Combat level calculator

The combat level formula

Combat level is built from two parts. The base comes from your defensive stats, and a class bonus comes from whichever offensive style is strongest.

base  = 0.25 × (Defence + Hitpoints + floor(Prayer / 2))

melee  = 0.325 × (Attack + Strength)
ranged = 0.325 × floor(3 × Ranged / 2)
magic  = 0.325 × floor(3 × Magic / 2)

combat = floor(base + max(melee, ranged, magic))

What this means in practice

• Only your best style counts. Training Ranged on an account with high melee stats may not raise your combat level at all, because melee is already providing the class bonus.
• Prayer counts for half. Two Prayer levels are worth one Defence level toward your combat level, which is why odd Prayer levels sometimes do nothing.
• Hitpoints rises on its own. It trains passively from any combat, so it pushes your combat level up whether you plan for it or not.

Why players care about staying at a specific level

In the Wilderness you can only attack, and be attacked by, players within a certain combat level range of your own. Accounts built for player-versus-player deliberately leave Defence and Prayer low so they can fight at a level where their offensive stats are unusually high for the bracket.

The classic examples are the pure — 1 Defence, high Attack and Strength — and the zerker, which stops at 45 Defence for the berserker helm. If that is your goal, the “next level from” result above tells you exactly which stat to stop training.

If you have no interest in player-versus-player, none of this applies and you should train Defence freely. It makes every piece of content in the game more forgiving.