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RuneScoop.com  >  RuneScoop Efficiency Mini-Guides       >  The RuneScoop Combat Spell Efficiency Guide for RuneScape

The RuneScoop Combat Spell Efficiency Guide for RuneScape - Spell Table The RuneScoop Summoning Pouch and Scroll Efficiency Guide for RuneScape

My primary goal in designing this mini-guide was to ensure that it accurately modeled magic combat in RuneScape. And since that combat has become rather complicated, it forced me to limit the extent to which I achieved my secondary goal: keeping things as simple as possible. The end result is useful but a bit tricky to understand, so I urge you to read this page so you can best understand how to make use of the guide.

Most of the guides on RuneScoop consist of text and tables, and while the tables are recalculated regularly—as item prices change on the Grand Exchange—the tables themselves don’t change. This was the way I wanted to go here as well.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do that, and the reason is that there are simply too many variables that impact the cost of a spell, how much damage it does, and its efficiency ratings. In order to provide the information as flat tables, I would have needed to make dozens of them, and the end result would have been both extremely confusing and difficult to use.

Instead, I designed a new system that lets you specify some of those variables, and then calculates a custom table accordingly. Most of these variables relate to your own personal stats, how you are fighting, and what you are fighting:

• Hit %: The percentage of time that you would typically hit with a combat spell on a particular monster. You won’t always know this exactly, but just make an estimate, from 1% (nearly every cast splashes) to 100% (every cast succeeds).
  
  
• Monster LP: How many life points the monster has that you’ll be fighting.
  
  
• Respawn/Switch Delay (sec): An estimate of how much time is lost or wasted between instances of combat, in seconds. This could be as little as 5 seconds (if you immediately start fighting a new monster after the previous one, never picking up drops) to as much as 120 seconds or more (if you must wait for a long respawn on a special monster).
  
  
• Magic Level Boost: If you are using any sort of boosting brew, potion or other method, choose it from the dropdown box; otherwise, leave the selection on “None”.
  
  
• Boost Interval (min): How many minutes you usually wait before using your chosen boost.
  
  
• Magic Level: Your magic level.
  
  
• Chaos Gauntlets for Bolt Spells? If you use chaos gauntlets when casting bolt (chaos rune) spells, leave this on “Yes”; otherwise, set it to “No”.

Again, if you aren’t sure of a number, just estimate. The more accurate the figures, the more useful the tables, but they don’t need to be exact.

When you press “Calculate”, your parameters are sent to a script on the RuneScoop site. The script combines the information you provided with pre-programmed information about spells, such as the base XP per cast, runes required, and so forth, and generates a table of spell costs, damage rates and efficiency factors.

A few notes on how the input parameters are used in the calculations:

• Hit percentage and monster life points are used to calculate how many casts it will take to kill a monster.
  
  
• The number of casts per kill rate is combined with the respawn/switch delay number to determine the number of kills per hour.
  
  
• Magic level boost and boost interval are used to calculate your average magic level boost during combat, which influences the amount of damage done.
  
  
• Your magic level is used for certain spells (like Magic Dart) where the amount of damage done is level-dependent. Note that I do not use this to filter out spells above your magic level, since I figure you may want to see what future options will look like.
  
  
• The “chaos gauntlets” setting impacts maximum and average damage done by the bolt spells.
  
  
• Experience rates are computed based on the number of spells cast per hour (providing a fixed amount of XP per cast) and the extra XP provided for each point of damage done.

The table that the site returns to you is rather large and may appear daunting at first, but it’s not too bad once you get used to it.

Each row of the table represents one of the combat spells from the normal or Ancient Magicks spellbooks. The first set of five columns contain general information about the spells, of the sort you’d find in any RuneScape magic guide. These include the spell’s name, the book it is from, the Magic level it requires, and its normal maximum hit and base XP values.

The remaining columns are grouped into five sets of five, with each set representing figures calculated for using a particular type of magic staff:

• Regular Staff or No Staff: These figures are calculated assuming the use of no magic staff, or a staff that provides no special bonuses or runes. You would normally avoid doing this, of course, but in some cases you must use a special staff in order to cast a spell, such as the Mage Arena spells (though Claws of Guthix can work with a void mace).
  
  
• Air Staff: Figures calculated assuming the use of an air staff to provide unlimited air runes for spells.
  
  
• Other Elemental Staff: This set of columns assumes the use of an elemental staff of the appropriate type other than air. For example, for Water Wave, it means using a water staff (or other staff that provides water runes, like a mud staff).
  
  
• +10% Damage Staff: These columns are computed based on the use of a staff that boosts damage by 10%, such as the ancient staff or master wand.
  
  
• Staff of Light: This very special item boosts damage by 15% and also saves on runes, so it has its own set of information.

Note that no data is provided for invalid spell and staff combinations: you can’t use an elemental staff when casting Magic Dart, for example.

The columns are the same in each set:

• Spell Cost: The cost, in gold pieces, for each cast of the spell using this staff. This is adjusted based on any runes provided by the staff in question.
  
  
• Kill Speed: The average number of kills per hour using this spell and staff combination. This will be higher for staves that increase damage.
  
  
• Activity Speed: How much experience you typically get per hour if you use this particular spell and staff combination.
  
  
• Activity Cost: How much gold per hour it will cost you to undertake magic combat using this combination of spell and staff, based on the latest rune prices and any runes provided by the staff.
  
  
• Efficiency: This is calculated by dividing Activity Cost by Activity Speed to determine a gp/XP figure.

Be sure to carefully scan the tables when trying to figure out the best option, because it may surprise you. For example, if your goal is to save money, don’t assume an elemental staff will always be the right choice: a +10% damage staff can actually save more money overall by reducing the number of casts required. The experience side of the equation can also be tricky at times, because you can sometimes get more XP by casting a larger number of weaker spells than a smaller number of stronger ones.

Finally, note that like all RuneScoop data tables, if you have Javascript enabled you can resort the table dynamically by clicking on one of the column headers. You can also sort based on two columns by clicking one, holding down the <Shift> key, then clicking another.

The RuneScoop Combat Spell Efficiency Guide for RuneScape - Spell Table The RuneScoop Summoning Pouch and Scroll Efficiency Guide for RuneScape