Spicy stew

Spicy stew
Released							15 March 2006 (Update)
Members							Yes
Quest item							Recipe for Disaster
Properties
Tradeable							No
Equipable							No
Stackable							No
Noteable							No
Options							Eat, Smell, Destroy
Destroy							You can make another one by adding evil spices to ordinary stew.
Examine							It's a meat and potato stew with fancy seasoning.
Values
Value							20 coins
High alch							12 coins
Low alch							8 coins
Weight							1.5 kg
Advanced data
Item ID							7479

Spicy stews are stews with special coloured spices (from Hell-Rats) added to the stew. They are members only and can temporarily increase or decrease a player's skill levels.

Spicy stews are available only to those who have completed the Freeing Evil Dave subquest in Recipe for Disaster.

Evil Dave's spicy stew, or 'EVIL STEW OF DOOM' as he calls it, requires all 4 colours of spice and can boost or decrease a wide number of skills which can be -5 to +5. Each of the four colours of spice affects its own specific set of skills, so players making spicy stew after the quest usually only use one colour of spice, to get a temporary boost in a particular skill.

As with all temporary skill boosts, the spicy stew's level boost can be extended by making use of the Preserve prayer.

Making the spicy stew

• First, obtain a regular stew (easily purchased from Warriors' Guild).
• Get the spices.
  • Get a cat (or hellcat) to chase the hell-rats.
  • Go to Evil Dave's basement in the house west of the Edgeville bank.
  • When the cat successfully captures a hellrat, it will drop a spice shaker, one of 4 colours, which may have up to 4 doses of that colour in it. After the Evil Dave subquest for Recipe for Disaster has been completed, you can gather spices much more quickly, using a cat (wily is best) to attack the hell-rat behemoths. These will always give a 4 dose of the specific colour spice they are guarding. Bring any type of fish to heal your cat if they are going to die. You must use the fish on the curtain. (Tip: Raw salmon and trout can be looted in Barbarian Village on a busy server, or raw karambwanji can be caught near Shilo Village; which are stackable and don't require banking. They do not have a quest requirement.)
• Add up to 3 doses of a colour spice to the regular stew to get a spicy stew.

Spices

Each colour spice affects different skill levels by giving them a temporary increase or reduction, similar to taking a potion except that the effects are random every time. The number of doses added of a colour will determine how much the skills affected by that colour can gain or lose, as noted in the table. This is the maximum number of levels gained or lost. For example, if a stew contains two doses of red spice, each of the skills affected by red spice may gain or lose between 0 and 3 levels. Evil Dave's spicy stew (for the quest) takes all 4 coloured spices and needs to be approved by Evil Dave. You can make and eat spicy stew with only one colour of spice in it.

Note: The maximum positive skill boost for eating multiple spicy stews cannot exceed the maximum boost for one stew of that type (see Eating multiple stews below).

Number of Doses	Skill Boost Range	Smells like
1	-1 to +1	A little
2	-3 to +3	Some
3	-5 to +5	A lot

Locations of each spice:

	Spice	Hell-Rat Behemoth Location
	Red	Northern-most Room
	Orange	North-western Room
	Yellow	South-western Room
	Brown	Southern-most Room

Template:Map:Spicy stew spices Note: Each successful cat fight will always give you a 4 dose spice [ex. Brown spice (4)].

If going for a boost (that can be done at Ferox Enclave, such as making potions), it is recommended to use the Pool of Refreshment at Ferox Enclave to restore any negative stats in between stews. If you have an action that has to be done at a specific location, such as thieving from a particular chest, you will need to stat-boost there. You could bring spices for multiple stews, and take a dose of Super restore in between attempts to return any negative stats. You could also wait a minute or two with the Rapid Restore prayer on to remove the negative bonus. Alternatively, if the player has built a Fancy rejuvenation pool or Ornate rejuvenation pool in their player-owned house, using the pool to restore drained stats may be desirable.

Each boosted skill is random; if you get a +5 boost, it will not be +5 in all the skills that spice boosts. For example, if you use the red spice, the Attack stat might get a +4 boost, while the Strength stat might get -2.

