Yakamaru/Strategies

Roles

 * Base tank (preferred to find a backup base tank as well) - Player should be focusing Yakamaru in a direction away from the rest of the team or else the entire team will get enrage stacks. The base tank can either tank at melee distance with any combat style tank gear and pray magic or tank at a distance with ranged or magic tank gear and pray range. Cycle between resonance, debilitate, reflect, devotion, and barricade to minimize damage received. Wear at least three pieces of tempest, primeval, or teralith armour is strongly recommended because they have a chance to reset defensive abilities' cooldowns, making tanking much easier. Divine, arcane, or elysian spirit shields reduces more damage than malevolent, vengeful, or merciless shields but always use penance and bring more super restore flasks if using spirit shields because without penance they prayer drain is extremely fast. Use malevolent, vengeful, or merciless shields instead of penance is on cooldown or is about to run out. Bring a malevolent, vengeful, or merciless shield to switch to along with a divine, arcane, or elysian spirit shield if penance may run out in the middle of the fight. If the base tank uses range or melee gear, they can switch to the lunar spellbook and heal the rest of the team with Heal Other will under the effect of barricade. Just remember to stop using Heal Other as soon as barricade runs out or you will be dealt very high damage. Eat up to full health before using barricade and Heal Other as a safeguard from this mistake. The disadvantage of this tactic is that the base tank does not build adrenaline while healing so they cannot use a defensive threshold as soon as barricade runs out.
 * Melee distance tanking with any style of combat gear is significantly harder to do because the base tank need to switch from praying magic to praying range when switching pools and they need to run further away from exploding sharks at shark pool. Therefore, it is not recommended for beginner base tanks or any base tanks that are low on food.
 * One benefit from melee tanking is that if using melee gear, the base tank can use balanced strike to heal and deal high damage. The damage done is based on the difference in percentage of current lifepoints over maximum lifepoints between Yakamaru and the base tank, not based on who has higher hitpoints. The heal amount is half of this difference. For example, if Yakamauru has 100,000 health out of 1,000,000 while the base tank has 2,000 health out of 10,000 and the base tank uses balance strike, Yakamaru will heal for 500 health and the base tank will take 1,000 damage instead because Yamakaru has 10% health left while the base tank has 20% left. So, it is best to use this ability when the base tank is low on health at the start of the fight at the centre pool or the start of a pool that is not the centre pool when centre pool's health is not near maximum.
 * Another benefit from melee tanking is if the poison spawn by the base tank, it will not spawn too far from the DPS group where the poison tank is than when distance tanking. The poison tank will be more likely to spot the poison and be less likely to miss it.


 * North tank(s) - During the mirage phase, two players in magic or ranged gear will get the aggression of the sand and stun mirages to prevent them from flinging projectiles at the team. It is recommended to have them using magic gear and entangle to bind the summoned jellyfish for 24 seconds, or Ice Barrage, binding shot, tight bindings or Bolas for 10 seconds. Wear at least three pieces of tempest or primeval armour is strongly recommended because they have a chance to reset defensive abilities' cooldowns, making tanking much easier. Divine, arcane, or elysian spirit shields reduces more damage than malevolent, vengeful, or merciless shields but always use penance and bring more super restore flasks if using spirit shields because without penance they prayer drain is extremely fast. If the team is sending two range DPS to stun mirage, only one north tank is needed and this north tank will tank the sand mirage. This north tank can also help the stun mirage DPS attack the stun mirage while using defensive abilities to reduce damage from the sand mirage.
 * Stun mirage range DPS - two range DPS should decide before the fight starts who will stun the stun mirage and who will be the backup stunner. After the fight starts, they must grab 5 planks before mirage phase starts. After all the four pools have been completed and Yakamaru is at the centre pool, both range DPS should be positioned between the centre pool and the stun pool. Starting building adrenaline to 100%. When Yakamaru is at 100k hp, use death swiftness and keep building adrenaline. When the stun mirage appears, immediately use all range threshold abilities on it. Use devotion to reduce damage and use freedom to lower enrage stacks. Bind any jellyfish that spawns with bolas, binding shot, or tight bindings. If done correctly, stun pool can be cleared and planked before other players reach sand pool.
 * DPS/Healers - Once all other roles are filled, any remaining slots should be range DPS in power armour because magic DPS has lower DPS at Yakamaru since asphyxiate must not be used at stun pool or stun mirage. Anyone who ranges at Yakamaru should also be healing the team whenever possible by using a piece of equipment that serves as a shield, then using Heal Other or Heal Group while under the effects of Barricade. Remember to also heal the base tank with Heal Other. Remember to stop healing as soon as barricade runs out or you will be dealt very high damage. Eat up to full health before using barricade and Heal Other or Heal Group as a safeguard from this mistake. If possible, they should also be using Vengeance Group.
 * Have a rotating order between healers so two healers do not use Barricade at the same time, skipping the next heal and forcing the other healer to heal others next.
 * Poison tank - Same role as DPS/Healer but with one more task: At 100,000 life points, Yakamaru will unleash a dangerous poison. The player serving this role will enter the spot where the poison will land and then go within melee distance of Yakamaru in order to complete the phase.
 * Backup poison tank(s) can help in case the main poison tank is killed by being "blued", is affected by tentacles/quicksand, slow to step on the poison spot, or cannot find the poison spot. Any player can be the backup poison tank. This player first stand next to but not on the poison spot when the poison spawns. Step into it if the poison tank is not on it when the poison is close to hitting the spot. If both the poison tank and the backup is on the spot, the backup should step out of it immediately and the poison tank should remain on it so one player does not have to tank the poison for the next pool. The base tank can take poison if it targets near him, and a backup tank will have to Provoke Yakamaru until base tank is resuscitated.
 * CPR (resuscitator) - After every Yakamaru pool change from poison, run to the beach and save the poisoner from the insta-kill effect. By 50,000 life points, you should start drifting towards the beach.
 * Debuffer - One magic DPS in power armour should cast the debuff spells vulnerability and enfeeble to increase damage dealt to Yakamaru by 10% and damage received by Yakamaru by 10%, respectively. These spells only last for one minute so they need to be recasted every minute. The debuffer should also cast entangle on spawned jellyfish while on mirage phase.

