Nightmare Zone

This is a safe activity in an instanced area. If you die here, you will not lose any of your items, including those stored inside an Item Retrieval Service (deathbank). However, any items you drop manually on the ground will be lost. Warning: It is still dangerous for Hardcore group iron players.

This article has a strategy guide. All information on mechanics and strategy will be on this page.

The Nightmare Zone is a combat-based minigame located north-west of Yanille bank. Players enter a "dream" to take on bosses they have previously defeated during completed quests. It is run by Dominic Onion, a mage from Lunar Isle. The dreams that make up this minigame take place in an instance of the King Black Dragon Lair.

Dominic did not plan on calling his business the Nightmare Zone; it was what the local folk have been calling it. The plan came to him in a vivid dream when he was younger where he saw himself running a successful business from a great structure. He told his father about it, who laughed and said he should be a banker like his ancestors. He refused and wanted to find out what that dream meant, so he studied to find out more about Magic, particularly oneiromancy and dream interpretation. Once he had learned enough, he left Lunar Isle attempting to find the location where he built the huge tower. Since he had not found it or gathered enough money for its construction, he decided to set up a small business north of Yanille selling dreams to people.

• Teleport using Minigame Teleport, either through any spellbook or the Grouping interface, by selecting Nightmare Zone. (Only usable when the requirements for Nightmare Zone are met)
• Casting Watchtower Teleport or using a Watchtower teleport tablet and running east. Both require completion of Watchtower quest to use.
• Casting Teleport to House or using a Teleport to house tablet if your player-owned house is in Yanille, or using a scroll of redirection on a Teleport to house tablet to make a Yanille teleport.
• Using fairy ring code CLS and walking north-west or code CIQ and walking through Yanille.
• Using a ring of dueling to teleport to Castle Wars, then walking to Yanille.
• Using the Spirit tree to teleport to Tree Gnome Village and walking from there.
• Using the Ardougne cloak 1 to teleport to the Ardougne Monastery and walking south.
• Teleport using Minigame Teleport, either through any spellbook or the Grouping interface, by selecting Fishing Trawler and walking south-west.

To begin the minigame, at least five of the following quests must be completed:

Games are paid for by coins deposited into Dominic's coffer. They can only be deposited into and withdrawn from the coffer in multiples of 1000, up to a maximum of 262,143,000 coins.

Once a game mode is chosen, the player will agree to pay any applicable fees and Dominic will prepare the dream potion on a plinth in the centre of the lobby. Upon drinking the potion, an optional boss customization menu will appear, and after accepting the options the fee is deducted from the coffer and the player enters the Nightmare Zone arena. A dream can be cancelled prior to drinking the dream potion by speaking with Dominic which will not deduct money from the coffer.

The arena can be safely exited at any time by drinking one of the wake potions on the north or south sides of the arena. Another player's dream can be spectated by drinking the red spectator potion outside the lobby area and entering the name of the player. The dwarf multicannon cannot be placed in the arena.

Quest items previously required to kill bosses are not needed, except for ice gloves. For example, the Black Knight Titan will die without Excalibur, and items such as the magic secateurs (nz) are provided for Tanglefoot, a rune pickaxe (nz) for Slagilith, the anti-dragon shield (nz) for Elvarg, and runes for Chronozon or the Dagannoth mother. All items provided this way have (nz) at the end of their names, indicating that they will disappear when leaving the Nightmare Zone. Magic experience from casting spells by using (nz) runes is heavily reduced, but does not apply to experience gained from damage dealt. Players cannot cast most non-combat spells in the arena, the exceptions being Bones to Peaches, Bones to Bananas, and Monster Examine.

A bonecrusher can be used here as all bosses drop their bone-variation of drops, Tanglefoot drops leaves, Karamel drops Choc-ice, Dad drops Big bones, etc. Long bones and curved bones can also drop from monsters that normally drop them.

Warning: For Hardcore Group Ironman deaths are not safe in Nightmare Zone. To avoid losing a life, exit the arena by drinking one of the dream potions on the north or south side of the arena.

Note: Logging out while inside the arena ends the dream, returning the player to the Nightmare Zone lobby.

There are 3 modes in Nightmare Zone: practice, endurance, and rumble. Each mode has a 'Normal' and 'Hard' difficulty.

• In the normal difficulty, all quest bosses have the same stats they have in their respective quests, as well as some of the mechanics.
• In the hard difficulty, the bosses have increased Hitpoints, Attack, Strength, Magic, and Ranged levels where applicable. Their Defence and defensive bonuses remain unchanged, although there are a couple exceptions. Some bosses in the hard difficulty can only attack with Melee or lose some special fight mechanics, such as Ice Troll King and Jungle Demon. Some bosses gain extra mechanics, such as The Untouchable, which reflects 20% of any damage dealt.

