2014 Christmas event

Festive Cheer is the 2014 Christmas event which is subdivided into four different activities, released on each of the first three weeks of December.

The first part of the event was released on 1 December, which introduced the Present Delivery & Giant Cracker and Tinsel Snake Hunt activities. On 8 December the following week, seasonal boss Snowverload was introduced as the second part of the event. The Snowboarding activity was the third and last part of the event, introduced on 15 December 2014.

Present Delivery & Giant Cracker
This activity can be started by talking to Santa Claus at the Lumbridge crater.

Present delivery
Players are assigned to aid Santa Claus with delivering his presents. With that, he will provide the sack of presents, essential for helping him with his present delivery.

By clicking the sack given, an interface will open showing 16 different NPCs. Selecting any one would reveal their current location. Once a target is set, head over and talk to the selected NPC to give them their present. Completing the task will grant the player 25 cheer points, a type of cumulative currency collected for the rewards shown in the Rewards tab by searching the sack given. This can only be done once per day.

After delivering the present, one festive paper will be received, which can be handed in to Santa for a festive lamp, a lamp rewarding experience in any chosen skill.

Giant cracker
Once a total of 250,000 festive papers (spread across all servers) are turned in, a broadcast message is announced in every player's chatbox.

By then, players may head to the Lumbridge crater to contribute in pulling the giant cracker. The cracker has 1,000 life points, and requires players on both sides to be exploded quicker. 1 life point per 2 seconds is deducted for every contributing player, whilst having a balanced team on both sides will result in a deduction of 2 life points per 2 seconds per character.

Successfully breaking open the cracker will reveal a chest, which can be looted by anyone for another festive lamp, a Christmas cracker joke and an additional 50 cheer points. The emote Cracker Pull is also unlocked for the player's first cracker looted. The cracker resets after 30 minutes, regardless of whether it is successfully pulled or not.

Tinsel Snake Hunt
This activity is a members-only distraction and diversion-esque activity which takes place every three hours at Varrock Square. Clicking on the central Christmas tree will inform the time remaining until the next round, unless there is less than one minute left, in which case it displays "The next event is starting soon!". Once the event is ready, players must once again click the central Christmas tree to start. Each round lasts half an hour.

The aim of the event is to hunt down as many tinsel snakes that are wandering around nearby and lead them back to the tree. One can create a train of up to 10 snakes to be led back. Only one train of tinsel snakes may be led to the tree regardless of the number of snakes.

Once the tinsel snakes are returned to the tree, up to 20 cheer points may be earned per day from the activity. Summoning experience is also gained based on the number of snakes turned in, in respect to the player's current level applied with bonus experience if any. Players with a Summoning level of 5 and below are prompted a confirmation message to whether the experience is wanted. Experience gained in this activity does not have a limit per day and may be done as many times as desired. Additionally, turning in a line of 10 tinsel snakes will unlock Sparkles the pet, if it hasn't been unlocked during the original 2011 Christmas event.

Snowverload
This activity involves taking down a unique seasonal boss known as Snowverload, and is only available for members. It spawns every 3 hours, in sync with the Guthixian Cache and Tinsel Snake Hunt at one of these locations (different for each world):
 * North of the Falador city walls
 * North within the Grand Exchange
 * South of the Clan Camp, within the vicinity of Armadyl's Tower
 * East of the Draynor wheat field

Once Snowverload is found, players must team up and defeat it using only snowballs, as it is the only weapon that damages it. Snowballs may be gathered by right clicking Snowverload, and must be equipped to be functional. It uses an array of unique attacks that hampers the player's performance in defeating it. As Snowverload's life points decrease, it shrinks in body mass, gradually becoming smaller in size. Once Snowverload is reduced to the smallest possible size, players are unable to extirpate it as replenishes life points once it reaches 0. At this stage, Snowverload must be lured to Santa Claus at the Lumbridge Crater, as he is able to melt Snowverload to its end once players have reduced its regenerated life points back to 0.

Successfully contributing to this activity will grant all participants two festive papers, the ability to deliver another present on the same day, and resets the daily cheer points cap from Tinsel Snake Hunt. Seasonal food turkey drumstick, roast potatoes and mulled wine were also distributed to all participants.

Spirit Hunting & Snowboarding
This activity can be started by talking to the Queen of Snow south within the Lumbridge Crater, next to the snowboarding ramp.

Spirit hunting
Players are assigned to hunt down snow spirits, scattered various locations across Gielinor, and melt them down. The Queen of Snow will hint the locations of the snow spirits for each player. Snow spirits do not wander off their spawn locations and do not show the conventional yellow dot on the minimap but instead, shows the Holiday Event icon on the world map.

Each player is given a total of 4 snow spirits to melt down, and locations vary for every player. The 8 possible locations hinted are as follows: Once all 4 snow spirits have been melted, the Queen of Snow will reward the player a snowboard.

Ramp
Players may start the Snowboarding activity via right-clicking the Queen of Snow once the snowboard is equipped. The player will then be placed on top of gnome jumpship, in which may be jumped off any time. Before jumping off, the player is prompted the Snowboarding Jump interface. On the left, presents are shown to contain a selection of gems based on their present colour, which contains the power required to perform tricks shown on the right. Players may choose a desired selection of tricks, which will fill up the power bar shown on the bottom-right, whereas choosing all four tricks will fill the bar up to 100%.
 * Grab requires 30% of power
 * Spin requires 16%
 * Flip requires 20% of power
 * Land requires 33% (34% with Spin) of power

Pressing the Jump button, the player will then descend the ramp. During this moment, different coloured presents containing different amount of power will appear on the player's screen. Quickly clicking on them will fill the vertical power bar that is now on the left side of the screen. Once reaching the end (crater), the player will perform the tricks that were preselected depending on the amount of power collected.