Gear
All players are usually required to have Dreadnips and to remember to use them as often as possible, as when Yakamaru is attacked by 5 or more at any given time, he becomes stunned (this does not affect northeast pool's stun effect) preventing him from attacking or using abilities. Like most other bosses that have access to abilities, they only use them if they can attack their target.

Like Vorago, melee can be used but is not recommended as anyone within a 2x2 range of Yakamaru will be hit by magic attacks and be affected by his enrage mechanics unless the player is the base tanker. Magic = When maging, it is required to be on either the standard spellbook to cast debuff spells on Yakamaru or the Ancient spellbook to cast Ice Barrage on summoned Jellyfish to bind them for 10 seconds. If north tanking, it is recommended to be on Ancients and be dual wielding due to 2-handed weapon's slow attack rate.

Range= Rangers should be on the Lunar spells spellbook with access to Heal Other/Heal Group and Vengeance spells, as it will be needed to restore the health of players from the many sources of high damage during the fight. As Heal Other and Group heal lifepoints based on the player's current health at the time, equipment that has more health bonuses are usually a priority for more effective heals.

Canals Puzzle
After entering a canal puzzle, you will be facing various Jellyfish in each island and there is a blocked water spout. The jellyfish that appear must be killed to unblock the spout, which will take you to the next skirmish. They are not aggressive. Having all players attacking one jellyfish at a time by avoiding the use of aoe ancient magicks or aoe abilities other than corruption shot and corruption blast makes killing the jellyfish much easier. Deploying dreadnips at the reflecting jellyfish can temporarily disable its reflecting damage. Having the whole team use both soul split and soul link helps spread out the damage and healing. Once all jellyfish are killed, have four people from the group go back to the islands which had pressure pads. One player will hit the block, which will show a face. The players on the other islands must stand on the pad containing that face to unblock the canal, leading to the boss fight. A minimum of four players are need to complete the puzzle: One player can flip the block and immediately run to the closest island with the pressure pads.

Rebank if needed by logging out then back in if you can't use the two canal banks, then re-enter the instance.

Note: In order to go straight to the boss fight from instance portal, all players must have dived into the arena; if one player has not dived through the waterfall yet, the whole team must complete the canal, even if the group leader sets the boss to Yakamaru.

Jellyfish
These jellyfish appear throughout the fight with Yakamaru. When they appear, they should be immediately prioritized over Yakamaru as they have a very fast attack speed and deal a decent amount of damage at their target(s), and can easily kill teammates. Stuns temporarily stop them from attacking.

When an orange jellyfish spawns, multiple cracks appear on the ground and geysers erupt a few seconds later. The geysers deal 1500-2000 damage to players hit by them, but also deal 10,000 damage to the jellyfish per player damaged by them. Carefully timed Resonance can be used to both heal yourself and damage the jellyfish.

Pre-Fight
Before fighting Yakamaru, run NORTH to reset the loading map; this can prevent lag.

Group in close proximity to other players while standing in the gaps between pools as seen to the right, to allow for healers and group veng'ers to reach everyone. This also allows you to easily run back during shark or sand effects.

