Melee combat guide

Weapon Upgrades (Attack)

Increasing your Attack level and gaining access to higher tier weapons is one of the best ways to increase your leveling output. For weapon types, attack speed and DPS refer to Attack Speed.

• Level 1 - Bronze scimitar
• Level 5 - Iron scimitar
• Level 15 - Steel scimitar
• Level 30 - Mithril scimitar
• Level 40 - Adamant scimitar
• Level 50 - Rune scimitar
• Level 60 - Dragon scimitar
• Level 70 - Abyssal whip
• Level 80 - Kalphite whip
• Level 85 - 3rd age longsword

1-handed weapons are typically better than 2-handed weapons as they attack faster, have higher dps and can be used with off-handed items to increase their efficiency further.

Defender Upgrades (Recommended)

Defenders are off-handed items that provide both a defensive and offensive bonus. Due to their increase in damage, they are recommended above the use of shields (Except when fighting dragons) as they can allow you to kill enemies faster. However, acquiring defenders requires access to the Warrior's Guild, it will take some time before you can begin getting these items so shields will be the only other option until you reach this point.

Entering the Warrior's Guild requires 100 combined levels in Attack and Strength.
The Dragon defender is the best off-handed item currently in the game (Except when fighting dragons).

• Level 1 - Bronze defender
• Level 5 - Iron defender
• Level 15 - Steel defender
• Level 30 - Mithril defender
• Level 40 - Adamant defender
• Level 50 - Rune defender
• Level 60 - Dragon defender

Shield Upgrades (Defence) (Not recommended - Use Defenders Instead)

Shields made from Smithing provide higher melee and ranged defence, while Fletching shields provide higher magic defence.

• Level 1 - Bronze shield
• Level 5 - Iron shield
• Level 15 - Steel shield
• Level 30 - Mithril shield
• Level 40 - Adamant shield
• Level 50 - Rune shield
• Level 55 - Anti dragon shield (Against dragons)
• Level 85 - Dragonfire shield (Against dragons)

Armor Upgrades

• Level 1 - Bronze chain helmet, Bronze chain body, Bronze chain legs, Bronze chain boots
• Level 3 - Bronze plate full helm, Bronze plate body, Bronze plate legs, Bronze plate boots
• Level 5 - Iron chain helmet, Iron chain body, Iron chain legs, Iron chain boots
• Level 10 - Iron plate full helm, Iron plate body, Iron plate legs, Iron plate boots
• Level 15 - Steel chain helmet, Steel chain body, Steel chain legs, Steel chain boots
• Level 15 - Slayer helmet (60 Slayer - Highly recommended when doing slayer tasks)
• Level 20 - Steel plate full helm, Steel plate body, Steel plate legs, Steel plate boots
• Level 30 - Mithril chain helmet, Mithril chain body, Mithril chain legs, Mithril chain boots
• Level 35 - Mithril plate full helm, Mithril plate body, Mithril plate legs, Mithril plate boots
• Level 40 - Adamant chain helmet, Adamant chain body, Adamant chain legs, Adamant chain boots
• Level 45 - Adamant plate full helm, Adamant plate body, Adamant plate legs, Adamant plate boots
• Level 45 - Berserker helm (Recommended even above Dragon chain helmet - From The Fremennik Trials)
• Level 50 - Rune chain helmet, Rune chain body, Rune chain legs, Rune chain boots
• Level 55 - Rune plate full helm, Rune plate body, Rune plate legs, Rune plate boots
• Level 60 - Dragon chain helmet, Dragon chain body, Dragon chain legs, Dragon chain boots
• Level 70 - Dragon plate full helm, Dragon plate body, Dragon plate legs, Dragon plate boots
• Level 80 - Bandos helmet (Highest helmet damage boost in the game)
• Level 85 - 3rd age melee helmet, 3rd age melee body, 3rd age melee legs, 3rd age melee boots (Highest defence armor in the game)

Amulet Upgrades

Amulets don't have level requirements to equip, so choose whichever item you have access to. (The lower in the list the better the amulet is)

• Amulet of defence
• Amulet of accuracy
• Amulet of strength
• Amulet of power
• Amulet of glory
• Amulet of fury
• 3rd age magic amulet

Other (Useful for automatically burying bones)

• Bonecrusher necklace
• Upgraded bonecrusher necklace
• Dragontooth necklace

Ring Upgrades

Like amulets, rings don't have level requirements to equip either.

