Melvor Idle

HCCO/Guide/6

To start, you should have: 1 and 1
At the end, you should have: 85 with Full (U) Ancient D-hide, Ancient Crossbow and Scaled Shield and 85 with Mystic Air Staff and Ancient Wizard Robes or Black Wizard Robes

Chapter VI: Non-Melee Training

Chapter VI-A: Ranged

  Ranged is quite straightforward, but we’ve been putting it off for a few main reasons. Firstly, it doesn’t provide any real benefit until you start fighting   Wizards, or other magic monsters, and getting its gear without having the space in your bank or loadouts for the gear and weapons will be annoying. It is recommended to wait until one has 10,000,000  to afford   Extra Equipment Set to make gearing much less of a headache. This upgrade is a lower priority than   Auto Eat - Tier III, which is why we wait until now to train   Ranged.

Progression in   Ranged can roughly be broken into three phases: preliminary, (1), training (1-85) and late (85-99). We only need to worry about the first two phases now, which will get us far enough to tackle   Water God Dungeon,   Fire God Dungeon and possibly even   Into the Mist and beyond.

Preliminary phase

Since none of the gear or weapon progression for   Ranged relies on the actual skill itself, we can prepare for the entire skill ahead of time. This is the preliminary phase, and it has three main considerations being ammo, weapons and gear.

Ammo

Before starting   Ranged, it is recommended to complete the   Elite Amulet of Ranged portion of the   Fury of the Elemental Zodiacs grind at   Bandits. This will set you up with all the arrows needed for the entire early and midgame   Ranged grind, as well as the item itself offering substantial ranged offensive bonuses while being equipable at level 1. Obtaining 200   Amulet of Ranged will yield around 48,000   Steel Arrows, 32,000   Mithril Arrows and 16,000   Adamant Arrows, which is much more than needed. A lot of arrows will also be supplied by   Basic Resupply/  Standard Resupply as well, so ammo is not much of a worry. It is also possible to clear   Bandit Base for possible   Ranged weapon upgrades, but these are not worth the time investment due to the low drop rate and can be skipped if desired.   Bandit Base will yield a decent amount of ammo, but it is slower overall than killing   Bandits directly. At   70 one can use the abundance of   Ancient Arrows obtained while killing   Raging Horned Elite for   Trout. It is not necessary to conserve arrows either, as most late-game   Ranged combat takes place with a crossbow using   Sapphire Bolts.

Note that it is no longer recommended to kill   Frozen Archer for   Ice Arrows anymore, as this monster was buffed and is considerably stronger now as well as dropping far fewer arrows.

Weapons

The overall weapon progression will be:

  Normal Shortbow (1-5) →   Oak Shortbow (5-30) →   Maple Shortbow (30-40) →   Yew Longbow (40-50) →   Elerine Longbow (50-85) →   Ancient Crossbow (85+)

These items will be obtained from   Ranged Golbins,   Holy Archers,   Elerine Archers and   Dragons Den (discussed below) and can all be farmed ahead of time if bank space is not a concern. As mentioned above, it is possible to farm   Bandit Base for a   Ancient Longbow, but it will take more time to obtain than what will be saved by using the item. The   Elerine Longbow is a very strong weapon for its level, as it rivals   Redwood Longbow from   Holy Archer /   Bandit Base. If you do decide to farm   Bandit Base or have done so in the past, you can replace the   Maple Shortbow with a   Maple Longbow instead.

An alternative (but less efficient) route for early   Ranged training is to kill   Thieves in the   Runic Ruins for   throwing knives, which, due to their higher attack speed and inherent 15% ammunition saving, can help with early training. This can be paired with   Throwing Power Gloves to increase effectiveness as well.

Gear

From 1-40 you will mostly be naked, as there are few options for gear at this low level. The cape slot is the only slot that you will likely be able to fill, and the options for capes are:

  Cape of Prat >   Cape of Ranged Preservation >   Fire Cape >   Obsidian Cape > nothing

It is not really worth grinding for any of these, just use whatever you have access to already.   Paladin Gloves don't have any negative bonuses so they are worth using to save on a bit of food. An   Elite Amulet of Ranged is extremely good, as it offers more bonuses than an entire set of green dragonhide.

