The Needle Skips
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The Needle Skips (#221) | |
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Release date | 19 November 2018 (Update) |
Members | Yes |
Voice Over | Full |
Recommended | Yes |
Official series | The Elder God Wars #2 |
Age | Sixth Age |
Timeline | World Guardian |
Start area | Kandarin North-west |
Combat | None |
Entity icon | ![]() |
Advanced data | |
Quest ID | 399 |
Quest create ID | 234 |
Official difficulty | Novice |
Links | Quests |
Infobox • Talk page |
The Needle Skips is a quest featuring the story of a local family and The Needle, one of the elder artefacts. It is one of few quests that are fully voice-acted, and has a mystery theme that takes after previous quests like One Piercing Note. The Needle Skips is very narrative-driven, and players must find and enter clues to unlock the full story.
Mod Osborne and Mod Krista, prior to her departure from Jagex, began working on the quest as part of the 2017 Game Jam.
Overview[edit | edit source]
Start point | ![]() | |||
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Member requirement | ![]() | |||
Official length | Short | |||
Requirements |
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Items required | Items from the tool belt are not listed unless they do not work or are not automatically added.
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Recommended |
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Enemies to defeat |
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Starting out[edit | edit source]
Begin the quest by searching the needle, located west of Piscatoris Fishing Colony; follow the southern path (coloured in grey on the map) to the west, over a small bridge, then north, then turn east just before the large house, and walk over the stone pathway.
Upon searching the needle short dialogue and cutscene occurs, showing the nearby buildings while the player wonders what has happened. After the cutscene the player will receive a shard of the needle and a mysterious body will appear laying on the ground beside the needle.
A search of the body will reveal that the body appears to be frozen in time, with a message saying "Megan" written in blood near it. Communing with the shard will allow the player to search for keywords from the story. By entering "Megan" (the message found near the body) the player will unlock a fragment of a memory that is viewable through the shard.
Continue searching the quest area for additional keywords, and enter them into the shard to unlock more fragments of memories and add characters and objects to the quest area. Throughout the quest, scenery such as fireplaces, bookcases and bushes will have to be interacted with.
A temporal portal will appear next to the Needle once chapters are completed. Use the portal to progress to the next chapter. Note that it is not necessary for the player to unlock all fragments of memories to progress.
It should be noted that one can enter all of the keywords for a chapter, play through the story, and then interact with the necessary scenery to progress the quest. The interactions and the memory fragment unlocks don't need to be done in any particular order to complete the quest.
There is some leniency for some of the keywords. For instance, during the first chapter, entering "30" works to unlock the keyword "30th".
Chapter 1[edit | edit source]
Chapter 1 is told from Megan's perspective.
If you are interested in the story, type in the first word of each fragment of a memory, for it to play in order. Be careful as some words are repeated so typing in one word will play two fragments, most likely out of order. Read through all the fragments and choose words that only appear in the fragment you are trying to play.
If you're not interested in the story, you can skip to the end of this section by entering the word "fire" or "fireplace" into your needle shard and interacting with the fireplace. Enter the portal next to the Needle to progress to next chapter.
Below are all keywords needed to fill up Megan's section of the shard.
Chapter 1 | |||||||
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30th | abandoned | adventures | angry | apprentice | argument | attack | banquet |
bed | birthday | bleeding | blood | blue | books | brand | calendar |
cart | choir | cloth | cook | creatures | cry | death | disease |
doctor | dying | fear | fireplace | flames | friends | fuel | gail |
gods | hannibus | help | homeowner | house | husband | illness | imagination |
joss | journey | killed | laziness | learn | letter | love | marriage |
medicine | megan | misery | monsters | month | mother | murdered | needle |
pack | poetry | potions | prayers | primrose | ramblings | saradomin | scar |
sea trolls | secret | sing | sloop | song | spear | spells | stranger |
study | temper | thinner | tower | toys | voice | wand | weak |
wishes | wizards | yak | year | zamorak |
Below are all words categorised into the memory fragments as seen on the shard.
Memory fragment | Keywords |
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Crushed under a pile of books | books, gods, husband, imagination, joss, marriage, saradomin, toys, wizards, zamorak, secret |
The day we moved here | books, cart, help, homeowner, journey, megan, yak |
The men I have loved | angry, love, prayers, saradomin |
Temper-temper | abandoned, husband, joss, laziness, temper, wand |
The arrogance of wizards | learn, tower, study, wizards |
The blue woman | abandoned, blue, gail, husband, joss, love, monsters, needle, spells, stranger |
Imagining another family | creatures, friends, imagination, letter, monsters, poetry, ramblings, sing, song |
Songbird | choir, sing, song, voice |
A wilting flower | argument, bed, disease, dying, fear, illness, love, misery, mother, primrose, weak |
A year | angry, creatures, disease, doctor, dying, illness, monsters, thinner, year |
I would pay any price | doctor, medicine, potions |
Papercuts | adventures, cry, hannibus, weak |
Pulling closed the curtain | attack, bleeding, blood, death, house, imagination, killed, murdered, sea trolls, spear |
The worst moment | attack, sea trolls |
Damn you Saradomin | gods, prayers, saradomin, sea trolls |
A second chance | 30th, birthday, calendar, homeowner, megan, month, wishes |
No one's going to harm you again | 30th, birthday, month |
The wizard's tower | apprentice, banquet, cart, cloth, cook, joss, tower, pack, sloop, wizards |
The wizard's apprentice | apprentice, sloop |
An unforgivable act | adventures, friends, hannibus |
The fire within us | brand, flames, fireplace, fuel, letter, poetry, scar |
Chapter 2[edit | edit source]
Chapter 2 is told from Primrose's perspective. If you're not interested in the story, you can skip to the end of this section by entering the word "birthday". Go to the portal next to the Needle to progress to next chapter.
