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Aviansies Magic/Ranged Training Guide - Drops, Costs, Profits and Experience Rates Aviansies Magic/Ranged Training Guide - The Care and Feeding of "Zamorak Pets"

My main objective with the TruthScape Monster Secrets series is to bring you information on the best ways of killing monsters for experience and items. In pursuit of that goal, I do a lot of testing of different methods, techniques and types of equipment. Some of these experiments pay off, while others do not. I realize that many people want to know not just what the best methods are but why they are the best, so in each guide I try to provide a topic that explains some of the strategy issues and challenges that are involved in each activity. Below I will explore some of these issues, to help you understand better why I made some of the choices that I did.

In addition, I will help you understand some of the inherent tradeoffs among methods that are all good in their own way, but have plusses and minuses when compared to each other. This will help you decide what approach you want to take for combat style, healing method and more.

This is probably the very first question you will need to ponder, and in most cases it is also a pretty easy one. The answer really depends on whether one of your goals is experience, or if it is primarily to get the items that the bird-creatures drop (either for your own use or to sell). If you are after experience, then you’re going to want to train whichever skill you are looking to raise, either Magic or Ranged. If your priority is drops at the lowest possible cost, ranging is the easy choice.

Ranging is better than maging for two main reasons. First, Jagex has greatly improved the power and speed of crossbows, while magic spells have been neglected for some time, so you can kill more per hour using a bow than a staff. Second, ranging is much cheaper than maging because bolts can be reused, so the costs are far lower; in fact, as we saw in the previous topic, you can make three times the profit ranging that you can maging.

Even though you make much less profit by maging than you do ranging, remember that the same costs that apply to maging here also do elsewhere. Even though you make far less profit per hour casting spells than hurling bolts, you still get very good XP and make a nice amount of money—whereas training on most monsters with combat magic results in a loss of money.

You can use almost any type of bow or other ranging gear to fight aviansies. My tests focused on crossbows, because they are currently one of the best weapons in the game in terms of speed, damage done and ammunition cost. (See the next subsection for later tests on the crystal bow as well.)

My initial tests were done with the bone crossbow, which has suddenly become very popular among rangers. The reason is that this former “noob weapon” is now both fast and capable of doing a decent amount of damage, and Jagex’s shop update means you can easily buy large quantities of bone bolts for just 4 gold each. The bolts are so cheap that they are practically free—you don’t even have to bother picking up the ones that Ava’s accumulator leaves behind.

I had good results with the bone crossbow, but still hit a fair number of zeros. I decided to switch to my rune crossbow and try a succession of common bolt types, including mithril, enchanted emerald, addy and rune. When I did, I found that these better bolts were slightly better than the bone crossbow, enabling me to increase the number of kills I could achieve per hour. I then had to decide which bow and bolt type made the most sense.

In conducting these tests, I reinforced in my mind an important economic lesson: there’s more to profit than just keeping costs low. Consider, for example, a comparison between bone bolts and addy bolts. The former cost 4 each while the latter are worth around 300. In my tests I found that I could kill about 130 aviansies per hour with bone bolts, but 145 per hour with addys (not including banking time). Now, on the surface, it would seem that bone bolts made more sense: after all, addy bolts let you kill 15% more monsters, but the bolt cost is more than 3000% higher!

The real answer, though, is that you make more money with addy bolts. Why? Because an analysis that only looks at costs gives you only half the picture: you also have to look at the drops. As we computed in the prior topic, aviansies yield an average of about 3,640 gold worth of drops per kill. This means that the extra 15 kills per hour with addy bolts are worth around 50k, which more than covers the extra cost of the bolts. In addition, more kills means more XP per hour—I calculated about 3k to 4k of extra Ranged XP using addy bolts compared to bone bolts.

Why not runite bolts, then? Well, by the time you get to rune, you seem to reach a point of diminishing returns. They killed the aviansies only slightly faster than using addy bolts, but the cost of rune bolts was very high. In the end, addy was the “sweet spot” in terms of ammo. And they also have another advantage, in that aviansies drop the addy bars and feathers needed to make more addy bolts.

