As of today, Old School Runescape has a brand new mid-level boss: Scurrius, The Rat King.
This boss is aimed at combat levels 60-90 and was designed to teach mid-level players the basics of high-level PVM.
Furthermore, fighting Scurrius should provide the best combat experience going forward, becoming a better and more active alternative to AFKing Sand Crabs or consuming countless Netflix shows while leveling inside The Nightmare Zone.
I’ve made a quick Strategy guide on my YouTube channel that teaches you how to fight the Rat King.
How to get there
Scurrius is located in the Varrock Sewers. To easily get here, start in Varrock Square and run Northeast towards the manhole. Once inside, run East towards the Scurrius’ Gate.
Here, you can enter a private instance by right-clicking on the bars and selecting ‘private’.
Inventory and Gear setup
Scurrius can be fought with all combat styles so pick your favorite and equip your best-in-slot gear.
As for your inventory, make sure you have some food and a couple of prayer potions.
Fighting Scurrius
Scurrius is designed to be mechanically heavy, but is quite easy to defeat, as long as you know his mechanics.
The fight can be divided into three phases:
- Phase 1 (start Phase)
- Phase 2 (Cheese Phase)
- Phase 3 (The Jad Phase)
The encounter always starts with Phase 1, in which Scurrius will attack you with melee.
Every now and then, he will jump up, causing rocks to come falling down. At this point, you want to look at the floor, and make sure there is no shadow cast underneath you. If there is, move away one tile to avoid taking damage.
He might also randomly spawn an army of Giant Rats. These do damage to you with melee.
Once you’ve dealt about 20% damage to him, he will run towards a cheese pile to heal, this sparks the start of Phase 2.
During Phase 2, Scurrius can no longer attack with Melee (because he’s busy eating) so his two other heads (Ranged and Magic) will start attacking you.
To avoid damage:
- protect from Ranged when you see a Green Gaseous Cloud coming your way
- & Protect from Magic when you see Blue lightning coming your way
These attacks are quite slow, giving you enough time to dodge them.
Once he moves away from his cheese pile, he will return his melee attacks.
If the fight takes a while, he may return to his cheese pile a couple more times.
You’ll know the final phase (phase 3: Jad Phase) has started when The Rat King is low HP and makes his way towards the center of his pit.
At this point, he will start using Ranged and Magic attacks. Just continue to pray against them until the fight is over.
Drops
Scurrius drops a bunch of runite items which can be alched or sold at the Grand Exchange for profit.
He also drops Scurry (new pet) and ‘Scurrius Spine‘ which is an untradeable item that can be combined with a Rune Mace, Yew Shortbow, or battlestaff to create bone variants.
These bone variants deal +10 damage to your max hit ONLY on the Rat King. Using them is efficient for combat training as you’ll receive more experience through the higher max hits.
Wrap Up
And that’s it for the Rat King. Another sweet update from the Old School Team that mixes up the combat training meta AND teaches mid-level players PVM mechanics! Gotta love it!