The cost of each mode varies depending on type and difficulty:

In practice mode, a previously defeated boss can be selected to fight 1-on-1 until either the boss or player dies. Players do not gain any experience or Nightmare Zone points from defeating the boss, and the kill does not count for a Slayer assignment. Drops will be awarded upon defeat of the boss however, such as dragon bones from Elvarg.

Endurance mode is a 1-on-1 fight with every unlocked boss in waves until either the player dies or defeats all unlocked bosses, earning points for each boss defeated (see 'Points Awarded' in the bosses table below).

Beating every boss in normal endurance mode awards a total of 216,634 points and in hard endurance mode a total of 794,770.

Rumble mode allows a single player or group of up to 5 players to fight multiple bosses at the same time in a random order with duplicates. A solo player will only ever encounter a maximum of 4 bosses at once. Adding more players to the party increases the maximum bosses in the arena at one time. Killing a boss rewards points and causes another boss to spawn afterwards endlessly until the player dies or leaves.

A standard rumble uses all unlocked bosses. For a higher cost players can select a customisable rumble, which upon starting gives the option to toggle any unlocked boss on or off. However, disabling bosses reduces the number of points rewarded for each kill. There is an additional mechanic to this where a large 83.33% point penalty is applied to all kills if the Dream Mentor bosses are enabled but the Desert Treasure I bosses are disabled. To avoid this make sure to only enable the Dream Mentor bosses in tandem with Desert Treasure I's ones or to disable them completely.^[1][2]

If starting a rumble with a group, all players involved must have the required amount of coins in the coffer. Only bosses that all players involved have unlocked are accessible. Partying with another player who has completed more or fewer quests than you does not affect points gained.

To start a rumble, a player must first speak to Dominic, and if grouping up, invite other participating players within the enclosure. Leaving the enclosure automatically removes that player from the group. Once the hosting player drinks the Dream potion, players in the group will be prompted to either join the shared dream or leave the group.

The maximum number of points that can be gained in one hard rumble is 1,048,575 () points.

Players can be in the Nightmare Zone for 6 hours before being 6 hour logged.

In Rumble mode, there are power-ups that spawn in the arena randomly and giving the player that activates it a temporary advantage. Power-ups disappear after 1 minute if they are not activated.

• Recurrent damage adds an additional hit which deals 3/4 of the initial damage. For example, hitting a 35 will deal an extra 26 damage. The extra damage does not give experience. This power-up is red in colour and lasts 45 seconds.
• Zapper damages nearby monsters over time, and the attacks have a max hit of 8. The zapper does not damage bosses immune to normal attacks (such as the Dagannoth mother and Tanglefoot). The zapper can only kill Count Draynor if a player has hit him at least once (the hit does not have to do damage). This power-up is purple in colour and lasts 1 minute.
• Power surge fills the player's special attack bar and regenerates it by 20% per tick. This power-up is yellow in colour and lasts 45 seconds.
• Ultimate force instantly kills all the bosses present in the arena. These kills do not award any points. This power-up is white in colour.
  • These kills will, however, count towards a Slayer task (if applicable) and grant Slayer experience as long as the player dealt at least 1 damage to the assigned monster.
  • Additionally, any bosses killed with Ultimate Force will not drop their 100% drop unless the player has dealt at least 1 damage to them.

Some monsters within the Nightmare Zone provide Slayer experience when killed on task. While this offers a lot slower experience than training Slayer normally, it can be a decent low-effort option for some players.

In order to start an instance, five bosses must be selected. To maximise Slayer experience per hour, it is recommended to use other bosses that are easy and quick to kill such as Count Draynor, Trapped Soul, Sand Snake, and King Roald. The use of all power-ups is recommended, including Ultimate Force if at least one point of damage has been dealt to the Slayer task monster.

