Theatre of Blood guide
Introduction
Welcome to RuneRealm's Theatre of Blood raid guide! In this guide you will learn about the Theatre of Blood (ToB) minigame. Raids are build clan based, opposed to OSRS's custom team building system. That means you can enter the ToB with a cc, without a limit of total players. You can also play solo. ToB is considered one of the, if not the hardest PVM encounter in the game. You will face different challenges and you have to get the absolute best out of yourself, your gear, and if you are playing with a team out of your team mates to beat this minigame. A small mistake could ruin your attempt in the blink of an eye. But... with high risk, comes high rewards. The ToB offers one of the best unique drop tables, containing some of the best pieces of loot in the game. In the ToB you have to kill 6 different bosses, all in their own room. Each boss fight has unique mechanics and require different strategies. In this guide i will take you through what you need to take an attempt at the ToB, which bosses you have to fight, what mechanics you have to take into account and ofcourse, what rewards could be waiting for you in the end! Let's open the curtains...
Before entering the Theatre
You can teleport straight to the ToB through the minigames teleport menu in the spellbook. When you teleport here you will be in the waiting lobby. On the west side of this area is a bank and the exit of the Theatre, should you be misbehaving... In the middle of this area is a notice board. If you read this you can see if there is already a raid going on in your cc and how many players are in the lobby. On the east side is the entrance to the Theatre. You have 2 options to enter. If you lef-click the entrance you will enter as if you are going with your cc. Anyone can join until anyone enters the first boss room. You can right-click the entrance and select quick-solo if you wish to do a game on your own. Remember to use this if you are going solo, to prevent other players not being able to play a game with the cc. Only captains or higher ranks in a cc can start a game for the whole cc. If you wish to do a multi-player run without a captain+, you can leave the help cc and make your own. Other players can then join your cc to play together. As soon as someone enters the first boss room, no other players can join anymore and the raid starts. The players who are inside can still enter the boss room. If a HCIM dies inside ToB, their hardcore status is revoked. If you die inside while playing solo the raid is over and you are out. If you die when playing with a group you get assigned a spectator spot where you can watch your friends beat the boss. You can select different spectator spots in the player panel interface on the bottom right. If the boss has been defeated, dead players come back to life and can rejoin for the next boss. If everyone in the group dies, the raid is over. You can teleport out of ToB, a message will pop-up to confirm your teleportation. If you log out in ToB, your progress is not saved and you will find yourself outside of the raid when logging back in. Bosses scale with the amount of players that are inside the raid. The bosses will have higher points and in some cases deal more damage aswell. Some abilities also scale up with the amount of players inside. This will be explained with each boss ability. When in the lobbyToB, on the top left you will which room you're in, how many players are in and alive, and how many there are waiting outside. If you start the raid, this changes to your points, and total group points, and a large health bar from the boss will show on top of the screen.
The first boss: The Maiden of Sugadinti
Base Hitpoints: 2500
Immune to poison/venom: No
Best style to kill: Ranged with twisted bow or Melee with Scythe of Vitur. While Scythe would deal more damage, ranged makes you more versatile which is
Abilities:
Tornado: This is her generic magic attack, this will always target the player closest to her (stat drain effects from OSRS are not implemented)
Blood pools: Maiden will occasionally throw blood pools to all the players in the room. These blood pools deal heavy damage and reduce your prayer very quickly. You should move asap when she does this attack. All players in the raid will be targeted each time.
Blood spawn: There is a chance a blood spawn will spawn on the blood pools. These blood spawns are red blood balls floating around the room leaving a trail of blood pools. Kill these as quick as possible to prevent the whole room being filled with blood pools. Freezing them with magic spells could help you alot. The more players inside the raid, the more blood spawns can spawn in the raid.
Nylos spawns: At 70%, 50%, and 30% hitpoints the maiden will spawn 2 nylocas in the east side of the room that will walk towards her, they will heal the maiden if they reach her by the amount of hitpoints these nylos have left and increase maidens max hit. 2 Nylos will spawn per player in the raid. The nylos have 300 hp, the more players in, the more hp they have. They should be frozen and killed asap after spawning.
