Balance Elemental

The Balance Elemental is an enemy fought during While Guthix Sleeps. It is currently the 11th strongest monster in RuneScape and the fourth strongest quest monster available to fight with conventional methods, after the Decaying Avatar, the Pest Queen and Nomad. It could be linked to the Chaos Elemental, according to Reldo in an edition of Postbag from the Hedge. It speaks about the player as if they have already met, and the player has already died.

Habitat
The Balance Elemental lives in the temple where the Stone of Jas is found. Lucien appears immediately after and finally, at the end of the quest, Tormented Demons are fought. According to its duel card, the Balance elemental exists in multiple dimensions at once, a state known as straddling.

The Balance Elemental uses all attack styles, and changes appearance for each: A stone club signifies that it is attacking with melee, a flaming bow ranged, and blue spike protruding from its head mean magic attacks. It also uses a stat draining attack which is a rock-like missile. God spells do not work against this monster.

The Fight


The Balance Elemental will appear from the Stone of Jas once a player touches it. It begins the fight using Ranged, but will readily switch to other attack types. Like players, there is a small delay when it switches combat styles, and it usually uses that same attack for 3-4 hits in a row. It is advisable to fight it using Ranged or Magic (be careful however, the stat drain will affect your spell casting) and get it stuck on some of the rubble around the room so that it cannot use its melee attack. The Stone of Jas itself can be used as a Safespot, and a familiar can be used to block as well. If the Elemental's melee attack is disabled in this way, switching prayer is a lot easier, with the bow and the blue spikes being clear indications of which prayer to use. Food must then only be eaten to replenish the health lost through the stat draining attacks.

One tactic is to immediately run to the other side of the Stone of Jas as soon as the Elemental appears and then completely out of its target range. This will allow time to plan a strategy as the player will no longer be targeted and the elemental will simply stand in place allowing for positioning before the first strike.

A good tactic for lower leveled players against the elemental, is to quickly poison the element with dds special attacks and protect with prayer against it's attacks AND for aporoimately every 1/3rd of it's health lost the elemental will engage in conversation. While it is talking to you, it still takes the damage from the poison allowing for it to be beaten with minimal risk, however, if the conversation is interupted it will resume attacking and players should take great care their prayer dose not run out leaving them vurnable, armour with high prayer bonuses can be very useful in prolonging prayer.

Using combat skills, being a minimum of 80.

Wear black dragonhide for armour, with 200 rune bolts to be safe and a Dragon sq shield. For equipment carry one Prayer potion, one Super restore, one Super attack, Super defence and Super strength. Use a one click-teleport for quick escape. Have a Rune crossbow ready to go and fill the rest of the spaces with sharks.

For the melee weapon use a Dragon Battleaxe or dragon scimitar.

Before touching the stone, use the axe's special and drink a dose of each super potion. Summon the Elemental and turn on protect from magic (keep it on).

Jump to crossbow when he switches to melee, but beware as he still has his rockthrowing ability. He shouldn't take more than 5 minutes to bring down.

Note: Should you die during the battle, your gravestone will appear next to Movario and Darve in the Tears of Guthix cave.

See While Guthix Sleeps for more extensive details on how the elemental fights and how to fight it.


 * 1) The Balance Elemental talks to the player as if it knows the player. Additionally, it talks in the past tense, using phrases like "used to" and "what you always told me," and also the fact that the player died "a glorious death." Provided that the elemental states that it had attended the player's funeral, it is likely that it was originally human, also that it has travelled through time, and was blessed by Guthix to gain a greater form, such as Fiara and Juna. Juna knew the Balance Elemental was in the temple, and calls you an enemy of Guthix if you tell her you defeated it. It may also mean, however, that it has met the player their past life.
 * 2) It may also be possible that the Balance Elemental knew the player in a previous life, in which he/she probably had the same looks and personality. Judging by what the elemental says about the player's teachings, he/she most likely would have been Guthixian at the time of his/her death, which would have been at a young age.
 * 3) The phrase the elemental says at its death is, most likely, part of Guthix's speech at the moment when it became the Balance Elemental and one of the Guardians of Guthix, at a moment when Guthix would be listing its duties as the Guardian of the Stone of Jas, one of which would be to protect it until its death, when it would be blessed with a blissful afterlife back in its "home plane". This may hint that it possibly came from another dimension, like the Mahjarrat or the Goraks.
 * 4) The Elemental may be trying to taunt the player (i.e. the player has died a glorious death saying the player will die from the fight) and the past tense could just be a taunt or that the elemental was trying to talk formally.

Updates

 * 16 December 2008 update: The Balance Elemental has become wise to your tricks, and will now fight as originally intended, varying his attack styles with your prayers. Make sure you're fully prepared before you attempt to engage this foe.

Trivia

 * The words 'manners maketh the man' appear to be based upon the Winchester College motto 'manners makyth man'.
 * The Balance Elemental's body parts are composed of the four basic elements, as of head and body of ice (as referred to water), a feet of earth, a pair of fire arms and earth arms each, and legs of air.

Balance Elemental Balance Elemental