Pyramid Plunder



Pyramid Plunder is a Thieving activity located in the city of Sophanem at the far southern reaches of the Kharidian Desert. It is run by the Guardian mummy. During the activity, the player has five minutes to loot Jalsavrah, the pyramid in which the activity takes place. There are a total of eight rooms which require progressively higher Thieving levels to enter and loot. Rewards range from pottery scarabs to the rare Pharaoh's sceptre. Pyramid Plunder also provides one of the fastest Thieving experience rates in the game.

A highly populated world for this activity is World 64.

Requirements
The player must start the Icthlarin's Little Helper quest and have access to the city of Sophanem in the desert. Alternatively, the player could simply purchase a Pharaoh's sceptre to avoid the quest requirement and Rings of duelling for banking. A Ring of kinship also teleports players fairly close to a bank and has unlimited charges.

A Thieving level of 21 is required to play, but it is recommended to have at least 51 Thieving for efficiency. Completion of the Contact! quest is strongly encouraged as this opens access to the nearby bank. The Feud quest lowers the Magic carpet ride fee to get to Sophanem.



Getting there

 * Teleporting to Jalsavrah using the Pharaoh's sceptre. This can be done before starting Icthlarin's Little Helper.
 * Taking the magic carpet from Shantay Pass to Pollnivneach, and from there to Sophanem. Players can get to the Shantay Pass quickly by:
 * Using the Amulet of glory teleport to Al Kharid.
 * Using the Ring of duelling teleport to Al Kharid.
 * Using the Broomstick teleport to the Sorceress's Garden in Al Kharid.
 * Teleporting to a house in Pollnivneach, then walking or taking the magic carpet to Sophanem.
 * Using the Ring of slaying to teleport to Sumona in Pollnivneach, then taking the magic carpet to Sophanem.
 * Teleporting using the Camulet and walking the remaining distance.

Equipment
The only truly necessary item is food, unless the player is planning to teleport after each round to bank and return to the pyramid with the Pharaoh's sceptre.

Useful items

 * Pharaoh's sceptre - This is strongly recommended for more experience. It teleports players directly to the mummy, allowing them to quickly start plundering.
 * Food - Monkfish and sharks are recommended.
 * Enhanced excalibur - This weapon will greatly aid the player in healing, but food is still recommended. If the player has an Anti-poison totem, only a few pieces of food along with the Enhanced excalibur will suffice.
 * Anti-poison totem - With this item, the player does not have to worry about getting poisoned, thus providing faster experience rates. If the player does not have a totem, then 2-4 Super anti-poison potions will prevent the player from being poisoned. A Prayer book and Holy symbol combination can cure poison, but it will require a fair bit of clicking.
 * One-click teleport - For emergency escape if life points run low. Players with good armour, high Defence, or plenty of food should not need this.
 * Regen bracelet - This item, combined with Rapid Heal, boosts health regeneration by four times the normal rate. If you have purchased Rapid Renewal from Daemonheim, you may use this instead of Rapid Heal (combined with Regen bracelet) to regenerate health by ten times the normal rate! Both of these methods work well while wearing Prayer boosting equipment.
 * Ardougne cloak 3 - This cape improves a player's Thieving abilities. It has not been confirmed whether it works in Pyramid Plunder, but wearing it will not hurt. It also offers a good Prayer bonus as well as the ability to teleport to the monastery south of Ardougne to recharge Prayer points if necessary.
 * Summoning familiar - A Void spinner, Bunyip, titan, or Unicorn stallion can also prove beneficial, as they restore player's life points with either their special move or their primary effect. The special move of a Magpie (level 47 Summoning) or an Abyssal lurker (level 62 Summoning) gives temporary boosts of 2 and 4 Thieving levels, respectively. Players should use the special move in the last room that they are able to enter. Players should note that the special move will not give temporary access to a pyramid level above the character's current Thieving level. Summoning a Spirit terrorbird may be helpful, as it can hold 12 items and recharge run energy.

The equipment above is needed to withstand the damage from monsters and poison during a plundering trip. If the player wishes to reduce banking time, one full inventory of food and potions can last from three to five games depending on how often the player consumes the items. To save time, it is best to eat in between games. To reach level 99 Thieving by playing Pyramid Plunder, the player will need roughly 3,000 lobsters and 500 antipoisons.

