Runescape Game Play

What equipment to take and wear to each task is dependent on your combat and slayer level the type of monster you are fighting and the combat method you want to train.

After you have been given a new slayer task you will be given a few more dialogue options, one of these is any tips, ask your master this and he will give you some fairly useless advice, he will however give you an indication of special precautions/requirements to take into consideration when attacking these monsters, this can be like using slayer gloves for attacking fever spiders, anti poison for cave crawlers and mind or elemental shield for Skeletal Wyverns etc.

You will need to understand the attack style of the monster you are attacking, whether it be mage, range or melee, and plan your attack method and armour accordingly, it is not alway evident what their attack style is so trial and error or copying what others use and wear is often your only way of determining this.

How to determine best armour to wear
This is easier than you might think, Jagex have given you all the tools you need to determine your best armour weapon combination, there are things to take into consideration and balances to make between different armour weapon types, only you can decide which is best for you.

It will take a while to get used to what type of armour to wear but as a rule of thumb, range armour protects from mage attacks, melee armour is good for protection from range and melee attacks, there are always exceptions to this rule but I will tell you how to determine the best way to use the easily available tool to decide.

I will use mage defence as an example this time but the same principle works for all attack and defence types.

Supposing you have a task for infernal mages, this is easy mages use mage attack normally and infernal mages being no exception, select all your items you expect to have high mage defence, as already said this is normally range gear and have them in your inventory. click on the little man icon next to your inventory icon this will show what your wearing, clicking on the shield and helmet icon towards the bottom will show you your items and the associated stats for what you are currently wearing.

You are going to attack a mage based monster so you need as high a mage defence as possible, under where it says defence bonus you need to concentrate on the magic stat, by clicking on the items in your inventory you should aim to make this as high as possible.

Having this as high as possible will allow you to stay on your task as long as possible by reducing damage received and saving you food.

Obviously for range defence work on the range defence stat and for melee you have the stab, slash and crush options these can be optimised for each melee monsters attack style/weapon but it starts to get complicated so normally it is fine to stick with your best general armour.

Wearing armour with a negative mage defence against a mage type attack reduces your resistance to mage so you will take more damage than not wearing anything, in this situation run away as fast as you can or take your clothes off.

Likewise wearing some armour will reduce your range and mage attack bonus, wearing rune while attacking with mage will cause most of your spells to splash, this means that you will not damage the monster you have waisted a rune or 2 and you will not get XP for that cast, there was a rumour that Magic dart could be used with armour with a negative mage bonus, this is not true and will cost you time and money even at barrows.

Choosing a Weapon
The quickest way to kill most monsters for a balanced player is melee, you can hit harder with melee than any other weapons (With the exception of expensive dragon bolts arrows and some other enchanted bolts) the same as the defence bonus above you need to look at the attack bonus part this time, to attack using melee you need to concentrate on slash stab and crush options, this varies considerably for each weapon so should be checked regularly until you are used to them.

Weapons like the dragon scimmy can be used on all attack styles, slash, stab and crush, weapons like the hallies are very low crush bonus so is not suitable to train defence.

Some monster are better to range than melee, bloodvelds use a melee based mage attack so you need to wear range gear and at any level you will take damage, for lower level players you may not be able to complete this task in one visit so a trip or 2 back to the bank will be required, taking a bow and arrows will make it so you can complete this task in 1 visit saving you time walking too and from the bank.

Another option is to use prayer, this is advised or sometimes essential to use to fight some monster, for example metal dragons, to melee these you will not last long without prayer, without prayer a task of 60 irons will take days because you may not be able to kill 1 on one visit, dark beasts praying on these is again essential, guthans can be used on these but they hit hard and fairly often so you will constantly be using the spear to heal and that is a very slow weapon.

Canon
The use of a canon for slayer is a very effective weapon, a canon can be used to turn a single combat area into a multi combat area, if you can set up a canon and not be attacked by any monster the canon will hit every monster not being attacked by another player in that area, you can have a canon firing and range or mage or even hally the monsters and still be hitting all free monsters in the firing range of the canon.
Use of a canon is not very popular with other players but you are entitled to use whatever weapon you want wherever you want, I personally prefer to find a quiet world so not to annoy anyone, but it is also better when there are no players to take your available monsters.

To help you along the way to identifying good defence for all fighting classes here is a non exhaustive list of advised armours.

For Mage defence

Snake skin, frog skin, dragon hide (Best you can wear), karils, elemental shield, sara book.

Melee defence
All metal armour from bronze to dragon (best you can wear), Torag, Dharoks, veracs, granite.

For range defence
very few monster fight with ranged attacks, I would wear the same as melee defence but check with your stats screen.

Defence using prayer
Monks robes, initiate, proselyte armour, veracs.

Now you know what armour to wear you know what weapon and attack style you want to use, what else is there to take?

Food
This is totally dependent on you ability as a player, take as much food as you believe you may require to kill your assigned amount of monsters, ranging or mage just take a bit in case you get caught by accident.

Guthans
Guthans can be used on melee based monsters, this will heal your health by the same amount as you take off your victim when the special kicks in, the special is very random you can get lots in a row or go for ages without any so take some food just in case, Guthans reduces your mage defence a lot so when used on a mage based attack you will take a lot of damage, this will require you to use it a lot to heal and with the spear being so slow will slow down your task considerably.

Pots
Hitting harder and more often will speed up your task, take attack, strength and defence pots or the super version if you have them if training melee, take mage pots if attacking with mage and range pots if using range, for training using prayer take the above pot depending on your attack style (Defence pot is not required) and of course prayer pots if you intend going to be there a long time.

Extras

Chisel (not so good now)
Take a chisel to cut gem drops for crafting XP, this was a good idea until the cut all option was introduced, before you could cut gems without slowing down your attack, now you can not cut when fighting.

Alchemy runes
Taking Nats and fire runes to alch any high value items is ideal to save space for other drops, you can take a fire or lava staff but this will slow down your task a lot, alching will cost you 1 hit swapping from weapon to staff can take 1 hit away and swapping back will, all this time you have taken hits from the monster and not been able to hit back or if you alch when you are not in combat wastes even more time.

Quick tele
If you are on a dangerous task take a quick tele just in case you get in trouble if not take runes or item to tele you near your slayer master for your next task.

Enchanted Gem
Essential, there is nothing worse than teleing from a slayer task with low health and no food to find you only had 1 left to kill, its also handy so you can plan when you take a break, if your tired and and have 160 left go, make a cup of coffee and take a walk, if you have 4 to go finish your task then take a walk and make your cuppa.

Next slayer installment will be called fighting your slayer monsters.

BTW piccies to follow shortly