Back to my Roots takes place in the Garden of the Handelmort Mansion. Yep, that’s the same Mansion that you stole a Tribal Totem from. Instead of stealing wooden Totems from the mansion, you have to help the mansion’s resident gardener acquire a very, VERY rare vine.

Horacio, the gardener of Handelmort Mansion, requests the services of a brave adventurer to travel deep into the jungles of Karamja. But why would he want someone to do that? you ask? Well, he’s currently in the process of replanting and redecorating his Master’s garden, but instead of normal things like nasturtiums or a magic tree he wants a Red Jade vine.

Red Jade vines are not the easiest thing in the world to transport as both Horacio and Garth, the Brimhaven fruit tree gardener, will tell you. Their roots are extremely delicate and too much air will kill them in just a few minutes. So, how do we transport them? We have to get an extremely rare magical device from Wizard Cromperty. (Knowing him its not a very extravagant item after all.)

After finding out that the RPDT haven’t delivered his package yet, you do the natural thing and go investigate what all the hold up it. As it turns out, someone tried sending a wizard’s hand through the RPDT. (And it wasn’t packaged very well either) Once that problem is solved the RPDT are able to return to the job at hand and deliver Cromperty’s package to him.

When he receives it he’s not very happy, it turns out the ‘specialist equipment’ was broken during delivery. (It’s pottery, when not packed correctly it will break!) You’re then told to make a new one. (That lid was the extremely rare magical device, not very rare eh?) Cromperty concludes that you must use an air-tight pot to transport the Jade vine rootling.

After you manage to acquire an airtight pot (by making it yourself, no doubt), you’re told to talk to Garth to learn the location of this very rare vine. Garth says the vine is located to the east of Shilo village, shouldn’t be too hard right? Its right next to a bank. Wrong. To get to the Red Vine you have to be outside on the northern side to get to the vine, nearby the nature rune altar.

Time for another surprise, you thought it’d be a little vine we cut a root from, right? Well as it turns out, this vine is over 100 years old. (Rough guess, look at the vine yourself and try to give it an age.) The vine has grown to be wider in diameter then you are, in fact its big enough to climb and that’s exactly what you have to do.

To get to the Root of this vine you have to monkey around on the vine. Aside from having to climb up and down and run around on the vine, you also have to dodge giant wasps and jungle spiders, not to mention the frogs that are as big as your shield. To top this off, most of these monsters can poison you. Once you reach the root its time to do some digging. You now have to try and make the root take root in an ordinary plant pot. (Err?) Once it does you’ve got to then put it in the air-tight pot before it shrivels up.

Remember the Hand in the Sand quest? And Remember that hand the RPDT had? The hand the RPDT had is the other hand from Clarence in the Hand in the Sand quest. As it turns out the rest of his body seemed to fair about as well as his two hands. His body parts have been divided up amongst the critters in this maze. When kill one of the Wasps or ants (yes their are giant ants also) it might drop one of his missing body parts. (Torso, Left arm, Right arm, Left leg, Right leg, or a foot, yes one foot.)

The pieces of Poor Clarence can be kept for a proper burial after the quest that yields a very worthwhile reward. But anyways, back to the Root of this quest, the Jade vine. Now that you’ve got your Jade vine rootling you must return to Horacio who is quite happy that you’ve successfully retrieved a rootling. One problem though…

Yep, Horacio wants you to grow the vine Rootling. you agree to do so since you ‘don’t want to see him kill it’. During its growth it seems you left it untended for a day and it grew out of control. The plant tries to kill Horacio and he requests that you kill it. (Why is it everyone always asks us to do something instead of us asking them?) The vine can only be hurt with an axe. (no battle axes, sorry) Yea, the vine is THAT strong.

Once you’ve cut it down to size Horacio thanks you and gives you a Jade vine seed that dropped from the Wild Jade Vine. (Why does he get the seeds when we did the fighting?) He also rewards you with a new vine patch and then the quest is over.

I think that’s about all for Back to My Roots but there are a few other things in this update.

Jagex has increased the number of ways you can acquire battle staves. Baba Yaga’s shop has in increased stock and the Mage Training Arena has reduced their costs. Additionally you can buy battlestaffs from Zaff in Varrock, the amount he has in stock varies depending on how far in the Varrock Diary you’ve gone.

Arhein now sells both Pineapples and seaweed though in the same basic way that Zaff does it, there is a limited amount of each that each player can buy each day.

Rock crabs now drop noted seaweed instead of piles of unnoted, this should make gathering seaweed from rock crabs easier. You can also harvest kelp from the underwater area from the Recipe for Disaster quest which can be burned on a range or fire to get soda ash. A very handy and quick method, as there’s a fire and bank deposit box very close by.

Various shops around Runescape have also been changing their prices.

Glarial’s spirit has now made it impossible to use any prayer inside her tomb, the moss giants their could already hit through prayer so this shouldn’t affect much.

It also appears that a certain sapling at the Red Salamander hunting area did not grow right and was preventing people from using it for hunting, the farmers of Runescape have trimmed this sapling so that will work properly now.

Finally, the gardeners of Runescape have decided it would make both your life and their life easier if they allowed you to pay them in one click, instead of talking before hand.

I believe that’s everything for this update, I’m sorry if the Quest part of this article wasn’t what you expected, this was the first time I wrote about a quest. If you have any comments or suggestions please post on my topic in Informer Article discussion.