Adventure/Guide

This page was last updated for (v1.0.1).

Written mainly by /u/Steelsauce, with help from adventure-mode-chat on Discord, and the HCCO/Guide. Updates in progress by DasUberLobster, with more help from Discord (come join us!).

Preface

Adventure mode takes what you know about Melvor and turns it on its head! You start with only melee combat unlocked, and must pay an increasing GP cost to unlock each skill. This means that the skills you choose will greatly affect the route you take through the game. Your noncombat skills will be locked to your combat level, so the skilling you can do is very limited at first.

This mode requires you to do more combat than the other modes, especially at the beginning. It may be harder for newer players to get a grasp of how all the skills are interconnected without using them first, so a brand new player is not recommended to start on Adventure mode. While this can make it harder for a new player, this mode also reduces the number of early-game choices, which can significantly help new players get a feel for the game. It's all about tradeoffs!

Speaking of tradeoffs, that is the name of the game in this mode. Anyone who tells you that they have the "best" strategy probably doesn't know what they're talking about. You can save time on one grind by picking another skill or targeting a different enemy, but this will likely cost you more time somewhere else. The trick on this mode is to pick aspects of the game that you like the most and focus your time and attention to those areas, then you can apply the time-reduction strategies to the areas you don't like as much. It's all about tradeoffs! We'll get into this more later. That said, there really are ways to hamper yourself pretty badly, so this guide is all about helping you dodge the big mistakes and apply your time where you want to spend it.

A rough strategy is given below, but don't let anyone dictate your suffering adventure!

Starting out

First you need to do some basic melee combat to get some combat levels and cash for a first skill. During the tutorial you made a Bronze Dagger. This will be the strongest weapon you need until steel. Equip your that and your Shrimp and start whacking some Plants. Remember to press the Loot All button to keep your potatoes! Use different fighting styles (Stab, Slash, Block) to keep your stats somewhat equal.

After getting about about 10|10|10 (Attack, Strength, Defense), try killing a Cow. If it hits too hard, level up a bit more with Plants.

After that, follow the HCCO/Guide for a smooth enemy progression, but note that some mobs require you to unlock Slayer first. Do note that this guide may be somewhat outdated, so I'll try to catch some of the basic changes below.

Early money making

Your first money maker will be fighting Cows. Collect their Leather, and then go to the shop and purchase as many Green Dragonhide as you can, then sell the green hides. This gives an extra  50 compared to just selling the plain leather.

Historically, the Amulet of Looting was a critical upgrade in this mode, but since thieving was updated and the combat loot box expanded, that can be your main money-maker very early (within a few hours of starting your character). I'll discuss more advanced tactics below (~4-6 hours to idle woman instead of 8+ for man), but if you just keep thieving from Man, you will eventually reach a 100% success rate and be able to idle him without losing food. Before about 93% success, you will have to keep manually eating to prevent death in this phase.

Planning Ahead

Skill Unlock Costs

Skill level unlock costs increase drastically, so planning out a skill unlock order is extremely important. Here are unlock costs:

Unlock	Cost	Cumulative Cost
1	10,000	10,000
2	25,000	35,000
3	50,000	85,000
4	200,000	285,000
5	250,000	535,000
6	400,000	935,000
7	1,000,000	1,935,000
8	2,500,000	4,435,000
9	10,000,000	14,435,000
10	25,000,000	39,435,000
11	50,000,000	89,435,000
12	100,000,000	189,435,000
13	200,000,000	389,435,000
14	500,000,000	889,435,000
15	500,000,000	1,389,435,000
16	500,000,000	1,889,435,000
17	500,000,000	2,389,435,000
18	500,000,000	2,889,435,000
19	500,000,000	3,389,435,000
20	500,000,000	3,889,435,000
21	500,000,000	4,389,435,000
22	500,000,000	4,889,435,000

Combat Level

Read the wiki page on Combat Level.

Your non-combat skills are gated behind your combat level, greatly restricting what you can do. Getting to 99 combat level is an important early goal of this mode. Combat level factors in HP, defence, prayer, plus your highest style of combat: magic, ranged, or attack/strength. It's easier to get combat lvl 99 through attack/strength.

