RECIPE FOR DISASTER SUBGUIDE · MEMBERS

Freeing Evil Dave

Evil Dave needs some kind of spicy stew. You will need Evil Dave's help for this one. He lives in his mother's basement...

Recipe for Disaster/Freeing Evil Dave — OSRS Wiki quest image
OSRS Wiki image for Recipe for Disaster/Freeing Evil Dave. OSRS WikiGame image © Jagex Ltd
Difficulty
Special
Length
Medium
Quest points
1
Released
15 March 2006
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Before you start

Where to start

Inspect Evil Dave in the Lumbridge Castle dining room.

Enemies to defeat

None

STEP BY STEP

Walkthrough

Follow the chapters below. Click any screenshot or diagram to view it at full size.

Before you begin

  1. ^ If making the unspiced stews.

Note: This section alone has been known to take some players well over 90 minutes to complete, so come prepared!


Bug Bugs:
  • Occasionally Evil Dave will not tell you what he ate, to get around this hold down the space bar when talking with him and it will bring up a list of options, you can then select "because the magic requires it" and be able to proceed.
  • There appears to currently be a bug, although rare, where if you teleport outside of the dining hall with a normal cat or a hellcat, it will turn invisible, and you will not be able to see or interact with it. If this happens, simply log out and back in, and you should have your hellcat back. (It will be following you—you won't need a free inventory space.)

Inspect Evil Dave in the Lumbridge Castle dining room to start the quest. Then go to Edgeville. The house west of the bank is Evil Dave's mother's house. Talk to her and ask her either question. Then, climb down the trapdoor. You will see that Evil Dave has gotten into summoning demons as well. However, they are hellrats, the weakest form of demon ever. Talk to him, and ask him what he ate, saying he must tell you "because the magic requires it". He'll eventually tell you that it was a perfectly spicy evil stew, like the ones his mother makes. Talk to Doris (Dave's mother) again. She will tell you that the hellrats stole all of the spices.

Hunting heinous hell-rats.
Hunting heinous hell-rats. Image source ↗

Since the Hell-Rat Behemoths cannot be fought until the subquest is completed, you will need to hunt down hellrats instead. If your cat catches a hellrat, you will get a brown, red, yellow or orange spice, which contains anywhere from 1 to 4 doses. When your cat catches 7 hellrats it will become a hellcat.

Using these spices, you must construct the perfect stew for Evil Dave, which will be a stew that contains all four of the spices, but at different random values between 1-3. This can be a very time consuming process, so to conserve spices and save a lot of time with this, focus on finding out one spice potency at a time.

Start off by using (1) dose of one colour on a stew and give it to Evil Dave. He will then eat and comment on your stew, there are two outcomes from this:

Correct: If he says, "one of the spices is correct, the rest are incorrect" that means the current number you used is correct. Write it down.

Incorrect: If he says "none of them are right", you will need to try again. Make a stew with two doses of spice in it. If it works, the correct amount of that spice is two. If Dave still doesn't like it, you know the correct amount of spice is 3. You do not need to "confirm" it any further.

At most, you will need six doses of each spice, as you cannot put more than three doses of a single spice in one stew. Keep doing this, and eventually you will find out 1 value for each of the 4 spices.

Pay attention when adding spices to the stew. Using a spice again quickly, before it is updated to reflect the spice's value after the first use, will result in the spice not being used. Looking in the game chatbox to make sure the spice has been added for each usage is recommended.

Make this final stew with the correct values of spice and give it to Evil Dave, and he will say that it is correct. He will not eat all of the stew this time. Make sure you finish the entire dialogue! Bring it back to Evil Dave in Lumbridge; make sure you do not eat the stew, or you will have to go back and get the spices again.

Excess spices can be dropped or kept in the bank to make more spicy stews for personal use. Note, that they may be decanted to 4-dose items much like potions.

Quick checklist 12 instructions

Use this when you already know the route. The full walkthrough above includes explanations and diagrams.

Walkthrough

  1. Inspect Evil Dave

  2. Talk to Doris (House west of Edgeville bank).

    Say: Is Dave in? → Yes, I'm evil!

  3. Talk to Evil Dave in Edgeville (Down the trapdoor).

    Say: What did you eat at the secret council meeting? → You've got to tell me because the magic requires it!

  4. Talk to Doris upstairs.

  5. Use your cat to catch hell-rats. (Right-click chase). Using a fully grown cat is much more efficient, but using a kitten still works.

  6. Collect spices from hell-rats there are 4 spices to collect: yellow, orange, red, brown. You only need a maximum of 6 doses of each colour.

    • The spicy stew required to free Evil Dave consists of all 4 different colour spices, 1-3 dose(s) of spice of each colour need to be added to the stew.

    • Add 1 dose of one colour and give it to Evil Dave. If he says "Hmm... I think you've got the amount of one spice right, but the others are wrong" then make a note that it is 1 dose of that colour.

    • If he doesn't say this then try again with 2 doses of the same colour, if he says "Hmm... I think you've got the amount of one spice right, but the others are wrong" then make a note that it is 2 doses of that colour. If he doesn't say this then make a note that it is 3 doses of that colour.

    • Repeat this process with the other 3 colours.

  7. When you have made a note of the amount of the 4 colours individually, add these amounts to the same stew and give it to Evil Dave (he will not consume it), then give him the spicy stew in Lumbridge.

  8. Congratulations, section complete!

QUEST COMPLETE

Rewards

  • 7,000 Cooking Cooking experience
  • The ability to catch hellrats to get a Hellcat
  • The ability to have your cat fight Hell-Rat Behemoths
  • The ability to add coloured spices to stew by catching hellrats (Spicy stews can boost and lower certain stats)
  • Further access to the Culinaromancer's Chest

OSRS WIKI CONTRIBUTORS

Sources & credits

Walkthrough text and preparation lists are adapted from Old School RuneScape Wiki contributors under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. Game imagery © Jagex Ltd; individual image sources are linked in their captions. This page is fan-made and not affiliated with Jagex.

Game icons © Jagex Ltd, via the OSRS Wiki. Interface icons by Lucide.