OSRS 1–99 Attack Guide

Every melee swing in OSRS is an accuracy roll followed, if it lands, by a damage roll. Your Attack level and your weapon’s attack bonus (shown in the equipment-stats interface) decide the accuracy roll — the chance the hit connects at all. Your enemy’s Defence level and defence bonus push back against it. When the roll succeeds you deal a hit somewhere between 0 and your max hit; that max comes from Strength, not Attack. So Attack does not make you hit harder — it makes you hit more often. That still works out to a large damage increase over time, because every missed swing is a wasted game tick that produced nothing, and accuracy is what cuts those misses down.

Your attack bonus comes mostly from your weapon, but armour, jewellery and an off-hand defender add to it too. The effect is steep: a low-level character with a weak weapon might land well under half of their swings against a tough, high-Defence target, while a maxed account with a strong weapon and full gear lands the large majority. This is why upgrading your weapon and your Attack level pays off twice over — you get faster kills and faster experience, because the XP only flows when a hit actually connects.

The single most important setting for training is your attack style, the small tab next to your weapon. Most melee weapons offer an Accurate style (the in-game wording is slash, stab or crush depending on the weapon) that pours all combat XP into Attack plus the usual Hitpoints, and many weapons also offer a Controlled style — on weapons like spears and the Saradomin sword — that splits XP evenly across Attack, Strength and Defence. If you specifically want Attack levels, set the style to Accurate and leave it there. If you would rather raise all three melee stats at once, Controlled is the lazy-but-even option. Crucially, there is no XP penalty for any style: the total combat XP per kill is identical no matter which you pick — you are only choosing where that XP lands.

One more rule worth knowing from the start: every 4 points of combat XP also gives 1 Hitpoints XP, on top of whatever stat your style feeds. That means training Attack quietly levels your Hitpoints as a side effect, which is why melee accounts end up with high Hitpoints almost for free. Keep this in mind when planning a balanced account — you rarely need to train Hitpoints directly.

Weapon speed matters as much as raw bonuses when you are picking a training weapon. Each weapon has an attack interval measured in game ticks (0.6 seconds each): a scimitar or whip swings every 4 ticks, while slow two-handers swing every 6 or 7. A faster weapon rolls for a hit more often, so for pure training XP a fast, accurate weapon like the scimitar or whip almost always beats a slow, hard-hitting one — you land more hits per minute and therefore more experience. Save the big two-handers for situations where a single huge hit matters, such as a special attack at a boss. This is also why the scimitar line stays relevant for so long: it is one of the fastest melee weapon types in the game.

Your weapon is the biggest single factor in your damage output, so the rule is simple: use the best weapon your Attack level allows, set to Accurate. For most of the early and mid game the scimitar line is your backbone — it swings fast and has a strong slash bonus, which makes it excellent value for training. Climb it as your level allows: iron and steel scimitars early, the mithril scimitar at 20, the adamant scimitar at 30, and the rune scimitar at 40. At level 40 the brine sabre (from The Slug Menace) is a slight upgrade over the rune scimitar, and at 50 you unlock the granite hammer and the leaf-bladed weapons for certain situations.

The first major jump comes at level 60 with the dragon scimitar, one of the best price-to-power weapons in the game and the default training weapon for a huge stretch of the mid-game. At 65 the Sarachnis cudgel is a modest crush upgrade, and at 70 the iconic abyssal whip becomes the best all-round Attack-training weapon thanks to its speed and high slash bonus. At 75 the abyssal tentacle — a whip combined with a kraken tentacle — offers the highest melee DPS for training, though it degrades over time and needs recharging.

The end-game trio all unlock at level 80: the Ghrazi rapier (stab), the Inquisitor’s mace (crush) and the Blade of saeldor (slash) are roughly equal in power, each best for a different attack type and therefore a different monster. At 82, Osmumten’s fang joins them — it is the best choice specifically against high-Defence monsters because of how its accuracy works, and it is far cheaper than the rapier, mace or blade, which makes it many players’ first true end-game weapon. Against low-Defence targets, the rapier, mace or blade still edge it out. You can see the full melee loadout, slot by slot, in our melee gear guide, and check current prices on the GE price tracker before you buy.

