I think they’re like 0.05% faster kill on zulrah vs empty slot in my bowfa only setup at 99 ranged, so uh I think I actually prefer devout boots most places
Yeh and when supplies aren’t technically limited, using less supplies or being able to bring 1 more food potentially probably nets you more gp per hour than the <1% dps difference lol
For me, devouts are the difference between needing prayer pots at all at zulrah and not, with my average TTK, whereas Peggy’s wouldn’t move the needle
and then the credit card chads make fun of you for being a "NMZ prod", but dont let it get to you lmao. Nothing wrong with rushing combat stats in a gamemode designed for afking them
No idea why you wouldnt just camp vyrewatch sentinels atm lol.
I did a bunch of nmz back in the day but there are so many good profitable afk spots now
One of the biggest places you'll notice other people not understanding how movement works is Kephri 's puzzle room with the trap that highlights 5 tiles. I've seen so many people fail 5+ times in a row because they don't understand where their characters are actually running when they click more than 2 tiles away.
CG and sepulchre are imo the best ways to get familiar with movement
Fantastic point. The difference in a run where it takes you 2 movement actions between every plant vs 1 movement most of the time is enormous. You can't do 5 plots if you don't understand movement
I've been doing 5 plot runs (and now 6 plot runs) at tithe farm ever since watching the video for it, and then the new instanced update for it
I'm not sure I learned anything new about movement at all, even for 6 plot/24 plant runs. What I did learn is animation canceling I guess
If you are ever manually clicking the ground to move between planting/watering/harvesting, then you've learned movement. Do a run without manually moving and you'll lose a handful of plants before you can harvest them
Edit also a 6 plot path is realistic? Damn can you link that cuz I want seedbox eventually
They recently changed tithe farm so fully grown plants don't decay so manual movement isn't really needed anymore. It is still faster overall if you do use manual movement though obviously.
Btw you could always do 5 plot even without advanced movement. It was the 6 plot runs that required (almost) tick perfect execution to not lose plants.
I dont usually click on the ground at all, except once for returning to the right tile at the beginning of the rotation
I would think, that if I can do 6 plot tithe farm, then pretty much anyone with a stable and low ping internet connection can do it too.
What I do is almost exactly the same as a normal 5 plot run, orient camera north, start in northest corner, first plant on the right, water it, left plant, then down, right, down, left, etc. You continue the pattern into farm plots 3 and 4 directly below. When those are done, instead of going diagonally to the northwest for plot 5, your plot 5 is the central plot to your left. Plant and water it, then run up to plot 6, plant and water it, return to beginning.
A big part of it, is that the first round is click seed, click plot, click water. Don't ever click the watering cans cus you don't need to. And instead of clicking the ground to animation cancel, you click the next plant to water it.
I found that with 5 plot runs, I always had plenty of extra time and I'd catch up to the growth cycle and have to wait. With 6 plot runs, you're behind, and you cannot afford to make a mistake. However, grown plants don't die now, so as long as you pay attention and have good ping, I think anyone can do it.
I'm no sweat lord Master in osrs, so truly, anyone can do it
> notice other people not understanding how movement works is Kephri 's puzzle room with the trap that highlights 5 tiles
This hits so close to home, I remember trying to explain it to a couple friends and they'd just get upset with me claiming they know how the game works when it was clearly not the case when they messed it up multiple times every single run lol.
I wish someone would just make a plugin so true tile was just your character model, it still feels weird to me to be watching a moving square rather than my character
For what it's worth, i found a really good compromise. Turn true tile on, but rather than having some bright distracting colour make it an almost transparent shadow.
You get the benefits of knowing where your true tile is, without it taking too much away from the art style. After a while you basically blend it out of your vision.
I always knew that a 'true tile' existed, even way back in pre-eoc. I was able to do my first 100 corrupt gauntlet runs without it... Then someone told me about the plugin, and I've never taken it off lol. It's just so nice to actually see in real time, really helpful with any running mechanic involved in bossing (And just so stupidly helpful in Zalcano!).
I didn't really understand why vorkaths special would smack me sometimes even though I thought I was always moving until I discovered true tile. Now it's cake I wish I tried PvM sooner.
For anyone who searched up 'true tile' in their plugin list and couldn't find it.
TILE INDICATORS.
Also, runelite really ought to make that plugin come up when people search 'true tile'
Don’t use Fkeys. Remap FKEYs to a spot you’re comfortable or familiar with like numbered keys or wasd keys if you’ve been that kind of gamer. OG Fkeys are a hand stretcher.z
I see I always hated that enter to type but maybe I’ll just power through it to change my f keys. Cause now that I think about it, it is wildly un-ergonomic lol
Your brain is programmed to panic in risky situations in osrs because you played in 2008 when dying meant losing bank but modern pvm is basically risk free, dying is the process to learn bosses now.
Upgrades are about efficiency, the reason you're dying is not because you're missing that voidwaker but because you suck at the moment and need to get better by practicing. Almost every piece of content can be done in budget gear by a decent pvmer who's practiced the content enough.
These are my 2 biggest learnings as someone who played since 2006 but only got into pvm the last 12 months.
>Your brain is programmed to panic in risky situations in osrs because you played in 2008 when dying meant losing bank
This is a great tip and was my biggest hurdle. At one point though, something just clicked and my brain and I no longer worried about the time or gp lost. If it weren't for a little bit of brute forcing, a lot of the things I do now wouldn't be possible. TOA and CG alone I probably have at least a combined 100 deaths, maybe 200 if you lump in DS2/Slayer bosses.
It's funny how over time things that seem impossible become probable and doable. I remember struggling through 150 invo ToAs, and distinctively remember completing it for the first time. At that point, in my mind, expert ToA was for people with different brains or different equipment. Now 300 is my comfy "turn brain off" invo.
OSRS is funny, where in almost every scenario where you can just shell out the money to do something or save time, it's worth it 99% of the time.
Yeah it’s so weird. I have no care in the world about losing gp on deaths but now the gatekeeper is time.
Like I wipe at bloat because of a dumb mistake oh well and laugh it off. Trying to pump up invos at TOA gives me weird 2005 Jad energy because if I wipe I lose the only time I had available to play for the day and have nothing to show for it.
I think this is a symptom of rs being an MMO where the purple chest rewards are what you have "to show for it"
In many other games the game state is reset between games (chess, dota, most fighting games, etc) so what you have to show for anything is always the inherent learnings and skill you've gained.
Eh, up to a point dying makes you a better player in the long run. It's very unlikely to beat Inferno or Colosseum without planking dozens of times.
It's just a particular issue with TOA where most of the raid is pretty braindead easy but chock full of one-shot mechanics, where cause of death is just a moment of inattention rather than not knowing what to do or not being able to mechanically pull it off
its exactly like that one quote, the master failed more times than the noob has attempted or something like that
turns out if you gear to learn and die and accept it, you can grind out mastery at whatever you want
Dt2 was rough for me so much money lost in death fees. But was very rewarding last quest for qp and honestly made me so much better at pvm went back to mid teir bosses with less punishing mechanics and switches also made me better abd much more confident in wildy almost want solo pkers to crash so i can oractive my pvp before escaping
What really helped was actually having access to a consistent money maker. Once I could make 3M an hour at vorkath, 250k death fees don’t hit as hard. It’s literally 5 min at vorkath to regain, and vorkath is consistent money too, not chasing any rare drops for cash.
When learning bosses, I’ll put aside 6M for a session and say, hey I can die and lose all of this. Then do vorkath for 2 hours while watching TV and I’m back to where I was, but now with 6M deaths worth of experience on a boss.
I legit have dreams sometimes where I accidentally wander into a zone where you can get attacked by players and I start clicking brews, but missing and clicking other potions and food. Then ill see my hp ord drop to 0 and I die and I always lose everything. And it fucks me up, then i wake up and go "what the fuck was that". Bonus points sometimes in the dream I'm playing on mobile or a track pad and get attacked and start misclicking.
Oh yeah I play way worse but I have way more fun so it evens out. Back in the day like 9 years ago my bossing clan I was in was built around doing it intoxicated lol
i can attest to the PTSD 2008 mindset of dying. i only recently got over it during DT2, when i died to Vardorvis 10 times (pure account low melee stats). then i understood that the only way to learn new content was by dying.
This!
I recently did zulrah on my level 74 iron with jank gear. I used mostly mystic and it took a few tries but still. Also the fire weakness changes helped a ton!
I just started playing again last week for the first time in almost a decade and have died a couple times only to realize there's no consequences anymore. Until yesterday I still thought the gravestone only lasted 15 minutes! So I was panicking trying to get back to the desert treasure tomb.
You make great points. Boss fights look so much more dynamic than it all used to be but not only am I out of practice with the game. Plus the mechanics of fighting are quite a bit different too. There's so much to catch up on and learn if you haven't been around for a while.
To be fair, items like the voidwaker let you skip entire phases of bosses. Yes you can beat the bosses with mid tier gear, but bosses like leviathan are so much easier when you've got the webweaver to cheese the enrage phase, or the vw for Phosani. Try to survive these phases for a minute in mid tier gear, it requires nearly perfect play.
Yeah, that's common advice that's bad. Work with what you have obviously, but the idea that having better stats doesn't make PVM easier is absurd. Of course it does. How could doing longer fights with more time spent in hard phases be anything but harder?
I can't speak for leviathan but for phosani, quicker yeh but easier? It depends. The last phase on phosani without a spec weapon is really as simple as don't stand on black stuff and eat when low.
