Free-to-play Prayer training

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See also: Pay-to-play Prayer training

Prayer is considered by some to be the hardest skill to train in free-to-play worlds, taking a lot of money or extreme patience.

There are few benefits to raising Prayer above level 48 in f2p. However, the higher your prayer level is, the longer you are able to sustain prayers and prayer potions restore more points. This can be very handy during player-killing and when fighting high-levelled monsters.

Overview

Prayer has by far the highest cost per experience point to level among all the free skills. Others can be quite quickly trained for less than 10 coins per xp, while the fastest Prayer method can cost more than 60.58 coins per xp. In addition, free players do not have access to much cheaper pay-to-play methods for levelling prayer such as gilded altars.

Unlike most skills, Prayer training is largely not limited by your Prayer level, but instead only by your ability to obtain the resources, e.g. dragon bones can be buried at level 1 as long as you could afford to buy them or kill dragons for them. This also means the same Prayer training methods can potentially be used from level 1 to 99.

Currently, the overall recommended method that balances cost and speed and requires little attention is to obtain the Cremation ability, then cremate big bones on a bonfire. See below for a detailed list of potential methods.

Beginners

Burying regular bones yield 4.5 experience each, costing 435 each if bought on the Grand Exchange. It is advised to bury every bone dropped from kills until you reach your desired level. Although it is slightly slower than training only combat, you save a lot of money in the long run than if you were to buy the bones and bury them.

The Restless Ghost

The Restless Ghost is a quest that gives 125 Prayer experience and 5 ancient bones which offer 200 experience each. This allows a player to raise Prayer from level 1 to 9 upon completion. It has no requirements and strongly recommended for beginners as it provides fairly substantial experience for relatively little effort (it should only take minutes to complete). Completing this quest is the equivalent of buying 250 bones and burying them, or 108,750 at current Grand Exchange prices.

If you completed the quest before the reward update, talk to Father Aereck and he will give you the bones. You can only get them once.

The Nexus

The Nexus is a one time Prayer activity located in the Lumbridge Swamp that can provide 37,224 Prayer experience, enough experience to go from level 1 to level 40. The activity can be slow, but it involves no combat and the experience is free.

Collecting bones

Having exhausted those options, players may wish to directly gather bones. Here is a list of locations where bones can be found:

• Boneyard

One of the best places for free-to-play players to train Prayer for free, even better than the Chaos Temple (Wilderness) as it has four big bones spawns and ten normal bones spawns. However, as it is in the Wilderness, there is the risk of player killers (albeit rarely) as well as the level 32 skeletons aggressive to players of any level. Turn off Auto Retaliate. Bring food and mage armour (e.g. spider silk equipment) if you want to train there indefinitely, but do not bring anything you are not willing to lose. Alternatively, since you do not have to risk anything, you could simply die and return (which takes about 1 minute once the Lodestone Network is activated at the Wilderness Crater) - a simple way to deal with player killers as well.

Focus on the big bones as they give a lot more xp. They respawn in about 20 seconds. If you are doing this correctly, you should be running in a circle (either clockwise or anti-clockwise) to gather the bones as they respawn. When you get 28 big bones, run out of the area and bury them. Use Protect from Melee, Steel Skin or other relevant defensive prayers to minimise damage taken. Whenever your prayer and/or health runs low, go south to recharge your prayer at the Chaos Temple's altar, and Simon south of the Temple acts as a bank, allowing you to withdraw food to heal.

Because a bank is fairly nearby, a more efficient long-term strategy is to bank all the bones you pick up, and later burn them once you obtain the Cremation (see that page for details) ability. Cremation allows you to burn bones on a bonfire anywhere for 250% the normal Prayer experience, plus 200% as Firemaking experience.

• Chaos temple

In the Wilderness level 12, it has 15 bones spawns. However, they take about 45 seconds to respawn (enough for you to pick them all up and repeat). Additionally, since big bones are cheaper per xp, it is more efficient simply to bank and sell bones, then buy big bones to train Prayer.

Killing monsters

Depending on the combat skills of a player, different monsters should be trained on. To maintain maximum Prayer XP/hour, monsters should, for the current ability of the player, be weak enough to be killed in one hit if it drops regular bones, and on average three hits if it drops big bones. To train as efficiently as possible, you should bury bones in between attacks to save time. It won't cause a delay on the next attack. Avoid waiting for your inventory to fill up before burying, otherwise you aren't burying at every opportunity. Once an enemy is killed, don't wait for the drops to appear but instead immediately move on to the next. Pick up any nearby bones that have already spawned, which you can also multi-task by doing in between attacks. Rinse and repeat.

Chickens

• Requirements
  1. None
• Advantages
  1. Any fighting method can be used because they are weak enough to be killed even at low levels.

Chickens are great for beginners and are very common and close to Lumbridge. Killing them is one of the most profitable activities in f2p (allowing you to buy big bones and cremate them to train more effectively), and killing them also gives you lots of bones for training Prayer. For more information, see Money making guide/Killing chickens.

