QUEST START AND REQUIREMENTS

They said it, not me.

THE QUEST GUIDE!

All right. This quest is, in a nutshell, one long test of endurance. Not only are you going to be killing things, but you’re going to be killing strong things. And not just strong things. LOTS of strong things.

At once. At the same time. For long periods of time.

Fans of the fight cave, your time has come!

You’re gonna start off by getting your hide somehow teleported to Lunar Isle because having to make that big three-floor pirate ship sail 50 feet is a hassle, isn’t it? Walk up to Runescape’s one and only mobile home and jump in, and you’ll see that there’s a man in Baba Yaga’s bed.

Who is he? Where did he come from? What’s his insurance broker’s wife’s middle name?

… by the way, it’s “Vanessa”. I learned it from Dex. Don’t ask how or why he knows.

Anyways, after a conversation with-

Wait, before I get into this, I want to first point out something.

Almost every single time you make a choice in this quest, it makes almost no difference as to what the NPC responds with. You can say “What’s your idea?”, or you can say “I see where this is going.”, and she’ll still give you her brilliant idea. Go ahead. Be as much of an idiot as you want, the quest will still go on as it should.

Truth be told, I like that. It lets me almost become my character and say things that I would rather say. That’s a good thing. A little bit more effect and perhaps a regarded reward of some kind would be nice, but at least that flexibility is there, and I thank you guys for that.

But be careful. While it doesn’t effect the quest outcome, it does effect the morality behind the basis in which you do it. For example, if you mess around later on when a deciding time occurs, you may find you’ll have messed things up. The outcomes remain the same, but different things may occur that lead up to those events. I’m just saying, do what you think you’d do in the situation, and you’ll be fine.

OK, on to business.

You talk to Baba Yaga and, however you carry the conversation, you’ll be jumping into this guy’s head with her. Good clean fun. Of course, remembering the other two times you went into someone else’s head, obviously you’ll be fighting something. And considering the last enemy you fought in a dream made it into a Jagex trading card game, you will want to get ready.

Stock up with food and your best armour, because I’m going to tell you right now that once you’re in, you’re not getting out until you endure all the dream’s got to offer. I would suggest you bring some kind of rechargeable health items, like Guthans armour, the enhanced excalibur, or a Saradomin Godsword, because summons can’t be made in the dreamworld.

So, after you get food, potions, armour, and the works, talk to Baba Yaga again and the two of you will enter the dream.

Looks familiar? That’s the lighthouse. So this guy must be Silias, the vanished uncle of Jericho. Eavesdrop on him and salvage the bookcases for- … a prophecy tablet?!? Wow! You have the last one already, and now it’s going to start coming together! Exciting!

After that’s done, head upstairs. Or downstairs. Your choice. You will then enter a room with the Dagannoth Mother you may remember from Horror of the Deep talking to Silias. … yes, apparently dagannoth speak the human language. It appears that Silias is … either possessed by a sea slug, or has gone completely bonkers, because he thinks he’s her husband or something.

It will be revealed that she’s unveiling an army of dagannoth to attack the Fremennik, and thank goodness you found out about this before it was too late.

Walk over to the next room, and you’ll come in contact with a tormented Silias. Talk to him, and Baba Yaga will try the lectern.

Except it doesn’t work.

And THEY’RE coming!

Hoard off the enemy forces, but beware. They will come with all three attack styles. I would recommend heavy armor and protect from magic for this. Fortunately for you, Baba Yaga has a good load of food an health, and will vengeance you and heal you should the situation get too dire.

Kill about 10 dagannoth or so, and she’ll get the lectern working and you immediately out of there.

Whew! What a battle! That was intense! Baba Yaga will then take note of the prophecy tablet you found and summarize your findings when the Oneiromancer will enter and say that Rellekka is under siege by an army of dagannoth!

… well, Baba Yaga will say it to you …

What? But you killed the mother! How is this possible?

Retreat to your bank and restock, and then chat with Baba Yaga, who will teleport you to Rellekka with a clever trick she knows.

She will take your Seal of Passage, and then “What are you doing here, Fremennik?” …

Enter epic battle number two.

Dagannoth! Everywhere! Rangers and meleers! Forget about the welfare of tour kin, they have food. Watch your own health, because it’s easy to lose track in that mess.

Dash around and deal whatever damage you can, and after a while (and I mean a while, this is a pretty epic battle), Brundt will shout a retreat for you and himself. A ship is coming up on the horizon, and you’re going out to meet it.

So, fantastic idea; let’s escape the water-dwelling fast-swimming sea demons and plot our next steps safely by jumping onto a boat, because obviously the long-hall, which everybody’s literally dying to protect, just isn’t safe enough.

All silliness aside, jump into the boat to escape the mayhem, and you’ll meet Queen Sigrid and co. She will ask you to look for King Vargas. Despite almost losing all hope until you came along, Brundt will say they can hold the fort while you do your side-quest.