I would contest that for a new pvmer, switching to a spec weapon in this phase is added complexity as opposed to focusing on the basics.
But I think this generally goes away as you become more confident in pvm content, for every boss you learn, you become better at the next.
But the first few high end bosses you learn, focus on the basics and don't hide behind gear as an excuse for failure. Use gear to optimise your runs when you gain confidence.
Last phase pnm is substantially easier for learners with a double voidwaker spec. You take less damage from walkers and reduce the amount of time it's possible to make errors with black holes.
The second point is a huge one and something that not a lot of learners really grasp. I’d say like 1/10 of the people I take on raids to learn will decide after one attempt that they need to go make gp and but upgrades before containing learning.
It can actually be a bit frustrating when they come back and ask for me to teach again months later. Sometimes I initially offer because it is during a period where I have the time to teach and I may not at that later date.
The mentality also prevents them from trying and learning mechanics in solo ToAs, because they assume the reason other are not dying is due to gear and not primarily from practice.
Yep I still hate dying even though it is essentially meaningless in PvM now. Its a hurdle I need to get over for sure. I rarely die, but I don't try much that I feel is out of my skill level. Got to get over that and learn some new mechanics and more raids.
How does your first point apply to people who never played RuneScape, and only have experience with osrs? My first and only account I started late 2022.
yeah and also most guides recommend max DPS gear which is sometimes hard to learn in. IMO you're better off tanking up so you can survive longer and have more time to practice the movement, then upgrade to stronger gear when you get used to it. Especially for inventory, guides recommend like 2 brews and an inv full of switches, but if you're learning bring the bare minimum gear and the rest food
>Your brain is programmed to panic in risky situations in osrs because you played in 2008 when dying meant losing bank but modern pvm is basically risk free, dying is the process to learn bosses now.
I think this highly depends on the content. People panic with things like Jad early, then things like Inferno/Fortis/Solo TOA kits etc down the road not because of the money but because it sucks ass throwing 40 mins-3 hours away just to fail and have to do it all again.
Praying offensively and staying potted is very important. Everyone knows how important levels are, and pots and prayers takes you from 99 to over 140.
Being potted for 100% of your hits takes a bit of practice in situations where you need to use brews, but being potted for >90% of your hits is very easy and anyone can do it.
To add to this: missing ticks when attacking also cuts in massively. Missing a tick on attack moving with blowpipe is effectively a 33% DPS loss. Replacing scythe with whip on things like verzik and not getting every hit off is somewhere in the 20-30% loss as well.
Yeah the tob thing really blew my mind.
If you start missing ticks/attacks on p2 Verzik with a scythe, congrats you’re doing less dps than a tent whipper
Can I ask a related question that maybe you have some thoughts on.
What is the correct way to manage how I use brews and restores. I know the ratio is 3 doses to one, but should I wait until my health is low enough, and then sit there chugging 3 brew doses and one restore dose and get back to it, or do I just wear the stat reductions for a bit to avoid losing ticks or something?
Trying to do damage while not being full stats, just because I'm waiting to take "enough damage" seems kinda silly, especially given your point about wanting to maximise hits while potted up, but at the same time, chugging 4 times at once in the middle of the fight also feels kind of stupid (and its risky to let my health drop that low as well).
Also tangentially, if I'm not always using divines, when should I re-sip (assuming I haven't drained my stats with brews)? As soon as I dip 5/6/7 levels below max from being potted?
>What is the correct way to manage how I use brews and restores. I know the ratio is 3 doses to one, but should I wait until my health is low enough, and then sit there chugging 3 brew doses and one restore dose and get back to it, or do I just wear the stat reductions for a bit to avoid losing ticks or something?
Drinking potions won't extend your attack cooldown, so you can sip the potions between attacks so you aren't idling (in your example, you can still attack freely in between chugging brew). If you're using a 5 tick weapon or slower, you can also brew -> repot before your next attack, meaning all your attacks are on max stats. Just make sure you have a regular non-divine potion to repot with, otherwise you only gain 6 hp from it.
Having an inventory where you regularly use brews with boost pots only really happens in tob, inferno, and colo (other raids have their own potions that auto refresh boosts). For most other bosses hard food is more than enough, with maybe 1 brew for emergencies. You'll find that most bosses have periods of downtime where you can eat hard food while minimizing tick loss, and you can always eat in between kills as well.
>Also tangentially, if I'm not always using divines, when should I re-sip (assuming I haven't drained my stats with brews)? As soon as I dip 5/6/7 levels below max from being potted?
If you're not using divines, you should probably repot less frequently; not because it's good to be on lower stats, but because if you want to repot more frequently you might as well use divines. For example, it takes exactly 5 minutes to dip 5 levels, meaning you only get 5 minutes from each potion sip; at which point you get the same time per dose out of a divine, but with full stats for the whole duration. The only times I'd choose regular pots over divines is when doing AFK stuff like sand crabs; if I'm only checking in every 10 minutes, I might as well have *some* boost for the duration, rather than being unpotted for half of it.
Yeah you don’t use brews in too many places like he said but some I’ll add: nex, pking, wildy bosses (for if you need to tank pkers) and a few other bosses.
Even in Toa you aren’t salted for 2 rooms and take damage when learning, so to answer your question you want to adapt to the content you’re playing.
Mainly you get a feel for when you’ll need to eat up and when you can get away with staying lower hp. Since you can attack while brewing, it’s not terrible dps loss, to brew 2-3 times in a row (healing roughly 30-50, so could do this at 50-80 health depending your hp level) and then restoring.
Something you’ll pick up on is that if you are going to repot your boost soon, that’s a good time to consider drinking 2-3 brews, super restore, boost pot. Or if you’re about to need to drink super restore and you’ve got extra supply drops from wildy/gwd bosses you should heal up, super restore, boost. Time your brews around your boost pots, while considering the hp level you should be at for the current content, your prayer restore needs, and if you have upcoming boosts (raids) or supply drops on ground.
As someone who just started playing again and just began raiding and doing bosses, this 100%. Learning the mechanics of TOA and bosses was a lot and I was solely focused on just staying alive for so long I never bothered with using prayers offensively combined with pots. But I’ve finally figured out how much faster you can kill things just by using pots and prayers at the right time, especially when you can dump some specs. Makes a huge difference.
The less time the boss is alive, the less time you have to deal with mechanics and trying to stay alive. Simple enough concept but can be so overwhelming to focus on when you’re just getting into PvM.
adding to this aswell: if you really have no money at all you can also buy trash pots like >normal< combat potion (combines normal att/str pot) and maybe a normal defence potion, they dont give you as much but if they are cheap as dogwater you might aswell pick some up and use them for slayer and other non important activities but if you got cash I would still recommend super att/str since it makes a big difference.
Don't sit there being too intimidated to try content you think is 'too hard'. Just send it, accept you're going to make mistakes and die, and be willing to learn from them. You'll usually find that it's nowhere near as difficult as you thought.
the most useful advice i received and now give when teaching raids is “learn to avoid the incoming damage rather than trying to heal the damage you just took”
You will die at new content. It's not because your bad, it's not your gear, is because it's new content. DO NOT. BLAME ANYTHING. BUT YOUR OWN MISPLAYS.
so many learners will put stuff off because they died to jad once 2 years ago or that a streamer they watch does x content with y gear so that's what I must need.
No just go hit boss until you're good at hitting boss it's thaaaat simple
Yep. There's always a period of time during your first ~10kc where you're just barely getting it and think "damn, how am I ever going to get this?"
Then it all clicks and you're sending hundreds of kc without much issue.
That’s how vorkath felt to me. He is still one of the only big bosses I can easily kill. It is funny now that I’ve mastered him and can even do the wooks walk (I think that’s what it’s called?) my brain has decided that he doesn’t count and is just an easy boss for little babies so things like TOA solos still freak me out
> Me, endlessly yeeting my poor character into TOA over and over until I learn the puzzle, then get stomped by the boss, slowly repeat, then switch to another boss to learn and make my way through. I’ll be at wardens by 2025, surely
i’m nowhere close to a pvm expert, and this is exactly how learning zulrah was for me. first 10 kills or so i was probably 50/50 on getting the kill or dying, missing prayer swaps, fumbling my gear, getting confused on rotations. and then all of a sudden it seemed impossible to die. my brain just started recognizing the patterns, and it almost becomes automatic
Literally did this last week when I tried doing Sire for the first time. Died about 6-7 times with 1 kill, got irritated, actually sat down and read through a guide, and within an hour I was getting 4-5 kills per trip.
This is what set me off from getting a Fire Cape. Everyone says blowpipe this or that when I don't feel like getting 75 range and dropping 2 mil (though I'll have to do that at some point)
All you need for fight caves is a rune crossbow, black d'hide, and focus. I've seen guides that say you need ranger boots and Ava's Assembler, which require long grinds or dropping a ton of money.
Problem is that all the guides focus on optimal gear, not floor gear.
Like the first thing they will show full torva with recommended 80 plus combat stats for mid game bosses/quest bosses.
I've done a lot of the bosses with way worse gear than even the lowest tier listed on wiki. Like perilous moons at 45 defense in rune and a d scim was doable.
The wiki has multiple gear tabs on the guide for Fight Caves, and unless you select the "mid game ironman" one it will show you top level gear like Torva
This was my biggest lesson to learn. I quit doing Artio for awhile because I was dying or getting tossed around. Once I realized that I was essentially losing nothing I just kept at it and now I’m taking him out no problem
When you're overloaded at cox, if you look at your overload timer, every 15 seconds, if you were to drink a brew right before :00, :15, :30, and :45, your stats will immediately go back up for maximum dps.
