Melee combat guide

## Overview

Melee combat is comprised of 3 different skills, being Attack, defence and strength. Its the art of using a melee weapon to defeat your foes. Usually melee combat brings high damage opportunities at the cost of being in range of the enemy's attack and prone to their retaliation. In a fight, each entity takes turns attacking one another independently of each other (e.g. a player using a dagger will be able to land 2 attacks against an opponent wearing a mace for every attack the mace wielder executes). Each hit you roll your Attack against enemies Defence to determine if its a hit or a miss. While exact numbers are not shared by the staff, formula goes roughly like this:

* Base hit chance - (opponents Defence Level - (your Attack Level-5))\*100%
	+ The higher your attack level and the lower your enemies defense is, the higher your chance to not hit zero, aka 'miss', is.
	+ 5 Attack levels above the opponent's Defence level guarantees 100% melee accuracy against the opponent.
	+ Further Attack levels increases your chance to critically hit your opponent with melee attacks.
* Base weapon damage + (Str Level \* weapon type bonus) = hit damage
	+ Hit damage has a range between 71% and 100% of this value, resulting in an average hit of 85.5% of your max hit potential.
	+ Hit damage can critically strike for a guaranteed max hit (100% dmg range) + 10% bonus damage, resulting in an average increase of 28.6% damage.
	+ Opponent's Defence Value affects your hit damage.

## Leveling Melee

Common ways to level melee:

* Doing slayer and killing mobs with melee
* Thieving + Killing the mob to reset the thieving cooldown of the mob.
* Specific mobs for resources (e.g Banshee or Unicorn for Rune essence)
* Cave Of Ordeals

### Going for max DPS

If you can afford the next tier of weapons, going for attack levels first will almost always be the best choice. if you do not have access to a better weaponry tier, strength will be better to level first.

Furthermore not all weapon types and attack speeds are created equally. Divide a weapon's Base Damage by its Attack Speed to figure out its DPS. Do this for the weapons you're trying to compare with each other to see which weapon provides better overall DPS. Alternatively refer to the Attack speed page for most weaponry's DPS values.

### Going for slayer

High level slayer monsters can hit very hard, so getting a high defense level with appropriate armor is a must, while the increase in damage from strength won't be that important. Taking slayer tasks of mobs whose Defence level is 5 levels below yours guarantees you will have 100% accuracy against them further helping reduce the amount of damage taken.

## Optimizing kill time and reducing personal damage intake

While fighting, to make the best use of your weaponry you're carrying, more than one weapon type can be beneficial in reducing kill time and reducing damage taken. Usually, the most employed tactic is to use 1 very fast weapon with high dps (dagger/scimitar) and a second weapon with low attack speed but high damage. This enables you to finish off a mob quickly with the potential to take one fewer attack from them.

For example: You have a dagger dealing 35 dmg a hit, and a 2h-weapon dealing 90 dmg a hit. If you attack a foe with under 90HP, you can execute it with your 2h-weapon.

Dependant on the opponent's attack speed and HP relative to your damage this kind of combo often enables you to either take no damage per mob killed, or take one less hit; thus reducing overall damage taken and reducing overall supplies used in a trip.

## (Advanced tips) Relation between percentual damage increases vs actual damage increase

The amount of hits required to kill an opponent typically ranges between one to five hits. Because of this a 10% increase might practically not increase your damage at all, or by **more than** 10% due to letting you advance a 'bracket' and enable you to, for example, only kill a mob in four hits instead of five.

Example:

* Unicorns have 230 HP. Every hit you do does, on average, 70 damage. Divide the Unicorn's HP by this average damage and you get 3.28 hits required to kill this monster. Since you can only attack whole numbers (e.g: 1, 2, 3) and not in decimal numbers, it will require on average 4 hits to kill a Unicorn.
* You use a Strength Potion to increase your melee damage by 10%, upping your melee damage to 77.
* 230 HP divided by 77 damage results in 2.98 hits taken to reduce the HP to 0.
* Result: the 10% damage increase enabled you to kill the Unicorn in 3 hits instead of 4, effectively increasing your damage done by 25%.

Note: due to the damage range on MineScape being 71% to 100% of your max damage potential this isn't a constant result.

Understanding the concept of damage brackets/amount of whole hits taken per kill further enables you to calculate how much 'overkill' time you waste to kill a mob and if preferred, can be accounted for as well.

Example:

* Unicorns have 230 HP. You have a weapon that does 78 damage every second (78 DPS). This results in a clean 3 seconds per kill (77 + 77 + 77 = 231 damage = 1 damage overkill)
* Unicorns have 230 HP and instead you have a weapon that does 144 damage every 2 seconds (72 DPS). This results in 4 seconds per kill ( 144 + 144 = 288 = 58 damage overkill)
* Result is 1 second worth of overkill.

Note: None of the above knowledge is necessary to enjoy the game. In the end use the weapon you enjoy using. MineScape is a marathon and the best way to complete a marathon is by not burning out. The same goes for MineScape.

## Multiplicative and additive damage increases/decreases

MineScape largely works with additive damage increases which might trick you into believing you're gaining more damage than you really are. Conversely it might trick you into thinking your reduced damage taken boosts become less effective the more you have of it than it really does.

Example:

* Your original damage is 100%
* You have 30% increased melee damage on your Scoreboard (can be enabled/disabled by opening the Inventory > Clicking the crossed swords icon > Clicking the skill tab icon > first button) from multiple sources meaning you now effectively do 130% damage compared to your original damage (100% + 30%).
* You use a Strength Potion increasing your Scoreboard's melee damage bonus by 10%. This *adds* 10% to the 30%, resulting in you doing 140% of your original damage (100% + 30% + 10%)
* The effective difference after consuming a Strength Potion is 140% divided by 130%, resulting in a 7.7%~ damage difference AKA damage increase.

The result is that the higher your Scoreboard damage bonus becomes, the less valuable every new point becomes. This is also known as 'Diminishing Returns'.

Reduced damage taken percentages scale differently, however. When going into the negative numbers, additive percentage increases scale more aggressively.

Example:

* Your original damage taken is 100% of the damage a mob does
* You activate Protect from Melee, reducing damage taken from melee attacks by 50% - you now only take 50% of the damage you would have otherwise
* You drink a Defence Potion further reducing the damage you take from melee attacks by 10% - you now have 60% melee damage reduction, effectively causing you to only take 40% of the damage you would have otherwise since you're negating 60% of the melee damage done to you
* Result is that instead of reducing the amount of damage you would have taken by a mere 10%, due to the damage reductions working additively and reducing the damage you would have taken by a flat percentual amount, you calculate the difference between 50% and 40% of the damage taken which shows you take 20% reduced damage instead of the expected 10%