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Cave Crawlers (Level 23, Slayer Level 10) Flesh Crawlers (Level 28)

If you’re trying to get the absolute greatest number of herbs per hour, banshees aren’t your monster. They give the fewest herbs of the five primary herb droppers, about half of what chaos druids will provide, for example. But if you like getting other valuable drops mixed in with your herbs, you’ll find banshees an attractive option. And if you’re an avid runecrafter, you may have trouble getting yourself to leave when you see how much pure essence they drop! J

Banshees are level 23 monsters that have 22 HP, just like cave crawlers; they require level 15 Slayer to fight. These monsters are modeled after mythological spirits whose howl portends coming death; the RuneScape version will do severe damage and drain stats if you don’t wear a special pair of earmuffs to protect yourself (which you can get at any slayer master). Banshees are unaggressive, use a magic-based melee attack, and are quite easy to kill.

Here’s a summary of their main combat-related stats:

• Name: Banshee
  
  
• Combat Level: 23
  
  
• Slayer Level: 15
  
  
• Hitpoints: 22
  
  
• Attack Style: Melee (magic-based)
  
  
• Maximum Hit: 2
  
  
• Combat Zone: Single
  
  
• Aggressive: No
  
  
• Special Attacks: Heavy damage and stat drain if not wearing required earmuffs
  
  
• Special Defences: None
  
  
• Special Equipment Required: Earmuffs
  
  
• High-Level Player Kill Rate: 425 per hour
  
  
• Herb Drop Rate: 100 per hour

Banshees are found only in the Canifis Slayer Tower; to get there easily, take the fairy ring network to code “C K S” and walk north to the entrance. Alternately, if you have a portal to Canifis from your house, use the portal, bank in Canifis, then head west through town and follow the trail as it bends northwest and then north to the tower.

When you enter, go past the giant bats to the crawling hands area, then weave your way past them, heading north and then east. From the northeast corner, turn south and you’ll find banshees in most of the eastern half of the ground floor. In my experience, the best place to fight them is in the southeastern room where the staircase is.

For the fastest killing speed, in order to maximize drop rates, meleeing banshees is recommended. Some players like to range or mage them, and it is possible to trap them so they can’t attack you, but with only 22 HP, there’s not much point.

The magic-based melee attack used by banshees counts as a melee attack for prayer, but as a magic attack in terms of armor. Thus, you are better off wearing dragonhide armor than metal armor, though if you were to pray against banshees (which is unnecessary) you’d use Protection from Melee.

Of course, remember your earmuffs. Also, banshees are considered undead, so if you have a salve amulet, wear it here if meleeing, to increase your Attack and Strength by 15% (or 20% if you have the enhanced version.) You can see an example of the type of equipment I recommend for banshees in Figure 179.

Take your best weapon for quick kills, and bring a super attack and/or super strength potion to speed things up further if you wish. I recommend bringing a macaw or beast of burden Summoning pouch as well.

As with other herb droppers, you may wish to bring with swamp tar and a pestle and mortar to make harralander tar, and ash potions for making Serum 207.

Banshees drop approximately 100 grimy herbs per hour, which as mentioned before, is not as good as some other monsters. Where they make up for this, however, is with their other drops, especially pure essence. They give a nice quantity of 13 at a time, in noted form, and drop it frequently: you can expect to get it around 1 in every 8 kills, yielding a total of 800 or more per hour. That’s almost as fast as mining essence yourself, and the herbs and other drops are on top of it. They also drop small numbers of runes, charms and other items, including black/red mystic gloves.

Here’s what I got in a sample 30 minute session using a whip and rune defender, standard armor, and no potions, summons or other enhancers:

• 100% Drops: None
  
  
• Herbs: 11 guam, 9 marrentill, 6 tarromin, 2 harralander, 3 ranarr, 5 irit, 2 avantoe, 2 kwuarm, 0 cadantine, 2 lantadyme, 2 dwarf weed.
  
  
• Runes: 403 pure essence, 6 air, 7 fire, 18 chaos, 20 cosmic.
  
  
• Gold: 1,141 coins.
  
  
• Charms: 4 gold, 10 green, 2 crimson, 2 blue.
  
  
• Other: 1 ruby, 1 level 2 clue scroll, 3 dark mystic gloves, 685 fishing bait, 2 eyes of newt, 3 unnoted iron ore, 4 iron daggers, 2 iron maces, 1 iron kiteshield.

Here are a few extra tips:

• Banshees aren’t very crowded, but you can sometimes find that others will set up shop where you’re fighting. In this case, you are best off to world hop, as there aren’t many in close proximity, and you’ll waste too much time running around if you have to compete with others.
  
  
• To conserve run energy, after you enter the crawling hands area, turn off run and click in the banshees room to walk there on “autopilot” while you read the forums or do something in another window.

Cave Crawlers (Level 23, Slayer Level 10) Flesh Crawlers (Level 28)