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A giant creature is causing havoc inside the Karamja volcano, digging tunnels beneath the city. The TzHaar now risk losing their beloved home, unless they can be convinced that they need help.

TokTz-Ket-Dill will give you a unique look into TzHaar society, as well as access to new areas, creatures and TzHaar characters. You may already know about TzHaar guards, hunters, mages, and crafters, but what about the TzHaar playwrights? Do you know how to speak the language? You don’t? Perhaps a TzHaar librarian could be of help.

But what would a trip to the TzHaar city be without some fighting? Worry not! Besides learning the language and meeting some strange TzHaar, you will also explore dangerous tunnels and fight deadly beasts. These foes are no less threatening than the other inhabitants of the volcano, so you will need to prepare yourself.

Speak to one of the three TzHaar outside of a collapsed tunnel in the TzHaar city.

Level 40 Attack
Level 50 Construction (oh ho ho!)
Level 43 Crafting
Level 41 Mining
Level 45 Strength
Must be able to defeat a level 100 monster.
Must be able to defeat lower-levelled monsters using Magic and Ranged.

New sections of the TzHaar city, including a multi-way combat Mining area.

First of all, I would just like to inform everyone that the Tzhaar have been crossbreeding with dagannoth for their next couple of spawns and generations. Yet to see Jad up close and personal, though, but I can imagine what it must be like now. … oh, never mind. Here’s a picture Dex just brought in after having a match with it.

… of course, Dex ‘might’ be blamed for this one.

The Tzhaar are a fairly hard-headed species. Not very pleased with questioning tourists. You start the quest by going through a bit of a One-Small-Favor style format where first, you are told to fix the cave. To fix it, you need tools. To get tools, you need to know what kind of tools you need. To do that, you must learn the language. To do that, you must read a book on it. To do that, you have to go from the Northeastern Tzhaar caves, over to the west-end library near the furnace, and then straight to Varrock.

Now that you have the translation guide, it’s time to work. After deciphering the book, I found that I require a pickaxe, 15 treated oak planks (one of the Tzhaar at the collapsed tunnel helps with that), and 18 magma stones.

To mine it, you enter these tunnels and talk to the TzHaar-Hur-Brekt. Only if you agree to convince the other miners to be in a TzHaar-made play (… ?) will he help you. Another task easily done. After telling the miners this plot, they will each complain about a different aspect. If you can change the whole story to conflict these complaints and make it so all the Tzhaar approve of it, then you’re good to go.

Needless to say, this may take a while. Just remember: Baby steps. Give them something they mildly hate, and then change it. Once another Tzhaar speaks out in disgust, you’ve done something wrong and have made the wrong choice. If you’re stuck, you can talk to the guard for a few clues. Lastly, talk to Brekt if you’ve got nowhere else to go.

First, you mess around with the plot. Then, after you make the most of them slightly happy, talk to Brekt to make up the ending and use that to make everyone happy with the plot. Then, dish out the roles and repeat this process a third time. Once all are happy, or fine with it, then you’re go.

Mine the obsidian, and then hammer and chisel them into pillars. Get a bunch of treated oak planks and these pillars, as many as you can, along with a pick-axe, and head inside.

Now it’s a bit of a maze. You use pillars (1) to fix very badly damaged walls and ceilings, and you use planks (2 of them) to fix slightly-damaged walls and ceilings. Everything that is “regular” bad can be fixed by whatever fixes the “slightly bad”. Preferably pillars, if they don’t block your way, because you can’t walk through pillars. Remember to examine everything, and start your work as far in as possible, as you’ll need to be able to reach everything and still get out. If you find yourself trapped, logging out will return you to the entrance.

Beware. If you try to substitute in a pillar for planks when you’re not supposed to, you will receive a penalty … in heavy damage! Bring food if you value your life.

Whenever you fully repair a tunnel, you mine the collapsed cave wall to open up a checkpoint in the tunnel system. Should you leave, you will appear automatically in the next tunnel. Also, should you leave, everything stays, so take your time.

There will be a point where you will come across fire creatures that will prevent your progress. Shoot them with something until they die (lava monsters take arrows, and fire monsters take spells), and they’ll stay dead while you traverse through the cavern to your next destination. All monsters must be defeated to use any stepping stones.

Once you get through the three caverns, you’ll encounter a group of TzHaar-Hurs. They have trapped the creature in the cave to the north, and if you mine the cave to the south, you’ll get back to the city. Prepare yourself with food and prayer, and when you’re ready, face-off and take it down.

Won’t be that simple, though. It’s got heavy stone armor! Wield your pick-axe and smash it until it breaks, and then finish the job with a crush weapon of some sort. It’ll die and drop … what do you know? 1000 tokkul!

Have a chat with the three guards to finish the quest. Then have a chat with Brekt to check out the ‘play’ and a … Tzhaar in a bonnet?!?

For one thing, I liked the quest’s puzzles. They were challenging, with never a dull moment, and we got to learn some new things about the TzHaar with every spoken word. Personally, I believe that the only way for Jagex to pull off such an intriguing puzzle was to actually have a number of members group up to represent each of the TzHaar, make up their personalities, beliefs, and histories, and then integrate them in by having them actually socialize with one another for a few days before actually adding them to the game. There was real personality behind each of these characters, despite being sacred walking stones, and I applaud Jagex for that.

However, half the speech itself was in TzHaar, and despite the book’s help, I kept on losing myself to trying to be able to pronounce, as well as memorize the TzHaar speech, names, and variants. Half the time I had to cut away from the spech and actually examine things before figuring out what was going on. I appreciate the effort set into the idea that they’re conflicting between both languages, but it does get annoying when every TzHaar word they say is long, fragmented, and similar-sounding, as well as difficult to pronounce. If it was spoken in audio, I could take that, but otherwise … yeah. Difficult to read and analyze. Lost some points there.

The new scenery is nice. Instead of looking like neon red LEDs shining through the floor, the place actually looks ‘hot’ for a change. The lava is heated, the rocks are molten, and even those obsidian walls had an interesting cracking effect when you mined it. How I managed to carry 18 of those giant pillars at the same time, though, is a little questionable.

“Multi-way Combat ‘Mining’ Area”? … what does it have to be multi-way if all you’re doing is mining? Seriously, think before you type, please.

Finally, and for goodness sakes, listen to me when I say this: when you update something, at LEAST make it resemble what it used to be in some way, or at least show some process of evolution. You guys (Jagex, not you) have turned the humanoid four-armed TzHaar into … lava dagannoth-king hybrids (with four arms and dulled faces, I’ll give them that). If this was because of “geological disturbances”, then that must’ve been one heckova quake. … not that I hate their new look. In fact, I think everyone will agree they look quite spiffy. It’s just, when I entered the newly-updated place for the first time and after expecting to see some meaner-looking stone men, but instead when I find lava dagannoth … well, first intention is to panic and run because of some previous experiences with them. Good graphical update, but at least warn us first, would you please?