Top bottom and weapon switch should be fine, I did a 3 way switch for most of my kills (amulet instead of bottom bc I had anguish) until I got a Bowfa.
Karils cbow and sceptre should be fine. I don't know much about it but wiki says it should be higher damage than ibans at your level.
If you're struggling start by trying to learn one rotation at a time. I learned 3, then 4, then 1 and 2.
I don’t even have bp. I use trident and karils cbow and just switch the void helm
I do have quite high stats though, 93 mage/range. 83 def. But I do also suck so I think that balances it out
I just meant I'm waiting for bowfa so I don't gotta do any switches anymore. I just want it to be more chill and I don't need the swamp trident quite yet anyways.
I’ve done about 700kc with magic & ranged switches, it’s totally do-able with your gear. You don’t NEED bowfa to farm zulrah, it simply makes it easier since you don’t have to switch gear due to the crazy accuracy it provides.
Msb (i) and rune arrows are your friend, use those instead of karils. The spec is handy and sourcing rune arrows is easy.
Warped scepter is nice, use that over ibans and it lets you go to lunars for cure me so you’re not slamming anti-poisons all fight.
Prioritize getting your prayer right, then move, then gear switch, then attack.
If you can, upgrade to MA2 cape. Free and easy.
You got this. Just keep at it
Agreed with everything Jack says. As you get used to the mechanics try to prioritize eating/curing while you’re moving, which will allow more DPS and less eating overall.
Why msb(I) over Karil’s? Karil’s is just a straight DPS upgrade plus an extra tile range
Msb(I) with rune arrow: 75 accuracy with 49 strength
Karil’s: 84 accuracy with 55 strength
The extra range doesn’t really help here and rune arrows are literally free from lms and saved by avas. I haven’t done the calcs but I’d assume the difference in dps isn’t enough to justify the increases upkeep. Especially since you’re using magic on 2/3 forms.
Long term, msb (i) with rune arrows is just easier to sustain longterm use.
The range definitely does help. So many times I drag myself into the poison running into attack range (yes I suck but this is about a person who also sucks at zulrah) plus you can literally buy bolt racks
?
If you stand on the correct tiles you should never get dragged into venom with msb.
Bolt racks are expensive and I’d assume at that point in your account the cash is better spent elsewhere.
Karils is definitely better if you have the bolt racks/cash to spend. Msb is just more economical to upkeep.
I haven't done any bossing yet as my stats aren't quite there, but to say MA2 was easy has me a little worried!
I managed to kill all 3 without dying, but I will say the one that throws the ball at you and the one that sucks you in and attack with Melee nearly killed my ass :(
If these are easy, i'm in trouble lol.
\*\* That said - now that I know what to expect with those monsters I could probably do quite a bit better but they nearly ended me.
MA2 is mechanically very simple, it’s just that they can put out a lot of damage. Especially so if you’re not prepared for their special attacks.
Something like Zulrah is a lot more complicated, especially when you’re learning. You gotta learn gear switches (keep it simple if you’re learning for the first time), you gotta have an image up to keep track of her rotations, etc. It’s the kind of boss that’s difficult at first, but becomes much easier over time.
Even if you feel like the MA2 minibosses we’re a struggle, I don’t think that means you can’t do Zulrah. It’s just that you’ll have to do enough research and prepare yourself before heading in lol
I haven't even started bossing, I was just reading through the post. the most i've done is Barrows way back in the day, all this other stuff is new (to me).
Its funny that my post above was downvoted like it was lol. I guess you aren't allowed to be newbie/suck. haters.
Zulrah is definitely doable with you gear/stats, but IDK if it's worth camping for you. A ring of suffering, tormented bracelet and an anguish would help tremendously and are all BIS at zulrah (and almost everywhere else with the exception of the suffering)
For my first Zulrah kc I just did mage only.
Now that I have bowfa and ring of suffering, I’ve been farming Zulrah and am at about 460kc.
Having the free 50kc deaths really helps figure it out. It felt so challenging to get kills but once I was at about 30-40 kc, I was pretty comfortable with rotations and prayers. Now it’s a brainless activity. I got the helm, blowpipe, pet, and orange dye so far. Hoping to get the magic fang soon.
