TzHaar Fight Cave

The TzHaar Fight Cave is an activity in RuneScape released on 4 October 2005. It involves single-handedly fighting off many waves of TzHaar creatures, ending in a boss fight against one of the strongest monsters on RuneScape: TzTok-Jad, with a combat level of 702. Players will be rewarded with Tokkul for playing this activity, and if they manage to defeat TzTok-Jad, they will be rewarded with the fire cape - the strongest cape in the game. Completing the entire Lame Cave gives about 50,000 Range experience. This is a safe activity, as you will keep all your items if you die. However, you will not keep the ammo, food, and potions used when you die, so doing the fight caves is still a risk.

Up until the release date of this activity, the Kalphite Queen (level 333) was the most powerful creature in RuneScape. The introduction of the TzHaar Fight Cave introcuced 2 higher-level monsters: TzTok-Jad (level 702) and Ket-Zek (level 360). The Kalphite Queen is widely regarded as more difficult to defeat than the level 360 Ket-Zek. TzTok-Jad was, for a long time, the strongest monster in the game. After some years, the Corporeal Beast (level 785) was released, which was considered the hardest boss. But in January 2011 Nex was released, with a combat level of 1337.

Playing this activity till the end takes a considerable amount of time and resources, requiring usually 2 to 3 hours of continuous playing and a considerable number of potions. At 90+ Ranged it can take as little as just over an hour to get to TzTok-Jad; however it is advised the player makes sure they can play straight for at least three hours. Logging out between waves can be done, but is risky. A good internet connection is also very helpful, as lag in the Fight Cave at the wrong moment can be deadly. Playing on a low-populated world decreases the chance of lag.

Location
The Fight Cave is located in TzHaar City, deep under the ground of Karamja. First of all, the player has to travel to Karamja. There are a few ways to do this:


 * Travel by ship from Port Sarim or Ardougne - this will cost 30 coins, unless the player brings a ring of charos (a), or if the player has received the karamja gloves (then it will be 15 coins).


 * Teleport with a charged Amulet of Glory to Karamja.


 * Teleport to one's Player-Owned House in Brimhaven.


 * Use the fairy rings (code BLP) to teleport directly to TzHaar city.

Whatever method is chosen, the player then has to make their way to Karamja volcano (this does not apply if one uses the fairy rings), east of Brimhaven and west of Musa Point. At the top of the volcano, to the southeast of the lava lake, is the entrance to a dungeon. Climb down. To the east of the rope, another dungeon entrance should be visible, made of lava-like material. Enter this - it is the entrance to TzHaar City. Now walk south to the crossroads, and then west to the bank. South of the bank is the entrance to the Fight Cave.

Map
The Fight Cave is a large cave that has three 'rocks' that can be used as safe spots: Orb Rock (west), Dragon Rock (north) and Italy Rock (east). The entrance is located in the northeastern corner of the cave. Many pools of lava are located near the walls.

Monsters
In this activity, players must battle past waves of six types of monsters ranging from level 22 up to level 360, before facing the final boss, TzTok-Jad. Each of these monsters require a different tactic by the player, though, due to the structure of the activity, most of them are best fought from a distance. The monsters generally have high Attack and Strength, along with a special ability, but low life points and Defence. This means they will hit hard and often, but can be killed quite easily. This is a breakdown of the waves. The monsters are referred to by their combat levels.

The monsters are in order of appearance by wave number:

TzTok-Jad
TzTok-Jad is the final monster encountered in the Fight Cave. Examining it yields the discouraging message "This is going to hurt...". It is the third highest level monster in all of RuneScape that players can fight with conventional methods (succeeded by the Corporeal beast and Nex, and preceded by Nomad). Defeating TzTok-Jad requires a huge amount of persistence and determination, as TzTok-Jad is rarely defeated in the first few tries by even the best RuneScape players.

General information
This happens to be a great way to earn experience, as one does not have to be in the RuneScape browser for your character to attack the monsters. In order for one to reach TzTok-Jad, one must first endure 62 waves of fighting progressively tougher monsters. The current wave that the player is on is shown at the beginning of each wave. TzTok-Jad himself is a level 702, huge, four-legged behemoth and uses all three sides of the combat triangle - Magic, Ranged and melee. TzTok-Jad will attack with melee only when the player is adjacent to him. When the player is in melee range, TzTok-Jad will use Magic and Ranged attacks as well. If the player attacks from a distance - which is strongly recommended - TzTok-Jad will alternate between Magic and Ranged attacks.

