Prayer is a slow and expensive skill to train just by the burial, offering or processing of bones; however, there are other ways to gain Prayer experience - without the use of bones or coins.
Prayer training table
- To see the cost efficiency and GP/XP of bones and ashes, see Calculator:Prayer/Bones
Type | Method | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
None | Oak | Teak | Cloth | Mahogany (or Cremation) |
Limestone | Marble | Gilded | Ectofuntus | |
Exp multiplier | |||||||||
1 | 2 | 2.1 | 2.25 | 2.5 | 2.75 | 3 | 3.5 | 4 | |
Impious ashes | 4 | 8 | 8.4 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 14 | 16 |
Normal bones | 4.5 | 9 | 9.45 | 10.125 | 11.25 | 12.375 | 13.5 | 15.75 | 18 |
Accursed ashes | 12.5 | 25 | 26.25 | 28.125 | 31.25 | 34.375 | 37.5 | 43.75 | 50 |
Big bones | 15 | 30 | 31.5 | 33.75 | 37.5 | 41.25 | 45 | 52.5 | 60 |
Babydragon bones | 30 | 60 | 63 | 67.5 | 75 | 82.5 | 90 | 105 | 120 |
Wyvern bones | 50 | 100 | 105 | 112.5 | 125 | 137.5 | 150 | 175 | 200 |
Infernal ashes | 62.5 | 125 | 131.25 | 140.625 | 156.25 | 171.875 | 187.5 | 218.75 | 250 |
Dragon bones | 72 | 144 | 151.2 | 162 | 180 | 198 | 216 | 252 | 288 |
Dagannoth bones | 125 | 250 | 262.5 | 281.25 | 312.5 | 343.75 | 375 | 437.5 | 500 |
Airut bones | 132.5 | 265 | 278.25 | 298.125 | 331.25 | 364.375 | 397.5 | 463.75 | 530 |
Ourg bones | 140 | 280 | 294 | 315 | 350 | 385 | 420 | 490 | 560 |
Adamant dragon bones | 144 | 288 | 302.4 | 324 | 360 | 396 | 432 | 504 | 576 |
Frost dragon bones | 180 | 360 | 378 | 405 | 450 | 495 | 540 | 630 | 720 |
Rune dragon bones | 190 | 380 | 399 | 427.5 | 475 | 522.5 | 570 | 665 | 760 |
Searing ashes | 200 | 400 | 420 | 450 | 500 | 550 | 600 | 700 | 800 |
Note: Some Prayer experience boosting items do boost prayer experience at Player-owned house Altars, but do not boost prayer experience at the Ectofuntus. This counts for the following:
- Any form of Bonus experience
- Clan avatar 3% or 6% skilling bonus
- First age outfit giving a 1% bonus xp per piece, as well as additional 1% for the complete set. (totaling in a 6% bonus)
- Brawling gloves (prayer)
- Auras: wisdom, prayer auras (all tiers of corruption, harmony and salvation) and certain time-limited auras (Festive aura (December only) and Enlightenment aura (June, July, August only))
- Perfect juju prayer potions 5% xp boost for 1 hour
Commonly used methods
Player-owned house
With the release of the player-owned altars, members have the option to build an altar to their respected Gods in their Chapel. This method provides an additional 100% to 250% increase of experience gained depending on the altar, with an additional 50% to 100% increase for lighting one or both burners. Prayer training in this form almost always involves using the highest boost; players gain 350% of normal experience when using a gilded altar with two incense burners lit (or 367.5% with the use of perfect juju prayer potions). If you cannot make a gilded altar yet it is recommended to use someone else's house
Items needed for this method:
- 2 clean marrentills - Used as incense for lighting the burners.
- Bones or demonic ashes - to use on the altar.
- Optional: Harmony/Salvation/Corruption Auras - 1%, 1.5%, 2%, 2.5% bonus xp depending on tier, small, but it saves a lot of money in the long run. Alternatively or in sequence use Wisdom aura, Festive aura, Enlightenment. Some of these might not work with ashes.
- Optional: Any pieces of the first age outfit that one may own - Each part gives a 1% experience bonus.
- The fastest way is to have runners, players who run to and from a bank to a house, hand you unnoted bones for noted bones, but they wouldn't be providing their services without any compensation so you will need to pay them for their services.
Lighting candles or torches in your altar will NOT provide any bonuses. Incense burners and marble burners both provide the highest bonus; the more expensive marble burners provide no further reward.