Fight overview
Despite the Maiden having a lot of heavy damage dealing abilities, she is one of the easiest bosses. You can kill her with taking close to 0 damage when paying enough attention. When you enter her room, you can find her in the back of the room. Despite her being 'stuck' in place, her attacks will reach you in the whole room. Use the Dragon Warhammer to bring her defence down, then start ranging her. Move a few tiles when she throws blood pools at you. When she's at 70% hp, the nylos will spawn. You can freeze them individually, then kill them one by one with the blowpipe. You can also wait a bit until they are together in front of the boss, then you can freeze them both at once, this is a bit more risky as you have less time to kill and chances to (re)freeze, but if succesful, you can kill them both at once with barrage spells. Do not stress if you fail to kill them, Maiden will heal the amount of hp they had left, but she won't spawn any new nylos until 50% and 30% hp. Proceed the fight, rinse and repeat until she is dead.
The second boss: Pestilent Bloat
Base Hitpoints: 2000
Immune to poison/venom: No
Best style to kill: Melee
Abilities
Flies: Bloat walks in circles around the pillar in his room, you have to stay on the opposite tile of his position on the other side of the pillar, if you get to close to bloat, he will attack you with flies, dealing damage every tick. Protect from ranged prayer will halve this damage. The flies can go around the corner so always try to stay diagionally from his position. Contrary to OSRS, flies don't spread to other players.
Falling Flesh: After every 'sleep' Bloat does, he will make Flesh fall off the ceiling, you will see dark shadows getting bigger, and within a few ticks, you will be hit by a big piece of flesh if you are in this position, dealing 30 to 50 damage, and stunning you for 3 seconds. You can avoid this by moving away. Make sure to keep an eye out for bloat's position while doing this. He repeats this until he is dead. Multiple people can be hit by one piece of falling flesh if they stand in the same tile.
Fight overview
Before you go through the gate in his room, make sure he is on the other side of the pillar so you won't get damaged. 'Dance' around the pillar to stay out of his eye-sight to prevent damage from Flies. Stay as close to the pillar as possible to make it easier for yourself. After a random amount of seconds, usually between 15 and 30, bloat stops walking and falls asleep in position, at this stage you run to him asap and smash him with your DWH specs, after that you damageh him with your Scythe, or other melee weapon. You will not receive damage from Flies while he's asleep. You can do about 5-6 hits until he wakes up. before he wakes up he starts moving a bit, this is your call to run away from him. If you are to close to Bloat when he wake's up, he will do heavy damage to you. After this, the Falling Flesh starts to occur, each and every time until he is dead. The falling flesh stops temporarily when he is asleep.
The third boss: Nylocas Vasilias
Base Hitpoints: 2500
Immune to poison/venom: no
Best style to kill: All styles are nescesary to kill this boss
This boss encounter has two phases. The first phase consists of killing waves of nylos, the second phase is the boss fight.
Phase 1
During this phase, nylos will come out of the webs to the room, starting to damage the pillars or you. The pillars have to stay up, if they all collapse the fight is over and you are out. The nylos come in three different colors, which corresponds with the style they can be damaged with:
Grey use melee and can only be damaged by melee
Green use ranged and can only be damaged by ranged
Cyan use magic and can only be damaged by Magic
Using another style on a nylos will not damage them. Every few seconds, a new wave of Nylos spawn, there is a cap so it won't be too flooded, but it can get pretty crowdy in the room. The small nylos have 10 hp, the more players in the room, the higher hp they have. There will also spawn big nylos, they have 20 hp and upon dieing, they spawn 2 small nylos. If a nylo isn't killed within 30 seconds, it will explode, dealing 18 damage to players standing close to it. After 25 waves of Nylos, the big boss, Nylocas Vasilias will spawn.
