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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 - Strategy and Trade-off Analysis

Weapon and Armor Selection and Binding Alternatives The RuneScoop Ultimate Skill Guide - Dungeoneering - Themes (Floor Zones)

There are six types of Summoning familiars, and ten tiers (levels) of each, for a total of 60 pouch types in Daemonheim. I describe how the Summoning skill is used in the topic on Summoning obelisks, and have full familiar tables in the skill tables reference section. On this page I will share with you my experiences in using various types of familiars, and provide you with some recommendations and tips for their use.

These are arguably the most useful of the familiar types, because they let you carry more items, a very important benefit in Daemonheim. Inventory space is very limited here, and you often have to carry around a lot of tools, runes and other “junk”. At the same time, you want to try to collect extra food to use when fighting the boss. Beasts of burden make this process much easier.

A good beast of burden is handy when soloing, but really comes into its own for medium or large sized maps. Here you will be spending not 10 or 15 minutes on a floor, but possibly an hour or more, and the extra inventory space is incredibly useful. If you are playing the role of keymaster, or carrying tools for doors and challenge rooms, a beast of burden becomes almost a must.

Beasts of burden will also fight by your side. They don’t do a lot of damage, so don’t expect much, but they are a lot better than nothing. They will sometimes also finish off bosses that teleport or use other special attacks when they are down to 1 life point, like Sagittare.

The biggest problem with worldbearers is that their secondary ingredient only comes via random drop. It can take a while to get a high-tiered torn bag, so be prepared to make a lower-leveled one if you can’t find the one you want. In teams, players will sometimes “fight over” tyrannoleather or megaleather torn bags, because you are unlikely to find 5 of them on even a large floor. But even a tier 7 worldbearer holds 24 items, so don’t worry about this too much.

The scrolls made from worldbearer pouches allow you to restore run energy. This is pretty much useless in Daemonheim; I’ve never run out of energy in a dungeon. The only place it could have any use is when fighting Night-gazer Khighorahk, a boss who can drain run energy. But even there, it’s not usually worth the bother, especially since it means needing to find two identical torn bags.

Worldbearers last 60 minutes, which may not be enough for large floors. If the team is moving slowly, consider waiting until the floor is about 25% done before summoning it.

Some players use a worldbearer at the start of a floor, and then dismiss it in front of the boss door and summon a melee familiar instead.

These familiars heal damage, but they work in a rather different way than familiars like the bunyip do outside of Daemonheim. Rather than healing you a set number of points every minute or similar, they increase the healing potential of food that you consume.

I’ve never been that impressed with these, to be honest. And I don’t see them used that frequently. There are a few reasons for this.

First, they don’t really increase healing that much. Jagex described them as adding 10 points of healing per tier, so a sachem skinweaver would add +100 points of healing per food item. In reality, though, you only get +30, which simply isn’t that much. If it were really +100, a lot more people might use them.

Second, to get a high-level skinweaver you have to use up two good pieces of food; that’s the secondary for these pouches. That puts you “in the hole” food-wise from the start.

But the real reason, I think, is simply that if you summon a skinweaver, you can’t have a worldbearer. On most properly-done floors, you get more food in drops than you can possibly carry without a beast of burden, and players usually find it easier to just store this food in a worldbearer than tinker with a skinweaver.

Skinweaver scrolls directly heal you when they are used. I can see this being useful, but to be honest, I’d still rather have the beast of burden.

All of the combat familiars are quite useful when applied properly. The high-level ones are capable of considerable damage—as much as 150 LP. They speed up routine monster kills a fair bit, but are most often used in the boss room.

The heavy emphasis on the combat triangle in Daemonheim also applies to familiars, so you should choose a type that corresponds to the weaknesses of the boss you are about to fight. In addition, note that combat familiars are subject to any protections that the boss may have; for example, a deathslinger will do zero damage to Sagittare, and zero damage to Astea Frostweb when she has protection from ranged up.

One nice thing about familiars is that they are able to “cheat” when it comes to some of the more annoying defences that bosses have. For example, you may slip and slide trying to get to Plane-freezer Lakhrahnaz, but your familiar won’t; it will just appear in front of him and start fighting. Familiars also aren’t subject to being frozen, poisoned, stat-drained or any of the other nasties that players have to contend with. Bosses will rarely attack them, and I’ve never seen one killed.

Combat familiar scrolls do extra damage and have a chance of a special effect: reducing defence (melee), poisoning (ranged) or snaring (magic). I have experimented with these only briefly, and haven’t found them particularly impressive. Also, many bosses really demand your attention, and adding something else to have to click to activate regularly is often a bad idea.

All combat familiars provide a small defensive bonus in their respective combat area, which is nice, though it doesn’t make a noticeable difference.

As I mentioned above, some players use a beast of burden while exploring the dungeon, then dismiss it at the boss. They summon a combat familiar to speed up the fight, and just use Gatestone Teleport when they need to pick up more food.

This is the only familiar category that I think is pointless. They are supposed to forage skill materials corresponding to their tier, so a tier 9 hoardstalker would have a chance of foraging entgallow branches or gorgonite ore. I tried one once—it foraged absolutely nothing over the course of a small dungeon. Even if it had, the chances that it might have randomly picked up something I needed were pretty small.

Don’t bother.

Weapon and Armor Selection and Binding Alternatives The RuneScoop Ultimate Skill Guide - Dungeoneering - Themes (Floor Zones)