HCCO/Guide
This page was last updated for (v0.19). |
The majority of this guide is written by Username, mazunki, @ERRORMONSTER#8764 and @Zxv#0157 of the Discord community. If you have any questions, or if anything is wrong, please make sure to reach out to any of us. Feel free to edit the guide or add anything to it as needed.
Thanks to everyone in #hardcore-mode-chat for making this possible. :)
THE EARLY SECTIONS OF THIS GUIDE ARE OUTDATED AND SHOULD BE TAKEN WITH A GRAIN OF SALT
What is HCCO?
HCCO stands for Hardcore
Combat Only. This implies that you cannot use any non-Combat skills at any time, and must play on
Hardcore. There is a secondary challenge, 12b, which means you may not buy any Bank slots, and are limited to the 12 provided to you by default. This guide is aimed more towards 12b players, but playing without this restriction just means you can spend less time on bank management.
Preface
Food is vital to a HCCO account, and your first food source (and one that you will be relying on for quite a while) is Plants. Starting out, you should fight
Plants for the
Potatoes they drop and to increase your combat levels.
Note about Attack vs
Strength vs
Defence: All three combat skills are very useful to level in their own ways.
Attack increases your chance to hit and unlocks new weapons to use,
Strength increases your maximum hit, and
Defence increases your chance to not get hit (which saves you food). In general, they should all be leveled equally.
Defence should be the first combat skill that you level, as it greatly reduces the amount of damage that you will take from
Plants (roughly by half).
Attack should be second,
Strength should be last. Since you have a low chance to hit, it’s more important to level
Attack rather than
Strength.
Weapons in this game have different attack speeds depending on their type. Daggers attack quickly, with an attack speed of 2.2 seconds, and Battleaxes attack slowly, with an attack speed of 3.1 seconds, for instance. Weapons that attack more slowly also deal more damage per hit and weapons that hit quickly usually do less damage per hit.
There are different styles in the game, depending on the weapon you’re wielding. Melee weapons, which will be our main focus initially, have Stab, Slash and Block. Each style gets a bonus to the accuracy rating depending on the specific weapon. Swords usually have a better stabbing accuracy, while scimitars are better at slashing, for instance.
The style you choose will also give you experience towards the combat skill in question: Stabbing gives Attack experience, Slashing gives
Strength experience, while Blocking is used to train
Defence. At the start, you’ll have to eat manually to ensure that you won’t die. Later on, you will unlock
Auto Eat, so eating will be less of a worry.
Chapter I: Gearing Up
To start, you should have: Nothing!
At the end, you should have: 4
Steel Armour pieces
You should get to about 10 in all melee combat skills (usually expressed as 10 /
10 /
10) by fighting
Plants. After that, it’s time to start getting your first bit of equipment.
After you have a decent stack of food from fighting Plants, it’s time to get your first pieces of gear from the
Golbin. You should have some levels in all skills (
10 /
10 /
10 or so) and a couple hundred
potatoes or so. You’re looking for a
Bronze Battleaxe (1 in 27 chance) and a
Bronze Shield (1 in 27 chance). If you get unlucky, don’t worry. Just kill
Plants for food until you’re able to get both.
Plants have very low HP, so having a faster weapon allows you to kill them faster, as you don’t need more than 20 damage to kill a
Plant. So, your next goal after your
Bronze Battleaxe is an
Iron Dagger. You should have about
15 /
15 /
15 stats and a few hundred
potatoes. The
Iron Dagger has a 1/33 drop rate from the
Goo Monster.
Your next gear upgrades will come from Zombie Hand. You’re looking for the
Iron Platebody (1 in 4 chance) and
Iron Platelegs (1 in 4 chance). Some people might go for the
Steel Knight first, but since the
Zombie Hand has a better chance for gear, it’s recommended to do it first. You should have about 20/20/20 stats for this and, once again, a large stack of
taters.
After you have the gear from the Zombie Hand, you should then move on to the regular
Zombie for the
Steel Platebody (1 in 5 chance). It also drops
Steel Boots (1 in 5 chance), but you shouldn’t grind for them here since it's easier to get them from the
Steel Knight next. (
20 /
20 /
20 stats recommended)
You’ll end the first part of your HCCO journey with Steel Knights. They drop the
Steel Helmet (15 in 67 chance),
Steel Shield (10 in 67 chance),
Steel Sword (10 in 67 chance), and
Steel Scimitar (4 in 67 chance). You should be using the
Steel Sword on
Attack and
Defence and the
Scimitar on
Strength when killing most monsters, but again, daggers should be used on
Plants due to their fast attack rate. The
Mirror Shield is a useful item to get around here, but if you decide not to get it, you can avoid ever getting tasks in the
Strange Cave. It acts as a decent early Shield, before you get the
Mithril Shield. However, it's optional.
Chapter II: Mithril Armour
To start, you should have: Full Steel Armour,
10 /
10 /
10,
Steel Scimitar
At the end, you should have: Amulet of Looting,
Auto Eat - Tier I, Full
Mithril Armour,
40 /
40 /
40,
Ice Sword,
Adamant Dagger
The next Knight after Steel is
Black. However, you should skip it, as the drop chances are very low, and the next tier is not much harder anyway.
But before you visit the Mithril Knight you'll want to take a detour to fight the
Mummy for
Silver Ruby Necklace and
Gold Emerald Ring to fill out your neck and ring slots. Your next step, therefore, is
Mithril Knights. Because they only drop gear a quarter of the time when killed (on average), it can take quite a while to get a full
Mithril set. You will probably get
Boots (25 in 268) and
Helmets (15 in 268) quite often, and the eventual
Platelegs (5 in 268). The
Platebody has quite a low drop-chance (1 in 568).
Before getting the Platebody you will probably get both a
Scimitar (1 in 67) and a
Shield (5/134), too, so equip these once dropped. You may equip the
Sword, too, but consider sticking with the
Scimitar for now, to efficiently level up your
Strength skill before equipping the
Ice Sword for a long while.
You should farm the Amulet of Strength from
Mummies either here or a little earlier, depending on your preference. If you want to stick around and upgrade it to an
Elite Amulet of Strength, you may, but it will be a little faster to do so in a bit.
As mentioned, you will want to get the Ice Sword after getting full
Mithril Armour, or even before getting the
Platebody, as it is a really good upgrade at this point. The drop rate is 10% at the
Ice Monster in the
Icy Hills. The
Ice Sword is better at grinding
Strength than all weapons from a lower tier.
Now, before you go away from the computer, or to sleep, it’s time to upgrade your dagger. You can get a cheap Adamant Dagger from the
Purple Goo Monster. More damage to
Plants? Good stuff.
Chapter II-A: Amulet of Looting
The Amulet of Looting is a special amulet which automatically loots gear acquired from Combat Areas and
Slayer Areas. You may get it from the
Spider Chest, with a 1/22 chance. Due to the nature of HCCO, you will spend a lot of
Potatoes in the early game (and beyond, too), so you might want to rush this item in order to ease the grind for food as soon as possible.
By using Mithril Armour, and having around
40 /
40 /
40, it will take you around 5000 healing from food per run of the
Spider Forest. Before you start running the dungeon, you should have a buffer of at least a thousand
Potatoes, just because RNG might be on your bad side.
It is quite possible to beat the zone without having any form of Auto Eat, and just make sure you time your manual eating right, since the damage of the
Spiders in the area is not too high.
Otherwise, if you really don’t want to manual the dungeon, you should know the base max damage of the zone is 142, requiring 710 HP for
AE1,
480 HP for
AE2. This requires 6,000,000
, which would require around 30 hours of active gameplay at
Master Farmer, since you still don’t have auto looting. Bad idea.
Chapter II-B: Making Money Early Game + Auto Eat 1
As soon as you have your hands on an Amulet of Looting, you can start to make money. Money making at this stage is a compromise between risk and reward. Consider the time it takes to farm up the food you need, and the time it takes to farm the GP you want.
The safest way to make money, for now, is to kill Cows, collect their
Leather, and upgrade it into
Green Dragonhide through the shop. The selling price for
Leather is 50
, while the selling price for
Green Dragonhide is 200
. By upgrading it, you effectively get 100
per piece of
Leather.
Assuming you’ve got the Ice Sword, the average GP yield per
Cow is 203
.
Important: As you farm Cows early game,
Master Farmers later in the game, or
Statues for gear upgrades, it is ALWAYS recommended to use free the easy
Slayer reroll to get your current objective, as all 3 of them are included.
Use Adamant Dagger for idling
Plants, and
Ice Sword for tougher enemies. This chapter ends when you’re at
40 /
40 /
40.
Chapter III: Mithril to (G) Adamant
To start, you should have:
Amulet of Looting,
Auto Eat - Tier I, Full
Mithril Armour,
40 /
40 /
40,
Ice Sword,
Adamant Dagger
At the end, you should have: Almost full
(G) Adamant Armour,
70 /
40 /
70
While your next target is Adamant Knights, you should know that leveling
Attack and
Defence up to 50 will effectively reduce your healing per Knight from 1700 to 1200.
