Is it possible to play as a character who only does life-skills (cooking, fishing, etc) without having to do combat?

[Jinxxed]

I'm just curious if this game allows players to do things like cooking, harvesting, and crafting etc without having to be a fighter or mage. Like, could I actually just be a farmer and a chef and make enough gold to get stuff like a house or a mount and stuff?

Are there any quests for the various crafting and gathering skills? For example, in Black Desert Online, there are a bunch of quests revolving around fishing and cooking and other stuff like that.

I heard of this game when I was like 12 and now I'm an adult and haven't kept up with this game at all since. But I always knew about how there weren't any classes and you had to use skills to level them up. I know there's things like wood cutting and I've only seen videos of people punching cows, but no actual farming or anything. So I'm wondering just how much you can actually do without getting into combat.

[Flaming Ninja]

Yes

[Kitten with Guns]

Yes, several players and clans maintain the combat level 3 without leveling combat skills. Some players have rare accounts with the account level 1 from a transfer glitch between the first Runescape and Runescape2.
There are several helpful clans in the Runescape community that focus on "skiller" accounts like these.

[stalehand]

Yes you can but some of the better money makers are locked behind quests which will require combat. And completing quests can level your combat skills so make sure to check the rewards on the runescape wiki.

[MouEEyada]

Yes, you can definitely just be a guy who levels up all of his non-combat skills without having to raise your combat level. We call those "skillers". Do be careful though as having a low combat level will make enemies with higher levels more likely to attack you in certain areas. Say you want to mine the valuable ores found under Falador. You can...but there are Scorpions lurking about, and if your combat level is too low, they will attack you and interrupt your mining. If your combat level is significantly higher than theirs though, they will leave you alone. Just something to keep in mind.

[>]

There are lots of skills on RS like farming etc, but they're not that "profitable" although farming is a great skill, you need gold to train skills and buy things, some non combat skills can make you money such as archaeology and mining but not a lot. I would recommend "merching/flipping", the great thing about RS is the economy is totally player driven, every tradable item has a medium value and can be sold on the "grand exchange" for gold, there is often a margin between the price in which an item is sold and bought at which you can find out, and place buy offers in for cheap then sell them later for profit. It's like WOWs auction house but 1000x better and easier to make money from. Since all items ingame have a medium price they show as and these prices change due to supply and demand you can invest in items and sell them later on for a huge profit, for example when a game update is coming out you know is going to cause an item to rise. You can get a lot richer than people who kill bosses etc doing that

[Xautos]

Originally posted by Jinxxed:

Is it possible to play as a character who only does life-skills (cooking, fishing, etc) without having to do combat?

combat is part of it but if you are careful? yes, you don't need to get any combat skills. You could tag along with a group of like minded users and they offer you protection for a cut of whatever you make, so long as you get your goal in the end, it is reasonable, especially in dangerous places where mining rare materials are found for example.

[kitsch]

yes. ingame its known as a ''pure'' .you stay level 3 while just doing the skills.

many max players create pures for the challenge

[Osamaru]

Originally posted by Jinxxed:

I'm just curious if this game allows players to do things like cooking, harvesting, and crafting etc without having to be a fighter or mage. Like, could I actually just be a farmer and a chef and make enough gold to get stuff like a house or a mount and stuff?

Are there any quests for the various crafting and gathering skills? For example, in Black Desert Online, there are a bunch of quests revolving around fishing and cooking and other stuff like that.

I heard of this game when I was like 12 and now I'm an adult and haven't kept up with this game at all since. But I always knew about how there weren't any classes and you had to use skills to level them up. I know there's things like wood cutting and I've only seen videos of people punching cows, but no actual farming or anything. So I'm wondering just how much you can actually do without getting into combat.

Be aware though, There ARE Things that are locked behind Combat.

Or at least Quests that require combat. Many of the best Skiller areas are't accessable until you've compeleted a certain quest or quest chain. And in order to do those Quest chains, you might need levels in certain Combat skills.

That being said, once you've done the quests you need, you don't have to fight anything anymore.

The point is, while a Combat Level 3 skiller IS possible, and played by a good sized community, Its NOT optimal and you won't be able to see or do everything

[Aquasword480]

Originally posted by Osamaru:

Originally posted by Jinxxed:

I'm just curious if this game allows players to do things like cooking, harvesting, and crafting etc without having to be a fighter or mage. Like, could I actually just be a farmer and a chef and make enough gold to get stuff like a house or a mount and stuff?

Are there any quests for the various crafting and gathering skills? For example, in Black Desert Online, there are a bunch of quests revolving around fishing and cooking and other stuff like that.

I heard of this game when I was like 12 and now I'm an adult and haven't kept up with this game at all since. But I always knew about how there weren't any classes and you had to use skills to level them up. I know there's things like wood cutting and I've only seen videos of people punching cows, but no actual farming or anything. So I'm wondering just how much you can actually do without getting into combat.

Be aware though, There ARE Things that are locked behind Combat.

Or at least Quests that require combat. Many of the best Skiller areas are't accessable until you've compeleted a certain quest or quest chain. And in order to do those Quest chains, you might need levels in certain Combat skills.

That being said, once you've done the quests you need, you don't have to fight anything anymore.

The point is, while a Combat Level 3 skiller IS possible, and played by a good sized community, Its NOT optimal and you won't be able to see or do everything

This actually hasn't been true for a very long time, the best skilling areas I mean. I will try to make this not too long but here are some examples.

