Last Man Standing Guide + Tips [Work in Progress]

Work in progress, I finished the bulk of the written content, now I'm going to work on videos to show certains things.
Can't post links at the moment because my forum account is < 7 days old.

Important: This guide is not intended for mobile players, I have not tried pking on mobile and I cannot imagine being better on mobile than on a desktop.

Location: Ferox Enclave
Getting there

• Minigame teleports > Last Man Standing
  
• Ring of dueling > Ferox Enclave
  
• Waka canoe (57 Woodcutting)
  

Starting out
Hop to an LMS Competitive world: 390, 492 w:oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Last_Man_Standing#Official_worlds



Talk to Lisa and complete the mandatory tutorial

At this point you should go to the Supply chest and customize the positioning of your items as you like.

This is my setup, although you can choose whatever you like. Just drag items to place them. What I like about this one is i can click along a row for my switches. I also start out with range which is the strongest defensive setup which is nice if you're a little slow on the start or happen to be afking as you might live longer.

• 24 players spawn on the island and there is a 7 second countdown to drink potions and turn on prayers
  
• Unlimited prayer
  
• Unlimited run energy
  
• Loot crates can appear randomly on the map
  
• A safe area is announced
  

Upon killing another player

• Special attack, stats, health, and consumable supplies are restored
  
• Key is added to your inventory which can be opened on a chest for gear
  
• 20 Second timer before you can enter combat again
  
• Lethal fog closes in damaging players if they are caught in it
  
• Safe zone provides protection from fog
  

Keys
A Bloody key is received upon killing players or a Bloodier key if there is less than 5 players. Open and search a chest to receive one item from the Offensive table and another from the Defensive table. A bloodier key adds 4 extra possible items to the offensive table. (Mithril seeds are also possible loot).


Loot Crates

Looting a crate gives one random item from the key table, including the upgraded table.
They spawn randomly during the game and in a random position in a random area.

Learn the names of these areas as it helps for finding the crates and safe areas quickly.

Points

• Rule of thumb: 1 kill = 1 point
  
• w:oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Last_Man_Standing#Rewards Detailed points calculation
  

Fog
After 1 minute the safespot from the fog will be announced. REMEMBER the location, often you will be midfight and the fog creeps up on you and the arrow indicator pointing to the safe zone doesn't always work. Hence you need to know where to run. Sometimes players use fog by freezing their opponent and running out of it so their opponent takes fog damage.

Rewards
There is a huge rewards shop so I won't go into detail, you can see the rewards w:oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Justine%27s_stuff_for_the_Last_Shopper_Standing
For mains you can sort the rewards by GP/Point to see what is most profitable.
The blighted items can only be used in the wilderness.
Ironman often use LMS to get a Rune pouch. Ultimate Ironman can have spare points and buy a Looting bag after they die for 1 point.
LMS Wins are also tracked which unlock the different tiers of Victor capes.



Now I am by no means an expert but I believe I know enough to make a guide. I'll go over strategies for the game and then into pking strategies.

Gear
You want the best gear possible to stand the best chance of winning fights. When looting crates you need to be able to quickly know what loot to keep, replace, and drop. Here are my suggestions for every possible loot.
Items to drop:

• Dark bow/Dragon arrows (very slow attack delay and you lose defense bonus from shield slot)
  
• Mage's book (Only providdes +15 Magic accuracy and defense)
  
• Any barrows helmets (Feel free to ignore this, they provide roughly +20 defense in range and melee over helm of neitiznot but you lose +3 strength and some range and magic accuracy, keep them if you are slow at praying or often run out of food)
  

Offensive Upgrades:

• Armadyl crossbow -> Replaces Rune crossbow
  
• Armadyl Godsword -> Replaces whip, dragon defender, and dragon dagger. This weapon packs a solid special attack and melee poke
  
• Dragon claws -> Replaces dragon dagger, can also drop dragon defender if you have elder maul as well
  
• Elder maul > replaces whip, can drop dragon defender if you have a 2h spec weapon
  
• Ghrazi rapier > replaces whip
  
• Granite maul > Up to you, inaccurate and requires skill to use well, can replace dragon dagger and complement dragon claw or ags spec
  
• Heavy ballista and Dragon javelins > replaces rune crossbow (possibly armadyl crossbow as well), this is a slow weapon but faster than the dark bow and hits hard. Remember to drop your diamond bolts as well. I don't recommend keeping a crossbow and a ballista as you have to switch the ammo as well.
  
