In the interest of full disclosure, I am not an old school RuneScape player. However, I do enthusiastically enjoy the paranormal exploits of RuneScape players. Often, to understand such feats, one must scour the wiki to understand the mind-boggling system tricks. Not this time.

This nail-biting challenge embarked upon by YouTuber Settled is so tense that I'm putting a spoiler warning on the video below (Settled uploads videos of his challenge runs whether he's alive or dead). It also rests on a simple game of rock-paper-scissors by game prayer combat skills.

Here are the details of the stakes: In “Nightmare Mode,” Settled dies with a single blow. If he dies, he must delete his account. He is a Challenge Mode character who has spent over 370 hours (about 15 and a half days) preparing to fight this ordeal.

To avoid damage, Settle must use three prayers: protect from range, protect from melee attacks, and protect from magic. Each spends a prayer point every 3 seconds and provides 100% protection from each type of damage.

The fire cape he is after can be obtained at the TzHaar Fight Cave. To get it, one must withstand 63 waves of enemies. Due to the prayer system, all damage is technically avoidable. However, each NPC in the cave uses a different attack method, dealing ranged, magical, and melee damage.

What you, the reader, will witness is perhaps the most expensive rock-paper-scissors match in the history of the game.

Damage is the name of the game here: you need to kill the assailant as quickly as possible in order to deal with him. Settled has over 154 ranged attacks and a small handful of defenses. To maintain his buffs, he stocks 27 potions that restore prayer points.

For information, Settled compiles all 63 waves into a spreadsheet and enters them at specific times to ensure the spawn rotation is correct.

Win or lose, the final run, which takes nearly two hours with unedited video, is a complete cheek-turner. Settlers must use both “Tetris stacking” and “corner trapping”. It's a technique that involves angling the monsters' attack paths at different angles to each other and trapping them in the terrain. If you don't want to be spoiled, this would be an excellent time to watch the video.

In the first run, the aforementioned level-22 bat got a little too close for comfort and Settled had to bail out, but in the second run everything went smoothly and he faced off against TzTok-Jad, RuneScape's “Sun Tzu,” who, like his foe in the super-special bottleneck Despite all the negotiations that are driving him, there is one very frightening thing about this boss.

Not only does this ferocious boss use both ranged and magical attacks, but the OSRS wiki includes this shocking detail: “Prayer switching must be done during TzTok-Jad's footwork animation. Switching while a projectile has already been released, even if the projectile has not yet hit you, will be too late.” Well, that's good.

Nevertheless, Mudlad gets it done. He threads the needle, relegates TzTok-Jad's healer to a useless lump, secures him in a corner with his own allies, and keeps his cool until the beast falls.

Settold is well within his rights to hang up his cloak and retire his nightmare account to a nice farm in the north, but as stated in the video, this is somehow only “phase one” of his master plan: “Honestly, there's less than a 10% chance of this happening. Well, OSRS players have always been lucky before. Never say what the odds are.