Free-to-play PvP culture

This article aims to document various parts of the free-to-play player-versus-player culture, including practices and behaviours, common locations and hot spots, as well as the used slang.

Arranged 1-vs-1 combat is a common form of player-versus-player activity where players participate in duels within single-way combat areas.

During 1-vs-1 fights in typical PvP hotspots, most experienced players adhere to the following rules:

• Protection prayers (or "overheads") are not used.
• Bind, Snare and Tele Block spells are not used.
• Both opponents are expected to skull up or risk similar amount of money in gear or coins.
• In general, fights are voluntary and players ask for permission before initiating duels.
• Interrupting fights between players and attacking players that are currently looting is frowned upon.
• Players can run away from the fights when out of food, energy, prayer points, or other supplies.
• Players keep their hitpoints relatively low, so that the opponent could take them out with a well timed combo.

Risk fighting is a form of 1-vs-1 combat where both player agree to risk similar amount of wealth in coins or gear. Common among experienced player killers that specialise in 1-vs-1 combat.

Although it might be perceived as gambling akin to staking, deathmatches dependent purely on luck are relatively rare, as there is no way to enforce the rules outside of the Emir's Arena. Instead, most risk fights are actual duels where both players use various PvP techniques to score the kill, not unlike in regular 1-vs-1 combat. Most risk fights follow the general assumptions of honourable 1-vs-1 combat, so techniques such as binding, farcasting or using the protection prayers are not common and should be discussed beforehand. Many players will also agree upon not using combo foods such as anchovy pizza to decrease the chances of a draw. Showing the entire inventory through trading before each fight is a common practice to prove adherence to the rules and the risked wealth.

In case of uneven odds due to varying combat skill levels, players might agree upon risking coins or gear that are not equal in value. To increase the risk in such cases is commonly called to X someone.

Due to the increased risk in losing wealth, risk fights are not advised for the beginners.

A deathmatch, or dm, is an arranged 1-vs-1 fight to the death where none of the players leave the combat when they run out of supplies. This might be a form of risk fighting where both players take extra loot, but this is not always the case. Some players choose not to run when out of supplies out of respect to the opponent, especially if they were nearly knocked out during the fight.

Before agreeing to a deathmatch, participants should make sure that their respective opponent has similar chances for survival. For example, both players should have similar combat skills and use the same supplies to make the combat fair.

No honour fights follow none of the unofficial rules of the arranged combat. It is basically a form of player-versus-player combat where anything goes. Techniques such as farcasting, spells like Snare and Tele Block, as well as protection prayers are all allowed and commonly used to gain an advantage in combat. It includes both 1-vs-1 combat without any enforced rules, as well as teams fighting each other or chasing individual players.

While such fights can be agreed on, these techniques are simply the norm in locations like the deep wilderness or PvP worlds outside of the usual hotspots.

Multicombat areas allow multiple players to attack the same target. This is often leveraged by teams of player killers within locations such as the Chaos Temple or nature runes spawn south of the Demonic Ruins to quickly score the kills. Multicombat areas share some PvP techniques with 1-vs-1 combat, but in general the overall team coordination and damage output are more important than the abilities of individual players. As such, builds that are viable in multicombat situations might slightly vary from the typical builds commonly utilised in 1-vs-1 combat, especially on the lower combat levels.

There is a free-to-play clanning community that frequently organises wars within chosen combat level brackets. War locations include multicombat areas within the wilderness or PvP worlds, as well as the Clan Wars minigame. Wars organised by clans have a much larger scale than typical multicombat fights within the wilderness that frequently occur between smaller teams of players.

Clans often advertise their clan chats near the common PvP hot spots such as the Edgeville bank in world 308 ("Wilderness PK") or Lumbridge in the PvP world.

Unlike other combat types between willing participants, player killing follows the hunter-versus-hunted dynamic where one side might be completely unwilling to engage in combat. It typically involves player killers hunting other players engaging in activities such as PvM or skilling in the dangerous areas.

When attempting to kill other players that might be unwilling to engage in combat, player killers are advised to use utility spells such as Tele Block or Snare to prevent their targets from escaping the dangerous locations.

Some player killing spots with varying popularity include:

• Lava Maze runite mine where players mine runite rocks.
• Lava isle near the Demonic Ruins where players attempt to telegrab the nature runes.
• Moss giants south-east of the Lava Maze near the final canoe station where players collect moss keys.
• Bandit Duty Free shop where players can be found trying to sell items at increased prices.
• Chaos temple where players might telegrab the wines of Zamorak.
• Various monster spawn locations throughout the PvP worlds including hill giants or ogresses where players train combat skills or collect loot.

