The Gauntlet is a self-contained challenge. You enter with nothing, gather everything inside, and fight the Crystalline Hunllef at the end. Your own gear does not come in with you, so the whole thing is decided by preparation and by one prayer mechanic.

Get there with ::gauntlet.

Two versions

Version	Boss
Gauntlet	Crystalline Hunllef
Corrupted Gauntlet	Corrupted Hunllef

Corrupted is the harder version, with the same structure but tougher throughout. Learn the normal one first, because the Hunllef mechanic is identical and that is the part that takes practice.

Starting kit

You are given a basic crystal or corrupted set on entry: a weapon, a helm and two other pieces. That is your entire starting loadout. Everything better has to be made inside from resources you gather.

The preparation phase

Before the boss you move through a maze of rooms, gathering resources and fighting the demi-bosses. The room layout rotates during the raid, so the maze is not static.

What to collect:

Crystal shards, the main crafting currency inside
Ore, bark and fibre for weapons, armour and the bow string
Herbs and fish for food and potions

Use the singing bowl to turn shards and materials into your weapons and armour. Build all three combat styles. This is not optional, and the reason is below.

Demi-bosses

Dark beasts and dragons appear in the maze. They drop the better resources, so killing them is worth the time and the supplies, but they will end an underprepared run.

Hunllef and the six attack rule

This is the mechanic the whole fight is built around.

After you land 6 damaging attacks, Hunllef changes its overhead prayer to protect against the style you were using. Its head icon updates so you can see the change.

Once it switches, your current weapon stops being effective. You switch to a different style, land another 6 hits, and it switches again to block that one.

What that means

Count your attacks.
On the sixth hit, swap to a different weapon.
Keep cycling.

This is why you build all three styles in the preparation phase. Turning up with one weapon means you spend most of the fight dealing almost nothing.

Its own attacks

Hunllef alternates between magic and ranged, and shows which one is coming. Pray against the incoming style and swap your overhead when it swaps its attack.

So you are tracking two separate switches at once: your weapon every 6 hits, and your prayer whenever it changes attack style. That split attention is the actual difficulty of the fight.

Tornados

Hunllef spawns tornados that chase you around the arena. Keep moving. They track you for their whole lifetime, so standing still to squeeze in extra hits is how runs end.

Movement also helps with the attack switching, since you are repositioning anyway.

Practical order

Gather aggressively in the prep phase. Time spent here is not wasted.
Build all three weapons before you go to the boss.
Bring food and potions. There is no banking and no second chance.
At the boss: count to 6, swap weapon, watch the head icon, swap prayer, keep walking.

Combat achievements

Both versions appear in the combat achievement list, with Corrupted Gauntlet tasks sitting at the Elite tier and above. Corrupted also appears in the daily task pool, so it is worth checking ::dailies before a run.

Related

The Golden Gauntlet perk from the perk tree gives a boost inside the Gauntlet specifically, and is part of the Gold Digger perk set. See the Perks guide.

Youngllef and Corrupted youngllef are the pets. The Enhanced crystal weapon seed from here carries magic damage, and crystal gear feeds into the Bow of faerdhinen, which is itself a component of the Magma blowpipe upgrade.