Skills-Thoughts on Summoning

The First Update

A few months ago (actually a WHILE ago), Jagex released a new (and really cool looking) skill called summoning. It was advertised as allowing player to summon a battling friend who would help them in skills, carry items, or just dish out some major damage. Cool, right? Right?

Meh. Not really. The first set of summoned creatures SUCKED (mostly) and it was SO hard to even make a pouch that nobody really cared (mostly). You spent a ton of money just to summon a mosquito that dealt 3 damage and died in one hit. Lots of complaints on the forums. Also the price of training this early version of this skill was astronomical (still is, but a little better).

The Second Update

So under a lot of pressure, Jagex released "summoning 2". Basically they made summoning cost less (still pricy), and the creatures were upgraded. New ones were added, until almost every 3 or 4 levels (sometimes 2) you were able to summon a new and completely different creature. Lots of complaints about this update too, but I think Jagex did a fairly good job. Before, summoning was so pointless. Now it actually can be useful. But I think Jagex could've done more.

The Third....fourth.....update?

Honestly, I haven't been follow the updates like I should. I know that the skill has been updated, but I really can't tell you how. The price of shards is still at 25coins per shard. Come on. They're just a bunch of little white dragon scale things! They shouldn't be that expensive.
STILL the most expensive skill in the game. My level (currently) is 33. I'll admit that leveling the skill is easy. It's just getting enough money to that's the hard part.

The Basics

Like herblore, you have to complete a quest called "wolf's whistle" to be able to summon. Basically you go around fetching stuff, summon a wolf, and scare a giant demented bunny in the attic. Loads of fun.

Ignoring the fact that the wolf looks like the mutated child of a cow and a horse, it's not a bad quest. It's kind of fun, and definitely interests you in summoning. It would have been more interesting if the animals had actually fought, but meh. It doesn't need to be epic.

I was lazy and skipped 16+ levels by using rewards from the Acheivement diaries. So, besides the wolf I had summoned in the quest, I was at lvl 20 and had never actually summoned a creature.

Summoning...Pouches? What a weird name.

Anyhow, I decided to summon a desert wrym and use it in the Stronghold of Player Safety. I got a few buckets of sand, a pouch and at least 100 shards. So I tele'd to falador, and headed to the summoning rock underneath Pickupstixs (don't ask) house. I clicked on the glowing rock and scrolled through the familiar's section. Nothing.

WHAATTT? I needed a !@#@! charm. I go back to falador and grab my only green charm and make my pouch. Whopee. Not much xp for all that money, might i add.

I try Combat!

After that ordeal, I teled to barbarian village (by way of skull scepter), and headed to the SPS. I start fighting one of the cockroach soldiers (lvl 84!). My little snakey takes a little bit of time to start attacking. Finally it starts and...three soldiers later it's dead and has dealt a grand total of 3 damage! w00t! talk about effective. Yeah, it's only lvl 30. But SERIOUSLY! I've kind of stopped making pouches after this experience.

I try Combat! Take two...

Second time around, I summoned a giant rat. Took it to the stronghold. Little ratty seemed a little reluctant to attack the cockroaches, but at least it dealt more than 3 damage. I was feeling pretty good. Until i realized that at about 1/3 health my rat wouldn't attack any more. WHAAATTT?! It just stood their taking hits, and squeaking. I thought rats ate cockroaches. So my rat dies.

PvP combat!

Yes, I couldn't resist the temptation. I tried three summoned creatures at Castle Wars. The first was some kind of tz-tox-something or another. Remember that I mentioned that a few familiars have secondary ingredients which are charms? Yup, this is one of them. Worked out pretty well! I did barely any regular damage, but it's special was moderately effective. Got killed by some annoying dude with a bgs.
My second familiar was a granite crab, who was absolutely worthless except for providing me a def boost with his special. Thanks little dude! I just wish you wouldn't die all the time.
Third familiar was somekind of bat thing. This was probably the best of them all, as it's special healed me 1/4 or so of the damage I inflicted on my opponenets. It got KO'd by a ranger though.

