Waterfiend/Strategies
This article contains information for players seeking to kill Waterfiends, including the recommended equipment, inventory and strategies.
Waterfiends' ranged attacks are more powerful than their magic attack. Therefore, to take the least damage from them, a player should use Protect from Missiles along with armour with high magic defence (such as dragonhide or Karil's). If a player has 95+ defence and magic levels they may be able to tank rather than pray, but they will still be hit fairly often, so a good healing method (options discussed below) is necessary.
A melee crush weapon is ideal, but other methods are also possibilities.
Weaponry and strategies
Melee strategies
It is fastest to kill waterfiends with crushing weapons, as their crush defence is lower than other styles. Popular crush weapons include the following:
- Chaotic maul
- Unarmed with Goliath Gloves and dragon defender
- Zamorakian Spear
- Saradomin sword
- Any Godsword
With the exception of the Chaotic maul and the Goliath Gloves, the weapons listed are very expensive for many players. If you do not wish to borrow a Zamorakian Spear/Saradomin sword then the following weapons should be useful for players who are on a budget:
- Verac's flail (recommended, due to prayer bonus)
- Torag's hammers
- Guthan's warspear (not recommended due to controlled attack styles)
Of these weapons, the Goliath Gloves has the highest damage rate. The Chaotic Maul has the second highest. One-handed weapons and the Goliaths should be used in tandem with a Dragon defender for added strength and crush bonus, or a Spectral Spirit Shield for magic defence. If goliaths and the maul are not available, a Saradomin Sword or Zamorakian Spear can be used. The sword is stronger but the spear has a higher crush bonus and therefore the Zamorakian Spear hits more accurately but hits less damage per hit. Godswords have useful special attacks, but otherwise are slower and thus have a lower damage rate than the sword and spear. Ranged and Mage strategies are discussed in the next section.
For players with sufficient accuracy (commonly requires 90+ attack, extremes/overloads, and piety/turmoil) the chaotic rapier and the chaotic longsword deal more damage per second than the Zamorakian spear and the Saradomin sword.
The use of Turmoil to improve defence and damage rate is highly recommended; players who do not have the requirements may instead use Piety or Chivalry prayers, or one of the lower-level strength and attack boosting/leeching prayers. Soul Split may also be very useful to heal. A handful of Prayer Potions and Prayer Renewals should be taken if a player decides to use any of these prayers.
Players who want to bring a special attack should consider any of the following weapons:
- Enhanced excalibur for healing and a defence boost. (This may also be used while ranging or maging.)
- Saradomin, Bandos or Armadyl Godswords to heal the player, reduce the waterfiend's defence or inflict extra damage respectively.
- Dragon Claws for extra damage, although there is no crush style.
- Dragon Mace for extra crush damage.
Alternate strategies
Ranging waterfiends is a cheaper strategy that involves finding a spot where you are around 4 spaces away from a waterfiend. Their attack range is 4 squares from their target. As long as you keep 4 squares between you and a waterfiend they cannot hit you. The easiest spot to use is across the pond to the north, used to kill the waterfiend that spawns by the river. Another location is west of that spot on the other side of the river. After the waterfiends stop being aggressive (around 10-14 kills), you can just range them at will. It is recommended however, to bring a melee weapon as well as a few prayer pots/food for the beginning while they are aggressive or in case you miss safe-spotting one.
At high Magic level (90+), maging waterfiends with a Polypore Staff becomes a feasible method. While waterfiends have a strong defence against Magic attacks, the staff's high hits (easily 500+ with boosts) somewhat make up for the decreased accuracy. Use of Leech Magic (with 78 Prayer) can help increase accuracy, as well as decreasing the accuracy and power of their Magic attacks. Use of Arcane Stream Necklace is highly recommended. It is advised to wear Magic robes and use Deflect Missiles to block most of the damage from waterfiends' attacks. Players who have completed Ritual of the Mahjarrat will find Akrisae the Doomed's robes uniquely suited to the task, granting decent Magic attack and defence bonuses as well as a hefty Prayer bonus.
Dreadnips, a combat familiar or a Dwarf multicannon may be used too, depending on the location.
Alternate location strategies
The most popular spot to kill waterfiends is the Ancient Cavern, as it is easily accessible. However, for those using combat familiars or a cannon, there are two viable alternative locations: the Chaos Tunnels and the Ghorrock Fortress.
Players who have the summoning level to use an Iron titan or Steel titan can kill waterfiends much more quickly in the Chaos Tunnels than in the Ancient Cavern, with consistent usage of the titan's scroll loaded into an enchanted helm. Using Soul Split, high level players can stay for a very long time (enough to make full usage of a Familiarisation triple-charm period). For those without the required stats and equipment (ideally 95+ summoning, prayer and defence plus extreme potions) this area should NOT be used, due to the large amount of waterfiends attacking the player at all times and thus dealing rapid damage, and the inconvenience of restocking.
In Ghorrock fortress, there are a number of waterfiends. After completing The Temple at Senntisten, they become level 115 (the same as at the other locations), but their drops are different from the norm; the waterfiends at Ghorrock have a lower charm drop rate, but drop two charms at a time. A cannon can be used there, which is useful for efficient Slayer experience. Note that if you are using a cannon, your accuracy is based on the accuracy of your melee/ranged weapon. Therefore, it may be advantageous to use a godsword rather than a zamorakian spear if you can do more than half of your damage with the cannonballs. A Saradomin godsword and cannon can save food and prayer, and allow most of your cannonballs to hit.
Healing strategies
If the player has access to the Unicorn Stallion familiar, it is recommended to bring pouches and scrolls to heal, as this requires the least inventory space.
