TruthScape.com - Giant Mole Exterminator’s Handbook - Description, Statistics, Attacks and Defence

Let’s find out a bit more about the giant mole. On this page I’ll show you what it looks like and describe it in general terms, including a summary of its main statistics. I’ll also outline the mole’s attacks and defensive strengths and weaknesses, so you understand better why I chose the techniques that I did.

The giant mole, as its name suggests, is a big chubby mole that lives in a set of mole tunnels underneath Falador. (The entrance is in Falador Park but the lair is so big that it covers the subterranean area of most of the town.) The mole—there’s only one—is very large, so it can be trapped easily behind obstacles for ranging. It is various shades of brown and grey, and has large, prominent claws and cute little whiskers. J You can see a picture of it in Figure 373.

**Figure 373: The Giant Mole**
Here’s the giant mole in his “natural habitat”.

The center of giant mole’s lair is its respawn point and where it appears after dying. The mole itself moves about the lair rather eagerly and quickly. The lair is also home to dozens of baby moles, which are smaller, pink little things that scurry to and fro; they are essentially “eye candy” because they cannot be attacked or interacted with in any way, though some of them do have interesting “Examine” texts (Try it!) They do not have dots on the minimap (which is good, because if they did, killing the mole would be nearly impossible.)

The giant mole is the easily the tamest level 200+ monster in the game. It has a simple melee attack that can hit into the lower 20s, no ranged attack and no maged attack.

The mole has one other habit that could arguably be called a special attack. Sometimes when it digs to escape (see the discussion of defensive attributes below) it will spash mud on you, which appears as a big brown “splat” on the game screen (see Figure 374). This will extinguish uncovered light sources, which can then lead to death due to “bugs” like in the Lumbridge Caves.

**Figure 374: Splat!**
Sometimes when the mole digs it will splatter mud like this, which will extinguish uncovered light sources. (In this image, I’m under the splat somewhere. J)

Using a covered light source such as a bullseye lantern provides absolute defence against this “splatter”. You can also employ the sapphire lantern made during the Tears of Guthix quest—in fact, this is precisely what I use. I believe that some other covered light sources may also work, but I haven’t tried them. Do not go into the cave with an open candle, torch or other primitive light source, or you’ll regret it!

What the giant mole lacks in offensive capabilities, it makes up for in defence—this is what makes the mole hard to kill, and justifies its high combat level.

The mole is highly resistant to certain types of attacks and more susceptible to others. It has very high magic resistance, but is hit fairly readily by ranging attacks, and a rune crossbow with enchanted bolts works quite well. In terms of melee attacks, the mole is weaker against stab attacks than against either slash or crush attacks.

The mole’s main special defence is its ability to instantly leave combat and reappear in a random place somewhere else in the lair. This is effectively a teleport, but is portrayed graphically as the mole digging a hole to escape and then popping back up somewhere else. When the mole does this it normally becomes unaggressive again, though it rarely will attack again after digging. It may or may not “splat” the screen with mud as it digs (as discussed in the preceding section).

The mole will only dig once it has been reduced to less than half of its full health. As soon as it is reduced to that point, it will take a random number of subsequent hits before digging to escape. This can happen after only one hit, or sometimes the mole will stand still until it dies. The mole can even dig in between hits of a multi-hit attack, such as a DDS special or the hit from a dark bow.

This digging is the main challenge in dealing with the mole. Efficient killing requires doing as much damage as quickly as possible so that less time is spent chasing it around the lair. This must be combined with efficient path selection and other tactics that I’ll discuss in the topic on challenges and strategies.

The digging annoyance is compounded by the giant mole’s huge range: its roaming area covers the entire length and width of its lair, which is a good percentage of the size of the entire town of Falador. See Figure 375 to get an idea of its size. The mole rarely stays still, wandering to and fro all over the lair, and it actually moves quite fast. This makes it hard to find both for the first kill when entering the lair, and after it digs to escape combat.

**Figure 375: The Giant Mole Lair**
This map, pieced together from minimap screenshots, shows how large the lair is. The highlighted area shows approximately how much you can see on your minimap when standing at the dot in the center.

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Last Update: May 21, 2008

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