From 40 onwards, the gear you will use will be a mismatch of dragonhide armour. Use whatever hides you obtained from the   Amulet of Looting and   Volcanic Cave grind from earlier. It is not worth going out of your way to obtain any singular piece of dragonhide, as it only offers accuracy with no strength bonus, and your accuracy will quickly become saturated on the enemies you train ranged on. Using   Green D-hide Vambraces at   70 for instance is perfectly acceptable. Green, blue and red dragonhide armour can also be easily upgraded in exchange for GP. Green d'hide costs 60k to fully upgrade, blue d'hide costs 225k and red d'hide costs 630k. These only offer a small amount of accuracy and DR, but this will come in handy for monsters such as   Master Wizards and the likes, so it may be worth it.

You will need to farm   Dragons Den for the almighty   Ancient Crossbow for   80+ at some point before progressing. Again, as this dungeon doesn't rely on   Ranged, this could technically be performed before commencing training. The goals of this dungeon are to obtain the   Ancient Crossbow and the   Ancient D-hide Shield, the latter of which will be upgraded to a   Scaled Shield which is a huge DPS increase for   Ranged and even for   Magic in many situations. The shield can technically be substituted with a   Dragonfire Shield or   Earth Layered Shield for meeting raw DR requirements, but the damage sacrificed will be noticeable so obtaining a   Scaled Shield is recommended. The crossbow is an incredible weapon for the two   Ranged God dungeons, as well as in   Dark Waters, however it is worth noting that all of the other items still have uses.

  Twin Exiles is the next most sought after item, as they are the best item in the game for farming low level mobs with low max HP. It is worth keeping for future rune grinding and completionist farming purposes. Any   Ancient Dragonhide Armour obtained here can be worn as an upgrade, but it is not necessary to grind for any pieces. Use any leftover   Elder Dragonhide to upgrade elder dragonhide pieces before selling it all off to unlock some free collection log slots.

Training phase

The best options for   Ranged training are magic enemies. However, the entry level enemy (  Wizard) is too strong to be tackled at   1, so killing various easy slayer tasks such as   Cows is fine until around   40 to equip some dragonhide. After this point, farming   Wizards and   Master Wizards for runes is ideal. One can then use these runes to train their   Magic to increase their magic defence to make killing them more efficient. At higher   Ranged and   Magic levels (around 50+), the option of killing   Shamans for   Chaos Runes and   Necromancers for   Death Runes opens up to supplement further   Magic training.   Seething Horned Elites can be killed for any outstanding   Amulet of Furies that weren't obtained from   Volcanic Cave.

Chapter VI-B: Magic

  Magic in this challenge will mainly consist of casting Air spells, since you can remove one colour from the rune costs. All spells cost   Air Runes, but   Water,   Earth, and   Fire spells additionally cost their respective runes.

This is a bad thing for us, since we have no real way to farm a lot of runes yet. However, we can get started by farming some catalyst runes (  Mind Runes,   Chaos Runes,   Death Runes, etc.) from the   Vampire and the   Master Wizard. The   Vampire is probably best for now, since it is a   Ranged monster, meaning we can strike it with our powerful   Melee. Even considering the drop chance and drop rates are lower than from the   Master Wizard, this will be faster overall as it will crucially save more food. Killing   Wizard until one piece of either   Green Robes or   Blue Robes (at   10) for each slot is recommended.

Catalyst Runes are the runes you use to power up your spells, while Elemental runes select which element you’re using. You can remove the cost for Elemental runes with staves, which we will abuse to completely nullify the   Air Rune cost, and thus primarily use air spells. Remember, since prayer points are a lot easier to farm on a CO than runes, you will generally want to run the two highest offensive prayers at all times when training magic. However, it is only worthwhile if the prayers give magic damage boost (  Mystic Mastery,   Augury and   Battleheart) or if you are very low level and your accuracy is low (below 90%).

