Kalphite Queen/Strategies
Players who wish to fight her should not take her lightly. She is very difficult to kill and can hit very high and rapidly. Recommended stats would be 80+ attack, 80+ strength,60+ defence and 75+ ranged. 37 prayer is a must, but 43 is recommended.
Take the best melee armour you can bring with the highest melee defence. The Kalphite Queen has a weakness against crush attacks, so a good crush weapon such as a Chaotic maul, Goliath gloves, or Godsword would be very useful. The Dragon battleaxe and Dragon mace are effective low cost alternatives, but you must do the Heroes' Quest to use these. Consider bringing some ranged equipment for the second form. A rune/chaotic crossbow with ruby bolts (e) and diamond bolts (e) is a very good choice. Be sure that you can switch combat styles as fast as possible. It is also useful to bring an extra weapon with a good damaging special attack to use at the beginning of the battle. The Dragon Mace special takes advantage of the Queen's low crush defence, but accuracy may be a problem compared to more powerful weapons like Dragon Claws. See here for a list of recommended weapons.
It is recommended to bring a summoning familiar with you. This can potentially be a fighting familiar (iron/steel titan) to aid you in the battle or a beast of burden (spirit terrorbird/war tortoise) to carry extra supplies. However a healing familiar such as the Unicorn stallion is touted to be more useful.
Suggested items
- 10-20 Dreadnips can be VERY useful during the fight. They hit very high with typeless damage, so they can damage both forms. They can also poison the queen for 108 damage, which will last even after she changes shape, and stun the queen, which will make standing inside the queen a temporary safespot when you need to heal. Only use dreadnips when your health is full though, because opening the interface and selecting to attack the queen can take a while, in which you won't be able to eat.
- Anti-poison potion or Super antipoison potion - Highly recommended as the guardians poison starting at 68. You also have soldiers that can poison you possibly on your way to the queen.
- Two ropes to access the lair (Only for your first time, but redundant in future trips or if you came through the third room.)
- Super/Extreme set or an Overload potion.
- Prayer potions/Super prayers/Prayer renewals/Super restores
- One click teleport for emergency reasons (such as the Ectophial or Teleportation Tablet).
- Food to heal yourself (generally the best available, such as rocktail, sharks, manta rays, or tuna potatoes. High levels can take some monkfish if they have a good team.)
- A Black mask/Slayer helmet/Full slayer helmet for extra damage (ONLY if Kalphites is the player's Slayer task.)
- Keris, for a chance to do triple damage on critical hits.
The Queen was commonly fought in teams of two. The tactic is to stand each player on opposite sides of the Queen; one in front of her and one behind her. This is done for two reasons: 1) She has to turn 180 degrees to damage either of you, so she will rapidly turn between you, and thus hitting you as little as possible, and 2) so her Ranged attack can no longer ricochet from one player to another. Her mage attack however will ricochet between each person. It is highly recommended to pray protect mage at all times.
One of the best armour sets for fighting the Kalphite Queen is considered to be a full set of Verac's armour, since the special effect of the Verac's set has a chance to ignore protection prayer and defence bonuses, and the flail has a good crush attack bonus. The set also provides good melee and ranged defence bonuses. This makes it also possible to use melee against the second form with much success. Higher levelled players have increasingly been able to solo the Queen, particually as more and more powerful items are being released.
If you have completed As a First Resort... , using the spa pool at Oo'glog before going to the hive can be very useful, as the spas boost both prayer and life points and give unlimited amount of run energy for a time. The spas also give temporary immunity to poison, but this will wear off before the player is able to kill the Queen, so anti-poison protection will still be needed besides the spa.
The battle
You might get poisoned by Kalphite soldiers or guardians while making your way through the lair. If so, just drink a dose of antipoison potion.
Once you enter the queen's room, you can prepare yourself for the battle. Such as drinking boosting potions, turn on your prayer or summoning the familiars you brought if you haven't done so already. The queen wanders around the other side of the room and cannot reach you here, but she can move around to about halfway through her chamber and attack you.