Enchanted emerald bolts were not particularly useful for fighting one aviansie at a time, because they have so few hitpoints that they would die before the poison could accomplish much. Things were quite different, though, when fighting multiple aviansies at once using prayer. The reason is that you can poison many monsters, and let the poison tick away at the hitpoints of the ones you are not currently fighting—this increases the number of kills you get per hour. More on this in the later subsection on using prayer or ranged when fighting.

I must admit that I got so caught up in all the hoopla over the improvements to crossbows and bolts that at first, I didn’t even test what had been my old standby, the crystal bow. When I went back to try it, at first I was very impressed—the kill speed and XP rate was higher than it was for any of the bolts I had tried, even runite ones! I was able to get about 10 extra kills per hour and started to think that the crystal bow might be “the way to go” for single monster ranging.

Of course, I did realize that I had started with a full bow; as the bow degrades its Ranged attack bonus drops, and thus, so does the speed of kills. By the time the bow had gotten down to 6/10, its speed had dropped to that of regular addy bolts, and below 3/10 it was actually slower. Overall, in tests of draining an entire crystal bow from full to empty, I found that it was slightly faster than using addy bolts, but not by much.

The main drawback of using the crystal bow is that it is either more expensive or much more expensive, depending on how many times you’ve already recharged it. Even if you have worked your recharge fee down to 180k, it still costs 50% more per kill than using addy bolts. In terms of straight cost effectiveness, the addy bolts are still a better deal, as you don’t make back that extra cost in average drops.

A major benefit of the crystal bow is that you do not have to waste time or effort picking up the bolts that Ava’s accumulator leaves behind. This, however, is offset by the annoyance of having to keep track of how much charge is left in the bow. You have to either plan to leave and bank when your bow runs out, or bring an extra to stop to when your current one dies. Of course, you also have to travel to the Elven lands to do the recharging. Note that if you start with a full crystal bow, you can plan on about 400 kills (at high Ranged levels) before it dies. If you bring Sara brews or cast Bones to Peaches you can often stay long enough to use up a full bow, then swap bows when you bank.

Overall, I’d say that using the crystal bow is a viable option for those who really prefer using it over a crossbow, but I generally would still stick with addy bolts. If you do use a crystal bow you will need to find another slot in which to wear a piece of Zammy gear, since you can’t wield the unholy book. One easy solution is to wear a Zamorak cloak, which is what I used in my tests.

The two fundamental approaches to preventing combat damage are wearing armor or using protection prayers. Due to the high cost of prayer potions, my first inclination was to try fighting using armor and food, hoping to keep costs down. This also made sense because ranging armor provides a Ranged attack bonus, whereas prayer gear does not.

Aviansies can quite successfully be ranged without prayer. Dragonhide ranging armor doesn’t have the best defence against their ranging attacks, so you will take damage, but this can be managed with food and potions. One issue with not using prayer is that you really cannot afford to have multiple aviansies attacking you at once, which is why you need the Pendant of Armadyl (or a piece of armadyl armor) to make them unaggressive.

(Of course, even if you aren’t specifically training with prayer, you’ll still use what prayer points you have to kill some aviansies without taking damage!)

Even though fighting without prayer was a success, I started to wonder if—as I had learned in trying different kinds of bolts—I could actually get higher profits by using prayer, despite the extra cost of potions. What really triggered my interest in this was theorizing that I could use enchanted emerald bolts to poison the aviansies, so they would all lose hitpoints even though I was only actually fighting one at a time.

This turned out to be even more successful than I thought it would be. The use of prayer and poisoned bolts let me increase my number of kills from about 145 per hour to almost 180 per hour. The extra drops from these kills more than covered the cost of the prayer potions. Since I was using prayer, it didn’t matter if the aviansies swarmed me, so I didn’t need the Pendant of Armadyl and could wear prayer boosting neckgear. And as an added bonus, I also found that I got slightly more XP, in part because I could spend more time attacking the many monsters surrounding me, rather than chasing them around.

