Hard to say exactly how long the grind will be, but it's slow even with good methods.
It's hard to sustain cannonballs for regular use in slayer unless you have a bunch of afk time and choose to use that time to make cannonballs. I've never really done much cannoning for slayer, outside of smoke devils and some turael skipping later on in the grind.
**Optimizations for melee tasks:**
*(Disclaimer: these come at the cost of GP and/or effort—I think they're worth it based on my experiences, but it's ultimately up to what you're willing to do)*
- Use piety. Whether you flick it or camp it, it is absolutely worth using, particularly if your alternative is to use no offensive prayers. Bare minimum, at least put on the 10% or 15% strength prayer, but preferably piety.
- Always use super attack/strength potions. Use divine super strengths if you have prif unlocked.
- Use thralls when possible.
- Bring a dragon dagger and use specs whenever you have them. Bonus points if you use death charge to get even more specs.
- Use expeditious bracelets. For kills against tankier and/or high HP stuff, it's good to wear barrows gloves until you're about to get a kill and then flick on the bracelet.
**General tips/optimizations:**
- Burst/barrage as many tasks as possible, and wear bracelets of slaughter while you do it. If you're willing to do a higher effort method, barraging dagannoths in the catacombs is a great way to add another barrage task to the mix before you unlock nechs.
- Start using smoke barrage at 82 magic with divine magic potions. Don't bother with shadow or blood barrage, as they're stupidly expensive, but definitely switch to ice barrage once you hit 90 magic.
- Construct your block list well. A good way to do this is to look up the task list for your slayer master and block the highest weighted tasks that use melee and are assigned in high quantities—for example, hellhounds and greater demons at Duradel. You'll eventually unblock those for Cerb/Zammy, but until then, they're worth blocking. I'd try to avoid blocking things that are weighted 7 or below (maybe can justify steel dragons if you have no better options and no good gear to kill them).
- Related to the above point: do your quests and diaries so that you can have more block slots.
- If you get a task with multiple options, like black dragons, kill the lowest HP/least tanky variant—in that example, baby black dragons in taverley.
- Don't safespot tasks if you care about efficiency and xp rates. If you just want to afk, that's OK, but just keep in mind that it's *way* slower (unless you have a bowfa, and even then it's usually a bit slower than meleeing).
A lot of these tips require you not to be poor. If you're struggling to keep up with runes/GP, I'd recommend doing a decent money maker, like making and alching air battlestaves. This gives you some pretty good magic and crafting xp, making it not just a money maker but also a good thing for your overall account progression. Or if you are willing and able to do something like CG or revs, those will solve your money issues as well.
If you're having trouble with prayer potions, I'd recommend spamming hard farming contracts and herb runs. If you're willing to detour a bit and do some Hallowed Sepulchre, you'll get a bunch of prayer pots and ranarr from that as well. ToA and Muspah also shit out ranarr seeds once you get to the point of being able to do them. If you're desperate, you can always go pickpocket master farmers with the rogue's outfit.
Slayer is slow, but it can be made less slow with the help of GP, resources, and putting more effort into tasks. Do what you're willing to do, and otherwise just try to have fun with it. Good luck!
great advice, one thing I would consider tho. Detouring from slayer efficency for "secondary" grinds should be noted, for instance, instead of blocking hellhounds, you could use that task to farm dpick as you would need to do it anyways later, same with lizardman and other tasks. Even though this would slow down slayer in the short term, it speeds up things overall
For sure, there are reasons to do slower tasks. The "secondary grinds" I can think of are shamans for DWH, basilisk knights for faceguard, black demons (demonics) for zenytes, kalphites for KQ kills for desert elite, aviansies for Kree, hellhounds for Cerb, and greater demons for K'ril. Definitely worth doing those at some point on an ironman, though a lot of those aren't relevant until later on in the slayer grind.
Hellhound tasks for Calvar'ion probably aren't super necessary since it just affects the dogs (which only have 30 HP to begin with), but I guess it could serve as some motivation to go do it.
