Please Whitelist This Site? I know everyone hates ads. But please understand that I am providing premium content for free that takes hundreds of hours of time to research and write. If I can't make at least a little bit of money to support my family via this site, I'll have to stop working on it. One alternative is to become a RuneScoop member. It's cheap, you get access to all of the site with no ads, and you help keep the lights on around here. If you want to use this site for free, I'd be grateful if you could add RuneScoop to the whitelist for Adblock. To do so, just open the Adblock menu and select "Disable on Runescoop.com". Or go to the Tools menu and select "Adblock Plus Preferences...". Then click "Add Filter..." at the bottom, and add this string: "@@http://*runescoop.com/*". Then just click OK. Thanks for your understanding! Sincerely... Qeltar, aka Charles, your hard-working host and RuneScape guide-writer extraordinaire. :)

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

Whole-Dungeon Training Strategies Choosing and Using Summoning Familiars

It’s been known for many years that Jagex wished that the combat triangle mattered more in RuneScape; this can be seen in the behavior of some of the newer monsters and quest bosses. But I think the company was afraid that making wholesale changes to how combat worked would alienate many players.

When Dungeoneering was introduced, with Daemonheim as a completely separate “mini RuneScape” within RuneScape as a whole, it was the perfect opportunity for Jagex to reinvent combat. And so they did: combat style and even melee attack style matter much more here than they do on the outside. This is not a place where you can expect to just use the same weapon or armor with equal effectiveness on all opponents.

The renewed emphasis on the combat triangle and “smarter combat” means players have to make decisions about what weapons and armor they will use. They also have some tough choices when it comes to binding items, because the number of bound items is so small: just one at the start and two at level 50, which is as high as most RS players will reach for many months or even years.

Most players use their first bind slot for a weapon, because starting each floor with a powerful weapon is widely considered the priority for efficiently clearing a floor. And most players bind melee weapons, for two reasons. First, even though the combat triangle is better balanced in Dungeoneering, melee is still the fastest way to kill most monsters. And second, it is generally easier to make a bow or a staff than it is a good quality melee weapon.

Assuming you do want a melee weapon, the next decision is what type. Obviously you will want the weapon made from the highest tier metal you can wield, but which kind? There are eight types of weapons (daggers, warhammers, rapiers, longswords, battleaxes, spears, mauls and two-handed swords) to choose from. And that doesn’t even include hatchets and pickaxes. :)That’s not to say that all players bind melee weapons; I have heard of players binding bows or high-level magic staves. But these are rare cases. Binding a bow or staff is best done by players who consistently play with teams of friends, where they know they can play a supporting role to complement the meleeing that is done by most other players. Trying to solo as a mage or a ranger is much slower than meleeing, and if you take this approach with random teammates, they may get annoyed that you are going slower than they are.

There are two basic schools of thought here. One is to go for flexibility, by choosing a weapon that provides a balance of high attack stats for all three melee styles (stab, slash and crush). If that’s the approach, then the spear is the clear winner. It’s a fairly fast weapon, and has very high stab and crash attack bonuses, and moderately high slash bonuses as well. Spears are the only weapon that have the ability to attack with all three styles. And as an added bonus, they can be poisoned—and this does help quite a bit, on both regular monsters and bosses.

(A lot of people think Jagex deliberately made spears an easy choice in Daemonheim to make up for how underpowered they are in most of the rest of the game.)

The second approach when it comes to weapons is to go for power. The idea here is to give up the ability to fight with all three styles, but get such high attack and strength bonuses in one or two styles that they are affective even on opponents strong against the third. Some of the options chosen here are mauls, battleaxes and two-handed swords.

I personally use a super-poisoned promethium spear; this is also the current weapon of choice of most high-leveled players. I once was on a team that got a primal maul as a drop from a boss; nobody wanted it, so I gave it a try to see how it fared next to the spear. There was no comparison: the maul was slow, and even with its massive crush and strength bonuses, it did far less damage overall than the spear.

When players hit level 50, they usually use their second binding slot on a piece of armor. The reasoning behind this is obvious: you save a tremendous amount of time and food by starting out each floor with a good piece of armor, rather than fighting without, having to use what randomly spawns on the starting tables, or needing to find ore rocks, mine them, smelt bars and so on.

