As a First Resort

As a First Resort is an experienced quest in the ogre series where you agree to aid the ogresses of Oo'glog in expanding their hot springs into a proper resort. The quest was acclaimed amongst players as it unlocks the Oo'glog spa, where pools can improve performance by restoring prayer points above the capacity, give unlimited run energy for a period of time, etc.

Development team

 * Developer: Ingrid J
 * Graphics: Paul B
 * Quality Assurance: Adam D
 * QuestHelp: Gillan M
 * Audio: Adam Bond, Dan Atkinson

Walkthrough


The fastest way of reaching Oo'glog is by using the Oo'glog lodestone if it is unlocked. Another quick way is using the Mobilising armies teleport, after which you can walk east to enter the city.

Bossy Human Lady
Travel to Oo'glog, directly south of Yanille, and speak to Chief Tess. She tells you that she cannot open her business for customers until the "bossy lady" at the bank in Oo'glog allows her to do so. Offer to help, and the chief asks you to speak with Balnea, the "human lady" in the ogre village's bank. Balnea has promised the ogres 'shiny pretties' in exchange for letting her set up her spa in the city.

Enter the bank, across the path from the chief's hut, and talk to Balnea. After a long dialogue filled with business-talk, Balnea asks you to help turn Oo'glog into a health spa.

Agree, and she sends you first to help the village's chef set up a spit and cooking fire. After agreeing to help Balnea, you can use the bank.

Catering to Their Needs
Items needed: 10 eucalyptus logs, 8 achey logs, 4 spears and 2 raw chompies.

Speak to the ogre cook, Chargurr, just north of the bank. She tells you she needs a big fire with lots of logs to cook chompy. Agree to get the logs for her. Give Chargurr eight achey logs and ten eucalyptus logs. Lay the logs in the pit to set up an unlit stove.

Speak with Chargurr again and she tells you that she wants big, long spears to cook chompies on. Give her four spears to be used as spits. If you forgot to get the spears, the level 58 ogresses wielding spears, just outside the west entrance to the village, drop them.

Talk to Chargurr, and tell her you would like to give her the four spears. You hang them in the trees, over the logs. Again, speak with Chargurr, who now needs 2 chompy birds. Fetch her the raw chompy birds and stick them onto the spears. Talk to her again, and now she instructs you to light the fire. Do so and speak to Chargurr one last time to finish the first task and setup catering services for the resort.

Relax, There Are No Bedbugs Here
Items needed: 8 stripy feathers (or a bird snare)

Speak to Balnea in the bank. She asks you to help Snurgh, the hotel manager in the building in the south-east corner of the village.

Speak to Snurgh, who informs you that the pillows in the hotel are made of raw meat, the softest thing that she could find. Advise her to use feathers instead of the meat. She agrees and asks you to get her some stripy feathers. Give her eight stripy feathers from Tropical Wagtails so that she can make the pillows.

Return to Balnea for the next task.

Solidifying Kringk's Assets
Items needed: 8 larupia furs (tatty or regular) and 4 wolf bones (If you need to trap the larupias, bring a teasing stick)

Have another jargon-laced conversation with Balnea. She says your next task is to help Kringk in the hair salon just east of the bank. She asks how can she do hair with no tools. Tell her you will help. Take four wolf bones and eight larupia furs to Kringk. Talk to her again, and give her the four "wolfsie bones" and eight "Lup-Lup furses" to complete this task.

Pushing the Envelope
Items needed: 16 eucalyptus logs, 7 each of the five types of herb - this is the maximum number you may need if you follow the method below; a few more of everything only if you make mistakes.

Speak to Balnea a fourth time. She wants you to help Seegud, who is in the hut north-east of the bank.

Talk to Seegud. She tells you she needs to clear flying bugs from the five spa pools by lighting fires in the fire pits next to each pool. For each type of bug, you need to burn eucalyptus logs and a specific plant to keep the swarm away. Seegud has placed stones beside each fire pit to help her remember what to burn.

You will need to collect the plants from outside of Oo'glog, if you haven't done so already, and combine them with eucalyptus logs to light the fires. Go north-west from Seegud, and examine the pile of stones between the salt-water spring and the fire pit. In your chat window, you see a description of the stones.

Place the logs and the plants that match the stones in the fire pit, and light them. You quickly notice something is not right: the bugs are still hovering over the pool and a mischievous ogre child is laughing. Return to Seegud, and speak with her. She says the ogre children must have mixed up the stones. You now need to discover which plants the mixed-up stones represent.

Talk with Snarrl, an ogre child just north-west of Seegud and by the salt-water spring. She recommends you start with the thermal bath. Head north-east of Seegud to the thermal bath.

Which stones match which plants is different for each player. Discover their new relationships through a process of elimination. Grab a pencil and paper, and as you learn which stone represents which plant, write the match down so you do not have to figure it out again.


 * Examine the pile of stones next to the thermal bath. Place the logs and one of the plants in the fire pit, and light them. If you get the message, "The fire has a pungent aroma, but it doesn't seem to have any effect on the insects," add more logs and a different plant to the fire pit and light them. Note that you need to use logs each time, otherwise you will not disperse the insects even if you find the correct combination.

If you get the message, "The pungent smell makes the insects disperse", write down the stone colour that corresponds to the correct plant.

