Back to my Roots

Helping Horacio


Start the quest by talking to Horacio and offer to help him with his gardening. He'll want you to get a special vine that grows near Shilo Village. He cannot give too much information and he recommends visiting Wizard Cromperty in East Ardougne.



Now go to Cromperty and he will ask you to investigate the reason the RPDT is not delivering Cromperty's parcel.

The next stop is the RPDT headquarters south of the southern Ardougne bank. Talk to any of the RPDT employees. The employee will say that the package is delayed because the address is unreadable. The RPDT employee takes the subtle hint that a non RPDT employee can open the parcel, so locate the parcel on the table and open it. Inside there is a severed wizard's hand. It has no use during the course of the quest, but it is used in the Returning Clarence miniquest.

Go back to Cromperty and talk to him. He opens the package and discovers that the item in the package appears to be broken. Make a new potlid out of soft clay. Make sure to 'use' the unfired potlid on the pottery oven. You can find a Potter's wheel west from the north bank. Note that a potlid made prior to talking to Cromperty will not work; Cromperty will say the lid is too small.

Cromperty's next instructions are to talk to Garth, the farmer near the fruit tree patch in Brimhaven. A boat to Brimhaven can be found slightly east of the RPDT workers, for 30 coins. Garth will tell you how to get the jade vine to grow in Horacio's garden. If you brought ten coins with you, you can use the cart of Hajedy to get to Shilo Village very quickly. Hajedy is located only a few steps east of Garth.

Karamja Vine Maze
Note: You CAN NOT take a familiar with you into the maze.

What to bring
Note: there is a bank in Shilo Village. For this part you will need to bring a machete, a normal pot, Wizard Cromperty's pot lid, a plant pot with soil, a spade, a Woodcutting hatchet, and a pair of secateurs. Given that the maze is loaded with aggressive monsters, take decent armour, food and anti-poison. A super defence potion is recommended as well. The alternative to food, armour and anti-poisons is to take a few prayer potions, equipment with prayer bonus and a Prayer book with a Holy Symbol to cure from poison. With this method, the Protection from Melee prayer (level 43 Prayer required) will nullify almost any damage, except the damage taken from failing obstacles and occasional poisoning.

How to get to the Maze
From the Shilo Village exit, go east and jump on the stepping stones. Go far north past the maze to a log, cross it, and go south again. An alternative path is to walk around Shilo and go east along the northern fence of Shilo. Try to find an endpoint of a vine to climb onto on the north-west corner of the maze. The 'climb-on' vine point forms the maze entry. As the maze is fairly close to the Nature runecrafting altar, all paths to the maze are fairly similar to the nature runecrafting trips. The Eagle transport system provides an alternative entrypoint further down the path through the maze. Unfortunately, that transport option is pretty isolated. You can also use the Fairy ring code CKR Karamja: South of Tai Bwo Wannai Village Shilo Village. This is usually the fastest way to the maze, unless you used Hajedy's cart to get to Shilo Village.

The creatures
In the maze are many creatures, some aggressive, some poisonous. Players should bring anti-poison potions and food.


 * Monkey lvl 3.
 * Jungle spider lvl 40.
 * Giant ant soldier lvl 58.
 * Giant ant worker lvl 40.
 * Tenacious toucan lvl 70.
 * Giant Wasp lvl 66.
 * Frog lvl 66. (poisonous)
 * Pernicious parrot lvl 66.
 * Snake wrapped around tree. Not attackable but can poison. High Agility enables evading of snake strikes.

The path through the Maze
Tip: Scars on vines will help players to find their way.
 * The maze has a number of navigational options:
 * Enter a hole
 * Enter vine
 * Climb up/down vine
 * Cut/squeeze/crawl through vines hanging down
 * Swing-on vine


