Access Directions | The primary home of giant rock crabs is several rooms in Waterbirth Dungeon, but getting to these is a nuisance. The Chaos Tunnels spot is much more convenient. To get there, bank in Edgeville or at the Grand Exchange, then enter the Wilderness on the east side of the River Lum. Run northwest, then north, until you see the crevice entrance. You'll land right in the crabs' room and be attacked immediately. Naturally, you must watch out for revenants, but attacks from them in this short run are few.
If you really want to go to Waterbirth, note that while there's a room with the crabs on the entry level of the dungeon, it's not practical to fight them there, because it's single combat. When the crab you are fighting retreats you'll get tagged by another one and never get a kill. To fight them at Waterbirth you need to get a friend to help you open a door, then use a rune thrownaxe special to get deeper into the dungeon.
Here's how to do it. Turn off autoretaliate and put on Protection from Melee. Enter the dungeon, run northeast and then east to a door with two pads. Each player should stand on one pad, then click the door to open it. You can do the rest solo.
Run all the way east and then south to a door; you'll see two more south and southwest of it. Wield the rune thrownaxe, click the special attack bar and then click the middle door (the one facing to the west). The rune thrownaxe special will knock down all three doors.
Put on Protection from Magic and go down the ladder. Run east, enable Protection from Ranged and go down another ladder. Run east and then up a ladder, and you're in the giant rock crab room. |
Equipment | These are best maged, and Ahrim's armor is far and away the best choice of armor, both for its magic attack bonuses and its melee defence. It's especially essential if fighting with a salamander, which means you'll be in melee range; the alternative is to pray, but that quickly gets expensive, and prayer gear has no magic bonuses. Splitbark is a cheaper alternative to Ahrims. If you are going to try to mage from a safe spot, you can get by with regular magic robes.
Bring the appropriate salamander or a magic staff for autocasting.
If you're going to try to melee -- which I don't recommend -- the only way to go is full Veracs. |
Supplies | If using a salamander, bring the appropriate type of herb tar. Note that a red salamander hits about 90% as hard as a black salamander, but tarromin tar roughly half the cost of harralander tar, so red is a more economical option. If maging with spells, bring the appropriate runes. You'll need at least 1,000 casts per hour of combat.
If you're using a salamander, you'll be in melee range; I advise super defence potions and also a load of food, the quality of which depends on whether you are using a healing familiar ornot. These monsters conveniently drop earth and water runes that you can use to cast Bones to Peaches, though higher-level players may not need to do so for a trip one hour long. If you are planning to safe spot, be sure to bring some food anyway, as you will definitely take some damage regardless.
Bring nature and fire runes for the many alchable items these monsters drop.
A one-click teleport is strongly recommended for going to either location, both of which are quite dangerous to get to (dungeon or Wilderness.) |
Familiar | The best option here is to bring a healer like a bunyip along with lower-quality food, which is all you'll need thanks to its help. An alternative is to use a beast of burden to carry in a larger amount of food and hold drops, but in this spot I prefer a bunyip.
Combat familiars can do a small amount of damage to help with kills, but will mostly hit zeroes. |
Combat Notes | These monsters have insanely high melee and ranged defence. Even with 99 Attack and 99 Strength, using Veracs for its special attack and super pots, I get 1/3 fewer kills with melee than using a salamander on "Blaze". Don't even bother trying to range these or melee with anything but Veracs. Even then, I don't really recommend it.
The salamanders have two main advantages: they can hit higher (up to 24 with the black one) and the tar fuel is cheaper than runes. Using spells, though, gives more Magic XP.
Note that these monsters begin as inert "boulders"; you must run over them to "wake them up", which makes them attack you and also allows you to attack back. Be careful as they will team on you in multicombat areas. In the Chaos Tunnels, I find the best place to fight is in the tunnel in the far southwest portion of the room; at most two will attack at a time there.
Every 10 minutes or so the monsters will stop waking up from their boulder state. To reset this, go up the rope to the Wilderness and then quickly back down again. You can also do this if you have several crabs on you at once; going up the rope and down again will leave them unaggressive but still attackable. |
Drop Notes | These monsters have two main draws: rock-shell armor and pieces, and gold charms. They used to drop 10 charms at a time, but not very frequently; Jagex adjusted this to be 3 charms at once, but increased the charm drop rate. They now actually seem to give more charms than before, but again, these are mostly the lower-XP gold variety.
The rock-shell shards, splinters and chunks can be used to make rock-shell platebodies, platelegs and helms respectively. Sadly though, the value of rock-shell armor has dropped quite a bit from where it once was, but you also get some Magic XP for your trouble.
Be sure to keep any black platebodies you get as they sell for more than alch value on the Grand Exchange. |
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