History DemonicSpiders / Runescape

** In the older versions (as well as the current "Old School" version) of Runescape, you had the Draynor Jail Guards. They were aggressive, located in a multicombat area, could kill a new player in four hits with high accuracy, and were less than a minute away from Lumbridge, the starting town. To new players just starting out, they were a nightmare to deal with, but they would gradually decrease to GoddamnedBats status as players gained levels. In fact, medium-leveled players sometimes even exploited their aggression and used them for training. Nowadays, they are no longer even aggressive, averting the trope.
** Even worse than the jail guards were the Dark Wizards south of Varrock, infamously known for killing many a new player. Aggressive monsters with powerful magic attacks located in the start of beginner quests, they could kill a player fresh from the tutorial in just two hits. It was common to see the remains of dead beginning players at the stone circle south of Varrock. Made worse because due to MinMaxing, wizards had low levels so an unsuspecting player would attack one only to be quickly killed.

* [[DegradedBoss Tormented Demons]] are one of the hardest and most complicated enemies in the game. Like Edimuus, they are very aggressive and several can attack you at once, and have very powerful attacks, but they are even worse. They can use all three combat styles, and use protection prayers, forcing you to switch weapons and protection prayers through the fight. They are also immune to all weapons until you hit them with either Darklight or Holy Water.

* Lava strykewyrms are considerably harder than any of the other three types of strykewyrm, and have much more difficult mechanics to deal with, such as dragging you towards them. Like revenants, these monsters are also exclusive to the Wilderness, [[ParanoiaFuel putting you at constant risk of PKers attacking.]] On top of that, there is also a [[EliteMook stronger version]], the [=WildyWyrm=], that can appear at complete random, but hits much higher and has ''a million'' life points. Killing them, especially the [=WildyWyrm=], is a very risky gamble no matter what your approach - if you use cheap gear, you will struggle just to get one kill, but if you wear stronger gear, you become a tempting target for [=PKers=]. It's also not helped by the fact that they're one of the 151 monsters listed in the [[EncyclopediaExposita Slayer Codex]], if you intend to complete it as a requirement to trim the Completionist Cape.

** Lava Spiders. They don't show up much, but each of them has 15000 health, they always spawn in large groups, and use very fast poisonous ranged attacks. In addition, once they see you, they will follow you through the whole dungeon unless killed, and are small enough to enter gaps that would stop the dragons. You can avoid drawing their attention with careful movement and some luck, but if you're unlucky you can have several spiders peppering you with ranged while you're fighting something else.

* Lava strykewyrms are considerably harder than any of the other three types of strykewyrm, and have much more difficult mechanics to deal with, such as dragging you towards them. Like revenants, these monsters are also exclusive to the Wilderness, [[ParanoiaFuel putting you at constant risk of PKers attacking.]] On top of that, there is also a [[EliteMook stronger version]], the [=WildyWyrm=], that can appear at complete random, but hits much higher and has ''a million'' life points. Killing them, especially the [=WildyWyrm=], is a very risky gamble no matter what your approach - if you use cheap gear, you will struggle just to get one kill, but if you wear stronger gear, you become a tempting target for [=PKers=]. It's also not helped by the fact that they're one of the 146 monsters listed in the [[EncyclopediaExposita Slayer Codex]], if you intend to complete it as a requirement to trim the Completionist Cape.

** Laboratory Slimes. They only appear in the first section, and are the most likely thing to cause your death for a few reasons. If they get within melee range of you, they send out smaller slimes, who will all proceed to attack you with rapid melee hits (melee that can hit from a distance, no less). Like the Death Lotus Rogues, they can whittle you down ''very'' quickly even with protection prayers, and they will not stop following you. once they see you. To top it off, there are ''six'' slimes guarding the barrier in the ''first room'' of the dungeon, and its impossible to draw one to you without aggro-ing the others.

** Cloaked Zealots are the magic users, and their gimmick is to summon a Crassian minion to attack you at regular intervals. What makes them difficult is that there are usually multiple zealots guarding the barriers you need to get through to progress through the dungeon, and if you take too long to kill them, you could have a small army of hard-hitting Crassians attacking you while you're desperately trying to take down the summoners.