There are several methods to obtain additional bones after using them. The fastest options without much running is to use an equipped ring of duelling, amulet of glory, ring of kinship, or a TokKul-Zo to teleport to a bank, then teleport back to your house using a house teleport tablet or the teleport to house spell. An alternative way to teleport to a bank is to use an Amulet of glory mounted in a Quest hall, or a portal room. If your house is located in Yanille you could get back by teleporting to the lodestone. It is not recommended to run back and forth from the bank in Yanille as teleporting proves faster.
It is recommended to maximise the number of bones that you take with you. This can be done by using a Beast of burden, such as a War tortoise or Pack yak. When using a War tortoise, the burning time of the burners just about equals the time to offer all bones.
It is possible to use the gilded altar at another player's house. There are often several players hosting an open altar at Yanille and some may even offer free doses of perfect juju prayer potion, referred to colloquially as "sips". The official world for this is world 31. By moving their player-owned house to Yanille players are able to teleport directly to the house portal by changing their Teleport to House location to 'At portal' in the house options. With the introduction of vis wax, players can use quick-teleports in the Lodestone Network to quickly return to Yanille.
When a player offers a type of bone to an altar, all bones of the same type in the player's inventory will automatically be offered. Using the TokKul-Zo as a means of banking and with a War tortoise familiar for its extra capacity, a proficient player can achieve roughly 33 trips per hour (provided that the gilded altar is located immediately adjacent to the house portal), which translates to an hourly experience of approximately 374,220 using dragon bones, 727,650 using ourg bones and 935,550 using frost dragon bones. If players do not have access to the TokKul-Zo the next best option is to utilise a mounted amulet of glory to teleport to Shantay Pass.
Please note that You shouldn't decide what type of bones (or ashes) to use based on only the cost per hour or the total cost involved (please refer to the efficiency article for more information).
Calculations based on using POH altar and 1400 bones per hour.
Players who value their time below −642,353 per hour should use accursed ashes.
Players who value their time between −642,353 per hour and 6,393,164 per hour should use dragon bones.
Players who value their time between 6,393,164 per hour and Lua error: . per hour should use airut bones.
Players who value their time above Lua error: . per hour should use rune dragon bones.
There is currently no range in which any other type of bones or ashes are best to use although this may change and it is recommended to do your own research before deciding which bones to buy.
Chaos Altar
As of the Wilderness Improvements & Task Set update on August 8th 2016 the chaos altar now gives 350% increase for bones and ashes used on it. This puts it on par with using a Gilded altar in a POH. Located in level 12 multi-combat wilderness it is a method that does not come without its risks, the threat of PKers requires one to be alert and paying attention to the screen. It is recommended to bring a one click teleport in order to escape if need be.
Players can use Simon who is just on the other side of the temple walls to bank and restock on bones. Roughly 1,400 bones can be offered an hour without the need of a BoB using this method, this makes it about equal to using a pack yak in POH. With the use of any BoB will make it the fastest training method aside from using brawler gloves at the mage bank.
Players who have completed the hard Wilderness Tasks will be able to un-note bones from their inventory with Harrison who is located within steps of the Chaos Altar. Doing so will reduce time per run and increase the bones per hour to roughly 2000.
Note: The Chaos Altar only works if you are logged into a Members World. If you are logged into a Free World, RS will display "nothing interesting happens" in your chat log.
Ectofuntus
Another method is to worship the Ectofuntus. By doing so, the experience one would gain from burying the bones will be multiplied by four. An example would be for every dragon bone used in the 'worship', a player would receive 288 experience instead of 72. Although the process is slower than just burying the bones, the experience earned is far better than just by burying the bones. To make the use of the ectofuntus most efficiently, it is best to use ashes instead of bones because ashes do not need to be grinded first.
In comparison to using bones on a gilded altar, the Ectofuntus will give ~14% more experience per bone (though aura boosts and sixth age boosts don't work on Ectofuntus, potentially narrowing the gap), but it can be slower. However, it is considerably more time-consuming to obtain the Construction level necessary to build a gilded altar than it is to access the Ectofuntus for worshipping, especially if monetary considerations are made. However, many players will allow their gilded altar to be used by other players in the Open Gilded Altars world.
Bones method
In most cases it is more efficient to use the ashes method instead of the bones method.
Recommendations for the Ectofuntus method:
- Ectophial for teleportation to the Ectofuntus - requires completion of Ghosts Ahoy
- Max cape, TokKul-Zo, desert amulet 2, ring of kinship, Drakan's medallion, ring of duelling, games necklace or amulet of glory for quick banking
- Weight-reducing equipment, such as:
- Boots of lightness
- Spotted cape, spottier cape, wicked cape
- Penance gloves
- Agile top and agile legs
- Or alternatively wicked robe top and wicked legs
- Morytania legs 2 will allow a few teleports daily to the slime pit.
