This article provides information for members about effective ways to train Attack, Strength, and Constitution through meleecombat. It contains some general training tips and suggestions for suitable monsters to kill for a wide range of levels. In this article, monsters are sorted according to the level of the skill being trained, not the recommended overall combat level.
This article assumes that players are training Attack, Strength, and Constitution more or less equally. If not, see the pure melee guide.
Use the best equipment you have and a weapon that has a style the monster you are fighting is weak to. (For example, moss giants are weak to slash attacks so it is a good idea to attack them with weapons such as the abyssal whip or the dragon 2h sword rather than weapons using crush or stab).
Complete Slayer tasks whenever possible in order to train Slayer while training other combat skills. (+12.5% att/str bonus while wearing a black mask or slayer helm when on a task). However, remember that Slayer tasks may give you monsters with weaknesses to ranged or magic, rather than melee.
Wear a ring of wealth, or better, whenever fighting a monster that drops items on the rare drop table if you are interested in valuable drops rather than slightly faster experience rates from rings with combat-related stats.
An emergency teleport that can be activated with one click can be useful to avoid death. A simple house teleport tablet is cheap and could end up being a lifesaver.
Healing abilities are a must have for extending the length of a training trip. The Resonance ability is a basic level Defence ability, that causes the next hit to heal instead of damage you. Rejuvenate is an ultimate Defence ability that restores 40% of your life points over several seconds. Regenerate is a basic Constitution ability that uses whatever adrenaline you have left to restore your health if you're not in combat.
Although the Resonance and Rejuvenate abilities require a shield to be equipped, you only need to equip the shield for as long as it takes to activate the ability if you prefer to dual wield or use two-handed weapons.
Another great healing ability is Guthix's Blessing, which will heal you 8% of your maximum life points every two seconds, up to ten seconds. This ability should only be used when not in direct combat with a monster as the summoned butterfly can be attacked and killed, ending the effect prematurely.
Consider using threshold abilities instead of ultimate ones; the damage done by thresholds is lower, but they use less adrenaline, meaning more than one can be used in a row.
Set up your action bar before you go into combat, making sure all the abilities you want to use are on there, and that all the abilities are ones you can use with the weapons you have. Remember that you can have multiple bars set up at once, and there is no penalty for changing which one you're using.
Common equipment, accessories, and setups[]
Weaponry[]
You can select what specific skill earned XP will go into through the Combat Settings tab in the Powers menu (F4 to open). For melee training, you can choose between Attack, Defence, and Strength (XP will automatically go to Constitution).
Jot down monster weaknesses and utilize them. Using a crush weapon against a monster weak to crush gives a much higher chance to hit against that monster, and significantly higher hits. Avoid monsters who have a weakness to ranged attacks, as they will have a very high defence to melee attacks.
Always use the best tier of weapons you can wield and afford. Better weapons ensure higher damage output and a higher chance to hit.
The abyssal whip is a popular weapon for combat training due to its rapid attack speed and low cost. It can be upgraded to the abyssal vine whip (a level 75 weapon) however this requires level 80 Slayer. The non-degradable off-hand equivalent for an abyssal vine whip is the enhanced excalibur.
The next-best weapons above whip vine/excalibur are chaotic (level 80) and Drygore weaponry (level 90). However, chaotic and drygore weaponry degrade with use and will incur a maintenance cost.
For extended combat training, consider wearing high defence and life point armour (such as Barrows armour). This allows for prolonged training in one sitting. However, a better choice for training would be to use offensive armour (such as Bandos armour), as it will allow you to increase your damage output and kill at a faster rate.
Barrows armour is a cheaper alternative to Bandos armour, and can be used with the corresponding weapons for powerful set effects. The trade-off, however, is that it degrades with use, meaning that it will incur a maintenance cost. Alternatively, the Void knight melee armour (from the Pest Control minigame) has a set effect of increasing your attack and strength bonuses, but at the cost of having low defensive stats. This is a viable way to train melee fast due to the increased damage output, if you are willing to use extra food or, if available, Soul Split.
Sacred clay equipment, a reward from Stealing Creation, gives a set amount of bonus experience that is rewarded as players train. This allows players to wear any armour, while still receiving the bonus experience. However, you can normally earn more experience from killing monsters than from the time it takes to get a piece of sacred clay equipment. Therefore most players choose to use their Stealing Creation on skills that cost money to train rather than combat, which is usually profitable.
Generally speaking, most of the time you will not need food if you use healing abilities such as Rejuvenate, an ultimate ability which restores 40% of your health (but requires a shield, and can only be used once every 300 seconds, due to a recent update), Regenerate, which can be used outside combat to convert remaining adrenaline into health, and Resonance, which makes the next attack that hits you heal instead of dealing damage.
