Clan


 * For information about specific clans, please see the RuneScape Clans Wiki.



A clan, sometimes but rarely known as a guild, is a united group of players who may choose to participate in player killing, training skills, participating in mini-games, holding events, or simply having meetings with one another. Clans often have allies and enemies.

Some clans are roughly constructed, participating only in a single task, such as pking or a single minigame. Other clans have strict codes and rules, setting down punishments for breaking these rules.

Jagex does not support clans outside of the game, however in order to keep clans in-game and prevent players from going to third party sites, they have recently added the clan chat feature on 6 August 2007.

A recent Jagex update marks clan members as purple dots on minimaps, as opposed to having to wear team capes to identify clan members.

Before the introduction of Clan Chat, players were usually asked if they wanted to join the clan, and thus either accepted or declined. With the Clan Chat system, a player can organize their entire friends list into a complex hierarchy without the supposed clan members even knowing of their admittance into the clan.

Types of Clans
Below are many different types of clans. A clan may fall under multiple types.

Military
A Military clan is a clan based on real military units.

Warring
A warring clan is a clan that goes to war with other clans. (See below for list of wars.) These clans often have much higher enlistment rates than non-warring clans on the official forums because of many players wanting action.

Non-Warring
A non-warring clan is a clan that does not go to war with other clans. These clans often have lower enlistment rates on the official forums.

Merchanting
A typical non-violent clan that focuses more on using the skill of its members in order to gain money. Some are constructed much like pyramid schemes. Their numbers have gone up after the introduction of the Grand Exchange.

PKing
PKing clan used to be a term for groups of players who player killed in the Wilderness, prior to the Bounty Hunter update. While Player Killing clans still exist, they can operate solely within the Bounty Hunter arena and the Clan Wars Arena, which is now a safe area. Within the Bounty Hunter arena, it is hard for clans to operate as effectively as they could prior to this update due to the bounty hunter rules which restrict the amount of ammunition that rangers and mages can bring, the addition to the "3-minute pickup" rule, which prevents clan members from adequately restocking food, and the fact that Bounty Hunter is a single combat area.

Pest Control
There are some clans that specifically get together to play games of Pest Control. Some people join these clans for fun, others join clans like this as they believe it is the fastest possible way of gaining combat experience.

Questing
A questing clan is a clan with the sole purpose of doing quests together.

Raiding Clan/Expedition Team
Groups of players, typically in the same range of levels, will choose to band together and sometimes mass attack a location like Dark Warriors' Fortress in the wilderness. Sometimes they can be very organised to, in their words, assault the place. Team capes of the same group are worn by members of their expedition.

Skilling
A skilling clan is a clan that mainly trains skills together also most skilling clans share tools.

Name Clans
Name clans find their origins at the very start of RuneScape. In the first days when all of Runescape was PvP for those who had selected the option, players grouped themselves together into clans with a common clan name or tag shared amongst each of the members. Name Clans quickly lost their popularity once the main world of RuneScape was switched to NON-PK temporarily. Of the original Name Clans, a few individual members from each clan remain.

Player Owned City
Player Owned Cities (POCs), sometimes called Player Owned Countries, are Role-Playing clans. Generally, player owned cities claim a certain area of land, ranging from a single city such as Keldagrim to entire parts of Gielinor. In this area, the members role-play as though they actually live in the city, hosting events, opening shops, creating jobs, and governing their nation.

In player cities, players generally take on one or more jobs, such as a fisherman, merchant, or warrior, which they do to gain personal wealth while aiding the city. Many cities also have military units and/or guards, which are stationed entrances or key points of the region to watch for enemies and monitor the flow of visitors.

Cities often try to distinguish themselves from clans, emphasizing their role-playing goals over more standard clan activities. The line between city and standard clan, however, is often difficult to distinguish.

POCs are often known to benefit the entire Runescape Economy, due to the constant jobs being done.

Most likely player to join, and why:


 * Low-Leveled players find POCs benefiting, due to the fact that money made is split amongst everyone.


 * High-Leveled players usually join because of the infamous role of being a guard or perhaps a military general, thus receiving a fair share of money/goods. Oddly enough, this job is usually considered hard because of the causes amongst people. (ex; fights,riots,etc)


 * Questers carry a huge amount of knowledge on Runescape, thus usually being invited to join a POC and be considered one of the higher "elites" to support members with knowledge on the city.


 * Others: Many more join due to the quick profit well established POCs make. However, not all usually join because of that, POCs are known to fight over territory and can cause major riots; usually ending in war. Mercinaries (or mercs) are paid high to be part of war in POC fights.

Pure Clans
Pure clans are clans with the requirement of low defence in them. These clans specialize in the fact that their combat his low with a higher strength, range, and mage. The most popular defence requirement is level 1 - 20 defence. Before the quest Recruitment Drive came out, the defence requirements were lower then 20, but with the quest came the ability to get initiate armour.

Old Clans
Old clans, or Mythic clans, constitute only a small fraction of the RuneScape clan community. These are the clans who have been in existence since at least mid-2002. They have a larger name recognition than other clans, often an extremely large members list, and wield considerable power within the community and whatever union they may be in.