Important note: DO NOT IDLE KNIGHTS. Make sure to always have more HP than the max hit of the enemy, and try to eat food right after your attack timer ends, so you don’t reset an attack in progress. Eat until full HP, or at least until you have enough HP to survive any attack. The 2.6s interval of the
Adamant Knight is not really a danger provided you’re PAYING ATTENTION and have enough food.
Your Ice Sword is great for leveling
Attack, and your
dagger is fine for leveling
Defence. You may do this at
Statue, to prepare for gear upgrades, and thus your first Damage Reduction points!
Each Adamant piece has a 1/48 chance of dropping. Good luck on that! While you don’t really care about the
Adamant Boots nor the
Obsidian Cape, you may as well equip them once you get them. It will be a while until you replace the
Cape for anything else, but there’s no point wasting
Silver/
Gold Bars on the
Boots. Upgrade the Equipment you get to
(G) Adamant as soon as you get them, since each piece gives you 4% Damage Reduction.
Chapter III-A: Making money early-mid: Master Farmer + Auto Eat II
The Master Farmer gives a total of 14 unique items. You want to prioritize your bank slots for the most rewarding items, taking the price and drop rate into account. This mainly comprises the Tree Seeds, requiring 5 slots. By reserving five slots for the
Master Farmers grind, you get a total of 84% of the GP drops. That’s around 809
per kill.
Chapter III-B: Late to mid Game food: Slayer
It is highly recommended to build up 150,000 Slayer Coins as
Auto Slayer is a great purchase to idly build up
Slayer Coins. With them, you can purchase
Standard Resupply, which nets you both a useful 150
Crab and 500
Magic Bones per purchase. This tends to be the most efficient HP per
Slayer Coin, and is worth saving up for. These can be used throughout the rest of the game for easy food.
As per usual, free rerolls may be used to acquire Master Farmer as your
Slayer task.
Beware of Wizards when using
Auto Slayer, and ensure they can not bypass your
Auto Eat threshold. They should be skipped either way, as they will consume a lot of food due to their high accuracy on melee armour.
Chapter IV: Upgraded Boots, Gloves, and Weapon
To start, you should have: Almost full (G) Adamant Armour,
(G) Rune Boots,
70 /
40 /
70
At the end, you should have: Almost full (G) Adamant Armour,
(G) Rune Boots,
Desert Wrappings,
Dragon Scimitar,
70 /
40 /
70
Auto Eat - Tier II
Now, grind up enough Slayer Coins for the
Desert Hat, and at least
Level 50, so you can gain access to the
Arid Plains. You may as well kill
Master Farmers for GP, or hit some
Statues for some
Gold and
Silver Bars, which are both Easy Slayer Tasks, meaning they’re free to reroll.
BEWARE: Do not Auto Eat
Potatoes in the
Arid Plains unless you have at least
Auto Eat - Tier II. You will lose all your
Potatoes instantly.
Now, why would you want to unlock Arid Plains? Well, there’s a few reasons:
Sand Treaders from
Turkul Riders — -0.1s to all attacks, good for farming lower level monsters.
Rune Boots from
Turkul Riders — Excellent upgrade, easier to get than from
Rune Knights.
Desert Wrappings from
Turkul Archers — 2% Damage Reduction gloves, best until
Paladin Gloves.
Also, you don’t even need to manual these two enemies! After getting these upgrades, you should hold on to your hat (literally!), because your next weapon upgrade comes from the Turkul Giant in the same area. You could also sell the hat, and buy it again a bit later. The
Slayer Coin cost is not too huge.
Farm up enough GP to upgrade to
Auto Eat - Tier II at
Master Farmer. With
AE2 you can idle
Turkul Giants, provided you have 23% DR and
Level 50. With this, upgrade your weapon into the
Dragon Scimitar or, even better, the
Desert Sabre.
Chapter V: (G) Adamant to Full (G) Rune
To start, you should have: Almost full (G) Adamant Armour,
(G) Rune Boots,
Desert Wrappings,
Dragon Scimitar,
70 /
40 /
70
Auto Eat - Tier II
At the end, you should have: Full (G) Rune Armour,
Paladin Gloves,
Elite Amulet of Strength,
70 /
80 /
80,
Sunset Rapier /
Ancient Claw,
Auto Eat - Tier III
The first thing you should do in this part of the story is to upgrade your Amulet of Strength into an
Elite one, simply by farming more
Mummies. On average you need to kill around a thousand of them.
You can wait to get the Paladin Gloves until after getting
Rune Armor, or you can farm it now. At this point, you will use around 65
Potatoes per
Paladin kill, and the chance to get them is 1/171. Not too hard.
The next step is to farm the feared shiny Rune Knights, and upgrade your four armor pieces into
(G) Rune pieces, for a total of 29% Damage Reduction with the
Paladin Gloves. You will need a bunch of
Gold and
Silver Bars, farmed at
Statue.
You should get Auto Eat - Tier III and a second
Extra Equipment Set. You should also consider getting the third set now, too.
Assuming you already have Level 60 (and if you don't, then go get it;
Giant Crab tasks are your friend here), the last thing to get before moving onto the next section is a better weapon.
Deep Sea Ship is your next stop for a
Sunset Rapier, a great upgrade.
Don't bother getting any Dragon Claw Fragments from
Griffin yet, as they will just take up space. If you're lucky enough to get an
Ancient Sword before the
Sunset Rapier, then feel free to use it until you get to
Volcanic Cave, as it will drastically reduce your food consumption and the associated food farming time. After that, you'll probably only want to use it outside dungeons due to the high monster damage reducing the benefits of the lifesteal.
Chapter VI: (G) Rune to (G) Ancient
To start, you should have: Full (G) Rune Armour,
Paladin Gloves,
Elite Amulet of Strength,
70 /
80 /
80,
Sunset Rapier,
Auto Eat - Tier III
At the end, you should have: Full (G) Ancient Armour,
Paladin Gloves,
Elite Amulet of Defence,
90 /
99 /
90,
Dragonfire Shield,
Sandstorm Ring
Elite Amulet of Defence from upgrading
Amulets of Defence, which are dropped by
Purple Goo Monsters, and
Silver Diamond Ring, dropped by
Mummies, are our best friends for now; the limiting factor for the remaining dungeons is how much DR you have access to.
Now that you've got full Rune (G) Armour and
Paladin Gloves for 32% DR,
880 Hitpoints will allow you to idle
Volcanic Cave for your first useful cape, the
Fire Cape. At this point, you can expect to eat around
30,000 HP worth of food per kill without
Prayer.
At this point, you should be using Standard Resupplies for your food needs. If you prefer to fight monsters instead, then
Sweaty Monsters for
Salmon and
Lobster will reduce your overall time spent farming food. Expect to get food equivalent to 10.2 HP/kill in
Salmon, 6.25 HP/kill in
Lobster, and 2.3 HP/kill in
Shark.
Once you have the Fire Cape, you can farm the
Sandstorm Ring from
Sand Beasts, which will be your best-in-slot
Melee DPS ring. You can even use
Safeguard if you'd like to farm it sooner, as it will speed up your
Volcanic Cave clears.
Hopefully you find the Volcanic Cave comfortable, as the goal is to get the
Ancient Platebody,
Ancient Platelegs,
Ancient Helmet, and
Ancient Shield. There are no Ancient Boots and
Dragon Boots are unobtainable on HCCO (as is the
Dragon Helmet,) so you'll continue rocking your
(G) Rune Boots for quite a while. Getting the
Dragon Platebody and/or
Dragon Platelegs is only useful if you plan to upgrade them to (G), as you still need the extra DR that comes from the (G) upgrade.
Once you get your full Ancient Armour, make another visit to
Statues to finish off gathering
Gold Bars and
Silver Bars and upgrade everything to (G). Luckily the
Elite Chests you've been opening also drop plenty of
Silver Bars and
Gold Bars.
In total, you'll need 6,000 Silver Bars and 10,000
Gold Bars for full
(G) Ancient Armour. If you get all the
Silver Bars you need, move to
Purple Goo Monsters for faster
Gold Bars. You can also hold onto the
Amulets of Fury for the
Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs grind later; you'll need 10
Fury Amulets in total.
After getting the (G) Ancient Shield, there's nothing stopping you from immediately upgrading it again to the
Dragonfire Shield, so head to the
Green Dragons to get 7,050
Dragon Bones. You can alternatively wait until getting some
Ranged levels, as
Green Dragons are slightly weaker to
Magic and
Ranged than to
Melee, but at this level, you shouldn't have any trouble, and the 8% DR of the
Dragonfire Shield will be very useful as a
Magic and
Ranged offhand for God dungeons.
Once you have full (G) Ancient Armour and
Dragonfire Shield for 43% DR (or 40% with
Amulet of Looting and
Sandstorm Ring, it's time to grind any remaining melee skills to ideally at least
90 /
99 /
90 while working your way towards
Level 70 for your next food upgrade -
Trout from
Raging Horned Elites or RHE; you can also take advantage of the
Gold Emerald Ring from
Mummies to speed up stat grinding.
Once you get to this point, you can expect 447.8 HP in food for every kill! Once you start killing Raging Horned Elites, hold onto the
Ancient Arrows they drop as they're your best arrows, even though they can't be equipped until
Level 70. Additionally, the
Large Horns that they drop will likely replace
Master Farmers for GP farming, as the GP/hr is about the same (not to mention the food, arrows, and
Prayer points you're getting), with a much lower bank demand.