• Ring of recoil
• Ring of stone - 3% dmg
• Warrior ring - 5% dmg
• Treasonous ring - 6% dmg
• Warrior ring (i) - 8% dmg plus 3 defence bonus (Imbued Warrior ring)
• Berserker ring - 10% dmg
• Berserker ring (i) - 16% dmg plus 5 defence bonus (Imbued Berserker ring)

Cape Upgrades

• Black cape
• Any skillcape
• Constitution Skillcape
• Strength Skillcape
• Attack Skillcape
• 99 max Skillcape

3rd Age Gear

Despite being arguably the best gear in the entire game, due to only being available from clue scrolls, acquiring these pieces are unimaginably rare and you might never get access to these, so aiming for one tier below is recommended. Buying these off other players is possible, but extremely few even exist within the game.

Math Overview

Melee combat is comprised of 3 different skills, being Attack, defence and strength. Its the art of using a melee weapon to defeat your foes. Usually melee combat brings high damage opportunities at the cost of being in range of the enemy's attack and prone to their retaliation. In a fight, each entity takes turns attacking one another independently of each other (e.g. a player using a dagger will be able to land 2 attacks against an opponent wearing a mace for every attack the mace wielder executes). Each hit you roll your attack against enemies' defence to determine if you hit or miss. While exact numbers are not shared by the staff, formula goes roughly like this:

• Base hit chance - (opponents defence level - (your Attack Level-5))*100%
  • The higher your attack level and the lower your enemies defense is, the higher your chance to not hit zero, aka 'miss', is.
  • 5 Attack levels above the opponent's defence level guarantees 100% melee accuracy against the opponent.
  • Further Attack levels increases your chance to critically hit your opponent with melee attacks.
• Base weapon damage + (Str Level * weapon type bonus) = hit damage
  • Hit damage has a range between 71% and 100% of this value, resulting in an average hit of 85.5% of your max hit potential.
  • Hit damage can critically strike for a guaranteed max hit (100% dmg range) + 10% bonus damage, resulting in an average increase of 28.6% damage.
  • Opponent's defence value affects your hit damage.

Leveling Melee

Common ways to level melee:

• Doing slayer and killing mobs with melee
• Thieving + Killing the mob to reset the thieving cooldown of the mob.
• Specific mobs for resources (e.g Banshee or Unicorn for Rune essence)
• Cave Of Ordeals

Going for max DPS

If you can afford the next tier of weapons, going for attack levels first will almost always be the best choice. if you do not have access to a better weaponry tier, strength will be better to level first.

Furthermore not all weapon types and attack speeds are created equally. Divide a weapon's Base Damage by its Attack Speed to figure out its DPS. Do this for the weapons you're trying to compare with each other to see which weapon provides better overall DPS. Alternatively refer to the Attack speed page for most weaponry's DPS values.

Going for slayer

High level slayer monsters can hit very hard, so getting a high defense level with appropriate armor is a must, while the increase in damage from strength won't be that important. Taking slayer tasks of mobs whose defence level is 5 levels below yours guarantees you will have 100% accuracy against them further helping reduce the amount of damage taken.

Optimizing kill time and reducing personal damage intake

While fighting, to make the best use of your weaponry you're carrying, more than one weapon type can be beneficial in reducing kill time and reducing damage taken. Usually, the most employed tactic is to use 1 very fast weapon with high dps (dagger/scimitar) and a second weapon with low attack speed but high damage. This enables you to finish off a mob quickly with the potential to take one fewer attack from them.

