Runescape Game Play

I just wanted to put up a post about the Bork boss, I am too busy now with my new businesses to play much Runescape or to update my blog regularly, sorry folks should be back when it is in full swing.

I did the mini quest "The Hunt for Surok" when it first came out, I quite enjoyed it as I love the chaos tunnels but it would have been nice to get some hunter xp after tracking him down.

When ever I am on I go to do the fight again, its very easy and I only need to take a few sharks as the noob Surok likes to take a pop at me occasionally hitting as much as 25, I start to attack Bork with protect melee not sure if he hits hard melee but I cant see any point in wasting sharks, he is a bit easy so I attack the little guys he calls up and collect their charms, I also thought it would be fun to have a pop at Surok, he has an attack option but no combat level.

He uses some form of magic melee protect spell to save him, I couldn't do any damage so I just killed his pets.

Still the xp and drops are good from the boss Bork and a few charms from his familiars is not to bad, well worth a daily visit.

Getting there

You have your slayer task you know what to wear to fight them and you know where you need to go, you need to travel there in a way to minimise damage from other monsters, this must be considered when traveling there, going to the top floor of the slayer tower without a nosepeg is very dangerous, aberrant specters were put there to protect high level players from "Can I have one of your whip drops please" but they will damage higher level players chances of a quick kill by reducing your stats if a nosepeg is not worn.

Potting up
Its a good idea to use pots to increase your efficiency, you can increase the speed you kill the monsters considerably using the pot appropriate to your attack method, drinking pots can slow you down if drinking when fighting however there is a way to drink and have no effect on your attack, you are effectively getting a free turn when fighting.

When and how to drink
You will hear the sound of when you attack your monster this is reinforced by the animation of you attacking, if you get used to the time interval between hits you can judge the exact time to drink your pot, you must drink your pot at the exact time you hit the monster, when your weapon sound is on drink and you will drink and be returned to the ready to attack state before your next hit, it takes a bit of getting used to but will increase your task time by a small amount, this small amount soon adds up over thousands of monster kills.

Eating
Unfortunately when eating you can not beat the system and it will take a turn to eat, even if using the above method you will still miss a turn, this gives the monster an extra chance to cause you damage, the only way to get around this is to eat when your not under attack, if you need to wait for a monster to respawn you can eat then but if there are plenty of monsters you will waste time, eating during the fight is often the most effective way to eat if there are lots of monsters.

Guthans
Using Guthans to heal is great for melee based monsters, changing your clothing and weapon can be done in fight without losing attack turns by using the pot method above, as soon as you reach 100% health return back to your original weapon and armour to speed training again..

Next Monster
To increase your speed in leveling slayer and finishing your task quickly it is a good idea to have your next monster visible for your next attack, as you are nearing the death of your monster locate your next victim, it may be possible to just click it as your monster dies but if they move around you may find another tactic useful.

Getting ready for next kill
Towards the death of your current monster locate your next victim and right click it, move your mouse cursor just over the attack option and wait for the death sound of the monster you are fighting, as soon as you hear that sound click the attack option and you will move on and attack your next monster immediately even if it has moved from your game window sight.

Competition
Many tasks have a limited number of monsters to kill, this means you may have times you need to fight over monsters with other players, there are ways of doing this quite effectively, for example you can take runes for a magic attack spell, clicking on the spell in your spell book allows you to click the monsters as soon as it becomes available, you will get that monsters attention immediately even if you are not close to it, this is particularly useful if the monster is a higher level than you, this avoids the right click and attack mouse clicks.

Its OK to get the monsters attention this way but it can be intercepted by the other player in the time scale of you mageing it and getting to attack it melee, the easiest way in the long term is to swap worlds for a quieter world, the other player may have ousted you from your world that you like to play on but you get a place where you are not constantly trying to fight to get your monster, you are guaranteed a monster so speeding up your slayer xp.

