Divination Tutorial: what am I supposed to do?

[hoot hoot]

The text you get from Orla Fairweather seems to be pure flavor and doesn't directly tell you what you're supposed to do in terms of gameplay.

First bit was "As you've seen, memories can be converted into experience, but that's not all they can be used for. If you focus your mind, you can also receive divine energy - a useful material. Why don't you try it?"

- Had to google this just to figure out I'm supposed to right-click and "configure" the rift. Why wasn't this explained in the supposed tutorial?

Now, she says "If you've spare divine energy you can use it to your advantage. Just focus your mind on enhanced experience and you'll get more return from your experience."

- Again, what? What am I supposed to do? I thought I had to "configure" the rift to XP, but apparently not.

Is the whole tutorial going to be incomprehensible like this? I still don't even know what divination is for, as a skill. Like, what does "divine kebbit burrow" do? I realize I can wiki this, but it feels like this is the worst tutorial I've encountered yet and it's not actually explaining anything.

[Orochi Samurai]

Find the appropriate divination spring for your level (presumably 1, although if higher, the skill guide will tell you were each spring is located) which is near the tutorial lady, right click the whisp to configure, if going for xp alone, set it to convert energy and memories to xp, if you want to gather energy specifically, set it to convert all memories to energy or for a 50/50 balance, choose the third option (don't ever do this)

Now click the whisp and stand there like a statue until your inventory is full of memories, after that, click on the nearby spring and once again, stand there like a statue until your inventory is completely empty except energy (if applicable), repeat.

[hoot hoot]

Originally posted by Orochi Samurai:

Find the appropriate divination spring for your level (presumably 1, although if higher, the skill guide will tell you were each spring is located) which is near the tutorial lady, right click the whisp to configure, if going for xp alone, set it to convert energy and memories to xp, if you want to gather energy specifically, set it to convert all memories to energy or for a 50/50 balance, choose the third option (don't ever do this)

Now click the whisp and stand there like a statue until your inventory is full of memories, after that, click on the nearby spring and once again, stand there like a statue until your inventory is completely empty except energy (if applicable), repeat.

This much I figured out and have done. Whatever it is that the so-called tutorial wants me to do, it's not that. I've done it multiple times. I can just look up a guide, but it's silly I need a guide to figure out what a tutorial is asking me to do.

[BuzzardBee]

The tutorials in the game are all pretty much trash. The wiki, on the other hand, covers nearly everything and explains it all rather well. I don't know what to tell you. In most cases, you are required to complete whatever each individual tutorial asks of you. If you find them confusing, please do refer to the wiki for clearer instructions.

As for Divination, it's a rather useful skill in practice, just extremely tedious to train. You can create items that reward additional xp for various other skills such as divine locations or nodes. These are essentially skilling hotspots that you can deploy and use to gain specific xp up to a pre-determined amount each day. Once deployed, any other player can also use the location, just as you can use anyone else's that has been deployed, for some additional xp up to that amount per day. The amount is determined by your skilling level.

Also bear in mind that there are things called boons which can created and used and are one-time items that offer 10% more xp and energy when converting memories of a specific tier. This is all much better explained in the Wiki than I can do for you here.

You will have noticed that when you right-click on the rift and can configure it to receive either xp, energy or a combination of both, that this will determine how exactly you will be using those wisps when you click on them.

When converting memories to energy, you will be gathering 1-2 energies for each memory collected. Occasionally, an enriched wisp will appear and it will produce 50% more energy when harvested. However, choosing this option will grant xp at the slowest rate possible as you'll only gain 1 xp per conversion.

When converting memories to experience, standard memories will be deposited before enriched ones. And finally, when converting memories to energy and experience, the conversion is at a higher rate. Each standard memory uses up to 5 energy and enriched 10. This higher rate gives the most xp. Enriched memories will be deposited into the rift first ahead of normal ones and this will continue until all energies have been consumed.

These options allow the player to decide what they want to do and how. If they require the energies to create items (such as locations or boons, portents or signs -- the wiki provides detailed info on all of these), then you usually should choose to sacrifice xp in favor of the maximum energies captured so that they can be used to make the items you want.

