Trolls OSRS Guide: The Ultimate Gameplay Tutorial

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Troll in the dungeon! Now that I have your attention, let’s talk about trolls OSRS. I do not know anyone who goes out of their way to fight these for training, besides maybe the ice troll variant. However, they get assigned quite a lot as a slayer task. 

A lot of players have no idea how to handle these monsters. There are also quite a lot of trolls running around in OSRS. To kill each and single one of them effectively, you are going to need quite some in-game knowledge, or have a good guide on them. That is where this guide comes in! 

I am going to assume you are killing them on a slayer task and not for fun. I will discuss multiple subspecies of the trolls and their drops. I am not going to go in depth about the trolls you are going to meet on a quest. These are one off encounters and will need a dedicated guide. 

I am going to split this guide up into the different variants. Oftentimes there is very little overlap in how to kill them, the drops are very different, and the locations are too. 

Trolls in Old School – A Rich History

Trolls are really fun in Old School. It isn’t a monster you think about often, but they have some of the coolest lore and quests in the entire game. They are found all over the world of Runescape, but mainly live in what is known as the Troll Country.

The most famous city they have is Troll Heim, but you can also find them near Piscatoris and Weiss. Trolls are known to be roaming around fishing spots. The river troll is a famous and feared example of that. 

A cool fact about trolls is that they are named after the very first thing they eat. So they very often have strange and funny names. They are not very intelligent, but are still able to use weapons with quite some proficiency. 

Unlike humans and gnomes, there are subraces of trolls that are very different from one another. They can speak the human language – albeit broken – and have multiple quests based around them.

Regular Trolls

Where Can I Find Regular Trolls in OSRS

While I call them regular trolls, they are actually called mountain trolls. These are the most often killed when you get a slayer task. There are a bunch of locations where you can find them in OSRS.

Death Plateau – Here is where most people are going to encounter trolls for their very first time. The plateau itself is not a multi-combat area, however, the path going to it is quite a dangerous one as multiple trolls can attack you here. There are 15 trolls here, and it is very easy to reach when you teleport to Burthorpe. If you want to kill them, it is quite easy to do. 

Troll Stronghold – There are two spaces where you can fight the trolls in the troll stronghold, one is underground and the other is on the surface. I think the surface is a bit better. Despite only 8 spawns there, they are close enough to one another that you can use your cannon on them. Those below the surface are a little too spread out for my linking which makes it quite hard to kill them. It is a decent spot to kill them, but not the best in my opinion. If you do not have the right teleports, it can take quite a while to get there. 

South of Mount Quidamortem – This might be the best spot to kill them off very quickly. You are able to cannon them there. It is a multi combat zone that is very seldom crowded. The Trolls are pretty close together, and you can spot them if you wish to. It is a bit far, even with the right teleports, however due to the ease of cannoning them there, it is the best spot to kill them easily. 

There are some other places where you can find these monsters. However, these just aren’t as good or as close as their three. That is why I advise you to just skip those places and pick one of these three. 

What Drops Are Worth Picking Up From Regular Trolls in Old School

You are not going to get very rich killing mountain trolls. There are quite a lot of bad drops and none really is anything special in my opinion. Here are some you can consider to pick up, and are going to make you a few coins but nothing special. 

Adamant warhammer – believe it or not, but this is their best weapon drop. You can pick it up and alch it. It will be worth about 2.3k when you do. Nothing good, but it might help you save some money on ammunition and potions. 

Nature rune – Another very mediocre drop. They drop about 7 at once which tends to add up if you have a big task. If you are an ironman definitely pick these up as nature runes are a very useful kind of rune in that game mode. 

Grimy ranarr weed – They drop ranarrs about one in a hundred. So you will not get very many on a trip. You should definitely pick them up as they are the most expensive drop you are going to get that is somewhat common. For Ironman accounts, these drops are amazing. The prayer 

Other herbs – there are a couple of other grimy herbs that you can pick up to add to your value per trip. These are avantoe, kwuarm, cadantine and lantadyme. Pick them up if you have the inventory space.

Ranarr seed – Trolls drop seeds quite often. One of the seeds they drop at a fair amount of 1 in 200 on average are the ranarr seeds. These are worth 46k each and very useful if you are an ironman. 

Snapdragon seed – They drop this only one in 1412 times on average. So don’t count on getting this 57 k drop very often. They are also very useful for Ironman, as this is where you can get your super restore potions from. 

Torstol seed – Just like the snapdragon seed, there is only a small chance of getting these. Only one in  7060 trolls drops a Torstol seed, on average. So you might never get one from them if you only kill them on a slayer task. 

Rare drop table – like a lot of monsters, the mountain troll has access to the rare drop table. The good drops on this list are, as the name suggests, rare. There is a one in a few thousands chance to get a dragon item. Do not go and kill them hoping you will get a dragon left half, you will very likely not get it, even after thousands of kills.

And that is about it! Despite being a fairly strong mid level monster, they are completely a waste of time if you want to increase your bank value. 