Other methods of healing include:
Using food
Guthan the Infested's equipment has excellent defence bonuses, a feasible two-handed weapon, and a set effect, which players can use to heal themselves. However, use of Guthan's has a few downsides. Use of Guthan's helm prevents the use of other head-slot items, such as a slayer helm or face mask. In addition, though Guthan's spear is a good training weapon, it pales in comparison to stronger weapons such as Godswords and chaotic/Drygore weaponry.
Soul Split requires 92 Prayer and access to the Ancient Curses. It heals its user 10% of the damage dealt if it is activated during a successful hit against a monster. Because of its rapid drain rate, many players use the prayer flashing technique to drastically reduce, or outright nullify, Prayer point drain.
If unable to create overloads or extremes due to a low Herblore level, super sets work well too.
Regular combat potions are more cost effective than attack potions and strength potions because they combine the effects of both while being cheaper than the two individual items combined.
Being a safe minigame, dying is no cause for worry.
Tokkul can be earned from playing this, and can be spent on valuable rewards from TzHaar shops.
The creatures do not drop anything, You can get drops of tokkul from the creatures outside the fight cave as a drop but do not fight them at this level.
You can get Obsidian Cape and Onyx with tokkul from the TzHaar Shops.
Due to the large number of them, a player could easily be piled and killed.
The money return from these monsters isn't that great.
An update reduced the aggression range of the ones in Waterbirth, hampering XP rates. A cannon can be used to bypass this, but the cannonball usage can be very costly.
Players will need food as they can hit hard and very accurately.
Some of the better drops require the player to be on a Slayer assignment.
Level 90-99[]
At this level, almost any monster that you wish can be killed, but some of the more preferred ones are listed below. It is recommended to have drygore weapons or higher to kill these monsters for optimum XP rates, without drygore weapons it may be advisable to kill level 80-90 creatures
3,204 ((and 1,057.3 experience) to 4,796.55 (and 1,582.8 experience)
Advantages
Disadvantages
Drops can be very valuable.
At high levels, the bosses are entirely soloable.
Using an instance can create very fast kills (provided that the spawn setting is on fast).
Risk of dying is incredibly high; this may result in high costs to buy back items.
A killcount hampers exp gain, as it takes time between banking trips.
Side note: Orks in God Wars Dungeon north of the entrance near the Bandos entrance become aggressive after killing one, and it resets after every killing, providing 100% AFK and averaging about 275,000 melee experience per hour. Bonecrusher, a Split dragontooth or Demon horn necklace, and Soul Split make your trips last as long as you like.
They will change combat styles depending on the player's combat style, equipment and prayers, which in turn changes their defence values.
Can use abilities which can deal heavy damage, and if their aggression is not toggled by Angof, can easily kill the player if several are attacking at once.
Training melee, magic, and ranged skills in the Abyss is perhaps the best AFK exp/hour in the entire game. The south-west and south-east corners spawn 15+ creatures that are aggressive and will attack the player upon respawn. There is a world-hopping safespot in the far south-west corner behind a tendril. The creatures become non-aggressive after 10 minutes. To reset the aggression timer simply run away and come back.
596,798.0 XP/h measurements: Melee halberd (power armour, blood amulet, super melee potion, dragon rider lance recommended): 596,798.0 exp/hour afk. Use Revolution++ with the following bar: Meteor Strike, Berserk, Hurricane, Quake, Cleave.
Bring a charming imp. Have him eat the abyssal, gold, green charms for easy Summoning exp. The monsters drop ludicrous amounts of charms due to the sheer volume of kills per hour.
Vyrewatch training[]
Alongside Abyssal training, killing Vyrewatch in Darkmeyer is another AFK method of training combat. The maximum combat XP/h sits at around 550-600k, but alongside this you also recieve 200k Constitution XP, 350-450k Prayer XP (if Morytania legs 4 are owned and equiped), 200k Firemaking XP and 100-150k Farming XP (if the player has seedicide unlocked). Alongside this, players can make upwards of 6.000.000 GP per hour if the player loots every 1-2 minutes.
Because of these rewards and the killing of Vyrewatch being (semi)afk,
this is a popular method of training. This method of training does require the Morytania elite tasks, many quests, seedicide and a high combat level to do.
At worlds 50+, Shattered Worlds can be a very good source of experience. In general, each world offers better experience per kill than the one before it until the player no longer has enough resources to continue. In addition to experience, Shattered Worlds awards the player with Shattered anima for rewards like Bladed Dive and slayer masks that are normally only obtainable from Treasure Hunter. It is recommended that players train around worlds 70-80, bringing their own armour and weapons, for the fastest experience rates.
Completing quests[]
Visit the links below for a list of quests granting experience in the respective melee skill on completion:
Defence
Level
Life points
experience)
Agility
Attack
Constitution
Construction
Cooking
Crafting
Defence
Divination
Dungeoneering
Farming
Firemaking
Fishing
Fletching
Herblore
Hunter
Invention
Magic
Mining
Prayer
Ranged
Runecrafting
Slayer (High-levelled)
Smithing
Summoning
Thieving
Woodcutting