For melee armour the priority order is Strength bonus first, then attack and defence bonuses — more Strength means a higher max hit on every successful Attack roll, so it compounds with your accuracy. From 1–30 Defence you can simply wear the best metal set you can equip, working up from iron through to adamant; the differences are small at that stage, so do not overthink it.

Above that, a handful of specific pieces matter. In the body slot the fighter torso from the Barbarian Assault minigame gives the same Strength bonus as a Bandos chestplate but is completely free, which makes it one of the best early upgrades on any account; the obsidian platebody is a fine budget alternative if you cannot face the minigame. In the head slot the helm of neitiznot is a cheap, well-rounded option, upgraded later to the Neitiznot faceguard. If you are running a crush weapon such as the Inquisitor’s mace, the Inquisitor’s great helm and the matching Inquisitor’s set add crush-specific damage and are worth the swap.

For legs, Bandos tassets are the mid-tier pick and obsidian platelegs the budget choice. At the very top of the progression sits the Torva set — full helm, platebody and platelegs — which is best-in-slot, giving the highest Strength bonus of any armour in the game. When you move into Slayer and bossing you will sometimes need magic-defence gear instead; the best dragonhide you can wear is a perfectly good default, with Karil’s and Void as step-ups. One trap to avoid: do not wear Armadyl armour while meleeing for magic defence, because it carries negative melee attack bonuses that will hurt your accuracy.

The small equipment slots add up to a big slice of your total bonuses, so do not neglect them. For the amulet, climb from the cheap amulet of strength (or an amulet of glory if you also want its handy teleports) up to the amulet of fury and finally the best-in-slot amulet of torture. Each step is a clear damage gain, and the fury in particular is an affordable workhorse that lasts most accounts a very long time.

For rings, an imbued berserker ring — the Berserker ring (i), which you imbue at the Nightmare Zone, Soul Wars or the PvP Arena — is the affordable standard, with the warrior ring a reasonable slash-specific option below it. The off-hand slot is where the defenders live, and they are some of the best free value in melee: once your combined Attack and Strength levels reach 130, you can earn a dragon defender in the Warrior’s Guild. Do this the moment you qualify, because a defender gives strong attack and Strength bonuses at no gold cost. The Avernic defender is the upgraded best-in-slot version, made from a Theatre of Blood drop.

In the cape slot, the fire cape from the Fight Caves is the long-standing melee goal, beaten only by the infernal cape from the Inferno — both add meaningful offensive bonuses on top of the prestige. For boots, the cheap climbing boots give +2 Strength and stay relevant for an enormous portion of the game, while guardian boots add defence and a useful prayer bonus that earns its slot during Slayer and bossing. None of these slots is individually huge, but together they are the difference between an average and a sharp loadout.

Boosts speed every melee grind up, and the gap is wide enough that serious training without them is leaving XP on the table. A super attack potion lifts your Attack level for extra accuracy, but most players just use a super combat potion, which boosts Attack, Strength and Defence in a single sip. The upgrade is the divine super combat potion — the same boost, except it holds your levels for five minutes instead of draining away, so you are not re-sipping every minute or two. Over a long session that convenience adds up to a noticeable XP gain.

Pair any of these with the Piety prayer (unlocked at 70 Defence after the King’s Ransom quest) for a further accuracy and damage boost, and bring prayer potions to keep it running. When you need to tank rather than glass-cannon, Saradomin brews are the heal of choice because they also raise your Defence while restoring Hitpoints, though they slightly lower your offensive stats — which is why players often pair a brew with a super-combat re-sip.

Inside the Nightmare Zone the boost kit changes entirely. Overloads give a larger combat boost than super potions and last the whole trip, while absorption potions soak incoming damage so you can train almost untouched — each dose absorbs 50 damage. The classic NMZ trick is to drop your own Hitpoints to 1 using a Dwarven rock cake or a Locator orb, so enemies can only ever chip 1 off your absorptions per hit, stretching a handful of absorption doses across a long AFK window. It feels strange to deliberately sit at 1 HP, but inside the NMZ it is completely safe once your absorptions are up. Check live boost prices on the GE price tracker before you stock up for a long grind.