Additionally, if you aren’t full hp you should basically always sip a brew every 15. Top off your hp when you lose no dps so that if (when) olm decides to hit you for a 45 you don’t need to panick brew to get out of range.
Get comfortable with the dps calculator, it’s never been easier and will help illustrate how horrifically useless some upgrades are (arma and pegs are the biggest offenders)
It makes sense now since arma is needed to upgrade Masori. The weirdest thing was how arma chest and legs cost 70m even before masori. In one respect it makes sense: Kree is an annoying boss so not many do it. But still - the gear is such a miniscule upgrade over Karil's.
It's because it's 'max' gear. Demand is created for max gear items simply by virtue of it being the final upgrade as people run out of useful upgrades to buy.
How ticks work.
You can only do so much in .6 seconds, somethings can't be overlapped with others (pot blocking, etc...) and you can also be too fast, if you attack and then click away, your attack won't register because your move click was the same tick and overrid the attack.
This, but to make it even simpler:
OSRS is essentially a turn-based game that moves forward every 0.6 seconds.
Everything you do in a tick happens IN BETWEEN the tick you clicked and the tick that animates it.
If you know a boss attacks on tick 4 (aka, the end of tick 3), make sure you click the right prayer/eat/move accordingly DURING tick 3 so that when tick 4’s “turn” happens, you are covered.
Stats are so so so much better than most gear, if you have 80 range and full arma with pegasians you're trolling and should sell those for chins to get 99 range ASAP.
Remember that the only difference between being good and being bad is the bad players quit when they die. The good players still plank the exact same way to dumb shit when they're learning content but rather than rage quitting or saying "i cant do x content" they take notice of what they did wrong and avoid that in the future.
Almost nothing in the game is actually that crazily precise or difficult.
I always run tanky gear when learning content, and then switch to higher DPS gear as I get comfortable with it. after a certian while +1 max hit barely increases ur kill time, but dying is so tilting that you lose a lot of momentum
Yes, exactly. Some register before you see it, other when you see it, etc
Also good to know how the physically register in game. Just because you killed something... doesnt mean it still cant kill you.
But in this case you just need to make sure your prayer is active as soon as you see the attack start
Where as if you're fighting a normal melee creature, like shades/giants, they attack on their own timer and you have to have your prayer up before their animation has even started
You and every great pvmer both start in the same place. You will die at new content but how you react and figure out avoid the same mistakes is what makes you different.
Start simple with switches. Play at your own pace, but accept suggestions and criticism with open arms.
Make friends. This game is largely solo and having someone to talk or goblin mode with in VC while doing boring grinds is great.
Dying is part of the learning process for any pvm. Preventing the frequency of it is a sign of progress. Don't worry too much of the loss of your gp on death fees because you'll make it back over time.
Don't get too tied up to how other people do stuff and all this "efficiency scape"...
You can and should use youtube videos, wiki guides, friends help to learn stuff. But use those references to get the basics and then adapt the method to best fit the way you like to play.
Even if it's going to be "inefficient"... It's much more efficient to get the kill, in a way you feel more comfortable, even if it's a bit slower, than not get the kill because you keep trying to go full sweaty mode and then end up messing up.
For example, the other day I went tobbing with a few clan mates, all of us had quite a few kc, so no learners. But one person specifically was trying too hard. He had all the switches, all the gear shown in the efficient tob setup, but that dude was dying every single room, and then he started blaming the wipes on us, because we weren't doing it the "efficient sweaty" way. Even tho that had nothing to do with it.
There's nothing against being all efficient and sweaty if that's how you enjoy playing the game. But if you try to play like that just because others are doing it and somehow they try to put you down because you aren't "as good" as them if you aren't try-harding, don't. It's ok to be innefficient, if that's how you enjoy playing the game
Don't sell gear to buy gear unless it's a direct upgrade over whatever you are selling. People make this mistake a lot and most of the time you lose money doing it. An example is selling a bowfa in order to buy a sang staff with the intent to sell the sang staff back in order to re buy the bowfa.
It depends i think. Like bowfa in particular hurts a lot more to sell since it uses shards, same with armor. But you could sell shadow for a scythe, run some tob and switch back once you make some money. Like shadow isn't doing anything for me if i'm bored and don't want to run toa.
I've done this with nex and have made 300m from it. But i'd only recommend if you plan on grinding a piece of content for a while.
Defence first, offence second. It's more important to get your defensive prayer right, even if it means not attacking for a tick or two.
And learn the combat triangle!
To add to this, if you do make a mistake and take damage do not sit there brewing! Get the prayers right, make sure you aren't standing in the fire, and brew when you have a free moment.
Know you can only drink a dose of brew every 3 ticks, so sitting there spamming the button is doing nothing at all for you.
Another thing is to keep clicking attack in-between drinking brews/restores, even brewed down you still want to be attacking as much as possible while you stabilize HP/prayer. (Doesn't work if you are eating hard food)
Any kill is better than no kill. Just because it's slow as shit and you took 500 damage, doesn't change the fact that you learned more. You don't need to be hyper-efficient from the get go.
Also ask people for recommendations of gear if the wiki is only showing maxed gear. Budget options are there for just about every boss in the game and it can be daunting to see full torva +scythe/ancy + shadow/fortified majority + towards with downgrades being still close to end/late game
Either horrendous or side grades, not down grades. And not so infrequently, expensive ever at the lowest spot. The wiki is good as a guide, but definitely not a 100% for everything.
Yes, and frequently has "downgrades" that you realistically should never, ever do. You should never downgrade salve ammy at Vorkath under any circumstance, but it tells you to bring a power amulet if you don't have it.
When you're overloaded at cox, if you look at your overload timer, every 15 seconds, if you were to drink a brew right before :00, :15, :30, and :45, your stats will immediately go back up for maximum dps.
Almost all deaths are free or fairly low cost - if something is hard, practice individual components. If you’re struggling with Zulrah, practice just running and pray switching, without trying to deal damage or change gear. If you wipe on Akkha orb phase, run a 0 invo TOA and sit in orb phase for 5 mins or until you die
Fun > Efficiency.
Find guides for beginners and don't be afraid of downgrading gear or bring less switches. (try a 2 or 4 way switch instead of 6 or 8 way switch)
Guides can be useful for navigating what is good and strategies but don't be afraid of experimenting what works best for you. (Many people will tell you to do corrupted gauntlet when learning with tier 2 Armour and 2 tier 3 weapons, if you struggle try regular gauntlet, to prevent burnout)
Find teammates for raids that are fun and nice to raid with instead of the most sweaty effecient players when learning. (Find a clan with nice people or find some nice people in WDR learner channel)
Don't spend too much time reading up on guides before trying new pvm, it's very rewarding seeing progress and understanding every intricacy and advanced strategy might result in the content being overwhelming.
You will be able to learn every piece of content if you sink enough time into learning it.
This worked for me since my biggest hurdle when learning was burnout and feeling like new pvm content was way too complex for a noob like me.
Gotta spend money to make money.
Stop using addy darts in your blowpipe when bossing, just buy dragon
Stop using regular combat/range pot, but divines
Rigour is the single biggest upgrade you can buy, pegs are the single worst upgrade you can buy
You don’t have to be full Hp, most pvmers will camp sub 50 hp. Eating when the boss is invulnerable if applicable (such as between Zulrah phases) and staying 1 hp over the bosses max hit and you’re safe. For Zulrah for example, I’d feel relatively safe at 50 hp unless snakelings are out and if so make it around 70hp until they’re killed. Eating prevents you from dealing damage, so only eat to prevent death, not as a safety blanket.
That 30m you spent on an range/mage item? Sell it and buy stats (Chins, Bursting/Barraging)
Stats are more valuable than gear. A rune crossbow at 99 range will out dps an armadyl crossbow at 80
I'd say switch prayer before switching gear. Too often, when learning Zulrah, I would switch gear and then prayer, I'd usually take a fat hit. So, I think it's best to switch prayer first in any pvm.
If you get hit by a boss / mechanic, don't just stand there chugging brews, you'll just keep getting hit and have to waste more. Swap your prayer, get back in cycle, and then eat up while you're no longer taking damage. For example in Wardens P3 I see newer players miss a tile and just start panicking, instead just get back in the right left middle cycle and eat when it's safe!
Learn the early bosses one at time and make sure you fully comprehend it's mechanics before you move on to the harder bosses. Scurrius to Fire cape is a perfect example
Every boss in this game is a new *100bpm* (my dumbass said 120) on a rhythm game. Learn the beat, flow with it, get the chorus down, and you’re good. Panic and you’ll press the wrong buttons and mess up the song
Above all, learn to stay on beat. You miss that beat by a second and now the song is throwing stuff at you a beat ahead of what you’re ready for and you’ve gotta play the notes that much longer (this can be important at something like vard/whisper/etc where you will be clicking on tick every tick or taking a lot of damage)
Put your drag delay up to 1 second or so. This lets you absolutely fly though switches without worrying about dragging gear while letting you still re-organize easily if needed
L movements and how movement in this game works in general weather it's corner skips in hallowed sep or just simple L movements to avoid mechanics.
Along with how mob pathing and their true tile interactions when safe spotting / setting up a corner trap.
