Slayer guide: How to not be a douche

The hardest part of training the slayer skill is finding one or two of your assigned monsters to yourself. You can’t just say, “These two fire giants are mine” and expect other players to abide by your claim. Of course, you can say that, but be prepared for verbal arguments or slowly noticing “your” fire giants are being killed by someone else. The essential part now is to find an “empty” world to train on.

1. The Real World

A good first step is to understand the world around you in relation to RuneScape. Though RuneScape’s game time is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), Real World time has affects, too.

A. Time Zones

Generally knowing the differences between your time zone and others can help find an empty world. In my case, Europe is at least 3+ hours ahead of me while most of Canada and the U.S. is at least 1 hour behind. Since I don’t have school, I choose to work on slayer during the day and typically on U.S. or Canadian servers. Because my time zone is ahead of theirs, these worlds will be mostly empty.

B. Themed Worlds

If you have school or work during the day, you might try to get on a designated themed world such as W158 (Stealing Creations), W24 (Castle Wars) or W143 (Soul Wars). The reasoning is simple. Most of the players playing on a themed world are on for the mini game/skill event. There will be a lot of people logged in to this world, but most of them won’t be training slayer.

2. Know Your Monster

Of all the monsters available as slayer assignments, only a handful of them have a single area where they live. What it means is you have choices of which area/dungeon to work on your task. Directions and maps can be found on many fansites, such as Truthscape’s Beastopedia, The RuneScape Wiki, Rune HQ’s Monster Database and  Tipit’s Dungeon Maps.

3. Sphere of Influence

Putting “dibs” on certain monsters isn’t the smartest thing to do, but you do have a sort of territory most players generally respect. The best example of this is being swarmed by dagannoths under the Lighthouse. Unless it’s super busy down there (5+ people), your little swarm of dags is going to be around you until you kill them all.

A. Safespotters

These people tend to stay in safespots and don’t come out except to pick up arrows/drops. In some areas, they can only reach one monster (usually the one spawning nearest them) and remain in the safespot. Give these players a break, okay? Let them have their single monster. Places I see this are in the Slayer Tower with bloodvelds (northeast chair), nechryaels (behind the table) and gargoyles (behind the corpse in the alcove).

B. The Front Door

Monsters like to wander about their dungeons. They’re not all going to run to the main entrance when you show up. Don’t be afraid to run/walk further into the area.

C. Cannon Drop

Cannons get a lot of complaints, mostly about their location. They usually get set-up in the center of the dungeon/cave in order to reach 90% of the monsters. Great for the cannoneers; horrible for everyone else. The player not using a cannon is now limited to where s/he can effectively kill without being poached by the cannon. The Lighthouse is common for this to happen. If you are here and see a cannon set-up, there are a couple areas you can be and avoid much of the kill stealing. Try the area where the mother dag spawns during the quest (east of some stalagtites and where the cannon usually stands); along the north most wall; right next to the ladder exit. If you’re the one with the cannon, have a care where you drop it. Look to see how busy/empty the area is and see about dropping it off to one side.

D. The Half Kill

Certain players will run around an area, fighting until the monsters have half health and moving on to the next. These people are relying on you to clean up their mess. Though they only get half the experience, they do get the drops.

4. Tolerance

No one should have to put up with a douche. Sadly, they’re out there and not going away.

A. Arguing

It happens to all of us. We think we can resolve the problem by talking about it. Avoid name-calling and evading the game censor.

B. Ignorance is Bliss

You can just ignore what the other player is doing/saying by not responding to what they do/say. Turning Public Chat to Friends/Off works, too.

C. Leave or World Hop

Other options are to leave the area by walking/teleporting or finding a safe spot to log out. You can always train later, in another area or on another world.