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Giant Mole Exterminator’s Handbook - Drops, Costs and Profits Giant Mole Exterminator’s Handbook - Location, Access, World Selection and Dealing with Other Players

As I discussed in my overview of the giant mole and explanation of its defensive characteristics, the main challenge associated with this creature is not avoiding the mole killing you, but rather dealing with its attempts to prevent you killing it. J All three of the methods I have devised are designed to overcome the problems that can result from trying to kill the mole the wrong way, which can be a serious exercise in frustration as it digs all over its lair and otherwise evades you.

Here are some more particulars on how best to deal with the mole’s unique challenges. Note that another major challenge with killing the mole is dealing with other players who wander into the lair; I discuss this on the next page.

The mole’s high defence in some areas and weaknesses in others naturally affects what method you should use to kill it. For starters, you should definitely not even bother trying to mage the mole, because it has exceedingly high magic defence. Ranging works well, making it a viable option, and melee is also effective if you have high enough levels.

I tried several ways of meleeing and settled on Veracs and Dharoks as the most effective. Another traditional method of killing the mole is to use prayer equipment such as monk’s robes and a regular weapon like an abyssal whip—this keeps prayer up and weight down allowing you to save run energy. On the other hand, the mole has high resistance to slashing attacks, so this takes longer, and since you have no armor you must protect from melee the entire time, which quickly drains your prayer. I don’t recommend this method.

The giant mole is one monster where poison isn’t merely helpful—I consider it a necessity. (See an example of my trying to poison the mole in Figure 380). The reason why poison is so important is the mole’s habit of digging randomly once it is over half dead; poisoning helps counteract this defence mechanism in at least three ways:

1. After the mole digs it will usually take some time to hunt it down. If the mole is poisoned, it will continue to take damage while you run around trying to find it. This can make a significant difference in how long it takes to kill.
   
   
2. If the mole is almost dead you can let the poison finish it off, avoiding the chance of hitting it and having it dig again (see Figure 390 for an example).
   
   
3. If you run out of prayer and/or food near the end of a kill, the poison will again finish the mole off so you can get the drop.
   

   Figure 380: Poisoning the Mole Using a Dragon Dagger (p++) Special Attack

   The dd(p++) is one of the two recommended methods of trying to poison the giant mole. The problem with it is that even after several good hits, you don’t know if the poison has “taken”.

   
   

Always make sure the mole is poisoned before switching to your main weapon. Once it is over half dead, it can be very hard to poison it.

The most common way of poisoning the mole is to use a dds/dd(p++), as shown in Figure 380, which will eventually poison it starting at 6 damage and slowly decreasing. For ranging, the best method is enchanted emerald (e) bolts, which poison with a damage value starting at 5.

I have, however, actually switched to using the emerald (e) bolts sometimes even when meleeing. There are two reasons for this: it’s faster, and you know immediately when the poison has taken because of the little green “poison cloud” animation (see Figure 381). With a dd(p++), you can hit the monster over and over and never know if the poison has taken until you see a “green splat”, which sometimes doesn’t show up until the mole is almost half dead—and rarely, doesn’t show up until even after it is half dead and starts digging.

I have had good luck using a rune crossbow with these bolts when meleeing using Veracs; even with that melee armor on my ranged bonus stays over +100 and I poison it quickly. I can then switch immediately to the flail without having to stand around poking the mole with my dd(p++) wondering if the poison took.

Another benefit of the crossbow is that if the mole needs to be re-poisoned, it is much easier to do than with the dd(p++). In fact, if you run out of prayer near the end of the kill, you can finish off the mole entirely using your crossbow.

The mole will dig to escape once it is down at least 50% of its hit points, but not before then. This means that you must take a very different approach for each half of the kill. At the beginning, you can take your time, and use weapons that don’t have as good a chance of hitting, such as a DDS. This is also the best time to avoid enhancing prayers if you are trying to conserve prayer points.

When the mole is more than half dead, you must try to make each hit count, since every time you try to damage it, there’s a chance it will dig. This is when you want to take every step possible to maximize the likelihood of doing damage. You will get faster kills if you use enhancing prayers like Incredible Reflexes or Piety for melee (Figure 382), and Eagle Eye for ranging. You should avoid weapons or attacks that have a low chance of hitting, and make sure your stat-boosting potions are topped up.

