Skills

From the RuneScape Wiki, the wiki for all things RuneScape

A player gaining a Level in a Skill.

A player using the Fishing skill.

Proof that a new skill is comming out

Skills are a player's abilities that may be developed throughout the game. Skills are trained by various repetitive actions that give experience in the skill, until enough experience is earned for the next level. Some skills allow players to cook, chop down trees, make fires, use magic, make runes, and so on. Some skills have "synergy," meaning that they can be used together. For example, logs obtained from Woodcutting can be used for Firemaking, and fires from Firemaking can be used for Cooking food, and food can be used to last longer while training Slayer. The higher your levels are the more armour you will have access to wear.

There are currently 24 skills in RuneScape. Members have access to them all, while free-to-play can only advance in 15 of them.

All skills but Hitpoints start out at level 1. Hitpoints start out at level 10. Players can advance a skill to level 99; after that, they can increase their experience up to 200,000,000 - but gain no more levels for doing so. A player's combat level begins at 3. The maximum combat level a member can reach is 138. Non-members can reach up to level 126. See the hiscores for the relative rankings of the different skills.

Skills can be temporarily boosted or lowered by using certain items or equipment, such as Capes of Accomplishment, beer, potions, and pies. The wild pie will boost your Slayer level, while other pies such as the Summer pie will temporarily raise your Agility level. These types of pies can be made using the Cooking skill (only some pies may raise your stats; pies such as Redberry or Meat pie only replenish your Hitpoints - technically, a stat). Refer to the Cooking skill guide for more information on pies.

If a player is in the top 2,000,000, and is of level 30 or greater, they will appear on the hiscores.

It has also been confirmed by Mod MMG that come the end of 2009 there will be a new skill introduced to RuneScape. Which skill this is, however, has not yet been announced.

[edit] Free to play skills

Free players have access to 15 skills.

	Attack	Allows players using melee weapons more accuracy per hit and increases their average damage per second. Generally, players with higher attack levels hit more often than players with lower attack levels. A higher attack level also allows you to wield better weapons.
	Strength	Allows players to deal more damage while using melee weapons and equip certain weapons. It also gives access to several agility shortcuts.
	Defence	Allows players to wear stronger armour and decrease their chance of being hit (a common misconception is that high Defence reduces damage taken).
	Ranged	Allows players to fight with missiles and projectiles from a distance. It, in conjunction with Strength, also gives access to various agility shortcuts.
	Prayer	Allows players to pray for assistance, such as combat ability boosts. Effects last until the player runs out of prayer points, or turns their prayers off.
	Magic	Allows players to cast spells, including teleportation. Reduces chance for magic-based attacks to hit you.
	Runecrafting	Allows players to make runes in special alters using tiaras or talismans, either for magic, experience or money making
	Hitpoints	Allows players to sustain more damage without dying. The Hitpoints is skill is basically your 'Health' limit.
	Crafting	Allows players to craft items from raw materials, from pottery to ranged armour, etc.
	Mining	Allows players to obtain ores and gems from rocks found in some specific places.
	Smithing	Allows players to smelt ores into bars and smith bars into armour and weapons.
	Fishing	Allows players to catch certain fish. The fish can then be cooked.
	Cooking	Allows players to cook food. The food can then be consumed to heal a player's Hitpoints. Some foods have special effects (for example, various members-only pies).
	Firemaking	Allows players to light fires on logs, lanterns, etc. Players could cook on these fires.
	Woodcutting	Allows players to cut down trees for logs, and to carve out canoes for transportation.The logs can then be made into a fire.

When you get a level up, it'll also show in the chat screen under the "All" and "Game" tabs. If you get to certain levels, also knowned as milestones, it will aso show up.

[edit] Member skills

Members have access to 9 other skills:

	Agility	Allows players to use shortcuts and increases the rate at which energy recharges. Certain equipment such as the Crystal bow also require agility to wear.
	Herblore	Allows players to clean grimy herbs and to make potions which can be used to boost/restore stats.
	Thieving	Allows players to steal from market stalls and chests and to pickpocket non-player characters. Thieving not only relies on the skill but if you have over 60 agility you have a 44% chance to successfully pickpocket the NPC.
	Fletching	Allows players to create projectiles (arrows, bolts) and bows which can be used for Ranged.
	Slayer	Allows players to kill certain monsters using tactics not used in normal combat.
	Farming	Allows players to grow plants (fruits, vegetables, herbs, trees, etc.) in certain patches accross RuneScape.
	Construction	Allows players to build a house and its contents such as chairs, tables, workshops, dungeon, etc.
	Hunter	Allows players to track, net, deadfall, snare, and trap animals, which may give materials useful for many other skills.
	Summoning	Allows players to summon familiars and pets to enhance gameplay in both combat and non-combat skills

[edit] Skills types

There are four types of skills in RuneScape: Combat, Resource, Production, and Character Development.

Combat: - These skills involve fighting in Combat.

