OSRS 1-99 Slayer Guide
- Theoatrix
- Sep 3
- 18 min read
What's going on guys, my name's Theoatrix and welcome to my updated 1-99 Slayer guide for OSRS. This guide will teach you everything you need to know to effectively level your Slayer in OldSchool RuneScape.
Guide Outline
If you would prefer to watch a video-version of this guide, I have linked that below. Otherwise, continue scrolling to read the written-version of this guide.
Changes To Slayer
For most, Slayer is the slowest 99 in the game, and it can be a complicated skill to train, so in this guide ill show you exactly how to train effectively.
It's a skill that is constantly evolving, and recently, Jagex introduced the Custodia Pass Slayer Dungeon with the release of Varlamore Part 3. Here, you can find 3 tiers of custodian stalkers, with the minimum requirement being 54 slayer, and they have a chance of dropping the antler guard, a prayer and offensive boosting offhand.
Jagex has also proposed a range of further improvements and adjustments to slayer, with separate blocklists for every master, as well as a range of updates benefitting the early to mid slayer levels. As a whole, slayer is becoming easier and this guide will show you every piece of info you need to know, before and after the updates.
Why Train Slayer
So why should you level your slayer?
Despite the low XP rates, its is an enjoyable skill for most, and is an efficient way to train your combat stats if you're going for the max cape. This is because you're training slayer and combat at the same time, and with the boosts of the black mask or slayer helmet, you're getting increased damage and subsequently, increased XP rates.
Slayer is also one of the most profitable skills in the game depending on your play style. If you aim to complete boss tasks and manage your costs effectively, you can make hundreds of millions on your journey to 99.
For Ironmen, slayer is essential for the preparation of high level content. This is because you unlock monsters that drop game changing equipment, including the abyssal whip, the trident of the seas and the occult necklace.
You need level 69 slayer in order to get the quest cape, and you need level 95 for the achievement diary cape. And some very important quests have a slayer level requirement, including Desert Treasure 1, Animal Magnetism, Sins of the Father and Monkey Madness 2.
How Slayer Works
Slayer is a task based skill, where you’re assigned to kill a certain monster from one of nine slayer masters.
Each Slayer Master assigns monsters from their own task list, and higher level Slayer Masters give harder and longer tasks. A slayer task consists of one type of monster, and a quantity of that monster that you're required to defeat.
Upon defeating an assigned monster, you receive slayer experience equal to the monsters total hitpoints with some exceptions. Some slayer monsters require specific gear in order to fight them, such as wearing a face mask when fighting dust devils.
And once you complete a slayer task, you will usually receive a number of slayer points, which can be used to get various rewards and unlocks.
Overall, slayer is a skill that is considerably faster if you have high combat stats, so I would suggest starting with at least level 70 combat, although ill still cover some low level gameplay further in this guide.
Slayer Masters
Now I'm going to briefly cover each slayer master so you know the benefits of each one. As I mentioned, there are 9 of them, and I'll go in order of difficulty.
The first is Turael, located in Burthourpe, and this master has zero requirements.
He is often used for point boosting or for skipping a task that you don't have the points for skipping.
There’s Spria, unlocked after the Porcine of Interest quest, and Spria has the exact same task list as Turael except with the extra task of Sourhogs. Its not a commonly used slayermaster.
Krystillia is the other slayer master that has zero slayer requirements, and this is the wilderness master. Krystilia is by far the best slayer master for points and can also be fast slayer xp at mid to high combat levels.
Mazchna requires level 20 combat to get a task from, and this could be a decent way to understand how slayer works, especially after the proposed changes that increase the slayer points rewarded with him.
Vanakka is a level 40 combat slayer master, and can offer tasks that are pretty tricky with a low combat level. This master again, should only be used if you're looking to try out slayer at a lower level, but with Jagex’s proposed update the slayer points from Vanakka aren't as low.
The next master is Chaeldar, unlocked at level 70 combat, and this one is great if you've just reached 70 combat. To be able to use Chaeldar, you do need to have completed the lost city quest, and she assigns a range of mid to high level monsters.
And the next one is Konar, unlocked at 75 combat. This master is great for profit since you have a chance of getting a brimstone key drop on her tasks. These keys allow you to get amazing supplies on an ironman, although in terms of getting the fastest XP rates, Konar is generally not the best.