• Infernal cape > replace the imbued guthix cape or keep both infernal and switch as needed.
  
• Occult necklace > Extra item to switch, provides 10% magic damage and better magic accuracy, keep glory/fury for switches. Can also just drop this if you aren't comfortable with an extra item to switch.
  
• Kodai wand > replaces Ahrim's staff/Staff of the dead
  
• Staff of the dead -> replaces Ahrim's staff
  
• Seers ring (i) > replace berserking ring or extra switch (note it provides +8 magic defence as well as accuracy)
  
• Morrigan's javelins > replaces armadyl/rune crossbow (heavy ballista hits harder but no shield slot)
  
• Vesta's longsword > replaces all 1h melee poke weapons, note elder maul hits harder.
  
• Statius's warhammer > replaces whip, dragon dagger, ghrazi rapier, has good poke and spec. Claws/Ags are better special attacks.
  
• Zuriel's staff > replaces all magic weapons > note it has 10% increased ice spell accuracy and blood spells heal 50% more.
  

Defensive Upgrades:

• Ahrim's pieces > replace mystic
  
• Karil's leathertop -> replaces black d'hide body (note similar stats but +15 magic defense and worse melee defence)
  
• Amulet of fury > replaces Amulet of glory
  
• Melee/Ranged legs: Bandos tassets > Dharok's=Torag's > Verac's > Rune platelegs*
  
• Blessed spirit shield > replaces spirit shield
  
• Barrows helmets: Guthan's = Torag's > Verac's > Dharok's > Helm of neitiznot
  

* This is really subjective as they are stronger and weaker in different stats

Keybinding
Find the keybinding setting here

Set them up as you like. Important to have quick ways to get to Inventory, Spellbook, Prayer, and Combat options for special attack. If you don't know what these are they allow you to use the function keys F1 to F12 on your keyboard to open up different tabs.

Potions
Brew -> Super restore -> Ranging potion -> Super combat potion. Drink these at the start of lms and after every kill. Drink ranging and super combat again when stats get say 2 levels lower than the max boost.

Praying
Priorities

1. Focus on protecting from the correct prayer.
   
2. Attack them with a different style than what they are praying from
   
3. Use the correct offensive prayer to boost your accuracy and damage (one should be on at all times as well since it increases defence)
   

Keep prayer on at all times since it's unlimited. Note the protection only applies if the prayer is on the tick before the opponent performs the attack animation. Protection prayers do not increase your defence, they only reduce the damage by 40%.

Eating
Somewhere in that priority list above should be eating. You need to find the balance with this as I'm terrible at it. If you're very low health < 20 the number one priority is to eat some food, you'll get slapped easy enough at 20 hp regardless of having protection prayers on. If you're say around 40 hp, you should focus on getting protection prayers on in time before the hit and then eat, or just risk it and keep fighting. If you are really panicking the best way to heal is Saradomin brew -> Shark > Karambwan; you can consume all this in one tick to heal a lot of hitpoints, however the brew requires repoting again. You can also Shark > karambwan in one tick, but you will have a sizable delay before attacking again. Personally I've never been in a situation where I needed to brew > shark > karambwan and usually i just use karambwan combos when I'm low on sharks. Blood barrage also heals 25% of the hitpoints it deals and has a base maxhit of 31 whereas ice barrage is 32. So I recommend to use blood barrage if the other player is already frozen.

Switching
This is the hardest part of pking and requires a lot of practice and a good mouse. Touchpad pkers begone! Switching is just changing your gear to increase your chances. Primarily, you switch gear to increase your damage output, sometimes you switch gear to increase your defence against the opponent's attacks. Now to the first video in the guide!

First time I've watched a video of myself doing this and I did not realize I was that fast. I can't even tell what I'm doing watching it so doubt anyone else can either. Main things are using fkeys and clicking the right items to equip. You should be watching what the other player does as much as you can. Often I keep prayer tab open and hover over protection prayers ready to switch.

Running
Yes you read that right, I'm going to teach you how to run. Running can sometimes be a great distraction for your opponent, especially when they are trying to mage you as they need to select the spell and click on your each time. Humans make mistakes and mistakes are made more often when they are confused or there's a lot going on, running adds to that. Sometimes the player is far away and switches to melee, you can either promptly freeze them or run in the opposite direction to buy you time if you're not frozen. Ideally you should pray from melee though.

