How the game works

Offline progress

The server simulates your fight around the clock — every swing is a real dice roll, whether your tab is open or not (only past several days away does the maths switch to exact expected values, where the difference is statistically invisible). Log back in and the "While you were away" report shows exactly what happened. Damage you've dealt to a monster is banked forever: nothing ever heals, even if you switch targets or log out mid-fight.

Kill times

Kill time = monster HP ÷ your damage per second, plus a short travel/respawn overhead per monster. Each swing (your weapon's real attack speed, e.g. 2.4s for a scimitar) rolls accuracy against the monster's defence, then damage between 0 and your max hit. The formulas are the real OSRS ones:

max hit = ⌊0.5 + (Strength + stance + 8) × (strength bonus + 64) ÷ 640⌋
accuracy = your attack roll vs (defence level + 9) × (defence bonus + 64)

Four combat skills & weapon styles

Attack makes melee hit more often; Strength makes it hit harder; Ranged and Magic each drive both accuracy and damage for their own weapons, and train themselves as you use them — all on the real OSRS experience table at 6× the real 4-XP-per-damage rate. Your weapon decides which combat styles you can use: a scimitar Chops, Slashes or Lunges; a maul only Pounds; a whip refuses to train aggressively; a battlestaff can Focus, Blast, Channel — or Bash someone over the head as crush melee. Melee stances route XP (accurate → Attack, aggressive → Strength, controlled → split); ranged and magic styles send everything to their own skill. The shop sells Ranging and Magic potions alongside the melee ones, and since v3.0 it also sells the starter weapons for both — a shortbow and an apprentice staff for pocket change, then an oak shortbow, an elder staff and the battlestaff — so a bow or a staff is a real choice from the first minute, not something that waits for Barrows.

The five defence lanes

Every monster defends stab , slash , crush , ranged and magic differently — authored from the real wiki metas — and those lanes are hidden: the listed Def number is only neutral defence. The Kraken all but ignores arrows but melts before a trident; trolls wall out magic; the Barrows brothers crumble to it; dragons shrug spells off while a lance finds the gaps. The instrument for finding a weakness is the Accuracy readout — equip a weapon, watch the number, try another style. After 5 kills with a type the game confirms how that lane feels; after 25 the exact defence bonus lands in your Bestiary (Account tab). A green log reveals the whole monster. On top of the lanes, curated affinities still multiply specific items at specific monsters (dragonbane weapons, god rivalries, the Seercull at the smoke devil). Trying things out is the point.

Equipment

Drops never replace what you are wearing. A new item only auto-fills a slot that is empty — swapping your finds in is the fun part, and the Equipment tab shows a ● when something in your bank beats a worn piece. Check it after every comeback: a banked full steel set is worth roughly a quarter off your kill time.

Hints are honest. Since v3.0 every upgrade marker, every "while you were away" upgrade line and the vs worn readout on an item's card are priced by the server against the monster you are fighting right now, with your real levels, boosts and style — so a hint never points at a piece that would slow you down, and a piece that is only better in another style says which style. Against a defence lane you have not probed yet the number carries a ~ and is an estimate against neutral defence. The Best from bank button on an item card builds the fastest outfit for your current target from everything you own (you choose whether to wear it), and a style hint appears when another style of the weapon you already hold would kill faster.

Kill speed comes from what you wear — one attack-bonus pool and one strength-bonus pool across all 12 slots (pets aren't equipment: every distinct pet you own follows you for a permanent +1 max hit). Weapons also set your swing speed, and since v1.3 many armour and jewellery pieces are lane specialists: their bracketed bonus (the gold lane on its card) only counts when your attack style matches, so a mage dresses in Ahrim's with an occult necklace while a crush build wants Torag's plate — the right outfit per monster is a real choice. A few items are extra effective at specific monsters (dragonbane weapons vs dragons). New drops auto-equip into empty slots only.

