What is Runescape?
RuneScape is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed and published by Jagex, released in January 2001. RuneScape was originally a browser game built with the Java programming language. RuneScape takes place in the world of Gielinor, a medieval fantasy realm divided into different kingdoms, regions, and cities. Players can travel throughout Gielinor via a number of methods including on foot, magical spells, or charter ships. Each region offers different types of monsters, resources, and quests to challenge players. Players are represented in the game with customisable avatars. RuneScape does not follow a linear storyline; rather, players set their own goals and objectives. Players can choose to fight non-player character (NPC) monsters, complete quests, or increase their experience in the available skills. Players interact with each other through trading, chatting, or by participating in mini-games and activities, some of which are competitive or combative in nature, while others require cooperative or collaborative play.
Gameplay
The player controls a character and can interact with NPCs, objects, and entities in the game world by left-clicking or right-clicking and selecting an option from the object's right-click context menu. Users can gain experience points (XP) and level up individual skills, making their playable character more powerful in various ways.There is a large selection of skills, grouped mainly between three different categories: combat, gathering, and artisan. Combat skills, which are Attack, Strength, Defence, Ranged, Magic, Prayer, and Hitpoints, allow the player to defeat enemy monsters or other players in certain circumstances. The gathering skills, which include Mining, Fishing, and Woodcutting, allow the player to gather in game resources to use or sell. The artisan skills include skills such as Cooking, Crafting, Fletching and Smithing. The input mechanics are primarily point-and-click. The game runs on a tick-based system where the game state refreshes every 600 milliseconds.
Skills
Skills are a player's attributes that can be advanced throughout the game. Skills are trained by repeating actions that give experience in the skill until enough experience is earned to advance to the next level. Skills range from cooking food, to chopping trees and to casting magic. Some skills are "interlaced", meaning that they can be used together. For example, logs obtained from Woodcutting can be lit for Firemaking, which can then be used to cook food for Cooking. All skills start out at level 1 except for Hitpoints, which starts with level 10.
Players can advance a skill to level 99. After that, they can increase their experience up to 200,000,000 but get no more levels for doing so. See Hiscores for the relative rankings of the different skills. A player could bring a level of a skill to 100 while wearing a Cape of Accomplishment of that skill, with no significant bonus; it is mostly done just for the feeling of having a skill boosted over the level 99 mark. Skills can also be temporarily boosted through special equipment, items, Prayer, or potions.
Some skills, such as woodcutting and fishing, enable the player to collect raw materials that can be processed into usable items for other skills, such as fletching and cooking respectively. The items created can be used by the player or sold to shops and other players. Other skills allow players to kill certain NPCs, build their own houses, move around the map with greater ease, steal from various NPCs, market stalls and chests located in-game, light fires, cook their own food, create their own potions, craft runestones and weapons, plant their own plants and hunt NPC animals.
Free To Play Skills
There are 15 free-to-play skills. They can all be leveled to 99. Attack |
Wielding stronger melee weapons and hitting monsters more accurately with melee weapons. |
 Strength |
Dealing more melee damage and equipping certain weapons. |
 Defence |
Wearing stronger armor and decreasing chance of being hit. |
 Ranged |
Equipping stronger ranged weapons and armour. It also increases ranged accuracy. |
 Magic |
Casting various combat and utility spells. |
 Prayer |
Activating temporary aids to assist in combat. |
 Runecraft |
Creating runes used for casting Magic. |
 Hitpoints |
Amount of damage you can withstand. |
 Crafting |
Creating items such as jewellery, pottery, and ranged armour. |
 Mining |
Obtaining ores and minerals from rocks. |
 Smithing |
Smelting ores into bars and forging bars into armour and weapons. |
 Fishing |
Catching fish. |
 Cooking |
Making and cooking food. |
 Firemaking |
Lighting fires. |
 Woodcutting |
Chopping down trees. |
Members Skills
There are 8 members-only skills They can all be leveled to 99. Agility |
Traversing shortcuts and increases the rate at which energy recharges. |
 Herblore |
Cleaning and using herbs to create potions. |
 Thieving |
Stealing from market stalls and chests and pickpocketing non-player characters. |
 Fletching |
Creating ranged weapons and ammunition. |
 Slayer |
Killing certain monsters that can't normally be defeated. |
 Farming |
Planting and harvesting crops. |
 Construction |
Building a player-owned house. |
 Hunter |
Capturing wild animals and creatures. |
Combat
RuneScape features a semi-real-time combat system based on server ticks. Combat is an important aspect of the game, allowing players to defeat monsters to obtain dropped items or to complete quests. A combat level is an indicator of how powerful a player or NPC is in combat. For players, it is determined by applying a mathematical formula to their combat skills. Players engage in combat by clicking on the enemy they want their character to attack and will automatically continue fighting until they kill their opponent, die, or retreat from the fight. Most of the game's weapons are medieval or fantastical in nature, and feature different strengths and weaknesses.Combat is subdivided into three main categories: melee, magic and ranged. Melee attacks are close range weapon attacks, magic attacks focus on using runestones to cast spells, ranged attacks use projectile weapons like arrows, darts or throwing knives.The three combat types make up a "Combat Triangle", which governs effectiveness of styles in a rock-paper-scissors fashion; melee beats ranged, ranged beats magic, magic beats melee, and each style is neutral to itself. Combat is governed by a life points system. Every combatant has a maximum capacity of life points, and dies when their health is depleted to 0. Lost life points can be recovered by consuming certain food or drinks, or casting abilities. Players who die reappear at a respawn point of their choice with their life and skill points restored; however, they drop all but three chosen items, as well as certain common items. Dying spawns a gravestone that will hold all of the player's items and will last for an allotted time; however, there are situations in which all items will be lost upon death. If the player does not return in time, the grave will collapse and their items will disappear.
Players gain combat skill experience from dealing damage. The normal value is 4 experience per damage in ranged and melee combat styles, and 2 experience per damage in Magic combat style. However, certain high defence monsters have higher experience per hitpoint damage ratio. The normal value for hitpoint experience gained is 1.33 experience per damage done.
Magic spells also grant experience for the spell cast even if the spell splashes. Defensive mode in Magic and Ranged are also an exception. If a player uses Magic on defensive mode, the normal value is 1.33 experience to Magic and 1 experience to Defence per damage dealt, plus casting experience. For ranging with long range, the normal value is 2 Ranged experience and 2 Defence experience per damage dealt. If a player is using a melee weapon such as an abyssal whip or spear that shares experience between Attack, Strength, and Defence, then the normal value is 1.33 experience per damage done to Attack, Strength, and Defence.
