The karamthulhu is an unreleased pet that was created by Mod Wilson during development of the Rum Deal quest, but was held back so it could be released as part of the planned Summoning skill instead. Wilson reportedly took the pet with him to tests of some of the multiplayer content that was in development at the time, such as Pest Control.[1] While not intended to launch until later, the follower NPC was nevertheless added to the live game alongside Rum Deal.
While not possible to encounter under normal circumstances, an oversight related to the karamthulhu item meant that it was possible to encounter the follower NPC as a result of a player dying with the item in their inventory, causing the follower to appear at the place of their death and wander around for a short time before disappearing.[2] While this oversight was present since the launch of the Rum Deal quest, it is not known to have been discovered until January 2008, and this behaviour is not known to have ever been present in Old School RuneScape. The NPC was removed from Old School RuneScape in early 2014.
In addition to this follower NPC, another unused karamthulhu NPC as well as an unobtainable karamthulhu item were also added to the game with Rum Deal. Curiously, the unobtainable karamthulhu item's examine text suggests it was intended to be linked to this pet, instead of the item found during Rum Deal.
Gallery
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[squidy_ready] - The karamthulhu's idle animation.
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[squidy_walk] - The karamthulhu's walk animation.
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[squidy_tickle] - An animation for karamthulhu being tickled.
Trivia
- An updated version of the pet was released in RuneScape 3 as the karamthulhu overlord summmoning familiar. While it possesses a nearly identical model to the planned pet, it has entirely redone animations.
- Its animations refer to it as "squidy".
- The examine text is a reference to a scene in the 2003 film Finding Nemo.
References
- ^ Mod Wilson. We can already summon karamthulhu. 14 January 2008. Archived from the original on 17 January 2008. "As anyone who has been keeping up with the Development Diaries is aware, I am also the developer for the Rum Deal quest, and I came up with the karamthulhu at that point. Initially, it was going to act as another food source, but this plan was dropped in favour of having it as a creature. This linked into the other little project I had completed: fish bowls. The problem was, with the idea of Summoning already being discussed at that point, it was decided to leave it to be part of this skill, rather then have it as a separate creature in its own right. I kept a copy of the dummy NPC for myself, and took it to some of the multiplay tests that we were doing at the time, including the first versions of Pest Control!"
- ^ Mod Wilson. We can already summon karamthulhu. 14 January 2008. Archived from the original on 17 January 2008. "The decision to keep it for Summoning was made after the creation of the graphics and (more importantly) the part where I attached the creature to the karamthulhu object, which was being dropped by the pirates. In the end, the dummy creature and the karamthulhu object was added to the game. Since there was no code that allowed you to spawn the creature - or so we thought - everything continued as usual. The problem is, as anyone with a cat will tell you, if you die with an object that says it is linked to an npc, then that npc will appear and wander around for a little while before vanishing... Obviously, this bug has been there since Rum Deal was released; however, nobody was particularly interested in the item until now. The second that people started talking about them, everyone wanted one. If enough people had them, then it was inevitable that someone was going to die with one, and the bug appeared. Given the timing, people assumed it was a spoiler, so went to grab more and the cycle repeated."
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