The fastest start to melee is not grinding at all — it is questing. The Waterfall Quest has no skill requirements, takes about 10–20 minutes, and its experience reward drops you straight to level 30 Attack and Strength, skipping a couple of hours of clicking. It is the single biggest early time-saver in the melee game and is worth doing on every single account, main or ironman.

From there, a handful of other low-requirement combat quests pile on more free levels — quests such as Tree Gnome Village, Fight Arena, Vampyre Slayer and The Grand Tree all give combat experience for little effort. Stacking these on top of Waterfall can bring you to roughly 45 Attack, 36 Strength and 31 Defence before you ever fight a monster purely for XP. If you are building toward the Quest Cape anyway, doing these early means the combat levels come as a bonus rather than a separate grind.

If you would rather just train, start at cows with an iron scimitar. At very low levels they actually give faster XP than crabs, because their Defence is so low that you land nearly every hit despite your weak Attack stat. Above level 10, move to crabs: sand crabs, ammonite crabs, rock crabs and swamp crabs all share the same useful profile of low Defence and high Hitpoints, which makes them ideal punching bags. You stand near their spawn rocks to draw them out, and they stay aggressive for about 10 minutes before you reset by running roughly 30 tiles away and back. Per our method table, crabs sit around 25,000–30,000 XP/hr as your stats climb, and they double as the best AFK option at this stage of the game. If the public crab spots are crowded, the Depths of Despair quest unlocks the quieter Crabclaw Caves, or you can pay a small fee to reach the less busy Crabclaw Isle. Keep your style on Accurate the whole time so every kill banks into Attack.

From level 50 the Nightmare Zone (NMZ) becomes the fastest standard Attack experience, and it stays the practical king all the way to 99. It is a minigame where you re-fight bosses you have already beaten in quests, but armed with absorptions and overloads it turns into a near-AFK experience machine. Per our table, NMZ scales from around 70,000 XP/hr on a comfortable absorption setup up to roughly 110,000 XP/hr at level 70 and above with overloads and active flinching — the latter being the fastest melee XP rate in the table. We break the exact NMZ setup down in the next section.

Beyond the standard tabled methods, a few specialist routes push higher but demand far more effort or extra accounts. The absolute ceiling uses the Dinh’s bulwark special attack fed by alt accounts casting the Energy Transfer spell to recharge your spec — this multiplies your output well beyond normal rates, but it needs several logged-in alt accounts and is well outside what most players will ever set up. Without alts, Pest Control — especially once you have Combat Achievement point bonuses — is the fastest solo method at high combat, converting minigame points into combat experience at a reward stall.

Both of those are genuinely powerful but niche. For the overwhelming majority of accounts, overloaded NMZ on the Accurate style is the realistic fastest path to 99 Attack, and the rates you should plan your route around are the ones in the method table rather than the headline figures from extreme alt-assisted setups. Because Attack XP is shared with the other melee stats depending on style, decide up front whether you want a pure Attack 99 (Accurate the whole way) or balanced melee stats (some Controlled training), then map the remaining XP and pick a realistic target with the Attack calculator.

To use the NMZ you first need to have completed at least five quests with eligible bosses — the in-game dream interface lists which quests count. Talk to Dominic Onion to set up a Customisable Rumble, deposit some coins in the nearby coffer to pay the entry fee, and select bosses that suit your level. At 50–70 combat use a Normal Rumble; the Hard Rumble bosses have much higher Defence and are best saved for level 70+ when your accuracy can handle them. The running costs are easily covered by buying herb boxes from the reward shop — you can buy 15 per day, and they are worth considerably more than they cost once you sell the herbs inside.

Your in-arena setup evolves as you level. At 50, a granite hammer as your main weapon paired with a granite maul for special attacks is the budget opener. With 60 Defence the full obsidian set (helmet, platebody and platelegs worn together) gives a 10% accuracy and damage boost with obsidian weapons, and adding a berserker necklace stacks a further damage boost on top — a cheap, strong package. At 60 Attack, Dragon claws become your special-attack weapon of choice, and paired with an ornate granite maul you can dump and instantly regenerate your spec bar for big burst damage.