Chapter VI-A: Ranged
Ranged is quite straightforward, but we’ve been putting it off for mainly two reasons: It doesn’t provide any real benefit until you start fighting Wizards, or other magic monsters, and getting its gear without having the space in your bank or loadouts for the gear and weapons will be annoying.
Get your first two bows; Level 5 lets you use
Oak Shortbow) from the
Ranged Golbin over at the
Golbin Village, and use the
Ice Arrows from the
Frozen Archer over at the
Icy Hills. These are almost as strong as
Rune Arrows, which you can start to use at
Level 40, but are much easier and cheaper to farm, and can be equipped from the very beginning.
Literally all your next weapon upgrades, except if you go out of your way to get the Yew Longbow from the
Holy Archer at
Level 40, will come from the
Bandit Chest. At
Level 30, you can upgrade to the
Maple Longbow, at
Level 50 you can use the
Magic Longbow, and finally you will get to use the
Redwood Longbow and the
Ancient Longbow at
Level 60 and
Level 70.
An alternative (but less efficient) route for early Ranged training is to kill
Thieves in the
Runic Ruins for
throwing knives, which, due to their higher attack speed and inherent 15% ammunition saving, can help with early training.
Once you get into higher levels you may consider using the Adamant (worse than
Ice),
Rune and
Dragon Arrows you’ve collected from the
Bandit Chest. If you’re farming
Raging Horned Elite for food you may also use
Ancient Arrows in
Ranged after
Level 70.
Most of your ranged armor upgrades will come from the Spider Forest, moving through
Green Dragonhide at
Level 40,
Blue Dragonhide at
Level 50,
Red Dragonhide at
Level 60, and finally into
Black Dragonhide at
Level 70.
Upgrading Ranged armor is much easier than
Melee armor, as you can buy
Leather from the shop, which can then be used to buy
Green,
Blue, and
Red dragon leathers for upgrading their respective armor tiers.
Alternatively, killing dragons in the Dragon Valley can provide all chromatic dragonhide, including
Black.
Ranger Hat and
Ranger Boots are a nice bonus for saving ammunition while training, but after
Level 70, ammunition will be plentiful thanks to
Raging Horned Elites, so they aren't necessarily worth the time to grind out.
Chapter VI-B: Magic
Magic in this challenge will mainly consist of casting Air spells, since you can remove one colour from the rune costs. All spells cost
Air Runes, but
Water,
Earth, and
Fire spells additionally cost their respective runes.
This is a bad thing for us, since we have no real way to farm a lot of runes yet. However, we can get started by farming some catalyst runes from the Vampire and the
Master Wizard. The
Vampire is probably best for now, since it is a
Ranged monster, meaning we can strike it with our powerful
Melee. Even considering the drop chance and drop rates are lower than from the
Master Wizard, this will be faster overall as it will crucially save more food. Killing
Wizard until one piece of either
Green Robes or
Blue Robes (at
10) for each slot is recommended.
Catalyst Runes are the runes you use to power up your spells, while Elemental runes select which element you’re using. You can remove the cost for Elemental runes with staves, which we will abuse to completely nullify the Air Rune cost, and thus primarily use air spells. Remember, since prayer points are a lot easier to farm on a CO than runes, you will generally want to run the two highest offensive prayers at all times when training magic. However, it is only worthwhile if the prayers give magic damage boost (
Mystic Mastery,
Augury and
Battleheart) or if you are very low level and your accuracy is low (below 90%).
The Staff of Air (obtained from
Fairy) reduces the cost by 3, allowing you to cast all spells up to
Fire Bolt with the sole exception of
Wind Bolt for no
Air Rune cost.
Air Rune are by far the most valuable elemental rune on a CO, so you should use the other elements to level your magic early on as these runes have little use outside of very late game situations by which point you will have a huge stockpile. You should aim to use most of your
Mind Rune on
Fire Strike and your
Chaos Rune on
Earth Bolt to make the most use of your varied runes gathered, until you are
30. At this point you can equip an
Air Battlestaff to save 5
Air Rune/cast, so obtain one from
Master Wizard and use that until
40. You also have enough magic defence from levelling
Magic that you can consider clearing
Hall of Wizards for some
Ranged exp and better robes. The
Red Wizard Robes can be worn at
30 (levelling from 1 to 30 cuts food usage against magic enemies roughly in half) and the dungeon will be important in the a following section anyway. You can alternatively wait until
40 for even higher magic defence. Lastly, now that you have some magic defence, gathering 200
Amulet of Magic is on the table. You will obtain a lot of catalyst runes in the process which can be put towards levelling, so it is worth making a dent in this decently long grind now.
Master Wizard are the best overall source of catalyst runes, as they have the lowest HP while dropping one of three catalyst runes 85% of the time.
You can now make use of every standard spell that is worth considering on a CO, which is up until Wind Blast. Prioritise all other elemental spells until you consume your elemental runes, and then finish training on the highest level air spell that has no elemental rune cost. Make sure to use the highest level aurora that you can that has no elemental cost. This will be
Surge I from
15-
40 and
Surge II afterwards. The light runes will be supplied from
Standard Resupply and will be in considerable abundance, so these should not be conserved.
After 40, you will now use a
Mystic Air Staff to conserve 7 elemental runes and primarily use
Wind Blast to level up, as this is the new highest no-elemental cost spell available. The relative damage increase between spells is lower as flat damage has diminishing returns, so there isn't much dps sacrificed by sticking to this one spell. However, the only way to obtain this staff is from
Hall of Wizards at a relatively low drop rate (~1/191.67). On the plus side, you will get some nice runes (albeit at a slower rate than other options) along the way and a good pet, hopefully. You will also want to obtain a full set of
Red Robes. It is debatable whether staying here all the way until full
Ancient Robes is worthwhile. The robes have a very low drop rate and will likely take awhile to complete, but you will obtain some useful runes and almost certainly obtain the pet. It is also important to maximise rune efficiency by maximising magic damage bonus, as rune gathering is a slow process. If you are completionistic in nature then it may be a good idea, although strictly speaking it would be faster to focus on simply obtaining more
Death Rune from
Master Wizard and
Necromancer than worrying about min-maxing the rune efficiency.
Once you have your gear, the best monster to kill is Raging Horned Elite as they are melee and drop valuable food, as well as giving a decent income and ammo. They have 5% DR, so using
Battleheart if you have the
Prayer level is recommended, along with
Augury. Kill either
Master Wizard or
Necromancer for
Chaos Rune and/or
Death Rune whenever you need more runes. It is both more rune-efficient and time-efficient to gather runes and use them separately, rather than try to kill
Necromancer with magic directly to slightly replenish the consumed runes. Making use of the triangle bonus is starting to become very important. You will be here until
85. Once you have
85 you will upgrade to
Glacia Armour, and then return to get a single level to
86.
The rest of your magic training will come after Into the Mist once you have the passive slot. You will return again to
Raging Horned Elite to get
90 to wield
Ocean Song, and then train from
90-
99 on
Umbora while grinding out
Tidal Edge.
Mind Runes are very useful lategame as
Water Strike is the most rune-efficient spell to use for
Cloudburst Staff and
Ocean Song, so you will want to keep them. You will also want to keep
Fire Rune (as well as
Ancient Rune and
Havoc Rune) for
Incinerate for
Impending Darkness Event.
Water Rune and
Earth Rune are not terribly important.
Light Rune are obtained easily from
Standard Resupply.
In summary:
1 -
30 using strike spells, gathering runes and gear from
Vampire,
Wizard &
Master Wizard
30 -
40 using bolt spells, gathering runes and gear from
Master Wizard
40 -
90 using
Wind Blast on
Raging Horned Elite, gathering runes from
Master Wizard &
Necromancer and gear from
Hall of Wizards &
Water God Dungeon
90 -
99 using
Water Strike with
Ocean Song on
Umbora, gathering runes from
Wizard &
Master Wizard
Chapter VII: (G) Ancient to God Dungeons
Pre-Gods
It's about time to get the Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs. It has 1% more Damage Reduction than the
Elite Amulet of Defence, in addition to offensive and defensive bonuses. Refer to the FEZ Guide for getting all the materials to make it. You will also want to have completed the
Dragonfire Shield and
Scaled Shield grinds, as these items are essentially best in slot for their respective classes and give considerable offensive and defensive bonuses.
It is recommended to have 99 /
99 /
99 melee stats at this point, but base 90s are fine. As CO accounts have limited sources of damage reduction and bonus HP,
99 is a requirement for most of the game beyond this point. You will need
85 for
Aeris Armour Aeris armour and
85 for
Glacia Armour Glacia armour during this section. This section will assume both
Finn, the Cat and
Leonardo for +10 HP and +1% DR respectively.
Throughout this section the optimal setup will be discussed, and HP/DR thresholds revolving best case scenario will be primarily considered. Use Can I Idle to verify if any other DR/HP combination you might have will suffice.
Aeris
Recommended gear
The optimal gear recommended above gives 1030 HP and 48% DR. You only need 42% DR with 1030 HP, or 48% DR and 910 HP to survive Air god.
