OSRS Vardorvis Guide: Axe Dodging, Gear & Drop Rates

Why People Fight Vardorvis

Vardorvis is the Desert Treasure II boss at the Stranglewood ritual site: a 700-hitpoint melee fight where you hold Protect from Melee, use a slash weapon, and dodge swinging axes by running two tiles diagonally out of their path. He heals for half of every hit he lands on you, his specials come at random, and he enrages at about 231 hitpoints. He drops the executioner's axe head for the soulreaper axe and the ultor vestige, both at 1/1,088.

Above 690 hitpoints the vines around the arena swing one axe across it. From 690 down to 231 they swing two, sometimes three. Below 231 they swing three every time, and the sets start arriving as soon as the last one has cleared the edge. That escalation is the shape of the whole fight, and it explains why so many players describe him as fine for two minutes and then suddenly unsurvivable. Nothing changed about their movement; the arena simply started filling faster than they could read it.

People come here for two things: the executioner's axe head and the ultor vestige. It is a fitting pair, because one is a quarter of a weapon you have to visit four different bosses to assemble and the other has no alternative source in the game. There is a small joke buried in the wiki's own recommended setup for him, which names the Bellator ring and the Ultor ring in its top ring slot. The best gear for killing Vardorvis is partly made out of things Vardorvis and his siblings drop.

What makes him genuinely different from the other three fights unlocked by Desert Treasure II - The Fallen Empire is that he has no rotation. Duke Sucellus, the Leviathan and the Whisperer all run their special attacks on predictable schedules or health thresholds you can count towards. Vardorvis uses his at random. You can know exactly what each mechanic does and still be caught, because knowing the answer is not the same as knowing when the question arrives.

He also inverts the usual sense that a boss gets safer as it dies. His Strength and Defence levels scale linearly with his remaining health: as you take him down he becomes easier to hit and harder to survive, with his melee maximum climbing from 32 to 43 once his health is critically low. The last quarter of the kill is the dangerous quarter, every time.

Its own attack is melee (slash), so Protect from Melee is the prayer it asks for.

In our index it sits in the Desert Treasure II group at difficulty 5 of 5, where kill times come down to axe swing mechanics.

Is Vardorvis the Right Fight for You Yet?

The mechanical knowledge Vardorvis asks for is small (four special attacks, all of them documented, none of them ambiguous), but you have to execute the dodges without warning while holding a prayer and keeping your damage up. Players who are comfortable at bosses with fixed cycles often find him harder than his stat requirements suggest, because there is no cycle to lean on.

You are ready for this fight if:

• You have finished Desert Treasure II - The Fallen Empire. That is the only hard requirement on the page; everything else the wiki lists is a suggestion.
• You own a slash weapon you will not resent using for hundreds of kills. He is weakest to slash, with only +65 slash defence against +85 crush and +215 stab, and the gap between slash and crush is wide enough that crush is not recommended.
• Holding Protect from Melee while you move is already second nature. It cuts his auto-attacks by 75 per cent, taking a 32 down to 8 to 10, and it halves axe damage as well.
• You are willing to prioritise dodging over damage. Every hit he lands on you heals him for half of it, rounded down, so a sloppy kill costs food and also takes longer.

Come back later if any of these are true:

• Your melee gear has several downgrades in it at once. Because he heals off you and starts with 215 Defence, gear gaps compound here in a way they do not at bosses that simply have a health bar to chew through.
• You are hoping to bring ranged or magic. He has +580 defence against both and a Magic level of 215; the wiki calls him highly resistant to them, and there is no bow route to fall back on.
• You expect stat-draining specials to open him up. A Bandos godsword or dragon warhammer does nothing useful, because his Defence is already tied to his health bar.

Access Requirements

Vardorvis is gated behind Desert Treasure II.

That single unlock opens the whole Desert Treasure II group, so finishing it is worth more than any one drop from Vardorvis. The boss requirements checklist lists what each group needs.

Location and How to Get There

Vardorvis is found in the Stranglewood Ritual Site, where his corpse is animated by the Strangler.

Access opens through Desert Treasure II. The post-quest fight is a harder version of the one you met in the quest, so your quest experience undersells how dangerous the repeatable version is.

The fastest way in is the ring of shadows, once you have used a strangled tablet on it. The tablet is an untradeable 1/25.5 drop from Vardorvis himself that stops dropping once you have it, so your first several trips will be slower than your later ones. It puts you at the Stranglewood Temple entrance.