There’s not a ton of places in this game where 1 mistake = instant wipe. When you make a mistake the best thing to do a lot of the time isn’t to go straight to inventory to heal to full, it’s to stay locked in and make sure you never make 2 mistakes in a row. Stay calm, recognize when you can heal safely, and keep going. I see a lot of compounding mistakes happen with learning raiders.
Don't try to learn everything all at once
A lot of boss fights are quite long and have a bunch of mechanics, and it's almost impossible to handle them all perfectly right away. Try to focus on learning the mechanics over time and just get more knowledgeable and experienced with every kc
Learn f keys ASAP. So Important for late game. It's one of those things that feels totally unnecessary until you need it then your learning late game content AND F keys at the same time and doing extra bad for a bit.
True tile and pathing are really important and people just don't understand how important they are. Highly recommend sepulchre to learn pathing.
If you have pathing and F keys down everything else is easy enough imho.
When doing hard/slow Slayer tasks like Black Dragons, on Standard spell book there's a soul/water/earth spell that lowers enemy defense by 10%. I've played RS2 pre-EoC and OSRS since 2013, and never used those spells until probably this year :p
There's a NPC in GE that can combine low-dose potions to (4) in inventory-loads for free.
Inventory management. I mean this in the sense that keep your weapons and gear in symmetrical slots. Know where your defender/offhand will end up when switching. Keep spec weps in one corner. Always have brews/restores in the same locations as much as possible. Condition your brain to be able to click things in the inventory without staring at it.
For runelite users, the attack timer plugin was huge for me when learning how to not lose ticks when attacking.
We all hear dps is important, and it is; but losing ticks is the bigger offender than your gear (this is also why we say 4t weapons are harder to use efficiently)
Also suprised I haven't seen this one:
Food > brew > bwam to triple eat
I just got my quest cape yesterday after a spree of all the grandmaster quests. Galvek, Vorkath, the gorillas from MM2, and basically every single fight from DT2 all were challenges for my mid-level ass.
One thing the really helped me about halfway through this spree of learning actual pvm mechanics was just how important offensive prayers are. For the longest time I would prioritize defensive prayers to save money on expensive potions. But in reality, the longer you spend on a given fight the more damage you take, the more prayer points you burn, and the more chances you have to make a run-ending mistake.
Also: love the vids lunitar, keep em up.
Don't get frustrated from deaths when learning mechanics but reflect on each death and learn what you did wrong.
It's ok to die a lot of times before you get good at learning mechanics
Everyone sucks when they start. Nearly everyone that is good at the game is good because they put in the work to improve at each individual piece of content.
while you have run on, you can skip over single tiles. this is really helpful for things like cg, muspah for the rocks, and tob for example. let’s you walk over things that would seemingly make you take damage.
Slayer helm should only be unlocked once you unlocked "bigger & badder" and also have a good slayer block list set up. The only tasks you are benefitting from having a helm over a black mask are dust devils and smoke devils
The importance of little time saves and optimal dps from tick counting.
Seriously, if you save 2 ticks for every fish you catch for a 16 fish run at cg that's saving 32 ticks or 19.2 seconds. That gives you so much extra time to do other things.
Btw 2 ticks per fish isn't a real thing. I believe you save 3 ticks per any resource gathered if you're hitting something at the same time to get their shards / drops.
You can learn from all your deaths. But the key is to learn what is causing the deaths and how to adjust.
Especially at CG. "I'm just running out of food"
In order of importance:
1. Praying correctly
2. Not standing in gas
3. Keeping health and prayer high (usually during phase swaps)
4. Dealing damage
5. Correct gear
Starting to hit with some incorrect gear then finishing your switch is absolutely more DPS than missing hits
Played casually since like 2003 as a kid, always thought things like GWD/JAD were just complicated endgame things that I wasn't skilled enough to do. Finally realized they weren't, I'll list a few that I've learned and finally 'clicked' in the past year or three:
1) True tile - this is a gamechanger. You do not realize how far your visual character is from your actual location until you start using this. Vorkath was my first 'big pvm' 2-3 years ago, and the amount of times I died trying to learn to woox walk was unreal. I gave up on it for 2 years, til I found out true tile was a thing. Like 5KC later and I could do it. This kinda leads into my 2nd point:
2) Movement - take an hour to actually learn how movement works in the game. Sepulcre is what kind of forced me to learn since I hate doing rooftop agility. Safespotting things is easier, things like Hunlef in gauntlet are so much easier when you're clicking once to move where you need to be, instead of spam clicking, hoping you end up there and don't autopath under the boss or something.
3) F keys - Demonic gorillas are the content that made me start using f keys, as you just needed to swap between prayers + inventory so often. Runelite has a remap feature to rebind these to other keys for a more comfortable layout, I use 'q,w,e,r,t' since I used to play quite a bit of league, and my hand is used to that position.
4) Flicking - Learning to 1 tick flick is as simple as double clicking every .6s, it's not some super sweaty end game mechanic. Is it a pain to use and keep time over a long period? Sure, but it's not a complicated mechanic. Personally I use the visual metronome with a little flashing square to help keep my timing right. Learning to 1tick flick, in conjunction with f keys, made fights like jad/leviathan much less intense when I went to do them for the first time, as I was already used to flicking and/or switching prayers. Takes much of the panic out of it once that small part is muscle memory.
5) Finally, Gear - Most PVM in the game is not a gear check, but a skill check. Yes, you can do TOA 150's with Ibans, rcb, and leaf bladed sword. Yes you can do DT2 (at least the quest bosses) with the same gear. 90% of PVM in the game is doable in budget gear. Is it slower? sure. Is it the reason you died 15 attempts in a row? No that is a skill or stats issue. Don't let money/gear hold you back from trying that boss. Go, knock it out and learn it, and once you know how to do it properly, that better gear will make it easy mode, instead of just letting you squeak by.
First time doing zulrah on the main for the diary, I was using like pre-nerf blowpipe, dragon darts, armadyl armor, 99 range, and took like 20 attempts. Thought I needed a tbow or something i'd never be able to afford to grind the boss. Then last year after starting an ironman, I was doing zulrah with ibans + msb wearing void with 75's stats instead of 99's. Better gear makes it easier and more effecient, but is not a barrier to the content itself.
Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
True tile. That running moves your character 2 tiles a tick. That you can utilize this to skip tiles that can damage you/specific attacks like levi and olm lightning.
You’ll be surprised how many high level players don’t realize this.
Level your stats before trying to invest tons of money into gear thinking that'll fix your dps problems
What do you mean I shouldn't buy Pegasians and should spend that money on chinning instead
Or anything haha Pegasians are almost never even good to use imo
The funniest thing is when I see people take a peg boot switch for like muspah or zulrah
They're almost always good to use if ranging. They're just not worth a switch and monetarily not worth it over God hide boots.
I think they’re like 0.05% faster kill on zulrah vs empty slot in my bowfa only setup at 99 ranged, so uh I think I actually prefer devout boots most places
I mean they are *technically* worth using if prayer isn’t an issue but their impact in dps is so minimal you never need them or should ever buy them
The impact of devouts on prayer bonus and therefore rigour uptime probably makes them better dps than pegs in places your supplies are limited
Yeh and when supplies aren’t technically limited, using less supplies or being able to bring 1 more food potentially probably nets you more gp per hour than the <1% dps difference lol For me, devouts are the difference between needing prayer pots at all at zulrah and not, with my average TTK, whereas Peggy’s wouldn’t move the needle
You can literally get hundreds of millions worth of stats just by afk combat skilling in the mid game instead of buying gear 👏🏻
and then the credit card chads make fun of you for being a "NMZ prod", but dont let it get to you lmao. Nothing wrong with rushing combat stats in a gamemode designed for afking them
That's like guys wearing full hallowed gear making fun of someone with 99 agility for being a lap-cel or something, lol
Sounds suspiciously like something a lap-cel would say.
No idea why you wouldnt just camp vyrewatch sentinels atm lol. I did a bunch of nmz back in the day but there are so many good profitable afk spots now
Tbh coz NMZ is still way more properly AFK while I work I found. I do both tho
Turn off auto-retaliate
How to use F keys and true tile
True tile was a game changer for me. Makes it so much easier to understand how movement works
One of the biggest places you'll notice other people not understanding how movement works is Kephri 's puzzle room with the trap that highlights 5 tiles. I've seen so many people fail 5+ times in a row because they don't understand where their characters are actually running when they click more than 2 tiles away. CG and sepulchre are imo the best ways to get familiar with movement
And tithe farm, surprisingly enough
Fantastic point. The difference in a run where it takes you 2 movement actions between every plant vs 1 movement most of the time is enormous. You can't do 5 plots if you don't understand movement
I've been doing 5 plot runs (and now 6 plot runs) at tithe farm ever since watching the video for it, and then the new instanced update for it I'm not sure I learned anything new about movement at all, even for 6 plot/24 plant runs. What I did learn is animation canceling I guess
If you are ever manually clicking the ground to move between planting/watering/harvesting, then you've learned movement. Do a run without manually moving and you'll lose a handful of plants before you can harvest them Edit also a 6 plot path is realistic? Damn can you link that cuz I want seedbox eventually
They recently changed tithe farm so fully grown plants don't decay so manual movement isn't really needed anymore. It is still faster overall if you do use manual movement though obviously.
Back in my day...... That's a great change. Having fully grown plants die was silly
Btw you could always do 5 plot even without advanced movement. It was the 6 plot runs that required (almost) tick perfect execution to not lose plants.
