Talk:Summoning training

Sorry about leaving the guide with only the expensive training part complete. Thanks for adding the Medium and cheap sections. Sorry about the bad scripting as well, I haven't used Wikiscript before. --Dan2384 17:48, 21 April 2009 (UTC) Actually, it is cheaper to use pak yaks from 96-99. Also please mention rock lobsters as a method for aquring crimsons fast and effectively, but at a large cost.
 * Going to add those now. This article is VERY incomplete anyways. 18:39, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
 * EDIT: Actually Pack yaks are more expensive, see the difference between my edits (20:28, 11 April 2009 and 20:47, 11 April 2009). 18:50, 11 April 2009 (UTC)
 * The calculations dont factor in any shard swapping. This makes Yaks cheaper. This whole article is a load of rubbish. It is outdated and gives bad advice. As a high level summoner (96) I feel obliged to rewrite the whole thing. -- 07:47, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

The cheap method for 20-40 isn't exactly cheap...It's slow, but not cheap. Simple mental math shows me that it's around 800k more expensive than getting from 20-49 using the "Expensive (fast)" method. And it's slower than the "expensive (fast) method as well. 96.253.84.208 22:51, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Minimising Shards
Somehow, this seems cheaper than the Cheap section. -- 12:02, 27 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Never mind. -- 13:22, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Wallasalaki claim real?
In this guide it says that using a cannon you can break even on cash, get 100-150k ranged exp an hour, and net 80 or so blue charms. Frankly, I doubt that. Most people don't even know what a wallasalki is. I seriously doubt that, and if anyone could check it out, itd be most appreciated. Swordfishguy 04:32, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I would also be interested in knowing if this is correct. To3cutt3r 02:36, 27 July 2009 (UTC)

I went to test this out, and I've killed quite a few Wallasalaki so far, and I just don't see how anyone could break even on them using a cannon. They do drop a decent # of charms, but unless someone cares to refute it, I'll eventually remove the cannon profitability phrase. To3cutt3r 06:38, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Closest Obelisk to Bank?
Just wondering, because I need to get to level 10 summoning, have all the materials, and now I cna't find an Obelisk anywhere near a bank to make pouches. Please Help me! 01:08, 17 July 2009 (UTC)
 * There aren't any obelisks super close to a bank. At your level the best bet is to run between Falador bank and Taverly obelisk (using the wall shortcut if you can). The fastest way is to use a Spirit kyatt and a Ring of duelling between Castlewars bank and the Piscatoris obelisk, but requires level 57 summoning. 09:59, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

Massive Changes
Yup, I made a whole bunch of changes to this page.

Basically what I did is this:
 * Removed tables that made no sense (the "expensive" ways to earn experience were cheaper than the "cheap" ways, and the costs listed didn't match anything in reality)
 * Moved stuff out of this page and into "Summoning" that wasn't related to just training (e.g. how to find charms is not just for people interested in doing training)Cscooper 22:06, 6 August 2009 (UTC)


 * How were the expensive ways cheaper than the cheap ways, and why weren't the costs correct? (wszx) ''' 23:01, 6 August 2009 (UTC)


 * So many ways the previous tables were wrong ... here's an obvious one.
 * In the "Cheap (Slow)" table it recommended to create Spirit Mosquito Pouches from levels 20 to 40 at a cost of 2 million coins; in the "Expensive (Fast)" table for those same levels it recommended Spirit Scorpion and Vampire Bat, at a cost of something like 1 million coins. At first I thought, maybe they just mixed up the titles of the tables, but since the actual cost of getting from level 20 to 40 can easily be kept to under 50,000 coins, for sure Spirit Mosquito is a terrible recommendation (it's one of the most expensive pouches out there).  Vampire Bat (level 31) is another strange recommendation; compared to Giant Chinchompa (level 29), it's twice as expensive and earns half the experience.
 * I think the basic problem is the the previous tables really had nothing to do with recommending pouches for summoning training - what they were actually intended to do, was to show how to achieve summoning experience by using only one type of charm - the first table contains only crimson charms, the second table only blue charms, and the third table only gold charms. If this seems useful, we can certainly put the tables back, but I can't imagine why anyone would want to train using only blue charms. Cscooper 12:58, 7 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I can't imagine why anyone would want to train using only blue charms. – Maybe you should take another look at your chart. Of the forty-nine pouches you list, thirty-seven are blue charms. 22 to 99 is completely blue charms on all charts. I also note that after 22, your charts are all practically the same.
 * Perhaps the reason the charts only contained one type of charm is that crimson charms are the fastest way to train. Obtaining blue charms on any sort of scale is considerably slower than crimson charms. Although blue charms give considerably more xp, they are more than considerably slower to obtain. Green and gold charms are obtainable faster than even crimson, but they give much lower xp. Therefore, it makes sense that the fastest way to train is with crimson charms. Blue gives much more xp per charm than green and gold, so blue charms could be the second-fastest way to train.
 * As for your specific example of the spirit mosquito, that's a valid point. But everything after that on the cheap section seemed to make sense. It's slow because it uses gold charms, and it's cheap because all the tertiaries are freely or cheaply obtainable. (wszx) ''' 20:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC)