Using prayer is now my preferred method. The only real drawback to it is that it can be a little “intense”, in terms of demanding your complete attention. Fighting aviansies one at a time without prayer is a lot more laid back, which makes it more suitable to situations where you can’t devote 100% of your concentration to the game.

If you are ranging without prayer, you will need to decide what approach you wish to take for healing: food, potions, spells or some combination of the three. After considerable testing, I’ve found that there are three methods that work well, each of which has certain pros and cons.

Here are the three options:

1. Food Only: This is the simplest technique, in which you only bring food, and use it until it (and your prayer points) run out. I usually bring a few cheap fish that I can quickly use up at the start to make room for drops, and pineapple pizzas for the rest of my inventory. The pizzas are a great choice because they can be made very quickly and cheaply, and pack 22 healing points into each inventory slot.
   
   The main benefits of this method are simplicity and low cost. The primary drawback is that it leads to shorter dungeon trips than using other methods, which means it is less efficient than the options below.
   
   
2. Food, Sara Brews and Super Restores: This method involves bringing Saradomin brew and super restore potions along with food. The Saradomin brews heal hit points and also boost defence, reducing how much damage is taken when fighting. The super restore counters the reduction of the Ranged stat caused by the brews, and provides prayer points to extend your trip.
   
   Substituting four Sara brews and two super restores for six pieces of food can easily double the length of a training trip. The drawback is a higher cost per kill, and more complexity as well. In particular, since the brews knock down the Ranged skill, you have to time things so that you take them and a super restore dose just before you’re ready for another dose of your ranging potion.
   
   
3. Food and Bones to Peaches: With this option, you bring with some food, along with either runes or tablets for casting the Bones to Peaches spell. As you consume your food, you pick up bones dropped by the aviansies, and periodically cast the spell on them to create more food. In theory, you can stay for many hours in the dungeon this way; in practice, you’ll eventually run out of inventory space for bones unless you want to waste all the herbs and gems that the aviansies drop.
   
   This is a flexible method that lets you stay for a long time. It also has the benefit of being even cheaper than using a food only method, plus you can bring cheap food like lobsters to start (instead of monkfish, sharks or pineapple pizzas) since you can make more food at will. The downside? It’s more hassle than other methods, due to the need to pick up the bones, and healing only 8 HP at a time gets old pretty fast too.

Now a quick word about using Magic to fight. I tend to take more damage when maging than ranging, and have found that the best approach here is a hybrid strategy that combines elements of the methods above. I use an inventory of food to start, and also bring two Saradomin brews and one super restore, both to provide some prayer points for using Protection from Ranged, and also both hitpoints and a defence boost. When these run out, I fall back on Bones to Peaches. Full details can be found in the topic detailing the maging method.

The choice of how long to spend in the dungeon on each trip involves a number of tradeoffs. In general, you want to spend as much of your time as possible fighting, and as little as necessary on overhead activities like banking or walking to dungeons. On the other hand, there can be drawbacks to trying to squeeze too many kills into a single trip.

The first factor that influences the importance of trip length is whether you are able to cast the Trollheim Teleport spell. If you can, then it takes only about 90 seconds to go from any bank to the combat area of the God Wars Dungeon. If you can’t cast the spell, then you will be forced to walk a winding path from Burthorpe, which takes a lot longer—in that case, lengthening each trip becomes even more important.

Here are some ideas and choices that will help you make your trips longer and more efficient:

• If you are ranging without prayer, consider using the Bones to Peaches spell. While constantly picking up bones is a bit of a pain, the spell allows you to stay in the dungeon for a very long time.
  
  
• If using prayer, the length of time you can stay in the dungeon is a direct function of how many prayer potions you bring with. You should also wear your best prayer bonus gear.
  
  
• Even if you don’t bring prayer potions, be sure to use what prayer points you have on each trip.

