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I've seen a lot of requests here for a new skilling boss, so I tried to come up with one while AFK Fishing. Likely too long and complex to ever be implemented but it was fun to come up with it so the post was flaired with Creative rather than Suggestion. Warning: Extremely long read
Story
After the events of Curse of the Black Stone, Xau-Tak lost all influence over Gielinor, but didn't give up trying to invade. They knew that corrupting the adventurer themselves was their best bet, as they canonically defeated the Ambassador, so Xau waited in the Erebus until the player would use the Codex (the Archaelogy Monolith).
Once the player did, Xau attempted to blast them with concentrated black stone corruption energy, but it missed and hit a tomato plant south of the Archaeology Guild instead. The tomato turned dark, giant, sentient, and its leaves turned into black hands.
It named itself Xau-Tak-Mato and intends to spread Xau-Taks influence all over Gielinor by planting and growing a new type of plant called Black Stone Tomatoes that can corrupt people the same way as Black Stone.
Varrock Guards attempted to slice the dangerous tomato, but unfortunately everyone who even got close were instantly corrupted and became Xau-Tak cultists. There was seemingly no hope to stop it until...
The Cabbage God Brassica Prime arrived
Brassica was amazed to meet a fellow god-like talking plant produce and insisted becoming best friends with Xau-Tak-Mato. The tomato attempted to corrupt the cabbage god but Brassica's sheer obliviousness made them completely immune to Xau-Tak-Mato's corrupting influence.
Eventually the two talking vegetables agreed to be "friends" and Xau-Tak-Mato challenged Brassica to a duel to the death, knowing they could kill Brassica and can continue trying to corrupt Gielinor.
However Brassica talked Xau-Tak-Mato into having a farming contest first. The tomato gave up trying to argue with Brassica agreed, but plots to use it as an opportunity to gain more power.
The "Battlefield"
South of the Archaeology guild you can find an area containing 5x5 Farming Patches separated by 2 tile wide path ways with a composter in the center, along with Brassica and Xau-Tak-Mato on the opposite side. Each farming patch is a 3x3. The edges of the contest are also 2 tile wide pathways. Its notably smaller than Croesus but it is meant for solo.
A Varrock Guard nearby tells the player all the lore related stuff and how his friends got corrupted trying to intervene with the tomato.
Brassica explains that the farming contest has no rules as its "just for fun" so they need you to help them plant Cabbages, while sabotaging Xau-Tak-Mato who plants Black Stone Tomatoes, or BST for short. The composter in the center was blessed with Brassica's power and can generate extremely overpowered compost quickly and you are free to use it, but Brassica only permits you to put BSTs in it. They agreed with Xau-Tak-Mato to have a combat duel afterwards.
The player insists that the fate of the world rests in Brassica's leaves, and if they lose the duel to the death afterwards Xau-Tak-Mato will be free to destroy Gielinor.
They doubt the player about the fate of the world, but explains that for every cabbage Brassica harvests during the contest, they will absorb its "delicious-ness" power to become stronger, and if they absorb enough cabbages they maybe able to win the duel. The player agrees to help Brassica if it means protecting Gielinor, and adds an option to start the contest.
The "Battle"
Upon starting the farming contest, half of all patches contain cabbages, while the other half contain BST (Black Stone Tomatoes), distributed randomly. The top UI shows Brassica has 0 Cabbage power while Xau-Tak-Mato has 25 Tomato power.
All plants:
- Increase one growth stage every 15s to 30s randomly.
- You can check its growth stage by hovering over them and they visually change.
- A plant becomes fully grown at stage 4.
- 15s to 30s after a plant is fully grown, their respective god harvests that crop remotely and increase their respective power level by 1. Brassica gains +1 Cabbage power per harvested Cabbage, while Xau-Tak-Mato gains +1 Tomato power per BST
- Brassica and Xau-Tak-Mato take turns remotely planting their respective crops in empty farming patches every few seconds.