From level 70 in all three melee stats, the full Dharok’s set is the meta. Dharok’s set effect hits harder the lower your Hitpoints are — which is exactly the 1-HP state the rock cake puts you in — so it pairs perfectly with the absorption-and-rock-cake trick. This combination, with Piety and Power Surge spec regeneration, is what reaches the top ~110k band in our table. If you would rather maximise AFK time than raw speed, swap to the full Guthan’s set (helm, platebody, chainskirt and warspear): its set effect randomly heals you for the damage you deal, letting you AFK for up to 20 minutes at a stretch at a lower but extremely relaxed rate. Many players run Dharok’s when watching the screen and Guthan’s when they need to step away.

If you would rather train Attack in the background while you work or watch something, the method list barely changes — you simply trade peak XP for longer hands-off windows. From 1–50, crabs are the AFK king: aggressive for around 10 minutes per reset and completely undemanding, at the ~25k–30k XP/hr the table shows. They ask almost nothing of you beyond an occasional reset run, which is exactly what you want for true background training.

From 50, the Nightmare Zone takes over as the best AFK melee spot. With absorptions you can go roughly 10 minutes between sips (around 70k XP/hr in our table), and with a full Guthan’s auto-heal setup you can stretch to a genuine 20-minute AFK while still gaining steady XP. That combination of high rate and long AFK is what makes NMZ the standout mid-to-late-game training spot.

Around 70 in the combat stats, bandits at the desert Bandit Camp open up as a strong alternative. Wearing a Saradomin or Zamorak item keeps the bandits permanently aggressive toward you, and with full Guthan’s you again get 20-minute AFK windows; a general-store NPC nearby un-notes food, so you can effectively bank-stand there forever. Players who prefer to pray rather than tank can run Protect from Melee in full Proselyte — the best prayer-bonus armour, requiring The Slug Menace — and bring noted prayer potions to un-note as needed. Finally, Slayer doubles as AFK melee from 70+: aggressive or multi-combat tasks let you semi-AFK, and a cannon clears monsters while you barely touch the mouse. Compare the relaxed options side by side in the method table to pick the one that fits your level and budget.

Slayer is the most rounded way to train Attack because it pays you to do it. Instead of grinding a single experience dump, you kill assigned monsters and gain combat XP, Slayer XP and valuable drops all at the same time. Our table lists Slayer-with-a-cannon at around 40,000 Attack XP/hr — lower than overloaded NMZ on paper — but you are simultaneously banking Slayer levels and loot, which makes the real-world value far higher than that raw number suggests. Over a long account, Slayer often is your combat training, with the XP arriving as a by-product of a skill you wanted anyway.

The key item is the Slayer helmet — specifically the imbued Slayer helmet (i) — which gives a flat accuracy and damage boost on every on-task kill. Before you can build one, the black mask provides the same boost in the helmet slot. Because that on-task bonus stacks multiplicatively with the rest of your gear and potions, Slayer is frequently where your loadout produces its best XP-per-hour, even though the headline rate looks modest.

One important planning note: if you intend to reach 99 Slayer eventually, train your combat through Slayer rather than following the dedicated Fast or AFK pathways. Otherwise you will rack up a mountain of combat XP past level 99 while your Slayer level still lags far behind — effectively wasting the combat XP. Many of the weapon unlocks earlier in this guide are themselves Slayer drops (the abyssal whip from abyssal demons being the obvious one), so the Slayer path conveniently funds its own gear upgrades as you go.

Training Attack is the gateway to bossing, and many bosses are themselves a fine way to keep gaining combat XP once your stats are high enough. At the easy end, the Giant Mole can be killed with just 43 Prayer and level-40 combat using Protect from Melee to negate its damage, and the Chaos Elemental can be flinched with melee for one of the easiest pets in the game. Obor and Sarachnis are gentle, melee-weak introductions to boss mechanics, and Bandos in the God Wars Dungeon is the classic first team boss — he is weak to melee and forgiving enough to learn the ropes on.

Higher up the chain, strong melee-weak targets include the wilderness bosses Venenatis and Vet’ion, the melee Slayer bosses, Vorkath (weak to stab, accessible after Dragon Slayer II), the crush-weak Nightmare, the stab-weak Corporeal Beast, and the Desert Treasure II duo Duke Sucellus and Vardorvis. All three of OSRS’s big raids — Chambers of Xeric, Theatre of Blood and Tombs of Amascut — require melee, so a trained Attack stat is non-negotiable for end-game content.

