HCCO/Guide/13
This section of the guide is dedicated to aspects of the game that cannot be idled. Everything here requires manual play (or is gated behind a prior requirement that needs manual play) and thus encompasses some level of risk. At the end of the day, there just aren't enough bonuses available to a Combat Only account to be able to idle all the content in the game. The good news is that with extremely dedicated play, one can seemingly beat the entire game.
Dungeon Gauntlet
The remaining dungeons in the game cannot be fully idled, as the bosses' damage outpaces CO survivability. The dungeons either require gear swapping, manual eating or both. If you are paying attention to the game, most of the mechanics aren't particularly difficult to deal with, but your account must be babysat in some way.
Lair of the Spider Queen
The Lair of the Spider Queen features a completely unique mechanic where the boss,
Spider Queen, has a completely random attack style each time she spawns. The minions in the dungeon also have a similar mechanic as their spawn pattern will be completely random, so expect to face all 3 combat styles in this dungeon.
Ranged is preferred for killing minions in the lead up to the boss as
Ranged has the lowest overall DR penalty against its weak style (-25% DR against
Melee) compared to something like
Melee (which has a -50% DR penalty against
Magic enemies). The boss can comfortably be dispatched with appropriate late game gear (needed to out-dps her healing) and the corresponding style, so the main difficulty of this dungeon is simply being present when the boss spawns in order to switch to the correct gear loadout.
The only rewards from this dungeon are the pet and a new Melee weapon. The pet,
Webbie, has an always-useful -0.1s attack speed bonus and is therefore worth grinding out. The sole chest loot from this dungeon is the extremely powerful
Royal Toxins Spear, which will be the best
Melee weapon available until the very end game. This spear gives better
income than any other option when used for
Elite Slayer, and has better DPS than
Ultima Godsword,
FrostSpark 1H Sword and
Ethereal Greataxe. This item is a hard requirement for
Golden Cloud Mountains.
Suicide Method
Here we detail a semi-idle method that involves a 67% chance of death, but has enough flexibility to allow the player to use Protect Item, meaning there is no risk of losing any items on death. It goes without saying that this method obviously cannot be used by HCCOs and is for MCCOs only.
This setup can idle the whole dungeon up until the boss with no issues. We choose to use Ranged as the combat penalty for using the incorrect style is higher with
Melee and runes for
Magic take too much time to gather, making
Ranged the best style for fighting a variety of monsters. Since the boss,
Spider Queen, has a 33% chance of spawning as
Magic based, there is a 1/3 chance you will be able to idle this boss with the above setup (note that using anything other than the BiS setup will result in drastically reduced kills/hr due to compounding effect of low DPS vs healing monsters). If she spawns as
Melee or even
Ranged, she will kill you if you are idle. If you are paying attention you can easily eat or switch gear setups to obtain the corresponding triangle bonus, but if you are idling then you will simply die and have to re-attempt the dungeon. Each clear takes on average about 12-15 minutes, so check back after that period to see if you were successful with your attempt. It is also worth noting that while
Shield of Ranged Power is faster for clearing trash mobs leading up to the boss,
Gauntlets of Rage are better in the prolonged fight with the boss.
IMPORTANT: note that after each death, your HP will be reset to 20% and your prayers will be disabled. After each death you must eat and re-enable your Protect Item (and
Holy Aegis) prayers or you will be at risk of losing your items on your next attempt.
Afflicted City
The requirement to enter this slayer area is one completion of Lair of the Spider Queen, but luckily all of the monsters within can be safely idled. Even if you want to farm out items from
Lair of the Spider Queen, it is recommended to at least pick up
Gauntlets of Rage from this area before committing to that grind.
The main upgrades from this location are Decay Bolts from
Cockatrice, various potions such as
Hinder Potion III from
Plague Doctor and the extremely powerful
Gauntlets of Rage from
Goliath Werewolf. The rest of the drops are largely irrelevant and are only for completionist.
