Recipe for Disaster: Freeing Evil Dave

This is a subquest of Recipe for Disaster.

Walkthrough
Inspect Evil Dave in the banquet hall in Lumbridge Castle. Gypsy Aris tells you to make a stew to free Evil Dave. She says that to learn the recipe you must find someone who has tasted the stew. She suggests you speak with Evil Dave's mother; Evil Dave lives in Edgeville in his mother's basement.

Go to Edgeville. The house west of the bank is Evil Dave's mother's house. Talk to Doris, and ask her either question. Then, open the trapdoor and climb down. You will see that Evil Dave has gotten into summoning demons now. However, they are Hellrats, the weakest form of demon. Speak with Evil Dave, and ask him what he ate at the secret council meeting. He'll ask you why, and you tell him he's got to tell you because the magic requires it (it's the 4th option). He'll reply "It was, like, this totally evil stew!" like the one his mother makes.

Climb the cellar stairs, and talk with Doris (Dave's mother) again. She will tell you Dave's Hellrats stole all of the spices. Climb back down the stairs, and with your cat, catch Hellrats. You must interact with it and tell it to "Chase-Vermin". It may fail, but just keep on trying. (After 7 to 10 catches, it will turn into a hellcat or hellkitten. It serves the same purpose as a regular cat. To change it back, talk to Doris or give it a bucket of milk.)

The hellrats drop ashes and a random spice. Collect a couple of four-dose shakers of each of the four spices. Much like you can combine potions, you can use 1-, 2-, or 3-dose shakers on each other to make a 4-dose spice shaker. Your cat may need to catch 25 or so hellrats to have enough of each spice (catching hellrats does, however, it does count toward obtaining a Cat training medal). Assuming you make no mistakes, collecting five doses of each spice will be enough, even if your stew requires three of every spice.

Now, get ready to use the spices to make your stew.

Strategy
First: There may be up to 81 variations of spices needed to make up the stew (3*3*3*3). Here are twenty-nine proven ways the stew could be made up of:

Note: These strategies will not work for everyone.


 * This method is sort of like a game of Mastermind. The best strategy is to have lots of stew in your inventory (9 is the maximum you will need, barring mistakes). Have your cat catch hellrats to get spices. Spices can be red, yellow, brown, or orange, and may have from 1 to 4 doses per shaker caught. The perfect stew will have between 1 and 3 doses of each of the four spice colours.




 * Figure out each colour separately. Use red as an example: Add one dose of red spice to your stew, and then ask Dave to eat it. If he says that one spice is right, stop and move on to the next colour. You know that you need 1 dose of red spice. If he says that no spices are right, add 2 doses of red spice to your next stew. If 2 doses are correct, stop and move on to the next colour. If no spices are right, the answer must be 3 doses. Do not try out 3 spices, because using this method, you now know red must be three. Move on to another colour—starting with a single dose of that colour—and repeat this process through all four colours.


 * By sending your cat out for rats every 20-30 seconds, and using the process of elimination as described you'll likely discover the correct spicy stew in 10-20 minutes.


 * If you run out of stew, use the canoes to travel to Lumbridge to make more or head east a small distance to the Grand Exchange and buy stew from players. However, you will not use more than two stews per colour using this strategy; thus, the maximum you will have to use is eight stews (plus the last one, which will be perfect).


 * After you figure how much of each colour to put in the stew, use that much of each colour on one stew. This will be the "totally evil!" stew.

Ask Dave to taste it. (Don't worry: If it's right, he won't eat the whole thing.)

You MUST ask Dave to taste it before going back to the Lumbridge kitchen, or you can't use it to free him.

Head back to Lumbridge Castle, and give the perfect stew to his earlier frozen self to protect him and to complete this subquest.

NOTE: If you want to change your hellcat back to normal, feed it a bucket of milk

Rewards



 * 1 quest point
 * 7,000 Experience
 * The ability to catch Hellrats to get a Hellcat
 * The ability to add coloured spices to stew by catching Hellrats (spicy stews can boost or lower certain stats)
 * (Further) access to the Culinaromancer's chest
 * 2 extra spins on the Squeal of Fortune