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TruthScape Monster Secrets - Ice Trolls Cannon Training Guide Ice Trolls Cannon Training Guide - Monster Description, Statistics, Attack and Defence

It’s a conundrum that is well known to most experienced RuneScape players. You want to raise your Ranged skill, but standing around for hours plinking greater demons or blue dragons with iron knives or mithril bolts is sleep-inducing. The alternative, always at the back of your mind like a siren’s call, is the Dwarven multicannon that promises you a way to train your Ranged much faster.

Unfortunately, it comes at a cost: cannonballs are very expensive—about 200 gold each—and not reusable. The usual places where the cannon is used, such as underneath the Lighthouse, at the rock crabs, or fighting kalphite soldiers, are not only crowded, but even when you find an opening those monsters do not generate enough good drops to come even close to paying for the cost of cannonballs. The alternative is to make the balls yourself, but that’s exceedingly slow—it takes around an hour to make 2,000 cannonballs—and it’s not like steel bars are cheap either. These costs and hassles have meant that using a cannon to “power level” Ranged has traditionally been a luxury only for the rich.

All of that changed in February 2007, though, when Jagex introduced the islands of Jatizso and Neitiznot, and the Fremennik Isles quest that grants access to them. Upon these islands are dozens of ice trolls, annoying but easily killed critters that live mostly in multi-combat areas and drop great loot. The area immediately struck me as being a natural place to try out my cannon, and after many hours of experimentation I’ve devised a foolproof method where I can train Ranged in peace while getting fantastic loot from the trolls that greatly exceeds the cost of my cannonballs.

And now, you can learn how to do it as well!

There are at least five major benefits of this technique:

• Experience: I average around 45,000 Ranged XP per hour using this cannoning method at level 90, because there are just so many of them (see Figure 353). Sure, there are faster ways to train the skill, but not faster ways that have the other benefits below. In addition you will get Attack/Strength/Defence XP (of whatever sort you choose) if you melee the trolls while managing the cannon, mage XP from alching drops, Hitpoints XP, and Prayer XP if you bury the hundreds of big bones you will get from the trolls. You can even get Construction experience from long bone drops!
  

  Figure 353: Lots of Trolls = Lots of XP

  Your cannon will usually have lots of fodder since there are over a dozen trolls in the area and they respawn fast. Here you can see over 70 points of damage in “splats” on the screen at once.

  
  
  
  
• Profit: The second major benefit of this method is that you make money doing it. As you can see in the discussion of drops, these trolls have superb drops given their levels, and you will kill so many of them that it’s nearly impossible not to get a bunch of great loot that exceeds the cost of supplies needed to kill them.
  
  
• Useful Items and Supplies: The third thing I love about cannoning ice trolls is that I get items and supplies that are hard to get in other ways and that I would otherwise have to buy. Are you training Crafting? Ice trolls are the best place to get seaweed and balls of wool in the game. How about cooking? I get sharks faster from ice trolls than I can using a harpoon! Farming? They’re a great source of herb and high level allotment seeds. They also drop gems, half keys, herbs and much more.
  
  
• No Competition: During busy times in the game, the more popular multi-combat areas—like the dagannoths or rock crabs—are usually swarmed with both cannon users and “cannon haters”. It’s rare to see anyone at the ice trolls where I set up my cannon (though maybe this guide will change that! J)
  
  
• Fun: Finally, cannoning ice trolls is just fun. You will be running around picking up drops, refilling the cannon and watching your Prayer level and other stats, so it’s never boring. Since there are so many trolls they die all over the place and you just go and grab their loot. It’s really cool when you suddenly realize there’s a granite shield lying on the ground next to you from a troll that your cannon finished off, like I saw in the scene captured in Figure 354!
  

  Figure 354: What’s That on the Ground?

  Hey look, a granite shield... I guess I should pick it up. J

  
  

Of course, walking into a multi-combat area filled with dozens of trolls who can each hit up to 17 is not without its risks. That said, the method I have devised is actually surprisingly safe—as long as you follow my instructions closely, use my recommended equipment, and pay attention to what you are doing, it’s actually pretty hard to die.

In fact, there’s really only one major risk associated with cannoning ice trolls: running out of Prayer points or accidentally turning protection from melee off. You will be in prayer gear with low melee defence and surrounded by trolls who could hit you very hard even if you were wearing good armor. You absolutely must watch your Prayer points and keep them topped up. If you do, even some lag won’t generally be a problem, because the only damage you will be taking is from the rock-thrower trolls, and they don’t do much damage if you use the right shield (this is explained fully in my description of the ice trolls’ capabilities, in the section “Offensive Characteristics and Attacks”.)

I did die once while cannoning ice trolls, months ago, and it was related to this Prayer risk, but it was my own fault. As I recall, I got kidnapped by a random and clicked to turn my melee protection off, not realizing that the game did this automatically. When I came back from the random my protection didn’t kick back on, because I had clicked to turn it off while at the random. Because of all the confusion associated with the many trolls taking damage from the cannon, I didn’t realize that some of those red splats were mine—my protection was off and by the time I realized that I was getting hammered, it was too late.

One other good thing is that the equipment used here is relatively inexpensive. Sure, it hurts to lose a god cloak, rune boots and so forth, but it’s not as bad as losing, say, a Guthan warspear.

The main prerequisite to using this method is that you must have access to the islands of Jatizso and Neitiznot (see Figure 355), which means you have to complete the Fremennik Isles quest. (Actually, you might be able to do this while still in the middle of the quest, but you certainly must have started it.) That quest in turn requires Fremennik Trials, and both quests involve combat and have non-combat skill requirements. Between the two quests you must have the following levels: 40 Agility, 20 Construction, 46 Crafting, 25 Fletching and 56 Woodcutting.

There’s even more good news here for those players who are not very high level and might have been discouraged by the hefty requirements for my Mithril Dragon Guide. Ranged training on ice trolls only requires moderately high combat levels. Of course it’s easier with higher levels in certain skills, but you can get by with only middling levels in most combat skills, and in some the level doesn’t matter at all. In fact, I would say that if you can beat the quest to get access to this area, you can probably use this technique (as long as your Ranged and Prayer levels aren’t far below those of your other skills).

In Table 78 you can find what I consider to be minimum and recommended levels for the combat skills you’ll use with this technique.

There aren’t really any non-combat skills that I feel you need for this method, other than perhaps an agility level of at least 40 so you don’t use up your run energy too fast. Fortunately, you need at least that to start Fremennik Isles anyway. J

One of the best things about cannon training on ice trolls is that it doesn’t require lots of fancy or expensive equipment. You do need a cannon and cannonballs, of course, and good primary melee weapon; a whip is the most common choice but is’t 100% necessary. You also need the special Fremennik shield from the Fremennik Isles quest. Aside from that, most of the equipment is fairly flexible.

For full details, see the full discussion of recommended equipment and inventory items.

TruthScape Monster Secrets - Ice Trolls Cannon Training Guide Ice Trolls Cannon Training Guide - Monster Description, Statistics, Attack and Defence