OSRS Attack Guide 1–99: Training, Weapons and Attack Cape

How to Train Attack in OSRS

Attack in OSRS sets your melee accuracy and which weapons you can wield. Train it on the Accurate style, which puts all 4 XP per damage into Attack. Quests take a new account to about 45, then the Gemstone Crab, sulphur naguas and maniacal monkeys carry it to 99.

The levels that matter most are weapon unlocks: 60 for the dragon scimitar, 70 for the abyssal whip, 75 for Voidwaker and the abyssal tentacle, and 80 for the blade of Saeldor and Ghrazi rapier. At 99 you can buy the Attack cape for 99,000 coins from Ajjat in the Warriors' Guild.

Attack 1–99 Level Path

Quests cover the first 45 levels. After that, pick the next weapon you want and train to its level.

1. 1

   1–45: quests.

   Waterfall Quest (13,750 Attack), The Grand Tree (18,400, needs 25 Agility), Fight Arena (12,175), Tree Gnome Village (11,450), Vampyre Slayer (4,825) and Death Plateau (3,000) give 63,600 Attack XP, enough for level 45.

2. 2

   30–55: the Gemstone Crab in the Tlati Rainforest after Children of the Sun.

   No food needed.

3. 3

   55–75: sulphur naguas in Neypotzli (partial Perilous Moons, 48 Slayer), or Nightmare Zone from 60 if you want AFK.

4. 4

   60: the dragon scimitar, which needs Monkey Madness I and costs 100,000 coins from Daga on Ape Atoll.

5. 5

   75–99: maniacal monkeys in Kruk's Dungeon with Monkey Madness II progress, the fastest melee spot on the wiki's list.

Pick Your Attack Training Method

Rates come from the wiki's melee training, Ironman melee and Nightmare Zone strategies pages. They are figures for efficient play with the gear those pages assume, and your Strength level drives every one of them. Where the wiki gives no hourly figure, the table says so instead of guessing.

NMZ vs Slayer vs Crabs for Attack Training

These are the three options most players weigh for the long middle stretch. The XP gap is smaller than the gap in what else you walk away with.

Boss lists, absorptions and the 1 Hitpoints setup are in our Nightmare Zone guide. For task-based training, see the Slayer guide.

Hours to 60, 70 and 99 Attack

XP totals are from the wiki's Experience table: 60 Attack is 273,742 XP, 70 is 737,627 and 99 is 13,034,431. The quest route leaves you on 63,600 XP at level 45.

Best Attack Weapons by Level

These are the training weapons the OSRS Wiki's melee guide lists at each Attack level. Several also need Strength, Slayer or Magic.

The blade of Saeldor and the scythe both needed 75 Attack until May 2022, when the equipment rebalance raised them to 80. Older guides still list them at 75.

Attack Cape: Cost, Seller and Perk

The Attack cape costs 99,000 coins from Ajjat in the Warriors' Guild in west Burthorpe. You can enter the guild once your Attack and Strength add up to 130, or with 99 in either, so 99 Attack gets you in on its own.

Its perk works in the same building: wearing it lets you stay with the cyclopes in the basement and on the top floor without spending Warrior guild tokens. It gives +9 to every defence bonus and becomes the trimmed version, with +4 Prayer, once you have a second 99.

Fastest XP Methods

Accurate gives 4 Attack XP per damage. Controlled splits it into 1.33 each for Attack, Strength and Defence, so use it only when you want all three rising together.

Maniacal monkeys are the fastest melee XP on the wiki's list, at 200,000 XP an hour or more with crystal halberd specials and good stacking. Sulphur naguas give up to 130,000 at 75 Strength with Blood Moon armour and Piety. Your Strength level drives both numbers, because it drives damage.

Slayer with a cannon is slower Attack XP, but it adds drops and Slayer levels, which is why most mains get a large share of their Attack there.

Cheapest / Budget Approach

Quests are free XP. The early list alone is worth 63,600 Attack XP before you buy a single potion.

The Gemstone Crab costs nothing: its max hit is 1 and it attacks once every 7 ticks. Save brews for PvM.

Buy the weapon for the level you are at. A rune scimitar at 40 and a dragon scimitar at 60 cover the early game, and a scythe needs 80 Attack and 90 Strength, so it does nothing for Attack training at 70.

AFK & Lower-Intensity Options

Nightmare Zone, north of Yanille, is the most AFK melee training, with about 20 minutes between clicks on normal rumble with absorption potions.

The Gemstone Crab is the other idle option. It stays in one spot for about 10 minutes, then burrows and you follow it.

AFK to a weapon breakpoint, such as 70 for the whip or 75 for Voidwaker, then go back to Slayer or the monkeys for speed.

Attack Gear and Prayer Tips

• Weapon breakpoints matter more than the skillcape: 60, 70, 75 and 80 Attack each open a new tier.
• Attack sets accuracy and Strength sets max hit. Each level of either adds 0.325 to the melee part of your combat level.
• Piety (70 Prayer, 70 Defence, King's Ransom) adds 20% to Attack and 23% to Strength, more than most single weapon upgrades.

Ironman Notes

On an Ironman the weapon is the bottleneck. You cannot buy the next tier, so the level often arrives before the weapon that justifies it. Check what your account can actually wield before deciding where to train.

The efficient answer is usually to stop training Attack directly and let Slayer supply it. Task XP arrives with drops attached, which an iron needs more than it needs a faster route to 99. The section below covers the early part, from a fresh iron to 60 in all three melee stats.

