Holly (2011 Easter event)

Holly (2011 Easter event) was removed after an update.

The contents of this page no longer exist in RuneScape, and this article is kept for historical purposes.

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Holly


Release date								19 April 2011 (Update)
Removal date								3 May 2011 (Update)
Members								No
Voice Over								No
Official series								None
Age								Ambiguous
Combat^[?]								None

Advanced data

Quest ID								189
Quest create ID								? (edit)
Official difficulty								Novice
Links								Quests

The Holly was a temporary holiday quest which was part of the 2011 Easter event. In the Land of Holly and Hawthorn, the Queen of Sunrise and the Queen of Snow required assistance in transitioning the season from winter to spring.

Overview

Start point

Speak to the Queen of Sunrise in the Land of Holly and Hawthorn.

2011

Members

Free to play

Length
as displayed in-game

N/A

Requirements

Quests:
Holly None

None

Required items

Items from the tool belt are not listed unless they do not work or are not automatically added.

Hatchet
Tinderbox
Hammer (can be obtained during the quest)
Chisel (can be obtained during the quest)

Combat

None

Starting off

Talk to the Queen of Sunrise to begin. Ask her if she has a task for you. She will explain that this year, the Queen of Snow and her are fighting for the Year using evil trees. She then explains that the Year is an item which can change what season it is in Gielinor, and it is winter because it is in possession of the Queen of Snow. Then, she asks the player to chop down an evil holly tree to obtain the Year for her, and explains that the Queen of Snow has it in her trees.

An Evil holly tree

To do this, find the current evil holly tree in the holly area. You can chop it, but if it is not fully grown, nurture it until it is. It takes three minutes for the Evil Holly Tree to grow. Once you have interacted with the evil tree (or its roots) at least once by either nurturing, chopping, or burning it, when it falls (i.e., dies) you can collect a reward by interacting with the fallen tree, as with a normal evil tree. However, no matter how you interact with the tree, it will take 7 minutes until it falls/dies. Your reward will be the Year; take it to the Queen of Sunrise.

It's not the real Year

The fake year

After a cutscene in which the Queen of Sunrise attempts to turn winter into spring by performing Invoke Spring and fails, subsequently discovering that the Year you obtained is not the real Year. She has a new assignment: retrieve the true Year.

To obtain the true Year, you must first talk to the Stone, River, and Cloud spirits to obtain keys of their elements. They are found to the north-east, south-east, and north-west, respectively. To obtain the keys, ask each spirit how the player can obtain the true Year. The spirit will give a cryptic hint depending on its element (e.g., the River spirit will say that it is submerged in deep water, while the Cloud spirit will say that it is high in the clouds) and then give you a key of their respective elements. They explain that the key will help you find the true Year. It is required to get all the keys.

		Location
Stone spirit	Stone key	North-east in Hawthorn
River spirit	Water key	South-east in Hawthorn
Cloud spirit	Cloud key	North-west in Holly

The area where the Cloud spirit resides
The area where the Stone spirit resides
The area where the River spirit resides

After you have obtained all the keys, head south-west of Holly. You will see that the river ends abruptly with a boulder in the way. Use the Stone key on the boulder to make it disappear, opening the entrance to a cave. Enter it.

The river is still flowing inside the cave. Follow it and you will see a large pool of water with bubbles forming in the middle. Use the Water key on the area with bubbles, labelled "pool". The water will then drain away, exposing a tunnel beneath the pool. Climb down the nearby stone wall and enter the cave.

Follow the tunnel and you will see another pool of water with steam forming in the middle. Use your Cloud key on it. The player proceeds to jump in, blasting them up through the ceiling and into another room.

The pool with bubbles before using the Water key
The pool with bubbles after using the Water key
The pool with steam before using the Cloud key

Ice sculptures

You will appear in a room with the Queen of Snow sitting, surrounded by ice, with a large block of ice nearby. Talk to her, and ask her about what she is doing there. She explains that it is the only ice cave that hasn't melted, due to the transition from Winter to Spring. Exclaim that she has the Year. Don't command her to give you the Year, however, because she will say that she is a queen, and that you have no right to talk to her like that, which will be proceeded by the conversation ending.