Training

Frankly, there are way too many things that you have to get for summoning. I'll run through a list of EVERYTHING you need.

Pouches:
Only cost 1gp each! Great price!...Until you realize that each summoning familiar only uses 1 pouch. Jagex, I beg you to change the price of the pouches with the price of the shards.

Spirit Shards:
Only costs 25 (?) gp each! Great price again!...Until you realize that you have to use up to 200 shards for 1 !@#! pouch.

Charms: Ok, now were just getting into the realm of "uselessness". You already have your "container". You already have the "base" ingredient of the pouch. There is no reason why you would need a "charm". They are dropped by monsters (rock crabs!), which is fine, but I'd rather that spirit shards were dropped by monsters. Also you can only use certain types of charms with certain pouches...so yeah. And you can't trade charms. *slaps head*

Secondary ingredient:
Oh ho ho...You saw this coming didn't you? Yup. Jagex has decided to be nice and friendly and make it just that much more difficult to make pouches! Yay! Each summoning creature has a different secondary ingredient, which most of the time are unique and rather rare items like "proboscis" or "bucket of sand". They're kind of a cool concept on their own. Charms or Secondary ingredients, Jagex. Not both at once. (to rub salt into your wounds, one summoning creature has a CHARM as its secondary ingredient. A CHARM.)

What familiars to train on:
I'm not really going to go in depth on this part. There is always a trade off. I personally like beavers, giant rats, and rock crabs for lower lvls. I've heard rumors that you can get from lvl 17-lvl 99 in one trip. Want to know how? Sure you do!
Stock up on mosquito proboscus. ALOT OF THEM. Stock up on everything. Proboscus stack, so that makes summoning a breeze. Yes, you can get to lvl 99 doing this.
Downside; This is the absolute fastest way to train ANY skill. But Jagex knows that. Thats why training this way is so !@#! expensive. The total cost of the items is over 700mil! Even skychi doesn't have that much money (sorry skychi). But if your looking to train the "easy" way, go ahead and spend 700 hours nature running.

The Benefits

Ok, ignore the fact that you spent all that time and money getting 4 different ingredients. Now I'm gonna drop a train on you.

Until you get above lvl 50, the summoning creatures are mostly useless (a few exceptions). You can sell the pouches ("for almost all your money back!" jagex exclaims joyfully), but no one wants to buy 30 rock crab pouches.

Now remember, there was a huge update to make summoning creatures more useful (mostly combat cretaures). You can imagine what it was like before the update.

I'll sum this up by saying that it is mostly worth it at the high levels, so don't NOT train this skill.

Types of Summoning creatures

Combat: The main class of summoned creatures. Only gets good above lvl 50. At level 99 you can unlock the incredible steel titan (four 21's at once! OMG!), but until you get there it ain't so hot (with a few outstanding exceptions).

Skill Helpers: A few good creatures in here. Alot actually. These guys will boost your skills, or even do tasks for you. For instance, one creature will even fish for you O_o. Most likely the most useful group of creatures all the way to lvl 99.

Beasts of Burden: Extra inventory space! Holy @#$%@! Sound great, eh? Nah. Jagex had to protect them good ole' noobs by not alowing these creatures to carry any items that are deemed too valuable. I'm not going to hit Jagex over the head with this one too much, but it would increase summonings value 1000 fold if Jagex removed this major killer. Again, as useful as it can be all the way up to lvl 99. But not more useful.

Pets: Fun, cute, but so annoying. Hey, at lvl 99 you can spend 20 hours searching for a dragons egg! And once it hatches after 2 weeks of waiting, you can feed it 400k of raw chicken every day for as long as you still keep it! And it does absolutely nothing!

To Improve summoning....

Mwahaha! You thought I was going to rub some more summoning nonsesne in Jagex's face? In short, no. They already get enough nonsense about it.
I will give them this. It is an extremely useful skill that has a huge variety of uses. It looks awesome, it's fun to use, training is a breeze (i'll ignore the money aspect), and the specs really make the lower lvl creatures worth it.

Thanks for reading,
TMP