Retrospective: OSRS Leagues VI Demonic Pacts

OSRS Leagues VI: Demonic Pacts was my 4th OSRS Leagues, 5th if we're counting Gridmaster. When this all started I found many of the teasers to be lackluster. While I liked the idea of getting to explore Varlamore more, I found the contract teasers were boring (though this was due to a lack of information and imagination). As more and more teasers came out, I kept finding myself less interested up to the point that I was considering not even bothering with this League.

Then they dropped the pacts. It was not even a week before launch and I was suddenly obsessed. The skill tree was something fresh and new and the build variety got me instantly excited in the same way I get for ARPGs like Diablo and Path of Exile. I jumped on it immediately and began forming a plan—this League would be different. While I had a fantastic showing in Gridmaster, my previous real Leagues were less impressive, with my top placement being Rune rank (around top 15%). This would be the first time I ever hit Dragon Rank, and I'd do it with regions I'd never selected before.

Three Principles

There was a nasty roadblock in my way, however. Work had just dropped a massive project on my desk and the due date landed right in the second week of the League. I was working nonstop which would leave me with very little time to play early on and very little time to plan. It also meant that any particularly grating parts of the run would hit me harder than usual. I needed an approach that meant I could leverage my work-from-home status to play OSRS on the side while still gaining meaningfully in points.

This left me with a clear direction working on the plan from three principles: Maximize AFK capabilities, Minimize Misery (Long Grinds, Bad RNG), Maximize Fun (Interesting builds, novel regions).

My strong showing in Gridmaster (top 2%) had taught me one big thing: Long grinds kill my momentum. I don't like repeating the same boss praying for good RNG in the middle of a points-based limited time event. The absence of this problem was the main reason I loved that mode so much. In Leagues IV I went dozens of CoX clears dry on uniques that should've been easy points. In Leagues V my entire run dried up at ToB and Phosani's Nightmare. If I was going to make it to Dragon, I needed to pick regions that didn't lock too many points behind miserable RNG grinds or bosses I didn't like.

Unfortunately, this meant no raids for me. This, combined with my desire for novel regions that I'd never picked before, led to a unique combination of choices that would wind up being the backbone of the entire strategy: KTA.

If you're finding yourself thinking, "Wait, but weren't Kandarin and Tirannwn two of the most popular region choices? What made them novel?" you're right, but hold that thought.

War Plans

The core of the plan revolved around finding points locked behind activities I could easily AFK while I worked. This led to several choices that cascaded into each other.

First, I knew I was taking Eternal Harvest right off the bat. It immediately solved several skills at once, turning fishing, woodcutting, and mining into full on "RS3 with Porters" levels of AFK. That's three skills up to 50m while I'm working without breaking a sweat. It also solved two other less obvious issues: cooking and food supply. We knew at this point there would be no noted shops, so this solved those theoretical problems (Spoiler: I did not end up needing food for anything).

Second, I knew early on that I was taking Tirannwn. This was a two-pronged decision. I wanted it because I like RuneScape's elves a lot and I'd never taken it as a region before. I had basically locked Tirannwn in as my core "I'm doing this" region, regardless if it fit with the plan. I knew the CG grind was a gamble and it was a direct counter to my "Minimize Misery" principle, but the region had passed me by too many times.

The third initial gateway decision was taking Woodsman. I agonized over this decision at first because I was worried about Herblore, as it had been a blocker in Leagues IV for me, and I'm not fond of Agility. However, Varlamore is the site of the Hunter's Guild and I think all of us knew going in that there would be a great number of points tied to Hunter. It also aided Herblore and Farming via seed acquisition and synergized with Eternal Harvest to fully solve Firemaking. The fact that it would mean I was ready for Crystal Imp hunting the second I hit Tira was also a nice bonus. While I considered Friendly Forager for a good while, once I settled on Woodsman the rest became crystal clear.

With Eternal Harvest, Woodsman, and Tirannwn locked in, the next obvious choice was picking my first major region unlock. I needed somewhere with very easy points that could propel me straight into Tira and the CG grind—the earlier I got there the better. I also needed synergy with EH and WM. I considered Zeah, my favorite region which I'd taken every League so far, but it just didn't fit the plan. Not only is Chambers a hellish deathtrap that sucks the joy out of every League (despite it being buffed in VI), but Zeah is lacking in fast, easy points. Many of its points are locked behind long grinds, arduous tasks, CoX, and now Yama. If I wanted this plan to succeed, I couldn't afford more than one exception and I'd already locked in Tira.

