Hi all. Time for the weekly Hot Topic. We're sorry we didn't get this posted yesterday, but the Administrative team here at Tip.It has been run off its feet looking for our TET Leader, Honest1, and quite frankly, the posting of the Weekly Hot Topic sort of slipped my mind. Remember, we need your help to find Honest1 and bring his captors to Justice! There is more information on what youcan do to help in Tuesday's News Announcement.

Now, as promised, on to the Hot Topic. This week, we've selected a topic that's only been in our Forums for about a month, and already has 15 pages of posts and discussion! The fun topics always seem to get lots of interest, and this one's no different. So, this week's Hot Topic selection is...Useless Runescape Facts! Please take a moment to check out what your fellow community members are saying about it!

Lastly, some guide updates. In between game updates, new features, new guides and tools, we do try to find the time to update our existing site content. I'd therefore like to draw your attention to our Barrows and Herblore guides, which have been fully updated. Thanks to everyone who submitted information for these guides.

As many of you may be aware, we have recently had a video posted of what seems to be Honest1 being kidnapped on Runescape. Obviously this is of great concern to us as he is the leader of the TET, but until now it has not been possible to tackle this issue, as it has been unclear who the perpetrators are. However, the Tip.It Admin team has today received a video taken in the wilderness of runescape and a PM from the group, making their identity known, and also their ransom demands.

As the TET is a group that was created to serve the public, we feel that anything regarding the well-being of the group needs to be shared with our community. It is for this reason that we have decided to share the contents of the PM with you. The video and message can be viewed here. We urge any members of the TIF community who think they may be able to help to post on this topic...together we can work to get Honest1 back.

Hello all. We have a new poll for you today, and as promised in last week's News Announcement, this week's question is a follow-up to last's week's poll, in which we asked you if you use a third-party client. It's important to remember that when we refer to "third-party client", we are not referring to any kind of macro, bot or autotyper. These are all considered as cheating and, as such, are against RuneScape rules. You are guaranteed to be banned from the game if you are caught using any of these types of software. Last week's poll referred to "worldswitcher" type of software, which are really RuneScape "toolkits" that can enhance the game playing experience. When you use one of these toolkits, you're not replacing the RuneScape client (the actual java applet), you're simply using another way to access it.

Now that we've clarified what we mean, this week, we'd like to know the main reason you use these types of "toolkits", if you do use one. We have opened a topic in our Forums to discuss this week's topic and talk about the poll results to date – you'll find the topic here.

In other news, we've updated our New Members (P2P) guide to include information on the Hunter Skill, plus we've updated our Construction Calculator and Planner to include costume room information. Finally, due to popular demand, we've got a brand new Farming Calculator up for you. We hope you like it and that you find it useful while planning your farming activities.

Happy Friday everyone! As you all know, Friday is Tip.It Times day, and today we're featuring a brand new guest article for you. Written by Tip.It Community member swampjedi, Pixels explores the anonymity playing RuneScape provides, and how some people take advantage of it. We hope you enjoy it.

Also, some of you may have already noticed that we have a brand new quest guide available for you today! Feel free to use our newly released Contact! quest guide to help you through the maze, battle the Giant Scarab and other nasties to help the High Priest of Icthlarin make contact with the citizens of Sophanem. As usual, we welcome your feedback – you may post any comments or corrections for the new quest guide here.

Finally, I'd like to remind everyone about tomorrow's TET event…Trouble Brewing is an event being hosted by our TETAU team, and we'd like as many of you as possible to participate to make this event the huge success it deserves to be! Start time for the event is 3:00 PM (Australian Time), on Saturday 13th January. Please check the Events Details page for more information, including start times for other time zones. You can attend even if you don’t live in Australia/Oceania, but remember that the start time of the event will be earlier for all other time zones. For example, if you live in North America, the start time for this event will be this evening, Friday 12th January. Check the time zone information on the Events Details page for the exact start time for your area.

Hello fellow RuneScapers! Yes, the title says it all. The Tip. It Crew is proud to present the Barbarian Assault Guide! Be sure to take a look before you attempt to work your way through the various nasties in the arena beneath the Barbarian Outpost. The guide contains lots of hints and tips to ensure your success.

Enjoy, and if you have any comments or corrections for the new guide, you may post them here.

Hi everyone. After we released yesterday's weekly poll, we received a suggestion from Tip.It Community Member Dalcyte asking that we consider posting a Weekly Poll Discussion Topic in our forums each time we have a new poll posted on the site. This sounded like a good idea and will allow you the opportunity to discuss the poll question amongst yourselves. If you'd like to discuss this week's Poll topic, "Do you use a third-party client to play RuneScape?" or talk about the poll results to date, you may do so here.

For future polls, We will include the link to the discussion topic in the Weekly Poll news item.

Hello fellow Tip.It'ers. The Holidays are over, and that means that we're back to our regular schedule. Now, for the first time this year, we have a new weekly poll for you. Last week's events surrounding third-party clients generated a lot of discussion here in our community, so much so that our Tip.It Times Editor covered the issue in last Friday's Tip.It Times. So we thought we would ask you the question in our weekly poll - do you use a third party client or not? Please take a moment to vote. We will ask you more questions about this issue in next week's poll, therefore, it's important that you vote in this first poll. Remember, we don't know who you are, so you can feel confident that your answer will remain anonymous.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to inform all our users that, because of compatibility issues with some browsers, we've re-written the script that stores the quests you have marked as "done" on the Quest Guides page. This upgrade should be invisible to most users, but if you experience any problems storing your completed quests, you should delete the cookies set by the Tip.It domain and then re-mark your completed quests. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause, but we're certain that the changes we've made will resolve any issues some of you were having with this feature.

Time for another Tip.It Times article! After reviewing the changes and updates released in 2006, our Tip.It Times Editor begins the new year with a bang! The RuneScape Rule 7 and 9 debacle caused so much of a stir in this and other player communities, that Jagex's original position had to be revisited more than once over the past few days. Of course, our Editor couldn't let this slide by without providing the usual insightful commentary on the whole affair. So please take a moment and give Rules is Rules a read.

On another note, I'd like to let everyone know that the Crew is feverishly working on a new guide for the new Barbarian Assault mini-game, and we hope to have it ready for general release very very soon. Thanks to everyone who submitted information to us, we very much appreciate your contributions.

Until next time, Happy 'Scaping, and be careful out there!

Hello everyone, and welcome to 2007! Seeing as how we've just closed the book on 2006, we thought this would be the perfect time to draw your attention to the Tip.It Community's views on which were the best game updates in 2006. And that's what this week's Hot Topic is all about...the Best Runescape Updates of 2006. Please take a moment to see what others are saying.

Also, to start the new year off right, we've got some site content updates to tell you about. We've updated lots of items in our Items Database, and we've fixed a problem we were having with items with apostrophes in their names - this was causing the item images to be not displayed. We've also corrected a number of other items to be in line with the new naming conventions announced on 22nd August 2006. Also in update news, our Runecrafting Guide has been fully updated to include a number of new things, so if Runecrafting is your thing and you haven't read through the guide in a while, stop by to take a look.

Last but not least, I'd like to welcome Dork and Rcty as the newest additions to the Tip.It Crew! Both were part of our Item Researcher team until very recently, and we thought it would be a good idea to bring them on board to work exclusively on the Items Database as part of the Crew. Getting the the Items Database ready for release was a massive undertaking and, in our effort to ensure that we continue to bring you only the best quality products, we felt that having some crew members dedicated to keeping the Items Database up to date would be the best way to go. So, on behalf of the entire Tip.It Staff, welcome guys!