Living Rock Striker - Access and Combat Recommendations

Access Directions

Living rock creatures are found in the Living Rock Caverns, a new combat/fishing/mining area added to the game in late 2009. There are two relatively easy ways to get there. First, starting at Edgeville, run northwest to the edge of the Wilderness, continuing west and then south, around the Prayer Guild, towards the bridge that leads to Ice Mountain. Continue southwest to the entrance to the Dwarven Mine, and go down the ladder. Run south and you'll find a rope leading down to the caverns on the west side.

An alternative is to take the dwarven mine cart from the trap door at the Grand Exchange to Keldagrim, and then hop back in the cart and ride to Ice Mountain. ...Run south, then east and then north, and you'll find the rope that leads down to the caverns.

There are both living rock strikers and protectors throughout the entire area. If you want to fight mostly strikers, I recommend the area just southeast of the bank deposit box, where you'll find three or so of them near a coal deposit. Another decent spot sometimes is west of the bank (you have to run around a rock "island") but there are also some 120s in that general vicinity.

Equipment

These monsters should be meleed, because their melee attack is much weaker than their ranging attack. I recommend using Barrows armor for its high defence. You can probably get by using dragon or granite, but you'll need more healing, and there's only a deposit box (not a full bank) in the cavern.

Bring your best pickaxe if you plan to mine the living rock corpses for minerals (recommended).

Lower level players may wish to use prayer on these, in which case prayer-maximizing robes are preferred.

Supplies

Bring extreme sets or super sets to speed up kills, and food for healing. If you are praying, bring prayer potions. High level players using a healing familiar won't need a lot of food; I just bring a few baskets of strawberries.

Familiar

Use a healing familiar here; nearly all of these monsters' drops are stackable, so a beast of burden is of limited utility.

Combat Notes

As mentioned in the Equipment section, these monsters should be meleed, because if you are in melee range they will melee back, and that style is the weaker of their two attacks.

These monsters are aggressive, but only if you get quite close to them; once they get interested in you, they will continue to attack from a long distance away.

Living Rock Protectors are found in the same cavern, and are similar except for having fewer life points and slightly worse drops. If you only want to fight the strikers, you may still need to kill a protector once in a while, unless you want to run from it.

When in this cavern, be sure to keep an eye out for the rare living rock patriarch. He spawns randomly once every few hours, and looks like the other rock creatures but larger. When killed, he gives a treasure trove of valuable drops!

Drop Notes

Living rock strikers leave behind remains when they are killed, which can be mined to yield 5 to 15 living minerals. Doing this slows down combat, depending on your mining prowess, but is recommended because the minerals are useful (they are bait for fishing rocktails) and valuable (they can be sold if you don't want to use them).

In addition to the remains, living rock strikers drop a variety of noted ores and gems, and the occasional pickaxe, all fitting in nicely with their ore/mineral theme. These drops are very similar to those of living rock protectors, except the strikers provide more runes (8 or 10 versus 3 or 4).