Without the tablet, fairy ring code bls and a run west to the rowboat is the cleanest option. Xeric's talisman to Xeric's Honour and Rada's blessing to the Kourend Woodland both work as well, but they route you through the Mountain Guide and the Lovakengj minecart, which is a lot of clicking for the same destination.

The shortcut from the temple grounds to the ritual site is the part worth checking before your first post-quest trip. You should have unlocked it during the quest; if it is not there, you have to run the long way once and unlock it from the far end. It is not drawn on the map, and from the temple you teleport to with the ring of shadows it sits to the north-west.

Every route makes you cross the Stranglewood, and even with the shortcut you will pass Strangled and a Strangled Boar on the way. They deal 1 to 3 and 2 to 4 damage respectively, which is trivial per trip and worth pre-eating an anglerfish for anyway. Click the shortcut the moment it renders, so a disconnect does not leave you stranded in the middle of it.

Recommended Stats and Gear at Three Budgets

None of these are gates. The only requirement is the quest, and the numbers above are the wiki's suggestion for a fight that goes badly when it goes slowly.

The soulreaper axe tops that list for a reason specific to his hitbox: he is 2x2, which stops a scythe of vitur getting its extra hits, so the weapon that would normally be the melee answer is held back here. If you are still learning, deliberately trade damage for survivability. A one-handed abyssal tentacle with a defender beats a stronger two-hander, because maximising slash defence is what stops the chip damage that feeds him.

Set every weapon to its slashing style, including burning claws if that is your special attack weapon. It is the single most common gear mistake here, and it stays invisible unless you go and look.

Oathplate is unusually good here because it stacks high slash defence with additional slash accuracy, which is exactly the pairing this fight rewards. Full Justiciar wins by a completely different mechanism: it reduces the damage he deals you, which reduces the amount he heals, which shortens the fight even though your strength bonus went down.

He is an undead vampyre, and none of the things you would expect to exploit that work. Silver weaponry does nothing, Crumble Undead does nothing, and the Salve amulet does nothing. Wear the amulet that gives you the most damage instead.

On specials, the useful distinction is accuracy against a defence that is highest at the start. Claws have very high accuracy and are best spent early, while his Defence is still up. Voidwaker ignores defence entirely, which points the same way, with one caveat: its special always hits a zero if it is the move that opens the fight, so land an auto-attack first. A dragon dagger is the opposite case and belongs at the end, when his Defence has fallen with his health.

• 215 Magic level rewards magic-defence scaling weapons.

Inventory and Supplies

The wiki's awakened inventory is built around staying overhealed: 4 Saradomin brews, 5 to 7 karambwans or halibut, 7 to 9 anglerfish, 2 to 3 super restores, a regular super combat next to the divine one, and a Voidwaker or claws for the spec. You spend that fight overhealed most of the time, which is why an amulet of rancour beats blood fury there.

Prayer and Spellbook

Protect from Melee is your default, and it carries more of this fight than its description implies. It cuts his auto-attack potency by 75 per cent, dropping a 32 to somewhere between 8 and 10, and it roughly halves the damage of a Swinging Axe you failed to dodge. Camping it is correct.

The exception is the head. Once he is below 570 health, the Strangler's tendrils start firing a green cone-shaped projectile at you, announced by the message that his head gazes upon you. That one needs Protect from Missiles. If you miss the flick you lose 10 prayer points and you cannot use any overhead protection prayer for the next three ticks, which is the real cost: it strips you naked for whatever comes next.

There is a small mercy built into the head attack: it always fires off-sync with the body, and he will not melee you while the projectile is in the air, taking two ticks to resume afterwards. The window is genuinely there. The only case where that mercy does not apply is if the Darting Spikes mechanic has him dashing three times in a row.

Be on the Arceuus spellbook if you can. Thralls are damage you do not have to click for during an axe cycle, and Death Charge feeds the special attack that ends the enrage phase early.

Mechanics That Decide the Fight

Because the specials fire at random rather than on a rotation, memorise the counts tied to his health bar. Axes: one above 690, two from 231 to 690 with a chance of a third, three below 231. Darts: one above roughly 500, two from 231 to 500, three below roughly 130. Head and Strangle: both unlocked at 570.

The dart layouts are consistent even though the timing is not. The first dart leaves half an X in a 3x5 area, the second fills in the other half, and the third scatters across a 5x5 area centred on you, assuming you are not standing near the edges and not running diagonally away from him.

One useful piece of negative information: if the axes go quiet, the Strangle is winding up. That lull is the one moment in the fight you get advance notice of anything.

