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RuneScoop.com  >  The RuneScoop Ultimate Skill Guide for RuneScape       >  The RuneScoop Ultimate Skill Guide - Dungeoneering            >  The RuneScoop Ultimate Skill Guide - Dungeoneering - Bosses

Gluttonous Behemoth (Floors 1-11) Icy Bones (Floors 1-11)

Astea Frostweb is a magic-wielding boss that has a number of tricks and abilities. She is the only boss that uses rotating protection prayers to grant immunity to one combat style at all times. She also employs “mage tricks” like freezing players and moving out of melee range. Finally, she summons helpers, in the form of ice spiders, both to damage and distract players. All of this adds up to a boss that requires some thinking and preparation—as opposed to the other two bosses you can get on floor 1, which pretty much just involve brute force.

If Astea Frostweb’s last name comes from her ability to summon ice spiders during combat, her first name must have been given because she can be such a pain in the... :) She’s clearly a magic user, as evidenced by her fancy robes and ability to hit players with magical spell attacks and freeze them into ice-barrage-like ice cubes. The ice spiders she summons are just like the ones encountered elsewhere in the “Frozen” theme, except they have no drops, of course.

Astea is, interestingly, the only boss in Daemonheim that uses rotating protection prayers. Each one lasts about 20 to 30 seconds before giving her immunity to a different style.

Because of her freeze attack and rotating prayers, Astea is a boss that really demands the use of two attack styles; normally these are melee and ranged. If you only have one style, you will spend at least one third of the time standing around tanking damage; if that one style is melee, it may be closer to 50% of the time wasted, because of her freeze ability. Fortunately, Astea Frostweb has poor defence and so when you are able to attack her, you can damage her pretty quickly.

• Name: Astea Frostweb.
  
  
• Examine Text: “A summoner using a form of ancient magic.”
  
  
• Daemonheim Theme (Zone): Frozen.
  
  
• Dungeon Floors: Levels 1 to 11.
  
  
• Primary Attack Styles: Magic.
  
  
• Secondary Attack Styles: Melee.
  
  
• Special Attacks: Freeze spells; summoned ice spiders.
  
  
• Special Defences: Rotating protection prayers; movement out of melee range after freezing.
  
  
• Special Immunities: Poison.
  
  
• Weak Against: Ranged, Melee/Any.
  
  
• Neutral: None.
  
  
• Strong Against: Magic.
  
  
• Recommended Attack Method: Melee/Any and Ranged.
  
  
• Recommended Defence Method: Ranged armor; alternately, melee armor with Protection from Magic or Deflect Magic.
  
  
• Drop Category: Magic boots.

Table 90 lists all of the instances of Astea Frostweb that I’ve encountered so far, showing the combat level, life points total and maximum damage of each, along with the circumstances under which they were fought, and what they dropped.

Astea Frostweb is a mage, and spells are her first choice of attack. She will pelt players with damaging ice-like spells, the strength of which scales up as she increases in combat level. She will also occasionally melee when in melee range, but this is not her strong suit; the attacks are of moderate accuracy on ranged armor, low accuracy on metal armor, and not very strong.

She uses a pretty standard “MO” for mages: freezing opponents and then moving out of melee range. Sometimes she will only move diagonally away from the player, but this still make retaliation using a melee weapon impossible.

As mentioner earlier, she summons ice spiders to assist her in combat, which are the same as the ones you find elsewhere in the ice-themed floors. The number of spiders summoned appears to increase if you try to block Astea’s spells using Protection from Magic or Deflect Magic. The spiders hit fairly accurately, but they do not do a lot of damage. Still, they can be dangerous if a large number accumulate on you over a long period of time.

This boss has very low defence to all attack styles except magic. In fact, she seems to be easier to damage using melee attacks than even some of the level 80 to 115 forgotten mages. Like all magic-users in RuneScape, she is also weak to ranged attacks.

Her special defence is a rotating protection prayer somewhat similar to that used by tormented demons. Every 20 to 30 seconds she will choose from among melee, ranged or magic protection. I have not yet had a chance to see if these appear in any sort of predictable pattern. They do not seem to adapt based on the attack style(s) used by players opposing her.

Interestingly enough, given that she can appear on even floor 1, this is the only boss for which two attack styles are pretty much mandatory. And since she is a mage, those should be melee and ranged. Make sure you have a good longbow and a decent number of arrows, as the ammunition tends to become scattered all about the room.

There are two ways to go here defensively. The best approach is to wear ranging armor, if you either have some bound or are able to make some by hunting bovimastyx on the floor. This not only increases your ranged attack bonus, it makes it feasible to fight Astea without using protection prayers, which in turn cuts down on the number of spiders harrassing you.

If you plan to fight in melee gear, you might be able to get away with tanking her damage if you have a lot of food. Otherwise, you’ll need to protect against her magic attacks, which will mean more spiders. Fortunately, as mentioned earlier, these aren’t that dangerous, and good melee gear should provide adequate protection.

Before entering the boss room, wield your bow. Make sure you have auto-retaliate off: this prevents you from wasting time fighting the spiders (which should be ignored except for when you are unable to attack the boss). Spy on her and wait until she switches prayers to protection from magic or melee; then enter and attack her with ranged. Some players like to start out by meleeing, but in my experience she will freeze you in place the second she sees you, meaning you won’t be able to get into melee range anyway.

The rest of the fight is a matter of reacting to Astea’s tricks. In general, you should try to melee her whenever possible (since this is faster), and range otherwise. She will continuously freeze you, even when she is in melee range and meleeing you herself! You’ll need to check periodically to see when you are able to move again. When she has Protection from Melee enabled, switch to ranging, then go back to melee when she no longer has melee protection active.

The only time you won’t be able to attack her at all is when she has Protection from Ranged active and you are frozen in place. In this case, make good use of the time by healing, or picking off one of the ice spiders.

It is possible to beat her using only melee, but you’ll need a fair bit of food to do this. And again, I don’t recommend it. The time you “save” by not just making a bow and buying some arrows will be more than chewed up by the extra time twiddling your thumbs unable to attack.

Note that combat familiars are of marginal value for this boss. She moves around a lot, which often causes the familiar to become distracted by one of the spiders and attack it instead. And it isn’t worth spending a lot of time constantly directing the familiar back onto the boss.

The fight with multiple players is pretty much the same. Astea will be higher level and may summon more spiders, though there seems to be an upper limit of around 10 on how many total can be in the room.

It is especially important in teams for players not to just be all meleers; rangers are needed, and it is best if everyone switches styles. Otherwise you’ll spend long periods of time unable to damage her, while absorbing fairly heavy damage.

Astea Frostweb drops tier 1 (salve) to tier 11 (celestial) magic boots. She also leaves behind parts of the “mysterious chronicle” (Chronicles of Bilrach), like other bosses.

Gluttonous Behemoth (Floors 1-11) Icy Bones (Floors 1-11)