The optimal gear assumes the player has manually completed the Infernal Stronghold once for the
Infernal Cape. If you wish to idle that dungeon, then you will need
Glacia Armour Glacia gear from the next dungeon in order to do so.
Your goal is to get full Aeris God Armour from the
Scrolls of Aeris, with the
Stormsnap being optional. The
Aeris Godsword is wholly unnecessary, as you'll want to keep using the DR of the
Dragonfire Shield a while longer, though all of the godswords can be used for non-dungeon grinding.
You'll want to hold on to the Air Shards which can be upgraded into
Air Chests, containing various Crossbow bolts. These won't be enough to supply you for the
Water God Dungeon but will at least save you some time grinding ammunition in the future. The
Deadeye Amulet and the
Deadeye Ring are each pretty good DPS increases for
Ranged, but DR is so tight in most god dungeons that you may not be able to use it over the
FEZ.
Glacia
Recommended gear
Water God Dungeon will be done with
Ranged. Your goal is 49% DR. The optimal setup shown above gives 55%, well in excess. The easiest way to reach this threshold is with the
Ancient Crossbow from
Dragons Den and a
Dragonfire Shield. You can gather bolts from either
Air Chests and
Slayer resupplies, the latter being a relatively good source. Arrows can easily be obtained from
Raging Horned Elite or from
Slayer resupplies.
Scaled Shield is much higher DPS than
Dragonfire Shield, so this shield is the top recommendation, but the latter is an option if one needs extra defensive stats to reach the idle threshold. An alternative if you have
Level 80 is to use the
Stone Skin Prayer and a
Stormsnap or
Ancient Longbow. Otherwise, you'll have to use a shield.
If you do go the +
/
route, then
Aeris Armour provides enough damage reduction for you to wear otherwise fully offensive gear, including the
Deadeye Amulet,
Deadeye Ring, and the
Cape of Prat or
Ranged Skillcape.
Regardless of your gearing, the goal is full Glacia Armour from the
Scrolls of Glacia, with the
Warlock Ring from
Water Chests being a neat bonus and the
Warlock Amulet not being very useful. The
Glacia Godsword is not worth grinding for, nor is the
Cloudburst Staff. The staff doesn't provide any
Air Runes, which are required for all standard spells, so where you can use a staff, you'll likely want to use your
Mystic Air Staff to prevent needing to farm
Wizards for
Air Runes, or
Ocean Song in the later game for rune-efficient DPS.
Water Chests are actually the best place to farm
Ancient Runes due to the low drop rate and amount from
Magic Chests. You will need enough runes to cast
Gust around 75-100 times, which is upwards of 500
Ancient Runes, 1,800
Air Rune and 500
Havoc Rune for
Into the Mist later down the line. It may be worth stockpiling more than these amounts in case any issues arrise during the fight. If
Slicing Winds is used instead (not recommended), one should collect enough runes for at least 200 casts. Hold on to a
Magic Wand (Elite) if you get one and have the bank space to spare, as it's the best one-handed wand you'll have access to for awhile.
Now is a good time to farm up Dragon Claw and
Ancient Claw, if you haven't done so already.
Dragon Claw Fragments are farmed from
Griffins in the
High Lands, while
Ancient Claw Fragments are farmed from
Pegasi in the same area. You will need 100 of each to make the claws. These can then be combined into the
Infernal Claw with 10
Infernal Core from completing the
Infernal Stronghold 10 times. As it takes quite awhile to finish
Infernal Stronghold 10 times, it is best to wait until one can safely idle the dungeon, which is only possible on a HCCO with full
Glacia Armour. It is, however, possible to skip the long
Infernal Claw grind entirely. Between
Darksteel Dagger for bosses and one of the four Godswords for idling elite
Slayer, there aren't many uses left for
Infernal Claw. It is still the highest DPS general purpose weapon behind
Tidal Edge, but some might argue not by enough to justify the time investment obtaining it.
Terran
Slot | Item (most effective → least effective) | |
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The first thing to notice about this dungeon is that since Magic is the recommended style, farming the dungeon efficiently will have to be done at a much later point.
Magic on a CO account is either awful DPS with rune-saving spells like
Wind Blast+
Surge II (around 1.2 effective kills/hr: 1.9 kills/hr and 40 minutes farming
Death Rune from
Necromancer) or incredibly rune intensive
with a good dps weapon in
Ocean Song (around 2.7 effective kills/hr: 7.4 kills/hr and 2.6 hours farming
Air Rune and
Mind Rune).
Cloudburst Staff is unfortunately not very useful, as the effective kills/hr are lower than even that of lowly
Wind Blast due to the intense rune consumption. Ancient magics is the same story: not worth the rune costs.
The second thing to note is that this dungeon is one of the first places where HC/Adv and standard characters deviate in their path. This typically only happens at points where Magic is the primary style needed within a dungeon, and
Earth God Dungeon and
Infernal Stronghold are the first instances where this happens. Standard CO characters, with their lower combat triangle penalties, can idle this dungeon with melee and a
Wasteful Ring at 52% DR. A
Tidal Edge is the most efficient item, but
Darksteel Dagger is also viable. HCCO and AdvCO can never idle this dungeon with melee without almost all of the items from
Earth God Dungeon in the first place, as the DR requirement is 64% with a
Wasteful Ring.
As for the actual mechanics of the dungeon, Terran pretty much can only be tackled with
Magic as he has a very tight window for gearing and Damage Reduction. Specifically, your attack speed needs to be faster than 3 seconds and you need 47% DR. In a worst case scenario,
Terran will increase your attack interval by 33% for 2 turns then stun you for 1 turn. If he hits you while you're stunned, you'll take an additional 30% damage, drastically increasing your necessary DR to safely idle.
As with the Water God Dungeon, there are two ways to do the
Earth God Dungeon: you can use a
Mystic Air Staff and use the
Surge II Aurora to just barely make your attacks fast enough to avoid being smacked while stunned and slowed, or use a
Magic Wand (Elite),
Miolite Shield (or
Dragonfire Shield if you're lazy), which is fast enough to not worry about needing
Surge II, but has increased rune costs and therefore less effective kills/hr.
The goal of the dungeon is to get any of the following combinations:
- 3 pieces of
Terran Armour (including the boots)
- 2 pieces of
Terran Armour and the pet,
Erran (1/150) (including the boots)
Terran God Boots and a
Guardian Ring
- An
Earth Layered Shield and
Terran God Boots
- Solely
Terran God Boots and later obtain
Hunter's Ring
At least one of these combinations is needed to enable Rokken farming later down the line. As
Terran God Boots are the most common item from this dungeon, you can finally put your
(G) Rune Boots to rest; they've earned it.
Terran Armour isn't necessary to upgrade your melee gear further to
Ragnar Armour and
Fire God Dungeon is actually easier to complete in comparison to
Earth God Dungeon (as it is completed with
Ranged), but you will need a few Terran pieces to reach the DR threshold for later activities such as
Into the Mist and
Dark Waters. Again, the
Terran Godsword isn't worth grinding out due to the DR windows being tight, as there is no access to
Damage Reduction Potions for COs. A
Guardian Amulet is not terribly useful as it has quite a high DPS penalty, but it may be useful in certain builds as a last resort to reach an idle DR threshold. A
Guardian Ring from the
Earth Chests is a useful ring to have for the same reason, but it doesn't carry anywhere near as heavy of a DPS penalty so it is somewhat more desirable.
Ragnar
Slot | Item (most effective → least effective) | |
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Ragnar is completely optional for game progression, as
Ragnar God Armour actually has LESS damage reduction than
Terran God Armour, though it has much higher Strength and melee attack bonuses. In addition,
Slayer Helmet (Master) and
Slayer Platebody (Master) are arguably better for late game grinds, as well as being deterministic to obtain. Elite slayer gear is also utilised heavily before master.
It is easy to manual clear Fire God Dungeon, as long as the player has
Dungeon Equipment Swapping unlocked. The second-to-last enemy,
Ignis, has a 52% DR requirement when using melee and the final boss,
Ragnar, has a 56% DR requirement when using Ranged. However, if one wishes to idle the whole dungeon then a
Wasteful Ring and either
Guardian Ring or
Guardian Amulet is required as a HCCO. It may be beneficial to delay farming these items until after unlocking the passive slot. Otherwise, grab some
Climbing Boots or a
Slayer Skillcape, head over to the
Perilous Peaks and kill some
Wicked Greater Dragons. While you're there, you might as well stock up on
Jadestone Bolts from
Hunting Greater Dragons, if you have the food to spare. While they're the best bolts in the game, the food necessary to grind them out in any notable amount may dissuade you from changing away from
Topaz Bolts or
Sapphire Bolts from
Slayer resupplies. You will need a
Hunter's Ring eventually, so picking one up won't be a waste of time.
Range is your best option for the Fire God Dungeon due to the 1300 Magic max hit of the final boss,
Ragnar. Even once you have your
Wasteful Ring equipped, you'll need 63% DR to idle
Fire God Dungeon, which at this point, can only be done with the
Guardian Amulet or the
Erran pet from
Earth God Dungeon plus
FEZ and otherwise full tank gear. We only have access to 66% total DR from
Ranged until after
Into the Mist. Full
Aeris,
Earth Layered Shield,
Infernal Cape, and
Stone Skin will only get you to 60% DR.
