Old School Runescape player grinds the worst version of a minigame for 149 long hours and abandons 88 levels of XP, just to get a cute raccoon without committing a single traceable crime
Old School Runescape players are on another level, man. The game's flooded with zero-sum games where the house always wins: yet compared to the person who gathered 1 million of the same crappy fish, this is small pennies. Despite this, I'm still somehow surprised whenever somebody goes so far out of the way just to prove a point.
As is the case with user lcarusLives on the game's subreddit (thanks, Gamesradar) who—in what can only be either a stunning feat of stubbornness or a stern belief that crime doesn't pay—has spent over 149 hours picking at least 13,500 fruit, all to obtain this funny little raccoon guy on their farmer purist account.
0xp Rocky Pet acquired on my Farming-Only UIM, "Is Farmer" from r/2007scape
As you might have noticed, Icarus has increased absolutely none of their other skills over the course of those 149 hours, or as they put it: "6 days, 5 hours in-game time." The skilling pet, a raccoon named Rocky, can "can be obtained while training the thieving skill" according to the OSRS wiki. Turns out that statement needs an asterisk.
As this humble farmer explains—there's a minigame in Old School Runescape called the Sorceress's Garden. In this game, you can enter a garden to steal some fruit for a dash of farming XP and a substantially larger amount of thieving XP by turning said fruit into juice. Only, IcarusLives is playing a farmer 'pure', shackling themselves to the way of the field. Luckily, they could just "go into winter garden, pick a sq'irk tree (granting 30 farming xp), drop the fruit, repeat."
See, the dice roll for Rocky (a one in 10,339 chance) happens when you pick the fruit, not when you turn it in. So if you just drop the fruit on the floor and pick up another, you can get your own raccoon while not fencing a single drop. It's a hilariously inefficient way of gaining farming XP, but they don't call them 'pures' for nothing, as commenter xzile400 susses out: "If you turned the sq'irks into juice and turned them in, it would be at least 4,748,000 [thieving] exp, or level 88."
Instead, Icarus got 70 XP per fruit for a measly 949,760 farming XP over their almost week-long playtime—plus a little raccoon buddy. If that wasn't enough, it turns out that the Winter Garden is a unique pain in the butt, thanks to an absence of plugin support for the garden's most inefficient farming spot—despite this, it was the only one Icarus has access to, seeing as all the other gardens require a minimum thievery level.
When asked how they handled it, Icarus simply replied that they "Suffer through. There is a one click plugin for every other garden, I don't believe one click is possible in the Winter garden."
So, to summarise—IcarusLives went to grind a 1/10,399 chance pet in the most annoying version of a minigame, while abandoning over 88 levels in another skill, for over 149 hours. Just to preserve the sanctity of a farming-only character. "People like you need to be studied," writes one commenter, and I'm inclined to agree.