> instead of blocking hellhounds, you could use that task to farm dpick as you would need to do it anyways later
If you haven't blocked hellhounds then calv is reasonable as a "free" skip but I don't think it's a substitute for blocking. It's negligible slayer exp and there's no real benefit to doing it on task. I'd rather just do it in my own time off task, given how hot the wildy is these day at peak times.
check templeosrs metrics tab to see what ehp is for any given level range. At your level range 32k slayer is considered an efficient hour (no prep or anything so something like cannonballs will speed this up a lot) Cannon typically is seen as not worth the time to sacrifice active time, but if you have time where you can pop over and make cannonballs when you would otherwise not play its free. Make sure to always use piety and pot up when doing melee. Having alts helps a lot with rates as well (dancing velds and stuff)
Been a bit since I have done low level slayer but make sure to have a good blocklist sorted
If you're going purely for the highest exp rates, you just tureal cancel everything that you cannot burst. You can get 40k-60k slayer exp per hour depending on superiors/sweatiness. The reason you burst instead of cannoning is that you can buy the runes needed and still break even on gp or profit.
>My questions: -How long is the grind to 87 slayer on avg, without the use of cannons, but with bursting when applicable? (Currently at lvl 74 slayer)
really depends, if you fully cut slow tasks and go for a point neutral skip/block list you can probably avg like 25-30k an hour focusing heavily on burst/barrage tasks. thisd also require good melee gear, using piety, using bracelets etc
>-Is cannoning tasks viable at all? Should I do a cannonball grind to stock up?
if you consider some part of the process to be zero time it can be okay.
If you have afk time that would otherwise not be spent on slayer, I can highly recommend cannonballs. Blast furnace can be used to make steel bars very quickly.
Dagganoths and bloodvelds are the big cannon tasks for me. Meierditch labs does require starting sins of the father, but that task is so good with a cannon. 50k an hr + easy.
Cant really say how long the grind is, it depends on a ton of factors.
Cannoning is not a thing for ironman, you only do it for tagging smoke devils, else its just a waste of cannon balls.
The best thing you can do is make sure you have arceeus spellbook for summon thralls and always potted + piety up, you should be meleeing. Ofc switch to ancients for burst tasks whenever you get one.
This is the most complicated routing question you can ask! First, to clear up a misconception: 87 slayer is not a large breakpoint. Trident doesn't enable you to do anything you couldn't already do. 80 is a massive breakpoint because of slayer tower nechryaels being some of the best strength training xp in the game as well as providing large quantities of herb seeds. After that it's straight to 93 for Occult to unlock the magic combat style, then 95 for hydra.
If you don't have it yet, you need bowfa asap. You use it for wyrm tasks, to get your bandos armor and zamorakian hasta, half of gorillas, and all your future PVM grinds you'll do up til tbow (and some after). You also need 83 construction for the occult altar and lumbridge elite for the extra block slot. Post-fang (which will be as soon as you think your gear is good enough for toa, usually anguish+torture+hasta and ideally voidwaker) you'll want elite combat achievements to cut millions of slayer xp off your heart grind.
A common noob trap is to use defensive armor over damage items for its afkability. That's totally fine if you value afk over xp, but this *dramatically* worsens your efficiency. Slayer is not an afk skill. You'll get hundreds of prayer potions from toa and thousands from hallowed sepulchre to 99, so use 'em!
Finally, the best way to improve your slayer XP/hr is to MAKE A SPREADSHEET. I based mine off of BruhSailer's guide and block lists here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kBMW2uRI8b4NBcYn9PmsedTnZ3yW7fuGwdzsRQSCNkk/edit?usp=sharing . Make sure to turael boost to 300ish points before doing so in case of bad luck then spend, spend, spend. Lizardmen? Dwh is a good item, definitely unlock them. Krakens? Slow as hell, block them after you have your tent whip and trident. Ankou? Grit your teeth and light money on fire as you barrage them in the catacombs.
Good luck! I highly recommend the Ironscape discord. The authors of that guide are constantly answering questions over there.
