How to play

AFKScape is an idle game: your character fights monsters on its own, all day, even while you're away. Your job is to pick what it fights and what it wears. Everything else on this page is something you can learn later, when you get to it.

1. The basics

Your character fights while you're away

• The server plays out every swing of your fight, whether the page is open or not.
• When you come back, the "While you were away" report shows what happened.
• Damage is never lost. If you switch monsters or log out mid-fight, the damage you've already done stays.

Check in once a day

Opening any page starts a 24-hour timer, shown as a health bar on the Game page. When it runs out, your character stops fighting until you come back. Time past the 24 hours isn't saved up, so three days away still only counts as one day of fighting. A quick visit resets the timer.

Unlocking monsters

You start with easy monsters and unlock harder ones as you go. Each monster shows what it needs, usually one of these:

• A kill count at an earlier monster, like "75 Goblin KC".
• Collection power: a score for everything you've ever found. Selling items doesn't lower it.
• Something special, like a Farming level, or beating all four God Wars generals for Nex.

Once you've unlocked a monster, it stays unlocked.

Drops, your bank and gold

• Everything a monster drops goes into your bank on the Equipment page.
• Sell spare copies for gold (gp) with Sell dupes. It keeps one of each item.
• Selling never removes an item from your collection log. It does mean you can't wear the item until it drops again. The game asks before selling anything worth 5,000 gp or more.

2. Getting stronger

Gear matters most

New drops don't replace what you're wearing. They only go into empty slots. After every visit, check the Equipment page for the ● marker. For example, a full steel set sitting in your bank can cut your kill time by about a quarter.

• Everything you wear adds to your accuracy (how often you hit) and strength (how hard you hit).
• Your weapon also decides how fast you swing and which attack styles you can use.
• Some weapons are two-handed — bows, godswords, staves, halberds, spears and the heavier mauls. They fill both hands, so you cannot wear a shield with one. Equipping either takes the other off and puts it back in your bank; the item sheet marks a two-handed weapon as 2h.
• Some armour only helps one kind of fighter. Its gold-coloured bonus counts only when you attack in that style. Mage robes help spells, not swords.
• Wearing a full armour set gives an extra bonus. The Equipment page shows which sets you're part-way through.
• Every different pet you own adds +1 to your max hit, permanently.

Let the game tell you what works

The What works here panel on the Equipment page learns from your fights:

• At 25 kills of a monster, it tells you which attack style works best.
• At 100 kills, which weapon you own works best.
• At 250 kills, your best full outfit, slot by slot.
• At 500 kills, or once that monster's collection log is complete, an Equip best gear button puts it all on for you.

Your skills

You train ten skills. The five combat skills go up by fighting:

• Attack: melee hits land more often.
• Strength: melee hits do more damage.
• Defence: nothing here hits you back, so Defence does not change a fight at all — it is what armour asks for before you can wear it.
• Ranged: bows and crossbows. Both how often and how hard.
• Magic: staffs and wands. Both how often and how hard.

Five more skills are trained outside combat: Farming and Hunter alongside your fighting, and Woodcutting, Thieving and Firemaking instead of it. Reach level 99 in any skill and you can buy its skill cape.

Choosing a combat style

Your weapon gives you a few styles to choose from. With melee weapons, the style decides which skill gets the experience:

• Accurate trains Attack.
• Aggressive trains Strength.
• Controlled splits it three ways, between Attack, Strength and Defence.
• Block (called Fend on a halberd and Deflect on a whip) puts all of it into Defence. It is the last style on every melee weapon, and it is slower: a defensive stance gives up the small accuracy and damage bonus the other styles carry, so you kill less while you train it.

Ranged and Magic styles train Ranged or Magic. They have no Block of their own — instead their controlled style (Longrange on a bow, Channel on a staff) hands Defence its share, so shooting from a distance trains Defence the way it does in the real game.

Gear you have to earn

Every piece of equipment asks for the levels it asks for in the real game before you can put it on: rune wants 40 Defence, an abyssal whip 70 Attack, Torva 80 Defence, Masori 80 Ranged. Its item page in your bank lists them, in green once you have them and in red while you don't, and a piece you can't wear yet is marked in the bank grid with what it needs.

• Requirements are measured against your real levels. A potion raises the number on your skill for the fight, but it can't qualify you for armour — the same as in the real game.
• New drops still fill empty slots by themselves, but only ever with something you could have put on yourself.
• Equip best gear and the What works here advice only ever name gear you can actually wear.
• If you were already wearing something when these requirements arrived, it stays on. Take it off, though, and it stays off until you really have the levels.

