HCCO/Guide

This page was last updated for (v1.0.4).

The majority of this guide is written by Username, mazunki, @ERRORMONSTER#8764 of the discord community with modernisation by @Zxv#0157 / Zxv / /u/Zxv975. 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. :)

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. Try to select Plant easy slayer tasks to start the  slayer coin stack rolling.

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 (note this only applies to manually rolling tasks and doesn't affect Auto Slayer). It acts as a decent early Shield, before you get the Mithril Shield. However, it's optional, and the  slayer coins can be spent on Basic Resupplies instead.

Chapter II: Mithril Armour

To start, you should have: Full Steel Armour, 10 / 10 / 10, Steel Scimitar
At the end, you should have: Auto Eat - Tier I, 4-5 pieces of Mithril Armour, 40 / 40 / 40, Ice Sword, Adamant Dagger

Chapter II-A: Making Money Early Game + Auto Eat 1

Now is a good time to earn money while training combat stats. The importance of money is to be able to afford Auto Eat - Tier I, as the single most common killer of HCCOs is simply forgetting to eat in time. Getting this upgrade sooner rather than later will eliminate the most common cause of death, so it is worth prioritising. Restarting a HCCO over again is always less efficient than simply taking the extra precautions to ensure safety.

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. The average GP yield per Cow is  203. This can later be increased by  150 with Gloves of Silence, but that has a decent 45 requirement.

Important: As you farm Cows early game, Master Farmers later in the game, or Statues for Silver Bar+ Gold Bar to use on 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. The full list of Slayer tasks will be discussed in the next section.

Chapter II-B: Easy Slayer Tasks

As your stats and gear improve throughout this chapter, more and more easy slayer tasks become viable to do. This is an advantage as it limits the amount of manual rerolling of tasks required.  Slayer coins are an important currency as they will be spent on Basic Resupplies and will our next food source to replace Potatoes. The Lobsters are important to obtain as they will be used towards the end of this chapter to obtain the more difficult upgrades such as Amulet of Looting. Due to manual eating being quite slow, Potatoes cannot feasibly be used for more difficult combat encounters where the damage sustained from enemies is high.

The category of easy slayer tasks can be broken down into roughly 4 groups: very easy, easy, moderate and dangerous (for auto slayer).

"Very easy" Easy Tasks

The list of very easy tasks include: Plant, Chicken, Cow, Seagull, Golbin, Junior Farmer and Ranged Golbin. These tasks were selected as all having an average DPS of below 1 damage/second on a player wearing full steel and 30. These tasks are simple and reliable points, but since they have low HP they will be very quick to complete and therefore quite tedious.

"Easy" Easy Tasks

The next category are easy tasks, which include: Steel Knight, Skeleton, Tentacle, Goo Monster, Leech and Zombie Hand. These monsters have a DPS ranging from 1 to about 3. Of this list, Tentacle are the best task as they have the most HP.

"Moderate" Easy Tasks

The last category of tasks that will be undertaken are the moderate ones, which are compromised of: Black Knight, Giant Crab, Moist Monster, Green Goo Monster, Adult Farmer, Sweaty Monster, Mummy, Zombie, Hill Giant and Statue. These tasks are doable with a bit higher stats (around 40, 40, 40) and some of the later gear upgrades such as Ice Sword discussed below. Of particular note from this group, Sweaty Monster drop a somewhat decent supply of Salmon, Lobster and Shark, Mummies drop a lot of useful jewellery (discussed below), Statues are the best source of Silver Bars and Gold Bars needed to upgrade metal armour, and lastly Giant Crab are the single best easy task, boasting the highest HP without having too high offensive stats.

"Dangerous" Easy Tasks

The rest of the easy slayer tasks can be quite difficult, as they either have quite high stats (such as Ghosts), have damaging special attacks (such as Frozen Archer) or are magic users and therefore extremely accurate (such as Wizards and Fairies). Monsters in this category should be avoided until much later, and a lot of care must be exercised when using Auto Slayer as these tasks can waste in excess of 500 Lobster per hour without proper stats and gear.

Chapter II-C: Gear Upgrades

While training your stats on Cows, you will eventually be strong enough to make some gear upgrades. For armour, 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. Instead, you will skip straight to Mithril Knight.

Jewellery

But before you visit the Mithril Knight you'll want to take a detour to fight the Mummy for Silver Ruby Necklace and Gold Topaz Ring to fill out your neck and ring slots. The Gold Topaz Ring enables your character to obtain Signet Ring Half (b) while in combat, which can be sold for  850,000 and will cut out a large portion of the Auto Eat grinds. Note that without Alt. Magic (which is typically not allowed as it does not constitute combat), CO players have no means to obtain a Signet Ring Half (a) to complete the full Aorpheat's Signet Ring. You will also want to nab a Silver Diamond Ring for the small DR it offers for future bossing. If you want to grind an Elite Amulet of Strength from Mummies, you may as it will help with Spider Forest, but it will be a little faster to do so in a bit. Note that the Silver Ruby Necklace and the Silver Topaz Necklace are both better than Amulet of Strength in the early game.

Armour

After these upgrades, your next step 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, so we won't aim for this. You will probably get Boots (25 in 268) and Helmets (15 in 268) and Shields (5/134) quite often. The two lowest drop rate items ( Platelegs (5 in 268) and Platebody (1 in 568)) and are therefore not worth grinding for specifically. The corresponding adamant drop from Adamant Knights is a better use of your time to obtain later down the line.

Weapons

For weapon upgrades, you will probably get both a Scimitar (1 in 67) from Mithril Knights, 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. You can upgrade to a cheap Adamant Dagger from the Purple Goo Monster after 30, and lastly the Ice Sword at 40.

As mentioned, you will want to get the Ice Sword after getting mostly full Mithril Armour and 40, 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.

Chapter III: Mithril to (G) Adamant

To start, you should have: 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, Amulet of Looting, Rune 2H Sword, 70 / 70 / 70

While your next target is Adamant Knights, you should know that levelling 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 all of your combat stats. 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! You don’t necessarily care about the Adamant Boots as there are reliable sources in Turkul Riders which also drop Rune Boots very soon from now. If you are lucky enough to snag an Obsidian Cape, rejoice as this item offers the biggest evasion upgrade of any item dropped by Adamant Knights. Its very low drop rate (1/240), however, may deter you from grinding for it. It will be a while until you replace the Cape for anything else, so you will get a lot of use out of it. There is no point wasting Silver/ Gold Bars on the Boots. Upgrade the rest of the equipment you get to (G) Adamant as soon as you get them, since each piece gives you 4% Damage Reduction. Since you will be using 2H weapons for awhile you may skip (G) Adamant Shield, but it will still be a useful shield until (G) Rune Shield or Dragonfire Shield so it is worth upgrading.

