Pyramid Plunder



Pyramid Plunder is a Thieving minigame set in the Jalsavrah pyramid in Sophanem, far in the southern Kharidian Desert. Inside Sophanem, the Jalsavrah Pyramid can be found with four anonymous looking doors; access to the minigame can be found behind one of the doors, guarded by the Guardian mummy.

During the minigame, the player has five minutes to plunder the contents of Jalsavrah. The pyramid consists of eight rooms, each requiring progressively higher Thieving levels to enter and loot. Artefacts pillaged from the rooms range from ivory combs to golden statuettes, with the most valuable artefacts found deepest in the pyramid.

Rarely, players may find a Pharaoh's sceptre within a grand gold chest or within a sarcophagus inside Jalsvarah.

Requirements
or higher ( strongly recommended)
 * Access to the city of Sophanem
 * Having started the quest Icthlarin's Little Helper, or teleporting to Jalsavrah via a Pharaoh's sceptre

Recommended

 * Completion of Contact! quest is strongly encouraged as it opens up access to the nearby bank in Sophanem Dungeon.
 * Completion of The Feud lowers the magic carpet ride charge to get to Sophanem (free after completing the Hard Desert Diary).
 * Any Ardougne cloak offers prayer bonus and unlimited teleports to the Ardougne Monastery to recharge prayer points (requires completing any tier of the Ardougne Diary).
 * Pharaoh's sceptre unlocks teleports to the Guardian mummy.

Recommended equipment
Optional:
 * Weight-reducing gear (ex. Graceful outfit, Spotted/Spottier cape, Boots of lightness)
 * High Prayer bonus, low-weight gear (ex. Monk robes, God vestments)
 * Armour (if not using Protect from Melee)
 * Some Antidote++
 * Food (monkfish or better)
 * Coins (if using the Magic carpets)
 * Stamina potions
 * Weapon for attacking Scarab swarms when looting the Golden Chest
 * An emergency teleport (Ectophial or Magic tablets)
 * Pharaoh's sceptre (very expensive), Camulet and an Amulet of glory or Ring of dueling for faster bank trips
 * Pharoah's sceptre, Desert amulet 4, and Crafting cape (and/or the Ring of dueling) strongly recommended for even faster banking and healing
 * Serpentine helm (charged) (75+ Defence) to prevent any poison damage
 * Snake charm to distract the snakes in the urns while you loot them
 * A lockpick to open the tomb doors easier (You will gain less XP from the doors, however.)
 * Guthan's equipment (with 70+ Attack/Defence) to heal on the NPCs outside Pyramid Plunder
 * A Prayer book and a Holy symbol can be used to heal poison for almost no prayer cost allowing for cheaper runs

Advanced setup

 * Armour or Weight-reducing gear
 * Pharaoh's sceptre
 * Desert amulet 4 for healing at Elidinis Statuette—omits the use of food, antidotes, and energy potions if player's Hitpoints and Prayer can sustain (thus, requires high levels in said skills)
 * Crafting cape for utilising the Crafting Guild bank

Guide
Travel to Sophanem, via magic carpet or Pharaoh's sceptre, and enter the city. Talk to Tarik outside the pyramid, and then, attempt to enter the pyramid on one of its four sides. You may enter a "dud" room; if this happens, simply leave the pyramid. You will then be placed at the northern entrance; check any leftover sides.

You will know when you have reached the right room when you investigate a side and get 20 Thieving experience. Occasionally, the Guardian Mummy inside will shove the player out, dealing 3 damage to you. If this happens, simply keep investigating that side until you get in.

To start the game, you will need to speak with the Guardian Mummy to learn about the rules. Once you are ready, he will take you to the first room.

When the mini-game begins, a timer will show on the right hand side of your screen. You have five minutes to loot as much treasure from the pyramid as you can. If you get a Pharaoh's sceptre during your looting trip, the Guardian Mummy will instantly end your attempt and make you leave the pyramid.

Inside the rooms
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 rooms in total. The first room requires 21+ Thieving—the requirement increasing 10 levels per room. The last room has a 91+ Thieving level requirement.


 * Spear wall: In each room, there are spears embedded into the walls. They must be disabled by clicking on them, in which your character will attempt to disable them. Occasionally, they may fail and be dealt with 1-4 damage.
 * Urns: Players can loot treasure from the urns and gain Thieving experience from them. There are two ways to deal with the urns; brute force your way through the urn for maximum experience, or search to pop open a snake for a third of simply searching it. Occasionally with either option, you may fail and be bit for 1-4 damage and can get poisoned for 2 damage. Urns give pottery, ivory, stone or gold artifacts depending on the room you are on.