Attacks
Survival depends on watching TzTok-Jad's movements - an emote precedes the attack, telling the player which prayer to use.
 * Melee: TzTok-Jad quickly slams his fist into the player. This is the fastest attack, but if the player stays at a distance, they should not encounter it. If you are engaging in melee combat, protect from melee should always be on at all times.
 * Magic: TzTok-Jad lowers his head while a ball of fire is created above his head - the player must turn on their prayer now. Then, the spell will be fired at the player. Once the ball is in the air, it's too late. If you weren't praying magic, you will be hit. The same sound as the Retribution prayer being turned on is played before the attack is launched, which makes it easier to identify it.
 * Ranged: TzTok-Jad slams down his front legs onto the ground, and large cracks will in the floor appear at his feet - the player must turn on their prayer now. Though, by the time you hear the sound, it's already too late. If you weren't praying ranged, you will be hit. (Which is why you need to pray ranged at the start) Next, a boulder will fall down on the player, which cannot be avoided by moving.

Although somewhat slow, all of these attacks can deal enough damage in a single blow to kill even the most powerful of players if not guarded against via using the correct protection prayer, as TzTok-Jad has a maximum hit of 970 and hits very accurately. If you have vengeance spells, you can take advantage of his extremely high hits by allowing him to hit you once, (provided your life points are above 970, so you have a 100% chance of surviving a hit.) and rebounding very high hits back at him, usually in the high 700's.

Healers
When TzTok-Jad is down to half health, he will summon four Yt-HurKots (level 108 melee fighters with 600 LP and tiny in comparison) which will heal him, effectively causing him to regenerate endlessly until they are dealt with. Therefore, in order to stop them from healing, they need to be killed, one by one, so they don't heal eachother, but don't forget about the TzTok-Jad waiting to kill you. If you kill them, and the TzTok-Jad is above half health,when you get him down again, they will respawn agian. The Yt-HurKots' melee attacks hit up to 140.

Note: A hidden update now allows the Yt-HurKots to heal TzTok-Jad while they are attacking you.

TzHaar Slayer task
Since the release of Kuradal, players may now receive Tzhaar creatures as Slayer tasks. Upon receiving the assignment, Kuradal will offer a player the option to upgrade the task to "280 volcanic creatures of the Tzhaar Fight Caves." Defeating TzTok-Jad on this special assignment will give a bonus of 25,000 Slayer experience, the largest amount of experience to be gained from any monster. Additionally, going through the whole Fight Cave on this alternative task may yield up to 37,000 Slayer experience. This consists of all waves up to 63, including killing eight Yt-HurKots (two waves) and TzTok-Jad himself. It is highly advised to get a full slayer helmet or a focus sight before attempting this task with range. The Slayer experience breakdown of a Tzhaar Fight Caves task is:

48 TzKih (480xp), 40 TzKek [large (800xp)], 80 Tz-Kek [divided (800xp)], 36 Tok-Xil (1,440xp), 34 Yt-MejKot (2,720xp), 33 Ket-Zek (5,280xp), TzTok-Jad (25,000xp), and 8 Yt-HurKot (480xp).

If a player fails/chooses not to kill the all of the Yt-HurKot, he/she can start the fight caves over to fight eight lesser creatures, gaining 50-370xp in Slayer less than if all healers were killed. This may be considered a more favorable option, despite less xp, as killing even one wave of them is often difficult when fighting TzTok-Jad.



Rewards


If you are successful in completing all the waves and defeating TzTok-Jad, you will be rewarded with 16,064 Tokkul and the much-coveted fire cape. This cape has an animated "lava" pattern. The animation shows lava flowing downwards continually.

The Fire Cape is widely considered the best cape in RuneScape. It provides more protection (+11 in all defence bonuses) than the Cape of Legends (+7), the skillcapes (+9) and the Obsidian cape (+9). It is, of course, non-tradeable. The only capes better in any area are the God capes which provide a higher magic offensive bonus only, Ava's attractor, accumulator or alerter in ranged attack bonus, and trimmed Capes of achievement as well as Vestment cloaks, Soul Wars cape, and the Ardougne cloak 2, 3 and 4 which are only higher in prayer.

