Adamant Dragon Best in Slot Gear & Strategy Guide

The hard gate is the Dragon Slayer II quest. You cannot reach the Lithkren Vault adamant dragons without completing it. Once that is done, the fastest way in is a digsite pendant, which teleports you straight to the Lithkren Vault. Alternatively, take Jardric's boat north-west of Fossil Island to Lithkren and navigate the ruins down to the vault.

There is no Slayer level requirement to attack them, but they are aggressive and hit hard, so the wiki's suggested skills are 90+ Attack, Strength, Defence and Ranged, 70+ Prayer, and 94+ Magic if you plan to mage them. Treat those as a comfort floor rather than a minimum.

All three combat styles are viable here, and the wiki lists melee, ranged and magic setups side by side. The thread running through all of them is dragonbane and anti-dragon gear, because these are dragons with strong, accurate attacks.

• Melee: reliable with base 90 melee stats and a top dragonbane or stab weapon family (the dragon hunter lance is the dragonbane option). The wiki recommends heavy defensive armour such as Bandos, Justiciar or Barrows to soak their accurate hits.
• Ranged: a dragon hunter crossbow shreds them thanks to its passive bonus against dragons, and it sidesteps their melee attack by fighting at distance. A Twisted bow is comparable.
• Magic: Tumeken's shadow is one of the fastest options overall; failing that, Earth spells exploit their 50% elemental weakness to earth and relatively low Magic defence, especially with a dragon hunter wand.

Rather than list every slot, plug your stats and bank into our Boss Gear Finder above to get the exact loadout you can afford. If you want to push a specific style, our melee gear, ranged gear and magic gear pages break down the item families in depth.

The non-negotiable item is antifire protection. Bring an extended antifire (or extended super antifire if your shield has no dragonfire protection), because their dragonfire can hit up to 50 unprotected. Beyond that, the wiki's supply list is:

• A digsite pendant (or a mounted one in your POH with house tabs) for the trip and restocks.
• A combat or ranging boost: divine super combat potion for melee, divine ranging potion for ranged, or a saturated heart for magic.
• 3-4 prayer potions.
• 1-2 doses of antidote++ (or antidote+/superantipoison/antipoison) if you are not wearing a serpentine helm, to handle the poison special.
• High-healing food such as sharks, manta rays, anglerfish or karambwan.
• A rune pouch for Vengeance or High Level Alchemy (optional), and a one-click teleport (optional).

If you train Prayer to extend trips, our Prayer guide covers the most efficient routes.

Adamant dragons throw standard melee, Ranged and magic attacks plus dragonfire, and two unique specials. Their standard attacks max 29 with melee, 20 with Ranged and 20 with magic, on top of the dragonfire and poison damage covered below. Handle each as follows:

• Dragonfire: long-range metallic dragonfire, up to 50 damage unprotected. A super antifire potion fully blocks it; an anti-dragon shield alone caps it low. Important nuance: Protect from Magic does NOT reduce metallic dragonfire, so a prayer is no substitute for antifire here.
• Poison projectile: a slow green projectile lands on your tile and splits into extra projectiles. It hits 14-25 poison damage, reduced to 4-8 under any poison protection. The cleanest counter is to move at least three squares from where you stood when it launched, which avoids it entirely. (Sources differ on the splash size: the main page describes a 5x5 area, the Strategies page describes a 3x3 area around the targeted tile.)
• Blood Forfeit (Ranged special): this Ranged attack hits through Protect from Missiles. It works like enchanted ruby bolts: the dragon sacrifices 10% of its current HP to deal damage equal to 20% of your current HP. The fix is not a prayer but HP management, keep your Hitpoints around 40-50 to cap the damage. Vengeance can be used to punish it.

For your overhead prayer the rest of the time: melee fighters use Protect from Magic with Piety; ranged and Tumeken's shadow fighters use Protect from Missiles with Rigour or Eagle Eye.

The kill loop is simple once supplies are right: pot up, turn on antifire and your style's overhead prayer plus offensive prayer, and DPS the dragon down while reacting to its specials. Step three tiles off the poison bomb, keep your HP in the 40-50 band so Blood Forfeit stays small, and eat back up only when the special threat has passed.

The mistakes that get players killed:

• Trusting Protect from Magic against dragonfire. It does nothing for metallic dragonfire, you must use antifire.
• Trusting Protect from Missiles against Blood Forfeit. It hits straight through, manage HP instead.
• Standing in the poison splash. Move three or more squares to dodge it outright rather than tanking 14-25 a hit.
• Skipping poison protection when not on a serpentine helm, leaving you chipping away from poison between kills.

Every adamant dragon is guaranteed to drop dragon bones and 2 adamantite bars, which keeps them worthwhile for prayer training and smithing income. The marquee uniques players chase are the Draconic visage, Dragon limbs and the Dragon metal slice, the standout rare rewards on their drop table. The Draconic visage is the rarest of the three. The full drop table, with every item and rate, is rendered above this guide.