Zogres useful after all

[GUdrus]

Got 1.3k addy nails order completed during the night, so today fletched some addy brutal arrows and when to the Zogre area.

In about 2 hours of training I got 44 000 ranged exp. The good part is that I also got 210 zogre, 26 fayrg, 17 raurg and 2 ourg bones in that time, also about 35-40 charms (didn't count them, mostly gold).

My strategy was to range zogres/scogres, fill inventory with bones and keys, load terrorbird with 12 bones, fill inventory again, then use all the keys on the coffin near the dungeon entrance, drop the junk and fill whats left. Then ring of dueling to Castle wars, bank, repeat.

Ranged exp isn't great, but the prayer exp is very good. These 255 bones are worth 8821 prayer xp, about the same as 122 dragon bones (it's pre-gilded altar). The test was done at ranged lvl 76, at this level I can get 45 black dragon kills in 2 hours, and thats about 100 bones. So from prayer perspective Zogres are better. The drawback is that you will need to spend twice the amount when running at gilded altar with Zogre bones than with dragon bones.

In conclusion, I found that the place is well worth the try, especially for the lower levels (bull ant will awork for those lacking summoning level). When the dungeon was released, many players started complaining its useless, but if you can get your hand on brutal arrows (and that is not that hard, just buy achey logs and nails and fletch them yourself), the reward is decent.

Edit: While getting 1028 zogre bones, I also got 90 Fayrg, 47 Raurg, 15 Ourg bones. Thats what proportions you might expect to get when keeping all the bones and using all the keys.

[Doomedrusher]

THEY DROP CHARMS?

I'm so going back there...must use up my thousands of brutal arrows..

[GUdrus]

Don't be too excited about charms, they are rather just a minor adition, i get only about 4-5 of them in 15 min run.

[arigold16]

Instead of using the terrorbird, you might want to use a combat familiar. The familiars do full damage to them, almost as though their normal attack is with brutal arrows. I haven't tried this since the Batch 2 update, but it worked rather well before and I imagine it would be even more effective now.

[boyeee13]

Instead of using the terrorbird, you might want to use a combat familiar. The familiars do full damage to them, almost as though their normal attack is with brutal arrows. I haven't tried this since the Batch 2 update, but it worked rather well before and I imagine it would be even more effective now.

I noticed that in the first batch. It was kind of fun being able to use the low level combat familiars, too bad you have to expose yourself to disease to get them to start helping. Have you found a way to get the familiars to attack when you range?

One thing I always hated about doing that was getting disease and having non-combat stats dropping. Seems like it was always a skill that I was going to use and I am way too cheap to drink a super restore. I guess I could just kill myself after doing a few runs... I will have to try sometime and see if that restores all stats.

[GUdrus]

Using combat familliar would reduce the amount of bones I bring in a trip by 12. Also, combat familiars are useful only when at meelee range, they do not help you when you endgage from a safe spot.

[arigold16]

Using combat familliar would reduce the amount of bones I bring in a trip by 12. Also, combat familiars are useful only when at meelee range, they do not help you when you endgage from a safe spot.

Well, the walking distance is rather short, so I suspect that any decent combat familiar would speed you up faster than the terrorbird.

It is true that you have to actually engage them in combat (and get diseased) to use them, but that hardly matters. Restore potions (3) cost 40 gp on the GE, so the disease is all pretty meaningless. You also can buy Relicym's Balm pretty cheaply, or even use the Leech familiar who fights at level 76 and his special power cures disease at the cost of hitpoints.

Just a thought though, I haven't tested it post-Batch 2, so I don't know which is better.

[jin jin5000]

Use steel titan since it has ranged attack

[GUdrus]

Pre-batch 2, what where your results with combat familiars, arigold? How many bones were you getting an hour?

As a side note, at my summoning level, only Evil Turnip I think rases ranged xp, and thats what I need.

[arigold16]

Pre-batch 2, what where your results with combat familiars, arigold? How many bones were you getting an hour?

As a side note, at my summoning level, only Evil Turnip I think rases ranged xp, and thats what I need.

I don't remember the exact numbers and they probably wouldn't match up well with yours unless we had the same stats, but I suspect even the old familiars were better for this task than the new terrorbird is. I look at it this way... If you got 255 bones, that is 6.375 trips with a terrorbird, or 9.1 trips without one if you use full inventory on bones, or 6.89 and 10.2 if you use 3 inventory spots per trip on charms. The run time is about 1 minute from castlewars, so by using the terrorbird you saved maybe 4 or 5 minutes, tops, of walking time in the 2 hours that you spent collecting bones. Thats about a 3% increase in bone collecting time. It seems likely to me that a reasonably strong combat familiar would speed you up by more than that... all they'd have to do is deal an average of about 5 damage per Zogre and even for the old, weak familiars that is not asking much.

Of course, if all you are after is range and prayer xp, then that greatly limits which familiars you can use. The Turnip is not really a practical familiar to use, since his second is so unreasonably hard to get. The Karamthulu Overlord is excellent though and he gives range xp, so if you get access to him then I would think that would be better than using the terrorbird. Again, its just my guess, since I haven't tested it with the new familiars, but collection tasks like this that are very close to the bank and require infrequent bank trips are rarely good candidates for BoB usage.

[dante infno]

I've spent some time in the zogre dungeon, I found that all the runs to the bank were tedious so buried all the jogre bones until I had lots of 12 decent bones. Just about everything else they drop stacks. There are loads of safe spots to range from - in a run for 12 decent bones I would consider myself unlucky if I was diseased once; I never take any food. Burying the bones is the most dangerous part as the skogres are aggressive. I found myself burying them in a safe spot.
My construction is not high enough to repair amour; Is it worth banking? Has anyone looked into it?

[Upupa Epops]

Burying the bones is the most dangerous part as the skogres are aggressive. I found myself burying them in a safe spot.

I found that logging out and back in makes these skogres non-aggressive (if the rest of the monsters already stopped being aggressive).

[Qeltar]

The familiar that *should* be ideal for this is the bloated leech. If it actually did what it says, it would be very useful.

I tested it before 3/31 and it sucked. You had to use the special like 8 times to actually cure disease. Haven't tried it since, but if they made it better, it would be very cool there.

I hope it does, because otherwise I see no use for that thing whatsoever.

[GUdrus]

Bloated leech still takes many specials to heal you from disease, so this is not the good way to heal it, Relicym's Balm is mutch better (faster and cheaper) option. It deals ok damage, but because the Zogres are low level ( lvl 44) with relatively low hp, and because of the nature you engage them (with ranged attack, offen causing them to stuck), bloated leech doesn't get many chances to strike, so spirit terrorbird is still a better option.

DISCLAIMER: I haven't tested it carefuly, with like few hours test, these are just a quick notes from a short testing, I disliked it and switched back to terrorbird quickly.

[GUdrus]

While getting 1028 zogre bones, I also got 90 Fayrg, 47 Raurg, 15 Ourg bones. Thats what proportions you might expect to get when keeping all the bones and using all the keys.

P.s. The Ourg bones sold for the price of 70 dragon bones .