Boss Slayer

Boss slayer is a second assignment track, run by Sumona in the Warriors' Guild and kept apart from ordinary slayer. She names one boss and a kill count, drawn from a pool banded to your combat level. It pays boss slayer points, a separate currency with its own shop, and it is the only place bosses are ever handed out as tasks.

Getting Sumona to talk

Sumona stands in the Warriors' Guild and will not deal with you until you have proved yourself elsewhere. The key is a permanent unlock sold in the ordinary slayer shop, listed as the ability to get bosses as a slayer task, and it costs 750 slayer points. That is a long stretch of normal slayer, so this is a mid to late unlock rather than something you rush. Approach her without it and she tells you that you seem weak and sends you back to the other masters.

Once it is bought, right-click her to open the boss track. Nothing else gates it. None of the bosses in her pool carry a Slayer level requirement, so your Slayer level decides nothing about which ones you see. Your combat level does. You still need your own way into each lair, because the unlock buys the assignment and not the door. You also have to walk to her, since the Slayer cape's remote master menu lists every slayer master except Sumona.

Taking an assignment

Sumona offers three tasks at once, a small, a medium and a large, and each names a different boss. They pay one, two and three boss slayer points respectively, so the large task is worth three times the small one for the same trip to her. Kill counts are far lower than ordinary slayer, single figures for the small, the low to mid teens for the medium, and anywhere up to the high forties for the large. The three offers are generated once and held, so you can walk away, bank and come back to the same choice.

You are never offered the boss you most recently completed, which stops the track collapsing onto one repeated target. Cancelling does not add a boss to that exclusion, only finishing one does. Two of the assignments are group tasks underneath: an Ahrim task is shown as Barrows brothers and any brother counts towards it, and a Dagannoth Rex task is shown as Dagannoth kings and any of the three counts.

Accepting locks the task in. While it is live that boss counts as a slayer monster, which matters more than it sounds. Bosses pay slayer experience only while they are your task, and a slayer helmet's on-task bonuses apply to them, the armour against anything on your task and the damage boost on melee, or on every style if the helmet is the upgraded one. Every kill that ticks the task down also carries a Rare chance at a Larran's key, which opens Larran's chest deep in the Wilderness.

The combat bands

Bosses cover a far wider level spread than any player ever will, so the pool is split into five bands and your combat level picks the one you draw from. Up to combat 75 you are in the first band, 76 to 95 the second, 96 to 110 the third, 111 to 120 the fourth, and 121 and above the fifth. The bands overlap heavily, so climbing into a new one adds harder bosses without stripping out everything you already farm.

If a band cannot fill three distinct offers, because the pool is short or your last boss has been excluded from it, the closest bosses by level are pulled in so the selector always shows three. Every band holds at least six bosses before that exclusion, so this is a safety net rather than something you will run into often.

Three tasks an hour

Sumona is rate limited. You can take three boss assignments in any hour, and the hour starts the moment you accept a task with no window already running. Take a fourth inside that window and she refuses to speak at all, with a message telling you how long is left. That refusal covers everything she does, so while you are capped you cannot check your live boss task through her or open her shop either. Use /task to read your current tasks and your boss point total instead.

The message you get on completing a boss task tells you how many you have taken in the current window and how long until it resets. Once the hour lapses the counter clears, and the next task you accept starts a fresh window from that moment.

Extending and cancelling

Both cost one boss slayer token, an untradable token bought from her shop for 5 boss points. It is not the same token the ordinary masters use, and the two are not interchangeable. Cancelling clears the task and rerolls her three offers, but it does not refund the slot, so the replacement task still counts against your three for the hour. That makes a cancel expensive twice over.

Extending adds another run of kills on the same boss and can only be done once per task. The amount it adds is drawn from the ordinary slayer ranges rather than the smaller boss ranges, so an extension usually adds more kills than the assignment you started with, and it pays no extra points. Extend when you want more kills on a boss you are already set up for, never as a way to farm points.

The boss slayer shop

Boss slayer points are a separate balance. They are not the points you spend at the ordinary masters, and they only buy from Sumona's shop, reached from a button in her task window. Prices are low because the points arrive one, two or three at a time. Boss slayer tokens cost 5. Holy sandals, hybrid boots that reduce prayer point use, cost 25. The rune pouch upgrade costs 30 and takes your pouch from five rune types to eight.

The rest are upgrades that consume something you already own, so bring the base item in your inventory rather than worn. A slayer helmet upgrade costs 40 and eats your slayer helmet, returning a hybrid version that extends the on-task damage boost to ranged and magic instead of melee alone. Each of the four Fremennik rings can be imbued for 60, consuming the plain ring. The dragontooth necklace costs 60 and consumes an upgraded bonecrusher necklace, adding a prayer point back for every bone it buries.