Quick banking can be achieved by using the Ring of duelling or the Ring of kinship to teleport to Castle Wars or Daemonheim, respectively. Afterward, the player should use the Pharaoh's sceptre to return to the pyramid.

Helpful items for new players

 * Snake charm - This is obtained from Ali the Snake Charmer in Pollnivneach by putting three coins into his basket. It helps avoid damage, but it also lowers the overall experience gained.
 * Lockpicks (or a Hair clip obtained from the King's Ransom quest) - For easy door opening. These will also lower the overall experience gained.

To gain faster experience, the player may choose to keep his/her inventory full. With this method, the player does not need to worry about wasting time dropping artefacts. However, if the player is using the Pharaoh's sceptre, this is not recommended because artefacts are needed to recharge the sceptre.

Guide
Travel to Sophanem. If you haven't played the game before, talk to Tarik outside the pyramid near the northern gates of the city. Then, attempt to enter the pyramid on one of its four sides. If the room is empty, leave and try another entrance. (Regardless of the entrance you used, you will always exit next to the northern entrance.) Inside one of the entrances, you will find the Guardian mummy. If you haven't played the game before, you must talk to it to gain access to the inner rooms. In later runs, you can start by simply right clicking the Guardian mummy and selecting the "Start Activity" option.

The Guardian mummy changes rooms every 15 minutes, so once you find the correct entrance you can keep using it for a number of trips before it changes.

The mummy may occasionally punch you as you try to enter the pyramid, which stuns you and does a little damage. This only happens at the entrance to the room containing the mummy.

As soon as you start the activity, a timer will start on your screen. You have five minutes to loot as much treasure from the pyramid as you can.

Once inside, you will find a room that contains the door through which you entered the room, a spear trap, urns, a golden chest, a sarcophagus, an exit door, and four doors leading to the next room, of which only one works. There are eight rooms in total, the first requiring 21 or higher thieving to enter. Each subsequent room requires ten more levels than the previous room, with the final room requiring 91 or higher thieving.


 * Spear Trap - The entrance corridor to each room has a spear trap, which takes up two squares in each of the two walls. Click on either of the two closest squares to attempt to deactivate the trap. You will be hit with 10-400 damage if you fail, if you attempt to walk into the room without trying to deactivate it, or if you click on either of the farther squares.
 * Urns - Each room has 13 urns. You can choose to steal from an urn or check it for snakes first. If you check for snakes, a snake will appear out of the urn and may then be charmed if you have a snake charm, this will however halve the experience gained. Both checking and stealing from urns earn thieving experience, but charming does not. Unless charmed, a snake may bite for 10-40 damage and may also poison with damage of 20 (a very weak poison that wears off fast). Searching is much slower than stealing, and the rewards from urns are generally poorer than from the golden chest and sarcophagus. Rewards also get better the further you get into the pyramid.
 * Grand Golden Chest - The centre of each room has a golden chest. The best loot is in these chests, but they occasionally contain level 98 Scarab swarms which hit extremely fast and will poison (hits 30 and is strong, so use an anti-poison potion to negate this). A swarm has 250 Lifepoints, however, so using a Dragon dagger along with the Protect from Melee prayer to negate damage 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, a Scarab swarm will not do too much damage and could be ignored. A swarm triggered by an earlier player will just wait at the door the player exited to the next room, thereby showing you which door you should use (unless the doors have been reset after the player left the room).
 * Sarcophagus - Each room has a sarcophagus. There is fairly good loot in these, but opening these gains you Strength experience instead of Thieving. You may awaken a level 84 Mummy. Opening a sarcophagus takes a fair amount of time, which needs to be considered in your Pyramid Plunder strategy. If you plan to open both the sarcophagus and gold chest in a room but want to avoid fighting the monsters that may appear, always open the sarcophagus first. If you open the chest first and a scarab swarm appears, its attacks will interrupt your attempts to open the sarcophagus. This problem does not occur the other way round, even if a mummy appears: the chest opens so quickly that the mummy's attacks will not interrupt you.
 * Exit Door - Each room has an exit door on each floor, allowing for fast exit from the entire pyramid but this can be interrupted by scarabs or a mummy.
 * Entrance Door - The door from which you entered a room may also be used like the exit door. You must pass the spear trap again and can fail it. This door can be useful, however, if you are seeking to escape the attacks of scarab swarms or mummies. Their attacks will interrupt your attempts to leave by the exit door. However, the monsters will not follow you through the spear trap, so you are safe once you pass the trap. The monsters' attacks do not interrupt your attempt to pass the spear trap, since this is a single-click operation.
 * Door - There are four doors per room which you can use to try to reach the next room. Only one of the doors actually connects to the next room, and the other three are dead ends. So, you must check each door until you find the correct one. You can fail to open a door, in which case you can try again. You receive some thieving experience for opening each door. The door to the next room changes periodically (each time any player on the current world begins a new game of Pyramid Plunder). The door thus remains the same for all players on the world for short periods of time. Hence, it is possible for a group of players to play together, quickly searching all the doors in a room. The other players can then follow the player who found the correct 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.

