The Firemaker's Curse

The Firemaker's Curse is a members only quest developed by Mod Ana.

Starting out
To start this quest one must travel to the starting location south of Eagle's Peak, talking to the Phoenix.The fastest ways to achieve this would be by using the Spirit tree system at the Gnome Stronghold and running south then west to the starting location. Using the Gnome glider system and also running south and west, or using the Eagle transport system to Eagle's Peak and running south to the start location would also be quick. Using Ardougne Teleport would also be relatively quick, as a player would need to run north and west to reach the starting location. You could also use a Phoenix Lair teleport scroll.

Once you arrive, talking to any of the Firemakers will begin the quest. A cutscene will ensue where you will be introduced to Emmett, Flint, Isis, Lina, Phoenix, Sera, and Twig. They will explain to you their belief of finding long lost Firemaking knowledge in the caves next to the entrance they are surrounding, that came to them in a dream. They will ask you to protect them as they go through the caves. You will agree and formally begin the quest.

Inside the Caves
Upon entering the caves you will enter a room with several red fires, Flint will give you a pitch can which allows you to create fires in front of you without logs. However, unlike regular fires you cannot stand on, or walk over these fires. Your first order of business to light fires so that you create an arrow out of fire pointing out of the cave, once this is done, a cutscene will occur where the characters will join you in the middle of the room, and the ground will begin to shake, and everyone will fall through the floor into the next room.



Second room
The second room will be dark, so you will have to light the logs next to you to illuminate everything. The Firemaker's will lament being trapped, and scared of some monster attacking them. In the center of the room is Firemaking journal: Chapter 1, and after taking it you will have Firemaking journal compilation (1) in your inventory. After doing so, another cutscene will occur with a spirit, Char, confronting you and the group and again turning off the lights, once you relight the fire you will see that Phoenix has been killed, as Emmett becomes possessed. The spirit says this is part of her game, and she will allow you to pass through to the next camp, but you must identify who she has possessed to prevent any more deaths. Now continue down the open tunnel.

Third room
The third room contains yet more red fires, in another pattern that is in the journal. The journal contains guide images to complete the shapes as you advance through caves. Complete the pattern to trigger another event where Char will begin dropping large boulders around the room whilst dimming the lights, avoid the boulders as they fall or you will be hit for around +100 damage, and collect them and add them to the rock pile at the end of the room to create a pile you can climb on to the next exit. Char will be dimming the lights so you have limited time to do this.

Fourth room
Now you will be in the fourth room and you need to light the fire to illuminate everything again. The Firemaker's will rejoin you can you can grab the Firemaking journal: Chapter 2 in the middle of the room, which will turn your journal compilation into Firemaking journal compilation (2). This will trigger another set of dialogue where you can get more information out of Char by going through various dialogue options. You can then pick a Firemaker who you think has been possessed, and tie them to a pillar. If you pick correctly, when Char next dims the lights no one will die. The first person to be possessed is Twig, which he gives it away by not being cowardly anymore. Relight the fire and proceed to the next room.

Fifth room
The fifth room contains two different colored fires, red and yellow, arranged in the pattern of a fire, with the red on the outside layer and yellow on the inside, the room also contains Red powder and Yellow powder which will allow you to change your fire's colors. Start by lighting the yellow fires, and mind that the fire in the topleft part needs to be lit from the square next to it to prevent getting trapped. Upon completing this puzzle, Char will summon a wall of fire, run for the gaps in the wall so you do not take damage, after surviving two different walls of fire from random directions (could be two different directions), proceed to the next room. Fill out the fire completely on both the inside and outside, the painting isn't complete. In order to do the red fire that is very close to the wall you need to select the "light fire here" option on your fire making can.

Sixth room
The sixth room is an agility-labirinth puzzle. You need to push pillars and light fires to guide you way through, once you are done. You can proceed the next room. GO to the left, jump as far as you can, light the patch there & push the pillar in it will show you that the pit to the right of it can now be lit. While you're there, push that pillar. Then, go to the beginning and go a bit to the left and go forwards through the maze. There's three different switches on pillars you have to play with in order to access each one and flip the barrier around, this is just hit and miss it may take a bit but you'll figure it out. After you get all the pits on the second line done, it will open up the third line and its barrier will go away. Light that and push the piller, then run right jump a bunch and leave through the exit. This is pretty general, and not that great, but I hope it helps someone out.

Seventh room
Room Seven is another party room where the rest of the Firemaker's will rejoin you and you will again have to decide who is possessed. The second person possessed is Sera when she gives it away by not mentioning Ignatius Vulcan once during the time in the room, in addition to suddenly not being very irritable at all.

Eighth room
In room eight all you need is red and yellow, you just have to follow the color and match them up, the tricky part is on opposite sides there is the opposite color. What you need to do - For example on the red side there is a yellow fire, lay a yellow fire next to it. the same goes for the yellow side with the red fire.

After finishing the pattern, you will be immediately accosted by a large, complete line of flame, due to Char's regaining strength. You must run to either side and hug the walls in order to let the fires slip past while you hide in the small gap. Afterwards, the tunnel opens up again.

Ninth room
In the ninth room, you'll see a grid like the pattern puzzle showed you. On the walls are nodes which will create temporary walls of flame that will help you survive, but prevent your own movement across them. Char will put you through a "tutorial" of sorts, demonstrating the various flames she will send at you, but since she's feeling a bit cruel, you can still take damage during this time. Red balls will drift slowly towards you and hit you for light damage if they get somewhat close; white balls move a bit faster and will explode for moderate damage should they catch up to you. Orange balls can set any line they touch on fire, same as your own walls, but if you happen to be standing on the line, it'll hurt you when it goes up. Blue balls will lazily float about, creating a trail of flames that will constantly damage you if you stand on them. All balls of flame eventually vanish if they haven't hit you directly, but orange and blue balls will leave behind the same type of fires that blue flames leave; orange balls leaving an "X" pattern that stretches across the entire board originating at the time they vanished, and blue balls leaving a 3x3 grid where they went out. These balls will spawn in four waves, with each wave containing more of them at the same time than the previous one.

