Now then, where to begin. I’ll just start with the issue that comes up most often: charms. As you probably know by now if you’re reading this, there are four types of charms: Gold, Green, Crimson, and Blue. In most cases, the successive color gives more Xp in general than the previous, while in turn being more difficult to obtain, either through rarity of drop or through the difficulty of monsters which drop them. In an attempt to cut down on less important and somewhat dull information, I’ll go right to the most important of the four as far as training is concerned — Crimson. This will be the main charm you use in training up your Summoning without a doubt. It’s good Xp with a decent ratio of spirit shards to go with it. Among the best monsters to kill for obtaining Crimson charms are Greater Demons, Abyssal Demons, Dust Devils, Rock Lobsters, and Waterfiends. These are all of the monsters I experimented on along the way. If done correctly, both Rock Lobsters and Waterfiends can drop Crimson charms at about the same rate, and are two of the fastest monsters to obtain them from. As I mentioned previously, however, the better charms are typically more difficult to obtain due to a monster’s difficulty. This is the case with Rock Lobsters and Waterfiends, which I will cover in the next two paragraphs.

Rock Lobsters are located in Waterbirth cave in the rooms surrounding the ladder that leads down to the Dagannoth Kings. You pass several on the run to the ladder, but what I was not aware of, and what most of you will probably find interesting is, if you go past the DK ladder to another ladder, then run down a passage and go up yet another ladder, you’ll be in a room of seven Rock Lobsters (and if you continue down the ladder past these, and up the ladder in the next room, you’ll appear in the water under the lighthouse, where all the level 74 and 92 Dagannoths are. Crazy, huh?). The best way to kill these is to gather a bunch of them together and Ice Burst (or Barrage) them while standing in a safe spot. A friend recommended that I stand near the ladder that I came up to get to this room as a safe spot. If you do that, you can get up to six of the seven to follow you there and Burst (or Barrage) away. A couple tips to help: When you right-click a pile of them, it will never show more than five, but believe me, there is a sixth there if you went and got it to attack you; also, they can hit fairly high, up to 11 I think, so either bring some Blood Burst/Barrage spells, or some good food (I recommend the Blood spells). Rock Lobsters are the expensive, but relatively easy method for obtaining Crimson charms quickly. In about 10,000 Ice Burst casts, I could get 2,000 Crimson charms. Next, I’ll cover Waterfiends, a lot less expensive, but considerably more difficult.

Waterfiends are located in the swirling whirlpool near the Barbarian Outpost, where Mithril Dragons, Brutal Green Dragons, and skeletal Barbarian Warriors also reside. I didn’t use Waterfiends until the last three levels of my feat, but they turned out to be an invaluable source of Crimson charms. They use both Ranged and Magic attacks, so it’s probably best to wear dragonhide or Karil’s armor and use the Protect from Missiles prayer when fighting them. They’re weak to Crush attacks, so good weapons for that are Godswords, including the Saradomin sword and Zamorakian spear. In polling a few of the other high level Summoners, I found that the Saradomin sword is most likely the best weapon to use there. It’s quite fast and is capable of hitting high amounts of damage frequently. Plus, it’s a lot cheaper than the Godswords. Using the Saradomin sword, I was able to get upwards of 90 Crimson charms per hour with a decent amount of effort, meaning I could get all the charms from 96-99 Summoning in just a single week. Needless to say, I was very impressed by this, especially considering I was used to getting a mere 35-40 of them per hour in the other places I listed earlier.

So, that was charms. Now, the real drag of the skill — cost. This is a close second in the questions most asked, and the answer is pretty simple: about 200 million. But before you claw your eyes out just thinking about having to spend that much, consider that this is the gross amount of money spent, and not the net amount. You can actually make quite a bit of it back from just alching the pouches you make. I estimate somewhere in the vicinity of 70-80 million was made back from just alching the pouches I’d made, which leaves an actual net cost of around 120-130 million. ‘But what was it all spent on?’ You ask. Believe it or not, a large majority of the money you’ll spend on Summoning goes into spirit shards alone. Unlike with Construction, Jagex found a foolproof method of getting you to dump huge sums of money back into the game, instead of it simply trading hands. Spirit shards alone will cost you in the area of 120-130 million+ should you decide to get 99. Then, when you factor in secondary ingredients, equipment for killing monsters, etc., you get up around 200 million. Fun!

I’m sure I know exactly what you’re thinking now. “But is it all worth it? Do you really make any of your money back using the creatures?” I’ll be honest, it’s really a matter of opinion. Since the second batch came out, it definitely seems like Jagex has made a concerted effort to improve on the skill, and to encourage people to use it the way it’s meant to be used. There are at least a few familiars that I have found to be very useful. The first is the Bunyip at 68 Summoning. This thing will heal you for 2 HP every 15 seconds for its entire 44 minute duration, unless of course you’re already at your max HP. It is very helpful when killing just about anything that isn’t immediately deadly (i.e. Kalphite Queen, Godwars Bosses, etc.). In other words, it’s very handy for most Slayer tasks, at Bandits, or even for Thieving (*writes that down*). In addition to this wonderful ability, it can also allow you to eat raw fish with its special ability (using scrolls), assuming you have the cooking level required to cook the fish. Next are the Beasts of Burden (BoB) such as the Spirit Terrorbird (52 Summoning), War Tortoise (67) and Pack Yak (96). Their inventory space has been tripled giving you tons of extra space to bring more materials for whatever and wherever you’re going. Plus, the Pack Yak’s special ability allows you to bank any one item in your inventory, extremely useful for killing Spiritual Mages for Dragon boots. And the last familiar I want to promote is the Spirit Kyatt at 57 Summoning. This is one of several Hunter related familiars. This one, however, possesses a very unique and incredibly useful ability. It can teleport you straight to the Hunter area near Piscatoris, which puts you a mere three seconds away from a ladder leading down to a Summoning obelisk where you can then make pouches. Once you’ve made the pouches, just teleport anywhere with a close bank, then teleport back again with the Kyatt. Extremely fast training.

All right, those were the really pressing issues, now I’ll throw in some of my own observations and tips that I’ve noticed along the way. When making pouches, it’s usually best to make the highest ones you can, unless the secondary ingredient is considerably difficult to obtain in bulk (i.e. Red flowers, Talon Beast charms, etc.). If you plan to alch the pouches you’re making, don’t make ones that require only a single spirit shard, they alch for very little and you’d lose a lot of money. Also, Pets are a nice addition for when you’re alching. In most cases you only need about 15 pieces of food to maintain your pet until it’s fully grown while you’re alching. My pet baby black dragon finished growing early this morning, after finally getting an egg drop after more than 600 black dragons. Bleh. I didn’t even get a Visage during that time either.

I think that about wraps up everything I can think of to talk about. Hopefully this quenches your undying thirst for knowledge from all of us master summoners. You’re welcome to leave any further questions in a comment and I’ll attempt to add them in at the bottom of this article if I feel it’s necessary. Enjoy Summoning.