OSRS Nightmare Zone Guide: Setup, Best Bosses and NMZ vs Slayer

Is Nightmare Zone Still Worth It for Melee?

Yes, if the goal is AFK melee XP. A normal customisable rumble with absorption potions needs one click every 20 minutes, and the Nightmare Zone strategies page puts that setup at up to 100,000–105,000 melee XP an hour, with more than 250,000 reward points on top. No other melee method lets you look away for that long.

What NMZ does not give you is loot. Every rumble costs coins, the bosses drop little more than bones, and the points go on overloads, absorptions and imbues. If you want GP and Slayer levels while you train, Slayer is the better use of the hours. If you have not done the quests yet, the Gemstone Crab fills the gap.

For the full level-by-level routes outside NMZ, see our Strength, Attack and Defence guides. The rest of this page is the NMZ setup and the decision against Slayer and the crab.

Requirements: Which 5 Quests to Do First

You need any five quests from the 38 listed on the Nightmare Zone page. Which five matters, because a dream can only spawn bosses from quests you have finished, and a customisable rumble makes you enable at least five bosses.

The efficient route is the quests that unlock the low-Defence, melee-only bosses the AFK setup uses:

Lunar Diplomacy adds Me, the fifth boss in the wiki's usual pick, but it needs 61 Crafting, 65 Magic, 60 Mining and several prerequisite quests. Most accounts put Tree spirit or the Khazard warlord in that slot instead. Our Lost City walkthrough covers one of the eight.

Starting your first dream

1. 1

   Use Minigame Teleport from the Grouping interface once the quests are done, or fairy ring CLS and walk north-west.

2. 2

   Deposit coins in Dominic's coffer.

   It only accepts multiples of 1,000.

3. 3

   Talk to Dominic Onion, choose the mode and difficulty, then drink the dream potion on the plinth.

   A customisable rumble shows the boss menu before the fee leaves the coffer.

4. 4

   Take potion doses from the barrels first.

   No empty vials are needed, and unused doses are not lost if you die.

Customisable Rumble: Normal vs Hard

On normal, bosses keep their quest stats. On hard they get more Hitpoints, Attack and Strength but the same Defence, so they hit harder and take longer to kill. That is why hard pays more points and less XP.

Pick normal if XP per click is the goal. Pick hard if you are farming points for imbues and will sit at the screen. Never train in practice mode: it gives no XP and no points, and the kill does not count for Slayer.

Three rules that protect your points

1. 1

   Enable as many bosses as your setup can handle.

   Five is the minimum, and more enabled bosses means each kill pays a larger share of its points.

2. 2

   Disabling one boss disables its whole quest.

   Turning off Damis also removes Dessous, Fareed and Kamil, since all four come from Desert Treasure I.

3. 3

   Never run Dream Mentor bosses without the Desert Treasure I bosses.

   That combination applies an 83.33% penalty to every kill. Enable both or neither; the Recipe for Disaster bosses do not affect it.

Absorption, Overload and the 1 HP Trick

An absorption dose costs 1,000 points. It soaks the next 50 damage, and doses stack to a 1,000 cap. The counter does not carry over between dreams, and it does not block damage you deal to yourself (overloads, rock cakes) or poison from a boss.

The trick is your Hitpoints. A boss cannot hit you for more than you have, so at 1 HP every hit drains at most 1 absorption point. At 2 HP a hit can take 2, which the wiki says drains absorption nearly twice as fast.

An overload costs 1,500 points a dose and only works inside NMZ. It raises Attack, Strength, Defence, Ranged and Magic by 5 plus 15% of the level for five minutes, re-applying every 15 seconds so the boost holds. In return it deals 50 damage over several seconds, cannot be drunk below 51 HP, and heals you 50 HP when it ends.

The start-of-dream routine

1. 1

   Drink absorptions until the counter reads 1,000.

   That is 20 doses.

2. 2

   Sip an overload and wait for all 50 damage to land.

3. 3

   Guzzle the rock cake or feel the locator orb down to 1 HP.

   Doing this while the overload is still hitting can kill you.

4. 4

   Flick Rapid Heal (22 Prayer) on and off every 50–60 seconds.

   You regenerate 1 HP a minute, and the flick resets that timer.

5. 5

   Before the overload expires, make sure you have 200+ absorption left.

   It heals you 50 HP as it ends, so re-dose straight away to drop back to 1.

