Introduction

Combat Guide/Atlas of Discovery

Introduction

Unholy Prayers

Contents

Unholy Prayers

Unholy Prayer Mechanics

Aquiring Unholy Items

Unholy Prayer Equipment Recommendations

Unholy Prayer Mechanics

Aquiring Unholy Items

Unholy Prayer Equipment Recommendations

Base Game

Throne of the Herald

Base Game

Throne of the Herald

Magic

Ranged

Melee

Magic

Ranged

Melee

This guide is designed to describe how best to integrate unholy prayers into combat progression with the expansion.

Unholy prayers can give a massive boost to late base-game combat. They can increase kills per hour (kph) by a magnitude of 1.5x-4/5x in dark waters and beyond. This can dramatically shorten grinds such as the fragments from

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Dark Waters

and trivialize difficult bosses. While they can be acquired earlier than ITM, they are far less effective without the Combat Passive Slot. The main strength of Unholy Prayers is multiple forms of % max HP damage, which is most effective on the strong enemies such as in

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Dark Waters

,

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Unhallowed Wasteland

,

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Impending Darkness Event

, and in the Throne of the Herald expansion. Note: Unholy Prayers are not effective against the boss in

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Into the Mist

as she is immune to all debuffs.

Unholy prayers do not follow the same mechanics as normal prayers.

An Unholy Item (M) will either state "Unholy Item used for Unholy Prayers" or "+1 Unholy Mark stacks applied when hitting with an attack and allows Unholy Prayers to be used with one other item that allows for Unholy Prayers." These two effects are exactly the same.
For each Unholy Item equipped, 1 Unholy Mark is applied to the enemy per hit, up to a maximum of 5.
1 Unholy Mark is removed from the enemy when they complete an attack.
Unholy prayers consume Prayer Points per hit, not once per attack turn.
Each time prayer points are consumed while using an Unholy Prayer, 1 Unholy Mark is removed from the enemy. This happens independently for each prayer, so with 2 prayers, 2 stacks are removed. Preserving Prayer Points results in fewer marks being consumed by the player's attacks.
Unholy prayers scale in power based on unholy marks on the enemy.

It is also necessary to specifically talk about

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Reckoning

. The stated effect "+10% damage dealt per effect affected by" is extremely unclear. The way it works is:

For each active status effect on you (meaning, individual icon), you gain 10% damage per unholy mark on the enemy.
Multiple stacks of a status effect do not affect the power of
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Reckoning.
Similarly, a status effect with 0 stacks also counts, as long as the icon is visible.
So for example with 5 active status effects, and 5 Unholy Marks on the enemy,
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Reckoning increases your maximum hit by +250%.

Due to the mechanics listed above, there are some cases where only a single prayer provides more damage than 2.

With only the minimum 2 items equipped and little/no Prayer Point Preservation, using 2 Prayers results in little/no marks being applied meaning prayers have no effect.
Without multi-hitting weapons, a weapon with a long attack interval will struggle to stack sufficient marks on the enemy due to them being removed on enemy attacks.
Thus, it is recommended to use weapons with special attacks that hit multiple times with 3+ unholy items for the best results.

There are multiple pieces of unholy gear from crafting skills, archaeology, and combat. The most powerful ones are listed below.

Ring of Malice (m), Grudge Amulet (m), Consuming Shield (m) from the
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Unholy Forest dungeon.
Eradicating Gloves (m) from the Underwater City dungeon.

Other unholy item options include:

Unholy Gem (m) from Archeology
The Unholy Ring (m) or Cursed Ring (m).

This section is heavily WIP due to the number of different factors that can go into using Unholy Prayers, as well as the possibility of nerfs.

Unholy prayers do not help against Barrier enemies as they do not affect summoning damage.

The gear listed below is the core required to see good results with unholy prayers.

As always, use the Combat Simulator to test these setups for YOU to ensure you are hitting the required slayer area negation and damage reduction to not die. If attempting to manually eat through a dungeon while relying on weapons with special attacks that hit multiple times, remember that eating interrupts your attack and guarantees that your next attack will be a normal attack.

The Eradicating Gloves (m) are a large upgrade to all styles, but require a larger investment into AOD combat.

Slot
Neck	Grudge Amulet (m)
Passive	Consuming Shield (m)
Ring	Ring of Malice (m)
Gem	Agile Gem	Accuracy Gem
Weapon	Cloudburst Staff
Prayer 1	Cloudburst Staff	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Reckoning
Prayer 2	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Destruction

Using

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Water Strike

over higher level water spells can be a minimal kph loss with a massive reduction in runes used.

Ranged has bad options for multi-hit in the base game, so including additional unholy items such as Unholy Gem (m) or another unholy item in the passive slot may be a gain. Ring of barrage, and fast weapons such as throwing daggers may be a kph increase with increased levels of ammo/prayer points. Ghost Blunderbow and Engulfing Vortex Longbow are massive upgrades, but require a significantly larger investment into AOD combat. Consuming Shield (m) or another unholy item may be moved to the passive slot if needed.

Slot
Neck	Grudge Amulet (m)
Passive	Ring of Malice (m)
Ring	Ring of Blade Echoes
Gem	Agile Gem	Accuracy Gem
Weapon	Infernal Claw	Tidal Edge
Offhand	Consuming Shield (m)
Prayer 1	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Reckoning
Prayer 2	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Destruction

Note: Blade echoes is particularly important as it grants a special attack with multiple hits to all melee weapons.

Slot
Robes	Poison Mythical Wizard Robes
Neck	Grudge Amulet (m)
Passive	Consuming Shield (m)
Ring	Ring of Malice (m)
Gem	Agile Gem	Accuracy Gem
Weapon	Archaic Wand
Spell	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Poison Pods	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Natures Bloom
Prayer 1	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Reckoning
Prayer 2	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Destruction

Poison pods and Natures Bloom are small damage upgrades over cloudburst with a large amount of accuracy gained from crafted poison gear. This can enable manual kills of most ToTH dungeons as manual eating does not disable Archaic Magics as it does with regular spec attacks.

Slot
Neck	Grudge Amulet (m)
Ring	Ring of Malice (m)
Gem	Agile Gem	Accuracy Gem
Weapon	Meteorite Crossbow
Offhand	Consuming Shield (m)
Bolts	Meteorite Bolts
Prayer 1	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Reckoning
Prayer 2	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Destruction

Note: From level 100-115 ranged does not get any good multi-hit items from ToTH. It may become more desirable to farm Ghost Blunderbow or possibly Engulfing Vortex Longbow at this point to greatly speed up ranged until higher levels.

Slot
Neck	Grudge Amulet (m)
Passive	Ring of Malice (m)
Ring	Ring of Blade Echoes
Gem	Agile Gem	Accuracy Gem
Weapon	Infernal Claw	Royal Toxins Spear
Offhand	Consuming Shield (m)
Prayer 1	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Reckoning
Prayer 2	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Destruction

Royal Toxins Spear can replace Infernal Claw + Ring of Blade Echoes. Melee can get away with the light DR of Consuming Shield (m) early on, but this not sufficient in Golden Cloud Mountains to farm Arctair as normal prayer DR is required. You may use Etherial Greataxe or Royal Toxin Spear with unholy prayers against Vorloran Watcher.

Grudge Amulet (m)

Ring of Malice (m)

Unholy Gem (m)

Consuming Shield (m)

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Reckoning

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Destruction