Strategy guide

When to start combat

Early, but alongside your skilling, not instead of it. The first combat levels are cheap in XP, every level adds a skill credit, and the first tier of mobs drops a tool for every gathering and processing skill. Those tools pay back slowly, though, so the skilling goals that unlock new activity tiers come first.

Checked against the game data from 2 October 2026

Cheap levels, more credits

Ten of the game's 30 skills are combat skills: Life, Spirit, Strike, Heft, Sight, Draw, Focus, Surge, Dodge and Defend. They all start at level 1 except Life, which starts at 10. Taking one of them from 1 to 30 costs 50,848 XP. In a skill you've already pushed to 60, the same XP doesn't even buy one level: 60 to 61 costs 109,456. How cheap that is in time depends on your combat XP per hour, which the game files can't tell us, so measure it on a few tasks.

Every level counts towards your total level, and your total skill credits are 200 plus your total level. Taking all ten combat skills to 30 adds 281 levels, and so 281 credits for the skill and Luck levers that shape your task rolls. Total level also grows your task queue by one row every 500 levels.

Combat pays XP to several skills at once. Each point of damage pays half a point to your chosen attack skill and a fifth each to Life and to Dodge or Defend. Spirit and Slay get a flat amount per kill. See Combat for the formulas.

A skilling tool from every Feeble mob

Skilling tools are permanent unlocks. A T1 tool gives its skill +0.5% XP and cuts 0.1 s off each action. It also counts as an action source, which adds +1% success chance and +1% double gather (or +0.5% material save in a processing skill). That's small per tool, but it never goes away, and the Feeble mobs hand out a whole set:

Each mob covers one gather and process pair, so pick the pair you train most. A 1-in-100 drop takes 69 loot rolls for an even chance and 230 for a 90% chance. Getting both of a mob's tools to 90% takes about 296 rolls. A slay task is 40 kills plus 3 per 100 total levels, so that's roughly six tasks on one mob.

Feeble Rage Slime, available from Slay 1, also drops the Enchanted Lantern at 1 in 500. That's a tool for every skill at once, but expect around 350 rolls for an even chance.

Tools drop once per mob. Tick them off in the collection log as you get them, and enter your loot rolls from Collections to see what's left and how your luck compares.

Gear

• Your weapon decides what you train. Melee trains Strike and Heft, ranged trains Sight and Draw, and magic trains Focus and Surge. Fighting with no weapon is crush at a slow 10 s per attack, so pick up a basic weapon for the style you want. See Combat styles.
• Ranged and magic need ammo. Without it, your attack and strength scores are halved.
• The Feeble Slimes each drop an amulet for one style, at 1 in 100, once per mob: Flame (crush), Spike (stab), Boom (range), Ember (slash) and Spark (magic). The T1 Crush Amulet, for example, gives +8 crush and +4 stab, slash and melee strength.
• The Reducer and The Extender go in the special slot and change your slay tasks. On a kill, the Reducer has a 30% chance (T1) to 60% (Chaos) of counting it as two kills toward your task, but still only one loot roll, so tasks end sooner. The Extender has the same chance of not counting the kill, so you stay on that mob longer and get more loot rolls there, which is what you want when you're after its tools. Both drop only from treasure chests: 1 in 300 per loot roll from a T0 chest, down to 1 in 100 at T10.

Every piece of gear, with stats, effects and where it comes from, is on the Gear page.

What it costs you

• Reroll credits. A skilling task pays 1 reroll credit, but the game's tooltip says combat tasks pay none, and rerolling on the Slay lane costs 10 instead of 5. Mix slay tasks into your queue rather than running only combat.
• Skilling time. Time in combat is time your skilling skills don't train, and they don't earn their per-skill credits (one per completed task) meanwhile.
• Food. Max HP is twice your Life level, so 20 at the start. You auto-eat at 75% HP or below, from the food in your bank, and at the start it's set to use any type of food. Cooked fish heal 6, 12, 18 and 24 for T0 to T3, so stock your bank from Fish and Cook.
• Overnight and offline. Don't leave slay tasks running overnight unless your bank holds enough food to last. If it runs out, you die and the task is cancelled.
• Dying is cheap. You respawn at Longha Bank, and only the task you died on is cancelled. Combat deaths aren't known to cost your inventory. Plunder is different: dying there wipes what you carry. See Death.

What comes first

• Skilling goals that unlock the next activity tier. Each tier pays about 1.41 times the XP per success of the one before, in that skill, from the first action.
• The first Fortress milestones. Banners and Ledgers are permanent bonuses to every skill.
• Then combat. A T1 tool is worth about +0.5% XP and a little speed in one skill. It never goes away, but it takes many hours to pay back the time spent getting it.

Combat fits in around those, for example when your skilling goals for the day are done, or while you wait for a Fortress run.

A plan

1. Put food in your bank. Any type works at the start.
2. Switch the queue's task type to Slay. Each new row then rolls 2 slay tasks and 1 skilling task, so you train combat and still have a skilling option. Your slay master starts as Valthor (Feeble); the others are locked until you reach their Slay level.
3. In Skill Customize → Slay, use the mob levers to favour the mobs whose tools match the skills you train most.
4. Log drops in the collection log as they come.
5. At Slay 30, Seraphine (Dire) unlocks. Dire mobs drop the T2 versions of the same tools, at 1 in 250. Once you've got the Feeble tools you care about, that's the next step.