Muffin's Guide to Get You Good at Grotesque Guardians

So, you want that sweet Noon pet, don't ya? Wanted to test out that recent update that made Dusk 'n' Dawn less tedious awful painful mind-bogglingly frustrating bothersome? Well boy howdy, as someone who has spent way too many hours smashing gargoyles to bits, do I have the guide for you!

The Grotesque Guardians are a solid mid-level boss that, while not the quickest grind, can provide some decent cash as well as excellent experience. In this guide I'm gonna tell you (no not you, the pretty one) everything you need to stop sittin' around and to start smashin' gargoyles!


Chonky Stone Demons Hate Him!

Here's what you're gonna need skill-wise:

• 75 Slayer to unlock Gargoyles
  
• 75 Ranged for a Blowpipe
  
• BARE MINIMUM base 70 Attack/Strength/Defence
  

Getting Started:

First of all, you're gonna need one of these:

Bless Duradaddy

Next, let's talk Gear

My personal gear/inventory setup:

You can look but no touching, sailor

A BiS max setup from the Gear Discord:

One day I'll be able to afford this

If you're following my setup, you can change the ratio of prayer potion:food depending on how comfortable you are with the boss. The more you get the groove, the less damage you'll take, the more prayer pots you can bring to extend your trips even longer. Even I only bring 6 or so prayer potions if I'm feeling rusty.

As for spec weapon, the best two choices are either Dragon Claws or a Saradomin Godsword. The claws are good for quicker kills, whereas the SGS will potentially extend your trips significantly. I'm personally a fan of the latter, but hey, you do you baby boo.

Oh, and I'll just remind you now before you invariably forget (as we all do):

DON'T FORGET YOUR ROCK HAMMER


Third, getting there:

• Salve Graveyard Teleport/Tablet
  
• Kharyll Teleport/Tablet
  
• Fairy Ring CKS
  
• Slayer Ring (Ideally Eternal if you're a big Mr. Moneypants and have a few mil to drop)
  
• Fenkenstrain Teleport/Tablet
  

Welcome to your new home

Before you can get to bossing, you're gonna need a Brittle Key, which has a 1/150 drop rate from the regular Gargoyles.
You can only get this drop on a Gargoyle task, so get smashing!

Once you've got the key, you can unlock the staircase leading to the roof of the Slayer Tower, and enter the arena.


This room ain't big enough for the three of us

You'll notice a few things here: two odd-looking statues, Dusk to the West and Dawn to the East, as well as an enticing-looking bell directly North that begins the fight. Before we ring that bell, let's take a look at the different stages you'll be going through.

Stage One: Denial
This is totally gonna be the one
Take a deep breath and attempt to repress the urge to tell yourself "I'm going to get the pet for sure this time!"

Stage Two: Anger
**** would you both just chill please

Both Dusk and Dawn will jump off their pedestals, and your first target is Dawn.

Pray Range and walk up next to her (Marked tile in the screenshot above is right next to her spawn), using blowpipe to bring her down. There are no special attacks in this stage, but get ready, because once Dawn gets to 50% HP, she flies away and we enter the next phase.

Stage Three: Bargaining
Dusk I'll do anything for you to stop hitting me

Immediately as Dawn becomes untargetable, switch to your melee gear and start smacking Dusk. I personally like to use piety/protection from melee during this stage to make it faster and safer, but this is optional if you want to instead save your prayer (and lord knows you'll need to pray for that pet unless you're Reality). You should be able to get about 3 attacks in before we get to the fun part:

Special Attack: during this stage, Dusk will curl up like the scared little boy that he is and begin to glow orange. As he does this, rocks will fall from the ceiling (and conveniently show which tile they will land on by their shadow).


Runrunrunrunrun

If you get caught next to Dusk as he finishes charging his attack, you'll get sent across the room and dealt 30+ damage. If you get hit by a rock, you get hit for up to 22 damage. If you get pushed by Dusk into a rock, you get a lovely 50+ damage combo that stuns you!

Basically, don't. The moment Dusk gets all glowy, you get the hell outta dodge.

Dusk turns into a normal mob after this, so keep bashing his head in until he too gets to 50% HP. Should you take too long, however, he can spec attack again, so be ready! Once you succeed in bringing him down to 50% HP, you enter the next stage.