What the player can do:
- When a cabbage is fully grown, the player can interact with it to harvest it instantly for Brassica skipping the 15s-30s wait.
- Cabbage patches occasionally glow, similar to nodes in the Croesus fight. Interacting with them skips one growth stage and harvests it immediately if its stage 4.
- Interacting with a BST will make the player try to uproot it. Each BST has 5 LPS shown on a life bar, and every 0.6s the player will attempt to deplete one LP. BSTs cannot grow or be harvested while a player is trying to uproot it. The chance of depleting a BST's life points depends on your Farming level. The player is able to move while trying to uproot a BST and is only cancelled if they move two tiles away, so they can dodge mechanics.
- When a BST runs out of LPs, the farming patch is emptied and an Uprooted Black Stone Tomato is added to the players inventory. Carrying two or more Uprooted BSTs will cause the players farming level to start draining slowly due to exposure to Xau-Tak's corruption, accelerating with more Uprooted BSTs.
- Interacting with the composter in the center will make the player dump all their Uprooted BSTs into the composter at once and close the lid. The composting process takes 15s, and produces one compost per BST.
Once a composter is done processing, you can interact with it to withdraw a random variant of "Cabbage God Compost" per BST that was composted. There is a bad luck mitigation effect where obtaining a variant increases the odds of getting all other variants. You can use any variant on a cabbage to instantly fully grow and harvest it, as well as cause a secondary effect.
- Nourishing: Boosts the players Farming level and halves all mobile ability cooldowns for a minute.
- Smiting: All BST's adjacent to the cabbage patch are instantly destroyed (farming patch is left empty), allowing every other of those patches to be replaced with cabbages by Brassica.
- Contagious: All cabbages adjacent to the cabbage patch are instantly fully grown
- Summoning: Summons a gardener NPC to look after that farming patch. Another cabbage is instantly replanted there and the NPC will auto-harvest it when fully grown then disappear.
- Ascended: All other cabbages in the same row and column skip one growth stage and clears disease.
- Hibernating: For 1 minute, all BSTs cannot grow and take double damage if you try to uproot them.
Xau-Tak-Mato Mechanics
Obviously Xau-Tak-Mato isn't going to simply let you help Brassica, they use these abilities occasionally.
Unhelping Hands: Xau-Tak-Mato sends a line of undead arms through a random row and column, similar to the ones spawned by Seiyru's Shadow Root. You cannot pass through the line of arms and standing adjacent to it drains a Farming level every tick.
80% of the time, a column and a row will be clogged by Unhelping Hands, limiting where you can move. You should be prepared to reposition yourself when it ends before the next line of Unhelping Hands starts.
Dark Disease: Infects a random cabbage with a disease. After sometime, the disease kills the cabbage, leaving the patch empty then spreads to a random adjacent cabbage patch if there are any. Interacting with the cabbage will make the player attempt to cure it, and the cabbage cannot die while you are attempting to cure it. Success rate per attempt depends on your Farming level. Cured instantly if compost is dumped on it.
This mechanic is only used the moment Unhelping Hands expires and is about to send another wave, giving the player an opportunity to get to the cabbage before being blocked off. Additionally cabbage patches being looked after by a NPC gardener from Summoning Compost are immune to this mechanic.
Greater Power: Empowers a BST shortly after its planted, increasing its LPS to 10. Its worth 3 tomato power when harvested and all adjacent BSTs are instantly fully grown as well. Uprooting empowered BSTs should be a priority.
Rotten Tomatos: Repeatedly drops a Rotten Tomato at your location for 6 seconds. Each Rotten Tomato drains your run energy, farming level, and interrupts your current action. Additionally Rotten Tomatos remain on the ground for 1 minute and continue to drain farming levels if you stand on them, so be sure not to walk on the same spot.