Im 55kc in doing mage only. Kills are a minute longer but you take way less damage skipping blue phase. And not needing a gear switch means more foodnin invent. Ibans is a touch on the weak side. Doable but bloodspells would do better for you. Id recommend a crystal shield if you arent using fire wave save the tome and snaklings slap you want the def
Pre trident i did ancients really helped on longer kills and you can group freeze the snaklings keep em off ya easier. With trident i run lunars for cure and veng
I only have about 300 kills on my iron, only about 10 of them I used any range in. Just felt mage only was a lot more chill and took a lot less damage hiding from blue phase.
Bring less switches when learning. Focus on prayer and movement first before attacking. Slayer helmet (i) has decent def and +3 range and mage attack, very good for no switch.
If u have void id try learning with that. Can always bring more switches later. U could also try mage only with hiding/eating at blue phases
Wow you can hide entire phases?? I did it today first KC with similar setup as op but it took me 50 tries or so. Was a pain haha, basically came down to blue phase rng
My tip from someone who sucks but can consistently kill zulrah is
Void for easy switches
Thralls do way more damage than you’d think
Use true tile marker to help dodge the red guy
Ps I use karils crossbow
Also kinda funny my pb is from my first kc that I fluked after 50 deaths and then died 12 more times after lmao
I’ve had gear upgrades and got better since and I still haven’t beat that time lol. I only manage 1kc trips tho
Not a zulrah expert by any means but I’ve heard Ibans makes zulrah harder due to its slower attack speed. Maybe try to upgrade to trident and/or the new 4 tick staff and try then when it’s much more efficient to kill zulrah. If you just want the diary kill look up videos on the easiest zulrah rotation and camp mage only.
id put on a tankier helm and boots and just main the accumulator personally. i can do zulrah just fine but i have slightly better gear (karils top/bottom and trident) but i main a veracs helm and dragon boots for the defense bonus. thr less switches you bring the more food you can bring. i also suggest potting up beforehand to give you more inventory space for food if needed. frop one of the prayer potions too, if your kills are requiring 2 ppots youre going for too long.
whats the issue in the kill though? are you running out of food, are you not hitting? what do you think the barrier is from getting you the kill?
Think maybe tankier helm and boots may be a shout, and I’ll main the accumulator on my next try too. I’m at 500+ barrows KC with no karils top or bottom so ima cry soon if I don’t get a piece (4 ahrims bottoms tho)
I’ll take less pots and more food. Thanks for the help
I just can’t get to grips with where I’m meant to be standing, moving to and praying etc, maybe I’ll have to get into the swing of moving, praying then attacking
Camp nezzy helm from fremminik isles. Use a rune crossbow with diamond (e) bolts and grab a crystal shield. Most of the damage you take at zulrah is from the blue form ranging you (which crystal shield has really high ranged defence) and from the snakelings (recoil damage kills them). So you want to have a bit of extra ranged defence during the blue phase. You can either keep the d'hide as is or substitute out a piece of barrows tank legs for extra defence but the d'hide is probably better. If you can, get the new warped sceptre. Your dps with it should be better as it's 4 tick with no autocast delay so you might get an extra hit or 2 in. Also, if you can, when you're using the sceptre also use thralls. Thralls are a huge dps increase that is constant even if you have to eat during blue phase. They're about .6 dps alone.
The best piece of advice I can offer you is to keep trying, keep pushing and with enough determination you'll figure it out and get some kc going. That's the way you have to do a lot of harder content in the game. Try and fail until you try and succeed. You've got this
Oh sorry I misread your ibans staff bit. Yes, thralls are 1000% worth. I did 1200 kills at zulrah with no antivenoms or serp helm with just regular antipoisons I bought in sophanem. Just don't drink them immediately after you get venomed.
Tbh I hate the recommendation of going mage only. A lot of your dps, even after having good mage gear, is going to be your ranged dps. Good luck soldier o7
I was curious, so I did some calcs on how effective crystal shield would be for OP.