With 85 combat, you unlock a high XP slayer master, Nieve. she generally gives long and high XP tasks, and she is located right next to the stronghold slayer cave, which is not only a great slayer location, but is also fast to reach once you unlock slayer rings.
And the final slayer master is Duradel, unlocked with level 100 combat and 50 slayer. Duradel gives the most boss tasks out of any slayer master, and also gives the longest slayer tasks. He is also excellent for XP, similar to Nieve.
Generally, if you're looking for bosses and profit, go to Duradel.
If you're looking for the fastest XP, go to Nieve or Duradel. If you want some extra profit and variety, go to Konar. If you want points, then wilderness slayer is best, although Turael point boosting is not bad either.
In the proposed slayer update, Jagex will allow you to setup blocklists for each separate slayer master, so you can set up each master to be tailored towards a certain play style, like for profit or for XP.
An update that Jagex released somewhat recently is where once you get 99 slayer, you can access any slayer master regardless of the combat requirement. So this means that pures can access Duradel, Nieve and Konar, as long as they have 99 slayer.
Slayer Points
As I mentioned, upon completing a slayer task, you receive slayer points.
You don't get any slayer points for your first 4 slayer tasks in a row, but then on your fifth and subsequent tasks, you start receiving points.
And once you hit certain task count milestones, you get a boosted amount of slayer points for completing that task, with 5 times the points for every 10th task, ranging up to 50 times for your thousandth tasks.
With these points, you can use them to purchase rewards and unlocks from any slayer master, which can be done by right clicking the master and selecting rewards.
There are 4 main categories of rewards.
There’s unlocks, where you can unlock new slayer tasks, and you can also unlock slayer items, or unlock utilities.
There’s extension rewards, which allow you to increase the number of monsters assigned to you with certain slayer tasks.
There’s purchase rewards, where you can trade slayer points for items, including slayer rings, broad bolts and some storage bags.
And lastly, there are slayer task rewards, which allow you to skip or block a task.
There are a lot of rewards, and generally, the best order of unlock for your slayer point rewards comes down to your training style. but in general, this is the best unlock order that most players go for.
Firstly, is the Bigger and Badder reward, which unlocks superior slayer monsters. And these monsters significantly increase your slayer XP rates, and also give you a chance at some highly valuable drops. In Jagex’s recent proposal, they are looking to reduce the slayer point cost of Bigger and Badder, so its not a bad idea to wait a bit until the cost is less than the current 150 points.
After unlocking superiors, you should then unlock the slayer helmet, which allows you to use the boost from the black mask on a range of other tasks that already require headgear. Some players choose to unlock the slayer helmet first, but i would recommend Bigger and Badder first since you can still use the boost from the black mask without needing the slayer helmet.
With superiors and the slayer helm unlocked, it now becomes more open ended about which reward you unlock next.
There’s slayer ring crafting, which has a number of benefits including easy access to slayer areas, as well as faster access to tarn’s lair for a salve amulet.
The “hot stuff” reward, which allows you to be assigned Tzhaar monsters as a task, and can be great for fast experience and profit as well. You can also get a Tzhaar task before going for your first fire cape, which can make it easier with the black mask or slayer helmet boost.
The “I wildy more slayer” reward is one that actually costs zero points, but is best unlocked after getting at least the slayer helmet, and this reward allows you to be assigned a few more high experience tasks from the wilderness slayer master.
And with Jagex’s proposed changes, the slug salter and reptile freezer rewards will be more accessible for lower levelled players, proposed to cost less points.
And on top of those, a slayer reward that is very important is sorting out your blocks and extends. This all depends on your playstyle, and for example, for the fastest experience, you'd block the tasks you cant cannon or burst, and then you’d extend the tasks which give the fastest experience.
Also, Jagex is proposing to have separate blocklists for every slayer master, with reduced costs to block with the lower levelled masters, so this way you could setup a blocklist with one master for points, and others for profit and experience.
There’s also task storage, which is excellent for all playstyles and especially useful for Turael skipping. It allows you to put away a task for later and get another task, which is an alternative to skipping your task. Task storage is proposed to cost only 500 slayer points after the update, down from 1 thousand.
From here, where you go is up to you. If you want more boss tasks, you can unlock the “like a boss” reward, or if you want a different coloured slayer helmet, there's a range of different designs you can get. But before getting any of those, its strongly recommended to have your blocklists and task extensions in order first.