The Fight
Yakamaru does not move for the majority of the fight; the only time it moves is when it jumps to another pool. Yakamaru will jump to another pool when its health is depleted. Each pool is a phase that gives Yakamaru different abilities, and there are 5 phases in total. Players will need to deal as much damage as possible, as the total damage needed to kill it is 5,600,000 from its phases and mirages.

Yakamaru's attacks will hit everyone in the fight within a 20x20 radius of him. It does not use melee-based attacks, but it melee-distance attack is a magic attack instead. Anyone 3 spaces or further from it will instead be hit with ranged attacks, shown as tentacles bursting from the ground and attacking the player. This means all players who attacks Yakamaru will take damage from it. Thus, all players should use debilitate or devotion throughout the entire fight to reduce this damage. The DPS team should be standing at a distance from Yakamaru while praying range for most of the fight.

During the fight, Yakamaru will not let you attempt you leave the fight through lobbying. If you do so, a message will say "Yakamaru is displeased with your cowardice.", preventing you from doing so. If you are out of combat, a message will appear saying "Yakamaru is displeased with your cowardice, and throws dangerous projectiles at you!", dealing 2,000 damage to all players out of combat with it. This will mean that it is a fight to the death, although players can leave a failed kill by asking the group leader to kick them or removing themselves from the group. Players can also prevent this by using anticipate, freedom, surge, or escape to stay in combat stance if they are outside Yakamaru's attack range.

For positioning, the tank should stand in the side away from the DPS group, turning Yakamaru's direction away from them or else they will also gain enrage stacks. The side the tank take should be the side closest to the centre pool so the tank can quickly return to it when one of the four outer pools is over. The tank should not stand on the opposite side of the team unless they are trying to avoid the 2,000 damage tendrils because the team cannot conveniently cast Heal Other on the base tank. The base tank can switch to soul split after using barricade to heal and switch back to praying range before it runs out. DPS'ers, which includes non-tank roles, should be in a group close enough to share Ice Asylum and Vengeance Group but away from the tank.

As soon as Yakamaru appears, attack it. Yakamaru and its mirages will cycle between the following abilities that occur after five auto-attacks throughout the whole fight:
 * An orange jellyfish can spawn along with cracks with 50,000 lifepoints. Players can stand on the cracks, after which a geyser will erupt out. The player will take around 1,700-1,850 typeless damage from the geyser, but will deal 10,000 damage onto the jellyfish. Prioritise killing these jellyfish over Yakamaru, as they are aggressive and can stack rapid AoE melee damage. Bind them immediately when they spawn so they cannot attack the team. Use Resonance timed correctly for a free heal, killing the jellyfish, or stun and ignore during Mirage phase. Throughout the fight, make sure that the base tank is not attacked by any jellyfish by binding them.
 * If there is more than one player in Yakamaru's attack range, one random player will turn blue (similar to the water Metamorphosis ability), and must pass the effect on to another player. This is done by standing next to someone else who has not obtained it yet (this is why standing close together is helpful). If you do not pass it on to another person, you will be hit for typeless damage, starting at 1500 and incrementing by 1000 for every following hit, until the effect is passed. After passing the effect around to 5 or 6 players, the effect will disappear. The effect does not pass between players standing on the same square.
 * The pool-specific special attack, except for the no-stun pool where Yakamaru has none. The quicksand pool will use its quicksand attack if there is more than one player in Yakamaru's attack range.

Since dreadnips can stun and delay Yakamaru's auto-attacks, they can also delay the special attacks and reduce the amount Yakamaru uses throughout the fight as well.

When Yakamaru switches pools, its special attack rotation pattern will be randomized, which is important to note at the tendrils and quicksand pool.

Yakamaru as well as Beastmaster Durzag have enraging mechanics, where damage against you increases over time. This effect increases damage taken by 20% per hit and is applied to anyone in an area around the main target. Yakamaru will warn you about increased enrage three times, saying "Yakamaru's water begins to drench you," (As soon the effect is applied, thus x1.2 damage taken.) "Yakamaru's waters begin to soak through you," (Damage multiplier has reached x2, after 5 hits taken.) and "Yakamaru's waters conducts his full power." (Damage multiplier has reached x3, after 10 hits taken.). This multiplier maximises at x4. Unlike Beastmaster Durzag, gaining enrage stacks from Yakamaru does not clear all active defensive abilities and put them on cooldown.

