New Player Guide: Combat

Community, 12 August 2025

How Does The World Work? How Damage Is Dealt Combat Skills & Effects Combat Options Melee Ranged Magic Prayer Brvcifer Guide

For the best experience, view these guides on Desktop or Tablet.

Jumping into any new game can be daunting, jumping into any new MMO can be even more so - especially one as unique as Old School RuneScape. OSRS is a Sandbox MMO and is about adventure, self-discovery and most importantly carving your very own path.

In this newspost, we'll be discussing everything to do with combat, but if you're looking for what to do in Gielinor or more information about the game settings, then use the buttons below.

How Does The World Work?

The game runs on what we like to call ticks. Every 0.6 seconds information is sent between you and our servers, keeping your character up to date on what you're doing.

Metronome 100 BPM PLAYING STOPPED

This is the core of understanding Old School from your early levels all the way to end game and while not essential to grasp straight away, it's a good thing to keep in mind when starting your journey.

While you can do most things within a tick, sometimes if your mouse clicks are fast enough, you can perform multiple actions in just one, single tick!

And, sometimes you'll find you can't perform a certain action straight after another, and that'll mean that particular action has a cooldown behind it.

How Damage Is Dealt

We're going to be giving you the top-level details of how combat works here, but if you want any more information - you can delve through the wonderful OSRS Wiki.

At it's very core, behind-the-scenes you're rolling invisible dice just like D&D, to see how much damage you're going to do to an enemy. But this is dependant on a few of things:

| Your Accuracy Type (e.g. Slash Accuracy) | VS | NPC Defence Stat (e.g. Slash Defence) |

| Your Total Strength (+ Max Hit) | Active Prayers (both Yours + NPCs) |

| Any Vulnerabilities (i.e. Elemental Weakness) | Any Immunities(i.e Poison Resistance) |

All of these factor into how much damage or if you're going to do any damage at all, with the most important being Accuracy (how likely you are to hit) and Strength (how hard you can hit).

The main point to note for combat is that the higher numbers you have against your enemy, the more likely you are to not only hit, but hit hard.

Here's some notable ways damage is shown:

| | | | | |

As an added tip, if you venture to a player-owned house with a Combat Dummy inside, hitting it will automatically show your Max Hit!

Did You Know?

At Level 42 magic and for just 2 Body Runes and 2 Mind Runes you can cast Monster Inspect to get an enemies Aggressive stats, Defensive stats, vulnerabilities and immunities!

Combat Skills & Effects

Let's take a look at how each of your Combat Skills affects combat:

Attack | | Hit more accurately with Melee | + | Wield stronger Melee weapons

Strength | | Increases Melee damage* | + | Sometimes needed to wield Melee weapons

Defence | | Increased chance to avoid damage against ALL styles | + | Wear stronger armour

Ranged | | Increases your Ranged damage & accuracy | + | Equip stronger Ranged weapons & armour

Magic | | Unlock combat & utility spells | + | Increases your chance to avoid Magic attacks**

Hitpoints | | Gives you more Health/HP | + | Some food heals more the higher your Hitpoints level

Prayer | | Unlock temporary combat aids | + | Total Prayer Points based on your Skill level

* i.e. Max Hits **This uses both your Magic and Defence levels (70% / 30% respectively)

Combat Options

As you go through the world, you'll passively train these skills by fighting NPCs with different weapons and styles and this tab is your best friend while doing so!

When clicking on the two swords icon, you'll see a few things here:

Combat LevelThis is the combination of all of your Combat Skills and will give you a good estimate on how powerful you are. This will also give you a rough estimate of how powerful enemies might be! | Auto-RetaliateWith this button, you can choose the option of whether to automatically attack NPC when you or it attacks! We'd recommend fighting bosses or exploring new areas with this feature OFF.

The big buttons with names like Chop, Slash and Block are the core component here and affect what type of damage you will deal and what kind of XP you'll gain.

There's two main things you need to know when it comes to these options:

Combat StyleUsed to show what skills you'll gain XP in when using different styles. | Attack TypeCertain types are more effective against different NPCs & dictates where combat will roll accuracy.

Below, we'll break down each combat type and show you the differences for each!

Melee

By hovering over (or pressing and holding on Mobile) the different buttons you can see their Combat Type.

