Guide:Clue Juggling
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Clue juggling is a term used to describe the act of intentionally dropping clues on the ground to let you get multiple clues at the same time. This is commonly used by limited accounts (region/chunk-locked, skillers, combat-only, etc.) to increase the chances of completing a full treasure trail and obtaining a reward casket. It can also be useful for regular players to more quickly complete some master clue steps by juggling a specific type of cryptic clue.
Why juggling works
Usually, you can't get more than one clue scroll of the same tier at a time. For example, if you have a hard clue in your inventory (or bank, or grave), monsters will not drop any hard clues, and if there happens to be a hard clue on the ground, you won't be able to pick it up. However, clue juggling changes this. If instead of holding your clue in your inventory, you drop it on the ground, then monsters (or implings, or any other source of clues) can drop a second one, and then you'll have two clues when usually you're not supposed to be able to get more than one.
But how does getting more clues on the ground help you? Don't you still need to complete at least 4 steps in a row on your hard clue scroll to get a casket? Actually, the truth is a bit more complicated than that. If you have two clues, one in your inventory and one on the ground, completing a step on one clue advances the "steps completed" progress for both scrolls, not just the one you were holding when you completed the step. This is the key reason why clue juggling is useful - it lets you progress down a treasure trail using multiple different scrolls with multiple different steps that you know you can complete, rather than leaving it up to chance what the next step the scroll will give you. So, if you get to step on your scroll that you can't complete, you can just drop it, pick up your juggled scroll from the ground, and then continue the partially-completed treasure trail rather than having to start from scratch. By having enough scrolls on the ground, you can even guarantee that you can get a casket even if you only complete a single step from each scroll.
How to juggle
It's important to know that once you start completing steps on your treasure trail, any new scrolls you obtain of the same tier will reset your treasure trail progress back to 0. So, you have to get all the juggled scrolls onto the ground before you ever start solving any steps, because once you start solving the clues you can't go back to get more scrolls than were already on the ground when you started.
As an example, we'll imagine you're a Wilderness-locked ironman who wants to complete a hard clue. So, pop on some combat gear (and maybe a ring of wealth (i)) and head up to the hellhounds to start your juggling session. Since you want to complete a hard clue, you'll aim to get six completeable scrolls to drop, which will guarantee a casket (there's a chance of getting a casket with fewer scrolls but you need six to guarantee it). Once you're up at the hellhounds, kill them normally for a while, picking up and checking every hard clue drop to see if it's a step you can complete.
Once you get a completeable step, the juggling begins in earnest. Drop that scroll on the ground, and then kill hellhounds until a second one drops. While you're killing hellhounds hoping for that second scroll to drop, you have to periodically refresh the drop timer on the ground scroll to prevent it from despawning. Dropped clue scrolls despawn in exactly 61 minutes, so you have to pick up and re-drop every scroll on the ground before their timer is up. Using the RuneLite "Ground Items" plugin with the "Despawn timer" option enabled is very useful to keep track of each clue's timer.
Once a hellhound drops a second scroll, check it to see if that step is completeable, and if it is, add it to your stack of juggled clues on the ground (otherwise drop the clue and you can just let it despawn, since an uncompletable step is worthless to you). Continue this process of killing hellhounds, refreshing your stack of completeable steps, and hoping for more clue drops until you have your target of six steps that you can complete.
Now it's time to actually go about completing the treasure trail. You can't just pick up all six of your scrolls and bring them with you, since the game doesn't allow you to have more than one of the same tier of clue in your inventory. So, you need to juggle all the clues while you're completing the treasure trail too. You can either ferry them around to each step as you complete them, or ferry them to a central location (like the Ferox Enclave for our Wilderness example) and just return there before the hour is up to refresh their timers while taking one at a time to complete its step. Once you complete a step the scroll you're holding will show a new step, but in the (likely) case that it can't be completed you can just drop that and continue on with the other scrolls. So, you slowly complete your treasure trail, ferrying around a diminishing stack of clues until you get your casket. Hooray!
Master clue cryptic juggling
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| Lone Gym Rat's video guide on master clue juggling. |
A slightly different form of clue juggling can be used to more quickly complete master clues and their notoriously long three-part cryptic steps. This works because the three torn clue scrolls that you obtain by completing each part of the cryptic don't actually know which scroll they were obtained for, so with a clever bit of juggling you can essentially re-use an easy set of cryptics for any future cryptic master clues. This is only really useful if you're doing a lot of master clues in a row, like if you're grinding clues for the bloodhound pet by turning in sets of clues to Watson.
To do this, complete master steps normally until you get a cryptic clue with three easy mini-steps (generally, three that are close to teleport locations). This is your "good clue", drop it and start up another master clue. While you're solving your new clue, make sure to re-juggle your "good clue" every hour so it doesn't despawn. Once you get to a new cryptic (presumably with a mini-step or two that's slow to complete) that's your "bad clue", drop it and pick up your "good clue". Go complete all the steps for the "good clue" but don't combine the torn clue scrolls yet. Get back to your "bad clue", pick it back up (dropping your "good clue" back to the ground) and then combine the torn clue scrolls. This will progress your "bad clue" to the next step, without having to actually complete any its mini-steps. The "good clue" with the easy mini-steps can continuously be used to easily complete master cryptics like this until you're done with your clue grind. You can even pick up your "good clue" and save it for another session.