Slayer task	Monster	XP gained (hard mode)	Quest
Birds	Evil Chicken	120 (240)	Recipe for Disaster - Sir Amik Varze
Birds	Giant Roc	250 (255)	My Arm's Big Adventure
Black Demon	Black demon	157 (255)	The Grand Tree
Dagannoth	Dagannoth mother	126 (252)	Horror from the Deep
Green Dragon	Elvarg	80 (246)	Dragon Slayer I
Ice Warrior	Kamil	146 (312)	Desert Treasure I
Lizardman	Corrupt Lizardman	50 (150)	Tale of the Righteous
Scabarite	Giant Scarab	137 (280.5)	Contact!
Troll	Dad	126 (264)	Troll Stronghold
Troll	Arrg	150.5 (299.6)	Troll Romance
Troll	Ice Troll King	161 (287)	The Fremennik Isles
Vampyre	Count Draynor	35 (210)	Vampyre Slayer
Vampyre	Dessous	220 (299.6)	Desert Treasure I

All monsters that can be encountered within the Nightmare Zone are listed in the table below. The more quests the player has completed, the more monsters the player has access to. Many bosses provide increased experience per damage dealt, such as Dad, Moss Guardian, Arrg, and the Ice Troll King.

Point values increase based on the number of bosses included. The point values shown below are the maximum points that can be given, which assumes all quests have been completed and all bosses are enabled.

In a team, points are split between those who attacked the monster. The person who did the most damage will take a larger percentage of the maximum points from that monster. In Rumble mode, the only bosses that appear are those that all participating players have access to.

Headless Beast, Kamil, Elven traitor, Essyllt, and The Inadequacy are all immune to movement inhibitors from ice spells, bind, snare, and entangle.

Players can purchase various rewards and imbues from a chest near Dominic Onion. These can only be purchased using the reward points obtained inside the minigame. Players can have up to 2,147,483,647 points at once.

Resources include certain Herblore ingredients, elemental runes, and items that are only obtainable via the minigame, such as herb boxes and scrolls of redirection. Players can only buy up to 15 herb boxes per day.

Ironmen can only buy scrolls of redirection from this tab.

Item		Price sold at	GE price	GP per point
	Flax	75	2	0.03
	Bucket of sand	200	7	0.04
	Seaweed	200	5	0.03
	Compost potion(4)	5,000	2	0.00
	Air rune	25	5	0.20
	Water rune	25	5	0.20
	Earth rune	25	5	0.20
	Fire rune	25	5	0.20
	Rune essence	60	11	0.18
	Pure essence	70	2	0.03
	Herb box	9,500	6,437.54[a]	0.68
	Vial of water	145	6	0.04
	Scroll of redirection	775	N/A	N/A

Points earned in Nightmare Zone can be spent in the reward shop to imbue certain items. Imbuing an item provides extra bonuses and appends an (i) to the item name. Imbued items can be uncharged, which removes their bonuses and refunds 100% of the reward points it would cost to imbue the base item. Completing the Hard Combat Achievements tier reduces the cost of imbuing all items by 50%. Note that after claiming the rewards for the Hard Combat Achievements, the refunded points will be calculated over the current cost of imbuing an item, even if an item was imbued before completing the Hard Combat Achievements.

In order to get the "free" NMZ points, it is critical that you uncharge all imbued items before going to Ghommal to claim the rewards (you can however cross the point threshold for Hard Combat Achievements before). Once you claim the rewards, the 50% cost reduction is applied and then you should reimbue all the items. Uncharging all items returns 7,825,000 points of which 3,912,500 (utilizing the reduced cost perk of the Hard Combat Achievements) must be spent to reimbue all items. This nets you 3,912,500 points, or 50% of the original points spent. Spending these points on Herb boxes would yield 411 boxes for a value of 2,645,828.55.

As the number of refunded points is based on your current Combat Achievements rewards, this process can be repeated if your number of Combat Achievement points drops out of the Hard rewards due to new Easy, Medium, or Hard Combat Achievement tasks being released. Even in this case the number of points refunded doesn't decrease until again claiming the Hard Combat Achievement rewards from Ghommal.

Imbuing the Salve amulet or Salve amulet (e) at Nightmare Zone is an elite task for the Ardougne Diary.

Item		Imbued Bonuses	Points required
	Black mask (imbued)[a]	15% bonus to Magic and Ranged accuracy and damage on Slayer tasks. +0 Magic and Ranged attack bonuses instead of negative bonuses.	1,250,000
	Slayer helmet (imbued)	15% bonus to Magic and Ranged accuracy and damage on Slayer tasks. +3 Magic and Ranged attack bonuses instead of negative bonuses. +10 Magic defence bonus instead of a negative bonus.	1,250,000
	Salve amulet (imbued)[b]	15% bonus to Magic accuracy and damage against undead monsters. 1/6 (16.67%) bonus to Ranged accuracy and damage against undead monsters.	800,000
	Salve amulet (e) (imbued)[b]	20% bonus to Magic and Ranged accuracy and damage against undead monsters.	800,000
	Ring of suffering (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	725,000
	Ring of the gods (imbued)	Doubles the Prayer bonus and gives the effect of the holy wrench when equipped.	650,000[c]
	Berserker ring (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	650,000
	Warrior ring (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	650,000
	Archers ring (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	650,000
	Seers ring (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	650,000
	Tyrannical ring (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	650,000
	Treasonous ring (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	650,000
	Granite ring (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	500,000
Total			7,825,000[d]

