Horror from the Deep



Although this quest is short, it is made troublesome by two hard monsters to be defeated, the Dagannoths.

NOTE: Although it isn't a requirement, 43 prayer is highly recommended for this quest.

Getting started
A Games Necklace will prove useful during the quest if several trips to the Lighthouse are made. A Camelot teleport is also good because it is the closest teleport city to the lighthouse in this quest, or Players with houses by Rellekka -- particularly if they have teleport to house teletabs and an appropriately-targeted Portal Chamber -- Will probably find this quest simpler.

Start by speaking to Larrissa south of the lighthouse. Items to take with you now are: 60 steel nails, hammer, 2 planks, swamp tar, tinderbox, molten glass, 1 fire rune, 1 water rune, 1 earth rune, 1 air rune, 1 arrow (not ogre), and 1 sword. These items cannot be retrieved, so it is advised to take a cheap arrow and sword.



Fixing the Lighthouse



 * 1) After speaking to Larrissa, go south, jump across the basalt platforms and go to the Barbarian Outpost.
 * 2) Talk to Gunnjorn and get the lighthouse key; you can get your two planks here, which respawn north of Barbarian's Outpost. To be able to enter the agility area and talk to Gunnjorn you must have completed the miniquest Bar Crawl.
 * 3) Use both planks on the BOTH sides of the broken bridge located east of Larrissa a little ways down.
 * Note: Even before fixing the bridge you can cross doing a small jump, so just hop to the other side and fix the other part of the bridge.
 * 1) Go and talk to Larrissa again.
 * 2) Go to the first floor, search the bookcase and take all the books available, flip through the lighthouse manual and the Ancient diary. (The journal plays no part in the quest).
 * 3) Go to the second floor, use molten glass, swamp tar (not swamp paste), and a tinderbox on the lighting mechanism. The lighthouse will now be fixed.
 * 4) Go talk to Larrissa once more.

The Door


Go down the ladder to the basement of the lighthouse then use all of your basic elemental runes on the door, (fire, water, earth, and air)
 * 1) Use your sword (any type, but you will not get it back), and your arrow (any type, but you will not get it back).
 * 2) If you brought your stuff for the fight, then you can save some time.

THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO PREPARE FOR THE FIGHT.

Preparation tips
If you haven't prepared for this fight with armour and runes for casting magic, teleport to any place with a bank and ready yourself. If you lack a teleport (other than home teleport), Camelot is the closest walk. If you only brought a games necklace, then use it to teleport to the Gamers Grotto or Burthorpe Troll Invasion and bank there. While you are there, pick up any quick teletab to any city or your POH, just in case you are close to death, to save yourself and your valuable items.


 * Get good armour (Rune or better), Dragon hide armour, or mage armour (Mystic or better), bring many combat runes (chaos, death, or blood runes) runes to cast several of each elemental spell. (wind, water, earth, and fire), get a good weapon for melee, and some ranger equipment. If possible, equip a ring of life and bring a one-click teleport just in case things get messy.
 * Sacred clay armour (and perhaps a Sacred clay weapon) can be useful for the fight. It is the equivalent of level 40 ranged, melee, and magic gear. What makes it especially useful is that, when right clicking one piece to transform it, it transforms the whole set (when worn).
 * Void armour can also be used due to the ease of switching combat styles (by changing helms), but it is not recommended due to its low defence bonuses.
 * Splitbark armour may be useful because it has decent melee defences and very few negative bonuses.

The Fight



 * 1) Go through the door and down the ladder.
 * 2) Talk to Jossik, be prepared to fight two Dagannoths.
 * 3) The first one is easy, put on protect from melee and range or melee it, because you want to save your runes for the mother.
 * 4) Then right after you defeat it, there will be a cut scene, and you will fight a harder monster. (Be careful; she can hit up to 160 with melee and up to double 120s with ranged, but will not attack with range if you used protect from missiles.) You can run away from either fight and come back later; just restart the fight by talking to Jossik.
 * 5) You should attack the Dagannoth Mother by colour if you want to do any damage more than 10 or 20.


 * Bringing Chaos gauntlets may be a cheaper alternative while still being effective during the fight; as Bolt spells would hit more then their Blast counterparts.

Tips
You can kill the Baby Dagannoth, then run away after you have talked to Jossik again, and still battle the mother next time you go there (even if you log out). If you take too long to kill the Dagannoth Mother it will disappear and you will have to restart the fight.

If you cannot see the colour changes very well, (while fighting) walk past the monster to see its back, or look at the chat box. There would be a message "The Dagannoth Mother turns (colour)..." Also, you can change the graphics to "safe mode" to brighten the scene, allowing you to see her colour clearly. Using the wrong attack does no damage to it.

By default, her first form is always white. The colour changes of the Dagannoth Mother seems to be totally random except for her first colour. It is possible for her to exist for the same form for two separate periods of time while not using one or more of her forms throughout the battle (e.g.: she start off white, turn red and turn white again).

You can safespot her on the stalagmites at the far end of the room.

If you stop attacking her at any point, there is a possibility that she will disappear and you will have to start the fight again.

She can detect prayer (so bring prayer potions) and will automatically use the opposite attack type when you use prayer. By default, she ranges at a distance and melees up close. Her ranged attacks are stronger and hit twice, so Protect from Missiles is recommended. Also, if you don't have ranging items, you can keep clicking under her so she doesn't hit you.

If a player has a reasonable defence, they could consider not using protection prayers at all but use attack bonus boosting prayers instead, because the Dagannoth Mother has a rather poor accuracy.

Sometimes if poison dealt the finishing blow on the baby dagannoth, the cutscene of the Mother emerging from the water would not play. The system treat you as still fighting the first dagannoth, and you would be told that you are too busy to talk if you tried to talk to Jossik. When this happens, simply climb up the ladder, back down, and talk to Jossik again. Be ready to face the Mother!