Your next goal after full adamant is a weapon upgrade. This will come from Elerine Warriors and are the Rune 2H Sword and the Elerine Spear. With 3 out of 5 (G) adamant pieces and a Silver Diamond Ring from Mummies totalling 13% DR, this monster can be safely idled with Auto Eat - Tier I, 13% DR and 540 hitpoints. Of the two drops we seek, the former is a relatively common drop (1/36) and a considerable step up from the Ice Sword (yielding double the clears/hr of Spider Forest). The Elerine Spear is a slight upgrade over the Rune 2H Sword, but it is a much lower drop rate (1/180), so it may not really be worth grinding for. It is worth noting that while both weapons are fantastic when used on their correct style(s), they are utterly abysmal at the other style(s). The Elerine Spear should only ever be used on stab to train Attack, while the Rune 2H Sword can be used to train Strength and Defence equally.

If you have 45, you can consider obtaining a set of Gloves of Silence to help with fundraising. This item alone almost doubles the gp/hr of Cows and it turns Plants surprisingly into one of the best early money makers.

At 50, save up enough  slayer coins to purchase a Desert Hat. You will also transition from Basic Resupply to Standard Resupply for the rest of the game at this point. This item gives you access to Rune Gloves, Desert Wrappings, (G) Rune Boots and Sand Treaders, as well Desert Sabre that you may want to farm at one point. You will want to farm for at least Rune Gloves and (G) Rune Boots from the respective creatures in Arid Plains, as these have relatively common drop rates and won't take long. Desert Wrappings offer a nice 2% DR which will help with Spider Forest, but can be skipped as they will soon be replaced with Paladin Gloves. It is possible to kill Turkul Giants at this point to obtain Dragon Scimitar or Desert Sabre, but these upgrades are relatively minor over the Rune 2H Sword and will soon be replaced with items from Deep Sea Ship anyway.

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 as they will round down to 0 healing.

Killing Paladins for Paladin Gloves at this stage is somewhat viable, but they have a low drop rate and the Auto Eat threshold is quite high. Over a long period, the chance of making a mistake and dying is quite high, so it would be better to wait until you can rely on auto eat to do its thing. Around 20% DR and 660 HP.

Chaper III-B: Amulet of Looting

With a hefty chunk of upgrades under your belt, it is time to fight the first early game milestone in the Spider King. This monster drops the Amulet of Looting which 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. This item marks the first paradigm shift in the HCCO game mode, as manual looting is now a thing of the past. Now is a good time to obtain the Amulet of Looting as before this point most monsters either wouldn't drop 100 items in a reasonable time frame, or their drops were largely not important enough to prioritise picking up consistently. Our main food source up until now has been Basic Resupply (or Standard Resupply at 50 and beyond) which do not need to be looted, so the benefit of the amulet was minimal.

As a point of comparison, 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. With access to gilded adamant & (G) Rune Boots for DR and a trusty Rune 2H Sword or Elerine Spear, this boss can be idled with 18% DR and 590 HP for around 10 kills/hr. 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. This may be appealing to players wishing to quickly eliminate manual looting from their routine.

Without any DR, the boss can instead be tackled with 710 HP and AE1. Check Can I Idle for any particular combination of requirements you happen to have. If you wanted to try obtain Auto Eat - Tier II before this dungeon, know that this requires  5,000,000, which would require around 25 hours of active gameplay at Master Farmer, since you still don’t have auto looting, or around 40 hours of Plant farming with Gloves of Silence. Bad idea.

Chapter III-B: 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  950 per kill.

Alternatively, equipping Gloves of Silence increases the base GP/kill of every monster by  150. This makes low HP enemies such as Plants and Cows a great source of income too, albeit with lower xp/hr compared to Master Farmers.

Later on at 70 you have access to Raging Horned Elite, which drop a reasonable amount of sellable items (worth about  2,000 each kill) as well as a huge supply of Trout. You will likely kill tens of thousands of this monster while gathering food, which can easily fund the more expensive upgrades remaining, so it is not important to over-focus on earning GP at this point.

Chapter III-C: Late to mid Game food: Slayer

Now is a good time 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 is the most efficient HP per Slayer Coin (even moreso than Generous Resupply!), 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.

As noted before, beware of Wizards and Fairies 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: (G) Adamant to Full (G) Rune

To start, you should have: Almost full (G) Adamant Armour, (G) Rune Boots, Desert Wrappings, Rune 2H Sword, 70 / 70 / 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 6 Lobster 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 or at Purple Goo Monster to make headway towards Elite Amulet of Defence. Considering the amount of bars needed to upgrade this armour, you may wish to wait until Ancient armour instead, as (G) adamant armour is sufficient for clearing Volcanic Cave (with a higher but still manageable HP requirement).

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 V: (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 a few main reasons. Firstly, 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. It is recommended to wait until one has  10,000,000 to afford Extra Equipment Set to make gearing much less of a headache. This upgrade is a lower priority than Auto Eat - Tier III, which is why we wait until now to train Ranged.

Progression in Ranged can roughly be broken into three phases: preliminary, (1), training (1-85) and late (85-99). We only need to worry about the first two phases now, which will get us enough far enough to tackle Water God Dungeon, Fire God Dungeon and possibly even Into the Mist and beyond.

Preliminary phase

Since none of the gear or weapon progression for Ranged relies on the actual skill itself, we can prepare for the entire skill ahead of time. This is the preliminary phase, and it has three main considerations being ammo, weapons and gear.

Ammo

Before starting Ranged, it is recommended to complete the Elite Amulet of Ranged portion of the Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs grind at Bandits. This will set you up with all the arrows needed for the entire early and midgame Ranged grind, as well as the item itself offering substantial ranged offensive bonuses while being equipable at level 1. Obtaining 200 Amulet of Ranged will yield around 48,000 Steel Arrows, 32,000 Mithril Arrows and 16,000 Adamant Arrows, which is much more than needed. A lot of arrows will also be supplied by Basic Resupply/ Standard Resupply as well, so ammo is not much of a worry. It is also possible to clear Bandit Base for possible Ranged weapon upgrades, but these are not worth the time investment due to the low drop rate and can be skipped if desired. Bandit Base will yield a decent amount of ammo, but it is slower overall than killing Bandits directly. At 70 one can use the abundance of Ancient Arrows obtained while killing Raging Horned Elite for Trout. It is not necessary to conserve arrows either, as most late-game Ranged combat takes place with a crossbow using Sapphire Bolts.

Note that it is no longer recommended to kill Frozen Archer for Ice Arrows anymore, as this monster was buffed and is considerably stronger now as well as dropping far fewer arrows.

Weapons

The overall weapon progression will be:

Normal Shortbow (1-5) → Oak Shortbow (5-30) → Maple Shortbow (30-40) → Yew Longbow (40-50) → Elerine Longbow (50-85) → Ancient Crossbow (85+)

These items will be obtained from Ranged Golbins, Holy Archers, Elerine Archers and Dragons Den (discussed below) and can all be farmed ahead of time if bank space is not a concern. As mentioned above, it is possible to farm Bandit Base for a Ancient Longbow, but it will take more time to obtain than what will be saved by using the item. The Elerine Longbow is a very strong weapon for its level, as it rivals Redwood Longbow from Holy Archer / Bandit Base. If you do decide to farm Bandit Base or have done so in the past, you can replace the Maple Shortbow with a Maple Longbow instead.