If you aren't after full collection log completion and just want to speed your way to Into the Mist and T90 weapon farming, pick up enough pieces of
Ragnar Armour to replace any remaining
Ancient Armour. Between
Terran and
Ragnar, you should have a piece of T85 armour for each slot, with possibly the body and/or the helmet slots missing as these can be filled with Elite and Master slayer gear down the line.
The Ragnar Godsword is the most useful Godsword, as it is the second best weapon for farming elite
Slayer tasks behind
Tidal Edge. The slow attack speed of Godswords reduces the prayer used per hour by about half, which can be further coupled with a
Prayer Skillcape down to around 6-7k/hr. The other Godswords are viable, but only
Ragnar Godsword is better than
Infernal Claw in terms of slayer coins/hr. All four Godswords are, however, better than
Darksteel Dagger for elite
Slayer, so if you have opted to skip the
Infernal Claw grind, then any of the four will be useful to you.
Big ol Ron is wholly useless.
Sandstorm Ring is still useful as it can actually be better than
Fighter Ring in a few situations, specifically against high defence enemies. However, due to the 100% accurate special attack of
Tidal Edge,
Sandstorm Ring eventually becomes a DPS loss in every situation and should be completely swapped out for
Fighter Ring,
Hunter's Ring or even
Guardian Ring.
The stun effect of the Fighter Amulet is one of the strongest combinations with
Tidal Edge as the first hit of its special attack reliably activates the stun effect while the second hit enjoys a +30% damage increase due to the enemy being stunned. The amulet is borderline required to unlock the full potential of the weapon. This can be farmed later after the passive slot and
Shockwave, as it is a considerable grind.
Chapter VIII: Into the Mist
The Dungeon Equipment Swapping upgrade is required to complete
Into the Mist. The minimum recommended gear is full
Terran,
Aeris and
Glacia God Armour, but it can be completed pre-Terran just with more active strategies (swap
Terran Gear for
Ancient Gear and swap
Earth Layered Shield for
Dragonfire Shield.) Recommended skill levels are
90,
90,
90,
90, and
86,
Level 99 and
Level 76. Each of the 3 phases of the boss can only be damaged by an attack type that matches their own. Melee vs melee, ranged vs ranged, magic vs magic. The DR numbers provided assume a max HP of 1000 from
Level 99 and
Finn, the Cat. (500 max HP after affliction).
You can either Auto Eat your way through this dungeon, or hold down the Eating button in order to spam food when it is available.
The most important thing to understand about Into the Mist is the Affliction debuff, which lowers your max HP by 1% for every stack and stacks up to 50 times. Every time an attack hits you while in this dungeon there is a 70% chance to gain a stack of affliction. This means that in long fights, your max HP will drop to 500, which puts your
Auto Eat threshold at 200. The only way to remove affliction is to defeat the current monster or run.
Afflicted Monsters
For Afflicted Monsters, you will want to be using your strongest Melee,
Ranged and
Magic sets. Swap sets according to the attack style of the monster to gain Combat Triangle advantage. Due to the variability of the monsters you face, this phase can either be very easy or very hard. Keep your eye on your current
Auto Eat threshold (which will drop from 400 to 200 as the fight continues), and the max hit of the monster you are currently facing (keeping in mind status effects like sleep, stun, and freeze.) You will likely need to eat manually in this section. This phase is not a race against time, unlike Phase 1 and 3 so there is no need to rush.
Mysterious Figure - Phase 1
Recommended Gear: Terran or
Ragnar Armour,
FEZ,
Guardian Ring or
Fighter Ring,
Darksteel Dagger,
Earth Layered Shield,
Infernal Cape
Recommended Prayers: Protect from Melee,
Chivalry
Combat Style: Stab
Attacks
Mark of Death (50%) (Auto Eat req: 34% DR)
- An unavoidable attack that deals 300 damage, and applies +1 stack of Mark of Death to you (Maximum 3 stacks). Mark of Death gives 50% decreased damage reduction regardless of number of stacks. One stack is removed after each of your turns.
Cursed Edge (35%) (Spam Eat)
- An avoidable attack that slices at you 2 times, dealing 600 damage each.
Reap and Return (15%) (Auto Eat req: 56% DR)
- An avoidable attack that hits 7 times, plus an extra time per Mark of Death stack applied to you. Deals 450 damage each and heals the enemy for 100% of damage dealt. Removes all Mark of Death stacks from you after attack.
Strategy
For this fight, it is very helpful to use a weapon with attack speed lower than 2.6. This means that you can avoid getting hit while you have a stack of the Mark of Death debuff. Mark of Death is survivable with Auto Eat at max affliction provided you have at least 34% DR. Cursed Edge can kill you through
Auto Eat at high affliction stacks, so spam eat for this attack once its max hit is higher than your
Auto Eat threshold.
With 56% DR, you can survive Reap and Return using just Auto Eat even at maximum affliction stacks. This fight is a race due to the healing the boss receives from Reap and Return. For this reason we use
Protect from Melee to limit the amount of healing the boss can do. It is important to not use
Sandstorm Ring, since the special attack will stop you from clearing the Mark of Death stacks before being hit.
Darksteel Dagger is very strong here due to how the bleed scales with enemy max HP.
Mysterious Figure - Phase 2
Recommended Gear: Aeris Armour,
Deadeye Amulet or
FEZ,
Deadeye Ring or
Guardian Ring,
Ancient Throwing Knives,
Earth Layered Shield,
Infernal Cape or
Cape of Prat.
Recommended Prayers: Eagle Eye,
Sharp Vision
Combat Style: Rapid
Attacks
Mark of Death (50%) (Auto Eat req: 34% DR)
- An unavoidable attack that deals 300 damage, and applies +1 stack of Mark of Death to you (Maximum 3 stacks). Mark of Death gives 50% decreased damage reduction regardless of number of stacks. One stack is removed after each of your turns.
Concealed Danger (35%) (Auto Eat req: 56% DR)
- An avoidable attack that hits 1 time(s), plus an extra time per Mark of Death stack applied to you. Deals 450 damage each. Removes all Mark of Death stacks from you after attack.
Shadowstep (15%)
- The enemy is surrounded with mist, gives the enemy +20% Global Evasion,+40% Damage Reduction and -20% Attack Interval for 1 of the enemy's turn. If buff is already active, perform a Normal Attack instead.
Normal Attack (Instead of repeating Shadowstep while the effect is already active) (Spam Eat)
- 772 Ranged Damage
Strategy
For this phase, we are once again avoiding the Mark of Death debuff by using a fast attack speed weapon. In this case, our attack must be faster than 1.75 which Ancient Throwing Knives with the rapid attack style allows us to do. Mark of Death is survivable with
Auto Eat at max affliction provided you have at least 34% DR. With 56% DR, you can survive Concealed Danger even with maximum affliction.
The attack which you must watch out for is the normal attack, which happens instead of Shadowstep if the boss already has the buff (the attack bar of the boss will be blue rather than yellow). This attack can kill you through Auto Eat at high affliction stacks, so spam eat for this attack once its max hit is higher than your
Auto Eat threshold. This phase is not a race against time, so slow and steady will work for this phase.
Ahrenia
Recommended Gear: Glacia Armour,
FEZ,
Warlock Ring or
Guardian Ring,
Magic Wand (Elite),
Miolite Shield or
Earth Layered Shield,
Skull Cape or
Infernal Cape
Recommended Prayers: Mystic Might,
Augury
Spell: Gust or
Slicing Winds
Attacks
Shadow Burst (70%) (Spam Eat)
- Fire off 3 large, avoidable, dark explosions that deal 800 damage each. Gives you -1% Global Accuracy that stacks up to 40 times.
Into the Mist (15%)
- The enemy disappears into the Mist. Gives the enemy +10% Damage Reduction each time they are hit for the duration of this attack (Stacks up to 10 times) and gives Regen that heals 10% of the enemy's max Hitpoints over 10s.
Fallen Light (15%) (Auto Eat req: 50% DR)
- The Mist breaks away and the sky opens up to an unavoidable, falling ray of Darkness, dealing 400x15 damage over 2.8s.
Strategy
For this fight, you will first and foremost need to achieve accuracy higher than 33,334. This allows us to stay above the 20,000 accuracy requirement for Ancient Magicks while accounting for max stacks of the Shadow Burst debuff. Once you achieve the required accuracy, you should then try to get at least 50% DR. How you achieve this combination of stats will depend or your exact Magic level and which pets and gear you have currently collected. It isn't possible to reach the DR needed to survive Shadow Burst even at low affliction stacks, so you will need to spam eat whenever you see Shadowburst (this will be most attacks).
Into the Mist healing the boss means this fight is a race against time. This is why we're going to use 100% accuracy Ancient Magicks. Gust is a good choice, but
Slicing Winds will also get the job done. Fallen Light can be survived with
Auto Eat at max affliction as long as you have at least 50% DR. It is important to use
Auto Eat for Fallen Light since that will allow you to attack without being interrupted by manual eating.