So my eyes fell on Kandarin. I'd taken Kandarin during Raging Echoes and found it dry. Echo Thermonuclear Smoke Devil required a high slayer level and its rewards back then were terrible. Now, however, Thermy's rewards were very appealing. The Shadowflame Quadrant and Devil's Element would make for very powerful magic builds and with the buffed Crystal Blessing the shape of an interesting build goal was forming for me: Elven Crystal Battlemage utilizing Shadowflame, Devil's Element, and some kind of Crystal Halberd build. Kandarin also had a ton of very, very fast points and easy synergy with Woodsman, having an easy spot to farm Red Chinchompas at and a smattering of Hunter-related points.

This is how I arrived at KT. My plan would be to abuse Eternal Harvest at work and Woodsman during active play to very rapidly propel myself through the myriad of easy tasks both in Varlamore and Kandarin to arrive at the Corrupted Gauntlet as early as possible.

During this stage of the planning another throughline became apparent: Kandarin and Tirannwn were both rife with Thieving related tasks, and Varlamore had its own small set of them. While I'd often gravitated towards the farming relics in previous Leagues, it felt like Larcenist was the clear winner for my Tier 5 choice, especially as it fed directly into the Maximize AFK principle. This would let me easily hit 50m thieving, crafting, and smithing the second I entered Tirannwn which would further propel me forward. I locked it in and it would go on to be one of the best choices I'd made.

This still left many decisions to be made. I hadn't fully settled on a third region at this point and there were tons of relic choices to be made. This was before I'd really dove into buildcraft as well!

The third region didn't take me long to decide on though. I could've gone Fremennik for an easy finish as I'd had tons of experience with Duke and Muspah in Gridmaster and I like the region well enough, but something both Kandarin and Tirannwn were missing was challenging boss content. Varlamore had some in the form of Doom and Colosseum and Karamja had the Inferno, but I wanted something between the Inferno and Doom. With no access to raid regions, this led straight to eyeballing Asgarnia.

Similar to Tira, I'd thought about taking Asgarnia multiple times in previous Leagues but never pulled the trigger. This felt like the perfect spot for it: A new echo boss in Cerberus and lots of fun bosses with relatively mild grinds in GWD. This would give me room to flex builds and play around with end-game PVM without being confined to a raid. The real golden ticket for Asgarnia however played even further into "Maximize Fun": It gave me access to a ton of solid end-game gear for various styles. Bandos and Torva armor, Armadyl Crossbow, and the Dogsword / Godswords for a blindbag build. It was the piece that would allow me to actually experiment with other builds late game since my regions were heavily constrained in this regard.

Taking Asgarnia also meant locking in Culling Spree. While I did have some difficult PVM to do in Colosseum and Inferno, I felt Eternal Sustenance was a waste of a slot when I had two major slayer bosses (three if we count Zulrah) that could become my primary bottleneck if I wasn't careful. Culling Spree fed into the "Minimize Misery" pillar. I love slayer, but I don't want to sit there and slay 24/7 in a League. I was confident in my ability to do Inferno and Colosseum regardless of the build I chose.

This left me with a solid lineup I dubbed the KTAFK strat: Kandarin, Tirannwn, Asgarnia, Eternal Harvest, Woodsman, Larcenist, Culling Spree. I'd rush for Crystal Blessing and Crystal Armor, rely heavily on my AFK capabilities to carry me in points when I had little time to play, and emerge with a powerful tribrid build using Shadowflame, Devil's Element, Crystal Halberd, and BOWFA, utilizing Trident of the Swamp and Crystal Bows for mid-game progression. I left my Tier 5 and 8 relics to decide later and settled on Evil Eye as my teleport relic due to GWD. As with all good plans, most of this strategy died in the water very early on.

Once I had the early strategy formed I dove into piecing together pacts, which I thought would be straightforward at the time. We had no idea how many points we were getting, so I settled on a modest 32 which was barely enough to create a real hybrid build (and I was pleasantly surprised later when I landed just about right on the money for planning). To be honest this stage of the theorycrafting wasn't that crazy because I hadn't really gained an understanding of just how strong some of these pacts would be when combined with some of the more absurd echo weapons.

My original plan was to grab a Magic Shortbow early, as I'd have high woodcutting and fletching and easy access to magic logs day 1. I'd take faster bows and abuse the MSB strength early to snag some easy experience and a kill on Echo Amox, then I'd stat into 2t Staves and Prayer Pen for Echo CG. I'd then complete the bow line, pick up fire spells, and start working on the CHally/blindbag capstones. It was a pretty straightforward and naive idea born entirely from an aesthetic vibe I had in my head with only the smallest amount of optimization. As with all good plans, most of this strategy died in the water—well, you'll see.