By using Freedom, the enrage is decreased to the state of the previous message received. As such, using it on first state will clear the effect. Using it on second state will reduce the multiplier to x1.2. Using it on third state will reduce the multiplier to x2. It is essential to Freedom the rage as doing so also lowers enrage stacks on the tank. Unlike Durzag, Yakamaru does not reset his enraging mechanic when he is not focusing on that player, so the only way to decrease his stacks are by continually using Freedom whenever those messages appear. But like Durzag, Yakamaru's enrage increases faster than the base tank's freedom goes off cooldown, so the base tank will always have some level of enrage on them.
 * If Freedom is on cooldown, Devotion and Debilitate can be used to temporarily reduce damage. Also, you can check your drench level when using Devotion, as you will take more than 1 damage while drenched.

Poison
When Yakamaru reaches 100,000 lifepoints at the specialty pools, poison will spawn in a designated spot. The team should have a poison runner, someone who will use the poison to infect Yakamaru at the end of the phase. When Yakamaru shoots the poison, it will hit a 1x1 area (shown with green arrows on that spot). The poison runner has 5 seconds to reach to this location. The poison runner will then go melee distance to Yakamaru once they are poisoned (Protect Magic prayer) and the team depletes his health to 0. The poison appears near any player, including near the base tank, which can make it hard for the poison tank to spot the poison. The DPS group should stick together to allow the poison to be closer to them by standing in one square when Yakamaru reaches 200,000 lifepoints. The DPS should not use death swiftness at 200,000 lifepoints as well because it can obstruct the poison tank's vision if the poison spawns inside of it. If the poison appears near the base tank, the base tank should take it if the poison tank does not reach it in time.

As a safeguard for the poison runner, as soon as the poison spawns, one DPS who is close to the spawned poison should run next to but not on the poison spot. If the poison runner is not on this spot when the poison is close to hitting it, this DPS should stand on it instead and take the poison in order to save the phase from being repeated. If the poison runner reaches to the poison spot at the same time or after the DPS stands on it, the DPS should immediately step out of it while the poison runner should stay on it.

A successful poison attempt should yield the message "Yakamaru is lured by the scent of your poison..." and drag them into the pool with him. That player will later end up on the shore, and must be resuscitated by a teammate or will instantly die from the poison. While that player is being resuscitated, any damage from Yakamaru will be reduced to 1 regardless of protection prayers or defenses. You can still eat and drink potions while being resuscitated however, and it is advised to do so should the resuscitator become "blued" while saving you. If either the poison tank or CPR is attacked by a summoned jellyfish or gets "blued", a DPS should be stand close to them to bind or provoke the jellyfish off them or remove the "blue" from them and pass it on to other DPSers.

One and only one person should take the poison. If someone else accidentally takes the poison as well and both poisoned players go into melee distance of Yakamaru, Yakamaru will only randomly take the poison off of one of them and send them to the beach. If this happens, the other poison player will need to tank the poison damage during the next pool and go in melee distance of the next pool at 100,000 health to remove the poison while ignoring the spawned poison at that pool. This poisoned player will need to eat a lot of food. So healers should heal the team more often if two players took the poison or else the other poisoned player will run out of food later in the fight.

If the poison tanker misses the poison, Yakamaru cannot be poisoned and the phase must be repeated again. The message "As no one poisoned Yakamaru, it returns to the central pool to recover." will appear, and Yakamaru will be back at the starting pool at health he was at + 50,000. No canal jellyfish will appear when this occurs.

Centre pool (Start)
This is the pool that Yakamaru is waiting for players in. The designated tank should shatter the barrier, starting the fight. The tank should be in melee distance with Yakamaru while praying against magic attacks. Everyone else should be standing away, but close together, while praying against ranged attacks. Everyone should use Dreadnips to stall Yakamaru's attacks as much as possible in every phase of the fight.

After Yakamaru 200,000 life points while in the starting pool, he will go to the next phase by jumping to one of the pools. The first pool is randomly chosen, but the others will be chosen in a clockwise rotation based on the previous pool.

If Yakamaru is killed without being poisoned at the end of phases, Yakamaru will return here, then players must redo the pool that he was just in until he is poisoned.

Southern-most pool (Tentacles)
During this phase, Yakamaru has access to two tentacle abilities.
 * 1) The first one, which is a group of bunched up tentacles, is used against his current target and deals rapid hits of 2000 for players near it, which will kill them easily. The base tank should be prepared to run or take heavy damage from them. This attack can be easily seen as Yakamaru will lower his head onto his main target, rather then using regular attacks, but the attack has already been released when he does so.
 * 2) The other tentacle ability will choke some of the players not targeted by him who are considered "top DPS", dealing small but increasing damage starting at around 200 per 2 game ticks. The tentacle also binds players and clears/resets defensive abilities. Affected players will be freed when enough damage has been done on Yakamaru. If the tentacle effect is somehow left uncleared, it can deal very high damage.

