Trouble Brewing Guide


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Introduction

Trouble Brewing is a non-combat, complex, pirate-themed minigame that is heavily based on teamwork. Rewards may include some skill experience and the opportunity to buy exclusive items (see Rewards). You will not lose your items during the game unless you come into the game with poison and low health. You must have completed the Cabin Fever quest and have at least level 40 cooking in order to play. The minigame is located on the east side of Mos Le'Harmless island.

Trouble Brewing Map

To get to the minigame area you must sail on Bill Teach's boat located at the far east side of Port Phasmatys docks. Your boat will dock at the main city on Mos Le'Harmless island. Head north out of the city then east all the way through the forest towards the minigame building. Beware though, because the forest contains aggressive level 70 monsters and also level 35 poisonous snakes.

Click here to see the
Mos Le'Harmless Map

Entering a Brewing Match
The two buildings north of the large fence are the waiting rooms that allow you to enter this minigame. In order to enter a game you must have a completely empty inventory and an empty head equipment space. Recommended equipment is listed in the Tips section. North of those two buildings there is a deposit box that will allow you to deposit any items straight to your bank account (but won't allow you to withdraw any items).

In the minigame, there are two teams: red and blue. In order to join a team you need to talk to or right click the owner of one of the two teams. Fancy Dan, who is on the west side of the two buildings, owns the red team. San Fan, who is on the east side of the buildings, is the owner of the blue team. You may also talk to Honest Jimmy (north of the buildings by the deposit box) to join a team and he will put you on the team that currently has the fewest players (similar to Castle Wars' Guthix portal).

When you join a team you will appear in that team's waiting room building wearing either the team's red pirate hat or blue bandanna. There must be at least 3 people on each team to start a game. On your mini map, any players on the same team as you will appear as blue dots while all players on the other team will appear as white dots. Any players on your friends list will still always appear as green dots. While you are in the waiting room the two red and blue numbers in the bottom right corner of the screen will show the number of people in each team that are in the waiting rooms. Also, try not to stand by the walls or door when waiting in the waiting room because if you do, sometimes you won't get into the game.

If you are late and you are waiting in the waiting rooms after a game has started, it is possible to get pulled into the game if the team frees up a vacant spot.

A very flamboyant pirate. I can\\'t wait to buy from a guy with Honest in their name... A pirate from the lands to the east.
The red team's Fancy Dan. Honest Jimmy, who sends you to the team needing help. The blue team's San Fan.
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Overview and Displays

The goal of this minigame is to have your team make more bottles of rum than the other team. You will be rewarded based on how much effort you put into helping your team and how many bottles your team makes. If you don't help your team enough you will not get parts of the reward.

To make the rum your team must have the correct ingredients and achieve many other correct conditions in your base. The ingredients for 1 bottle of rum are 1 bitternut, 1 pile of sweetgrubs, 1 scrapey bark, 3 bowls of coloured water, and 5 buckets of water. Every minute 1 bottle of rum will be made, so one goal is to try to keep enough of each ingredient to make 1 bottle of rum per minute that is left on the clock. To make the rum you will also need to have the boilers running at correct temperatures, which is done by lighting sufficient amounts of logs in them. When your team's boilers are the correct temperatures, when the pipes and boilers are intact, and when you have enough ingredients to make a rum, 1 bottle of rum will be made after a minute and the bottle will go to the end of the conveyor belt. Only players who have contributed enough ingredients towards that bottle of rum will be able to see the bottle at the end of the conveyor belt. Those players that can see it will need to pick up the bottle of rum and move it to the storage box. If a bottle of rum is not picked up by the time the next bottle comes, the first bottle will be shattered and the work put into it will be erased.

This display at the top of the screen shows your team's ingredient supplies. The first three symbols show how many logs are in the boilers; if the number of logs (above the symbol) is green, there are enough logs in that boiler. The symbols to the right of the boilers show how many of each ingredient you have in the hoppers: Bitternuts, Sweetgrubs, Buckets of water, Bowls of coloured water (which is blue for blue team or red for red team), and Scrapey bark. The final symbol shows you when a bottle of rum (the blue team's rum in this picture) is ready. If it is flashing green (it is in the middle of flashing green above) then a bottle of rum is soon going to be at the end of the conveyor belt and should be picked up.

Every time one bottle is made and moved to the storage box, your team will get 1 point. The goal of the game (although winning or losing doesn't affect your reward) is to have more bottles of rum packaged by the end of the game.

The coloured numbers at the lower right of the screen show how many bottles of rum each respectively coloured team has packaged. The "Time Left:" simply tells you how many minutes are left in the game. While you are in the waiting room this same display shows you how many people are in each coloured waiting room and how long until the next game begins.

