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​Zalcano Boss Guide

Aug-31-2019 PST

Zalcano is a skilling boss, mostly centered around mining, that’s imprisoned underneath the city of Prifddinas. This is also one of the few multi-skill bosses that cannot be killed using combat. You will get a mix of Mining, Smithing, and Runecrafting experience during the fight.

She was involved with the god wars and is related to Skotizo, and ventured to Tirannwn to search for her brother. She was imprisoned in her volcanic cell to be studied and contained. You may access her cell in the Southeastern part of the city.

In terms of profitability, many players have compared it to Zulrah before it was buffed. It consistently drops large stacks of bars, ores, runes, and gems, which benefit ironmen and mains alike. There is also the rare chance to receive a Crystal Tool Seed to create crystal pickaxes, hatchets, and harpoons.

Reaching Zalcano’s prison is quite easy as it’s in the town and near a bank. He is trapped in a spacious jail cell that has multiple rock formations, a furnace, and a Seren altar.


Boss Fight Strategy

This fight will have you running around a lot so stamina potions or full Graceful is a requirement. Be sure to bring Saradomin Brews for food since you want to free up space in your inventory to handle multiple runs.

As weapons have no use against Zalcano, players must bring their best pickaxe to mine Tephra from one of the rock formations. Each rock formation will have a noticeable glow, which indicates which one players should mine from. The boss may fire a magic blast towards a new rock, which indicates where players have to move to mine.

Players will have to avoid boulders falling from the ceiling (triggered by his stomp), red energy balls, and barrages of pebbles. Once Zalcano has fallen, players need to keep away until she gets back up or they will take damage. She will also have a phase that spawns red and blue demonic patterns, in which the red ones will cause damage to players.

It would be most efficient to start in one of the northern corners to mine tephra and gather a minimum of 3. The amount you mine is random and using the bonus for multiple ores from the Mining cape and Varrock Armour is highly useful. Moving on from the rock to the furnace should be a priority for this phase.

A dash to the eastern side of the prison, while dodging the aforementioned attacks, you will smith the tephra into refined tephra. A dash to the Seren altar will then allow you to runecraft the tephra into imbued tephra, readying you for the final attack.

If there are demon patterns on the ground, you should stand on the blue ones as it increases the damage and accuracy of throwing you tephra at the boss. If not, you should still swiftly throw your tephra to take her down. She should go down near instantly in a full world. Once the boss is weakened, you will mine it (while gaining experience) and takedown it’s real health bar. If your group is sufficient enough, you only have to repeat this for a few rounds to get the loot.

While most words are populated, World 378 has become the de-facto world for players to congregate. You don’t need to create raid parties so players can just jump in for the fight, which is similar to Wintertodt.

The best-known setup is the crystal pickaxe (which requires charges), Varrock Armour 4, a Mining Cape and any weight reducing gear in the rest of the slots available. If you plan on using tick manipulation, you may fare just fine with a Dragon or Rune pickaxe.


Notes for Ironmen:

For hardcore ironmen wanting to farm this boss for resources, it should be noted that it is not a safe mini-game death and you will lose your rank. On the day of release, the rank 31 HCIM had lost his rank by testing out the boss’s mechanics, and many other lower-ranked HCIM as well.

For ultimate ironmen having issues managing inventory space, there is a furnace and anvil within proximity to the bank and general store. You may smith all bars, ores and optionally sell them to vendors to liquidate Zalcano drops.


1.5-tick Manipulation

The initial mining phase of the boss works similarly to mining rune essence. Because of this, players have taken note and tried the same 1.5-tick manipulation method to get double ores, making this phase nearly instant before running over to the smithing phase.

This involves taking a Guam leaf, swamp tar, and a pestle & mortar and interrupting the process between a click on an object. It takes some practice to time it right, but it will allow you to complete actions instantly and increasing your activity rating during the boss.

It turns out that 1.5t works on every phase of the boss, so efficient players have been grabbing the MVP  on most kills in worlds full of noobs. This has become an issue as players believe this is an unintended mechanic, but it makes the boss more rewarding for those willing to put in more effort.


Getting The Pet

The drop rate for Smolcano (the Zolcano pet) has been relatively unknown, but according to Mod Ed, only the MVP has the chance to get it. This adds another layer to the rarity and difficulty of obtaining the pet, and it will likely be mostly efficient tick-manipulating players who get it.


Wrapping Things Up

Zalcano is a relatively easy boss once you get the hang of it, and fighting in a populated world makes it a rather safe boss fight. There have been reports of efficient players making up to 5 million runescape gold per hour, so don’t be surprised if Zolcano gets nerfed soon. This is considerably easier than other end-game bosses in the game, so there is no excuse not to do the new quest and take advantage of it. Thank you for reading, more guides in RSGoldFast.com!