Fungal mage

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 dealing 2 or 3 life points. However, this can be prevented by using neem oil on it; also, this infestation has a chance to reduce your Prayer points. It should be noted that they are very weak for their level. They have a moderately low max hit and terrible accuracy. Players with fair magical defence are strongly recommended to tank their attacks. Players with a low Magic level and poor magic defensive bonuses however, should go near the Fungal mage to let it infest it; it would be difficult to break even while using Protect from Magic/Deflect Magic, and the damage from infestation is much more less then the attacks from the magic attacks.

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 that it does a large amount of damage (maximum 300) and the mages seem to have an instant respawn rate.

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. Players assigned these as slayer tasks can gain around 100-300k per task (not including spores/flakes) from the commonly dropped herb secondaries and Pure essence. 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.

When sprinkling neem oil they will drop an item which is listed in a separate drops table. Items include such as swamp tar, neem drupe, eye of newt, or a vial of water.

Mage strategy
For your inventory, bring along some low-medium level food (trout to lobster work fine), and if you are using a Dwarf multicannon, bring the parts of the cannon along with 1000 (less or more depending on how many you want to use) cannonballs. If using spells, fire bolt works fine, so bring air and chaos runes.
 * Helm: Full Slayer helm (if task) > Hexcrest (if task) > Grifolic visor > Fungal visor > Mystic hat
 * Necklace: Arcane stream necklace > Amulet of Fury > Amulet of Glory
 * Body: Grifolic poncho > Dagon'hai robe top > Fungal poncho > Mystic robe top
 * Staff: Polypore Staff (using its built-in spell) > Staff of light > Mystic lava battlestaff > Lava battlestaff
 * Shield: Arcane spirit shield > Farseer kiteshield > Mages' book > Sacred clay shield (magic) > Tome of frost > Illuminated unholy book > Illuminated ancient book
 * Leggings: Grifolic leggings > Dagon'hai robe bottom > Fungal leggings > Mystic robe bottom
 * Gloves: Infinity gloves > Mystic gloves
 * Boots: Ragefire boots > Infinity boots > Mystic boots
 * Cape: God cape > Cape of Accomplishment > Obsidian cape

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

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The herbicide from Daemonheim does work with these herb drops.

Trivia

 * They might somewhat resemble 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 mages have a very fast respawn rate; as soon as they are killed, within 5 seconds they will respawn.
 * 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.