Pyramid Plunder

Pyramid Plunder is a Thieving mini-game set in the far south of the desert. It is extremely good experience, though the rewards are not massive compared with other activities in Thieving.

Requirements
You must have started Icthlarin's Little Helper quest and have access to the city of Sophanem in the desert. You must have 21 or higher Thieving to be able to play this mini-game. Completion of the Contact! quest is strongly encouraged as it opens access to the nearby bank, and The Feud quest lowers the Magic carpet ride fee to get to Sophanem.



Getting There

 * Teleporting to Jalsavrah using the Pharaoh's Sceptre.
 * Taking the magic carpet from Shantay Pass to Pollnivneach then to Sophanem.
 * Teleporting to a house in Pollnivneach then walking or taking the magic carpet to Sophanem.
 * Teleporting using the Camulet and walking.

Equipment
The only truly necessary items are food, although the following may help:
 * High healing but light food such as tuna or lobster are good. If you do not want to take on extra weight from the items inside the tomb, food such as pies or wine is useful.
 * A set of armour, unless you have a high defence level. (If you have 70+ defence, it is better to wear light clothing such as a spotted/spottier cape, boots of lightness, and penance gloves since you need to save energy for running through the rooms. If you plan to use the Protection from Melee prayer against the monsters, Monk robes are helpful, as they make your prayer points last longer.)
 * Additionally, a set of Guthan's can help a player restore hitpoints as its special occasionally heals the player's hitpoints by the damage they inflict.
 * Dragon Dagger (P++) or other fast damage item to fight the monsters inside the tomb.
 * 2-4 Super anti-poison potions (alternately, a prayer book and holy symbol).
 * (Optional: Snake Charm obtained by from Ali the Snake Charmer in Pollnivneach, by putting 3 coins in his basket. This helps avoid damage but is not recommended if you want more thieving experience. This is only recommended for players who are new to Pyramid Plunder, though many players find it redundant as it lowers the experience you receive.)
 * (Optional: Lockpicks for easier door opening, though not recommended if you want more thieving experience.)
 * (Optional: Items to restore run energy, such as Energy potions, Super energy potions or the Explorer's ring.)
 * (Optional: A 1-click teleport for emergency escapes if hitpoints run low. Players with good armour, high defence, or plenty of food should not need this.)
 * (Optional: A Regen bracelet combined with Rapid Heal boosts health regeneration to x4 the normal; this works well while wearing relatively light prayer boosting equipment.)
 * Summoning a Magpie at level 47 summoning or summoning an Abyssal lurker (level 62 summoning) and using their respective special moves gain give a temporary boost of 2 and 4 thieving levels respectively. Players should use the special in the last room. However, note that the special move will not allow temporary access to a pyramid level above the character's current thieving ability.
 * Summoning a Spirit Terrorbird is also very helpful, as it's special recharges running energy fairly fast, and it can hold 12 items.
 * A void spinner, bunyip, titan or unicorn stallion can also prove beneficial, as they restore player's hitpoints whether with their special move, or with their primary effect.

The equipment is needed to withstand the damage from monsters and from poisoning without requiring bank trips. One full inventory of food and potions can last up to 3-5 games, depending on how much you consume the items. To save time, it is best to eat in between games. To get to level 99 by doing Plunder, you need roughly 3k lobsters and 500 antipoisons, though this varies from player to player.

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 playings, you can start by simply right clicking the Guardian mummy and selecting the "Start Mini-game" 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 mini-game, 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 1-4 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. Both checking and stealing from urns earn thieving experience, but charming does not. Unless charmed, a snake may bite for 1-4 damage and may also poison with damage of 3 (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 3 and is strong, so use an anti-poison potion to negate this). A swarm has 25  Hitpoints, 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 you 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 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 Protection from Melee prayer, if you have it, makes it easy for you to thieve the remaining urns.)

Experience
This mini-game provides the second fastest experience rates in RuneScape, being beaten only by knocking out and pickpocketing Menaphite Thugs.

At 71 or higher thieving, 80,000 experience can be gained in an hour, and even more at higher levels, and at 91 or higher thieving, upwards of 150,000-220,000 experience per hour is possible. At 71 Thieving, you can get up to level 6 in the Pyramid. 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 level 71 player will thus gain the following experience in 5 minutes: 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.
 * 840 (chests)
 * 1200 (6 urns in level 5)
 * 3900 (13 urns in level 6)
 * 270 (opening doors to next level)

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 is:


 * About 15 lobsters. A common mistake players make is buying sharks for the game, however, lobsters are just as effective if players avoid opening sarcophagi.
 * 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.

It is recommended that a player wears:


 * A weapon. A DDS or an Abyssal whip is recommended.
 * Weight-reducing garments, such as Boots of lightness, Penance gloves, and a spotted or Spottier cape.
 * A Ring of dueling for a quick bank teleport. Note that players cannot wear a ring of dueling and penance gloves at the same time.
 * Any prayer boosting clothes.

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.

1 - No experience is gained from a chest if a Scarab swarm is found. 2 - The sarcophagi do not give Thieving experience, but give Strength instead. If you are only interested in thieving experience, 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.

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.

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.

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 are expelled from the pyramid and all the chests, urns and sarcophagi are reset and a new sceptre is placed in one at random.

Tips

 * Scarab swarms will only target the player who triggered them. Other players thus can safely ignore them.
 * Mummies will first target the player who triggered them but can attack other players, too. This can occur when the triggering player leaves the room.
 * 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.)

Le Pillage de Pyramide