Super combat potions are the cheaper option, and the wiki notes some players prefer them when playing less attentively. The overload's HP swing every five minutes is the only part of this setup that needs watching.

Dwarven Rock Cake vs Locator Orb

Both items take you to 1 HP without killing you. Since an October 2016 update the rock cake also hits through absorption points, so you can lower HP with a full counter.

The orb is the quicker of the two: a flat 10 per click, while Guzzle takes less than 10 below 90 HP. The cake is the answer before Dragon Slayer II: the dwarf part of Recipe for Disaster needs only Cook's Assistant, Another Cook's Quest and Fishing Contest, so most accounts can buy one early. Both are covered on the wiki's dwarven rock cake and locator orb pages.

Best NMZ Bosses for Melee

For the AFK setup, the wiki's normal-rumble pick is Count Draynor, Sand Snake, King Roald, The Kendal and Me. They attack only with melee, have low Defence and no mechanics that can kill you, and carry enough Hitpoints that you are not waiting on respawns. The points below are maximums that assume every quest done and every boss enabled, so a fresh account earns less.

With a salve amulet (e), swap The Kendal and Me for the undead pair, Headless Beast and Trapped Soul. The salve's 20% melee bonus against undead does not stack with a black mask. The Khazard warlord hits harder, but his high Hitpoints for his level make him a good pick for XP. Large bosses like the Sand Snake and The Kendal can block each other and stop your auto-retaliate.

Bosses to leave off

1. 1

   Normal AFK rumble:

   Nazastarool (three forms cut XP), Black Knight Titan and Bouncer (both hit hard and burn absorption).

2. 2

   Hard rumble:

   almost always disable Glod, Elvarg, Corrupt Lizardman, Chronozon and Barrelchest. The Lizardman's poison goes straight through absorption points. Treus Dayth keeps vanishing and Witch's experiment has four forms, so both cost points per hour.

3. 3

   Bonus XP bosses:

   Moss Guardian (4.3 XP per damage), Dad (4.4), Ice Troll King (4.5) and Arrg (4.7) pay more than the usual 4. Dad stuns and knocks you back and Arrg attacks with Ranged, so they suit the attentive hard setup, not the AFK one.

Power-ups

Click Power surge and use a special attack weapon: it fills your spec bar and regenerates 20% a tick for 45 seconds. Zapper and Recurrent damage add points but no XP, so take them whenever they spawn. Skip Ultimate force on a points run, because its kills give no points.

NMZ Setup: Main and Budget

Strength bonus matters more than Defence here, because absorptions take the hits. The wiki's AFK list starts at Torva and the soulreaper axe. The table below is the mid-game version most players can actually put together.

The main inventory holds 84 absorption doses (84,000 points) and 24 overload doses (36,000 points), so a full restock is 120,000 points. Swap one slot for a special attack weapon such as dragon claws or a granite maul with the ornate handle if you want to use Power surge.

The obsidian catch

Obsidian is the strong budget-to-mid pick, with one condition. The helmet, platebody and platelegs together give 10% melee accuracy and strength, and the berserker necklace adds 20% damage, but only with obsidian weapons such as the Toktz-xil-ak. With a whip or scimitar you get neither bonus, and the necklace still costs -10 to every melee attack bonus and -20 to every defence. The wiki's melee training guide is blunt: if you cannot use all five items, do not use the Toktz-xil-ak. In this setup it also suggests leaving Attack and Defence at 60 and taking Strength to 99 first.

Dharok's at 1 HP

Dharok's set hits harder the lower your Hitpoints, so NMZ at 1 HP keeps it near its peak. The armour needs 70 Defence and the greataxe 70 Attack and Strength. The wiki rates it among the best AFK sets from about 85 Hitpoints, and the best points set from 92, but it degrades after 15 hours of use. Our Barrows guide covers getting the pieces.

NMZ vs Slayer vs Gemstone Crab for 60–99 Melee

These three cover most melee training from 60 onwards, and they are good at different things. NMZ is the most AFK. Slayer is the only one that pays you and levels a second skill. The Gemstone Crab needs one quest and no supplies at all.

Pick NMZ if you want the most time away from the screen and the imbues. Pick Slayer if you can play actively, because the drops and Slayer levels are progress NMZ never gives. Pick the Gemstone Crab if you lack the quests, or as free AFK XP while you do them.

