Fun with math

Ever wonder why most people's Melee combat level is higher than Ranged or Magic combat level? Is it just because melee is more popular?

Well, you folks have played the game enough to get the feel for it and probably realize that it is just plain easier to get your melee combat level up.

Combat level has a couple of parts. One part (lets call it your "base") is computed from your HP, Def, and Prayer and is shared by all three types of combat level calculations. But the other part is figured a little differently.

For Melee the other part = 0.325 X (Attack level + Strength level)
For Ranged it's basically = 0.325 X ((Range lvl)/2 + Ranged level)
For Magic it's basically = 0.325 X ((magic lvl)/2 + magic level)

You see that ranged and magic are figured using the same sort of math but melee is different because it uses two skills (attack and strength) instead of just one.

Well, if you do the math for how many experience points it takes to reach different combat levels you will see something interesting. Let's ignore the base level (the part figured from Def, HP, and Pray) and just look at the second part and see how much exp it takes to reach different levels.

Non base . . . Mêlée exp . . Range or Magic
combat level. . needed . . . exp needed
10. . . . . . . . . . . 5 k. . . . . . . 5 k
20. . . . . . . . . . 28 k. . . . . . 41 k. . . . . . 1.5 times more
30. . . . . . . . . 136 k. . . . . 274 k. . . . . twice as much
40. . . . . . . . . 636 k. . . . 2421 k. . . . . almost 4 times more
48. . . . . . . . . 2 mill. . . . . 13 mill. . . . . 6.5 times more.
The higher you go the harder it is to get combat levels based on Range or Magic compared to getting the same combat levels in Melee.

48 is the most Ranged or Magic can contribute to total combat level but melee can go up to 64.

If you had a character with 99 in HP, Def, Pray, Attack & Strength then his combat level = 126
If you had a character with 99 in HP, Def, Pray & Ranged (or Magic) but low Attack and Str then combat level = 109