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RuneScoop.com  >  RuneScoop Monster Secrets       >  RuneScoop Monster Secrets - Waterfiend Guide

Waterfiend Guide - Introduction, Prerequisites and Recommendations Waterfiend Guide - Drops and Charms

Since our goal is to kill waterfiends as quickly as we can, for as little cost as possible, understanding exactly how they work is an important first step. These aren’t boss monsters by any means, and aren’t going to complicate our lives with lengthy lists of special attacks and odd behavior. However, they do have a few tricks up their sleeves that it is useful to know about.

As their name implies, waterfiends are small demons/devils made of water. They were introduced to the game along with the Ancient Cavern as part of Barbarian Training, and are found in two locations in that dark, dank cave. Waterfiends were later added to a room in the Chaos Tunnels as well; since that entire dungeon is multicombat, and waterfiends are aggressive, that area represents a very different challenge (and opportunity). You can see a detailed picture of some waterfiends in Figure 28.

In addition to these “regular” waterfiends, there is also an “alternative” version found in the fortress of Ghorrock, accessed via the Ice Plateau deep in the Wilderness; they were added to the game as part of the quest The Temple at Senntisten. These waterfiends are very similar to the ones in the Ancient Cavern and Chaos Tunnels, but their drops are different—in particular, they drop two charms at a time, but at a much lower rate. They are therefore uninteresting for our purposes, and they are not the subject of this guide; I won’t make further mention of them.

Here is a summary of the most important stats about waterfiends:

• Name: Waterfiend.
  
  
• Level: 115.
  
  
• Life Points: 128.
  
  
• Number of spawns: ~20 (Ancient Cavern); ~12 (Chaos Tunnels).
  
  
• Respawn speed: Fast (about 15 seconds or so on a full world).
  
  
• Aggressive: Yes.
  
  
• Attacks: Magic; Ranged (Magic-based).
  
  
• Maximum Attack Damage: Magic: 110 / Ranged: 110.
  
  
• Immunities: Poison.
  
  
• Special or Unique Drops: High crimson charm drop rate.

Waterfiends have magic and ranged attacks that look quite similar to the comparable attacks from the mithril dragons and brutal green dragons that inhabit the same cavern. The magic attack looks like a small blue ball of flame, while the ranged attack resembles a pale blue arrow or crossbow bolt. Waterfiends use their magic and ranged attacks randomly on all players, regardless of what attack methods they are using. Both attacks hit for up to 110 damage, and both are quite accurate even when fighting with high defence.

The ranged attacks of waterfiends are somewhat unique, in that they appear to actually be magic-based. This means that while they are technically ranged attacks—and so would be blocked by the Protection from Ranged prayer or Deflect Ranged curse—the damage energy comes in a magic form, and is best resisted using magic defence armor. This is similar in concept to the more common magic-based melee attacks often seen in Slayer monsters such as bloodvelds, banshees and so forth.

This odd ranged attack is the reason why some players find waterfiends very difficult to understand, especially at first. One conventional way of dealing with magic and ranged attacks is to bump up Ranged defence and then use Protection from Magic, but this doesn’t work here because of the magic-based ranged attack. A common “rookie mistake” at waterfiends is trying to use high defence Barrows melee gear with Protection from Magic—no matter how high your ranged defence, the ranged attacks hit constantly. This is also why using Guthans to heal on waterfiends is not effective, and why Dharoking is extremely dangerous.

Waterfiends are aggressive to all players (because of their high level), and this lasts for about 10 minutes. The only exception to this is when arriving to the cavern using the new fairy ring; you remain immune from attack as long as you do not step out of the ring. Otherwise, they will attack on sight, and can do so from a considerable distance. This can sometimes be annoying during their aggressive period, because if you start an attack on one just as another is attacking you, the game will force you to switch targets.

Waterfiends are one place where Jagex has nicely tailored a monster’s statistics to match its physical characteristics. They are magical water creatures, and so take little damage from the attacks you’d expect to do little to them. Slashing and stabbing melee attacks, in particular, will frequently hit zeroes (presumably because they would tend to “go right through” their watery bodies, but that’s just a guess). The only types of melee attacks that hit well on waterfiends are crushing attacks, so a crush weapon is mandatory for fighting them.

Similarly, as magical creatures, waterfiends have fairly high magic defence. They are not at all well-suited to maging—in my tests, even using high-end gear and the level 95 Fire Surge spell, I got “splashes” nearly as much here as I did fighting mithril dragons! And of course, since they range and mage themselves, you can’t “safe spot” them like you could a melee monster.

The one place where the “internal consistency” of waterfiends might seem a bit off is when it comes to ranged attacks. Even though a ranged attack is physically more like a slash or a stab than a crush, waterfiends do seem to be fairly susceptible to being ranged.

Like all creatures in the Ancient Cavern, waterfiends are immune to poison. This means both conventional poison (such as that used on arrows) and magical poison (enchanted emerald bolts) do not work. One thing I have not tried is using smoke spells from Ancient Magicks, but again, waterfiends are not worth maging, so it doesn’t really matter.

Waterfiend Guide - Introduction, Prerequisites and Recommendations Waterfiend Guide - Drops and Charms