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. This can be paired with Throwing Power Gloves to increase effectiveness as well.

Gear

From 1-40 you will mostly be naked, as there are few options for gear at this low level. The cape slot is the only slot that you will likely be able to fill, and the options for capes are:

Cape of Prat > Cape of Ranged Preservation > Fire Cape > Obsidian Cape > nothing

It is not really worth grinding for any of these, just use whatever you have access to already. Paladin Gloves don't have any negative bonuses so they are worth using to save on a bit of food. An Elite Amulet of Ranged is extremely good, as it offers more bonuses than an entire set of green dragonhide.

From 40 onwards, the gear you will use will be a mismatch of dragonhide armour. Use whatever hides you obtained from the Amulet of Looting and Volcanic Cave grind from earlier. It is not worth going out of your way to obtain any singular piece of dragonhide, as it only offers accuracy with no strength bonus, and your accuracy will quickly become saturated on the enemies you train ranged on. Using Green D-hide Vambraces at 70 for instance is perfectly acceptable. Green, blue and red dragonhide armour can also be easily upgraded in exchange for GP. Green d'hide costs 60k to fully upgrade, blue d'hide costs 225k and red d'hdie costs 630k. These only offer a small amount of accuracy and DR, but this will come in handy for monsters such as Master Wizards and the likes, so it may be worth it.

You will need to farm Dragons Den for the almighty Ancient Crossbow for 80+ at some point before progressing. Again, as this dungeon doesn't rely on Ranged, this could technically be performed before commencing training. The singular goal of this dungeon is the Ancient Crossbow as this is an incredible weapon for the two Ranged God dungeons, as well as in Dark Waters, however it is worth noting that all of the other items still have uses. Twin Exiles are the best item in the game for farming low level mobs with low max HP so it is worth keeping for rune grinding and completionist farming purposes. Any elder dragonhide armour obtained here can be worn as an upgrade, but it is not necessary to grind for any piece. Use any leftover Elder Dragonhide to upgrade elder dragonhide pieces before selling it all off to unlock some free collection log slots.

Training phase

The best options for Ranged training are magic enemies. However, the entry level enemy ( Wizard) is too strong to be tackled at 1, so killing various easy slayer tasks such as Cows is fine until around 40 to equip some dragonhide. After this point, farming Wizards and Master Wizards for runes is ideal. One can then use these runes to train their Magic to increase their magic defence to make killing them more efficient. At higher Ranged and Magic levels (around 50+), the option of killing Shamans for Chaos Runes and Necromancers for Death Runes opens up to supplement further Magic training. Seething Horned Elites can be killed for any outstanding Amulet of Furies that weren't obtained from Volcanic Cave.

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

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	(G) Ancient Helmet	(G) Rune Helmet
	(G) Ancient Platebody	(G) Dragon Platebody	(G) Rune Platebody
	(G) Ancient Platelegs	(G) Dragon Platelegs	(G) Rune Platelegs
	(G) Rune Boots
	(U) Ancient D-hide Vambraces	(U) Black D-hide Vambraces	Paladin Gloves
	Infernal Cape	Fire Cape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs	Elite Amulet of Defence
	Sandstorm Ring
	Sunset Rapier	Ancient Sword
	Dragonfire Shield	(G) Ancient Shield	(G) Rune Shield

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

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Aeris God Helmet
	Aeris God Platebody	(U) Ancient D-hide Body
	Aeris God Platelegs	(U) Ancient D-hide Chaps
	Aeris God Boots
	Aeris God Gloves	(U) Ancient D-hide Vambraces
	Infernal Cape	Cape of Prat	Fire Cape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs	Deadeye Amulet	Elite Amulet of Defence
	Deadeye Ring	Silver Diamond Ring
	Ancient Crossbow	Stormsnap	Ancient Longbow	Confetti Crossbow
	Scaled Shield	Dragonfire Shield
	Sapphire Bolts	Ancient Arrows	Adamant Arrows

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)
	Glacia God Helmet
	Glacia God Platebody
	Glacia God Platelegs
	Glacia God Boots
	Glacia God Gloves
	Skull Cape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Warlock Ring	Tormented Ring
	Mystic Air Staff	Magic Wand (Elite)
	Scaled Shield	Dragonfire Shield

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)
	Aeris God Helmet
	Aeris God Platebody
	Aeris God Platelegs
	Aeris God Boots
	Aeris God Gloves
	Infernal Cape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Wasteful Ring
	Shockwave	Ancient Crossbow
	Scaled Shield
	Sapphire Bolts
	Guardian Amulet

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.

Late Game Farming

As the God dungeons require fairly high stats and gear, efficiently farming will mostly be carried out after completing Into the Mist and Dark Waters grinds. The first two dungeons, Air God Dungeon and Water God Dungeon are easily farmed out with gear upgrades listed in the respective sections above (with obvious upgrades made where appropriate, such as (G) Rune Boots → Terran God Boots). On the other hand, both Earth God Dungeon and Fire God Dungeon will require a Wasteful Ring to lower the efficient idle DR thresholds to CO-achieveable levels, and so are better left until later. This is because Earth God Dungeon is most efficiently cleared with melee over magic (as the latter is far fewer effective kills/hr due to rune gathering speed being very low) and the second to last enemy in both dungeons Fire God Dungeon ( Mistral and Ignis respectively) counters the primary style we use for each dungeon. The necessity of Wasteful Ring stems from simply being able to deal with these monsters while at a combat triangle disadvantage.

One will note the prevalence of Master slayer gear in the recommendations. This is because the doubling effect from Master slayer gear is overall more beneficial than the slight increase in DPS from God gear. Where DR allows for it, Master slayer gear is preferred. It is not worth using offensive prayers to boost clears/hr, as the additional clears/hr save less time than the equivalent amount of elite slayer required to replenish the prayer points used.

The DR thresholds for all of the dungeons are listed here

Dungeon	HP	DR
Air God Dungeon	1030	42%
Water God Dungeon	1000	49%
Earth God Dungeon (Magic)	1000	47%
Earth God Dungeon (Melee, Wasteful Ring)	1030	52% (SC) / 64% (HC)
Fire God Dungeon	1000	56% (SC) / 71% (HC)
Fire God Dungeon (HC, Wasteful Ring)	1030 (HC)	62% (HC)

Note that there are differences for hardcore and softcore players for the two later dungeons.

Below are suggested gear setups that are optimal (or close to, as they ignore items from Unhallowed Wasteland and beyond) that can meet the DR requirements listed in this table. The optimal gear set will always meet the DR requirement if the player has all three defensive pets. Any substitutions should be checked to see if it still meets the DR/HP requirements.

