A Theatre of Blood guide I wish existed earlier

[sarcothis 20]

Gear -
you will need all three styles in order to effectively do TOB. Better gear will only get you faster times. Not necessarily make it easier, because TOB's difficulty is entirely tied to your prayer and movement. Your defense stats are effectively irrelevant. Thereby, for gear, simply refer to Romp's gear guide (topic 11373), and bring your best items for each style. 
There are only a couple notes i would make on gear: 
1. You don't need inventory space, so sacrifice no gear swaps. Food in TOB is not an issue, except the final boss, Verzik, as she hits through prayer regularly. All other bosses, done correctly, will barely damage you. I have never used more than 2 sara brews for a normal TOB, and I am by no means a good player.

1a. Elite void is not good. If you've read that it is, just know it is worse than your regular gear and only saves inventory spaces, which as i said is irrelevant, as you do not need much space.

2. on one boss you will have to swap through attack styles somewhat quickly. for this reason, a mage weapon with a built in attack (like Vorpal staff), or a ranged weapon without arrows (Blowpipe or Zaryte) can make switching a bit easier. It is by no means necessary, but will make your life easier if you already have them.

3. A Crystal Halberd from the achievement store can be a good spec weapon for the second boss, Bloat. bring one if you feel like it.

4. Mage is the least necessary combat style, being used almost exclusively for the Spider room. Bad mage gear is not an issue.
Inventory - 
You will want a couple sara brews, some super restores (obviously), any form of stat boosting item, a stamina potion, and all of your gear.

What most people care about - the bosses and their mechanics.
The Maiden - 
The Maiden is an incredibly simple boss. Use your highest DPS weapon. it does not matter what style it is. Pray protection from magic and the attack boosting prayer appropriate to your weapon. It may be helpful to DWH spec her. She will occasionally throw out pools of blood at every player. One will always land on the tile you are standing on, so you must move. several more will land around you, so moving 3+ tiles is recommended.

If you stand in a blood pool, a minion will spawn who leaves a trail of blood wherever they move. If you are standing on the SIDES (or back) of the boss, these minions will never bother you, as they will always roam in front of her. As such, ignore them if they do spawn.

When she reaches 70%, 50%, and 30% life for the first time, she will spawn spiders near the front of the room that run to her and heal her. The general strategy is to completely ignore them and "brute force" the boss down. However, you may also ice barrage them to death. Depending on your gear, this may be faster.


The Bloat -
 Bloat is simple, but deadly. Pray range and enter the room and run clockwise around the center. You never want to be on the same side of the center square as the bloat while he is moving. Always stay out of his line of sight. Small shadows appear on the ground where hands will land and stun you if you're under them. There are two main things the bloat will do during the entire fight:

1. "Shut down" the bloat will slow and stop moving. During this phase he poses no threat at all, and during this time you should run up and hit him. I've found generally with a 4-tick weapon (scimitars, whips, etc) you can get in 6 hits consistently without fear of him waking up. BEFORE he wakes up, run back around the corner you came from, or he will quickly assault you (and any allies near you) with ranged attacks until you break line of sight again.

2. "Turn around" at each and every corner of the room, Bloat may choose to turn around. Always be on the watch for this, and be ready to start running the other direction.

Basically, hide from him until he shuts down, hit him, and repeat.

An additional thing that you should know is that you can sneak in an extra hit on him each and every time he turns a corner. If you are standing at the previous corner, just as Bloat turns the next, you can attack him. BE SURE to do this AFTER he has "made the decision" to turn or not, else, there is a chance he will turn and kill you and your whole team. All you have to do is click him as he enters the next side of the square, and click backwards as your attack lands (or else you'll continue attacking him and follow around the corner).
Spiders/The Spider -
First, you will enter a room with three pathways of webs. Down these webs will come spiders of three different colors, grey, green, and blue. Respectively, they may only be damage by melee, ranged, and mage. If you have a group of people, split responsibilities for these styles. If you're alone, you only need to swap weapons. (here it is helpful to have something like a Vorpal, so you dont need to select a spell each time). Deal with the spiders for some amount of time and then a much larger, "boss" spider will spawn.

TURN OFF AUTO RETALIATE. (obviously you can do this beforehand)

This spider will occasionally rotate through the aforementioned colors. She will use the damage type her color represents, and may only be damaged by that same type.
FOCUS ON SWAPPING YOUR PROTECTION PRAYER FIRST. then swap your weapon, and attack her. Attacking with an incorrect style will result in you being dealt a lot of damage.  

Xarpus -

Pray protection from range when entering. There are two things to know for this fight

1. Poison pools - he will, just like maiden, shoot pools underneath you and in the surrounding area. Simply do not stand on them.
2."Magia Transitum" and "Arti Saggitarium transitum"  these mean "PRAY PROTECT FROM MAGIC" and  "PRAY PROTECT FROM RANGED".
Obey his commands, and you will be rewarded with not dying. Simply pay attention to him or the chat box, whichever is easier, and pray correctly.


