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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 - Core Concepts

Segregation of Items and Binding Equipment How Other Skills are Used Within Dungeoneering

The floors of Daemonheim are fillled with monsters of all sorts and levels, from level 1 pests to level 500+ bosses. A big part of raiding a dungeon is finding and killing all of the monsters in it. In fact, you’ll likely spend more time in combat within Daemonheim than doing anything else.

Combat in Dungeoneering works in a mostly similar way to how it does in the rest of RuneScape. As when you are above ground, within the dungeons you will choose from among melee, ranged and magic attack forms. Warriors still put on metal armor and hit things with metal weapons; rangers rely on bows and arrows with leather armor, and magicians use elemental and other spells to dish out damage to their foes.

However, the details of how combat is implemented within Daemonheim mean some important differences in how fighting actually works. Most of these are due to Jagex’s decision to make some very welcome changes to combat mechanics to better balance the combat triangle, fix broken weapon designs (like longbows) and give more reasons for players to consider alternatives and options in combat.

The limited availability of resources also has a big impact. You have to be more careful about how you use food and prayer points in the dungeons, because there are only so many of each available before they run out.

The combat triangle in RuneScape is meant to represent the trade-offs among melee, ranged and magic combat. In a vein similar to “rock, paper, scissors”, each is supposed to be weak to one and strong to another. Specifically, magic is supposed to dominate melee but be weak to ranged; ranged is intended to be weak to melee but to overpower ranged; and melee is supposed to lose out to magic but be strong against ranged.

Unfortunately, in regular combat in RuneScape, the triangle doesn’t really work all that well. Most players melee, and most of them basically ignore the triangle, simply using brute force on every opponent. It’s very common, for example, to see players fighting humanoid monsters wearing heavy armor and just hitting them quite nicely with melee weapons.

Well, things are different in Daemonheim. The combat triangle really does matter down there, and using the wrong attack style can mean fights that really drag out. A classic example: most players who are used to meleeing everything are surprised the first time they run into a high-level forgotten warrior, and notice that they can literally sit there for two or three minutes trying to melee it, hitting almost nothing but zeroes while their prayer points dwindle.

Jagex even put two different challenge rooms in Daemonheim that reinforce the importance of the combat triangle in the dungeons.

Now, the balancing of the combat triangle isn’t perfect by any means. In particular, I believe ranged is underpowered compared to the other two methods of combat, largely because the ranged strength of even top-tier arrows is too low. But it’s a lot better than it is above ground.

In addition to making the selection of melee, ranged or magic a lot more important in Dungeoneering, Jagex also made choosing from stab, slash and crush melee attack styles matter much more than it does in the rest of the game. You may be able to get away with simply flicking almost any monster with an abyssal whip above ground, but that will not work here. There are monsters that literally take two or three times longer to kill if you don’t pay attention to attack style.

In keeping with the renewed emphasis on choosing an attack type and melee attack style, most monsters have specific strengths and weaknesses that you have to figure out to fight them efficiently. These won’t be evident when fighting low-level versions of monsters: you can overpower a level 20 version of nearly any monster using any attack style because its defence is so low. But when you get to dealing with the tougher opponents, this matters a great deal.

Again, here, players are often surprised at how much of a difference attack style can make. I already mentioned the folly of trying to melee a high-level forgotten warrior, but it’s also worth pointing out that if you do try it, you better have a crush weapon! Most other monsters also have strengths and flaws, and some of them are not as easy to figure out. For example, hydras happen to be weak to slash attacks; they take longer to kill using stab or crush. Giant bats are weak to ranged attacks and can take a yawn-inducing amount of time to kill with any melee style. And so on.

While the materials used to make armor and weapons in Daemonheim are foreign, the basic designs of the equipment are the same. You’ll still find swords and spears, platebody armor, gauntlets and so forth. But when you look more closely, you’ll see subtle but meaningful differences.

Since choosing the right attack style to match a monster’s weakness is important, melee weapons that provide a variety of attack modes are more highly valued than ones that are only strong in one area. In particular, spears are the most popular weapons because they have balanced attack bonuses for stab, slash and crush.

Melee armor has also changed so that there are bigger differences between similar items, and more trade-offs are involved. For example, if we contrast a rune chainbody and a rune platebody, we see that the platebody provides 19 points more stab resistance, 8 points more slash resistance, but 6 points less crush resistance. But if I compare fractite (level 40) armor in Daemonheim, the platebody provides 50 points more stab resistance, and 24 points more slash resistance, but a whopping 57 points less crush resistance. So choosing between these two really matters.

Another interesting change is that platelegs and plateskirts aren’t just “male” and “female” versions of the same item. Platelegs provide much more stab and slash resistance; plateskirts are much better against crush. (IMO, plateskirts should really be called chainskirts to better reflect this).

I have a full listing of melee gear and stats in the combat equipment section.

Rangers will still use bows, arrows and leather armor as always. There aren’t as many changes here, but there are a couple of notable ones.

First, longbows are actually worth using in Daemonheim, because Jagex made the ranged attack bonuses for longbows much higher than they are for the equivalent material shortbows. For example, a corpsethorn (tier 8) longbow has a ranged attack bonus of +108; the corpsethorn shortbow is only a paltry +43. This better balances the power of the longbow against the speed of the shortbow. (In fact, it may tilt things too far towards the longbow, which is what most players use.)

Arrows can be made from a variety of metal arrowheads, and one difference here is that you appear to be able to use any tier of arrow with any bow. As mentioned before, they are still too weak, limiting the maximum damage attainable by rangers, though accuracy is very good.

There are five pieces of leather armor—body, chaps, vambraces, coif and boots—available at each tier. These provide ranged attack boosts and moderate balanced defence as always. One difference here, though is that ranged armor imposes melee attack penalties (much the way the Armadyl set does). Thus, meleers who want to fight in leather armor have a drawback to consider.

Ranged equipment stats can be found in the combat equipment section.

Magic weapons are staves, and they are much changed in Daemonheim, in that there are many more choices and options. These include elemental staves, staves that boost damage, and some that do both, all of which can be made by players.

Magic robes function in pretty much the same way that they do above ground, except there are more varieties, and they can also be made by players.

A full list of magic equipment can also be found in the combat equipment area of the guide.

The spellbook in Daemonheim is comprised mainly of combat spells from the normal spellbook, to which are added a few utility spells from both the normal and Lunar Magicks spellbooks. There is a Dungeon Home Teleport spell which is the equivalent of the Home Teleport spell outside the dungeons, except its use is unlimited. The only truly novel spells are Create Gatestone and Gatestone Teleport, which are used together to permit teleportation within a dungeon.

The full Dungeoneering spellbook is also described in the combat reference section.

Segregation of Items and Binding Equipment How Other Skills are Used Within Dungeoneering