To help you on your mission, she will entrust, to you, an axe that easily rivals Dharok’s: the Balmung. It’s especially strong and particularly accurate against dagannoth, and will be your new best friend on Waterbirth Isle from now on, so KEEP IT!

So, stop off at the bank again to resupply before you go, then use your lyre (if you have one) to teleport to Waterbirth while wearing your Sea Boots Level 3. See, that’s why you need it. Because due to the attack at Rellekka, Waterbirth is swarming too much with the creatures to make a safe landing.

By whatever means, get there, and you’ll encounter your old buddy, who will lead you to a hole on the southwestern tip of the island. Use the rope he coincidentally gives you on the hole and climb down.

Ah, there’s King Vargas. Easiest find ever.

Now to get him out of there.

… of course, he’s too injured to climb a rope, and no amount of food is going to heal him to a better state (wimp). That, and Waterbirth is again swarming with dagannoth, so to get him to safety, you’re going to have to delve into the belly of the beast and, literally, escort him to the lighthouse escape hatch in the deepest part of the dagannoth hive.

That’s right. An escort mission. What’s more, Vargas moves slower than you can walk!

Not to worry, you’ve got an axe. You can do this.

The first series of tunnels are, surprisingly, easy enough. Pray against the majority of what’s attacking you, like rock lobsters. They won’t attack King Vargas so long as you go first and attract their attention, then hold off their attacks while Vargas catches up. Lots of people muse that this is harder than it seems, but that’s entirely false.

Pass by the Dagannoth King ladder, You don’t want to take Vargas down there.

You will then eventually enter a long tunnel. King Vargas will comment that it’s too quiet. THIS is where things get tough. Get ready for battle.

Epic battle number three.

Dagannoth will appear, and in order to proceed, you’ll need to slay every single one while keeping Vargas alive by healing him with food. Forget about moving to the ladder, just keep them off your ally. Use your AWESOME axe to bring the newbies down quickly (preferably the ones attacking Vargas first), and when it’s clear, you’re pretty much in the clear.

Save for a bunch of rock lobsters, but a constant protect from melee will allow you to breeze right through.

Finally, the ladder. Vargas will go first, and you’ll endure a cinema where he shows his true colours. I knew Vargas was a wimp, but this was just silly. Anyways, he’ll notice marks on the ceiling, “test” them, and a landslide that coincidentally occurs over your head will-

Oh dear. You are dead!

… except this time you are. Welcome to heaven. Have a chat with Eir there, and she’ll say that it’s not yet your time. Thank goodness, eh?

Being dead and all, you’ll get to finally meet Nial and Aslief in the flesh. Have a chat with them, say your final salutations, and then talk to Eir again to get resurrected.

Now you’re on a boat! Again! Vargas miraculously is totally scratchless, and, expectantly, so are you, Sigrid is happy he’s safe, and Brundt announces that despite not having their champion, the dagannoth have been driven back. … I wonder where Mawnis is during all this.

Good thing Vargas actually found something. Another prophecy tablet! This is getting very exciting!

So, as it seems, the situation is incredibly dire. The dagannoth are regrouping again, and by what it seems, will be launching a full-scale assault to finish off the Fremennik race and claim your lands (yes, your) as their own. Right now, while you’re on the ship and getting ready for yet another epic battle, Vargas and Sigrid finally decide on a course of immediate action.

They decide that now’s the time to get married.

… yeah. And you get to perform the rites. Don’t worry about not having your prayerbook, you can to improvise the entire thing.

Make it a Saradomin’s blessing, or go berserk on the words, it doesn’t matter. After you amuse yourself with the various options, they will kiss, and the two kingdoms will be one. Hooray!

Oh, and you know, since Astrid and her brother are there too, you might as well get married too. It’s your call.

In fact, go ahead. Why not? Get married while Rellekka is on the brink of destruction. What better place to do it than on a boat with chieftain Brundt giving the rites?

And, come on. Let’s see your character kiss somebody human for once! I proclaim no more frogs! HAVE AT!

Or not. Mess it up and break her heart. It’s your call.

… take thee, Baba … heh heh …

So, now that you’re bonded, time to realize your kin are in a state. Brundt comes up with the idea that you go see him in the longhall after stocking up for an assault, and a Fremennik boarding party will attack.

That’s right, you’re going on the offensive with a great army of barbarians! SAWEET!

Get stocked up by whatever means necessary, chat with Brundt, and you’re off! TIME FOR WAR! YAHOO!

Now you’re on a boat AGAIN! … wait, what’s Baba Yaga doing there now?

She’ll say that admits all that, she found yet another tablet. 4 out of 5, and that it’s time to start piecing them together. In the midst of things, it will appear that killing the mother invoked the dagannoth attack by transferring all leadership to her equally, if not much more powerful, “daughter mother”. Don’t ask, it just is.