There is a pattern that can be used to easily find the correct combination:

Remember that each combination only requires two plants and one eucalyptus log, except for the Bandos pool.
 * Start with the thermal bath. Figure out which plant out of the five is required to disperse the insects. Keep track of this plant.
 * Next, move to the mud bath. One of the two plants will be be the same as the last pool. Keep using a second plant out of the four you have left until you get the combination correct. Keep track of the secondary new plant that was used for this pool, as it will be used for the salt-water spring.
 * Move to the salt-water spring. Be sure to use the secondary plant you kept track of from the last pool for the primary plant for this one. Keep trying combinations using the three herbs you have left until you get the correct one. Keep track of the new plant you just used.
 * Now make your way to the sulphur spring. Use the new plant you used for the salt-water spring for the primary plant for this spring. One of the two herbs you have left will be the secondary plant, so try them both. Keep track of this new plant you just used.
 * Lastly, make your way to the Bandos pool. There are three plants required here, but you should have worked out what all the stones mean by now (there will be one new stone, but you should only have one unused herb). Just look them up on your piece of paper and use them.

An example of a possible combination would be:
 * 1) Thermal bath - fever grass
 * 2) Mud bath - fever grass + stinkbloom
 * 3) Salt-water spring - stinkbloom + lavender
 * 4) Sulphur spring - lavender + tansymum
 * 5) Bandos pool - tansymum + primweed + the ingredient that the mud bath and salt-water spring have in common.

Finally dispersing all the bugs, speak to Seegud and then return to Balnea.

Accelerate the Action Point
Talk to Balnea to learn about the "one last outstanding matter." If you do not have 48 hunter, take your hunter potion now or you will not be able to continue. She asks you to trap the creatures wandering around the village. She suggests they may not be as easy to trap as you might think and recommends you talk to Chief Tess to learn how to catch the creatures.

Talk to Chief Tess. She tells you the animals in the area are clever so you have to be sneaky to catch them. You need to burn "stuffs" to lure the animals to the traps.

Kebbit, Kebbit
Items needed: Logs and a few fever grass.

To catch the diseased kebbits, set deadfall traps on the boulders to the east and west of the salt-water spring; catch two from each side of the spring, as they will not follow you very far.

Bait the trap by using fever grass on the deadfall trap. Then light another fever grass and run around to lure a kebbit to the trap. The smouldering grass turns to ashes after about 30 seconds, so have a few in your inventory before starting. The smouldering method uses the weapon slot, so remove any weapons you are wielding before starting.

Note that diseased kebbits become aggressive if you burn tansymum nearby them. Also, If you try to set more than one trap at once, an ogre child scolds you: "Hey, you, human! You no allowed to clutter up Oo'glog wiv traps. You only set one at a time here."

Is It A Bird? Is It Wimpy?
Items needed: Bird snare and a few tansymum.

To clear Oo'glog of the wimpy birds, set a bird snare in the area west of the bank. Light a tansymum flower and run around to attract the birds to the snare. There are 5 wimpy birds. You need to catch all 5 of them.

Wimpy birds become aggressive when you burn fever grass. Burning lavender will make them peck you.

Home Improvement
Items needed: Box trap and a few lavender.

Rid Oo'glog of the platypodes by laying a box trap and then burning lavender in the area west of Chief Tess, by the sulphur spring. Platypodes have poison spurs. Do not burn fever grass as it may cause them to attack with their "webbed feet of doom".

Once you catch one, check the shaking box to put the platypus in your inventory. After you have caught the whole family (Patrick, Peanut, Penelope, and Peter), go to the north-east corner of the village, by the coast within Oo'glog (see the "baby platypus" part in the map above), and release the platypodes near the bulrushes. Each released platypus gives you a casket or an oyster.

Cutting the Ribbon
Once you have caught all the creatures, return to Balnea one last time (dismiss any familiar you may have summoned before you talk to her). You see a cutscene of the grand opening of the spa and the Wise Old Man taking the waters.

Congratulations, quest complete!

Rewards

 * 1 quest point
 * A mixture of 4 items, either caskets or oysters
 * Access to spa facilities
 * Access to Oo'glog hunter area
 * Access to platypus summoning pet (level 10 Summoning). If you release your pet in the spot you released the others during the quest you will receive another casket or oyster
 * Access to Fresh Meat
 * Ability to travel to Oo'glog using the Charter ships
 * Ability to create Robust glass and Crystal glass
 * Access to Fresh Meat
 * Ability to travel to Oo'glog using the Charter ships
 * Ability to create Robust glass and Crystal glass

Music unlocked
Music tracks unlocked:
 * Bish Bash Bosh
 * Hot 'n' Bothered
 * Shaping Up
 * Spa Bizarre

Required for completing

 * Desert Tasks:
 * Elite: "I'm Super"
 * Tirannwn Tasks:
 * Elite: "The Expensive Range"

Cultural references

 * When Balnea asks you to go to the hotel manager, she uses the word Positivewise. This is a reference to, a fictional language from the book , by.
 * In the dialogue near the beginning of the quest, Balnea says "With a little imagineering and some nose-to-the-grindstone developmentation...". This could be a reference to , Disney's name for their engineers who designed the Disney theme parks.

Trivia

 * On the first day of release, when a player clicked to see spoilers it said: "The ogresses' customer relations has not yet incorporated this information into their incentivised pre-warning development plans. Please return when they have re-envisioned their interfacing and fed back to us."
 * In an option of dialogue with Balnea, the player insists that there are actually whales small enough to fit in the palm of one's hand. This is not true, however, since even the newborn babies of the smallest whale on earth are greater than 1 meter in length.
 * When asked how he likes the spa, the Wise Old Man responds by saying "sat sapienti", which is a play on the Latin phrase enough for the wise (first said by the philosopher Plautus, and originally meaning that enough information has been given for a wise person to figure out the rest, although it is used in a different context here).
 * Upon completion of the quest, the Adventurer's Log states: Balnea’s entrepreneurial spirit turned Oo'glog into a successful holiday resort for weary adventurers, if you like mud...

As a First Resort... As a First Resort...