Combat Guide

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Revision as of 22:13, 15 November 2021 by TheAlpacalypse (talk | contribs) (→‎Tips)

Introduction

This guide is meant to replace the great, but outdated, Gear Progression guide written by Tim Feels. Much of the content will be adapted from his work and updated to match the current state of the end game. It was written by TheAlpacalypse#8105 and Verisimilitude#0001 on Discord.

As stated there, this guide will not give you DR requirements for Dungeons (though it will give recommended gear), nor will it give you the most efficient level paths. With the current amount of content in the game, we highly recommend using the excellent Combat Simulator browser extension for measuring the optimal XP/hr rates for whichever combat style you are using.

Additionally, this guide is written for characters in STANDARD. Hardcore changes the numbers, especially for

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Fire God Dungeon

.

The base guideline of gear progression is to have the highest possible damage whilst not dying, as dying will result in you losing a piece of gear. Losing your Tidal Edge from greed really sucks.

There are now a multitude of skills that provide useful resources to combat. To summarize:

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    Agility     - Many of the obstacles provide combat bonuses
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    Herblore    - Diamond Luck IV potions are among the highest DPS increases in the game
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    Thieving     - There are a multitude of useful item drops from several NPCs, including Chapeau Noir, Knight's Defender, and others
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    Astrology     - These are easy to obtain bonuses to your character. The hidden levels provide accuracy bonuses, as well as other nice easy to acquire boosts
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    Summoning     - The tablets provide boosts to combat effectiveness and do damage. The dragon burn effect is great against hard to hit enemies.

Some other skills are necessary for smooth progression, or to provide the bankroll necessary for progression:

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    Fletching
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    Smithing
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    Crafting     (Jewelry and ranged armor)
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    Firemaking     (XP boost is no joke)
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    Fishing    /
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    Farming    /
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    Cooking     (Food)

Gear Stats

All gear has certain stats linking it to certain combat styles (melee, ranged, or magic). More difficult to obtain gear is (usually) better. Once you approach the endgame, the choices become more situational rather than strictly better.

For stat breakdowns and math, use combat simulator or read the Combat wiki page.

Shared Stats

Attack Speed

Attack Speed, or AS, is determined mainly by the attack speed of your weapon. It is given as seconds per attack, so lower is better. Things that affect your attack speed are:

  • Elder Crown - Helmet, drops from Elder Vampire
  • Sand Treaders - Boots, drops from Turkul Riders
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    Surge I     /
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    Surge II     /
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    Surge III     - Spells
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    Otto     - Pet from Dark Waters
  • Knight's Defender - Thieving from Knight, melee only
  • Guardian Amulet and Spiked Shell Ring - These negatively impact your attack speed
    • Guardian Amulet - Drops from Earth Chests upgraded from Earth Shards, Earth God Dungeon
    • Spiked Shell Ring - Upgrade from 10 Guardian Rings and 500 Stinging Essence. Endgame item
  • Slows

Damage Reduction

Damage Reduction, or DR, is for the majority of the game the stat to optimize for. DR, HP, and Auto Eat tier all determine what is the highest damage hit you can survive, and relatedly what content you can... idle. This is not an exhaustive list, but DR can be found on:

Auto Eat Threshold

Auto Eat Threshold reduces the effective HP necessary to trigger your auto eat, lowering the necessary HP/DR required. This is a somewhat new feature, so we highly recommend you test this in Combat Sim. This can be found on:

Slayer Area Effectiveness Reduction

Slayer Area Effectiveness Reduction reduces the effect of the slayer area effects on your character when fighting in one of these areas. These can range from annoying (Forest of Goo, Arid Plains) to downright progress blocking (Dark Waters, Unhallowed Wasteland). This is another stat where Combat Sim testing is highly effective. This stat can be found on:

Armor/Evasion Rating

These are included on all pieces of armor, and are highly linked to the combat triangle. The higher the number, the better.

Melee Stats

Melee gear focuses on 4 stats:

  • Strength bonus: One of the factors that determines max hit
  • Stab/Slash/Block bonus: Determines the accuracy (chance to hit) of that particular attack style. Every weapon favors one of the styles, and using the correct one will boost your effective DPS.

Magic Stats

Magic armor and weapons focus on 2 stats:

  • Magic Damage Bonus: A % increase in max hit
  • Magic attack bonus: Determines your accuracy

Additionally, magic also benefits from Rune Preservation Chance and Rune Cost Reduction. These can be found on:

Ranged Stats

Ranged armor and weapons focus on 2 stats:

  • Ranged strength bonus: Determines your max hit
  • Ranged attack bonus: Determines your accuracy

Additionally ranged gear also benefits from Ammo Preservation. This can be found on:

Special Attacks and Loot Passives

Beyond stats, many pieces of equipment have Special Attacks or passive effects.