Corruptionist Clans
These clans are extremely dangerous to "official clans" as their name says it all. Corruptionist Clans are considered to be breaking the rules by simply supporting them. No one should recommend joining or making a Corruptionist Clan. Corruptionist Clans are hired by official clans (ex:Most of the clan types stated above), their job is to corrupt the rival clan, practically eliminating it. Corruption usually begins with one of the CC's (corruptionist clan's) member(s) joins the targeted clan to be corrupted. When the CC's member(s) join the targeted clan they begin the usual rumors and often begin fights, causing the targeted clan to begin to split. These moves can later cause threatening moves such as hacking or other harmful actions. Eventually, the Targeted Clan would be unfortunately disbanded. The Corruptionist Clans usually receive payment in Runescape Money, or in some cases, real money for what they do. This information is not meant to encourage players to join or make one of these clans, but to know of these clans and be on guard for your own clan's sake.

How to avoid these clans:
 * Regulate your clan's members
 * Be sure to always question new members
 * Report suspicious activity (but only if you're sure)
 * Kick all suspicious people within your Clan Chat

Wars
Pre-10 December 2007, wars would usually be taken far more seriously than they are today. Sometimes one clan might have a disagreement with another clan, which causes the members involved to become angry with the members of the opposite side. Usually a disagreement leads to name-calling, flaming, etc., and this is when each person begins to get involved. This usually results in wars.

Some clans have wars for fun, or to prove that their clan is better than another, while others try to avoid wars, although most clans today fight in clan wars for fun, or combat experience. Some clans will have a contest in another field like runecrafting or other skills.

Sometimes clan wars will lead to rivalries. This means that when clans are rivaling each other, if one person from the team sees another they will most likely call other members of the clan, and this results in frequent ongoing wars between clans. This can become very expensive and drain the players' coins and items quickly if they are on the losing end. However, the winning end would be very prosperous, as they would be left to claim the lost items and gold dropped by the members of the rival clan. This side of clan wars was removed with the addition of Clan Wars, and so the victors nowadays get only bragging rights.

When one team wins, there is a momentary time of peace with minimal fights; this is because the losing team needs to recuperate and build up resources in order to fight the other clan again. These clan rivalries can last for very long periods of time.

However, a real oddity is when clans eventually decide to merge to form a larger and more formidable clan in order to take down tougher enemies of their clan. This may sometimes fail because of disputes amongst once-rivaled clan members. But if the merge is successful, the clan may become twice as powerful and continue to build in power.

Types of Wars
Some clan wars may have certain common rules and thus have a name. These specific rules for wars have fallen out of popularity due to the removal of PvP in the wilderness, and most people now choose to simply wear their strongest armour to wars, due to the negated risk of losing items.

Iron War
This type of war requires that every member of both clans wear full iron, and is very popular amongst low-leveled clans. There are normally no conditions on which weapon participants may bring, although a rune scimitar is a popular choice. This is less common since the removal of playing-killing in the wilderness and the addition of the safe Clan Wars Arena.

Steel War


This type of war requires that every member of both clans wear full steel. This is popular for mid-level and low-level clans. Usually a rune scimitar is required, but it varies depending on the clan. Again, it is less popular since the removal of playing-killing in the wilderness and the addition of the safe Clan Wars Arena minigame.

Rune War
This type of war requires that every member of both clans wear full rune. Not as popular as iron wars, as full rune costs much, much more than full iron. Some players are so concerned of losing their armour that they may not turn up to the war.

Most of the large clans only accept wars with other clans if it is a full rune war.

Fair War
This is when clans bank all of their weapons, armour, runes and bow and arrow, and go to war. A lot of people have been known to sneak in gloves and boots.

Ranged War
This is when clans fire arrows at each other until one side is dead or players run out of arrows. To make it fair, they often fight over a long hill or ditch, so that nobody can easily use melee.

Mage War
Like the ranged war, clans fire magic at each other until one is dead, or they run out of runes. These can also be fought over ditches or mounds, but sometimes the clans just fight without organising anything.

Castle Wars War
This type of war is done in Castle Wars. It is not very popular because one clan may be bigger than the other, so not all of both clans may fight. It may also be due to the fact that there will always be non-clan members interfering the battle, giving one side more of an advantage.

Duel Arena War
This is sometimes popular because:
 * Staking can be done, so some may win prizes. Although, the maximum that could be gained in 15 minutes is 10,000 coins worth of items for free players and 60,000 coins worth of items for members.
 * Rules can be made that are impossible to break
 * Random PKers/Castle Wars players will not interfere

Clan Wars
The most popular method of war is to fight in the Clan Wars mini-game. This is popular because of no other players being able to interfere, and it can be set to 100% safe, meaning when a player dies, they lose no items. There is also an option of item loss upon death, although these wars are not very frequent.

Uniform
It is common to see clans all wearing the same clothing or armour. Some clans only wear a certain colour of cape or hat, but others have everyone wearing the same thing. However, this has recently fallen out of practice due to a minimap update in which members of a clan chat are now marked with a purple dot, thus making it easy to discern friend from foe when fighting.

Clan Support
For the longest time, Jagex did not offer official in-game support for any clan related activities. Players could group together on the forums or on fansites, but there was no official way to control clan affairs in the wilderness or any other area of the game.

The first clan update was the introduction of team capes. This prevented players from accidentally attacking a clan mate and made it easier to identify them inside and outside the wilderness. In addition to this, the in-game minimap was updated to let members of a clan chat see their fellow members as purple dots on the minimap, easy to tell apart from the opposing clan's members, which still appeared as white dots.

Clan chat
If a player wants to create a channel to speak to their clan, they can create a clan chat. This is useful to talk to the people who are in a clan, without letting anybody else know what clan members are saying. To talk on clan chat just type a "/" before typing the message.

Clan chat is essential to LootShare and Clan Wars.