Strategy: Keep protect from ranged up at all times. The melee one's will hit you the hardest, so if you get these on you, kill them asap. After those, kill the magers and the rangers. You can use blood blitz/barrage on the magers to heal up a bit. As you are praying ranged protection, the rangers have the least priority. Try to kill one big guy at a time, as the spawns will always target you, and if you are unfortunate, they can deal a lot of damage on you. The trick on phase 1 is to stay calm. Kill what tries to kill you first. Get the big guys of the pillars and kill the spawns. Kill the small nylos on the pillars inbetween. If you have high hitpoints you could leave one or 2 small magers on the pillars, you can use those later to heal up. Don't start panic eating food, as blood blitzing/barraging a few magers, or getting a few Master Alex pet effects on you can also do a lot of healing.
Phase 2
After you've killed all the Nylos, the big boss, Nylocas Vasilias will spawn, a warning will appear in chat. Vasilias changes colors every few seconds, corresponding with styles the same way the small nylos do. When he's grey, he does melee damage and his damagable by melee damage, if he's green ranged, and if he's cyan magic. But, damaging him with the wrong style will heal him and the damage retaliates! You can easily kill yourself within a few seconds if you're not paying attention. Your character will automatically stop attacking him when he changes colors, so no need to click away. Just try to prevent spam clicking the boss at all time so you won't accidentally kill yourself.
He starts in melee phase, put protect from melee on and spec him twice with your DWH, vasilias will switch to another style, put the right prayer and weapon on and damage him. You could only equip a weapon and keep wearing the same armor the whole time, being less accurate, but also saves you switching each time. Casting spells in melee or ranged gear is possible, as spells are reasonably accurate. Don't be affraid to not attack him a round if you messed up with your prayers or switching. Rather not attack him for a round than try to be quick and accidentally kill yourself. His ranged and magic attacks are quite accurate and can hit up to 17 with protection prayers on. Rinse and repeat until he is dead. After he is dead you walk out of the room the same way you came in, walk a bit back and go to the right to enter the next boss room.
The fourth boss: Sotetseg
Base Hitpoints: 3000
Immune to poison/venom: No
Best style to attack with: Melee
Sotetseg has 2 basic attacks, a magic and a melee attack. If you do not get in melee range, he will only attack you with magic. This makes it possible to 'flick' attack him. Stay away at least 1 tile from Sotet, attack him when he attacks you with mage, then step back again, rinse and repeat. His magic attack is a small red ball floating to you. Both his mage and melee attacks can deal over 50 damage, but 0 if protected against. It is adviced to use protect from mage and flinch his melee attacks. The magic attacks will riochet off of you to other players, which is another red ball which does magic damage, or a grey ball, which does ranged damage. These ball float a bit slow so it is possible to protect pray against them. If there are a lot of players in the room, a lot of balls could be floating around, so it is reccommended to keep focusing at all times what happens around you. If you don't pray accordingly you can get a lot of damage and your protection prayers will be disabled for a few seconds.
Sotet can also fire a very large red ball, which will very slowly float to one player. All players need to stand in the same tile when the ball lands to spread damage, if not, the player being targeted will get very heavy damage and most likely be killed. It is adviced to talk beforehand with your team where you are all going to stand when he does this attack, during the fight you won't have time to talk. It is an unwritten rule the tile in front of the boss's head is used for this, but it is always good to talk about this. If you are doing this solo, the damage off the red ball obviously can't be spread to other players, so you can just stay in the same place and face the consequence. The damage in a solo run will be lower than in a group.
At 66.6% and 33.3% of health left, a maze will begin. A leader is picked and sent to the shadow realm, that has to guide the path for the team members still left in the room. Every tile the leader clicks will also light up in the teams room (only 1 tile at a time). The leader will take 1-3 damage every few seconds will in the shadow realm. The maze will start as soon as the leader steps on to the 4th row of tiles in the maze (a tornado will spawn, that will wipe out the path behind the team) Should a player be caught by the tornado, or stand on a tile that is not part of the path, they will be dealt rapid damage of around 17. As soon as all players have finished the maze, Sotetseg becomes attackable again.