 * 1) Climb on to the vine in the north-west corner of the maze.
 * 2) Walk to the east, and go up the vine.
 * 3) Walk to the south-east, and go down.
 * 4) Go north-west, and then climb off. If you fail the river crossing, this is where the hole will take you.
 * 5) Walk to the south, cut the vines hanging there, and crawl through them.
 * 6) Walk south again, and squeeze through the vines
 * 7) Go south-west, and climb on vine.
 * 8) Climb up the vine, then climb up again, and you're on the eagle's platform. There is a chance of falling through the platform. If this happens, climb up the vine again. This can be avoided by rather walking around on the edges to the other side instead.
 * 9) Walk east across the net to the other side and climb down.
 * 10) Walk to the north, and then swing-on the vine hanging in the air to the east. You may fall off this vine. If this happens, make your way back to the platform. Look for a hole that will take you back into the maze.
 * 11) Walk to the north, climb down the vine and then climb off the vine to the ground (use the eastern climb).Backtomyrootsmaze.PNG
 * 12) Crawl through the southern vines, then squeeze through the vines (again in the south).
 * 13) Go south-east and climb onto the vine.
 * 14) Go up the vine to the east and cross the vine across the river. You can fall down here. If this happens, you will need to find your way back to the vine crossing the river. Look for a hole that will take you into the maze.
 * 15) You are now in the eastern part of the maze. Climb down the vine and climb off it at the north east.
 * 16) Cut the vines in the south and crawl-through them.
 * 17) Climb back onto the vine in the south-east.
 * 18) Walk to the south, and then to the west. Climb up the vine.
 * 19) Walk to the west, climb down the vine, and then climb up again.
 * 20) Cross the vine across the river, back to the western part of the maze. You can fall here again - look for a hole to take you back into the maze if this happens.
 * 21) Go a bit west, then south, and then east.
 * 22) Climb down the vine, and climb off it to the ground. Congratulations, you made it to the end of the Jade Vine maze!

Or take a chance and keep going though the holes and lines till you skip up to number 15 and keep going.

The end of the maze features the vine root. It can be obtained by using your spade on the loose soil on the ground. This exposes the vine root. Cut the root with your secateurs. Use the root cutting on the plant pot. With a bit of luck it will grow. If the cutting does not grow, dig up and cut another root in a different soil spot. When the vine root cutting successfully grows, use your plant pot on your normal pot to end up with a sealed pot. That pot now contains the root. Be careful not to teleport until the root has grown and has been sealed in the pot. If the sealed pot is lost, talk to Garth to get another.

Growing the Vine
Go back to Ardougne, and talk to Horacio. Bring the root cutting sealed in the pot. The player must plant the vine in Horacio's vine patch, found northeast of Horacio with a gardening trowel. A tool leprechaun is nearby, for obtaining Farming tools if you already stored them. After planting the vine, a cut scene appears where the jade vine has grown out of control. Horacio now insists that the vine needs to be killed. Fortunately, there is an opportunity to prepare for the battle.

BadThe Battle
The wild jade vine can only be damaged by using a woodcutting hatchet as a weapon. It does both melee and magic attacks so you can not fully protect yourself with prayer, however its magic attack is much weaker and used less often than it's melee attack. Therefore it is recommended to get magic defence, and then protect from melee. The vine's magic attack will poison for 70 damage (regardless of if it hits), so a dose of a super antipoison potion can be used to defend against it. It is recommended that you do NOT use a Prayer book. It will drain your prayer each time you use it, and the vine poisons quite frequently, causing you to waste a lot of your much needed prayer points. Just in case, bring a teleport as players will not be able to walk away from the battle area until the vine or player is killed. Horacio is bound by the vine at the exit of the garden, preventing the player from exiting. After killing the vine, cut the last remainder of it using your secateurs.

Now talk once more to Horacio to complete the quest.

Reward



 * 1 quest point
 * 24,000 experience
 * 40,000 experience
 * 23,000 experience
 * 15,000 experience
 * Vine Farming Patch in East Ardougne
 * Jade Vine Seed

And access to:


 * A new maze Jade vine maze, slightly larger than Draynor Manor.
 * 8 new creatures: Giant ant soldier level 58, Giant ant worker level 40, Tenacious toucan level 70, Giant Wasp level 66, Frog level 66, Pernicious parrot level 66, Wild jade vine level 167, Karamjan Jungle eagle.
 * Transportation between Eagle's Peak and Karamja using the Karamjan Jungle eagle.
 * Ability to slay the Jade Vine for extra Slayer and Farming experience once every 15 hours.

Returning Clarence miniquest
If you collect 6 body parts, and prove who murdered him, Clarence can be buried and you will be richly rewarded.

Reward

 * 10,000 experience
 * 200 blood runes
 * 100 law runes



Repeatable rewards
A vine seed is part of the quest rewards. When lost, talk to Horacio to get a new one. Plant the seed in the west patch of the garden in front of the Handelmort mansion. Talk to Horacio and ask him to look after the vine patch. He'll want a payment of 10 wildblood hops. Those can be grown in any hops patch with 4 wildblood seeds, the payment is 1 nasturtium.

