Ernest the Chicken Oddly, I have next to no memory of this quest, aside from the fact that a man gets turned into a chicken. For some reason my brain is telling me it used to be a member's-only quest, but the wiki disagrees. Must not have made much of an impression on me at the time.
Note from the future: this post isn't going to have as many screenshots as last time, partly because I couldn't think of as many visual jokes, but mostly because it's puzzle-heavy in a way that's hard to demonstrate visually.
I do remember Draynor Manor from childhood; it scared the bejeezus out of me, with the tree that attacks you (but you can't fight back), and the mysteriously-closing front door, and of course the damn near insta-killing vampire in the basement. There was an embarrassingly long period of time where I couldn't figure out how to get out of the manor, except by dying and respawning in Lumbridge, so I avoided it like the plague for a while. I don't remember exactly when I figured out the back door (maybe a friend told me, I can't recall), but that basically killed any fear I had of the place.
First impressions are good: I like the redesign of Draynor Manor (though this isn't new to me; I've been in dozens of times on my main, penguin hunting). I even popped down to visit the Count, and I really like what's been done down there (but more on that next time).
Anyway, Victoria gives me the hint that I have to go to the top floor, which I proceed to do. One thing I don't like about the redesign: it's really hard to see the ladder up to the third level. This didn't bite me here, but only because it did on my main and I spent a couple of minutes running around the second floor until I finally spotted it. It blends in really well, which can be confusing. Anyway I get up there, and I see the chicken (non-attackable which both makes sense for context and totally spoils that this chicken is important in some way). And then we get to Professor Oddenstein, and we get to the main quest.
It's interesting to compare this to Cook's Assistant, because they're basically the same quest: an NPC needs you to acquire three unique items, which are spread out over an area you must explore, and you're not given any more information than that. The real differences are around emerging complexity: Cook's Assistant defines a fairly broad area for you to explore, but you're given some hints (and some red herrings) and the items aren't hard to find from there. Ernest, in contrast, gives you a much tighter search area, gives you no information besides that, and gives more complex puzzles to get at the objects. It's a good form of escalation, but woe betide anyone who happened to do this one first.
So I'm off exploring. First thing I see is the pressure hose, sitting on a table in a room with a skeleton, but the door is locked. Okay, I'm going to have to find a key; no problem. But before that I continue searching the house, especially looking for the basement; not Count Draynor's bedroom, but the basement that Oddenstein mentioned. I quickly see the ladder, and work out how to get there through the trick wall.
Ah, now I know why I don't remember this quest.
So, I wasn't much of a gamer when I was a kid. I had a few games, don't get me wrong, but I wasn't very good at them; I had a Nintendo 64 when I was about 6, but the only game I beat was Ocarina of Time, and only then because I also had the Prima strategy guide. I also had a couple of PC games, but I was so bad at them I could only repeat the first couple of levels.
I wasn't a puzzle-oriented child, is what I'm trying to say here. And Ernest the Chicken's basement puzzle would have absolutely broken me. I know I finished it, because I have the quest cape on my main, but I'm 1000% sure I used a walkthrough.
But I'm better now, and I got through it on brains alone. I figured out pretty quickly that the colours on the doors corresponded to the colours on the levers, but I had to restart at one point because I had mistaken orange for red on the final door; minor problem, and soon I had the oil can.
At this point I've explored the entire house and found nothing (except for fish food and poison, which I didn't take because there's no narrative reason for Xurdtwos to want those things), so I go outside and explore the grounds. First thing I see is the compost heap, which I search (because it's the only interactable thing I've found) and find a key. Sidenote, this annoys me for reasons I'll get back to later. Key in hand, I return to the locked door and get the rubber hose. I was a bit confused at first because I was expecting the skeleton to attack me straight away; some wire sparked in my brain and told me that would happen, but no:
He's just cool with me. He does activate once I've got the hose, but I was in and out of the room so fast I didn't actually notice until I was already out of the room. Probably good design not to discourage the player immediately, but it does feel a bit unsatisfying.
But anyway, last thing. I haven't seen any sign of the pressure gauge, but I've seen fish food and poison with the quest icon next to their names, so I have an idea of what I'm looking for. Sure enough, the fountain in the manor grounds is interactable, and searching it reveals the pressure gauge, as well as some hungry piranhas. This puzzle is where Runescape really shows its influences, which is nice in some ways and less nice in others. Mod Stu has said on streams (and I think I've read interviews with the Gowers where they say this as well) that Runescape was partly inspired by the point-and-click adventure game genre popularized by LucasArts (particularly the Monkey Island series) and Sierra Online, and it shows with this puzzle, which is essentially "rub the oddly-shaped key on the oddly-shaped door to proceed."
That isn't really a problem in itself, but one complaint with some of those games (Leisure Suit Larry 3 and Space Quest 3 come to mind) is that they can lack a reason for the character to do certain things. There's all the reason in the world for the player to pick up every interactable object in the game and rub them on each other, but there's oftentimes not a reason for the character to. That's my problem with the compost pile, and to a lesser extent the fountain: I can kind of see the player wandering the grounds and catching a glint of the pressure gauge in the water of the fountain, but I can't for the life of me conceive of why my character would be possessed to dig through a compost heap in expectation of finding anything productive.
What I think would have been better would be more dialogue with Professor Oddenstein, where he signposts these things a little better; he gives you a clue about the existence of the basement, which is good, but after that he has no dialogue (I checked). It would have been nice if you could go to him and get some hints, which would also help fill in the logic of why exactly the bits of his machine have been strewn across the house.
Anyway, complaining aside I found the three objects and saved Ernest, who wants to reward me:
Ewwwwwwwww.
Quest complete.
