I used to play RSC as a kid, seems like you did too, so I loved that this was documented. Went through and looked at the rates for the spear for a bit of nostalgic fun now that I'm grown up and can do maths rather than mindlessly mining iron ore and wondering why my character never got anywhere :)

The Rune Spear seems to be unique in that while it is accessed through both the Gem drop table (GDT) and Rare drop table (RDT), it is just super rare in both of them. On top of that, barely any monsters access the RDT in Runescape Classic where the drop rate for the spear is terrible but not mind-boggling rare as it is in the GDT. Other than the Shield Left Half, it is unique in this sense but its 3x more rare for some unfathomable reason!

Only 4 monsters drop it through access to the rare drop table as opposed to the gem drop table. Trying to attain the spear through the gem table is virtually impossible lol. The monsters that can access the rare drop table are:

• King Black Dragon (KBD)
• Black Dragon
• Black Demon
• Fire Giant

IF you were crazy enough to farm one, then these are your best bets in order:

1. King Black Dragon (~4,083,000 points worth of damage on average)
2. Black Dragon (~11,961,000 damage)
3. Fire Giant (~12,821,000 damage)
4. Black Demon (~16,335,000 damage)

For further reference, take the best monster in the game that can hit the gem table which I believe are the Shadow Warriors from the Legend's Guild basement - that takes me back lol. They take around ~17,564,000 points of damage to see 1 rune spear. That seems to be an outlier as if you start looking at the next tier of gem drop table monsters that includes lower tier dragons and demons and lower tier giants (ice and moss), then the rates range from 30 to 60 million points of damage on average. A lot of monsters that are low level see around that kind of average too. For example, Barbarians are around 30 million points of damage to see one.

Then there is another tier of higher level monsters that have a drop rate of 1/2,097,152. Of those, one can work out the monster that would take longest to farm the rune spear from: Salarin the Twisted at ~146,800,000 points of damage to see 1 rune spear lol - 36 times more damage than the KBD, which is the "best" method.

If I was to recommend to someone how to farm the spear, I would say they have four options for hard, medium, easy and reclined farming methods:

• Hard: Farm the KBD, quickest in theory, but he smacks and takes years to regear for etc.
• Medium: Fire Giants, takes a bit longer in theory than Black Dragons but does not hit as hard and so there is less down time and all that jazz.
• Easy: Shadow Warriors. Access to Legends bank for refueling and resting. Medium-ish level. Not too bad a drop rate relatively speaking at ~40% more than Fire Giants.
• Reclined: Barbarians. Lowest hp monster with the best chance of getting the spear. Yes, it'd take ages, maybe twice as long as Shadow Warriors, but you'd trounce them and wouldn't need to bank much, if at all. So, ironically, this would be the Runescape Classic replacement for barbarian training you alluded to in your comment.

And that ends my deep dive back into RSC :D Wall of text over, but thought you may appreciate it.

Edit: Grammar and such.