The   Staff of Air (obtained from   Fairy) reduces the cost by 3, allowing you to cast all spells up to   Fire Bolt with the sole exception of   Wind Bolt for no   Air Rune cost.   Air Rune are by far the most valuable elemental rune on a CO, so you should use the other elements to level your magic early on as these runes have little use outside of very late game situations by which point you will have a huge stockpile. You should aim to use most of your   Mind Rune on   Fire Strike and your   Chaos Rune on   Earth Bolt to make the most use of your varied runes gathered, until you are   30. At this point you can equip an   Air Battlestaff to save 5   Air Rune/cast, so obtain one from   Master Wizard and use that until   40. You also have enough magic defence from levelling   Magic that you can consider clearing   Hall of Wizards for some   Ranged exp and better robes. The   Red Wizard Robes can be worn at   30 (levelling from 1 to 30 cuts food usage against magic enemies roughly in half) and the dungeon will be important in the a following section anyway. You can alternatively wait until   40 for even higher magic defence. Lastly, now that you have some magic defence, gathering 200   Amulet of Magic is on the table. You will obtain a lot of catalyst runes in the process which can be put towards levelling, so it is worth making a dent in this decently long grind now.   Master Wizard are the best overall source of catalyst runes, as they have the lowest HP while dropping one of three catalyst runes 85% of the time.

You can now make use of every standard spell that is worth considering on a CO, which is up until   Wind Blast. Prioritise all other elemental spells until you consume your elemental runes, and then finish training on the highest level air spell that has no elemental rune cost. Make sure to use the highest level aurora that you can that has no elemental cost. This will be   Surge I from   15-  40 and   Surge II afterwards. The light runes will be supplied from   Standard Resupply and will be in considerable abundance, so these should not be conserved.

After   40, you will now use a   Mystic Air Staff to conserve 7 elemental runes and primarily use   Wind Blast to level up, as this is the new highest no-elemental cost spell available. The relative damage increase between spells is lower as flat damage has diminishing returns, so there isn't much dps sacrificed by sticking to this one spell. However, the only way to obtain this staff is from   Hall of Wizards at a relatively low drop rate (~1/191.67). On the plus side, you will get some nice runes (albeit at a slower rate than other options) along the way and a good pet, hopefully. You will also want to obtain a full set of   Red Robes. It is debatable whether staying here all the way until full   Ancient Robes is worthwhile. The robes have a very low drop rate and will likely take a while to complete, but you will obtain some useful runes and almost certainly obtain the pet. It is also important to maximise rune efficiency by maximising magic damage bonus, as rune gathering is a slow process. If you are completionistic in nature then it may be a good idea, although strictly speaking it would be faster to focus on simply obtaining more   Death Rune from   Master Wizard and   Necromancer than worrying about min-maxing the rune efficiency.

Once you have your gear, the best monster to kill is   Raging Horned Elite as they are melee and drop valuable food, as well as giving a decent income and ammo. They have 5% DR, so using   Battleheart if you have the   Prayer level is recommended, along with   Augury. Kill either   Master Wizard or   Necromancer for   Chaos Rune and/or   Death Rune whenever you need more runes. It is both more rune-efficient and time-efficient to gather runes and use them separately, rather than try to kill   Necromancer with magic directly to slightly replenish the consumed runes. Making use of the triangle bonus is starting to become very important. You will be here until   85. Once you have   85 you will upgrade to   Glacia Armour, and then return to get a single level to   86.

The rest of your magic training will come after   Into the Mist once you have the passive slot. You will return again to   Raging Horned Elite to get   90 to wield   Ocean Song, and then train from   90-  99 on   Umbora while grinding out   Tidal Edge.

  Mind Runes are very useful lategame as   Water Strike is the most rune-efficient spell to use for   Cloudburst Staff and   Ocean Song, so you will want to keep them. You will also want to keep   Fire Rune (as well as   Ancient Rune and   Havoc Rune) for   Incinerate for   Impending Darkness Event.   Water Rune and   Earth Rune are not terribly important.   Light Rune are obtained easily from   Standard Resupply.

In summary:

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