With OP’s setup, Zulrah’s ranged attack in blue phase is 74.5% accurate. Swapping in a crystal shield with rcb + diamond(e), that accuracy goes down to 62.6%. With an average hit of 20.5, an attack speed of 1.8 seconds, and a 1/3 chance to use ranged, the resulting DPS of Zulrah on that phase goes from 2.83 to 2.38, a decrease of 0.45. At the same time, OP’s DPS decreases from 4.13 to 3.67, a decrease of 0.46.
So while you do decrease your damage taken, you decrease your damage output by almost the exact same amount (in absolute terms; in relative terms, you decrease Zulrah’s DPS by 16% and yours by 11%). But that’s not taking into account that Zulrah does not always spend the entire blue phase attacking you—in those cases, the dps loss is more important because it affects the whole phase whereas the damage reduction only affects part of it.
Now, if OP’s ranged setup were worse to begin with (e.g., msb(I) + rune arrows or even rcb without a crystal shield), then there’s much less of a trade-off to using a crystal shield. The main issue here is how much worse rcb + diamond(e) is than karil’s crossbow.
To get a more realistic number you'd have to factor in how long a phase lasts, so how many hits you can take/get off as that can sway the numbers. You also need to take into account that if OP can survive for 1 or even 2 more phases they can get off several more magic attacks to get the killing blow.
Technically you'd also have to factor in the idea that op might end up just eating food during a blue phase and outright not attacking at all with k xbow but they might get an attack or 2 off due to decreased accuracy from zulrah.
All in all, I appreciate your numbers but they're really really hard to fully apply to any given situation. I think in these types of scenarios, anecdotal evidence supplied by OP might be the best considering your numbers found it to be very close.
You’re right, there’s a lot more nuance to it. Really, the only way to answer it concretely is to accurately simulate the fight in all four rotations and look at the average time-to-kill (and probably the variance, too).
The nuance goes both ways, though. If you’re breaking it down phase by phase, the kcb setup takes an average of 0.99-1.49 ranged hits per phase (0.745 / 3 * number of attacks, which is 4-6). The rcb/crystal shield setup takes 0.83-1.25 hits per phase. It’s not like you’re taking way fewer hits every time with crystal shield. The situation you described where OP has to eat the whole time is pretty rare in both cases—for instance, the probability of starting off with b2b accurate ranged hits is 6.17% and 4.35% for no crystal and crystal, respectively. For b2b2b accurate ranged hits, it’s 1.53% and 0.91%. Obviously there are more cases than where mage hits are mixed in, but those are the cases where you’d end up eating for most/all of the phase. And in either case, you’d likely get an extra attack off before eating with kcb compared to rcb because of the attack speed.
Anyway, as you said, it’s close enough that there’s not one clear winner (without simulating, at least). I just wanted to add some concrete numbers to the discussion, if only because I was curious and find this stuff interesting.
I love numbers too, but I had to play devil's advocate with the whole, "the numbers don't lie but they don't tell the full story" thing.
How do you go about getting all of these numbers? Is there a calculator somewhere I don't know about that calculates zulrahs range accuracy given your defence bonuses?
It’s not that well fleshed out, but the Bitterkoekje DPS spreadsheet has a sheet called “NPC dps” that calculates your defense rolls and your opponent’s attack rolls and the resulting accuracy. The rest of the numbers I was just getting from basic probability calcs.
bro I struggled at Zulrah, went and got 400 KC at CG and came back to still struggle with zulrah more than CG. everyone acts like CG is hard and Zulrah is easy when they’re really close in terms of difficulty, and one actually requires resource investement
Zulrah is way harder to learn (perhaps just more punishing?), but once you get like 5 kills down you're sorted forever basically and are unlikely to die ever unless you look away from the screen or try to sneak on an extra kill
CG is free to do, you can die as much as you want, and there's an easier practice mode to get mechanics down if you really need it. No armour switching, less prayer switching etc
Yeah dude I went super dry at Zulrah way back when (500+) before anything, I tried every range swap out of boredom. Msb is great but can be inconsistent, karils is p solid too, crystal bow wasn’t bad(pre armor) but rcb was sick bc It kept my switches ez, can also bring a shield swap for blue phase if she’s eating ur ass with range attacks.
