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Details

Walkthrough

The starting point of the quest. Fred the Farmer is the man with the straw hat.

The sheep pen beside Fred the Farmer's house.

First, grab the shears off the table in Farmer Fred's house, or buy some from the general store. Next, talk to him and tell him that you're looking for a quest. Fred will now give you a quest to collect 20 balls of black wool from Black sheep.

Leave his house and enter the fenced area on the east side of his house, which is the sheep pen. Players can enter the sheep area by climbing over the stile or by entering through the gate on the eastern side of the fenced in area. You can either use your shears with the black sheep or left-click on them to shear them. Sheep with wool that you must shear will look black and puffy, and sheep without wool will look skinny. If a sheep has no wool, wait a few seconds and the wool will eventually appear on them. Sometimes they will run away from you if you try to shear them; just keep trying and you'll eventually get their wool.

Once you have 20 pieces of black wool, you must now spin them into balls of black wool. Enter Lumbridge Castle and head to the second floor. In one of the rooms is a spinning wheel. Click on it and spin the 20 pieces of black wool you have, to spin them all at once, right-click the "Ball of wool" and click the "Make All" option. When they are all balls of black wool, go back to Fred the Farmer to finish the quest. If you do not have the space to carry all 20 pieces of wool, you can make smaller deliveries until you reach the required total. Should you try to give Farmer Fred notes for the wool, he will say: "What's this rubbish! This isn't wool! It's a note promising to give me wool!"

P.S. If you got 20 plain balls of wool, you will finish quest anyway.

Reward

• 1 Quest Point.
• 2,000 coins.
• 150 crafting experience.

Music

Music tracks unlocked:

• None.

Trivia

The two penguins disguised as a sheep.

• After finishing the quest you can't shear black sheep.
• Before a hidden update on 15 December 2009, the quest only required normal balls of wool. You could have them all in your inventory before speaking to Farmer Fred if you wanted, making the quest much shorter. There is still a minor bug where if you talk to Farmer Fred and tell him you have some wool for him, even if it is a standard (not black) ball of wool, he will take it. Although, if it isn't black, it won't count towards the quest, it's just a waste of wool!
• For players who completed the quest before the update, the reward was 60 coins, not 2000. Players can collect the remaining 1940 coins by talking to Fred. He will say that the black wool sold unexpectedly well and is giving you some of the profits; however, the only people who can do this are people who sheared white sheep, not black ones.
• There are two things which could be quite distracting/annoying in the previous version of the quest, but aren't as distracting since the update as they can only be mistaken for white sheep, are:
  • Rams. Rams look very similar to the white sheep. If you left-click them, you'll attack them, as they cannot be sheared. If you're a very low-level player, it's best to be careful and try not to attack them. Because of the update, it is a lot harder to mess up and click on a ram since the sheep you must shear are black.
  • "The Thing." Fred the Farmer will warn you about "The Thing" and tells you to be wary of it. In the sheep pen, one of the sheep has an option to talk to it. This is "The Thing" Fred the Farmer mentioned. It is two penguins in a disguise. They have a role in the Cold War quest. If you've tried to shear "The Thing", the penguins will squeak and run from you. You can talk with Fred the Farmer about "The Thing" and have an interesting conversation. "The Thing" is also mentioned by a person upstairs in the southern house in eastern Falador.
• Sheep Shearer was one of the 6 quests available during RuneScape's launch.
• With 150 crafting experience, it holds a record of the smallest experience reward for any skill given as a quest reward.
• Andrew Gower said in his Clan Chat that half of the Sheep Shearer quest was available in his game, DeviousMUD the first version of RuneScape.