Again here, there are a lot of choices, but nearly everyone binds the same thing: the highest-tier metal platebody they can wear. The promethium platebody is the choice of nearly all high-level players, due to its stats: it gives bonuses of over +200 to stab, slash and ranged attacks, and over +100 to crush attacks. (Be aware, though, that ranging monsters in Daemonheim seem to be able to hit pretty consistently even when you have a high ranged defence bonus.)

But there’s another good option here that I’ve experimented with on occasion: binding a leather (ranged) armor body instead. At my level, this means the tyrannoleather body (tier 10). Compared to the promethium plate, it offers much less in the way of bonuses against melee and ranged: these bonuses are only from +68 to +91. But it offers a massive +83 bonus against magic attacks (where the metal plate is -6).

The leather body is an argument again in favor of flexibility. It is not great against anything, but it also has no glaring weaknesses against anything. Wearing a leather body means you are in pretty much the opposite position from most players. Whereas they are in good shape against a room full of hobgoblins and forgotten warriors, mages and mysterious shades give them fits. In a leather body, mages and shades splash much more, but meleers and rangers hit harder.

Advocates of platebodies say that the metal armor protects against two styles and they can pray against the third (magic), whereas ranged armor isn’t good against anything. This is true to a point: in a leather body, you are in danger in a room full of high-level meleeing and ranging monsters. But again, don’t overestimate how much help metal armor is in deflecting monster attacks. When I wear a promethium plate, I still routinely get ripped to shreds by forgotten warriors, hobgoblins, skeletons and forgotten rangers. (I think Jagex tipped the balance of power in favor of the monsters a bit!) So I am not sure how much value you are really getting with a metal body in exchange for being very weak against magic.

Another issue is bosses. A further argument in favor of the leather body is that there are many more bosses where leather armor is preferred than where metal armor is preferred. This is usually countered by players who say they can just make ranged armor for bosses where it makes sense. And that’s true... though in practice, very few actually do it. :)

Finally, there’s one big argument against the leather body: in Daemonheim, ranged armor imposes melee attack penalties. And since most players melee, they don’t want to deal with that.

I freely admit that most players prefer metal armor, but the leather body is certainly worth considering. I have switched back and forth between them and am not entirely sure which I like better. The metal body does seem to be better for large team floors, while I suspect the leather body is preferable for soloing.

In addition to the equipment binding slots, you are allowed to bind up to 125 of a single type of arrow or rune. Making runes is pretty easy—you can buy rune essence from the smuggler for 50 gp each, and make any type of rune on the runecrafting altar right in the starting room. But fletching good quality arrows takes much more time and materials. For this reason, most players bind the highest-level arrows they can, preferably after treating them with poison. (Note that you must poison arrows before binding them, which is not the case with melee weapons).

I actually have 125 blood runes bound, though, for two reasons. First, I mostly melee and mage in Daemonheim; I find that this covers me with nearly any monsters, and since ranging is so weak in Daemonheim, I try to avoid it. Second, I’m a noob and don’t have the Runecrafting level to make bloods yet. :)

Deciding what weapon, armor and ammo you want bound is not always easy, but actually getting the items can be even harder. For example, most high-level meleers want a promethium platebody, but few have the level 99 Smithing required to make one, and getting one as a drop is very rare (if it is possible at all).

First, if you have nothing bound at all for whatever reason—it’s possible to alch or sell bound equipment, so watch out!—you can always do a quickie dungeon on complexity 1. This will start you out with a selection of armor and weapons in your backpack, and you can choose to bind from among those options. It won’t be the best gear, but it’ll get you started.

Second, you can sometimes get good items as drops; I’ve seen promethium spears dropped before, for example. Getting the best items this way can take a lot of time, though.

Third, remember that you can boost your Smithing level using weak, regular or strong artisan’s potions. Since the smuggler now sells herb seeds, this is no longer a matter of luck, and it means you really only need level 88 to make that promy plate. (Of course, you also need Farming and Herblore levels to make the potion!)

Finally, you can always try to get a friend or acquaintance to help you out. Most players are happy to start a small dungeon with a friend, help them get the materials needed to make a weapon or armor item, and then give it to them to bind. I’ve had friends do it for me, and I’ve done it for at least one complete stranger who really wanted a gorgonite longsword that I had the Smithing level for.

Whole-Dungeon Training Strategies Choosing and Using Summoning Familiars