First reported by GamesRadar (opens in a new tab)an old-school RuneScape player with the handle NC State (presumably not an official representative of the Raleigh-based university) finally sought his reward for completing an infamous minigame, the Brimhaven Obstacle Course, for eight years. As described by a friend, user h0dgep0dge (opens in a new tab) Over on Reddit, NC State finally brought their ride home, giving out all their accumulated rewards at once and earning 178 million XP on RuneScape’s Suboptimal Agility ability in under a minute. This was such a rapid influx that the game’s built-in hourly experience tracker couldn’t keep up: it reached 2.147 billion even though NC State was progressing at a rate of 10.8 billion per hour.
Agility in RuneScape isn’t exactly the sexiest ability in the long-running MMO: it’s associated with cool naughty things like fancy attire. (opens in a new tab) in-game, but mechanically it just gives you more stamina and allows you to access a variety of shortcuts across the map. One of the main ways you can level up is the Brimhaven Agility Arena, a sort of skill vendor minigame.
My experience with RuneScape was limited to trying to make a high school bully like me back in 2004, fail, and go back to playing Paper Mario instead, so I never got here. But from what I can tell of a variety of YouTube guides like this (opens in a new tab), involves clicking on a grid-based arena to highlight pillars and seeing cute little skill check scenes of your character walking a tightrope or avoiding blade traps. Seems like a good thing to do just once. NC State has put in thousands of hours doing it since 2015. This project has spanned three US presidencies.
Listening to NC State describe it, it doesn’t really sound as bad as all that. “I want to add that Brimhaven is a quiet place or at least it can be if you don’t make obstacles while you wait,” she explained. (opens in a new tab) in response to user ElMico, who had estimated that this project required a ballpark of 4,800 hours. “A lot of times you’re watching YouTube, reading the news, surfing the web, etc. I was almost never on my computer for the sole purpose of doing agility, but I almost always had Runescape on when I was.”
So less a matter of sheer will and stamina, more patience and commitment. How to take care of a garden After all those years of work, what benefits can NC State expect from a godly 200 million Agility XP? Stamina that never runs out? Forbidden über-secret shortcuts? Well, for all practical purposes, RuneScape abilities are capped at level 99 or just 13 million XP, so this was it for now. Okay, NC State, though I have to wonder what’s in the background while you’re watching YouTube now.