Combat! Yes, the glorious art of bashing monsters and hunting demons is part of any good high-fantasy world, and RuneScape is no different. In our last This Is RuneScape blog, it’s high time to dive into the various Combat arts you can master and how they fit in to your adventures across the world of Gielinor.
Master of Many
There’s three primary styles of Combat to get to grips with in RuneScape – Melee, Ranged and Magic. Each has associated Skills to level that increase your power through new abilities, spells, access to higher level gear and plenty more.
There are no classes in RuneScape, so you can be a master of any Combat style you like at any time. And you’ll need to be! As you venture across Gielinor, there’s a vast array of creatures, humans, dragons and demons that all have their own strengths and weaknesses, so being versatile with your Combat is often key to success.
But fret not, fair adventurer - equipment will help make your raw capabilities even more lethal. As you level up key skills (like Attack for Melee or Defence for Armor), you’ll be able to equip better protection and weapons that will even the odds against increasingly grizzly foes.
Skilling Matters
On top of power-boosting gear, other Skills in your repertoire will also feed into your Combat lethality!
Supporting skills Prayer and Summoning will offer the most direct assistance. Prayer allows you to channel godly blessings that enhance your abilities, while Summoning let’s you… well, summon... creatures into battle, whether that’s a damage-dealer like the Ripper Demon or a giant War Tortoise that can carry extra supplies!
As with the general philosophy of Skilling in RuneScape, many of the other abilities will also give you a helping hand in your quest for Combat prowess. And that goes far beyond simply crafting your own armour and weapons (although that is super cool).
Herblore is a great example. Your knowledge of potions can translate to success in battle, allowing you to craft concoctions that can both protect you or boost your capabilities. Pass the Weapon Poison +++!
Fight Your Way
As you grow more powerful, action bars and hotkeys will become a core part of your Combat routine, Eventually you'll develop a whole host of abilities at your finger-tips – but not necessarily all of the time.
The default Combat mode is what we call Revolution, which selects some of your powers to automatically activate on your behalf, reducing the manual labour of brawling and allowing you to focus on when to activate more impactful abilities like Ultimates.
As you reach the biggest Combat challenges in the game (more on those in a bit), or simply if you want more control, Manual mode places every single one of your battle manoeuvres under your command. It’s the most intensive, but also the most optimisable, way to deal some juicy damage.
If you prefer to keep things simple, there’s also Legacy Combat mode. This harkens back to the days of RuneScape yore when only a simple click was needed to start attacking, leaving you to focus just on consumables and weapon special attacks. While you won’t be able to take on the game’s biggest Combat challenges this way, you can enjoy this approach for the vast majority of the game.
In the end, it’s about doing Combat your way!
Reasons To Fight
While there's nothing like some mindless Slaying, we know there's plenty of you out there that need a purpose beyond simple monster-bashing. So good news - there’s plenty of reasons!
For the questing types, you’ll need to enhance your powers to take on some of the toughest quests in the game and face down some climactic battles that will test your Combat skillset.
For the less quest-orientated, the aptly named Slayer skill tasks you with travelling the land to hunt down certain types of monsters. Kill enough to complete your task, and in turn you'll gain access to more lucrative beasties for money making and material drops!
There's also Dungeoneering, which has you venturing through the floors of ever-deepening dungeons. And you start empty handed! All your Skills come into play in order to craft whatever you're able to with items you find on your run, but Combat is the core of the experience if you want to take on the toughest floors available.
And then there's the pinnacle PvM content to tackle, from epic solo bosses through to a whole menagerie of challenging group encounters. You name it, we have it. If you are someone who yearns for glory and the best rewards the game has to offer, this is for you - whether you use those drops to make money or to arm yourself to the teeth. RuneScape's Clan System is a great way to find like minded adventurers to take on these mighty challenges, but you can also use the Grouping feature to find like-minded combatants willing to take on the toughest Gielinor has to offer.
And finally, for the brave and the bold, there’s PvP in the legendary Wilderness. Those who dare to venture into the depths of this special PvP enabled area can face off against other players, but be warned, though - almost everything you are holding or have equipped is on the line. You can reap massive rewards in the Wildy, but you can also lose it all. Sound like your jam? We salute you!
That’s it for our This Is RuneScape! series. We hope you feel ready for launch on October 14th – and if you’d like to know more details about anything you’ve read so far, hop on over to the RuneScape Wiki for some fantastic guides that’ll get you nice and prepared for your first steps in Gielinor.
See you soon on the docks of Taverley,
The RuneScape Team