It is also possible to burn the other team's property in order to hinder them and their rum-making efforts. This option allows players to sabotage the other team's attempts and force them to repair the burned property to make any more bottles of rum.

This is the display on the left of the screen which shows you if any of your team's property is burning. The top symbol tells you if any of your team's hoppers (where you load ingredients) are burning; if any are, they can't take any more of that ingredient. The next symbol tells you if any of the rum-making machine's pipes are on fire; if any are, you can't make bottles of rum. The bottom symbol tells you if any of your bridges are on fire; if any are, no one can walk across them.
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Necessary Jobs

During this complex game you'll need a constant supply of the many tricky ingredients, a supply of wood and people to keep the boilers hot, some people to repair sabotaged areas, other people to craft more repair supplies, approved people to catch the rum bottles before they break, and many other jobs to be done. One person will usually need to switch between the jobs when different jobs become more necessary at different times.


The Hopper Room
The focus for all ingredient gathering is the hopper room, where you put all the ingredients for brewing. The hopper room is up your team's base's ladder (which is in the red base's south-east corner and the blue base's north-west corner) and will be needed for almost all of the jobs.

Each hopper will only take one specific ingredient shown on the sign above it. From this view in clockwise order the hoppers will only take: Buckets of water, Bowls of coloured water (which will be red or blue), Scrapey bark, Sweetgrubs, or Bitternuts.


Below is a list of the many jobs that will need to be done in order to have a successful team and then the description of and method for doing each.

 

Wood Chopping
Wood is needed to feed the boilers and to make spare repair parts. This job is not important for the beginning of the match because the Log Store starts off with some logs in it. When necessary, wood can be chopped from tropical trees all around your base. Chopped logs should be put into the Log Store. From there, other players can take the wood and either put it into the boilers or craft repair supplies from them. The wood choppers can just use the logs for the boilers or repair parts themselves, but it's usually more convenient for the choppers to just chop and store the wood and for the other teammates to use the wood from the Log Store. A bronze axe can be pulled out of the Tool Store workbench, but it is wise to bring along a better axe and to always have it equipped. No woodcutting level is required to chop the trees, but higher levels will cut faster.

The Log Store is highlighted with cyan and the tool store (that can give a bronze axe) is highlighted with white. This is the south wall of the red base. In the blue base, though, the Tool Store is on the north wall and the Log Store is in the south-west corner.
 

Boiler Loading
Each of the three boilers needs at least 3 lit logs in it or the bottles of rum can't be produced. Each boiler can only hold a maximum of 10 logs but it's good to keep high amounts of logs in them. About every minute 1 log from each boiler is used up so more wood must be loaded. The first log placed in the boiler needs to be placed in the boiler and then lit with a tinderbox. If that log is still lit, all the following logs placed in the boiler won't need lighting; they can just be used on the boiler. All of the logs that you get should be picked up from the Log Store, which makes this a quick job.

The number of each boiler (also referenced in the supply indicators along the top of the screen) is written on each of the flags in front of the boilers. In this picture, the lower left boiler is Boiler 1, the boiler above it is Boiler 2, and the boiler on the far right is Boiler 3.
 

Gathering Coloured Water
Coloured Water is a slow ingredient to gather and each bottle of rum needs 3 of them, so they are an ingredient that is often in demand. (One bowl is also needed to dye a monkey to fetch a bitternut.) To make a bowl of coloured water you must first run across the bridges to get to the enemy's base. Right outside the west wall of their base you will see flowers of your team's colour that you need to pick. You can only carry 5 flowers and should always grab all 5 while you're there. With your 5 flowers, run back to your base, go to the Tool Store and grab at least 5 bowls. With your bowls, go to the corner of the room with the kettle. When you use a flower with the kettle it will extract the colour from the flower and you can then use a bowl on the kettle to get coloured water. The reason that you bring extra bowls is so that if someone else left behind some flowers in the kettle for the team, you can pick up that coloured water, too. Once you put the flower in the kettle, though, any of your teammates can use their bowl on the kettle and get the coloured water for themselves. Sometimes teammates will stay at the kettle just stealing all your flowers; all you can do in that case is hope they'll use the coloured water for the good of the team and ignore the fact that they stole the 40 cooking experience you would have gotten from putting the coloured water in the hopper upstairs.

The kettle, highlighted in yellow, is in the north-east corner of the red base and in the south-west corner of the blue base.
 

