TruthScape.com - Aviansies Magic/Ranged Training Guide - Drops, Costs, Profits and Experience Rates

The excellent drops of aviansies are one of the main reasons why I recommend them for training. The value of these drops, combined with the low cost of the supplies needed to fight the monsters, means that you not only get back the cost of your runes or ammunition, you can also make a substantial profit to use for training other skills.

In this topic, I will start off by telling you each of the drops you can get from aviansies. Since you will be killing them by the hundreds, I will also provide information for you on the typical cumulative value of drops that you will receive for a given number of kills. Then, I’ll discuss the costs and time involved in killing aviansies, and compare costs and drop values to give you an idea of roughly how much you can make, on average, while training. I’ll also show you about how much experience you can get per hour.

All aviansies have two 100% drops: bones (regular, one set) and feathers (a random number from 1 to 6). These seemingly mundane drops are actually more important than you might realize. The feathers are dropped in small numbers, but if you take them all they quickly add up—you can easily get over 1,000 feathers a trip, which you can use to make replacement ammunition for what you consume when ranging. The bones are essential if you want to use the Bones to Peaches spell for healing.

In addition to the bones and feathers, you will usually get another drop as well. Aviansies have no unique or special drops, but their regular drops are quite valuable, especially the noted adamantite bars (see Figure 447). Incidentally, I have not noticed any difference in the drops from the different levels of aviansies. While I would have expected a level 131 to have a greater likelihood of a more valuable drop (like addy bars) than a level 69, that hasn’t been the case in my experience.

I have listed aviansie drops in Table 94, roughly in order of increasing value. Value figures are approximations based roughly on current market prices, or alch values for items that a high-level player normally wouldn’t bother to sell.

**Table 94: Individual Aviansie Drops**
Drop	Approximate Value	Frequency	Notes
(nothing)	0	Uncommon	Once in a while you will just get the 100% drops.
Rune javelins (5)	n/a	Very rare	Jagex has made these fairly worthless, and they can’t be sold, so I recommend dropping them, alching them (though you don’t get back the cost of a nat) or simply using them to kill an aviansie or two until they are gone.
Swordfish (5, unnoted)	n/a	Rare	You won’t want to keep these to take out of the dungeon, but they are very important if fighting without prayer, as they give you 70 points of free healing. See the discussion of healing methods in the topic on strategy and challenges. If using prayer, just leave them unless you need healing.
Mind runes (5)	75	Rare	For whatever reason, Jagex made minds the rarest of the aviansie rune drops, and you only get 5 at a time. They aren’t worth wasting an inventory slot on (but if you already have a mind slot for maging, might as well take them.)
Body runes (12)	120	Uncommon	These are worth collecting if you are staying for a long time, and if you have inventory space to spare. You can always drop them later if you don’t get enough to be worthwhile and need the space for something else.
Air runes (15)	250	Very common	You’ll want to collect air runes.
Silver ore	500	Very common	These are unnoted and usually not worth taking unless you are about to leave and have empty inventory space.
Water runes (30)	600	Very common	These stack so you’ll want to collect them.
Law runes (2)	650	Common	Even though you only get 2 at a time, law runes are obviously worth keeping.
Chaos runes (3, 16)	400 / 2,000	Common	The drop of 3 chaoses is more common than 16. Either way, these are worth a slot.
Anti-poison potion (5, unnoted)	1,000 to 5,000	Common	You’ll usually just leave these on the ground, as they are of no value in combat and they are unnoted. I sometimes use them as “inventory filler” near the end of a trip.
Grimy Herb	500 to 8,000	Common	I generally keep herbs from ranarr and up, unless I have extra inventory space.
Nature runes (9)	2,700	Common	These stack with the natures you’ll be bringing anyway.
Uncut gem (sapphire, emerald, ruby or diamond)	1,000 to 5,000	Uncommon	I always keep emeralds, rubies and diamonds. Sapphires I hold onto if I have space.
Rune dagger (p+)	4,800	Common	These should be alched.
Blood runes (11)	5,000	Uncommon	Obviously worth keeping.
Runite limbs	9,600	Uncommon	Alch these as well.
Adamantite bars (4, noted)	11,000	Very common	The noted addy bars are the ‘star attraction” here, of course, and you’ll obviously make some room for them!
Half key	20,000 to 30,000	Very rare	I’ve gotten a half key once, obviously I kept it. J

Note that one issue with aviansies is inventory management, because you kill so many of them on a trip. In the “Notes” column I provide some information on whether I recommend holding the drops or leaving them, depending on various circumstances. (By the way, I do collect feathers, but I only spend time to pick them up if I have inventory room and if I am also going to the drop pile to pick up something else.)