Corruption Wave: Xau-Tak-Mato charges a meter for every Farming level they drain, similar to Croesus's energy bar. When full, they release a blast of energy that increases the growth stage of all BSTs by 1 and decreases all Cabbage growth stages by 1. Cabbages cant be downgraded below stage 1
If your farming level drops below 50% of your normal level, you are stunned repeatedly from further farming level draining.
Ending:
After 10 minutes, Xau-Tak-Mato will declare the farming contest over. The player cannot interact with crops further and all remaining crops are converted into cabbage/tomato power regardless of growth stage.
Xau-Tak-Mato will then duel Brassica as originally agreed. The two plant produce gods initiate an epic battle involving physically bumping into each other repeatedly. The result depends on how much power each vegetable accumulated.
If Xau-Tak-Mato has more or equal Tomato power than Brassica's cabbage power: After the duel, Brassica explodes into a pile of leaves and "dies" while Xau-Tak-Mato goes unconscious from bonking heads with Brassica.
You can loot the pile of Brassica leaves for greatly reduced rewards and no chance of uniques, depending on how much cabbage power Brassica accumulated during the farming contest. The encounter is considered a fail and does not reward Marks of War nor count towards a reaper tasks.
Brassica will then regrow themselves while Xau-Tak-Mato regains conscious and forgets everything that happened. They agree to a farming contest and gives the player the option to try again.
If Brassica's cabbage power surpasses Xau-Tak-Mato's tomato power: Brassica accidently knocks Xau-Tak-Mato into the composter, violently killing and degrading them into compost. Xau-Tak-Mato screams to Xau-Tak for help but there's no response while Brassica says this is perfectly normal for plants. This counts as a successful encounter for Marks of War and reaper tasks
Drops:
After a successful encounter, you can check the composter to loot Xau-Tak-Mato's remains. The quantity of common drops and chance of uniques is increased by 4% for every 1 cabbage power Brassica had higher than Xau-Tak-Mato's tomato power.
Example: If the contest ended with Brassica having 80 power while Xau-Tak-Mato had 50 power, you would receive +120% common drops and +120% chance at uniques.
The farming contest is always lasts 10 minutes, however you should continue to help Brassica even if you've already surpassed Xau-Tak-Mato's power as you would get better rewards for your time. A victory rolls on the common loot table several times, while the uniques table is rolled once and only gives something if successful.
If no uniques are gained, you receive 100 "bad luck mitigation" points, +4 for every power point Brassica had over Xau-Tak-Mato. If your bad luck mitigation points surpass 1000, you get +1% unique chance per per 10 points until a unique is received, to which the points are reset (excludes boss pet)
Common Loot:
- 100% chance of either Crux Equal Favor, PoF Beans, or Farming reputation. Cannot give farming reputation if maxed.
- Daily Herb Reroll Token: Rerolls the daily herb for obtaining Crux Equal Favor
- Brassican Herb Seeds: They can be turned into a herb seeds of your choice at a 1:1 ratio (AKA: Arbuck seeds)
- Brassica Leaves: Dropped in small quantities. Stackable edible food item that heals 300 LPS and restores 25 prayer points. When added to a compost bin, turns into Ultra-Compost. More importantly used for crafting some unique drops.
- Obligatory junk items like Stone and Wood Spirits
Uniques:
Enchantments are one time use consumable upgrades.
- Enchantment of Capacity: Allows the Abyssal Demon familiar to store 30 Pure/Impure Essence.
- Enchantment of Vitality: All Summoning familiars regenerate 5% of their maximum life points every 15 seconds outside of combat, and 1% of their maximum health while in combat. Niche effect to help keep Hellhounds and Blood Reavers alive
- Enchantment of Cabbage: Cabbages no longer drain adrenaline when eaten. Combine this with the Brassican invention perk for a regenerating no adrenaline cost food source (albeit far inferior to Jellyfish)
Black Stone Ring: Provides a +17 damage bonus to Necromancy. Same stat bonus as DK rings. Drops twice as often over other uniques
Brassica's Personal Cabbage Sack (Farming Off-Hand): Dropped in a broken state and needs to be repaired. Requires both a Seed Bag and Herb Bag to repair, along with Brassica Leaves
The handle is Brassica Primes god symbol
- Counts as both a Herb and Seed Bag. Additionally able to store noted herbs (converts to un-noted). Works from inventory so its great for slayer tasks.
