Combat Setup: Weakness, Food and Potions

Three things decide your damage per hour: how often you hit, how hard you hit, and how often you swing. Weakness improves the first two. Your weapon sets the third. XP follows damage, so the setup that deals the most damage per hour is also your best training setup.

Hit chance and max hit

For melee, Attack sets your hit chance and Strength sets your max hit. Archery and Magic each use one skill for both. The defender's Defence is worked out from different stats depending on the style you attack with, which is why a monster can be easy to hit with one style and awkward with another.

The wiki gives the formulas, with a note that the hit chance section may be out of date. Your accuracy and the monster's defence are each turned into an augmented stat: (stat + 64) × (level + 8) / 10, rounded down. If your accuracy is below its defence, your hit chance is (accuracy − 1) / (2 × defence). If it is at or above, the chance is 1 − (defence + 1) / (2 × accuracy). Max hit is (stat / 8 + level + 13 + stat × level / 64) / 10.

Two practical points come out of that. First, both your level and your gear bonus feed the same product, so a level is worth more the better your gear, and the other way round. Second, once your accuracy is well above a monster's defence, more accuracy barely moves your hit chance, and strength is where the gains are. Damage on a hit is random between 0 and your max hit, inclusive, so even a landed hit can do nothing.

Weakness

Every monster has a weakness type: a melee damage type such as stab, slash, crush or pound, or a whole style, archery or magic. When your weapon matches, the weakness text on the combat screen turns yellow. The wiki says weakness multiplies your max hit; this site's combat leveling page reads the official calculator's value as +20% damage and −20% monster defence. Either way, it is the cheapest damage upgrade in the game, because it costs only a weapon swap.

Weakness is spread around on purpose. In the Wilderness alone, the game data has six monsters and six different weaknesses, and the Lair of Beasts is the same. A melee player who carries two or three weapon types covers most targets. The weapon types page lists which melee weapon deals which type, and each monster page shows its weakness.

Attack speed

You attack when your attack meter fills, and the fill time comes from your weapon's attack interval. In the game data the tier melee weapons mostly sit at 3.6 seconds, the special scimitars at 2.75, crossbows at 3.5 and staffs at 4.75. A slower weapon needs a proportionally bigger hit to keep up. Compare a 2.75 second weapon and a 3.6 second weapon at the same max hit and hit chance, and the faster one deals about 31% more damage per hour. That is why the best weapon page shows speed next to every bonus.

How combat XP is paid

The base rate is 5 XP per point of damage: 4 XP to the skill your style trains and 1 XP to Health. The game data's shared settings carry the same 4 and 1. No regular monster pays XP for the kill itself, so the target that levels you fastest is the one you deal the most damage to per hour. Overkill is lost on regular monsters, and the 2.55 second respawn after every kill is time with no damage at all. Turkeys use a 2 second timer. Clan perks and the Potion of Resurrection shorten the respawn.

The wiki lists what boosts combat XP: clan combat XP events, holiday events and the +30% daily boost. Housing XP boosts do not apply to combat skills, which is worth knowing before you plan your housing around a combat goal. Plug your own numbers into the combat calculator to compare two targets.

Food and death

You eat to get Health back. If your Health hits zero, you lose any unclaimed loot from that fight and you are removed from combat, so running out of food costs more than the time. The best food page ranks all 39 foods in the game data by heal, from Cooked Piranha (2) to Cooked Bloodmoon Eel (24). For regular monsters, bring the cheapest food that keeps you alive; for bosses, bring the best you can cook.

Dodge

Agility gives a dodge chance of +0.18% per level, up to 21.6% at level 120, rolled before the enemy's hit roll. At level 50 that is 9% of attacks gone before they can land. It is one of the few defensive stats that does not depend on your armour.

Potions

The potions page lists every brewable potion from the game data with its Brewing level. The ones combat players ask about: Swiftness at Brewing 1, Resurrection at 30, Great Sight at 55, Dark Magic at 75, Pure Power at 85 and Ancient Knowledge at 93. The game data stores potion effects as bare numbers, so this site does not name what each one does; read the in-game tooltip. The wiki does confirm that potions multiply max hit in the same way weakness does, and that Pure Power, Dark Magic, Great Sight and Ancient Knowledge all work in clan boss fights.

Fighting in a group

A standard group is one to three players sharing an enemy. Loot goes to one player per kill, weighted by damage. The wiki's example: 175, 120 and 205 damage give 35%, 24% and 41% chances. Clan combat events take up to 20 clan members against a Big ol' Turkey, which cannot kill anyone. Clan bosses fight back; the clan boss guide covers those rules.

A setup checklist

• Weapon type that matches the target's weakness.
• Accuracy high enough that strength is now the better upgrade.
• Food that out-heals what the monster deals.
• A target with low enough health that respawns are not eating your hour, unless you are there for its drops.

Frequently asked questions