During The Tourist Trap quest, budding adventurer Ana set out to explore the Kharidian Desert, but her plans were rudely interrupted by a brief stint of kidnapping and slavery in a mining camp. If you talk to Ana's Mum after the quest, she says:
This is the actual dialogue currently in-game.
Her expectations were right. Ana is still eager to explore the world and has set sail onto Gielinor's oceans in search of swashbuckling adventure. But Ana would be wise to avoid Rumrunner's Retreat, an island of pirates that lure naive sailors with promises of wealth and adventure, only to imprison them and force them to work in the island's underground mine.
Click here to see the placement of Rumrunner's Retreat on the world map.
Rumrunner's Retreat is a new island located in the Sunset Ocean, South of Varlamore and between Shimmering Atoll and The Crown Jewel. It has a distinctive bite-shaped coastline and features camphor trees and sand crabs. Docking at Rumrunner's Retreat requires 67 Sailing.
A pirate crew discovered the island while smuggling rum between Varlamore and Kandarin, though the distinctive Tortugan-style buildings already present on the island suggests the pirates were not the island's first inhabitants. Nonetheless, the pirates have moved in and claimed the island as their own, forming a convenient base of operations for brewing and smuggling rum.
The island has an underground mine, featuring veins of copper, lead, and nickel ore (but no gold ore, much to the pirates' disappointment). There is also an underground lake for lantern fishing and a nearby deposit box.
Rumrunner's Retreat also serves as the starting point for a new quest, The Pirate Trap.
While exploring the underground mine of Rumrunner's Retreat, our player character will find Ana, who unfortunately was captured by the island's pirates and is now a mining slave (again). Talking to Ana will begin The Pirate Trap quest.
The Pirate Trap is a simple fetch quest, involving travelling between Rumrunner's Retreat, Draynor Manor, and the Ruins of Unkah and talking to NPCs at each location. Keep reading if you're interested in the quest specifics, or feel free to skip ahead to the quest rewards.
When you ask Ana what you could use to bargain with the pirates for her freedom, Ana reveals that the pirates initially mistook her for Ava, a scientist at Draynor Manor. The pirates were excited, as rumours say Ava makes ammo retrieval devices and could possibly design something the pirates could use to retrieve cannonballs (pirates use a lot of cannonballs). Ana speculates that if you could build a cannonball retrieval device, the pirates would eagerly trade her freedom for it.
You go to Draynor Manor and talk to Ava, who designs a schematic for "Ava's Anchor", a ship-mounted cannonball retrieval device. You return to Rumrunner's Retreat and show the schematic to the pirate leader, but rather than trade for it, the pirates simply steal the schematic from you and refuse to let Ana free. Left with no choice, you put Ana in a barrel (again, much to her chagrin) and smuggle her off the island to your ship. You then sail to the Ruins of Unkah and safely return Ana home (similar to how we escort Floopa to The Great Conch during the Troubled Tortugans quest).
Ava's Anchor!
A new buildable facility for skiffs and sloops that give a 75% chance to recover cannonballs fired from your ship's cannon.
I'm not an artist, but here's two mockups of what Ava's Anchor could look like.
Ex-Pirate Ana becomes a recruitable crewmate!
Currently, no crewmates are able to both pilot a sloop and operate rune/dragon cannons. But Ana's recent time amongst the pirates and Spirit Anglers has taught her how, making her a valuable addition to the crew.
Two new notice boards with improved bounty task drop rates!
Rumrunner's Retreat is surrounded by an ocean (pardon the pun) of dangerous sea creatures that interfere with the pirates' rum smuggling operations. The pirates are offering rewards for any sailors willing to remove these pesky predators.
In terms of sailing experience, bounty tasks are currently an under-rewarding training method. To rectify this, completing The Pirate Trap will unlock a new notice board on Rumrunner's Retreat that only offers bounty tasks (the pirates don't trust strangers to courier their rum). These bounty tasks will have improved drop rates for Albatross beaks, Stingray skins, and all other bounty drops. This should make tasks faster to finish, improving experience rates and making bounty tasks a more viable training method (though still less xp/hr than Barracuda Trials).
A 2nd bounty-task-only notice board will also be available at Buccaneer's Haven after completing The Pirate Trap, conveniently located closeby to the higher levelled monsters found in the Northern Ocean.
I realise these rewards are quite strong, so in case they're too powerful, I have ideas for other rewards.
Upgraded darts/blowpipes!
Given that The Tourist Trap unlocks the ability to make darts, it seems fitting for its sequel The Pirate Trap to also have a dart-related reward. I have several ideas, but my two favourites are:
1. The ability to make lead and cupronickel darts. Lead darts have a ranged accuracy/strength between iron and steel, while cupronickel darts are between adamantite and runite. Lead bars and cupronickel bars will produce 75 dart tips per bar instead of the typical 15, making these darts actually viable to produce.
2. The ability to buff the new wooden blowpipes by applying squid venom, gathered from lantern fishing within the Rumrunner's Retreat underground lake. This would give wooden blowpipes a 25% chance for monsters to become poisoned (not venomed), acting as a weaker version of the toxic blowpipe's 50% chance for monsters to become venomed.
The lore reason for this reward could be that, during The Pirate Trap quest, Ana refuses to escape in a barrel and instead convinces you to supply her and the other slaves with darts/blowpipes so they can revolt against the pirates. While doing so, you learn how to make the upgraded darts/blowpipes.
New rum for your ship!
Completing The Pirate Trap could give access to the pirates' rum, which could be placed in your ship's keg facility for a bonus of some kind (e.g., improved bounty task droprates, improved fishing xp from trawling, ocean monsters are unaggressive to your boat, your boat moves faster for 3 minutes after completing a courier/bounty task).
Thank you for reading my submission.
If you like this idea, please share your support on the 2007Scape subreddit thread.
Mods Player Nibbles II
Not part of The Old School Team.