This sections lists locations that are player versus player combat hotspots. Note that activity ratings may vary over time.

On free-to-play worlds, dangerous PvP activities take place in the wilderness or the dedicated PvP worlds.

The following locations are where most of the arranged honourable 1-vs-1 fights take place.

Since some players choose to train in PvP worlds in order to avoid crowds, other notable areas where players can be found include typical training spots with monsters such as the hill giants, flesh crawlers or ogresses. Some players can also wander throughout the wilderness, although most hotspots are in multicombat areas.

Multicombat areas allow groups of player killers to attack a single opponent at the same time. This is leveraged by clans to wage wars in truly many-versus-many combat, as well as by teams of player killers to score kills faster in many-versus-one combat. None of the (unofficial) rules of honourable single-way combat areas apply here, and typically players use whatever technique they can to score the kills, participating in the so-called "no honour" fights. Bind and Snare usage is common and very dangerous, as it prevents the players from escaping the multicombat boundaries.

Some less active areas include Dark Warriors' Fortress, Zamorak temple and hill giants north-east of the Zamorak temple.

These places mix both single-way combat and multicombat areas in close proximity. They are generally less dangerous than entirely multicombat areas for solo player killers and small teams.

Due to the restrictions on new free-to-play accounts, PvP worlds cannot be accessed by most low level accounts. As such, these worlds are especially popular among players with mid and high combat levels.

Combat minigames are a form of safe player-versus-player activities that are common among both casual players as well as player killers.

Last Man Standing is a safe player-versus-player battle royale style minigame. Its notable free-to-play rewards included the swift blade and adamant arrows packs. While it was active within the designated free-to-play worlds, Last Man Standing features members-only combat mechanics and does not resemble the free-to-play combat very well. The competitive mode necessary to gain points to buy the rewards is now disabled within free-to-play worlds.

Castle Wars is a safe player-versus-player minigame with capture-the-flag mechanics. Its notable free-to-play rewards include the gold decorative boots with a unique strength bonus. While somewhat active on the designated free-to-play world, combat skills are not rescaled when entering the game. This leads to a significant advantage for mains over common combat pures.

Due to high damage boosts granted by castlewars brew and castle wars bracelet, this minigame is often used for training with alternative accounts.

Clan Wars is a safe player-versus-player minigame. It allows for both typical fights within the free-for-all area, as well as arranged clan-versus-clan fights with specific rules. Casual fights between players in the free-for-all area are very common on the 308 world.

Due to the safe nature of the minigame and the fact that arrows automatically return to the inventory upon exit, the free-for-all area of this minigame is often used for training with alternative accounts.

Emir's Arena is a minigame that has replaced the Duel Arena. The core gameplay of the minigame is restricted to the members-only worlds. However, players can still arrange safe duels with specific sets of rules in the free-to-play worlds under the legacy mode by right-clicking other players within the Arena area and choosing the Challenge option. Coins or any tradeable items cannot be staked in duels in the legacy mode.

Players must be on a dedicated Legacy Duels world to challenge one another.

Since dealing damage to other players yields extra experience based on the target's combat level, training on low Defence alts provides among the best experience rates on free-to-play worlds. While training combat pures on members-only world is common and allows avoiding Hitpoints experience among other benefits, players that decide to keep their accounts purely free-to-play might consider killing their alternative accounts in minigames for the higher experience rates than slaying NPCs even if they do not plan to participate in PvP later on.

Notable minigames for training include:

• Castle Wars. A combination of the castlewars brew and castle wars bracelet offer the highest skill and damage boosts against the flag bearer from the opposite team, yielding the highest possible combat experience rates in the free-to-play worlds. Additionally, the players can passively gather the castle wars tickets that can be exchanged for some notable free-to-play items such as the gold decorative boots.
• Clan Wars. The arrows are automatically picked up and returned to the player's inventory after exiting the area, making it particularly suitable for Ranged training. This method also takes minimal setup with the free-for-all portal, and has no downtime between the games like Castle Wars do.

Minigames also allow engaging in PvP activities without gaining combat experience, which might be desirable for players following specialized restrictive builds without the Ironman Mode. The following minigames can be played with the option to disable combat experience gains:

• Castle Wars: by right-clicking Lanthus.
• Clan Wars: by right-clicking the white or purple portal.
• Last Man Standing: no experience gained at all.

