Luring

Luring may also refer to the Fishing technique, lure fishing.

Luring is a common term used when a player tricks or deceives another player by leading them to a dangerous place, most likely in the Wilderness. Since 28 March 2007, it has been considered scamming. Another type of lure is bringing an enemy to the player, which is seen mostly in the Dagannoth King's lair. Luring is usually done when victims have expensive items or plenty of coins, so that when they die, they will lose an amount of items (depending if skulled or not), and will give it all to the lurer. Since the return of the Wilderness, luring has become much more common and highly lucrative, and the rules concerning luring have become more ambiguous. At the very least, however, luring is considered an undesirable player behavior.

Why players lure

Luring is considered by a few players to be dishonest and unfair. Purportedly, there have been many players who made substantial amounts of coins through luring. Players lure for profit or for fun.

Types of lures

There are many types of lures; the three main being Wilderness Luring, Clan Wars Luring and Monster Luring.

Wilderness Luring

Wilderness luring is the most common lure seen in RuneScape. It is when a player (lurer) brings another player (victim) to the Wilderness and immediately kills them; receiving their loot. A lurer usually brings a victim to the Wilderness with a variety of methods; for example: Revenants, faking a drop party, or selling/buying an item for a ridiculously low/high price. The lurer usually creates an excuse for trading in the Wilderness, depending on the location. For example, if a lurer is east of the Edgeville bridge, the lurer will usually say that he's power-fletching or woodcutting trees. Another method of luring was using the RuneScape Official Forums, where the victim is buying or selling an expensive item.

The main flaws of Wilderness luring is that it is usually obvious that the lurer will kill the player and the lurer must ensure the item is stacked or cash. Since the victim will most likely lack a Skull (where a player loses all their items when they die), they will not lose their item unless they are carrying other items that protect over the item. To ensure the specific item is dropped, a lurer usually lures players that are selling stacked items or are buying in cash. Stacked items or cash are lost no matter what, so this was used to the lurer's advantage. A different method to lure a player is lending an item to the victim, ensuring that their items/cash will be lost; leaving the lurer with the loot, except for the borrowed item in the victim's inventory.

Another type of Wilderness luring involves the lurer pretending to team up with the victim. Because teaming up in the Wilderness is very common, the victim usually does not suspect anything. The lurer usually gives an excuse for going deep into the Wilderness, such as "The guy we want to kill is there". Once in deep Wilderness, the lurer, chatting with the victim as if they're really teamed up, suddenly and abruptly attacks the victim. Sometimes the victim can escape if they have a lot of food and if they have "run" turned on. However, the lurer succeeds most of the time, especially if they use Ranged or Magic, because they can still attack the victim while they are running away. This lure is more effective than the other Wilderness lure, particularly because in the first type, the victim may easily figure out that he is being lured, while this lure does not have any suspicious parts to it (until, of course, the lurer attacks). To prevent this, you should only team up with people you know, such as a real-life friend or relative, and if possible be with them in real life when entering the Wilderness, as you can ask in person for your items back if they do decide to kill you.

Another form of old Wilderness luring is the one where the lurer would tell the victim to switch to a German server, or a server with a different language the victim could not understand. The lurer would then teleport the victim to the deep Wilderness without the victim knowing because he or she could not understand that the lurer was teleporting them to the Wilderness, or just Camelot or a familiar city. When the victim mistakingly teleported, thinking it was the name of a familiar city, or the friendly city the lurer told the victim they were teleporting, they would then end up in the deep Wilderness where he would be killed by the lurer or a team of lurers, then after be looted for all the victim was worth.

Another form of Wilderness luring similar to the one above is where the lurer, after claiming to want to kill a player deep in the Wilderness, leads the unsuspecting player to a remote section of the Wilderness, where a gang of attackers (usually the lurer's friends) is waiting for them. They use freeze spells, making escaping almost impossible. After they kill the unsuspecting player, they often share the loot among themselves.

Sometimes weapons such as the Red chinchompa are used, causing the player to skull even if not attacked first the player if has auto on will fire the chinchompa at the player who is luring and can end up getting skulled if it hits other nearby players.

An older, common method of luring (usually for luring out of a safe area or into deeper wilderness) is for the lurer to offer a trade to a victim and then run out of the safe area. This causes the victim to run out of the safe area upon accepting the trade. This is used quite frequently in the Wilderness, so it is highly recommended to watch the person sending a trade offer, and make sure they do not run out of a safe zone before accepting the trade. If the lurer does run to a danger zone, the lure can be avoided simply by not accepting the trade offer.

Another form of luring is ask a player to show the way to, for example, the Forinthry Dungeon and then attack them on the way.

Wilderness Wall

In an attempt to combat luring, Jagex constructed a ditch that had to be climbed over to reach the Wilderness. On 15 September 2010, the Wilderness ditch became a wall, due to aesthetic issues with z-buffering.