Skills affected

The skills affected by each colour of spice are as follows:

	Spice	Category	Skills affected
	Red	Combat skills	Attack, Strength, Defence, Ranged, Magic
	Orange	Production skills	Smithing, Crafting, Fletching, Runecraft, Cooking, Construction, Firemaking
	Yellow	Utility Skills	Agility, Hunter, Slayer, Thieving, Prayer
	Brown	Gathering Skills	Woodcutting, Farming, Fishing, Mining, Herblore

Eating multiple stews

Only one spicy stew can be made at a time, but the player can have several normal stews in their inventory along with several spices and mix the next one right after consuming the previously-made spicy stew.

As with all player temporary skill boosts, spicy stews will not boost higher than the player's natural skill level plus the (maximum) regular boost amount (+5 in the case of a spicy stew). Stew boosts applied to drained stats are only applied with respect to the drained skill level, so restore a drained skill before attempting another stew boost. Stew boosts applied to an already boosted skill can only boost according to the natural skill level; boosts do not accumulate, but larger boosts will replace smaller ones, so there is no risk nor advantage to attempting a stew boost on an already boosted skill.

This boost gain limitation also applies to other player temporary boosts. However, some other boosts will stack with spicy stews, although not many. Crystal saws stack with stews (and with any other boost) because they do not actually boost your level; they simply allow you to build most constructed items as if your skill were three levels higher than it actually is, so they can be used with spicy stews for a maximum possible boost of +8.

When trying to obtain a boost, it is important to note where the timer is for your skills to decay back to their normal levels. To get the most time for the boost, players can increase another stat with another cheap method such as an attack potion or Excalibur's special attack, then wait till those boosted stat drop, which will mean there will be another 60 seconds till the next drop, so you don't waste your boost. Players may also choose to activate the Preserve prayer if unlocked, which will extend the length of stat boosts by 50%.

How useful spicy stew is for any given skill depends on what boost you could have used without the stew, and how much effort it would have taken you to train an extra level in the skill instead. For many skills, if your level is (say) 65, you may find that the time and effort of collecting enough spices to be in with a good chance of a +5 boost - for that special one-off level 70 task you need to perform - is so much that it would have been almost as quick to train two extra levels to 67 and collect enough spices for a +3 boost, which you are likely to need far fewer attempts to get. Of course, you would also then have the extra levels and not need to train them again. Whether it is worth it depends also on what alternative boosts were available. For example, Runecraft can be raised +2 by speaking with Oldak, but beyond that, there is only spicy stew, so aiming for the +3, +4, and +5, are valuable uses for the stew since one or two extra bonus levels can allow you to make that special item you need. For Agility and Fishing on the other hand, +5 boosts are easily obtainable with pies, so the stew is of relatively little value for these skills. These boosts may be useful for Achievement Diary tasks where, for example, getting from level 91 to 96 via training will be time-consuming.

Probability

When a stew is eaten, two rolls are made per affected stat. The first roll is a range, 0 to (2N-1) inclusive, where N is the number of spices in the stew. The second roll determines whether it's a positive or a negative bonus. As a result of these two rolls, the boost distribution is nearly uniform, with the only exception being 0 (due to positive and negative 0 being identical).

Because of this, it can sometimes be more efficient to use more spice doses per stew. For a desired boost of +3, using 3-dose stews instead of 2-dose stews requires 12.5% fewer spice doses.

Spice Doses	Chance of exactly +X boost
	-5	-4	-3	-2	-1	0	+1	+2	+3	+4	+5
1	-	-	-	-	25%	50%	25%	-	-	-	-
2	-	-	12.5%	12.5%	12.5%	25%	12.5%	12.5%	12.5%	-	-
3	8.3%	8.3%	8.3%	8.3%	8.3%	16.7%	8.3%	8.3%	8.3%	8.3%	8.3%

Spice Doses	Chance of at least +X boost
	≤0	≥+1	≥+2	≥+3	≥+4	+5
1	75%	25%	-	-	-	-
2	62.5%	37.5%	25%	12.5%	-	-
3	58.3%	41.7%	33.3%	25%	16.7%	8.3%

Spice Doses	Average Spice Doses needed for +X boost
	≥+1	≥+2	≥+3	≥+4	+5
1	4	-	-	-	-
2	5.3	8	16	-	-
3	7.2	9	12	18	36

Changes

Date	Changes
[[{{#explode:12 February 2007| |0}} {{#explode:12 February 2007| |1}}]] [[{{#explode:12 February 2007| |2}}]] (update)	The "Drop" option was replaced with a "Destroy" option.