Air God

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Helmet (Master)	Ragnar God Helmet	Terran God Helmet
	Slayer Platebody (Master)	Ragnar God Platebody	Terran God Platebody
	Ragnar God Platelegs	Terran God Platelegs
	Ragnar God Boots	Terran God Boots
	Ragnar God Gloves	Terran God Gloves
	Infernal Cape
	Fighter Amulet	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Fighter Ring
	Tidal Edge	Infernal Claw	Ragnar Godsword	Darksteel Dagger
	Dragonfire Shield
	Elder Crown

Remember that if you opt for a Godsword then you will need to make up for lost DR through prayer or gear switches.

Water God

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Cowl (Master)	Aeris God Helmet
	Slayer Leather Body (Master)	Aeris God Platebody
	Aeris God Platelegs
	Aeris God Boots
	Aeris God Gloves
	Ranged Skillcape	Infernal Cape	Cape of Prat
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs	Deadeye Amulet
	Deadeye Ring	Guardian Ring	Wasteful Ring
	Shockwave	Ancient Crossbow
	Scaled Shield
	Sapphire Bolts
	Elder Crown

This gear setup aims to maximise efficiency in the form of shards/hr and chests/hr while still maintaining good food, bolt and prayer economy. The optimal setup shown here has exactly 47% DR with the remainder being bridged by both DR pets ( Leonardo and Erran). A Ranged Skillcape is ideal to halve bolt use, but swapping this for an Infernal Cape easily allows the player to utilise a Deadeye Amulet for marginally more DPS over a Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs if desired. The prayers Safeguard and Stone Skin can be used if the player needs more DR to hit the threshold, as the prayers only consume 1,000 and 3,000 prayer points/hr respectively. These slight prayer costs reduce the efficiency by about 1.5% / 4.5% (determined by doing elite slayer to replenish lost prayer points), which is marginal but on par with most gear substitutions listed here, therefore opting for a gear setup that saves prayer is very slightly better. Downgrading the shield to a Dragonfire Shield is not recommended as this is around a 10% DPS loss so other gear swaps should be performed first, such as the ring slot.

Earth God

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Wizard Hat (Master)	Glacia God Helmet
	Slayer Wizard Robes (Master)	Glacia God Platebody
	Glacia God Platelegs
	Glacia God Boots
	Glacia God Gloves
	Skull Cape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Warlock Ring
	Ocean Song
	Recoil Shield	Scaled Shield
	Sapphire Bolts
	Elder Crown

This dungeon is very easy to clear with magic, but the time spent gathering runes heavily diminishes the effective kills/hr. The strategy therefore is to work towards obtaining the necessary gear to meet the melee DR threshold for the player's game mode and then finish the dungeon using melee.

Earth God (Melee, Softcore)

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Helmet (Master)	Ragnar God Helmet	Terran God Helmet
	Slayer Platebody (Master)	Ragnar God Platebody	Terran God Platebody
	Ragnar God Platelegs	Terran God Platelegs
	Terran God Boots
	Terran God Gloves
	Infernal Cape
	Fighter Amulet	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Wasteful Ring
	Tidal Edge
	Dragonfire Shield
	Elder Crown

The optimal setup shown here is 49% DR with the remainder bridged by the Stone Skin, one DR pet and either Safeguard or the other DR pet. It is not worth attempting this dungeon without Tidal Edge, as it is more than 3x faster than the next melee alternative. If Master slayer gear is not used then pieces of Terran can be replaced with Ragnar, with gloves having priority over boots.

Earth God (Melee, Hardcore)

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Terran God Helmet
	Terran God Platebody
	Terran God Platelegs
	Terran God Boots
	Terran God Gloves
	Infernal Cape
	Fighter Amulet	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Wasteful Ring
	Tidal Edge
	Dragonfire Shield
	Guardian Amulet

One can tell that due to the complete upgrade to total tank gear that we are very much on the brink of obtainable DR for a CO. This is the only situation in the game where a Guardian Amulet is completely necessary. It is unfortunate that it is the single rarest item from this dungeon, despite it being the sole use case for it. The optimal gear setup is 62% DR when under 50% HP, and the remainder of the needed DR given by the two DR pets or prayers. Fighter Amulet is considerably better than Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs, as the synergy with Tidal Edge increases DPS drastically and cuts food usage in half. Even without Otto the player is still fast enough to avoid stuns from Terran as their attack speed is 2.85s.

Fire God (Softcore)

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Cowl (Master)	Aeris God Helmet
	Slayer Leather Body (Master)	Aeris God Platebody
	Aeris God Platelegs
	Aeris God Boots
	Aeris God Gloves
	Infernal Cape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs	Deadeye Amulet
	Deadeye Ring	Guardian Ring
	Shockwave	Ancient Crossbow
	Scaled Shield
	Sapphire Bolts
	Elder Crown

The optimal setup here is 51% DR, so it requires Stone Skin, one DR pet and then either Safeguard or the other DR pet. If substituting for Deadeye Amulet then one must also substitute Guardian Ring and include Safeguard or Aeris God Platebody. This latter combination is very slightly worse by about 1-2%, so Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs is overall preferred.

Fire God (Hardcore)

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Aeris God Helmet
	Aeris God Platebody
	Aeris God Platelegs
	Aeris God Boots
	Aeris God Gloves
	Infernal Cape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Guardian Ring
	Shockwave	Ancient Crossbow
	Dragonfire Shield
	Sapphire Bolts
	Wasteful Ring

Note the switch to Dragonfire Shield. The additional +30HP reduces the DR requirement by 2%. This gear setup gives a total of 57% DR, with the remaining DR given by Stone Skin, Leonardo and one of either Safeguard or Erran.

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

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Terran God Helmet	Ragnar God Helmet	(G) Ancient Helmet
	Terran God Platebody	Ragnar God Platebody	(G) Ancient Platebody
	Terran God Platelegs	Ragnar God Platelegs	(G) Ancient Platelegs
	Terran God Boots	Ragnar God Boots
	Terran God Gloves	Ragnar God Gloves
	Infernal Cape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Guardian Ring	Fighter Ring
	Darksteel Dagger	Ragnar Godsword
	Earth Layered Shield	Dragonfire Shield

Recommended Prayers

Protect from Melee + Chivalry if using Darksteel Dagger, otherwise Protect from Melee + Battleheart or Piety if using Ragnar Godsword.

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 and Ragnar Godsword's unavoidable special attack helps a lot due to the low accuracy the player has during this fight.

Even though Ragnar Godsword is better DPS, it is considered harder to use, increasing the chance of accidentally dying. The low attack speed makes clearing Mark of Death debuffs harder, and it also means it is easier to interrupt your attack when manual eating.

Mysterious Figure - Phase 2

Recommended Gear

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Aeris God Helmet
	Aeris God Platebody
	Aeris God Platelegs
	Aeris God Boots
	Aeris God Gloves
	Infernal Cape	Cape of Prat
	Deadeye Amulet	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Guardian Ring
	Ancient Throwing Knife	Ancient Crossbow
	Scaled Shield	Earth Layered Shield	Dragonfire Shield
	Sapphire Bolts

Recommended Prayers

Sharp Vision + Eagle Eye or Rigour depending on Prayer level.

