Fight Caves
63 waves of Tzhaar monsters ending in TzTok-Jad, with the fire cape as the reward.
The Fight Caves are a solo endurance run: sixty-three waves of Tzhaar, each arriving as one group somewhere in the cave and walking straight at you, ending with TzTok-Jad. The Tzhaar leave no loot and there are no checkpoints. Clear all sixty-three and you leave with the fire cape and a large pile of tokkul.
Getting in
The entrance sits beside the trader who deals in tokkul, and there is no skill or quest requirement to step into it. You get a warning first: the fight is focused on ranged combat, and hardcore characters who die inside lose their status. Accept and you drop into your own private copy of the caves, a few blocks from the exit marker, with fifteen seconds before the first wave spawns. Use them to eat, pray up and pick your ground.
How the waves work
All sixty-three waves run back to back, and a counter on screen tells you which one you are on. Every monster in a wave appears together at one of seven spawn points spread around the cave, scattered a few blocks apart, and all of them come looking for you. The spawn point steps one place along a fixed circuit each wave, so once you have seen a couple of spawns you can predict roughly where the next group lands. A banner names the wave and lists what is in it.
The roster climbs steadily. Wave 1 is a lone Tz-Kih, Tz-Kek joins at wave 3, Tok-Xil at 7, Yt-MejKot at 15 and Ket-Zek at 31. From there the waves stack those four in every combination, up to six monsters at once, with doubles marking the corners: two Tok-Xil at wave 14, two Yt-MejKot at 30, two Ket-Zek at 62, then TzTok-Jad alone at 63.
A wave only ends when everything in it is dead, and the two halves a Tz-Kek splits into count towards that. The next wave follows almost at once with no rest in between, so eating, repositioning and prayer restores all have to happen mid fight or in the seconds it takes the new group to walk over to you.
Ranged, cover and prayer
Every Tzhaar in the caves takes heavily reduced damage from magic and a smaller reduction from melee. Ranged is the only style that lands in full, which is what the entrance warning means. Nothing in the caves fights you one at a time either, so a stacked wave will hit you from several directions at once rather than queueing up politely.
Terrain matters as much as gear. Melee and magic attacks both need a clear line to you, and thrown weapons are real projectiles that stop when they hit cave rock. Put stone between you and an attacker and its attack does nothing at all. A thrown weapon only hurts you if it lands within a couple of blocks of where you are standing, so stepping aside after the throw turns a hit into a near miss.
Protection prayers reduce the damage of the style they cover rather than cancelling it, and only one runs at a time, so you are always choosing which attack to blunt. Switching is worth doing all the way through, and it is the reason Tz-Kih is dangerous out of proportion to its size: every melee hit it lands strips prayer points, and it is happy to do that just before something far worse arrives.
Reading a mixed wave
Kill order decides most runs. Yt-MejKot heals itself and every monster near it, but only once it has taken damage itself, so the moment you start chipping at one you have started its healing. If it is sharing a wave, drop it first or drag the fight far enough away that the healing cannot reach. Tz-Kih is frail but strips prayer with every hit, so clear it before you need a protection prayer to hold.
Tz-Kek punishes you twice over. Damaging one sends damage straight back at you whatever you hit it with, so the recoil is unavoidable rather than a melee-only trap, and killing it splits it into two smaller ones that recoil in exactly the same way. Ket-Zek casts from range and switches to melee once you let it close, shoving you backwards on the hit, which is enough to knock you out of cover or into the rest of the wave.
TzTok-Jad
Wave 63 is Jad alone, with far more health than anything else in the caves and the hardest hits in the fight. It moves slower than the other Tzhaar, so the distance between you is yours to control. Every attack starts with a wind up: it rears into a melee, magic or ranged animation and the damage arrives about a second later. That second is your window to switch protection prayer.
Jad picks between the three at random, so the wind up is the only tell you get. Its melee only connects when you are standing beside it, so at range that swing simply misses and the damage reaching you comes from magic and the thrown rock. The rock is a physical projectile aimed at where you were standing: it slams into the ground and only hurts if you are still near the impact, so keep moving once it is in the air.
When Jad drops below 5,000 health, four Yt-HurKot appear around it, once only. They do not count towards the wave, so the fight can end without you touching them, and a healer that has taken no damage does not heal. Damage one and it will pour health into Jad and everything near it across a wide area, faster than a Yt-MejKot manages. Deal with them properly or leave them alone, but do not half kill them.
Leaving, dying and the reward
An exit marker floats where you first arrived. Before wave 10, walking onto it takes you straight out with no confirmation, so be careful when a fight drifts that way. From wave 10 onwards it asks first and warns you that progress is lost. There is no saving and no resuming: leaving or dying puts you back on wave 1 the next time you enter.
Dying ends the run but is not a total loss. You are paid tokkul scaled to the wave you reached, so a deep attempt still pays something, and the further you get the steeper that payout climbs. Deaths from wave 50 onwards are announced to everyone in the game, and hardcore characters lose their status.
Kill Jad and you are teleported out beside the entrance with 8,032 tokkul and the fire cape. The cape is untradable, goes to your bank rather than dropping if you die wearing it, adds defence against all three combat styles, cuts prayer drain and boosts melee damage, and it registers in your boss collection log. The trader beside the entrance takes tokkul for ores and uncut gems, up to an uncut onyx at 100,000. Stock is limited and refills over time, and most of those items can be sold back for tokkul, though not by ironmen.
Everything the caves throw at you
A small flying Tzhaar with 450 health, the weakest thing in the caves. Every melee hit it lands drains prayer points, so it can strip a protection prayer just before something far worse reaches you. Kill it early rather than saving it for last.
A 1,250 health melee brawler that splits into two smaller Tz-Kek of 500 health each when it dies, both of which count towards the wave. Damaging any of them sends damage back at you whatever style you use, so the recoil is a cost of the kill rather than something you can play around.
A 1,050 health attacker that closes in while hurling knives. The knives are real projectiles: they stop on cave rock and only hurt if they land close to you, so cover and movement blunt it more than armour does.
A heavy melee Tzhaar with 3,000 health. Once it has taken damage it can heal itself and every monster around it as it attacks, which makes it the priority target in any wave it shares. Kill it quickly, or pull the wave apart so its healing cannot reach.
Jad's healers, 1,000 health each. Four appear once, when Jad drops below 5,000 health, and they do not count towards the wave. Once damaged, each heals Jad and nearby monsters across a wider area, and for more per heal, than a Yt-MejKot does.
A 3,500 health Tzhaar that casts magic from range and switches to melee once you let it close, knocking you backwards with the hit. That shove is the real threat: it can push you out of cover or into the rest of the wave.
The wave 63 boss, 25,000 health, slower than the rest and hitting harder than anything else in the caves. It picks at random between melee, magic and a thrown rock, each announced by a wind up about a second before the damage lands. Below 5,000 health it calls in four healers.