The best way to deal with this is when the 'leader' is on the 3rd tile ask if the team surfaced is ready and if so, he starts running. Make sure to stand still very shortly at corners (one tick is long enough) so the team can see what route to follow, as damage will be dealt to them if they stand on the wrong tile.
The fifth boss: Xarpus
Hitpoints: 3000
Immune to poison/venom: No
Best style to attack with: Ranged or Melee
The boss consists of 3 different phases:
Phase 1
Xarpus will stand unattackable on the ground in the center, the boss spawns at 75% of its max hp and will start resurrecting Exhumed Skeletons, which will rapidly shoot healing projectiles towards Xarpus. This can be prevented by standing on top of the projectile, which will stop the healing (until the player leave this position). After 9 seconds the skeleton despawns and moves to a new location. The more players there are in the raid, the more skeletons spawn each time, but there will never be more skeletons than players at the same time. Obviously the boss having less hp to start with is a goal to aim for, but also the more Xarpus is healed in phase 1, the less points you will get in the end.
Phase 2
Xarpus will rotate around different players, and shoot acid pools at them. These pools stay for the entire duration of the fight and if a player is standing on them, they will receive rapid damage (and get poisoned). These pools will shoot "ricochet" balls, which will launch towards another pool, if a player is standing within 1 tile next to a pool as it lands (or a ricochet pool landing) they will be dealt splash damage on impact. Standing under Xarpus (same as phase 2) will deal you rapid (light) damage and should be avoided at all times. The best way to deal with Xarpus is to stay on the outskirts of the area. Attack him with a Twisted Bow and move 2 tiles away when he attacks you. Shoot an arrow at him then move again. When there are no tiles left, move a row close to the boss and repeat this process. This way when you come close to the boss, you can finish him with melee.
Phase 3
This phase starts around 25% Hp left. You'll know when phase 3 starts when Xarpus yells 'Screeeeeeeech'. Xarpus will face a random one of the 4 directions (NW, NE, SE, SW) a player standing in his viewing direction should not attack Xarpus as he will deflect and deal high damage to the player and most likely kill you. This is done almost instantly when he turns, so a player should count their attacks and manually stop attacking before he turns and not wait for the animation. Also in this phase you should never be standing under Xarpus. In this phase he stops shooting acid pools around, so if you have left a 'circle' free around him, you can attack Xarpus with melee while avoiding his attack, and not have to worry about standing in acid pools.
The sixth Boss: Verzik Vitur
Base Hitpoints: 4500 (spread out over 3 phases, 1500 HP each phase)
Immune to poison/venom: No
Best style to attack with: Magic on Phase 1, melee on phase 2 and 3
Before advancing from the Xarpus room, a player is required to pick up the Dawnbringer staff from the skeleton. This is a special staff which can only be used on the first phase of Verzik Vitur in ToB. After Phase 1 is over, or everyone is dead, the staff will dissapear. If a player teleports, or logs out with the staff, it will be dropped on the floor. Dawnbringer will be seen instantly by other players when dropped on the floor. Proceed to the last room and talk to Verzik Vitur to start the encounter.
Phase 1 (Base 1500 HP)
Theres 6 pillars spawning in the room, erzik will shoot a very strong projectile attack towards each player, this can hit up to 137 (or 68 if using Protect from Magic).
