OSRS Awakened DT2 Bosses: All 4 Ranked, Easiest to Hardest

Awakened Bosses Ranked: The Short Answer

Our ranking of the four awakened bosses, easiest first: Duke Sucellus, Vardorvis, the Whisperer, the Leviathan. Duke is the easiest because his fight is still a slow, countable melee fight behind a pillar. The Leviathan is the hardest because its awakened enrage attacks every single tick, and the wiki's own task page calls it "a significant step up compared to other Awakened bosses".

Each awakened fight is a harder version of one of the four Desert Treasure II bosses, started by using an awakener's orb. The orb is used up whether you win or die, so every attempt has a price. Killing all four once gives the ancient blood ornament kit, and each awakened kill is its own Grandmaster Combat Achievement.

What Awakened Bosses Are

The awakened versions are the hard modes of the Forgotten Four, the bosses you fight in Desert Treasure II and can farm after it. Each one has much more health, harder hits, extra or sharper mechanics, and immunity to stat drains, so a Bandos godsword or dragon warhammer spec still hits but drains no Defence.

• You need Desert Treasure II finished. The orb's consume option is not offered before that.
• One awakener's orb buys one attempt. It is not returned if you die and not returned if you win.
• The prompt appears at the entrance: entering the asylum for Duke, climbing the handholds for the Leviathan, climbing the rocks to the ritual site for Vardorvis, and disturbing the Odd Figure for the Whisperer.
• The Whisperer's prompt only shows in an instance where you did not receive the orb drop, so picking one up mid-trip means leaving and coming back.
• Slayer tasks do not apply to the awakened versions, and a slayer helmet or black mask gives no on-task bonus there. Bring the best non-slayer helmet you own.

If you are still deciding whether the normal versions are ready, the Desert Treasure II guide covers all four at their normal difficulty. Every awakened fight assumes you can already kill the normal version without thinking about the basics.

Why the Ranking Goes This Way

1. Duke Sucellus: the easiest awakened boss

Awakened Duke keeps the thing that makes normal Duke manageable: you still stand diagonally behind a pillar, force his melee attack, and count his attacks to the Freezing Gaze. His hits go up (81 melee, 71 magic, 121 on the gaze), but every one of them is still answered by position. The extra work is mostly in the preparation, where his poison tolerance rises from 200 to 370 and you brew three poisons instead of two.

What catches people is the second half. From about 65% he covers you in bile, and the pools hit 9 to 12 every tick you stand in one, so you walk a set route rather than run. From about 32% an Orb of Darkness crosses the row in front of him, hitting up to 27 and draining all stats by 8. Enrage starts at 440 health. In enrage he can bile you twice in one rotation, and the second bile always costs you pool damage at some point because of the Freezing Gaze timing. Save your specs for enrage to make it shorter.

2. Vardorvis: lowest HP, highest punishment per mistake

At 1,400 hitpoints awakened Vardorvis has the smallest health pool of the four, which is why he sits second. The catch is the axes. They hit for up to 96, roughly half that through Protect from Melee, they deal damage as soon as they appear, and they spawn at normal-mode enrage speed for the whole fight. Three axes per set are guaranteed from 1,380 down to 462 health, with a chance of a fourth, and four are guaranteed below 462. The wiki describes axe skipping as just about mandatory.

Below 50% the head starts firing magic and ranged projectiles one tick apart in a random order. The usual trick is to pray against the first projectile you see, swap to the other style as it lands, then go back to melee. In enrage that can mean six prayer flicks inside one axe cycle.

3. The Whisperer: no sanity regeneration

Normal Whisperer lets you rebuild sanity by stepping out of the Shadow Realm. Awakened Whisperer does not, and the drain inside the realm rises to 4. Tentacles hit for 30 damage and 30 sanity, the Screech hits five times instead of three and getting caught costs 70% sanity, and a dark green seed deals 60 to 75. In practice you have to execute every mechanic close to perfectly or you go insane before the kill ends.

She also has 2,700 hitpoints, specials at roughly every 10% of her health instead of three fixed points, 16 lost souls on the Soul Siphon (bring a venator bow and a blowpipe), and an enrage that heals her 250 instead of 140 while she swaps style on every attack.

4. The Leviathan: the hardest awakened boss

Everything the awakened Leviathan changes takes time away from you. Stuns last half as long. Each roar drops five permanent boulders in a + shape on your tile instead of one, so the correct habit flips to stunning before every volley ends. At 50% (1,350 health) a tornado spawns and chases you for 40 or more on contact. Then enrage doubles its attack speed to one tick while you stay inside a 7x7 pathfinder area and drag the tornado around.

With 2,700 hitpoints and a melee orb that hits up to 86, this is the fight where missed flicks stack fastest. If you are a strong prayer flicker but weak at reading layouts, you may find the Whisperer harder than the Leviathan. For most accounts the order above holds.

Do Awakened Bosses Have Better Drops?

Yes. An awakened kill rolls the tradeable unique table three times as often as a normal kill. That table holds the vestige, the chromium ingot, the soulreaper axe piece and the virtus pieces, so every one of those gets three times more likely.

That still does not make them a farm. Each attempt costs an orb, the kills take far longer, and a death costs the orb as well, which is why the wiki says the awakened variants are not meant to be farmed for uniques. The reward that only exists here is the ancient blood ornament kit, dropped by whichever of the four you kill last. It turns Torva armour into sanguine torva at 20,000 blood runes per piece, and if you lose the kit, any awakened kill gives it back.

Where Awakener's Orbs Come From

Each of the four rolls for an orb right after a missed unique-table roll, and the orb is tradeable, so a main can simply buy them. Ironmen have to farm them, and the Whisperer is the quickest source.

Budget several orbs for each boss. The wiki's task pages warn that you should expect to die multiple times before your first kill of every one of the four.

How to Prepare for Your First Awakened Kill

1. 1

   Get the normal version boring first.

   If you still lose normal kills to a mechanic, the awakened version will punish that mechanic harder.

2. 2

   Start with Duke Sucellus.

   Before using the last poison, drop supplies on the pillars nearest him so mushrooms, salt and poison can be picked up without inventory juggling.

3. 3

   Swap your slayer helmet for a normal helmet, since the on-task bonus does not apply.

4. 4

   Plan to stay overhealed.

   At awakened Duke, Saradomin brews are your main healing before enrage; switch to solid food in enrage. At Vardorvis an amulet of rancour is the recommended neck because you are overhealed too often for blood fury's heal to matter.

5. 5

   At the Whisperer, carry a venator bow for the clusters and a blowpipe for the lone souls in the cardinal directions, and leave the realm the moment the last soul dies.

6. 6

   At the Leviathan, stun before every volley ends, keep the north-west clear of boulders so the pathfinder spawns where you expect, and lure the tornado south before enrage.

7. 7

   Spend your specs on enrage in every fight.

   The last phase is where each of the four kills people, and a shorter phase is the easiest fix.

Combat Achievements for Awakened Bosses

Each awakened kill is a Grandmaster task, added on 31 January 2024. You only need one kill of each.

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