 * Scarab swarm.pngGolden chest: In the middle of each room is a large golden chest, which can be looted for stone or gold artifacts. The player may rarely find a Pharaoh's sceptre inside one. Occasionally, the player may set off a trap and a level 98 Scarab swarm will appear in addition to taking 1-4 damage. The swarm only has 25 Hitpoints and only have a max hit of 1 damage. However, they have an attack rating of 9 (0.6 seconds per attack), and can poison the player.
 * Sarcophagus: In each room is a sarcophagus. They have the same rewards as a golden chest, apart from the fact that lower value artifacts can be found in them. Unlike the other lootable items in the rooms, opening a sarcophagus gives Strength experience. Occasionally, a level 84 mummy will pop out and attack the player.
 * Doors: In each room are two exit doors to leave the pyramid and four "trick" doors. Three of these doors are fake, leading nowhere, while the forth one will lead to the next room. Players can fail in opening the doors, although no consequences will occur if they fail. Having a lockpick will increase your chances of opening the doors.

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 fastest Thieving experience rates in RuneScape at level 91 and prior to this level only beaten by knocking out and pickpocketing Menaphite Thugs (blackjacking).

Experience rates and strategy
At 71 or higher Thieving, 125,000 experience can be gained in an hour, and even more at higher levels, and at 91 or higher Thieving, upwards of 270,000 experience per hour is possible.

The general strategy for the game is to loot as many chests and urns as possible (sarcophagi do not give Thieving experience but give Strength experience instead). Ideally, you want to fully loot the highest level room available to your level, and if your level is 61 or higher, loot as many urns in the previous room as far as time allows.

It is important to note that each room gives roughly 50% more experience for every action than the previous one (with the exception of Room 8), so before level 61, you just rush to your highest available room and loot everything in there and leave the game, since the amount of time to reach the low level rooms is a lot shorter than for the higher level rooms.

From level 61 onwards, you will roughly spend 45 to 90 seconds to get to your second highest available room, and use the rest of the time remaining to loot as much in your two highest accessible rooms as possible. It is advised to watch your time and move to the last room when you feel like you might not have enough time to fully loot the last room. Since looting in a higher level room gives more experience, you always want to get everything there.

You may want to choose to loot the chest in every room to increase the chance of receiving a Pharaoh's Sceptre. For higher experience per hour, the earliest chest to loot is in the third last room available to your level, while they give a lot less experience than urns they are looted a lot quicker.

Also, you will want to loot the chest at the end of looting a room before leaving to the next one so you do not get interrupted by or waste time killing the Scarab swarm.

Example:

This example expects proper but not perfect attention from the player, your results may wary.

At 71-80 Thieving, you can get up to Room 6 in the pyramid. Therefore, you will run straight to Room 5, only looting the chest in Room 4, then loot as many urns and the chest in Room 5 before you deem it necessary to leave to Room 6 to loot everything in time. On average, a player should be able to loot nine urns in Room 5 (~7 at level 71 and ~11 at level 80). A player at level 71-80 will thus gain the following experience in a five minutes game on an average: This adds up to 10,540 every five minutes, which is over 125,000 experience per hour.
 * 640 (chests from Room 4 to 6)
 * 2,700 (9 urns in Room 5)
 * 5,850 (13 urns in Room 6)
 * 1,350 (opening an average of 2.5 doors to the next room)

The same strategy at level 81+ Thieving yields around 190,000 experience per hour and 255,000 experience per hour at level 91+.

You will want to bring high level food (monkfish or above) and lightweight equipment. Helpful but not absolutely necessary may be some sort of poison immunity and a lockpick to open the doors, as well as a weapon or prayer potion to help in blocking any scarab swarms or mummies that appear when you open up the golden chest and/or sarcophagus in the rooms.

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.

4 - The experience for opening doors is halved when using a lockpick.

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.

Simple strategy
A relatively simple strategy to follow is rushing to the penultimate room and looting each chest along the way. Try to loot a few urns prior to looting the chest in the second-to-last room (4-6 depending on time remaining), and head to the final room and loot all the urns and the chest. If under half time remains, then it would be best to start heading to the last 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 Magicks spell set.

The sceptre has three 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.

 WARNING:  Be sure to pick up the sceptre hastily as it can disappear quickly from the ground if the player has a full inventory.