If a player is hiding behind a pillar, their ball will be redirected towards, and damage, this pillar. If all players are behind the same pillar, it will shoot one ball to the pillar. If players use different pillars, all used pillars will get a ball of damage. If players are not hidden, they will all get hit, with the exception of players hiding behind the pillar. It is adviced to stay at the same pillar with all players. Verzik has a very high defence in this phase, only magic is a bit accurate, and the Dawnbringer staff is very accurate. It's base damage is low, but it's spec can hit up to to 150! It is adviced to use 2 specs on Verzik, then drop the staff for another player to pick up, use 2 specs, drop it again for the next. Rinse and repeat to get the maximum specs out of it as this deals the most damage. Other players can damage Verzik with magic if they not have Dawnbringer. It is adviced to use blood blitz if a player is hit by verzik, to safe food, at least until the next phase and only if you are above 68 hitpoints. After 5 to 8 hits, the pillar has received too much damage and will collapse. Standing next to a pillar upon collapsing will deal heavy damage, make sure to run to another pillar before the pillar hits the ground to avoid collission damage. Talk to your team beforehand in which order you are going from pillar to pillar. Verzik has 1500 hitpoints (higher if with a team) in this phase, upon reaching 0 hitpoints, phase 2 will start. All the pillars collapse so make sure to stand in the middle to prevent getting damaged, and Verzik will float to the middle of the room.
Phase 2 (Base 1500 HP)
Dragon Warhammer/Statius Warhammer/Bandos Godsword attacks do not work vs Verzik in this phase. Verziks primary attack is ranged based, he shoots bombs at all the players (on their previous position), you can dodge these by tick walking or walking in a L shaped pattern. On the tick Verzik launches an attack, he will check if any player is within 1 tile distance from him, if this is the case he will do a "stomp" style bounce attack that pushes the player several blocks away and stuns them, this can deal high damage (up to 50), due to the stun timer the ranged bomb will usually hit almost at the same time. Damage her with melee while tick walking her attacks, so you are never in melee range when she attacks.
Every 4 ranged attacks verzik shoots an Electric ball instead, that bounces between players (if they are not too far away) until all team mates have touched it OR it discharged on Verzik (and verzik gets damaged), if not discharged the last player gets a lot of damage, this damage scales with the amount of players in the group.
Every 5 electric ball attacks she will perform a Nylocas attack, she spawns 1 Athanatos that will constantly heal her while it's alive. This can be instantly killed by Poisoning/Venoming it (this will also deal a very high hit to Verzik herself) kill this as fast as possible. At the same time she will spawn 1 common nylo per player, these will follow the players around the room and explode once they get too close, dealing high damage to all nearby players up to several tiles away. You can avoid this by waiting until the nylos is at you, then run away quickly when it stops walking/starts detonating.
After she reaches 35% health, she will switch her ranged attack to a magic attack, a blood spell that heals her for 25% damage dealt. This attack is only targeted vs one player instead of the entire team, like the ranged attack. She will also spawn 2 Matomenos every 8 attacks, these work similair to Maiden, as they will heal Verzik for their remaining HP once they despawn after 24 seconds.
Phase 3 (Base 1500 HP)
Verzik will use 3 basic attacks (Mage, Range, Melee) and 4 different special attacks in a fixed repeating order. She will only use Melee if a player is within melee range (standing underneath her does not count). Below are the 4 special attacks
Nylocas bombs: same as phase 2 but without the healing Athanatos.
Webs: she shoots webs around the room at several targets, if stuck in this web you can no longer move. The webs disappear after a short amount of time, dealing heavy damage to the player inside the web. Other players can attack the web a player is standing on to kill it and free the player.
Yellow auras: Safespots will appear around the room, 1 per player. If a player is standing on one of these safespots before the projectile hits they will receive no damage. Normally a safespot can not be shared with other players, but on here we allow it aslong as ALL safespots are taken (so in a larger teams, we still only spawn 5 so some people need to share a safespot which can be done safely as long as all the others have atleast 1 player on them) Not being on a safespot in time deals large damage, sharing a safespot while not all are taken deals moderate damage to everyone sharing a spot.
Green ball: Players can bounce it between each other by standing close to the target, it will never hit the same target twice. If solo, the green ball just damages the player.
In this phase, act to the special attacks and try to kill Verzik asap with melee, kind of in the same manner as phase 2.
If you have survived until now, you have completed the Theatre of Blood! Congratulations!