I do not agree with 87 slayer not being a huge milestone, as well as requiring those items you mentioned for ToA. You can and should definitely send ToA as soon as you have a trident and bowfa. Get a fang and a yellow gem and you can easily farm 400s, a voidwaker is not needed at all, bgs is way better, and even keris + dds is more than enough. Anguish is very good, not a must but for sure one of the most important items unless you spoon a shadow. Torture is not needed.
ToA is the most skill-dependent step in iron progression, so there's lots of times you could start depending on your comfort level. I definitely missed BGS, but there's no better time to get VW/zenytes and you may as well get them pre-fang. Extending black demon tasks for zenytes is worth it.
Let's examine warped sceptre vs trident. You care about magic DPS in two places in ToA: Akkha and P2 wardens. According to the DPS calculator (https://dps.osrs.wiki?id=LockpickHonourArctic) you gain 55.2s naively. However, you spend only a third of the time using magic on Akkha, so that goes down to 18.4s per run. At Tumeken's Warden (https://dps.osrs.wiki?id=ZombieSpiderlingSandals) you save 31.8s assuming a three down which favors trident. That's a total of 50.2s saved per run by going to 87 slayer first.
Let's compare that to just torture and hasta pre-fang. Kephri and Zebak aren't any different. You save 70.1/3=23.4 seconds at Akkha (https://dps.osrs.wiki?id=ElementsPithProp), and 79.3 seconds at Ba-Ba (https://dps.osrs.wiki?id=EssenceSkeletonPoured), down to 55.6 if BGS'd. That's a total of 79s saved per run by grabbing melee upgrades first.
More importantly, these upgrades are useful forever. You will use torture everywhere and eventually upgrade the hasta to the insane DHL. Fang then unlocks basilisk tasks and makes vorkath tasks far, far better, especially with torture. This way you unlock better tasks and get to do them better, making the path to 87 slayer better for your account than if you had done it otherwise.
Mate I see you can use dps calcs, but honestly I cba to read the whole reply. Believe what I said in the previous message. I got over 2k expert toa completions and sell toa services, you can trust me ahah
Sure. TLDR: Getting hasta and torture instead of trident saves 28.8s per run and more importantly allows you to use fang along the way to 87 slayer letting you do better tasks faster.
I accept that you are proficient with ToA, but that has nothing to do with efficient ironman routing overall. Common sense is much less helpful when talking about time to clear content than a calculator is.
28 seconds per run? And how long does it take to get a torture and a hasta? Ahah
Where would you use a fang for efficient slaying? I assume you burst/barrage wherever possible and have a blade of saeldor already, or not?
Anyway gl mate!
I would recommend cballs as it greatly helped me push through the early-mid slayer grind. I probably burned through around 40k before getting to smoke devils. I dont recommend using NEARLY that many though… youll want alot for smokes, but enough to sustain some little dags/kalphites when you want a mixup of slayer/as well as doing the boss variants.
as I was very particular with tasks (trying to do only barrage/cannonable tasks) I went from 80-87 slayer in 13 days. Also sweaty lol.
Okay, thank you all! I think I've gathered some valuable intel for my grind(s)
Some things i've gathered from this discussion.
-No cannon unless can afk balls during zero loss time
-Do TOA (after 80)
-Get BOWFA
-Use the resources I have, always pot up, always piety.
Thank you all! Maybe I will make it out of my early slayer jail yet!
My slayer style is bosses or cannon. 100% viable for afk slayer if you don't mind mass making cballs... And I mean MASS. I probably crushed.. nearly 150k cballs if I had to guess on the way to 99
Don't make cannonballs unless you're unable to do slayer while you're making them. They're very slow and don't speed up slayer more than it slows you down.
