Rune dragon

Rune s are metal dragons that can be found on Mount Firewake, in Kethsi. Ritual of the Mahjarrat and Fate of the Gods are required to access the s, and they are accessible through the World Gate. They won the first RuneLabs poll, alongside adamant dragons, and were first announced in the June 2015 Behind the Scenes.

Rune s are found in the remains of Mount Firewake, where the Kethsians kept the Stone of Jas, until it was overused and awakened the Dragonkin. Also located in this area is the laboratory of the Dactyl Forcae, a disciple of Kerapac that created the adamant and rune s.

Upon death, players' gravestones spawn near the World Gate.

Strategy
Rune s have a total of three phases that must be completed with each kill, with the first phase requiring the use of dragonbane bolts or arrows in order to break through their metallic armour and with the second being unreachable with melee weapons.

In addition to magic and melee attacks, rune s use a very powerful dragonfire attack during their second phase that cannot be completely blocked even by a Dragonfire shield or Super antifire potions; however, full protection reduces the damage to around 450. Their ranged attack freezes the player for one second.

During each phase, be careful of dealing too much damage past each threshold. If you deal damage that goes past the threshold, the rune dragon will automatically start the next phase, but will not lose any life points from your attack(s).

Armoured phase

 * Starts with 68,250 life points
 * Dragonbane ammunition is essential on this phase, as all other attacks, including those of familiars, deal dramatically reduced damage.

Flying phase

 * Starts with 45,045 life points. Any attacks during the transition will be reduced to 10% damage.
 * The begins flying, during which time it is immune to melee attacks. bane is no longer required to deal full damage. In addition, it stops using melee attacks and replaces its standard fire attack with the enhanced version.
 * Throughout this phase, the rune may breathe a bright blue plume of enhanced fire onto your character, dealing magic damage. This attack still deals a portion of its full damage even if the player is protected by a super anti-fire or wyrmfire potion (a minimum of 425 magic damage). However, if the player is far enough from the, a small cloud appears under the player indicating the enhanced fire is being used and can be avoided by moving away from it.

Enrage phase

 * Starts with 22,522 life points. Any attacks during the transition will be reduced to 10% damage.
 * The rune gains a blue aura about its head crest after landing, indicative of this phase beginning.
 * The lands, making melee possible again. It gets stronger with every attack, so killing it quickly is important.
 * The stops using enhanced fire and instead use standard fire. It also starts using its melee attacks again.

Trivia

 * Upon release, there was a bug that caused Rune s to build up their rage outside of combat, due to players leaving combat during the 3rd phase. This caused them to easily kill players in a single hit. This bug was patched the following day.
 * There is currently a glitch where damage from a dwarf multicannon deals full damage for phase one of the fight, even though bane ammo is required in order to harm them.
 * On release, rune dragons were aggressive and had less spawns. With the Patch Notes update on 22 June 2015, several changes were implemented, such as increased experience, tolerance towards players, more spawns and reduced damage from their enhanced dragonfire.
 * For a while, rune dragons' phase transition was bugged. As the dragon had to reach a specific "set" of life points to move to the next phase, overhitting the mark would result in the rune dragon healing all lost health to the specific health mark (e.g if the rune dragon had 46,000 life points and was hit by a Tuska's Wrath on task, it would have 34,000 hipoints; the next hit would result in its health returning to 45,050 life points). In addition, the rune dragon could not be attacked during phase transition. This was changed on 22 August 2016 due to player complaints as other monsters that had a similar mechanic did not have this problem.