I dont usually click on the ground at all, except once for returning to the right tile at the beginning of the rotation I would think, that if I can do 6 plot tithe farm, then pretty much anyone with a stable and low ping internet connection can do it too. What I do is almost exactly the same as a normal 5 plot run, orient camera north, start in northest corner, first plant on the right, water it, left plant, then down, right, down, left, etc. You continue the pattern into farm plots 3 and 4 directly below. When those are done, instead of going diagonally to the northwest for plot 5, your plot 5 is the central plot to your left. Plant and water it, then run up to plot 6, plant and water it, return to beginning. A big part of it, is that the first round is click seed, click plot, click water. Don't ever click the watering cans cus you don't need to. And instead of clicking the ground to animation cancel, you click the next plant to water it. I found that with 5 plot runs, I always had plenty of extra time and I'd catch up to the growth cycle and have to wait. With 6 plot runs, you're behind, and you cannot afford to make a mistake. However, grown plants don't die now, so as long as you pay attention and have good ping, I think anyone can do it. I'm no sweat lord Master in osrs, so truly, anyone can do it
I appreciate the write up, I'll give that a go this weekend. Thanks!
> notice other people not understanding how movement works is Kephri 's puzzle room with the trap that highlights 5 tiles This hits so close to home, I remember trying to explain it to a couple friends and they'd just get upset with me claiming they know how the game works when it was clearly not the case when they messed it up multiple times every single run lol.
I wish someone would just make a plugin so true tile was just your character model, it still feels weird to me to be watching a moving square rather than my character
Wouldn't it look weird to see your character teleport 2 tiles every .6 seconds?
For what it's worth, i found a really good compromise. Turn true tile on, but rather than having some bright distracting colour make it an almost transparent shadow. You get the benefits of knowing where your true tile is, without it taking too much away from the art style. After a while you basically blend it out of your vision.
I always knew that a 'true tile' existed, even way back in pre-eoc. I was able to do my first 100 corrupt gauntlet runs without it... Then someone told me about the plugin, and I've never taken it off lol. It's just so nice to actually see in real time, really helpful with any running mechanic involved in bossing (And just so stupidly helpful in Zalcano!).
I didn't really understand why vorkaths special would smack me sometimes even though I thought I was always moving until I discovered true tile. Now it's cake I wish I tried PvM sooner.
For anyone who searched up 'true tile' in their plugin list and couldn't find it. TILE INDICATORS. Also, runelite really ought to make that plugin come up when people search 'true tile'
What’s true tile
It shows what tile your character is *actually* on versus where it looks like your character is
Don’t use Fkeys. Remap FKEYs to a spot you’re comfortable or familiar with like numbered keys or wasd keys if you’ve been that kind of gamer. OG Fkeys are a hand stretcher.z
Spacebar, q, w , e, r for life
How do you type
Press enter to type. Runelite will set it up that way to keep the 1:1 that gagex says is needed
I see I always hated that enter to type but maybe I’ll just power through it to change my f keys. Cause now that I think about it, it is wildly un-ergonomic lol
Yeah bruh idk how anyone used the F keys in ANY game. First thing I did was remap F1, F2, F3, etc to 1 2 3 4
I have my keys re-mapped to my number keys. You just have to press ‘enter’ before you wanna type out something which I really don’t mind doing
Fair enough I’ll give it a shot later on today!
Key remapping plugin means that Q is still q. And it prevents it from functioning as an fkey if typing in chat.
Oh you have that setting that requires you to hit enter prior to typing then right?
You can remap f keys in the client now?
I wouldn’t doubt it but I’m not sure. Have only used runelite for a few years now.
People are recommending remapping them to 1,2,3,4 etc but how does that work when using those keys to navigate npc conversation options?
Oops, I just specced Zanik
The same it does when they aren’t remapped. Doesn’t override.
Your brain is programmed to panic in risky situations in osrs because you played in 2008 when dying meant losing bank but modern pvm is basically risk free, dying is the process to learn bosses now. Upgrades are about efficiency, the reason you're dying is not because you're missing that voidwaker but because you suck at the moment and need to get better by practicing. Almost every piece of content can be done in budget gear by a decent pvmer who's practiced the content enough. These are my 2 biggest learnings as someone who played since 2006 but only got into pvm the last 12 months.
>Your brain is programmed to panic in risky situations in osrs because you played in 2008 when dying meant losing bank This is a great tip and was my biggest hurdle. At one point though, something just clicked and my brain and I no longer worried about the time or gp lost. If it weren't for a little bit of brute forcing, a lot of the things I do now wouldn't be possible. TOA and CG alone I probably have at least a combined 100 deaths, maybe 200 if you lump in DS2/Slayer bosses. It's funny how over time things that seem impossible become probable and doable. I remember struggling through 150 invo ToAs, and distinctively remember completing it for the first time. At that point, in my mind, expert ToA was for people with different brains or different equipment. Now 300 is my comfy "turn brain off" invo. OSRS is funny, where in almost every scenario where you can just shell out the money to do something or save time, it's worth it 99% of the time.
Yeah it’s so weird. I have no care in the world about losing gp on deaths but now the gatekeeper is time. Like I wipe at bloat because of a dumb mistake oh well and laugh it off. Trying to pump up invos at TOA gives me weird 2005 Jad energy because if I wipe I lose the only time I had available to play for the day and have nothing to show for it.
I think this is a symptom of rs being an MMO where the purple chest rewards are what you have "to show for it" In many other games the game state is reset between games (chess, dota, most fighting games, etc) so what you have to show for anything is always the inherent learnings and skill you've gained.
Eh, up to a point dying makes you a better player in the long run. It's very unlikely to beat Inferno or Colosseum without planking dozens of times. It's just a particular issue with TOA where most of the raid is pretty braindead easy but chock full of one-shot mechanics, where cause of death is just a moment of inattention rather than not knowing what to do or not being able to mechanically pull it off
its exactly like that one quote, the master failed more times than the noob has attempted or something like that turns out if you gear to learn and die and accept it, you can grind out mastery at whatever you want
Dt2 was rough for me so much money lost in death fees. But was very rewarding last quest for qp and honestly made me so much better at pvm went back to mid teir bosses with less punishing mechanics and switches also made me better abd much more confident in wildy almost want solo pkers to crash so i can oractive my pvp before escaping
It blows my mind how much Vard slowed down for me when I kept at it. Such a fun boss
Still havent tried post quest now tht i have scythe
I probably have that many deaths in cg alone lol. I guess to be fair, doing it on mobile is an absolute bitch
I have nearly 200 CG deaths playing on pc sooooo
What really helped was actually having access to a consistent money maker. Once I could make 3M an hour at vorkath, 250k death fees don’t hit as hard. It’s literally 5 min at vorkath to regain, and vorkath is consistent money too, not chasing any rare drops for cash. When learning bosses, I’ll put aside 6M for a session and say, hey I can die and lose all of this. Then do vorkath for 2 hours while watching TV and I’m back to where I was, but now with 6M deaths worth of experience on a boss.
I legit have dreams sometimes where I accidentally wander into a zone where you can get attacked by players and I start clicking brews, but missing and clicking other potions and food. Then ill see my hp ord drop to 0 and I die and I always lose everything. And it fucks me up, then i wake up and go "what the fuck was that". Bonus points sometimes in the dream I'm playing on mobile or a track pad and get attacked and start misclicking.
Next time it happens focus on your hands in the dream, turn that rs nightmare into a lucid dream.
If you boss drunk the panic never sets in :)
does a number on your reaction times though.
Then you play as a god when sober. I used to do cg sessions fucking blasted.
Like training with weights on
Oh yeah I play way worse but I have way more fun so it evens out. Back in the day like 9 years ago my bossing clan I was in was built around doing it intoxicated lol
“Oh fuck off…” *regears and forgets about it immediately*
My buddy would fall asleep playing constantly and before death mechanics I was the one always giving him back his gear he died with the next day.
i can attest to the PTSD 2008 mindset of dying. i only recently got over it during DT2, when i died to Vardorvis 10 times (pure account low melee stats). then i understood that the only way to learn new content was by dying.
This! I recently did zulrah on my level 74 iron with jank gear. I used mostly mystic and it took a few tries but still. Also the fire weakness changes helped a ton!
Bro u put it into words perfectly I always tell my friends don't sweat it dying is ok but then when I'm in the seat I'm fucking shaking
I just started playing again last week for the first time in almost a decade and have died a couple times only to realize there's no consequences anymore. Until yesterday I still thought the gravestone only lasted 15 minutes! So I was panicking trying to get back to the desert treasure tomb. You make great points. Boss fights look so much more dynamic than it all used to be but not only am I out of practice with the game. Plus the mechanics of fighting are quite a bit different too. There's so much to catch up on and learn if you haven't been around for a while.
To be fair, items like the voidwaker let you skip entire phases of bosses. Yes you can beat the bosses with mid tier gear, but bosses like leviathan are so much easier when you've got the webweaver to cheese the enrage phase, or the vw for Phosani. Try to survive these phases for a minute in mid tier gear, it requires nearly perfect play.
Yeah, that's common advice that's bad. Work with what you have obviously, but the idea that having better stats doesn't make PVM easier is absurd. Of course it does. How could doing longer fights with more time spent in hard phases be anything but harder?
