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Familiars in Combat - Powerful or Pathetic? Scrolls, Combat Special Moves and Right-Click Attacks

Hopefully the previous topic didn’t entirely put you off trying Summoning familiars in combat. J Assuming you’re still with me, let’s move on to talk about the basics of using combat familiars, and some of the most important ways of getting the most from them.

Note that the familiar quick reference contains a summary of the combat specifications for the familiars currently covered in this guide.

In theory, getting familiars to participate in combat is supposed to be automatic; you start fighting a monster, and the familiar notices and jumps into the fray. This does in fact happen, but only after several seconds; for whatever reason, Jagex implemented a long delay, by which time the fight is often mostly over with. To get a familiar to start fighting immediately, you must attack an NPC and then use the whistle button in the Summoning interface. It’s not mentioned in the knowledge base, but this doesn’t just call the familiar to you, it also tells it to start fighting.

Another way of getting a familiar involved in combat is to start a battle using its special move. Many familiars have magic or ranged special moves, which are useful for “picking a fight” with an NPC, especially if it is half-way across the room. As we’ll see later on, some players make good use of this to “gather” NPCs towards them without having to move.

Once a familiar begins fighting, it will generally continue doing so until it is killed or expires (its timer runs out) or the NPC is killed. Note that you cannot tell a familiar to stop fighting.

Most familiars that are capable of combat have a standard attack that they use for basic combat. These attacks can be melee, ranged or magic, just like the attacks of players or NPCs. Also like players and NPCs, the standard attacks of most familiars are melee-based, with a smaller number ranging or maging.

There are some familiars that actually have more than one standard attack. The karamthulhu overlord, for example, appears to alternate between a ranging and a magic attack. I believe it may even have a melee attack thrown in there as well, but I’m not sure.

Note that many familiars have special attacks that are rather different than their standard ones, generally by design. For example, all of the metal minotaurs (bronze through rune) use melee for their standard attacks, but have magic-based special attacks.

The speed with which familiars attack varies, sometimes dramatically, from one familiar to the next, but on the whole, most of the familiars are very slow in attacking, which contributes to the feeling on the part of many that they aren’t doing a lot. The metal minotaurs (bronze through rune) are particularly bad in this respect, despite having been portrayed as familiars intended for combat. While they are capable of doing a decent amount of damage (see Figure 252), they are not going to have a big impact on a battle when they only get one attack every seven seconds—that’s three times as long as it takes between attacks with an abyssal whip. This will hopefully be improved, soon.

The damage done by familiars’ standard attacks depends chiefly on the familiar’s level and how combat-oriented it is. For example, the iron minotaur swings a big battleaxe and so will probably do a fair bit more damage than, say, a bloated leech, even though the latter has a slightly higher combat level. That said, you can’t always judge a book by its cover—some small familiars can do a lot more damage than you might think.

Jagex hasn’t published maximum hit figures for the familiars, but I’ve attempted to determine approximate values for each one, which are provided in the detailed familiar descriptions, as well as the quick reference.

Just as with players and NPCs, the combat triangle comes into play to a certain extent in determining the effectiveness of NPC attacks, so understanding familiar attack styles is important. A familiar that attacks with magic is not going to help you much against a dragon, but can do a lot of damage on a creature weak to magic, like a giant rock crab. Conversely, the crab will shrug off ranged attacks from familiars, while the dragon will take damage from them.

Some familiars, like the karamthulhu overlord mentioned earlier, have multiple standard attacks. This is obviously advantageous in many situations where a monster has high defence against one style.

There may also be situations where one familiar does better than another on a specific NPC, even if they both use the same attack style. Since the skill is new, much experimentation remains to be done, so don’t be afraid to try different things.

Familiars in Combat - Powerful or Pathetic? Scrolls, Combat Special Moves and Right-Click Attacks