The combat level formula means that if you have a high level in one combat style, picking up another one won’t raise your combat level until you surpass your other combat style’s level.

It is meaningfully easier to reach 99 combat through melee than other means, and prayer can further speed this up. You will be aiming for stats (Attack, Strength, Defense, HP, Prayer) something around 79/79/76/78/75 to reach your goal, though feel free to play around with those numbers- they're very flexible.

Long Term goals

If you want to complete the Adventure mode, you will need several billion GP. To get that much money, you need a good method and a plan for how to get it.

Please read the Money Making guide in order to make a draft of your money-making progression.

For instance:

1. Unlock Cooking.
2. Kill cows and cook beef.
3. Unlock Thieving.
4. Get your combat level to 30.
5. Thieve from Man, sustaining by manually eating Beef
6. Progress through items that improve thieving- Thiever's cape from Bandit Thug or Marauder, Golbin Mask from Golbin Chief, Sneakers from anyone
7. Unlock the skills needed for the production of Jadestone Bolts (Note: There are several viable late and endgame money-making setups. Jade Bolts is currently the strongest endgame. Focus progression on things that improve global thieving first, as they improve any money-making build)

Skills Pros/Cons

The recommendation for when to unlock a skill means the following:

• Early game: skill unlock 1-3.
• Mid game: 4-8.
• Late game: 9-13.
• End game: 14-18

• • • • • • • • • • No Updates made past this point, any following data may be outdated********

Attack, Strength

Pros: Unlocked at start. No ammo needed to train. Can get starter weapon/armor quickly. Will need to use it for a while at the start. Fishing lets you train Strength when idle with Barbarian Fishing. Strong against ranged enemies.

Cons: Not as strong as magic in late-game. Need to train two skills instead of one. Weak to magic enemies.

Defence

Pros: Unlocked at start. Can train with any type of combat. Always contributes to combat level. Reduces food usage.

Cons: Doesn’t increase your damage.

Ranged

Pros: Fairly easy to get weapon/armor drops from enemies. Frozen arrows are strong and relatively quick to gather with melee. Strong against magic enemies.

Cons: Need to farm ammo, which is much slower if you don’t have mining + smithing for bolts/knives, and additionally wood + fletching for arrows. Less needed than other forms of combat. Not as strong as magic late game. Bad against melee enemies, most enemies are melee.

Recommended to unlock: Late game, when fighting the Water God Dungeon.

Magic

Pros: Very strong, especially in the end game. Ancient magic is high damage and perfect accuracy. Strong against melee, most enemies are melee. Alt magic lets you gain prayer points easily, plus some idle xp. Can craft good weapons/armor with runecrafting easily.

Cons: Need mining + runecrafting before you can start. Takes time to craft runes, best runes are locked behind a high runecrafting level. You need woodcutting or thieving to make elemental staves, otherwise they are monster drops. Prayer points can come from fishing instead. Needs ancient magic to reach full potential. Bad against ranged enemies.

Recommended to unlock: Mid to Late game, when you already have Mining and Runecrafting unlocked.

Prayer

Pros: Helps a ton in combat, especially in difficult combat or late game. You get bones from everything. Always contributes to combat level.

Cons: Needs a supply of prayer points, bone drops aren’t enough. Best ways for that are Raw Skeleton Fish from fishing or Blessed Offering from alt magic.

Recommended to unlock: Mid game, when you have a good source of prayer points.

Slayer

Pros: Rerolling easy tasks is free, so you can always gain slayer coins and xp from what you want to fight. Slayer coins can be spent on upgrades and resupplies that give food, bones, and ammo. Slayer areas have important mobs, like mummy for gold emerald ring and gold topaz ring.

Cons: Acquiring slayer coins requires you to manually reroll tasks, or at least switch to your current task, which is inconvenient for mostly idling players until you get 150k for auto slayer. You can still earn some slayer xp by fighting in a slayer area. Takes a while to earn up coins to buy anything. Does not contribute to combat level.

Recommended to unlock: Early to Mid game, when you need the drops from Slayer mobs.

Woodcutting

Pros: Easy to idle, can make decent gp/hr at higher levels. Gets logs for magic staves, arrows. Bird Nest are a decent source of seeds. Level 99 needed to efficiently create Dragon Javelins, one of the best end-game Money Making strategies.