I typically aim for about two hours per trip. This generally allows me to get about 300 or so kills, and is also about how long I can fight aviansies before I get rather bored and tired. It also means that I don’t have to leave behind too many unstackable drops—if you stay for a very long time and don’t have imp boxes (see later in this topic) you will end up having to waste even very good herbs (ones over ranarr).

One other issue is that you don’t want to leave for the dungeon with your whole inventory packed with great food or prayer potions, because you need some space for drops, and for picking up bolts. For this reason I always take a few pieces of “disposable” food that I can quickly use up during the first few kills. Otherwise, I end up wasting either food or drops.

In the area of the God Wars Dungeon where you’ll be fighting aviansies, there are also lots of other monsters that you do not want to fight. Unfortunately, since they move around so much, it’s relatively easy to accidentally click on the wrong monster. This can be especially problematic if, for example, you are wearing prayer robes and have Protection from Ranged enabled, and suddenly find yourself being hit hard with magic or melee attacks.

Higher level players need to be especially careful, because there are a number of spiritual warriors, rangers and mages in the area that range from level 120 to 125. This means that they can be “one-click attacked” by very high level players by accident, where lower level players must right-click them to initiate combat.

Fortunately, iIf you do find yourself being attacked by a monster you didn’t want to fight, it’s pretty simple to fix matters. Simply run away from the area where you are fighting, to another part of the dungeon, then run back. In most cases this will “reset” the monster and it will stop being aggressive. As an alternative, of course, you can always just put on the right protection prayer and kill the monster…

The Saradomin godsword—not the “Saradomin sword”—has a unique special ability: it can restore Hitpoints and Prayer points. Each time the special is activated, you receive 50% of the damage dealt on the next attack to your Hitpoints, and 25% of the damage to your Prayer by 25%. The minimum restored is 10 Hitpoints and 5 Prayer points, as long as you hit your opponent. Each special takes 50% of the special attack bar.

For example, if you hit a 28, then you’ll get back 14 hitpoints and 7 Prayer points. If you hit a 12 (or anything else under 20 except 0), you get 10 Hitpoints and 5 Prayer points.

Needless to say, this is extremely useful for any sort of training, and that includes aviansies. If you have a Saradomin godsword, it’s worth bringing it along if you are mainly fighting without prayer. You can’t hit the aviansies with it, but there are other monsters you can use it on.

My preferred technique is to watch the clock since the last time I used my specials. At about 5 to 6 minutes from the last time I used the sword, I go into the little “alcove” southwest of the main combat area where a couple of pyrefiends are usually found (see Figure 449), and use both specials on them to heal. Then I switch back to my bow or Slayer staff.

Note that if you are using an unholy book to keep Zamorak monsters from attacking you, wielding the Saradomin godsword will unwield the book and make the Zammy guys aggressive. Be sure you don’t equip the sword near the gorak or other high-level Zammy monsters; if you do by mistake, re-equip the book and use the “run away and return” method described above.

If you’ve reached level 71 Hunter, you have the ability to trap imps in magic boxes. You can then take these boxes with you into a dungeon, and the imp will bank two items (or stacks of items) for you, in exchange for being released. Imp boxes are not tradeable, so to use them you must catch the imps yourself.

Imp boxes can be useful when training on aviansies, because they let you keep more unstackable drops that you’d otherwise have to leave behind for lack of inventory space. In particular, they let you keep some of the herbs like harralanders and avantoes that you might otherwise waste. Using them lets you also keep your inventory more open and manageable when fighting. The drawback of them—aside from the time needed to catch the imps—is that the boxes themselves take up inventory slots that would normally be used for food.

Based on these factors, I recommend using imp boxes mainly when ranging aviansies with prayer. You will have extra inventory spaces anyway, because you don’t need to bring with food. It is of course also possible to use them when fighting without prayer, but they will of course displace food (reducing the length of your dungeon trip), and in many cases you won’t need them anyway (since you won’t be staying as long.)

Aviansies Magic/Ranged Training Guide - Drops, Costs, Profits and Experience Rates Aviansies Magic/Ranged Training Guide - The Care and Feeding of "Zamorak Pets"