When Yakamaru or its mirage just spawned at the tendril pool, there is a chance that they will use its 2000 damage tentacle attack at the DPS team, catching the off guard and possibility kill some of them. To prevent this, the DPS team should let the base tank attack Yakamaru first so it will not be targeting any DPSer. However, not all DPSers know how to do this so eat to full health and be ready to run away at the beginning of tendril pool. If the base tank does provoke Yakamaru or its mirage at the beginning of the tendril pool, Yakamaru can use its tendril attack immediately at the base tank as its next special attack rotation. To counter this, the base tank should build to 100% adrenaline at the centre pool before the tendril pool or the mirage phase and use immortality as soon as the tendril pool appears. If the base tank cannot do this, they should eat up to full health and run around at a distance while praying range until Yakamaru or its mirage uses its tendrils, summon a jellyfish, or uses its "blue" special attack.

If Yakamaru or its mirage does not use its tendrils as its next special attack after the tendril pool phase begins, they will use the tendril special attack 5 auto-attacks after the "blue" special attack. A DPS should immediately call out in public chat when the "blue" is released so the base tank can count the auto-attacks and predict when the tendrils will appear. If the base tank cannot see the "blued" player, they can also tell when it is out when they see Yakamaru raises its head but does not spit anything out. When the "blue" is out, the base tank should build to 100% adrenaline and use barricade or immortality right before the tendrils appear to survive them. Do not use barricade too early because dreadnips can unpredictably stun Yakamaru or its mirage, delaying the time tendrils spawn and they may spawn after barricade runs out. If the base tank cannot do this in time or when both abilities are on cooldown, they should eat up to full health and run around at a distance while praying range until Yakamaru or its mirage uses its tendrils. If done correctly, the tendrils will appear behind the base tank's path and they will only take one or two 2,000 damage hits.

Deal damage to Yakamaru while avoiding his special attacks until the end of the phase, where like all phases, poison will spawn. The person who is contaminated by running into the 1x1 target area must then run melee distance to Yakamaru, infecting it. If you suspect that the tentacles are about to appear, wait for them to be used or have someone backup poison tank, as the smaller tentacles can grab the main poison tank.

Yakamaru will return to the centre pool now.

Centre pool (Poison)
Yakamaru leaves this pool after 200,000 lifepoints lost. If you successfully poisoned, it will run to the next phase (Pool clockwise from the last pool). If you defeated Yakamaru before he was poisoned, the pool that he was just in will need to be repeated again. If unpoisoned from the last phase, he will return back to the pool with health when he went to that pool + 50,000 (so on first pool he would have 850,000 lifepoints if he wasn't poisoned).

If the base tank tanks at melee distance, switch to praying range, surge to the centre pool immediately, and switch back to praying magic when at melee distance of the centre pool, and provoke Yakamaru. At max enrage stacks, when poisoned and if not praying correctly, Yakamaru can hit over 8,500 damage per hit. As a safeguard from switching prayers at the wrong time, just before Yakamaru switches pools, the base tank should eat to full health. Another safeguard is to not use resonance and use preparation when Yakamaru is at 200,000 lifepoints. Use resonance when Yakamaru returns to the centre pool without switching to praying range so the base tank receives a powerful heal instead of a powerful hit. Just make sure the base tank is at melee distance after resonance is used or switch to praying range.

After every successful phase Yakamaru will return to this pool and summon multiple jellyfish encountered in the canal puzzle. Each group always contains 3 combat canal jellyfish (one of all types) and one support jellyfish (durable/reflect). The support jellyfish rotate after every successful phase, the first spawn being random. You can either prioritize killing jellyfish first (as they hit very fast and hard on the players) or tag them to keep them from reaching Yakamaru then prioritise phasing Yakamaru before returning to the jellyfish. Use stuns such as Ice Barrage or Tight Bindings to stop the jellyfish from attacking.

While poisoned, Yakamaru will take double damage from all attacks as well as dealing more damage to the base tank. The poison is removed if Yakamaru is damaged enough to be forced into the next pool, a canal jellyfish touches him, or a durable/reflecting jellyfish is killed. One technique used is to tag all jellyfish to take them away from Yakamaru and leave the last jellyfish alive to extend poison effects. When a Reflecting Jellyfish spawns, leave a Piercing Jellyfish alive due to its range attacks matching players' range prayers. When a Durable Jellyfish spawns, tag but do not kill until poison is removed or other jellyfish are dead.

Resuscitator should save the poison tanker on the beach and be in combat via defensive abilities if Yakamaru is not attack them, as they can go out of combat and be hit with projectiles for 2,000 while saving the poison tanker. Players with spare inventory space should loot planks for Mirage phase.

