Hitpoint Basics

by: Latona

Hitpoints are basically the amount of health your character has on runescape. The more hitpoints you have the greater your chances of survival as you have slightly more time to get healing if you make a mistake. However, if you do not have any food to quickly replace lost hitpoints, then you can die very easily.

Players can check their current hitpoint level from the statistics panel or can see when they are in danger as there will be an energy bar above your characters head. The more red that is visible in this bar, the greater danger you are in.

Some players like to train when they are on low levels of health. Generally they will know the maximum damage a monster can inflict and ensure they stay at least higher than that level.

Healing during a fight will enable players to kill much higher level monsters. Food is the main source of healing in any fight. Most people will train with lobsters, although members may prefer to train using Shark or some other specialist food. Overall, the longer you can train against any monster the quicker you will gain experience as travelling to a bank normally takes some time. Over the course of time all the travelling will add time to your training schedule.

Players can also run away if they run too low on health. However, they should have auto-retaliate turned off if the monsters are agressive as you will automatically start attacking the monster when it hits you and this will slow your escape down considerably. The monster will follow you trying to attack, but if you make it away from their area you are generally safe.

Some slayer monsters require specific equipment to be worn or wielded to inflict any damage. If a player does not wear the correct slayer equipment and they fight a special slayer monster, they will not only lose hitpoints at a very quick rate but will find almost all other stats are reduced heavily as well. This can be extremely dangerous.

Hitpoints can also be lost if you are a member and are poisoned. If you dont monitor this you can easily die and lose equipment you are wearing and items that are in your inventory. If fighting in an area that has monsters who poison you the you should always have an anti-poison potion with you to remove the affects of poison. Over time the poison affect will wear off, but you will still need to ensure you have sufficient food to make certain you do not die in this manner.

Hitpoints may also be lost when your light source is extinguished on member servers. Many people have died as they lost their light source and took damage while in darkness. Members should aim to get their firemaking level high enough to be able to ignite a permanent light source so they will not be affected this way.

About the Author

Latona is a veteran runescape player and webmaster of this runescape help site as well as submitting several guides and articles including this Hitpoint Basics Guide.