If you are interested in the story type in the bold words first.
Below are all keywords needed to fill up Primrose's section of the shard.
Chapter 2 | |||||||
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30th | apprentice | baba | beautiful | bed | birthday | book | books |
boredom | bottle | boyfriend | burn | cloak | clown | constellations | dad |
daemonheim | danced | demon | diary | dome | doubt | dubbo | friends |
gail | ghost | giant | gilly | gossip | grave | hannibus | joss |
key | letters | liar | lies | lizard | lizardman | look | lover |
lying | magic | medicine | megan | metum | mum | overbearing | plagiarism |
poison | possessed | potion | return | runt | scar | scary | shade |
sheep | sickness | sloop | snake | strength | thing | thok | time |
willikers |
Below are all words categorised into the memory fragments as seen on the shard. The keyword "metum" for the subchapter "A demon's name" will only be recognised after "birthday" is entered for the last subchapter. Even then, the memory won't be shown, and instead there will be a message "The Needle glows, recognising the name. But now is not the time to utter it."
Memory fragment | Keywords |
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Imaginary friends | bed, boredom, friends, lying, thok, time, lies, liar |
The last dragonrider | hannibus, lizardman, lizard, book, books, thok, baba, gilly |
Between the pages | apprentice, boyfriend, dad, letters, lover, plagiarism, sloop, joss |
Dubbo's story | baba, dubbo, giant, medicine, megan, overbearing, poison, runt, sheep, mum |
My champion | thok, daemonheim, demon, ghost |
The lonely demon | demon, possessed, thing |
A moment's respite | medicine, poison, potion, strength |
A big old bag of lies | burn, liar, lies, scar, sloop, snake, lying |
A new lie every day | liar, lies, lying |
The shade | shade, cloak |
Silly old sheep | baba, sheep, gilly, willikers, bottle, medicine, gossip |
Gilly | clown, gilly, key, time, willikers, cloak, diary |
A moment of strength | diary, 30th, return |
Dancing without music | 30th, grave, return |
The weaver's dance | danced, look, dome, constellations |
The most beautiful woman | gail, strength, beautiful, scary, sickness, magic |
A missing grave | grave, look |
Happy birthday | doubt, birthday |
A demon's name | metum |
Travelling back | birthday |
Chapter 3[edit | edit source]
Chapter 3 is told from Gail's perspective. If you're not interested in the story, you can skip to the end of this section by entering the word "wenla". Go to the Needle and investigate it to finish the chapter.
If you are interested in the story type in the bold words first.
Below are all keywords needed to fill up Gail's section of the shard.
Chapter 3 | |||||||
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anger | angry | bed | betrayed | book | buckthorn | burn | childhood |
cost | cruel | dead | demon | disease | dying | ending | energy |
evil | fainted | fainting | family | fate | father | fix | following |
gail | happiness | happy | help | ill | illness | infected | knife |
legs | loop | megan | metum | mistakes | monster | mother | necessary |
necessary evil | needle | no | note | paper | parents | peeling | people |
possessed | primrose | return | returning | scar | siblings | skin | stories |
story | thing | traitor | wenla | worse |
Below are all words categorised into the memory fragments as seen on the shard. The keyword "metum" for the subchapter "A demon's name" won't show a memory fragment, and instead there will be a message "The Needle glows, recognising the name. But now is not the time to utter it."
Memory fragment | Keywords |
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Growing pains | childhood, father, mistakes, mother, needle, gail |
Loneliness | happy, happiness, people, energy |
What family means | family, happy, parents, siblings |
Burning books | book, burn, anger, angry |
There was someone in there with her | burn, demon, megan, possessed, scar, book |
A demon's name | metum |
An evil in the ink | demon, monster, possessed, thing |
The agony of kindness | needle, returning |
Just one more | cruel, disease, fate, illness, dying, dead |
Easing her pain | disease, fix, illness, infected, legs, peeling, skin, worse |
A necessary evil | evil, necessary evil |
The note | note, paper |
The beginning of the end | bed, buckthorn, evil, fainting, following, necessary, no, primrose, return |
Family | buckthorn, cost, family, help, no, primrose |
Closing the loop | ending, loop |
Assuming the worst | fainting, fainted |
The buckthorn bush | buckthorn |
A dulled needle | betrayed, traitor, knife |
This isn't the end | dead, dying, story, stories |
The end of the chapter | wenla |
The finale[edit | edit source]
Go back to the Needle and continue to the finale. This time, you will end up in the present. You will need to find a cure for Gail, Primrose, and Megan. As Gail mentioned previously, the leaves and berries of the buckthorn bush can be used to cure illness.