She’s the leader, and if you strike her down, the army will be scattered and lost. Sounds like a plan. All those dudes in all those ships will create a distraction while you and a small team of heroes assault the mother.

Get onto Waterbirth, jump down the hole, and meet your team. Baba Yaga herself, princess Astrid, her brother, and-

Koschei? The deathless? Nice! You get the strongest, immortal-seeming Fremennik on your team!

Regardless, enter the cavern- wait, Koschei is staying behind to protect your exit?

LAME! Ah, who cares, you got a lunar mage to help.

Walk 5 steps with your incredibly well-coordinated and all-powerful backup, and Koschei will run out, saying that there are three big dagannoth attacking in all forms.

That’s right, the kings! Your entire team will decide to stay behind and cover your exit while you alone tackle the strongest of them all. Even your beloved.

So … yeah. All those ships, all those heroes, all those cameos … and you’re going at it all alone.

…

I would just like to point out that there’s a large hollowed-out dent in my desk that allows me to make high-velocity contact my head with minimal damage done to my visor.

Ah, fine. Be that way. We can hog up all the glory ourselves, then. How’s that sound?

Epic battle number 4. The dagannoth sentinels.

These guys are, at first, annoying. Attack one, and the other will heal it. One specializes in magic and the other ranged. They both melee.

But they heal so much, and all the time! How can you kill them?

I’ll let you try figuring it out for yourself, and if you can’t (lame … just kidding!), then read on.

The only way to take these guys down is to distract them from healing. You are going to have to go back and forth, hitting one with one hit, then the other with one hit. This way, they’ll both be too occupied to heal each other.

Kill one, and the other should fall quickly, since you’ve probably been hitting it about the same.

Enter the cave. You can check up on your allies if you need, they’ll be fine. Restock if you have to.

Now, remember this: if you’re going up against the dagannoth mother (the new one), she’ll probably have the same defensive system as the other one. … oh, who am I kidding? She DOES! If you’re going to hurt her, you’ll need to use all four elemental spells and a bow in addition to your axe. Bring a trainload of runes (Jagex really do mean “all”), your bow and ammo, and your axe, stock up with however much food you possibly can (Guthans won’t help much here), and go to it.

Oh, bring lots of prayer potion, too. You’ll need it, because if this isn’t your hardest battle, it will possibly be your longest.

One final stretch. Navigate the caverns, protected from ranged against the Dagannoth Guardians. They’re pushovers, really, but don’t waste your resources on them. Jump this wall, run around here, crawl this cavern, and you’ll find the cave there in the southeastern part of the cavern.

Entering the cave, you’ll find free stuff on the ground! Leave it all alone, you need your food, anyways. Enter the next cavern, and you’ll be in conversation with the big boss itself.

… what, that’s it? She’s there, all alone, in this nice big open cavern, without any personal bodyguards or even a second emergency escape route. Some leader she is … she’s not even the grandeur size of the dagannoth kings! In fact, she merely looks like somebody took a bicycle pump to a dagannoth ranger!

After a speech (don’t ask), the battle is on. Enter epic battle number 5.

[My apologies, but technical troubles (Dex in a bad mood …) have destroyed my quest pictures after this point. Besides, it’s a lot more exciting if you see the ending for yourself, which I think is better for you considering what I have to say about it later on.]

If you fight Tormented Demons every so often, you’ll be able to deal with her easily. you’ll have to keep switching weapons and prayers while watching her half the time. She’ll change her defence style often, and her attack style every so. Watch what she does:

Spines: She ranges.
Water bomb: She mages.
Seizures?: She melees.

In case you have forgotten the Horror of the Deep quest:

Green: Range.
Orange: Melee.
White: Air spell.
Blue: Water spell.
Brown: Earth spell. (Yeah, yeah, I know, just bear with it …)
Red: Take a guess.

Remember to keep switching prayers, because she literally is just a more complex Tormented Demon, and any dude who has completed While Guthix Sleeps can tell you how lethal they can get.

Eventually, you’ll get the rhythm down, and this will actually become quite an easy battle. After bashing her some, she’ll fall down, whine a bit, and just lay there. Instead of decapitating her, which I would do, it would probably be a much better idea to seal her up by burring her alive. After all, who would possibly want to dig her out?

Exit the cavern again and, if you actually decided to challenge yourself with this battle, you’ll have used up enough food to grab the three items. Grab them, and collapse the pillar.

Your plan is to prop the collapsing pillars with a plank, then set fire to it while you run. Then it’ll collapse, and that’ll be the end. Simple, eh?

Now, the rest is cinema, so I suggest you do the quest and watch them yourself. If you’re really REALLY curious to see how it ends (or hear a general summary, at least), read on and spoil the big surprise at the end. Again, going by what I have to say at the end, it really isn’t that much.

