OSRS Official Account Builds Guide: What You Need to Know
On the 10th of December, Jagex announced that they were working on official account builds and that they wanted to make an official way to self-impose more restrictions like how the ironman mode works. Builds involve self-imposed restrictions where you will choose not to level up specific skills, and Jagex has already officially introduced a few through the LMS minigame and PvP Arena minigame.
After their original statement regarding account builds, Jagex consulted the community and polled this change during the 20th of December and the 3rd of January period. However, the initial poll did not pass with a 68 percent vote.
This February, Jagex opened the discussion about official account builds again and hopes to find a solution to bring the official account builds to OSRS in a way that the community sees as a good implementation. This means that the official account builds will reach Old School RuneScape later. Still, Jagex is committed to bringing this change and making life easier for many players who choose to self-impose restrictions while making the option more accessible to others.
Table of Contents
Why Should I Choose A Different Build?
If you’re new, you’re probably wondering why players want to self-restrict after noticing that Jagex fully supports this decision. While the answer to this question can vary depending on who you ask, the answer will fall into either of these categories: players love the challenge or the advantages that specific builds bring. The first one is self-explanatory, as more restrictions equal a higher challenge, but when it comes to the other reason, it is closely linked with how the Wilderness and the combat levels work.
The Wilderness features a reasonable combat restriction where you will only be able to attack and be attacked by other players who have a similar combat level to yours. The deeper you go in the Wilderness, the wider the gap between your combat level and your opponent’s combat level can be. For this exact reason, players have designed ways to keep their combat level low while, at the same time, being deadly to opponents.
Builds can be best described as an artificial and legitimate manipulation of the combat level-based mechanics of the Wilderness PvP. That’s if we refer strictly to PvP builds, as there are a few other different builds that are created with different goals than PvP.
Non-PvP Builds
Main accounts
The first type of build is the main account build. This is the classic non-restrictive build where you’ll play however you like. It is generally great for players learning the game as it will give you room for exploration without worrying about certain restrictions. A maxed main account will reach 126 combat level with all combat skills at 99.
Ironman accounts
Ironman accounts are a variation of the main account and are not generally used for PvP. This is because ironman accounts restrict themselves from trading with other players. The ironman has three other variations: hardcore ironman – who, on top of being unable to trade, cannot die, or they will become a regular ironman. Ultimate ironman doesn’t have access to banks on top of not being able to trade, and group ironman can only trade within their group of a maximum of 5 players.
Skillers
Skillers are builds that are restricted from training combat skills. They are instead trophy accounts as leveling skills like slayer or completing quests and achievement diaries can be extremely difficult, if not straight-up impossible, without the combat skills.
Combat-Only Pures
This is the reverse of the skiller accounts and represents another trophy account generally built for PvM since you can only complete a few quests or achievement diaries.
PvP Builds
Attack Pures
Some PvP builds are built around the attack level. You can make a 1 attack pure, which will sacrifice your accuracy for maximum damage output. This is because the attack skill is linked to your accuracy, while your strength skill will directly influence how hard you hit or your maximum hit damage.
Defence Pures
These accounts sacrifice their resilience in combat for more accuracy and greater max hit. They are generally known as glass cannons and can hit hard but die quickly.
The most popular defence pure is the 1 defence pure, but there are some other defence-restricted builds, such as the 13-defence pure, who can do the nature spirit quest and wear some vital equipment such as the slayer helmet.
10 HP Pure
Another type of pure is the 10 HP pure, a handy build for PvP, which is hard to train as most combat activities will award you hp XP on top of the strength, attack, magic, or ranged XP. There are a few ways to train combat without training hp, such as using a dwarf multicannon for range or splashing for magic.
Why It Failed
Jagex’s proposal failed because it could make some builds less challenging. However, Jagex wants to make the necessary changes, and it opens up new community feedback to bring the official account builds to OSRS. Note that some of the builds will not be official. The official builds are supposed to prevent you from accidentally gaining XP in a skill where you don’t want to, rather than prevent you from gaining XP while allowing you to do otherwise restricted content.