Stage 4: Depression
*sobs* why won't my blowpipe hit in the double digits I'm 96 range

Stage 4 begins with a game we've all loved since childhood: the floor is lava! Well, only certain parts of the floor. As Dawn and Dusk return to the center of the room, random tiles will glow porple or orunj. Standing on or adjacent to these tiles will deal 5+ damage per tick, and these can stack up quick. Try to find a safe spot as close to the middle of the arena as possible, as once the Area of Effect (AoE) attack is done we'll be going on the offensive. Switch back to range gear, protect from ranged and stand next to Dawn as you start peppering her with darts again.


Gotta squeeze through sneaky-deaky like


Stage 4 is the most important stage, as it can really make or break a clean kill. As you start fighting Dawn, she will release 3 purple orbs on the ground. These will grow 3 times, until they all return to her and heal for 90HP each. You COULD run around and destroy the orbs (taking 2/10/20 damage each, depending on the size) or...

We can bring her down before she even gets the chance to heal.

Every tick counts in this phase, so avoid eating if you can. as you bring Dawn close to 0HP, click on your rock hammer to select it and get ready to manually use it on Dawn. If using Runelite, you can give it a shot when your overlay says she only has 12HP remaining: more often than not she actually has less, bringing her within the threshold for an early kill. By manually smashing Dawn (giggity) we can seriously speed up our kills, taking less damage in the process. You can use your rock hammer even as the healing orbs are just about to touch Dawn, potentially saving supplies by clinching that last-tick kill. Once Dawn goes kaboom, Dusk gets all angsty and begins the final phase of the fight.

Stage 5: Acceptance
Sit nerd

Once you take Dawn down, swap back to melee gear (if you brought a spec weapon like dclaws/sgs, now is the time!).

Special Attack: Dusk will throw you across the arena again, except this time when you land you find yourself boxed in by flames. You can only get out via a single tile: book it straight through immediately, or you're gonna take 50+ damage from staying in the middle. If you get pushed against the wall, it's possible that the only way out is directly against the wall: if this is the case, hide in the safe spot until the flames disappear!


He's just angsty because no one understands him

During this phase, Dusk will respond to your efforts to murder him with both range and melee attacks. Both can hit hard, and you might find yourself swapping between protection prayers depending on what you get hit with the most (in my experience, its ranged, but apparently I'm a super weirdo for not always protecting melee). Just like in Stage 3, taking too long during this phase can trigger another Special Attack, so hit him hard! Once he's low enough HP your handsome character will smash him to bitsies, or you can keep practicing those manual smashing techniques discussed earlier.

Either way, when Dusk goes down the fight is over! Accept your mediocre loot and get ready to rumble again!

Hope this guide was even somewhat helpful to anyone who wanted to give the Grotesques a try! If you have any suggestions on stuff I could add/change, don't be shy to let me know

Stay wonderful,

Muffin

Dope guide. It will definitely prove useful when I start learning to tackle these giant concrete bats!

Thanks for the write-up Muffin!

Alright, good lord. I can see why this took you as long as it did. Super informative, and awesomely formatted! 15 seconds in and I'm cracking up, too Definitely gonna be referring back to this in the future, since I seemingly have to relearn the boss from scratch every time I go back, haha.

Will need to keep practicing with that rock hammer as well. Feels like I'm only capable of skipping the healing about 50% of the time (with rune darts and rigour at 93 Ranged). You figure it's worth trying dragon darts until my Ranged level is a bit higher, or do I just need to git gud? Would appreciate any tips you've got, and I bet others would too

P.S. Happy 100th offsite post!

Awesome guide, now how do I do more than 10 kills without getting bored?

Love this guide, very informative! Looking forward to starting my first gg kcs Thanks Muffin!

-J

This is an amazing guide Muffin! I kept seeing people post their kill counts in the cc but never even knew what Grotesque Guardians were, this definitely explains it, and it's not really something I ever want to try, but if I ever decide to put my big girl pants on, I'll definitely be referring to your guide lol

Thanks for the write up, Muffin. I tried these guys in the past, but my kills were very slow. I'll probably try them out again once I get a steady supply of rune darts (as well as rigour), as addy darts are not cutting it for me to skip the healing phase. The kills just don't seem worth it to me without skipping it. Would be AWESOME to snag the pet tho, one of the best in the game IMO.

Very nice write up! And convenient too! As I was going to attempt the guardians on my next task

im 60 kc in and its made me hate the boss, but this guide will def make it way easier for me to suffer through. thanks Muffin! :]

glad this got bumped up to the home page again because guess who just got a garg task? thanks muffin for this informative and funny guide!

Do you have any advice for what the orb-skip meta will be after blowpipe nerf? Will it just mean having to bring dragon darts or something to still be able to orb-skip?

This boss gives me depression.

Honestly, I have no idea. Going to do some test runs when the patch hits for sure!