Overview:
Contact! is another quest many low lvl players are afraid of. It is really not recommended to go to this quest without any of prayer protections except you have high health and really high magic or melee stats. On other side, if you have 40+ prayer and decent magic lvl, you can do this quest easily even on account around lvl 60 combat and with some risk or in special cases even on lower accounts.

Background:
After issue of this quest I took place in debate about lowest possible combat lvl able to finish this quest. The debaters were experienced pure adventurers (players doing quests on lowest possible levels for fun of higher challenges) so results of this debate cannot been used "as is" by less experienced players. But we got good outlook of possible minimal stats useful for this task.

Essetial stats for low lvl adventurer are prayer, hitpoits and magic lvl. This quest is nearly impossible to do for low and middle lvl players without lvl 40 prayer (ranged protection) at least. So it is +5 lvls to combat. You need to challenge complete combat triangles in multiway combat area so your hitpoints lvl should be high enough to survive at least one round. It means lvl 19 hitpoints at least and with lvl 1 defence it is another +5 lvls to combat. With these two stats it is possible to survive at least few seconds in battle but to win it it is required to kill boss somewhat. Bug has high defence agaist range, standard defences agaist melee and low defences against mage. It has strong melee and range attacks and it is able to cast 9hp strong magical (unable to be blocked by drank antidotes) poison even over walls and to extiguish lanterns. The same abilities have also mage minions. The best strategy for weak players is to use magic attack from distance with ranged protection prayer. So we need magic skill in level able to kill boss fast enough to not been outnumbered by minons or to not get bad luck from being hit by two minons at same time or one minion and poison. From tests seems that the least spell suitable for this is earth bolt. This adds up 29 mage lvls to combat formula and it means that minimal combat lvl for this quest is around lvl 25.

Note that this apply on crazy pure adveturers only! These levels are minimal and means high risk of dying. Recommended levels for normal players are 40+ prayer, 28+ or 35+ hitpoits, 1+, 20+ or 40+ defence, 30+ attack, 20+ or 40+ range and 40+ or 50+ magic. The higher skills means better chance to win final fight. If you compute combat lvl from highest of them, you will find that it is still only lvl 47 combat. But such account will be perfectly able to do this quest on first try without big problems.

Equipment (for fighting part, both strategies):
- bottle of antipoison - keep one dose for end of battle!
- lamp and tinderbox - it is posible to buy tinderbox from hatch door guards for 50gp to save one space in inventory for traveling to Sophanem in case you are using carpet.
- oneclick teleport - ideal is lumby tele tablet with player respawning point set to lumbridge too. There is real danger of death and most of your opponets will use distant attack able to hit you AFTER you teleport away. Not to mention high lvl poison. It will make recollecting of your most important things from your nearby grave much easier.
- bottle of prayer restore potion - just to be sure, probably you will not need it.
- high lvl food - for players with high hitpoints lvl (50+) it is recomemnded to bring just oneclick food like sharks or tuna potatoes. Player with lower hitpoints will need also a few (5-8) pieces of pineapple pizzas. The reason is that you cannot allow your health to go under 28hp (better not under 35) but you cannot heal over your max hitpoints lvl (except use of saradomin brews, but it is not neccessary here). The point of pineapple pizzass is ability to heal in two 11hp parts in case your health get just under "level of risk" but it is still not 22hp bellow your max hp lvl. The total amount of damage you can get during battle is given by your hitpoints lvl and summ of healing abilities of all food you have. If you heal 22hp food at time you are just 17hp under your max hp lvl you will lost 5hp from this total number and it might do great difference on end of battle.

- money - optional for carpet riders, you can add 50gp to buy tinderbox and save one space in inventory for carpet riding (you need free hands for carpet riding, one space can be shared with shantay pass, but you still need another one)
- waterskin - optional, required by desert walkers. If you take carpet ride you will be hit by sun just once or neither so wateerskin is not neccessary. But becasue you will not have desert suit, you will be hit for 11hp each time without waterskin.