Here's where your XP will go based on the selected Combat Style:

| Attack | Strength | Defence | Hitpoints

Accurate | | | |

Aggressive | | | |

Defensive | | | |

Controlled | | | |

NOTE: The Controlled Style will split XP evenly across all above Skills.

In order to defeat enemies efficiently, picking the right type of Melee weapon which has a strong Attack Type to combat the NPCs weakest Melee Stat is best practice!

StabPrimaryPolearms, Spears Stabbing Swords, Pickaxes | SlashPrimaryAxes, Claws, Scythes, Slashing Swords, 2h Swords | CrushPrimaryBludgeons, Blunt Weapons, Bulwarks, Polestaves, Unarmed

Bronze Sword Mithril Spear Dragon Dagger | Iron Longsword Adamant Battleaxe Dragon Scimitar | Steel Mace Rune Warhammer Dragon Mace

Ranged

What about when you're slinging arrows with Ranged? All Ranged options give Ranged experience, but there are some key differences!

The names of the boxes (i.e. Accurate, Rapid & Longrange) are actually the same across all ranged weapons, but each of them have a more obvious difference:

| Attack Style | Effect #1 | Effect #2

Accurate | Standard | Invisible +3 bonus to Ranged level | -

Rapid | Rapid Fire | You'll almost always use this option! | Increased Attack Speed = Best DPS

Longrange | Extended Range | Invisible +3 bonus to Defence level | Split XP over Ranged & Defence

As for what's useful against different enemies, the 'type' we spoke about for Melee is actually embedded into the weapon/ammo you're using.

There are some other specific examples but you won't need to know that until later on:

LightPrimaryDarts, Knives, Thrownaxes | StandardPrimaryShortbows, Longbows | HeavyPrimaryCrossbows, Javelins Ballistae, Chincompas

Bronze Knives Mithril Thrownaxe Dragon Dart | Oak Shortbow Maple Longbow Magic Shortbow | Dorgeshuun Crossbow Light Ballista Rune Crossbow

Magic

Finally, if you wanna blast some foo's with powerful spells, let's talk Magic. This is one of the most diverse combat skills as not only do you have the option of combat spells, you've got plenty of support and utility variants too!

Combat SpellsThese spells are primarily used in combat as they offer great offensive capabilities. | Teleport SpellsOne of your best methods for travel in the game outside of ships and fairy rings. | Utility SpellsHuge helpful spells that can assist you in different skills like Cooking, Fletching, etc

For combat, you can click on a spell from your Spellbook tab and then an enemy to cast it on them. Alternatively, with a staff equipped you can automatically cast Combat spells at them instead.

While the three options on the left are what Melee damage you'll do with your equipped staff, the two buttons on the right give you two options for auto-casting:

Defensive CastingWill give you split XP in Defence & Magic | Magic CastingWill give XP in Magic exclusively

Just make sure you have enough runes to cast your spells...

Some NPCs have a weakness to certain elements that we call Elemental Weakness. Using the proper elemental spell can significantly increase your magic accuracy, damage, and experience gained:

AirWeak to Air | WaterWeak to Water | EarthWeak to Earth | FireWeak to Fire

Ghosts Flying Creatures Barrows Brothers | Demons Fire Giants Coloured Dragons | Skeletons Ammonite Crabs Trolls | Zombies White Wolves Moss Giants

Prayer

Activating any Prayers from your Prayer tab drains your prayer points and once you have 0, you won't be able to use any until you recharge them at an altar or with Prayer restoration items.

The utility that the Prayer Skill provides is one of the most useful features for combat as it can provide buffs to help boost your stats, keep items on death and most importantly, protect against attacks.

Thick SkinDefence Boost | Burst of StrengthStrength Boost | Clarity of ThoughtAttack Boost | Sharp EyeRanged Boost | Mystic WillMagic Boost

The three Protection Prayers are essential and against the majority of NPCs, fully protect you from damage of the associate style.

You'll need a total of 43 Prayer to access all 3 of these.

Protect from Magic Level 37 | Protect from Missiles Level 40 | Protect from Melee Level 43

Outside of Quests, burying bones or scattering ashes that you find is a great start, there are even better ways to train your Prayer that you're sure to learn about down the line!

Brvcfier's Guide

The wonderful Brvcifer created a very handy image for combat recently so we'd thought we would include it here for a bite-sized serving of handy tips!