The idea here is to use the flame walls you set to prevent the balls from reaching you. However, if you aren't fast enough, or are on the wrong side of a node when you light it up, you may accidentally trap the ball on the same side as you. A few general tips are as follows: you should stay near the middle of the walls most of the time since the balls always spawn at four corners between the walls and the center of the room, and they will not hesitate to go off if you're on top of the spawn, and you do not want to be surrounded. Balls that are on top of a line when it is set off will become stuck in that wall, except for orange balls since they're usually the ones that set the wall down in the first place. Try to avoid the orange flame's walls, since they'll end up trapping you if you're at the short end of the room when they set fires, and always be aware of when the wave nears the end as the residual flames they drop when they leave spawn immediately. When you're hiding behind a wall, lure the balls over to one side, then create a wall perpendicular to the one you are using to block them so that when the first wall goes out, you'll still have something protecting you. Lastly, the balls that try to chase you will still hurt you even if they're behind a wall, if they get close enough.

Tenth room
Room Ten is another party room where the rest of the Firemaker's will rejoin you and you will again have to decide who is possessed. The person possessed this time is Twig again.(He gives it away when he says that he was born with the name Twig but Twig is actually the nickname he gave himself which he mentions if you spoke to him before entering the cave for the first time.)

Eleventh room
You may want to make your screen size smaller to make this next part easier if you are playing in full screen format.

This time, the pattern is in the shape of a torch. You won't need yellow at all, just complete the blue surrounding it and patch the red all around the pattern. But before you finish, take note of the firepit nearby. Instead of throwing firewalls at you, Char will just shut the lights off entirely.

Immediately light the firepit in order to avoid taking too much damage. Then take a torch from the pile, and proceed down the tunnel.

You'll be forced to walk the entire way. During this time, dark tendrils will claw their way out of all sides of your screen. This is why smaller screen formats are recommended, since if you use widescreen, it will be near impossible to make out some of the tendrils against the pitch black of the area outside of the walls. You have to ward them off by right clicking them and selecting the command which will make your avatar swing their torch; just left clicking won't actually do anything. Failing to shake one of them off in time will result in moderate damage. Don't forget to keep walking while this is happening, and escape through the open door as soon as possible.

Twelfth Room
After lighting the fire quickly, take the last journal. During the interviews, you'll notice that Emmett is suspiciously levelheaded when you talk to him, as opposed to earlier, when he lit himself on fire just by talking about flames, making it a dead giveaway.

Char will warn you to prepare yourself, so don't be lazy. Head back to the surface to resupply on food, and to take a fast hitting weapon with you, like knives or claws. It doesn't matter what type of metal you use, since you will only require speed. Don't bother with armor, use weight reducing gear to conserve energy and bring a few energy potions just in case.

Char
In the last room you will meet Char, she is standing in a somewhat lowered part in the cave. Now is the time to get some food, energy potions (about 2) and weight-reducing clothing, since no armour has any effect best is to be as light as possible, because the battle involves lots of running. Probably the best way to defeat the boss is using ranged (only bring the ranged weapon you like, no ranged armour) so you can hit her from a distance and won't be hit yourself, because the damage she takes depends entirely on how many fires are lit, it is best to bring bronze knives or darts to fight her. The best way to kill her is this: Run around the room lighting fires, and hit Char when you have more than 6/7 fire lit (A counter in the left of your screen shows how many fires are lit). You will do 101 damage for every fire that is lit when you hit, so keep enough fires lit to do some serious damage. But watch out, when Char starts glowing, don't try hitting her and never come close, because she is invulnerable and does over 500 damage. (You can cool her luring her onto the water, but this is not advisable, just light as many fires as possible and when she stops glowing try attacking again.) ATTENTION! When she is around half health, fire walls start appearing with only a few openings. Try avoid to be hit by them cause that damages you heavily. Drink energy pots and food when needed. There is currently a glitch which enables you to occasionally avoid taking damage from the fire walls: simply run through them and light a fire.

One method of killing Char is by lighting 9+ fires taking her to the water, activate soul split then use knives on rapid to deal massive damage at a fast rate without having to worry about healing.(this is a good tactic)

If ancient ice spells work against her these could be used to freeze her in place while running to the other end of the chamber and setting lots of fires, running back to the water and proceed with the above method.

Knives and darts work well on rapid due to damage being based off the amount of fires you have just be sure to stand back.

Rewards

 * 2 Quest points
 * 80,000 Firemaking experience
 * 30,000 Agility experience
 * 76,000 Constitution experience
 * The Book of Char, when activated on the off-hand slot provided it is wielded, causes fiery orbs to spin around the player, simultaneously igniting any log the player walks/runs over.
 * Access to two new events in Balthazar Beauregard's Big Top Bonanza
 * The ability to unlock Char's training cave with a choice of fiery pet (with 91 Firemaking).


 * A new set of outfit from Balthazar Beauregard's Big Top Bonanza

A guaranteed content poll was held on the RuneScape forums to choose the personality of a female character involved in the quest. The winner was Sera, a self-professed jealous rival of Ignatius Vulcan, whose goal in life is to create a blaze that will trump those of Vulcan himself.

Music

 * The Firemakers' Theme
 * Charred Remains

Trivia

 * The original Firemaking requirement announced for this quest was 90. The lowered requirement was announced in a stickied thread by Mod Mark in the Future Updates forum, and the January 2012 BTS was changed to reflect the new requirement of 74 Firemaking.