Trouble Brewing

Trouble Brewing is a minigame that takes place on the pirate island of Mos Le'Harmless. It is a non-combat minigame. The main goal of the game is to make as much rum as you can as fast as possible. To do this, there are a number of tasks that must be done, from gathering ingredients to taking care of the boilers. A special interface helps determine what needs to be done, but to function effectively, it's helpful to discuss with team members what tasks each will do beforehand.

To play the game, you must have completed the Cabin Fever quest and have at least 30 Cooking. It is also recommended to bring Boots of lightness, M'speak amulet, and a good woodcutting axe (though a bronze will be supplied).

Joining a Game
To play the game, you must have a completely empty inventory and not be wearing anything on your head. In case you forget to put something away, there's a Deposit Box next to Honest Jimmy where you can put things into your bank, but not take anything out.

Next, you need to talk to someone to sign up. There are three options. San Fran is the captain of the Cutthroat (blue team). Fancy Dan runs the Gilded Smile (red team). Or, you can talk to Honest Jimmy and he'll sign you up with the team that has less crew.

Each game is 20 minutes with an interval of 3 minutes between. At the midway point of a game (the 10 minute mark), players in the waiting room will get a chance to join up with the game in progress if the team is lacking crewmembers.

The Interface
The interface has several different icons on it. Along the top is amounts of ingredients. The number will be green if there is enough for another batch of rum. The icons are as follow, from left to right:


 * The first three are the three boilers. They must each have at least 3 logs in them and must be lit to keep rum production going, and can fit 10 maximum.
 * Bitternuts. Each bottle of rum requires 1 Bitternut.
 * Sweetgrubs. Each batch requires 3 Sweetgrubs.
 * Buckets of water. One bottle takes 5 buckets of normal water.
 * Coloured water. For one bottle of rum, there must be 1 bowl of coloured water.
 * Scrapey bark. There must be 1 scrapey bark per bottle of rum.
 * Production status. When this is flashing green, there is a finished bottle of rum that must be placed in the crate before the arrival of the next bottle pushes it off and breaks it.

The left side has the repair status of your team's equipment. If this shows a number, it means that something has been sabotaged by the other team. From top to bottom, these show the status of the hoppers, the pipes between boilers, and the bridges between islands.

In the lower right of the screen is the scoreboard and time left in a match. Each bottle of rum is worth one point.

Your Base
The base may seem complicated at first glance, but if you know where you're going, it's not so bad. The ground floor has the three boilers (where you put logs) and the pipes that can be sabotaged. A table nearby supplies you with any tools you might need to play the game. There is also the log store which starts off with a number of logs in it and can be added to, and next to it is a kettle that coloured flowers are put in to make bowls of coloured water. Just outside is a pump for water and a patch of coloured flowers of the other team.

On the top floor are the hoppers. This is where all the ingredients are placed.

Coloured Flowers
Perhaps the most important task, as coloured water is neccessary for both rum production and gathering Bitternuts. To gather these, you must run all the way to the other team's base. A patch of the flowers grows just outside it. There is no wait time to pick them, but you can only have 5 at a time. Once you've gathered the flowers, run them back and place them in the kettle in your base.

The 5 flower limit can be bypassed if someone trades the flowers to you, but it's uncertain at this time if this is an exploit or not.

Tending the Boilers
There are three boilers on the ground floor of your base. To light them, you must place one log in it, then use a tinderbox to light it. Once started, more wood can be added. There must be three logs in it to make rum, with a maximum of ten. Unlike the ingredients, the supply of wood in the boilers will continue to decline even when rum isn't being produced. Signs in front of the boilers identify what number it is.

Gathering Water
The simplest job. To get water, simply go to the pump outside your base and fill your buckets, then take it upstairs and place it in the corresponding hopper. If the pump has been destroyed, you must either fix it or go to the pond on the middle island, but this one won't autofill all your buckets.

For those who just want Pieces of Eight, this is a fast and effective way of getting a lot of them, but it's also a very common task, so it will often have been done already and won't do much good for the team.

Cutting Wood
A less needed task since the supply of logs in the store is pretty good to begin with, but should the supply dwindle, you can cut many of the jungle trees down and resupply the wood store.

Sweetgrubs
Around the area are mounds of dirt that sweetgrubs live in. To lure them out, you have to use raw meat on the mound. You can get an unlimited supply from the table in your base. If you succeed, you'll get some sweetgrubs.

