Wilderness/Survival guide

This article is about how to survive in the Wilderness. For information on monsters and how to deal with them, see PvM.

Located north of the kingdoms of Misthalin and Asgarnia, the Wilderness is a very large and potentially, a dangerous Player-versus-Player (or PVP) area. When opt-in to PvP, dying will cause a player to lose all of their items. This guide aims to help players to safely navigate their way around the dangers of the Wilderness.

Do NOT opt into PvP. If you have accidentally opt into PvP (like via Cursed Energy, Demonic Skull, etc.), then talk to Vala in Edgeville to opt out.

Wilderness levels and attack range

The Wilderness level is displayed in the top right corner of your screen. The level represents the potential combat level difference between players that can engage in combat. For example, a Wilderness level of 1 means the player can attack and be attacked by players within one combat level of their own. Note that carrying a Demonic skull, Cursed energy, Cursed memories, Hellfire bow, or Warband supplies allows the player to be attacked by any level player.

Teleportation

Most methods of teleportation do not work above Wilderness level 20. These items are recommended to use as a level 20-30 teleport:

Recommended level 20-30 teleportation methods

Item	Value or reclaim cost
Amulet of glory	11,272
Combat bracelet	10,485
Grand seed pod	76,602
Ring of life	3,509
Ring of Wealth	8,900
Skills necklace	10,417
Wilderness sword 4	100,000

Useful items and effects

Item or effect	Effect	Notes
Armour	Armour with high defence bonus will provide good protection against player-killers (or PKers). Royal dragonhide armour is a good and cheap option.
Shield	Any shield or shieldbow will allow you to use more defensive abilities.
Gorajian mushroom	Heals 10% of the player's maximum health, and for 10 seconds afterwards, damage in PvP is reduced by a flat 15%.	60 seconds cooldown.
Portent of restoration	Heals you when you drop below 50% health in combat.
Wilderness sword	Offers several teleports into the wilderness. Wilderness sword 4 allows teleportation from level 30 wilderness.
Hard Wilderness Tasks	Ability to choose your arrival destination when using Ancient Obelisks.
Enhanced Excalibur	Heals the player over time.	5 minute cooldown
Fury shark	Heals the player and grants the ability to protect one additional item for up to one minute after being consumed.	Player-killers may wait a minute for its effect to run out; bring more than one if relied upon. Stacks with Protect Item and/or Powder of item protection for a maximum of five items protected while unskulled or three if skulled.
Protect Item	Protect an additional item.	Stacks with Fury Shark and/or Powder of item protection for a maximum of five items protected while unskulled or three if skulled.
Powder of item protection	Protect an additional item for up to thirty minutes after being scattered.	Stacks with Fury Shark and/or Protect Item for a maximum of five items protected while unskulled or three if skulled.
Phoenix necklace	Automatically restores the wearer's life points by 30% of maximum if they drop below 20% of the maximum.	Destroyed after use.
Ring of life	Automatically teleport the wearer to their respawn point if they have less than 10% of their life points remaining.	Phoenix necklace is activated first. Destroyed after use.
Ogre flask (salt water)	Provides infinite run energy.
Stamina potion
Salt water bath
Globetrotter boots
Adrenaline potions	Gives 25% adrenaline, useful for getting to the adrenaline requirement for threshold or ultimate abilities.	120 seconds cooldown.
Beast of Burden	Allows the player to carry additional items.
Pack yak	Allows the player to carry additional items and its special move allows you to bank items at level 30 wilderness or below.	If used on a stack of items, it will only bank one.
Imp-in-a-box	Allows you to bank items at level 30 wilderness or below. Cannot be used while in combat.	Can bank stacks of items at once.
Committed perk	Allows the player to skull themselves to gain access to the Bandit camp.
Mobile perk	Halves the cooldown of Surge, Escape, Barge and Bladed Dive.
Disruption Shield	The next hit you receive from a player or NPC is negated.	60 seconds cooldown
Camouflage potion	When consumed, the potion removes the player's minimap dot for 1 minute.

Teleport Block

A player casting Teleport Block on another player.

Main article: Teleport Block

Teleport Block is a spell in RuneScape that requires a Magic level of 85 and can only be cast on another player. If successful, it will prevent that player from using almost all forms of teleportation (both through spellbooks and through enchanted items) for 5 minutes. If the cast is successful but the target had Protect from Magic or Deflect Magic active when it was cast, the spell will only last for 2 minutes and 30 seconds. The spell will also wear off upon leaving the Wilderness by any means.

The animation for teleport block is very small, spins quickly, and is dark purple so it is hard to see it in many places. Therefore, many players do not realise they have been teleport blocked, until they attempt to teleport. Players receive the message "A teleport block has been cast on you!" in their chatbox when they are hit with the teleport block spell.

Skulling

Main article: Skull (status) § PvP Skull

The PvP Skull (also known as the white skull) is a feature that appears when a player:

• Ask Vala in Edgeville to opt into PvP and enters Wilderness
• Attempt to harvest cursed wisps in the Wilderness Crater
• Enter the Wilderness carrying a Demonic skull, Divine-o-matic vacuum or cursed energy
• Loot from a Wilderness Warbands camp
• Wielding an augmented item with the committed perk added (currently disabled)

As soon as one of the methods above occurs, the skull will appear above their character. If a player dies with a skull in the Wilderness (and dungeons linked to the Wilderness, excluding the King Black Dragon's lair), they will drop all of their items upon death, unless a Protect Item mechanic is used (the prayer itself, scattering powder of item protection, or consuming a Fury shark), in which they keep their most valuable item with them, up to three items if they are combined.

