Combat

The combat triangle

Armour is grouped by what it's made from, and each stops a different kind of attack best: metal turns aside a ranged shot, wool lets an arrow through but stops a spell, and leather stops neither a blade nor a bolt well. Choosing armour is a trade-off against what's fighting you, not a simple upgrade path.

Melee

Every melee weapon offers a handful of named styles (a sword's, for example, are Cleave, Hew, Run through and Ward), but they all lean on the same four stances underneath:

A blessed silver sickle (see Skills) hits the undead — skeletons, shamblers, wights, haunts, the drowned and the Rift's wraiths — 15% harder at the top of its blow. It is no better than a plain one against anything alive.

Ranged

Bows shoot arrows from seven tiles away and spend one arrow per shot. Three stances: Aimed sharpens your accuracy; Quick shoots a little faster, trading accuracy for speed; Far reaches out to nine tiles instead of seven, training some Defence alongside Ranged.

Magic

Spells are cast from the spellbook tab (the purple book): click a spell, then click a creature, and it is cast once from up to ten tiles away, whatever you're holding. Each spell spends its runes, whether or not the cast lands. A staff can cast one spell over and over: right-click the spell and choose Autocast, then fight with the staff's Cast style (or Cast warding, which shares the XP with Defence). An elemental staff stands in for every rune of its element.

There are twenty elemental spells so far, in four elements (Gale, Tide, Stone, Ember) and five tiers (Shot, Lance, Crash, Storm, Fury), from Gale Shot at level 1 to Ember Fury at 95. Every spell in a tier hits as hard as the strongest spell of that tier you can cast. The Spells page lists every spell with its runes, XP and damage, and where each rune comes from. That includes the curses, the binds, the spells cast on items, the teleports to the towns, the five spells cast through their own staff (Thought Dart, Scorch, Sunfall, Pyre and Wildclaw) with Charge, and the Send-to spells that send another player to a town if they say yes. Runes and staves are sold at the magic shops (Vell's Staves in Thornbury, Rook's Runes in Emberville, Merrow's Staves in Wickstead and Brenner's Staves in Kilnhold), bloom and oath runes at the Caravan Post in Sandreach, and creatures drop them too.

Prayer

Bury bones to train Prayer. Each prayer lends a share of your level in one combat skill while it's switched on, and drains your prayer points as it runs — pray at an altar in any church to refill them. Only one prayer boosting the same skill can be active at a time. A Prayer bonus on what you wear (a holy symbol gives 8) slows every drain by a thirtieth a point.

Death

If your hitpoints run out, you black out and wake up somewhere safe — but whatever you were carrying is left lying where you fell, so it's worth banking anything you can't afford to lose before a fight you're not sure of.

Creatures

Roughly by combat level, and where you'll meet them:

See The World for more on where each of these places is.