There is a quest needed to access Menaphos but that quest has zero requirements in stats or other quests, a lv3 player can do it and access the place immediately. The city of Menaphos is the best spot in the game to train fishing and woodcutting and a very solid place to train mining as well.

- For fishing you also have the deep sea fishing training hub which is where the most profitable fishing happening in addition to some of the equally best exp. Outside of that most fish can be gotten in other areas of the game that have no entry barrier and are still very convenient. The only place that has better fishing exp offers no potential for profit or cooking exp and that's Prifddinas which yeah does need a quest.

- For Woodcutting there are plenty of areas that have trees close to a bank if you don't want to use Menaphos to level. You also have wall ivy and vine covered idols which don't give profit but are also very good AFK Woodcutting exp. Ivy is almost exclusively in peaceful towns that have no entry and idols which used to only be in Karamja a hostile jungle, now are also located on the isle of Anachronia where everything is non-hostile to you regardless your level.

- For mining there are plenty of sites where you are safe to mine rock and still get good exp/profit. Once you get high enough to access the mining guild it will give you everything you need for a good while, menaphos can be a good way to achieve that. The best bane mine is and probably always will be arctic habitat mine which is an entirely safe area, you just have to run through rock crabs for a second or two to get there. Phasmite's second best spot is near Port Phasmatys and they removed the quest requirement to get into the Land of Morytania where Phasmatys is. IIRC if you choose to do archeology you can work around having to kill the ghoul with recoil rings now by using the Everlight Digsite teleport from it.

So that leaves necrite, anima, and shadow anima rocks. The best light animica and shadow animica isn't really convenient anywhere, but Anachronia has easy access ones with no hazards or hostile enemies, and no entry barrier. Necrite has no good spots period even if you do quests they are all terribly out of the way but necrite is also just not really good for exp or money compared to others so that's not a loss. The only notable area a skiller can lose out on is a slightly better light animica spot in the elf lands and then corrupt seren stones in Prifddinas which are just pure exp no profit.

I could go on but they've done a LOT to make being a skiller in RS3 both easier, lots of stripping away quest requirements that had a combat element and adding more areas accessible for pure skillers. It's also very profitable now as a skiller, not as profitable as say PvM against a really high end boss and getting a big money drop. But fishing, smithing, mining, etc... pretty much any non-combat skill has a was to generate a lot of good consistent profit. Smithing and mining especially due to the rework making them the only ways to get ores, metal bars, and smithable items above rune.

[Jinxxed]

Thanks everyone. I'm not sure if I'd be a "pure" skiller. I was wondering how deep it could go. In Black Desert, I was able to do all the life skills, but I still leveled up to make myself stronger and get more carry weight etc.

I think I'll give this game a shot when i get the time. What I'd most likely try to do is be some kind of archer or healer (assuming that's a thing in this game?) and then when I feel that I'm strong enough, just do life skills. In Black Desert, I was a ninja but once I reached the soft cap, I would mainly travel around gathering random ingredients to cook a bunch of different meals and tame horses while traveling and sell the horses. The problem with BDO though, is like many modern MMOs, it feels like a single player game lol.

[Xautos]

Originally posted by Jinxxed:

Thanks everyone. I'm not sure if I'd be a "pure" skiller. I was wondering how deep it could go. In Black Desert, I was able to do all the life skills, but I still leveled up to make myself stronger and get more carry weight etc.

I think I'll give this game a shot when i get the time. What I'd most likely try to do is be some kind of archer or healer (assuming that's a thing in this game?) and then when I feel that I'm strong enough, just do life skills. In Black Desert, I was a ninja but once I reached the soft cap, I would mainly travel around gathering random ingredients to cook a bunch of different meals and tame horses while traveling and sell the horses. The problem with BDO though, is like many modern MMOs, it feels like a single player game lol.

Archery is a combat skill.

[Aquasword480]

Originally posted by Jinxxed:

Thanks everyone. I'm not sure if I'd be a "pure" skiller. I was wondering how deep it could go. In Black Desert, I was able to do all the life skills, but I still leveled up to make myself stronger and get more carry weight etc.

I think I'll give this game a shot when i get the time. What I'd most likely try to do is be some kind of archer or healer (assuming that's a thing in this game?) and then when I feel that I'm strong enough, just do life skills. In Black Desert, I was a ninja but once I reached the soft cap, I would mainly travel around gathering random ingredients to cook a bunch of different meals and tame horses while traveling and sell the horses. The problem with BDO though, is like many modern MMOs, it feels like a single player game lol.

So runescape doesn't have classes you are encouraged to just switch between what you want/need as part of the sandbox style. There are three major combat styles you can focus in, it helps long term to focus on all 3 just for having more utility in content, but Range is one of those styles and you can be just a ranger if you want to.

There is no healer role in the game and not many ways to do that. The only way to heal another player is through the heal other spell, which saps your life to give it to them, and a few abilities. Most big healing is done through self heal using food and potions depending on the content. While there are number of things, such as the prayer called soul split, that heals you based on a percentage of the damage you deal. Since there are so many of those things a lot of people just heal themselves through dealing lots of damage to an enemy rapidly.

[Dark Gaia]

The game doesn't really have mounts, but yes, what your describing is a skiller, someone who avoids training combat and just focuses on skills like say Fishing, woodcutting, Mining, Smithing and so forth. A lot of quests in RS have a boss at some point but then there are also quests which don't have a boss at the end, generally quests that are easier to do.