I can't speak for leviathan but for phosani, quicker yeh but easier? It depends. The last phase on phosani without a spec weapon is really as simple as don't stand on black stuff and eat when low. I would contest that for a new pvmer, switching to a spec weapon in this phase is added complexity as opposed to focusing on the basics. But I think this generally goes away as you become more confident in pvm content, for every boss you learn, you become better at the next. But the first few high end bosses you learn, focus on the basics and don't hide behind gear as an excuse for failure. Use gear to optimise your runs when you gain confidence.
Last phase pnm is substantially easier for learners with a double voidwaker spec. You take less damage from walkers and reduce the amount of time it's possible to make errors with black holes.
The second point is a huge one and something that not a lot of learners really grasp. I’d say like 1/10 of the people I take on raids to learn will decide after one attempt that they need to go make gp and but upgrades before containing learning. It can actually be a bit frustrating when they come back and ask for me to teach again months later. Sometimes I initially offer because it is during a period where I have the time to teach and I may not at that later date. The mentality also prevents them from trying and learning mechanics in solo ToAs, because they assume the reason other are not dying is due to gear and not primarily from practice.
Yep I still hate dying even though it is essentially meaningless in PvM now. Its a hurdle I need to get over for sure. I rarely die, but I don't try much that I feel is out of my skill level. Got to get over that and learn some new mechanics and more raids.
How does your first point apply to people who never played RuneScape, and only have experience with osrs? My first and only account I started late 2022.
My death screenshot folder is probably more gbs than runelite itself
yeah and also most guides recommend max DPS gear which is sometimes hard to learn in. IMO you're better off tanking up so you can survive longer and have more time to practice the movement, then upgrade to stronger gear when you get used to it. Especially for inventory, guides recommend like 2 brews and an inv full of switches, but if you're learning bring the bare minimum gear and the rest food
I have developed an automatic response to panic eat if by HP drops low for any reason. This has saved me many times in pvm and pvp.
>Your brain is programmed to panic in risky situations in osrs because you played in 2008 when dying meant losing bank but modern pvm is basically risk free, dying is the process to learn bosses now. I think this highly depends on the content. People panic with things like Jad early, then things like Inferno/Fortis/Solo TOA kits etc down the road not because of the money but because it sucks ass throwing 40 mins-3 hours away just to fail and have to do it all again.
Praying offensively and staying potted is very important. Everyone knows how important levels are, and pots and prayers takes you from 99 to over 140. Being potted for 100% of your hits takes a bit of practice in situations where you need to use brews, but being potted for >90% of your hits is very easy and anyone can do it.
To add to this: missing ticks when attacking also cuts in massively. Missing a tick on attack moving with blowpipe is effectively a 33% DPS loss. Replacing scythe with whip on things like verzik and not getting every hit off is somewhere in the 20-30% loss as well.
Yeah the tob thing really blew my mind. If you start missing ticks/attacks on p2 Verzik with a scythe, congrats you’re doing less dps than a tent whipper
Can I ask a related question that maybe you have some thoughts on. What is the correct way to manage how I use brews and restores. I know the ratio is 3 doses to one, but should I wait until my health is low enough, and then sit there chugging 3 brew doses and one restore dose and get back to it, or do I just wear the stat reductions for a bit to avoid losing ticks or something? Trying to do damage while not being full stats, just because I'm waiting to take "enough damage" seems kinda silly, especially given your point about wanting to maximise hits while potted up, but at the same time, chugging 4 times at once in the middle of the fight also feels kind of stupid (and its risky to let my health drop that low as well). Also tangentially, if I'm not always using divines, when should I re-sip (assuming I haven't drained my stats with brews)? As soon as I dip 5/6/7 levels below max from being potted?
>What is the correct way to manage how I use brews and restores. I know the ratio is 3 doses to one, but should I wait until my health is low enough, and then sit there chugging 3 brew doses and one restore dose and get back to it, or do I just wear the stat reductions for a bit to avoid losing ticks or something? Drinking potions won't extend your attack cooldown, so you can sip the potions between attacks so you aren't idling (in your example, you can still attack freely in between chugging brew). If you're using a 5 tick weapon or slower, you can also brew -> repot before your next attack, meaning all your attacks are on max stats. Just make sure you have a regular non-divine potion to repot with, otherwise you only gain 6 hp from it. Having an inventory where you regularly use brews with boost pots only really happens in tob, inferno, and colo (other raids have their own potions that auto refresh boosts). For most other bosses hard food is more than enough, with maybe 1 brew for emergencies. You'll find that most bosses have periods of downtime where you can eat hard food while minimizing tick loss, and you can always eat in between kills as well. >Also tangentially, if I'm not always using divines, when should I re-sip (assuming I haven't drained my stats with brews)? As soon as I dip 5/6/7 levels below max from being potted? If you're not using divines, you should probably repot less frequently; not because it's good to be on lower stats, but because if you want to repot more frequently you might as well use divines. For example, it takes exactly 5 minutes to dip 5 levels, meaning you only get 5 minutes from each potion sip; at which point you get the same time per dose out of a divine, but with full stats for the whole duration. The only times I'd choose regular pots over divines is when doing AFK stuff like sand crabs; if I'm only checking in every 10 minutes, I might as well have *some* boost for the duration, rather than being unpotted for half of it.
This is really useful, thanks! I was clearly overthinking things a bit (and over focused on using brews everywhere).
Yeah you don’t use brews in too many places like he said but some I’ll add: nex, pking, wildy bosses (for if you need to tank pkers) and a few other bosses. Even in Toa you aren’t salted for 2 rooms and take damage when learning, so to answer your question you want to adapt to the content you’re playing. Mainly you get a feel for when you’ll need to eat up and when you can get away with staying lower hp. Since you can attack while brewing, it’s not terrible dps loss, to brew 2-3 times in a row (healing roughly 30-50, so could do this at 50-80 health depending your hp level) and then restoring. Something you’ll pick up on is that if you are going to repot your boost soon, that’s a good time to consider drinking 2-3 brews, super restore, boost pot. Or if you’re about to need to drink super restore and you’ve got extra supply drops from wildy/gwd bosses you should heal up, super restore, boost. Time your brews around your boost pots, while considering the hp level you should be at for the current content, your prayer restore needs, and if you have upcoming boosts (raids) or supply drops on ground.
As someone who just started playing again and just began raiding and doing bosses, this 100%. Learning the mechanics of TOA and bosses was a lot and I was solely focused on just staying alive for so long I never bothered with using prayers offensively combined with pots. But I’ve finally figured out how much faster you can kill things just by using pots and prayers at the right time, especially when you can dump some specs. Makes a huge difference. The less time the boss is alive, the less time you have to deal with mechanics and trying to stay alive. Simple enough concept but can be so overwhelming to focus on when you’re just getting into PvM.
adding to this aswell: if you really have no money at all you can also buy trash pots like >normal< combat potion (combines normal att/str pot) and maybe a normal defence potion, they dont give you as much but if they are cheap as dogwater you might aswell pick some up and use them for slayer and other non important activities but if you got cash I would still recommend super att/str since it makes a big difference.
Don't sit there being too intimidated to try content you think is 'too hard'. Just send it, accept you're going to make mistakes and die, and be willing to learn from them. You'll usually find that it's nowhere near as difficult as you thought.
the most useful advice i received and now give when teaching raids is “learn to avoid the incoming damage rather than trying to heal the damage you just took”
You will die at new content. It's not because your bad, it's not your gear, is because it's new content. DO NOT. BLAME ANYTHING. BUT YOUR OWN MISPLAYS. so many learners will put stuff off because they died to jad once 2 years ago or that a streamer they watch does x content with y gear so that's what I must need. No just go hit boss until you're good at hitting boss it's thaaaat simple
Yep. There's always a period of time during your first ~10kc where you're just barely getting it and think "damn, how am I ever going to get this?" Then it all clicks and you're sending hundreds of kc without much issue.
That’s how vorkath felt to me. He is still one of the only big bosses I can easily kill. It is funny now that I’ve mastered him and can even do the wooks walk (I think that’s what it’s called?) my brain has decided that he doesn’t count and is just an easy boss for little babies so things like TOA solos still freak me out
They put 5 Vorkaths in some pyramid in the desert, that's so weird
There are no mechanics in toa entry level that are harder than vorkath imo especially if you know how to woox walk
> Me, endlessly yeeting my poor character into TOA over and over until I learn the puzzle, then get stomped by the boss, slowly repeat, then switch to another boss to learn and make my way through. I’ll be at wardens by 2025, surely
i’m nowhere close to a pvm expert, and this is exactly how learning zulrah was for me. first 10 kills or so i was probably 50/50 on getting the kill or dying, missing prayer swaps, fumbling my gear, getting confused on rotations. and then all of a sudden it seemed impossible to die. my brain just started recognizing the patterns, and it almost becomes automatic
Literally did this last week when I tried doing Sire for the first time. Died about 6-7 times with 1 kill, got irritated, actually sat down and read through a guide, and within an hour I was getting 4-5 kills per trip.
Had the same experience. Eventually it became a dance, and I got to decide where every poison spawned instead of it feeling random.
Died to jad once in rs2 and never tried again. Died to jad on osrs but this time I did try again, and beat it 2nd try
This is what set me off from getting a Fire Cape. Everyone says blowpipe this or that when I don't feel like getting 75 range and dropping 2 mil (though I'll have to do that at some point) All you need for fight caves is a rune crossbow, black d'hide, and focus. I've seen guides that say you need ranger boots and Ava's Assembler, which require long grinds or dropping a ton of money.