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

Slot	Item
	Glacia God Helmet
	Glacia God Platebody
	Glacia God Platelegs
	Glacia God Boots
	Glacia God Gloves
	Skull Cape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Tormented Ring
	Magic Wand (Elite)
	Scaled Shield

Spell

It is highly recommended to wait until Gust to speed the fight up, which saves on runes and reduces the chance of dying due to affliction stacks ramping up, but if the player accepts these downsides then Slicing Winds can just barely out dps the healing of the boss and can be used. Having a lower Magic level will also necessitate an offensive magic shield in order to meet the accuracy requirement.

Prayers

Protect from Magic + Mystic Mastery, or Mystic Mastery + Mystic Might.

Note that Augury has a lower accuracy bonus than Mystic Mastery and gives less magic evasion than Mystic Might, so Augury should never be used when using Ancient Magicks.

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 25k before accounting for prayers or pets. Since accuracy buffs/debuffs interact additively, this threshold will allow us to stay above the 20k net accuracy requirement for Ancient Magicks while accounting for max stacks of the Shadow Burst debuff. This threshold can be met outright with the recommended gear setup with 90, or by substituting the Protect from Magic prayer with Mystic Might and 86. One can also opt to use Protect from Magic for the majority of the fight to reduce the rate at which affliction stacks are accumulated, then swap Protect from Magic to Mystic Might only after dipping below the 20k accuracy mark. For 86, this occurs at 37 stacks, and each Magic level increases the stacks you can withstand by 1. The only pet that increases accuracy is Chick, and this pet is equivalent to 1 additional Magic level. For concreteness, with this pet, the above quoted thresholds would be changed to 89 and 38 stacks respectively.

Besides accuracy, the next consideration—as always—is DR. You want to try to get at least 50% DR in order to be able to auto-eat through the Fallen Light special attack even at full affliction stacks. The above setup with Leonardo gives 55% DR. With this DR, you can survive Shadow Burst as long as your max HP is still above 900. As soon as your max HP drops below this threshold due to affliction, you will need to hold to spam eat through Shadow Burst attacks. Hopefully you will be able to dodge enough attacks due to Protect from Magic to keep the affliction stacks low and maximise your DPS. Without Leonardo, the threshold is 920 HP instead.

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, as the magic defence on Ahrenia is extremely high. Gust is the best choice of spell, but if you are desperate and do not want to wait the final Magic level or have the Air God Dungeon clears to use this spell, then the next choice is Slicing Winds. It will get the job done, albeit with a much, much longer fight, mostly due to the fact that the boss will heal more with the lower dps.

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	Crab/hr	Crab/kill
Darksteel Dagger	81.5	1175	14.5
Tidal Edge	115	1425	12.5
Infernal Claw	95	1700	18
Shockwave	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

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Helmet (Elite)	Slayer Helmet (Elite)
	Ragnar God Platebody	Slayer Platebody (Elite)
	Terran God Platelegs	Terran God Platelegs
	Terran God Boots	Terran God Boots
	Terran God Gloves	Terran God Gloves
	Slayer Skillcape	Infernal Cape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Fighter Ring	Hunter's Ring
	Darksteel Dagger	Darksteel Dagger
	Dragonfire Shield	Dragonfire Shield

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%
Shockwave	Weapon	0%
Scaled Shield	Off-hand	8%
Slayer Cowl (Elite)	Head	4%
Aeris God Platebody	Body	8%
Aeris God Platelegs	Leggings	8%
Aeris God Boots	Boots	8%
Aeris God Gloves	Hands	8%
Slayer Skillcape	Cape	0%
Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs	Neck	3%
Sapphire Bolts	Ammo	0%
Deadeye Ring	Ring	0%
Elder Crown	Passive	0%
Finn, the Cat	Pet	0%
Leonardo	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%
Ocean Song	Weapon	0%
Scaled Shield	Off-hand	8%
Slayer Wizard Hat (Master)	Head	6%
Slayer Wizard Robes (Master)	Body	6%
Glacia God Platelegs	Leggings	8%
Glacia God Boots	Boots	8%
Glacia God Gloves	Hands	8%
Skull Cape	Cape	3%
Warlock Amulet	Neck	0%
Hunter's Ring	Ring	0%
Elder Crown	Passive	0%
Finn, the Cat	Pet	0%
Leonardo	Pet	1%
Salem	Pet	0%
Golden Golbin	Pet	0%
Rosey	Pet	0%
Jelly Jim	Pet	0%
Aquarias	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
Ancient Throwing Knife	Weapon
Slayer Cowl (Master)	Head
Slayer Leather Body (Master)	Body
Aeris God Platelegs	Leggings
Sand Treaders	Boots
Throwing Power Gloves	Hands
Ranged Skillcape	Cape
Deadeye Amulet	Neck
Deadeye Ring	Ring
Elder Crown	Passive
Golden Golbin	Pet
Rosey	Pet
Aquarias	Pet
Otto	Pet

Melee

Item	Slot
Twin Exiles	Weapon
Slayer Helmet (Master)	Head
Slayer Platebody (Master)	Body
Ragnar God Platelegs	Leggings
Sand Treaders	Boots
Ragnar God Gloves	Hands
Strength Skillcape	Cape
Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs	Neck
Fighter Ring	Ring
Elder Crown	Passive
Golden Golbin	Pet
Rosey	Pet
Aquarias	Pet
Otto	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

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.

• Mystic Air Staff with Wind Blast

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.

• Darksteel Dagger

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 (4/9) 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

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Helmet (Master)	Slayer Helmet (Master)
	Slayer Platebody (Master)	Slayer Platebody (Master)
	Ragnar God Platelegs	Ragnar God Platelegs
	Ragnar God Boots	Terran God Boots
	Ragnar God Gloves	Terran God Gloves
	Slayer Skillcape	Slayer Skillcape
	Fighter Amulet	Fighter Amulet
	Hunter's Ring	Hunter's Ring
	Tidal Edge	Tidal Edge
	Earth Layered Shield	Dragonfire Shield
	Third Master Slayer Piece	Third Master Slayer Piece

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

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Cowl (Master)
	Slayer Leather Body (Master)
	Aeris God Platelegs
	Aeris God Boots
	Aeris God Gloves
	Slayer Skillcape
	Deadeye Amulet	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Hunter's Ring
	Shockwave
	Scaled Shield
	Jadestone Bolts	Sapphire Bolts
	Third Master Slayer Piece

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  110k/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

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Wizard Hat (Master)
	Slayer Wizard Robes (Master)
	Glacia God Platelegs
	Glacia God Boots
	Glacia God Gloves
	Slayer Skillcape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs	Guardian Amulet
	Hunter's Ring
	Ocean Song
	Earth Layered Shield
	Third Master Slayer Piece

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

Slot	Item
	Slayer Wizard Hat (Master)
	Slayer Wizard Robes (Master)
	Glacia God Platelegs
	Glacia God Boots
	Glacia God Gloves
	Slayer Skillcape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Hunter's Ring
	Ocean Song
	Earth Layered Shield
	Third Master Slayer Piece

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, extremely low chance of death (estimated around 1/750k 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/or 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 a very low chance of death while farming. Unfortunately without Stone Skin the death rate rises to around 1/30k, which is over 20 times more likely, but still a rare event 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 1/25.

