The Ides of Milk

This quest has a quick guide. It briefly summarises the steps needed to complete the quest.

The Ides of Milk is a free-to-play quest that involves the various farms of Lumbridge. Completing the quest unlocks a repeatable cow boss located in the Lumbridge cow field.

Start point	Talk to Cassius by the Lumbridge pond. Show on map
Official difficulty	Novice
Official length	Short
Description	Lumbridge, the iconic city for all the fresh-faced arrivals and budding adventurers. Home to regular citizens of Gielinor, they chop the trees, work the fields, and tend to the animals of the realm, except there has been a disturbance in the nearby cow pen and the steaks have never been higher! Distress runs through the herd and while they have always feared adventurers claiming their lives, a new threat has entered their domain bringing the beef...
Requirements	None
Items required	None
Recommended	15 Combat level
Enemies to defeat	A bull
League notes	Not completable, as it requires access to Misthalin.

Speak with Cassius by the Lumbridge pond, just south of the windmill. He will offer you a partnership in his future milk empire, and ask you to question Seth and Gillie Groats about how they've made their animals so productive.

Gillie Groats can be found inside the Lumbridge cow field, just north of the gate. Talk to her and she'll say that happiness is the secret to better milk production, and suggest you talk to her father.

Seth Groats can be found inside the house by the chicken coop, slightly north-west of the cow field. He will recommend his book, The Groats Principles, which discusses his approach to husbandry. Search the shelves on the southern wall to obtain it, and return to Cassius.

Cassius will snatch the book away, and offer a milk sample. Drink the sample to discover that his milk tastes awful. Although the player takes 1 poison damage, they will not be poisoned and cannot die. Speak to him again, and he will give you another milk sample for Duke Horacio to try, in order to convince the Duke to give you a permit for selling the milk.

Duke Horacio can be found in Lumbridge Castle on the 1^st floor. Ask about the permit, and he'll refuse to issue it without the Groats' approval, seemingly worried about their potential response. He will ask you to speak with Gillie directly.

Return to Gillie and offer her the sample. She'll be apprehensive about drinking a strange liquid, and ask you to drink the sample instead. Drink it (no damage will be dealt this time) to find that it tastes even worse than the first one. Gillie will comment that she might be helping people out by refusing to give a permit, given how bad the milk seems to be. You will then ask if there's anything you can do to convince her to give you one, and she'll mention that an aggressive bull has been disrupting her herd, saying that if you deal with it, she'll authorize the permit. Head to the gate north east of her and prepare for a fight.

This fight takes place in an instance. On death, all unprotected items will be moved to a grave outside the instance. Any items left on the ground will be lost.

Upon entering the north-eastern gate you will need to fight the bull. If you wish to leave during the fight, run south-west to the gate to escape.

The bull attacks using melee with a max hit of 3. However, this cannot kill the player during the quest, as they will always hit for 0 if the player is at 1 Hitpoint. After three melee attacks, he will also start using his special attacks after 1-6 hits. The damage of both special attacks scale with the player's Hitpoints level, with a max hit of upwards of 19. This damage is NOT mitigated like his auto-attacks, and will kill the player if they hit. Low level players can expect to be hit for around 30-40% of their health by the special attacks. This damage ignores protection prayers, but may be avoided entirely by moving out of the way before Brutus moves.

• When the bull *snorts*, he will then slam the ground and hit a number of tiles around the player, either a 3x1 row (if the player is adjacent to him) or an L shape (if the player is diagonal to him). This attack can be fully avoided by stepping two tiles to either side or one tile backwards.
• When the bull *growls*, he is about to charge towards the player. This attack can be fully avoided by stepping two tiles to either side.

Note: For combat pures, Rings of recoil may be used to avoid gaining Hitpoints experience.

After defeating the bull, your player will pick up the tag he drops and it reveals the bull was Brutus, Cassius' supposed business associate. Return to Gillie and let her know that the bull belonged to Cassius. She'll tell you to confront him; return to Cassius, and it is revealed that he was stealing milk from Seth's cow herd, and Brutus' aggression disrupting the herd was causing them to produce bad milk. He then chastises you for killing Brutus, and refuses to speak to you further.

Congratulations, quest complete!

After completing the quest, return to Gillie to receive the additional quest rewards.

• 1 Quest point
• Access to Brutus, the cow boss.
• Additional rewards from Gillie Groats:
  • Cowbell amulet
  • A magic lamp providing 1,000 experience in any combat skill, including Prayer.

• Key visual for the quest, made by Dankormast and commissioned by Jagex.
• Concept art of the cow bell amulet, mooleta, bottomless milk bucket, and rump steaks, by Mod Skylark.
• Concept art of the Cow slippers's variants

• This quest originated from a Game Jam project that sought to introduce a low-level boss for free-to-play accounts, akin to Scurrius.
• The Ides of Milk is a play on the Ides of March, the date of the assassination of Julius Caesar. Likewise, Cassius and Brutus were two of the principal conspirators involved in his killing.
• Despite misconceptions, the milk sample is simply just cow milk.^[1] Although Cassius doesn't own any cattle besides Brutus, it is implied in the quest that he was stealing milk from the Groats' cow herd.^[2] Brutus' aggression was disturbing the herd and causing their milk to taste bad, which Cassius says is the unique flavour he was trying to sell.^[3]
• All ironman characters will state they have never paid taxes before, even if they paid Vanligga Gastfrihet's taxes for her during The Fremennik Isles or the trading tax of one Diamond to enter the Zanaris market.