Attack
Gates which melee weapon you can wield and feeds the melee damage/cooldown calculation, unlocking metal tiers from bronze through dragon plus quest, Barrows and God Wars weapons.
Attack decides whether your swing lands. Every hit rolls your Attack against the target's Defence, so a low Attack against a well defended monster misses far more than it connects. It also raises the bottom of your damage roll, so your hits cluster higher as it climbs, and it gates every melee weapon and every defender in the game. Attack and Strength are added together for your combat level, which is why they usually climb side by side.
Level 1 to 120
There is no Attack activity. You set your melee style to Attack in the profile menu and everything you kill feeds it: melee pays one XP for every 7.5 damage dealt, so a monster is worth its own health bar. Start on chickens and cows, spend the twenties on rock crabs and hill giants, the middle on yaks, the Abyss and Warriors' Guild cyclopes, then trolls, Waterbirth, dragons and Barrows to 120.
- Chickens, cows and goblins around Lumbridge 1 to 15
Chickens are 60 health for 8 XP, cows 85 for 11, goblins and men 70 for about 9, and none of them can hurt you badly. Any weapon of your tier will do here: a scimitar swings faster than the sword beside it but hits for less, and the two come out about level.
- Rock crabs on the Fremennik coast 15 to 30
230 health for 31 XP a kill and only 20 Defence, so most swings connect. They line the coast around Rellekka and Waterbirth Island, with more in the Corsair Cove cave.
- Hill giants and town guards 20 to 40
Hill giants are 300 health for 40 XP and still only 20 Defence, with the biggest cluster in the Tree Gnome Village dungeon. Varrock guards and skeletons are 240 health for 32 XP each and keep you next to a bank.
- Yaks on Neitiznot 30 to 50
500 health for 67 XP against only 20 Defence, which is the softest big target you will find at this level. The Fremennik Trials asks for nothing to start and opens the isles.
- Abyssal guardians and the Experiment cave 40 to 60
Guardians in the Abyss are 590 health for 79 XP against 30 Defence, reached through the Enter the Abyss miniquest, though walking in empties your prayer points. The Experiments under Fenkenstrain's Castle are 500 health for 67 XP at 50 Defence.
- Warriors' Guild cyclopes 50 to 70
700 health for 93 XP against 35 Defence, but your Attack and Strength must add up to 100 to get in and the cyclops room costs 10 tokens a minute. Tokens come from feeding full plate sets to the animation altars and killing the animated armour, which hands the set straight back, and the cyclopes drop the defenders that add damage in your off hand.
- Trolls, Waterbirth, then dragons and Barrows 70 to 120
Mountain trolls are 720 health for 96 XP at 60 Defence and spawn well over a hundred strong around the Troll Stronghold, and the Waterbirth Island dungeon pays better again: rock lobsters 220 XP, wallasalki 173, dagannoth 153. Past that, metal dragons run from 400 XP for a bronze to 667 for an adamant, Barrows brothers are 467 each and a God Wars general is close to 2,700.
Picking a target
Your hit chance is a straight comparison of your Attack against the monster's Defence. Level for level you land about nine swings in ten; thirty levels below its Defence you land closer to four in ten, and the floor is one in twenty.
Toughness never pays extra. A monster gives up its own health divided by 7.5 no matter how long it takes, so the fastest Attack XP is always the largest health bar with the lowest Defence you can hit reliably.
Quests that skip whole levels
Waterfall Quest has no requirements at all and pays 13,750 Attack. Vampyre Slayer adds 4,800 and the Fremennik Trials 2,812, both with nothing to meet first, and the Lumbridge Catacombs hands over 500.
The Grand Tree is the biggest single lump at 18,400, but it wants 25 Agility and a black demon dead. Fairytale I gives 2,000 and sits at the end of a long chain. Demon Slayer pays no XP: it asks for 15 Attack and gives you Silverlight.
The cape
The Attack cape makes critical hits land more often and cancels stamina fatigue when you swing. A crit adds a tenth to the damage and always rolls your maximum, and crits already come more freely the further your combat level sits above whatever you are fighting.
It is bought at 99, and there is a glowing 120 version of it with the same effect.
Worth knowing
- Set your melee style before a session. Balanced splits every hit three ways between Attack, Strength and Defence, which is fine early and wasteful once you are chasing one number. Constitution takes the same cut either way, so switching costs you nothing there.
- You cannot swing a weapon above your Attack level at all. The game refuses the hit and tells you the level it wants.
- Below level 30 every swing carries a small flat bonus XP on top of the damage, but only on weapons that swing at 0.8 seconds or slower. Daggers swing too fast to earn it.
- Wearing magic or ranged pieces while you swing a sword costs damage on every hit, once for each mismatched piece. Melee armour, or an empty slot, beats a mismatched set.