Ironman Melee 1–60: Quest XP, Weapons and Crabs

Quests do more work on an iron than on a main, because the XP is free and several rewards are gear you cannot buy. The quest list on the wiki's Ironman melee page takes a fresh account to 45 Attack, 44 Strength and 39 Defence before you train anything on purpose.

Haunted Mine needs 35 Crafting, not 35 Agility as some guides say. The Haunted Mine page only recommends 15 Agility, and only for the cart shortcut at the front entrance; without it you use the southern entrance.

• Scorpion Catcher adds 6,625 Strength (31 Prayer, Alfred Grimhand's Barcrawl), which takes Strength to 45.
• Daero's training after Monkey Madness I gives 35,000 XP in the two skills you focus on and 20,000 in the other two. The Attack and Defence focus puts you on 49 Attack and 46 Defence.
• The Fremennik Trials adds 2,812 to each melee stat, which takes Attack to 50 if you took Daero's Attack option.

HCIM-safe quest order

1. 1

   Train a little Hitpoints and get Fire Strike, then do Witch's House for its 6,325 Hitpoints XP.

   The wiki's ironman page recommends this before any other melee quest on a hardcore.

2. 2

   Waterfall Quest once you have 17 Hitpoints, so a fire giant or the moss guardian cannot kill you in one hit from full health.

3. 3

   Death Plateau and Vampyre Slayer:

   no real danger.

4. 4

   Tree Gnome Village, Fight Arena and The Grand Tree:

   safespot every boss with Magic.

5. 5

   Holy Grail:

   flinch the Black Knight Titan by stepping in and out of melee range, or kill it with a halberd.

6. 6

   The Fremennik Trials:

   Koschei's duel is a safe death on the wiki's Ironman Mode list.

7. 7

   Dragon Slayer I and Haunted Mine last.

   The wiki recommends 50 combat and 40 Prayer for Treus Dayth, and the nearest bank is in Burgh de Rott after In Aid of the Myreque, so bring every supply at the start.

Where an iron gets each weapon

Gemstone vs ammonite vs sand crabs

Pick the Gemstone Crab once you have Children of the Sun. Its 12.5% XP cut is outweighed by no overkill and no aggression resets. Use ammonite crabs if you have Bone Voyage but not Varlamore, and sand crabs only on a brand-new account. Our Gemstone Crab guide covers the spawn spots.

The full route to 70 in every combat stat is in our ironman combat training guide, and the HCIM guide covers the other risky quests. If you would rather skip the quest grind, our ironman quest service does them on your account by hand.

F2P Attack Training

Free-to-play has one Attack quest, Vampyre Slayer (4,825 XP), so most F2P Attack comes from monsters. These picks are from the wiki's F2P melee training page.

• 1–20: chickens, monks at Edgeville Monastery (they heal you for free) or seagulls, which cannot hit you.
• 20–40: big frogs (72 XP a kill) and giant frogs (92 XP a kill) in Lumbridge Swamp, or barbarians.
• 40–60: flesh crawlers in the Stronghold of Security. They are always aggressive and only hit 1s.
• 60–99: giant spiders (level 50, 50 Hitpoints, max hit 7) on the Stronghold's third level. Always aggressive, so they are the F2P AFK spot.
• Moss giants (level 42, 60 Hitpoints) give less XP than spiders but drop big bones and runes. Pick spiders for XP and moss giants for loot.
• Amulet of strength (+10 melee strength) or amulet of power (+6 plus accuracy and defence): wear strength only when it raises your max hit.

Prayer and Magic for F2P accounts are in our F2P training guide.

When Paid Training Makes Sense

The Attack levels worth paying for are weapon tiers: 70 for the whip, 75 for Voidwaker, 80 for the blade of Saeldor and rapier, 82 for the fang.

If you do order it, specify the route as well as the level range. Monkey stacking, Slayer and AFK Nightmare Zone are different jobs on this skill, with different timelines and different supply bills for the same 99. Our Attack page lists what we need from you, and the work is played rather than botted.

Common Mistakes

1. 1

   Expecting the whip to train Strength.

   Its styles are Flick (accurate), Lash (controlled) and Deflect (defensive). Keep the dragon scimitar or dual macuahuitl for Strength.

2. 2

   Leaving controlled on while chasing a weapon level.

   Controlled puts 1.33 XP per damage into Attack instead of 4, so 70 for the whip takes three times the kills.

3. 3

   Doing Haunted Mine early on a hardcore.

   Treus Dayth is far harder than level 95 suggests and the bank is a long way back. Wait for 50 combat and Protect from Missiles.

4. 4

   Training on hard rumbles for XP.

   In Nightmare Zone, hard rumbles give more points but lower XP. Normal customisable rumble with absorptions is the XP setup.

5. 5

   Pushing Attack to 99 before Strength.

   Once your best weapon and armour are wearable, the wiki's fastest order is Strength to 99, then Attack, then Defence, because Strength drives every XP rate.

FAQ

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Final Takeaway

Quest the first 45 levels, then train to the next weapon you will actually use: 60 for the dragon scimitar, 70 for the whip, 75 for Voidwaker. Mains finish at maniacal monkeys; irons let Slayer and the quest list in the ironman section do most of the work.

Browse Attack training, more skill guides, or the full blog for related progression help.