Weapon mechanics, armour families & monster attributes

Three pinnacle weapons are rules, not stat sticks, and each depends on what you are fighting. The Scythe of vitur sweeps through up to three tiles: a size-1 target is hit once, a size-2 twice (100% and 50% of the max hit), a size-3 or bigger boss three times (100% / 50% / 25%) — the Stats panel says "3 hits vs size-5" when it applies. The Twisted bow scales its accuracy and damage with the target's magic level (up to 140% accuracy and 215% damage at magic 250): devastating at the raids and Nex, a wet noodle against a goblin — the readout says "bow: 215% dmg vs magic 250". Tumeken's shadow carries little damage of its own and instead multiplies the magic accuracy and strength of every other worn item — ×3 as standard, more inside the Tombs of Amascut; the item's card and the readout ("shadow ×3") carry the exact figures. Each rule only works in the weapon's own lane (a scythe's Bash still sweeps; nothing leaks into a staff's melee styles).

Strength bonus has a family too. A weapon's strength projects into styles outside its own family (melee / ranged / magic) at 40% — a strength-heavy staff makes a poor club — and since v2.7 the same goes for armour slots (helm, body, legs, boots, gloves, shield): a piece with a lane identity (the gold lane on its card) keeps its full strength only on its own family's styles, so melee plate gives a bow just 40% of its strength and Masori or Ancestral give a scimitar the same discount. Dress for the style you swing. Pieces without a lane, and all jewellery and trinkets, stay family-free.

The six Barrows sets are sets. Wear all four pieces of one brother — weapon, helm, body and legs — and swing in that brother's style, and the set adds a few percent to your max hit: 7% for Dharok's, Torag's and Guthan's, 5% for Verac's and Karil's (ranged), 4% for Ahrim's (magic). Three pieces give nothing; a melee set under a crossbow gives nothing. The item card counts the pieces you are wearing, and the Stats panel names the active set beside your max hit. They are tuned so a full set is a real alternative to the best mixed outfit of that era, not a new must-have.

Every monster carries public attribute tags — dragon, undead, demon, giant, raid, a god allegiance, size words and more — shown as chips in your Bestiary (Account tab) and on a boss's hover, each with a short gloss. Items carry affinities against those tags ("×1.6 vs dragons" on the item's card): the largest matching affinity multiplies that item's whole contribution at that monster, never a product of several. Dragonbane weapons vs dragons and wyrms, Saradomin's blades vs demons, the godswords against their rival gods, the Seercull at dagannoths and spellcasters — the card says exactly where a thing shines. Some trinkets carry utility effects instead of, or on top of, stats: drop luck, pet chance, combat XP — a jar only works at its own monster, and the card says "at <boss>" when that is so. Pure forge components (hilts, sigils, fangs, the uncut onyx) cannot be worn at all — the forge is their whole job.

Unlocks

Monsters unlock in chains — meaningful kill counts at a predecessor ("75 Goblin KC"), collection power (the summed power of everything you currently hold — selling a last copy costs you its power, though any monster you have already killed stays unlocked forever), or slaying all four godwars generals for Nex. Anything you have ever killed stays unlocked forever. The ladder since v3.0: the Giant Mole opens after Scurrius, the Moons of Peril after Barrows, the Royal Titans after Sarachnis; the four Desert Treasure II bosses (Duke Sucellus, The Leviathan, The Whisperer, Vardorvis) open together after 50 Corporeal Beast kills; and Tier 5 — Sol Heredit, TzKal-Zuk, Yama and the Doom of Mokhaiotl — opens after 25 kills at each of the three raids. Every Tier 5 boss out-defends the raids, each is soft to one lane, and each combat family has a pinnacle weapon there (the Tonalztics of Ralos, the eye of Ayak, oathplate with the infernal cape) that is best in this tier and nowhere before it.

