Introduction
Welcome to the P2P Old School Runescape ranged training guide. Ranged or Ranging, refers to projectile based combat and is one of the main forms of combat available to a player, alongside melee and magic. Ranged is particularly useful in end game content, with it being the ideal attack method vs many bosses, for example Zulrah. Whilst you may commonly associate ranged training with bows and arrows, in orsrs ranged comes in many forms, such as throwing type weapons, or blowpipes. In this guide I will cover the best training methods from 0-99, as well as some cheaper alternatives. This is a P2P guide, stay tuned to this site for a F2P guide which will be released soon.
Equipment
When training ranged it goes without saying that the fastest experience will come from the best equipment. Some equipment can be very expensive, so you should weigh up the investment vs reward. Arrows and other ammunition types used in range training can become very costly, especially at the higher levels. A good method to prevent these costs becoming too high is to make use of Ava's devices, these will return all arrows to you, as long as you don't have metallic body armour equipped. To gain access to these devices you should complete the quest “Animal Magnetism”. Now I will list the best in slot ranged items, and some good alternatives, ordered by effectiveness. Effectiveness in this instance is measured by total range damage increase per second dealt by the player who has the item equipped. Like in most combat scenarios in OSRS, defence or rather ranged defence should not play a bit role in your decision making process about whether to buy/equip/use an item or not. Some of these items may also have a considerable amount of questing to be done before you are able to use them, please research these before committing to a setup.
Head slot items, in decreasing effectiveness from best in slot are: armadyl helmet, 3rd age range, Robin Hood, Karil's coif, Guthix coif, ranger hat, Archer helm, spined helm, snakeskin bandanna, slayer helmet (I), coif and leather cowl.
Cape slot items, in decreasing effectiveness from best in slot are: Ava's assembler, Ava's accumulator, Ava's attractor, Infernal cape and Fire cape.
Neck slot items, in decreasing effectiveness from best in slot are: Necklace of anguish, amulet of fury, amulet of glory, amulet of power, amulet of accuracy and unholy symbol.
Body slot items, in decreasing effectiveness from best in slot are: armadyl chestplate, 3rd age range top, bandos d'hide, black d'hide body, Karil's leathertop, red d'hide body, blue d'hide body, green d'hide body, rangers tunic, snakeskin body, frog-leather body, studded body, heardleather body and leather body.
Shield slot items, in decreasing effectiveness from best in slot are: twister buckler, dragonfire ward, odium ward, book of law, unholy book, black d'hide shield, red d'hide shield, blue d'hide shield, green d'hide shield, book of balance, snakeskin shield and heard leather shield.
Legs slot items, in decreasing effectiveness from best in slot are: armadyl chainskirt, 3rd age range legs, guthix chaps, black d'hide chaps, Karil's leatherskirt, penance skirt, red d'hide chaps, blue d'hide chaps, yak-hide armour (legs), green d'hide chaps, studded chaps, snakeskin chaps and leather chaps.
Hands slot items, in decreasing effectiveness from best in slot are: barrows gloves, 3rd age vambraces, Guthix bracers, black d'hide vambraces, ranger gloves, red d'hide vambraces, dragon gloves, blue d'hide vambraces, rune gloves, green d'hide vambraces, adamant gloves, regen bracelet, combat bracelet and mithril gloves.
Feet slot items, in decreasing effectiveness from best in slot are: pegasian boots, ranger boots, Guthix d'hide boots, boots of brimstone, snakeskin boots and frog-leather boots.
Ring slot items, in decreasing effectiveness from best in slot are: archers ring (I), brimstone ring and archers ring.
I will discuss weaponry in the training section, as choice of weaponry is partly based on your enemy.
How to Train Ranged
Unlike when training melee there is no one quest (I refer to the waterfall quest) to quickly boost you through the early levels. However if you combine the quests “Death to Dorgeshuun”, “Horror from the Deep” and “Shadow of the Storm” (putting the experience you are rewarded on completion towards ranged) this will give you around 16.5k xp which will bring you all the way to level 32. As I mentioned earlier, it is now worthwhile to do “Animal Magnetism” also, although if you wish you can wait till you are a higher ranged level where saving ammunition will be more cost saving.
Level 1+
From level 1 you can train on the various kinds of crabs, it should be noted that having a decent defence level will make this very afk, otherwise be prepared to bring lots of food and bank regularly, they don't hit much or hard but as you will be training here for a while they can add up. The crabs have there differences and some more optimum locations are unlockable with quests. Sand crabs are a familiar choice, easily accessible on the Hosidus beach (you can travel to just north of there from Port Sarim), there is also a bank very close buy incase you don't have a decent defence level. You can train crabs for many levels but around 45+ there are better methods and especially once you reach level 70+. For afk methods with low requirements though crabs are really great. I recommend using throwing knives up to rune as they have the highest damage per second, although darts up to mithril or adamant are considerably cheaper and not overly less effective. Arrows and crossbows aren't really worth it on crabs.
On completion of the quest “Dwarf Cannon” you will gain access to the dwarf multicanon, there are a few ways you can utilise this afk combat method. Many will train their slayer skill with the use of a cannon, when in a multi-combat area, for instance on the dagannoth and kalphite tasks. After completing the “Biohazard” quest you can train with the canon on Ogres in the combat training area giving relatively good xp.
Level 45+
From level 45+ you can throw chinchompas (commonly known as chinning) at maniacal monkeys in Kruk's Dungeon on Ape Atoll, in order to use this method you will need to have started the second chapter of the quest “Monkey Madness II”. The monkeys regularly drop prayer potions meaning you can stay in the dungeon for extended periods of time, wearing prayer boost armour will also help. You can get huge experience rates here, up to 900k+ xp/hr is possible at the higher levels. Skeletal monkeys, which are also on Ape Atoll are a reasonable choice for pures or people who haven't started MMII although they offer less experience than the maniacal monkeys.
Level 70+
If you start Nightmare Zone from level 70+ on bosses that attack with melee and using the normal customisable rumble setup you can expect around 70k ranged xp/hr. Using super ranging is necessary to reach these experience rates and absorption potions should be used to extend your time spent in NMZ. I recommend you use a magic shortbow (I), with either amethyst or rune arrows.
Thanks for reading this guide to P2P ranging in Old School Runescape. Expect more great guides soon at MMOexp.com, so stay tuned, and buy cheap runescape gold & osrs gold from us so easy & safe.