- No empty pots or buckets are required. An inventory with one Ectophial, a teleport item, and 13 bones or ashes and 13 empty slots is most efficient. Now filled bonemeal pots will be replace bones at the bonecrusher, and filled buckets are provided by the slime pool. These are returned to the Ectofuntus after use.
- Some prefer to make separate trips to grind bones, fill buckets and worship the Ectofuntus
- 58 Agility to utilise the slime shortcut
- A beast of burden familiar for trips to grind bones
To use the Ectofunctus to train Prayer, maximize the efficiency of each trip back and forth between the bank and the Ectofunctus:
- With an empty inventory, teleport to the Ectofunctus using the Ectophial.
- Go to the Slime Pool and collect an inventory full of Buckets of Slime.
- Teleport to a bank using the fastest means possible (for example, Burthorpe Lodestone Teleport).
- Deposit all Buckets of Slime into your bank.
- Withdraw 13 Buckets of Slime and 13 Bonemeal Pots.
- Teleport to the Ectofunctus using the Ectophial.
- Worship the Ectofunctus until your inventory is empty.
- Repeat steps 2-7 until there is at least as many Buckets of Slime in your bank as there are Bonemeal Pots.
- Collect Buckets of Slime and Bonemeal Pots at the bank and then use them at the Ectofunctus, until you have no Buckets of Slime or Bonemeal Pots left.
Ashes
An often overlooked but reasonably efficient prayer training method is to use infernal ashes at the Ectofuntus.
Using ashes instead of bones:
- Ashes do not need grinding, and thus saving time per trip.
- An inventory with an Ectophial and 13 ashes will allow the most ashes per trip.
- Using infernal ashes will give 3250 xp per trip, while using dragon bones will give 2592 per trip if you grind the bones at the same time as collecting buckets of slime.
Preparation:
- Withdraw 13 ashes and Ectophial.
- Teleport to Ectofuntus using Ectophial.
- Go down the trapdoor, take the agility shortcut if you can and go to the slimepit.
- Collect buckets of slime.
Training:
- Teleport to Ectofuntus using Ectophial.
- Worship the Ectofuntus.
- Go down the trapdoor.
- Collect buckets of slime.
- Teleport to bank.
- Withdraw 13 ashes (use a load-out to save time.)
- Repeat.
(The worship-slime-bank trip may seem reverse, but it only needs two teleports per trip.)
Types of bones to use
See the bone burial calculator for coins-per-experience-point analysis of bones using live data from the Grand Exchange Market Watch.
Big bones give 52.5 experience each when used on a gilded altar with both candles lit. They cost about 6.1 coins per prayer experience.
Babydragon bones are the most recommended to train prayer in P2P. Using them on a gilded altar costs 15.133333333333 coins per prayer experience, varying what the price of dragon bones are at the time. They give 105 experience each when used on a gilded altar. It takes 124,138 babydragon bones to go from 1-99 Prayer using a gilded altar. Although this is more expensive than using big bones, it is twice as fast, so depending on the market price it may be more efficient to use baby dragon bones and earn the extra cash needed in the time saved. Compared to big bones, using baby dragon bones saves 6.8 hours per million xp.
Dragon bones are most commonly used to train prayer in P2P. Using them on a gilded altar costs 8.4761904761905 coins per prayer experience, varying what the price of dragon bones are at the time. They give 252 experience each when used on a gilded altar. It takes 51,724 dragon bones to go from 1-99 Prayer using a gilded altar. Although this is more expensive than using big bones, it is about 5 times faster, so depending on the market price it may be more efficient to use dragon bones and earn the extra cash needed in the time saved. Compared to big bones, using dragon bones saves 16.39 hours per million xp, and costs an extra 4.6 gp per xp, so it is more efficient if the player can earn 281 thousand gold per hour.
Since they were released, infernal ashes have become a cheaper alternative to dragon bones offering almost the same experience rate. Compared to dragon bones, infernal ashes require 40 more minutes per million xp, and save -0.92 gp per xp, so they are more efficient unless the player can earn -1.41 million gold per hour. If used at the Ectofuntus, the ashes have the additional advantage of not needing to be ground.
Dagannoth bones give 437.5 experience each when used on a Gilded Altar, but cost 28 to 30 coins per prayer experience. Since this is much more expensive than dragon bones, dagannoth bones are rarely used. It takes around 34,000 dagannoth bones to reach 99 prayer using a Gilded altar.
Ourg bones are even more expensive than dagannoth bones and are even more rarely used.
