Beast of Burden



Beast of Burden (often abbreviated to BoB) is a type of Summoning familiar that has the ability to carry items for the player. To access their familiar's inventory, players need only to right-click on them and select "store", or interact with them and manually ask them to open their inventory. The familiars with this ability are shown in the table below.

Item storage


If players have a Beast of Burden (BoB) familiar with them with the bank window open, they can move its entire inventory into their bank by clicking the summoning familiar icon at the bottom of the bank interface, similar to the 1-button inventory or equipped items banking feature.

Before the familiar's time limit is up, two messages will appear, along with a tick-tock sound:
 * You have 1 minute before your familiar vanishes.
 * You have 30 seconds before your familiar vanishes.

After that: Your familiar has dropped all the items it was holding. You will have exactly five minutes until your items disappear for you to pick them up, significantly longer than as if you would've dropped them yourself. This technique is useful in fighting difficult bosses such as Nomad.

Limits of items carried
Currently the known limits for what a beast of burden will carry are as such:


 * A maximum amount of coins, depending on the familiar
 * Only tradeable items (untradeable items, such as some quest items, cannot be carried by the familiar)
 * Items with lower values.
 * Rune and pure essence can be carried only by the three abyssal familiars, which can only carry essence (see below).

Currently it is unknown what the limit is for the items with lower values. The limit is not based on high alch prices, but rather the Grand Exchange market value. For example, a beast of burden will carry a rune full helm, but not a green h'ween mask.

The amount a familiar could hold was changed with the release of summoning patch #2. There is speculation that it was changed because people were complaining about the limited amount of items a player could store with the familiars.

For large volume resource collection, combine a beast of burden familiar with your imp boxes. Use your imps to send your resources and empty imp boxes to the bank, then fill up your familiar, and your inventory and travel home. This will allow you to transport: 28 items in your inventory + 28 items banked by the imps (+banked boxes), + your familiars cargo space worth of items. If you have a war tortoise, that's another 18 spaces for a total of 74 items per trip. Using a pack yak, that's another 30 items, for a grand total of 86 items per trip.

For quest items that cannot be handed to a familiar, the method above still works. simply hand your empty magic boxes to your familiar until it is full, then ship the remaining empty boxes to your bank with imps from occupied boxes. In each case, the sums come out the same. Imps either take one item and one magic box home, or the box is handed to the familiar, and the imp carries 2 items home. 84 phoenix feathers or nightshades per trip is a great improvement on 28. (The yak will have 2 free slots that cannot hold any quest items.)

Beast of Burden limitations
Although in most cases Beast of Burden helps, there are a few factors that should be taken into consideration before using it.

Premature Death
If a beast of burden dies while carrying items, they will be dropped on the floor and players may not be able to retrieve them if they do not have inventory slots available. Players may want to think about how many items they load a familiar with depending on what level monster they will be fighting, at least then if they die they (if calculated correctly) should have enough inventory space to pick up those items and restock inventory. This is rather uncommon, as most beasts of burden have high life points, and all of them are immune to poison.

Familiar Timer
All familiars have a set lifespan - including Beasts of Burden. The timer, therefore, is the key factor to take into consideration. Players should consider how long a trip might take or the familiar's timer might end up running out and items may be lost. If only using the familiar to bring items back and not take them, consider waiting until it is really needed before summoning.

On 29 April 2009, an update allowed players to replenish the familiar's lifespan. They are required to bring the pouch of the familiar they currently have.

Withdrawing items during combat
While in combat familiar's inventory interface can not be accessed, so if the player is depending upon the items they are carrying to survive, a safe spot should be found, access the inventory, take what is needed, and resume battle. With the introduction of the "take items" button in the familiar interface withdrawing items from them has become a lot easier, but players cannot select which items and how many of them are received, but if the items carried are all the same (such as food) then this does not matter. Players will only receive the amount of items the inventory can hold, none will be dropped.

Carrying pure essence or rune essence in a familiar's inventory
Possibly to protect rune prices there are specific Abyss-based creatures that are classified as beasts of burden; these only hold 7 rune essence or pure essence, and are the only Beasts of Burden than can hold these items. They are:

Other Beasts of Burden
In addition, the following familiars can only be summoned while training Dungeoneering in Daemonheim. The following Beast of Burden Clay familiars are exclusive to the Stealing Creation activity.

Glitches

 * There was a glitch when using Cyreg Paddlehorn's boat (to or from Mort'ton). When a beast of burden was following a player the beast would be forced to leave and while doing so it dropped all of the items it was carrying, however there was no way to pick up the items from the boat. The messages only appeared after arriving at the destination and dismissing the message that informs the player of the arrival.
 * There was also a glitch on the first days summoning came out involving Beasts of Burden, on the Barbarian Assault activity. A player choosing the "Attacker" role would constantly take runes/arrows (Though runes were commonly taken due to their higher price, because highest arrows available from machines are mithril) from the attacker supply machine, sometimes even letting their team lose. This was highly annoying for players that actually wanted to play the game normally. Then the player would deposit the arrows or runes on their Beasts of Burden. After the round was finished, the player would NOT lose the arrows and runes deposited on their familiars, and were free to trade/use them. Some players took advantage of this bug to get easy money or magic/ranged supplies. This was swiftly detected by Jagex and is now fixed, without many players noticing the bug. Almost all players that were detected taking advantage of this bug were harshly punished by Jagex.

Trivia

 * The term "Beast of Burden" is most likely a reference to the real-world use of animals such as camels, donkeys , or mules to carry large loads for people.
 * All BoB familiars (except the Abyssal, Daemonheim, and Stealing Creation ones) carry a number of items that can be divided by 3 evenly.

Beast of burden