Drops
Do not pick up coin drops,
This will cost you a lot of money in the long run, killing a monster waiting for its dieing animation then going over to pick it up will cost you valuable seconds per monster.

I will use an example to demonstrate my theory.

170 greater demons as a slayer task
You kill the demons
Dieing animation 2 seconds running over to get loot 1 second attacking next monster 1 second thats 4 seconds per monster.
4*170=680 seconds
Over your slayer task thats 11 minutes picking up cash max value of 3k.
You have 10 slayer tasks thats just under 2 hours for 30k (How much flax can you pick and spin in 2 hours?).
To get 85 slayer you will need thousands of slayer tasks, using 1k tasks as an example 1k * 11 minutes, 183 hours for 3m cash thats just under 8 days constant playing for 3m.
How many slayer tasks can you do in 8 days constant playing?
By picking up loose change you have delayed your 85 slayer by weeks of constant game play, how many whips can you get in 8 days constant, I will answer that for you its loads.

This above example is a very rough estimation there is instances where the pickup times will be quicker and other factors to bear in mind but even at half the times quoted there is still too much time wasted by collecting coins.

Clues
Clues can bring great value items running into millions for level 3 and 100's for 2's and 1's, but the chance is you will only get a few rune items for 3's and carp for the 1's and 2's.
Clues can be quite quick or they can take ages depending on you experience and combat levels for wildy trips, doing a clue will reduce your slayer time by a lot, if you are seriously training slayer you should ignore clues, I personally do them at the end of the task just for a break.

Armour drops
Unless they are mith legs or above they should be ignored, please view the coin drop example above.

How to pick up drops
When you kill a monster it may drop a good item, unfortunately Jagex like fancy dieing sequences for their monsters so it will take a long time before you see it on the floor, this time is wasted if you stand and watch so you should attack your next monster and while you are fighting watch the monster you just killed go through its dieing sequence and the drop appear, if it is good run over and pick it up during your fight, this will minimise your non fighting time your monster you are attacking may follow you so you can attack sooner and auto attack will get you back on track quickly.

Alching
When training on some monsters you will get good armour drops, mith bodies, addy legs etc, selling these is time consuming and is not worth the time involved and they can take up too much space in your inventory, this is when alching comes in handy, having nats and fire runes in your inventory you can hi alch them and turn them into stackable gold pieces when you are fighting, it takes up an attack turn but you will resume fighting as soon as you have finished.

Randoms
Love them or hate them they are there for good, randoms are not totally random, they can be induced and usually at the worst possible time, if you are fighting a monster and they drop bones, if you have been fighting for a long time you are likely to get a bone random if you bury them, grave digger, shade, zombie, be prepared that if you bury a bone you may well get one so watch your health before.

Teleing from the place may also bring a random these are particularly dangerous if you are fighting dangerous monster with prayer, for example you are meleeing metal dragons your prayer runs out so you tele, mad molly the evil twin random whisks you away and gets you to catch her sister, if you catch her sister you are dumped back in the dragons lair with no prayer (not healthy) there is an easy way out of this, catch the wrong one and you are teled to safety.

Alching can also bring on randoms so be prepared for an evil chicken or any other random that can cause damage.

If you are caught fighting and a random appears you can deal with them without stopping, security guard, MOM (Non box 1) and cap'n hand can be dismissed with a click they will stand and watch you but will not attack or tele you even if you don't complete the conversation.

The MOM with the box and sandwich lady can not be dismissed so easily.

Before the cut all option for gems you could cut them while fighting, this was great because this would often call the genie random and free xp pressy, you need to stop fighting now but could be worth it for you.

Escaping
Tele after completing your task watch out for randoms as mentioned above.

What equipment to take and wear to each task is dependent on your combat and slayer level the type of monster you are fighting and the combat method you want to train.

After you have been given a new slayer task you will be given a few more dialogue options, one of these is any tips, ask your master this and he will give you some fairly useless advice, he will however give you an indication of special precautions/requirements to take into consideration when attacking these monsters, this can be like using slayer gloves for attacking fever spiders, anti poison for cave crawlers and mind or elemental shield for Skeletal Wyverns etc.

