Melee is one of the three main Combat styles, alongside

This page is up to date (v1.3.1).
Melee
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Ranged

and

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Magic

.

Mechanics

Unlike the other two combat styles, Melee has separate skills for increasing Accuracy and Damage (

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Attack

and

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Strength

respectively) instead of them being combined into a single skill. As melee armor requires

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Defence

levels to wear while most Ranged and Magic armor requires only levels in the appropriate skill, leveling Defence is also more important to Melee than any other style. Melee receives Combat Triangle bonuses when used against

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Ranged

and penalties when used against

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Magic

.

Due to requiring three skills to be leveled in order to be used effectively instead of just one, melee is the slowest style to train, although this is offset somewhat by not having a cost associated with each attack as neither runes nor ammo are needed.

Melee weapons and armor can be made using the

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Smithing

skill or received as drops from various Monsters or Dungeons. The Melee icon (

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) is the same as the Attack icon.

Attack Styles

Melee has three attack styles: Stab, Slash, and Block. Each has a separate attack bonus stat associated with it, and most melee weapons have different bonuses for different styles. This means that a given melee weapon will be most accurate when used in certain styles. For example, the   Ragnar Godsword has a +125 Slash Bonus but a -4 Stab Bonus, making it substantially more accurate when using the Slash attack style than it is when using Stab.

In addition to having different bonuses, each attack style provides XP to a different skill:

  • Stab provides
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    Attack
    XP
  • Slash provides
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    Strength
    XP
  • Block provides
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    Defence
    XP

Each attack style also provides +6 hidden levels in the respective skill. Hidden levels are functionally identical to normal levels for all accuracy, damage, and evasion calculations, but do not count towards item equip requirements. Using the Block attack style at

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Defence

Level 54 would not allow the player to equip a   Dragon Platebody

Melee Equipment Stats

Weapons

As a rule of thumb, smithed weapon follow this style:

Weapon Details Style
    Dagger Fast, weaker
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Stab
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Block
    Sword
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Stab
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Block
    Scimitar
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Slash
    2H Sword No shield, slow
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Slash
    Battleaxe Slow-ish
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Slash
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Block

Equipment

Melee Equipment is helpful in increasing the damage done by your Melee attacks.