Drop lists are good to have, but what you probably really want to know is what typical drops are like over a period of time when actually training. I recorded drop totals during my tests, and since the dungeon keeps track of killcount for you automatically, this made it easy enough to figure out some typical cumulative drop values for killing aviansies. In Figure 448 you can see the results from three different trips of about two hours each.

I made some calculations using drops from from over 2,500 kills spanning 11 trips. Note that this does not represent all drops, just the ones I decided to keep with me to take out of the dungeon—lots of silver ores, anti-poison potions and lesser herbs got left behind! Here’s what I determined as averages for “net” aviansie drops, per 100 kills:

Using typical current item values, this works out to around 364k worth of drops per 100 kills, or 3.64k per kill. Not bad at all, since as you’ll see below, you can easily kill over 100 of these per hour!

The costs associated with training on aviansies will depend on two main choices: how you choose to kill them (ranged or magic, and using which weapon or spell), and how you decide to heal or protect yourself from damage. The three methods that I recommend are ranging without prayer, ranging with prayer, and maging using Magic Dart. I’ll explore these options in detail in the topic on challenges, tradeoffs and strategy issues, while summarizing them and their associated costs here so I can compare the cost figures to drop values.

Note that if you have a Saradomin godsword and bring it with, this will both extend the time you can stay in the dungeon and also lower costs, since it provides free healing, as well as prayer points that save food. Also, any swordfish drops you get from aviansies will also extend trips and save costs. In order to keep comparisons fair, I have not taken either of these into account in the analysis that follows.

First, let’s consider ranging without prayer. I recommend using addy bolts; on average, you use up approximately one bolt per kill, worth around 300 gold. If you use a crystal bow instead you will have to substitute for this recharging costs, which are even higher. On top of that are food and potion costs, which depend on which of the three healing options you select: using just food, using food plus Saradomin brews and super restore potions, or using food along with the Bones to Peaches spell. Here’s how the costs stack up for these options:

The costs here will include bolts, ranging potions and prayer potions (as well as miscellaneous costs). I recommend using enchanted emerald bolts for this technique, and due to how the method works, you’ll consume less than one bolt per kill, on average. The total cost per kill works out to around 625.

Maging is much more expensive than ranging, so we should expect the cost per kill to be substantially higher. On average, about 5.5 casts of Magic Dart are required per kill, resulting in a base cost of about 1,900 just for the death and mind runes. On top of that we must add food and potions. This technique combines the healing methods used in ranging, using food at first, Saradomin brews and super restore doses to provide prayer and increase defence, and Bones to Peaches for the extra healing needed.

Total cost, including combat runes, food, two Saradomin brews, one super restore, Bones to Peaches runes (or tablets) and Ahrims set repair is about 2,200 per kill.

In the preceding sections we figured out the average drop value and cost per kill in training on aviansies. We can now use that information, combined with my tests to determine how fast the aviansies can be killed to determine how much profit you can make per hour. The data is summarized in Table 95. Note that my figures assume using addy darts for ranging withot prayer, and the figures for kills per hour also include extra time for banking, to conservatively simulate the total time for multiple runs. Again, they don’t take into account the fact that if you get swordfish drops you can stay considerably longer with the same amount of supplies.

**Table 95: Summary of Aviansie Kill Rates, Costs and Profits By Method**
Training Method	Average Drop Value Per Kill	Typical Cost Per Kill	Profit Per Kill	Approximate Number of Kills Per Hour	Approximate Profit Per Hour
Ranging Without Prayer, Using Only Food	3,640	400	3,240	135	437k
Ranging Without Prayer, Using Food, Sara Brews and Super Retores	3,640	500	3,140	140	440k
Ranging Without Prayer, Using Bones to Peaches	3,640	375	3,265	140	457k
Ranging With Prayer	3,640	625	3,015	175	527k
Maging Using Magic Dart	3,640	2,200	1,440	120	173k

In my many tests with various techniques fighting aviansies, I noticed that the XP rate per hour tended to vary more than with other monsters. This is probably due to both the usual randomness of the RuneScape combat formula, added to the fact that varying amounts of damage are done to the aviansies by other monsters (“pets”) in the dungeon.