Cons: Everything you can get here you can get from thieving, and the gp/hr is worse than Gem Gloves until a high level.

Recommended to unlock: Late to end game, when you are planning to do Dragon Javelins.

Fishing

Pros: With cooking, it's an easy afk food supply. Can get ARoS for XP or Message in a Bottle that unlocks Raw Skeleton Fish - a great source of prayer points. Can train strength afk with Barbarian Fishing. Can make some decent money offline at higher levels. Cooking is not mandatory to gain edible food from fishing because there's Raw Magic Fish, but it's very slow compared to Cooking.

Cons: You can get food from farming or combat. Prayer points can come from alt magic. The gp/hr is worse than gem gloves until high levels.

Recommended to unlock: Early to Late game, depending on if your food/prayer source comes from here or from Farming and Alternative Magic.

Firemaking

Pros: The skill cape gives you and xp bonus, but you can buy it only at level 99. Gives Cooking an xp bonus with fires. If you are going for max completion, might want to get the Firemaking Skillcape and Pyro before completing some other skills.

Cons: Need 99 combat level to get the skill cape, its appeal is reduced by its late acquisition. Need to get logs from woodcutting. Need Herblore for Controlled Heat Potion for effective training.

Recommended to unlock: Late to End game, when you have Woodcutting and Herblore and want to grind the Firemaking Skillcape for bonus xp.

Cooking

Pros: Easy and quick afk food with Fishing. If you aren't able to actively play, it is hard to get food from collecting monster drops or from farming.

Cons: You can get food and lots of other items from Farming or Combat. Farming can provide food without pressing the Loot All button regularly. Does not give any advantage besides food.

Recommended to unlock: Depends on if you take fishing and put off farming.

Mining

Pros: Mining with Gem Gloves is the best money making strat early on, plus it's idle. Can earn some offline gp before the gloves. Need Rune Essence for Runecrafting and Weird Gloop for Farming. With Smithing, you can get bars for armor trimming, melee armor and weapons, and ranged ammo. Needed to create Dragon Javelins.

Cons: Need 500k for first pair of gem gloves.

Recommended to unlock: Early game - gem gloves is love, gem gloves is life.

Smithing

Pros: Make silver/gold bars for armor trimming and gp before you can afford gem gloves. Make ranged ammo. Make melee weapons/armor. Needed to create armor in order to idle some crucial late-game locations. Needed to create Dragon Javelins.

Cons: You can kill knights for melee weapons/armor far sooner than you unlock with smithing (except gloves). You can earn gold and silver bars from monster drops, although smithing is far quicker. Can get ranged ammo from mob drops.

Recommended to unlock: When you want better melee gear.

Thieving

Pros: Get decent gp/hr while getting other materials like food and logs and ore. Pickpocketing the Farmer is the best source of Seeds. Can get Chapeau Noir to earn more drops from combat.

Cons: Hard to get started. You can get the vital stuff from other places.

Recommended to unlock: Mid to Late game, depending on when you think the drops will be useful.

Farming

Pros: Food with no in-game time spent. The only way to get herbs for Herblore. Gets most types of logs. Earn some decent gp with no in-game time spent if you sell herbs/logs.

Cons: Need to open the game every so often to get the most food. Get seeds from Thieving, Combat or Woodcutting. Need to buy Compost or kill farmers for it. Need mining to get Weird Gloop for best xp and food rate. Thieving or woodcutting is required to get Carrot Seeds.

Recommended to unlock: Early to Late game, depending on if you take fishing and cooking first.

Fletching

Pros: Needed to craft Arrows and bows for Ranged combat. Needed for Dragon Javelins (DJavs).

Cons: Ranged is not the strongest combat style, and you can get most arrows and bows from combat drops. Fletching DJavs for money is locked behind high level.

Recommended to unlock: Late to End game, when you start doing DJavs.

Crafting

Pros: Makes ranged armor and jewelry.

Cons: Ranged armor and jewelry drop from combat. Not a useful skill.

Recommended to unlock: End game when you have nothing else to unlock.

Runecrafting

Pros: Lets you use Magic. Also required for Alt Magic to gain prayer points. Curses and auras make you stronger until you become a walking DPS machine with ancient magic.

