The Skillz – Slayer

Slayer, the long lost technique of carefully studying your opponent to find its crucial spots and then attacking those areas as to inflict maximum pain and damage. Unfortunately that’s not quite how its done in RuneScape, probably because that’d be to complicated. No need to fear though, I will tell you how Slayer is done in RuneScape but first you’ll need to learn…

The Basics of Slayer

The ABCs of Slayer is this: Assign, Kill, Learn, and Loot. Ok so that isn’t exactly A, B, C but that’s pretty much what you do. You go to a Slayer Master and get an assignment then go kill the creature you’ve been assigned thus gaining Slayer experienced and lastly you loot what the creature dropped when you banished it from our world. That’s just the basic description of AKLL, I will tell you more about each thing later.

A few basic things you must also know is that to kill certain monsters you need a certain level of Slayer, this also will be talked about more. (Most people call these Slayer Monsters, so that is what they will be called by during this article.)
Also alot of Slayer Monsters also require certain items in order for you to damage, defend from, or finish off, this will also be talked about later.
You won’t always be Slayer Monsters as your task.

Now that those are out of the way we’ll start on…

Getting an Assignment

There are 5 Slayer Masters, from these (and only these) you may ask for an assignment. Certain Slayer Masters will not give you an assignment if your combat level is too low. (After all, you wouldn’t want to fight bronze dragons at level 50, would you?) Here’s a list of the 5 Masters and what combat level you must have in order to receive an assignment from them.

Master: Combat Level Required:
Turael 3 (If your any lower you’ve been bugged)
Mazchna 20
Vannaka 40 (Yes he’s the same one from tutorial island)
Chaeldar 70
Duradel 100 (He’s also the one to go to when you reach 99 Slayer)

As you see a level 60 could not receive a slayer assignment from Chaeldar though he may easily be able to do it. This is so that you can’t be assigned something that is too hard for you to do. Another thing I should note is that you can get your assignments changed at Turael at anytime, it doesn’t matter if you’ve started it yet or not. However, Turael is the only person who can change your assignment and you can’t change your assignment if he gave it to you.

Now that we’ve covered Getting an assignment let’s discuss…

Doing an Assignment

Like I stated in the first sentence of this article you need to know your enemy. Don’t go up against a monster you’ve never fought before without doing a little research on it, this is especially important when your assignment is a slayer monster. Many people have died because they were unprepared.

Now let’s say you’re assigned 52 Cockatrices, before heading off to do that task (also if you don’t know where a creature is this is a good way to find out where it is.) let’s do some research.

Cockatrice
Required Slayer level: 25
Combat level: 37
Weakness: Mirror shield
Where found: Fremennik Slayer Dungeon

We see here that you couldn’t safely fight a Cockatrice with a rune kite shield. Why is that you ask? Its because though Cockatrices are a low combat level and can’t hit much higher then a 5 in melee combat they can hit constant 8’s when unprepared. I’m not exactly sure how this works but I think Cockatrices are a mythical creature which turned anything which looked at it into stone, that is why the mirror shield protects you. (Though you still have to look at them to hit accurately so go figure.)

Also bring appropriate armor, from looking at a Cockatrice it looks like it would attack with melee, so put on your melee gear. Also Defense plays a big roll in training Slayer effectively. The higher your defense the less often your enemy (your assignment) hits for damage, less damage means less food consumption which means you get to stay there longer.

So, review:

Research your assignment to find if it has any weakness
Look it over and get peoples’ advice about what kind of attack it uses
Higher defense means you get to work on your assignment longer

Bottom line: Don’t underestimate your assignment and don’t go unprepared.

By now I’m sure you’re wondering…

How do I get Experience?

You must do atleast half damage to the monster in order to get experience, but why only do half? You get more experience if you kill the whole thing. Aside from it being rude and annoying to other players you only get half the experience points when you only do half the damage.

You wanna know how the amount of experience you earn is calculated? Well from experience (no pun intended) I know that a Cockatrice has 37 Hitpoints and I know that they give 37 Slayer experience. According to that the experience rate is 1 XP point per Hit Point. How do we know this is correct you ask? Because by fighting other monsters we find that the ratio is the same, Hit points = Experience points received.

“What if I only get to do just over half the damage to the monster, do I get its total HP in Experience or only the HP that I took away?”

You get half of the total Experience, just so long as you did just over half the damage.

Are you satisfied with the ways of getting experience? I know its not the fastest but the rewards of high level slayer are worth it. Now let’s look at…

The Many Rewards of Slayer

Wow, we’re at the rewards already? Oh…you just wanted to know whats so good about the skill is that it?