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

Impending Darkness Event

Preface

This is the hardest event in the game, requiring the most preparation and highest stats. Impending Darkness Event currently requires 99 in all skills in order to access, which makes it inaccessible for Combat Only accounts. It has been confirmed that these requirements will be removed with the expansion, but in the meantime any COs interested in trying the event will need to use a script to remove the level blockout. This script by Xander will modify the 99 all skills requirement that the event has to a requirement of having 99 in all combat skills and 1 in all non-combat skills, making it accessible to COs.

This is designed to be the hardest event in the game. For a normal account the expected clear time is around 2 hours of mostly active gameplay (switching gear frequently and prayers). For a combat-only account without access to Diamond Luck Potion IV, Agility, Summoning etc the event takes around 3-3.5 hours, and is heavily influenced by how effectively you can reroll modifiers.

The event is quite similar to the experience on a main account with a three main differences. As such, the Impending Darkness Event/Guide for standard accounts is a good resource to also check, and one can just ignore any recommendations regarding inaccessible items or skills. Where this guide will branch out will be with the CO-specific considerations, which are:

1) Unhallowed Wasteland is the most demanding part of the run, due to the 5% heal these enemies have without access to Agility passive pillars. This heal has the potential to completely brick wall the run if the modifiers are not handled correctly, as the enemies can very easily outheal your DPS if they are the slightest bit stronger. The minibosses at the end of this zone dictate the whole event.

2) Rerolls are absolutely crucial. Out of the 12 possible modifiers, over half of them (7/12) make Unhallowed Wasteland enemies out-heal your DPS. The chances of not rolling any of the impossible modifiers at some point in the event is extremely unlikely, so rerolling is an essential mechanic for COs.

3) Melee Bane is impossible. Reroll every time. Melee is only viable with stuns and Bane is stun immune.

Remember, this event is a safe death for Hardcore characters, as dying inside the event will NOT delete your account. Instead, you suffer the standard death penalties, where a random item will be deleted if the Protect Item prayer is not active when you die.

As general advice for this event it is recommended to have a handheld calculator handy (or if anyone wants to create a script for this, that would be appreciated) to calculate the HP threshold needed to auto-eat through different attacks on the fly. This can be quickly calculated by taking the monster's most threatening attacks and simply dividing by 0.4. For example, one of Bane's attacks with a maximum hit of 324 would be able to be safely auto-eaten through as long as the player's maximum HP is above 810 (324/0.4 = 810). Once the affliction stacks accumulate and your HP drops below 810, you will have to manually eat to stay safe during these types of attacks. Multi-attacks are especially dangerous at this point, as the only safe threshold for these moves is N-times their maximum hit (i.e. double the max for a 2-hit move, triple for a 3-hit move, etc). There aren't many high-damaging multi-hit moves, but there are a few which will be detailed in the respective sections.

I recommend putting on a playlist of boss music for maximum immersion. I had this particular one on repeat for the whole duration of the event.

Gearing up

As for actual gear, the items required are relatively simple. Unhallowed Wasteland requires a specific setup to get maximum negation, but the remainder of the zones and Bane himself don't require anything special. Throughout almost all of this entire event you will utilise one protection prayer alongside Battleheart. Battleheart works equally well with all styles which makes prayer switching easier, and the DR & minimum hit contribute nicely towards your DPS. In certain situations where accuracy is low, Rigour and Sharp Vision can prove to be higher DPS (as Shockwave has the most infrequent special attack, increasing its reliance on accuracy compared to the other weapons), but this shouldn't be necessary in order to complete the event.

Unhallowed Wateland

Melee

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Helmet (Master)
	Slayer Platebody (Master)
	Ragnar God Platelegs	Terran God Platelegs
	Ragnar God Boots	Terran God Boots
	Relentless Fury Gloves	Ragnar God Gloves	Spiked Shell Gloves	Terran God Gloves
	Slayer Skillcape
	Fighter Amulet
	Hunter's Ring
	Tidal Edge
	Shield of Melee Power	Earth Layered Shield	Dragonfire Shield
	Third Master Slayer Piece

Either of the two pre-event shields are viable for the first encounter with Bane, and then upgrade to Shield of Melee Power for increased stun frequency for the remainder of the event. Using Ragnar over Terran is recommended to speed up Legaran Wurm as the main difficulty is being out-healed. DR is not as important as this event cannot be idled anyway, and it is not necessarily that difficult to eat in time for the enemy attacks. Legaran Wurm will mostly be stun locked from Tidal Edge+ Fighter Amulet combo, which is the only reason why Melee is viable at all. The necklace slot is non-negotiable, as without heavy stuns then this monster will out-heal your DPS. If the miniboss lands on Legaran Wurm in the 4th or 5th round (with most/all of the modifiers enabled) then you may have to reroll Unhallowed Wasteland to get one of the other three minibosses instead.

The lethal move from Legaran Wurm is its penetrating spike shot. You will need to keep an eye out for this move specifically and eat accordingly. It is a single-hit move, so as long as your HP is above about 400 (staying weary of any poison, burn or frostburn effects on your character that may drop your HP below the threshold). The other two moves have lower maximum hits and you will probably kill this boss before affliction stacks rise to the point where you cannot out-eat them. If the fight drags on this long you have probably been brick-walled and it's reroll time anyway.

Ranged

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Cowl (Master)
	Slayer Leather Body (Master)
	Aeris God Platelegs
	Aeris God Boots
	Poison Virulence Gloves	Aeris God Gloves
	Slayer Skillcape
	Deadeye Amulet	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Hunter's Ring
	Shockwave
	Shield of Ranged Power	Scaled Shield
	Jadestone Bolts
	Third Master Slayer Piece

Ranged is quite strong and shouldn't have any troubles pulling its weight this event. Stick to the Scaled Shield and upgrade once you unlock Shield of Ranged Power after the second encounter with Bane. Jadestone Bolts are non-negotiable as they offer a substantial DPS increase and the main threat in this event is being out-DPS'd. You won't need many for the event, only a few thousand. This can be easily accumulated in around 2 hours of Hunting Greater Dragon farming.

The lethal move from Cursed Lich to watch out for is her cursed flames. This is a single-hit ability, so eat whenever your HP drops below around 400 to stay safe. With Protect from Magic active, affliction stacks should not accumulate enough to make cursed frost shards or cursed tether a death threat.