Having a skull is required to:

• Attack other players who are opted into PvP
• Use the Hellfire bow
• Do Wilderness Warbands
• Harvest Cursed wisps
• Make the bandits at Wilderness Bandit Camp tolerant and access the camp's shop

Escape strategies

Escaping an enemy attacking you can be rather simple depending on the skill of the other player. Firstly you should enable protection prayers corresponding with the enemies attack style, this will ensure you take less damage while you're trying to get away. Be aware that the enemy can remove your over-head protections with Snipe, Havoc and Dragon Breath. After 3 seconds be sure to enable your prayers again to reduce the damage taken again.

While running away be sure to use Surge (or Bladed Dive with dual-wielded melee weapons) when it's off cooldown to put distance between you an the enemy player. Having the Mobile perk equipped on an augmented piece of gear will let you surge every 10 seconds instead of the default 20. Running between solid objects that players cannot attack through will give you time for you to leave combat and lobby or hop world.

Note that Mobile will not be as effective against melee attackers, as they also have access to Barge/Greater Barge, which acts as a pseudo-Mobile. They do not share a cooldown with Mobile/Escape/Bladed Dive, essentially allowing a melee attacker to cover twice as much space in the less than or the same amount of time as you would have from a single use of Surge or Bladed Dive, with or without Mobile. The best bet in this case is to hope to catch the attacker off-guard with a well-timed Surge/Bladed Dive and a bind.

If skulled, try to keep prayer as high as possible as the attacker is more inclined to use Smite or Soul Split, which drains prayer. Neglecting your prayer might cause you to get smited, losing your +1 item on death and adding substantial risk if you're risking more in the first place.

Threat Level

Following the 8 August 2022 update, players in the Wilderness regardless if PvP is enabled or not will have a passive threat level that builds up while doing any activity in the Wilderness. The threat level ranges from 0-10.

Regardless if the player opts in or out of PvP, whenever the player is in the Wilderness, a threat level will begin building up while being active or even idle. The threat level will increase based on the following:

• Spending time in the Wilderness (1 threat level per 10 minutes)
• Killing monsters in the Wilderness
• Gathering resources using Wilderness nodes

For combat, threat increases for every 4 monster kills. For skilling, threat increases vary depending on the skill being trained and the resource that is being gathered. For example, cutting bloodwood trees will increase threat for every 4 actions that provide a log, but hunting charming moths increases threat with every 14 catches. Additionally, threat is not increased for skilling in the Wilderness that does not involve the nodes directly. Cutting the logs from a bloodwood tree will generate threat, but fletching the logs gathered will not.

Threat is retained for as long as the player remains within the Wilderness and resets when leaving to a non-Wilderness zone or upon death. Areas that are in the Wilderness but are not considered such (e.g. the Corporeal Beast's cave, Mage arena bank, Spirit Realm) will reset the threat level. The threat level caps at level 10. Trail-be-gone and Trail-be-gone (max strength) reduces the threat level by 1 and all levels respectively when used.

As the threat level increases, the player takes and deals more damage (1% per threat level, up to a maximum of 10%), along with the Wilderness becoming more aggressive towards their presence. The Wilderness will lash out in two forms in any order and at any area that's considered the Wilderness:

• The main volcano will launch a shard (Ranged) or magical ember (Magic) towards the player. The damage and the frequency dealt based on the threat level. While the damage is hard typeless, successfully praying against the attack (or having volcanic protection) will significantly reduce incoming damage; prayer flicking does not appear to work. When it happens, it yields:
  • You sense the magical embers of the volcano, hurtling towards you. if it is in magic, along with a flaming ball.
  • You sense a shard of the volcano, shooting towards you like an arrow. if it is in ranged, along with a green projectile.

Note: Disruption shield does not negate the damage for either, and neither do other defensive abilities.

• Monsters will form flash mobs to ambush the player; a game message appears stating: The creatures of the Wilderness disapprove of your continued stay.... These monsters will initially be aggressive to the player they were intended for and spawn in the nearby vicinity around them, but will attack other players should the targeted player die, run far enough away, or if they are provoked by another player. The monsters will despawn roughly 30–45 seconds after appearing, regardless if they are in combat or not. Defeating the ambush will grant you their normal drop table in the Wilderness. The size and frequency of the ambushes depends on the threat level, but will always consist of the following monsters:
  • Revenants: Revenant demon, revenant ork, Revenant dark beast, Revenant knight, Revenant dragon
  • Slayer monsters: Onyx dragon, Hydrix dragon, Dragonstone dragon, Acheron mammoth, Abyssal savage, Abyssal beast, Abyssal lord
  • Demons: Lesser demon, Greater demon, Black demon, Hellhound, Greater demon berserker, Greater demon ash lord, Ripper Demon
  • Other: Black dragon

Players should run away if greater demon berserkers/ash lords and/or dragons spawn in the mix, since the former can deal very high damage (even more so with a high threat level), while dragons' dragonfire can be deal excessively high damage. If any revenants spawn in the group, it is up to the player's discretion to kill them for a chance at the Revenant Spirit or Statius's warhammer.

Using Trail-be-gone reduces the threat level by one. The max strength version removes all threat levels. Obsidian palmstones prevent the threat level from rising should actions result in it doing so. However, none of these are recommended to be brought or used, since the threats only pose a problem when not paying attention; an attentive player can easily minimise damage from threats.