Hard to say exactly how long the grind will be, but it's slow even with good methods. It's hard to sustain cannonballs for regular use in slayer unless you have a bunch of afk time and choose to use that time to make cannonballs. I've never really done much cannoning for slayer, outside of smoke devils and some turael skipping later on in the grind. **Optimizations for melee tasks:** *(Disclaimer: these come at the cost of GP and/or effort—I think they're worth it based on my experiences, but it's ultimately up to what you're willing to do)* - Use piety. Whether you flick it or camp it, it is absolutely worth using, particularly if your alternative is to use no offensive prayers. Bare minimum, at least put on the 10% or 15% strength prayer, but preferably piety. - Always use super attack/strength potions. Use divine super strengths if you have prif unlocked. - Use thralls when possible. - Bring a dragon dagger and use specs whenever you have them. Bonus points if you use death charge to get even more specs. - Use expeditious bracelets. For kills against tankier and/or high HP stuff, it's good to wear barrows gloves until you're about to get a kill and then flick on the bracelet. **General tips/optimizations:** - Burst/barrage as many tasks as possible, and wear bracelets of slaughter while you do it. If you're willing to do a higher effort method, barraging dagannoths in the catacombs is a great way to add another barrage task to the mix before you unlock nechs. - Start using smoke barrage at 82 magic with divine magic potions. Don't bother with shadow or blood barrage, as they're stupidly expensive, but definitely switch to ice barrage once you hit 90 magic. - Construct your block list well. A good way to do this is to look up the task list for your slayer master and block the highest weighted tasks that use melee and are assigned in high quantities—for example, hellhounds and greater demons at Duradel. You'll eventually unblock those for Cerb/Zammy, but until then, they're worth blocking. I'd try to avoid blocking things that are weighted 7 or below (maybe can justify steel dragons if you have no better options and no good gear to kill them). - Related to the above point: do your quests and diaries so that you can have more block slots. - If you get a task with multiple options, like black dragons, kill the lowest HP/least tanky variant—in that example, baby black dragons in taverley. - Don't safespot tasks if you care about efficiency and xp rates. If you just want to afk, that's OK, but just keep in mind that it's *way* slower (unless you have a bowfa, and even then it's usually a bit slower than meleeing). A lot of these tips require you not to be poor. If you're struggling to keep up with runes/GP, I'd recommend doing a decent money maker, like making and alching air battlestaves. This gives you some pretty good magic and crafting xp, making it not just a money maker but also a good thing for your overall account progression. Or if you are willing and able to do something like CG or revs, those will solve your money issues as well. If you're having trouble with prayer potions, I'd recommend spamming hard farming contracts and herb runs. If you're willing to detour a bit and do some Hallowed Sepulchre, you'll get a bunch of prayer pots and ranarr from that as well. ToA and Muspah also shit out ranarr seeds once you get to the point of being able to do them. If you're desperate, you can always go pickpocket master farmers with the rogue's outfit. Slayer is slow, but it can be made less slow with the help of GP, resources, and putting more effort into tasks. Do what you're willing to do, and otherwise just try to have fun with it. Good luck!
great advice, one thing I would consider tho. Detouring from slayer efficency for "secondary" grinds should be noted, for instance, instead of blocking hellhounds, you could use that task to farm dpick as you would need to do it anyways later, same with lizardman and other tasks. Even though this would slow down slayer in the short term, it speeds up things overall
For sure, there are reasons to do slower tasks. The "secondary grinds" I can think of are shamans for DWH, basilisk knights for faceguard, black demons (demonics) for zenytes, kalphites for KQ kills for desert elite, aviansies for Kree, hellhounds for Cerb, and greater demons for K'ril. Definitely worth doing those at some point on an ironman, though a lot of those aren't relevant until later on in the slayer grind. Hellhound tasks for Calvar'ion probably aren't super necessary since it just affects the dogs (which only have 30 HP to begin with), but I guess it could serve as some motivation to go do it.
