written by: Tarquin


The wilderness can be a freakin scary place for those who aren’t sufficiently prepared. Hopefully, this guide will help you survive your forays into that dangerous area, and perhaps take a little of the “Run! Escape!” out of Runescape.

First of all, don’t take any more than three valuable items (including equipment) into the wilderness. Unless you have a skull over your head (attained by attacking a human player in the wilderness), you will keep your three most valuable items upon your death. If you have a high enough prayer level to use ‘Protect Items’, you can keep one extra item. Still this is a risk, because you may not have the time, or be alert enough, to pop this prayer on before you’re brutally slain. That’s a bad thing, by the way...

Now, when going into the wilderness, know the friggen heck where you’re going! If you have a specific goal (ie. getting to an item respawn or monster respawn), know how to go directly to the area, and how to get back. If you don’t dawdle, you will be significantly safer from threats of pkers and high-level monsters. Generally, you should try to start and end your journey from a spot that isn’t heavily trafficked (ie. not eastern Varrock...), and try to stay on one of the less-populated servers. Also, make sure to keep an eye on the level of wilderness you’re in, and keep tabs on what levels can attack you and what can’t. A very important thing to remember is to do all you can to stay out of multicombat zones if you’re carrying anything valuable (you‘ll see why later). Surviving pkers is 80% preparation - if you can eliminate the threat before you have to deal with it, then.. well.. yay!

Now, we’ll deal with how to survive a pker attack. This can be tricky, as many times there is nothing you can do but run fast and pray (out-of game type of praying). One effective way of escaping a pker attack is to attack any other sort of monster. As long as you’re not in a multicombat area, this will make the pker unable to attack you at all. That’s why it’s so important to stay out of multicombat areas, besides the fact that three or four high level pkers can group you and do roughly 7 billion damage to you in under a second. Once you’ve attacked a monster, you can start running, and get a several second headstart on the pker.

If you’re already in a multicombat area, or just in an area without any monsters, run for cover. Players that are running through forests or areas full of boulders won’t get stuck, but the pker trailing you with the attack command most likely will get stuck, and will stop completely once the computer recognizes that the target is out of range. Then, you’re home free, or have several seconds on a headstart.

When running from a pker, especially in the previous instance, it is probably best to log out when you can, and switch to a different server. If you successfully escape a pker, chances are he’ll come back after you holding a grudge.

*added by Snerlin: When going into the wilderness, it's always good to wear the right armor if you'll be wearing any at all. Dragon hide armor is excellent for the wilderness in that it protects you from both magic and ranging!

*also added by Snerlin: You don't necessarily need full dragonhide though. If you're going into the wildy to mercilessly slaughter poor innocent high-level monsters, you may want to bring a weapon of some sort. In this case, bring your favorite weapon in place of one part of your armor.

*also also added by Snerlin: If you get attacked by a pker and you have the protection prayer for their attack, USE IT! If you're being ranged, use Protect from Missiles! If you're being maged, use Protect from Magic! If you're being cut up into little bits by a fighter, use Protect from Melee! Hopefully your prayer points will last long enough to escape. If you don't have any more prayer points, you're in luck if you're just south of the bone yard, run for the chaos temple and restore your prayer there! If you're already being chased by an angry rabid mob of pkers, forget restoring your prayer there and run!!!

*also also also added by Snerlin: One of the best ways to survive the wilderness is to bring lots and lots of food! However, be sure to leave some space for any loot you pick up in the wildy.

Well, that’s currently all for the Wilderness survival guide. Nothing spectacular, but hopefully you’ve learned a little, enough tho lengthen your average wilderness life-span, at least.

-Tarquin