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RuneScoop.com  >  The RuneScoop Laboratory - RuneScape Gameplay Testing and Myth Busting

The RuneScoop Laboratory - Report #1 - “Strongly” Overrated The RuneScoop Laboratory - Report #3 - “R” is for “Random”

Published: February 12, 2010

Waterfiends have become one of the most commonly fought monsters in RuneScape because of their reliable crimson charm drops, a staple of the Summoning skill. They are also somewhat unique monsters in that they have extremely strong defence against slashing melee attacks, but are weak to crush attacks. Most players prefer slashing weapons, such as the abyssal whip, but waterfiends are important enough that most look to an alternative, crush-based weapon just to ensure they can kill them efficiently.

Two of the most popular options for killing waterfiends are the Saradomin sword and the Zamorakian spear. These weapons have a lot of similarities overall: they are both two-handed; they both come from bosses in the God Wars Dungeon; they both have crush attacks; and they are both fast (the same speed as an abyssal whip). You can find the bonuses of both weapons summarized in Table 2.

As you can see, though, they also have some important differences. Given that we are talking specifically about fighting waterfiends, most of these are not that important—we don’t care about stab or slash attack, and the defence bonuses have little impact on a monster whose attacks are mostly magic based. The two stat differences that are most important are that the Zamorakian spear has a +5 crush attack bonus over the Saradomin sword, which in turn has a +7 strength advantage over the spear.

This attack bonus versus strength bonus trade-off may sound somewhat familiar. :) Yes, it’s very much like the comparison of the berserker ring and warrior ring that I did in RuneScoop Labs test #1. Of course it’s +5 versus +7 this time, not +4 versus +4, and the test itself is somewhat different. Still, based on this, I expected to see the two weapons come out very close.

There’s another important difference between these weapons that I should also mention: special attack. Here there really is no contest: the Saradomin sword’s full bar special attack adds 5 to 16 points of magic damage every five minutes, an attack that usually hits well on waterfiends. The Zamorakian spear’s special (which pushes a monster back a square) is really of no use on waterfiends. However, many players use a different weapon for its special, so I left this factor out of my tests.

The basic test setup here was pretty simple, since obviously I knew what monsters I would be killing. I just used fairly standard waterfiend fighting gear and tested my kill speed with each weapon. Since waterfiends have a magic attack and a ranged attack that appears to be magic-based, I used the same setup many players do: Karil’s top and skirt, helm of Neitiznot, Soul Wars cape, amulet of fury, “Barrows” gloves, dragon boots and berserker ring.

Normally one would use super sets or extreme sets when fighting monsters like waterfiends, but this introduces the potential for discrepancies between tests if the potions wear off faster when testing one weapon versus the other. (This can happen if the area is busier during one test than the other, which is common, or if they become aggressive in the middle of one test.) I dealt with this in my prior test by fighting without any potions, and did that as well here.

However, I also wanted to see what difference, if any, there was between the weapons when my stats were maxed. So I did a second test, this time using overload potions. These set your combat stats to maximum and keep them there for a period of time; I watched carefully and “repotted” immediately when they wore off.

As always, I used a stopwatch to time my combat, which I started at the beginning of combat with each monster, and stopped when it died. I then checked to see how many experience points I gained during combat, and normalized the results to equivalents for a full hour of combat. I did approximately 20 minutes for each weapon with no potions, and another 20 minutes for each with overloads. Again, these numbers are only for actual in-combat time, so this works out to well over an hour of combat with each weapon.

Table 3 summarizes the results obtained during my tests.

I’d be lying if I said I was unsurprised by these numbers—I expected the weapons to be much closer. The infamous RuneScape random number generator being what it is, I recognize the possibility that I got very lucky with the Sara sword and unlucky with the Zammy spear, but I don’t think so. Differences of these magnitude are probably significant, even taking random chance into account.

The most obvious conclusion I draw from the raw figures in this test is that the Saradomin sword is better than the Zamorakian sword, at least for fighting waterfiends. The spear may be better for other monsters, even ones that are susceptible to crush attacks, but the Sara sword works better here.

This advantage for the Sara sword is further magnified when you take into account the weapons’ special attacks. As mentioned earlier, the Saradomin sword’s special is useful on waterfiends, while the Zammy spear’s special is not. That doesn’t matter if you’re using another weapon’s special, but if you can’t be bothered, the Sara sword is clearly better here.

Another difference that may be relevant to some players is that when on the “crush” setting, the Saradomin sword trains Strength, while the Zamorak spear trains Attack, Strength and Defence evenly. Most players would consider this an advantage for Saradomin, but it depends on your playing objectives.

Of course, the cost of each weapon is also relevant, and as of this writing the Saradomin sword costs over double what the Zamorakian spear does. Is it worth the extra money? I think so, but that decision is really up to you.

The RuneScoop Laboratory - Report #1 - “Strongly” Overrated The RuneScoop Laboratory - Report #3 - “R” is for “Random”