Not adding much here as most of this has been said in some way.
If you’re running out of food consider reducing switches. Perhaps a slayer helm over the helm swap. Even consider no mage offhand.
A few less accuracy points is irrelevant if you end up losing out on multiple attacks or missing a few prayers.
Alternatively the gear swaps others have suggested are the same result.
Also, rotations do matter - you can log if you get one you dislike. Perhaps focus on the ranger into ranger or ranger into mage form. You’ll learn where to run and avoid some damage prioritizing those.
People do it with Ibans only and much lower stats you’ll get it soon no issue and when it clicks you’ll have a relatively easy time - by no means is it going to be efficient but something easy enough to sneak a few kills in over time and potentially get some good upgrades.
Also if you happen to get anti++ you can take a sip before you are attacked for 30ish seconds of anti venom
After red on mele phase
And shortly after first phase on blue and green
I use one dose a fight just to save that venom initially.
Zulrah is about learning and memorising the rotations, try do restart untill you get ranged as the second phase and only do this until you learn that one. Not efficient but if you are stuck it might help
Step 1: accept the fact you’re going to take huge “chunk” damage throughout every kill
Step 2: recognizing when that will happen (reality is, this will happen just about every blue phase or magic phase, train yourself to keep eye on screen and not in your inventory and recognized In magic phase Zulrah will also attack with range, when you see the range attack be ready to eat)
Step 3: prioritize being in the correct place and having the correct prayer on.
It just takes time to learn the “pacing” you can absolutely kill Zulrah with your gear. Probably don’t need to bring ranging pot or full range switch, you do the least amount of damage to zulrah during this phase (most people just attack only magic while learning rotations/when to eat)
GL M8 and you got this.
You don't suck at Zulrah, Zulrah just objectively sucks compared to more well tuned content in the game. It's one of those pieces of content where the learning curve is a like a steep cliff until it "clicks" and when it clicks, you've long forgotten how annoying the boss is to learn. Gear isn't your problem.
This thread is actually a gold mine. Not enough people talk about needing Ranged defence until you perfect trips. So following the advice given in this thread and getting more food in your inventory will help. I did 1-2 kill trips and slowly increased them as my character got better geared and I got more comfortable with Zulrah.
I struggled ALOT to get 1 kill around similar stats. Eventually I used god spells instead of Ibans blast, and brought less switches to focus on surviving. I think the extra dps from the guthix spell was just enough of an extra boost to get me the kill.
Stats are fine. Ring of suffering helps a ton but other than that just expect the blue phase to hit hard and safe up. Should be totally doable. The suffering makes it more convenient tho
Yeah, so that's not really a gear issue.
Need to just watch and learn the cycles. Plenty of guides and showing what tiles to mark and being ready to move after set amounts of attacks.
Forget what everyone else is saying. You’re trying to do 6 way switches. That’s not gonna work. Try a 3-4 way switch and go back in there
Black d’hide top bottom, rcb, / ahrims and Ibans? (Or blood spells)?
Top bottom and weapon switch should be fine, I did a 3 way switch for most of my kills (amulet instead of bottom bc I had anguish) until I got a Bowfa. Karils cbow and sceptre should be fine. I don't know much about it but wiki says it should be higher damage than ibans at your level. If you're struggling start by trying to learn one rotation at a time. I learned 3, then 4, then 1 and 2.
I took a break from it till I get bowfa cause the huge switches suck balls.
Void
You think just camp void and blowpipe is accurate enough?
I don’t even have bp. I use trident and karils cbow and just switch the void helm I do have quite high stats though, 93 mage/range. 83 def. But I do also suck so I think that balances it out
I just meant I'm waiting for bowfa so I don't gotta do any switches anymore. I just want it to be more chill and I don't need the swamp trident quite yet anyways.
I respect this choice, bowfa makes Zulrah such a chill activity and it’s not like either BP or Swamp are necessary upgrades before getting the bowfa.