I made a basic starting route—just enough to get me to Kandarin—and waited eagerly for the launch.

Day One

The League started great. I couldn't sleep so got out of bed and waited. I had to work that day, but if I simply used the brilliant strategy of refusing to sleep I could snag a ton of active play time before work. I logged in literally in the first few seconds of it going live and was immediately out of the gate with my route ready. This was by far the best start I've ever had to a League; I'm fairly certain I was top 10 in the game for the first hour.

By hour two I was already deep in the points and had Huntsman locked in. This started a magnificent chain reaction in which the fletching, firemaking, and hunter gains catapulted me forwards, and I was forcing hunter contracts and hitting tier 4 within just a couple hours of starting.

The first real snag I'd hit was that hunter contracts were bugged. There's a method you can use to block certain tasks—you get a task at one hunter and leave it with them, then move on to the next. If you do this correctly you can force the guild to only assign you red chins. Sadly this wasn't working day one and plans had to change. I knew Kandarin had an easy red chin spot so I left my 500 red chins task unfinished and moved into other stages of my plan. When I hit tier 3, my gut told me not to pick Evil Eye. I couldn't put my finger on it, but something told me not to do it. I loved Bank Heist from previous events and was extremely familiar with it, so I locked it in on a whim and I'm so glad I did. It wound up being a massive time save for me throughout the League where Evil Eye would only have been marginally useful at GWD (where Bank Heist was still reasonably good due to Ashlaught's bank).

Eventually I had to settle down and work, so I made fantastic use of Eternal Harvest, progressing my woodcutting and mining very quickly. I knew I'd have good fishing spots in Catherby soon, so I didn't bother doing much fishing. I ended day one strong, choosing my Tier IV relic. This was another first for me as I'd always taken clue relics, but this time I was convinced to take Butler's Bell by a friend and I'm glad I did it. I didn't want to do many clues anyways this League and Bell became an important time save for me.

The next few days blurred together: AFK during work, active play when I had time, and more lost sleep than I'm comfortable admitting to.

Eventually I wound up in Kandarin, and merely hours later I unlocked Tirannwn. It was time for the Corrupted Gauntlet.

I'd done some CG in Gridmaster, but this was a whole new level of learning experience. While normal Hunleif is somewhat challenging and it took me several tries to get back into the flow, Echo Hun is an entirely different beast. I threw myself at the brick wall for an entire day, going so far as to take the day off work to practice. However, persistence paid off and by the end of the day I had snagged my first Echo Hun kill, along with an exceptionally lucky armor seed drop on 1 KC.

My luck didn't stop there. I proceeded to grind out a dozen kills, taking short breaks every now and then to work on hunting crystal implings and complete other high-point tasks that required my active attention. At 23 KC, while I was watching OSRS content creators get trapped in CG hunting for the bastard, I got the Enhanced Crystal Weapon Seed drop. I was over the moon because this meant I'd won the gamble: There would be no 400 KC gauntlet chasing this damn thing. Just 24 hours after my first Echo Hun kill, I'd managed to hit 35 KC and snag five of my six armour seeds and the Enhanced Seed that I'd been worried about. To top it off, I even got the elven signet drop from a completely random crystal impling. This whole day propelled me forward and gave me the momentum I needed to make it to end-game.

From here it was textbook. I farmed Zulrah and Amox, finished my crystal armor and BOWFA, kept progressing my pacts, and explored all that Varlamore and Tirannwn had to offer. These were entirely new regions to me in OSRS, I hadn't ever touched Varlamore in the main game and I'd only been to Prif in RS3. It was a brand new experience and the novelty helped keep things fresh for me, even during some of the more boring grinds.

I eventually got my Trident of the Swamp (I got quite unlucky here, getting it at ~150 KC) and decided to test out the damage. It honestly dwarfed what BOWFA was capable of, even though I had bow capstones and only had 1t Trident. I was actively taken aback at the difference, and the lower point cost was very appealing to me. I began to consider respec'ing to drop bows entirely so I could spend my points on accuracy, but at the same time I was encountering a great many players and content creators that were talking about how powerful thorns was. So, after a lot of deliberation, I made my first major departure from the initial plan. I respecced into 1t Powered Staffs, Prayer Penetration (for farming Demonic Gorillas), accuracy, and Thorns nodes. This would change the entire game for me. Thorns. Was. Broken.

I used a crystal shield, crystal armor, and trident everywhere. I was unstoppable. While the healing wasn't anything to write home about at first, it was enough that I didn't need tons of food for my Zulrah kills anymore, and as I gained more points in Thorns I picked up the node that heals when you're hit for a 0. This triggered on prayer hits which meant I had virtually any sustain at any enemy that didn't hit through prayer. Demonic Gorillas and the Zaryte grind were trivialized. I felt like a force of nature.