For example: You have a dagger dealing 35 dmg a hit, and a 2h-weapon dealing 90 dmg a hit. If you attack a foe with under 90HP, you can execute it with your 2h-weapon.

Depending on the opponent's attack speed and HP relative to your damage this kind of combo often enables you to either take no damage per mob killed, or take one less hit; thus reducing overall damage taken and reducing overall supplies used in a trip.

(Advanced tips) Relation between percentual damage increases vs actual damage increase

The amount of hits required to kill an opponent typically ranges between one to five hits. Because of this a 10% increase might practically not increase your damage at all, or by more than 10% due to letting you advance a 'bracket' and enable you to, for example, only kill a mob in four hits instead of five.

Example:

• Unicorns have 230 HP. Every hit you do does, on average, 70 damage. Divide the Unicorn's HP by this average damage and you get 3.28 hits required to kill this monster. Since you can only attack whole numbers (e.g: 1, 2, 3) and not in decimal numbers, it will require on average 4 hits to kill a Unicorn.
• You use a Strength Potion to increase your melee damage by 10%, upping your melee damage to 77.
• 230 HP divided by 77 damage results in 2.98 hits taken to reduce the HP to 0.
• Result: the 10% damage increase enabled you to kill the Unicorn in 3 hits instead of 4, effectively increasing your damage done by 25%.

Note: due to the damage range on MineScape being 71% to 100% of your max damage potential this isn't a constant result.

Understanding the concept of damage brackets/amount of whole hits taken per kill further enables you to calculate how much 'overkill' time you waste to kill a mob and if preferred, can be accounted for as well.

Example:

• Unicorns have 230 HP. You have a weapon that does 78 damage every second (78 DPS). This results in a clean 3 seconds per kill (77 + 77 + 77 = 231 damage = 1 damage overkill)
• Unicorns have 230 HP and instead you have a weapon that does 144 damage every 2 seconds (72 DPS). This results in 4 seconds per kill ( 144 + 144 = 288 = 58 damage overkill)
• Result is 1 second worth of overkill.

Note: None of the above knowledge is necessary to enjoy the game. In the end use the weapon you enjoy using. MineScape is a marathon and the best way to complete a marathon is by not burning out. The same goes for MineScape.

Multiplicative and additive damage increases/decreases

MineScape largely works with additive damage increases which might trick you into believing you're gaining more damage than you really are. Conversely it might trick you into thinking your reduced damage taken boosts become less effective the more you have of it than it really does.

Example:

• Your original damage is 100%
• You have 30% increased melee damage on your Scoreboard (can be enabled/disabled by opening the Inventory > Clicking the crossed swords icon > Clicking the skill tab icon > first button) from multiple sources meaning you now effectively do 130% damage compared to your original damage (100% + 30%).
• You use a Strength Potion increasing your Scoreboard's melee damage bonus by 10%. This adds 10% to the 30%, resulting in you doing 140% of your original damage (100% + 30% + 10%)
• The effective difference after consuming a Strength Potion is 140% divided by 130%, resulting in a 7.7%~ damage difference AKA damage increase.

The result is that the higher your Scoreboard damage bonus becomes, the less valuable every new point becomes. This is also known as 'Diminishing Returns'.

Reduced damage taken percentages scale differently, however. When going into the negative numbers, additive percentage increases scale more aggressively.

Example:

• Your original damage taken is 100% of the damage a mob does
• You activate Protect from Melee, reducing damage taken from melee attacks by 50% - you now only take 50% of the damage you would have otherwise
• You drink a Defence Potion further reducing the damage you take from melee attacks by 10% - you now have 60% melee damage reduction, effectively causing you to only take 40% of the damage you would have otherwise since you're negating 60% of the melee damage done to you
• Result is that instead of reducing the amount of damage you would have taken by a mere 10%, due to the damage reductions working additively and reducing the damage you would have taken by a flat percentual amount, you calculate the difference between 50% and 40% of the damage taken which shows you take 20% reduced damage instead of the expected 10%

Beginner Combat Guide -Minescape-