* Revenants, powerful Wilderness-dwelling ghosts that can attack from all three corners of the combat triangle. They will ZergRush you as soon as you enter their lair, the Forinthry Dungeon, which can be deadly considering they can hit almost as hard as (and in some cases harder than) players of similar combat level (though there is an item you can use to make them non-aggressive). They also have the ability to rapidly heal themselves when their health drops low, so you'll probably spend more time killing them than you would want to. It certainly doesn't help that you can be attacked by [[PlayerKilling PKers]] at any time, and given how valuable some of their drops are, [[ParanoiaFuel you're very likely to encounter a PKing team there at some point]]. They were worse when they were originally introduced into the Wilderness as a replacement for [=PKers=] following the infamous 12-10-07 update to remove PvP in the Wilderness. Not only did they roam all around the Wilderness, but they could teleblock and bind you in addition to their healing powers and high damage output, not to mention they had horrible drops if you could succesfully kill them. Thankfully, when PlayerKilling returned about three years later, they were contained in the aforementioned Forinthry Dungeon, and also lost their bind and teleblock powers.

* Revenants, powerful Wilderness-dwelling ghosts that can attack from all three corners of the combat triangle. They will ZergRush you as soon as you enter their lair, the Forinthry Dungeon, which can be deadly considering they can hit almost as hard as (and in some cases harder than) players of similar combat level (though there is an item you can use to make them non-aggressive). They also have the ability to rapidly heal themselves when their health drops low, so you'll probably spend more time killing them than you would want to, particularly with the possibility of [[PlayerKilling PKers]] attacking (and likely killing) you. They were worse when they were originally introduced into the Wilderness as a replacement for [=PKers=] following the infamous 12-10-07 update to remove PvP in the Wilderness. Not only did they roam all around the Wilderness, but they could teleblock and bind you in addition to their healing powers and high damage output, not to mention they had horrible drops if you could succesfully kill them. Thankfully, when PlayerKilling returned about three years later, they were contained in the aforementioned Forinthry Dungeon, and also lost their bind and teleblock powers.

** One of the challenge rooms is a bit of a DemonicSpider ''web''. Imagine a Forgotten Mage, but with much higher stats ''and'' the ability to call in reinforcements to back him up. The number of reinforcements he calls in depends on how many people are on your team. On a solo dungeon he only calls three units. In a five-man group, he calls in ''fifteen'' units. Expect to be dropped in seconds in a group dungeon if you go in alone. Even in a solo dungeon, you can usually expect to use up a considerable amount of food or even take a death or two fighting him and three other mercenaries at once. On a members world, it might involve getting attacked from all three sides of the combat triangle at once by mercenaries in level 99 equipment, particularly if you're in Hard Mode. Thankfully it is fairly rare, and has been made considerably easier as of the Evolution of Combat.

** To lower levels, Dungeon Spiders, especially before the introduction of the Evolution of Combat. They can poison you, which does 50 damage every 20 seconds or so, which fades away very very slowly. Within Daemonheim, every resource is limited, including food, so losing this much HP is a major issue. However, it's not just that. They can poison you through prayers, which you would expect to stop that sort of madness[[note]]even though all poisonous monsters are capable of doing so[[/note]]. Fortunately, poison mechanics have changed since the launch of the Evolution of Combat[[note]]Poison now wears off after three minutes and does less damage per hit, though it does damage faster[[/note]], and even if you do get poisoned, there is a cure which can be bought for just 200 gp, and potions which give immunity for several minutes can be made with Herblore. In addition, they do not appear on Warped floors, but given how dangerous those floors are to begin with...
** Brutes. They're not as infuriating as the dungeon spiders, but their attacks are utterly devastating, especially at higher levels where they will consistently hit into the 1000s. On furnished floors, they also feature in a puzzle room where you have to pickpocket them while they're asleep to obtain the key to the door. Failing to pickpocket them or making noise by running in the room and stepping on debris will result in you facing ''four'' of them at once.

** The second elite Slayer monster [[WolverineClaws Ripper]] [[LightningBruiser Demons]], mainly for their ability to [[OneHitKill instakill you]], but for other reasons as well. They telegraph their DeathFromAbove attack and it is avoidable, but if you don't get right back into their melee reach after avoiding it, they will ''[[YouWillNotEvadeMe drag you towards them]]'' and hit you with a very painful melee bleed. It's bad enough in and of itself, but if your health drops below half, all of the other demons in the cave will ZergRush you, likely [[CurbStompBattle dropping you in seconds]] unless you can teleport out. On top of that, even if you do manage to kill one, it will start spinning around wildly [[LastDitchMove in a final effort to try and kill you]], causing rapid, unblockable melee damage as it dies.

