Servant

A Servant is an NPC in a player-owned house (POH). There are five different servants, all of who are able to greet guests entering a players' home.

Servants for hire can be found in the Servants' Guild at the very north-east of Ardougne. To hire a servant, the player must have at least two bedrooms with beds. If you demolish a bed and then build another one in the same spot, you will have to exit and re-enter your house before the servant returns. If you already have a servant, you will need to fire him or her (by talking to them in your POH) before trying to hire a new servant.

The higher-level servants have more abilities/talents, including: Higher-level servants also perform their tasks more quickly, serve better food, etc...
 * Fetching items from the bank
 * Taking items to the bank
 * Taking logs to the sawmill for conversion into planks
 * Serving food to the visitors in the house (See table below)
 * Un-noting noted items (except bones)

If you "use" noted items on your servant, you will be asked whether you want it to be banked or to be unnoted. If you use an unnoted log on the Cook or the Butlers, they can take a specified amount to the sawmill. (Refer to previous table.)

Update of 2009-08-18
With the update of 2009-08-18, servants will follow players upon being talked to or summoned via the bell. They will cease this behaviour upon being told to "Stop following me." Note that they can frequently become "trapped" behind walls or objects whilst following the player.

The interface for banking/sawmilling was also changed slightly to become more efficient. This was something several players had asked for via the forums during the "Year of Updates."

The Disappearing Servant Bug
Some people have reported problems with the servant arbitrarily disappearing during construction. Pulling on the bell pull gets the message "the house has no servant." Moreover, the head of the Servants' Guild refuses to let the player hire a new servant, saying that a servant is already employed and must be dismissed first.

A few approaches that have been found to work in this "Catch-22" situation are:

1. Visit the house in normal mode, and use the bell pull or find the servant. This has worked for some people, and the servant will remain when you re-enter in building mode.

2. Leave, return and build a new addition to your house, and try the bell pull again. This has also worked for some people.

3. You may have discarded the servants bed, without which they cannot remain at the premises. Just make sure you have two beds.

After using a servant's services seven times, players will be asked to pay him or her again; if it is decided not to do so at the moment, the servant will temporarily keep the items. After using a servant's services eight times, players are required to pay him or her, otherwise the servant will quit without retrieving the items the player requested. The items will be deposited in the bank if the servant is fired; the same happens if the servant is unable to deliver the items to you (like getting out of the house without taking them from it).

Trivia

 * In May of 2009, the servant's summoning via the bell pull was changed. Prior to this, the servant would appear nearby and then walk to the player's location. This would sometimes result in a path resolution glitch where the servant got "trapped" behind an object, and the player would have to go to the servant, or move a bit so the servant could figure out a way around the object and come to them. The short-lived "fix" made the servant spawn in the same place the player was standing and "walk out of the player". This was changed shortly after implementation, and the servants now spawn the old way, but with a more robust path-finding algorithm. (However, they can still get stuck. It just happens less frequently.)
 * Something similar can occur when the servant is returning from a trip to the bank or sawmill. That glitch occurs less frequently now, but still happens from time to time.
 * The servants do not actually "un-note", they "un-cert" which may be a carry over from RuneScape Classic.