During the phase, five planks appear on the south-eastern coast (20 planks total when all pools have been defeated). There is no need to have a designated person to collect planks since it takes up many inventory spaces. Whoever has lots of empty inventory spaces should pick them up, as it is needed to defeat Yakamaru. However, if the team is sending two range DPS at stun mirage, these two players should collect 5 planks each in the first and second phase before the rest of the team.

South-western pool (Sharknado)
During this phase, Yakamaru has the ability to create sharknados. This can be easily seen, as the whirlpool around Yakamaru will grow larger and have sharks circling around it. After several attacks, Yakamaru will release the sharks in a circle, which will drop onto the floor and then explode, dealing 2100-2400 typeless damage per shark. If you Surge or Escape before the sharks appear on the ground, they will appear on the tile where the player Surged or Escaped to. The sharks are solid objects, so players should avoid Surging or Escaping too early or teammates will be hurt by their damage. The base tank should use barricade when the sharks are launched. If it is on cooldown, run, surge or escape away from the pool, pray range if melee tanking. Return to the pool when the sharks exploded and pray magic if melee tanking. Do not tank the sharks with immortality because the sharks do not explode at the same time. One shark can activate immortality and save the base tank's life but the other ones that explode a tick or two later can kill the base tank.

Alternatively, you can fish the sharknado pool, which will reduce the amount of sharks but is NOT RECOMMENDED as you will be forced to go within melee distance and the risk of sharknado is nonexistent with experience.

Immediately after the sharks explode, an orange jellyfish will spawn.

Deal damage to Yakamaru while avoiding his special attacks until the end of the phase, where like all phases, poison will spawn. The person who is contaminated must then run to Yakamaru, infecting it. Players should be very careful with their DPS on Yakamaru. If he is near 150,000 lifepoints and a sharknado is about to be launched, wait for the sharks to be launched before damaging him to below 100,000. The poison tank should be ready to use Barricade.

Yakamaru will return to the centre pool now.

North-western pool (Sand)
In this phase, 5 auto-attacks after the summoned jellyfish, Yakamaru dampens the ground around him, causing players near him to be stuck in the sand as the same time clearing defensive abilities and putting them on cooldown. A message will appear for two people not affected by the ability saying "Yakamaru drags your team into quicksand! Free them before they drown!". There is no warning message for players affected by the quicksand, so players should be looking for a Detonate-like animation at the beginning of the quicksand and quickly spam a phrase that will let players know that they need to be freed. If not saved in time, the player will die instantly, although a Sign of Life or Death will activate and the player can rejoin the battle.

Players are advised to stand in a rectangle formation to easily see who is stuck in the sand and have a partner free them, so more people can focus on DPS. Spam a short message or a letter in the public chat to make it easier for the freed members of the team to locate trapped members. until you are free. The main tank can and will be dragged also. If they are melee distance tanking, they should use protect/deflect range when they are out of their melee range and switch back to protect/deflect magic when returning back to melee range.

The base tank should not use immortality and try to "die" for a heal after a jellyfish spawns as the quicksand attack will clear it.

Deal damage to Yakamaru while avoiding his special attacks until the end of the phase, where like all phases, poison will spawn. The person who is contaminated must then run to Yakamaru, infecting it. Be careful if a quicksand attack is about to occur when Yakamaru is near 100,000 lifepoints, as the main poison tank may be grounded and be unable to reach the poison.

Yakamaru will return to the centre pool now.

North-eastern pool (No-stun)
During this phase, Yakamaru gradually gains a damage reduction effect, until he is completely immune to damage. He will also be weak to a certain combat style (this is indicated by the color of Yakamaru's helmet), which will partially bypass this effect. A designated stunner (usually the base tank) must be set before starting the fight or this phase will be hard to pass through. Stuns are not to be used outside certain circumstances, as any stuns used against Yakamaru while he is in this pool will reflect damage back at all team members who are near the pool. This is shown with a game message "(Player name) has stunned Yakamaru!" in addition to a red aura pulsing out from him. The damage from the reflect varies based on how high his damage reduction was; the reflect damage deals anywhere from 1,000 (lowest) to 5,000 (highest), with 1,000 and immediately 5,000 damage being dealt of two or more players stuns Yakamaru at the same time.

Abilities that count as stuns are: Asphyxiate, Deep Impact, Impact, Tight Bindings, Binding Shot, Destroy, Stomp, Forceful Backhand, Backhand, Kick. Dreadnips can stun/stall Yakamaru but they don't trigger the pool's mechanics. Dominion gloves bind not stun the target and are thus safe to use during this phase.

All players at this pool or its mirage should keep their health above 7000 incase someone accidentally use asphyxiate. If you or someone else accidentally use asphyxiate all players around the pool will get hit 5000 damage four times, most likely killing everyone. To counter this, if you get hit with 5000 damage at any time during the stun pool, immediately run, surge, or escape away from the stun pool while eating up. If done fast, you will only get hit by one 5000 damage because the stun pool's reflect damage has a limited range. The player who accidentally used asphyxiate can interrupt asphyxiate by moving away from the stun pool to prevent further damage to the team.