Chapter IX: T90 grind
Recommended stats
The most important skills are 99 and
99, as HP is needed to meet the DR thresholds and the slayer cape perk is very beneficial. Bare minimum stats are
80 to equip
Darksteel Dagger, around
80,
85 for Ragnar/Terran God Armour,
66 for Chivalry,
90 and
90 for God Armours,
Shockwave and
Ocean Song. It is also assumed that
Finn, the Cat and
Leonardo are owned. The reason why the offensive requirements are relatively low is that farming T90s takes a very long time on a CO account (about 3 weeks of continuous play all up), so a lot of experience will be gained during this section anyway. For example, by the time the first T90,
Shockwave, is completed the player will have earned about 4m prayer and 9.5m melee exp. Therefore it is not essential to have maxed offensive stats, as those can be effectively trained along the way. 99 slayer however is very important for the cape perk. It is still possible to do without the cape, but a lot of food will be wasted in compensation and a lot fewer kills/hr on
Rokken if the player's attack speed is 2.2 or above. A
Hunter's Ring is highly recommended in this case for full area effect negation.
You must complete Into the Mist to make use of the passive slot for this section. The food and dps loss from not having this slot is simply not worth it. You will complete 40 master slayer tasks while farming T90s and
Dark Waters enemies are easier than
Perilous Peaks enemies once the DR threshold from gear has been met.
Perilous Peaks enemies are designed to consume a large amount of food (which is precious on a CO account) and so tackling them with T90 gear is optimal.
The recommended order for farming T90s is: Rokken (ranged) →
Ku-tul (magic) →
Umbora (melee). Both
Rokken and
Ku-tul can be completed at roughly the same kills/hr without any T90 items, but
Darksteel Dagger +
Elder Crown combo will result in about 2.5x less food usage on
Rokken, as well as
Shockwave having more immediate value than
Ocean Song which requires a lot of farming to make use of.
Umbora is by far the most difficult monster due to the scarce nature of runes, so tackling this monster with doubling and % damage from
Slayer Gear Upgrade Kit (Master) will have the most benefit out of all three mobs.
Umbora first is highly discouraged as runes are very difficult to obtain on a CO account, making it vital to use
Ocean Song to maximise rune efficiency. A comparison of alternative
Umbora methods is presented below in the dedicated section and it should be clear that
Ocean Song is by far the best option.
Method
You will be manually selecting tasks to avoid unfavourable tasks while farming T90s. There are many reasons to be on a slayer task:
- You always profit slayer coins even when factoring in reroll costs
- You can passively work towards 40 master slayer tasks
- Slayer cape damage bonus to help with farming
When starting out it is recommended to remove your slayer cape, toggle auto slayer ON and manually roll tasks. This will remove Perilous Peaks enemies from the potential pool of slayer monsters, leaving only a 1/2 chance of obtaining the correct slayer task.
WARNING: MAKE SURE TO TOGGLE AUTOSLAYER BACK OFF AFTER SELECTING A TASK, AS INCORRECT COMBAT TRIANGLE MANAGEMENT IS CERTAIN DEATH IN THE WATERS AND A LOT OF FOOD WASTED IN PEAKS, POSSIBLY LEADING TO DEATH.
You will always profit slayer coins as each Dark Waters task gives about 250k coins on average (382.5k if extending the task) and costs about 65k on average (77.5k if extending) to manually select. This leads to an average profit of 185k/task or 305k/task if extending. These numbers equate to extended tasks being about 10% more efficient coins/kill. The player has the choice of earning more slayer coins by extending slayer tasks, or obtaining master slayer gear faster by leaving tasks unextended. On average, one will complete 20 tasks per T90 item or 12.5 if extending. Since it is highly recommended to have
Slayer Wizard Robes (Master) and
Slayer Wizard Hat (Master) before
Umbora to save on runes, it is recommended to not extend tasks. Alternatively, one can make up the extra tasks at
Perilous Peaks while farming out
Peri or any of the three unqiues. Even with this in mind, it is always better to be running a task than not. Try to manage extensions so that a task will end shortly before the player expects to away from the game (such as overnight), as this will ensure that a fresh (possibly extended) task can be undertaken for the duration of the inattentive period. Expected kills/hr are listed in each section and this can be used as a guide to figure out when a task will be completed.
Once Shockwave is obtained the Slayer Skillcape can be left on as farming
Perilous Peaks is perfectly manageable with access to a T90 weapon. Around 40k
Crab should be earned by the time
Shockwave is obtained, so this food can now be spent on these monsters.
Wicked Greater Dragon are very straightforward as
Shockwave destroys them. The setup is the same as the
Ku-tul setup below, but the
Slayer Cowl (Elite) is swapped for a
Aeris God Helmet and
Protect from Magic is replaced with
Battleheart, as the majority of damage comes from dragon breath.
Hunting Greater Dragon can also be killed with
Shockwave (around 105 kills/hr) or with
Infernal Claw (for around 95 kills/hr) with a typical melee build.
Darksteel Dagger is around 80 kills/hr so it is viable but a bit slower than the others. It is not necessary to wait for
Tidal Edge, as that only marginally increases the kills/hr to 115 while being substantially more difficult to obtain. Melee methods save more food, with
Tidal Edge being the least food usage,
Darksteel Dagger second,
Infernal Claw in third and
Shockwave consuming the most food. These results are summarised in the following table:
Item | Kills/hr | ![]() |
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81.5 | 1175 | 14.5 |
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115 | 1425 | 12.5 |
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95 | 1700 | 18 |
105 | 2325 | 22 |
One can also choose to farm Chaotic Greater Dragon to obtain a
Recoil Shield or to waste less coins on rerolls. These are a fair bit slower at 50 kills/hr with
Darksteel Dagger and 57.5 kills/hr with
Infernal Claw, so one may choose to only undertake such tasks if the quantity is low and 40 Master Slayer tasks are still needed. Due to combat triangle penalty,
Shockwave is considerably more food usage, but it is faster kills/hr at around 80-90/hr. Melee is preferable for this task, as the time spent gathering runes is not worth the increased dps of magic, even with
Ocean Song. This task is significantly faster with
Tidal Edge (around 93 kills/hr) as the unavoidable special attack is very useful, so this task can be skipped until that point if preferred.
With a 3/6 to 4/6 chance of favourable tasks, very little should be wasted on rerolling tasks. Umbora tasks should be skipped until
Ocean Song and
Rokken tasks should be skipped unless they are very short (around 150 or less). There is only a 1/5 to 2/5 chance of receiving an unfavourable task after completing a slayer task (the automatic task assigned is free, saving 25k slayer coins), which further adds to the savings.
Once the player has received the Perilous Peaks uniques,
Peri and completed 40 master slayer tasks, they can return to removing the cape + toggling auto slayer on to skip
Perilous Peaks tasks.
Rokken
Recommended gear
Take care when interpreting this table. Rokken requires a very specific setup as both the DR threshold and the full Slayer area effect negation thresholds must be met. The two loadouts shown will achieve both requirements (with the leftmost one being more kills/hr), but pieces are not interchangeable between each set. For example, a
Ragnar God Platebody cannot be swapped for
Slayer Platebody (Elite) in the first setup, nor can a
Hunter's Ring be swapped for a
Fighter Ring in the second setup. The only advantage of the second setup is that it does not require
99 or a God platebody, so it is easier to achieve.
Alternative gear options
Rokken requires 47% or more DR, so any 3 Terran pieces will achieve this. The
Ragnar God Platebody has the best increase in stats over its respective Terran counterpart so this layout is chosen. Additionally,
Fighter Ring + 2x Terran is better than
Guardian Ring + 2x Ragnar, but you may want to use the latter or some intermediate combination if you do not have full Terran or Ragnar. The swap priority goes: boots < gloves < helmet < legs < ring < platebody < amulet. This means that if one needs 2% more DR over their Ragnar setup, the best choice would be to swap to Terran boots and gloves.
Sandstorm Ring and
Hunter's Ring respectively are the next best options for the ring slot. Consider using
Hunter's Ring and two pieces of Elite Slayer gear if you do not have
Slayer Skillcape for full 40% slayer area negation. DO NOT use a guardian amulet unless you have
Otto, as this will put your attack speed low enough to where you risk being stunned and attacked (see below).
Earth Layered Shield with full Ragnar is better DPS, but farming Earth God is very difficult and expensive on a CO so it is best saved until after
Tidal Edge or
Ocean Song.
Earth Layered Shield requires 48% DR due to the HP lost by removing
Dragonfire Shield.
Recommended prayers
Protect from Ranged +
Chivalry.
Protect from Ranged is very important as this heavily mitigates the raw damage the enemy does and it also results in less frequent stuns. This makes the prayer higher dps than
Piety or
Battleheart as more time is spent doing damage. The food usage drops from 600
Crab/hr to less than 100
Crab/hr with
Protect from Ranged alone, as
Darksteel Dagger +
Elder Crown combo will take care of the majority of damage incurred.
Chivalry is better than
Battleheart and
Piety as it has the most accuracy, which will help keep the
Darksteel Dagger bleed applied more often.
Method
This method relies on having faster attack speed than Rokken (2.2 seconds/attack) to avoid the stun → basic attack combo. If stunned, the DR threshold is increased to 57%. This setup with full slayer effect negation, crown and dagger is 2.1 seconds/attack.