Every monster has weak spots

There are five ways to attack: stab , slash , crush , ranged and magic . Each monster is tougher against some of these than others. The right one can make a big difference. For example, the Kraken barely notices arrows but falls quickly to magic.

These weak spots are hidden at first. To find them:

• Try a different weapon or style and watch the Accuracy number. Higher is better.
• After 5 kills with an attack type, the game tells you roughly how well it works.
• After 25 kills, the exact number shows in your Bestiary (Settings page).
• Completing a monster's collection log reveals everything about it.

A few weapons are also extra strong against particular monsters, like dragon-slaying weapons against dragons.

Potions and boosts

The shop sells potions that raise a combat skill for a while. Stronger potions give more and last longer.

• Boosts don't stack. They queue instead: the strongest runs first, and weaker ones wait their turn with their full time. You never waste a potion by buying another.
• Boosts keep running while you're away.

3. Things to work towards

The collection log

The Collection Log records every item you've ever found, one page per monster.

• Green logs: find every item on a monster's page and it turns green. You then kill that monster 5% faster for good, and every green log also makes you 1% faster against all monsters (up to +20%).
• Minigame pages: the minigames have pages of their own, and finishing one is its own kind of star (🌟 rather than ⭐). It is a trophy and nothing more — a finished minigame page pays no bonus, and the hiscores count it in a column of its own.
• Stars: tap the star on an item you don't have yet. When it drops, you get an alert.

Quests

Monsters sometimes drop quest scrolls, which add a quest to your Quests page. Each quest asks for kills at two or more monsters.

• XP quests can be repeated, but each time needs new kills.
• Item quests use up the items they ask for.
• Harder quests give gear you can't get anywhere else, like the Dragon scimitar.

The Forge

Some drops are only half of something, like a godsword hilt that needs a blade. The Forge tab on the Equipment page combines two items into a better one. Nothing tells you the recipes, so you experiment:

• Put two items (or a stack of one) in the two slots and press smelt. It costs nothing.
• Right pair: you get the new item.
• Close: you keep your items and get a rumor, a hint about which item was right. Rumors get clearer the more you try.
• Wrong: you get your items back.

There are 37 recipes. Some use drops from two different monsters, and some forged items are parts of bigger recipes. Forging never removes collection log credit.

Farming

On the Farming tab of the Skills page, plant seeds in your patches, water them, and harvest them later. Every planting uses up a seed. Potato and onion seeds can be bought from the seed stall in the planting menu (5 gp and 10 gp). Every other seed has to be found: they drop from every monster (1 kill in 50), fall from bird nests while woodcutting, and come from Tithe Farm rounds, clue caskets, Hunter jars and the Master Farmer. Every seed also needs the Farming level printed beside it in the planting menu — a seed found early keeps until you reach that level. You start with three patches and get more as your Farming level goes up. Farming has nothing to do with combat, except that Hespori, a boss, unlocks at level 65.

Three tree plots sit beside the crop patches, opening at Farming 15, 35 and 65. They take saplings rather than seeds, and they work the same way — plant, water if you like, come back and chop the tree down — but on a completely different clock: an oak takes 4 hours, a magic tree 12, and the payout is in thousands of experience and a stack of logs rather than a handful of crops. Oak, willow, maple, yew and magic saplings need Farming 15, 30, 45, 60 and 75 to plant, and there is nowhere to buy one for coins. They come from the Tithe Farm's shop, from the Master Farmer's pockets, and as drops from a few monsters — Bryophyta, Sarachnis, Zulrah, Venenatis, the Corrupted Gauntlet and, most often of all, Hespori.

Level 65 also opens the anima patch. Plant a Kronos or Attas seed there (Hespori drops both). It grows for 4 hours, then blooms for 48 hours before it withers. While a Kronos plant is in bloom, crops you plant grow 10% faster. While an Attas plant is in bloom, every harvest has a 50% chance of one extra crop and a 25% chance of two.

Hunter

While the Game page is open, small creatures called implings fly across the screen. Click one to catch it for Hunter experience and a jar.

• Rarer implings show up as your Hunter level rises.
• Sell a jar, or open it for a random reward: gold, seeds, a clue scroll or, from the rarest implings, a platinum token.
• Once the Magic butterfly net has dropped from Puro-Puro, you can pay it to catch them for you from the Puro-Puro lobby — 30 minutes, 2 hours or 6 hours at a time. It catches for the whole window, including while you are logged out, but an unwatched net only catches half as often. Buying again adds to the time you have left.

