Welcome to another F2P OSRS guide. In this guide, we’ll take a look at the mechanics behind OSRS Magic Combat and how Magic works!
It is important to note that this guide is intended to establish a basic understanding of the mechanics, so I will use approximations and simplifications to make things easier to understand. Without further ado, let’s get started!
Magic Attack, Strength And Defense
First, we have a Magic Attack, which is Magic Accuracy. This affects how often you hit your target. This is a combination of your Magic level and any Magic equipment bonuses provided by your armor, weapons, or other items.
Magic Strength or rather Magic Damage. This isn’t actually very useful early on, as very few items actually increase Magic Strength. Ancient Sceptre, Black Mask and Slayer Masks are some of the more easily obtained items that provide a percentage-based bonus to spell damage. But these items belong to mid-range games and are beyond this guide.
Magic Damage is determined by the spell you use. For example, Wind Strike has base damage of 2 and Wind Blast has base damage of 13. These maximum hits have nothing to do with your Magic level, as it cast them from a spell book. Therefore, even at level 99, Magic Wind Strike still has base damage of 2.
Usually spells based on Spellbook have a fixed maximum hit, such as Trident of the Seas. They use your Magic level as the basis for damage output. But again, these are mid-range gaming level items, a bit out of scope.
For now, just know that the spells you choose to cast usually set your Max Hits, so we can look up the handy OSRS Wiki table to find our Magic Max Hits.
Finally, we have Magic Defense. Unlike Melee and Ranged, which are entirely dependent on your defense level and equipment bonus. Magic Defense is a combination of your actual Magic level (70%), base Defense level (30%), and any equipment bonuses.
As you can see, it’s similar to the defense calculation we used before. We should note here that for monsters, this is not their base Defense level, but their Magic level and Magic Defense bonus.
Magic Equipment
Magic Equipment is very similar to Melee and Ranged equipment. Rewards are provided by Armor, Weapons, Necklaces and other equipment items. However, there are two key differences.
First, like Ranged, spells usually require ammunition in rune form. For example, a Wind Strike requires Mind Rune and a Wind Rune. These need to be farmed from drops, Runecrafted, or purchased from Magic Store and GE.
Next, you can only auto-cast magic by equipping a staff or similar item. These staffs often also provide other magic bonuses, such as an unlimited supply of certain runes. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that you get a set of staff before training magic. Because auto-cast magic is necessary, and it also saves OSRS Gold and inventory slots.
Magic Attack, Styles, Speed & Range
Base level magic attacks award XP based on spells cast, with additional magic HP and XP added based on any damage dealt.
Unlike Melee and Ranged attacks, which require a weapon, Spellbook manual clicking can cast Magic and has no attack style. You can access Magic Attack option by equipping a Magic staff weapon.
Once equipped, you can choose which spells you want to auto-cast. But this doesn’t provide any additional benefits other than allowing you to auto-attack or auto-retaliate using spells from your equipped Spellbook. Therefore, as with manual spellcasting, XP is awarded based on base spell XP, plus additional magic HP and XP based on any damage dealt.
The last option for equipping staff is Defensive Casting. This is the same as the previous auto-cast option. In addition to damage, it divided XP into Magic, HP, and Defense. There is no invisible bonus to magic casting unless using a Powered staff.
Powered staff allow players to throw in Accurate or Long-range styles. Accurate provides invisibility +3 magic level, while Long-range provides +1 magic and +3 defense level and is also invisible. In addition, Long-range can also increase the magic attack range by +2.
All magic attacks have a cast speed of 5 ticks. There are some exceptions, including Powered staff with a cast speed of 4 ticks. It also fixed the range of magic attacks at 10 ticks, which obviously applies mainly to combat spells.
Some Powered staffs have lower range, you can also enhance it with Long-range, the maximum range is 10. If the weapon or attack already has a range of 10, Long-range provides no additional range bonus.
DPS Calculations
As with these guides, high DPS is the end goal, as this gives us the most XP/hour.
Unlike Melee and Ranged, spells tend to have a fixed speed and maximum hit, so DPS is more dependent on spell and enemy selection.
As Magic level increases and higher damaging spells are unlocked, figuring out the exact DPS is a little troublesome. The equation here will show you how to do this. There’s another handy OSRS Wiki table that will give you the maximum DPS for each spell.
Unfortunately, my XP trick works with Melee and Ranged, so we can’t use it in this case. So if you want actual DPS you can either take the best-case scenario and assume the maximum number of hits in the table, or you have to calculate it the old-fashioned way.
At the end of this guide, I hope this OSRS Magic combat mechanics guide has been useful. Hopefully, it helps shed some light on what’s going on behind the scenes and how to maximize your character’s performance.