Before stepping into any raid, aim for at least 85 Attack, Strength and Defence plus solid Ranged, Magic and Prayer, so you can switch styles to whatever each room demands. Special-attack weapons earn their inventory slots at most bosses: the Dragon warhammer lowers a boss’s Defence (making your whole team hit more often), the Voidwaker deals guaranteed minimum spec damage, and the humble dragon dagger remains a cheap, effective burst weapon for early bossing. Picking the right weakness and the right spec is what turns a trained Attack stat into real kills.

A practical tip for new bossers: match your weapon’s attack type to the boss’s weakness, which the wiki lists for every monster. A stab-weak boss like Vorkath wants the Ghrazi rapier or Osmumten’s fang; a crush-weak target like the Nightmare wants the Inquisitor’s mace; a slash-weak target wants the Blade of saeldor or abyssal tentacle. Using the wrong attack type can cut your accuracy badly even with top-tier gear, so carrying two weapon types for different rooms is normal at the high end. Bossing is where all the Attack training, gear and consumables in this guide finally pay off in gold and uniques.

Attack trains perfectly well in free-to-play — you just have fewer toys to work with. Your weapon ceiling is the rune scimitar at level 40, which is genuinely strong and will carry you the entire way to 99; pair it with the best rune armour you can wear (the rune platebody and rune full helm), an amulet of strength and a strength-bonus setup, and keep your style on Accurate. There is no super combat potion in F2P, so you are training on raw stats, which makes your weapon and your Attack level matter even more than they do for members.

For training spots, low-level free players can use the frogs in Lumbridge Swamp — regular frogs at first, then big and giant frogs above level 20 combat — thanks to their high Hitpoints and minimal Defence. At a higher level, the best F2P option is the giant spiders on level 3 of the Stronghold of Security: they are aggressive for about 10 minutes at a time and give decent, fairly AFK experience, though at lower levels you will need to bring food. If you want to make a little money while you train, the Ogress Warriors near Corsair Cove drop runes and alchable items.

Be aware that the Nightmare Zone, Slayer, bossing and most of the gear discussed above are members-only, so the free-to-play route naturally tops out well below the members meta in both speed and gear. That said, reaching 99 Attack as a pure free player is entirely achievable — it just rewards patience and the discipline to keep your style on Accurate and your rune scimitar swinging.

A few simple habits make the whole grind smoother and faster. First and most important: always re-check your attack style after switching weapons — a new weapon can quietly reset you to a style that splits XP across all three melee stats, costing you Attack levels without you noticing. Second, keep the best weapon you can afford equipped rather than hoarding gold; a weapon upgrade almost always beats a marginal armour piece for XP-per-hour, because accuracy and speed are what drive your kills. Third, imbue your Berserker ring (i) and claim a dragon defender the moment you reach 130 combined Attack and Strength — both are large, permanent, essentially free upgrades that too many players put off.

On the quest side, a small number of quests punch above their weight for melee. The Waterfall Quest is the must-do early skip to level 30 Attack and Strength. King’s Ransom unlocks the Piety prayer at 70 Defence, which is a major DPS boost for all melee training and bossing. Lunar Diplomacy opens the Lunar spellbook used in some advanced alt-assisted setups. And Recipe for Disaster (just the Mountain Dwarf subquest) gives access to the Dwarven rock cake used in the NMZ trick.

For milestones worth aiming at: the Quest Cape requires 50 Attack, 50 Strength and 65 Defence; the Achievement Diary Cape wants 50 Attack, 76 Strength and 70 Defence plus level 100 combat. One thing not to chase: Attack has no skilling pet. Unlike gathering and production skills, combat XP does not roll for a pet while you train — the pets associated with melee come from bosses and Slayer monsters instead. So do not waste effort hunting one at crabs or the Nightmare Zone. When you are ready to optimise the rest of your route, run the numbers in our Attack calculator, build your loadout slot by slot from the melee gear guide, and browse the full OSRS guides hub for the matching Strength and Defence guides.