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How to Use Familiars for Combat Support TruthScape Skill Secrets - Summoning - Familiar Analysis, Reference and Rankings

In my overview of the issues in using familiars in combat, I mentioned that one of the biggest problems with them is simply keeping them from being killed by whatever you’re fighting. There won’t be any real solution to this unless (and until) Jagex makes changes to how familiars work. In the meantime, though there are a few tips I’d like to share with you that will hopefully increase your familiars’ lifespans—at least by a few minutes, anyway. J

Here are my suggestions:

• Call the Familiar Away Quickly: If you see the monster you are fighting “turn” on your familiar and hit the whistle button before it attacks, you can effectively get the familiar out of harm’s way. This is not easy to do, however, and once the familiar is under attack you cannot call it.
  
  
• Kill the NPC Quickly: Your best way of protecting your familiar is to quickly kill whatever is attacking it. If you’re in combat with a single NPC then obviously you are already trying to kill it as fast as you can, but if fighting multiple enemies, try to watch for whichever monster is damaging your familiar, and finish it off quick.
  
  
• Start Dancing: All meleers are familiar with “dancing”, where a player and NPC each try to get into position for combat and end up moving all over the place. I have had reasonable success with getting an NPC to stop attacking one of my familiars simply by shifting my position—this sometimes causes either the NPC or the familiar to move as well, and may temporarily interrupt combat.
  
  
• Use the “Call Familiar” Button with Ranging/Maging Familiars: Some familiars can attack from a distance using ranged or magic attacks, but are too stupid to deliberately stay out of the range of meleeing NPCs. You can sometimes fix this by pressing the whistle button repeatedly, until the familiar shows up behind you, with your character standing between it and the monster you’re fighting (see Figure 252 for an example). This doesn’t always work, however, and as mentioned above, won’t work at all if the familiar is already being attacked.
  
  
• Use Appropriate Familiars: Familiars with lots of HP and high defence will, of course, last longer than ones that have less impressive abilities. You also need to match the familiar to the opponent—a vampire bat may do rather well in helping you deal with moss giants, but won’t last too long against a black demon.
  
  
• Delay Summons: With some familiars, it makes sense to delay summoning until you really need to do so, rather than using a pouch at the start of a battle and then having to keep the familiar alive for a long time. This is especially the case when using familiars for both combat and non-combat abilities, such as beasts of burden.
  

  Figure 257: Stay Back, For Your Own Good!

  Since the karamthulhu overlord can attack from a distance, by pressing the whistle button one or more times I can usually get it to position itself behind me, where it can’t be meleed by my target. It doesn’t always work, though.

  
  

I should also remind you that if your familiar does start getting attacked, the monster going after it probably won’t finish it off. NPCs seem to start attacking familiars (instead of their masters) randomly, and then stop attacking them and switch back to the player randomly as well. So sometimes patience is the best approach.

Also remember that you do have the option of simply bringing extra pouches with you when you go into battle; if your first summon gets killed, you can use another pouch. Of course this can get expensive—and it uses up inventory slots—but it may make sense in certain situations.

How to Use Familiars for Combat Support TruthScape Skill Secrets - Summoning - Familiar Analysis, Reference and Rankings