After more than 10 years of game journalism, one of my favorite parts of this job is seeing all the ridiculous challenges that gamers think up and pursue for no particular reason, from 1,700-hour speedruns to absurd game-breaking corner cases in Baldur's Gate 3. Timeless MMO Old School RuneScape remains a premier source of this sort of behavior, as evidenced by one player who recently spent a week needlessly killing 16,000 chickens by hand just to prove a point.
I've reported on and spoken to a lot of standout OSRS players over the years, and I'll admit that the chicken slaying from MordorMordorMordor, as they're called on Reddit, didn't move the needle for me at first. But then I started to unpack the work that went into it, the math that came out of it, and the community response to it all, and ultimately I knew I had to talk to them. And yes, partly to ask why.
100k feathers from 16k chickens from r/2007scape
Earlier this month, our hero crafted up 100,000 arrow shafts now in need of feathers for training Fletching. As many commenters on the post above have pointed out, OSRS players can easily buy feathers cheaply from shops. They even sell feathers in bulk now, presumably because nobody – sorry, that's almost nobody – wants to gather them all by hand. But store-bought feathers wouldn't cut it for ol' Mordor. "They are too expensive and I don't get to train combat," they said of the feather packs. And besides, they added in another Reddit reply, "I like my feathers covered in blood."
This week, they shared their completed grind with the community: 100,000 feathers from just over 16,000 chickens. The completed loot tracker, which may well be a first for the game, is absolutely pristine. But what really stood out to me is the attention to detail that went into this grind.
For example, Mordor logged "probably the luckiest/unluckiest RS event I've ever experienced" in a duel with one ironclad chicken that soaked up three consecutive zero-damage hits. Another fighter, dubbed Clucky Balboa, took five hits to kill. Bear in mind, chickens are level 1, have 3 hitpoints, negative defenses, and are among the weakest mobs in the entire game, so this is an impressive performance.
In another freak incident, Mordor says they went eight "consecutive kills with no feathers," which they'd almost chalk up to a glitch given that you have to lose a 50% and 25% drop chance to go featherless, according to the sterling OSRS wiki. The odds of failing this loot check naturally eight times in a row are in the tens of thousands at the very least – low enough that even hitting it in 16,000 kills is unlikely.
Mordor also spotted some unexpected compatriots on this grind: high-level players decked out in expensive ranged gear killing a few chickens for their own purposes, even using costly weapons like a Toxic Blowpipe or Dwarf Cannon. Recovering from the shock of the 16,000-chicken screenshot, other players suggested that these over-leveled folks were likely completing an easy task for another skill, Slayer. These are the findings you just don't get unless someone decides to kill 16,000 chickens in an 11-year-old MMO based on a 17-year-old version of a 20-year-old MMO, folks.
Many players wondered if this whole thing was just a botted account set up for a meme, but Mordor says it was all too serious – but yes, also for a meme. "Basically the entire motivation to get it done in a week was for the meme," Mordor tells 12DOVE. "Everyone on the sub posts absurdly high kill count loot from high-level monsters, thought it would be funny if I did the same but for the monster with the lowest possible level. Took me about a week from start to finish.
"I'm probably going to do something similar for the memes. I was pretty shocked with the response from some people. Telling me I should be banned for playing the game a certain way. A part of me wants to do something similar as a 'fuck you I can do what I want.'"
When I ask if it was worth it, Mordor says, "Eh. It was cool to see the post get to the top of the sub. The entire thing is just a meme so I don't take it too seriously."
And if you're wondering – as I was, obviously – their Fletching grind hasn't started yet. They still need to smith 100,000 arrowheads, you see. I've got nothing but respect for self-sufficient OSRS players, even if they do have lakes of chicken blood on their hands.
Meanwhile, after "almost 2 years" and "over 800 hours," this Final Fantasy 14 legend has finally completed one of the hardest solo MMO challenges out there.