Gathering Bitternuts
Bitternuts are the slowest and most challenging ingredient to get, but they can be easier or faster to get if you have an Amulet of Monkey Speak. Each bitternut you gather needs you to use 1 coloured water in order to get it. To get a bitternut you must take your bowl of coloured water to one of the middle islands that are between the teams' bases. The center island is slightly easier to gather bitternuts from, but not by much. Once you are at the island you must catch a monkey (but you can only hold 2 monkeys at once and your team can only have 12 monkeys at a time). You then use your coloured water on the monkey. When the monkey is dyed, use it on a bitternut tree and it will climb up the tree. If a monkey from the other team climbs the tree at the same time, the monkeys will fight. If your monkey climbed up the tree without a fight, or if it won the fight (which is normally a random decision), it will throw a bitternut to you that you will appear in your inventory and that monkey will vanish. If your monkey loses the fight it will disappear without throwing you a nut. You can only receive 2 bitternuts at a time from the monkeys.

If you have a monkey speak amulet you can give your monkey one of two pieces of advice as you send him up the tree and they are to either "Anger the monkey" or to "Caution the monkey" (you can also advise the monkey by talking to it before sending it up the tree). An angry, fast monkey will grab the nut faster if there is no fight, but will always lose a possible fight. A cautious monkey will always win a fight, but will get the nut slower without a fight. The monkey speak amulet is helpful if there are opposing rum makers nearby that also want bitternuts.

The middle islands are easily accessible by the bridges that are around them and the bases. However, if the bridges are broken (or on fire) you can still try to get to the islands by hopping across the slower Stepping Logs that can be found on east and west sides of your base's shore.
 

Gathering Sweetgrubs
Sweetgrubs are a simple ingredient to grab. First take a few raw meat from the Tool Store. You will need more pieces of meat than the number of sweetgrubs you want. Then you have to find a sweetgrub mound, which is just a brown mound of dirt. There are some mounds around the bases and also one on all three middle islands. When you find a whole mound use your meat on it and if you are lucky you'll get one sweetgrubs. There's a chance that a sweetfly Swarm will attack you instead. They will hurt you and no one will be able able to use more meat with that mound until you run away from the swarm. A mound will get used up after a few times. It will regenerate, or you can just move to another mound.

This is a used up mound as you can see by the hole in the side of it, but it will soon regenerate.
 

Getting Buckets of Water
This is the easiest and quickest job, but unlike the other jobs it will give you no skill experience at the end of the game (but it will still allow you to get the other rewards). Simply go to the Tool Store, get all the buckets you want, and then fill them at the water pump on the west side of the base. When all the buckets auto-fill themselves you can just climb the ladder to go upstairs and empty them into the water hopper.

If the water pump is on fire (see making repairs), you can also get water from the center island's lake (but it doesn't auto-fill all the buckets).
 `

Gathering Scrapey Bark
This is a semi-quick job that can sometimes cause you to become diseased (where you will get "hit" by yellow "damage" splots that will lower random stats by 4 levels and then will weaken in power over time just like poison does, hitting for less level damage at a time and eventually going away). You need an axe and knife in order to get the bark and you can get both of those supplies from the Tool Store (again, no woodcutting level is required for these trees, but higher levels will allow you to cut faster, just as a better wielded axe will). You must cut scrapey tree logs from scrapey trees that you can find around the bases or on the 3 middle islands. When you have the scrapey tree logs you use a knife on them in order make them into scrapey bark that you can then put in the correct hopper.

The trees give multiple logs before falling like all large trees do, and they will regenerate soon after being cut down.
 

Bottle Catching
This is probably the most important job because if it isn't done, all the previous work that was put into preparing a bottle of rum is wasted. When a bottle of rum is completed someone must pick it up off the conveyor belt before the next bottle comes or the first bottle will be smashed and wasted. The catch is that in order for your character to be able to see a rum bottle on the conveyor belt you need to have done a measurable amount of work towards producing that bottle. In order to see it you must have given at least 1 bottle's worth of at least one ingredient. This means to see 1 bottle of rum you need to have given at least 5 buckets of water, 3 coloured waters, or 1 of any other ingredient. If you have brought multiple bottle's worth of any ingredients you will be able to see that many more rounds of rum bottles (for example delivering 3 Scrapey Barks would let you see 3 consecutive bottles of rum). It is also possible for multiple teammates to grab the same bottle of rum at the exact same time. If this happens the team will actually get 2 or more points from that one rum bottle.

The area where bottles will appear (if you have the right to see them) is highlighted in green. When you click on the bottle your character will deliver it to the packaging box without even needing an open inventory space.
 

