Method Description, Instructions and Tips for Success

General Description

When they were first introduced to the game, waterfiends were mainly viewed as annoying pests that would attack you when you tried to run past them to get to the mithril dragons in the Ancient Cavern. All of that changed with the introduction of the Summoning skill, because Jagex made waterfiends one of the very best sources of crimson charms in the game, making them a very popular monster among high level players training Summoning. They are aggressive and somewhat tough monsters; because they use both a ranged and magic attack, you cannot avoid damage using just prayer.

The desire to get large numbers of charms quickly for Summoning training has led many players to devise clever ways of killing these beasties very quickly, often involving the use of enhancing prayers. However, if you are willing to be a bit more frugal, you can kill them a little more slowly for much lower cost, allowing you to get many crimson charms and also make money off the waterfiends' other drops.

If life is like a box of chocolates as Forrest Gump said, then waterfiends are as well, at least when it comes to drops. They drop a surprising array of valuable items, including herbs, herb seeds and gems; large numbers of mithril arrows, death and blood runes; noted water orbs, snape grass, seaweed, water vials and mithril ore; combination runes and much more. Because of this variety, every time you go for a trip you'll get a rather different selection, but almost always quite a few items of value. Waterfiends also drop unnoted raw sharks and lobsters, which makes them an ideal choice for using a bunyip familiar. You can use the raw fish to heal if you need it, or use the fish on the bunyip to get water runes (a random number from 1 to 12 for lobsters, or 1 to 20 for sharks).

Since the goal here is to make money, I devised a system that keeps cost to a minimum -- in particular, no prayer potions are required. Each trip should last just about an hour, depending on how lucky you get with food drops and so forth.

Effective waterfiend combat requires a good crush weapon. For those on a budget, Veracs flail is a decent choice, but the Saradomin sword and Zamorakian spear are much better, because they are faster weapons and hit more frequently. I have assumed the use of Veracs flail for the very high level method here, and a Saradomin sword for the extremely high level method. Other weapon choices include the barrelchest anchor or a godsword, but the slow speed of these actually makes them inferior here.

Specific Method Details

As mentioned in the intro, the Saradomin sword is an excellent choice for killing waterfiends. If you are using Veracs flail instead, derate the drops by a good 15%.

Put on the equipment shown in the list, and take out a Bunyip pouch, 10 Swallow whole scrolls, a games necklace, a 4-dose super set, 20 sets of alching runes, 12 full strawberry baskets and 8 salmon.

Teleport to the Barbarian Outpost, then run into the foyer of Barbarian Assault and put the games necklace into the deposit box. Run out, go south and jump into the whirlpool to enter the Ancient Cavern. When you materialize, put on protection from magic -- this will prevent you from getting zapped by the brutal green dragons. Go down the stairs, then run south through the dragons, then west past them. This will put you in the far waterfiend area, which is preferable to the one near the stairs -- it has more monsters, you can stay well away from the dragons, and you don't have to deal with the annoying skeleton.

Take one dose of super set, summon the bunyip and start fighting. (Be sure your weapon is on the "crush" setting or you will do little damage.) Remember to activate your special every five minutes for a bit of extra damage. Eat to heal as necessary, starting with the salmon to free up inventory space for drops and to take strawberries from the baskets. Waterfiends have so many good drops that you will have to do some juggling and make tough choices about what to keep. In general, try to keep items that stack as you may get more of them and then you don't have to spend an inventory slot for those. If you get raw fish drops, use some to heal using your swallow whole scrolls, and feed the rest to the bunyip. Store arrows or bolts in your quiver to save space. Alch items like adamant chainbodies, water battlestaves and mithril warhammers.

Take more of your super set every 12 minutes or so. After about 45 minutes your bunyip will disappear, and you'll start noticing how much faster the damage piles up. Turn on the protection from ranged prayer so you can stay for several extra minutes. When you are out of prayer and low on health, use home teleport to leave, recharge prayer in Lumbridge and then get to a bank to repeat the process. Do not tempt the fates by letting your health get too low -- these monsters can do a lot of damage if you are unlucky.

If you don't move around too much, the waterfiends become unaggressive after about 10 minutes. If they are still aggressive for some reason when you want to leave, jump onto one of the logs near the edge of the water for a quick getaway from the dungeon.