Full disclosure, here—I am not an Old School RuneScape player. I am, however, an avid enjoyer of the absolutely harebrained nonsense its player base is capable of—something that is both terrifying and awe-inspiring in equal measure. Often, digesting these feats involves hunting through wikis to understand mind-bending system tricks. Not this time.
This nail-biting challenge, embarked on by YouTuber Settled, is so tense I’ll be throwing up a spoiler warning for the video below (Settled uploads his challenge run videos regardless of whether he lives or dies). It also hinges on a simple game of rock-paper-scissors via the game’s prayer combat skill.
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Here’s the run-down of the stakes: On “Nightmare Mode”, Settled dies in one hit. If he dies, he has to delete his account—a challenge mode character he’s spent over 370 hours (around 15 and a half days) getting ready to fight this gauntlet.
To avoid damage, Settled needs to make use of three Prayers: Protect from Range, Protect from Melee, and Protect from Magic. Each of these provides 100% protection from incoming damage of their respective types, draining his prayer points at a rate of one per three seconds.
The Fire Cape he’s after is awarded in the TzHaar Fight Cave. To get it, players have to endure 63 separate waves of enemies. Because of the way the prayer system works, all of the damage is technically avoidable. However, NPCs in the cave all use different attack techniques—dealing ranged, magic, and melee damage respectively.
What you can bear witness to above, dear reader, is essentially the highest-stake match of rock, paper, scissors perhaps ever attempted in gaming history, where “a level 22 bat could be a big risk for my account.”
Damage is the name of the game here: In order to manage his assailants he needs to kill them as quickly as possible. Settled comes prepared with over 154 ranged attack and piddly defences—after all, if he uses his Prayers right, he’ll never take any damage. To keep his buffs up, he comes stocked with 27 potions to restore his prayer points.
In terms of intel, Settled puts all 63 waves into a spreadsheet, and enters at a specific time to make sure he gets the correct rotation of spawns, giving him the foreknowledge of every single monster he’ll need to knock down to claim his prize.
Win or lose, the final run, which takes nearly two hours in an unedited video, is a complete cheek-clencher. Settled has to make use of both “tetris stacking” and “corner trapping”—techniques wherein he angles monster’s attack paths into each other, or gets them trapped on terrain. Now would be a great time to watch the video if you don’t want to be spoiled.
On the first run, Settled has to bail when that aforementioned level 22 bat gets a little too close for comfort—on the second, everything goes swimmingly and he confronts TzTok-Jad. Despite negotiating his enemies into hyper-specific chokepoints like some kind of RuneScape Sun Tzu, there’s one very scary detail about this boss.
Not only does this blighter use both ranged and magic attacks, the OSRS wiki provides this gut-dropping detail: “Prayer switches must occur in-between TzTok-Jad’s footwork animation. If you switch while the projectile has already been unleashed, it will be too late, even if the projectile has not hit you yet.” Well, okay then.
Despite it all, the mad-lad freaking does it. He threads the needle, forcing TzTok-Jad’s healers into an unhelpful clump, pinning it in the corner with its own allies, and keeping his cool until the beast falls.
Settled would be well within his rights to hang up his cape and retire his nightmare account to a nice farm upstate but, as the video states, this is somehow only “Phase 1” of his master plan: “I’ll be honest with you, I give myself less than 10% odds.” Well, OSRS players have been far luckier before. Never tell them the odds.