Making Repairs
Repairing your rum-making machinery and your bridges are an important job, but it's only necessary if the other team decides that they want a violent, less-productive match and begins to sabotage your side. Your property will become damaged when it is lit on fire by a member of the opposing team. To fix anything you must first douse the flame with a bucket of water and then use the correct repair materials (see below) while having a few more of that repair material in your inventory. More damage is taken the longer it burns, so more repair material will be needed to fix it. If your Tool Store is out of the correct repair material you can use logs (usually from the Log Store) on the Workshop table (right next to the Tool Store) and make repair materials. When you have made repairing materials you can also use one of them on the Tool Store and all of that repair item will go into the Tool Store for anyone to withdraw.

Repairs:
Rum machine pipes,
Water Pump
Repairs:
One row of bridge
Repairs:
Hoppers

If your water pump is on fire and you need water you can go to the middle, center island and scoop a bucket of water there. Your trees can also be set on fire, but they can be completely fixed just by dousing them with a bucket of water (no repair materials needed). If they stay on fire they simply regenerate slower.

 

Sabotage
This job is never necessary unless you feel that you would rather hinder the other team's efforts instead of helping to make your own rum and rewards. To sabotage you need a tinderbox and a torch from the Tool Store. Use the tinderbox to light the torch (remember you can only have one torch at one time.) and then go to the enemy's base. Every time you use your torch to light something in their base you may succeed or fail to ignite it. Every time the torch is used there is a possibility that the torch will disappear, which will force you to go back to your base to get another torch. There are many of the opposing team's things you can sabotage: rum machine pipes (the team can't make rum until they repair them), hoppers (the team can't deposit or use more of that ingredient until they repair it), trees (they will regenerate slower while burning), the water pump (the team can't get water from it and will have to visit the center island to get water to douse the started fire), and bridges on the opponents' half of the area (no one can walk through a burnt bridge). Be careful when burning bridges, though. By burning down a bridge you prevent your own team from crossing that bridge to grab coloured flowers.

Tb Fire Sabotage This is an example of a burnt bridge, once a bridge is burnt you are unable to walk on the section so you'll have to find another way round.
 

Pumping and Venting (Repair)
By doing this job you can not only put out all the rum machine's pipe's fires at once, but you will also get revenge on the opposing pyromaniacs. By pumping and venting the pipes you will douse all the pipe fires at once while giving damage to all opponents near the flaming or broken pipes. The negative side to using this method is that after ending a fire with this method rather than the normal bucket of water method, the pipes will be further damaged and take slightly longer to repair than normal. In order to do this job your character needs lots of energy. To start this job, go to the rum machine's pump. In order to start pumping you need at least 50% energy. Each time you pump the handle it will use 10% of your energy, and you will be forced stop pumping when your energy gets down to 40%. The pipes' pump can hold ten pumps worth of pressure at a time. To use this stored pressure you wait until an oponent has lit one or more of the machine's pipes on fire. When they have lit them, right click and then Vent the pump in order to douse all the fires at once and spew damaging steam towards any opponents near those damaged pipes. Note that if someone dies from this steam they will just go back to their base, losing no items.

The pump is highlighted here in purple. The pump vents all the pipes along the entire rum machine at once.
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Rewards

Pieces of Eight
The Pieces of Eight (PoE for short) are the main reward of playing this game. After a match you will always get 2 PoE per bottle of rum your team makes. You can personally get an extra reward of up to 100 additional PoE per game based on your efforts. For every single thing you do (giving one ingredient, sabotaging one enemy item, etc.) you will earn 1 of the extra 100 PoE.

Here is what you can buy with your wonderful Pieces of Eight at Honest Jimmy's shop (all items are non-refundable): Trouble Brewing Shop All of the Naval Shirts, Tricorn Hats, and Navy Slacks (Blue, Green, Red, Brown, Black, Purple, and Grey) are the same price. Almost all of the flags are different prices, and are listed below in the order they appear. The last item, called "The stuff", can aid your beer brewing (see the Cooking Guide) if it is added to your beer vat before the main ingredient; it will speed the brewing process and increase the chance of getting mature ale. Red or blue rum sold here has a special property - when you drink it anywhere in Runescape (except, presumably, beyond level 20 Wilderness), you will be transported immediately to the Trouble Brewing minigame area! You can also buy "maps" by talking to Honest Jimmy; they are medium clue scrolls. These are the prices of the items (in Pieces of Eight):

  • Naval Shirt - 100
  • Tricorn Hat - 50
  • Navy Slacks - 100
  • Cutthroat flag - 200
  • Gilded smile flag - 200
  • Bronze fist flag - 300
  • Lucky Shot flag - 400
  • Treasure flag - 500
  • Phasmatys flag - 600
  • The stuff - 5
  • Rum (red or blue) - 2
  • Clue scroll (not shown) - 5000

Rum Bonus Skill Experience
After the game you get skill experience based on how many rum bottles were made by your team and whether or not you made a beneficial contribution to the team's rum-making. You will get 100 Crafting, 150 Firemaking, and 250 Cooking experience per bottle of rum that you helped make. To qualify for each bottle's experience you need to have given one of the following per bottle of experience that you wish to claim: 1 bitternut, 1 sweetgrubs, 1 scrapey bark, or 3 coloured water.

