Musicles

I range blacks somewhat frequently and have found the following to be true: Knives will often pull you into melee range so dont use knives Cheaper bolts hit less often than more expensive ones Emerald bolts (e) poison them within a few shots Addy bolts hit better, and enchanted Addy even better (diamond or ruby tips) You will lose money on them, and I have killed over 1k black dragons for the visage, which still eludes me. The only thing I have made any money on is the javelins which I immediately sell to the merchants. Sometimes they are handy for pulling a dragon to your area. Also, the longer you take to kill the dragon, the more of your bolts on the ground will despawn. It works the same as if you dropped them, so you have to kill faster. That's why poisoning first is best. You don't get xp for the damage done by poisoning, but you do get a faster kill. I have a good inventory of mithril & addy bolts and mithril & addy darts. The darts are pure dust devil killing tools, and the bolts are mostly for black dragons / metal dragons.

If you haven't ever had them in the past, you do need a clue scroll to start the dialogue that enables you to get the 3 pieces. The 4th piece is nothing but a spade which you carry with you. I believe once you have been given the pieces, you can make them in your house. It requires the proper items, hammer, steel bars, clockwork, etc. to do. As for the chart, when you get that piece, just drop it on the ground and ask him for another, and do this 3 or 4 times so you have extras, just in case you die on a clue hunt. The chart is under the observatory, so you have to enter some nasty area to get this, and you can / will get poisoned there so carry super anti p pots (they last for a while).

The only reason you would superheat is if you had a bunch of mithril or addy ore and wanted to turn it into bars while mining coal. This is done only if you can enter an area of unlimited coal like the Mining Guild, or Coal Trucks, or just East of Ardougne / South of the Legends Guild. With mithril, leave 4 slots, and Addy, leave 6. Mine the number of coal you need, then. If you arent able to mine in a spot that has many coal spots, then you might as well farm your coal or buy it, then just use a forge. I always wear my Varrocks (3) armor for those double ores and double forging and faster smithing. If you are doing iron and wearing it, and using a ring of forging, if it does 2 pieces of ore at the same time, it only removes 1 charge from the ring of the 140 it comes with when new. Personally, if you superheat, you are kind of wasting nature runes since they cost you around 250 gp ea. You could forge the item for free anyway. I only use it if I have a few pieces of ore to do and need to get it done right away. Save the Nats - use them after you make iron plate, then high alch them to recover some of the money you lost.

I'd buy super anti p pots since they are good for a period of time. It seems just as you cure your poison there, something bites you again and re-poisons you 5 seconds later. Also, the final demon was so easy, it was almost a let down. Just range him and do not use knives because I don't believe they have the range to hit him. You have to almost be sitting in his lap for a knife to reach. And you could have done this quest 20 times in the time you spent waiting for an answer. :)

Al Kharid is closer to the forge than Falador. The 2 closest ones are the Port Phatasmys one and the Edgeville one (for us Varrock Armor 3 people). In Al Kharid, you can get a few implings while you are running back and forth. They are severely unmolested there. In Edgeville you can advertise your stuff for sale while you run back and forth to the forge from the bank.

For those that didn't do RFD, the combat bracer is the way to go, but otherwise, yeah, barrows gloves are better. If I'm fighting something while wearing full barrows, the few extra points difference doesn't mean a lot to me and instead of carrying the gem with me to find out where I stand, I take the bracer. Of course I get metal dragons and god monsters every other mission, sometimes two in a row, so I don't often wear it. It's just one handy item to have (3 combat bracers + 7 skills necklaces) to get around when on Lunar or Ancients. When I switch to Lunar, I put my house in Relleka and use my lute (14 in bank) to get there or house port tabs if I made them up ahead of time.

I made attempts with crystal bows, crossbows, mage bows, and finally karil's crossbow. Karil's is by far the fastest shooting and hardest damage over time. The smart thing to do is learn how to do Barrows and get your own. I bought 1k of the bolts for my tries. You'll find the faster you take down certain targets, the longer you live. Pure rangers have an easier time because they can kill the melee ones almost before they get on top of them so you take less damage, need fewer food pieces to heal. I also found using purple sweets made me last longer too. With the Karil's, I have gotten to Jad 3 times. With any other configuration, I only made it once. The problem is when he spawns, there is usually a big lag [bleep]e on my computer, even though I run a good system, and by the time I've finished hearing his sound, he's burping from eating me in melee so fast. I have tried to end up in different areas so he is farther away, but that 500ms or 1 sec pause is all he needs to wipe me out. It's frustrating. On the good side, I now have 24 onyx bolts (e) from the Tokuls they give me. Hehe. As for using a Dark Bow, I found it was only good for 1 thing: Selling to someone else so I could get a Fury instead. :) They look cool, and looking cool can get you killed. Even the hunter crossbow shoots harder than they do (except for addy arrows & up). But like someone said, those arrows aint cheap. I mined 200 addy ore and bought the coal just because and turned them into darts and bolts. I'm sure they are faster too, than the Dark Bow, but they are limited in range and you often get too close to a target to kill with those, and anything 360 (fat and red) and up, can munch you in 2 or 3 hits, so leave those behind. You must have full guthans for healing, and switch out some pieces for ranging, so the Karil's bow is the best choice, imho.

I did knights with gloves of silence (seem to be made to really work well with them) so it's important to get enough hunter xp to be able to wear, if not make them yourself. Also the rogues den isn't bad xp with the safes, especially if you want to raise your crafting skill or make some good gold by selling the uncut gems in the exchange. My crafting is 77 and thieving 99 because of that place. Master Farmers are pretty fast xp too because you left click on them to pick their pockets (default click). You don't have to right click and scroll down a menu item or two to pick pocket. Also, when picking pockets, it is always best to have a bow in your hands without arrows, so you cannot accidently attack them. You can even put bolts in your ammo slot and use a regular bow. Again, there are so many that don't slide down enough and they hit ATTACK KNIGHT instead of PICKPOCKET KNIGHT. Don't waste your time on Paladins, because they hit way too often, so your chaos runes to food consumed ratio will be low (cost you almost more than it does for the runes you sell). Anyway, the best knight to do is the one by the ardougne castle. All of the others have to be lured into a closed room and there are always the little boys that consider it their right to kill them because they know it makes you mad. Very few go to the castle for that, so you will be left alone.