The instant death glitch was a very rare glitch that occurred shortly after the release of the Swan Song quest. The final boss of the quest, the Sea Troll Queen, used an attack that dealt a vast amount of damage against the Wise Old Man. On extremely rare occasions, the damage would instead be directed towards a random player for no apparent reason, regardless of whether they started the quest or not. Since the damage dealt to the Wise Old Man was more than twice that which players could handle even with boosts such as Saradomin brews, it would always result in death, and hence lost items, for the affected player. Although very few instances of the glitch were reported, it was thankfully fixed by Jagex within hours of its discovery.