Equipment (for fighting part, warrior strategy):
- superset - superdefence is optional for defenceless pures, but super attack and super streght will help a lot
- dragon dagger p++ - optional, but highly recommended. Unleashing af all four specials on begining of battlle is good start for fast victory.
- whip or dragon long - or any weapon favorite weapon you have. Dagger power is on specials but then it is better to switch to stroger weapon to kill bug faster.
- armor and shield - it depends on strategy. IF you have not barrows set or want not to risk it in private instance (all items dropped here will be destroyed immediately after you leave battle area!) you can use plate or dragonhide armor. Plate armor with good shield will protect your from melee and range so use protect from magic. Dragonhide protect you from melee and mage so use ranged protection prayer. You can use also prayer books in shield hand, it is up to you.

Equipment (for fighting part, mage strategy):
- superdefence - optional for defenceless pures but can help to get damage from warrior and mage minions less often
- staff - required for higher magic atack bonus, autocasting and saving runes. There is no point to bring mystic staff here but battlestaff, if you can wear, it is ideal solution. Wisely chosen elemental staff can save you some runes too. More advanced players can use iban staff instead, iban blasts are ideal solution for this battle and can short it under 10 seconds. Just be sure your staff has still like 20-25 charges left before you choose this solution. Ancient staff is suitable for ancient magic users but effectivity of blitzs is equal to blasts but more expensive and also getting ancient staff replacement is not comparable to elemental battlestaff.
- runes to cast suitable amount of spells - required. According to test you need to bring runes to cast 15-25 iban blasts, 30-35 blasts or blitzs or about 50 bolts (chaos gauntlets can reduce this number to 25-35). secondary weapon - optional. Some players prefers kiling warrior minions instead of running from them. I think that running is better strategy becasue if you kill it, scarab will summon immediately another one just on your back.
- armor - most tricky part. You need to wear equipemnt with as high as possible magic defence bonus but with still positive (10+) magic attack bonus. You will be protected from rangers by prayer and you need siomething to protect you from mages and warriors. becasue all armor with high melee defence bonuses has also high magic attack penalties it is better to choose armor that will protect you from mages and for warriors use another method (being out of warrior reach is good one for me). Such armor can be build around splitbark armor or you can choose combination of mage top and ranger legs as base. Just one thing about shields. You can use either mage or prayer book (if you have any) in your shield hand or you can use regular shield - in order from best to worst choose mirror, antidragon, elemental mind or elemental shield.

Procedure:
First you need to get to other end of maze without big harm. First turn OFF autoretaliate for whole quest. In maze it is very dangerous to go with autoretaliate ON and for fight it is also better to have it OFF. Some players just go down ladder and run over big cave to other side but it is pretty dangerous for low lvl players. The cave bellow maze is full of scarabites of all three kinds and it is multicombat area. It is much safer to go carefully through maze. All normal traps are good visible and can be easily avoided or disarmed. But there are also very dangerous invisible falltraps on squares adjacent to walls with golden scarab symbol. So do not go close to symbols. The maze is infested by mages and rangers, but it is not needed to go close to any ranger. Just protect from mage or kill them on sight and everything be good. The right ladder is the second one from south in southwest corner (opposite corner to entrance). Right path through maze is similar to shape of number _5 (with long bottom line).

When you go to fight, stop up of ladder to fight area and wait for full run energy eventually full special energy in case you want to use dds specials. Also check health and prayer to be full. If you are mage and want use autocast, check if it is set up on staff. Now, if it is first time you are going to fight, just go down and see animated sequence, then walk further to corridors and before stairs to big cave turn on running, drink super potions and then turn on protect from range and run to cave to attack scarab. If it is second or other attempt,run whole way from ladder to big cave because scarab starts summoning immediately. Super potions drink above ladder or during this run. Turn prayer protection (range) before last stairs.

Procedure, warrior strategy:
It is simple and easy. Just run to scarab, unleash all specials and then finish it with finishing weapon. On run use ranged protection and when you get close switch to mage protection if you are wearing full plate armor. If you are wearing dragonhide armor, keep ranged protection or switch to melee. Heal if needed. Ignore minions, they will all disappear when you kill boss.

Procedure, mage strategy:
When entering cave run to agent corpse and start casting spells on scarab from behind of it. Jagex updated corpse so minions can go over it. But if this happen and warrior minion gets close to you just run to north side of nearby stalagmite. Ignore other minions and focuss on boss only. With iban blasts it is possible to kill him under 10 seconds with some luck.

One advice, keep one dose of antipoison potion for end of battle and if you are low on health drink it after scarab dies. His poison is 9hp strog and can kill you fast.