 * The second item in the "cheap" section was the Bull Ant - one of the most expensive pouches you can make (in terms of gold/XP), and about 1/6 (!) as much experience per pouch as the Bronze Minotaur and Iron Minotaur, both available in the same range of levels.
 * The third item in the "cheap" section was the Spirit Terrorbird - not bad on price (only 0.2 coins/XP) but terrible experience, only 68.4 per pouch, at that same summoning level you could be making things like the Iron Minotaur, a little more expensive at 3.5 coins/XP, but 404.8 XP/pouch, that's almost 6X more experience than the Spirit Terrorbird.
 * The fourth item in the "cheap" section was the Barker Toad. Not a bad price, 5.2 coins/XP, but terrible experience, only 87 per pouch where you could be getting 580.8 per pouch with the Mithril Minotaur (almost 7X better experience).
 * There are similar issues with the items in the "expensive" list too - the Vampire Bat is kind of expensive at 12.2 coins/XP, and pretty bad at experience, 136 XP per pouch. At that same summoning level you could be making Giant Chinchompa, only 4.9 coins/XP, and 225.2 XP per pouch.  The only reason I can think of for making Vampire Bat instead of Giant Chinchompa is if you have vampire dust or crimson charms already in your inventory, but I'm figuring those people aren't looking in this table - they should look in the Summoning pouches article to see what they can make out of what they already have. Cscooper 21:42, 7 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I think you completely missed the "slow" part of the last list. They use gold charms, and they are therefore slow. The tertiaries are obtainable at low or no cost, hence the cheap. So everything you just said is wrong. Using minotaurs and chinchompas is very slow because of the blue charms. I think you are completely ignoring the issue of obtaining charms. (wszx) ''' 07:04, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * So the original tables were just horribly mis-named? They really had nothing to do with expense, but really were specific to which types of charms were more easily available?  That definitely makes some sense.  But I would still think it makes no sense to limit yourself to blue charms (for example) – if you are capable of killing monsters that drop blue charms, you are capable of killing monsters that drop gold charms (right?) so what we want is a table of gold-charm-only pouches, then a table of gold-and-green-charm-pouches, etc.?  Gold charms are the easiest to obtain, do you think green are the second easiest?  Blue the third easiest, crimson the hardest? Cscooper 02:36, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * No, we don't want those tables. We want tables that take into consideration time to gather charms, time to actually make pouches, and costs of tertiaries. I am not saying the previous tables were perfect, just that they were better than yours. (wszx) ''' 03:31, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

←Then instead of just saying my tables are bad, help me understand things so I can make them better, eh? I'm updating the tables on the "Summoning" page under "Monsters to kill for charms" to include information on each monster's combat level, and frequency of drop of the desired charm. Based on just those two factors, it appears that green charms are not that much harder to acquire than gold charms. Am I wrong about that? Cscooper 13:38, 10 August 2009 (UTC)


 * In my experience green charms are easier to get WRT to gold charms than crimson are WRT to green.
 * I think it may make sense for this article to focus on training theory, instead of listing out specific pouches to make. For instance, discussing that while blue charms give handily the most XP per charm, they are very difficult to obtain in large numbers, and so crimson may be the fastest. Or whether it makes more monetary sense to sell, alch or exchange pouches. And this page would provide number-crunching charts, rather that lists of recommended pouches. What do you think? (wszx) ''' 07:46, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Hmmm ... let me start with my philosophy of the difference between the "training" page and the main "summoning" page.

People come to these pages because they have questions. These pages are here to provide answers.