Woodcutting

Open the Skills page and pick a tree. Chopping takes the place of fighting: starting a tree leaves your boss, and you're back to fighting as soon as you pick a monster again. Like combat, it keeps going while you're offline, and it pauses the same way if you haven't visited in 24 hours.

• Each log gives Woodcutting experience. Logs sell in lots of 10.
• Higher levels chop faster, and so do better axes. Axes up to Rune are sold in the Equipment tab's shop. The best three aren't sold:
• The Dragon axe (level 61) drops from the Dagannoth Kings.
• The Infernal axe (level 61) is forged from a Dragon axe and a Smouldering stone from Cerberus. It chops faster than a Dragon axe, and while it has charges, 1 in 3 logs you cut burn straight away for half their usual Firemaking xp (only logs your Firemaking level can light). Each log uses one of its 5,000 charges. Once they're gone it chops like a Dragon axe until you recharge it with another Smouldering stone on the Woodcutting tab.
• The Crystal axe (level 71), the fastest, is forged from a Dragon axe and a Crystal tool seed from the Corrupted Gauntlet. It never runs out.
• Now and then a bird nest falls with a seed in it, and clue scrolls turn up too.
• The Beaver pet is found by chopping. The more experience you gain per hour, the sooner it turns up.

Thieving

Also on the Skills page: pick someone and pickpocket them. Like Woodcutting, it takes the place of fighting and carries on offline.

• Each success pays Thieving experience and coins. The Master Farmer drops a seed instead on 1 success in 10, usually a low-level one and rarely a herb seed — or, rarest of all, a tree sapling.
• A failed attempt stuns you for a few seconds. Your success rate climbs as your level passes the target's requirement.
• Clue scrolls turn up more often than from Woodcutting, and Rocky, the Thieving pet, is found here.

Firemaking

Also on the Skills page: pick a kind of log you've chopped and burn it. Like Woodcutting, it takes the place of fighting and carries on offline.

• Each burn uses one log from your bank and pays Firemaking experience. Better logs need a higher level and pay more.
• Burning is much quicker than chopping, so an hour of logs goes up in smoke in well under an hour. When that kind of log runs out, the fire goes out and you stand idle.
• Higher levels burn faster. Logs you burn can't be sold, so it's experience or coins: your choice.
• The Phoenix, the Firemaking pet, is found here. The more experience you gain per hour, the sooner it turns up.

Clue scrolls

About 1 kill in 150 drops a clue scroll. Work through its steps on the Clues page to open a casket of gold and farming seeds, often with platinum tokens too. The scroll hands them over one at a time: you only ever see the step you are on, and the next one appears when that one is done — so nothing counts towards a step you have not been given yet, and you never get the same kind of task twice in a row. There are four tiers that drop, from easy to elite, and you can work on one clue of each tier at the same time. The rate is the same off anything, but the tier is not: what you are killing decides which tiers it rolls between — goblins only ever give easy scrolls, and the endgame bosses give hard and elite — so the collection log lists each minion's tiers under its name. If a clue is taking too long you can abandon it, but you lose the scroll. Hold one scroll of each of those four tiers and you can combine them into a master clue: the hardest steps, the biggest casket and the only chance at the Bloodhound pet.

Platinum tokens

A second currency that gold can't buy. You spend them in the Platinum Shop on permanent upgrades and rare items. You get them from:

• The mimic: a rare chest monster that appears on the Game page. Hit it 30 times within a minute (it jumps somewhere new every hit) for 1–3 tokens and 500 Hunter experience.
• Clue caskets, rare Hunter jars and Fight Caves clears.

Your companion's crate: every couple of minutes, your companion on the Game page drops a crate. Click it within a few seconds for a free one-minute combat boost. If you're skilling when you click it, it boosts that skill for a minute instead: Woodcutting chops 10% faster, Firemaking burns 10% faster, and Thieving gives either half the chance of being stunned or double loot (50/50).

4. Playing with others

Group bosses

Multi-combat bosses and raids are better with company. Two things happen there:

• Rally bonus: each other player on the same task as you (and active in the last 15 minutes) lifts the skill you're using by 5%, for up to two of them — three players at a thing, and a 10% boost at the top. It works like a potion: at 10% a level-99 Strength swings as 108, and it stacks on top of any potion you have running. It counts at the multi-combat bosses and on the gathering skills, where anyone else chopping, pickpocketing or burning the same skill rallies you, whatever they're working on. The monster list shows how many people are at each boss.
• Expeditions: anyone can start a 24-hour expedition on one of these bosses. Everyone fighting it joins automatically. Hit the kill goal in time and everyone who did at least a tenth of it gets 40 bonus drop rolls at triple drop rates. It needs at least two players. You can call one expedition per day — the button counts down the time left until your next one — but you can join as many as other players call.

