OSRS The Phantom Boss: First Impressions
The Phantom Muspah boss was introduced in Old School RuneScape on January 11th, together with the Secrets of the North quest. To gain access to the boss, you will need to complete the Secrets of the North quest, which is a master-level quest in that you’ll need 69 Agility, 64 Thieving, and 56 Hunter to start. You’ll also need to have completed Making friends with My arms, Devious Minds, Hazel cult quests, and The General’s Shadow miniquest to start it. The recommended combat level to complete the quest is 85.
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What to Expect
During the quest, you will encounter the boss for the first time in the form of the Strange Creature. However, this is a weaker version of the boss, so defeating it during the quest won’t speak volumes about how easy or hard you’ll find the boss after the quest. Once you finish the quest, you can repeat the boss fight as often as you want in an instance, but you will face a stronger form of the strange creature called the Phantom Muspah.
To get to the Phantom boss, you will need an Icy Basalt teleport, which you can incorporate in your player-owned house either in the Portal Nexus or Portal Chamber. Unlike most other teleports you can add here, there’s no Magic level requirement for this one.
Once you reach Weiss, go through the shortcut near the herb plots, then move east, sneak through the fence, and climb down. Go through the first door and then move north, as the rubble blocking that passage during the quest is now removed. Use the same door as during the quest to enter the instance, and be prepared!
Weaker Than Vorkath?
Jagex initially stated on November 17th, 2022, that the Phantom Muspah would be mechanically more complex than Vorkath but with lower stats.
“Given it’s coming from a Master level quest, we’re not looking at Inferno level of difficulty! We think a fair comparison is a slightly more mechanical version of Vorkath but with lower stats. You might have to focus a little more, but you’ll be able to shred through the boss much easier than you can against the beasty blue boi.”
However, this is a somewhat questionable statement. From a mechanical perspective, one could argue that given that the Phantom Muspah is moving, but Vorkath is static and that you will need to swap prayers for its range form, he is more complex than Vorkath.
Stats
Phantom Muspah has a total HP is 850, which is greater than Vorkath, and on top of this, he also gains a shield that will prevent you from dealing damage for some time. Both Vorkath and Muspah can heal if you step on one of their special attack (the acid pools for Vorkath and the spikes plus the shield phase for Muspah).
Defense
Vorkath’s defense level is 214, and Muspah is close by with a 200 defense level. Both have the same Magic level of 150, so looking at the overall defensive stats, Vorkath is only significantly stronger regarding its Attack, Strength, and Range levels.
When it comes to defensive stats, Muspah has the following:
- +185 Stab defense
- +134 Slash defense
- +120 Crush defense
- +437 Magic defense
- +56 Ranged defense
On launch, the situation was so bad that the very next day (January 12th), Jagex proceeded to balance the boss so that players could more accurately freeze him. They did this by increasing the accuracy of the ice spells by 10 percent when the boss was not frozen. Still, the boss manages to drop this critical attack for the strategies developed against him until now.
Offense
The situation could be better regarding offensive stats, as Vorkath has higher offensive stats for its range attacks.
Here’s a look at the Phantom Muspah’s offensive stats:
- +393 Attack
- +11 Strenght
- +280 Magic
- +180 Magic Strenght
- +64 Ranged
- +6 Ranged Strength
Harder Than Expected
Based on what Jagex has promised, the Phantom boss feels much more challenging than anticipated. Even though the mechanics are complex, they’re not the ones that add up to the difficulty of the boss, but rather the high defensive and offensive stats. While the boss is pretty intuitive and not hard to learn, you’ll spend enough time kiting the boss and consume full inventories of prayer pots, food, and stamina.