There is a random chance that when you use the meat on the mound, it will draw out instead a swarm of Sweetflies. This is very much like the swarm random event, causing you to have to run. No one can gather more sweetgrubs from the mound while there are still sweetflies present.

The mound has a limited number of grubs, and when it's empty it will collapse. You'll have to find another mound or wait for it to fill again.

Scrapey Bark
There are a number of Scrapey Trees around the area that can be cut down. They usually yield several logs before being felled. Once the logs are in your inventory, you must use a knife to cut the bark off, at which point you can put it in the corresponding hopper.

There is a random chance while cutting the Scrapey tree or removing the bark from the logs that you may be diseased.

Bitternuts
The most complicated task. In order to gather Bitternuts, you must first get a few bowls of coloured water. Then, go to one of the islands and catch a monkey. Dye the monkey with the water to mark it as being on your team, then use it on the Bitternut tree. The monkey will skitter up the tree and, after a little while, will toss you a nut. If another monkey is in the tree already, they will first fight and the winning monkey will get the nut.

If you have a Monkeyspeak amulet, you can alter the strategy used. You can choose to either make the monkey angry by taunting it, or caution him. By making him angry, he'll be more inclined to get up the tree as fast as possible and start pelting you with bitternuts, speeding up the time before you get a nut. If you tell him to be careful, he'll take a little bit longer, but will be more aware of other monkies and will be more likely to win in a confrontation.

Sabotage
While you're prevented from actively attacking others by the laws of the pirate port, sabotage is a perfectly acceptable alternative. For this, you need a torch and a tinderbox. You can only carry one torch at a time.

With a lit torch, you can go to the other team's base and set things on fire. To do so, use the torch on what you want to sabotage. You'll either succeed or fail, and after a random number of attempts your torch will go out. Some things you can burn are:


 * Hoppers - Prevents the other team from adding ingredients or the ingredients to be added to the rum, though it won't damage anything already inside.
 * Pipes - Halts rum production.
 * Pump - Forces water gatherers to go to the middle island for water.
 * Trees - Prevents the tree from being cut down and makes players go further for resources.
 * Bridges - Makes players go around or use the much slower jumping stones to get around. This is a double-edged sword, though, since it also makes it much harder for flower-gatherers on your team to get to the other team's base. You can only burn bridges on the opposing team's side.

Defence
Defence is truly important as, if your equipment is burned, you can't get anything done. If something is set on fire, the first thing you need to do is put it out using a bucket of water. If not, it will eventually burn itself out, but you'll need more supplies to fix it afterwards. Once the fire is out, you can use the appropriate repair item to fix it. Pipes and pumps need bamboo pipes. Hoppers take lumber patches. Bridges take bridge sections. Depending on how long they were allowed to burn, it takes anywhere from 1 to 3 items to fix the problem.

You can also use the pump near the boilers on the first floor to gather pressure in the boilers. To do this, you must have over 50% run energy, and takes 10% each pump. It can hold up to 10 pumps worth of pressure. The reason to do this is defensive. When someone is trying to sabotage your boilers, you can right click the pump and select the vent option. By doing this, a burst of steam will run through the pipes. This will put out any fires currently burning and cause damage to opposing team members standing near a damaged section of pipe. If they die, they will return to their base with no loss of items. There's a negative side effect to this method, though. While it does put the fires out, it will damage the broken pipes further, taking as many bamboo pipes as if you'd let the fire run its course.

Another defencive course is to resupply the repair items. You can do this by taking logs and using them on the workbench in your base. You can either use them yourself or use them on the table to resupply it.

Bottle Packing
When everything has been completed, a bottle of rum will roll out the end of the line. This must be collected and placed in the crate, or it will be broken when the next bottle arrives. Players who haven't contributed enough won't be able to see or collect it. Once the bottle has been placed in the crate, your team will get 1 point.

Rewards
After each game, you will get an amount of experience from the tasks you performed and some Pieces of Eight based on how much work you did and how many bottles of rum were successfully made. Each bottle equals 2 pieces of eight, 100 crafting experience, 250 cooking experience, and 150 firemaking experience. In addition, you gain 1 Piece of Eight and some experience for every task you complete.

You can also talk to Honest Jimmy to use your Pieces of Eight and get some unique items, such as naval clothing, special pirate banners, The Stuff (which increases the chance of getting a mature ale from personal brewing), and treasure maps (level 2 clue scrolls).