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Polishing off of one of the most demanding video game speedruns you could possibly come up with, Old School RuneScape player he box jonge recently maxed out one of the MMO's Ultimate Ironman accounts in a mere 1,758 hours and 45 minutes.
You may know he box jonge as the holder of the 771-hour speedrun record for maxing out a normal, unrestricted OSRS account. The goal in both cases is relatively simple: get all 23 in-game skills to their max level of 99 and obtain the coveted Max Cape. Jonge's normal record was set last March, beating runner-up JCW by just 20 hours. As you might have guessed given the sheer time investment and game knowledge required, getting a Max Cape in OSRS isn't a terribly popular speedrun category, so these records are two of just three on Speedrun.com.
The third record, the only current entry for maxing an Ultimate Ironman, comes from p_the_menace. The recorded time here seems to be capped by the website at 999 hours, but in an expanded post p_the_menace explains that it actually took 2,945 hours, meaning Jonge's 1,758-hour run represents a massive time save over one of the only known UIM Max records.
UIM SPEEDRUN IN 1758h 45min!!!Thank you guys for all the support <3 Can finally play the game again.. pic.twitter.com/dRCofJx1AnJuly 13, 2024
The kicker here is that Ultimate Ironman accounts face severe restrictions that dramatically slow training progress. Like normal and hardcore Ironman players, they can't trade with other players in any way, meaning they have to acquire all of their equipment and resources the old-fashioned way. This isn't a super big deal for some skills, like Woodcutting or Fishing, which are conventionally trained by gathering specific resources anyway. But for skills like Construction and Herblore which require massive stockpiles of specific items, it can lead to huge preparatory grinds compared to just buying whatever you need.
Then we get to the Ultimate part, which is the real killer. As an Ultimate Ironman, you can't store your items at a bank either, forcing you to cram everything you own into very limited space, like trying to move house using one cardboard box. You can basically only keep and carry a set of equipment, up to 28 items in your inventory, as well as whatever you can fit into the instanced storage tied to Old School RuneScape's death mechanics. Ultimate Ironmen have found some clever ways to soften the restrictions of the account type, but it's still a huge challenge that totally warps the way you play the game. To put it simply, you have to prioritize specific items and juggle what you need for your immediate goals.
Jonge finished this record with some true multitasking. In the final Kick stream of the long grind, Jonge combined Fishing, Cooking, and the potion-making skill Herblore with a fast-paced Barbarian training method which is much more difficult than it looks. I was surprised to see that Fishing, generally regarded as one of the easier skills to max, was the last to reach 99, presumably because of the way the XP lined up and due to Jonge knocking out some harder skills first.
"Last fish!" Jonge exclaims on-stream as a cabal of followers erupt into celebratory spam in-game and in stream chat. "There we fucking go."
"Can finally play the game again..." Jonge said in a follow-up tweet.
The Old School RuneScape devs faced loot-hungry MMO players after an endgame quest spit out worse items than an easy mob so profitable it became a bot farm, but the divisive demons have since been addressed.