If you do land a freeze immediately switch prayer to range or mage since it's impossible for them to melee you (range is the quickest switch so most people go to range at this point).

Here's a glorious video where this player got destroyed because I was doing Formula1 around him.


Where you run to is important as well, e.g. running behind an object to buy you time. Here's a trick to run away and then run back to use an unexpected melee attack/spec (note some pkers expect this).
[Insert video here]
Note that people often need to change the zoom to see you, running far enough way and then back in can sometimes cause the other player not to even see what you're doing.

Attack distance
Detailed wiki article w:oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Attack_range
Magic spells can reach 10 squares while the rune crossbow can only reach 7 squares on rapid and 9 on longrange. Be aware of this as you can get frozen and not be able to reach the player with range anymore. This works both ways so you can try freezing someone and maging them 10 squares away. Note if you run too far away from them their freeze gets removed.

Tree hugging
It really sucks to be the victim of this. Involves freezing the player and then going behind an obstacle so they can't attack you. You then rapidly attack them and run back. This strategy works because it's challenging for the frozen player as they have the extra task of having to attack you again when you come out. I recommend using range gear and focusing on protecting from their attack, spam clicking them is easiest way to get a hit on them. If you didn't enjoy being the victim try and freeze them or move into an open area.

Standing underneath
Similar to Tree hugging, you can freeze players and then run underneath them. This is difficult trick to get good at (I'm terrible at it, but never practiced). You cannot see the gear of the player beneath you and it's also more difficult to tell their combat style. You can attack the player and then right click walk here under them to move back again. If this happens to you, use range or melee as then you can spam click them to attack when they move out. Players using this trick can also step out diagonally and then attack the player with range/mage to avoid getting hit with melee, but this requires an extra click. If your opponent does this trick often to you, it's a good idea to keep your distance and keep them frozen as much as possible. Either player can use the time they have underneath each other to heal up as well.



Faking
Sometimes you're fighting a really good pker and they are always protecting from you when you do switches. A trick that works here I call faking, where you switch to one style and then back to your old one or a different one quickly.
[Insert video here]

Miscellaneous tips

• Drop good unwanted gear in places where others won't find it (up ladders is great)
• If you have a ballista and get another one, keep the javelins so the ballista is useless to other players.

Conclusion
If you got this far through the guide congrats! Go out there and drop some noobs!

Ay dude, this is great! Thank you very much for the writeup. Seems like it should come in handy. I'm far from an expert myself, so I'll leave any critiques to the people that know what they're talking about

Cheers for the post! One thing you mentioned in your post that personally I've been using and has helped me the most, is using F keys. I even used the key re-mapping function on runelite and mapped the 4 most common switches (magic spell book, special attack, prayers, and inventory) to my QWER keys. Definitely adds for some better ergonomics IMO

I'd consider F-keys to be more or less essential for anyone making an entry into high-level combat in Runescape, whether it be PVM or PVP. Remapping can be useful as well, provided you're using a 3rd party client (which you should be, honestly). Can even set up the extra buttons on your mouse if you have them. Good call there.

I'd also recommend installing the PVP Performance Tracker using the Runelite Plugin Hub. Offers real-time stats that can help you see how you measure up against your opponent, and fight logs that you can refer back to later. https://github.com/Matsyir/pvp-performance-tracker/wiki

Syllabic wrote:I'd consider F-keys to be more or less essential for anyone making an entry into high-level combat in Runescape, whether it be PVM or PVP. Remapping can be useful as well, provided you're using a 3rd party client (which you should be, honestly). Can even set up the extra buttons on your mouse if you have them. Good call there.

I'd also recommend installing the PVP Performance Tracker using the Runelite Plugin Hub. Offers real-time stats that can help you see how you measure up against your opponent, and fight logs that you can refer back to later. https://github.com/Matsyir/pvp-performance-tracker/wiki

Thanks for mentioning setting up the extra buttons on a mouse... I never even thought of that. That's 2 more convenient buttons I can bind! Never knew about that plugin either, but I bet it would be cool to see those stats. I'd imagine it would give me more motivation to improve myself as well as others, especially when grinding out the rune pouch on my other account at LMS.