A different way is to thieve about half of the urns from the second highest level room you can get to and thieving all of the urns in the final room. But if using this method, one should be careful that they do not use too much time on the second highest room and should therefore loot the urns without checking them for snakes first as this is quicker.

When in your final room, watch the time you have remaining. If time is about to run out and you haven't thieved everything in the room, leave off thieving the urns and thieve the chest (or both the sarcophagus and chest), for better rewards. If you still have time left after this, you can resume thieving the urns. (If a monster appears from the sarcophagus or chest, the Protect from Melee prayer, if you have it, makes it easy for you to thieve the remaining urns.)

Experience
This activity gives the fastest experience in RuneScape, however, blackjacking the coshing volunteers at the Thieve's Guild gives the safest and easiest experience, at 84000-96000 xp per hour. Most do not use this method, though, partially because it requires training in quick clicking the 'loot' option and it gives no reward, such as coins.

At 61 thieving, 80,000 experience can be gained in an hour, and even more at higher levels. At 91 or higher thieving, upwards of 150,000-220,000 experience per hour is possible. 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 typical player with 61 Thieving will gain the following experience in 5 minutes:


 * 840 (chests)
 * 1200 (6 urns in level 4)
 * 3900 (13 urns in level 5)
 * 270 (opening doors to next level)

This adds up to 6210 every 5 minutes or to approximately 70000 experience in one hour as players have to refuel time to time in bank. Higher experience rates require players to search more urns at level 5 or to replace chest searching with searching more urns at level 5.

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.

A recommended inventory for a player with medium to high combat are:


 * About 24 lobsters or simply cakes for lower level players. Or a bunyip or another healing familiar. Or alternatively, an enhanced excalibur.
 * 2-3 Super antipoisons or a holy symbol with a prayer book.
 * An emergency one-click teleport, such as an Ectophial or a teletab.
 * A Pharaoh's sceptre with at least one charge.

Medium to high combat players willing to use teleports between each playing of pyramid plunder can take less food. The player can take a Ring of duelling, a charged Pharaoh's sceptre, and only one piece of high-healing food. This allows more plunder to be kept per trip while not slowing down the player. At the end of a playing, the player teleports to Castle Wars using the ring, uses the bank chest there, eats food if needed, and teleports back to Pyramid Plunder using the sceptre. Every third trip, the player should remember to bring sufficient artifacts to get the mummy to recharge the sceptre.

It is recommended that a player wears:


 * A weapon. A Dragon dagger(p++) or an Abyssal whip is recommended.
 * Weight-reducing garments, such as Boots of lightness, Penance gloves, Agile legs, Agile top and a spotted or Spottier cape.
 * A Ring of duelling for a quick bank teleport. (A Ring of kinship is a cheap alternative).
 * Any prayer boosting clothes.

One way to save time is to drink a dose of Super-Antipoison before starting the activity at the mummy. This way, if a chest or urn is failed, there is no need to waste time drinking a dose because the antipoison protects long enough for at least one run.

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.

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. If the search option is successfully performed before checking, players will still get all of the experience they would have if they had both checked and searched (ex. a Room 3 Urn yields 150 experience when being only searched). Note that the experience received when using a lockpick on a door is halved.

1 - Numbers in parentheses are thieving experience if snake charming is used. Note that the experience gained with charming is only about 2/3rds the experience if charming is not used.

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. Unless you are solely looking for Pharaoh's Sceptres, it is advised not to open these because 1) They slow you down and 2) The mummies can attack you or any other players passing by, which is looked upon by those trying to train thieving as rude/noob-like.

