OSRS Ironman Slayer Guide 2026: Block List, Skip List, Unlock Order & Best Slayer Master

Slayer reward unlocks: the ironman order

The wiki's Ironman Guide, in short: prioritise blocking and skipping poor tasks over perks and extensions; unlock superior Slayer monsters, the Slayer helmet and Slayer ring crafting first; and if you use Ranged often, consider Broader Fletching early. Costs below are from the Slayer Rewards page as of October 2026, after the August 2025 price cuts.

Broader Fletching is worth more to an iron than to a main. The wiki notes that fletching broad bolts is a common ironman Fletching method, because unfinished broad bolts are sold in bulk by every Slayer master for coins, and you add your own feathers for 3 XP a bolt. The bolts themselves are what kill turoth and kurask.

Buy these with something other than Slayer points

• Herb sack: 750 Slayer points, or 250 Tithe Farm points from Farmer Gricoller. It needs 58 Herblore and holds 30 of each grimy herb. Since August 2025 some Slayer monsters that used to drop one or two noted herbs drop them unnoted so the sack can pick them up.
• Rune pouch: 750 Slayer points, or 150 telekinetic, 150 graveyard, 1,500 enchantment and 200 alchemist points at the Mage Training Arena, or a rune pouch note for 75 points from Justine at Last Man Standing. You can only own one. Our Magic guide covers the MTA route.
• Looting bag: 10 Slayer points, only useful for Wilderness tasks.

Leave these locked

Extensions worth taking

The Ironman Guide marks which of its recommended tasks to extend. An extension raises the amount at every master that assigns the task.

Smoke devils, dagannoth and blue dragons have no extension to buy. Don't extend anything on your block list.

The Slayer helmet

The helmet gives the black mask's 16.67% melee accuracy and damage bonus on task, and puts the earmuffs, facemask, nose peg and spiny helmet into one head slot. The training page says to prioritise it as soon as possible.

1. Black mask. Cave horrors on Mos Le'Harmless drop it at 1/512. They need 58 Slayer, Cabin Fever, a light source and a witchwood icon or Protect from Melee. They are only a weight-4 task at Duradel, so waiting for the task is slow; our walkthrough camps them at 58.
2. Malevolent Masquerade for 400 points at any master.
3. Combine the mask with the parts below at 55 Crafting, which is boostable. Everything except the mask comes from the Slayer Equipment shop. If you already own a helmet when you finish A Porcine of Interest, the goggles are added for you.
4. Imbue for a further 15% Ranged and Magic accuracy and damage: 1,250,000 Nightmare Zone points (625,000 with the hard Combat Achievements), 500 Soul Wars Zeal Tokens, or a scroll of imbuing. Both Nightmare Zone and Soul Wars are on the wiki's list of safe deaths for hardcore ironmen.

Slayer helmet parts

1

Black mask × 1 (Cave horrors, 1/512)

1

Earmuffs × 1

1

Facemask × 1

1

Nose peg × 1

1

Spiny helmet × 1

1

Enchanted gem × 1

1

Reinforced goggles × 1 (After A Porcine of Interest)

Combine at 55 Crafting (boostable) after Malevolent Masquerade. An eternal gem cannot replace the enchanted gem.

The bonus doesn't stack with a salve amulet on undead tasks. The salve's 20% beats the helmet's 16.67% on paper, but the wiki points out that a helmet plus a strong amulet such as torture usually out-damages salve plus a weaker helm.

Superior Slayer monsters

Bigger and Badder costs 50 points since August 2025 (it was 150). With it on, killing a monster on task has a 1/200 chance to spawn its superior version, 1/150 after the elite Combat Achievement rewards, and 10% more often in the Wilderness (1/180 base).

A superior gives about ten times its hitpoints in Slayer XP, three rolls on the normal monster's drop table, ten times the clue scroll chance, a guaranteed brimstone key on a Konar task, and a guaranteed dark totem piece in the Catacombs of Kourend. It also has its own unique tables: the imbued heart, the dust battlestaff and the mist battlestaff on one, and the eternal gem on the other. Superiors with a higher Slayer requirement roll those tables more often. The eternal gem turns your Slayer ring into one with unlimited teleports.

