Combat

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For the rating of a player's combat abilities, see Combat level.

Combat is an event in RuneScape in which two or more players and/or creatures fight.

Combat is based around randomly generated numbers in the form of "damage", which deplete a target's lifepoints. The damage done by the parties involved is determined by their skills and, in a player's case, their equipment among other factors. There is also hit and block chance, the likelihood that a party will land a successful hit. Combat lasts until one participant is killed or flees.

Players can influence their effectiveness in combat in many ways, such as boosting their combat skills via potions or prayers, or lowering their enemy's stats via curses or curse spells. There are also some items that offer special buffs to combat.

A player fighting with Melee.

Combat classes

Main article: Combat classes

The combat triangle, depicting the three combat classes.

There are three methods with which a player or monster may fight in combat: with melee attacks, ranged attacks, or magical attacks. The classes involving these attacks are known as the warrior, the ranger, and the mage. A player's class is determined by their worn equipment and prioritized skills, and thus their class may change as desired.

Each combat class is stronger against one class and weaker to the other. This forms the combat triangle, a depiction of this relationship.

• Warriors are strong against rangers. Rangers' projectiles cannot penetrate metal armour well, but warriors' blades cut through leather with ease.
• Rangers are strong against mages. Their leather and dragonhide armours absorb magical spells, whereas their projectiles easily pierce the soft cloth of mage robes.
• Mages are strong against warriors. The metal in warriors' armour conducts spells. Their magical robes resist melee attacks, and they can use bind or freeze spells to keep warriors out of attacking range.

By bringing weapons and armour for multiple combat classes, and switching between them at will, a player can use multiple combat styles in a fight. This is called "hybridding". Hybridding is often used to gain an advantage in player-versus-player combat, especially to avoid protection prayers that halve damage from a single combat style, and it is a common tactic in large multiplayer battles such as Clan Wars.

Monsters use attacks from one or more combat classes, and the vast majority have a weakness against one particular class. Other monsters have no weakness and may be fought effectively with any class.

Combat variables

A player's lifepoints, adrenaline, prayer points, and summoning points on the action bar.

There are several variables in combat which moderate an entity's performance. Lifepoints are possessed by players and foes, whereas the other mechanisms are used in foes sparingly or restrictively.

• File:Health globe.gif Lifepoints — These represent how much damage a player or creature can withstand. When an entity loses all its lifepoints, it dies. A player's maximum lifepoints is determined by their Constitution level and their worn armour. The primary method of recovering lifepoints is eating food.
• File:Auto retaliate globe.gif Adrenaline — This determines the abilities a player or creature may use. Adrenaline is gained and lost by using different types of abilities, and unlike other mechanisms, it is represented as a percentage. Only a few foes are capable of using adrenaline.
• File:Prayer globe.gif Prayer points — These are drained as the cost of using prayers. Some foes can use prayers, though only players pay in prayer points, their maximum points being determined by their Prayer level. Prayer points can be replenished by praying at an altar, or by drinking a prayer potion.
• Summoning points — These are spent to summon a familiar, and are drained while a familiar is kept. A player's Summoning level is their maximum summoning points, and these points are recharged by drawing energy from an obelisk. Only a very small amount of foes can summon familiars.

If playing on Legacy Mode, the adrenaline mechanism is replaced with special attack energy, which is found in the combat settings tab. Special attack energy is used for special attacks and regenerates naturally.

Combat skills

Combat skills are levels possessed by players and creatures that influence their combat proficiency. There are offensive and defensive skills that increase damage, hit chance, and block chance, while there are further skills that augment the others or offer additional options in combat.

Accuracy skills

These skills contribute to the player's accuracy stat, offering up to 1212 base accuracy at level 99.

Attack raises your accuracy with melee attacks.

Magic raises your accuracy with magical attacks.

Ranged raises your accuracy with ranged attacks.

Damage skills

These skills contribute to the player's damage stat. The damage gained scales with weapon speed and handedness, though as a base, each level contributes 2.5 damage.

Strength raises your damage with melee attacks.

Magic raises your damage with magical attacks.

Ranged raises your damage with ranged attacks.