Efficiency notes
- This setup is about 36 kills/hr with 95 crabs used and 18.5k prayer points used per hour, assuming max stats. This drops slightly below max.
- Expect 35.5k slayer coins/hr in return, 18.5k prayer exp/hr, 75.5k melee and 57k slayer exp/hr.
- The player can expect to complete 20 master slayer tasks (12.7 if extending) by the time they finish 100 shockwave pieces, netting 3.5m (3.9m if extended) slayer coins when factoring in manual selection (and extension) fees. If spent solely on standard resupplies, the player can expect to profit about 39k (45k) crabs and spend about 820k (620k) prayer points.
- It will take on average about 140 hours which is almost 6 days of continuous farming.
Ku-tul
Item | Slot | DR% |
---|---|---|
Weapon | 0% | |
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Off-hand | 8% |
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Head | 4% |
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Body | 8% |
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Leggings | 8% |
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Boots | 8% |
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Hands | 8% |
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Cape | 0% |
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Neck | 3% |
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Ammo | 0% |
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Ring | 0% |
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Passive | 0% |
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Pet | 0% |
Pet | 1% | |
Total | 48% |
Gear alternatives
The DR requirement for Ku-tul is 48%.
Guardian Ring and
Hunter's Ring are perfectly viable options if the player does not own
Deadeye Ring.
Deadeye Amulet can be worn in the passive slot for 72 kills/hr (+6%) in exchange for more than doubling the food usage (300/hr).
Recommended prayers
Protect from Magic +
Rigour.
If the player has an abundance of food, they can opt for
Battleheart over
Protect from Magic. This will increase the dps by about 16% in exchange for 470% more food usage.
Efficiency notes
- With access to the T90, this is the easiest monster of the three by far.
- Expect about 68 kills/hr, 140
Crab/hr, 18k prayer points/hr and -1.2k
Sapphire Bolts/hr.
- Expect to earn 220k ranged exp/hr, 130k prayer exp/hr, 110k slayer exp/hr.
- Due to the increased kill speed,
Ku-tul profits both food and prayer but loses bolts.
- From the 3.5m (3.9m if extending) slayer coins after completing
Ocean Song, standard resupply yields 42k (48k if extending)
Crab, 425k net prayer points profit and -19k (-11k)
Sapphire Bolts.
- This mob takes about 74 hours, or about 3 days of continuous farming.
Umbora
Recommended gear
Item | Slot | DR% |
---|---|---|
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Weapon | 0% |
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Off-hand | 8% |
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Head | 6% |
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Body | 6% |
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Leggings | 8% |
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Boots | 8% |
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Hands | 8% |
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Cape | 3% |
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Neck | 0% |
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Ring | 0% |
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Passive | 0% |
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Pet | 0% |
Pet | 1% | |
Pet | 0% | |
Pet | 0% | |
Pet | 0% | |
Pet | 0% | |
Pet | 0% | |
Total | 48% |
The DR requirement for Umbora is 47%. Note that because
Umbora takes so long to farm compared to the other monsters, any small efficiency is highly beneficial. This is why Pets that offer loot doubling or rune saving are highly recommended.
Because the vast majority of the damage done is due to the special attack of Ocean Song, which is unaffected by damage increases and has 100% accuracy, we opt to sacrifice the
Warlock Ring in favour of
Hunter's Ring. The dps downgrade is minimal (less than 0.5% fewer kills/hr) but the additional slayer coins help pay for the prayer points used and can be put towards remaining master slayer purchases.
Additionally, this is one of the few situations (or perhaps the only one) where a Warlock Amulet is useful. For the same reason as above,
Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs does not contribute very much to our DPS, but
Warlock Amulet saves around 50
Crab/hr. Strictly speaking the
Crab end up being worth more than the fraction of a kill in terms of time-to-obtain efficiency, but
Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs is still fine to use if one prefers to complete the
Umbora slightly faster in exchange for about 20% more food usage.
Recommended prayers
Protect from Melee +
Battleheart
Augury does not increase dps by very much as the
Ocean Song special cannot miss, while
Protect from Melee cuts food usage by 80%.
Method
This setup relies on using Water Strike and
Fury II on
Umbora for 63 kills/hr. This may seem decent, but when factoring in rune acquisition this is by far the most painful of the three.
Water Strike is the most rune efficient spell, as the dps increase by upgrading to
Water Bolt is only about 7.5%, yet requires 50% more runes that are harder to obtain. The reason for the small upgrade in DPS is due to
Ocean Song special attack and the aurora both adding flat damage. The story is similar for
Water Blast, but with even more exaggerated downsides.
Chaos Rune and
Death Rune are best saved for magic exp with a
Mystic Air Staff on
Raging Horned Elite.
Umbora also does by far the most damage and consumes around 310
Crab/hr, but again resupplies come in clutch as they generate about 910
Crab/hr so it is still net profit.
Rune farming
Overall farming Umbora consumes roughly 1,000
Air Rune, 1,000
Mind Rune, 2,000
Light Rune per hour. Over the 3 days it takes to farm
Umbora, expect to consume 67,500
Air Rune, 67,500
Mind Rune and 135,000
Light Rune. The latter is abundantly obtained from standard resupplies, but the two former must be obtained manually.
The following two setups are recommended for farming runes. The advantage of the melee setup is there are no supply usage costs, while the ranged setup is more kills/hr if one has an abundance of knives handy.
Ranged
Item | Slot |
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Weapon |
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Head |
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Body |
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Leggings |
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Boots |
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Hands |
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Cape |
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Neck |
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Ring |
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Passive |
Pet | |
Pet | |
Pet | |
Pet |
Melee
Item | Slot |
---|---|
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Weapon |
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Head |
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Body |
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Leggings |
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Boots |
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Hands |
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Cape |
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Neck |
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Ring |
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Passive |
Pet | |
Pet | |
Pet | |
Pet |
- The best option for obtaining
Air Rune is
Wizard. With the previous gear setup, one can expect to obtain about 800
Air Rune/hr using melee and around 970
Air Rune with ranged. The ranged setup will consume about 600
Ancient Throwing Knife per hour, so it essentially trades
Ancient Throwing Knife for
Air Rune at basically a 1:2 ratio. Lower tier knives are perfectly viable, as even
Bronze Throwing Knife is still better than the melee setup (around 840
Air Rune/hr in the worst case scenario). Javelins are also viable, as
Ancient Javelin will result in around 950
Air Rune/hr and consume slightly fewer javelins (around 500/hr). A
Cape of Prat is also an option, but this almost doubles the ammo usage to around 1,100
Ancient Throwing Knife/hr while only increasing the runes gained to around 990
Air Rune/hr. It should take about 70-85 hours to obtain all the
Air Rune necessary, depending on the method used.
- For collecting mind runes, the best option is
Master Wizard. Luckily this will be a lot faster, obtaining about 2,150
Mind Rune/hr with melee and about 2,675
Mind Rune/hr with ranged. Similar ammo saving considerations can be made as above when farming
Air Rune. While collecting the 67,500
Mind Rune, you will also snag 27,000
Chaos Rune, 8,000
Death Rune and over 400
Amulet of Magic for your second and third
Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs. This will be much faster than
Air Rune, clocking in around 30 hours to collect all the necessary
Mind Rune. The
Chaos Rune when used on
Raging Horned Elite should give about 2.3m magic exp and the
Death Rune around 900k. If starting the T90 grind without having
90 required to equip
Ocean Song then one should start the rune farming grind with
Master Wizard and use the higher tier catalytic runes to level their magic.
- Opting for Ragnar (or Aeris) over Master Slayer is perfectly viable (A Ragnar setup nets about 740
Air Rune/hr instead of 800). However, over the 115 hours spent farming runes, the time saved (about 9-10 hours) is quite considerable. With
Ragnar Godsword, full Ragnar,
Hunter's Ring and
Prayer Skillcape one earns around 65k slayer coins per hour doing elite slayer while spending only 6.5k prayer points. This means the 9-10 hours saved contributes around 500k slayer coins (minus points spent on resupplies to replenish prayer) towards the 2m total coin cost of the melee master slayer set. Master slayer is also required for the next stage of the game which is farming
Unhallowed Wasteland, so this is the best time to obtain it.
- Combined, the total grind will be about 70 hours farming
Umbora, 85 hours for
Air Rune and 30 hours for
Mind Rune totalling 185 hours. This is on par with the previous two items combined, which is fitting as it is the most useful for a CO-account with limited resources.
- The player will easily get from 90-99 magic while farming
Umbora. Expect around 200k magic xp/hr, which ends up around 14m after
Tidal Edge is obtained.
Alternatives
Cloudburst Staff using
Water Strike clocks in only around 45 kills/hr at 2.5x the rune usage. All up it would require 100+295 = 395 hours (2.5 weeks). This also burns 500
Crab/hr while only producing 663
Crab/hr, barely profiting. Requires
Guardian Ring for those insane enough to try in order to meet the DR requirement, as it is not as necessary to mitigate all of the area effect due to
Cloudburst Staff not heavily scaling with attack speed.