- After harvesting a crop, automatically replant the same crop using stored seeds (Toggle-able)
- +2 harvest lives for all crops.
- Automatically notes farming produce (Toggle-able)
- Can be used on any farming patch to attune it to that patch. For every 50 produce you harvest, the Cabbage Sack gains one free teleport to the attuned patch and stores up to 50 teleports. Using a Brassica Leaf on the sack adds one teleport (can be done in bulk).
- Chance of spawning an Avatar of Deliciousness after fully harvesting any patch, including Fruit Trees and Bushes, as well as checking the health of trees. When collected, sends one of the following to your bank: Brassica Leaves, Brassican Herb seeds, Wood Spirits, or awards PoF Beans, Equx Favor, or Farming reputation.
Boss Pet - Brass: A cabbage that rolls around and follows you. Claims to be a disciple of Brassica.
Strategies
Its impossible to completely stop Xau-Tak-Mato from farming BSTs nor instantly harvest every fully grown cabbage, as there are too many farming patches and mechanics to handle, and the Unhelping Hands will frequently limit the patches you can interact with.
However the win condition only requires that you help Brassica enough that they end up with more cabbage power than Xau-Tak-Matos tomato power by the end, and there are ways of optimizing your contributions.
- Observe which cabbages are about to be fully grown or are glowing in that area, then immediately dive towards them and interact.
- If no cabbages are fully grown nearby, focus on a BST instead, preferably an empowered one. However you cannot focus solely on BSTs as carrying two or more will drain your farming level, and victory is impossible from uprooting BSTs alone.
By uprooting a BST, you both prevent Tak-Xau-Mato from gaining tomato power and gain one compost which instantly grows one cabbage and has a secondary effect. The downside is that uprooting isn't instant like harvesting cabbages, and requires 5 successful attempts at uprooting.
- Prioritize using Cabbage God Compost on newly planted cabbages to get the most value from it.
- Pay attention to the secondary effects of God Compost. For example, if there a lot of BSTs adjacent to a cabbage, Smiting would be a good choice as it would destroy all the BSTs, then half of those patches would be replaced with cabbages as the gods take turns planting their crops there.
Consider the following: If all mechanics are ignored, both Brassica and Xau-Tak-Mato would gain a similar amount of power due to their planting mechanics being identical over the course of the contest. Both Cabbages and BSTs grow at the same rate, harvested by their respective gods at the same rate, and they take turns replanting.
However this would result in Xau-Tak-Mato likely winning by default due to starting with 25 power. This means you will need to contribute enough that it makes an approximately 26 or more difference in cabbages harvested over BSTs.
Equipment
- The farming cape grants a chance of instantly uprooting a BST
- Augmented equipment with the mobile perk helps you move around faster
- Restore potions or a Bloated Leech familiar for restoring lost farming levels
- Prism of Salvation can be placed next to the composter to get there faster
- Brassica's Personal Cabbage Sack allows you to carry two BSTs at a time without draining farming levels. Three or more will still drain your farming.
Duo Mode
When talking to Brassica to start the contest, you have the option to bring a friend. This will let you send an invite to anyone nearby. If they accept, the farming contest starts with both you and your friend in the encounter. The contest is changed accordingly:
- The field is expanded to 7x7 farming patches, but keeps the composter in the center tile. This increases the number of farming patches you have to deal with from 24 to 48, so split the work with your partner.
- Xau-Tak-Mato starts with 50 Tomato power instead of 25, so the two of you will need to contribute twice as much in total for Brassica to win.
- Xau-Tak-Mato's Dark Diesease, Greater Power, and Unhelping Hands mechanics are used twice at a time. Rotten tomatoes targets both players. Corruption Wave charges when either players farming level is drained, but only used once when fully charged.