Most superiors are passive until you attack them, and they despawn after two minutes if you ignore them. You can toggle the unlock off and on without paying again.

Cannon and burst tasks for XP

The wiki's Ironman Guide says a dwarf multicannon is usually not worth it for iron Slayer because of the time it takes to make steel cannonballs, with the occasional exception of smoke devils. That is also why it says suqah and kalphite, decent tasks on a main, aren't worth doing on an iron: without a cannon they have no drops and mediocre XP.

Bursting is the ironman's fast XP. These are the Ironman Guide's own magic task entries:

Abyssal demons are on the Ironman Guide's list at about 52,000 an hour with Magic, but it calls maging them extremely expensive, and they are on the block list above. The wiki's notes on running the others:

• Greater nechryael: lure with darts, run round a corner to stack them, and Ice Barrage. Switch to Blood Barrage when the superior spawns or the death spawns hurt. Bank the rune items. If you are low on herb seeds, melee normal nechryael in the Slayer Tower for about 31,000 XP an hour instead.
• Smoke devils: lure around the western bone pile and barrage the eastern stack every five ticks. Luring with a shortbow beats making cannonballs unless you can hold 160,000 XP an hour or more, and a goading potion keeps them aggressive.
• Dagannoth: the wiki calls barraging them difficult and expensive, but fast once you have practised. Bring one or two stamina potions per task. With melee, pray and stand still.
• Defensive casting: use it on burst tasks unless you only want Magic levels, because it gives more XP overall.

Bursting a task costs thousands of chaos and death runes, which is why the list is built around monsters whose drops replace them. The Ironman Magic guide has the rune costs per cast, the shops that sell them and the Ancient Magicks unlock.

Boss tasks for ironmen

You can already kill these bosses on the matching normal task, with no Like a Boss unlock. The Ironman Guide lists them because their drops are ironman gear:

Konar complicates this, because the location counts too: the Abyssal Sire only counts if she sends you to the Abyss. The Ironman Guide's Cerberus tip is worth copying: keep her above 400 hitpoints for the first 56 seconds in Guthan's, then switch to your best gear, and you can usually skip the ghost phase that drains your prayer potions.

Like a Boss (200 points) lets Konar, Nieve, Duradel and Krystilia assign a boss directly. You pick 3 to 35 kills, up to 65 with Combat Achievement tiers, and get a 5,000 Slayer XP bonus on completion. Duradel weights boss tasks at 12, the others at 8. The Ironman Guide's verdict is mixed: some bosses are quick tasks, some are a slog, and it costs 200 points. The main Ironman Guide suggests unlocking it after Desert Treasure II, when you start learning endgame bosses for the medium and hard Combat Achievements. To stop boss tasks you have to toggle the unlock off, which refunds nothing. Assignable bosses now include the Maggot King (74 Slayer, The Blood Moon Rises) and the Shellbane gryphon (51 Slayer, Troubled Tortugans). See our Maggot King guide and the boss order.

