Farming: Use to grow foods, herbs, and flowers. The higher your Farming level, the better crops you can farm.

Runecrafting: Use to turn Rune Essence (mined) into Runes (used for all magic spells). The higher your Runecrafting level, the better runes you can make, and the more you can make at with a single Rune Essence.

Hunter: Use to trap certain creatures, to be used in skill such as Cooking, Crafting, Smithing, and various others.

Construction: Use to make repairs on various things in RuneScape, and to build your very own house! The higher your Construction level, the more rooms and the better rooms you can build, along with items that are placed inside them.

Summoning: Use to summon up creatures to do your bidding, such as help you in Fishing or in killing.


POWER TRAINING
The art of Power Training is one that I strongly suggest everyone learn. It is, essentaily, only getting experience for a skill, very fast, without keeping any items that you make/find from that skill. This, in turn, gets you to higher levels quicker than normal, so letting you gather more money at those levels.

How do I Power Train? As it is difficult to explain this concept, I will give an example. Let's say you wanted to Power Train Mining. Grab a pick and find some ores. Then, mine them until you have a full inventory (28 slots), and drop all that ore. This is, in most circumstances, faster than banking. So, you get experience faster.
For manufacturing skill such as Cooking, you buy a lot of an item to manufacture. Lets say you wanted to cook raw lobsters into lobsters. You would buy a lot of raw lobsters, then cook them all and sell, drop or use.

I will not, unfortunately, be posting elaborated guides on Power Training each skill, and what the peaks of effeciency are for those methods and skill, as that would take away all challange in the game. Sorry cheaters, you won't get more out of me. =P

MONEY MAKING
Ah, what everyone wants! Money. As this is a vastly diverse and long subject, I will sumerize.

There are four basic methods for gathering money: Combat, Non-Combat Skills, merchanting, and scavenging.

Combat: Kill monsters, collect the drops, sell them or make them into other items then sell. Easy.

Non-Combat Skills: Gather resources from skills such as Theiving, Mining, and Woodcutting, then sell or make them into other items using skills such as Crafting, Smithing, and Magic then sell.

Merchanting: There are three "official" methods of merchanting. 1: Buy items low, wait for a peak, sell them higher than you bought them for. 2. Buy a lot of items and thus create a demand, which makes prices increase, at which point you sell and make money. 3. Buy items from NPC's (Non-Player Computers), then sell to other NPC's or real life players for more than you bought.
NOTE: It is safest to use method 3, and riskiest to use method 2, but with more risk comes better rewards.

Scavenging: This isn't the most popular (or well-known) method, but it is a sure way to make decent cash in a quick amount of time. Basically, you pick up items that spawn on the ground, or that come from other players kills that they don't want (which don't appear to players that didn't kill the monster until a certain amount of time passes, based on the value of that item). For example, beginners to the game may want to hang out around the goblin house Northwest of Lumbridge and collect bones to sell. Everyone needs bones for Prayer!


Combat
In RuneScape, the general theme of the game is to kill things. Every skill or action leads to or helps, in some way, combat.

Combat Triangle: This simple, but absolutley essential, concept is the basis for all killing. This triangle tells us what is good against what. The three types of combat: Melee, Ranged, and Magic, are the three points on the triangle.
For the most part, this is how it works...

Melee -> Ranged
Ranged -> Magic
Magic -> Melee

Of course, there are exceptions, as you will find in the game. For example, if a melee person is fighting a magic person, and the magic person has melee armor on (which reduces GREATLY the likelihood of you being able to hit your target with magic), and the melee person has ranged armor on (which reduces the likelihood of magic based attacks hitting you), the melee person will likely win.


And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, concludes this guide!