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This article is about the melee offensive shield. For other uses, see Defender (disambiguation).
For other variants of this item, see ranged, magic.
A closeup of a Rune Defender
A player wielding a Rune Defender in the shield slot.

Defenders are off-hand melee equipment that are wielded in the off-hand slot and provide positive offensive and defensive bonuses. They are the melee equivalent of reprisers and rebounders. Defenders, reprisers, and rebounders have a +3% accuracy boost and 1/15 chance to decrease the damage taken from a hit by 50-100%, which also increases the player's accuracy for their next attack by 20%.

Defenders allow the use of both dual-wielding and shield abilities. For scaling defensive abilities, defenders are treated as shield half their tier. For example, a Kalphite defender scales to a tier 45 shield. Their damage style is stab. To wield a defender, a player must have an Attack level high enough to wield a weapon of that metal and a Defence level high enough to wear armour of that metal.

Defender statistics[]

Defender passive effect

The passive effect of the defender activates.

Defender metal Levels required Off-hand Defence
Attack-icon Defence-icon Damage Accuracy Defence-icon Constitution-icon Prayer-icon
Bronze defender Bronze 1 1 14 150 15 0 0
Iron defender Iron 10 10 24 202 20 0 0
Steel defender Steel 20 20 48 316 31 0 0
Black defender Black 25 25 57 381 38 0 0
Mithril defender Mithril 30 30 72 454 45 0 0
Adamant defender Adamant 40 40 96 628 62 0 0
Rune defender Rune 50 50 120 850 85 0 0
Dragon defender Dragon 60 60 144 1132 113 0 0
Corrupted defender Corrupted 70 70 168 1486 148 0 0
Ancient defender Ancient 80 80 192 1924 192 0 0
Kalphite defender Kalphite 90 90 216 2458 245 0 0

Dungeoneering[]

The Flameburst defender is a defender obtained in Dungeoneering. Like all other Dungeoneering equipment, it can only be used within Daemonheim, and cannot be removed from a dungeon. Unlike normal defenders it requires only a defence and magic level to wield.

When wielded with a Frostbite dagger, the dagger has an accuracy boost of 10%, however its normal maximum hit is decreased by 10.

Defender Levels required Off-hand Defence
Defence-icon Magic-icon Damage Accuracy Defence-icon Constitution-icon Prayer-icon
Flameburst defender Flameburst 33 33 202 381 100 0 0

Obtaining defenders[]

Defenders are non-tradeable items. The metal defenders (bronze through dragon) can only be obtained by killing the cyclopes or the cyclossus on the top floor of the Warriors' Guild. Twenty warrior guild tokens (or 15 if in multitoken mode) are used up for every minute spent in the cyclops room. Eventually, a cyclops will drop a bronze defender, and when a player has this, they need to show that to Kamfreena who is located just outside the room. The next time that player enters, Kamfreena will inform the player that the cyclopes will now drop the next-tier (iron) defender. The player will then have to kill cyclopes until they eventually receive this drop. This process is continued for steel, black, mithril, adamant, and rune; until the player finally gets to the dragon defender.

The time needed to obtain a defender varies and it generally takes between 700 and 2,400 tokens (about 1–4 hours) to get to a rune defender. However, it may take over 10,000 tokens to get to Rune, if you are extremely unlucky.

The corrupted defender requires the player to obtain a corruption sigil from the Barrows chest, and use it on a fully repaired or new Dharok's greataxe, Verac's flail, Torag's hammers or Guthan's warspear.

The ancient defender requires the player to obtain an ancient emblem from killing Nex, and use it on a chaotic splint, a reward from Dungeoneering.

The kalphite defender requires the player to obtain a perfect chitin from killing the Kalphite King, and use it on an off-hand drygore rapier, off-hand drygore longsword or off-hand drygore mace.

Like the original defenders, the previous defender must be carried or worn for the components to be dropped.

If a player loses their defender, they will need to start over. Because of this, it is wise for a player to keep duplicate/lower-tier defenders in their bank, so that they can show Kamfreena and start on the defender they dropped. For example, if a player loses his or her dragon defender, but has a rune defender in the bank, the player can show Kamfreena the rune defender and not be forced to start over. Alternatively, the player can obtain two or more dragon defenders which only take up one bank slot.

Once a certain defender has been dropped, it is still possible to obtain lower tiered defenders. By using a lower level defender on Kamfreena, she will put out cyclops that drop one higher than that level, for instance, to obtain more rune defenders, wield a rune defender, but use an adamant defender on Kamfreena. The new cyclops will drop rune defenders.

Option responses[]

Use defender on Kamfreena - "I have a [metal] defender, please let me in to kill some more cyclopes!"

Kamfreena responses -

  • Bronze - "Bronze eh? The next cyclopes are ready, toddle in when you're ready."
  • Iron - "Wow, iron eh? The next cyclopes are ready, toddle in when you're ready."
  • Steel - "Strong as steel eh? The next cyclopes are ready, toddle in when you're ready."
  • Black - "Black, hmmm, about half way to Rune then! Keep going! Cyclopes have been released, enter when you're ready."
  • Mithril - "Mithril? Getting good at this aren't you? Ok, I've released those cyclopes that sometimes drop adamant defenders, enter when you're ready."
  • Adamant - "An adamant defender, eh? Trying for the Rune defender I'm betting. Ok, I've released those cyclopes, enter when you're ready."
  • Rune - "Well done, you truly are a brilliant warrior! I've released some cyclopes that may well drop a dragon defender, enter when you're ready."
  • Dragon - "Well done! You truly are a warrior of the highest order! I've released the cyclopes; enter when you're ready."

Trivia[]

  • Defenders seem to be based on a main gauche (left hand), or parrying dagger, which is a defensive weapon used in fencing and rapier duels
  • The defender's special ability to block damage applies to nearly all kinds of damage, such as poison damage, that from failing an agility task, or hard typeless damage.
  • The inventory icon was slightly altered 9 June 2010.
  • The look of the defenders were updated on 9 August 2011.
  • Prior to the release of dragon defenders on 7 December 2010, it was possible to alch defenders, with rune defenders generating 30,000 coins, adamant defenders generating 17,000 coins, and lower level defenders generating between 300-7000 coins.
  • Defenders gained the ability to use defence abilities on 30 November 2015. The same update added level 70, 80, and 90 melee defenders, with ranged and magic variants following shortly afterwards.
  • Currently there is a bug with the damage of the magic and ranged variants. The damage from levels and equipment is halved. The damage (for both ability damage and off-hand damage) on the equipment interface shows the damage of an off-hand weapon of the same level as the repriser or rebounder.
  • The Dragon defender is one of the items that are required for a certain emote clue.
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