Note: Compost effects will be notably more effective due to being able to affect more patches
At the end, both players get their own loot from the composter. Your drop quantities and unique chance are increased by 2% per cabbage power rather than 4% like solo, as you will probably get twice as much contribution with two players.
On the surface level, Croesus seems way more difficult and mechanically complex than Xau-Tak-Mato while having better rewards so here's an additional option unlocked after a successful encounter with 25 surplus cabbage power or more (50 in duo)
Hard Mode
Also works in duo if both players have hard mode unlocked. Basic changes:
- Xau-Tak-Mato starts with 50 Tomato power, or 100 in duo, making the window for victory smaller.
- Unhelping Hands drains farming levels twice as fast
- Dark Disease occurs more frequently after Unhelping Hands expires.
- Rotten Tomatoes cover a 3x3 area rather than 1x1, so you will need to run to avoid it and they completely block the pathways.
- Contest lasts 15 minutes instead of 10
When the contest starts in hard mode, Xau-Tak-Mato will claim its unfair that Brassica has the adventurer(s) to help them so he calls Xau-Tak for help. Xau-Tak answers by summoning the Ambassa-Farmer to assist, who performs additional mechanics on top of the enhanced normal mode mechanics.
Ambassa-Farmer mechanics:
The Ambassa-Farmer wanders around the farming patches at walking speed and can pass over Unhelping Hands but not patches. Half the time they will try to move towards the player. In duo mode, they will always chase one of the two players at random. They sometimes rant about losing the Ambassador fight and being revived and demoted to a farmer by Xau-Tak.
Slap: If the Ambassa-Farmer is within two tiles of a player, they will start using its melee attack from the Ambassador fight, which stuns the player and drains farming levels.
Purple Cloud: The Ambassa-Farmer stops moving and targets a nearby BST patch and causes a blue bar to fill up over it similar to the purple cloud mechanic from the Ambassador boss fight. When full, the BST will fully grow instantly and be harvested for tomato power. The blue bar can be interrupted by trying to uproot the BST, but continues if the player cancels trying to uproot it. The Ambassa-Farmer wont move until the BST is uprooted or harvested. Only uses this mechanic every 40s-80s, twice as often in duo.
Sinister Watering Cans:
This is signified by the Ambassa-Farmer shouting "GROW like the plants you are"
At the 4 minute and 8 minute marks, all existing mechanics are paused and the Ambassa-Farmer moves ontop of the composter while 6 (10 in duo) watering cans spawn along the pathways in random locations, but never close to the center.
They proceed to perform the "Tri-Beam" attack from the Ambassador fight for 60s
- Touching the beams drains your farming levels a lot every tick
- Interacting with the purple watering cans will make the player grab them and dump them out.
- Crops grow normally during tri-beam and cabbages may still glow, so you can still harvest grown cabbages if you happen to pass by them.
After 60s, the Ambassa-Farmer absorbs all of the non-dumped watering cans. Afterwards, the Ambassa-Farmer creates a shock wave every 6 seconds for every watering can that was absorbed. Skipped if no watering cans were absorbed
These shockwaves replicate the Corruption Wave effect, but also stuns and drain every players farming level, as well as harvest all fully grown BSTs.
Rotting Barrage: Only used in the last 6 minutes. Alternates between using this and Purple Cloud
This is signified by the Ambassa-Farmer shouting "Cabbage, fall now and be rotten"
The Ambassa-Farmer targets a nearby cabbage patch, then after a few seconds channel tons of shadow energy onto it, destroying and replacing it with a overgrown BST which is harvested instantly and gives +10 Tomato power. Looks similar to the magical barrage in the last phase of the Ambassador fight.
The only way to prevent this mechanic is to dump Cabbage God Compost on the cabbage, which interrupts the barrage. The Ambassa-Farmer will never target a cabbage being looked after by a gardener NPC.