If, however, your focus is just to train the skill so that you can create your permanent boon and then move on to the next tier rift (the optimal way to train the skill), then choosing either option 2 or 3 is best as they provide the most xp (or at least a combination of both energy and xp) so that you can level up and move on to the next rift.

There's a whole section on transmutation which you can read up on in the wiki which essentially allows you to use energies plus other items to essentially convert lower tiered resources into higher tiered ones. The reason for doing this is generally for the xp but there may be times when the player may need or want those items. Doing this solely for training purposes may not always be very cost effective unless you gather those resources yourself.

Really there isn't much else to the skill. There are several other ways to train it other than the rifts. Again, the wiki provides info on these such as the Guthixian Cache and the Memorial to Guthix but new players really don't have to concern themselves with these until they've leveled up some and familiarized themselves more with the skill and the various rifts.

Hang in there. It's all pretty confusing at first until you get the hang of it. Have fun.

[BuzzardBee]

Oh and there's an official wiki and a much older one on Fandom. Avoid like the plague the Fandom one as it is woefully out of date and no longer supported or updated in any way. The other one, on the other hand, usually has the most up to date information on anything and even covers rather well alternative training methods for each skill.

The game itself has a direct link to the wiki. You may have noticed a small WIKI button in your chat box. If you click on it, you will then be able to type whatever information you are looking for in the chat box and it will bring up your browser to the appropriate wiki page. You can search broad topics such as a skill or specific topics such as divine energy.

[hoot hoot]

Originally posted by Your Friend Hana:

It's a point and click game. You have two buttons...and nothing else. What is hard to figure out?

... All the bits I described in my post. I'm enjoying the game and seeing all these updates to the Runescape I used to play back when it was 2D mush, but to imply that this tutorial makes any sense to a new player is ludicrous.

It's the same as a driver's ed course teaching students "to drive safely, go and focus on driving in one particular way that I won't describe to you."

Originally posted by BuzzardBee:

...

This is pretty thorough. Thank you. I've been using the wiki for other skills, but I was just sort of caught by surprise at how unusual divination is and how unhelpful the tutorial seems to be vs other skill tutorials.

[hoot hoot]

Originally posted by Your Friend Hana:

Originally posted by Drew P. Johnson:

... All the bits I described in my post. I'm enjoying the game and seeing all these updates to the Runescape I used to play back when it was 2D mush, but to imply that this tutorial makes any sense to a new player is ludicrous.

It's the same as a driver's ed course teaching students "to drive safely, go and focus on driving in one particular way that I won't describe to you."

A car doesn't have two inputs. A better analogy would be figuring out which end of a pencil you can write with.:hana1::hana2:

Again, I know how to click a mouse. My whole point to the post is that the instructions for the divination tutorial are cryptic and nonsensical to someone who doesn't already know how the mechanics of the skill work. It forces you to use the wiki and is a trainwreck of a tutorial.

[BuzzardBee]

I fully get what you mean. I tried to introduce a good friend to the game. Talked him through a few things to help get him started but once he tried the tutorial, he just gave up. I tried to explain a ton of things for him but he was just so turned off by how poorly done the tutorials were, he didn't want to play anymore.

I do hope you'll give the game a chance. It can be frustrating but you can actually turn off the stupid tutorials and try to figure things out on your own with the Wiki and by asking in the game, on this forum or on reddit. While you may run into the occasional toxic jerk, there are a lot of very helpful people around.

Have fun!

PS: We who've been playing the game for upward on 20 years or so (15 for me next March) have been complaining about the tutorials for years. They've gone through several of them but honestly, they've just gotten worse as time goes by. Just stick with it and you'll get there.

[Sweagen]

click wisp. gather stuff. click spring to put the memories in...

[BuzzardBee]

Originally posted by Sweagen:

click wisp. gather stuff. click spring to put the memories in...

Yeah but to be fair, there are those boons that you might miss out on if you didn't know about them and the divine locations you can create and a lot of other stuff that the tutorial doesn't even hint at.

Heck it doesn't really stress a difference between the enriched and normal wisps nor the ability to empower rifts. So the wiki is very much needed but it is also information that should be more readily available in the game itself.