Somehow this isn't a survival horror-inspired quest. I know, I can't believe it either.
I don't remember much about Clock Tower, but I remember it having a fairly brutal puzzle (at least brutal for the time, and for my child's mind), so this line from Brother Kojo threw up red flags:
I know what sort of sense of humour Runescape has. I'm not going to enjoy this very much, am I?
Anyway, Kojo sends me down into the basement to fetch the four cogs. I've actually already been down here (see the Monk's Friend post for more on that), and I explored the cellar fairly thoroughly, but I wasn't really looking for cogs so we'll see how we do. Head down into the cellar, and here's what immediately catches my eye:
Four doors, four colours. Seems logical. I start in the bottom-right and work my way counter-clockwise. Red is first, and it's just down a short corridor, guarded by some ogres. Unlike in Monk's Friend, these guardians actually care about the thing they're guarding, and attack me; but they're level 67 and I'm only level 21, so I just grab the cog and leg it. At this point I discover that there's more than one set of spindles for the cogs, and I need to find which of the 16 spindles the cog goes on. Luckily they're colour-coded, so there's only actually four choices, so this isn't very hard.
Black cog next, this one in front of some fire. It tells me that the cog is too hot to pick up which, fair enough. Everybody knows water beats fire, so I go get a bucket of water to cool it down. Actually, I tell a lie: I knew to do this because the quest overview said I needed a bucket of water. It's a pretty logical puzzle, but I still don't think it would go amiss to add a small player hint here that we might want to find something to douse the flames. But that's a fairly minor issue, all things considered.
Next is the white cog, which is the first real "puzzle" of the quest. Immediately I see the levers that control the doors, and I'm thinking "okay, one lever will open the first and third doors, and the other lever will open the second door put close the other two." But no, it wasn't even that difficult of a puzzle: I just needed to pull one lever to get into the room with the rats. The final door doesn't open at all, though, and points me back to Brother Kojo (good design! This is what I've been asking for), who tells me to kill the rats and that there's poison in the basement.
I find the poison pretty quickly, and initially try using it on a rat. No such luck, but then I spot the food dish. Okay, not sure why there's a food dish for a rat infestation, but whatever it works. Though when I try to open the door...
Nice try, game. No way am I buying that the rats actually managed that. But whatever, I've got the cog.
Blue cog, which is the last one, is a little trickier. I can see it in the cells, but it's the only cell I can't get into. Maybe Brother Kojo will have an idea.
Okay first question: why are you keeping prisoners locked up under a clock tower? What the hell is this place for? Game has no time for my questions, and sends me over to the Ardougne zoo. I pretty immediately see what I need to be using:
This isn't suspicious at all. Follow the tunnel, fight another miniboss, and I've got the last cog. Quest complete!
Okay, this quest wasn't as hard as I seem to remember it being, but that's still a pretty mediocre reward considering I just got 2000 Woodcutting experience for getting some monks drunk.
Anyway, in general I thought this was a good quest. There are some problems with the narrative logic (again, why does the clock tower have prison cells?), but the puzzles were mostly logical and well-signposted. It's not going to top anybody's "favourite quest" lists, but for a novice puzzle quest it's pretty good.