TruthScape.com - Salarin the Twisted and the Sinister Chest

The Agility Dungeon is so named because of the numerous obstacles within it that have Agility level requirements, and make use of that skill to traverse them. Yet from the standpoint of the resources it provides, you could say it would be better called the Herblore Dungeon! Not only is the Agility Dungeon the quietest place in the game for fighting chaos druids, and the only place to find chaos druid warriors, but it’s also home to another feature that will be of interest to many herblorists: Salarin the Twisted and the sinister chest.

Salarin is an evil druid who has some unique defensive characteristics: he can only be damaged by mind rune (strike) spells. When killed, he will occasionally drop a sinister key, which is used to open the sinister chest found in another room of the dungeon. The chest contains a fine selection of nine grimy herbs: 2 harralander, 3 ranarr, 1 irit, 1 avantoe, 1 kwuarm and 1 torstol. Sinister keys are also tradeable, which means buying them to use on the chest is an option as well.

The main entrance to the dungeon is just north of Yanille and east of the Watchtower. There you’ll find a small building with stairs leading downward, which are blocked by a pair of spider webs (Figure 195). You need a knife or slashing weapon to cut the webs, after which you descend to the main level of the dungeon, where you’ll find level 27 giant bats.

**Figure 195: Agility Dungeon Entrance**
Teleport to Watchtower, go downstairs, go east, slash the webs, then head down the stairs to the dungeon.

NOTE: It is highly advised that you bring an antipoison, because if you fail any of the Agility obstacles you’ll drop into a room containing level 64 poison spiders! You also get poisoned when you open the sinister chest.

To the southeast is a ledge you must cross, which requires an Agility level of 40. After passing the ledge you’ll see a pipe to the west; crawling through this pipe (level 49 Agility) takes you to a room with level 45 skeletons where the sinister chest is located.

If instead you continue south from the ledge, you’ll find a group of level 37 chaos druid warriors. Walk past them and you’ll find a set of monkey bars, which requires level 57 Agility to cross. Past them and to the east is a group of six chaos druids. You’ll also find a door to the south, which leads to a building in Yanille. You can exit the dungeon using this door at any time, but entering the dungeon from Yanille requires level 82 Thieving and a lockpick. If you have the necessary level, this is a much faster way of getting into the dungeon than using the primary entrance.

Go past the chaos druids and you’ll find a ladder; take it and you’ll be in a small chamber. To the north is a pile of rubble you must pass, which has the highest Agility requirement in the dungeon: level 67. Climb the rubble and you’ll be in the final chamber, containing Salarin, four chaos druids and an adventurer named Sigbert, who can tell you a bit about Salarin.

Note that you can use agility potions to access Salarin at level 64, or summer pies to get to him at level 62.

Salarin is immune to melee and ranged attacks, and if you try either on him he’ll literally laugh at you! You must fight him with the four strike spells, which work in a different way on him, hitting particularly hard: each wind strike does 9 points of damage, water strike does 10, earth strike does 11 and fire strike hits for 12 points of damage.

Our quarry has 70 HP, so it takes 8 casts of wind strike, 7 or 8 casts of water strike (he may heal during combat), 7 casts earth strike, or 6 casts of fire strike to kill him. You want to get this done as fast as possible, so fire strike is the way to go (see Figure 196). The cheapest way to cast it is to equip yourself with a fire or lava staff, and take a stack of mind runes and dust runes—the latter are much cheaper than airs! You need two dusts for every mind rune. Alternately, if you have a ton of fires, use an air staff and take three fire runes for every mind rune.

**Figure 196: Fighting Salarin**
One of the rare monsters that takes a constant amount of damage from magic attacks, it takes six casts of *Fire Strike* to kill Salarin.

Salarin is aggressive, and will hit you with melee attacks that can do up to about 7 damage, so you do need armor and food—Ahrim’s set works well here. It takes about 20 seconds to kill him with fire strike, and his respawn time on a full world is 30 seconds, so you can only kill him about 72 times per hour. And unfortunately, the sinister key is a rather rare drop: I average around two per hour when I fight him.

Salarin’s other drops are similar (but not identical) to those of chaos druids. In a recent 30 minute test I killed him 36 times, getting 10 gold pieces, 6 law runes, 2 black daggers, 13 grimy herbs, 1 snape grass, 1 white berries, 1 sinister key and 5 super defence (1) vials.

Because of the need to use strike spells and his slow respawn rate, going to this room just to fight Salarin is not worth your time: even if you are lucky with the keys, you only get 9 herbs per key, and 2 to 3 keys per hour is the most you are likely to receive. In order to make the trip worthwhile, you should kill the chaos druids in the same room while waiting for Salarin to respawn. You can do this either by maging them as well, or switching to a melee weapon for a short time. The latter is faster and cheaper, but having to swap weapons and reset your auto-attack spell gets annoying after a while.

If you are fighting Salarin and the chaos druids around him for herb drops and keys, I recommend not using the keys as soon as you get them: Salarin’s room and the chest room are pretty far apart, and your inventory will probably be too full for the ones you get out of the chest anyway. Instead, collect the keys until you have three, then bank and follow this procedure:

You can also use Summoning beasts of burden to increase efficiency further. If you have a Summoning level of 40, you can use a bull ant to carry 9 herbs, allowing you to do 4 keys per trip. At level 67, the war tortoise’s 18 extra slots mean 5 keys per trip can be done, and at level 96, the pack yak’s whopping 30 slots let you do 6 keys per trip!

In my tests I’ve found that the standard trip takes a little under 2 minutes, so I can do 34 trips (102 keys) per hour. With a familiar, the need to use extra keys and to transfer herbs to the beast of burden for transport slows things down; it takes me 2 minutes 10 seconds per trip with my war tortoise. But since I can do 5 keys per trip, that still comes to around 140 keys per hour, a substantial increase.

Salarin isn’t the only source for sinister keys: you can also get them from magpie implings and ninja implings in the Impetuous Impulses minigame. Many players who get these keys from implings don’t know what to do with them, or don’t have the Agility level needed to use them, so they sell them on the Grand Exchange, where you can buy them.

The sinister key is also sometimes a nice way of getting herbs like ranarrs and kwuarms that go through high demand cycles when they may be difficult to buy the normal way.To determine if this is worth doing, check the price of sinister keys on the GE against the value of the herbs you get from each key. At the present time, I can buy a sinister key for around 23k, and the value of the herbs each chest contains is about 27k, so that’s 4k per key savings or profit, depending on your point of view. At 3 keys per trip and 34 trips per hour, that’s over 400k per hour, which isn’t bad at all—and it’s even better with a beast of burden.

As a bonus, in addition to getting a bunch of good herbs, you also get XP! All of the herbs in the chest are grimy, and most are high level, so they give decent cleaning experience: you get 240 Herblore XP for cleaning the 27 herbs you receive with three keys. You also get 30 Agility XP per run for navigating the ledge and pipe. At 34 trips per hour, I can get a total of about 8k of Herblore XP and 1k Agility XP per hour without a familiar, or over 10k of Herblore XP with one. Not great, but a nice bonus on top of the herbs.