After 15 minutes, the contest ends the same way as normal mode. If Brassica has more cabbage power than Xau-Tak-Mato has tomato power, the encounter is treated as a success.
Additional Strategies (Hard-Mode)
- Be sure to keep a distance from the Ambassa-farmer to avoid being slapped, but dont move too far as you may need to interrupt Purple Cloud. Interrupting Purple Cloud involves uprooting a BST, so be sure to compost them afterwards.
- Ensure all mobility abilities are off cooldown before Sinister Watering Cans to ensure you can move quickly.
- Save compost for the last 6 minutes to counter the Rotting Barrage mechanic
Drops (Hard Mode):
Drops twice as much common loot as normal mode and has twice the chance of uniques. Bad luck mitigation points are also doubled for NM drops. The same bonus multiplier applies as NM
Additionally has a chance of awarding an item from a hard mode exclusive drop table. Rolling on this table has a separate bad luck mitigation mechanic and is affected by the same unique chance multiplier as NM
Enchantment of Safety: Berserk ability only causes 30% increased self damage instead of 50%
Heart of the Erebus: You can combine this with 10 Black Stone Rings to create a Black Hand Ring, in a similar fashion to the Rex Matriach Rings. Due to Black Stone Rings being available in normal mode and having a higher drop rate than other uniques, there would be a larger quantity available so this could be crafted.
The Black Hand Ring is a Necromancy equivalent of the other Rex Matriach Rings
- +30 Necromancy damage bonus
- +5 prayer bonus.
- Passive: Increases your critical strike chance when using Necromancy attacks by 2% for every Necromancy exclusive status effect on your current target. There are currently only 3 status effects: Death Mark, Bloat, and Haunted for a maximum of +6% critical strike chance.
This would be BIS for bossing as keeping those 3 status effects applied to a boss wouldnt be hard, but keeping all those status effects active on low health targets like slayer mobs would be difficult so the Reavers Ring remains the best in those situations.
One of 5 Pieces of Damaged Cabbage God Armor:
Pieces can be repaired with Brassica Leaves, Elite Sirenic Repair Patches, and T90/T92 ranged power armor of the respective piece. Once repaired, cabbage god can be worn and do not degrade. The body and legs are augmentable
Being made of cabbage leaves, its extremely light and easy to move around with making it perfect for archers, but also incredibly durable due to Brassica's power. It has several set bonuses that fit mobility and the multi-hit nature of the ranged combat style.
Cabbage God Armor functions
- Functions as T95 Ranged Power armor
- Every piece has a prayer bonus
- Gloves retain the effect of Nightmare Gauntlets (Enhanced Nightmare Gauntlets are required to fix the gloves piece)
- Boots retain the effect of Fleeting Boots (Enhanced Fleeting Boots are required to fix the boots piece)
- Set Bonus (2) - Charge: Using Dive, Escape, or Surge will cause your next ranged attack within 6s to deal an additional 35%-55% ability damage. Charge damage is increased further by 10% per piece.
- Set Bonus (3) - Death Swiftness's damage bonus applies even if you step outside of the cloud. All other ranged ultimates cost 20% less adrenaline. (Igneous Deadshot reduced to 40%)
- Set Bonus (4) - Every hit with any ranged attack applies one stack of Delicious to your target, up to a maximum of 600 stacks. Hitting the target with any ranged ultimate ability while they have 100 or more stacks consumes all stacks and then causes a secondary hit splat of 0.5%-0.8% ability damage for every consumed stack. The damage of Delicious is increased by 1% for every 2% of your targets health missing, so it's better to use it as late as possible to maximize damage
- Set Bonus (5) - Heal for 50% of damage caused by Delicious
Boss Pet - Xau-Tak-Minito: Exclusive to hard mode and is a miniature version of Xau-Tak-Mato. When examined gives your KC for hard mode rather than normal mode like the Brass pet. Does not affect nor affected by HM bad luck mitigation, but has its own bad luck mitigation like other boss pets.
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