Attack, Defence, Strength, Magic*, Ranged, Summoning**, Slayer***, Prayer, and Hitpoints

Resource: - These skills involve regular spawns.

Woodcutting, Mining, Fishing, Farming, and Hunter

Production: - These skills involve creating Resource items into other items.

Smithing, Cooking, Fletching, Firemaking, Crafting, Herblore, Runecrafting, and Construction.

Character Development: - These skills help with travel and making money.

Agility and Thieving.

* Magic could be a Production Skill because of Enchantment and Lunar Spells. It could also be a Character Development Skill because of Teleport Spells (a commonly used method of travel) and Alchemy Spells.

** Summoning familiars have a wide variety of abilities. Although most are designed to help with combat, several have gathering based abilities (not considered Resource because you don't take anything from the environment), others Production abilities, and others help with travelling, making them have Character Development abilities.

*** While Slayer is related to combat, it does not contribute to combat level.

[edit] Experience

Main article: Experience

[edit] Levels

The equation below calculates exactly the minimum experience needed for a given level:

Experience Required , where L = skill level

The above equation can be approximated with minimal rounding error as:

Approximate Experience Required , where L = skill level

This approximation can then be used to find the maximum additional experience required to level up:

Additional Experience Required to Level Up , where L = current level

[edit] Example

You want to find the experience that it would take to level up from 28 Strength to 29 Strength:

Additional Experience Required to Level Up

It takes 83 experience points to get from level 1 to 2 in any skill. Thus, it would take a maximum of 1207 experience points to get from level 28 to level 29.

[edit] Combat skills

To calculate the experience gain for combat skills, a simple equation can be used:

Experience earned = 4 x d

where d = damage dealt to an opponent

This equation does not work for some opponents such as random events which give significantly less experience.

A fairly new feature includes using sacred clay weapons and armour which then entitles the player to gain double experience for a certain period of time. When you use the mode controlled the experience is divided by 3.

[edit] Hitpoints

To calculate the experience gain for Hitpoints, another simple equation can be used:

Experience earned = 4/3 x d = 1.33 x d

where d = damage dealt to an opponent

Experience Boosters:

For certain skills, you can use Stealing Creation equipment to double your xp gained.

These skills are:

• Smithing/Construction - Sacred Clay Hammer
• Crafting - Sacred Clay Needle
• Melee/hitpoints - Sacred Clay Melee Armour
• Magic/hitpoints* - Sacred Clay Mage Armour
• Range/hitpoints - Sacred Clay Range Armour
• Woodcutting - Sacred Clay Hatchet
• Fletching - Sacred Clay Knife
• Hunting** - Sacred Clay Butterfly Net
• Mining - Sacred Clay Pickaxe
• Fishing - Sacred Clay Harpoon

-The Magic xp boost only works with Combat-related spells

-The Hunting boost only works with implings/butterflies

[edit] Skill release timeline

• All other skills have been in game since time of release.

[edit] New skill

• It is definite that there is a new skill coming to RuneScape, most likely in 2010.

• In the first question of a Q&A with Mark Gerhard in a Developer's Blog dated 6th August 2009, he confirmed that the new skill was available for all players, as since he was instated as CEO, he would give more updates to the free-version of the game, reiterating that the free-version is not a demo.

The image shows Mod MMG (Mark Gerhard, CEO) confirming that Sailing would not be a skill in the time of his career as CEO, but during a live Q&A session with Mark Gerhard (Mod MMG), he claims he was only joking, and possibly Sailing could in fact be a skill.

Quote from MMG in the live Q&A session on 6th July 2009:

Q)In your CC you allegedly said that Sailing will not become a skill while you're CEO, true? Thanks for taking the time to read

A)Hi Kaoru

I was only joking around about sailing, maybe there will be sailing maybe there won't be?

Jagex has also mentioned that the skill will be open to free players as well as members. Currently, very little is known about this unreleased skill.

• Also in the latest Q & A with Jagex a new question came out regarding the new skill of 2010:

Q) "Probably a question you saw coming - Can you shine anymore light on the new skill that's coming?"

A)Mod Mark: "Honestly, it’s not the Sailing skill. That was a crazy rumour based on a picture of a mage on a dock, who apparently is sailing a ship. He isn’t, and there is no Sailing skill. Interestingly, several of the team here at Jagex love sailing, so it did give us some cool ideas for the future. Oh, and the new skill is far better than sailing."

It is also revealed on the RuneScape official youtube channel, Mod Paul M gave a hint at the new skill. The only hint was that it started with a 'B'.

[edit] Gallery

The current skills screen, stretched to show all skills	The old skills screen, prior to 8 July 2009	The old skills screen, prior to 15 January 2008	The old skills screen, prior to 5 November 2007
The old skills screen, prior to 31 May 2006	The skills screen, following the release of RuneScape Classic beta was released and prior to 24 May 2001

[edit] See also

• Milestones
• Experience
• Level 99 skills
• Total level
• Cape of Accomplishment
• 200 million experience