The Gear And Inventory You Should Bring When You Are Killing Regular Trolls in OSRS

If you are going to kill regular mountain trolls, a good idea is going to be to bring a cannon. You should bring at least a thousand cannon balls. Even if you are going to a single combat area, it could be useful to chip away at the health of the one you are attacking and to lure them to you to do it AFK. 

You should always kill mountain trolls with melee. They have a defense of +200 range and +200 magic. They are going to survive most of the ranging and  magic attacks you throw at them, so do not bother with that.

You have two options armor wise. Either you bring a prayer armor and prayer potions so you can protect from their melee attacks. The other option is to use the tankiest armor you have and get attack bonuses from your gloves, boots and amulet. 

Even when you are using prayer, you should bring some food. Some of the trolls use range attacks that are very accurate. If you do not bring some food like monkfish you will need to rebank often which will ruin your exp an hour.

If you have the money, bringing a Saradomin Godsword is going to help you quite a lot. The special attack will heal you 50% of the damage you deal, and you will get a prayer restoration of 25% of the damage you did. This will make your trip pretty easy. 

Ice Trolls

If you want to kill trolls, you will have a much better time than the ice trolls in my opinion. They are a bit better slayer exp with a cannon (about 52k an hour) and you actually get pretty decent drops most of the time. 

However, they are not as AFK as regular trolls. You are going to need to have a bit of food on you to survive and make sure your prayer does not drop.

Where Can I Find Ice Trolls in OSRS

The Ice Trolls that are worth killing are Jatizso and Neitiznot. The other trolls from the ice path for example, are much higher level, harder to reach, and have a much worse drop table than these. So go to these places. 

In those places you will find three kinds of Ice trolls. There are spots with quite some spawns. Fremerik island with 13 spawns has the most. The second-best one is the Ice troll caves, but this is a bit far away. 

You will find Ice troll males, females and runts here. Killing them is going to be more or less the same with minimal differences in drops and killing strategy. 

What Drops Are Worth Picking Up From Ice Trolls in Old School

The drops that Ice trolls have are a lot more fun to get than those of regular mountain trolls. You can actually make a decent amount of profit and make money cannoning them. Their exp per hour is also a little higher, so they are a very decent alternative to the mountain troll. Even if they are a bit further away and locked behind a couple of easy quests. 

Rune kite shield – The rune kite shield is dropped by all three ice trolls. It has a one in 64 chance of dropping, so those odds are pretty decent. You can either save them in your inventory and sell them in the GE or alch them. They will really add up and you can count on 2 to 3 of these on average per trip.

Granite Shield – This is the iconic drop of the ice troll and the reason ironman accounts go off to kill them. The odds of it dropping are pretty decent. You have a 1 in 128 chance. Meaning, on average you can count on getting one per trip on a slayer task. They are worth about the same as the rune kiteshield. The shield is pretty useful for tanking but very heavy. 

Rune Warhammer – Another decent rune drop is the rune warhammer. They drop these at the same rate as the granite shield. 1 in 128. So just like the shield, you will get one on a trip on average. You can alch these or sell them on the GE. You are going to get about 26k for them. 

Nature runes – They drop 4 to 12 nature runes quite often. So you do not really need to bring them, and just bring fire runes and you will be fine if you want to alch something. 

Grimy ranarr weed – In order to get a ranarr weed, you will have to kill 744 trolls on average, so they really aren’t a good source for this drop. If you get one, you should definitely pick it up. 

Ranarr seed – Ice Trolls do not drop seeds as often as mountain drops. One of the seeds they drop at a fair amount of 1 in 312 on average are the ranarr seeds. These are worth 46k each and very useful if you are an ironman. 

Snapdragon seed – They drop this only one in 2400 times on average. So don’t count on getting this 57 k drop very often. As the drop is even rarer for ice trolls than it is for mountain trolls. 

Torstol seed – Just like the snapdragon seed, there is only a small chance of getting these. Only one in 12000 trolls drops a torstol seed, on average, which is even worse than the regular mountain troll drop rate. So you might never get one from them if you only kill them on a slayer task. 

The Gear And Inventory You Should Bring When You Are Killing Ice Trolls in OSRS

There are two ways to kill these. The first option you have is using magic. Ice trolls are weak to magic, and using a decent spell like fire bolt or blast will kill them quite easily. It is possible to kill them at very low levels if you are going to use a safe spot. If you do them with magic, make sure you bring some food when you mess up the safe spot. 

The ice trolls can be killed with melee too. It is very useful to bring a cannon to kill them off a lot faster. I am not sure if you should wear prayer armor here. It might be better to get your tank legs out and a prayer boosting chestplate. The reason for this is that the female ice trolls that throw rocks at you hit very accurately and if you have a low defense of under 70 you are going to need a ton of food if you do not have a good defense bonus. 

Just tanking them with a high defense armor is a bad idea. The trolls hit high and they attack with multiple if you cannon them. They are also aggressive, so make sure you look out when running past them. 

Make sure that you bring enough food next to your prayer potions. You will definitely get hit a couple of times by the trolls. That is going to make it quite a pain if you do not have enough food on you and have to run all the way back to the bank multiple times. 

