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TruthScape Monster Secrets - Dark Beast Slaying Guide Dark Beast Slaying Guide - Description, Statistics, Attacks and Defence

Dark beasts are famous within RuneScape for having the most demanding Slayer skill requirement of any monster in the game: level 90. They can be fought at lower levels by using enhancers such as wild pies, but they are a challenge even for those with the high combat skills that result from getting Slayer to level 90—most warriors are at least combat level 115 by the time they are able to fight dark beasts “straight up”.

In addition to the Slayer level requirement, you also must at least start the quest Mourning’s End Part II, which has a series of long and difficult prerequisite quests. Combine a high Slayer level, challenging monsters and quest requirements, and you have one of the most exclusive monsters in the game.

There was also a serious problem with dark beasts as they were first introduced to the game: they did not have drops that made them worthwhile to kill, given their difficulty. The only valuable item you could get from them was the death talisman, which while worth maybe 200k, was difficult to sell and not highly sought by most players. Many high-level Slayers were annoyed that they would work so hard to get to level 90 only to have basically no reward for their efforts.

Jagex changed all that in June 2007, when it introduced a new ranged weapon to the game, which can only be obtained as a rare drop from dark beasts. The dark bow has a unique special attack that always hits, and is also the only bow in the game that can fire the new dragon arrows introduced to the game simultaneously with it. This update greatly increased interest in dark beasts, as you can imagine. And while the bow isn’t worth nearly as much as it was in its first few weeks, it’s still a nice payoff once in a while for those willing to rise to the dark beast challenge (Figure 461).

There are three reasons why a player might choose to fight dark beasts. First, some players kill them because they get them as Slayer assignments. Second, some want to try for one of the dark beasts’ rare dark bow drops. And finally, some just like the challenge of killing a monster that many others consider “too difficult” or “not worth the time”.

Befitting their difficulty, dark beasts are occasionally assigned only by Duradel, the highest-level Slayer Master in the game. Unfortunately, he only gives out 10 to 20 of them per assignment, and many players don’t feel it’s worth the time to get equipped to make a trip to fight that few of them. You can make it worth your while, though, if you gear up to fight as many as you can in a single trip, thus completing your assignment and also perhaps getting a dark bow for your trouble. Also remember that doing this saves you the time involved in Burthorping the dark beast task, which could result in you perhaps getting something that you like even less!

Fighting dark beasts for dark bows is very much like killing any other difficult monster hoping for a valuable drop—it’s largely a matter of luck. The dark bow is, at the time of this writing, down to about 2 million gold, as a result of the crash in nearly all item values that occurred because of structural changes in the game in late 2007. That’s still a nice amount of gold, though, and while dark beasts don’t have the best secondary drops, they aren’t as bad as some make them out to be. Plus, that same reduction in prices also makes the supplies for fighting the beasts far more affordable than they were earlier in the year...

Finally, there’s the challenge. As I mentioned before, if you worked your way up to level 90 Slayer, you’ve earned the right to kill these rather exclusive monsters! And using this guide, you can learn how to do it efficiently.

Even if you have the necessary requirements, there are a number of downsides to fighting dark beasts, which is part of why not many people do so. Here are the most significant ones:

• They have high defence, so they are not suitable for training (low XP for the time spent killing them).
  
  
• You have to wear special robes to access their area, which means you lose 8 or 9 inventory slots.
  
  
• They are aggressive and never lose aggressiveness.
  
  
• They cannot be killed from safe spots because they have potent melee and magic attacks, making ranging or maging impractical.
  
  
• Their secondary drops, while not terrible, are not the best for a monster of their difficulty.
  
  
• Because they are difficult, you need to use potions and good food to fight them (unlike, say, abyssal demons, where you can camp out for hours just using Guthans once every few minutes to heal up.)

There’s also some risk involved in killing dark beasts, because they are very high level and can hit hard. With the right preparation and technique, though, they are not that bad. These monsters are certainly not nearly as dangerous as the true boss monsters of the game, or even something like mithril dragons.

In order to get to dark beasts, you must start the quest Mourning’s End Part II. Right at the beginning of the quest you will be told to go into the mourners’ headquarters in the northeast corner of West Ardougne. In the basement of this building is a dungeon which is where the dark beasts are found.

To get into the building you must be wearing full mourners’ robes, and nothing else except a ring or quiver ammunition (no neck piece and no weapon or shield). If you don’t have the mourners’ robes from when you did Mourning’s End Part I, you’ll have to get them again using the same process you did in that quest.

In general, anyone who has a high enough Slayer level to fight dark beasts will also have high enough combat skills to be able to tackle them. That said, I realize that some people train skills unevenly, so I have provided my skill recommendations in Table 96.

Those who want to fight dark beasts continuously will need a Slayer level of 90. You can fight them at lower levels using wild pies, which are now both cheaper and easier to get than ever before, thanks to the Grand Exchange. Even though you can technically fight dark beasts at a Slayer level of 85 using the pies, I strongly recommend at least level 87, so you don’t waste all your pies getting only a tiny number of kills. Level 88 or 89 is much better—every extra Slayer level gives you about two extra kills per pie.

The most important non-combat skill for killing dark beasts is… Mining. Huh? J Well, you don’t really need a high Mining level, but it so happens that the dark beast lair is the home of one of the few, rare runite rocks in the game, as shown in Figure 462. So if you have a Mining level of 85, you can supplement your dark beast drops with some handy runite ore.

Level 71 Hunter can also be useful in some cases, to use imp boxes to free up inventory space, but this is not essential.

There’s nothing super special required for dark beasts in terms of gear. Anyone high enough level to fight them will probably already have most of what they need to get the job done.

Armor will either be Barrows or proselyte, depending on the method you choose. Most players will fight with a whip and defender, but a godsword can also be handy, especially the Saradomin variety. For Slayer tasks you’ll want a black mask. You also need full mourners’ robes, as mentioned earlier.

You will need a decent assortment of potions, including super attack and super strength potions, and prayer potions for prayer combat or Saradomin brews and super restores for meleeinng mainly without prayer. Some good food may also come in handy. Again, though, any high-level player should have these already.

TruthScape Monster Secrets - Dark Beast Slaying Guide Dark Beast Slaying Guide - Description, Statistics, Attacks and Defence