Chat

• The box under the kill counter shows your drops and the public chat. Type at the bottom to talk to everyone online.
• Click the 🙂 button for emoji, or type a shortcode like :fire: or :gz:. Faces like :) and <3 turn into emoji too.
• A filter replaces rude words with stars instead of blocking your message.
• A gold crown marks an administrator. Administrators can mute a player, which also removes their messages.

Leaderboards

The Leaderboard ranks players by skills, kill counts and collection log. On the Settings page, tap any monster name to see who has killed it the most.

5. Minigames

Minigames are the part of the game you actually play. You'll find them all on the Minigames page. In each one, the server replays your inputs to check the result, so what you see is what counts.

Every one of them ends on a result screen with two ways out: straight back in for another go, or out to the lobby. Going straight back in pays any entry fee again, exactly as the lobby would.

The Fight Caves

Needs

250 TzHaar-Ket kills

Costs

One Obsidian offering per run

Goal

Survive 16 waves and beat TzTok-Jad

Before each attack, a monster shows a coloured warning with a shrinking bar. Turn on the matching protection before the hit lands and it does no damage.

• Keys 1, 2, 3 protect from melee, ranged and magic. Press the same key again, or 0, to turn it off.
• Protection drains prayer every second it's on, and prayer never refills. Turn it on just for the hit, then straight off.
• You can only block one style at a time. When two monsters attack together, block the bigger hit and click the other monster to kill it first.
• There's no healing, so health lost on wave 1 is still gone when you reach Jad.
• When Jad is hurt, he calls four healers. Kill them fast.
• Better gear kills each wave faster, so there are fewer attacks to survive.

Offerings: buy one at the cave entrance for 400 tokkul. TzHaar-Ket drops 1–2 tokkul every kill, and sometimes an offering (1 in 500).

Rewards: every clear gives a Fire cape and a platinum token (two if you took no damage), with a 1 in 25 chance of a free offering. Throw a spare Fire cape into the lava for a 1 in 100 chance at the Tzrek-jad pet.

Obsidian: your first clear opens TzHaar-Ket's real drop table. From then on it drops Toktz-xil-ak (a sword that slashes and stabs, 1 in 600), Tzhaar-ket-om (a slow, heavy crush maul, 1 in 600) and Toktz-ket-xil (an obsidian kiteshield, 1 in 300). Before the clear those slots sit empty in your collection log — the TzHaar do not arm a stranger.

Puro-Puro

Needs

Hunter level 15

Costs

40 gp per Hunter level

Goal

Catch as many implings as you can in one minute

• Click an impling to catch it. The ring around your cursor shows how far your net reaches.
• The net needs a moment between swings, so aim carefully rather than clicking fast.
• Only implings at or below your Hunter level appear, and rarer ones move faster.

Rewards: Hunter experience and a jar for every catch. Catch 10 or more for a 1 in 40 chance of the Magic butterfly net (a quarter more reach). Any round has a 1 in 300 chance of the Baby chinchompa pet.

Hiring the net: once you own the Magic butterfly net, the lobby lets you set it loose on the implings that fly across the Game page — 30 minutes for 2,000 gp, 2 hours for 7,000 or 6 hours for 18,000. It catches them for you, same experience and same jars, and keeps going while you are logged out at half the rate. A second hire adds to the time you have left rather than replacing it.

Tithe Farm

Needs

Farming level 34

Costs

Free

Goal

Grow and pick as much fruit as you can in two minutes

• Click an empty plot to plant. Each plant grows in three stages and needs watering once per stage. A blue drop means it's dry.
• Miss a watering and the plant dies (blights). Leave ripe fruit too long and it rots.
• Your farmer walks to each plot you click, up to four clicks ahead. Walking takes time, so plan a route.
• Your can holds 8 waterings. Refill it at the barrel.

Rewards: Farming experience for each fruit, more for the higher-level seeds. Every 10 fruit also pays a seed, and better seeds come from the higher tiers. Pick 10 or more fruit for a 1 in 8 chance of a farmer's outfit piece (+2.5% Farming experience each) and a 1 in 30 chance of Gricoller's can, which never runs dry.

The farm shop: every fruit also banks one tithe point. The shop under the farm door is the only place they can be spent, and the only thing it sells is tree saplings for your tree plots — 30 points for an oak, 55 willow, 90 maple, 140 yew, 220 magic.