Cons: Need Mining first. Doesn’t do anything before unlocking magic. Higher tier runes require a high level, which means a high combat level.

Recommended to unlock: Mid to Late game, when you plan to start training magic.

Herblore

Pros: Makes other skills more efficient. Combat potions provide a boost, but Diamond Luck Potion IV and Damage Reduction Potion IV are desired for late game combat. Level 53 helps to create Dragon Javelins faster.

Cons: Needs Farming for herbs, some secondary materials are hard to get depending on you available skills. Need a high combat level and a huge number of ingredients to get the best combat potions. Slow to train.

Recommended to unlock: Mid to Late game, when you have plenty of herbs and want some efficiency on your other skills.

Agility

Pros: Provides small buffs to other skills, increasing XP, mastery, item preservation, combat buffs, etc. Easy afk way to make good gp/hr at higher levels.

Cons: Many obstacles require skills or items you have not unlocked yet. Obstacles become increasingly expensive, and some have large debuffs. Gp/hr Does not surpass gem gloves until high levels unless you have Aorpheat's Signet Ring.

Recommended to unlock: Mid to End game, when you have enough money, skills and items to create a useful course.

Summoning

Pros: Provides small buffs to other skills, and helps in combat. Some synergies provide big boosts.

Cons: Needs other skills unlocked to unlock more familiars and synergies. Getting materials for some marks may be tricky, and shards are expensive. Need an Agility course and spend slayer coins on gear to train efficiently.

Recommended to unlock: Late to End game, when you have the skills to unlock useful familiars and the money to burn on shards.

Astrology

Pros: Provides bonuses to all skills. Has no requirements to train.

Cons: These bonuses won't make help you in farming the gold for the next skill.

Recommended to unlock: Late to End game, when you have unlocked one of the best money-making methods.

Potential Skill Order

Choosing a skill order will greatly change your path through the Adventure Mode. Many skills are interconnected, and you will be limited by items you can't get and your combat level. The skill descriptions above might help with grasping the connections. Plan ahead on what skills you will buy.

There is no best skill order. Your order depends greatly on how often you play actively and your priorities. The start of the game requires some manual action to progress efficiently, but you can still make some progress with idling.

Example: up to Dragon Javelins

This section presents a path from the very start to money-making with Dragon Javelins. Producing them is one of the most profitable money-making methods that don't require you to have the end-game gear. If your goal is the full completion, then the Adventure is about getting the best money-making method as fast as possible. The given strategy is one of the ways towards it.

TL;DR: Cooking to get to fighting lvl 50 > Slayer > Mining to get gem gloves > Smithing > Gem gloves till AE 2 > Autolooting > Rune > Magic > Prayer > Combat level 99 > Woodcutting > Fletching.

Get Potatoes from Plants. When you have 100 Potatoes, try Cows.

Kill Cows, then unlock Cooking. It will save you a ton of gathering and clicking because Beef heals 16 times better than Potatoes.

After you got Beef by cooking drops from Cows, get Bronze Battleaxe and Bronze Shield from Golbin.

In general, if the mentioned monster is hard, use Cows to level up more before trying it again.

Get Iron Platebody and Iron Platelegs from Zombie Hand.

Get Steel Platebody from Zombie.

Get the rest of the Steel armor and weapon set from Steel Knights.

Unlock Slayer and get Amulet of Strength and Gold Emerald Ring from Mummy.

Get Ice Sword from Ice Monster. It will hit hard, but if you can survive it and deal damage at a decent rate, do it.

Set your character name to "witwix" and get Chest of Witwix from Leech. If your name is "witwix", you will always get Amulet of Calculated Promotion from this chest.

Unlock Mining and Smithing. With them unlocked, transition into Mithril and then Adamant armor. If you are strong enough, farm Master Farmer instead of Cows to sell the seeds. Trim your armor up to Gold.

At this point your Combat level should be more than 50, so you can farm Mithril Ore. Farm it until you can buy Gem Gloves, then keep them always active when mining and mine more to get Auto Eat 2. This step is aimed at the idle style of play. If you want to manually farm Spider Dungeon, you can do that instead.

Get your HP to the level when you can Idle Spider Forest. Get Amulet of Looting from Spider Chest. Now you can idle your food production.