Just like regular mountain trolls, If you have the money, bringing a Saradomin Godsword is going to help you quite a lot. The special attack will heal you 50% of the damage you deal, and you will get a prayer restoration of 25% of the damage you did. Since ice trolls hit you pretty often, this will help you complete a full trip and maybe even have some food left at the end of the trip. 

Frequently asked questions about Trolls in Runescape

Question: Are trolls worth doing on slayer, and which trolls should I kill? 

Answer: Both for profit and experience, I think the ice trolls come out on top by quite a margin. They have a much better drop table, dropping items like rune warhammer, rune kiteshield and the iconic granite shield. Another thing is that they are a lot easier to cannon due to them being in multi combat. They are all quite close to each other, and thus you can get a lot of kills very quickly.
Besides making a decent profit, even when using a cannon, the slayer exp isn’t half bad either. You can count on about 50k slayer experience an hour. Which is very nice and will help you get some levels quite fast, as trolls can be assigned at the first slayer level since there is no specific requirement. 

Question: What are the best trolls to kill as a new player for money?

Answer: My preference clearly goes out to the ice trolls. As I mentioned in this guide, the regular trolls have some very bad drops. The average worth of a kill is under 1k. This is horrible and you will not make more than a 100k an hour if you kill about 130 of them an hour due to supply costs. If you are going to cannon regular trolls you will almost always lose money doing so. 
Ice trolls have a lot better drops like rune and these drops add up much better and will get you a profit even if you cannon. 
The only downsides for new players is that the ice trolls are locked behind some (easy) quests that you need to get out of the way first. Another downside is that they are in multi combat zones, so killing them with melee is going to be a very hard thing to do at the lower combat levels.
However, you can safely spot the ice trolls and they do not have the same insane defense against magic as mountain trolls. A good idea is to kill them off with some of your stronger fire spells. Even when using fire blast you will still make a decent amount of money on the drops and you will likely make a profit of about 100k an hour. 

Question: What weaknesses do trolls have?

Answer: Again, I am going to split this up into two. The regular trolls and the ice trolls have pretty different stats despite being of the same race and looking so much alike. 
The regular trolls are only weak to melee, their defense bonuses for those attacks are all 0. Their bonuses against range and mage are both plus 200. So you will not hit them very often with attacks based on those two skills. Melee will be your only option here. Despite a cannon being ranged based, it will hit pretty often, and I would still bring it if you have one and have the money needed for cannon balls. 
Ice trolls are weak to melee and magic. This gives you the option to safe spot them if you want to use magic. This is a good tactic if you are a low level or if you do not have the prayer level needed to pray melee. 
When you are killing ice trolls, I strongly advise you to bring a cannon. A cannon will help you kill these monsters very fast and easily. There are spawn points where about 5 to 6 of them spawn. If you do this that way you can get more than 200k in combat exp in melee and ranged combined. You will also get about 45 to 55k slayer exp an hour, depending on your stats and concentration while killing them.
So in short, the mountain trolls are weak to melee but a cannon still works. The ice trolls are weak to both melee, magic, and a cannon also works very well on them. 
 

Question: Is there a troll boss in old school Runescape? 

Answer: There isn’t a real boss like Zulrah, or the giant mole that you can kill over and over again for loot. Which is quite a shame, as trolls are one of the oldest monsters in Runescape and a troll boss would be a very cool idea with loads of interesting mechanics. There are however a lot of quests where you can encounter a troll that can be considered the troll boss. 
* Arrg – This is the strong troll you will have to defeat at the end of the Quest Troll Romance.
* Dad – Maybe the most famous troll in OSRS, you will have to fight him in Troll Stronghold Quest.
* Ice Troll King – This is the troll that you need to defeat to complete the Fremennik Isles Quest. 
* Kob – This is the strongest troll on this list, you will have to fight him during Monkey Madness II. 
* Troll Generals – These are some pretty strong trolls that you will encounter on the top floor in the Troll Stronghold. Do not underestimate them.
You can also kill Dad and Arrg in the Nightmare Zone once you have finished the Quests where you have to fight them. In the Nightmare Zone or the NMZ, there also is a hardcore option that makes them a whole lot stronger than their originals. That is the closest you will get to a troll boss in OSRS. Unfortunately, none of them drop anything useful. 

Conclusion: Killing the ice trolls is worth it, mountain trolls are not

As you see, there is quite a difference between these kinds of trolls. The ice trolls are a lot better to kill if you are looking to have a profitable and fun time. They have decent drops, they are in multi combat zones and you can break even when using a cannon. 

Mountain trolls are generally considered to be a waste of time in my book. It is a good idea to skip them completely and just do the ice trolls. They do not drop anything of value, are slower to kill, and are thus quite boring. The only thing that is good about them is that they are quite easy to reach, and you do not need to do a lot of quests to get to them. 

Final tip, whether you kill ice trolls or regular mountain trolls, always bring a couple of pieces of food so you do not get killed by the ranging trolls. There are banks nearby, but teleporting to one of the mountain troll or ice troll spots and walking there is going to be quite far. 

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