This section lists behaviours that may be frowned upon within the PvP community. Some of the listed practices are bannable offences.

Attacking unwilling players in 1-vs-1 combat areas without a possibility of a fair fight is called ragging. Players commonly referred to as raggers often use defensive gear such as rune armour along with a high defence level, or use the Protect Item prayer along with a single weapon such as the rune scimitar. The goal of ragging is often not to kill the opponent, but waste their time and supplies.

Using a single protected item with no supplies and consistently attacking players after respawn is called 1-itemming. 1-itemmers usually use a rune scimitar in combination with Protect Item for its high damage output. This particular form of ragging can be performed by any account with at least 25 prayer level.

A similar form of ragging involves using a maple shortbow in combination with a few adamant arrows. They do not strictly need Protect Item, but it does minimise their loses. With more range, faster attacks and considerable damage output, these raggers are similarly effective. However, in contrary to 1-itemmers with a rune scimitar, they do lose some supplies on every death.

Perming is a form of harassment that involves constant attacking of a player by a ragger or a group of raggers. The player is in effect "permanently banned" from entering a certain area, hence the name. Note that this can be reported under disruptive behaviour.

Healing too much in 1-vs-1 combat is called safing. Keeping the hitpoints too high forces a draw, as none of the players are able to score a kill. When being called a "safer" repeatedly by multiple players, consider healing less often or downgrading to a lower tier of food.

As a rule of thumb, in typical arranged 1-vs-1 combat both players should stay in hitpoints range where a well timed combo can knock them out, but not a single regular attack.

Attacking unsuspected players in order to immediately knock them out is called rushing. Since typical attacks in free-to-play worlds are not powerful enough to take out entire hitpoints of fully healed players, rushing is often performed on players that are currently looting or fighting with someone else.

Accounts built with rushing in mind will typically have a low hitpoints level to maximise the damage output within their combat level brackets. In particular, ironmen accounts do not gain any combat experience in player-versus-player fights with the exception of basic spell casting experience. This allows them to build combat pures with very low hitpoints levels for a specific combat level bracket that never level up through combat with other players.

After the changes in the PJ timer and grace period after a kill combined with the relatively low damage potential of free-to-play account, rushing is rather ineffective in single-way combat areas.

Player jacking is an interruption of a fight between two players within a single-way combat area. In typical 1-vs-1 combat, it was often paired with rushing. Note that due to the increased PJ timer and the addition of locking opponents in combat within single-way combat areas, this behaviour is currently mostly prevented by the game mechanics in the majority of PvP areas.

Within the deep wilderness, player jacking was performed as a deliberate strategy by teams to protect their teammates and maximise the damage output on a single opponent. Since the players could heal inbetween combat, members of team could take time fighting a single stronger opponent to increase their chances of a kill.

PJing can also refer to pile jumping, a term ranging back to RuneScape Classic. Pile jumping is rushing a player that is looting items from a previous kill. This behaviour is also limited nowadays due to the introduction of the loot keys and increased PJ timer after a kill.

Players that perform player jacking or pile jumping are commonly called PJers.

Skull tricking is forcing unwilling players to skull up. Due to how inexpensive the commonly used gear is, most players already skull up when they participate in player-versus-player combat, so this practice is not that common in the free-to-play worlds. However, it might still be used against players that wear expensive cosmetic items or PvMers training in armours such as full rune within the PvP worlds or the wilderness.

There are various techniques that fall under this category. Examples of this practice include logging in under a looting player, or changing between two accounts with a very similar name during combat, so that the opponent thinks they are fighting with a single person.

It should be noted that the PK Skull Prevention option in the Controls Settings mostly eliminated these techniques, although many players that mainly participate in PvP combat do not use that setting.

Tricking the players into entering dangerous zones is called luring. The most common form of luring involves bringing players into multicombat zones, where they can be attacked by entire teams of players at once.

Using vulgar, insulting or offensive slang during or after combat is referred to as flaming. It is generally frowned upon, especially in the clanning community. Severe flaming can be reported under seriously offensive language.

Looters pick up items dropped by killed players without participating in actual player-versus-player combat. While not strictly against the rules, looting makes it more difficult for legitimate player killers to pick up the entire loot from their kills. Due to crowding of the common PvP hotspots, looters can also make it more difficult to engage in combat by causing lags or even misclicks that might lead to accidental skull tricking of player killers that did not mean to attack them in the first place. Additionally, looting is a commonly botted activity, further increasing the tension between player killers and looters.