The "training" page is there to answer one exact question - "I am a player at summoning level X and I wish to get to level X+1. How should I do that?"

The "summoning" page is there for a whole flock of questions - "What is summoning?" "Why did my summoning points go?" "What familiar can help me perform task X?" "Why did my familiar disappear when I entered the Grand Exchange?" "What do I need to create so that I can summon familiar Y?" etc. etc. etc.

Maybe in general it's this - the "training" page is for players at level X focused on getting to level X+1; the "summoning" page is for players who are focused on using the abilities they have at their current level, and if they eventually get to the next level that's fine too, but it's not their focus.

So I think that selling vs. alching vs. exchanging pouches sounds like a good discussion, but not one that's limited to training. Clearly it can affect training in that it affects how much money you have to do more training, but it also affects just general running around and doing whatever, so I'm leaning towards putting that on the main Summoning page.

For charms, the basic process of acquiring charms is not specific to getting from level X to level X+1, so what's on the "summoning" page about charms now looks good to me. The additional information you have about gold vs. blue vs. crimson maybe needs to be on both pages, a brief discussion of the differences between the charms on the "summoning" page, and then specifically how it relates to training on the "training" page.

I'm not sure what you mean by "number-crunching charts". What would these charts display? My concern, without really understanding what you mean, is that these charts would be so long (since there are so many pouches) that it would be difficult for a player to extract the desired information. There may be 50 pouches that a player at level X could create, they don't want to know about all 50, just the one that makes sense for them to get from level X to X+1.

And yes, the pouch that is "best" for a particular player depends on factors beyond just their summoning level - most importantly, their combat and slayer levels (which control how easy it is for them to acquire various charms). I didn't understand how important that was, thank you for pointing it out to me, and I definitely agree that information needs to be included on this page. Somehow.

Cscooper 12:44, 12 August 2009 (UTC)


 * My problem right now is that currently the page makes recommendations I strongly disagree with. I don't think recommending almost entirely that players use blue charm pouches is good, because I think training primarily with crimson is much better. I'm not sure what the wiki's policy is about disagreements on what we recommend in training guides, so I don't know where we go from here. (wszx) ''' 03:15, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Did you see the "Gold Charms Only" table I'm adding? I think the solution is to explain under what circumstances each table is accurate. For example, the table I had started on ("By Cost") is completely correct for players who have no problems getting any type of charm. I have a process I go through to come up with those recommendations, it's not gut feel or "stuff I like", it's actually me going through the Summoning pouches chart and picking pouches that (1) increase XP over the previous pouch in the table, and (2) fit the cost restrictions. I'm perfectly happy changing the title or the explanatory text so that visitors to the page understand that. Or maybe we want to rearrange the order so that the "Gold Charms Only" table comes first, since it's more likely to be applicable to lower-level players.

I'm working on "Gold Charms Only", if you feel a "Crimson Charms Only" table would also be helpful, let's add one. But do people really want to train with only Crimson? Or are you thinking about players whose levels in combat & slaying make it difficult for them to acquire Blue & Green charms, so what we would really want is a "Gold + Crimson Charms Only" table? That is to say, are there a significant number of players who specifically don't want to use any gold charms?

Let me know what recommendations you disagree with, keeping in mind that the "By Cost" table specifically ignores the type of charm. I'll be glad to discuss individual recommendations in the table, and why they are there. But what I keep hearing from you, is issues with which charms to use - and I think the solution there is not to throw away the "By Cost" table, but to (1) make it clear to visitors that the "By Cost" table uses all types of charms, and (2) add tables that do take into account charm types.

Are you thinking that even if a player can acquire Blue Charms (for example), and even if a pouch is available at their summoning level that makes sense, they may not want to use that pouch for leveling, due to the difficult in acquiring Blue Charms?

Notice I've renamed "By Cost" to "All Charms" and moved it after "Gold Charms Only".

Cscooper 13:24, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

It would be nice to have separate tables for each charm type, with columns for level, name, profit (with sale on GE), xp, profit/xp, and tertiary, and make all columns sortable. That would allow the individual player to make decisions based upon whatever charms they have. To3cutt3r 20:47, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Too expensive?
Costing 300 mil to train to lvl 99 seems way to much. It seems this guide makes the new pouches every time a new one is available even though the old one is more cost-efficient.--69.104.164.152 22:43, 25 August 2009 (UTC)