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
Link							MOID

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.

• First, obtain a regular stew (easily purchased from the Grand Exchange, the Warriors' Guild, or the pub in Auburnvale).
• 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 or Bucket of milk/Bottomless milk bucket to heal your cat if they are going to die.
      • You may use the fish or bucket on the curtain or the cat directly.
      • Tips:
        • 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.
        • The bottomless milk bucket from Brutus is another great alternative, and can be filled up with one overnight 6hr session beyond what any account will reasonably use.)
• Add up to 3 doses of a colour spice to the regular stew to get a spicy stew.

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).

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

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 or use a Sunlight moth 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.

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

	Spice	Category[t 1]	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[t 2], Sailing
	Brown	Gathering Skills	Woodcutting, Farming, Fishing, Mining, Herblore

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. It is important to note that combat and non-combat skills do not share the same timer. To get the most time for the boost, players can increase another non-combat stat with another cheap method such as a garden pie or Dragon axe's special attack, then wait until those boosted stat drop, which will mean there will be another 60 seconds until the next drop. Players may also choose to activate the Preserve prayer if unlocked, which will extend the duration 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, at a low level, you may find that the time and effort of collecting enough spices to receive a +5 boost - for the one-off task you need to perform - is so much that it would have been almost as quick to train two extra levels and settle for a +3 boost, which is likely to require far fewer attempts to get. Whether it is worth it depends also on what alternative boosts are available. For example, Runecraft can be raised +2 by speaking with Oldak, but beyond that the only boost that exists is a spicy stew, so aiming for the +3, +4, and +5 are valuable uses for the stew. For Agility and Fishing on the other hand, +5 boosts are easily obtainable with pies, so for these skills the stew is of relatively little value. These boosts may be useful for Achievement Diary tasks where, for example, getting from level 91 to 96 via training will be time-consuming.

When a stew is eaten, two rolls are made per affected stat. The first roll determines whether it's a positive or a negative bonus. The second roll is a range, 0 to (2N-1) inclusive, where N is the number of spices in the stew. 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.

The following table combines the above tables with a comparison to the best guaranteed boosts in a skill. Italics indicate a non-consumable item which may be significantly more expensive than other sources of temporary boosts.

Spice	Skill	Guaranteed boost		Doses	Chance of ≥X	Average doses
Red		≥+5	Super attack	-	0%	-
		≥+5	Super strength	-	0%	-
		≥+5	Super defence	-	0%	-
	1-9	+4	Ranging potion	3	8.3%	36
	10+	≥+5		-	0%	-
	1-24	+4	Magic potion	3	8.3%	36
	25+	≥+5	Forgotten brew	-	0%	-
	10+	≥+5	Saturated heart	-	0%	-
Orange		+4	Kovac's grog	3	8.3%	36
		+4	Mushroom pie	3	8.3%	36
		+4	Dragonfruit pie	3	8.3%	36
		+1	Metztonalli white	2	25%	8
				3	33.3%	9
	1-19	+2	Whirlpool surprise	3	25%	12
	20-39	+2	Chef's delight (m)	3	25%	12
	40-59	+3		3	16.7%	18
	60-79	+4		3	8.3%	36
	80+	+5		-	0%	-
	1-5	None		1	25%	4
				2	37.5%	5.3
				3	41.7%	7.2
	6-22	+1	Cup of tea (clay)	2	25%	8
				3	33.3%	9
	23-66	+2	Cup of tea (porcelain)	3	25%	12
	67+	+3	Cup of tea (trimmed)	3	16.7%	18
		+1	Chilhuac red	2	25%	8
				3	33.3%	9
Yellow
		+5	Summer pie	-	0%	-
		+6	Super hunter potion	-	0%	-
		+5	Wild pie	-	0%	-
	1-44	+1	Bandit's brew	2	25%	8
				3	33.3%	9
	45-64	+2	Autumn sq'irkjuice	3	25%	12
	65+	+3	Summer sq'irkjuice	3	16.7%	18
		+2	Nature Grotto altar	3	25%	12
	1-30	None		1	25%	4
				2	37.5%	5.3
				3	41.7%	7.2
	30-77	+3	Whirlpool surprise	3	16.7%	18
	78+	+4	Horizon's lure	3	8.3%	36
Brown		+2	Axeman's folly(m)	3	25%	12
		+3	Dragon axe ( 60+ )	3	16.7%	18
		+3	Garden pie	3	16.7%	18
		+6	Super fishing potion	-	0%	-
		+2	Dwarven stout(m)	3	25%	12
		+3	Dragon pickaxe ( 60+ )	3	16.7%	18
		+4	Botanical pie	3	8.3%	36