Clan Wars Luring

Clan Wars, specifically Red Portal luring, is one of the most popular methods of luring. It is a lure having to do with the dangerous portal at Clan Wars. The lure involves a victim, the lurer or talker, and the killer; a second lurer is sometimes involved thus making a victim, two lurers, and the killer. A player with no armour (the lurer) asks someone with relatively expensive armour (the victim) to come into the dangerous portal to kill them. After the lurer says that to the soon-to-be victim, he private messages the killer that the victim is attacking them. Then the killer rushes in and freezes the victim with ice spells, followed by various rushing techniques like the Dragon claw special to finish the victim off. The lurer and killer then grab the victim's armour and carried items. Legitimate players won't ask to be killed in the dangerous Red Portal.

Also in the dangerous Red Portal, lurers can lure players by persuading the victim and trading the victim some Telegrab runes and drop an amount of money, which is usually like 10K since it looks like millions when dropped, in the dangerous zone. First, the lurer shows that it is safe to obtain the money by dropping a low amount of coins or a cheap item there and lets the victim tele-grab it, or said lurer has the tele-grabbing victim demonstrate this method in the safe White Portal. Afterwards, the lurer says that he or she will drop a large amount of money or an item with high value. Instead of dropping the money or item near the portal, however, the lurer drops it behind a tree at the edge of the arena on the east or west side. Next, the unsuspecting victim tele-grabs the money or item, but because it's behind the tree, he or she will automatically run into the dangerous zone, tele-grab, and then get barraged and killed by the lurer's companion upon entering the dangerous zone. The killer typically employs a rushing technique like Dragon Claw specials after the victim is frozen to quickly finish him or her. Therefore, the player would lose all of his carried items and armour upon death.

Multi-luring

Multi luring is one of the most popular methods of luring. It is when a person is lured into multi-combat Wilderness, and is then killed by one or more people using Dragon daggers and other weapons that are capable of quickly doing damage, such as the Dark bow. For example, one square south of the Wilderness wall near the Grand Exchange shortcut is a multi-combat area, so people are often seen in that area with Dragon spears, who then use the special attack to push an unsuspecting player into multi-combat, where they would then be killed by the person with the player's team.

There is also another type of multi-lure commonly found in the Clan Wars' Red Portal. In this type of lure, there is always an ancient mage/ranger and/or spec rusher and most importantly, a low-level lurer. The mage uses Ice Barrage or any other stopping spell. The mage immediately changes to range armour or melee armour then quickly kills the victim in seconds with a weapon that can hit multiple times in a single turn such as the Dark Bow or a Dragon Dagger.

Monster Luring

Monster luring is a type of lure where a player attracts an aggressive monster to another player and kills them. This is most commonly seen in the Dagannoth King lair, a very dangerous place where level 303 Dagannoth Kings lie. Serious Dagannoth King hunters usually bring a Guthans set to extend their time spent on the Dagannoth Kings. Since a player will always lose a Guthan's warspear out of an entire Guthan's set, a successful lure will rack in a large sum of money for the lurer. Although Dagannoth Kings are the most commonly seen, the same principle applies for other high-leveled monsters.

Another highly common form of monster luring was at the apes on Ape Atoll. Normally this was done on a low-level player who would find it tricky to kill an ape fast. The lurer would tell the player to go up the bamboo ladder because of an "update" there was now an altar up there. When the player went up there and found no altar, the player came back down the ladder and was surrounded by about 4 or 5 apes. Since you could not walk through the apes, and a player could only climb up one side of the ladder, the player was stuck. This form of luring was almost impossible to get reported for since there was no detailed proof that the lurer did anything wrong.

Other Lures

Another place for luring is in the Ranging Guild. Someone may say that they are buying feathers or raw chicken for large amounts of money and a victim will go out to the chicken farm to get it. The lurer lures the unsuspecting player into the activity area and brings them to the high level rangers. This is a multicombat area and all three enemy archers may attack a player at once. The lurer goes by, but not into, the high-level area and tells the victim to trade. When they try to trade, and the victim is in range of the level 64 archers, they can hit in the one hundreds for lifepoints and could kill a player if they aren't suspecting it.

Another lure involves simply placing bait, such as a stack of coins or some valuable item, in low-level Wilderness. When the victim goes for it, the lurer attacks him/her. It is believed that this is not against Jagex's rules, because it does not involve lying.

In another lure, the lurer tells the victim to take the Wine of Zamorak (often a lower level player). When the victim does so, the monks of Zamorak attack the victim.

Another lure to watch out for is the item-doubling table or glitch table lure. In this the lurer invites the victim to their player-owned house, puts a whip (or similar mid-value item) on the table and then does the dance emote. The lurer then grabs the whip and shows the victim two whips in trade, claiming that it was doubled by the previous actions. The victim is then encouraged to copy the lurer, but when they start the emote the lurer kicks them from the house and locks it so the victim can't return, which allows them to claim whatever high-value item the victim placed on the table.

Controversy

There have been many questions as to whether luring is bannable or not. There have been no confirmed cases where players have been banned for luring and there were also many messages from Jagex that said luring was not bannable. On 29 March, 2007, Jagex updated Rule 2 to make "Luring someone into the wilderness under false pretences" a bannable offence. However with the re-release of the wilderness, this is no longer necessarily true, although there has also been cases in which certain J-Mods claimed luring is a bannable offence. In addition, several J-mods have stated that luring is "against the spirit of the game", and have disallowed threads encouraging it on the forums. Despite this, there are no player documented cases of lurers being banned, although there are a few cases where lurers received temporary mutes from P-Mods.