Where Vardorvis Sits in Progression

Duke Sucellus is the usual first Desert Treasure II boss. Vardorvis, the Leviathan and the Whisperer all sit at 5 of 5 in our index, and which one feels hardest depends on you: Vardorvis tests movement under random specials, the Leviathan tests prayer switching and the Whisperer tests sanity management. Awakened Vardorvis has the lowest health of the four awakened fights at 1,400, but his axes hit for up to 96.

Phase by Phase

700 to 570: two mechanics, and time to get comfortable

He is not aggressive after the quest, so the fight starts when you attack and tendrils burst up to seal the arena. Those tendrils are also your emergency exit, since the rock you arrived on has its options disabled until he dies.

For the first three auto-attacks there are no axes at all. Above 690 hitpoints there is only ever one axe in the air and one dart, which makes this the window where you should be spending your highest-accuracy special attacks, because his Defence will never be higher than it is now.

570: the head opens and the tendrils grab

Two mechanics unlock at the same number, and they demand opposite things. The Head Gaze wants a prayer flick and no movement; the Strangle wants your full attention on an overlay in the middle of your screen while he keeps hitting you.

This is the phase where most players start running out of prayer. Each missed gaze is 10 prayer points and three ticks of no overhead protection, and three ticks is long enough for an axe you were about to dodge to become an axe you are eating unprotected.

500 to 231: the arena gets busier

The second dart appears below roughly 500, so the crack pattern goes from half an X to a full one. Axes are running at two per set with a chance of a third. Nothing new has been introduced; there is simply more of it, and the overlaps start to matter.

If you are going to reposition to the arena edge to control the darts, this is the stretch to build that habit in, before the axe count makes edge tiles less attractive.

231 and below: enrage

At 33 per cent of his health, which is around 231, he enters enrage after his next non-enraged attack. There is no animation and no message. The axes now come three at a time, with a new set appearing as soon as the previous one has swung clear, and the head fires far more often.

Below roughly 130 the darts reach three as well, and his melee maximum has been climbing towards 43 the whole time. The combination of head and spikes in this window is what kills prepared players, not the axes on their own.

• If you saved a special attack for this phase, spend it now, even at a bad moment. Shortening enrage is worth more than a clean spec.
• A lull in the axes still means Strangle, and in enrage that lull is the only quiet moment you will get.
• Overshooting into enrage while your prayer is low is the single worst position in the fight. Restore before you cross 231, not after.

Fight Strategy: Axe swing mechanics

1. 1

   Pre-eat an anglerfish outside, then attack him to start the fight and turn on Protect from Melee immediately.

2. 2

   Use the three auto-attack grace period to establish your position, then spend your accuracy-dependent special attacks while his Defence is at its highest.

3. 3

   Dodge each axe by running two tiles diagonally out of its path, using the twelve marked tiles.

   If three quadrants horizontal to you are throwing, run four tiles diagonally from the central square instead.

4. 4

   When he darts, drift to the arena edge so he darts on the spot and leaves a single crack.

5. 5

   From 570, add the Protect from Missiles flick for the head and clear Strangle spores as they appear.

   Resume attacking with a right-click; there is no need to wait for the animation.

6. 6

   Restore prayer and health while he is still above 231, before enrage starts.

   There is no indicator for the phase change, so the threshold is yours to watch.

7. 7

   In enrage, prioritise movement over damage entirely, and spend any special attack energy still in the bar to shorten the phase.

The arena is divided into nine 3x3 quadrants, and once you see it that way the axe dodge stops being reactive. Axes travel either straight or diagonally depending on which quadrant they emerge from, so what you are reading is a direction, not a projectile.

The advanced version of the dodge is the axe skip, which trades distance for tick precision. If the axes are swung from a quadrant adjacent to you, click a second marked tile one tick after the axe appears and click back one tick later. If they are swung from the opposing quadrant, make that first click on the fourth tick after the swing and come back one tick after. In normal mode this is optional and buys you attack ticks; in Awakened mode it stops being optional.

Every hit you avoid is worth double, because anything that connects heals him for half of it. That is the honest reason this fight rewards patience over damage output. At most bosses a hit taken costs you food, and here it costs you food and gives some of your progress back.

Positioning and Movement

There are twelve tiles in the arena that let you dodge an axe with a single two-tile diagonal move: one in each of the four cardinal directions, and the pair of tiles in front of each pillar facing the centre. Learning three or four of them well is more useful than knowing all twelve badly.