As you run to the queen she will start attacking you. Her ranged and magic attacks are the most dangerous so protect from magic is the most recommended prayer to use, since it covers the bad magic defence of your melee armour. While her magic attacks are nullified, your armour will help defend against her ranged and melee attacks. Still, even with very high ranged defence and damage soaking her projectiles will still hit high, so keep a close eye on your health when she starts to use it.
First use the special attack weapons you brought before switching to your main weapon. Keep an eye on your health and prayer points. During the battle you may be attacked by the Kalphite Guardians which wander around the room. If so, it is best to turn off your auto retaliate and ignore them. You can also take advantage of the Queen's size by moving youself so that the Guardian is on the opposite side of the queen to you, in which case the Guardian cannot attack you. If you brought a beast of burden, replenish your supplies as you use them.
After the first form is defeated, you will have a small window of time to prepare yourself for the next form, such as switching attack styles and eating/drinking supplies. You can also switch your familiar during this time. If you managed to defeat the first form, but can't take on the second one, teleport away to restock and come back once you have a new supplies of food and potions. She will remain at the other side of the room and she remains at the form you took her into before you escaped.
In her second form she starts to summon a lot of Kalphite workers. They are weak, but come in great numbers. It is now necessary to turn off auto retaliate if you haven't done so already. She also uses protect from melee in this form, so many players switch to ranged or continue to use the Verac set.
Solo method
The Kalphite Queen is very difficult to solo, and should only be attempted by players highly experienced in boss fights. To effectively solo her in one trip, near-maxed stats are essential. Bring at least super potions (overload and extreme potions highly recommended), and piety/turmoil. Verac's set is very effective here as well, providing decent bonuses and hitting through the 2nd form's prayer quite often. A special attack weapon such as Dragon claws is highly recommended, but not required.
As always when attempting dangerous battles, bring a one-click teleport. House teletabs are recommended, as you may sometimes die upon arriving at your teletab destination if you wait until you are very low on health before clicking. A typical high-levelled player might bring the following equipment:
- Verac's helm/Torva full helm/Helm of neitiznot
- Completionist cape/TokHaar-Kal/Max cape/Fire cape/Soulwars cape
- Amulet of Fury
- Verac's flail/Chaotic maul/Unarmed (with Goliath gloves and Dragon defender)/Barrelchest anchor (the anchor may seem like a strange choice, but it is very effective as it has high crush attack, a decent special attack, and is relatively easy/cheap to replace)
- Verac's brassard/Torva platebody/Bandos chestplate
- Verac's plateskirt/Torva platelegs/Bandos tassets
- Goliath gloves (may be used without a weapon) > Culinaromancer's gloves
- Steadfast boots > Dragon boots
- Berserker ring (i) > Berserker ring
- Penance aura
It is common to not even need prayer potions while this aura is activated as you will be taking enough damage to recover prayer points as you use them. This was tested with Protect from Magic and Turmoil activated at max combat while staying for 1-2 kills [Solo Method]) and an inventory with the following:
- Special attack weapon: Dragon claws > Dragon halberd > Armadyl Godsword > Dragon mace
- Super Prayer/Prayer potion/Prayer renewal
- Overload
- Teleport to House
- Antipoison++
- Rocktails, and pack your BoB with these too
- Healing aura scrolls if you brought a Unicorn stallion.
Alternatively, the fish can be replaced with Saradomin brews and Super restores, but this is much more expensive and unlikely to increase the number of kills per trip enough to cover the cost.
Even with a Chaotic maul, 99 attack, Overload and Turmoil, you will be quite inaccurate on the second form. Hence it can be worth bringing ranged attacks if you can acquire sufficiently powerful equipment. Example gear:
- Void ranged helmet
- Ava's alerter
- Amulet of fury
- Pernix body > Armadyl chestplate
- Void deflector
- Void robe bottom
- Void gloves
- Chaotic crossbow > Rune crossbow
- Glaiven boots > Ranger boots
- Archer ring (i) > Onyx ring (i) > Archer ring
- Diamond bolts (e)