As seen above, proficient melee combat requires training in two skills whereas Ranged and Magic each require only one. However, as such, melee combat makes use of both Attack and Strength abilities.

Other skills

These skills are used by all combat classes.

Defence raises your chance to block foes' attacks, and it reduces the damage of attacks received. At level 99, Defence provides 1212 base armour and a 9.9% damage reduction against creatures and players.

Constitution raises your maximum lifepoints by 100 for each level. Players start out with level 10 in this skill. At level 99, Contitution provides 9900 base lifepoints.

Prayer is used to grant buffs to combat, such as raising your combat skills, and it offers benefits like item protection, damage upon death, and even the ability to halve damage from a combat style. Using prayers depletes prayer points. A higher Prayer level allows access to more powerful buffs and benefits.

Summoning is used to conjure familiars to aid you. Many familiars will fight alongside you, while others act as a beast of burden, or will heal you and bank your items among many other traits. As with Prayer, the best familiars require a high Summoning level to use. Some familiars are meant to aid non-combat skills, making Summoning a skill used in and outside combat.

While creatures possess lifepoints, and a rare few use prayers or summon familiars, creatures do not have a Constitution, Prayer, or Summoning level.

Skill boosts

Players can boost their combat skills via several methods, the foremost being potions and prayers, both of which boost the player's accuracy skills, damage skills, or Defence skill. Potions temporarily raise the skill levels seen in the skills tab, the extra levels diminishing by one every minute, whereas prayers maintain an invisible, constant boost until disabled. The strongest combat potions are untradeable and, similar to prayers, require a high Herblore level to obtain.

Constitution cannot be boosted, but a player can raise their maximum lifepoints by equipping high-level armour or by throwing logs on a bonfire. To heal above one's maximum lifepoints, one can consume rocktail or Saradomin brew, soak in the thermal bath at the Oo'glog spa, pray at the Elidinis Statuette in Nardah, or use titan's constitution summoning scrolls.

A player cannot boost their maximum prayer points, but they can restore points above the maximum by praying at special altars like the Senntisten altar, or by soaking in the sulphur spring at the Oo'glog spa.

Neither Summoning nor summoning points can be boosted.

Skill drains

Not only can combat skills be boosted, they can be drained by some creatures, bosses, and environments like the snowy land north of Trollheim. Skill drains can be combated by drinking a restore potion.

Other factors

While skills are an important aspect of combat, damage done and received is mostly determined by external traits, and there is a multitude of other factors which contribute to the fight.

Armour and Weaponry

The most glaringly obvious of these is armour and weaponry, As a general rule of thumb, armour boosts a persons defensive capabilities through the form of accuracy reduction, and weaponry boosts a players offensive capabilities. However, this is not always true, as some pieces of armour boost a player offensive traits, and vice versa. High levels without corresponding armour and weapons usually greatly inhibits your ability in both dealing and reducing damage.

Skill boosts

Stat increase is available to anybody through the use of certain items, mainly potions and certain food. What this does is temporarily increase a specific combat statistic, albeit temporarily, to a (sometimes much) higher level. The advantage of this, obviously, is to give yourself the abilities of a higher level. If you are the appropriate level and using the appropriate boost, you can elevate your levels beyond the known cap of 99.

Special attacks

Special attacks were determined by the weapon being used by a player. Special attacks were unique traits of high level weaponry which gave the ability to initiate a unique move which could have diverse effects, from damage to run energy absorption. They have since been removed from the game and replaced by Abilities.

Attack speed

All weapons in RuneScape have a specific speed, which will determine how often you attack with that weapon. The stronger a weapon is, the more likely it is that it will have a slower attack speed. A fast weapon is usually used when a person is fighting something with a high defence level, as it is far more consistent and it is far easier to make up for low hits.

Combat instances

PvP (Player Vs Player)

PvP, or more commonly known as PKing (player killing), is the act of two or more players fighting each other. Normally, players cannot fight each other, except in certain minigames, such as Castle Wars. However, players can fight each other anywhere in a specific section of the map known as the Wilderness, except in specifically designated "Safe Zones". PvP combat, generally, is more dyanamic than fighting NPC's, and can vary greatly. IF you are going into a PvP environment, anything can be expected. On top of this, there are plenty of restrictions in a PvP environment. For a full explanation on how PvP works and various strategy recommendations, head over to the PvP page.

