TruthScape.com - Mithril Dragon Guide - Challenges and Strategy

Since mith dragons are so difficult to kill, I have spent a great deal of time trying out various methods and types of equipment. In doing so, I’ve learned a few things about the challenges that these monsters pose, and devised several strategies that work well for them. Before we get to the specific techniques, here’s a general discussion of some of the issues involved in killing these beasties, so you know what my thinking was in coming up with my methods, and why I made some of the choices that I did.

This famous and somewhat controversial saying is often applied to sporting events, where it has a fairly simple meaning. Those who believe it is true take the view that rather than devoting too much effort to trying to defend against the opponent, the best way to win is just to score early and often. If you score a great deal then it doesn’t matter if your opponent scores a little bit too.

The saying can apply to fighting mith dragons too—again, depending on your point of view. One of the basic problems with fighting them is that in most cases you are going to be using up resources: prayer potions and food. The amount of resources you use up depends on both how good your defence and prayer bonuses are and on how long it takes to kill them. Thus, there’s an essential trade-off between going for the kill fast at the cost of taking more hits, or trying to increase defence and prayer at the cost of slower kills, the extra time meaning you will take more hits anyway.

In my experiments, I have generally found that in most cases, with mith dragons the best defence is indeed a good offence. I have the best success when I try to kill them as quickly as possible so that I do not give them time to wear down my stat boosting pots and use up my food. This does sometimes increase the risk associated with fighting them, though.

When ranging, what this strategy means is that I wear every bit of ranged attack boosting equipment I can and I do not worry about prayer bonus. So, for example, I wear a Robin Hood hat and not a Helm of Neitiznot or a god mitre; I wear Ava’s accumulator and not a defensive cape; and I wear an archer ring. The added benefit of this is that most ranged equipment also increases magic defence which is helpful with miths.

Similarly, after much experimentation I decided to always use enchanted ruby and diamond bolts. They are more expensive than plain mithril or addy bolts but they kill the dragons much faster, which means I spend less on food and prayer potions and get more kills, which helps offset their higher cost.

The concept of “the best defence is a good offence” concept hits its nadir with one of my advanced techniques, which uses the Veracs Barrows set with the high-level Piety prayer. Done right, this can result in incredibly fast kills (see Figure 338). It is extremely risky, though, and you can only get 3 or 4 kills per trip, sometimes less.

**Figure 338: “The Best Defence is a Good Offense”**
Here’s an example of what I mean by this phrase... when you fight the miths with Veracs you will take some hits, but you’ll hit them even harder. Overall, it is risky but fast.

One exception that I make to this general approach is the dragonfire shield. It has a -5 penalty to ranged attack, but I still use it when ranging in my advanced method that boosts ranged attack using prayer.

Ranging using a rune crossbow and enchanted gem bolts is the best of the normal methods of killing mith dragons. They are hit hard by them, and in most cases you need the high mage defence provided by range boosting equipment anyway. I have had better success on

Meleeing is an option but is slow, even with the best equipment. Enhancing prayers like Piety can speed up the process but it raises the cost and ranging is still faster. Melee is certainly an option, and can be cheaper than ranging since you don’t use up bolts, but I don’t recommend it unless your Ranged level is too low to be successful with a crossbow.

Maging mith dragons is possible, but I do not recommend it as it is very slow and very expensive. The most economical method is casting fire bolt using chaos gauntlets—maximum of 15 damage—but it can take 75 casts per kill for a cost of 15k just in runes alone. On top of that you will use a lot of food and get only a couple of kills per trip. Using higher level spells increases the cost even further; using slayer dart would make the cost probably 25k-30k per kill. I saw many people try maging the first few days, but haven’t seen any since, for good reason.

When the miths first came out there were many discussions where it seemed people were competing with each other for how many kills they could get in a single trip. Some said they could kill 6 mithril dragons in a trip, and others would “one-up” them by claiming they could nab 8 or more.

Sure, this can be done—it usually requires large numbers of Saradomin brew potions, super restores and sharks. In fact, I have seen high levels get 12 or even 15 kills in a trip. But why bother? Doing this means you waste millions in drops that you have to leave behind, and the mith dragon lair isn’t like the iron/steel dragon lair, where restocking and then walking back is an annoying hassle that can take close to 10 minutes. It only takes about 90 seconds to get to the miths, so use that to your advantage.