This method obtains a whopping 12 kills/hr, while consuming a total of 380k death runes. Farming these would take around 250 hours of Necromancers, and then another 415 hours to use them up.
This is actually the next best option, as you are trading dps for no resource gathering time. This requires a Wasteful Ring and all up this clocks in around 19 kills/hr with
Protect from Melee +
Chivalry (750
Crab/hr) or 22 kills/hr with
Piety +
Chivalry instead (1,500
Crab/hr). All up this would cost about 180k/310k crabs and around 1.4m prayer points, as well as around 241/207 hours depending on whether one can spare to forego
Protect from Melee.
Chapter X: Unhallowed Wasteland
Unlike the previous chapter, the items from this section are extremely minor, niche and non-universal. There are situations where God gloves and rings are better than the sidegrades obtained here. It is a considerable grind on the order of around 750 hours (~1 month) to unlock everything required for this section. The main purpose is for completionist over anything else. All that being said, it is possible to complete this grind on a HCCO character, and this section will detail the process.
There are very few substitutions to be made in this section, as the Slayer area effect is so strong that half of the equipment slots are dedicated to
Slayer effect negation, while the remainder are for DR. As a CO it is only possible to negate a maximum of 95% of the area effect, so all of the enemies will passively heal throughout the fight. This makes DPS and stunning effects two of the most important considerations. Additionally, since the grind is so long and expensive while requiring many items from
Earth God Dungeon, the pet
Erran is assumed for all of these calculations, giving a passive +1% DR.
Luckily, due to the triple Master slayer gear requirement, the +9% doubling reduces the average kills quite considerably. Again, since this is such a long grind and of completionist nature, all of the doubling pets ( Golden Golbin,
Rosey and
Aquarias) are all assumed to be owned, as they are quite easy to obtain compared to this grind. Each monster here has an average completion rate of 4000, but this is reduced to 3520 due to the +12% doubling.
The overall Slayer task strategy is similar to the previous section, except there is no longer a preferred order for any of the monsters as the upgrades each one gives is minor. This means that if the
Auto Slayer task trick is employed again (detailed above in the T90 guide), there is a good chance (4/6) of rolling at least one task that you can tackle at any given time, and there is a 3/9 chance of rolling another
Unhallowed Wasteland monster for free after completing a task. As master slayer gear has already been obtained, one should always extend their
Slayer tasks here. All of these effects massively reduce the slayer coins needed to spend on rerolls. Doing this section on task is highly recommended, as the average amount of
Crab needed to complete this section is around 250k. Buying
Standard Resupply will almost entirely replenish all of the food used. One can further macro-maximise their rerolls by farming
Hunting Greater Dragon tasks as they arise while farming
Jadestone Bolts as detailed in the
Cursed Lich section. Because of the overall complexity of reroll strategies, reroll costs will not be factored into the overall calculations below. A very rough estimate for the total amount spent on rerolls for this entire section would be in the ballpark of around 750k-1m, essentially equating to 11.25-15k
and 1.5-2m prayer points over the cumulative values reported in the sections below.
A link to the raw data used for the calculations in this section can be found here.
Legaran Wurm
Recommended gear
Strategy
Like before with Rokken, these two gear sets are not interchangeable, although the passive slot can freely be any spare master slayer item. Both sets meet the necessary DR required, but the left setup is slightly more kills/hr due to Ragnar offering slightly higher net offensive stats. The DR threshold for
Legaran Wurm is 46% with
Earth Layered Shield and 45% with
Dragonfire Shield.
Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs is not recommended, as the stun effect from
Fighter Amulet not only reduces food usage, it speeds up the fight by limiting the healing effect of
Legaran Wurm.
The prayers used are Protect from Ranged and
Battleheart. As a considerable portion of our DPS comes from the special attack of
Tidal Edge,
Battleheart is the most effective offensive prayer. Due to the consistent stuns of
Fighter Amulet, this is the least painful monster of the four.
Efficiency Notes
- The food usage is around 670
/hr and 30k prayer
- Expect around 63k Slayer coin income, profiting both food and prayer when spent on
Standard Resupply
- Kill speed is around 53 kills/hr
- Total grind is around 66 hours
Cursed Lich
Recommended gear
Strategy
The main consideration for this section is which bolts to use. The comparison between the two bolts is as follows.
Sapphire Bolts
are obtained in almost infinite supply from
Standard Resupply, and so can essentially be considered "0-time" gathering. However, the lost DPS has a compounding effect, as the enemy can then heal more health the longer it is left alive. The total amount of ammo needed is around 75k
Sapphire Bolts and yield around 53 kills/hr while
Cursed Lich consumes the most food out of the four at a painful 1,350
Crab per hour. The total grind for this section will therefore be around 67 hours, resulting in -26k
Crab after
Standard Resupply are bought, as we do obtain about 65k slayer coins/hr.
Jadestone Bolts on the other-hand require killing
Hunting Greater Dragon. If one farms for the
Perilous Peaks pet
Peri primarily on
Hunting Greater Dragon, then around 150k
will be obtained by 7500 KC, and only 60k
is required for completing
Burning Madness Gloves. Even with the quickest strategy of equally farming
Wicked Greater Dragon and
Hunting Greater Dragon (that is, skipping
Chaotic Greater Dragon due to lack of triangle bonus), one should expect to obtain enough
for this whole grind, with
Sapphire Bolts perfectly acceptable to finish up with if needed. Again due to the combo of
Tidal Edge and
Fighter Amulet,
Hunting Greater Dragon are by far the easiest of the three enemies in
Perilous Peaks, consuming only 470
/hr while raking in around
/hr.
If one has to go out of their way to grind Jadestone Bolts, then expect around 2700
/hr. This will add around 22 hours to the total grind and save around 14 hours while farming
Cursed Lich, as the kill speed is around 66 kills/hr for a total duration of 53 hours. This will also independently profit around 25k
Crab.
In either case, not accounting for any slayer coins obtained while farming Hunting Greater Dragon, expect around -6k
Crab at the end of this grind after buying
Standard Resupply. The slayer coin income is around 82k/hr.
Downgrading from Deadeye Amulet to
Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs will save a slight amount of food, but result in 3 less kills/hr, totalling a 56 hour grind all up with
Jadestone Bolts. The DR requirement here is 45%, which is easily obtained with either amulet.
The prayers used are Protect from Magic and
Rigour.
tends to be the best prayer for
Ranged.
Spiked Red Claw
Recommended Gear
Strategy
As we are in the Magic section, expect pain.
There are no real substitutions or considerations to be made for this monster. The DR requirement is 54% with Magic, and the above gear gives 51%. We obtain 2% from both DR pets and the remaining 1% from the prayer
Stone Skin and excess DR reducing food usage. The other prayer we use is
Protect from Melee.
Guardian Amulet is not recommended as it is a considerable DPS loss, but it is still an item which will allow the DR threshold to be reached if one does need it.
This fight is excruciatingly slow, only yielding around 34 kills/hr. The total runes required is around 130k Air Rune, 130k
Mind Rune and 260k
Light Rune. From the rune farming guide in the
Umbora section, this will take around 220 hours of rune farming at 800
/hr and 2,150
/hr. The actual fight with the monster will take a further 103 hours, totalling 323 hours. We consume around 950
/hr during the fight. Due to the low kill speed,
Standard Resupply do not replenish us in this section. We spend around -30k
Crab, but we do profit around 650k prayer points due to the lack of excessive multi-hit moves on
Spiked Red Claw that drain prayer.
Greater Skeletal Dragon
Recommended Gear
Strategy
This is exact same gear and prayers as Spiked Red Claw being
Protect from Melee and
Stone Skin, but there is an unavoidable complication with this monster over the others...
Due to the nature of affliction stacks, there is currently no 100% safe way to idle this monster. There will always be an extremely low chance of death (estimated around 1/16.7k per fight from combat simulator) if the enemy can stack enough affliction stacks on us before we kill it.
If you are comfortable with that risk and plan to make regular backups of your character, then proceed. If you are not a HC character, you can swap Stone Skin for
Protect Item and accept the occasional death while farming. Unfortunately without
Stone Skin the death rate rises considerably to around 1/300, so it is a trade-off. Similarly,
Battleheart can be used for an additional +4 kills/hr with the same increased death rate.
Protect from Melee is non-negotiable (compared to the other monsters where it can technically be substituted for offensive prayers), as the dodge chance drastically slows the rate of affliction stacks accumulating. Without
Protect from Melee the death rate is around 1/6.
The alternative is to save this grind until after expansion where more sources of DR and HP will undoubtedly be added to the game.
Efficiency notes
This monster consumes less food than the other melee monster, but more prayer. Very similar kills/hr to Spiked Red Claw, but slightly less runes
- 34 kills/hr, 21.5 prayer/hr, 450
/hr
- 125k
Air Rune, 125k
Mind Rune and 250k
Light Rune
- Total grind is 212 hours farming runes and 103 hours killing the monster, totalling 315 hours.
- Due to the relatively low
consumption, we profit around 24k
. We only barely profit around 75k prayer points
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Reference Tables: Items, Equipment, Experience Table, Upgrading Items, Combat Areas, Slayer Areas, Dungeons, Strongholds, The Abyss, Monsters |