You will need to understand the attack style of the monster you are attacking, whether it be mage, range or melee, and plan your attack method and armour accordingly, it is not alway evident what their attack style is so trial and error or copying what others use and wear is often your only way of determining this.

How to determine best armour to wear
This is easier than you might think, Jagex have given you all the tools you need to determine your best armour weapon combination, there are things to take into consideration and balances to make between different armour weapon types, only you can decide which is best for you.

It will take a while to get used to what type of armour to wear but as a rule of thumb, range armour protects from mage attacks, melee armour is good for protection from range and melee attacks, there are always exceptions to this rule but I will tell you how to determine the best way to use the easily available tool to decide.

I will use mage defence as an example this time but the same principle works for all attack and defence types.

Supposing you have a task for infernal mages, this is easy mages use mage attack normally and infernal mages being no exception, select all your items you expect to have high mage defence, as already said this is normally range gear and have them in your inventory. click on the little man icon next to your inventory icon this will show what your wearing, clicking on the shield and helmet icon towards the bottom will show you your items and the associated stats for what you are currently wearing.

You are going to attack a mage based monster so you need as high a mage defence as possible, under where it says defence bonus you need to concentrate on the magic stat, by clicking on the items in your inventory you should aim to make this as high as possible.

Having this as high as possible will allow you to stay on your task as long as possible by reducing damage received and saving you food.

Obviously for range defence work on the range defence stat and for melee you have the stab, slash and crush options these can be optimised for each melee monsters attack style/weapon but it starts to get complicated so normally it is fine to stick with your best general armour.

Wearing armour with a negative mage defence against a mage type attack reduces your resistance to mage so you will take more damage than not wearing anything, in this situation run away as fast as you can or take your clothes off.

Likewise wearing some armour will reduce your range and mage attack bonus, wearing rune while attacking with mage will cause most of your spells to splash, this means that you will not damage the monster you have waisted a rune or 2 and you will not get XP for that cast, there was a rumour that Magic dart could be used with armour with a negative mage bonus, this is not true and will cost you time and money even at barrows.

Choosing a Weapon
The quickest way to kill most monsters for a balanced player is melee, you can hit harder with melee than any other weapons (With the exception of expensive dragon bolts arrows and some other enchanted bolts) the same as the defence bonus above you need to look at the attack bonus part this time, to attack using melee you need to concentrate on slash stab and crush options, this varies considerably for each weapon so should be checked regularly until you are used to them.

Weapons like the dragon scimmy can be used on all attack styles, slash, stab and crush, weapons like the hallies are very low crush bonus so is not suitable to train defence.

Some monster are better to range than melee, bloodvelds use a melee based mage attack so you need to wear range gear and at any level you will take damage, for lower level players you may not be able to complete this task in one visit so a trip or 2 back to the bank will be required, taking a bow and arrows will make it so you can complete this task in 1 visit saving you time walking too and from the bank.

Another option is to use prayer, this is advised or sometimes essential to use to fight some monster, for example metal dragons, to melee these you will not last long without prayer, without prayer a task of 60 irons will take days because you may not be able to kill 1 on one visit, dark beasts praying on these is again essential, guthans can be used on these but they hit hard and fairly often so you will constantly be using the spear to heal and that is a very slow weapon.

Canon
The use of a canon for slayer is a very effective weapon, a canon can be used to turn a single combat area into a multi combat area, if you can set up a canon and not be attacked by any monster the canon will hit every monster not being attacked by another player in that area, you can have a canon firing and range or mage or even hally the monsters and still be hitting all free monsters in the firing range of the canon.
Use of a canon is not very popular with other players but you are entitled to use whatever weapon you want wherever you want, I personally prefer to find a quiet world so not to annoy anyone, but it is also better when there are no players to take your available monsters.