Rune dragon bones are currently the most expensive bones, but also give far more experience than any other bone. Using the efficiency formula, it can be calculated that a player who can make over 7329k per hour should use Rune dragon bones on a gilded altar rather than dragon bones.
A list of some good monsters to obtain bones from:
Regular bones | Big bones | Baby dragon bones | Dragon bones | Wyvern bones | Dagannoth bones | Ourg bones | Frost dragon bones |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Most monsters | Giants | Baby dragons | Dragons | Skeletal wyverns | Dagannoths | Ourgs | Frost dragons |
Any Level | 28 and 42 | 48, 83 | 79, 83, 111, 131, 135, 152, 189, 227, 246, 276, and 304 | 198 (level 72 Slayer) | 303 | 624 | 166 (85 Dungeoneering required to access) |
However, collecting a large number of bones to use for prayer can take an extremely long time, and it is advised to buy your bones as in the time you save you could more than make the extra money you have spent back.
Alternative methods
The following methods are less effective than the ones above. They are not recommended for training prayer because they are slower, more expensive, impractical or complicated.
Completing quests
Members have the luxury of being able to breeze through the low prayer levels simply by completing quests.
Low-level quests
Some low-level quests that give prayer experience:
- Recruitment Drive (1,000 experience)
- Making History (1,000 experience)
- Restless Ghost (1,125 experience)
- Priest in Peril (1,406 experience)
- Mountain Daughter (2,000 experience)
- Ghosts Ahoy (2,400 experience)
- Rag and Bone Man (500 experience)
- Swept Away (10 bowls of goulash granting experience that is the same as your prayer level)
- One Piercing Note (Ability to make illuminated god books for 10,000 experience each, and retrieve a Holy Cithara for 50,000 experience once).
- The Death of Chivalry (Kick the gilded cabbage 30 times for 10,000 bonus experience, lamp for 60,000 exp)
Medium quests
- Rag and Bone Man wish list (5,000 experience)
- Spirits of the Elid (8,000 experience)
- Missing My Mummy (6,500 experience)
- Holy Grail (11,000 experience)
- Troll Stronghold (2x 10,000 experience from experience lamps; requires at least 30 Prayer)
High-level quests
- Nomad's Requiem (70 Zeal can be used to buy Prayer experience from Soul Wars)
- The Temple at Senntisten (10,000 experience, and potential extra 23,000 with experience lamp; requires at least 50 Prayer)
- Swan Song (10,000 experience)
- Plague's End (50,000 experience; requires at least 75 Prayer)
- The Void Stares Back (100,000 experience; requires at least 75 Prayer)
- Ritual of the Mahjarrat (240,000 experience; requires at least 72 Prayer)
- The World Wakes (250,000 experience; requires at least 80 Prayer and 100,000 experience; requires at least 90 Prayer)
- Blood Runs Deep (450,000 experience; requires at least 75 Prayer)
Burying bones
Collecting bones and burying them for experience is not recommended. A maximum of about 2700 bones can be buried per hour, giving 2/7 the experience they would give if used on a gilded altar. As it is possible to use well over (2/7) * (2700) = 770 bones per hour on a gilded altar, using bones on a gilded altar will give faster experience per hour than burying bones, and cost far less. At this rate it would take around 75–80 hours of this method to obtain 99 Prayer.
If you are training a different combat Skill, like slayer, using a bonecrusher to bury bones can be a good way to make experience on the side. It is not however a fast way by any means, it just means free experience.
Urns
Urns can be a good way to get some additional Prayer experience. Some urns, such as infernal urns, can be used to give extra experience to prayer when killing different types of demons. They gather ashes automatically when having them in your inventory and killing creatures that drop ashes. When full they can be teleported for bonus experience. There is an urn for each type of demonic ashes (impious, accursed and infernal) and each urn can be made with the Crafting skill. Good monsters to kill for ashes are:
- Abyssal demons (requires 85 Slayer)
- Nechryael (requires 80 Slayer)
- Lesser demons
- Black demons
- Imps
The different urns are:
- Impious urns give 120 prayer xp upon teleporting.
- Accursed urns give 375 prayer xp upon teleporting.
- Infernal urns give 1875 prayer xp upon teleporting.
Prayer brawling gloves
Prayer brawling gloves are a possible drop from killing revenants, the Chaos Elemental or from the rare drop table. Players using them in the wilderness will gain up to 4x the normal experience, depending on how deep into the Wilderness they are. However, this comes with the risk of dying and losing supplies (and possibly gloves). Theoretically, this would be the fastest method to obtain 99 prayer with a sufficient amount of gloves.