It may be important to note that the Duel Arena is a minigame designated specifically for 1vs1 PvP, and the only location to specifically do so. The minigame also allows the two contesting players almost complete control as to how the battle be played out.

PvM (Player Vs Monster)

PvM, whether it be large amounts of relatively weak monsters, or bossing, is the largest part of combat. The majority of all combat in the game will involve you fighting NPC's, unless you specifically aim to PvP the majority of the time. Normal monsters usually do not have many restrictions and are easy to kill as long as you are an appropriate level. Generally, there only three reasons to kill average monsters; you need to for a quest, you are training your combat levels, or you are training the Slayer skill. The latter is by far the most popular as it, while not being a skill that affects your combat level, assigns the players a number of monsters to kill in the form of Slayer assignments. The restrictions for killing monsters of this caliber are usually the restrictions of the area in which they spawn in.

Bossing, however, is much more interesting and requires far more attention than that. Bosses are spread around RuneScape, each one having its own set of attacks and abilities which set it apart. Usually, bosses require much better equipment and levels to take down compared to low levels NPC's, and many require groups for all but the elite players. To boss effectively, many factors must be taken into consideration, including the boss's special attacks, the boss's life points, and the area it is in.

Some bosses have abilities that players have as well.

• Protection prayer have rarely been used by bosses. In the case that they are, the bosses have a seemingly infinite supply of prayer points, and no known abilities can deactivate the prayers. However, the set effect of Verac the Defiled's equipment works even on the prayers of bosses.
• Bosses can use poison, dragonfire, and attacks that hit multiple players all at once (sometimes all players in the room).

Bossing in some instances presents the opportunity to tank. While this role is not popular, it is sometimes done when the majority of the party is comprised of low-level players.

Dungeoneering deserves a special mention, as it places a player or group into an instanced environment where they must handle difficult monsters and a boss to complete the dungeon. Thus, it exposes the player/s to the two base forms of PvM, and is usually a very dynamic experience.

Also, it is recommended to be well rounded in all your combat skills if you intend to be an avid PvMer. Skills only help, and it is far easier to level a lower skill ten times than level a higher skill even once.

Combat level

A player's combat skills display themselves through their combat level. As a person increases his or her base statistics, their combat level will rise in accordance to that. The current highest possible combat level in-game is 138. Combat level is not displayed upon right-click unless the player has an unsheathed weapon.

Combat training

A player setting XP to go towards Attack.

Experience points are given after a monster is killed, not during the fight per hit.

To change where the experience goes, one must go to the Powers interface window and click on the tab for whatever xp you want to change. In the lower right hand corner are options to change the xp gained. For melee, the choices are attack, strength, defense, or a mixture of the three. For ranged, it is either ranged, defense, or both, and for magic it is either magic, defense, or both.

Since the xp rewarded does not scale up with the health of the monster, it is wise to fight monsters with a low health to xp ratio. For example, level 4 goblins, yield 1 xp per 3 damage dealt.

Training is usually done by necessity via the Slayer or Dungeoneering skill. If you find yourself in need of combat levels, there are specific monsters in the game which yield high experience rates. Killing random monsters for experience is usually a waste of experience, not to mention time.

There are various areas in the game which give decreased or no EXP when fighting, but they are usually very specific and restricted, such as clan battlefields.

See also:

• Magic training: F2P, P2P
• Melee training: F2P, P2P
• Ranged training: F2P, P2P

Trivia

• Sometime during 7 December-12 December, 2009, when players would hit damage including a zero in it (like 10 or 0), it would show as "0", without a diagonal line across it.
• Sometimes there is a glitch that the message level up appears two times.
• Combat training areas are identified on the map with the combat training icon ( ), but combat training is only allowed to players with an Attack, Strength, or Defence level less than 9, depending on what is being trained. Also, these training dummies will only provide experience in the Attack, Strength, and Defence skill. Magic can be trained at the training area in Lumbridge, but ranged must be trained on other attackable NPCs.

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