To help you along the way to identifying good defence for all fighting classes here is a non exhaustive list of advised armours.

For Mage defence

Snake skin, frog skin, dragon hide (Best you can wear), karils, elemental shield, sara book.

Melee defence
All metal armour from bronze to dragon (best you can wear), Torag, Dharoks, veracs, granite.

For range defence
very few monster fight with ranged attacks, I would wear the same as melee defence but check with your stats screen.

Defence using prayer
Monks robes, initiate, proselyte armour, veracs.

Now you know what armour to wear you know what weapon and attack style you want to use, what else is there to take?

Food
This is totally dependent on you ability as a player, take as much food as you believe you may require to kill your assigned amount of monsters, ranging or mage just take a bit in case you get caught by accident.

Guthans
Guthans can be used on melee based monsters, this will heal your health by the same amount as you take off your victim when the special kicks in, the special is very random you can get lots in a row or go for ages without any so take some food just in case, Guthans reduces your mage defence a lot so when used on a mage based attack you will take a lot of damage, this will require you to use it a lot to heal and with the spear being so slow will slow down your task considerably.

Pots
Hitting harder and more often will speed up your task, take attack, strength and defence pots or the super version if you have them if training melee, take mage pots if attacking with mage and range pots if using range, for training using prayer take the above pot depending on your attack style (Defence pot is not required) and of course prayer pots if you intend going to be there a long time.

Extras

Chisel (not so good now)
Take a chisel to cut gem drops for crafting XP, this was a good idea until the cut all option was introduced, before you could cut gems without slowing down your attack, now you can not cut when fighting.

Alchemy runes
Taking Nats and fire runes to alch any high value items is ideal to save space for other drops, you can take a fire or lava staff but this will slow down your task a lot, alching will cost you 1 hit swapping from weapon to staff can take 1 hit away and swapping back will, all this time you have taken hits from the monster and not been able to hit back or if you alch when you are not in combat wastes even more time.

Quick tele
If you are on a dangerous task take a quick tele just in case you get in trouble if not take runes or item to tele you near your slayer master for your next task.

Enchanted Gem
Essential, there is nothing worse than teleing from a slayer task with low health and no food to find you only had 1 left to kill, its also handy so you can plan when you take a break, if your tired and and have 160 left go, make a cup of coffee and take a walk, if you have 4 to go finish your task then take a walk and make your cuppa.

Next slayer installment will be called fighting your slayer monsters.

BTW piccies to follow shortly

You have minimal input on your slayer task, the things that affect your task is your masters monster list, the quests you have completed and your slayer level.

Each master has a set amount of monsters they can give you, these are not just slayer monsters that you need a required slayer level to kill but you can get monsters that you can kill regularly like goblins , bats and dragons etc.
You will not receive a slayer task for a monster you can only access after a certain quest if you have not completed that quest.
You will not get task that are for a slayer level higher than yours.

So if you get a slayer task you can do it! you have the ability to get to the monster and you have the slayer level to kill it!

If the slayer master gives you a task you are obliged to do it, you can not ask him for another one, when you get your task you have a number of decisions to make, where should I go to complete it, what do I need to wear, how much food do I take, what method should I use to kill it, can I kill it quick enough to make the xp worth it, am I confident/competent to do it, do I have the correct items to be able to do it.

Where you should go is dependent on the monster you are killing, your combat level and other factors, There may be high and low level monsters for your task, you need to decide which is most beneficial for you, for example if you have skeletons, you can kill low level ones in a local sewer but you wont get much slayer xp, you can travel a bit further for example the hidden dungeon in Ardy accessible after staring desert treasure, they are higher level take more time to kill but the slayer xp is greater, if you can kill the higher level monsters quick it is worth the time but its a balancing act as only you know your abilities.

