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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 - Understanding Floors, Rooms, Doors and Related Features

The Smuggler Skill Resources and Stations

Just like other dungeons in RuneScape, the dungeons of Daemonheim are populated by a large number of monsters. These include old familiar foes, such as the pyrefiend, earth warrior and hobgoblin; and new monsters specific to Dungeoneering, like the mysterious shade, the forgotten mage and the spiritual guardian.

Fighting monsters will normally take a big percentage of the time you spend in the dungeons. Killing them is sometimes mandatory—such as the case of rooms with guardian doors—but sometimes optional. One of the big trade-offs that players have to contend with in deciding on a strategy for doing a floor is whether to kill more monsters to get a higher XP multiplier, or skip killing as many of them as possible to finish levels faster. Monster killing is also important because it is a key source of resources via drops.

I have a separate section where I describe each of the monsters in Daemonheim in detail, providing general descriptions, combat stats and recommendations for offensive and defensive styles and modes. The rest of this page will provide an overview and general information on Dungeoneering monsters.

There is a wide variety of monsters in the dungeons; I have so far encountered and documented over 40 unique types. Within many of these are variants based on level (see below) and some have even more variations based on the equipment they use.

Some Daemonheim monsters have been “imported” from the rest of RuneScape, and left pretty much as they were in their original state. You’ll find bats, giant rats and animated pickaxes here, as well as Slayer monsters like crawling hands and jellies.

Other Dungeoneering monsters share the names of monsters on the outside, but have been adjusted in subtle or not-so-subtle ways. For example, the green dragons in Daemonheim use a different graphical model, and have a magic attack that makes them in some ways more like brutal green dragons than regular ones. There’s even a Summoning familiar that has been turned into an aggressive monster (the hydra).

Finally, there are unique monsters found only here. Most notable among these are the forgotten mages, rangers and warriors, which are very common and exist in dozens of variations. There are also several new Slayer monsters, which drop unique Dungeoneering items that can be obtained in no other way.

In my discussion of Dungeoneering combat, I mentioned how Jagex has made the combat triangle much more important in Daemonheim than it is pretty much anywhere else. This is strongly reflected in the designs of monsters found in the dungeons here. Lower-level monsters have little defence and can be killed using pretty much anything, but higher-level ones require more thought. Nearly every monster has particular strengths and weaknesses, and part of being able to do a dungeon floor quickly is being sure you use combat styles that will cut your opponents down as efficiently as possible.

This means the days of rampaging throughout a dungeon with just a slashing weapon are over. You will find some monsters that are weak to slash, but others have far more slash defence than crush defence, for example. There are monsters that are very strong against magic attacks, and not always the ones you’d expect (forgotten rangers, sure, that makes sense—but giant bats?!)

I do provide some help in this regard in my monster listings.

Monsters are one area where the dynamic floor generator heavily adjusts a level to suit the number of participants and their combat abilities. When you do a Frozen theme floor playing solo as a combat level 87 player, you’ll see the same ice monsters as a team of 138s doing a 5:5 large, but the quantities and levels of these monsters will be vastly different.

When playing solo, it is typical to find one to three monsters in a room; I haven’t seen more than that. In groups it appears to be possible to get five monsters in a single room, and possibly even more.

The combat levels of the monsters are also roughly tailored to the combat stats of your party, but with a lot of randomness thrown in. As a nearly-maxed player, for example, I most often get monsters in the combat level range of 50 to 125, but it is not uncommon to also be attacked by monsters as low as level 1. The random number generator mixes things up nicely in this regard. :) But when I play in a team I’ll often run into regular monsters with combat levels of over 200, whereas I never see these when I solo.

There are different versions of most monsters, and it’s typical to encounter many of them as you go through several dungeon floors. They can even appear together; I’ve frequently encountered level 2 and level 50 mysterious shades in the same room.

There are some monsters that exist not just in a number of different combat levels, but in specific tiers that correspond nicely to the tiers used for equipment. Forgotten rangers are a good example of this; higher level rangers use higher-tiered bows, armor and arrows, and have a chance of dropping those items as well; lower-level rangers use lesser gear and will only drop those lower tier items.

Forgotten mages and warriors take this a step further, especially warriors: there are many different warriors within a tier, each using a different weapon type made from the same metal, and thus having a different maximum hit. Again here, you can only get the particular weapon being used by the warrior; if it’s stabbing with a spear, it won’t drop a battleaxe. This is a nice improvement to the realism of monster combat. (Note that daggers seem to be the exception, as you can get them from many kinds of monsters.)

Monster drops are completely different in Daemonheim; even if a monster exists outside the dungeons as well, it will drop different items here.

Some monsters have a 100% drop, such as bones, big bones or ashes, and some have special drops related to the monster type. For example, forgotten mages drop maging robes and so forth, as discussed above, and many Slayer monsters provide special equipment. But nearly all monsters also have what I refer to as “standard drops”, which can be a collection of one to over a dozen items, often food and other resources required to work skills and finish the floor.

Drops are a major resource and thus covered fully in the resources section.

Jagex has smartened up monsters considerably in Daemonheim. In particular, gone are the days of monsters mindlessly making a bee-line towards you, getting stuck on a wall or other obstacle, and then standing there like morons while you rip them to shreds with arrows or spells.

In Dungeoneering, there are essentially no safe spots; or rather, there are safe spots, but they only last for a few seconds. If a monster gets stuck and can’t reach you, then you can damage for a while, but eventually it will move away from the spot it was stuck and start wandering around. This often allows the monster to move into a new spot where it can get to you, meaning that your safe spot is, well, no longer safe.

The same thing happens when a monster sees you but can’t get to you because of a wall. It will stand near the wall for a few seconds, then get bored and resume wandering. This gives it a good chance of happening by a doorway and then getting a clear path to attack.

Note also that nearly all monsters in Daemonheim are aggressive. The only exceptions I know of for certain are bovimastyxes, which are really “resources on the hoof” and not conventional monsters anyway.

The Smuggler Skill Resources and Stations