Useful Slayer Unlocks
Now lets go through the useful unlocks that you might consider before training slayer. Firstly, I'll talk about quests that unlock certain slayer tasks.
There’s about 20 quests that unlock slayer monsters, and some of these monsters are better than others. But I would very much recommend doing quests like desert treasure 1 for dust devils, horror from the deep for Dagannoths, and if you want to avoid dragons tasks all together, you can skip completing the dragon slayer 1 quest, although that does restrict your account.
Next in terms of slayer unlocks, is a very important one, and that is using enchanted silver bracelets on your task. This includes the expeditious bracelet, which shortens your slayer task, and the bracelet of slaughter, which extends your task.
Your usage of these really depends on your play style, but for example, if you're going for the fastest experience, you can use the expeditious bracelet to shorten the slow tasks, and you can use the slaughter to extend those tasks that are fast, usually burstable or cannonable. Ironmen can go out of their way to make these bracelets, or on a regular account, you can just buy these straight off the grand exchange.
Aside from the bracelets, there's a number of other items that greatly improve your slayer training.
The dwarf multicannon is one that I've already mentioned, and this is unlocked after the dwarf cannon quest. Using the multicannon greatly speeds up slayer and is almost a must for every training style.
Having the Ancient Spellbook unlocked after Desert Treasure 1 is essential for bursting your slayer tasks, which is how you can get some of the fastest slayer XP rates in the game.
Having fairy rings unlocked facilitates quick travel to hard to get to locations, and also, having an upgraded player owned house can improve your gameplay, with convenient teleports, reducing inventory clutter, and for utilities like the restoration pool or occult altar.
There's also the gem bag, herb sack and the seed box, which are excellent for saving inventory space while training.
You can also get the Soulbearer, which is useful in the long run with ensouled head drops.
There’s the holy wrench, which is great if you're using prayer potions, and also, bringing along high alchemy to your tasks can extend your duration at a slayer task.
Now aside from those items, there's 2 crafting level requirements which will improve your training. With 54 crafting, and 400 slayer points, you can make a slayer helmet, which is a must for slayer training. This gives a damage and accuracy boost with melee, then at the nightmare zone or PvP arena, you can imbue your slayer helmet or black mask to make it work with magic and ranged as well.
And with 75 crafting and 300 slayer points, you have the ability to make slayer rings, which I spoke about earlier.
Armour & Weaponry
Let's talk about armour and weaponry, and with slayer, at the bare minimum, I would suggest having a melee combat set.
At minimum, you should always be bringing a black mask or a slayer helmet to every task, and with the imbued version if you're using ranged or magic. This greatly speeds up your slayer training.
As a whole with slayer, you’ll need the following armour…
You need a melee set, prayer armour set, a magic bursting set, and you can optionally have a ranged setup, wilderness setup and bossing setups.
For melee gear, you typically want to be using at least a dragon scimitar all the way up to a rapier, Blade of Saeldor or inquisitors mace for low defence monsters, then an Osmumtens Fang for the high defence monsters.
In terms of armour, you should be prioritizing strength bonus, which could include obsidian armour, blood moon, Bandos, Oathplate or Torva.
In terms of prayer armour, here are the best prayer sets to use, and the best in slot is the new Sunfire fanatic armour, which will allow protect from melee to last almost 10 minutes.
For magic, you should only really use it for bursting, and the best weapons to use are the Kodai wand, ancient sceptre, or at minimum you want the ancient staff.
With magic bursting armour, at minimum you want to use Ahrims, and Virtus or Ancestral are going to be your best in slot. You should also imbue your slayer helmet or black mask.
Optionally, you can also have a ranged setup, and this is best with a venator bow, but without the venator bow, I would recommend just using melee on your slayer tasks.
In terms of a wilderness setup, you should only ever bring 3 valuable items and turn on PvP skull protection. One of those items should be the black mask or the slayer helmet, and taking a wilderness weapon is going to give the most damage output. Although, you do risk more with a wilderness weapon, so your best regular melee weapon also works.
And with slayer, certain training styles prioritize bossing tasks, and for each boss the setup varies, and these setups can be very expensive but in the long run, completing these boss tasks will bring in the most profit.
Slayer Training Styles
So now lets get into the training styles for slayer, and its up to you to choose which one you do, and each of them have their own benefits.
So there's low level, fast XP, for profit, afk slayer and farming points.
Low Level Training
At a low combat level, its not always worth it to train with slayer, due to reduced access to high level slayer masters and getting high defence monsters assigned.