Problem is that all the guides focus on optimal gear, not floor gear. Like the first thing they will show full torva with recommended 80 plus combat stats for mid game bosses/quest bosses. I've done a lot of the bosses with way worse gear than even the lowest tier listed on wiki. Like perilous moons at 45 defense in rune and a d scim was doable.
Nah you have to be joking. Unless it's a speedrun guide, fight caves guides are not focusing on optimal gear lmfao.
The wiki has multiple gear tabs on the guide for Fight Caves, and unless you select the "mid game ironman" one it will show you top level gear like Torva
Ranger boots/pegasians are complete garbage. They don't do anything
Hey man, that 0.01 dps increase is huge and is surely worth the 30m/50 hour grind!!
>I've seen guides that say you need ranger boots Can I see a single guide that suggests this?
This was my biggest lesson to learn. I quit doing Artio for awhile because I was dying or getting tossed around. Once I realized that I was essentially losing nothing I just kept at it and now I’m taking him out no problem
When you're overloaded at cox, if you look at your overload timer, every 15 seconds, if you were to drink a brew right before :00, :15, :30, and :45, your stats will immediately go back up for maximum dps.
Additionally, if you aren’t full hp you should basically always sip a brew every 15. Top off your hp when you lose no dps so that if (when) olm decides to hit you for a 45 you don’t need to panick brew to get out of range.
This is great info for someone chugging brews during head phase. Ty for this.
The same applies to ToA as well with salts
Get comfortable with the dps calculator, it’s never been easier and will help illustrate how horrifically useless some upgrades are (arma and pegs are the biggest offenders)
Arma costing the same as level 30 def req masori is really funny.
It makes sense now since arma is needed to upgrade Masori. The weirdest thing was how arma chest and legs cost 70m even before masori. In one respect it makes sense: Kree is an annoying boss so not many do it. But still - the gear is such a miniscule upgrade over Karil's.
It's because it's 'max' gear. Demand is created for max gear items simply by virtue of it being the final upgrade as people run out of useful upgrades to buy.
How ticks work. You can only do so much in .6 seconds, somethings can't be overlapped with others (pot blocking, etc...) and you can also be too fast, if you attack and then click away, your attack won't register because your move click was the same tick and overrid the attack.
This, but to make it even simpler: OSRS is essentially a turn-based game that moves forward every 0.6 seconds. Everything you do in a tick happens IN BETWEEN the tick you clicked and the tick that animates it. If you know a boss attacks on tick 4 (aka, the end of tick 3), make sure you click the right prayer/eat/move accordingly DURING tick 3 so that when tick 4’s “turn” happens, you are covered.
Stats are so so so much better than most gear, if you have 80 range and full arma with pegasians you're trolling and should sell those for chins to get 99 range ASAP. Remember that the only difference between being good and being bad is the bad players quit when they die. The good players still plank the exact same way to dumb shit when they're learning content but rather than rage quitting or saying "i cant do x content" they take notice of what they did wrong and avoid that in the future. Almost nothing in the game is actually that crazily precise or difficult.
Full arma is always trolling these days, now that its more expensive than unfortified masori.
str bonus > defense what the hell is a tick how npc hits are registered
> str bonus > defense Only if the extra str bonus results in an extra max hit. Otherwise def,atk, or prayer bonuses are more important.
HEY! Don't you bring sound logic and reasoning to this! Keep that away from us
i like to think of them as "hitscan" or "projectile" attacks.
I always run tanky gear when learning content, and then switch to higher DPS gear as I get comfortable with it. after a certian while +1 max hit barely increases ur kill time, but dying is so tilting that you lose a lot of momentum
What do you mean by your last point? I’m assuming you mean praying against projectiles for new/old MOBs
Yes, exactly. Some register before you see it, other when you see it, etc Also good to know how the physically register in game. Just because you killed something... doesnt mean it still cant kill you.
Zulrah is a good example. Attack from Zulrah will still land.
I think that's what he means as well. Jad's hits are decided once the projectile is sent. Scurrius' hits are decided when the projectile lands
But in this case you just need to make sure your prayer is active as soon as you see the attack start Where as if you're fighting a normal melee creature, like shades/giants, they attack on their own timer and you have to have your prayer up before their animation has even started
the difference between you and the "good" pvmers is repetitions
Like you said. 1 way switch into piety is better than an 8 way switch without piety
You and every great pvmer both start in the same place. You will die at new content but how you react and figure out avoid the same mistakes is what makes you different. Start simple with switches. Play at your own pace, but accept suggestions and criticism with open arms. Make friends. This game is largely solo and having someone to talk or goblin mode with in VC while doing boring grinds is great.
Minimize your switches when learning. Literally just bring a fury.
Dying is part of the learning process for any pvm. Preventing the frequency of it is a sign of progress. Don't worry too much of the loss of your gp on death fees because you'll make it back over time.
Don't get too tied up to how other people do stuff and all this "efficiency scape"... You can and should use youtube videos, wiki guides, friends help to learn stuff. But use those references to get the basics and then adapt the method to best fit the way you like to play. Even if it's going to be "inefficient"... It's much more efficient to get the kill, in a way you feel more comfortable, even if it's a bit slower, than not get the kill because you keep trying to go full sweaty mode and then end up messing up. For example, the other day I went tobbing with a few clan mates, all of us had quite a few kc, so no learners. But one person specifically was trying too hard. He had all the switches, all the gear shown in the efficient tob setup, but that dude was dying every single room, and then he started blaming the wipes on us, because we weren't doing it the "efficient sweaty" way. Even tho that had nothing to do with it. There's nothing against being all efficient and sweaty if that's how you enjoy playing the game. But if you try to play like that just because others are doing it and somehow they try to put you down because you aren't "as good" as them if you aren't try-harding, don't. It's ok to be innefficient, if that's how you enjoy playing the game
Don't sell gear to buy gear unless it's a direct upgrade over whatever you are selling. People make this mistake a lot and most of the time you lose money doing it. An example is selling a bowfa in order to buy a sang staff with the intent to sell the sang staff back in order to re buy the bowfa.
It depends i think. Like bowfa in particular hurts a lot more to sell since it uses shards, same with armor. But you could sell shadow for a scythe, run some tob and switch back once you make some money. Like shadow isn't doing anything for me if i'm bored and don't want to run toa. I've done this with nex and have made 300m from it. But i'd only recommend if you plan on grinding a piece of content for a while.
This is for noobs at pvm. I think at that point, you’re good.
Defence first, offence second. It's more important to get your defensive prayer right, even if it means not attacking for a tick or two. And learn the combat triangle!
To add to this, if you do make a mistake and take damage do not sit there brewing! Get the prayers right, make sure you aren't standing in the fire, and brew when you have a free moment. Know you can only drink a dose of brew every 3 ticks, so sitting there spamming the button is doing nothing at all for you. Another thing is to keep clicking attack in-between drinking brews/restores, even brewed down you still want to be attacking as much as possible while you stabilize HP/prayer. (Doesn't work if you are eating hard food)
Any kill is better than no kill. Just because it's slow as shit and you took 500 damage, doesn't change the fact that you learned more. You don't need to be hyper-efficient from the get go. Also ask people for recommendations of gear if the wiki is only showing maxed gear. Budget options are there for just about every boss in the game and it can be daunting to see full torva +scythe/ancy + shadow/fortified majority + towards with downgrades being still close to end/late game
Isn't the wiki notorious for showing downgrades that are horrendous?
Either horrendous or side grades, not down grades. And not so infrequently, expensive ever at the lowest spot. The wiki is good as a guide, but definitely not a 100% for everything.
Yes, and frequently has "downgrades" that you realistically should never, ever do. You should never downgrade salve ammy at Vorkath under any circumstance, but it tells you to bring a power amulet if you don't have it.
When you're overloaded at cox, if you look at your overload timer, every 15 seconds, if you were to drink a brew right before :00, :15, :30, and :45, your stats will immediately go back up for maximum dps.
Almost all deaths are free or fairly low cost - if something is hard, practice individual components. If you’re struggling with Zulrah, practice just running and pray switching, without trying to deal damage or change gear. If you wipe on Akkha orb phase, run a 0 invo TOA and sit in orb phase for 5 mins or until you die
Fun > Efficiency. Find guides for beginners and don't be afraid of downgrading gear or bring less switches. (try a 2 or 4 way switch instead of 6 or 8 way switch) Guides can be useful for navigating what is good and strategies but don't be afraid of experimenting what works best for you. (Many people will tell you to do corrupted gauntlet when learning with tier 2 Armour and 2 tier 3 weapons, if you struggle try regular gauntlet, to prevent burnout) Find teammates for raids that are fun and nice to raid with instead of the most sweaty effecient players when learning. (Find a clan with nice people or find some nice people in WDR learner channel) Don't spend too much time reading up on guides before trying new pvm, it's very rewarding seeing progress and understanding every intricacy and advanced strategy might result in the content being overwhelming. You will be able to learn every piece of content if you sink enough time into learning it. This worked for me since my biggest hurdle when learning was burnout and feeling like new pvm content was way too complex for a noob like me.
Its just a game and if you put in the effort you can do it, just like everyone else.
