Skeleton - Access and Combat Recommendations

Access Directions

There are five types of skeletons in the northern part of the plateau area where the archeologists are found during the quest Dealing with Scabaras: the Skeleton (Level 97), Skeleton (Level 108), Skeleton (Level 115), Skeleton (Level 120) and Skeleton (Level 140).

Easiest access to the area requires you to have used a rope to create the Agility shortcut from the Agility Pyramid area. Bank in Sophanem, then use a Pharaoh's sceptre to teleport to the Agility Pyramid, or run to it from the town. Go down the rocks and run east to the rope shortcut.

Use the rope and run past the mummies and over the low wall (I recommend Protection from Melee first, as the mummies hit hard). Head east to the archeologists, then north; the skeletons meander around the area. They are aggressive, so stay near the archeologists' camp until ready for battle.

Equipment

These skeletons are high level, aggressive, and in multicombat area; that adds up to using prayer gear. You can get by with some other methods, but even Guthans is inconvenient, because of the need to deal with desert heat damage (best done with an enchanted water tiara, which precludes Barrows sets).

If you are using a cannon, you definitely should wear prayer gear along with the water tiara. You could also forego the tiara and use food to heal the heat damage since you won't be taking hits from the skeletons.

Bringing along a charged Pharaoh's sceptre allows you to quickly get back to Sophanem to store drops and get more supplies.

Supplies

If fighting with prayer (as recommended), bring Zamorak brews, super strengths and prayer potions, along with a small amount of food "just in case".

These monsters don't drop a lot of items worth alching, but a few sets of alching runes isn't a bad idea.

Familiar

The two best familiar choices here are a beast of burden to carry drops, or a combat familiar to help with kills. If you are fighting without prayer (not recommended), use a healing familiar instead.

Combat Notes

All of these skeletons are pretty similar in terms of combat style and drops, but the higher-level ones have more life points, and tend to have higher Defence as well, so they take longer to kill.

Since the skeletons are spaced relatively far apart, I recommend just picking a spot near the center of their area and sticking to it, just killing whichever skeleton is closest. That said, If you have a choice, go for the lower-level ones as they die more quickly. Since the skeletons have a slow death animation, as soon as you see one start to crumple, start on a new one and come back for the drop later.

These skeletons are decent cannoning monsters, though not as good as the nearby Dried Zombies (Level 89), which have the same drops but are closer together.

Drop Notes

These monsters have the same drops as dried zombies -- which is nothing to be proud of. Most of what you'll get from them is junk, though you can also expect a decent number of death runes, some noted silver and steel bars, the odd ruby ring, some potions, and a bit of bow and crossbow ammo. These high level skeletons are also pretty good blue charm droppers; like all good blue charm monsters, they don't drop very large quantities of charms overall, but they give more blues than a monster that provides mainly gold, green or crimson charms.