At a very low combat level, Turael and Spria can provide some easy tasks, but it should only be done as a way to understand how slayer works, since its not very efficient. You are better off training until a higher combat level, and using one of the higher levelled slayer masters.
Although, masters like Mazchna and Vanakka may become more worthwhile at a low combat level after the proposed changes, since they will now earn you more slayer points.
At mid combat levels, around 50 to 60 combat, you could consider trying out wilderness slayer for some semi efficient training. This is because you can use the wilderness weapons which stack with the effect of the black mask or slayer helmet.
However, most players, including ironmen, should aim to start their slayer journey at 75 combat when you unlock at least Konar, although level 85 is even better once you have Nieve.
Slayer could also be started at 70 combat with Chaeldar, but you can expect lower xp rates there. Although the upcoming changes to slayer, they will make lower levelled slayer more viable.
Fastest Experience
Next is the fastest XP strategy, and this is what most players go for.
When slaying for the fastest experience, there are some key things you should be focusing on.
You should be using the enchanted silver bracelets on every slayer task, whether you're extending or shortening a task, and these will greatly improve your overall slayer XP rate.
You should be cannoning every task you can, as well as bursting or barraging every possible task.
Your skip and blocklist should consist of tasks that you cant use a cannon and cant use bursting spells.
To also increase your overall slayer XP rate, you should be using combat boosting potions like super combats, and you can use prayers like piety to increase your damage output.
In terms of slayer masters, you should generally use Nieve or Duradel for the fastest XP since they give longer tasks with higher hitpoint monsters.
In terms of your blocklist for the fastest XP, you should aim to block the slow XP tasks that have a high task weighting, which is how often the master assigns that task. Here are some example blocklists for getting the fastest xp rates, with one for Nieve and one for Duradel.
For the absolute fastest xp rates for slayer, they're actually possible in the wilderness since the wilderness slayer cave is both multicombat and cannonable, meaning you can burst your tasks while using a cannon. The venator bow also works very well here, and its possible to get over 100k slayer XP per hour at places like hellhounds or dark warriors, which are very high slayer xp rates.
Technically, using alt accounts to assist you with slayer is the fastest possible xp you can get, where you can use alts to stack up monsters, or to help defeat monsters.
Profitable Slayer
With slayer, there are 2 main ways to train profitably. You can train with Konar, or with bossing with Duradel.
With Konar, you sacrifice the convenience of picking your slayer task location for the occasional brimstone keys for extra profit. One brimstone key has an average loot of around 100K, which can really add up over time.
You do occasionally get decent boss tasks and decent xp tasks, but sometimes the tasks can be slow. With this, you should always extend the good tasks with slaughters and speed up the bad tasks with expeditious bracelets.
Here’s an example blocklist if you choose to use Konar, and these are tasks that don't bring in much profit, or they are often assigned in bad locations.
Now for boss slayer, you do want to be using Duradel and you want the like a boss slayer reward unlocked. The reason for Duradel is that boss tasks occur more commonly than Nieve's boss tasks, so you'll get boss tasks more often with Duradel.
With this, you’ll need plenty of decent gear to be able to do boss slayer, and the gear will vary from boss to boss, so quite a bit of starting capital is needed.
If you're prioritizing boss tasks with Duradel, this is an example blocklist you can go for, and generally, these are slow tasks with no boss variants, and they have high weightings with Duradel.
AFK Slayer
Next is the AFK slayer style, and for this, it works a bit differently.
You can afk a slayer task in a few different ways.
Firstly is with monsters that are aggressive, and they will stay aggressive for 10 minutes at a time.
Second is by using a cannon, and with the combat achievements completed, you can load your cannon with more cannonballs, which allows you to afk for longer.
And thirdly, you can attack a bunch of monsters in multiway combat and let your character slowly defeat them all, AFK.
And the latest upgrade for afk slayer is the introduction of goading potions, which make all monsters aggressive for 6 minutes, and these are quite expensive, but do provide the easiest afk slayer experience.
For AFK training, many players choose Nieve or Duradel, and these are 2 example afk blocklists depending on the slayer master you're using.
Using prayer regeneration potions is another boost for afk slaying, where you can last for longer with protection prayers active. Prioritizing your prayer armour set is pretty important for afk slayer, so getting that Sunfire Fanatic armour is a big upgrade.
