This guide is organised into sections based on skill levels. For example, if the section header is Levels 20 to 30, you should begin training at the area with an Attack and Strength level of at least 20. Defence is also preferred to be at that level, but is not always required. The solution to lower Defence is to bring more food, or use food that heals more.
Players should always use the best scimitar they can equip as scimitars offer the highest damage per second of any other type of free-to-play melee weapon due to their high speed and high strength bonus. Use the amulet of strength if it gives a higher max hit for your Strength level, otherwise use the amulet of power for more accuracy, defence, and especially if it provides the same maximum damage as the amulet of strength at certain Strength levels with certain attack styles. Use full melee armour sets against monsters that use melee, and ranged armour against monsters that use magic. A chainbody is more useful than a platebody against monsters that use crush.
As for boots, you may start off with fancy boots or fighting boots (both have same stats as members' bronze boots) that are awarded in the Stronghold of Security, or leather boots if you don't want to reclaim the stronghold boots when you die. The best-in-slot boots for melee combat is decorative boots (gold) for its melee defence and its +1 Strength bonus (same stats as members' adamant boots). However, the time it takes to obtain gold decorative boots (400 castle wars tickets) is not worth the time spent to train melee skills to 99 but if you quickly want more defence bonus over fancy or fighting boots to tank more hits, decorative boots (red) (same stats as members' steel boots) is a decent defence upgrade with +4 more defence bonus than fancy/fighting boots that can easily be obtained within a few Castle Wars matches (4 castle wars tickets) and with a bit more time put into Castle Wars, decorative boots (white) (same stats as members' mithril boots, 40 castle wars tickets) is a good defence upgrade with +3 more defence bonuses than red boots if you don't wish to spend a lot of time going for decorative boots (gold) for the gold boots' +1 Strength Bonus.
As for capes, all coloured capes, team capes, and the cabbage cape share the same defence bonus and are best-in-slot for free-to-play players. For gloves, gilded d'hide vambraces are best-in-slot but require 40 Ranged to equip and may be prohibitively expensive for some players. A cheaper alternative is green d'hide vambraces, otherwise the next best choice is leather vambraces or leather/coloured gloves depending on enemy attack style until 40 Ranged is achieved.
^Holy symbol provide no offensive bonuses but it provides a +8 Prayer bonus that is useful for using prayers for a longer period of time.
^The barronite mace is the best weapon to use against runecraftinggolems in the Ruins of Camdozaal, even better than the rune scimitar, due to its golembane effect. Otherwise this is the second best weapon against anything else.
^Leather gloves have greater crush defence than leather vambraces, equal to that of green d'hide vambraces.
^Decorative boots (gold) provide a +1 Strength bonus, equivalent to the adamant boots. It is the only piece of melee armour in free-to-play that provide a Strength bonus. No other pieces of free-to-play melee armour provide Strength or attack bonuses.
Rune scimitars offer the best damage per second (DPS) in free-to-play and is recommended to use for melee training from Level 40 Attack and all melee skill onwards so it is recommended to achieve Level 40 Attack as soon as possible. Training Attack slightly increases the attack accuracy of your hits. However, training Strength is important for increasing maximum damage which also increases damage per second.
To further increase damage per second, there are three free-to-play neck slot items that can provide attack and/or strength bonuses including amulet of accuracy, amulet of power, and amulet of strength. If the player cannot afford an amulet of power or if an ironman cannot acquire an amulet of strength ( 50 to craft a ruby amulet and 49 for Lvl-3 Enchant) or an amulet of power ( 70 to craft a diamond amulet and 57 for Lvl-4 Enchant), the amulet of accuracy from Imp Catcher is a weaker alternative to the amulet of power (without a strength bonus) until the player can acquire one of the other two amulets.
The skill to train first depends on the player's preference and a preferential example could be to keep melee skills (and Defence) within five or ten levels of each other while prioritizing one combat skill over the others. If the player wants to deal the most damage first, the player would prioritize training Strength until they achieve a new maximum hit for a different attack style to train the next combat skill with the amulet of power.
Strength levels 1 to 99
The following tables below will determine the maximum of damage certain weapons can inflict on enemies at certain attack styles with the following amulets at certain Strength levels so that you can determine which enchanted amulet you should use at certain Strength levels. The aggressive attack style adds an invisible +3 Strength level boost, the amulet of power adds a +6 Melee Strength bonus, and the amulet of strength adds a +10 Melee Strength bonus. Amulet of accuracy is not included in the table since it does not provide a strength bonus, and even though gold decorative boots from Castle Wars provide a Melee Strength bonus of +1 with higher defence bonuses than fighting boots/fancy boots, the amount of time it takes to acquire the boots (over 40 hours if winning Castle Wars every time to 400 castle wars tickets) is not worth the time to train Attack, Strength, and Defence to 99 and so the tables will not account for gold decorative boots' bonus.