Plague Doctor
We opt to use Protect from Magic to mitigate the affliction debuff that
Plague Doctor applies, which can lead to a chance of death if enough stacks accumulate.
In the late game one can expect to need about 10k-15k of most of the potions dropped by this monster, so one will need to return to farm this monster in future. That is why very late game gear considerations are listed for future farming, but the Seccond-in-Slot gear loadout is perfectly capable of farming this monster adequately.
Cockatrice
Decay Bolts are a best-in-slot upgrade for both
Magic and
Melee but not necessarily for
Ranged, strangely enough. The game currently has a bugged interaction where the decay effect from the bolts activates regardless of whether the bolt is used or consumed. The high rate at which bolts are consumed and the slow rate at which bolts are farmed from
Cockatrice means that these bolts won't really be used much for
Ranged directly, so only a handful are needed for now. This is until the very endgame where several weeks must be spent gathering ammo. You only need to equip 1
Decay Bolt to activate the effect.
Similar to above, Decay Bolts are needed en masse for late game grinds, therefore very late game gear choices are listed for players returning to farm out the 50k-100k
Decay Bolts bolts needed for
Golden Cloud Mountains and
Millennium Gate.
Goliath Werewolf
The item we are after from this monster are the Gauntlets of Rage. These items feature a hefty -3% DR, which when combined with the 8% DR (or more) sacrificed compared to typical gloves, this item overall has a huge -11% relative DR bonus. So why is this item considered useful? Well, both of the above negatives can simply be ignored by equipping the item in the passive slot instead of the glove slot. The opportunity cost paid for this slot is generally a DPS comparison (compared to the three power shields), rather than a survivability comparison.
In situations where survivability is needed, Guardian Amulet will still be the go-to item, but for situations when DPS is needed,
Gauntlets of Rage will be used for longer fights (as the effect needs to ramp up) such as boss fights, and one of the three power shields will most likely be used otherwise for shorter fights. There will rarely be a situation where these gloves will be worn in the actual glove slot, as situations where the -11% relative DR penalty isn't a factor are also situations where the fight will not be long enough to allow the glove effect to ramp up enough.
As these gloves work for all three styles, consider grabbing up to 3 sets for future convenience.
As Goliath Werewolf has the rage effect himself and can stun, this fight can be quite dangerous. This is why we opt to use
Ocean Song with
Earth Layered Shield over
Lightning Coil 2H Staff for the extra DR, on top of both DR prayers.
Cursed Forest
This dungeon is locked behind completion of Lair of the Spider Queen, but luckily it can be fully idled. A lot of the items here are useful, as
Mask of Madness and
Mask of Torment apply very strong debuffs at the start of a fight and each have 13% DR (+1% over other options so far) that can speed up
Slayer and dungeon farming.
Voodoo Trinket can be used in the passive slot for particular builds, although this is somewhat rare as the rune and opportunity costs are significant.
Like all other dungeon bosses, Lady Darkheart can heal, so one must have enough DPS to break through her healing mechanic. This build relies on stun-chaining with
Lightning Coil 2H Staff to prevent her from healing, so the variance in kill times can be quite drastic. One can also speed up the boss fight considerably by swapping out low DPS items (mostly the
Guardian Amulet and possibly
Wasteful Ring) with higher DPS items (such as
Shield of Magic Power [in the passive slot],
Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs [to replace the amulet slot] and
Burning Madness Ring) which also carry much more stun and status effect chance. The higher DPS builds cannot idle the boss fight or the dungeon mobs and is therefore the fight must be manually handled.
Necromancer Palace
Golden Cloud Mountains
Harkair
Arctair
Initial build
Torvair
Glacia
Need to farm for Ancient Runes
Polar Bear
Needed for Frost Crabs. These are needed for burst healing as they heal the most per eat in order to eat between multi-hits of strong enemies.
Millennium Gate
Throne of the Herald
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