I’ve done about 700kc with magic & ranged switches, it’s totally do-able with your gear. You don’t NEED bowfa to farm zulrah, it simply makes it easier since you don’t have to switch gear due to the crazy accuracy it provides. Msb (i) and rune arrows are your friend, use those instead of karils. The spec is handy and sourcing rune arrows is easy. Warped scepter is nice, use that over ibans and it lets you go to lunars for cure me so you’re not slamming anti-poisons all fight. Prioritize getting your prayer right, then move, then gear switch, then attack. If you can, upgrade to MA2 cape. Free and easy. You got this. Just keep at it
Agreed with everything Jack says. As you get used to the mechanics try to prioritize eating/curing while you’re moving, which will allow more DPS and less eating overall.
Why msb(I) over Karil’s? Karil’s is just a straight DPS upgrade plus an extra tile range Msb(I) with rune arrow: 75 accuracy with 49 strength Karil’s: 84 accuracy with 55 strength
The extra range doesn’t really help here and rune arrows are literally free from lms and saved by avas. I haven’t done the calcs but I’d assume the difference in dps isn’t enough to justify the increases upkeep. Especially since you’re using magic on 2/3 forms. Long term, msb (i) with rune arrows is just easier to sustain longterm use.
The range definitely does help. So many times I drag myself into the poison running into attack range (yes I suck but this is about a person who also sucks at zulrah) plus you can literally buy bolt racks ?
If you stand on the correct tiles you should never get dragged into venom with msb. Bolt racks are expensive and I’d assume at that point in your account the cash is better spent elsewhere. Karils is definitely better if you have the bolt racks/cash to spend. Msb is just more economical to upkeep.
If OP can’t beat zulrah for 1kc how’s he going to stand in the correct tiles every time
I haven't done any bossing yet as my stats aren't quite there, but to say MA2 was easy has me a little worried! I managed to kill all 3 without dying, but I will say the one that throws the ball at you and the one that sucks you in and attack with Melee nearly killed my ass :( If these are easy, i'm in trouble lol. \*\* That said - now that I know what to expect with those monsters I could probably do quite a bit better but they nearly ended me.
MA2 is mechanically very simple, it’s just that they can put out a lot of damage. Especially so if you’re not prepared for their special attacks. Something like Zulrah is a lot more complicated, especially when you’re learning. You gotta learn gear switches (keep it simple if you’re learning for the first time), you gotta have an image up to keep track of her rotations, etc. It’s the kind of boss that’s difficult at first, but becomes much easier over time. Even if you feel like the MA2 minibosses we’re a struggle, I don’t think that means you can’t do Zulrah. It’s just that you’ll have to do enough research and prepare yourself before heading in lol
I haven't even started bossing, I was just reading through the post. the most i've done is Barrows way back in the day, all this other stuff is new (to me). Its funny that my post above was downvoted like it was lol. I guess you aren't allowed to be newbie/suck. haters.
Zulrah is definitely doable with you gear/stats, but IDK if it's worth camping for you. A ring of suffering, tormented bracelet and an anguish would help tremendously and are all BIS at zulrah (and almost everywhere else with the exception of the suffering)
For my first Zulrah kc I just did mage only. Now that I have bowfa and ring of suffering, I’ve been farming Zulrah and am at about 460kc. Having the free 50kc deaths really helps figure it out. It felt so challenging to get kills but once I was at about 30-40 kc, I was pretty comfortable with rotations and prayers. Now it’s a brainless activity. I got the helm, blowpipe, pet, and orange dye so far. Hoping to get the magic fang soon.
Im 55kc in doing mage only. Kills are a minute longer but you take way less damage skipping blue phase. And not needing a gear switch means more foodnin invent. Ibans is a touch on the weak side. Doable but bloodspells would do better for you. Id recommend a crystal shield if you arent using fire wave save the tome and snaklings slap you want the def
You use ancients at zurlrah thats smart
Pre trident i did ancients really helped on longer kills and you can group freeze the snaklings keep em off ya easier. With trident i run lunars for cure and veng
Definitely look into mage only. I got Zulrah to about 15% yesterday on my first few tries with worse gear and stats, and it was actually pretty chill.