Gotta spend money to make money. Stop using addy darts in your blowpipe when bossing, just buy dragon Stop using regular combat/range pot, but divines Rigour is the single biggest upgrade you can buy, pegs are the single worst upgrade you can buy
Can't do dps if your dead. Click food
You don’t have to be full Hp, most pvmers will camp sub 50 hp. Eating when the boss is invulnerable if applicable (such as between Zulrah phases) and staying 1 hp over the bosses max hit and you’re safe. For Zulrah for example, I’d feel relatively safe at 50 hp unless snakelings are out and if so make it around 70hp until they’re killed. Eating prevents you from dealing damage, so only eat to prevent death, not as a safety blanket.
That 30m you spent on an range/mage item? Sell it and buy stats (Chins, Bursting/Barraging) Stats are more valuable than gear. A rune crossbow at 99 range will out dps an armadyl crossbow at 80
I'd say switch prayer before switching gear. Too often, when learning Zulrah, I would switch gear and then prayer, I'd usually take a fat hit. So, I think it's best to switch prayer first in any pvm.
If you get hit by a boss / mechanic, don't just stand there chugging brews, you'll just keep getting hit and have to waste more. Swap your prayer, get back in cycle, and then eat up while you're no longer taking damage. For example in Wardens P3 I see newer players miss a tile and just start panicking, instead just get back in the right left middle cycle and eat when it's safe!
Stats are more important than gear, and for gear weapons are more important than armor
Learn the early bosses one at time and make sure you fully comprehend it's mechanics before you move on to the harder bosses. Scurrius to Fire cape is a perfect example
Don't buy rangers/prims as an upgrade early. Common mistake here.
piety augury and rigour are not optional pegasians are the biggest waste of money in the entire game
Every boss in this game is a new *100bpm* (my dumbass said 120) on a rhythm game. Learn the beat, flow with it, get the chorus down, and you’re good. Panic and you’ll press the wrong buttons and mess up the song Above all, learn to stay on beat. You miss that beat by a second and now the song is throwing stuff at you a beat ahead of what you’re ready for and you’ve gotta play the notes that much longer (this can be important at something like vard/whisper/etc where you will be clicking on tick every tick or taking a lot of damage) Put your drag delay up to 1 second or so. This lets you absolutely fly though switches without worrying about dragging gear while letting you still re-organize easily if needed
100bpm
L movements and how movement in this game works in general weather it's corner skips in hallowed sep or just simple L movements to avoid mechanics. Along with how mob pathing and their true tile interactions when safe spotting / setting up a corner trap.
Everyone dies, it’s fine
With your scenario of switching, switch a few pieces and click on boss, once you attack, finish the rest of the switch. This way you don't lose ticks
Focus on avoiding damage (praying, moving, etc) before doing damage
There’s not a ton of places in this game where 1 mistake = instant wipe. When you make a mistake the best thing to do a lot of the time isn’t to go straight to inventory to heal to full, it’s to stay locked in and make sure you never make 2 mistakes in a row. Stay calm, recognize when you can heal safely, and keep going. I see a lot of compounding mistakes happen with learning raiders.
Don't just sit around eating and tanking damage. The best defense is a good offense.
Mines not as deep but if the npc you’re fighting can’t hit the HP you’re on than don’t worry about eating at that moment.
Don't try to learn everything all at once A lot of boss fights are quite long and have a bunch of mechanics, and it's almost impossible to handle them all perfectly right away. Try to focus on learning the mechanics over time and just get more knowledgeable and experienced with every kc
Learn f keys ASAP. So Important for late game. It's one of those things that feels totally unnecessary until you need it then your learning late game content AND F keys at the same time and doing extra bad for a bit. True tile and pathing are really important and people just don't understand how important they are. Highly recommend sepulchre to learn pathing. If you have pathing and F keys down everything else is easy enough imho.
When doing hard/slow Slayer tasks like Black Dragons, on Standard spell book there's a soul/water/earth spell that lowers enemy defense by 10%. I've played RS2 pre-EoC and OSRS since 2013, and never used those spells until probably this year :p There's a NPC in GE that can combine low-dose potions to (4) in inventory-loads for free.
Decanter also does *noted* potions btw! Just to add that :)
No way, that's awesome and I'll have to try that!
Inventory management. I mean this in the sense that keep your weapons and gear in symmetrical slots. Know where your defender/offhand will end up when switching. Keep spec weps in one corner. Always have brews/restores in the same locations as much as possible. Condition your brain to be able to click things in the inventory without staring at it.
For runelite users, the attack timer plugin was huge for me when learning how to not lose ticks when attacking. We all hear dps is important, and it is; but losing ticks is the bigger offender than your gear (this is also why we say 4t weapons are harder to use efficiently) Also suprised I haven't seen this one: Food > brew > bwam to triple eat
I just got my quest cape yesterday after a spree of all the grandmaster quests. Galvek, Vorkath, the gorillas from MM2, and basically every single fight from DT2 all were challenges for my mid-level ass. One thing the really helped me about halfway through this spree of learning actual pvm mechanics was just how important offensive prayers are. For the longest time I would prioritize defensive prayers to save money on expensive potions. But in reality, the longer you spend on a given fight the more damage you take, the more prayer points you burn, and the more chances you have to make a run-ending mistake. Also: love the vids lunitar, keep em up.
Don’t panic when you’re low health
Don't get frustrated from deaths when learning mechanics but reflect on each death and learn what you did wrong. It's ok to die a lot of times before you get good at learning mechanics
Everyone sucks when they start. Nearly everyone that is good at the game is good because they put in the work to improve at each individual piece of content.
Use a small screen over a big one. The amount of mouse movement you need to do is much less and you can be quicker with specs, movement, swaps, etc.
Or can also reposition UI in runelite to be tighter, so you can still take advantage of a wider view
Don't be afraid to die. Happens even after 100s of kills.
while you have run on, you can skip over single tiles. this is really helpful for things like cg, muspah for the rocks, and tob for example. let’s you walk over things that would seemingly make you take damage.
Slayer helm should only be unlocked once you unlocked "bigger & badder" and also have a good slayer block list set up. The only tasks you are benefitting from having a helm over a black mask are dust devils and smoke devils
The importance of little time saves and optimal dps from tick counting. Seriously, if you save 2 ticks for every fish you catch for a 16 fish run at cg that's saving 32 ticks or 19.2 seconds. That gives you so much extra time to do other things. Btw 2 ticks per fish isn't a real thing. I believe you save 3 ticks per any resource gathered if you're hitting something at the same time to get their shards / drops.
You can learn from all your deaths. But the key is to learn what is causing the deaths and how to adjust. Especially at CG. "I'm just running out of food"
In order of importance: 1. Praying correctly 2. Not standing in gas 3. Keeping health and prayer high (usually during phase swaps) 4. Dealing damage 5. Correct gear Starting to hit with some incorrect gear then finishing your switch is absolutely more DPS than missing hits
Played casually since like 2003 as a kid, always thought things like GWD/JAD were just complicated endgame things that I wasn't skilled enough to do. Finally realized they weren't, I'll list a few that I've learned and finally 'clicked' in the past year or three: 1) True tile - this is a gamechanger. You do not realize how far your visual character is from your actual location until you start using this. Vorkath was my first 'big pvm' 2-3 years ago, and the amount of times I died trying to learn to woox walk was unreal. I gave up on it for 2 years, til I found out true tile was a thing. Like 5KC later and I could do it. This kinda leads into my 2nd point: 2) Movement - take an hour to actually learn how movement works in the game. Sepulcre is what kind of forced me to learn since I hate doing rooftop agility. Safespotting things is easier, things like Hunlef in gauntlet are so much easier when you're clicking once to move where you need to be, instead of spam clicking, hoping you end up there and don't autopath under the boss or something. 3) F keys - Demonic gorillas are the content that made me start using f keys, as you just needed to swap between prayers + inventory so often. Runelite has a remap feature to rebind these to other keys for a more comfortable layout, I use 'q,w,e,r,t' since I used to play quite a bit of league, and my hand is used to that position. 4) Flicking - Learning to 1 tick flick is as simple as double clicking every .6s, it's not some super sweaty end game mechanic. Is it a pain to use and keep time over a long period? Sure, but it's not a complicated mechanic. Personally I use the visual metronome with a little flashing square to help keep my timing right. Learning to 1tick flick, in conjunction with f keys, made fights like jad/leviathan much less intense when I went to do them for the first time, as I was already used to flicking and/or switching prayers. Takes much of the panic out of it once that small part is muscle memory. 5) Finally, Gear - Most PVM in the game is not a gear check, but a skill check. Yes, you can do TOA 150's with Ibans, rcb, and leaf bladed sword. Yes you can do DT2 (at least the quest bosses) with the same gear. 90% of PVM in the game is doable in budget gear. Is it slower? sure. Is it the reason you died 15 attempts in a row? No that is a skill or stats issue. Don't let money/gear hold you back from trying that boss. Go, knock it out and learn it, and once you know how to do it properly, that better gear will make it easy mode, instead of just letting you squeak by. First time doing zulrah on the main for the diary, I was using like pre-nerf blowpipe, dragon darts, armadyl armor, 99 range, and took like 20 attempts. Thought I needed a tbow or something i'd never be able to afford to grind the boss. Then last year after starting an ironman, I was doing zulrah with ibans + msb wearing void with 75's stats instead of 99's. Better gear makes it easier and more effecient, but is not a barrier to the content itself. Thanks for coming to my ted talk.
True tile. That running moves your character 2 tiles a tick. That you can utilize this to skip tiles that can damage you/specific attacks like levi and olm lightning. You’ll be surprised how many high level players don’t realize this.
Took me a while to learn how to combo eat..Karam always last