After each stun, players should use all their threshold abilities (excluding stuns), as after being stunned, all damage towards Yakamaru will increase greatly where thresholds that normally hit 4,000 damage can increase up to 10,000 without using any damage boosters. Rapid Fire is highly effective, and Soul Split can be used to heal a lot of life points right after the pool has been stunned. the base tank as well as the DPS can also use sacrifice right after stunning to heal a large amount of health. However, the designated stunner can miss, so a backup stunner is helpful to avoid multiple players from stunning at one time.

After every successful stun while Yakamaru has at least 150,000 or lower health, tone down on thresholds as they can deal too much damage if all players use it and will force them to restart this pool again.

Deal damage to Yakamaru while avoiding using stuns (unless you are the designated or backup stunner) where like all phases, poison will spawn. The person who is contaminated must then run to Yakamaru, infecting it.

Yakamaru will return to the centre pool now.

Mirage phase
After all five phases are done and Yakamaru has been damaged to 50,000 lifepoints at the centre pool, it will create mirages of itself on all but the starting pool. Each mirage only has 150,000 lifepoints.

Use damage boosting abilities such as Sunshine and Death's Swiftness either when Yakamaru is nearing the 50,000 lifepoint mark or on the tendril mirage when it appears.

Jellyfish that spawn during mirage phase should be binded instead of killed, as it is more important to kill the images of Yakamaru. Entangle keeps the jellyfish binded the longest for 24 seconds. Binding shot, tight bindings, ice barrage or bolas all bind for 10 seconds. Stand more than just a couple squares away from them while they are binded. The debuffer should prioritize binding the jellyfish with entangles over DPSing in mirage phase as the DPS may panic and lose coordination if they are attacked by the jellyfish.

If players use revolution, they cannot cast entangles either from the spellbook or from the action bar because the revolution skips the spell and proceed to using the next ability off cooldown. Players on revolution need to stop using abilities for a second or two before they can cast entangles. Do so by walking one step from your current location and pause for one or two seconds before casting entangles.

If the team is overwhelmed by the great number of summoned jellyfish, instead of binding the jellyfish, one DPS should attack or provoke all the jellyfish on them and run around the arena so the rest of the DPS can calmly DPS. This "jellyfish tagger" should regularly returning to the mirage their team is on to aggro more jellyfish. Alternative, the "jellyfish tagger" can DPS the mirages too by running clockwise or counterclockwise in a large square formation around the mirage the team is currently on, stopping at the corners to attack and moving to the next corner when the jellyfish gets close. Just make sure to prioritize keeping your distance from the jellyfish and aggroing newly summoned jellyfish over DPSing.

If any number of the mirage images are left out of combat, a message will say "As a mirage was left out of combat, it flings dangerous projectiles at the group!", dealing 2,000 damage per mirage leave out of combat to all players in the arena. This can be fatal when combined with damage from standard jellyfish, so the two north tanks or one north tank and two stun mirage range DPS come into play to aggro the mirages on them, so they do not fling projectiles at them. Teams go from the tentacle pool to the damage reduction pool (hence the role north tank). While at the tendril pool, have a DPS attack the nearby sharknado mirage or it will fling projectiles at all members.

As soon as the mirage's health bar is depleted (not the real Yakamaru, shown in the top bar), go to melee distance and spam click the pool instantly, otherwise the mirage will return with full health and it has to be defeated again. The team has five seconds to close the pool. The tentacle and sand pools are blocked with sand, requiring no items. Planks obtained during the fights can be applied in one click to the sharknado and stun pools, making it beneficial for only two players to carry 10 planks each while other players surge and dps. To block, it is recommended to get within melee distance of the mirage at 30,000 lifepoints and pray magic (all players for sand pools, only those with planks for plank pools).

As all phase effects are active at once, make sure to stay aware of sharks when killing tendril pool, be ready to save your team at sand mirage, and no one but the stunner or the backup stunner must use stuns at the stun mirage.

Note: During the quicksand phase, make sure that no one is stuck in the ground before depleting Yakamaru's health bar, since they will be unable to move and unable to block the pool, reducing the amount of players that can block the pool. If the sand mirage is low in health and just summoned a jellyfish, stop DPSing and wait for it to use its quicksand. Save the team from quicksand, kill the mirage and close the pool.