Magic

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Wizard Hat (Master)
	Slayer Wizard Robes (Master)
	Glacia God Platelegs
	Glacia God Boots
	Burning Madness Gloves	Glacia God Gloves
	Slayer Skillcape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Hunter's Ring
	Ocean Song
	Shield of Magic Power	Scaled Shield	Earth Layered Shield
	Third Master Slayer Piece

Magic is finally the heavy hitter of the three styles. Since this is a one-time event, you can let loose and use some of the insane DPS abilities that Magic always had but were prohibitively expensive for COs. As usual, swap to Shield of Magic Power once unlocked as it has ridiculous synergy with Incinerate.

You will be using Incinerate for almost all of this event. Its 100% accuracy is vital, and the frequent attacks mean that it activates the passive on Shield of Magic Power almost every single attack, stunning enemies every other attack and burning/frostburning them consistently. You will need a bare minimum of around 300 casts of Incinerate for this event, but it is recommended to have at least 500. This comes to 15,000 Fire Rune, 5,000 Ancient Rune and 5,000 Havoc Rune. If you notice that you are running low on runes during this event, you can swap back to old faithful Water Strike, using Fury II and Confusion for Shrouded Badlands, Perilous Peaks and Dark Waters. Unfortunately Decay shares a crucial resource of Havoc Runes with Incinerate, so this spell cannot be used to save if you are running low on this type of rune. You should only be using Ancient Magicks for Unhallowed Wasteland anyway so it shouldn't be a consideration, but remember that Greater Skeletal Dragon is curse-immune, so don't waste runes trying to confuse this enemy.

Spiked Red Claw is actually the easier of the two enemies here. You will just need to set them on fire and eat whenever you are bleeding. Keep an eye on the max hit of Savage Spike, and if this ever increases due to you bleeding then just eat if you are low on HP. With Shield of Magic Power this enemy will almost be completely stun-locked, so it is a simple fight. This is the easiest monster in all of Unhallowed Wasteland, so rolling this miniboss is always ideal.

Greater Skeletal Dragon, on the other hand, is the scariest monster in the whole event, perhaps even more so than Bane himself. It is stun, freeze and curse immune, so it cannot be stun-locked into triviality like Spiked Red Claw. The lethal move from this enemy is Bone Crush, which has a moderate max hit, but when paired with Spiked Tail Whip and comboed with itself it is extremely deadly. Spiked Tail Whip lowers your DR by 10%, and Bone Crush can stun you. Suffering a Tail Whip → 2x Bone Crush combo can leave you suffering over 2x500 damage, which can kill you outright from any HP if you are not spam-eating. Always try to remove stuns when possible, and as a last resort eat and pray you don't get double max hit if you're in this deadly situation. This monster also accumulates affliction stacks faster than any other monster with its final special attack, Desecration. A miniboss of this monster is beatable due to the ridiculous power of Incinerate, but given how scary this monster is, you may want to reroll this miniboss to stay safe.

Badlands, Peaks & Waters

As these monsters do not heal, they intrinsically aren't any different to a standard account. You cannot be brick walled here with the event modifiers we will select, so just refer to the information in the Impending Darkness Event/Guide for more general information during this section. The general strategy is to swap gear to the corresponding style, swap to the corresponding protection prayer and DPS away. You will want to swap gear around slightly after completing Unhallowed Wasteland, as you do not need a third piece of Master slayer gear or a Hunter's Ring. In order to simplify the process of switching back and forth after each encounter with Bane, one can wear mostly Master slayer gear and opt to solely switch the passive and ring slots, as these are the most impactful slots and easiest to organise. You only really need to switch to full God Armour for the respective style that you use to fight Bane with.

Melee

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Helmet (Master)
	Slayer Platebody (Master)
	Ragnar God Platelegs	Terran God Platelegs
	Ragnar God Boots	Terran God Boots
	Relentless Fury Gloves	Ragnar God Gloves	Spiked Shell Gloves	Terran God Gloves
	Slayer Skillcape
	Fighter Amulet
	Relentless Fury Ring	Fighter Ring
	Tidal Edge
	Shield of Melee Power	Earth Layered Shield	Dragonfire Shield
	Elder Crown

The relentless combo ( Relentless Fury Gloves + Relentless Fury Ring) is very nice for this portion of the battle, as it contributes towards keeping enemies almost permanently stun-locked. However, only Rokken poses much of a threat until Bane (which you will never fight with Melee anyway), so your gear for this style does not matter too much. Overall it is not worth switching away from Slayer Helmet (Master) and Slayer Platebody (Master).

Ranged

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Cowl (Master)
	Slayer Leather Body (Master)
	Aeris God Platelegs
	Aeris God Boots
	Poison Virulence Gloves	Aeris God Gloves
	Slayer Skillcape
	Deadeye Amulet	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Poison Virulence Ring	Deadeye Ring
	Shockwave
	Shield of Ranged Power	Scaled Shield
	Jadestone Bolts
	Elder Crown

Again, it is only necessary to switch rings and passive slot. No enemies should give you trouble outside of Ku-tul, which can be easily manual eaten.

Magic

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Slayer Wizard Hat (Master)
	Slayer Wizard Robes (Master)
	Glacia God Platelegs
	Glacia God Boots
	Burning Madness Gloves	Glacia God Gloves
	Slayer Skillcape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Burning Madness Ring	Tormented Ring
	Ocean Song
	Shield of Magic Power	Scaled Shield	Earth Layered Shield
	Elder Crown

Magic obliterates all Melee enemies with Incinerate. As noted above, you can switch to Water Strike, Fury II and Confusion for these zones in order to save on runes.

Bane

This is the main boss of the event. You will always reroll Melee Bane, as his heal cannot be out-DPS'd as you cannot stun him. The strategy for the final form of Bane, Instrument of Fear is the same, but you will have to manual eat during his Overwhelming Power attack at higher affliction stacks. It may be necessary to reroll to a Magic version for Bane, Instrument of Fear.

Remember, since you are fighting him in a slayer area with a slayer item requirement you must use Slayer Skillcape or Climbing Boots.

Ranged

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Aeris God Helmet	Slayer Cowl (Master)
	Aeris God Platebody	Slayer Leather Body (Master)
	Aeris God Platelegs
	Aeris God Boots
	Poison Virulence Gloves	Aeris God Gloves
	Slayer Skillcape
	Deadeye Amulet	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Poison Virulence Ring	Deadeye Ring
	Shockwave
	Shield of Ranged Power	Scaled Shield
	Jadestone Bolts
	Elder Crown

It is worth switching away from Master Slayer for extra DR for Bane, but not entirely necessary. The fight itself though is quite simple. Use Protect from Ranged and Battleheart for this fight. Sharp Vision (and even Rigour) can also be used when Bane reduces your accuracy with Fragile Mind if you are comfortable switching prayers around quickly. Auto eat through Unknown Threat, eat if your HP is around 400 for Fragile Mind and keep your HP above 50% during Suffocate. If Bane starts to Suffocate you, you can generally finish getting your attack off before having to auto eat. Remember that Elder Crown's lifesteal will help keep your HP above 50% for Suffocate if you have a Shockwave special incoming.