> instead of blocking hellhounds, you could use that task to farm dpick as you would need to do it anyways later If you haven't blocked hellhounds then calv is reasonable as a "free" skip but I don't think it's a substitute for blocking. It's negligible slayer exp and there's no real benefit to doing it on task. I'd rather just do it in my own time off task, given how hot the wildy is these day at peak times.
check templeosrs metrics tab to see what ehp is for any given level range. At your level range 32k slayer is considered an efficient hour (no prep or anything so something like cannonballs will speed this up a lot) Cannon typically is seen as not worth the time to sacrifice active time, but if you have time where you can pop over and make cannonballs when you would otherwise not play its free. Make sure to always use piety and pot up when doing melee. Having alts helps a lot with rates as well (dancing velds and stuff) Been a bit since I have done low level slayer but make sure to have a good blocklist sorted
If you're going purely for the highest exp rates, you just tureal cancel everything that you cannot burst. You can get 40k-60k slayer exp per hour depending on superiors/sweatiness. The reason you burst instead of cannoning is that you can buy the runes needed and still break even on gp or profit.
This is good for heart but an optimized blocklist is better exp than turael skipping purely for burst tasks
>My questions: -How long is the grind to 87 slayer on avg, without the use of cannons, but with bursting when applicable? (Currently at lvl 74 slayer) really depends, if you fully cut slow tasks and go for a point neutral skip/block list you can probably avg like 25-30k an hour focusing heavily on burst/barrage tasks. thisd also require good melee gear, using piety, using bracelets etc >-Is cannoning tasks viable at all? Should I do a cannonball grind to stock up? if you consider some part of the process to be zero time it can be okay.
Don't be afraid to burst tzhaars! Slaughters and expeditious bracelets are your best friends!!
If you have afk time that would otherwise not be spent on slayer, I can highly recommend cannonballs. Blast furnace can be used to make steel bars very quickly. Dagganoths and bloodvelds are the big cannon tasks for me. Meierditch labs does require starting sins of the father, but that task is so good with a cannon. 50k an hr + easy.
Cant really say how long the grind is, it depends on a ton of factors. Cannoning is not a thing for ironman, you only do it for tagging smoke devils, else its just a waste of cannon balls. The best thing you can do is make sure you have arceeus spellbook for summon thralls and always potted + piety up, you should be meleeing. Ofc switch to ancients for burst tasks whenever you get one.
This is the most complicated routing question you can ask! First, to clear up a misconception: 87 slayer is not a large breakpoint. Trident doesn't enable you to do anything you couldn't already do. 80 is a massive breakpoint because of slayer tower nechryaels being some of the best strength training xp in the game as well as providing large quantities of herb seeds. After that it's straight to 93 for Occult to unlock the magic combat style, then 95 for hydra. If you don't have it yet, you need bowfa asap. You use it for wyrm tasks, to get your bandos armor and zamorakian hasta, half of gorillas, and all your future PVM grinds you'll do up til tbow (and some after). You also need 83 construction for the occult altar and lumbridge elite for the extra block slot. Post-fang (which will be as soon as you think your gear is good enough for toa, usually anguish+torture+hasta and ideally voidwaker) you'll want elite combat achievements to cut millions of slayer xp off your heart grind. A common noob trap is to use defensive armor over damage items for its afkability. That's totally fine if you value afk over xp, but this *dramatically* worsens your efficiency. Slayer is not an afk skill. You'll get hundreds of prayer potions from toa and thousands from hallowed sepulchre to 99, so use 'em! Finally, the best way to improve your slayer XP/hr is to MAKE A SPREADSHEET. I based mine off of BruhSailer's guide and block lists here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kBMW2uRI8b4NBcYn9PmsedTnZ3yW7fuGwdzsRQSCNkk/edit?usp=sharing . Make sure to turael boost to 300ish points before doing so in case of bad luck then spend, spend, spend. Lizardmen? Dwh is a good item, definitely unlock them. Krakens? Slow as hell, block them after you have your tent whip and trident. Ankou? Grit your teeth and light money on fire as you barrage them in the catacombs. Good luck! I highly recommend the Ironscape discord. The authors of that guide are constantly answering questions over there.
