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Summoning Familiar Details - Desert Wyrm Summoning Familiar Details - Albino Rat

The arachnid family seems to be particularly well represented in the pantheon of lower-level Summoning familiars; there’s the spirit spider at level 10, and here at level 19, the arguably related spirit scorpion. The similarities end there, unfortunately, as the scorpion doesn’t share the spider’s useful non-combat ability, and its combat value is also rather marginal.

The spirit scorpion is a cute little fella that resembles many of the regular NPC scorpions you find around RuneScape. It’s mostly a gray color with yellow markings, and a red tail that it lashes when in combat. Its dialog options are rather amusing—seems the scorpion fancies itself some sort of a thief and really wants to visit the bank and some crossroads (Figure 273)…

The chat for this familiar was an odd choice given that it doesn’t have any Thieving-related abilities, though, and as a matter of fact, it doesn’t really doesn’t have any other abilities of note either! It provides nothing in terms of non-combat skill enhancement, which just leaves the rather ho-hum combat skills of a level 19 Summoning familiar. And like the desert wyrm, its special attack sounds good, but is actually pretty much worthless.

The information about spirit scorpions can be found in Table 60; for an overview of the table’s entries, see the topic Explanation of the Familiar Summary Tables.

The spirit scorpion has no non-combat abilities.

The scorpion is similar in its combat abilities to the desert wyrm—and that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement. It has a total of 25 HP and a maximum damage potential of 4 HP; in my tests I found that it would do slightly more damage on low-level opponents than the desert wyrm, but was still very slow and generally nothing to write home about. It might be of some use to low-level players, but that’s about it, and as discussed elsewhere in this guide, there aren’t many places they can even use familiars.

The spirit scorpion’s special move, Venom Shot, is described in the RuneScape knowledge base as having a “chance of making your next Ranged attack mildly poisonous, provided the ammunition you are using can be poisoned”. What this basically means is that you must be using a bow or crossbow with normal arrows or bolts, the type you could use poison potions on. (Only bolts without gem tips can be poisoned; I have not tested them with the scorpion but I believe this should work the same way as regular arrows.)

In the case of the scorpion, “mildly poisonous” means the same strength as regular weapon poison: a maximum of 2 HP of poison damage to start, which wears off at the speed of all poison damage.

You don’t use the special move on particular creatures; instead, you click the special move button, and the scorpion throws a purple ball of energy at you (see Figure 274). Once this is done, the next time you attack using Ranged, there’s a chance you will poison your target.

This special might actually be of some use if it worked frequently enough, but—you guessed it—that’s not the case. In my tests using steel arrows, the poison activated 10% of the time. Whoop-de-do. If you consider that this familiar uses a crimson charm and 57 shards to make a pouch, that’s pretty pathetic.

Let’s say you wanted to try to use this familiar and special. For about 5k you can buy one pouch and 45 scrolls, which will cause you to get maybe 5 or 6 opponents poisoned for 2 damage each. Or, you can take that same 5k and buy 25 weapon poison potions, make 125 poisoned steel arrows, and get a lot more poisoning done and monsters killed, without having to worry about babysitting a familiar or clicking a button before every shot. Not a tough choice, is it?

And of course, you only need to be level 36 Ranged to use enchanted emerald (e) bolts, which poison starting at 5, activate their poison much more frequently than any arrows, and show you when it has taken effect.

To add insult to, well, uselessness, consider this. If you want to use this familiar’s special move you must be ranging, which means you are probably in a safespot. Well, the scorpion itself can’t attack from a safespot, so it stands around doing nothing (aside from periodically throwing purple balls at you.)

So much for the spirit scorpion.

This familiar is an even bigger disappointment than the desert wyrm. It has no non-combat abilities and is nearly worthless in combat. The overall rating of 1 is generosity on my part, given only because some low-level players might find its combat ability less-than-100%-worthless.

Don’t waste crimson charms making these pouches—save them for higher-level summons that give more XP and actually have some use. If you already did make some spirit scorpion pouches, either save them and hope that at some point Jagex fixes this familiar, or alch them.

Summoning Familiar Details - Desert Wyrm Summoning Familiar Details - Albino Rat