Poison Virulence Ring is very strong here. The percentage maximum health and increased damage with Shockwave special attacks add a lot of damage, but it is entirely possible to kill Bane with just a Deadeye Ring.

Magic

Slot	Item (most effective → least effective)
	Glacia God Helmet
	Glacia God Platebody
	Glacia God Platelegs
	Glacia God Boots
	Burning Madness Gloves	Glacia God Gloves
	Slayer Skillcape
	Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs
	Burning Madness Ring	Tormented Ring
	Ocean Song
	Shield of Magic Power	Scaled Shield
	Elder Crown

The gear recommended here should put you above 20k accuracy with Battleheart, which means Incinerate will melt Bane. As a result, this is the easier of the two styles by a considerable margin. If your accuracy is reduced due to Fragile Mind, you will need to switch to Mystic Mastery (note that this is the second highest Magic related prayer, not the highest) in order to boost back above the 20k threshold. Tormented Ring is recommended over Warlock Ring as the latter has no benefits with Ancient Magicks and the former gives more accuracy towards the threshold needed.

During Bane's Suffocate attack, you will generally only need to eat one or two pieces of food and then Elder Crown's lifesteal should keep you above the 50% threshold.

Zone Order

This is the same as for main accounts. Unhallowed Wasteland → Dark Waters → Shrouded Badlands → Perilous Peaks. This ordering means that you finish the first two zones at the start, and then you will fight Bane with the least offensive slayer area effect of the four (evasion is entirely useless with 80% dodge due to protection prayers). It is also possible to fight Bane in Shrouded Badlands in order to remove the Slayer Skillcape requirement from the Bane fight, but overall this isn't worth the loss in accuracy.

Strictly speaking, only the last zone you choose matters, but there is little benefit to changing from the order given here. You need Master slayer gear for Unhallowed Wasteland and Dark Waters, but these items can be swapped for God armour for extra DR and damage for Shrouded Badlands, Perilous Peaks and Bane.

Event Modifiers

As a CO, your DPS is very limited and Unhallowed Wasteland enemies can heal. Any modifier that increases enemy healing or attack speed (even by 5%) will immediately make Unhallowed Wasteland impossible. This rules out 5 of the possible 12 modifiers. As a CO you cannot afford to lose the ability to stun, as this makes Legaran Wurm impossible, adding another modifier to avoid. As you cannot get the same modifier twice, this leaves you with 6 possible modifiers that can be taken. 4 are perfectly fine, 1 is painful but recommended and the last 1 is not recommended as it may brick wall when paired with a miniboss Legaran Wurm, but might be manageable otherwise.

The list of preferred modifiers are (you will always pick these for every Impending Darkness Event run):

• +20% Maximum Hit and -10% Maximum Hitpoints
• +20% Maximum Hit and +20% Accuracy Rating
• +2000 Maximum Hitpoints and -10% Maximum Hit
• +50% chance to apply poison when hitting with an attack and +10% Maximum Hitpoints

Of the next two, the first is recommended over the second. Frostburn will lower your attack speed, which essentially makes the enemies heal more relative to your DPS. This is not ideal, but it is less impactful than an overall 15% DPS, as it only applies when you are actually frostburned and can be mitigated by stunning your opponent. If you have a choice between any of the four above modifiers and either of these two, always pick one from the above four first.

1. +50% Chance to apply burn when attacking and +50% chance to apply frostburn when attacking
2. +15% Damage Reduction and +15% Global Evasion

Lastly, taking a single one of these modifiers will end your run. They either cause the enemy to heal excessive amounts of health or make an entire style obsolete (stun immunity). There is about a 10% chance that a Unhallowed Wasteland run can spawn no Legaran Wurm, but this reliance on RNG is less ideal than simply rerolling.

• +100% chance to ignore Stuns and Freezes and Immune to Sleep
• +100% chance to ignore Slow effects and -5% Attack Interval
• +10% Maximum Hit, -10% Attack Interval, and -10% Global Evasion
• +15% chance to apply affliction when attacking and +15% Lifesteal
• Slayer Area Effects are 5% Stronger
• Heal 4% of current hitpoints every 2 turns and +40% of Maximum Hit added to Minimum Hit

Reroll Mechanics

As COs completing Impending Darkness Event is already a knife's edge, you will have to become well acquainted with rerolling for the perfect combination of event modifiers listed above. Rerolling involves either keeping a second tab of the game around (which can be switched to in the event of death or impossible modifiers) or creating a cloud save at a particular point. Before every run of Unhallowed Wasteland and every fight with Bane, it is recommended to keep a backup tab around in case you die, but it is not necessary for truly hardcore players. As a last resort, it is recommended to have a third backup tab before every fight with Bane if you ever need to reroll a potential mistake (such as choosing the +15% DR modifier).

A backup tab is fairly self-explanatory, but cloud saving is more intricate. Firstly, you must have a Melvor Cloud account. Next, you must be logged in to the account on the game homepage. This is shown on the bottom left of the main character sign in page. Lastly, you must navigate to the settings page of your CO account and disable "Auto Save to Cloud" in the Melvor Cloud Settings. This option only shows up if you are signed in to the Melvor Cloud account, so if it is not present then return to the character selection screen and log in.

With automatic cloud saving disabled, you can freely create cloud checkpoints just before the two main reroll points, being Bane and event modifiers. These checkpoints won't be automatically overwritten as the non-cloud local save would be. The points that you need to create checkpoints for are:

• When on the final miniboss of Perilous Peaks
• Just before Bane dies

The first checkpoint will allow you to reroll Bane's attack style in case you land on Melee (as Bane's style is determined when the final enemy is defeated), and the second one allows you to easily reroll the event modifiers. If you create a cloud save a bit before killing Bane when your character is at full health and can easily idle to victory (i.e. most likely not during a suffocate attack when you are in danger of being put to sleep), then whenever you load the cloud save account Bane will be defeated and you can select from a list of 3 modifiers. If all 3 modifiers are bad, simply refresh the page and load from the cloud save once more.

Melvor Idle version v1.2.2 (Released: 15th November 2023)
Combat: Attack Strength Defence Hitpoints Ranged Magic Prayer Slayer
Skills: Woodcutting Fishing Firemaking Cooking Mining Smithing Thieving Farming Fletching Crafting Runecrafting Herblore Agility Summoning Astrology Township Cartography Archaeology Alternative Magic
Other: Beginners Guide Guides Bank Combat Mastery Money Making Shop Easter Eggs Pets Golbin Raid Full Version Throne of the Herald Atlas of Discovery
Reference Tables: Items, Equipment, Experience Table, Upgrading Items, Combat Areas, Slayer Areas, Dungeons, Chest Loot Tables, Monsters, Monster Loot Tables