RuneScoop.com - Waterfiend Guide

Like killing most monsters, battling waterfiends will give you experience in the combat skills of your choice, but that’s not the reason most players fight them. In fact, they are one of the few “non-boss” monsters where it is quite common to see players meleeing despite having maxed out melee stats, even when not on a Slayer assignment. No, we fight waterfiends for their drops: both conventional items and charms.

In this section I will describe the drops you can get from waterfiends. This includes a listing of their possible drops and how likely you are to get them, and of course, a discussion of the charms they provide.

Jagex gave waterfiends a clever 100% drop: where fire-related demons like pyrefiends drop ashes, these leave behind a single water rune when you kill them. Once not very valuable, the removal of infinite shops has caused water runes to greatly increase in price, since they are used by the thousand for Ancient Magicks; a water rune is currently worth 7 gp (based on average Grand Exchange prices recorded on May 20, 2012).

Many players do not bother to pick up this single water rune, since they feel it saves enough time that they will make up the value of the rune in other drops or an additional charm or two. (This is why the waterfiend areas are usually littered with water runes; see Figure 29.) It’s important to note, however, that waterfiends also sometimes drop 91 water runes: 90 as a conventional drop plus their standard one. This is fairly common, so if you never pick up water runes, you may be leaving behind thousands of water runes over time.

One compromise is to pick up water runes whenever you see only waters and a charm with no other drop. Also, if the water runes are ever above the charm in the drop pile, that’s a good hint that it’s a 91 rune drop. (Of course, items left behind by other players can sometimes make this a bit more confusing that it would be otherwise.)

Waterfiends have a very long, eclectic drop list. They provide all of the following in various quantities: herbs; herb seeds; water, death and blood runes; combination runes; alchable armor and weapons; mithril arrows; noted Herblore and Summoning supplies; noted mithril ore; raw fish; water talismans—and the list goes on.

Table 190 contains a listing of all of the known non-guaranteed drops of waterfiends. Because they have so many types of drops, I have separated these into categories. I have also included values of most of the items, based on GE prices (valid as of May 20, 2012). Bear in mind that these should only be considered approxmations of value in certain cases (not all items can actually be sold for GE value, and you won’t keep all drops). Also, I have not separated out all of the possible herb and seed drops, so those just have a value of “Variable”. I have added comments where appropriate.