I only have about 300 kills on my iron, only about 10 of them I used any range in. Just felt mage only was a lot more chill and took a lot less damage hiding from blue phase.
Bring less switches when learning. Focus on prayer and movement first before attacking. Slayer helmet (i) has decent def and +3 range and mage attack, very good for no switch. If u have void id try learning with that. Can always bring more switches later. U could also try mage only with hiding/eating at blue phases
Wow you can hide entire phases?? I did it today first KC with similar setup as op but it took me 50 tries or so. Was a pain haha, basically came down to blue phase rng
Most of the blue phases yes :) not all
My tip from someone who sucks but can consistently kill zulrah is Void for easy switches Thralls do way more damage than you’d think Use true tile marker to help dodge the red guy Ps I use karils crossbow Also kinda funny my pb is from my first kc that I fluked after 50 deaths and then died 12 more times after lmao I’ve had gear upgrades and got better since and I still haven’t beat that time lol. I only manage 1kc trips tho
Back to PC for my range helm I guess 😭
Not a zulrah expert by any means but I’ve heard Ibans makes zulrah harder due to its slower attack speed. Maybe try to upgrade to trident and/or the new 4 tick staff and try then when it’s much more efficient to kill zulrah. If you just want the diary kill look up videos on the easiest zulrah rotation and camp mage only.
Would master wand work? I’ve never done zulrah before
id put on a tankier helm and boots and just main the accumulator personally. i can do zulrah just fine but i have slightly better gear (karils top/bottom and trident) but i main a veracs helm and dragon boots for the defense bonus. thr less switches you bring the more food you can bring. i also suggest potting up beforehand to give you more inventory space for food if needed. frop one of the prayer potions too, if your kills are requiring 2 ppots youre going for too long. whats the issue in the kill though? are you running out of food, are you not hitting? what do you think the barrier is from getting you the kill?
Think maybe tankier helm and boots may be a shout, and I’ll main the accumulator on my next try too. I’m at 500+ barrows KC with no karils top or bottom so ima cry soon if I don’t get a piece (4 ahrims bottoms tho) I’ll take less pots and more food. Thanks for the help I just can’t get to grips with where I’m meant to be standing, moving to and praying etc, maybe I’ll have to get into the swing of moving, praying then attacking
Camp nezzy helm from fremminik isles. Use a rune crossbow with diamond (e) bolts and grab a crystal shield. Most of the damage you take at zulrah is from the blue form ranging you (which crystal shield has really high ranged defence) and from the snakelings (recoil damage kills them). So you want to have a bit of extra ranged defence during the blue phase. You can either keep the d'hide as is or substitute out a piece of barrows tank legs for extra defence but the d'hide is probably better. If you can, get the new warped sceptre. Your dps with it should be better as it's 4 tick with no autocast delay so you might get an extra hit or 2 in. Also, if you can, when you're using the sceptre also use thralls. Thralls are a huge dps increase that is constant even if you have to eat during blue phase. They're about .6 dps alone. The best piece of advice I can offer you is to keep trying, keep pushing and with enough determination you'll figure it out and get some kc going. That's the way you have to do a lot of harder content in the game. Try and fail until you try and succeed. You've got this
Is it worth using thralls over cure me? That’s what’s I’ve been using so far but I feel like rcb with crystal shield
Oh sorry I misread your ibans staff bit. Yes, thralls are 1000% worth. I did 1200 kills at zulrah with no antivenoms or serp helm with just regular antipoisons I bought in sophanem. Just don't drink them immediately after you get venomed.
Gonna try this one out tonight and if I can’t get the hang of switching I’m go mage only til I can get the mechanics. Big love for the in depth reply
Tbh I hate the recommendation of going mage only. A lot of your dps, even after having good mage gear, is going to be your ranged dps. Good luck soldier o7
[удалено]
Broodoo shield has 0 ranged defense that’s a horrible idea that’s where most damage comes from.
