Splitbark equipment

Splitbark armour is a set of magic armour that adds defence and attack bonuses, making the wearer less vulnerable to melee than magic robes. To wear this armour, players need level 40 Magic and level 40 Defence. The full set can be stored in the Magic wardrobe found in the Costume room of a player-owned house.

In order to obtain the raw materials, players must have completed the Priest in Peril quest to get into Morytania to cut hollow trees, east of Canifis, and the Shades of Mort'ton quest to commence with the process of killing and burning shades to obtain the Fine cloth. One can also buy these materials in the Grand Exchange, where they are relatively inexpensive.

Each piece of splitbark armour can be made by the armoured wizard at the Wizards' Tower, if players pay a fee and bring him the following raw materials: Fine cloth and bark. In total, a player is required to have 11 barks, 11 Fine cloths, and 77,000 coins in order to get Full Splitbark. Since Full Splitbark's Grand Exchange price is usually 200,000-230,000 coins, players may choose to purchase the set on the Grand Exchange instead.

Most people only wear this for show and rarely use it for combat wizardry, which is one reason why it is so cheap. While it has a great bonus against Melee, it weighs down the player, and its offensive magical bonuses are significantly lower than the Mystic Robes set. Areas in RuneScape that are conducive to that trade-off tend to have offsetting issues, which is why most players use Mystic robes or lunar armour in its place, even though Splitbark is cheaper.

As an example, the intermediate monsters in the Brimhaven Dungeon make high-defence magic armour valuable to mages. Unfortunately, the metal dragon lairs are far from the entrance (maximises Splitbark's weight penalty), and the creatures have very high defence (exacerbates Splitbark's lower magic attack bonus). The preferred strategy for mages is thus to use only some pieces of the Splitbark set (hat and boots), if any, wear Mystic Robes for their magic attack bonuses, and rely on prayer and anti-dragonfire equipment for defence.

Skeletal armour has very similar stats, yet splitbark is better by a few points.

Splitbark body is sometimes worn with a farseer helm and mystic robe bottoms for defence and a better magic bonus.

Recently during the Quest Love Story when Zenevivia is fighting in the fight pits during a cutscene, an unreleased updated version of Splitbark Armour can be seen.



Trivia

 * The updated version of this armour, as seen in Love Story, is actually used by some of the heroes in While Guthix Sleeps (Hazelmere, Cyrisus, Turael, Ghommal, and Harrallak). They merely use a different colored alternative to it, but the armour shape and style is identical. This can be seen in the picture below:
 * When the elite clue scroll was released, many people got clue scrolls that needed the Splitbark Helm, many players offered over 300k to borrow the helmet only to do the clue.