The Slayer figures come from the Duradel table on the wiki's Slayer training page: 40,000 Slayer XP an hour meleeing abyssal demons or nechryael, 35,000 at dust devils and 55,000 at smoke devils. Gargoyles sit at 30,000 but are the profit task. The 4-to-1 ratio follows from the rules: a kill gives Slayer XP equal to the monster's Hitpoints, and melee gives 4 XP per damage. Our Slayer guide has the block lists to push those rates up.

The Gemstone Crab never dies and burrows to the next of three mines about every 10 minutes, and the nearest cave always leads to it. It does not count as a Slayer task, so a Slayer helmet adds nothing. Routes and gear are in our Gemstone Crab guide.

What to Buy With NMZ Points

Points have one job before anything else: keeping your absorption barrel full. After that, imbues are the best use, and the order depends on how you fight.

1. 1

   Absorptions and overloads,

   1,000 and 1,500 points a dose. Each barrel holds up to 255 doses of each potion.

2. 2

   Berserker ring (i), 650,000.

   Imbuing doubles the ring's bonuses, so +8 Strength instead of +4. This is the melee trainer's first imbue.

3. 3

   Slayer helmet (i) or black mask (i), 1,250,000.

   The 16.67% melee bonus on task is already on the unimbued item; the imbue adds 15% Ranged and Magic. Buy it once you do Slayer with more than one style.

4. 4

   Salve amulet(ei), 800,000.

   The (e) already gives 20% melee accuracy and damage against undead. The imbue adds Ranged and Magic, and imbuing a salve at NMZ is an elite Ardougne Diary task.

5. 5

   Ring of suffering (i) at 725,000,

   then the other rings at 650,000 (ring of the gods needs a holy wrench in your inventory) and the granite ring at 500,000.

6. 6

   Herb boxes, 9,500 points each,

   up to 15 a day. Each box rolls the herb table seven times. Ironmen cannot buy them here.

NMZ is not the only place to imbue. Soul Wars sells the same imbues for Zeal Tokens, and Emir's Arena sells a scroll of imbuing for 200 of its points that can be moved between items. Items imbued with NMZ points can be uncharged for a full refund and re-imbued with the scroll. Source: the wiki's Imbuing page.

Hours and Points to Your Goal

These use the XP table and the wiki's NMZ rates. Real rates sit below the top figure at 60 and above it with better gear, so treat them as planning numbers.

Point rates are before the potions you drink, and a full AFK restock costs 120,000. Three melee skills from 70 to 99 on the AFK setup add up to roughly 350–370 hours, which is why most players split the work between NMZ, Slayer and active methods.

Ironman, HCIM and Pure Notes

1. 1

   Ironman:

   you can buy potions and imbues, but only scrolls of redirection from the resources tab, so no herb boxes, and you cannot join group rumbles. The wiki singles out the AFK absorption setup as a good points-and-XP mix for ironmen saving for imbues. More in our Ironman combat training guide.

2. 2

   Hardcore Ironman:

   NMZ is on the wiki's list of safe deaths, so you keep your status. It is not safe for Hardcore Group Ironman; leave by drinking a wake potion on the north or south side of the arena if a dream goes wrong.

3. 3

   Pures:

   absorptions work at any Defence, since at 1 HP each hit costs at most one point. The wiki still recommends 60 Defence for absorption runs, and obsidian needs 60 Defence, so 1 Defence builds use their best Strength gear instead. See our pure builds guide.

Common Mistakes

1. 1

   Eating the rock cake instead of guzzling it.

   Eat stops at 2 HP, and at 2 HP every hit can drain 2 absorption points instead of 1.

2. 2

   Lowering HP before the overload finishes.

   The overload's 50 damage lands over several seconds and is not absorbed. Guzzle or feel the orb mid-overload and that damage can kill you.

3. 3

   Running Dream Mentor bosses with Desert Treasure I switched off.

   Every kill takes an 83.33% points penalty. Enable both or neither.

4. 4

   Wearing obsidian armour or the berserker necklace with a whip or scimitar.

   The bonuses only apply to obsidian weapons, while the necklace's -20 defences apply to everything.

5. 5

   Training in practice mode, or clicking Ultimate force on a points run.

   Practice gives no XP or points at all, and Ultimate force kills give no points.

Where Paid Help Fits

NMZ is cheap in coins and expensive in hours: one skill from 70 to 99 is over 115 hours even on the best AFK setup. If you would rather spend that time on bossing or Slayer, our melee training service trains Attack, Strength or Defence by hand on the route you pick, NMZ included, and the points it earns stay on your account for imbues.

FAQ

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