Unlock Runecrafting, Magic, and Prayer by mining with the Gem Gloves.

Get prayer points through Alt Magic. Use the prayers that are most expensive and useful: Chivalry and Piety are the best options to level up Prayer: the options that spend fewer prayer points are both slower and have lower rate of prayer-xp-per-point.

Level up your Combat. A Tentacle or a Giant Crab are good choices, but if you want the best option, check out Combat Simulator to see which monster is the best for your situation. Don't forget to consider the food expenditure.

Get your combat up to level 99. For instance, the following combination was enough for it: Attack 77, Strength 75, Defence 79, Hitpoints 77, Prayer 91.

Unlock Woodcutting and Fletching by mining the same Mithril Ore with Gem Gloves.

Level up the unlocked skills to create Dragon Javelin.

The skill routes below are viable, but if you don't like suffering, you might want to do the math or ask people about how hard it would be because it is possible to lock yourself with months of dull grind if you make several wrong unlocks.

Early Game: Active Playing

Slayer > Farming > Mining > Gem Gloves > Auto Eat - Tier 1

With slayer, reroll easy tasks for free until you get the creature you want to fight, usually plants, cows, or farmers. Save slayer coins for auto slayer.

Once you have the money for farming, buy it and start farming. Kill farmers for seeds. It is slow at first, but soon will give you more food than you need. Harvest and plant new seeds whenever you can. Herbs and trees are less important for now, but are still good for xp.

Buy mining and save up for gem gloves. Mine some essence and use it to make weird gloop. Mine the highest tier ore and sell it if you have to afk and aren't saving for smithing.

Early Game: AFK Playing

Mining > Gem Gloves > Fishing > Cooking > Auto Eat - Tier I

This route will be significantly slower, but at least you can make some progress when you are not able to have the game running.

You will need to actively collect loot from combat and heal with potatoes at first. Soon your regen will be enough to outheal plants, and later cows.

After you kill enough cows to unlock mining, you can start earning some gp offline, but you will be greatly restricted by combat level. Work towards earning 500k so you can start earning good gp/hr offline. Then get fishing, cooking, and Auto Eat - Tier I so you can afk combat. When you get the drops, you can train strength through barbarian fishing and get prayer points from bone fish.

You will still want to buy slayer and farming soon!

Mid Game: Melee

Source of Prayer Points > Prayer > Smithing

By now you should have a good source of food and progressing through combat. Get prayer points from fishing (bone fish), RC+magic (blessed offering) or slayer (resupply). Train prayer and slayer as you do combat so you are prepared for the higher tier dungeons. You can trim Mithril armor, or wait until you can fight adamant knights and trim their armor.

Mid Game: Magic

Runecrafting > Magic > Prayer

After some essence mining, start training runecrafting. Craft a set of air robes and get a weapon, either create a Magic Wand (Basic) from 1k essence or fight fairy for a staff. Then start whacking melee mobs with wind strike! As your combat level increases, you can craft higher tier runes to use stronger air spells. You can use alt magic to earn xp while offline, and you will want to cast a lot of Blessed Offering to earn prayer points when you unlock it.

Next Steps

There are lots of ways to go from here. Getting slayer and farming is a must if you haven't already. Herblore makes your other skills more efficient, thieving gives you Chapeau Noir and carrot seeds, agility gives passives boosts. Try to train two combat styles, probably magic and melee. Working on getting to 99 combat level and being able to idle the late game dungeons!

Melvor Idle version v1.2.2 (Released: 15th November 2023)
Combat: Attack Strength Defence Hitpoints Ranged Magic Prayer Slayer
Skills: Woodcutting Fishing Firemaking Cooking Mining Smithing Thieving Farming Fletching Crafting Runecrafting Herblore Agility Summoning Astrology Township Cartography Archaeology Alternative Magic
Other: Beginners Guide Guides Bank Combat Mastery Money Making Shop Easter Eggs Pets Golbin Raid Full Version Throne of the Herald Atlas of Discovery
Reference Tables: Items, Equipment, Experience Table, Upgrading Items, Combat Areas, Slayer Areas, Dungeons, Chest Loot Tables, Monsters, Monster Loot Tables