A superior way to kill Waterfiends

[Lord Klotski]

With the changes to the waterfiend drop list, food is abundant there if you have a bunyip. Bank your GS, SS, or Zamorak Spear, I have a better method for you.

Please note that this method requires 68 summoning.

Armour

Full Veracs with flail. Accessories that I use: Fire Cape, Fury, Empty arrow slot, Dark Gloves, Dragon Boots, and a Berserker ring. This gives a prayer bonus of 25 and a magic defense bonus of 32; Crush is 105 and Strength is 104. I would recommend having a fairly high magic level for defence purposes, but you can substitute a small amount of luck and get fish drops instead if you prefer.

Prayer

Protect Range is Essential. Waterfiends look like Geyser Titans for a reason: The graphics team is lazy (lol). Actually , their range attack has a "boil" effect; the more heavy armour you wear, the harder (more often) it hits. Here, your full verac armour with ~250 range defence does FAR worse with no protect prayer than a set of freaking void (~130 range defense). Fortunately you have a huge prayer bonus. Piety is highly justifiable as well.

Kills/hr

With piety enabled and my stats, I can get about 125 kills/hr (not including bank time). With my spear or GS, I couldn't do any better than 105 ish.

Inventory

I wont discuss inventory in too much detail (because that varies a LOT from person to person), but if you use the same prayers that you normally do , you'll only need 3 prayer potions for every 4 you used to take. Replace that space with food of your choosing. I'd recommend having pure sets, prayer potions, bunyip pouch + scrolls, high alch, and a holy wrench. Drop your games necklace as soon as you get there to free up a space.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

High prayer bonus means more efficient killing
High attack power (from veracs) means 99 attack isn't necessary to laugh at people using Godswords. On that note , a SGS spec would hardly go amiss...
Verac's flail allows you to train attack , strength, or defence.
More kills / hr

Cons:

Need 68 Summoning ( A feat about 1.5% of the RS population has achieved)
High magic level recommended because magic defense is low.
You'll go through a bit more food than usual, and bad luck may end a trip.
High levels may flame you (I met a guy there with 97 summoning that hated the fact that I kept killing faster than him... )

As a last point, if you really dont have 68 summoning but still idolize Lord Klotski's methods (And I would say that there is only 1 person that does the latter - me), Full Guthans can be used to heal. It costs you time and 2 inv spots (4 pieces minus the bunyip pouch and scrolls), but it will work.


Thanks for reading. Coming soon is full Dharoks vs Waterfiends

[wkw427]

Some people say crushing with full guth works well. Only need to pray if healing stops

[Lord Klotski]

It's not particularly fast though, and from what I've seen, most using full guth are still praying range (due to the boil effect).

[ferrariman12]

Ooh, snap!
I'm about 50k from 68 summoning...maybe it's time to pay a visit to the dust devils and see what I can do

[Stethrane]

Lord Klotski - what ARE your stats? Just got 68 summoning but I don't and probably will not for the forseeable future have a GS. Can I get away with an anchor here?

[Ukraine]

Full karils, anchor and best mage def with range prot. Do about 150 kills in one trip.

[lebst]

What about on slayer task? would this be any faster than ss and slayer helm?

[arigold16]

What about on slayer task? would this be any faster than ss and slayer helm?

I would have said that the mask and ss would have to be faster, but his numbers suggest that veracs would still be faster... if he gets 105 kills per hour with the god sword normally, add 15% to that and you're still lower than the 125 he gets with this. Thats without even considering that its not really 15% faster killing with the mask, for various reasons. I still probably would give the mask and ss a try because thats how I roll, but numbers are stubborn things.

[Lord Klotski]

Stethrane - As for my stats: I have a stat sig, just like you. Figured it was fairly obvious I never said that you need a GS - in this thread I'm promoting full veracs, which costs 3.5M.

I'd personally use a straight verac flail if you cant afford the whole set (with karils or void melee as armour).

Lebst: As for the black mask/ss vs full verac... that's a nasty one. I'd also be inclined to go with the standard weapon there, but that's due to an entirely irrational need to always use a black mask. I'd guess that it'd be a saw-off.

[Stethrane]

Ah - so you do! I think maybe the image wasn't loading earlier for some reason because I specifically checked for a stat sig - thanks for replying - I'll get this a try on my next slayer or charm binge...

[Lord Klotski]

Are you able to kill Mithril Dragons with full veracs in your sleep? So good at soloing God Wars bosses that you aren't afraid of being killed at the slightest mistake? Look no further for one of the most intense things that a set of Dharok's offers: fighting enemies without full prayer protection.

Method: Full Dharok's vs Waterfiends

A few notes about this. Firstly, your trips will be short and intense, and you will drink prayer potions like they were water (you can substitute "coca-cola" for "water" if you prefer). Secondly , the ever present possibility of dying exists, and lastly , it's about as fast as using verac.

Armour

Wear Dharoks and prayer/strength boosting gear.

Dharoking and Prayers

Protect range and piety. Pure set is essential. Use the Smash (crush) attack. STAY AWAY FROM THE BRUTAL GREENS. Waterfiends max at 11, so I'd keep your health above that (11 hp doesn't cut it, you need 12+)

Inventory

If you want to take high alch, you can alch between attacks (Four bars of speed or less and you can alch between attacks without losing the attack turn). 1 pure set, at least 8 prayer potions, an instant tele, and a lot of moderate- healing food that heals more than 11 (if you have 1 hp and eat a salmon, that gives the fiend a chance to kill you...).