The looting activity was severely limited by the introduction of the loot keys.

Boosting is performed by repeatedly killing alternative accounts or friends to increase the K/D ratio. This might also include focusing on players that are considered easy targets such as bots, skillers, raggers (1-itemmers) or other players that do not aim to engage in legitimate PvP combat. Boosting of the K/D ratio has no mechanical benefits in game.

Boosting can also be performed in PvP minigames, which might be against the rules for playing multiple accounts.

Using alternative accounts in Clan Wars and Castle Wars is common for training combat skills, as both of these minigames provide convenient forms of training that allow to achieve better experience rates than typical free-to-play training methods involving PvM combat. Additionally, playing Castle Wars matches against alts or friends that do not legitimately participate in the minigame is a common form of obtaining castle wars tickets necessary to buy some useful free-to-play and members items, with gold decorative boots being a notable example.

Playing against bots in the Last Man Standing minigame was a common occurrence that allowed to boost both the rewarded points as well as the win count.

In arranged 1-vs-1 combat, the players are expected not to use the protection prayers, unless explicitly agreed upon. Note that there is no such expectation for the no honour combat.

In arranged 1-vs-1 combat, the players are expected to carry similar amount of risk, meaning items or coins of similar value that are lost upon death. As such, using Protect Item to avoid losing the most expensive item is frowned upon in 1-vs-1 fights, particularly within the risk fighting scene where expensive cosmetic items can be used as risk. Protecting the +1 item can be be called out by other players, resulting in difficulties with finding opponents for duels.

Some players choose third party game clients that give them an advantage in combat or automate certain tasks such as prayer flicking. Note that this is a bannable offence that should be reported under PvP Cheating.

Brand-new free-to-play accounts have multiple restrictions that greatly affect the low level player-versus-player scene.

After an update on 14 May 2018, free-to-play accounts require a total level of at least 150 to join a chat-channel. This impacts the ability to from ultra low level clans, as at the lowest combat levels players were often using throwaway alternative accounts with barely any skill levels to engage in PvP activities, preventing them from joining any clans.

With an update on 2 April 2020, new free-to-play accounts were restricted even further in terms of trading. Items dropped by a brand-new account cannot be picked up by other players, although brand-new players can still pick up items dropped by others. Brand-new players may receive items in a trade, but cannot give items away. Also, they cannot create Sell offers for commonly botted items on the Grand Exchange, as well as adding items to the chest in the Falador Party Room.

More importantly, brand-new players cannot log into PvP worlds. If a brand-new player is PK'd, the opponent will still receive most of their tradeable items—the exception is noted items, which are capped at 20 notes per item.

These restrictions on new accounts can be removed by buying membership, or logging over 20 hours of game time, earning 10 quest points, and reaching a total level of 100. As can be expected, this update made it even more difficult to form ultra low level clans or even individual accounts, as now idling, questing, and skilling became a necessity to unlock unrestricted trading.

This section contains a subset of the slang dictionary with selected terms commonly used in the context of the free-to-play PvP activities.

• Free-to-play combat pure guide
• Free-to-play account builds

v t e Free-to-play PvP
Gameplay	Activities Dangerous Wilderness PvP worlds Safe Castle Wars Clan Wars Emir's Arena Last Man Standing Mechanics Skull status Team capes Loot keys Loot Chest Tick manipulation PID PJ timer Strategies Techniques Training guide Equipment guide Transportation guide
Account builds	Combat pure guide Account builds One-defence pure Main account 1 defence builds Ranged-melee hybrid Melee pure Magic pure Strength pure Ranged-magic hybrid Ranged pure Other builds Rune pure Adamant pure Tank Defence pure Magic tank Strength tank Clan pure
Community	Culture Slang Clans Chat-channels

v t e Free-to-play guides
Skills	Combat Melee Ranged Magic Defence Prayer Hitpoints Gathering Mining Fishing Woodcutting Processing Crafting Smithing Cooking Firemaking Runecraft
Achievements	Quests Quests list Quest rewards Optimal quest guide Other Adventure Paths Collection log Combat Achievements Steam Achievements
Account builds	Account builds Ironman guide Combat pure guide
Miscellaneous	Free-to-play PvP Clues Bestiary Food Music Money making guide Transportation guide Closest points of interest Cosmetic items