Elite levels (100–120)

Every combat skill climbs past 99. Base experience still caps at 99 exactly as it always has (13,034,431 xp); from there a separate elite pool fills from zero on the same growing curve, one elite level at a time up to 120, and the level combat uses is the sum. The skill bar turns gold with an "elite" marker once you are past 99, "(maxed)" now means 120, and the hiscores show elite levels. Nobody starts ahead: experience that was banked past 99 before v3.0 is recorded on your account but never converted, so every player begins the climb at elite 0.

Quests

Quest scrolls drop from monsters and unlock journal entries. Every quest needs deeds at two or more monsters. XP quests are repeatable but demand fresh kills each time; component quests consume the components; higher quests grant one-time gear like the Dragon scimitar.

The Forge

Some drops are not in their final form — a godsword hilt is a trinket until it meets a blade; a Kraken tentacle wants a whip to coil around; sigils long for a blessed spirit shield. Every forging is a pair: the Forge tab (Equipment page) has two slots — load two items (or a stack of one kind), smelt, and see. The right pair consumes the components and produces the finished item; the forge keeps a fee of 15% of that item's sell value (printed on the recipe card — intermediates and materials cost nothing). A warm-but-wrong pair adds a rumor to your book — and the rumor remembers which of the two resonated, or tells you outright when the pairing is right but the proportions are wrong. A cold offering is returned free. Nothing is spoiled up front: dozens of pairs to find (the recipe book on the Forge tab keeps the exact count), several spanning two different monsters' drops, and some forgings are themselves parts of greater pairs. Consuming a component never removes its collection-log credit, and repeatable quests will re-grant a quest reward you forged away.

Chat

The box under the kill counter is both your drop feed and a public chat — type in the bar at the bottom and everyone online sees it. Chat has emotes: the 🐸 button shows the pack, clicking one drops it into your message, and typing an emote's name works too (two letters and Tab completes it, Tab again cycles the matches). A message that is nothing but one to three emotes shows them big. A language filter stars out the obvious stuff rather than blocking your message, so you will never be left wondering whether it sent. Staff wear a crown beside their name: gold for an administrator, silver for a player moderator. Clicking a name in chat opens the staff actions you are allowed to take on that person. Moderators can mute and unmute ordinary players — never another moderator or an administrator — and a mute also clears what that player has already posted. Administrators additionally promote players to moderator and demote them again from the same menu. Administrators have full permissions: they are the only ones who can grant or revoke crowns, and the only ones who can clear the chat for everyone (your own drop log survives that). Every check runs on the server, so there is nothing to be gained by poking at it from the browser.

Green logs (mastery)

Own every drop on a monster's collection log — ever, selling doesn't count against you — and your swings there come permanently 5% faster, plus 1% faster everywhere per green log (global part capped at +20%). It speeds the swing timer only — respawn time and a raid's minimum length are untouched, so the kill-time gain is a little under the headline number.

GP, selling & potions

Duplicate drops can be sold for GP in the Equipment tab ("Sell dupes" keeps one of each). Sell values climb with the monster's era and how long it takes to kill, then with the drop's rarity — a late raid unique is worth hundreds of times an early common, and a forged item is worth its parts plus a tenth. Selling your last copy costs you its equipment bonus until it drops again, but your collection log credit is permanent — only valuable items (5,000+ gp) ask you to confirm first. Tag a whole basket with Tag to sell. GP buys temporary boost potions with the real OSRS boost math — an Attack potion is +3 + 10% of your level for 15 minutes, supers are +5 + 15%, Divine lasts an hour. Boosts replace weaker ones, never stack, and offline simulation respects the exact moment they expire. Potion prices climb 7.5% per tier of the hardest monster you have unlocked, capping at +30% from tier 4 (tier 5 pays the same) — the store card shows your price.

Bad-luck protection exists for the drops that would otherwise wall you: Vorkath's head is guaranteed by your 50th Vorkath kill and the mokhaiotl cloth by your 2000th Doom kill, once each, if they have not dropped by then. The item card says so on the items it covers; everything else is honest dice.