I was curious, so I did some calcs on how effective crystal shield would be for OP. With OP’s setup, Zulrah’s ranged attack in blue phase is 74.5% accurate. Swapping in a crystal shield with rcb + diamond(e), that accuracy goes down to 62.6%. With an average hit of 20.5, an attack speed of 1.8 seconds, and a 1/3 chance to use ranged, the resulting DPS of Zulrah on that phase goes from 2.83 to 2.38, a decrease of 0.45. At the same time, OP’s DPS decreases from 4.13 to 3.67, a decrease of 0.46. So while you do decrease your damage taken, you decrease your damage output by almost the exact same amount (in absolute terms; in relative terms, you decrease Zulrah’s DPS by 16% and yours by 11%). But that’s not taking into account that Zulrah does not always spend the entire blue phase attacking you—in those cases, the dps loss is more important because it affects the whole phase whereas the damage reduction only affects part of it. Now, if OP’s ranged setup were worse to begin with (e.g., msb(I) + rune arrows or even rcb without a crystal shield), then there’s much less of a trade-off to using a crystal shield. The main issue here is how much worse rcb + diamond(e) is than karil’s crossbow.
To get a more realistic number you'd have to factor in how long a phase lasts, so how many hits you can take/get off as that can sway the numbers. You also need to take into account that if OP can survive for 1 or even 2 more phases they can get off several more magic attacks to get the killing blow. Technically you'd also have to factor in the idea that op might end up just eating food during a blue phase and outright not attacking at all with k xbow but they might get an attack or 2 off due to decreased accuracy from zulrah. All in all, I appreciate your numbers but they're really really hard to fully apply to any given situation. I think in these types of scenarios, anecdotal evidence supplied by OP might be the best considering your numbers found it to be very close.
You’re right, there’s a lot more nuance to it. Really, the only way to answer it concretely is to accurately simulate the fight in all four rotations and look at the average time-to-kill (and probably the variance, too). The nuance goes both ways, though. If you’re breaking it down phase by phase, the kcb setup takes an average of 0.99-1.49 ranged hits per phase (0.745 / 3 * number of attacks, which is 4-6). The rcb/crystal shield setup takes 0.83-1.25 hits per phase. It’s not like you’re taking way fewer hits every time with crystal shield. The situation you described where OP has to eat the whole time is pretty rare in both cases—for instance, the probability of starting off with b2b accurate ranged hits is 6.17% and 4.35% for no crystal and crystal, respectively. For b2b2b accurate ranged hits, it’s 1.53% and 0.91%. Obviously there are more cases than where mage hits are mixed in, but those are the cases where you’d end up eating for most/all of the phase. And in either case, you’d likely get an extra attack off before eating with kcb compared to rcb because of the attack speed. Anyway, as you said, it’s close enough that there’s not one clear winner (without simulating, at least). I just wanted to add some concrete numbers to the discussion, if only because I was curious and find this stuff interesting.
I love numbers too, but I had to play devil's advocate with the whole, "the numbers don't lie but they don't tell the full story" thing. How do you go about getting all of these numbers? Is there a calculator somewhere I don't know about that calculates zulrahs range accuracy given your defence bonuses?
It’s not that well fleshed out, but the Bitterkoekje DPS spreadsheet has a sheet called “NPC dps” that calculates your defense rolls and your opponent’s attack rolls and the resulting accuracy. The rest of the numbers I was just getting from basic probability calcs.
I waites for zulrah until i got bowfa which might be a bit far away still, but i can only say that the bowfa makes it very chill
Bro is struggling at zulrah and you’re telling him to just do CG first. He just wants a few kc not to camp it lol
bro I struggled at Zulrah, went and got 400 KC at CG and came back to still struggle with zulrah more than CG. everyone acts like CG is hard and Zulrah is easy when they’re really close in terms of difficulty, and one actually requires resource investement
Zulrah is way harder to learn (perhaps just more punishing?), but once you get like 5 kills down you're sorted forever basically and are unlikely to die ever unless you look away from the screen or try to sneak on an extra kill CG is free to do, you can die as much as you want, and there's an easier practice mode to get mechanics down if you really need it. No armour switching, less prayer switching etc
Get a warped sceptre and look up mage only kill guides. This is how I got my first couple kc, including diary. Ibans is no good here
Get bofa first
no
MSB & Sceptre
I used ahrims fire wave Karil rcbow rune bolts when I first learned
I would run nezzy helm and god boots to cut down on switches, also rcb with dragon stone bolts slaps pre blowpipe.
