Nightmare Zone is a minigame where players enter a dream to fight bosses they have defeated in previous quests. Several players play this minigame mainly to train their combat or to get Nightmare zone points required to imbue several items.

Requirements to Participate In the Nightmare Zone

• The player must have completed at least 5 of the following quests:

 The Ascent of Arceuus, Contact!, The Corsair Curse, The Depths of Despair, Desert Treasure I, Dragon Slayer I, Dream Mentor, Fairytale I - Growing Pains, Family Crest, Fight Arena, The Fremennik Isles, Getting Ahead, The Grand Tree, The Great Brain Robbery, Grim Tales, Haunted Mine, Holy Grail, Horror from the Deep, In Search of the Myreque, Legends' Quest, Lost City, Lunar Diplomacy, Monkey Madness I, Mountain Daughter, My Arm's Big Adventure, One Small Favour, Recipe for Disaster, Roving Elves, Shadow of the Storm, Shilo Village, Song of the Elves, Tale of the Righteous, Tree Gnome Village, Troll Romance, Troll Stronghold, Vampyre Slayer, What Lies Below or Witch's House.  

However, players who have completed only 5 of these quests will have more difficulty participating in the Nightmare zone when compared with players with more quests completed. Some quests in the list above are highlighted in bold, the more of those quests you complete, the better the XP and points you will get.

• At least 26,000 coins should be deposited in the coffer, or 16,000 coins if the player has obtained the quest cape.

How to get Nightmare Zone

The Nightmare Zone minigame is located north-west of Yanille Bank and is run by Dominic Onion, a mage from Lunar Isle. 

• Grouping teleport: the fastest way to get the Nightmare Zone

• Watchtower Teleport or Watchtower teleport tablet: This requires Watchtower quest to use

• POH in Yanille: Players can use a teleport to house or a teleport to house tablet to POH if their house is in Yanille or by using a scroll of redirection on a teleport to house tablet to make a Yanille teleport.

• Fairy ring code CIS or CIQ

• Ring of dueling: teleport to Castle wars

• Spirit tree: teleport to tree gnome village

• Ardougne cloak 1 to the Ardougne Monastery

Useful items

Absorption

Drinking an absorption causes the next 50 damage on the player to be absorbed, preventing any reduction in the player’s hitpoints. It acts as a separate hitpoints which needs to be exhausted before the player’s hitpoint will be affected by damage. An absorption has 4 doses, each dose will heal 50 damage, up to a maximum of 1,000 damage while in Nightmare Zone. They can be bought from the Dom Onion’s Reward Shop for 1,000 points per dose and can only be used in the Nightmare Zone.

Overload

An overload potion has 4 doses which can reduce a player’s hitpoint, dealing 10 damage at a time up until 50, and in exchange, raise their attack, strength, defence, ranged, and magic levels by 5-19 (5 + 15% of the player’s level, rounded down) for 5 minutes. These boosts are reapplied every 15 seconds until the 5-minute duration ends. At the end of the 5-minute duration, the player’s hitpoint will be restored by 50.

Players cannot drink an overload if they have less than 51 hitpoints. If the player reduces their hitpoint (through dwarven cake or locator orb) while the overload damages them, and it gets to a point where their hitpoint is less than the damage from the overload, it will kill them.

Rock Cake

Rock cake is used in the Freeing the Mountain part of the Recipe for Disaster series. It is obtained during the quest, and subsequent dwarven cakes can be purchased from Rohak for 100 coins. Players in the Nightmare zone popularly use it to reduce their hitpoint by guzzling or eating it.  Eating the Rock cake depletes 1 hitpoint while guzzling it depletes 10% of the player’s current hitpoints, rounded down, +1. This means it will deplete 1 HP if the player’s hitpoint is at 2 but guzzling at 1hp will cause only 0 damage.

Locator Orb

The locator is an item obtained during the Dragon Slayer II. Each use of this orb will damage the player by 10 until the player has 1 HP. Similar to the dwarven cake, it cannot kill the player. It is a better alternative to Dwarven Cake for the Nightmare zone, as it reduces a player’s hitpoints directly to 1 HP from 10, but players need to guzzle repeatedly with the Dwarven Cake to get 1 HP from 10 HP.

Using the Overload, Absorption, and Dwarven cake/locator orb in the Nightmare Zone

One of the reasons why NMZ is so popular is because of the ability for players to use absorption and overload. A player can only take damage relative to their hitpoint. For example, If a player with 1 HP drinks a dose of absorption, the player will take a maximum of 1 damage every time a monster hits successfully. A dose of absorption will absorb this damage up to 50 times, more doses will absorb more damage, up to a maximum of 1000 times if the player maintains 1 HP by guzzling dwarven cake. Players should first use the overload to reduce their hitpoint while getting the boosts from it, then use the dwarven cake/locator to get it to 1 HP

Letting your hitpoint above 1 will increase the maximum damage, and you would have to drink more absorption, it is best to maintain 1 HP by using a locator orb or guzzling the dwarven cake. This will allow you to stay longer in your dreams and save costs.