**Table 190: Regular Waterfiend Drops**
Category	Drop	Approximate Value	Frequency	Notes
Coins	Coins (~200 to ~600)	200 to 600	Common
Gems	Uncut sapphire	683	Uncommon	They also drop pairs of noted uncut sapphires.
	Uncut emerald	1,223	Uncommon
	Uncut ruby	2,962	Uncommon
	Uncut diamond	12,200	Uncommon
	Loop half of a key	14,600	Rare
	Tooth half of a key	17,900	Rare
	Uncut sapphire (2, noted)	1,366	Common
Runes	Water runes (90)	630	Common
	Death runes (9 to 20)	3,672 to 8,160	Common
	Blood runes (4 to 12)	1,408 to 4,224	Common
	Mist runes (3 to 10)	819 to 2,730	Common
	Mud runes (3 to 10)	1,194 to 3,980	Common
	Steam runes (3 to 10)	105 to 350	Common
Talismans	Water talisman	6,790	Common
Herbs	Grimy herbs (2)	(Variable)	Common	These are randomly taken from the standard list of 11 grimy herbs.
Seeds	Herb seed	(Variable)	Uncommon	Waterfiends can drop any type of herb seeds, not just the higher-level ones. This means usually low-valued seeds, but once in a while you’ll get a nice surprise.
	Watermelon seeds (1 to 4)	1,559 to 6,236	Uncommon
	Strawberry seed	152	Uncommon
	Limpwurt seed	155	Uncommon
	Jangerberry seed	1	Uncommon
	Whiteberry seed	12	Uncommon
	Jangerberry seed	756	Uncommon
	Wildblood seed	11	Rare
	Mushroom spore	7	Rare
Ores	Mithril ore (1 to 5, noted)	459 to 2,295	Common	Look for these on the ground, too—players often leave them behind.
Bars	Mithril bars (1 to 2)	1,536 to 3,072	Uncommon	Unlike the ores, these are not noted.
Food	Shark	573	Common
	Raw lobster (4 to 12)	684 to 2,052	Common	These are unnoted; you can “eat them” using a bunyip’s special move, feed them to the bunyip to change them to water runes, or keep them if you have inventory space or a beast of burden. Otherwise they often go to waste.
	Raw shark (3 to 6)	1,656 to 3,312	Uncommon	These are unnoted; you can “eat them” using a bunyip’s special move, feed them to the bunyip to change them to water runes, or keep them if you have inventory space or a beast of burden. Otherwise they often go to waste.
Weapons	Staff of water	787	Uncommon	Should be alched.
	Water battlestaff	9,045	Uncommon	Should be alched.
	Mithril warhammer	1,117	Uncommon	Should be alched.
Armor	Mithril full helm	720	Uncommon	Should be alched.
	Adamant chainbody	2,754	Uncommon	Should be alched.
	Rune medium helm	11,300	Uncommon	Should be alched.
	Blue dragonhide vambraces	1,693	Uncommon	Should be alched.
Ammunition	Mithril arrows (90)	2,160	Common	Put in quiver to save inventory space.
Ammunition	Sapphire bolts (15)	1,755	Uncommon	Put in quiver to save inventory space.
Miscellaneous	Water orbs (5 to 12, noted)	8,550 to 20,520	Uncommon
	Seaweed (10 to 28, noted)	4,320 to 12,096	Uncommon
	Snape grass (20, noted)	5,460	Rare
	Vial of water (5 to 10, noted)	110 to 220	Uncommon
	Fishbowl	507	Rare
	Oyster	35	Uncommon

You can see from the frequency ratings that waterfiends are pretty “steady as she goes” when it comes to drops. There aren’t any “very common” or “very rare” drops here—you get a wide selection. There also aren’t any very rare drops, except for very high level herb seeds.

As useful as some of the waterfiends’ regular drops are, Summoning charms are their “main attraction”—they are the reason this guide was written. And as you probably already know, waterfiends are superb charm droppers.

Waterfiends drop a single charm at a time, and they provide one on 95% of drops. The distribution of these charms is heavily tilted towards crimson charms, with typically 80% to 85% of charms being of the crimson variety. The majority of the remainder will be gold charms, with only about 5% green charms and maybe 1-2% blue.

Waterfiends drop level three sclue scrolls, which can be followed to get the highest possible treasure trail rewards (if you are lucky, of course). As with most other monsters, a clue scroll drop appears in addition to any other standard drops. Their frequency seems to be about typical for a monster of this level.

Note that as always, you cannot get a clue scroll drop if you already have a scroll in your bank or on your character.

Because waterfiends have so many drops, including many unnoted drops, most players will not take home everything. How much you are able to keep depends on several factors, including what familiar you are using, and especially, how much you are focusing on maximizing your charm rate. Keeping waterfiend drops can be lucrative, but it does require time for inventory management, trips to the bank, alching items and so forth. This in turn slightly reduces your charm yield; whether it is worthwhile depends on you.

Most players that I know will tend to focus on keeping the high-valued noted and stackable items, and leave unnoted items behind unless they are particularly valuable (grimy ranarrs, etc.) Alching items like rune med helms and adamant chainbodies is usually worth your time as well. As we’ll see later on, proper use of a beast of burden can also help you save more drops while wasting as little time as possible.

The waterfiends entry in the Beastopedia contains specific drop logs that you may find useful, to see what you can expect after a typical trip. I have also included a quick picture of my proceeds from a short 30-minute trip in Figure 30.

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