For north tanks, before mirage phase starts, stand close to the pool that you will be north tanking. When the mirage appears, switch to your shield, shield ability bar, an amulet of souls for its +10% damage reduction to protection or deflect prayers, and a charged healer's insignia for its +5% healing effect that also affects saradomin brews; attack the mirage you are assigned to get it agro on you (provoke is not needed); use debilitate first to reduce damage; and run to the north side of the pool, keeping out of melee distance while praying range. After debilitate wears off, use reflect next. Use freedom to reduce enrage stacks when you see a message that you have gained a stack. However, the mirage gains enrage stacks faster than freedom goes off cooldown, so north tanks will always have some level of enrage. If using revolution, place freedom as your first action bar slot while north tanking in case you forget to use it. Use devotion or barricade subsequently as the mirage's attacks grow stronger from enrage stacks. Use preparation immediately after using resonance. Wearing at least three pieces of tempest or primeval armour is very helpful while north tanking because they have a chance to reset defensive abilities. An advance tactic that can be used is to switch to soul split after using barricade to heal and switch back to praying range before it runs out.

Watch your prayer points especially when you are using a divine, elysian, or arcane spirit shield with penance and keep them high. The mirages can hit in the 6000s per hit at higher enrage stacks without praying.

While north tanking, north tanks need to bind the summoned jellyfish that the mirages summon. Use entangle, bolas, binding shot, tight bindings, or Ice Barrage with Dark Form to bind the jellyfish. Entangle is the best tactic to do so because it binds the jellyfish for 24 seconds while the other methods only bind them for 10 seconds. After binding the jellyfish, stand far away from them and resume attacking the mirage. Bind them again as soon as they move again. Note that if you drink too many saradomin brews in a quick session, you may not have a high enough magic level to use entangles. Counter this by drinking a super restore flask. Cycle between damage reducing defensive as well as binding all jellyfish targeting you until the rest of your team arrives at your pool and the base tank provokes the mirage off you. Switch to your dual-wield or two-handed weapon and ability bar and start DPSing while continuing to lower enrage stacks with freedom.

The sand pool will not use its quicksand special attack and both the sand and stun pool will not use its "blue" special attack if there is only one player in its attack range. But if the rest of the team comes to the sand pool, the sand pool north tank can be stuck in quicksand on the north side and the team may not notice them and save them. The sand pool north tank should immediately move the south side after the rest of the team begins to attack the sand mirage. If you are not fast enough, spam a letter or a short word in public chat and hope a DPS or the stun pool north tank comes and saves you.

One common but deadly mistake that inexperienced north tanks make is that they get themselves stuck in a cycle of always needing to heal themselves as the mirage hits them for 2000-3000s damage per hit through prayers while running from the jellyfish. This is because they do not have time to use freedom and do not have enough adrenaline to use damage reducing defensive abilities because eating food lowers it below 50% and running from the jellyfish does not build adrenaline. They have to run from the jellyfish since they do not have time to bind them while they are constantly eating. To avoid this vicious cycle, always keep your health full throughout your north tanking phase. As soon as you see your health is not full, drink saradomin brews until full. Eat other types of food like rocktails or rocktail soup only when you experience a quick drop in your lifepoints because food will lower your adrenaline while brews do not. Bind your brews and food to a easily accessible key on your keyboard so you can eat while moving around. Always make sure you have some damage reducing defensive ability active while north tanking to keep the mirage's damage in the 1000s. Keep your adrenaline at least 50% so you will be ready to use a debilitate or reflect. Do so by quickly binding the jellyfish as soon as they start moving and stand far from them so you can have more time attacking the mirage and building adrenaline and less time running around.

If using revolution while north tanking, players cannot cast entangles either from the spellbook or from the action bar because the revolution skips the spell and proceed to using the next ability off cooldown. Players on revolution need to stop using abilities for a second or two before they can cast entangles. Do so by walking one step from your current location and pause for one or two seconds before casting entangles.

If north tanks feel overwhelmed with damage with north tanking, they can run outside of their mirages' attack range and heal up. But do not be outside of it for 5 seconds or the mirages will fire 2000 damage projectiles to everyone. North tanks can stand outside of their attack range for a few seconds while building adrenaline off binded jellyfish, use a defensive ability, run back in, tank a hit, and run back out again. This may be harder to do if the binded jellyfish are also close to or in this attack range boundary.

Instead of having a second north tank at stun mirage, the team can plan in advance to send two range DPS with 5 planks each to quickly close it. See above in the Roles section for this method.

After the pools have been blocked, Yakamaru will return to the center pool with 50,000 life points left. Once he is killed, the fight is over (Jellyfish will die) and you may loot if eligible before leaving through the whirlpool.

Feats Challenges
There are 5 special challenges that when completed award progress towards "the Daredevil" title. In order to complete the feat, the challenge described must be met AND players must finish the kill.