I do not agree with 87 slayer not being a huge milestone, as well as requiring those items you mentioned for ToA. You can and should definitely send ToA as soon as you have a trident and bowfa. Get a fang and a yellow gem and you can easily farm 400s, a voidwaker is not needed at all, bgs is way better, and even keris + dds is more than enough. Anguish is very good, not a must but for sure one of the most important items unless you spoon a shadow. Torture is not needed.
ToA is the most skill-dependent step in iron progression, so there's lots of times you could start depending on your comfort level. I definitely missed BGS, but there's no better time to get VW/zenytes and you may as well get them pre-fang. Extending black demon tasks for zenytes is worth it. Let's examine warped sceptre vs trident. You care about magic DPS in two places in ToA: Akkha and P2 wardens. According to the DPS calculator (https://dps.osrs.wiki?id=LockpickHonourArctic) you gain 55.2s naively. However, you spend only a third of the time using magic on Akkha, so that goes down to 18.4s per run. At Tumeken's Warden (https://dps.osrs.wiki?id=ZombieSpiderlingSandals) you save 31.8s assuming a three down which favors trident. That's a total of 50.2s saved per run by going to 87 slayer first. Let's compare that to just torture and hasta pre-fang. Kephri and Zebak aren't any different. You save 70.1/3=23.4 seconds at Akkha (https://dps.osrs.wiki?id=ElementsPithProp), and 79.3 seconds at Ba-Ba (https://dps.osrs.wiki?id=EssenceSkeletonPoured), down to 55.6 if BGS'd. That's a total of 79s saved per run by grabbing melee upgrades first. More importantly, these upgrades are useful forever. You will use torture everywhere and eventually upgrade the hasta to the insane DHL. Fang then unlocks basilisk tasks and makes vorkath tasks far, far better, especially with torture. This way you unlock better tasks and get to do them better, making the path to 87 slayer better for your account than if you had done it otherwise.
Mate I see you can use dps calcs, but honestly I cba to read the whole reply. Believe what I said in the previous message. I got over 2k expert toa completions and sell toa services, you can trust me ahah
Sure. TLDR: Getting hasta and torture instead of trident saves 28.8s per run and more importantly allows you to use fang along the way to 87 slayer letting you do better tasks faster. I accept that you are proficient with ToA, but that has nothing to do with efficient ironman routing overall. Common sense is much less helpful when talking about time to clear content than a calculator is.
28 seconds per run? And how long does it take to get a torture and a hasta? Ahah Where would you use a fang for efficient slaying? I assume you burst/barrage wherever possible and have a blade of saeldor already, or not? Anyway gl mate!
I would recommend cballs as it greatly helped me push through the early-mid slayer grind. I probably burned through around 40k before getting to smoke devils. I dont recommend using NEARLY that many though… youll want alot for smokes, but enough to sustain some little dags/kalphites when you want a mixup of slayer/as well as doing the boss variants. as I was very particular with tasks (trying to do only barrage/cannonable tasks) I went from 80-87 slayer in 13 days. Also sweaty lol.
For me 10kph is sometimes max i get:D but i am doing konar from low lvls (now 93) and its a chill vibe
Okay, thank you all! I think I've gathered some valuable intel for my grind(s) Some things i've gathered from this discussion. -No cannon unless can afk balls during zero loss time -Do TOA (after 80) -Get BOWFA -Use the resources I have, always pot up, always piety. Thank you all! Maybe I will make it out of my early slayer jail yet!
My slayer style is bosses or cannon. 100% viable for afk slayer if you don't mind mass making cballs... And I mean MASS. I probably crushed.. nearly 150k cballs if I had to guess on the way to 99
Don't make cannonballs unless you're unable to do slayer while you're making them. They're very slow and don't speed up slayer more than it slows you down.
Venator bow is worth going for makes slayer afk
My only regret is getting venator bow a 98.5 slayer lmao
I think going for hard combat achievements for higher superior chance is pretty smart
It's elites for that fyi
yeah bro just casually rush elite combat achievements 💀
It's viable to do and you should do it before you continue past 80 slayer