By the time I unlocked my third region, Asgarnia, I'd already managed to complete most of my major grinds in Tira and Kandarin. I'd been steadily working on Slayer via boss tasks, with the Culling Spree relic being an incredibly valuable addition to my growing power. I'd finished my Zulrah grind, Corrupted Gauntlet, almost everything in Varlamore, and even an Inferno run by the skin of my teeth. I'd been steadily moving in the direction of water spells since I knew I would be getting the Shadowflame very soon, and I'd maxed out my melee stats to 50m using Thorns at maniacal monkeys. Larceny and Eternal Harvest were my MVPs, because I had nearly thrice the AFK as active playtime and I'd managed several 50m skills at this point including fishing via karambwans, mining, and even thieving to 200m via Prif elves. This also let me max out smithing and crafting early. I'd also reloaded into Soul Harvest by this point, solving Prayer and Runecrafting. I was all set.

I unlocked Asgarnia and finished up my slayer grind, hitting 99 by hunting for Kraken, Smoke Devil, and Cerb tasks. While Trident absolutely shredded Kraken and made the grind barely worth mentioning (I AFK'd 80% of my kills), Thermy was a different story. You see I had forgotten that Thermy has mechanics, and mechanics have hands. Thankfully my recent exposure to the Echo CG difficulty had prepared me to pick up these mechanics quickly, though attacking at 1 tick made the movement sections of the fight mildly annoying. I often had to skip attacks and force a 2 tick attack speed, which was obviously a huge nerf to damage. Eventually I settled into a rhythm and learned how to do some fun tile skipping and tick-perfect inputs at Thermy that were both satisfying and sped up my kills by a huge margin. I wound up with Shadowflame and Devil's Element roughly on rate and got the last pact point I needed for the Water capstone.

Crashing Waves

Water Thorns was disgusting. I went from having to pay attention at some bosses like Zulrah to being able to nearly fully AFK them. Taking this into Cerberus trivialized the fight. 188 HP, infinite healing, reflect damage, infinite prayer, prayer penetration, rune regeneration, and extremely high accuracy alongside forced elemental weakness via Shadowflame was a combo made in Hell.

I took Water Thorns everywhere at first. I discovered quickly that the GWD bosses—who I assumed would be the longest active grinds of the League—were chumps. I could fully AFK all of them with the right prayers. I didn't even bother using potions anywhere. I could just park at a boss, let auto-retaliate handle the fighting, and do my work. It was insane.

I noticed I could do anything in the game from here. Any silly nonsense I wanted. So I did. I fully AFK'd through the fight caves tasks, and then completed every Inferno task. I decided to test the waters and see how far a fully, 100% AFK Inferno run would make it. I turned on Mage Prayer and hoped for the best. The result? Instant Death at triple jads. But then I tried again, and on the third attempt I watched my character AFK the entire Inferno without my input. I had 13 HP by the end of it.

I picked up Minion and dove into Doom in earnest. I'd only done this boss a little so I was excited to see what it looked like on farm status. The answer was hilarious. While I couldn't stop its cannon attack with Water Thorns, it couldn't kill me through my 188 HP either. I even tried bringing in demonbane weapons from Amox to see if they'd smooth out the kills—they didn't! Water spells would still heal me even while the target was invulnerable, so the cleanest answer was always to just keep attacking. The highest I could go was Delve 90 before I both got bored of Doom and found the grubs were hitting way too hard, so with my curiosity satisfied and a nice pair of gauntlets and boots I left Doom behind to chase other dreams.

Nex, My Old Friend.

I have farmed a lot of Nex in RS3. More than the average PVMer. She was my primary income source on my main when I was maxing and despite her janky BS mechanics I had a fondness for her. This was a small, secret reason I'd picked Asgarnia as well—it was time for me to return to her arena, this time under a different game title and a different set of rules.

Water Thorns fucking sucked at Nex. The kills were five minutes long even with full accuracy nodes and BIS gear. The constant misses meant healing was unreliable and Thorns had its own set of complications. Not only does Nex not hit often, she ignores prayer for the most part and her minions couldn't care less. Thorns also added an extra component to Blood phase to track, as it could heal her if I wasn't careful. This was the real wall I'd finally been waiting for. This was the reason I needed to try other builds.

I left her behind after my first few kills, moving to finishing up other challenges. I was not especially familiar with the Colosseum, despite having done it a few times, so I created my own problems. "I'll do a Colosseum with no armor on!" Sure, okay Wrin. Why not?

