Clue Juggling Guide – OSRS

Clue juggling is a term used to describe the act of intentionally dropping clues on the ground to let you get multiple clues at the same time. This is commonly used by limited accounts (region/chunk-locked, skillers, combat-only, etc.) to increase the chances of completing a full treasure trail and obtaining a reward casket. It can also be useful for regular players to more quickly complete some master clue steps by juggling a specific type of cryptic clue.

Why juggling works

Usually, you can’t get more than one clue scroll of the same tier at a time. For example, if you have a hard clue in your inventory (or bank, or grave), monsters will not drop any hard clues, and if there happens to be a hard clue on the ground, you won’t be able to pick it up. However, clue juggling changes this. If instead of holding your clue in your inventory, you drop it on the ground, then monsters (or implings, or any other source of clues) can drop a second one, and then you’ll have two clues when usually you’re not able to get more than one.

Of course, this doesn’t yet solve the problem: you still need to complete 4-6 steps in a row on a hard clue scroll to get a casket. The trick is that if you have two clues, one in your inventory and one on the ground, completing a step on one clue advances the “steps completed” progress for both scrolls, not just the one you were holding when you completed the step. This is the key reason why clue juggling is useful: it lets you progress down a treasure trail using multiple different scrolls with multiple different steps that you know you can complete, rather than leaving it up to chance what the next step the scroll will give you. So, if you get to a step on your scroll that you can’t complete, you can just drop it, pick up your juggled scroll from the ground, and then continue the partially-completed treasure trail rather than having to start from scratch. By having enough scrolls on the ground (for example, exactly six hard clue scrolls that each show a step that you are capable of completing), you can guarantee that you can get a casket even if you only complete a single step from each scroll.

How to juggle

Once you start completing steps on your treasure trail, any new scrolls you pick up will reset your treasure trail progress back to 0 for that tier. To effectively juggle, you must receive and juggle scrolls onto the ground before solving any steps. For example, imagine you have a hard clue scroll with 4 steps completed on the ground. If you receive another hard clue scroll as a drop, then picking up the new scroll will reset your hard treasure trail progress to 0 (but you may keep both scrolls and continue to juggle).

Dropped clue scrolls despawn in exactly 61 minutes, so you must pick up and re-drop every scroll on the ground before their timer is up. Logging out pauses the timer, and any scrolls you are juggling will follow you if you hop worlds. Using the RuneLite “Ground Items” plugin with the “Despawn timer” option enabled is very useful to keep track of each clue’s timer.

Although difficult, clue scrolls of different tiers can be juggled simultaneously.

As an example, imagine you’re a Wilderness-locked ironman who wants to complete a hard clue. Pop on some combat gear (and maybe a ring of wealth (i)) and head up to the hellhounds to start your juggling session. Since you want to complete a hard clue, you’ll aim to get six completeable scrolls to drop, which will guarantee a casket (there’s a chance of getting a casket with fewer scrolls, but you need six to guarantee it). Once you’re at the hellhounds:

1. Kill them normally for a while, picking up and checking every hard clue drop to see if it’s a step you can complete:
   1. If it is completeable, the juggling begins in earnest. Drop that scroll on the ground in a “keep” pile, and keep killing hellhounds until a second one drops.
   2. Otherwise, drop it in a “discard” pile that you allow to despawn, since an uncompletable step is worthless to you.
2. Periodically refresh the drop timer on the “keep” scroll to prevent it from despawning.
3. Once a hellhound drops a second scroll, check it to see if that step is completeable:
   1. If it is completeable, add it to your “keep” stack of juggled clues on the ground.
   2. Otherwise, drop the clue in a “discard” pile that you allow to despawn.
4. Continue this process of killing hellhounds, refreshing your stack of completeable steps, and hoping for more clue drops until you have your target of six steps that you can complete.

Now it’s time to actually go about completing the treasure trail. You can’t just pick up all six of your scrolls and bring them with you, since the game doesn’t allow you to have more than one of the same tier of clue in your inventory. So, you need to juggle all the clues while you’re completing the treasure trail too. You can either ferry them around to each step as you complete them, or ferry them to a central location (like the Ferox Enclave for our Wilderness example) and just return there before the hour is up to refresh their timers while taking one at a time to complete its step. Once you complete a step, the scroll you’re holding will show a new step, but in the (likely) case that it can’t be completed, you can just drop that and continue on with the other scrolls. So, you slowly complete your treasure trail, ferrying around a diminishing stack of clues until you get your casket. Hooray!

Master clue cryptic juggling

A slightly different form of clue juggling can be used to more quickly complete master clues and their notoriously long three-part cryptic steps. This works because the three torn clue scrolls that you obtain by completing each part of the cryptic don’t actually know which scroll they were obtained for, so with a clever bit of juggling you can essentially re-use a quick set of cryptics for any future cryptic master clues.

Keeping a quick cryptic master clue scroll around means you will not obtain further master clue scrolls (e.g. as rewards from lower-tier scrolls), so make sure you drop the saved scroll temporarily before opening caskets. Watson is a great help here as he can hold a master clue scroll for you without counting as you owning one yourself: simply turn in 1 of each lower-tier scroll like normal, and he will be forced to hold the resulting master clue scroll until you drop the one you already possess.

To juggle cryptics:

1. Complete master steps normally until you get a cryptic clue with three easy mini-steps (generally, three that are close to teleport locations). This is your “good clue”. Drop it and start up another master clue.
2. While you’re solving your new clue, make sure to re-juggle your “good clue” every hour so it doesn’t despawn.
3. Once you get to a new cryptic (presumably with a mini-step or two that’s slow to complete), that’s your “bad clue”. Drop it and pick up your “good clue”.
4. Go complete all the steps for the “good clue” but don’t combine the torn clue scrolls yet.
5. Get back to your “bad clue”, pick it back up (dropping your “good clue” back to the ground first) and then combine the torn clue scrolls. This will progress your “bad clue” to the next step, skipping its mini-steps.

The “good clue” with the quick mini-steps can be re-used infinitely. Pick it up and save it for another session. Note that you cannot obtain the torn pieces in advance, because any new master clue scrolls you pick up will cause your existing torn pieces to be deleted.