4 - Numbers in parentheses are thieving experience if a lock pick (or hair pin) is used. Note that the experience gained with a lock pick is only 1/2 the experience if a lock pick is not used.

Checking urns with snake charming 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.

Pyramid Plunder is enhanced by having other people in the room to give clues about which doors to open. A Pyramid Plunder Guild operates on World 64. Unfortunately a world that is too busy can work against you, because the dead ends behind doors change every time a player begins a new game.

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. Fastest of all, if you have a Pharaoh's Sceptre its Jaleustrophos teleport brings you right to Simon. To really speed your ability to cash in artefacts, there is an optional reward after you've done Dealing with Scabaras that will allow you to bring Simon Templeton noted artefacts. However, he will not accept noted gold artefacts because of the possibility of forgeries or some such reason. This does make it worthwhile to bank in between games if you can bank in Sophanem to at least save up all the stone artefacts.

Below is a table showing what each item is worth in coins.

You may also find a Pharaoh's Sceptre in one of the Grand Gold Chests or Sarcophagi. Immediately after finding a Pharaoh's Sceptre, all players used to be expelled from the pyramid and all the chests, urns and sarcophagi are reset and a new sceptre is placed in one at random.

This has been changed since it was first made—now upon a player receiving a sceptre from a chest or sarcophagus, that player will be expelled from the pyramid, but other players will remain inside. The players left inside the pyramid will see a mummy standing beside the chest in all rooms who shouts at the players.

Tips

 * Scarab swarms will only target the player who triggered them. They will ignore other players, allowing players to safely pass them without getting attacked.
 * Mummies usually will first target the player who triggered them but can and often will attack other players, too. Releasing mummies into a room with other players present is generally frowned upon.
 * Sometimes you may open all four doors in the room, only to find all of them are dead ends. This can happen when another player on the world starts the game, as the door connections are changed when this occurs. Just go back and recheck the other doors in the room and you will find the correct one. (The doors will still be open, but you can recheck them anyway.)
 * Players who have completed Contact! can use the bank located at the north east corner of Sophanem (below the ladder). This can be used instead of teleporting back & forth from a bank.
 * With the pharaoh's sceptre a fast way to train is using a bank teleport (castlewars with ring of duelling or edgeville bank with amulet of glory recommended) after every pyramid plunder run, then simply bank all items, take out the sceptre and a super antipoison potion (taking a sip here and banking the rest gives 1 more free inventory slot) and teleport back into the pyramid. When the sceptre has only 1 teleport left also take 12 stone items with you to recharge it when you arrive at the mummy.
 * Carry two sceptres at all times. Then you can use them to teleport to the mummy to begin the next round instantly instead of searching for the correct door to enter the pyramid. This will allow for more experience per hour.
 * Most players do not right-click urns and check them. Doing this is generally slower and almost no high level players can be found doing this. Simply search them by left-clicking.
 * If a snake bites you while searching an urn repeatedly click the urn until you receive experience successfully.
 * Players commonly start clan chats with each other while here. That way each player can choose the same door on each floor every round. Instead of a player having to search all doors in the pyramid the player can simply follow another member of the clan chat who opens the correct door. This works best if players use a common method to call out open door locations (such as 11 for first floor and first door going clockwise, 21 for second floor first door going clockwise, and so on). Utilising this method properly may require finding a team in world 64 and then moving to an empty world where doors will not change randomly. Experience can be gained very quickly by using this method.

Trivia

 * When examining the Grand Gold Chest, it will say "Anyone lost an ark?" This is an allusion to the biblical Ark of the Covenant which held the 10 Commandments from the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. Also, when examining it when it's looted you will receive the message "Phew, no evil ghosts in there". This is an allusion to the same movie.
 * If you are attempting to open a sarcophagus as the game ends, you will continue to do the animation for opening the sarcophagus outside of the pyramid, and a mummy may appear and attack you outside of the pyramid.
 * The Dwarven Consortium can be seen from the entrance of room 3.
 * Waterbirth Island dungeon is viewable from the entrance room, using the Orb of Oculus.
 * An old Holiday event room can be seen from room 3 using the Orb of Oculus.
 * The Dragonkin Castle Castle from Tail of Two Cats can be seen NW of room 1, using the Orb of Oculus.
 * You can see the Pyramid Plunder dungeon from the Waterbirth dungeon room with 10 rock lobsters, northeast corner.

Le Pillage de Pyramide