I generally aim for 4-5 kills when ranging or meleeing, and 3-4 kills using Veracs. I then restore prayer, reload my supplies and can be back in the cavern in 3 minutes or so. Limiting the kills has many benefits, including making the process easier, allowing you to use cheaper food, and ensuring that you have inventory space to keep all of your drops.

The right protection prayer to use depends on the method you choose. Not everyone agrees on this and even I have changed my mind a few times, especially when meleeing.

For ranging, I prefer protection from melee if I am going to leave it on for the entire kill. The reason is that you can retrieve bolts and drops without fear about getting whacked with a huge melee hit. If I am only protecting sometimes (advanced ranging method) I use protection from ranged. I also sometimes use protection from ranged if I am low on prayer or am distracted and might not notice immediately if I run out of prayer points—the miths’ ranged attack is far less dangerous than its melee.

For meleeing, the two approaches are to wear good mage defence gear and protect from melee, or vice versa. The mage attacks don’t have as high a max hit, but they can do more damage overall because it’s hard to get mage defence very high while wearing melee armor.

If you’re going to melee, the right weapon may not be as obvious you’d think. The need for an anti-dragon shield rules out two-handed weapons—except for the special Veracs method—and that would normally make most players automatically reach for an abyssal whip. The miths, though, seem to have very high defence against slashing attacks, and I’ve found a whip very frustrating to use.

I experimented with the whip, a dragon dragger (poisoned or not, it doesn’t matter here), dragon longsword, dragon mace and dragon battleaxe. Of these, believe it or not, the dragon long gave me the best results, when on the “Lunge” attack setting (stab damage). The dagger hits well on stab but is too weak; the dragon mace is appealing for its prayer bonus but it also does not enough damage. The battleaxe works fairly well on either stab or crush but is slow. My somewhat controversial conclusion is that the dragon long is the best tool for this particular task.

Incidentally, I have found that the dragon long spec is not worth using on mith dragons.

If you look on the RuneScape forums you will see people bemoaning the high cost of killing mithril dragons; some will claim it costs 30k or even 40k per kill! Well, that’s true only if you aren’t smart about how you go about it. My methods are specifically designed to balance speed of killing with manageable cost; used properly, you will not lose money even if you never get a draconic visage or dragon full helm.

The first issue is food: if possible, use food that is economical, in terms of the number of hitpoints healed for the cost of the item. (Please don’t say “well I fish myself so it’s free”. Wrong—time is money. Even if you get the food, I still consider that to be a cost since you could have sold that food if you weren’t using it up.)

In general, better food not only costs more, it costs more per hit point as well. Consider that tuna costs around 100 gold and heals 10 HP; that’s 10 gp/hp. For lobsters the figure is about 17 gp/hp; for monkfish around 20; and for sharks a whopping 45. You are always better off to try to use monkfish instead of sharks whenever possible—it can save you millions in the long run.

Also consider the benefits of alternative foods. One of my favorites is the pineapple pizza: heals 22 in two bites. You will have time between kills to use these to “top up” your health, so the two bites is not an issue. They are also quite easy to make now that Jagex added “make X” to pizza making. Or you can buy pre-made pizzas dirt cheap in the Warriors Guild and add pineapple yourself in just a few seconds.

I also like to use the new Barbarian “mix” potions, as they provide 6 healing per dose and let you pot up and heal a bit in one swig. They are especially useful for antifire pots since you will typically not need more than 2 doses per trip.

You have to run past a couple of annoying monsters to get to the lair: waterfiends and brutal green dragons. The former have a ranged and mage attack; the latter a melee, mage and firebreath attack. Always drink your antifire potion and put on protection from mage before running to the mith dragon stairs, and try to avoid getting close to the brutal greens.

If you are using any method where your melee defence is particularly low—such as ranging with an anti-dragon shield instead of a dragonfire shield—you may wish to put on protection from melee instead while running past the brutal greens. And in this case definitely put it on before going up the stairs to the miths.