Life leech
Life leech is a utility effect that can turn a percentage of damage dealt into Hitpoints restoration. Life leech can occur actively through some special attacks or more passively through chance on hit effects. This effect is often sought by advanced players to increase the margin of error during harder content, or increase sustainability on longer outings. Some powerful monsters possess methods to leech health from players in return.
Not all sources of life leech are equal and each method may have unique limitations. For example onyx bolts (e) cannot trigger when facing undead monsters and the Saradomin godsword can restore health when fighting some enemies which are completely immune to the sword's damage like a kurask.
Sources of life leech often share a similar graphical style, a visible upwards flourish above the target when triggered in combat. This makes them easy to spot compared to attacks that do not trigger the effect.
The following methods can provide a percentage of damage dealt as hitpoint restoration.
Sources
| Item | Name | Type | Leech % | Method |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
Guthan's warspear | Passive | 25% | Equipping a full Guthan's set grants a 25% chance to heal for 100% of damage dealt. Additionally, with an amulet of the damned equipped, the leech effect allows for over-healing Hitpoints up to 10 above the current maximum. |
 |
Guthan's helm | |||
 |
Guthan's platebody | |||
 |
Guthan's chainskirt | |||
 |
Blood Rush | Passive | 25% | Blood spells heal for 25% of damage dealt. An ancient sceptre increases this by 2.5%. Each piece of Bloodbark armour increases it by 2% for a total of 10% with a full set. A blood ancient sceptre allows for over-healing Hitpoints up to 10% above the current maximum. |
 |
Blood Burst | |||
 |
Blood Blitz | |||
 |
Blood Barrage | |||
 |
Sanguinesti staff | Passive | 8.33% | The built in spell has a 1/6 (~16.6%) chance to heal for 50% of damage dealt. |
 |
Amulet of blood fury | Passive | 6% | Melee attacks while wearing this amulet have a 20% chance to heal for 30% of the damage dealt. |
 |
Onyx bolts (e) | Passive | 2.75% | Hits with these bolts have a 11% chance (12.1% with completion of the Hard Kandarin Diary) to heal for 25% of damage dealt. |
 |
Onyx dragon bolts (e) | |||
 |
Toxic blowpipe | Special | 50% | Heals for 50% of damage dealt. |
 |
Saradomin godsword | Special | 50% | Heals for 50% of damage dealt, always restoring a minimum of 10 Hitpoints. (Also restores 25% of damage as prayer points) |
 |
Ancient godsword | Special | 100% | Marks a target. If the target fails to move far enough away within 8 ticks (4.8 seconds) then 25 damage is dealt, and the player is healed for 15% of the target's hitpoints level, up to a cap. |
Cost[edit | edit source]
Passive life leech methods are often prohibitively expensive, each having an associated cost-per-hour for continual use. These methods can replace food entirely, and tend to be reserved for content that generates profit at a higher rate than this cost.
| Source | Name | Cost Per Hour |
|---|---|---|
|
|
Guthan the Infested's equipment | [a] 22,000 |
|
Blood Rush | 1,027,200 |
|
Blood Burst | 1,627,200 |
|
Blood Blitz | 1,848,000 |
|
Blood Barrage | 2,502,000 |
|
Sanguinesti staff | 1,332,000 |
|
Amulet of blood fury | 2,013,839 |
|
Onyx bolts (e) | [a] 2,620,800 |
Special Attacks[edit | edit source]
Life leech from the Saradomin godsword or Ancient godsword does not have a per-use gold cost. However restoration attempts are limited by the player's special attack energy pool. These special attacks can miss or hit for low amounts of damage and should be considered supplementary, instead of an outright replacement for food.
Special attack energy naturally recharges at the rate of 10% every 30 seconds, allowing one restoration from a godsword every 150 seconds (2.5 minutes) of recharge. The Lightbearer ring doubles natural energy regeneration speed, reducing it to 75 seconds (1.25 minutes) of recharge between special attacks. For this reason Lightbearer is strongly recommended to double the potential leech from these weapons.
On a successful hit, the Saradomin godsword guarantees a minimum of 10 health restored, even if dealing less than 20 damage. The following table is a rough estimate of how many hitpoints per minute may be restored with this method.
| Hitpoints per minute | - | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Source | Name | minimum hit | potential |
|
|
Saradomin godsword | 4 | 10+ |
+
|
Saradomin godsword + Lightbearer | 8 | 20+ |
On a successful hit, the Ancient godsword heals for 15% of the target's maximum hitpoints. The following table is a rough estimate of how many hitpoints per minute may be restored with this method.
| Hitpoints per minute | - | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Source | Name | Target with 100 max HP | Target with 250+ max HP |
|
|
Ancient godsword | 4 | 10 |
| +
|
Ancient Godsword + Lightbearer | 8 | 20 |
NPCs with Life Leech[edit | edit source]
Some monsters have a life leech mechanic that a player may have to deal with uniquely during a fight. This usually displayed as a 
with the amount healed above the monster's head but should not be confused with other healing effects that use the same graphic.
- Corporeal Beast - When the smaller magic projectile successfully hits, it will heal itself a small amount.
- Dark energy core - Leeches up to 13 health per player of all players adjacent and heals the Beast by the same amount.
- Guthan the infested - heals the same way his armour set does.
- Nex and Cruor - Using blood spells during the third phase, also Soul Split for the latter in the final phase.
- Rune dragon - Occasionally uses the onyx bolt special effect, where it heals itself 100% of the damage dealt.
- Sarachnis - Leeches 10 health when successfully hitting a player with an attack.
- Vorkath - Vorkath's acid pools leech health from players to himself, up to 10 per tick.
- Zebak - Zebak's blood clouds will leech health every tick a player stands next to one, as well with certain invocations Zebak gains access to blood magic spells.
- Phantom Muspah - Heals if the player is caught in a spike or when its Soul Split is active in the shielded phase.
- Vardorvis - Auto-attacks heal Vardorvis for 50% of the damage dealt.
Exceptions[edit | edit source]
There are some instances in which players cannot leech health from certain enemies or bosses:
- Zebak - Has immunity to Blood spells and other sources with the life-leech tag.[1]
- Tumeken's Warden and Elidinis' Warden cannot be healed off of blood spells.
- The wights fought during the final act of Desert Treasure II - The Fallen Empire are unaffected by life-leeching effects.[2]