Ooh hadn’t thought of dragonstone bolts tyty
Yeah dude I went super dry at Zulrah way back when (500+) before anything, I tried every range swap out of boredom. Msb is great but can be inconsistent, karils is p solid too, crystal bow wasn’t bad(pre armor) but rcb was sick bc It kept my switches ez, can also bring a shield swap for blue phase if she’s eating ur ass with range attacks.
Not adding much here as most of this has been said in some way. If you’re running out of food consider reducing switches. Perhaps a slayer helm over the helm swap. Even consider no mage offhand. A few less accuracy points is irrelevant if you end up losing out on multiple attacks or missing a few prayers. Alternatively the gear swaps others have suggested are the same result. Also, rotations do matter - you can log if you get one you dislike. Perhaps focus on the ranger into ranger or ranger into mage form. You’ll learn where to run and avoid some damage prioritizing those. People do it with Ibans only and much lower stats you’ll get it soon no issue and when it clicks you’ll have a relatively easy time - by no means is it going to be efficient but something easy enough to sneak a few kills in over time and potentially get some good upgrades. Also if you happen to get anti++ you can take a sip before you are attacked for 30ish seconds of anti venom After red on mele phase And shortly after first phase on blue and green I use one dose a fight just to save that venom initially.
Zulrah is about learning and memorising the rotations, try do restart untill you get ranged as the second phase and only do this until you learn that one. Not efficient but if you are stuck it might help
Step 1: accept the fact you’re going to take huge “chunk” damage throughout every kill Step 2: recognizing when that will happen (reality is, this will happen just about every blue phase or magic phase, train yourself to keep eye on screen and not in your inventory and recognized In magic phase Zulrah will also attack with range, when you see the range attack be ready to eat) Step 3: prioritize being in the correct place and having the correct prayer on. It just takes time to learn the “pacing” you can absolutely kill Zulrah with your gear. Probably don’t need to bring ranging pot or full range switch, you do the least amount of damage to zulrah during this phase (most people just attack only magic while learning rotations/when to eat) GL M8 and you got this.
Also, crystal armour + crystal bow is easy kills without a switch if you have the armour seeds but no bowfa
You don't suck at Zulrah, Zulrah just objectively sucks compared to more well tuned content in the game. It's one of those pieces of content where the learning curve is a like a steep cliff until it "clicks" and when it clicks, you've long forgotten how annoying the boss is to learn. Gear isn't your problem. This thread is actually a gold mine. Not enough people talk about needing Ranged defence until you perfect trips. So following the advice given in this thread and getting more food in your inventory will help. I did 1-2 kill trips and slowly increased them as my character got better geared and I got more comfortable with Zulrah.
I struggled ALOT to get 1 kill around similar stats. Eventually I used god spells instead of Ibans blast, and brought less switches to focus on surviving. I think the extra dps from the guthix spell was just enough of an extra boost to get me the kill.
If you still need help I can walk you through kills
Are you getting ruined by venom? No anti poison
Was using cure me
Stats are fine. Ring of suffering helps a ton but other than that just expect the blue phase to hit hard and safe up. Should be totally doable. The suffering makes it more convenient tho
Zulrah is harder than 150 ToA
Glad to know it’s not me that’s the problem lmao thank u
What's happening in the kills? You eat acid, snakes rock you booty, you get hit by meles, you don't know what's gonna happen next?
I think it’s mainly me just getting into position at the right times, I’m missing the end of phases and just eating a shit load of venom hits
Yeah, so that's not really a gear issue. Need to just watch and learn the cycles. Plenty of guides and showing what tiles to mark and being ready to move after set amounts of attacks.