Strength levels higher than 99 are strength boosts from the use of beer or strength potion. At level 99 Strength, a strength potion will temporarily boost strength up to 111.
The third best option would be the rune sword, or alternatively the rune mace at certain Strength levels depending on which amulet you use, both of which can be bought from the Champions' Guild. While rune longswords are stronger and more accurate than rune swords and rune maces, it is slower, resulting in a lower damage per second. Rune swords provide the third best melee damage per second in free-to-play and are good for ironmen to train with until a barronite mace or rune scimitar is obtained.
The maximum hit table below is for the rune sword.
Feathers are dropped in groups of 5-15 and are stackable, and can be sold for some profit.
Bones will drop frequently, allowing the player to train their Prayer as well.
Only 3 HP (12xp) per kill. Once you start hitting 4's with your Strength and weapon, chickens are no longer a good melee training monster but they are still good for training Prayer and collecting feathers.
No food required as you can ask monks to heal you for free.
Good training for 1 Defence pures.
15 HP (60xp) per kill plus more experience per kill if they heal themselves for 2 HP. Players can continue killing monks towards Level 20 melee skills.
Bring your best armour (chainbody recommended) and weapons. If food is needed, bring an axe and a tinderbox to kill nearby giant rats and cut down dead trees to cook their meat.
Advantages
Disadvantages
High HP (23 HP for 92 melee experience per kill), low defence, and they deal little damage.
Always drops big bones which can be sold for guaranteed profit (336) or used for Prayer experience while training.
Higher level Flesh Crawlers will quickly damage players, even if it is just 1 HP per hit as they have a very fast attack speed of 1.8 seconds per attack.
Not as profitable in free-to-play as other monsters around these levels. They are only profitable in member worlds.
Always aggressive towards players of all levels, making this a great afk training method at any level to 99 and beyond.
After aggression ends in 10 minutes, if the player is training among the giant spiders just north of the ladder upon entering the first room of giant spiders from the ladder, players can re-aggro them by running to the end of the corners of the room of giant spiders: Top-left corner of the room after the first 10 minutes, then top-right corner of the room after the next 10 minutes, then bottom-right corner of the room after the next 10 minutes, repeat. If this doesn't seem to work (as in if aggressive areas covers the entire room, usually due to random events teleporting the player), climbing up the ladder and climbing back down will reset aggression too.
Giant spiders can sometimes hit up to a maximum of 7 points of damage.
Unattended players could still possibly die before aggression ends. This happens less often at higher Defence but it's still possible. Hardcore ironmen, pay attention to your character at all times!
Suggested training methods for both experience and profit hybrid
Feathers are dropped in groups of 5-15 and are stackable, and can be sold for some profit or be used for fly fishing.
Bones will drop frequently, allowing the player to train their Prayer as well.
Only 3 HP (12xp) per kill. Once you start hitting 4's with your Strength and weapon, chickens are no longer a good melee training monster but they are still good for training Prayer and collecting feathers.
While uncommon, they drop beginner clue scrolls more often than men, women, and cows.
If Goblin Diplomacy has yet to be completed, the player could hold onto 3 goblin mails from killing goblins for that quest but goblin mails could also be found inside crates at Goblin Village.
Lumbridge is a common place for new players to train their combat skills and the area may be crowded.
While goblins do drop an assortment of items including coins, they only provide little profit.
They have a tendency to hit 1's on players with little defence and no armour.
Your best weapon and armour and 15+ Defence. Level 20 Fishing and Level 15 Cooking to catch and cook trout (and salmon at Level 30 Fishing and Level 25 Cooking) outside the stronghold with a fly fishing rod and feathers.
They uncommonly drop right skull halves, which can be used to build or recharge skull sceptres (+3 charges or more for each tier of the Varrock Diary completed) or be cut into bone fragments, which can either charge the skull sceptre (i) or be sold on the Grand Exchange for 650 each (1,950 per right skull halves, or 650 more for each tier of the Varrock Diary completed up to 4,550 with all tiers of the Varrock Diary completed).
Decent but cheap food like trout or salmon. Alternatively, you can buy kebabs for 1 gp each in Al Kharid. Also bring your best armour and weapons, because they can deal some damage.
Advantages
Disadvantages
Lots of warriors to fight.
Aggressive if one warrior is attacked — all nearby others will come and fight. This makes it easy to always be fighting something, which is advantageous at higher levels.
Bring your best armour and weapons, because they can deal some damage. While there are cooked meat in the mead hall, players could also fish and cook trout and salmon by River Lum east of Barbarian Village with a fly fishing rod and feathers (other players also often drop fish too).
Your best armour (chainbody recommended) and weapons, and some moderate-to-high-healing food
Advantages
Disadvantages
Decently high HP for level (35).
