Summoning



Summoning (Also known as Summon) is a members-only skill released on 15 January 2008. It allows players to infuse the essence of a variety of creatures into Summoning pouches, then summon these creatures, termed familiars. Each familiar has a unique ability that requires a Summoning scroll, made from a corresponding pouch, to use. Summoning familiars and creating scrolls gives very little experience, so players must almost always create pouches in order to gain levels quickly in the skill.

The summoning skill shares similarities to Prayer, the skill is trained mostly through one action (infusing pouches) and points are used when the skill is brought into action, such as summoning a familiar to assist in fighting, carrying or foraging.

Summoning also affects the player's combat level. Previously, the maximum combat level a player could have was 126. When summoning was added to the game, the maximum combat level was raised to combat level 138.

Design
Here are a few images released by Jagex before summoning was released. Source: RuneScape home website

Pouches
Summoning pouches are used to summon familiars. The creation of a pouch is relatively simple: the pouch is infused with the essence of a creature, or familiar, which can be summoned later on using the pouch. Doing so yields experience in the skill. Several items are needed in order to make summoning pouches. A single empty pouch, a number of spirit shards, depending on the familiar, and a charm (of specific colours such as gold, green, red, and blue) is needed for each summoning pouch. Each familiar also requires a unique component that embodies the familiar in some way: for example, wolf bones are needed to summon a spirit wolf. Empty pouches and spirit shards can be purchased from Pikkupstix in Taverley for 25 coins for spirit shards and 1 coin for pouches. Three shops sell the basic summoning components (see the Summoning Shops section). Most of the components can also be purchased from players, or through the Grand Exchange. However, charms are only available as monster drops, which is a key factor in the difficulty of this skill. To make pouches, the required items must be taken to a Summoning obelisk. Players can right click on the obelisk and choose the option "create pouch". This will open up an interface that allows players to choose what type of pouch and how many they wish to make.

Scrolls
Summoning scrolls are required to enable a familiar to use its special move.

To create summoning scrolls, use a completed summoning pouch on a Summoning obelisk. A window will open and allow you to choose what type of scroll (and how many) you want to make. You can also click the obelisk's option of "Infuse pouches", which will open the same window but require you to switch from the pouch-making page to the scroll-making page. You will get 10 scrolls for each pouch that is transformed.

Familiars
Familiars are friendly creatures that players may summon to help them do many things. The familiars have many different abilities, from boosting skills to aiding you in combat, and all of them have special moves that can be activated with Summoning scrolls.

In order to summon a familiar, players must use the "Summon" option on a Summoning pouch. It costs summoning points (similar to Prayer points) to summon familiars, as well as to keep them with you without having to re-summon them. Summoning potions can restore summoning points.

You can talk to a familiar if you have at least 10 or more summoning levels above the required level to summon that familiar. You will never be able to talk to the pack yack or wolpertinger because it is impossible to get a "natural" summoning level over 99.

Abilities
Familiars have different special abilities that they are able to access. Some are accessed by talking, using the familiars special button or right clicking a familiar for another option.

Pets
Pets are animals that follow you as you travel throughout RuneScape. They do not fight for you like familiars, and instead are mostly "decoration", as well as a way to show off your Summoning level. They are very similar to Cats obtained from the Gertrude's cat quest.

When you get a pet it will be the baby version of the adult. Young pets need to be fed a certain type of food so that it does not run away because it is hungry. After a certain amount of time it will grow into an adult pet which is slightly larger than the younger version. Even though cats do not need food once they are grown it is not the same for the new grown pets. They still need to be fed.

You can talk to a pet if you are at least 10 or more summoning levels above the required Summoning level to obtain that pet. You will never be able to talk to the dragon, monkey, or chameleon because it is impossible to get a "natural" summoning level over 99.

The table below shows the different pets, the levels at which they can be obtained, and what kinds of foods they require. Some pets require you to place a certain type of egg in an incubator, found in pet shops in Taverley and Yanille. Hatching may take several hours.

Notes:
 * For the pets in the dog variety, feeding them bones does not count as feeding them food. If you only supply them with bones, they will eventually run away.
 * Some pets require you to catch them with the Hunter skill. Pets caught using hunter (noted in the table below) will be caught as the baby version, just like other pets start as.
 * All of the pets besides cats require you to have completed Wolf Whistle and have the required Summoning level and Hunter level (in some cases).

Summoning Items
Summoning includes the use of 4 new subitems. These include Pets, Familiars, Summoning Scrolls, and new Summoning only items. These and their required Summoning skill levels are listed below:

Shop Items
Note: See Summoning Shops for the shop locations.

Headdresses
Note:
 * These items can only store scrolls that are used to attack (not skill helping scrolls like "Egg Spawn").
 * Combat scrolls stored in headdresses will be automatically used while in a multicombat zone with your familiar summoned and when you are wearing the headdress.
 * The scrolls stored in the headdress must match the familiar you have currently summoned for them to be used.

Summoning Shops

 * Taverley
 * Gu'Tanoth
 * Nature Grotto

Pet Shops

 * Yanille
 * Taverley

Obelisks
Note that the italic bank locations need some quests or limitations to use.



Training
The main summoning experience is gained from making pouches. Making scrolls and using the special effects give very little experience (typically less than 10% of that provided by making pouches). Hence, training the skill involves making loads of pouches. The critical element for pouch making is the Charms requirement.

The three main elements required for pouch-making are charms, spirit shards, and tertiary ingredients. Since charms are untradable, you must collect them by yourself, which takes time and effort (see Charms). Spirit shards cost money and are not available from monsters, so they must be bought with money. Finally, the tertiary ingredient can usually be obtained through many ways, involving decision-making on whether to buy or collect it.