Strategies
One way to defeat her is to ignore the ranged and melee forms, since she has too high defence against those attack types for them to be worthwhile. Use an air staff and switch spell types in the correct order. If you use this method it is recommended to stand out of melee range or in a safespot and use the Protect from Range prayer. This can be "flashed" and not lose a single prayer point while not having the Dagannoth Mother use her range attack. If you have a Magic level over 40, you can use bolt spells with their chaos gauntlets which would be quite accurate and hits for reasonable damage.

Another way to defeat her is by using Protect from Missiles, the safespot, runes or staves for each of your four highest elemental spells, along with a crossbow like the Dorgeshuun c'bow. 3-4 doses of Prayer potion may be needed. Whenever the Dagannoth Mother changes colour, click at your feet (to stop wasting runes or ammo), then switch weapons or spells and continue attacking. When she changes to orange (melee), equip an air staff and cast Wind Rush until she changes again, because if you don't attack, she will get bored. Using this method no defensive armour is necessary, provided that your prayer does not run out and you don't accidentally move from the safe spot.

One way of setting up your armour and inventory would be your best ranged armour, A Mystic Air Battlestaff, the Dragon Dagger P++, and a good melee weapon such as the Abyssal Whip. For lower levelled players, the following inventory is recommended: Super Strength potion (4), Super Attack potion (4), a few Ranged potions, lobsters (or monkfish), a prayer potion, a good melee weapon with a special attack, and a teleport tab if you don't think you will survive.

Another method that could be used involves standing behind Jossik while fighting the Dagannoth Mother with mage and range. In this position she cannot attack you. However, if you take to long in killing her, she will vanish because she cannot engage you in combat and you will have to start over in killing her.

It IS possible to attack the Dagannoth Mother using only melee. The best course to do this is to use Protect from Range prayer and use the Dragon Dagger (P++). Most of the direct hits will not affect the Dagannoth Mother, but the poison damage will work. Using this method, the combat will take less time than using other melee weapons.

After the fight
After you defeat the Dagannoth Mother, the quest is finished.

As a reward from the Dagannoth you get a rusty casket. Go to the first floor of the lighthouse and show it to Jossik. If you had a full inventory when defeating the Dagannoth Mother, you will not receive a rusty casket. Instead, you must talk to Jossik, who will have picked it up for you.

Reward



 * 2 quest points
 * 4,662 Experience
 * 4,662 Experience
 * 4,662 Experience
 * A damaged prayer book of your choice: a Holy book (Saradomin), an Unholy book (Zamorak), a Book of Balance (Guthix). A Holy book gives +8 to all defensive equipment stats, an Unholy book gives +8 to all offensive equipment stats, and a Book of balance gives +4 to both.

WAIT!!! Before you leave the lighthouse, go to the second floor and talk to Jossik. He will help you see what is written on the box. It is very important that you make a choice and stick by it.

After collecting all the pages (1-4) of the book YOU chose, you can start the other three (a Book of War (Bandos), a Book of Law (Armadyl), or an Ancient book (Zaros).


 * Access to the lighthouse general store and the Dagannoth caves underneath (There are level 74 and 92 Dagannoths. The level 74's use a ranged attack that has terrible aim, and the level 92's use their much more effective melee attack)
 * The Dagannoth ribs can be obtained by killing Dagannoths after the completion of this quest to help complete the 2nd part of the Rag and Bone Man quest.

Music unlocked

 * Out of the Deep
 * Lighthouse

Required for completing
Completion of Horror from the Deep is required for the following:
 * Blood Runs Deep
 * Recipe for Disaster/Defeating the Culinaromancer

Trivia
There is sometimes a glitch where the option of Bandos, Armadyl or Zaros books do not come up. This has currently not been fixed. Horror from the Deep Horror from the Deep
 * The quest was originally named Lighthouse Quest.
 * Upon the completion of this quest, one's Adventurer's Log will read: "A foul and horrible creature dwelt below the lighthouse. I have slain it, but the lighthouse keeper, Silas, remains missing."
 * According to Jarvald in Rellekka, the Water-birth island dungeon is filled with "dagger-mouths", which is how dagannoths got their name.
 * When you first speak to Larrissa, she will say "Oh, thank Armadyl!" which may mean she is a follower of Armadyl, or it could just be an expression.
 * The lighthouse user's manual mentions a service centre advertised in the Varrock Herald. However, there is no such advertisement in the Herald.
 * During September 2009, there used to be a glitch in which you would kill the Dagannoth Mother but the quest would not be completed. This has now been fixed.
 * As of today, there is still a known glitch that if you speak to Jossik and run during mid-sentence of his speech. The Mother will come out of the water ... but a second one may come out as well. This is a rare glitch.
 * There is a glitch where, when you get the book and complete the quest, the quest complete doesn't come up but you still get the rewards and the quest points.
 * There is a glitch where, when failing the first basalt jump on the lighthouse side, you can click the basalt rock and turn endlessly on the spot.
 * When you see the "Quest completed!" screen, it does not show, "You have completed Horror from the Deep!", but it shows "You have survived the Horror From The Deep!" which refers to the tough monsters in the quest.
 * It is impossible to obtain a book of Armadyl, Bandos, or Zaros as a reward for the quest. You can only choose to buy those books after the quest.
 * During the fight, if the Dagannoth Mother cannot hit you, she will vanish. You will then have to fight her again with her health replenished. This has made the quest somewhat harder.
 * During the Horror from the Deep quest, when a player enters the Lighthouse, the player is actually entering a copy of the lighthouse but the copy is entered and used only in the quest anyway.