They have decent profitable drops for lower-level players such as limpwurt roots (531) and they have access to the gem drop table that rarely drop uncut gems.
Chance of dropping a giant key, which allows the player to fight Obor, who also has good drops and a chance of dropping the valuable hill giant club (1,102,895).
Your best armour (chainbody recommended) and weapons, and some moderate-to-high-healing food
Advantages
Disadvantages
A decent alternate monster of training your melee combat skills and profiting when hill giants are overcrowded.
Level 42 hobgoblins have high HP of 49 but they are stronger than their level 28 counterparts and are recommended to be fought at 40+ melee levels.
They have decent profitable drops for lower-level players as they very commonly drop limpwurt roots (531) and they have access to the gem drop table that rarely drop uncut gems.
They drop similar runes as hill giants do (except for death runes) but they don't drop them as often as hill giants.
They can be a bit rough and tough against lower levels, especially the Level 42 hobgoblins.
Chance of dropping a mossy key, which allows the player to fight Bryophyta, who also has good alchable drops. Additionally, Bryophyta can rarely drop its essence (11,812,578) which can be crafted into Bryophyta's staff (11,063,155) by bringing the essence and 50,000 to Zaff at his store in Varrock.
Always drops big bones which can be sold for guaranteed profit (336) or used for Prayer experience while training.
They common drop uncut gems. You could bring a chisel to cut them and high level alchemize emeralds and higher-tier gems rather than banking uncut gems for more experience per trip. Sapphires don't make much profit from high level alchemy, so they can optionally be dropped while saving nature runes for everything else.
Highly crowded in few areas.
Without praying or prayer flicking protection prayers, shamans and warriors can hit up to a maximum damage of 8 and quite often if your Defence is underleveled.
Must wait 10 minutes in an area to de-aggro ogresses in the area.
They uncommonly drop left skull halves, which can be used to build or recharge skull sceptres (+5 charges or more for each Varrock Diary tier completed) or be cut into bone fragments, which can either charge the skull sceptre (i) or be sold on the Grand Exchange for 650 each (3,250 per left skull halves, or 650 more for each tier of the Varrock Diary completed up to 5,850 with all tiers of the Varrock Diary completed).
Edgeville Monastery's altar (requires 31 Prayer to access the 1st floor[UK]2nd floor[US]) that is outside the stronghold is not too far away and restores over +2 Prayer.
Drops, while still okay, are not as amazing as ogresses' or greater demons' drops. At times, even the lesser demons' rune med helm rare drops profit more until all tiers of the Varrock Diary are completed in Members to maximize profit from left skull halves' bone fragments.
Less Prayer XP for their bones than killing ogresses or lesser demons.
Without praying or prayer flicking Protect from Melee, they can hit up to a maximum damage of 7 (level 75) or 8 (levels 82 or 86).
Rooms with skeletons in them will get in the way while the aggression timer is still going.
70+ Attack and Strength (lower levels may be fine too with better Attack/Strength prayers), high prayer level, no other equipment
Advantages
Disadvantages
Your prayer will gradually be restored in the Demonic Ruins. You'll never run out of prayer points with Burst of Strength + Clarity of Thought (or only one of the higher-tier prayers) and Protect from Melee constantly active. With the rune mace giving the player +4 prayer bonus and barronite mace +2 prayer bonus (while being slightly stronger), you may be able to step up to stronger offensive prayers while maintaining prayer but the rune mace is weaker than a rune scimitar.
Ignoring drops, this is also an afk training method.
Common hotspot for player killers. If you wish to bank your expensive drops, don't stay long.
If you don't plan on picking up drops, there is nothing much to worry about if you have Protect Item on as you won't lose anything from being PKed unless if the PKer baits you into attacking them first.
To continue training on greater demons, if your respawn point is in Lumbridge (Edgeville respawn is recommended), run across River Lum and up towards the farm house, grab a bronze axe, run back south towards the Lumbridge Canoe Station, and travel to the Wilderness (57 Woodcutting required). If you need a new set of monk's robes, they can be found on the 1st floor[UK]2nd floor[US] of the Edgeville Monastery.
Alternative accounts in Clan Wars
If you have a 1 Defence combat pure and high Hitpoints (80+ HP for example), stock them up with jugs of wine and attack them in the Free-For-All Clan Wars portal. This is the fastest combat training method in free-to-play when done efficiently. This training method is not recommended for players who have not yet made a one-Defence combat pure account and it wouldn't be worth the time training one up just for this training method alone. But it is recommended for alternate accounts created after a high HP one-Defence combat pure account.
Alternatively, wizard's mind bombs can reduce a character's Defence towards 0 Defence but Defence will regenerate by a point every 60 seconds.
50 to craft a ruby amulet and 
49 for Lvl-3 Enchant) or an amulet of power (