** The last elite Slayer monster, Acheron mammoths, are probably the toughest of the four. Though somewhat slow to move, [[MightyGlacier they have a truckload of health and high defence against anything that isn't a stabbing weapon]], and can use heavy hitting melee and ranged attacks, including a selection of combat abilities. They also have a [[ThatOneAttack special charge attack]] that can deal upwards of 7500 damage, ''multiple times in a row'' (though it is telegraphed and avoidable). To make matters worse, they have an "honour" mechanic while you're fighting them: if you try running out of the reach of their melee attacks, they will disable your prayers, and if you try ranging or maging them, their ranged attacks will gain a secondary effect that constantly stunlocks you, effectively mandating the use of melee to kill them.

** The melee-using moss golems will [[LosingYourHead detach their head]] after a while. If you don't kill the golem, [[DetachmentCombat the head will come to life and attack you]], and it must be killed before you can continue attacking the golem.

** Forgotten Mages. Trying to get past all of those enemies in that one room with your Shadow Silk Hood? Good luck trying to pull it off without the hood's effects as they will promptly reveal you to the other monsters, resulting in you being [[ZergRush piled]]. It certainly doesn't help that they can lower your stats or bind you, making it frustrating to kill them with melee.
** Necromancers. Think like a Forgotten Mage that can also summon zombies to help him.

** One of the challenge rooms is a bit of a DemonicSpider ''web''. The Mercenary room is near-''impossible'' to complete without wasting large amounts of food or racking up a death or two on a solo dungeon, especially on a free world. On a members world, it might involve getting attacked from all three sides of the combat triangle at once by Tier 11 mercenaries, particularly in Hard Mode. Thankfully it is fairly rare, and has been made considerably easier as of the Evolution of Combat.

* The [[FlunkyBoss spider minions]] occasionally summoned during the fight against Araxxor and Araxxi can sometimes be literal DemonicSpiders, but the one in particular that stands out the most is the Mirrorback spider. Attacking Araxxor or Araxxi while one of these nasties is alive will result in the entire attack being [[AttackReflector reflected back onto you at full power]]. Needless to say, you can [[HoistByHisOwnPetard easily kill yourself]] if you use a heavy-damage attack as a mirrorback spawns. It certainly doesn't help that they tend to hide themselves underneath Araxxor or Araxxi most of the time, meaning you often won't even know it's there until you start receiving heavy, and sometimes fatal, deflection damage from your attacks.

** The last elite Slayer monster, Acheron mammoths, are probably the toughest of the four. Though somewhat slow to move, [[MightyGlacier they have a truckload of health and high defence]], and can use heavy hitting melee and ranged attacks, including a selection of combat abilities. They also have a [[ThatOneAttack special charge attack]] that can deal upwards of 7500 damage, ''multiple times in a row'' (though it is telegraphed and avoidable). To make matters worse, they have an "honour" mechanic while you're fighting them: if you try running out of the reach of their melee attacks, they will disable your prayers, and if you try ranging or maging them, their ranged attacks will gain a secondary effect that constantly stunlocks you, effectively mandating the use of melee to kill them.

* A literal example are the infamous Shadow Spiders. They aren't particularly damaging, but the minute one attacks you, it cuts your prayer points in half. When you consider that prayer points are used both to NoSell enemy attacks and give hefty buffs, you see why they're so dangerous, especially considering that Jagex loves to put these guys right at the start of several dungeons. It's even worse as of the Evolution of Combat, where not only are their homes multi-combat, but they now attack with ''ranged''.

** Dragons. Though rarer than brutes, they tend to hit harder thanks to their dragonbreath, which will hit you very hard if you do not have a [[LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe special shield]]. Worse yet, you might not even find said shield on the floor, and even if you do, it's worthless if your main weapon is two-handed, forcing you to waste time making one from scratch. Thankfully, Protect From Magic can be used to partially mitigate their breath, but even then it will still hit plenty hard.

* Don't be fooled by the cute appearances of the Lost Grove creatures - they mean business. Their attacks are very accurate and can deal well over 3000 damage if you're not using a suitable protection prayer. On top of that, they also have some nasty special attacks:

** The melee-using moss golems will detach their head after a while. If you don't kill the golem, the head will come to life and attack you, and it must be killed before you can continue attacking the golem.

** Brutes. They're not as infuriating as the dungeon spiders, but their attacks are utterly devastating, especially at higher levels where they will consistently hit into the 1000s.