However, using the familiars while fighting for charm drops will provide experience for summoning and will provide faster charm drops.

One also needs to find a way to do quick and efficient round trips between a bank and a summoning obelisk (see Obelisk section above).

High alchemy
Players may be able to make a small profit from alchemizing their pouches, but only for those made from gold charms, and only if they runecraft their own Nature runes. Players are not advised to alchemize pouches made from crimson, green, or blue charms as they may take a loss instead. The amount of money received from high alchemy is proportional to the number of shards used in summoning the creature.

Table below shows minimum cost of only pouch and shards, assuming players get tertiary components themselves.

See Summoning pouches table for more alch values.

Minimum cost
Based upon minimizing the cost due to the number of spirit shards used:

Table below shows minimum cost assuming players buy all the components (pouches, shards, tertiary ingredients).

At around level 16 this will use up all the gold charms from the quest. Raw chicken meat can be bought in a store in Canifis or from Ali Morisanne in Al-Kharid. Iron ores are easily mined or purchased from the Grand Exchange. It also will require just over 2,000 Spirit shards at 25 coins each. It will cost around 50,000 coins to reach level 18. Expect at least 3 times that amount to just make the hiscores at level 30.

Minimum time
This method minimizes the time taken to gain levels. It also minimizes the use of Summoning charms:

Costs
The cost of training the skill is in larger part determined by the number of shards and the cost of each shard. Analysis of the cost of a summoning experience point shows that the cost starts at 5.7 coins per point (Barker toad) to 62.5 coins per point (Beaver).

Analysis of the pouch table shows an interesting relationship between cost per summoning experience and Charm type:

The analysis applies to summoning levels over 16. For the lower levels, players essentially use the gold charms from Wolf Whistle.

The interesting effect is that the gold and the blue charms enable the most cost efficient way of training summoning.

The experience given for a particular pouch is a charm linked factor multiplied by Summoning skill level required for that pouch. The table below gives the multiplication factor for each pouch type.

Even the lowest option to train the skill puts this skill at a higher cost per experience point than any other skill, even exceeding the acknowledged money sink skill - Construction.


 * See Update:Summoning balancing regarding skill costs.

Chaos Tunnels
Main article: Chaos Tunnels

The Chaos Tunnels were released in conjunction with Summoning. When players run out of charms, this is the main location where they go to get a large supply of them. Different monsters drop different types of charms. Players should be warned that the area is multicombat and it would be best to come prepared with food and good armour. There are 5 entrances (called rifts) to the tunnels.

History


Summoning was mentioned in Issue 20 of the God Letters when Saradomin mentions the Mysterious Old Man who apparently roams RuneScape looking for people who are "of such low intellect that they cannot respond even directly to their own name" and would teleport the aforementioned over great distances (using a mysterious type of rune) if they did not respond in an attempt to "test" Summoning.

On 31 March 2004 a Behind the Scenes-like article was published, which included the updates of the next few years. Within these, there were also "Summoning spells - summon skeletons, demons, etc...!".

In November 2007, Jagex first started hinting about "something big" to come in the near future, and continued to hint about it until they finally announced its future release in January 2008. They then proceeded to release four Development Diaries about the skill, as well as three sets of wallpapers, all giving small hints and teasers about the skill. Finally, on 15 January 2008, the skill was released.

A few months before its release, Jagex had a Knowledge Base banner ad where the person typed in "bulldog". Many curious players tested this, and most did not realize the page they ended up on, was a clue to summoning.

On January 29th, Jagex "fixed" a bug with charms, which was that many monsters dropped too many charms and some of the other monsters dropped next to nothing. They made the charm drops based on monsters' combat levels, and added charm drops to more of the monsters that are assigned as Slayer tasks. However a post on the forums later that day announced they had quickly removed the update as it caused other problematic issues with the game.

When Summoning 2 had been released on March 31st 2008, they added more creatures, like various Titans and Tz-Haar based creatures. Also you can gain Combat XP from the familiars depending what familiar it is that attacks.

Music

 * Scape Summon - The opening music at the Welcome to RuneScape screen when the skill was released
 * Animal Apogee - in room with Summoning Obelisk

Trivia

 * Hiscores - On 6th February 2008, HS Nercychlidae became the first player with 10,000,000 experience and on 8 February (3.5 weeks) the first to reach level 99.
 * You can log onto a Free-to-Play world and you will be able to see your combat level without the bonus from summoning.
 * Apparently, a hidden monster can be seen by using paint on the Summoning Log-in screen or by turning your brightness and contrast up too 100/the maximum. It sort of resembles a Skeleton's Skull either on fire or with a very majestic crown. It also could resemble a minotaur. In one of Jagex's recent Development Diaries, it showed a picture of a concept art for a new npc . Also, note how the Vultures stare at what looks like the area of the skull, the Spirit Wolves heads both are howling in the skulls direction, the Bronze Minotaurs are somewhat protecting the entrance hall, and the Sprit Cobras look as if they are possessed.
 * On February 13th, the summoning log-in screen was taken away.
 * The chocotrice that was commandable during the 2008 easter event is the only creature that could be controlled by non-member players.
 * From the Update on 'Summoning Wallpaper #4' on the 27th March 2008, the picture along side the article on the Runescape homepage, when saved to your hard drive, has the name 'abyssal_titan.gif' showing yet another summoning familiar. This links with the Update description of 'It is element-ary that we would release a new wallpaper for something as titan-ic as Summoning 2'. Then from this description you see that 'element-ary' directly links with the wallpaper of 4 creatures based on the elements.