The Dragon Defender in OSRS is a massive equipment upgrade to your offensive melee combat stats, in the place of a shield. Many players use the defender for extended periods of time throughout their accounts, as it is near best in slot when it comes of melee stats.
It is second only to the Avernic Defender, which can be obtained from the second Raid, the Theater of Blood. Since this is a rare drop from an endgame activity, the Dragon Defender is much more commonly used.
In order to use the Dragon Defender, you need at least 60 Defence. However, there are several other requirements for the activities you get the defender from. In this guide, I’ll show you how to get to Dragon Defender in OSRS.
Armour Reanimation Station
You can get the Dragon Defender in OSRS by following a few simple steps. The first step is to gain access to the Warrior’s Guild, near Burthorpe, Catherby and Trollheim. This access requires your Attack and Strength levels to add up to 130 or more. Or, you will also be let in if you have 99 in one of the two skills.
Once you have gotten into the Warrior’s Guild, you need to farm the Warrior’s Guild tokens. There are several minigames throughout the guild that reward you with tokens, however, the one I recommend is the Armour Reanimation Station.
These machines will reanimate armour sets you bring it into NPCs you can then fight. It will take bronze through rune full helms, platebodies, and platelegs, and the strength of the NPC depends on the tier of armour reanimated.
For example, a bronze reanimiation would be level eleven and have ten HP. In comparison, a rune reanimation will have a 138 combat level and 120 HP. Of course, the amounts of tokens rewarded also depends on the strength of the reanimation. Bronze will give five tokens each, while rune will give forty tokens each.
It is also important to note that you will not lose the armour sets you reanimate. The items will simply drop whenever you kill the reanimation, and if the NPC despawns from taking too long, you can talk to Shanomi, the nearby (non-enemy) NPC, for the armour pieces back.
Black Armour
I would recommend getting the Dragon Defender as early into an account as possible, so your combat stats when doing this probably are not that high. For this reason, it’s most time-efficient to reanimate black armour pieces.
There are a few reasons to use black armour for the reanimation minigame. First, at the bare minimum 65 Attack and 65 Strength, it will take a long time to kill adamant or rune reanimations. Second, the black armour sets have the same token to HP ratio as the rune armour sets.
Fighting Cyclops
Once you have enough tokens from the reanimation minigame, it’s time to move on to the next step in getting to Dragon Defender in OSRS. I cannot give you an exact number of tokens, since they only provide you time with the monsters who drop the defenders.
I would recommend getting to 500 or 1,000 tokens. WIth these tokens in your inventory, head up to the top floor of the Warrior’s Guild. Your tokens are needed to enter the room with the Cyclopses, who drop the defenders at a rate of 1 in 50.
You need at least 100 tokens in your inventory to enter the Cyclops room, but only ten will be taken on entry. Every minute you spend in the cyclops room, ten tokens will be deducted from your inventory.
Once you are in the cyclops room, simply kill the cyclopses until they drop the bronze defender. Note they are immune to Ranged and Magic, so you MUST use melee to fight them. You need to work your way through the tiers of defenders, from bronze to rune.
Each time you get a defender, you need to exit the room and show it to Kamfreena, the NPC outside the doors. Doing this enables the next tier of defender to drop. Simply repeat this process until you get the rune defender, and return to reanimating if you run out of tokens.
Fighting More Cyclops
The next step in getting to Dragon Defender in OSRS becomes accessible once you have the rune defender. You need to move to the basement of the Warrior’s Guild at this point, through a trap door near the food shop exit.
In the basement, there are more powerful cyclopses, and the mechanics of entering the room remain the same: you need at least 100 tokens in your inventory, ten deducted on entry, and ten more deducted every minute.
You also need to show your rune defender to Lorelai, the nearby NPC. However, once you have shown it to her once, you do not need to bring it in your inventory anymore. The cyclopses in the basement are level 106 and drop the Dragon Defender at a rate of 1 in 100.
It is also important to note that having 99 Attack and the corresponding skillcape equipped will allow you to stay in either cyclops room for free, as long as the skillcape remains equipped. The Dragon Defender will seriously help with this grind, though.
Final Thoughts
Getting to Dragon Defender in OSRS can be done in several simple steps. First, you need your Attack and Strength skills to add up to 130, or have 99 in either skill. Then, you need to farm Warrior’s Guild tokens from the various minigames.
Once you have determined that you have enough tokens, you can go to the top floor of the Guild and fight cyclopses for the bronze through rune defenders. With the rune defender, you can then go into the basement and fight more powerful cyclopses for the Dragon Defender.
