Pyramid Plunder

Pyramid Plunder is a Thieving mini-game set in the far south of the desert. It is extremely good experience, though the rewards are not massive compared with other activities in Thieving.

Requirements
You must have started Icthlarin's Little Helper quest to have access to the city of Sophanem in the desert, or own a Pharaoh's Sceptre to teleport directly to the pyramid. You must have 21 or higher Thieving to be able to play this mini-game. Completion of Contact! quest is strongly encouraged as it opens up access to the nearby bank, and The Feud lowers the magic carpet ride charge to get to Sophanem.

Equipment
All you really need is food, although the following may help you
 * a set of armour
 * Dragon Dagger (P++), or other fast damage item.
 * 2-4 Super anti-poison potions
 * Lobsters or better food such as Sharks.
 * Lockpick to open the tomb doors easier, but you will gain less xp from the doors.
 * Coins (2000 is enough) if using the magic carpets
 * (Optional: Snake Charm obtained by giving the snake charmer in Pollnivneach 3 coins in his basket)

The equipment is needed to withstand the damage from monsters and from poisoning without requiring bank trips.

Equipment Alternatives
A player with a Pharaoh's Sceptre, Camulet, and an Amulet of Glory or Ring of Dueling and optionally an emergency teleport, can make fast bank trips and can opt to bring less or lower grade food (e.g. Salmon, Cake or Trout).

Another option is to use the healing special effect of the full Guthan Barrows armour on monsters outside Pyramid Plunder. Advanced (70+) combat levels are required to be able to wear this armour.

Guide
Travel to Sophanem, preferably via the magic carpets and enter the city. Talk to Tarik outside the pyramid, and then attempt to enter the pyramid on one of its four sides. Inside one of the entrances you will find the Guardian mummy who you need to talk to before using the pyramid. Once you have talked to him once you may then right-click and select 'Start Mini-game' from then on.

As soon as you start the mini-game, a timer will start shown on the right hand side of your screen. You have five minutes to loot as much treasure from the pyramid as you can.

Inside you will find a room that contains a spear trap, urns, a golden chest, a sarcophagus, and doors out and to the next level. There are eight levels in total, the first requiring 21 or higher thieving and then going up ten levels per room, so the highest level requires 91 or higher thieving to access.


 * Spear Trap - at the entrance to every room is a wall with a spear trap on it. Click on it to attempt to deactivate it. You will be hit 1-4 damage if you fail.
 * Urns - in each room there are 13 urns, you can choose to steal from urn, or check for snakes first. If you check for snakes the snake will appear out of the urn where it may be charmed if you have a snake charm from The Feud quest. Both checking and stealing earns thieving experience, but charming does not. The snakes may bite for 1-4 damage, and they also poison with damage of 2 (very weak poison-wears off fast). The searching is much slower than stealing, and the experience from searching urns at a lower level room is better than searching urns at a higher level room. The rewards are generally poorer than the golden chest and sarcophagus found in the rooms. Rewards also get better when moving further into the Pyramid.
 * Golden Chest - in each room there is a golden chest at the centre. The best loot is in these chests, but they occasionally contain level 98 Scarab swarms which hit extremely fast and poison (hits 3 and is bad, use an anti-poison potion to negate this). They do not have many Hitpoints though, so using a Dragon dagger will dispatch them quickly. The Pharaoh's Sceptre can only be obtained from the golden chest and the sarcophagus. Opening a chest is very fast, so it is worth checking all chests on the way to the highest level room. When searching for the door to the next level, scarab swarms will not do too much damage, so they could be ignored. The swarm also will mark the door to the next level for later players going through the same room.
 * Sarcophagus - in each room there is a sarcophagus. There is fairly good loot from these, but you gain Strength experience from these rather than thieving, and you may awaken a level 84 Mummy. Opening a Sarcophagus takes a fair amount of time, which needs to be considered in the Pyramid Plunder strategy.
 * Exit Door - there is an exit door on each floor, allowing for fast exit and restart.
 * Door - there are four doors per room which lead to higher levels. Only one of the doors provides the exit so you must check each door until you find it. You receive some thieving experience for opening each door. The door placement changes periodically but not too rapidly. Hence, it is possible for a group of players to search all doors quickly. The other players can then quickly follow the player that found the open door.

