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Dark Beast Slaying Guide - Location, Access, World Selection and Positioning Dark Beast Slaying Guide - Armor-Based Combat Technique

Most players fight dark beasts while protected from their attacks using the Protection from Melee prayer, so it makes sense for me to start by describing this technique. It is relatively simple to fight the monsters this way, and also safer than fighting without prayer enabled; you can also stay longer in the lair if you use prayer potions. The primary drawback, of course, is the extra cost of the prayer restore potions needed.

The method here is pretty simple: equip yourself with good prayer-enhancing and melee-boosting gear and supplies, and get to work! J Here’s a summary of the technique:

• Technique: Melee Using Protection from Melee
  
  
• Risk Level: Moderately Low. As long as you stay in melee range and don’t let yourself run out of prayer, you really have nothing to worry about.
  
  
• Risk Level Relative to Other Techniques: Low. This method is definitely safer than fighting without prayer.
  
  
• Kills Per Trip: Anywhere from 80 to 120 or more, depending on skill levels and equipment used.
  
  
• Kills Per Hour: Approximately 60 to 70.
  
  
• Cost Per Kill: Approximately 1k, depending again on skill levels (especially Prayer) and the equipment used..

Note that the estimates above are based on my recommended skill levels and equipment.

I need to start out by reminding you that you won’t start your trip by wearing your combat equipment. In order to get to the dark beasts you must be equipped with a full set of mourners’ gear, and nothing else except a ring. Thus, even though I will shortly lay out my recommended gear by equipment slot, most of those items will begin in your inventory, and not on your character.

That said, let’s discuss combat equipment selections. You have two primary goals here: maximize your Prayer bonus, and maximize your melee bonuses (slash attack and strength). My recommendations are as follows:

• Head: God mitre (Saradomin, Guthix or Zamorak). This item offers the best prayer bonus of any headgear, and it’s pretty inexpensive. The proselyte sallet is next best at +4; some may like to use a helm of Neitiznot for its +3 Strength bonus, but it has only +3 Prayer.
  
  If you are going to the dark beasts only to do a Slayer assignment and are leaving when it’s done, substitute the black mask here. Otherwise, bring with the mask as an extra item.
  
  
• Cloak: Trimmed skill cape (+4 Prayer) or fire cape (+4 Strength and +2 Prayer).
  
  
• Neck: Amulet of Fury. You can use a God stole here for an extra +5 Prayer compared to the amulet, but you lose a lot of attack bonuses, so I don’t recommend it.
  
  
• Quiver: Empty.
  
  
• Weapon: Abyssal whip or godsword.
  
  
• Body: Proselyte hauberk. This armor provides +8 Prayer, the best in the game. Second best is a tie between the initiate hauberk and regular old monk’s robe top (+6 Prayer).
  
  
• Shield: Rune defender or unholy book if using a whip; the defender is generally preferable despite not giving the prayer bonus. Leave empty if using a godsword.
  
  
• Legs: Proselyte cuisse or tasset. These both provide +5 Prayer. So does the monk’s robe bottom if you don’t have proselyte, but the real armor is safer in the event of lag or accidentally turning off prayer.
  
  
• Gloves: “Barrows” gloves, or the best Recipe for Disaster gloves you can get.
  
  
• Feet: Dragon boots.
  
  
• Ring: Ring of wealth (if you believe in it) or an enhancing ring such as a warrior ring (+4 slash attack) or berserker (+4 Strength).

You can find one example of a prayer setup in Figure 471.

As mentioned above, you will begin with most of your combat equipment in your inventory, while you wear mourners’ equipment. The mourners gear consists of a face mask, cape, shirt, trousers, gloves and boots. You can also wear your ring. The other eight or nine pieces of your fighting gear will begin in your inventory, as seen in Figure 471.

To those items I recommend adding the following:

• Holy Wrench: This item gives you lots of extra prayer points when you sip prayer potions, so it is worth a slot.
  
  
• Alching Runes: Bring 10 to 15 nature runes, and a matching number of fires (unless you are on Lunars or Ancients.)
  
  
• Stat Boosting Potions: If you want to stay for a long time, I recommend three Zamorak brew (4) or super attack (4) potions, and three super strength (4) potions. See the note below on the Zammy brews.
  