Important: after the Xarpus room (the red wall) but before the next room (the big wooden gate) there is a skeleton. 
Searching this skeleton will give you the Dawnbringer. It is a weapon crucial to the first phase of the next, and final boss, Verzik.

Verzik - Phase 1.

Upon entering the room Verzik is not aggressive. Stand (On the center tile) behind one of the pillars closest to her, and pray protect from magic just in case. Then, use Dawnbringer's special attack on her as many times as possible. A Ring of Vigour/Grand ring can be very effective for this, but is by no means necessary. If you are in a team, drop Dawnbringer so they may also use their special attacks. Anyone without the staff may attack her normally, with ranged or mage. Melee is not an option as standing anywhere except behind a pillar will quickly result in death.

Note: if all special attacks have been used and she is still in the first phase, someone should continue attacking with Dawnbringer. It is VERY effective in the first phase.

additional note: if your pillar breaks, simply move to a new one, preferably before (while it is in flight) or as soon as her attack lands on the pillar.
Verzik - Phase 2.

For this phase any style of attack may be used. She will simply target the square you are standing on with an attack, extremely similar to Vasa for those familiar with raids 1. Simply hit and move. She spawns additional minions during this phase. Kill them if you wish, but they can generally be ignored.

Note: the minions are colored spiders as seen before, but now any attack style may be used to kill them.
Verzik - final phase.
 For the final phase, follow the same prayer rules as Xarpus. She will start on ranged, just like him, and say the same exact phrases to indicate which prayer is correct. However, she will also follow you and try to melee attack you. Her melee attack hurts quite a bit, so try your best to stay away from her (melee not advised). If you have someone using magic for this phase, have them freeze her. 

Besides her melee attack, the only other thing to worry about during this phase is her final "mini-phase" of sorts.
when her health reaches 20%, a "Tornado" will spawn for each player in the room. Each will choose a specific player to follow. You only have to worry about your own tornado, and those of allies can be considered safe to run through if necessary. Simply move away from the tornado while following what I have already said above for this phase (avoid melee and pray correctly) and you'll be fine.



Once this phase is done, leave this room through where you entered, and you'll find yourself at the reward chest. Congratulations, and I hope this guide will help people. I personally didn't do TOB for the longest time because I didn't understand some mechanics, and when the lovely @Beedletaught me, i realized just how easy it was, and how dumb i was for not doing it earlier. So for anyone who was in my same shoes, you now have what I wished for back in those days. 

Edited June 21, 2020 by sarcothis
changes due to update

[CombatBorn 5]

Great job, lots of detail. I love it. Few tweaks I would make however,
There's quite a lot to read here, and people work better with visuals. Maybe try to reduce the amount of text and add some images? :}

[sarcothis 20]

19 hours ago, CombatBorn said:

Great job, lots of detail. I love it. Few tweaks I would make however,
There's quite a lot to read here, and people work better with visuals. Maybe try to reduce the amount of text and add some images? :}

Thanks! I removed a lot of unnecessary text to make it less of a wall, broke the paragraphs better, added more spacing in general to make it more digestible, and added colors for some clarity and to make it look a bit nicer.

Personally i find images to be a bit wasteful on space in some other guides on runex (like, does anyone need to know what bloat looks like?) but there definitely are some images that could be helpful. I'll try to add in more as time goes on.

[CombatBorn 5]

19 hours ago, sarcothis said:

Thanks! I removed a lot of unnecessary text to make it less of a wall, broke the paragraphs better, added more spacing in general to make it more digestible, and added colors for some clarity and to make it look a bit nicer.

Personally i find images to be a bit wasteful on space in some other guides on runex (like, does anyone need to know what bloat looks like?) but there definitely are some images that could be helpful. I'll try to add in more as time goes on.

You really do an incredible job at giving the juicy details which will help people a ton, but in my experience: images truly help emphasize important things. For example a great image to put in would be the skeleton corpse you must search before Verzik. It also catches people's attention so they'll actually spend the time to read it.

Edited June 1, 2020 by CombatBorn

[sarcothis 20]

On 6/1/2020 at 9:34 AM, CombatBorn said:

You really do an incredible job at giving the juicy details which will help people a ton, but in my experience: images truly help emphasize important things. For example a great image to put in would be the skeleton corpse you must search before Verzik. It also catches people's attention so they'll actually spend the time to read it.

fair point! That definitely would be a helpful image to add. the next raid I do I'll grab a screenshot

Edit: If anyone is wondering "hey, he posted this comment a little while ago, where's the screenshot?" I swear to god guys, I tried, and I just cannot for the life of me figure out how to add images to the post. If anyone knows how, send help please.

Edited June 11, 2020 by sarcothis

[Lesbians 7]

Thanks for the guide ❤️