Reputation (stylised as "rep") is gained from snowboarding ramps, and is based off the successions of tricks, with tricks requiring higher power granting more reputation. Each board starts with a reputation 0 and restarts as a snowboard is upgraded. Players can have their reputation checked by right clicking the snowboard in inventory or equipped items. Reputation is needed to upgrade to higher tier snowboards. Excess power will grant 0.2 reputation for each percentage. However, failing to get 100% power needed for all tricks can result in a large penalty on reputation gain. For instance, completing tricks 3/3 gives around 210 reputation, but tricks 3/4 only gives around 130 reputation; while completing 2/2 tricks grants around 170 reputation, completing 2/3 tricks only grants around 90 reputation instead. Once members acquired snowboard tier 6, they are given the ability to re-skin their snowboards with one of three different designs.

Agility experience from this activity is gained depending on the player's snowboarding performance (and level), and will stack with bonus experience if present. A trick requiring higher power boost (or a combination of tricks) will result in a higher experience reward.

Grind rails
Players may also grind the grind rails, situated west within the Lumbridge Crater. To start, players must run-up the wall of the watchtower north-west of the crater. On the railings, players must attempt to balance themselves using either the arrow keys on the keyboard or the arrows next to the meter interface on the screen. The meter itself is visible on the screen while grinding, which informs the balance nature of the player during the grind. The meter will turn in colour depending on how well-balanced the player is on the railings, with green being safe, orange being imbalanced and red being close to falling.

When the meter interface arrow needle is shown to tilt towards one side, players must counteract the direction by clicking (or pressing on the keyboards) the opposite direction to rebalance themselves. If the arrow needle is tilting towards the left, players must hastily counterbalance by clicking right arrows and vice versa. A gap exists in between two railings halfway through the course where the player will attempt to perform a jump.

Reputation and a fixed amount of Agility experience (based on the player's level) is gained after completing grinding rails. Aside from that, 10 cheer points are also earned from each successful run. 20 cheer points is earned if the player completes the course with perfect balance during the jump sequence.

Other
In addition to the main event, players may participate in Oxfam's 'Unwrapped' event in support of the Oxfam charity. By donating in-game bonds to Thorvar Crittersmash at the Lumbridge, Edgeville, Burthorpe or Prifddinas lodestone, players will receive various rewards as a symbol of gratitude for their good cause. For the first 5 bonds donated, players will receive different rewards. Additionally, players also receive another unopenable Oxfam present for every bond donated, which may be traded to another player for them to receive 2 Treasure Hunter key tokens. The number of bonds donated by a player is also recorded as one of December's Seasonal HiScores.

Aside from that, some other minor Christmas changes were made to the game during the duration of the event. Lumbridge crater, Varrock Square and Burthorpe bank were covered with snow and decorated with a Christmas tree.

A number of boss monsters wore a Santa hat during the month, with Vorago and Nex also receiving additional changes. Affected bosses include:
 * Araxxor
 * Araxxi
 * Barrows Brothers (was decorated during Barrows - Rise of the Six)
 * Chaos Elemental
 * Commander Zilyana
 * Corporeal Beast
 * Dagannoth Kings
 * General Graardor
 * Giant Mole
 * Har-Aken
 * Kalphite King
 * Kalphite Queen
 * King Black Dragon
 * K'ril Tsutsaroth
 * Kree'arra
 * Legiones
 * Nex (Ice Prison attack was also replaced with a Presents Prison)
 * Queen Black Dragon
 * TzTok-Jad
 * Vorago (was also decorated with Christmas lights)

Rewards
Cheer points are the event's cumulative currency, earned via all the Christmas event activities. A maximum of 500 cheer points may be earned. These points are required to unlock rewards when the correct amount has been achieved. Rewards requiring cheer points include:

The Present Delivery activity also rewarded a festive lamp after handing in any festive paper to Santa Claus. The Giant Cracker activity rewarded the player the new Cracker Pull emote upon first time looting the chest of a giant cracker, along with the usual previous Christmas emotes the player has yet to unlock. Looting the cracker also awards a festive lamp and a Christmas cracker joke.

The Tinsel Snake Hunt activity also awarded Summoning experience based on the amount of snakes. The tinsel snake pet Sparkles is presented to the player if a train of 10 snakes is returned to the tree, given that the player has not owned one.

Defeating seasonal boss Snowverload also presented a turkey drumstick, roast potatoes and mulled wine to the player, and two festive lamps after turning in both festive papers. Players may also deliver another present on the same day, and play more rounds of Tinsel Snake Hunt for more cheer points.

Hunting down and melting all snow spirits assigned by the Queen of Snow will reward the player with a snowboard. Snowboarding on the ramp or grinding rails will grant reputation necessary to upgrade snowboards. Furthermore, Agility experience is also awarded dependent on the successions and total power accumulated of the tricks selected.

Trivia

 * The first Giant Cracker was completed on 5 December 2014 at 21:34 UTC, 5 days after the event had started.
 * Snowverload was originally set to be spawned every 14 hours, along with the second instance of Wilderness Warbands.
 * Some bosses featured in quests, such as General Graardor in The Mighty Fall, were also wearing Santa hats. This is likely because the same models are used for the boss and the quest NPC. Their chatheads, however, didn't wear one.
 * The icicle attack used by the ice demons in the quest Ritual of the Mahjarrat were also replaced as presents. This is likely because the same model as Nex is used.