This also kind of sucked. I died over and over and often felt there was little for me to learn. This was a result of inexperience, however, and as I started to study the enemies I was up against I started finding ways to finish this challenge.

It mostly boiled down to getting good modifiers. I discovered that Bees were a bad time as Water spells wouldn't heal you, but they still required an attack to get rid of. Exploding enemies were also just a bad idea. I didn't know at the time how to avoid the Fremennik Warband's damage and the explosions absolutely ruined me. I didn't understand wave solves back then (hell, I still barely understand them now) and this meant any modifiers which added more stuff to track or more damage from enemies were a terrible idea.

Eventually I succeeded, with a weird combination of Myopic, buffed manticores, and buffed rangers. It was hard, too. Sol takes nearly 0 magic damage and I missed a ton. I want to say there were probably 30 attempts here in total and of those only 4-5 actually made it to Sol. In the end, I mostly succeeded due to good RNG, but it still felt great to have something like that under my belt and the experience I gained from the challenge forced me to develop a better understanding of the Colosseum.

I finished up my GWD farming and any other major grinds I felt needed doing as my time in the League started to wind down. It was finally time for the part I'd been originally excited about: Buildcrafting.

By this point the community had tested any possible combination of builds you could name. I had access to a ton of gear from GWD and a nihil to kill, so I built out a specific ACB build using Void armor and ruby bolts and faced down Nex again. This build absolutely destroyed her. However, it required much more active input on my part. I had to really pay close attention to mechanics, and importantly I had to bring brews and restores, something I was glad to be rid of with Water Thorns. While I love Nex, I found the Torva grind incredibly tedious, especially when I hit the "officially dry" mark on any given piece. In the interest of Minimizing Misery, I bid a tearful farewell to my old foe and left her behind. I didn't need the points from her, I had plenty in other areas.

The rest of the League was testing builds and AFK grinding. I tried out Blindbag, which was just terrible. I enjoyed my crossbow thorns ACB build for a bit and even tried a 1h Melee Thorns build to farm Vardorvis using the Fang of the Hound. This was shockingly good and really fun to use, much better than Blindbag, though I don't know how much of that was because of Thorns and how much of it was 1h being genuinely good.

I also took this chance to continue exploring Varlamore. I'd already done so much and I was shocked at how enamoured I'd become with the region as a whole. Zeah was my favorite region before this League, and I'd hesitate to say that's still the case. I adore Varlamore. The culture, the lore, the activities, the whole structure of it all. I won't commit to saying it's my new favorite region, but it's something I'm still chewing on.

However, I felt my time in the League winding down quickly after saying goodbye to Nex. I began to get a bit bored and was ready to move back to the main game. It was time for the final phase of my plan.

I had been saving a number of tasks to finish up the League with. By this point I was at 61,000 points and needed a mere 4k to hit my goal. I'd like to say much of it was exciting, but in reality it was all quite dull. I settled into a comfortable series of AFK grinds, and on my last day in the League I cashed in all of the Larceny spoils I'd gotten—mostly enhanced crystal teleport seeds—at the Shilo general store for a vast sum of cash.

65,000

There in Prif I bought a crystal crown and equipped it in my full crystal armor, smirking in satisfaction as I hit exactly 65,000 points. It was over, I had beaten my past self and set a new personal record. This was what I'd wanted the whole time. Illiya finally had a Dragon Trophy of her own.

Verdict

Overall, this was my favorite League by a wide margin. It isn't remotely close. I loved Leagues IV, I had fun in V, but VI to me pushed the bar so much higher. The combination of a new starting region, new personal region choices, relics that let me actually take advantage of my more limited active playtime, and the interesting (if imperfect) skill tree made the entire experience novel and fun in ways previous Leagues hadn't been for me. I think this was the secret ingredient to my success this time around—I was actually having a blast, rather than stressing about points. I have many critiques about balance this League—earth magic was utterly useless, bows felt terrible, and thorns was absurdly overpowered—but for a first attempt at a skill tree I think this was a great time.

This League left me feeling satisfied, but more than that it helped ignite a new curiosity. I hadn't even unlocked Varlamore on my main, and yet here I was absolutely in love with the region as a whole. The Hunter's Guild and rumours were an actually fun way to train a skill I disliked, Mastering Mixology was a cheap and interesting way to train herblore with the huge advantage of having amazing rewards, the quests were actually interesting with good storytelling and lore, and the Doom and Colosseum were new, hearty challenges I could throw myself at eventually. If anything comes next, it's me finally stepping into one of my new favorite areas in the main game with a fresh new perspective and a highly piqued curiosity.