You’ll collapse the pillars, but then realize that the pillars were there for a reason. In comes another sudden cave-in, and-

Oh dead. You are dear.

Well, no, not really. Eir will congratulate you and say that she’ll once again make an exception and immediately send you back without you finding anything else out about the place. Ho hum.

Return to the entrance to find-

NOOOOO!

… wait a tick. That means you’re single again!

You can chat to Baba Yaga and even attack her if you want in rage, but she’ll teleport. Meh.

Well, get out of there, get onto yet ANOTHER boat, and Brundt will tell you that he just coincidentally found the last tablet.

Strung together, they read something like this:

When the mother is struck down, the daughter will rise.
All-consuming Darkness will rise from the sea, unleashed by Good Intent
Wit and strength will win the day, not fate.
When the tide is strongest, Good Intent will be needed once more
And his/her name will be [Subject name here]

So that’s it. Pieces of junk didn’t really resolve anything, they just said that you’ll win. Finish the quest with a traditional Fremennik funeral by setting two big wooden pyre ships alight without even getting a single bit of firemaking experience, and then you’re done!

QUEST COMPLETE!

ALEX’S ANALYSIS

Such is another end to another series, and, to be perfectly and absolutely honest, … I’m disappointed.

Really. I love the ends to stories, but this one was just awful!

I loved the battles. I loved the war of Rellekka. I loved the final boss. That was awesome. I think positively about all quest, and I will give a tip of the hat to Jagex and their great battles.

But it was not the activities that gave the quest its flaunt.

It was the cinematics and story that threw me down. In fact, they hurt. Very much.

First off; Silias. What the heck happened to him? Did we cure him of his obsession? Is he going to try to find the dagannoth mother? Baba Yaga says he left, but where’d he go? Perhaps he’s around somewhere, I dunno.

Second, the great battle. I wanted to see Fremennik and dagannoth fighting en-masse. We had a great fleet for a moment, and after 5 minutes of dialogue, we end up taking on the mother and get sentinels ALONE! We don’t even know who survived and who died. In fact, by what it seems, NOBODY died! Are the Fremennik just that powerful?

And where the heck was Mawnis during all this? I would imagine he would’ve taken great pride in sending his level 110 honour guards to help out.

But the most hurtful of the entire storyline was the end. After you killed the mother … BOOM! Hit harder in the face than she ever could to me with an entire legion of dagannoth kings. We finally get married to our beloved (or the chance to, anyways), and what happens?

They die! Yes, parting is such sweet sorrow, and I would definitely have cried, but the way it was portrayed hurt.

I die, then come back to life, and then enter the cavern. Where are the children of Vargas? Oh, there they are, lying dead. Wow. In fact, I may even have decided to just ignore the NPCs and climb up the rope. Baba Yaga will teleport them out herself. I thought she was injured, so I went to Astrid and interacted with it. Every one of my options told me she was dead. At the end, we light their boats on fire.

… OK. I had suddenly lost all immersion. She was just another computer character, and I didn’t feel anything about her death. I grew much more attached to Zanik, for Sartra- sorry, Saradomin’s sake! In fact, dibs on her bow.

How could this have been corrected? A battle. I wanted to see the battle. Look into the well in heaven and watch the battle between them and the dagannoth kings, and then watch them dramatically fall to the beasts. THAT would’ve done it.

And come on. Who DOESN’T want to see Koschei solo a dagannoth king with the great Baba Yaga backing him up?

I’ve also got to critique the rewards a touch. Getting more prayer experience than the While Guthix Sleeps quest was pretty awesome, and this axe will be beast during my slayer tasks which will involve me cannonading the dagannoth guardians, but … really, that’s it? For such involvement with Miscellania and Lunar Isle, I expected a couple new Lunar Spells for entering a guy’s dream, but that wasn’t done (really, I could probably list a couple dozen useful spells). I was desiring a few more points in my kingdom meter to get resources with but … no, not that either. I was hoping that I’d finally get to wander Lunar Isle without the need of a Seal of Passage but- *POOF* oh shaddup, Sigmund.

Lastly, there was no party. There was a funeral for two characters whom I lost interest towards, but there was no victory feast. Are you saying that Brundt’s birthday was a much more celebratory event.

It ended with a grand battle and a finish, but it didn’t end with a flourish. The build-up that the quest series offered was much too abruptedly snuffed.

I’m sorry, Jagex. I’m a big fan of the Cave Goblin series. That was a good storyline. This one just missed too many important and anticipated parts.

3.5 out of 5, mainly for my 3 free prayer levels and add a half for the new treat for my cannon.

Speaking of which, I’ve got a date with the Nechryaels. I’m off to go shove their own demon summons right down their throats!

Cheers, cannoneers!