Special Attacks have a percentage chance of triggering when in combat and will replace your standard attack. The gear with specials is truly too numerous to list.

Loot Passive effects are bonuses that are always in play. These will increase your GP/hr as well as provide more loot to speed up many of the long grinds in the game. These can be found on:

Using Combat Simulator (Or Not)

Combat Simulator is a browser extension maintained by TinyCoyote that allows you to estimate quite a number of attributes of Melvor combat, namely Death Rate, XP/hr, Drops/hr, DPS, etc. It makes it trivial to test out if your setup is going to work, and uses the same webworker as the game itself so it's quite accurate. A link can be found to it here: Scripting_and_Extensions

How to use this Guide

All of the combat skills tie into each other, and it is impossible to be a Melee pure or vice versa if you wish to do all of the content in the game.

Most people start with melee as it is the easiest to gear and train. We highly recommend leveling all of the skills in tandem so you aren't like me, where you finish

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Volcanic Cave

and then have to level your

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Ranged

from level 1 for 2 weeks.

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Slayer

should be leveled alongside your core combat skills. Some of the best items in the game drop exclusively in slayer areas, and it will provide plenty of opportunities to level up your combat skills.

Early Game (Pre-Volcanic Cave)

An early goal for most players is the Amulet of Looting, found in the Spider Forest, which will make combat a fully automated activity. Beyond that, it's mainly a matter of learning how combat works and leveling up your skills. Some general goals for all classes are the following drops:

PSA: The following item recommendations are up to T70, as that is where you will likely begin clearing Volcano. These are not all strictly necessary, but they do all help a significant amount.

Melee

Before Volcanic, you can grind the Knights Castle area to find most of your upgrades to supplant any gear not gained from smithing. You can also get some very good melee weapons in pre-Volcanic Cave areas. Drops to look for:

Ranged

Magic

Volcanic Cave

Link to Guide: Volcanic Cave/Guide

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Volcanic Cave

is usually done with melee gear, as it is very easy to fill out the required DR via smithing. A full gold-trimmed set of dragon armor provides 30% DR, as shown in the below table. Level 99

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smithing

is required to trim a full set.

Item Slot DR%
(G) Dragon Helmet Head 6%
(G) Dragon Platebody Body 6%
(G) Dragon Platelegs Leggings 6%
(G) Dragon Boots Boots 6%
(U) Black D-hide Vambraces Hands 5%
Subtotal 29%
Cape
Elite Amulet of Defence Neck 2%
Aorpheat's Signet Ring Ring 0%
(G) Dragon Shield Off-hand 6%
Total 37%

For gloves:

For capes:

  • You will need either the Knight's Cape (1% DR) from thieving the
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    Knight     or
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    Squire    , or the Skull Cape if you absolutely need the extra DR ((3% DR) Not recommended for Melee or Ranged, it reduces your attack bonuses by a significant amount). If you do not need the extra 1% DR provided by the Knight's Cape, you may use any Skillcape (if you have one), or the Obsidian Cape dropped by Adamant Knights.
  • Note: Once you clear Volcano once, swap your cape to the Fire Cape! It provides 2% DR and has better stats than the noncombat skillcapes.

For boots:

  • Pretty straightforward, the boots you will most likely use are the (G) Dragon Boots, as these provide 6% DR and decent offensive bonuses. If you do not have the
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    smithing     level (94) to craft these, you can use the Rune Boots that are dropped by the Rune Knight and upgrade those to (G) Rune Boots for 5% DR.

For jewelry:

Once you clear Volcanic Cave 100 times, you will unlock the basic tier of Ancient Magic -

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Slicing Winds

,

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Icicle Volley

, and

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Ignite

. Of these, as of patch 0.23, Icicle Barrage is by far the strongest. Ancient Magic is way better than what basic magic can give you at your current level, but it is not affected by damage amplification in any way (Except for the combat triangle). No curses, no debuffs, no gear buffs.

Infernal Stronghold

Congratulations on beating

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Volcanic Cave

. You now have the Fire Cape, your first useful cape. It provides 2% DR, which will greatly speed things up. Your next objective is the

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Infernal Stronghold

. Beat at least once for the Infernal Cape. The setup is almost identical to the

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Volcanic Cave

. The extra 4% DR will carry you through the end of the game until you acquire the Max Skillcape.

Mid Game (God Dungeons)

, then God Dungeons. The four god dungeons, whilst somewhat intimidating, are all handled the exact same way once you complete Air God. Each is beaten with the gear from the previous tier.

Some additional useful drops for the midgame are the following, found in Elite Tier slayer areas:

None of the above are needed, but definitely worth obtaining here. You should also be nearing max combat as you progress through the dungeons.