Run down the path from the house, and pick from the buckthorn bush by the river. Grind the leaves and crush the berries. Go inside the house and search the bookcase northeast of Megan. Talk to Megan who is possessed by the demon. She can only be freed by saying the demon's correct name, "Metum". You must have searched the bookcase to get the correct name as an option.
Head upstairs and use the buckthorn smelling salts on Primrose, who is lying unconscious on the floor.
Use the crushed buckthorn berries, now called bottle of crushed berries, on the stove or fireplace in the house to create a buckthorn salve. Use this healing salve on Gail, who is still up on the hill next to the Needle. She will recover and go down to Megan to talk to her.
After the dialogue that follows, continue to the Needle, pick up the note, read it, and go back to the house. Talk to Megan to finish the quest.
Congratulations, quest complete!
Rewards[edit | edit source]
- 1 quest point
- 1 small XP lamp
- 2 Treasure Hunter keys (Ironman accounts will not receive these)
- Additional rewards/activities
- Discover all chapters to claim a medium lamp.
- For full completion, players can find all of the words in each chapter. After the quest is completed, players can replay chapters by searching the Needle (or the rubble that remains after Desperate Times). To get the large XP lamp you need to speak with Megan outside of the quest replays.
- Music unlocked
Achievements[edit | edit source]
- The Needle Skips (
0) – Complete this quest.
- Pulling on the Threads (
10) – Discover all of the chapters in 'The Needle Skips' and then claim your reward from Megan.
Required for completing[edit | edit source]
The Needle Skips is directly required for the following quests/miniquests:
Transcript[edit | edit source]
Gallery[edit | edit source]
Credits[edit | edit source]
The Needle Skips | |
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Developers | |
Developer | Mod Osborne, Mod Krista |
Art & Graphics | |
Characters | Mod Damo |
Environments | Mod Alex |
Audio | |
Composition | Mod Grace |
Databox • Talk page |
Update history[edit | edit source]
- patch 30 November 2020 (Update):
- The Shard of the Needle is now displayed correctly on the 'Quest Complete' screen for The Needle Skips.
- The voiceover for Primrose's note to Gail in The Needle Skips now matches the text.
- patch 19 August 2019 (Update):
- During 'The Needle Skips' quest you will now correctly unlock the memory fragment 'A second chance' when using the keyword 'Megan'.
- Fixed an issue where some chapters of the Needle Skips had their text cut off.
- patch 22 July 2019 (Update):
- A grammatical issue within The Needle Skips has been resolved.
- A mismatch between the voice-over and text for a certain line during The Needle Skips has been resolved.
- ninja 20 May 2019 (Update):
- The Needle Skips quest has also been improved!
- During The Needle Skips, keywords will now be coloured in the chatbox:
- Red if the keyword is not valid.
- Light green if the keyword is valid and has been newly discovered.
- Dark green if the keyword is valid but has previously been discovered.
- During The Needle Skips, if a new keyword has been discovered, the subchapter it belongs to will flash around the portrait.
- During The Needle Skips, if you guess a correct keyword, the list will update immediately, allowing you to see if it belongs to the section you are currently viewing.
- When searching for keywords in The Needle Skips, the search box will re-highlight if you guessed an incorrect word, saving you a click.
- After uncovering a memory, the keyword interface will reopen with the search box highlighted.
- During The Needle Skips, if you click on the search box within the keywords interface and close it, the search box will be re-highlighted once the interface is reopened.
- During The Needle Skips, if the replay button is clicked in the keywords interface, the search box will be automatically highlighted.
- During The Needle Skips, guessing a keyword will bring up 1 of 3 messages:
- You have already discovered the word [keyword].
- The word [keyword] doesn't reveal anything.
- You have discovered the word [keyword].
- When replaying chapters of The Needle Skips, players now have the option to leave the instance by selecting the 'Return to normal time' option.
- During The Needle Skips, keywords will now be coloured in the chatbox:
- The Needle Skips quest has also been improved!
Trivia[edit | edit source]
- The Needle was first mentioned in Runescape: Idle Adventures, a mobile spin-off of RuneScape released in February 2016.
- Similarly, Gail bears a close resemblance to Sally, the avatar of the Needle.
- As mentioned during "The fire within us", Megan owns a horse, which is one of the few references to horses within the game.
- Primrose and Gail's names may reference the The Hunger Games trilogy.
- Upon completion of the quest RuneMetrics state: "I released Megan from her self imposed torment and helped Primrose to fulfill her destiny and become Gail."
- This quest rewarded the 400th quest point to be released. Upon completion, if every quest released prior had been completed, players were finally able to claim the eighth lamp from Philipe Carnillean and Spot the black dragon.
- At the start of the quest, the needle hums with great power. This could be a reference to the Places of Power in the Witcher trilogy of video games.
- The quest draws inspiration from the video game Her Story.
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Music | |
Miscellaneous |