The Rogue Problem

The Rogue Problem is the realm's optional PK schooling. Once you've cleared the Wizard Tower and claimed your Squire rank, the Recruiting Sergeant by the Lumbridge gate has an assignment for anyone who wants to learn to fight players - and only for them. In the quest tab it's two quests: Rogue Hunting I (the 30-rogue hunt) and Rogue Hunting II (the Rogue Knight ladder). The Quest Journal points the way at every step once you're on it.

It is not required for anything. Your ranks come from coin and War Effort, War-Prep II opens straight after the tower, and every march is open to you whether or not you ever touch a rogue. Take it because you want the PK curriculum and the Blood Money and gear it pays.

Getting in

• Finish the War-Prep chain (the Wizard Tower and the Squire rank-up).
• Talk to the Recruiting Sergeant by the Lumbridge gate and say yes when he offers the assignment. Say no and he'll offer again next visit - there's no penalty either way.
• Already know how to PK? You don't need the assignment at all: tell the Sergeant you'd rather fight the Rogue Knights directly (or type ::knights challenge) and the ladder opens on the spot. Take the assignment later if you want its purse - it simply picks the climb up wherever it stands, and if you've already broken the whole ladder the Knight step completes the moment it opens.
• The Quest Journal tracks your objective the whole way. Type ::rogueproblem for a quick status check, or ::rogues for your lifetime rogue tally.

The quest

The road camps are all safe, reclaimable ground - die there (or to any Rogue Knight outside the wilderness) and your gear waits in a pile. Fallen Varrock is not: its streets are a level-20 PvP pocket where other players can attack you, and only the banks and the Grand Exchange are safe. Cut your teeth on the roads first, and take nothing into the ruins you can't afford to lose; the rogue tally, at least, is yours forever and death never resets it. See Death & item protection. Your first assigned Rogue Knight also waits on safe ground, at the Bandit Hideout west of Lumbridge: if he beats you (he might!), you walk straight back for the rematch.

The quest and the Rogue Knight ladder are one journey: fourteen named boss PKers, weakest to strongest, each guarding the gear that beats the next. The Rogue Problem completes only when the whole ladder is broken - that climb is where you actually learn to PK: switches at the low camps, prayer baits and freezers in the middle, held spec combos and momentum play at the top. Every beaten knight stays farmable after.

Rewards

• A soldier's purse (150,000) the moment the hunt clears.
• The ladder's spoils: every knight and camp rogue pays Blood Money on death (the named knights double), each knight pays a first-kill gear-and-coin unlock and rolls its signature rares, and the Sergeant's rogue-hunting bounties keep coming - the fastest gear-and-coin road for a PKer. (Nothing drops the kit it wears.)
• War Effort at every step of the ladder - each camp you thin, each knight you beat, capped repeats of beaten knights (see the ladder's War Effort table).
• The wilderness / PK loop itself: player kills pay Blood Money and drop loot keys.

What comes after

Every beaten knight stays farmable for its signature gear (::knights), and the ladder's knights are the sparring partners a future PvP academy will send you back to. Your main road - War-Prep II, the marches, the ranks - was never waiting: see the Gameplay roadmap.