The dark bow is a weapon I have experimented with on the giant mole, because it has a special that is guaranteed to do damage. When using rune arrows, this is 5 damage for each of two hits, for a total of 10 points. (Dragon arrows are a bit expensive to use on the mole!) As mentioned earlier, once the mole starts digging, you want to make sure any hit does damage, so the guaranteed hit special is useful, especially to “close the deal” when the mole is nearly dead; see Figure 383 for example.

The problem with the dark bow, however, is that the mole can actually dig between two hits on a multiple attack weapon. So while you do get guaranteed damage, it is only 5 points, not 10. This same restriction also applies to weapons like the dragon dagger and dragon halberd, which makes them less useful when fighting the monster after it is half dead.

While I have had kills where the dark bow was useful, I decided eventually not to bring it, preferring to save the two slots of inventory space (see the next subsection) and the weight of the bow as well.

You will usually need two to six inventory slots per kill for drops—and that’s not even including the big bones. If you plan to go for 5 or 6 kills per trip, as I recommend, this means you should not take with more food or potions than you need, or you’ll end up wasting them.

It is absolutely essential that you do everything possible to keep your run energy up, because if you do not run, giant mole extermination becomes a boring and tedious affair. The mole can actually move around at least as fast as you can walk, so you won’t find him easily unless you run. If you are using poison (and you should) then you also risk losing your drops if he dies somewhere remote and you don’t run to the kill pile fast enough.

The most important way of conserving run energy is to hunt for the mole efficiently each time it digs so you don’t move around any more than necessary. This is discussed in detail in the next subsection. Here are some additional tips for keeping run energy high (which are reflected in my kill methods, equipment and inventory items):

• Be sure to top up run energy before leaving the bank.
  
  
• Ensure you have a reasonably high agility level.
  
  
• Avoid excessively heavy armor, food and other items.
  
  
• Use boots of lightness instead of rune boots when meleeing. You may get hit a tiny bit more but the savings in weight are substantial. You can also consider a spottier cape, though I usually use that slot for prayer bonus instead.
  
  
• Always bring energy or super energy potions.
  
  
• Drop unneeded items as soon as possible, including your shovel as soon as you enter the cavern.
  
  
• While returning to the center of the lair after a kill, walk instead of running since you have to wait for the respawn anyway.

If you run out of energy and energy potions, I recommend banking and restocking to avoid frustration.

The giant mole’s lair is very large, a smart choice deliberately made by Jagex to add to the challenge of killing it. You can be smart too, though, by using an efficient path for looking through the lair for the mole.

There are two basic approaches to this: either using a route that will ensure you cover the entire lair with your minimap as you look for the yellow dot that indicates the mole, or using a shorter route that doesn’t cover the whole lair but still covers most of it. I generally choose the latter approach, using a path that sweeps the majority of the lair but with a fraction of the running needed to see it all; if I don’t find the mole that way, I then go and “look in the corners”. In Figure 384 I show you two routes and the areas of the lair that they cover, for you to compare and use as the basis for your own efficient mole hunting routine.

Obviously, you will not always start out in the center, so adapt your route to suit where you are when the mole teleports, so you scan as much of the lair as possible with the fewest steps.

Note that as soon as the mole digs, it will start wandering away from the spot where it reappeared. This means that sometimes you may end up finding the mole in a spot you previously searched! You have to just keep looking.

If the mole digs and when you find it, the mole is red-barred (near death) and poisoned, do not attack it! Just wait for a few seconds until it dies so you can get its drops. If you attack you risk making it teleport again and then you might have a problem finding its drop pile when it dies.

If you suspect that the mole has in fact died somewhere after digging, you need to quickly search the lair looking for the red dot that indicates its drop pile. You have only a couple of minutes to find it before it disappears—and if others are in the lair, they can see the pile after only one minute.

I recommend that you avoid “littering” when hunting the mole. By this I mean that I always hold empty vials and such in my inventory and drop them all in one place at the end of a kill rather than dropping them as I run. If you scatter items all over the place, finding a drop pile after the mole dies can be tricky.

Finally, once in a while you will have bad luck and will lose the drop no matter what you do. One time I was using Dharoks and hit a 41 on the mole... it must have had 42 or 43 points left, dug and disappeared, and I never found its drop pile. This is rare, so if it happens just shrug it off and kill the next one.

Giant Mole Exterminator’s Handbook - Drops, Costs and Profits Giant Mole Exterminator’s Handbook - Location, Access, World Selection and Dealing with Other Players