She admits that she stole the Year. She then explains that she can only see Winter, and anything else is dark and empty, and she can't understand why anybody would want a world like that. She only stole the year to protect the world from becoming barren and empty in her eyes.

Tell her that you could help her appreciate Spring. She says that she would like that, but that you would have to carve what you want to show her out of ice, because that is all she can see. Pick up the hammer and the chisel from near the entrance of the room. If you have a Golden Hammer in your backpack, the hammer will not appear on the ground. Use one of them on the large block of ice. She will then ask you what you are going to carve into the ice. Your options are:

A stag
Cute baby animals
The Easter Bunny bringing eggs
Cute baby animals... impaled on swords!

Pick any of the options (it does not matter which one you pick; the outcome will be the same).

Talk to the Queen of Snow. A cut-scene will play, in which she stands up and begins to contemplate your sculpture. Depending on which sculpture you carve, it yields a slightly different reaction from the her, but this is irrelevant, and the quest progresses as normal regardless. She also mentions that she will find an appropriately cold place to place it on display - you can find the ice sculpture next to the Windswept tree near the fairy ring with code DKS.

She then says that the player made her believe in Spring, and that she feels okay about passing the Year on. She then exits the room to a ledge outside and disappears in a shower of snow.

After the cut-scene, you appear back near the Season Tree, with the true Year in your inventory.

The ice room
The Queen of Snow sitting alone in the last ice cave.
The Queen of Snow disappears in a final shower of snow.
The Easter Bunny sculpture next to the Windswept tree.

The 'Cute baby animals' sculpture
The 'Cute baby animals... impaled on swords!' sculpture
The 'The Easter Bunny bringing eggs' sculpture
The 'stag' sculpture

Finishing up

Once back at the Season Tree, talk to the Queen of Sunrise. You will hand her the true Year, and she will ask you where you found it. You can choose to tell her the truth, that the Queen of Snow was hiding it, or just tell her that you found it lying in a cave. Either option will progress the quest.

A cutscene plays where the Queen of Sunrise attempts to turn Winter into Spring by performing Invoke Spring again, and succeeds.

Congratulations, quest complete!

Rewards

A Sunbeam crown, which can be charged by chopping down evil holly trees for teleportation to evil trees.
The Invoke Spring emote (and any other Easter emotes if they weren't unlocked in previous events).
The ice sculpture made during the quest will be standing near the DKS fairy ring.

Music unlocked

Spring Song

Credits

Holly (2011 Easter event)
Developers

Developer				Mod John A

Update history

This information has been compiled as part of the update history project. Some updates may not be included – see here for how to help out!

update 19 April 2011 (Update):
- Added to game.

Trivia

A glitch on the day of the quest's release showed the evil holly tree's health as always below 5%, even if it had just been born.
Another glitch has been discovered regarding the evil trees. If you log into the right locations, you can appear inside of a tree, or inside of the roots. If you are inside of the roots but outside the tree you can chop at the tree without being attacked by the roots. The only way out is to kill the root, or the whole tree. When you kill the root from inside you will not get any kindling.
Using a chisel and/or a hammer with the finished ice sculpture used to yield the following message: "The statue is perfect. To modify it further would be a crime against art." Jagex later implemented a change allowing players to change their sculpture by using a chisel and/or a hammer in response to complaints on the forums.
If a player interacts with a living evil holly tree, they could receive the fake year by searching the recently fallen tree (which would remain for some time after it was defeated). They do not need to kill an Evil Tree at all. It is unknown whether it is a bug.
For some reason, new evil trees, or the seedlings, seem to always spawn close to the last evil tree.
On free-to-play worlds, evil tree kindling in backpack would be consumed to light a fire around a holly tree if no Easter evil tree kindling is in backpack, even though it appears as a members object.