Item		Imbued Bonuses	Points required
	Black mask (imbued)[a]	15% bonus to Magic and Ranged accuracy and damage on Slayer tasks. +0 Magic and Ranged attack bonuses instead of negative bonuses.	625,000
	Slayer helmet (imbued)	15% bonus to Magic and Ranged accuracy and damage on Slayer tasks. +3 Magic and Ranged attack bonuses instead of negative bonuses. +10 Magic defence bonus instead of a negative bonus.	625,000
	Salve amulet (imbued)[b]	15% bonus to Magic accuracy and damage against undead monsters. 1/6 (16.67%) bonus to Ranged accuracy and damage against undead monsters.	400,000
	Salve amulet (e) (imbued)[b]	20% bonus to Magic and Ranged accuracy and damage against undead monsters.	400,000
	Ring of suffering (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	362,500
	Ring of the gods (imbued)	Doubles the Prayer bonus and gives the effect of the holy wrench when equipped.	325,000[c]
	Berserker ring (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	325,000
	Warrior ring (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	325,000
	Archers ring (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	325,000
	Seers ring (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	325,000
	Tyrannical ring (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	325,000
	Treasonous ring (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	325,000
	Granite ring (imbued)	Doubles equipment bonuses.	250,000
Total			3,912,500[d]

Benefits include certain potions that can only be used within the minigame. The potions are sold by the dose and are automatically stored in the nearby barrels, with each barrel being able to hold up to 255 doses of each potion. Players can freely withdraw the desired number of doses of each potion before entering a dream, empty vials are not required. Upon death in a dream, any unused potions are not lost.

All Nightmare Zone potions (excluding overloads, due to the damage dealt) can be drunk extremely quickly and do not delay any hits. Like combo foods, 28 doses of absorption potion can be drunk at the speed of cleaning an inventory of herbs, by clicking on them one by one. This can also be done with food/other potions with Nightmare Zone potions, without delaying any hits.

Item		Points per dose	Effective cost[a]
	Super ranging (1)	250	169.41
	Super magic potion (1)	250	169.41
	Overload (1)	1,500	1,016.45
	Absorption (1)	1,000	677.64

The overall concept for the Nightmare Zone, derived from RuneScape 3's Dominion Tower minigame, was first mentioned on 19 April 2013 in the Developer's Blog for the game's third content poll, in a section detailing the development of future content and asking players to come up with some designs, keeping in mind the limitations of the team's development tools. One example the team gave was written as such:

The concept, well received by players, was later expanded in another Developer's Blog on 13 May 2013. The blog outlined a provisional list of quests with bosses that the player would be able to re-fight, alongside Endurance and Rumble modes. The rewards mentioned in this blog offered only consumable resources (ex. flax, essence, and herblore ingredients).

An updated blog was released on 5 June 2013, which added fees for entering a dream, a hard mode for both Endurance and Rumble modes, in addition to offering more rewards alongside the aforementioned consumable resources:

• Sets of degradeable tier 50 and 65 melee, ranged, or magic equipment. Charged with reward points, they would have had a random chance to restore health during combat.
• Teleport scrolls to runic altars
• Teleport scrolls to player-owned house portals

The minigame was put to a poll the next day in Old School feature poll 5 – Dom Onion Cave, and more..., passing with 77.4% of voters supporting the minigame's development, though all the offered rewards failed to pass. The poll also let players vote on the location and name of the minigame. The location with the most votes was Yanille (30.5%), while the name with the most votes was Nightmare Zone (25.2%).

The other locations, in order of popularity, were:

• Edgeville (24.8%)
• Varrock (15.75%)
• Seers' Village (11.8%)
• Falador (11.2%)
• East Ardougne (5.9%)

The other names, in order of popularity, were:

• Dom Onion's Cave (21.6%)
• DreamArena (21.2%)
• Dominic's Den (17.1%)
• Domain of Morpheus (14.8%)

With the Nightmare Zone's release on 5 September 2013, the reward shop only offered resources and potions used inside the minigame. After player feedback, more rewards were offered in a Developer's Blog on 13 September 2013, and were polled five days later in Old School feature poll 10: New Rewards.

