The Tip.It Times


Issue 1699gp

Player VS Monster

Written by and edited by Tip.It

Will there ever be a monster that can outsmart the player? Over the years, Jagex has tried many different approaches to their monsters in the game in an attempt to make them as difficult as possible for the player to defeat. So far, they have only created one monster which is next to impossible to kill solo, but only because of its sheer power. This article looks back over the various "boss" monsters and the many ways Jagex has tried to make them difficult to defeat.

Jagex’s very first attempt to spice up their monsters was with dragons. These require a special shield to protect yourself from their fiery breath to prevent yourself from being toasted. The very basic dragons just attack with melee and their fire breath and thus can still be killed quite easily; however, this is not true for all dragons.

After the basic dragons came the King Black Dragon, with his added ability of long range fire attacks as well as having ice and poison breath. He was certainly a lot more challenging than the standard ones. However, with the right equipment, an anti-fire potion and the correct prayer, you can slay him fairly easily by yourself, even back when he was first released in classic; it just required a lot more effort and food.

The next monster brought in to try and better the player was another royal monster, the Kalphite Queen. With her ability to not only attack with range, mage and melee, she had resistances to your attacks as well, meaning that to kill her effectively you’d need to bring a variety of weapons. With the release of stronger equipment she has become easier to kill, mainly thanks to Verac’s armour's ability to hit through her resistances while providing some great defence at the same time.

Having failed to outsmart the player thus far, Jagex created yet more boss monsters, this time in the form of the form of the three Dagannoth Kings, one devoted to each combat type. These proved tough to kill at first and generally required a team of at least three people to be able to kill them efficiently. Since then, tactics have been found to easily dispose of them, although it requires fighting one of them at a time, a great number of kills could be accumulated in one trip which I’m sure is not what Jagex had in mind.

The Chaos Elemental, a strange cloud-like monster is perhaps the most random of the monsters Jagex has created and its bizarre range of abilities showcases this. The ability to disarm the player along with the ability to teleport the player away from it proved it difficult to kill, however by bringing food such as curry and a bow these two abilities are rendered ineffective. He can, however, still deal quite a bit of damage due to having multiple attack types. With its location in the member’s area of the wilderness also adding another threat to fighting the beast but since the removal of PvP in the Wilderness this has become less of an issue.

Since then there hasn't really been too many interesting monsters; Mithril Dragons have the ability to mage and melee, or range and mage depending on how close you are to them. The God Wars bosses, while doing a variety of attacks, are fairly predictable, and their bodyguards are fairly harmless despite having one dedicated to each of the three attack styles.

The Corporeal beast is the only monster in the game that I believe has yet to be killed by just a single player. It attacks with a variety of attacks and due to its sheer level and power it’s believed to be next to impossible to kill without having a team of players. This isn’t really Jagex out smarting the player but more about Jagex putting in a monster that can’t realistically be soloed.

The only monsters that comes close in my opinion in being able to outsmart the player are Tormented Demons. Released with the first ever Grand Master quest "While Guthix Sleeps", these monsters attack with all three attack styles, are in a multi-combat zone and have the ability to use the three different protection prayers to protect themselves from the players’ attacks. On top of this they have a fire aura which greatly reduces the damage the monster takes, although this can easily be removed by the use of the Darklight blade. They will change their attack style if the player is using that protection prayer against them for a number of rounds. Their own protection prayer changes very similarly; after receiving just over 25 damage from an attack style they will switch their protection prayer to the attack the player is using. These three features combined make tormented demons very challenging to kill, the player has to worry about changing attack type and changing prayer at the same time. Once you’ve gotten the hang of their patterns they become fairly simple. It’s possible to amass over twenty kills in a single trip with the right equipment or a lot more if you bring a team with you.

While Jagex may have failed to outwit the player thus far, they have come out with several unique methods of trying to achieve this which has led to a variety of fun monsters and many deaths as players strive to find better and more efficient ways to slay the beasts.

Will Jagex ever be able to create a monster that can completely outsmart the player? Probably not, however they will not stop trying and personally I can’t wait to see what they try next!


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