Chaos Dwarf Hand Cannoneer - Access and Combat Recommendations

Access Directions

Chaos dwarf hand cannoneers are found only in the Chaos Dwarf Battlefield in Keldagrim; you must complete Forgiveness of a Chaos Dwarf to access them.

The easiest way to get to the battlefield is to use the trap door at the Grand Exchange to take a mine cart to Keldagrim. When you arrive, go north, then west across the bridge and head to the bank. Prepare for combat, then head southeast to the small room with a door on the north wall and another on the south; this is part of a tower that you access during the quest. Go south and then west, taking the southern passageway, past the cannon you use to get into the Arzinian mine. The entrance to the battlefield is at the end of the tunnel.

Equipment

I strongly recommend using Verac's armor, as you will need to use prayer while simultaneously fending off melee attacks. Any weapon will suffice, with most players using either a whip or a godsword. As always the Saradomin godsword is handy for its healing ability.

Dharoks can be very effective here, but you need to exercise caution because you'll be taking damage even with prayer enabled.

Supplies

Bring super sets, as always, prayer potions and also some decent food.

A few alching rune sets is also a good idea.

Familiar

There are two ways to go here: either a healing familiar, or a beast of burden to carry back drops. I personally prefer the latter, just loading up my pack yak with extra food, then using it and replacing it with drops. These guys drop plenty of useful unnoted drops, especially mithril bars and muddy keys, and it's worth having space to carry them.

Combat Notes

The Chaos Dwarf Battlefield is where the dwarven Black Guard engages in constant battle to fend off the chaos dwarf invasion of Keldagrim. The NPCs fight with each continually, much as they do in the Khazard battlefield or the main room of the God Wars Dungeon.

When you first enter the battlefield, none of the monsters will be aggressive towards you. If you "choose a side" by attacking either the Keldagrim dwarves or the chaos dwarves (including cannoneers) then the other members of that side will then come after you. Note that this does not include the chaos dwogres, which for some reason don't trigger this response.

We are of course going after the cannoneers here, so as soon as you attack one all of the other cannoneers, as well as the regular chaos dwarves, will attack you in this multicombat area. The cannoneers normally use a ranged attack; the chaos dwarves are weaker and use melee. The cannoneers' ranged attack is very strong, able to do 380 life points of damage per hit, and they hit the maximum often. You pretty much must use Protection from Ranged (or Deflect Ranged) to avoid a very quick death. When you do this, the cannoneers will then switch to melee -- they try to hit you with the cannon! -- which is a weaker attack, but one that will still do a fair bit of damage over time.

The first 10 minutes or so of combat is the most difficult, because the monsters will be aggressive. After that, you can pick off the cannoneers one at a time, which is much easier.

Note that like in other NPC battlefields, you get the drop for a monster if you do at least 1 point of damage on it, even if most of the damage came from its NPC opponents. You can take advantage of this by watching for cannoneers that are fighting the black guard and attacking them; as long as the black guard they are fighting stays alive, they will ignore you completely. Just be ready to slap on your ranged prayer if they turn on you.

Incidentally, Deflect Ranged provides no advantage over Protection from Ranged here, because they change to a melee attack.

Drop Notes

These are one of only two monsters to drop the much desired dragon pickaxe, the other being the Chaos Dwogre. This is an extremely rare drop; it took me thousands of kills before I finally got one (though, of course, some players got them far faster -- it's all luck). Suspicion is that these drop the pickaxe less frequently than the chaos dwogres do, but they also drop hand cannons and hand cannon shot (100 shot at a time), which are valuable drops in their own right, so many players fight these monsters.

Beyond the special weapons, hand cannoneers drop small numbers of runes, some mithril bars, and muddy keys. This key can be used to open a chest deep in the Wilderness, each key yielding some pretty valuable loot: an uncut ruby, mithril bar, anchovy pizza, 2 law runes, 2 death runes, 10 chaos runes, a mithril dagger and 50 gp. These can be sold, or you can take them to the chest to make a tidy profit.