The first set of rewards included using reward points to imbue certain rings and equipment:

• Imbued Fremennik rings would have their stats doubled.
• Imbued diamond rings would have a +5 Stab bonus, with +4 in all other Attack bonuses
• Imbued dragonstone rings would have +5 Attack and Defence bonuses
• Imbued onyx rings would have +6 Attack and Defence bonuses
• Imbued black masks would have their negative Attack bonuses removed, and would give a +15% accuracy in Ranged and Magic, and a +15% damage bonus in Ranged, alongside the mask's original bonuses.

All imbues, excluding the jewelled rings, passed the poll. The imbued black mask would later receive a +15% magic damage bonus in another poll, while imbuing crystal equipment was removed with the release of Song of the Elves, where their stats no longer degrade at all.

The second set of rewards included tradeable ingredients to create higher level potions.

• Super anti-fire - Requiring level 89 Herblore to make (and level 93 to create the barbarian mix version), the potion would provide complete immunity to regular dragonfire (and reduced effects for the King Black Dragon's dragonfire attacks) for an unspecified amount of time.
• Energy renewal - Requiring level 92 Herblore to make (and level 96 to create the barbarian mix version), the potion would fully restore run energy, and keep it at 100% for 30 seconds.
• Super prayer - Requiring level 94 Herblore to make (and level 98 to create the barbarian mix version), the potion would restore 4 more prayer points per dose than a normal prayer potion, with the added benefit of being able to restore above the player's maximum Prayer points.

All three failed the poll; the super antifire potion would later be released as part of Dragon Slayer II, and the stamina potion could be considered as a reworked energy renewal potion.

The quest point cape was offered to be trimmable upon completion of an Endurance dream alongside a small stat increase.

• Completing a normal Endurance dream would trim the cape blue, increasing the Defence bonuses from +9 to +11 and giving it a +2 Prayer bonus.
• Completing a hard Endurance dream would trim the cape red, giving it +1 in all Attack bonuses, in addition to the blue-trimmed cape's bonus increases. This would give the red-trimmed cape identical bonuses to a fire cape (excluding its +4 Strength bonus).

Both cape trims failed the poll. The quest point cape would later become trimmable on 5 March 2015, upon the completion of all Achievement Diaries.

Other rewards offered include:

• Herb boxes, which would provide ten rolls on the herb drop table. Though it passed a poll, the daily buy limit of 15 was not mentioned and was likely implemented as a balancing change.
• Scroll of redirection, which was offered once before as tradeable teleport scrolls to player-owned house portals and failed. The reworked scroll was made untradeable and would have to be used on teleport to house tablets instead, rather than being directly usable on its own.
• Cow mask, originally made as part of the Duke of Bridgelum random event, was offered as a cosmetic reward. Though it failed the poll, it was later given for free as part of birthday events alongside the full cow outfit.
• Additional resource rewards were offered to be purchasable, though only the vial of water passed the poll.
  • Goat horn dust
  • Limpwurt root
  • Mort myre fungus (upon completion of Nature Spirit)
  • Swamp tar
  • Unicorn horn dust
  • Vial of water
  • Wine of Zamorak

Each boss has a music track associated with it that will play when fighting it. In rumble mode, the music track played will be randomly selected from one of the four bosses in the arena. However, the Trapped Soul, Corsair Traitor, Witch's experiment, Tanglefoot, and Chronozon do not have their own individual tracks, and instead play from a separate shared list of tracks.

The Trapped Soul, Corsair Traitor, Witch's experiment, Tanglefoot, and Chronozon will play one of the following tracks when fought. Only the tracks on this list that have been previously unlocked by the player are played. As such, it is not possible to unlock any of these tracks through the Nightmare Zone.

• The Nightmare Zone was the first game update to introduce new content created specifically for Old School RuneScape. It reuses assets like the King Black Dragon Lair and various quest bosses because Jagex had extremely limited access to developer tools at the time.
  • There is a very small chance for a cow to appear inside a dream. This is an easter egg referencing how Jagex’s lack of a proper map editor at the time caused a cow to occasionally wander into the minigame’s starting area. ^[4]
• Dominic Onion is a play on "Dominion" as the minigame resembles the Dominion Tower in RuneScape 3.
• Trying to cast the Lunar spell Dream while in a dream within the Nightmare Zone yields the message: You cannot perform Inception here. Dreaming within this dream will inevitably activate your Kick (i.e. death)., as a reference to the 2010 sci-fi movie Inception.
• Trying to cast Low or High Level Alchemy while within the Nightmare Zone yields the message You shouldn't need more cash in here; there are no shops..