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RuneScoop.com  >  The RuneScoop Ultimate Skill Guide for RuneScape       >  The RuneScoop Ultimate Skill Guide - Dungeoneering            >  The RuneScoop Ultimate Skill Guide - Dungeoneering - Challenge (Puzzle) Rooms

Agility Obstacles Collapsing Tunnels

The second of the “ferret puzzles”, that creature is the only thing those two rooms have in common. This time you aren’t feeding the ferret to get it to move the way you want; you are trying to catch it using your both your Hunter skill and your hunting skills. You have to make traps and trick the ferret into running into one of them—and that’s not nearly as simple as most hunting is in RuneScape.

If you’ve ever snared rabbits using the Hunter skill, this is similar in concept. Ironically, in that technique you use ferrets to chase rabbits into traps; this time it is a ferret that you’re trying to catch.

This challenge room resembles a loosely-constructed maze, with a number of N-S and W-E walls in it. On your minimap you’ll see that all four corners of the room are red, which is somewhat unique. In those corners you’ll find yellow holes; there are also more holes scattered around the room.

The star of the show is a small gray ferret with a pink crystal tied around its neck. The ferret is a scaredy-cat, and if you try to get near him he’ll do whatever he can to get away, running until he gets to one of the holes. He’ll then disappear in the hole and reappear somewhere else in the room.

This critter is lightning fast; it is possible to catch it “bare-handed”, but this is extremely difficult. Usually, trying to catch it yourself just means you end up chasing it into one of the corners, each of which inconveniently has an escape hole. Even when you are able to sneak up on it, sometimes you miss catching it anyway, and it bites you for damage and stuns you!

There’s a smarter way to get it, though. On one of the walls is a special version of the trees found elsewhere in the dungeon. You have to cut wood from here, then make special Hunter traps that you can lay on the ground. You have to place the traps and then orient yourself so that when you approach the ferret, it runs into the trap. Once caught, pick up the trap, which destroys the crystal and unlocks the doors.

• Skill Requirements: Hunter and Woodcutting.
  
  
• Tool Requirements: Hatchet and knife.
  
  
• Overall Difficulty: Moderate.
  
  
• Added Difficulty for High Latency Connections: Low.
  
  
• Danger Level: Low.
  
  
• Time Required: Low to Moderate.
  
  
• Monsters in Room? No (except ferret, of course).
  
  
• Resources in Room? Yes (often just other trees).
  
  
• Impact of Team on Puzzle: Low.

The key to doing this room without losing your mind is to make several traps. Some players mistakenly think you can only make one, which means you have to force the ferret into a specific corner—very aggravating.

Start out by finding the “Dry branches”, which should be on an outside wall. Be aware that the game often will also put a regular tree in this room, but traps made from ordinary branches won’t work! Click the branches and you’ll get “dry logs”. You have to click once for each set of logs you want. Get four sets. Then use your knife on each to make “simple traps”. Again, there’s no “Make-X” for this, so do it one at a time.

The obvious strategy is to drop the traps in each corner, but I guess the developers thought of that, so they won’t let you. Instead, lay down a trap one square away from each of the corners, along one of the walls.

Now, move near the ferret to flush it out. It should move directly away from you, eventually heading towards one of the corners. It won’t always go right in the trap—since the trap isn’t right in the corner, only one wall will have a trap next to it, so sometimes it gets a free pass to the hole in the corner. Even when it does go into the trap, it sometimes escapes and goes down the hole. That’s okay, though: when the ferret reappears, just flush it again, and keep doing this until it is caught.

You’ll know the ferret is caught when the yellow dot in the room disappears near a corner and doesn’t resurface elsewhere. Pick up the trap that caught it and the doors will unlock.

I have heard rumors of instances of this room where there are no dry branches! The room may also appear in F2P dungeons, where of course there is no Hunter skill. In this case your only option is to try to catch the ferret “barehanded”. The best way to to do this is to wait until it is next to the end of a wall, and sneak up on the other side of that wall to grab it. I’ve never managed to do this, though!

This challenge is the same for teams, but the presence of extra players can make it either easier or more difficult: it all depends on the team. A coordinated team can work together to try to trap the ferret in a particular corner, possibly meaning fewer traps are needed. On the other hand, a bunch of players just randomly moving around the room can make the process take longer than it should by causing the ferret to constantly dart all over the place.

In practice, most teams just let one player do the room while others concentrate on different parts of the map.

Agility Obstacles Collapsing Tunnels