The Fire cape also gives the ability to obtain an Ice strykewyrm slayer task without using slayer reward points to purchase that ability, and doubles the damage of fire spells while slaying them. In addition, it adds 40 damage to all attacks against them. Ice strykewyrms are the only monster to drop the coveted Staff of light.

Defeating TzTok-Jad subsequently after obtaining the Fire Cape awards the player with another Fire Cape and 16,064 Tokkul, allowing you to have more than one fire cape at a time. Any spare fire capes can also be sold to TzHaar-Mej-Jal for 16,064 Tokkul per cape.

If a player dies in the fight caves, they will still get Tokkul, but not as much as they would if they defeated TzTok-Jad. The further a player gets, the more Tokkul and if one dies at TzTok-Jad then they will only receive 8,800 Tokkul—about half the amount than if the player defeats TzTok-Jad.

As of 9 November 2009, defeating the Fight Cave and TzTok-Jad rewards the player with double Tokkul.



Trivia

 * When the activity originally came out, players could use the Dwarf multicannon in the Caves. This was remedied shortly thereafter.
 * TzTok-Jad originally only used Ranged and Melee; however, Jagex later added Magic to his attacks so players couldn't kill TzTok-Jad as easily.
 * When the activity was first released, you could not log out during the fight caves without giving up all of your progress. It is now possible to logout during the fight caves and pick up where you left off. When the logout button is clicked, the player will receive an option to logout immediately or at the end of the current wave. If they chose to logout immediately, the player will be required to re-do the wave they were on when trying to log out. Additionally, if a player clicks the logout button while fighting a monster, the player will appear to log out, but the "Connection Lost" screen will appear, and the player will find themselves back for the next level.
 * When summoning was released, scrolls could be brought to the caves and familiars summoned. This was probably fixed with the release of TokTz-Ket-Dill Quest.


 * Before the random event update it was possible to receive Genie, Evil Chicken, and Jekyll and Hyde Random Events inside the fight caves. This was to combat a problem with botting inside the caves for training purposes. These events were removed with the update, and random events usually do not occur in the Fight Cave anymore—it still occurs if a player logs out and logs back in after finishing a wave.


 * The fight caves can also be used as a place to recover for players killing Tzhaar monsters or Lesser Demons when their Prayer or Lifepoints are low. This is effective because it is faster to die in the caves than to go find a prayer altar.
 * If you are low on potions, food or if there are only one or two monsters left to kill, trapping them on the other side of the Italy rock can allow you to rest and regenerate health without using supplies.


 * The monsters' levels double as the waves increase. The first monster is level 22: 22+22 is 44, which is rounded up to 45. This makes the next monster level 45. 45+45 is 90, making the next monster level 90. 90+90 is 180, making the next monster level 180. 180+180 is 360, making the next monster level 360. Finally, 360+360 is 720, but because the hitpoint limit was 255 (2550) when TzTok-Jad was introduced, he could not have 3200LP. Therefore his combat level is not 720 (double of Ket-Zek, 360), but only 702.
 * It is possible to get roughly 90k Ranged experience by using the range only method while completing the Fight Caves. Note that this depends on how much the Jad heals and how much damage is dealt to the healers.
 * Jagex has recently hinted at the possibility of a higher-levelled boss being added, along with several more waves. This would of course bring the requirements for the fire cape in to question, and there is speculation that its requirements would stay, while a new reward, such as an upgrade to the existing cape, would be given for killing the new boss.
 * There is even more speculation that the new item would be possibly be a dragon bow, as a fire bow would seem awkward (or even possibly obsidian). As Ranged is the primary method of choice for defeating the fight caves, it would be logical to introduce a ranged reward. This, however, is fairly unlikely because it was said by Jagex that the dragon crossbow will come out once the combat triangle is balanced.
 * The equation to find what wave a given monster will make its first appearance is W = 2^x - 1, where x = the tier of the monster you wish to find the wave it appears (1-6, 1 being the level 22, 2 being the 45's, 3 being the 90's, 4 being the 180's, 5 being the 360's, and 6 being TzTok-Jad). Where W = the wave it will appear on.
 * If you finished "Death to the Dogreshuun" you can see a room that looks like it could be from something like this.
 * Source by Jagex says there are exactly 218 lava stripes in the whole city