Gear Setups for Nightmare Zone

Melee Gear setup

Head slot: Dharok’s helm

Neck slot: Amulet of torture

Cape slot: Infernal cape

Body slot: Dharok’s platebody

Leg slot: Dharok’s platelegs

Weapon slot: Dharok’s greataxe

Ammo slot: Rada’s blessing 4

Glove slot: Barrows gloves

Boot slot: Primordial boots

Ring slot: Berserker ring (i)

Ranged Gear setup

Head slot: Void ranger helm

Neck slot: Necklace of anguish

Cape slot: Ava’s assembler

Body slot: Void knight top

Leg slot: Void knight robe

Weapon slot: toxic blowpipe

Ammo slot:  Rada’s blessing

Glove slot: Void knight gloves

Boot slot: Pegasian boots

Ring slot: Archers ring (i)

Power Ups

Power ups can give players temporary useful abilities when activated/clicked. They spawn randomly in the arena and will disappear after 45 seconds to 1 minute if they are not activated:

Recurrent damage

When activated, it adds additional damage which is 3/4 of the initial damage. For instance, if the player hits 20, it will deal an extra 15 damage. This additional damage does not give XP. Recurrent damage lasts 45 seconds before it disappears if not activated.

Zapper

This damages close-by monsters over time at a max hit of 8. It lasts for 1 minute before it disappears if not activated.

Power surge

This fills the player’s special attack bar and regenerates it by 20% every tick. It lasts for 45 seconds before it disappears if not activated. You should spam-click your special attack after activating this power-up

Ultimate force

When activated, it instantly kills all the bosses present in the arena, but points are not rewarded for the deaths of those bosses. Those kills will count towards a slayer task, and slayer XP will be awarded to the player as long as they have dealt at least 1 damage to the assigned monster. Also, the bosses killed will drop their 100% drop if the player has dealt at least 1 damage to them. This power up is particularly useful to get rid of unwanted bosses in the arena, like Damis

How to play the Nightmare Zone

Players must deposit coins into Dominic’s coffer to play the Nightmare Zone. Only multiples of 1000 coins can be deposited into the coffer, up to a maximum of 262,143,000 coins, and they would be deducted based on the mode of the Nightmare zone selected by the player.

Nightmare Zone Modes

The Nightmare Zone has three modes: practice, endurance, and rumble. Players can speak to Dominic outside to select the mode they want to participate in. Each of those modes has a normal and hard difficulty. In the normal difficulty, all bosses have the same stats as in their respective quests. In the hard difficulty, the bosses have increased hitpoints, attack, strength, magic, and ranged levels but their defence and defensive bonuses remain the same.

Practice

In practice mode, Players can select only one boss to fight until either of them dies. Players would not gain any XP or Nightmare zone points from this mode, and it cannot be used to complete Slayer tasks. As the name sounds, it is for players who want to try out a previous quest boss to learn a new technique, or to improve PVM skills. Players can also get the drops from the boss they defeat. It is free in both normal and hard mode.

Endurance

When a player selects practice mode, they would fight with every boss from the quests they have completed. The fight would occur sequentially until the player dies or defeats all bosses they have unlocked, earning points for each defeated boss. Normal endurance mode costs 1,000 coins and the hard endurance mode costs 5,000 coins

Rumble

Rumble mode is the most popular NMZ mode. It allows a player or a group of 5 players to fight multiple bosses simultaneously.  These bosses will spawn in a random order with duplicates, and players can choose the ones they fight in the customizable mode. Players will be rewarded with nightmare zone points and combat XP when fighting a boss In this mode

There are two rumble modes; the standard and customizable mode. In the standard rumble mode, all unlocked bosses will spawn during a dream while in the customizable rumble, players can select the bosses they want to fight before entering a dream, with a minimum of 5 bosses. If participating in a dream with other players, all players involved must have the required coins in the coffer and all be within the enclosure. Players who leave the enclosure will be automatically removed from the group.

This mode is quite useful for players who have completed fewer quests, as they can join other players who have completed more quests and get access to bosses they otherwise won’t be able to fight in the Nightmare Zone.

Note that, there is an 83.3% point penalty to all kills if the Dream Mentor bosses are enabled but the Desert Treasure I bosses are disabled. Normal rumble mode costs 2,000 coins and the hard rumble mode costs 6,000 coins

Normal custom rumble costs 22,000 coins, while the hard custom rumble costs 26,000

Strategy for Nightmare Zone training

Players have to follow a different strategy if they are trying to get the most points or XP from the nightmare zone.

Strategy for more XP in the Nightmare Zone

First off, set up your inventory as follows;

• 6-9 overload potions

• Locator orb or absorption

• Absorption: the rest of the inventory should be filled with absorption