  
• Prayer Restore Potions: You should have enough room for around 10 prayer (4) potions, which will keep you set for a long time. Note that if you are using a godsword you may not need that many; its +8 Prayer bonus may mean that your boosting potions will run out before you use all the p pots.
  
  
• Imp Boxes: You may wish to bring one, two or even three imp boxes to send your mourners’ gear back to your bank account after getting to the dark beasts, as described in the section “Inventory Management and Mourners’ Robes”. If so, take fewer prayer potions; your trip will be shorter but you’ll keep more drops. This is especially recommended if you have a Saradomin godsword, because using one means you don’t need as many prayer pots and so you’ll have extra inventory space.
  
  
• Black Mask: If you are going to the dark beasts on an actual Slayer assignment and staying afterwards, bring with the black mask to use until you finish your task; it helps a lot. Switch back to the mitre when done the assignment for its Prayer bonus.

You may be surprised to see me recommending the use of Zamorak brews. These have a reputation as being “useless” potions, because they give a nice boost to Attack and only a moderate boost to Strength, while reducing Defence and hitpoints. When fighting with prayer, though, your Defence doesn’t matter, and the small damage you take is not a big deal since you can heal or let it slowly restore. The Attack boost from Zammy brews is 2 points higher than that of super attack potions, and as an extra bonus you also get some prayer points restored too—about 10% of your Prayer level. So I think they are worth using.

If you do use the Zamorak brews, I recommend taking one strawberry basket (5) unless you have a Saradomin godsword (which can heal you). Bear in mind that the dark beasts occasionally drop one or two sharks, which will also help you quite a bit.

Prepare yourself for combat and get to the dungeon following the steps described in the section “Location, Preparation and Access”. Once you are past the mourners and ready to go with your combat gear properly equipped, get ready to move towards your chosen combat spot.

If you brought super attack and super strength potions, then take one sip of each, turn on Protection from Melee and start fighting. Carefully monitor your prayer level and take prayer potion sips as necessary. Also watch your Attack and Strength levels, and once they get down somewhere between 6 and 8 points from your potted maximums, take another sup of super attack and super strength potion. You should aim to stretch out the stat boost potions and the prayer restore potions so you don’t run out of any of them too soon before the others.

If you’re using the Zamorak brew potions, the steps are mostly the same, but with a couple of exceptions. First, you should wait until you are down 10% of your Prayer points before taking any Zammy brew dose; this will ensure you don’t waste the small bonus it provides. Second, you will need to watch your health and make sure it doesn’t get down too low.

If you have a Saradomin godsword, then be sure you use it to best effect. Only use the specials when you are down at least 12 Prayer points, and if possible, try to time the specials so you use them when your combat stats are near their potted maximums. I also temporarily enable Piety to increase the chances of a hit and the damage done.

In the ideal case, using a Saradomin godsword and Zammy brews, you can get a lot of prayer points in addition to those provided by the prayer potions. In fact, my tests showed that I could actually kill 120 dark beasts using my gear on only 6 prayer (4) potions!

Continue to fight until you are either running out of prayer potions and prayer, or your boost potions are gone and you see that kills are starting to take too long. Try to fill your inventory with the best of the drops you can, then get away from the dark beasts and use the Home Teleport spell. If you came home to Lumbridge you can recharge prayer in the chapel right there, then return to Ardougne if you want to go on another run. If you were on Lunars or Ancients, there’s a prayer altar in Ardougne as well.

Here are a few additional notes and tips for success using this method:

• If you are running low on inventory slots near the end of the trip, drop any remaining fire runes; they are cheap.
  
  
• If you want to really try to optimize, you can turn off prayer temporarily between kills or when you have to run out of the lair to deal with randoms and so forth. Just watch out for cheap shots by the beasts!
  
  
• You can use a dd(p++) to poison the dark beasts if you wish, though as I explained in my strategy discussion, I don’t generally bother.
  
  
• The best place to catch imps is, conveniently enough, just south of Ardougne, between the Monastery and the Tower of Life.
  
  
• If you want to speed up kills slightly at the cost of shortening your trip, use one of the enhancing prayers like Superhuman Strength (+10% Strength) or Improved Reflexes (+10% Attack). These drain prayer much less than the +15% versions (or Chivalry/Piety).

Dark Beast Slaying Guide - Location, Access, World Selection and Positioning Dark Beast Slaying Guide - Armor-Based Combat Technique