Edge tiles and pillar tiles solve different problems, and in normal mode the edge usually wins. Standing next to the tendrils at the arena edge collapses his dart pattern to a single crack and keeps one from spawning underneath you, which removes a whole mechanic from your workload.

Awakened inverts that specific piece of advice. There, axes deal damage the instant they appear and the anti-edge behaviour makes the perimeter unsafe, so you live in the corner quadrants and by the pillars instead, running back and forth between a corner and the quadrant across from it.

Beginner Plan, Then the Advanced One

Your first trips

1. 1

   Set your weapon to slash before your first kill, then check it again after your first bank trip.

   Whip on slash, tentacle on slash, burning claws on slash.

2. 2

   Deliberately downgrade to a one-handed weapon and a defender while you are learning.

   Maximising slash defence reduces the chip damage that feeds his healing, and a slightly slower kill you survive beats a faster one you do not.

3. 3

   Learn the dart-control trick early.

   Moving to the edge when he starts darting is one habit that removes an entire source of damage and healing.

4. 4

   Do not chase the axe.

   Read which quadrant it came from, pick your diagonal, and commit. Hesitating in the middle of a two-tile move is how a dodge becomes a hit plus a bleed.

5. 5

   Never run while bleeding if you can help it.

   The bleed deals three damage every three ticks normally, and three damage every single tick if you are running.

6. 6

   Watch your health cross 570 and 231 consciously.

   Both thresholds change the fight and neither one announces itself.

Once the kill is boring

• Learn the axe skip as a routine move. The tick-precise version keeps you attacking through cycles where the four-tile diagonal run costs you the whole window.
• Decide a spec policy and stick to it. Spending claws early exploits his high starting Defence; holding them exploits the fact that enrage is the phase you most want to be short. Both are defensible and alternating between them by mood is not.
• In Awakened mode (entered by climbing the rocks with an awakener's orb in your inventory and accepting the prompt) the axe skip is close to mandatory. Axes hit for up to 96 instead of 35 and deal damage the moment they appear, which combined with his own attack will usually end the fight on the spot, and an extra axe joins every set: three guaranteed from 462 to 1,380 health with a chance of a fourth, four guaranteed below 462.
• Awakened also changes the head from a single ranged cone to a mixed threat: it can fire a magic attack that looks like a blue crescent wave, and below 50 per cent it fires magic and ranged one tick apart in a random order. The trick worth learning is to pray only against the first projectile you see, switch to the opposite prayer as it lands, then return to Protect from Melee, because the second is always the other style.
• If you miss a prayer in Awakened, dodge and eat first, and pray against the next head attack after the body has attacked. Reacting to the body instead usually costs you the following two projectiles as well.

Vardorvis Drop Table and What He Is Worth

The executioner's axe head is why most accounts turn up here, and it is worth being honest about what that means: it is one quarter of a project that requires all four Desert Treasure II bosses, so Vardorvis is usually one stop on a list of four. The ultor vestige is the other reason, and it has no second source.

His unique table is rolled at 1/136 per kill, the rarest of the four Desert Treasure II bosses, or 3/136 in awakened mode. A perfect kill, with no avoidable damage taken, gives 50% more loot from the standard table, and every hit you avoid also stops him healing.

The strangled tablet matters for travel, because it turns the run across the Stranglewood into a teleport. It is common enough that the awkward travel phase of this grind is measured in a handful of kills.

Combat Achievements

Vardorvis has Combat Achievement tasks. A 43 max hit is survivable enough that the kill-time limits usually bite before the restricted-gear ones do.

Task lists move with updates, so read the current list in game.

Combat Achievements guide

Ironman Notes

Slayer masters who assign Vardorvis: Konar, Nieve, Duradel. Each kill is 1085 Slayer XP.

Ironmen cannot buy the executioner's axe head or the ultor vestige, and Vardorvis is the only boss that drops either.

Common Mistakes and Death Causes

If a trip goes wrong there is a genuine exit that many players forget exists. The rock you climbed in on has its options disabled once the tendrils are up, but the tendrils themselves can be used to leave the arena quickly if you did not bring a teleport.

Dying here is cheaper than it looks while you are learning. Your grave appears by the rocks leading to the Stranglewood Ritual Site, and the reclamation fee runs at a quarter of the usual price for your first five kills. There is one exception to check before you lean on that: if you already have an active gravestone somewhere else when you die at Vardorvis, the full cost applies with no reduction at all.

FAQ

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