To unlock the ancient spells, you will need to run each of the God Dungeons 100 times. Each dungeon also provides extremely useful drops, some of which are BiS.


Air God Dungeon

Link to guide: Air_God_Dungeon/Guide

Item Slot DR%
(G) Ancient Helmet Head 7%
(G) Ancient Platebody Body 7%
(G) Ancient Platelegs Leggings 7%
(G) Dragon Boots Boots 6%
(U) Ancient D-hide Vambraces Hands 6%
Subtotal 33%
Fire Cape Cape 2%
Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs Neck 2%
Silver Diamond Ring Ring 1%
Dragonfire Shield Off-hand 8%
Total 46%

To start with, begin by collecting the full set of Ancient Melee gear from Volcanic Cave. A full set will provide 28% DR. Additionally, work on completing the Dragonfire Shield. This provides 8% DR and 30 hitpoints, and is useful through the end of the game.

Additionally, complete

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Infernal Stronghold

so that you can get Infernal Cape, which increases DR to 4%. You should have upgraded your melee weapon. Dragon Claw is probably the minimum, though Sunset Rapier will also do. We would highly recommend grinding Pegasus for Ancient Claw Fragments, as Infernal Claw ( Ancient Claw + 10 Infernal Core) is extremely good through ITM.

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Slicing Winds

/

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Gust

are highly effective.

You will need about 46% DR to complete the dungeon. Notable drops include:

Water God Dungeon

Link to guide: Water God Dungeon/Guide

Item Slot DR%
Aeris God Helmet Head 8%
Aeris God Platebody Body 8%
Aeris God Platelegs Leggings 8%
Aeris God Boots Boots 8%
Aeris God Gloves Hands 8%
Subtotal 40%
Fire Cape Cape 2%
Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs Neck 2%
Silver Diamond Ring Ring 1%
Dragonfire Shield Off-hand 8%
Total 53%

At this point, you should have a full set of Aeris God Gear. For your weapon, you should be using

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Ancient Crossbow

, or Slayer's Crossbow/ Dragon Crossbow if you don't have one. Dragonfire Shield as well makes this a breeze so you can use Aorpheat's Signet Ring in the ring slot.

Emerald Bolts are probably your best bet. Jadestone Bolts work too if you have those.

This dungeon is a breeze if you have the above gear. Notable drops:

Earth God Dungeon

Link to guide: Earth God Dungeon/Guide

Item Slot DR%
Glacia God Helmet Head 8%
Glacia God Platebody Body 8%
Glacia God Platelegs Leggings 8%
Glacia God Boots Boots 8%
Glacia God Gloves Hands 8%
Subtotal 40%
Skull Cape Cape 3%
Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs Neck 2%
Aorpheat's Signet Ring Ring 0%
Dragonfire Shield Off-hand 8%
Total 53%

Same ordeal as the

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Water God Dungeon

. Equip the previous set of armor, then get to work. By now, you should likely have Skull Cape, one of the BiS capes for magic. Air Imbued Wand is highly recommended so you can use

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Gust

for cheap along with the Dragonfire Shield.

Again, this dungeon is easy. Notable Drops:

Fire God Dungeon

Link to Guide: Fire God Dungeon/Guide

Item Slot DR%
Aeris God Helmet Head 8%
Aeris God Platebody Body 8%
Aeris God Platelegs Leggings 8%
Aeris God Boots Boots 8%
Aeris God Gloves Hands 8%
Subtotal 40%
Infernal Cape Cape 4%
Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs Neck 2%
Aorpheat's Signet Ring Ring 0%
Dragonfire Shield Off-hand 8%
Total 54%

This dungeon is a bit harder than the previous, as it mixes both melee and magic enemies. For that reason, use the Aeris god set. Gear setup is similar to the

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Water God Dungeon

, but focuses primarily on DR breakpoints. Consider using the

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Stone Skin

prayer or Damage Reduction Potion IV's. Getting enough DR without using prayer or potions will severely hamper your clear times, as you won't be equipping the proper DPS gear.

Highly recommend using combat sim to ensure you aren't killed by Ragnar or Ignis. This dungeon probably has the most variety in setups out of any of the dungeons, just ensure that you aren't in danger of dying.

Notable drops:

Preparing for Into the Mist

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Into the Mist

is one of the most difficult challenges in the game. The Insane difficulty is accurate. It cannot be idled. To start, you first fight 20 Afflicted versions of randomly chosen monsters between combat level 165 and 677. Any monster, save those from

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Unhallowed Wasteland

or

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Dark Waters

, including bosses, can be chosen.

Affliction is a special status effect applied by monsters that reduces your max HP. This means that the encounters are a race against the clock, forcing you to kill the enemy before your affliction stacks get too high. Due to this, it is recommended that you focus on DPS above all else when choosing your three gear sets.