** One of the challenge rooms is a bit of a DemonicSpider ''web''. The Mercenary room is near-''impossible'' to complete without racking up several deaths on a solo dungeon as a low level, especially on a free world. On a members world, it might involve getting attacked from all three sides of the combat triangle at once by Tier 11 mercenaries. Thankfully it is fairly rare, and has been made considerably easier as of the Evolution of Combat.

** The Dungeon Spiders, especially before the introduction of the Evolution of Combat. They can poison you, which does 50 damage every 20 seconds or so, which fades away very very slowly. Within Daemonheim, every resource is limited, including food, so losing this much HP is a major issue. However, it's not just that. They can poison you through prayers, which you would expect to stop that sort of madness[[note]]even though all poisonous monsters are capable of doing so[[/note]]. Fortunately, poison mechanics have changed since the launch of the Evolution of Combat[[note]]Poison now wears off after three minutes and does less damage per hit, though it does damage faster[[/note]], and even if you do get poisoned, there is a cure which can be bought for just 200 gp, and potions which give immunity for several minutes can be made with Herblore.
** Brutes. They're not as infuriating as the dungeon spiders, but their attacks are utterly devastating, especially at higher levels.
** One of the challenge rooms is a bit of a DemonicSpider ''web''. The Mercenary room is near-''impossible'' to complete without racking up several deaths on a solo dungeon, especially on a free world. On a members world, it might involve getting attacked from all three sides of the combat triangle at once by Tier 11 mercenaries. Thankfully it is fairly rare, and has been made considerably easier as of the Evolution of Combat.

* ''[[EverythingTryingToKillYou Everything]]'' on Ape Atoll, unless you're a monkey. The spiders and scorpions, despite being tiny, can easily smack you with nasty poison and respawn almost instantly after death. The monkeys come in packs and can deal ungodly damage, and the zombie and skeletal varieties in the gnome tunnel will mob you if you give them the chance.

** In the older versions (as well as the current "Old School" version) of Runescape, you had the Draynor Jail Guards. They were aggressive, located in a multicombat area, could kill a new player in four hits with high accuracy, and were less than a minute away from Lumbridge, the starting town. To new players just starting out, they were a nightmare to deal with, but they would gradually decrease to GoddamnedBats status as players gained levels. In fact, medium-leveled players sometimes even exploited their aggression and used them for training.
** Even worse than the jail guards were the Dark Wizards south of Varrock, infamously known for killing many a new player. Aggressive monsters with powerful magic attacks located in the start of beginner quests, they could kill a player fresh from the tutorial in just two hits. It was common to see the remains of dead beginning players at the stone circle south of Varrock. Made worse because due to MinMaxing, wizards had low levels so a unsuspecting player would attack one only to be quickly killed.

* Pretty much any monster that can use abilities in combat, but in particular are the Iorwerth and Cadarn elves in Prifddinas. Their adrenaline meter is constantly locked at 50%, enabling them to use threshold abilities [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard without having to build it up]], whereas you do not have that luxury. It's not terribly uncommon to attack a Cadarn Magus and have him immediately stunlock you into an Asphyxiate.

** The second elite Slayer monster [[WolverineClaws Ripper]] [[LightningBruiser Demons]], mainly for their ability to [[OneHitKill instakill you]], but for other reasons as well. They telegraph their DeathFromAbove attack and it is avoidable, but if you don't get right back into their melee reach after avoiding it, they will ''[[YouWillNotEvadeMe drag you towards them]]'' and hit you with a very painful melee bleed. It's bad enough in and of itself, but if your health drops below half, all of the other demons in the cave will ZergRush you, likely [[CurbStompBattle dropping you in seconds]] unless you can teleport out. On top of that, even if you do manage to kill one, it will start spinning around wildly [[LastDitchMove in a final effort to try and kill you]], causing rapid melee damage as it dies.

* Lava strykewyrms are considerably harder than any of the other three types of strykewyrm, and have much more difficult mechanics to deal with, such as dragging you towards them. Like revenants, these monsters are also exclusive to the Wilderness, [[ParanoiaFuel putting you at constant risk of PKers attacking.]] On top of that, there is also a [[EliteMook stronger version]], the [=WildyWyrm=], that can appear at complete random, but hits much higher and has ''a million'' life points. Killing them, especially the [=WildyWyrm=], is a very risky gamble no matter what your approach - if you use cheap gear, you will struggle just to get one kill, but if you wear stronger gear, you become a tempting target for [=PKers=].