Players should try and pass through all the doors to make it to the highest room they can use and then thieve everything in that room, for better rewards and experience. Experience increases from each thievable object further into the Pyramid.

Experience
This mini-game provides the second fastest experience rates in RuneScape, being beaten only by knocking out and pickpocketing Menaphite Thugs.

(It would be nice if someone could test experience rates, as the following seem possibly inaccurate or dated. Personally, at level 70 thieving, I received about 93,000 experience per hour using a sceptre and dueling ring to go to clan wars to bank and restore health and run energy every 3 rounds. Some things are not taken into account, and too much time safety is assumed. Unless I was slightly behind in my route than other people who were also playing, I almost never got the first door to lead me to the next floor. Each door gives experience, not just the correct one. I was able to almost always able to search every urn and the golden chest on my last two floors. Sometimes I even had extra time and left early. [abra238, 20 Nov, 2014] Extra note: This might not apply as much at higher levels, as I was only dealing with 5 floors.)

At 71 or higher thieving, 80000 experience can be gained in an hour, and even more at higher levels, and at 91 or higher thieving, upwards of 280,000 experience per hour is possible. At 71 Thieving, you can get up to level 6 in the Pyramid. It is possible for a player to search the chests in all rooms, successfully search all urns in the highest level room as well as 6 urns at the previous level. A level 71 player will thus gain the following experience in 5 minutes: This adds up to 6210 every 5 minutes or to approximately 74000 experience in one hour. Higher experience rates require players to search more urns at level 5 or to replace chest searching with searching more urns at level 5.
 * 840 (chests)
 * 1200 (6 urns in level 5)
 * 3900 (13 urns in level 6)
 * 270 (opening doors to next level)

A similar strategy for a level 81+ Thief yields 112000 experience. As the longer path to level 7 will make it hard to process any urns at level 5, a more realistic experience rate is around 90000 experience in one hour.

The strategy should be to get to your "level" and then thieve everything in that room. If you have time, thieve some of the urns on the level below too. Use a full load of sharks and have around 3-4 super-antipoisons, plus a lockpick, some coins and an empty space (Shantay Pass/Dragon Dagger). Have a full inventory to start with and let all the trinkets drop on the floor, and save the gold ones for trading with Simon Templeton when you finally run out of food. A full load of sharks should keep you thieving for around an hour, and the best place to bank is probably Nardah.

With a Pharaoh's Sceptre fast bank trips are possible if a Player combines a bank teleport with the sceptre teleport to the Pyramid. This gives the option of using lower grade food as the bank round trip can be very fast. Alternatively, completing the Contact! quest will provide a bank in Sophanem itself.

The table below lists the various thieving options and the reward associated with it. Note that the experience from checking and searching adds up when both steps are performed. When the check step is ignored, players get more damage, but can use the check and charm time to search more urns yielding more overall thieving experience.

1 - Urn is searched without checking.

2 - No experience is gained from a chest if a Scarab swarm is found.

3 - the sarcophagi do not give thieving experience, but give Strength instead.

Checking urns takes a fairly long time, so for faster experience it often is better to simply search all urns. The time saved can be used to search all urns at a lower room.

Rewards
When you loot the urns, sarcophagi and chests you will find various trinkets that you can trade in for Coins at Simon Templeton at the Agility Pyramid not far from Sophanem. Players can use a crack in the wall behind the bank to get to Simon Templeton even faster. Below is a table showing what each item is worth in coins.

You may also find a Pharaoh's Sceptre, that can be used to teleport to the following three places:
 * The Pyramid Plunder (Jalsavrah) pyramid right next to the Guardian mummy.
 * The Agility Pyramid (Jaleustrophos) where you can sell the items to Simon Templeton.
 * The Desert Treasure pyramid (Jaldraocht) where you can change to/from the Ancient magick spell set.

The sceptre has 3 teleport charges, and may be recharged by exchanging items with the Guardian mummy at the start of the mini-game. See the item page for details.