This dungeon cannot be completed without the Dungeon Equipment Swapping upgrade purchased from the shop.

It is highly recommended that you have acquired *all* previously available BiS gear for each combat style before attempting ITM.

Recommended Gear from Best to Worst:

At this point you can probably begin to make your way towards one of the longest grinds in the game, Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs. FEZ, as it is often called, is made from the upgrading process by combining:

This item is by no means necessary, but it is very useful as a "catch all" type of amulet. No matter what situation you're in, FEZ is probably a good choice. See the following link for best practices while farming for the amulet.

Link to Guide: Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs/Guide

Into the Mist

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Into the Mist

consists of 3 set order phases, with pauses in between each phase.

Link to the guide: Into_the_Mist/Guide

There is too much information on ITM to copy to this guide, definitely worth reading the above, which is excellent.

Notable Drops:

  • Access to the
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    Dark Waters     slayer area, where the T90 weapons can be obtained
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    Pablo     - Drops after 5 completions

T90 Farming

Following completion of

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Into the Mist

, you now have access to

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Dark Waters

, the penultimate slayer area. These 3 mobs drop fragments for the T90 weapons, the most powerful weapons in the game. These are extremely long grinds, and require quite a bit of preparation. Each weapon requires 100 fragments, and the fragments have a 2% drop rate. That's 5,000 kills on average.

We recommend acquiring them in the following order, as the high evasion on Rokken makes it extremely hard to complete without Tidal Edge:

Additionally, you should also acquire the pet

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Otto

whilst doing this grind.

Item fragments are very rare drops, and you should attempt to sneak in as much item doubling into your gear as possible. Using Combat Sim to measure your Drops/hr with a 0 Death Rate is highly recommended. This can be the difference in literal days of grinding.

Unhallowed Wasteland

After completing the T90 weapon grinds, you are ready to face the final content in Melvor.

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Unhallowed Wasteland

is the final

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Slayer

area. To access, you will need to purchase a

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Map to the Unhallowed Wasteland

. This area requires maximizing a different stat than DR. All of the monsters here will heal a % of their HP every 2 attacks, which will outpace your DPS regardless of setup. To mitigate this, you will need the following example Melee set for use versus the Legaran Wurm:

Item Slot Slayer Area Effect Negation%
Slayer Helmet (Master) Head 20%
Slayer Platebody (Master) Body 20%
Ragnar God Platelegs Leggings 0%
Ragnar God Boots Boots 0%
Ragnar God Gloves Hands 0%
Subtotal 40%
Max Skillcape/ Slayer Skillcape Cape 25%
Fighter Amulet Neck 0%
Hunter's Ring Ring 10%
Tidal Edge Weapon 0%
Dragonfire Shield Off-hand 0%
Slayer Cowl (Master) Passive 20%
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Agility Pillar of Combat 		Pillar 5%
Total 100%

While you are here, you should work to acquire all of the set bonus gear, dropped from each of the UW monsters:

Impending Darkness

A guide does not yet exist for Impending Darkness. This is highly a work in progress.

Tips

Because Bane uses the modifiers from the slayer area you fight him in, you should always fight him in the

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Perilous Peaks

. Your prayer will be

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Protect from Magic

or whichever style he is, plus your other style prayer, rendering the area effect moot.

When fighting Bane, always eat through the Suffocate special attack. The stuns will cripple you. Fragile Mind can be extremely dangerous if you have high Affliction stacks, so be on the lookout for that as well.

Bane will force you to use the same attack style as he is. If you are hitting for 0, make sure you're not using the combat triangle default.

Running from Bane will not make you leave the event, just forces you to refight that slayer area.

For passives, avoid giving + Max HP, or any sort of regen. These will extend the fights, which makes them deadlier and more expensive in food and gear. + Max Hit is fine, as special damage is unaffected. Obviously, avoid Affliction if possible. These do stack.

The final fight with Bane is a special version, Bane, Instrument of Fear

Gear

You will need to be able to switch your combat styles on the fly in

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Dark Waters

and

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Unhallowed Wasteland

. These areas WILL kill you if you are using the wrong combat style versus them. There is no pausing between monsters, so we highly recommend maxing out your Slayer Area Reduction on all 3 equipment sets.

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Dragon

tablets are nigh required for Bane, as the burn status effect will chisel away his HP even when you are stunned. Pair with

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Yak

tablets. For melee, Ring of Blade Echoes increases the number of hits you do, which pairs well with

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Dragon

tablets. For magic,

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Incinerate

also provides more hits for burns. Towards the end, switch to Ocean Song and

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Fire Surge

to finish him off with specials.

Loot

Each Bane kill drops the following loot, in this set order. All of these are BiS:

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