Special attacks

Some weapons in Old School RuneScape have special attacks available for them. There are many types of special attacks, from temporary boosts in stats, to strikes dealing extra damage. They are activated by the player by clicking on the special attack bar under the Combat Options interface. Hovering over the special attack bar will show a tooltip with the weapon's special attack's name and description.

Special attacks have an energy bar that is drained when you use the attack; this is drained of varying amounts according to which weapon is used. The special energy bar regenerates at a rate of 10% every 30 seconds, or five (5) minutes to regenerate from empty to full. The bar will not regenerate while a player is logged out, nor will it regenerate if a player has their bank window open. The special attack bar also does not regenerate on death or upon exiting the Clan Wars portal. However, the Elidinis Statuette at Nardah, a restoration pool or higher in player-owned houses, and exiting a Nightmare Zone dream fully restore special attack energy.

The energy bar is related to the player, not to the weapon - in other words, changing weapons does not change the special energy bar.

On PvP worlds or in the Wilderness, players are prevented from teleporting for a few seconds after using an offensive special attack in PvP combat. This is done to prevent players from using their special attack on a player and immediately teleporting away without consequence.

While players are the most common users of special attacks, NPCs are known to use them too. The stranger that may be encountered during Desert Treasure is capable of using his dragon dagger's special attack. He does not seem to be limited by a special attack bar and can even unleash consecutive special attacks per game tick.

Dragonfire
The dragonfire shield and dragonfire ward can discharge a fireball hitting around 25 damage at an opponent. It doesn't use any special attack energy, but the attack can only be used once the shield has cooled down every two minutes.

Ancient wyvern
The ancient wyvern shield can discharge an icy breath attack at an opponent. It doesn't use any special attack energy, but once the shield has been activated, there is a cooldown before the player can use it again.

Trivia

 * Previously, within the game itself, weapons did not have names for their special attacks, nor were their effects documented in game; they were only found in the discontinued on the RuneScape website. It was not until an update on 24 August 2017 that they were officially added in game after passing the poll question in Old School Content Poll 56: Quality of Life.
 * For weapons released after the release of Old School RuneScape, Jagex created their own special attack names, while adopting some that were already on this article.