Soldiers either scaled walls with ladders or overran castle walls breached by tunnels, battering rams, or artillery. Sometimes they attacked two or three spots around the castle at once to surprise their foe or divide castle defenses, and sometimes they approached the wall hidden within a trench or tunnel.

Breaking into a medieval castle was an arduous process that involved a "toolbox" of brutal and ingenious siege tactics. The most direct method was "Scaling," using ladders to climb the walls, though this was often suicidal due to defenders raining down rocks and boiling liquids. "Battering" used massive iron-tipped rams to smash through the main gate, usually protected by a "tortoise" shield to keep the operators safe. Perhaps the most feared tactic was "Mining" or "Sapping," where engineers dug tunnels under the castle's foundation, propped them up with wooden beams, and then set the beams on fire to cause the walls above to collapse. For long-distance destruction, attackers used Trebuchets to hurl 300-pound boulders (or even diseased animal carcasses for biological warfare) over the battlements. If these methods failed, the most effective—and most common—tactic was the "Siege of Attrition," where attackers simply surrounded the castle and waited for months until the residents were forced to surrender due to starvation or thirst.