Growing a jade vine offers repeatable rewards, like the once per week Tears of Guthix activity. When the vine is fully grown, checking its health yields 1500 Farming experience. After a short time, the vine will grow branches. Pruning these with secateurs will provide 30 Farming experience. Without pruning, the jade vine will grow wild. As in the quest, the wild jade vine can be killed using a woodcutting axe and secateurs. This gives 2500 Slayer experience and a new vine seed. Talk to Horacio about the wild vine and he'll offer to kill it for a payment of 5 coconuts and 5 watermelons. Paying Horacio gets rid of the wild vine but yields no experience reward in any skill. After clearing the patch repeat the cycle. If a player loses the vine seed, he may ask Horacio for a new one. If the jade vine dies, then after clearing the patch of the dead jade vine, the player may ask Horacio for a new seed. The vine growth is approximately 15 hours. The vine turns wild a few hours after checking its health. If you trim the vine regularly, Horacio will continue to keep it in good health. If you allow the vine to grow out of control, you must kill it, receive a new seed, replant it, and again pay Horacio 10 wildblood hops if you'd like him to look after it for you.

Killing a wild vine during repeatable rewards makes it possible for a player to abandon the battle without a teleport by simply using the gate exit.

Music
Music tracks unlocked:


 * Roots and Flutes (if not already unlocked by exploring the land just outside of the maze)

Trivia

 * This quest is well-known for having an extremely substantial and excessive amount of puns and references in it. Examples of them are below.
 * On the first day of release if players clicked to see the spoilers they received the message: Good quest spoilers need time to take root. Come back when they're in season.


 * When speaking to Garth about preserving the vine root, he will mention Wizard Cromperty is a "wonderful wizard", and then he and your character will take turns saying "because" a few times. This is a reference to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.


 * When speaking with Horacio at the start of the quest the player will say that they will be "off to see the wizard". This is another Wizard of Oz reference.


 * This quest also gives 40000 Woodcutting experience as a reward, also breaking a record in quest experience given in a single skill as a reward. The previous record holder was Monkey Madness, which gave 35000 experience in 2 combat skills of the player's choice. However, this record was again broken with the release of While Guthix Sleeps, which gives 100000 experience to four skills of the player's choice above level 65. The quest Blood Runs Deep then broke that record, giving 150,000 experience in any combat skill over 75 excluding Summoning.


 * Players must have all required skill levels to start quest; temporary skill boosts will not help.


 * The quest's Master status is probably due to the high skill level requirements to start the quest. The quest itself is fairly short and the greatest challenge seems to be the vine maze.


 * After burying Clarence in the miniquest, the Robe Store Owner says "...he was...a member of a society within the Guild called the New Order Occult Bookists..." Their acronym would be NOOB. If you enter the God Wars Dungeon you will see a frozen person that looks vaguely wizardish. By the frozen man engraved in the ground is the word NOOB.


 * After opening the R.P.D.T. smelly package to find the hand, Wizard Cromperty later refers to the player as a handy person.


 * After being told by Wizard Cromperty to get a pot lid, player says: Sure, some people make pottery to urn a living, but not me: I just run errands for potty wizards... Urn, a type of pot, is used instead of earn as a homophone. The term "Potty" is also British slang for "insane".


 * Horacio states about the Jade Vine: If you let this species get wild by leaving it unpruned, it will attack anything. Some closely related species that can pop up pretty much anywhere has a large purple fruit, you've probably seen it. See Strange plant.


 * During the burial of Clarence, one of the wizards says "one foot in the grave" a reference to the British sitcom One Foot in the Grave, the player replies with a pun "footing the bill," another says "rest in pieces" yet more examples of Jagex's humour.
 * After Horacio tells you how to defeat the vine, your character asks "Wait, didn't you just hear that through the grapevine?" This may be a tribute to the song 'I Heard it Through the Grapevine' by Motown artist Marvin Gaye.


 * When talking to Zavistic Rarve after handing him Clarence's body bits, he offers to teleport you to Sandy's house on the island of Karamja, he jokingly says "click your heels together three times", then he says "only joking it sometimes fools them, only the other day a girl came along she clicked her heels three times and it actually worked." This is yet again a reference to Dorothy and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.


 * After defeating the vine, your character will say to Horacio Oh, stop vining. This is a play on the word whining. In response, Horacio will say "I don't think I can take mulch more of this." A play on the word much.


 * When the player complains about having to plant it too, Horacio makes the comment that it is not like he is making you cut your head off. This is a reference to the wizard's head that the player found in The Hand in the Sand.


 * The Jade Vine's scientific name is Strongylodon Macrobotrys.


 * Lord Handlemort rhymes with (and could be a reference to) Lord Voldemort, the antagonist in the Harry Potter series.


 * Upon the completion of this quest, one's Adventurer's Log will read: "I successfully navigated the vine maze to get a cutting of a very rare vine for Lord Handlemort."


 * Wizard Cromperty uses the old teleportation animation when he opens his R.P.D.T. package.