Fungal mage

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The fungal mage is a monster found in the Polypore Dungeon.

If players come closer than one square away from it, it will infest them, dealing fast hits of 2 or 3 life points. However, this can be prevented by using neem oil on it. This infestation does not reduce your Prayer points, contrary to popular belief. It should be noted that they are weak for their level, with a moderately low max hit and accuracy. Players with fair magical defence could tank their attacks with ease. Players with a low Magic level and poor magic defensive bonuses however, should go near the fungal mage and allow it to infest them; it would be difficult to break even while using Protect from Magic/Deflect Magic, and the damage from infestation is much less than the attacks from the magic attacks themselves. It seems that even with good defence its normal magical attacks still cause more damage, but as the damage is small either way it is partially up to personal reference. If the player wish to go for the infection method, they must stay in melee range and not use neem oil (Players should note however that when neem oil is used on a fungal mage it stops attacking for a few seconds).

Melee and range attacks will be severely reduced to almost 1/10th of what the attack would have done, unless a dwarf multicannon is used, which is highly recommended due to the fact that it does a large amount of damage (maximum 300) and the mages seem to have an instant respawn rate.

Fungal mages can drop one unnoted Gorajian mushroom, which can extend trips. Depending on a player's magic level, they can kill 120-200 Fungal mages per hour.

Players can kill these without 50 Magic, but they will not get them as a Slayer task until they have the level. It should be noted that fungal magi are incredibly strong against melee and Ranged, as with all other creatures found in the Polypore dungeon. A good way of training on these if lacking coins is to use a salamander on magic attack mode. Another way is to use the spell Fire Bolt, as with chaos gauntlets and an arcane stream necklace, it can deal a nice amount of damage comparable to Fire Blast, and chaos runes are inexpensive.

Killing fungal magi can be quite profitable, due to their valuable drops such as fungal flakes, potato cactus, snape grass, pure essence, chaos runes and seeds.

Strategies


Inventory should include some food or other source of healing, runes for spells, an emergency teleport, and a cannon/cannonballs if applicable. You may also wish to take a Prayer urn for collecting the ashes.

An easy way to get a few safe hits in on the mage is to attack him once, then immediately sprinkle neem oil on the mage. This will give you about three safe hits before the mage starts to attack you.



100% drop

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Essence and runes

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Seeds

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Other

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Neem oil drops
Note: The herbicide from Daemonheim does work with these herb drops.


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Trivia

 * They may be related to earth warriors, as their examine option states "A creature of animated earth infested by fungus", and the only animated earth monsters in high amounts is the Earth Warrior.
 * When the fungal mage is assigned for a Slayer task, the Slayer masters call them fungal magi (because the plural of "mage" is "magi" since the word has Latin origin).
 * Fungal magi have a very fast respawn rate; as soon as they are killed, within 5 seconds they will respawn.
 * Despite being the highest levelled monster to drop Fungal flakes, it rarely seems to drop them. This may be an oversight from Jagex.
 * When the fungal mage is assigned as a Slayer task, when you block it you can also choose the option to block all monsters in the Polypore dungeon.
 * When neem oil is scattered on them their back loses its bright green colour. When the effect has worn off they return back to their normal green colour.