What should you wear is dependent on the monster and location, for mage attack monsters wear your best range gear, dragon hide, frog/snake skin, for melee based attacks wear your best melee armour bronze up to dragon or barrows if you have. If you are ranging or meleeing monsters wear your appropriate armour for the attack style.
When receiving your task you have the option to ask for advice on the task given, sometimes you need special slayer equipment and he will tell you what you need you can purchase it from him by trading with him.

How much food should you take again is different depending on your level and the monster you want to attack, some tasks you can just take a few lobbies others you may need a full inventory full of sharks and return to the bank for more, when you get to the top level of the slayer tower Guthans is a great space and food saving set of armour, it can not be used effectively against mage attacking monsters so the ground and first floor of the slayer tower it should not be used, the top floor is melee only (Except death spawn) and is great to avoid trips to the bank.

What method of attack should you use is dependent on the monster type and what you want to train, some monsters are easy to range or mage, kurask, turoths, with broad arrows or magic dart, cave horrors, black demons etc, others are not so good such as mage based attacks, infernal mages, dark beasts, aberrant specters etc, melee is quicker for most monsters but if you are training other attack methods it is worth it for xp in that method.

Can you kill it quick enough to be valuable xp for the chosen task, again this is dependent on your choices of where to train and combat level, if your level 12 combat killing a level 82 skeleton it is not going to get you good quick slayer xp however a level 22 skelly will, choose the level of monster that you can kill quickly.

Am I confident to kill the chosen monster is a decision only you can make, you may be able to kill a monster but you don't think you will be able to stay there long without dying, other players lower level may be killing them but you don't feel confident yet, only you can say.

Do you have the equipment, pots or items required to kill the monsters is dependent on the monster and your skill and cash level, you may be able to kill metal dragons but if you cant make anti fire breath pots or you cant afford to buy them then there is no point in going.

If you have considered the above points and decided that you are not ready for the task then Burthorpe it, don't feel bad for burthorping it all level players do it, even after Burthorping you will get an easy task, you then need to look at many of the above points and decide the best level monster for that task, at any level 12 skellies is not worth going to ardy for the high levels ones it is better to kill low levels and get them out of the way for a better task, however 25 monkeys you can choose between the ones in ardy zoo and have to wait for respawn, go to Karamja and kill them quickly but more traveling, or go to Ape Atol and kill the high level guard monkeys for more xp or even ninja or zombie monkeys, decisions decisions its up to you.

Next topic in the slayer saga is going to be titled Equipment

To find out your dedicated slayer master you need to activate your enchanted gem, this is purchased from any of the slayer masters by trading with them and it costs 1gp. when activated this opens up a dialogue with your assigned slayer master, you can ask about fighting tips and how many more monsters you need to kill to complete your task but you can not get another task, you always need to return to them for a new task, there is the option in Lunar magic that you can speak to them remotely and ask for a task but I find normal magic more useful when slaying.

Visit your slayer master and ask for a new assignment, if it is not your slayer master they may say they are too easy for you and recommend you go to another master or they are too hard for you and tell you to go to another slayer master, if it is easier than your allocated slayer master you can still get a task, if the slayer master is too high for you you will not get a task.

Requirements for slayer master
Turael, Burthorpe, 3 combat.
Mazchna, Canafis, 20 combat
Vannaka, Edgeville Dungeon, 40 combat
Chaeldar, Zanaris, 70 combat
Duradel, Shilo, 100 combat and 50 slayer

Tasks
If you get a task from Turael in Burthorp you must do that task, he will not give you anything you can not get to or kill.
If you get a task from the other slayer masters you will not be given tasks that you can not get to but you may get tasks you don't like doing or don't feel confident doing, in this situation you can change your task to a task from Tureal, just go and ask him for a new assignment, this is unofficially known as Burthorping, when you get this new assignment you must do it, try to do as many tasks as you can to gain as much experience as possible on each monster but don't be afraid to burthorpe a task that may take too long or you don't want to do.

Please visit us again soon for the next exciting installment from the slayer files, Entitled accepting a task.