You can mix AFK slayer with one of the other training styles, like fast XP or fast points, but it is difficult to make a lot of profit out of AFK slayer.
Most Slayer Points
To get the most slayer points per hour, there are 2 main strategies you can follow, either Wilderness slayer or with Turael, by point boosting.
With wilderness slayer, you get the most points per task out of any slayer master, and that's 25 points per task. For your 1000th wilderness task, you get an astonishing 1 thousand 2 hundred and fifty points for completing that task.
Wilderness slayer works off a separate task counter to the regular masters, so you cant just do regular tasks up until your thousandth and then wilderness slayer for the thousandth, you actually have to do 1000 wilderness tasks.
With wilderness slayer, if you're solely going for points, you should be using an expeditious bracelet on every single slayer task to speed it up, no matter how profitable and efficient the task is.
Here you can see an example blocklist if you're using the Krystilia slayer master solely for points, and I’ve tried to account for
Now the safer option for fast slayer points is Turael boosting, and this involves doing 9 tasks with Turael, then completing 1 task with Konar for the 10th task. with this, if you're going for points, you should camp the expeditious bracelet the entire time, for all tasks.
And generally, your blocklist doesn't really matter for this, although blocking Kalphites could speed up the Turael side since they can be a bit slower compared to the other Turael tasks.
You can also use a different master like Duradel for your 10th task, but Konar is going to give slightly more points.
Doing Turael boosting with duo slayer is another decent option for points, where you can very quickly get through the 9 initial tasks with the help of a friend.
Slayer Tips & Tricks
Now lets go over some tips and tricks for slayer training…
Firstly, if a task is too difficult for you, and you don't have enough points to skip it, you can reset your task by getting one from Turael in Burthourpe. This does reset your total task streak, so you should try to avoid doing this, but if the task is way too hard and you're out of points to skip, its not a bad idea to skip with Turael.
On top of that, I mentioned that you only start gaining slayer points from your 5th task, so you should aim to complete your first 4 slayer tasks with Turael to get them out of the way quickly so you can start earning points.
When you're in places like the slayer tower or the stronghold slayer cave, you should be cautious when running past certain monsters without the proper protection. For example, aberrant spectres can deal a lot of damage and drain your stats if you aren't wearing a nose peg, and they are aggressive monsters, so running past these will significantly impact your gameplay.
There are a range of slayer tasks that can be completed at certain monster variants for a better profit rate. And this includes fighting demonic gorillas on a black demons task, fighting tormented demons or Zammy on a greater demons task, killing Vorkath on a blue dragons task, and there are a range of other ones. One thing to note, is you can complete a slayer task from reanimating creatures with ensouled heads, which lets you train your prayer while doing slayer.
Safespotting with a cannon in a singleway combat area makes the cannon act as if its multi combat, which can speed up your task. This works great in the stronghold slayer cave where you can range the monsters from a distance while your cannon attacks all of them at once.
You should always use the bracelet of slaughter on the good tasks for your training style, and the expeditious bracelet for the slow bad tasks to speed them up, then you should skip and block the worst tasks that have a high task weighting. These are the monsters that are most commonly assigned by your master.
You can use the NPC contact spell to contact slayer masters and to get a new slayer task. So if you have 67 magic and have completed lunar diplomacy, you can contact the slayer masters that are far away without having to go to them.
You can get slayer tasks with a friend by doing duo slayer. To do this, you partner with them on an enchanted gem or slayer helmet, then you share the task and task killcount. Duo slayer can be a decent way to get points and sometimes experience depending on the tasks you get.
Ironman Tips
And to finish off this guide, id like to briefly give a few ironman training tips.
Overall, ironmen can follow the same training styles I showed earlier, but with a few exceptions.
One of those is that ironmen shouldn't really cannon their tasks since it takes so long to make cannonballs, but if you're looking for something to AFK and you have the mould from the giants foundry, making cannonballs is still not a bad idea.
Getting the herb sack and the gem bag is very beneficial on an ironman for slayer training since those drops are going to greatly improve your training for herblore and crafting.
Ironmen don't really have the option for wilderness slayer at a low combat level, that's mostly for main accounts with access to the wilderness weapons. So ironmen should aim to get at least 75 combat or 70 plus in the melee combat stats before training slayer. Items like the dragon scimitar, dragon defender and some strength boosting gear is almost a must before you start.
As an ironman, you can’t do duo slayer, so you're on your own for the entire pathway to 99.