Defence

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Defence is a combat stat that can be trained by defeating mobs in combat. It is associated with all three combat styles. Leveling defence allows to equip and use higher tier armour. Higher defence level also reduces the damage taken from attacks. Defence is useful when facing strong or several opponents as higher defence makes enemies hit less often. In tight situations, the defence cape can be used to teleport to Lumbridge when the player's health drops below 10% of the maximum health.

## Training

Defence experience is gained through means of combat. Defence is an exception combat skill in that it can be trained with all three combat styles: melee, magic and ranged. Ranged and magic all defence experience to be gained through shared stance, in which 50% of the rewarded experience goes to defence while the other half goes to the used combat style's skill. Melee is different in that it can be used set to defensive stance in which 100% of the experience goes to defence. In shared melee stance, only 33.3% of the experience goes to defence. Since melee is usually the fastest combat style to train defence, it's advised not to use shared stances with ranged or magic, but rather train it solely through melee combat.

## Armours

Wearing armour provides defensive boosts which reduce damage taken from hits. Most armours are either purely melee, magic or ranged armours. Wearing a certain combat style's piece of armour provides a -10% reduction to damage buffers of the other two styles. There is also hybrid gear that offers defensive bonuses in all combat styles with no damage buffer reducation.

Shields are off-hand items that provide defensive boosts. They do not have any debuffs but provide better defensive bonuses towards combat styles that they are strong against.

Trimmed, gold trimmed and gilded armours are armours that can be obtained through treasure trails. They share the same stats and requirements as their non-trimmed counterparts so the difference is purely cosmetic. However, treasure trails do offer a considerable method to obtain armour at any part of the game as mobs that drop suitable armour can be quite challenging to defeat at the level the armour is required and making the armour often requires quite high level in the respective skill which too can be out of proportions.

### Standard armours and shields

Standard armours are armours that are obtained easily or naturally as progress is made with the given combat style. They do not have any requirements besides defence level.

Standard melee armours and shields can be made with smithing. For each metal, there exist a chain and plate armour set. Both sets have a body, legs, helmet and boots. The chain set become usable at a lower defence level and provides lesser defensive bonuses than the plate variant.

Standard ranged armours can be made with leather work crafting. Ranged shields are made with fletching. Unlike melee, there is only one armour set for each leather type. Each set consists of a head piece, body, chaps and boots.

Magic armour is exceptional in that it can not be made by players and must be obtained as loot. As such, obtaining early game magic gear can be challenging. Magic also lacks dedicated shields. A magic armour set consists of robe top, rode bottom, hat and boots.

* Melee armour
* Ranged armour
* Magic armour

 Black d'hide armour | 30

 Dagon'hai robes | 45

* Melee shields
* Ranged shields

 Iron shield
 Steel shield
 Mithril shield
 Adamant shield
 Rune shield

### Special armours and shields

Special armours are different from standard armours in that they can not be made or require extremely rare materials in order to be created. In many cases the armours and their materials are highly rare drops from relatively strong mobs, bosses or treasure trails. Special armour may also have extra requirements to just defence level, most common being prayer.

* Melee armour
* Ranged armour
* Magic armour
* Hybrid armour
* Slayer armour

 Gilded d'hide armour
 God blessed d'hide armours
 Karil's armour | 75
 3rd age ranged armour
 3rd age ranged cloak

 God robes
 God cloaks

 Ear muffs
 Nose peg
 Spiny helmet
 Black mask
 Slayer helmet  | 15

1. ↑ Requires 55 crafting to make.

* Melee shields
* Ranged shields

## Boosts

Defence stats can be temporarily increased with defence potions.

Attack •
Constitution •
Constitution •
Cooking •
Crafting •
**Defence** •
Exploration •
Farming
Firemaking •
Fishing •
Herblore •
Hunter •
Magic •
Mining •
Prayer •
Ranged •
Runecrafting
Slayer •
Smithing •
Strength •
Thieving •
Woodcutting