What changed in 2025 and 2026

• 23 July 2025, Varlamore: The Final Dawn. Custodian stalkers (54 Slayer, Shadows of Custodia) became a task from Chaeldar and Nieve. They drop broken antlers for atlatl dart tips and, from the mature and elder variants, the antler guard.
• 27 August 2025, Summer Sweep Up Slayer. Per-master block lists and prices. Bigger and Badder 150 to 50, Ring Bling 300 to 150, Task Storage 1,000 to 500, Slug Salter and Reptile Freezer to 10. All six metal dragons merged into one task of 30 to 50, extendable to 150 to 200 with Pedal to the Metals, now 200 points. Mazchna to 6 points a task and Vannaka to 8. Some noted herb drops became unnoted for the herb sack. The granite hammer got a 30% golembane effect that works on gargoyles.
• 1 October 2025. Any master now cancels for free a task you can no longer complete because of quest or Slayer level requirements.
• 19 November 2025, Sailing. Aquanites (78 Slayer, 73 Sailing, Lured In for 80 points), gryphons (51 Slayer, 45 Sailing, Troubled Tortugans, Wings Spread for 80), frost dragons (87 Sailing) and lava strykewyrms in the Charred Dungeon (60 Sailing), which count as wyrms and drop dragon metal sheets at 1/45 on task instead of 1/115.
• 17 June 2026. Chance of Heavy Frost (100 points) raises frost dragon weight from 5 to 8 at Nieve and Duradel, and I see Dragons (100) extends them to 180 to 240.
• 30 June 2026, The Blood Moon Rises. Venators (74 Slayer) count for vampyre tasks, and the Maggot King became a boss task.
• 22 July 2026, Summer Sweep-Up Gear & PvM. Demonic gorillas no longer swap prayers until you have hit them at least four times and dealt at least 70 damage with one style.
• 29 July 2026, Wyrmscraig. Mortimer, the tenth master. Wyrmscraig Cavern has five wyrms you can cannon and three lava strykewyrms, and Konar can send you there for wyrms and trolls. Slayer rings teleport to the cavern after Fallen From Grace.

HCIM notes and Wilderness Slayer

Krystilia has no combat requirement, gives 25 points a task (the highest base rate of any master) and her monsters can drop Larran's keys for Larran's big chest. The Ironman Guide also points to the Wilderness Slayer Cave's higher drop rates, the looting bag, and blighted food, restores and rune sacks, which help an iron's supply problem. Changing one of her tasks at Turael only resets your Wilderness streak, which the wiki suggests for irons fishing for revenant tasks or Wilderness bosses for voidwaker pieces.

For a hardcore ironman, the risk is plain:

• Every Krystilia task is in the Wilderness, and only kills inside it count. PKers can attack you anywhere there, and she can assign monsters of any combat level regardless of yours.
• A Wilderness death is not a safe death. The wiki's list of HCIM safe deaths doesn't include it, so dying to a PKer or a monster there ends your hardcore status.
• A ring of life is only a partial safety net. It works up to level 30 Wilderness, but Tele Block stops it, and it won't save you from one hit that takes you from above 10% hitpoints to zero.
• Boss tasks can send you there too. With Like a Boss, Konar, Nieve and Duradel can all assign Wilderness bosses such as Callisto, Venenatis and Vet'ion. Konar does so even though her normal tasks never send you into the Wilderness. Skip them for 30 points or at Turael.

If you take Krystilia tasks anyway, follow the wiki's own rules: take nothing you can't afford to lose, turn on PK Skull Prevention so you can't be skull-tricked, and have 43 Prayer for protection prayers. Outside the Wilderness, the Ironman Guide's one HCIM Slayer tip is a ring of life on tasks where a disconnect could kill you. Our Hardcore Ironman guide covers the rest.

Suggested path

For efficient Slayer, the Ironman Guide recommends starting at 80 to 90 combat with reasonable gear, and these stats:

On melee: the Ironman Guide says to train only Strength once you have 75 Attack for Arclight and 70 Defence for Barrows armour, until you have an abyssal whip, unless you want to hit 100 combat sooner for Duradel.

Quests give a lot of Slayer XP for free. The wiki's quest table totals 191,348 XP. The big ones:

The training page's recommended quests for Slayer itself: Desert Treasure I for Ancient Magicks, Fairytale II for fairy rings, Animal Magnetism for Ava's device, Knight Waves Training Grounds for Piety, and Bear Your Soul for the soul bearer. Our quest order places them.

Related

• Ironman Magic guide for bursting runes, the rune pouch and Ancient Magicks.
• Wyrmscraig ironman guide for Mortimer and Fallen From Grace.
• Maggot King ironman guide for the newest boss task.
• Sailing guide for the levels behind aquanites, gryphons, frost dragons and strykewyrms.
• Fletching guide for broad bolts.
• Gear progression for where your Slayer drops fit.
• Boss order and the dry calculator for the bosses above.
• Herblore guide for the herbs and seeds your tasks drop.
• Hardcore Ironman guide for safe and unsafe deaths.
• The full ironman walkthrough for where Slayer fits in the account.