Yes, I stole the bone calculator, but with a particular purpose in mind. You'll notice that no matter what we come up with in terms of analyzing the efficiency of training the Prayer skill with bones of various kinds, the numbers always favor the cheaper bones, and you and I and any noob who can bury more than 3 kinds of bones all know that that's not how it's done -- you buy the best bones you have the budget for!

To be extreme, if I had a bank full of Santa Hats (I wish!), which would I buy to train Prayer as fast as I could, and especially with the least grinding and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome? The Frost Dragon Bones, of course! So why do our numbers say that I would be an idiot not to buy the normal bones? If I'm poor or lazy, or fresh out of Lumby, I kill, bury or buy whatever I can, and I'll be very glad for the XP anyway. But why buy a ton of normal bones just because they're cheap? A single million of gp buys me something like 10,000 bones! I'll die of old age before I grind them all, much less worship at the Ectofuntus! I can only buy 70 or so Frost Dragon bones, but at least I can use them! So how many normal bones would you take in trade for a FD bone? Away from the G.E.? Right there at the bone grinder or the altar? It'd take a lot, wouldn't it, if you agreed at all, at any price? You bet it would.

So my next question is, is this a product of how we analyze the prices, or is this the result of how Runescape prices are capped (until the 1st, and then we may see something else)? If these numbers don't make more sense sometime after the market caps come off, then we will have to assume the former, and I don't see the math that makes that work, not with the prices as they are. The price of bones reflects the standard "gopher" or "fetch" price of about 100 gp per item, but then that means that FD bones are severely under-priced, or so it would seem to me. Maybe the demand for bones that expensive isn't as high as I think it is? Possibly, but I don't see it. Let me know if you have any ideas, and we'll watch the G.E. in the meantime!

HOO-YAH!!

Training Points:

First Formula (gold): (XP X 10) - Price = 0 [give or take]

Second Formula (XP) : XP - (Price/10) = 0 [same]

The XP rate for Herblore, Construction, Summoning, and yes, maybe Prayer too, would obviously push higher, as there are fewer cheap ways to train these skills with any speed. Taking the first formula, we can then use the rather precise Efficiency formulas and the idea of value of time to figure out the best way to train a particular skill. (The only thing that bugs me about the Efficiency formulas is that they don't account for the value of XP, and only budget for gold. This leads to cheap but slow training, and missing out on higher incomes at greater skill levels. I harvest Coconuts with my Giant ent Familiar along, so I know that training skills on the cheap may be penny-wise, but seems to me rather pound-foolish. Sorry.)

For example, you could attempt to train Construction at the fastest rate that the XP tables allow, but this would cost a total of billions (or is it trillions???) of coins to do. As no one I know has that kind of earning power, this obviously is out. But given a certain rate of income / value of time, the best and fastest method should pop up in front of you and wave hi almost! So that's the progress I have now, and leave me a message if you see anything in this.

Thanks.

CalculationsEdit

Bone	Experience	Cost	Cost/XP	Cost/XP (Ectofuntus)	Cost/XP (POH)	Members-only?
Bones	4.5	90	20	5	5.92	No
Wolf bones	4.5	1,385	307.78	76.94	88.15	Yes
Burnt bones	4.5	558	124	31	35.64	No
Monkey bones	5	406	81.2	20.3	23.39	No
Bat bones	5.3	188	35.47	8.87	10.31	Yes
Big bones	15	441	29.4	7.35	8.46	No
Jogre bones	15	904	60.27	15.07	17.28	Yes
Zogre bones	22.5	685	30.44	7.61	8.74	Yes
Shaikahan bones	25	3,424	136.96	34.24	39.17	Yes
Babydragon bones	30	831	27.7	6.93	7.95	Yes
Wyvern bones	50	7,024	140.48	35.12	40.16	Yes
Dragon bones	72	2,187	30.38	7.59	8.69	Yes
Fayrg bones	84	6,433	76.58	19.15	21.89	Yes
Raurg bones	96	56,761	591.26	147.82	168.94	Yes
Dagannoth bones	125	7,036	56.29	14.07	16.09	Yes
Ourg bones	140	17,133	122.38	30.59	34.97	Yes
Ourg bones (General Graardor)	140	7,234	51.67	12.92	14.77	Yes
Frost dragon bones	180	10,498	58.32	14.58	16.67	Yes