A team normally doesn't make much more than 20 bottles of rum per match, so the maximum amount of the skill experience bonus at the end of the match for an achievable 20 bottles of rum would be 2000 crafting, 3000 firemaking, and 5000 cooking experience per match!


In-game Experience
Just about everything you do in the game will also earn normal skill experience. Here's a table including all of the ways to get experience:

Action Experience Received
Adding buckets of water to hopper None
Adding coloured water to hopper 40 Cooking
Cutting 1 scrapey tree 25 Woodcutting
Adding scrapey bark to hopper 40 Cooking
Adding sweetgrub to hopper 40 Cooking
Adding a bitternut to hopper 80 Cooking
Each log put on the boiler 40 Firemaking
Lighting the first boiler log None
Setting 1 enemy flammable thing on fire 50 Firemaking
Putting out a fire with water 50 Firemaking
Crafting 1 repair item 12.5 Crafting
Using 1 repair item in a repair 12.5 Crafting
Catching a monkey 15 Agility
Pumping 1 point of pressure 10 Strength
Venting the pump None
Catching a Pirate Impling 15 Hunter

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Tips

The best items to wear, if they are available to you:

Along with those, wear and carry nothing else. The Boots of Lightness, Spottier or Spotted cape, and wearing no other items allow you to weigh less and conserve energy for all the running needed. The game makes you deposit all your held (inventory) items to your bank, including any runes or other inventory teleporting methods. Wearing the duelling ring is for teleporting away from the minigame area if you ever want to leave and don't want to walk back through the forest to the town. The woodcutting axe is so you can chop wood faster during the game, and also you won't need to take a bronze axe out of the Tool Store every match. The Amulet of Monkey Speak will help you with collecting bitternuts as mentioned in the monkey description. If you don't have an Amulet of Monkey Speak, you can bring a charged Glory Amulet as your teleportation jewellery so you don't waste duelling rings. Some people believe wearing gloves reduce the likelihood of getting diseased while harvesting scrapey bark - this has not yet been proven.

The best, quickest way to get the extra 100 PoE is with buckets of water, but don't do this first - it wastes time early in the game that could be used for making more rum! After your team is steadily producing rum and has a healthy number of ingredients for rum, there's lots of time to grab a ton of buckets from the Tool Store and fill them at the water pump. When they're filled, deposit them all in the water hopper. Each one will give you 1 of the 100 bonus PoE. It is best at some time in the game to get 3 full or nearly full inventories of buckets of water into the hopper and then 1 full inventory of Scrapey Bark into its hopper. This will get you the 100 bonus PoE as well as the maximum rum bottle bonus skill experience (contributing one major ingredient for each bottle made).

Currently, it is possible to trade the items that have a limit of how many you can hold in order to exceed that limit. This can be done with flowers and bitternuts (but with bitternuts to an extent because you can get 2 from the monkeys, and then have someone else take them to the hoppers while you stay and get more bitternuts from the monkeys). By getting all that you are allowed to carry of a certain item (5 blue flowers for example) and then getting someone to trade or drop more of them to you, you can end up with more than just 5.

You can also catch Pirate Implings in the minigame; they can provide items like bitternuts, flowers (red or blue), buckets and many more useful items for the game. You can catch them with a jar and a net which you can find back at your base.

If you want to play a match and don't have 5 other friends with you that can start the game, Jagex suggests World 104 on the world select page to find other interested players.

 

Credits

Original Guide by: Kwimbob

Thanks to: Aurhora, blubbyblubby, Cdub, Freshwacka, Jaffy1, Kazel01, Knightmage72, n4h, pokemama, Rien Adelric, Sentry Wolf, Speedyshel, Vhellcat, Vulxai, Wereta

Last Updated by: Arceus

Last updated: 10-Nov-2014


RuneScape 2007
Find this page on the Internet Archive with a date as close to Aug 10, 2007 as possible.

Will you use Menaphos to train your skills?



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