Barbarian Assault

Needs

Attack level 30

Costs

Free

Goal

Stop monsters reaching your gate, then kill the Queen

Monsters come down three lanes. Two calls at the top tell you what works right now:

• The attack call names the style that hurts fighters. Choose it with 1, 2, 3, then click a fighter.
• The bait call names the food that stops runners. Choose it with Q, W, E, then click a runner.
• Anything that doesn't match the call does nothing. Each call changes every 10 seconds and flashes when it does.
• A fighter at the gate hits you for 10. At 0 health the round ends.
• At 80 seconds the Penance Queen walks down the middle. She takes 20 hits of the called style. Kill her before she reaches the gate.

Rewards: every kill earns an honour point, and the Queen is worth 15. Spend them on the Fighter hat (500) and Fighter torso (1,000). Killing the Queen gives a 1 in 150 chance of her pet.

Mage Training Arena

Needs

Magic level 25

Costs

Free

Goal

Earn points in four one-minute puzzle rooms

Each room earns its own pizazz points, and each point also gives 30 Magic experience. Every action takes a moment, shown by the bar under the timer.

• Telekinetic Theatre: slide the statue onto the gold goal with the arrows or W A S D. It only stops at a pillar or wall. Fewer moves earn a bonus point. R resets it.
• Alchemists' Playground: search cupboards for items and turn the best-paying one into coins. Prices change every 12 seconds, and anything you're holding disappears. The cupboards follow a pattern.
• Enchanting Chamber: enchant shapes from the piles. The bonus shape is worth 4 times as much and changes every 8 seconds. Click a dragonstone when one appears.
• Creature Graveyard: grab bones, turn them into bananas and deposit them. Falling bones hurt you, so eat a banana to heal. If you're knocked out you keep only half your points.

Rewards: spend points from all four rooms on the Infinity robes, the Mage's book and the Master wand.

Rogues' Den

Needs

Thieving level 50

Costs

30 gp per Thieving level

Goal

Get through the maze to the chest inside thirty seconds

• Move a tile at a time with the arrow keys or W A S D (or the pad under the maze). Hold a direction to keep walking.
• You are on the tile you step onto from the moment you set off, so a vent that fires while you are walking in catches you.
• Flame vents, swinging blades and spike floors all flash before they fire, and each keeps its own rhythm. Guards pace one room each and never leave it.
• Getting caught is not the end of the run: you pick yourself up at the last doorway you came through, two seconds later. Only the clock can finish you.

Rewards: 200 Thieving experience for every doorway you get through, and reaching the chest pays 1,500 more plus 40 for every whole second still on the timer — with 500 on top if nothing laid a hand on you. Every clear then rolls 1 in 20 for each of the five pieces of rogue equipment you don't have yet, and 1 in 20 again for the lockpick, which cuts the time a failed pickpocket holds you by 40%. A clear can turn up two of them or none. Only the complete set doubles the coins and loot from every pickpocket you make anywhere in the game — four pieces of it do nothing. A clear also rolls 1 in 500 for Rocky, the Thieving pet, who can just as well turn up on a pickpocket.

6. The numbers, for the curious

You don't need any of this to play. It's here if you want to know exactly how a fight works. The game uses the real Old School RuneScape formulas.

• Kill time is the monster's health divided by your damage per second, plus a little time for walking and respawns.
• Every swing first checks whether it hits (your attack roll against the monster's defence), then rolls damage from 0 to your max hit.
• Swing speed comes from your weapon, for example 2.4 seconds for a scimitar.
• Combat experience is the real 4 per point of damage, times 6.
• Potion boosts use the real math: an Attack potion is +3 plus 10% of your level for 15 minutes; super potions are +5 plus 15%.

max hit = ⌊0.5 + (Strength + stance + 8) × (strength bonus + 64) ÷ 640⌋
accuracy = your attack roll vs (defence level + 9) × (defence bonus + 64)

The "Def" number shown for a monster is its average defence. Its real defence against each attack type is hidden until you discover it.

7. Words you'll see

KC

Kill count: how many times you've killed a monster.

gp

Gold pieces, the main currency.

xp

Experience. Enough of it raises a skill's level.

Max hit

The most damage one swing can do.

Accuracy

How likely a swing is to hit.

Dupes

Spare copies of an item you already own.

Green log

A monster whose collection log page is complete.

Multi-combat

A boss many players can fight together for a bonus.

Pet

A very rare drop. Each different one adds +1 to your max hit.

Tokkul

The Fight Caves currency, dropped by TzHaar-Ket.