Summoning



Summoning is a members-only skill released on January 15, 2008. Before using this skill, players must first complete the Wolf Whistle quest. This quest is started by speaking to Pikkupstix in a house on the east side of Taverley.

Before it was released, Jagex released four mini-Development Diaries and three wallpapers detailing the process of developing the skill. Conflicting reports from Jagex moderators had been given regarding whether this would be a member only skill or a skill for all, however Paul Gower has said that Summoning will definitely be members-only. This was confirmed in the final development diary.

Also stated in the final development diary was that a second batch of creatures will be released in February. This is to help people become familiar with all the various creatures and thier abilities without being overwhelmed or under utilizing some of the creatures.

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:

Shops

 * Yanille
 * Yanille Petshop
 * Taverley

Obelisks

 * 1) Gu'Tanoth
 * 2) Taverley-Down the ladder from Pickupstix in easternmost house (not counting witches)
 * 3) Mort Myre
 * 4) Isafdar
 * 5) Brimhaven
 * 6) Piscatoris
 * 7) Kharidian Desert

Fights
This familiar will fight with you when you attack something, the level in brackets indicates the familiar's Combat level. Note that you must choose to attack for it to come to your aid. The pack yak and unicorn stallion will only fight to defend themselves, and then only if you have auto-retaliate turned on.

Light enhancer
Some familiars - notably bats - can see well in the dark and will make any light source you have with you brighter.

Right-click
A small number of familiars have a special ability that they can use (normally in combat). To trigger one of these, right-click your familiar and select the name of the ability.

Skill boost
Some familiars can temporarily raise your level in a given skill, while some other familiars provide an 'invisible' boost that is always active. The number in brackets indicates the size of the boost, and the term 'invisible' indicates that is always active as long as your familiar is close by.

Remote view
These familiars can fly into the air and allow you to see through their eyes, giving you the ability to see things much further away.

Beast of burden
A beast of burden can carry a number of items equal to the number in brackets. In some cases, it will only be able to carry certain items, in which case they will be listed.

Forager
A forager will find certain items from time to time, and can carry a number of them equal to the number in brackets. You are only able to 'Withdraw' items from these familiars.

Training
The main summoning experience is gained from making pouches. Making scrolls and using the special effects only gives very modest experience. Hence, training the skill involves making loads of pouches. The critical element for pouch making is the charm requirement. The gold charm reward from the Wolf whistle quest is generous, but lots more is needed to train the skill. Given the rather low collection rate for charms, picking one with a good experience reward seems a good strategy. A secondary concern is the availability of the secondary item. Some items can be bought from stores which may make it easier to obtain them in reasonable quantities. Some also may want to consider the cost of the shards required. The next element is to find a quick way to do round trips between a bank and the summoning obelisks. House locations, fairy rings, and teleporting jewels can be useful in this regard.

A suggested method is using dueling ring to castle wars bank in combination with balloon transport system to taverley, or making snail pouches at the nature spirit altar, all the necessary items can be brought or bought making it only necessary to bank when you get full of pouches, the nearby Burgh de rott bank is most convienient.

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 GE. It also will require just over 2,000 shards at 50 coins each. It will cost around 100,000 coins to reach level 18. Expect at least 3 times that amount to just make the high score lists.

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 xp (Barker toad) to 62.5 coins per xp (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 the starting quest.

The interesting effect is that the gold and the blue charms enable the most cost efficient way of training summoning. These two types also seem to have a fairly low drop rate.

Even the lowest option to train the skill puts this skill at a higher cost per xp than any other skill even exceeding the acknowledged money sink skill.

Music

 * The opening music at the Welcome to RuneScape screen when the skill was released is Scape Summon.

Trivia

 * Initially, it is not possible to use tomes of experience on Summoning. The player is advised to "try again in a few weeks".
 * In the same vein as tomes, Juna of Tears of Guthix will not assign experience to Summoning if it's your lowest experience level. She says "I must warn you though the Tears cannot help you with the Summoning skill at this time, for Guthix does not wish to interfere with the balance of such a new skill". It is possible that summoning will become available in a few weeks later.

Background
The first hint of Summoning was the discovery of Life runes, which were never released. For more information about life runes, see below.

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 March 31, 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...!".

Some degrees of Summoning were introduced in RuneScape, both from NPCs and players.

