The Mysterious Old Man teleports players to the Maze and Mimerandom events, or simply hands out items in a similar way to Rick Turpentine, because he was feeling lonely. In the Maze random event, complete the labyrinth as quickly as possible, faster for better rewards. In the Mime random event, copy the emotes of the mime artist.
The Mysterious Old Man can also appear underwater, in which case he will always award an item straight away, rather than offer the player a chance to participate in an event.
Before the Optional Randoms update, he would also occasionally give the player a strange box instead of teleporting them off to the Maze or the Mime, unless their inventory was full. The strange box presented the player with a puzzle asking them which shape contains which number or which number is in which shape. The rewards from this random could be very generous, as you could get a tooth half or loop half of a crystal key from the Mysterious prize box. The man obtained these boxes from a village in the Eastern Lands.[1]
Rewards
Drop rates are estimated based on 5,819 samples from the Drop Rate Project, unless otherwise cited.
The average Mysterious Old Man reward is worth 496.27.
This article on an NPC has an associated dialogue page. Click here for a transcript of possible conversations with this NPC. Click here for a list of other transcripts that this NPC speaks in.
The NPC was added to the game, along with his 3 random events.
Trivia
The Mysterious Old Man appeared before the Bandits of the Golden Claw on two occasions. During the first he appeared before the group, who were not sure how he got into the cave system, only leaving after Davey spoke to him.[4] On the second occasion, the group ignored the Mysterious Old Man, resulting in them being teleported away.[5]
If the Mysterious Old Man spawns underwater, he will be wearing diving gear.
The Mysterious Old Man can be found upstairs in a house in eastern Falador, saying he is trying to solve a puzzle-cube and that he is retired.
During Crack the Clue III, the Mysterious Old Man will appear and let the player into the vault to loot the chests and claim their reward.
^Jagex. Mod Ash's Twitter account. 16 October 2020. Archived from the original on 18 October 2020. Mod Ash: "2/75. Same for Mysterious Old Man, by the way."
^Jagex. Mod Ash's Twitter account. 7 November 2023. Archived from the original on 25 May 2026. Mod Ash: "Looks to me like that old man may not have been appearing correctly on members' worlds before, but he now does."
^Arthur Artimus in Feathered journal. Old School RuneScape. "A mysterious old man turned up today. Not sure how he got in. Kept pestering us until eventually Davey spoke to him, at which point he offloaded a load of spinach rolls onto us then left."
^Arthur Artimus in Feathered journal. Old School RuneScape. "That mysterious old man has turned up again. We don't have time for this, quite frankly, so we're just going to ignore him, after all what could be possibl..."
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