Brawling gloves can also be used outside the wilderness on a normal world to gain 150% experience (1.5x). This stacks with the gilded altar in a player-owned house. Ectofuntus is not affected by any boosts to experience.
Bonecrusher
This item automatically transfers dropped bones into prayer experience. Fighting green dragons with a Dragon Rider amulet equipped is a great way to use this item. This results in 144 Prayer experience per kill due to the Dragon Rider amulet's dragon bone experience boosting effect. The bonecrusher can be purchased from the rewards trader for 34,000 Dungeoneering tokens.
Another fairly effective method of getting Prayer experience with the bonecrusher is to use a dwarf multicannon in any area with blue dragons with a Dragon Rider amulet equipped. While this isn't particularly cost effective, it trains Prayer, Ranged and/or Defence at the same time and very quickly.
Alternatively, one may want to use bonecrushers on Slayer tasks, to get a slow but steady flow of experience while also getting combat experience, charms and potentially valuable drops.
There is also an equivalent item for ghost-like creatures called the Ectoplasmator or Attuned ectoplasmator, giving prayer experience upon killing ghastly creatures.
The following table has approximate xp/hr rates.
Monster | XP/Hour | Additional Info |
---|---|---|
Frost dragons with a Dragon Rider amulet equipped | ~108,000
300 kills |
Each kill with a Dragon Rider amulet equipped rewards 360 Prayer experience. |
Green/blue dragons with a Dragon Rider amulet equipped | ~36,000
250 kills |
Each kill with a Dragon Rider amulet equipped rewards 144 Prayer experience. |
Baby blue dragons | ~7,950
265 kills |
Each kill rewards 30 Prayer experience. |
Dagannoths | ~3,938
875 kills |
Several thousand cannonballs (~6,000-8,000) will be used, making this method not as cost effective. However, you can make some money off of seeds and possible clue rewards. Each kill rewards 4.5 Prayer experience. |
Hill giants, Moss giants, Ice giants, Ogres | ~3,000
200 kills |
Each kill rewards 15 Prayer experience. |
Armoured zombies | ~1,013
225 kills |
Each kill rewards 4.5 Prayer experience. |
Blessing spirit shields
As a last alternative, at level 85 Prayer players can bless spirit shields which gives 1,500 experience per shield. This requires a vial of holy elixir and a plain spirit shield. Provided the player has sufficient money to buy a large amount of shields and elixirs, this is by far the fastest method of training prayer.
Currently, the player gains a profit of 29,464 coins for every blessed spirit shield created. However, note that both blessed and normal spirit shields have a Grand Exchange buy limit of 1.
Cleansing crystals
With the release of the Hefin Clan in the elf city of Prifddinas, players can go to the Hefin Cathedral and purchase cleansing crystals from one of the Hefin monks inside. Each crystal costs 110,000 coins and will provide 9,800 experience, a cost of 11.22 coins per experience. Unlike with offering bones on a gilded altar or the Ectofuntus, players do not spend time running to and from a bank. Each crystal takes 2 minutes to use up, resulting in up to 294000 experience per hour without Voice of Seren nor other experience bonuses.
Timelocked methods
Nemi Forest
Each day a full run of Nemi Forest can be done to earn prayer xp. There is a dedicated Friend chat.
Skeletal horror
This method may be used after completing the second part of the Fur 'n' Seek quest. It involves fighting a reasonably powerful opponent once a week and gaining Prayer experience based on your level in Prayer and some Slayer experience as well. Unfortunately the difficulty of the skeletal horror means that for lower levelled players, the cost in food will be quite high, but for high level players this is a reasonably attractive option for a weekly bonus to your prayer training. The first time the horror is fought, it yields 7,000 Prayer and 10,000 Slayer experience. The skeletal horror can then be fought each week for several thousand Prayer and Slayer experience, with experience rewarded depending on one's levels in those skills.
God Statues
Once per month the player can build up to five statues paying tribute to one of five gods at five locations. Building the statue to the god that the locals of that area worship will grant the same exp in prayer as a medium exp lamp.
Jack of trades
Jack of trades is an excellent source of prayer experience once per day. It gives between 99 and 9703 experience depending on your current level, which can save you very large amounts of money if you have a high prayer level.
Penguin Hide and Seek
Penguins can be spotted for penguin points, which can be exchanged for experience in any skill. Some people choose to use this experience on prayer as prayer can be a very expensive skill. This method costs nothing and gives a somewhat decent amount of experience. This method gives more experience the higher a player's Prayer level is, which makes it a better option for high level players.
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