Why do this anyway?

This is an unbelievable amount of fun. You've never played RS like this before, trust me (Unless you solo Zammy in your spare time). 2-hitting a waterfiend does happen, and it's pretty cool.

[niperwiper]

As someone who never trains mage, I doubt this method will work for me. I have a tough enough time with mage attacks hitting me when I have protect range and full mage def armour on. Trading that in for verac's sounds like asking for trouble. I have used the flail as a replacement crush weapon before, not bad, but pretty slow. I suppose I can give it a whirl, but 69 magic probably won't help me much.

[Qeltar]

Thanks for posting about this.. it's an interesting method I haven't tried since they changed the drops.

Gotta say though, my results were rather different than yours. Fighting without Piety I get about 95 kills/hr with my SGS, and I got 91 with Veracs. I can't image Piety would help Veracs that much more than it helps with a godsword, so I have to wonder how you got that 125 kills/hr...

I used twice as many super restores as I do with my SGS.

I also really found fighting this way to be quite nerve-wracking. I was constantly alternating between getting raw fish drops I couldn't hold for lack of inventory space, and being half dead waiting for a raw fish drop. With Karil's and the SGS health is never a problem, and in fact I feed the raw fish to the bunyip for water runes.

All of this culminated with me dying at the end of my trip as I raw low, tried to get my 91st kill, then ran but couldn't get on the stupid raft. First time I've died since the gravestone update, rather weird going back there trying to get all my stuff back.. got most of it fortunately.

Anyway.. this might be better than using an anchor but no way IMO does it replace the SGS with Karil's.

[Lord Klotski]

Sorry to hear that you died.

I did say that it was a test that didn't include bank time - I did a run yesterday that was 38 minutes with 77 kills, and another with similar results before I posted this. If you do your test under this light I'll guess you'll come to a different conclusion.

I'm honestly stunned that you ran out of food - that's never happened to me (and you definitely have better stats for it). Perhaps you would find that taking the SGS for the special attack would alleviate the issue, but quite honestly, I really didn't think this method required it. The SGS definitely does have THE best PvM special, and I didn't factor that in to my calculations (mostly because I don't have that kind of cash).

Perhaps I should change my first line to "Bank your GS (unless it's a SGS)..." - I admit that I forgot the power of its special attack. However, I will also claim that it's only the special that makes it better than full verac. Each to their own though, if it works for you I wont be telling you how to do it =). For a 3.5M set , though, veracs holds its own.

[Qeltar]

Well I just tried again. Even with Piety (and sucking down p pots like there was no tomorrow) I got 46 kills in 27 minutes (no banking time). That's about the increase I'd expect with piety.

If you can really get 77 kills in 38 minutes then you must be doing something very right that you haven't been able to describe or express so far.

[Lord Klotski]

I have no idea whether you do this or not, but my only "trick" is to exclusively drink pots during battle and eat using the bunyip during battle without missing an attack turn. Let me give you an example of how effective this is:

Suppose that I drink 2 pure sets and 11 prayer pots - 60 doses total. If I dirnk these without timing then I'll lose 60 attack turns (about 3 minutes using veracs); if I drink them at the correct time I'm 3 minutes ahead of a similar player that doesn't. Add on the eating with the bunyip scroll (again not losing an attack turn, although this is easier to time), and suddenly I'm now even farther ahead.

I have no idea how you fight in battle, but it is quite possible to use technique to obtain faster kill times.

[Qeltar]

Well, it may have to do with timing issues and drop juggling. I'm a miser when it comes to drops and so sometimes waste time in that way -- but not much.

Still, if that's the case I'd still expect my Veracs to be roughly the same percentage above the other methods as it is for you, and it's not. Something isn't adding up here, but I don't know what it is.

[Lord Klotski]

Fair enough - I'm going to give God Wars solo a try, then I'll do another GS and Verac test there, and post the results.

I use an atomic clock that sits on my desk to time, for what that's worth. We'll see if I'm just full of it, or what the issue is =)

(Oh, and I'm definitely not a miser - I only alch the mith stuff if I'm using a GS, because I can alch between attacks )

[Qeltar]

Well I just did a test with Piety using Karil's and the SGS... 50 kills in 27 minutes, and only 24 of those had Piety since I ran out of p pots (only took 4). Again, this is what I would expect -- the GS hits much harder than Veracs, and the defence-busting special is of little use here because on crush you rarely miss anyway.

The special of the SGS doesn't speed up kills, either, so that's not a factor.. what the special does is mean you use far fewer p pots and less food. (And I'm sitting here with 5 raw sharks in my inventory.. I only used one scroll and that was not even strictly necessary.)

Regardless of the special, I much prefer fighting in Karil's -- it is a lot less dangerous and even running out of prayer is no big deal. My suspicion is that Karil's with the Verac flail would be more effective than full Veracs, all things considered.

[Lord Klotski]

My stats teacher regularly quoted to us that "A man with one watch knows the time, but a man with two does not."

Now I finally understand what he was getting at

Let me think on this one.