The vampyrism is a helpful aura to use when fighting waterfiends as it heals 5% of all damage and combined with a waterfiend makes you basically invulnerable without the need of food.
For lower-level summoners, since waterfiends drop large quantities of raw fish, it is recommended to take advantage of this by using the Bunyip's scroll on the raw fish, consuming them without needing to cook. Players should note that the cooking level to cook the dropped fish is required to The bunyip will also restore health over time, as will a void spinner.
Alternately, the food dropped can be cooked on a fire. Players intending to use this method should either repair the fairy ring in the ancient cavern in order to use the Zanaris range, or bring logs and a tinderbox (in the toolbelt) to make a fire within the cave itself. It may not be easy to cook the food in combat.
Once a player has completed the hard or elite Seer's village diary tasks, the Enhanced excalibur's special attack can provide up to 400 lifepoints of healing, plus a defensive boost comparable to a super defence pot. A Saradomin Godsword special attack may also heal a variable amount of HP.
If none of these options are available, players should bring good food (monkfish, sharks or rocktails) and expect to bank often.
Recommended Equipment
Armour
- The void knight pieces should only be used as a set, for the damage boost. Individually, they have poor bonuses and lower defences than other armour options.
- If a player has less than 70 ranged, red, blue or green dragonhide armour can be considered instead.
Inventory
Mid-to-High-level inventory:
- Dramen staff or Lunar staff. This is not necessary if Fairytale III - Battle at Orks Rift is completed.
- Enchanted gem or Ring of slaying. This may not be necessary when wearing a Combat bracelet or when not on a slayer task.
- Prayer potions and Prayer renewal potions - At least 4 recommended if using protection prayers. If using Turmoil, bring 4 prayer renewals and 3 prayer potions.
- If using a familiar, Super restores or Summoning potions are optional, but may be useful to summon a new familiar once the previous timer elapsed.
- Enhanced Excalibur or another special attack weapon.
- Overload > Extreme attack / Extreme Strength > Super attack / Super strength. Bring at least one (4)-dose potion of each, two (4)-doses is recommended.
- Holy Wrench - Optional, to improve prayer potion restore rates.
- Recover special if using a weapon with a special attack such as the Enhanced Excalibur.
Lower-level inventory (will allow 25 kills or so per trip):
- Dramen staff or Lunar staff - Not necessary if Fairytale III - Battle at Orks Rift is completed or if entering by whirlpool.
- Games necklace to travel to Barbarian Outpost if entering by whirlpool (this can be deposited at Barbarian Outpost to save inventory space for drops).
- Good food is a must if you lack the level required to summon any of the suggested familiars, since you can only use one protection prayer at a time. Consider lobsters (cheap), monkfish, sharks or rocktails.
- Enchanted gem or Ring of slaying, however, this may not be needed for players who need to restock frequently.
- 3 - 5 prayer potions, or 2 prayer renewals and 2 prayer potions.
Extra Tips
- Using a full set of Void Knight Equipment with a Void Melee Helm is arguably the best armour to wear when you aren't on a slayer task, as it has good magic defence and it boosts your attack and strength by 10%. Elite Void Knight equipment also offers a Prayer bonus of +4 per piece, or +8 total.
- Using Armadyl and Pernix armour should only be considered while ranging - both provide a negative melee attack bonus.
- It is impractical to use Guthan the Infested's equipment to fight waterfiends, because of the low magic defence. While the healing effect will still work against the waterfiends
- Waterfiends tend to drop lots of raw fish — usually more than a player can hold. A good way to keep this food is "rotate dropping": this is constantly dropping and picking up the food so it won't disappear. This is preferably done with a Bunyip because of its ability to allow players to eat raw fish with the swallow whole scroll.
- It is also worth mentioning that while it may cost a certain amount to kill waterfiends through use of prayer potions, food or familiars etc., players can at least break even through picking up noted water orbs, noted snape grass, water talismans, ranarrs, lantadymes, items from the rare drop table, and even the reward from the level 3 clue scrolls they drop.
- Some High Level Alchemy spells can be brought to alch valuable drops such as Water battlestaves or armour pieces like the Rune med helm and Adamant platebodies. Due to lack of space, many people may not want to pick up all items and usually only pick up the stackable items such as water orbs, mithril arrows, and various runes.
- To save inventory space, mithril arrows or sapphire bolts may be held in the ammo equipment slot, providing the player is not using ranged.
- For those fighting Waterfiends in the Ancient Cavern, using the Fairy Ring (Code BJQ) is a much quicker route to stock up on food/potions than walking all the way from the Barbarian Outpost. Note that the Fairy Ring is only accessible after completing much of Barbarian Training, at least up to Pyre ships. Before the ring can be used, bittercap mushrooms must be planted there. With a Spade and 5 mushrooms in inventory, use one of the mushrooms on the 'enchanted lands' spot near the centre of the ring.
- Waterfiends usually drop 1 water rune, 1 charm (typically crimson), and one other item or two grimy herbs. Sometimes the other item is 90 water runes. This means if a player examines the drop and sees only "charm" and "water rune", the odds are good that the player has received a charm and 91 water runes. If a player sees a charm, a water rune, and something else (like a shark), the water rune is 1 and not 91. The single water runes are not worth picking up.
- It may be recommended to use Piety instead of Turmoil on the waterfiends in the ancient cavern, because they do not attack with melee, so turmoil does not boost your attack or strength above the minimum. However, it should be taken into account that by using piety you lose the ability to use soulsplit, and your defence is weaker.
- Provided a player uses full set of void equipment, turmoil, high combat stats, goliath gloves and a use of a dreadnip for every kill, it is possible to get up to 120+ crimson charms an hour in non-multi combat area.