Know how to earn the highest amounts of XP or NMZ Points.
The Nightmare Zone is one of the many minigames of Old School RuneScape. The most succinct description would be a boss rush with various added mechanics. It can also be a source of OSRS gold, which will be mentioned in this article.
What is the Nightmare Zone?
It’s a minigame in Yanille, owned by Dominic. He didn’t want to call it the Nightmare Zone, but the locals have been doing so, and it stuck. He’s running this kind of business because of a dream of doing business in a great tower. His father laughed at his face when he mentioned it. It didn’t deter him from finding out what his dream meant, so he went off to study Magic, particularly the branches that related to oneiromancy.
After learning enough, he left the Lunar Isles to find out where he built the tower. However, since he hadn’t found that specific location nor had enough money to construct one, he started a business in Yanille. He’s selling dreams, though apparently, the locals didn’t take too well to it.
How to Unlock the Nightmare Zone
To start the minigame, you should have completed at least 5 of the following quests:
- The Ascent of Arceus
- 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 Favor
- 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
- Witch’s House
Though you only need 5 to open the minigame, doing as many as possible is recommended to maximize your point gain.
First, pay for the service by depositing OSRS gold in the coffer at the lobby’s entrance. You can only deposit and withdraw in increments of thousands, up to 262,143,000 coins. When you start a game, the fees will automatically deduct from your balance in the coffer. Beginning a game means drinking the dream potion. Once you have, you can’t refund your coins.
Drinking the potion will teleport you to a unique King Black Dragon Lair instance. You can leave it by drinking a Wake Potion on the north or south side of the arena or by dying. It’s a safe minigame, which means you don’t lose anything upon death, except if you’re in the Hardcore Group Ironman mode. In the latter, you’ll lose a life if you die here. Logging out will also make you exit the instance.
There are 3 game modes
- Practice – This mode is free and will give you a taste of the minigame. You won’t get points or XP from it, though.
- Endurance – Fight all the bosses you’ve unlocked in 1-on-1 battles. The game ends when you’ve defeated them all, you leave by drinking a Wake Potion, or you die.
- Rumble – Pits you against more than 1 boss at the same time. You can do this mode solo or with a group. Be warned that going with friends will increase the number of bosses in the arena. Solo players will only ever get up to 4. This has a customizable mode where you can choose which ones you’ll encounter in the game. This is also the only mode with power-ups.
Each one also has 2 difficulties: Normal and Hard. Normal mode does not modify the bosses’ stats; you’ll fight them as they were encountered in the quest. However, you’ll gain fewer points when compared to Hard mode. The latter will have a spike in difficulty, but it’ll have a corresponding increase in reward point earnings. Some bosses lose some of their unique fight mechanics, and others gain one.
Except for Ice Gloves, any specific equipment you need to defeat the boss will be provided in the game. These will have the designation (nz) on them, meaning they’ll disappear when the game ends.
The cost varies depending on the game mode and the difficulty you choose.
| Normal | Hard | |
| Endurance | 1,000 | 5,000 |
| Rumble | 2,000 | 6,000 |
| Custom Rumble | 22,000 (12,000 with max QP) | 26,000 (16,000 with max QP) |
Rumble Mode Power-Ups
As mentioned, Rumble mode has unique power-ups to help you through the game. Their use will be detailed in the strategies portion, but here they are.
- Recurrent Damage (Red) – Adds a hit dealing 3/4ths of the initial damage. It won’t give experience. Lasts 45 seconds.
- Zapper (Purple) – A damage-over-time effect that affects nearby enemies. It has a max hit of 8 and will not damage bosses immune to regular attacks, such as Dagannoth Mother. It’s the longest-lasting power-up with a 1-minute duration.
- Power Surge (Yellow) – Fills your Special Attack Bar and regenerates 20% of it every tick. Like Recurrent Damage, it has a 45-second duration.
- Ultimate Force (White) – Kills all the bosses in the arena. Points will not be awarded for those deaths. However, it will count for Slayer tasks if the player has dealt at least one damage to them. Bosses will also only drop their guaranteed items if the same condition is met.
They will appear in the arena for a minute and disappear afterward if not picked up.
Nightmare Zone Strategies
Maximum Points
In the beginning, you’d want enough reward points to buy several doses of Absorption and Overdose potions. The best mode to get the most is Custom Rumble. The Nightmare Zone awards the currency based on how many bosses you have activated. With the maximum Quest Points, you can score tons of them for the potions and more besides.
For the most efficiency, fill your inventory with mostly Prayer Potions and pick only the melee bosses. This lets you keep up one protection prayer and limits how many times you have to switch. Once you get your Overload and Absorption potions, you can go for efficient point farming.
It works by using Overload Potions, Dwarven Rock Cakes, and/or Locator Orbs to whittle your HP down to 1. Afterward, you use Absorption to mitigate the damage you take. Each dose absorbs 50 points of damage, and you can drink more to stack up the effects to 1,000.
Since the usage counts per point of damage, if you have 1 HP, only 1 gets deducted from the stack each time. Remember to double-click your Rapid Heal Prayer every minute or so to reset the natural regeneration timer. Otherwise, you’ll run out of Absorption Potions faster than you planned to.
Though the Nightmare Zone awards points based on how many bosses are activated, there are a few you’d want to exclude. Some examples are:
- Corrupt Lizardman can hit through Absorption
- Elvarg has a stat drain
- Slagilith only gets damaged by a pickaxe (you’ll waste time picking one up and equipping it)
- Dagannoth Mother is immune to some damage types
- Agrith Naar can teleport you around the arena
- Tanglefoot can only be defeated with the Magic Secateurs (same deal as Slagilith)
- Glod drains Prayer
- Chronozon has blast spells
There are some more. Still, if you want to maximize rewards, you’ll keep those others because they give out many points. It’s worth the trouble dealing with them for the prize.