Many NPCs summon monsters and other magical energies; for example, Malignius Mortifer summons ghosts, skeleton mages, skeletons and sometimes fungi when he fails to summon another creature, though he will tell you himself, that necromancy has nothing to do with summoning. Wizard Grayzag, at the top of the Wizard's Tower, used to summon imps to fight for him when he was attackable, but according to Malignius, he is also a Necromancer. Strongbones also summons four Skoblins to fight alongside him. And Melzar the Mad summons cabbages from his garden.

On February 19, 2007, the Tower of Life quest and the subsequent Creature Creation minigame were introduced, where players could "summon" certain creatures. At the time, some players speculated that this was all there was going to be to players' summoning abilities. After the Tower of Life quest came out Mod Ash stated on the forums that this was not summoning and that it was more of a test to see how the servers would handle summoning. He also stated that there was more to come in this area.

Concept
Firstly, Summoning was considered as an addition to Magic, leading to the creation of life runes. They were never released, but some players managed to deduce their existence. After the development of alternate spellbooks, Summoning was changed to become an independent skill.

In February 2005, Mod Bennett wrote the initial brief for Summoning, which wasn't well-received. The development was halted, but it was revived in mid-2005, after Jagex moved into a new office. A new brief was written by Mod Wilson, this time calling the skill "Animal Lore", and with more focus on non-combat aspects of the skill. Some of the brief was considered technically infeasible by Jagex, and development was again halted. The brief was then modified to use a different approach, allowing the skill to again be named Summoning. Development based on this concept began in September 2006, shortly before the release of the Hunter skill.

Announcements
Most of what is currently known about Summoning comes through the four Development Diaries that have been released on the topic to date. Several wallpapers have also been released, although it is not possible to determine very much regarding the nature of the skill from these.

One of the most controversial aspects of the skill is that it will increase the maximum combat level to 138. Since it will not be available to free-to-play players, many have commented that this is unfair to them, since their maximum level will remain 126. Players have speculated based on this fact that Summoning will actually be available to free-to-play to balance this, with a Jagex moderator even "confirming" it, however contradictory statements have been given from Paul Gower and at least one other Jagex moderator. The fourth Development Diary, however, says that it is a members-only skill.

It is also known that Summoning will make use of birds' eggs, including those released in a hidden update in late 2007. Over 70 creatures were said to be summon-able in all.

The Development Diaries indicate that Summoning is expected by Jagex to be a difficult skill to understand. A quest, named Wolf Whistle, has been developed to serve as a tutorial for the skill and will be released on the same date as the skill itself. Its starting point is known to be in Taverley, giving further credence to the confirmation by Paul Gower that Summoning will be members-only.

With the final development diary being released as of the 9th of January, speculation on whether or not summoning will be available for both free players and members has all but ended with the note: "'It's my favourite members' skill that I've helped to release,' says Mod Mark."

Leaks


If a player stands next to the table on which there is a green potion on the first (American: second) floor of the Magic guild, they can see part of a pet store in Yanille. It can also be viewed from a different angle by standing on the Yanille city wall. This is only visible on low detail. Every five minutes or so, the pet shop owner will exit the shop and take her bulldog for a walk. When you talk to her, however, she will say she is too busy preparing for the grand opening to talk.

It was possible to summon a Karamthulhu before the official release of Summoning but this "programming oversight" was soon fixed. Anyone trying to summon one using those methods before the skills release will receive the message "Sorry, you'll have to wait a little longer for one of those! :-)" in their chatbox. Mod Wilson explained that this bug has been around since Rum Deal but no one took much interest in it. He went on to explain that the Karamathulu has underwent further developed and that the one from the bug was just a prototype.

Hints


Each Summoning-related Development Diary featured a mug that had an image of a quarter circle with part of an image inside it. When these were put together, it was revealed that they formed the head of a wolf. There was much speculation on the nature of this image, and it has since been revealed to be the skill icon for Summoning.

Other hints were given within the Development Diaries and wallpapers, such as the week of the skill's release circled in the final Development Diary. Hints were also given through the noticeboard portion of the Postbag of the Hedge releases made prior to Summoning's release.

Website design changes

 * Main page : on the day of the skill's release, the two rock pillars on each side of the RuneScape main page were replaced with totem poles, on which were drawings of summonable monsters (monkeys, vampire bats...). The people representing skills around the page title were replaced by summonable monsters. A few pairs of eyes were also scattered around the page.
 * Login screen : vultures, wolves, minotaurs and spirit cobras were added on each side of the screen.


 * After logging in, the Message of the Week is Summoning!.

In-game changes

 * Chaos Tunnels were added in the Wilderness. They contain many monsters and are multicombat.
 * Bank space was extended by 64 slots (for members) "due to the large number of items introduced with Summoning".