The slayer skill itself does not reward you with anything but it allows you to work for the reward. By having a high Slayer level you can fight harder monsters, these harder monsters drop some of the best equipment like armored boots.

For you mages you can fight many monsters that drop pieces of Mystic clothing. Both white/yellow and red/black pieces drop. To get the full set though, you must have level 75 slayer.

Also by fighting certain monsters like Skeletal Wyverns or Gargoyles you can receive Granite items.

One of the most used and most sought after items (I bet you have one) is the abyssal whip. This weapon is only dropped by abyssal demons. Being one of the strongest and highest level creatures, these require level 85 Slayer.

Rangers are not left out, they can reap a very powerful yet very slow long bow. This bow, called the dark bow, is only dropped by Dark beasts. Dark beasts are probably the highest combat level Slayer monster and definitely take the highest level slayer, requiring a terrific level 90. The Dark bow is the only bow in RuneScape that can (and does) fire two arrows at a time though, like I mentioned earlier, it comes at the loss of speed. For more on the Dark bow visit Karl 67’s article Here.

Hmm, you want more? Well lets see…Most slayer monsters are a good supply of either herbs or herblore supplies, banshees, cave crawlers, and turoths being especially good in this department. Also if you want to train melee and need fire runes then Dust devils are good. Jellies and Turoths are great for getting level 3 clues.

I think that’s about it for rewards, i’m sure there are others I haven’t mentioned but I guess you’ll just have to find them!

Special Equipment

How could I forget about this stuff? I should of talked about it when I was talking about being prepared.

Like I said before many creatures require special equipment to fight, like the mirror shield for the Cockatrice. Cockatrices aren’t the only creature though, not by a long shot. For fighting banshees you must protect your hears from their screams and because of the dusty well’s dust you must wear a face mask. To keep yourself from being shocked by killerwatts you must wear insulated boots and to protect yourself from disease you must wear Slayer gloves.

There are more items that you must wear for protection but that’s not what i’m concentrating on.

To do damage to Turoths or Kurasks you must have a Leaf bladed spear, a bow with broad arrows or a Slayer staff.

There is also an arsenal for making the killing blow. (or chime) A rock hammer must be used to knock a gargoyle out of the air and Fungicide must be sprayed on injured mutated zygomites to finish them. Additionally you must ring a Slayer bell or chime crystal chimes to allow Molanisks or warped terrorbirds to be harmed.

There is alot of special equipment that you must use to kill, hurt, or protect from certain monsters.

Another thing I mustn’t forget is the black mask which is obtained as loot from Cave beasts.(I know I should’ve mentioned this in the rewards but it is also special slayer equipment, though never required.) Black masks boost the damage and accuracy of your attacks when fighting your slayer assignment. They also have 10 charges of a special attack that randomly release against any opponent. Each of these charges weakens your opponents defense by 10%. (these will not stack, if to go off right after each other, oh well.)

Post Notes

No, not post it notes, Post notes.

I think that is pretty much all of the skill. Sorry skillers but unless you want to start training combat you can’t do the skill, that is if you don’t put genie lamps into it, boy would that take a long time.

Hmm, did I forget anything? No?* Let’s do some FAQs then.

“Why am I not hitting these harpy bug swarms?”

You must have a lit harpy bug lantern equipped in the shield slot. This lantern distracts the bugs so that you can hit them.

“Why can’t I poison my leaf bladed spear? I even tried Karambwan poison.”

The blade or ‘head’ of a Leaf bladed spear is too big and is not designed to hold poison. There is no real logic in this, this is just a restriction Jagex put on Leaf bladed spears.

“A person here is half killing monsters, why?”

If he’s on a slayer assignment he might be doing it in hopes that you will kill the creatures and then you both get a kill count. This is really only jipping him of slayer experience, though it may save a bit of time. Or he could just be annoying person.

“Why did you enforce Defense so much? I don’t like defense is there any other way I can fight longer?”

The reason I enforced defense so much is because it is an over-looked skill, like many others. People do not understand that when fighting monsters your defence level really does count. Another way you could stay fighting longer is to use Guthan’s, but that requires 70 defence anyway.

“Why am I not hitting this slayer monster? My attack is very high.”

What’s your slayer level? If you don’t have the required slayer level for a monster then you can’t hit it. Like I said at the beginning, a real slayer studied his enemy to find the crucial parts, your slayer level is like your knowledge of monsters, the higher the level, the more knowledgeable you are.

I think that’s it. I pretty much followed the same style as last time except that this is more of an article then a guide, if you don’t like it or want me to try something new then please post on my topic in Informer Article Discussion.

Bored? How ’bout you go make a few slayer levels!