Melee - The Basics

Melee Combat

Combat styles and options

Melee combat is divided into three main areas: Attack, Strength and Defence. Attack will determine your accuracy when fighting and will increase your consistency when hitting opponents. Strength will determine how hard you hit your opponent. Finally, Defence relates to how resilient you are to attacks and how often your opponent will hit you. The higher your Defence, the more likely the opponent is to miss.

To train the three skills requires you to fight the numerous and various monsters in RuneScape.

Wielding a weapon will display the training styles available and what combat skills you can train with that weapon.

This screen shows the weapon you are wielding and the combat options for that weapon. To find out more about each style, move your mouse over the icon.

Training Attack

To train Attack, you will need to select 'Accurate' attack styles from the combat menu (to find out which style is which, scroll your mouse over the icons).

Having a higher Attack level not only means you will hit the opponent more often, but it will also enable you able to train with stronger/better weapons.

To read more about Attack and weapon types, see the Combat - Weapon Types page.

To see what you can wield with your Attack level, see the low, medium or high level melee equipment pages.

Training Strength

Strength ultimately determines the amount of damage you can deal to an opponent. With a strong weapon and a high Strength level, you will find yourself able to deal a significant amount of damage to a monster or player!

To train Strength, you would use the 'Aggressive' options from the combat sub-menu (to find out which style is which, scroll your mouse over the icons). These will purely train your Strength, making you able to gain Strength levels quicker.

To find out what you can wield with your Strength level, see the Melee subcategories.

Training Defence

Defence refers to the chance you have of being hit. A higher Defence level makes you a tougher warrior, giving you the ability to last longer against any foe.

To train Defence, you should select the 'Defensive' option from the combat side interface (to find out which style is which, scroll your mouse over the icons). You can also train your Defence by selecting defensive casting from the bottom-left of your magic spellbook.

A large part of Defence is armour. Having more resilient armour, combined with a good Defence level, will minimise the chances of being hit. As with Attack, there is a variety of choices depending on your Defence level.

To read more about Defence and armour types, see the Defence - Armour Types page.

To see a tabled listing what you can wield with your Defence level, see the low, medium or high level melee equipment pages.

Training Controlled

Training controlled will boost all of the skills (Attack, Strength, Defence and Constitution) equally, this means that the experience you gain is divided up among the skills. Although this may seem slower to some players, it means that you are increasing all four skills at one time.

To train controlled, just select the option in the combat screen for the weapon you are using (to find out which style is which, scroll your mouse over the icons).

Getting Experience

The amount of experience you get from hitting an opponent is based upon a number of things.

Defeating dastardly demons!

The experience you receive will vary, depending on the combat level of the monster you are fighting. You are in control of what experience you receive as you can choose your fighting style, therefore controlling how your experience is distributed.

When training, it may be worth considering your opponents' (player or monster) weaknesses. Certain armours are weak to different styles of attack. The main Attack styles include stab, slash and crush attacks.

For example if your opponent is wearing a light robe material, a slashing weapon such as a scimitar should have no problem tearing through the armour.

Similarly, investigate whether a puncturing 'Stab' attack could deal the most damage, or if an aggressive crush attack to smash through armour is necessary.

Click here to view the Melee FAQs

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