[Update 10/2/15: A game update has rendered some of this list obsolete.]
The previous Top 5 tips for DarkScape has been insanely popular, but recent updates have made several options on the list either already obsolete or about to be obsolete. With that in mind, and considering I am further in the game than last week, I decided to go back and produce five more tips for survival in DarkScape.
5. Stay On Top Of Updates/Plans
This one is pretty important. Since content updates aren’t coming to DarkScape for a fair amount of time, you might be inclined to ignore patch notes during content updates. This isn’t advisable. For instance, if you didn’t check the patch notes you may not be aware that entering the abyss no longer skulls players, or that a toolbelt has been added, or why your interface has been set to retro by default after an update.
Right now Jagex are performing some heavy tweaks to the game in response to player feedback, tweaking certain features to make them easier in some areas and harder in others. If you don’t keep watch on update notes and particularly discussion on the developer streams (which you can find summaries of on the DarkScape subreddit), you won’t just be at a disadvantage against the game, but you’ll be at a disadvantage against other players.
It also helps to keep up with the forums to know what content is currently broken, because there is a fair amount of it (see #2). For further reference, the DarkScape wiki is slowly being populated.
4. Tier Bank Trading Made Easy
Three tiers of danger means three separate banks, each with their own supplies, each irretrievable in other areas. While DarkScape would like you to believe that moving items between banks is a matter of sheer danger, the truth is that there are enough routes to go down that finding one or two with minimal risk of player interaction, let alone players looking to randomly kill you, is pretty good.
When trading between low and medium risk areas, the closest route I’ve found is between Lumbridge and Al Kharid. Starting out at the Lumbridge Grand Exchange, you can head south and over the bridge to Al Kharid, reducing the amount of time spent in medium-tier areas. The level range in the low-risk portion of the travel only goes up to six while you spend, at most, six or seven seconds in the mid-risk zone before reaching the bank, which itself is patrolled by three guards in a very enclosed space. When trading back, just be aware that the medium-tier area extends to the end of the bridge on the Lumbridge side rather than the city entrance as it was when you came in.
For moving items to high risk zone, one of the safest routes that I’ve found so far is between Varrok and Canifis. If you haven’t been through the area before, you’ll need to kill a level 30 monster before you can proceed, but the travel from Varrok to Canifis is one that is sparsely populated with players and even less so with player killers. Cities like Ashdale, Zanaris, and Al Kharid have more open areas and lack choke points that pk’ers can nab you in, making them rife for smuggling goods between zones.
Initially this spot was supposed to discuss easy access to high-threat areas, due to the fact that the game automatically identified any zone as high risk until labeled otherwise. Areas like Death’s office offering easy access to your high risk bank have been fixed.
3. RuneSpan For Runecrafting/Nexus For Prayer
Runecrafting in DarkScape is a long, difficult, and dangerous affair, even more so before Jagex updated the Abyss so that it no longer skulls players effectively taking them out of towns for a full five minutes. If you’re looking at training runecrafting with a focus on pure experience, your best bet is to take on the RuneSpan activity. Available right off the bat at level 1 runecrafting, RuneSpan offers far better experience than it has any right to in DarkScape. Starting off at level 1, I managed to make my way to level 39 within an hour. Bear in mind, these experience rates are coming from a member with member experience rates, with no bonus experience.
While the entirety of RuneSpan is high threat (no guards, no limits on combat), I’ve found very little combat going on outside of the random troll. The time and resources required to move about in RuneSpan for the relatively low amount of players present makes player killing in the area a massive waste of time, even for the dedicated troll. Runecrafters in the area are more interested in crafting than killing. Which isn’t to say it is safe, I was killed once while writing this piece. After today’s update, your points are redeemed upon death.
Compared to RuneSpan, the Nexus is a lot more popular and prone to player killers coming in and ruining your day. That in mind, the mini-game is not far from the Lumbridge respawn point and is generally filled with enough other players that you should be able to slip around relatively unnoticed. Unlike Runespan, however, your experience at the Nexus is capped and will eventually come to an end. Once you receive 37 thousand experience, not counting the extra experience from bones, the event will no longer grant prayer experience.
On the plus side, thirty seven thousand experience will get you to level 40 assuming you begin the Nexus at level 1.
2. Taking Advantage of Oversights
DarkScape is (to the best of my knowledge) officially considered “experimental,” another name meaning any issues that should have been considered have not, leaving players at the mercy of Jagex to eventually fix them. In this case, if you were looking to finish your achievement diaries or a number of quests, look again. While Jagex has been rolling out updates to fix these oversights, DarkScape’s restrictions on teleporting left players literally unable to complete quests because the game won’t move them with the quest rewards in their inventory.
But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t currently existing oversights that can be taken advantage of before they are fixed in the coming weeks/months. For instance, right now it is extremely easy to craft blisterwood weapons assuming you finish the quest line required to craft them. Jagex has detailed plans to make blisterwood weapons much more difficult and costly to craft, as right now they are high-tier equipment that can be mass produced with little effort (other than the quest line).
There are plenty of things to take advantage of outside of that example, including how easy it is currently to smuggle items between risk zones (see above). Keep an eye on the forums for other shortcuts.
1. Only Use What You Can Lose
This one likely goes without saying, but always play with the mentality that you will probably be killed and lose whatever you are carrying. That said, you don’t necessarily want to go out constantly with just a weapon/tool and no armor or food on you, you’ll just be easy pickings for even the least equipped killers. This is where welfare equipment, gear that is cheap and can be easily replaced, comes into play.
If you’re making a decent amount of money, you can go to shops or the Grand Exchange and buy your welfare gear in bulk. If not, your best bet may be to level up relevant skills (mining/smithing, crafting, fletching) and use the resources you gain leveling in order to build the equipment you’ll be using for your own protection. While it won’t deter everyone, a player wielding just a weapon is less likely to attack a decked out player with full armor and weapons of his own, and you’ll be better equipped to fight back/run away and get to a safe zone.
A few of your inventory slots should be dedicated to food to survive or teleportation to quickly escape, but be aware that teleportation is slower in DarkScape than it is in RuneScape, you can still be killed even using rune-based town teleports.
MMO Fallout 