Killing chickens and burying/cremating their bones is a relatively fast and completely safe way to train Prayer for Ironman Mode players, but for regular players, since bones are worth more than big bones which gives more xp, it is best to sell them to buy big bones to train with instead.

Hill giants

• Requirements
  1. Combat 50+
  2. Recommended: Brass key (to quickly access the dungeon)
  3. Recommended: level 50 Magic gear
  4. Recommended: 20 Dungeoneering (to enter the resource dungeon)
• Advantages
  1. Good drops
  2. Big bones
  3. Bones spawns
  4. Close to Grand Exchange
  5. Many safe spots
  6. Not very crowded (resource dungeon)
• Disadvantages
  1. May be crowded in Edgeville Dungeon
  2. They can hit relatively high and often depending on your defence, meaning food will be needed for the lower levels
  3. They have high life points

See also: Free-to-play Magic training

Hill giants in Edgeville Dungeon drop big bones, and two bone respawns are available there. Hill giants drop limpwurt roots which sell for 415 coins each. A brass key can be obtained by entering the dungeon from the Edgeville entrance. Hill giants are very popular training monsters, and as such, finding a hill giant to fight may be difficult. Another place is east of the Boneyard, several giants inhabit the place, and it is not very crowded but it is in the Wilderness.

Near the hill giants in Edgeville Dungeon is a resource dungeon that requires a Dungeoneering level of 20 to enter. There are four limpwurt root spawns in the dungeon and eleven hill giants. It is not as crowded as the Edgeville Dungeon.

Moss giants

• Requirements
  1. Combat 60+
  2. Recommended: partial completion of Dragon Slayer (to quickly access Crandor)
  3. Recommended: Melee
  4. Optional: Explorer's ring 3 or Explorer's ring 4 for fast bank deposit in Port Sarim
  5. Optional: Rune pickaxe
• Advantages
  1. Good drops
  2. Big bones
  3. Many safe spots
  4. Not very crowded (resource dungeon)
  5. Much less crowded spot than Hill giants (see above)
  6. Much easier spot than Ice giants (see below)
• Disadvantages
  1. They can hit relatively high and often, meaning food will be needed for the lower levels
  2. Aggressive, but they stop after 10 minutes or if player is over Combat level 103

See also: Free-to-play Melee training

The moss giants of the Isle of Crandor can be a bit of a challenge to reach the first time. The Dragon Slayer quest must be completed up to the point where you are standing outside Elvarg's Lair. You do not need to fight Elvarg, but merely need to run south (past the giant skeletons and lesser demons) and unlock the shortcut to the isle of Karamja. After this point, you can freely pass in either direction.

Ice giants

• Requirements
  1. Combat 70+
• Advantages
  1. Good drops
  2. Big bones
  3. Relatively uncrowded, especially compared to the Hill Giant and Moss Giant areas
• Disadvantages
  1. High combat level
  2. Distant from bank
  3. Has aggressive Ice warriors (level 57) nearby, which may prevent you from attacking the giants often

See also: Free-to-play Magic training

The ice giants of the Asgarnian Ice Dungeon can be a bit of a challenge for unprepared players, but can provide fair prayer training with excellent combat training simultaneously. Several mithril items are dropped, which can be low-alched/high-alched with the Explorer's ring if you have completed the Lumbridge and Draynor Tasks. There are also drops of several member-crafted runes such as nature runes and law runes, and large numbers of mind runes (20+ on a drop). Ice giants are accompanied by ice warriors, which do not drop bones and may be an annoyance. If you have a high enough defence and can remain in the Ice giant area for longer than about 4–5 minutes, the Ice warriors stop being aggressive and you can ignore them to concentrate on the Ice giants. Several spots to hide behind ice columns exist to attack ice giants with Ranged or Magic.

Green dragons

• Requirements
  1. Anti-dragon shield
  2. combat 63+
• Advantages
  1. Drops green dragonhide
  2. High prayer experience
  3. Rarely crowded
• Disadvantages
  1. In the Wilderness

Dragon bones grant high experience (72 xp per bone) and green dragons should only be fought by higher levelled players. Three are located northwest of the Black Knights' Fortress. Due to it being in level 12 of the Wilderness one may easily teleport out if they encounter a PKer. Food should be brought even if one uses Regenerate. There are no safe spots for rangers as the dragons can attack with melee or magic. Dragons attack only with melee when the player is adjacent to the dragon otherwise the dragon will attack with magic. Green dragons are non-aggressive. Picking up the green dragonhide left behind is also very profitable.

Demonic creatures

Demonic creatures such as lesser demons and imps will drop ashes which can be scattered for Prayer Experience. These will be impious ashes (from imps and fiends) and accursed ashes (lesser and greater demons). Scattering impious ashes will yield 4 Prayer experience and Accursed ashes will give 12.5 experience.

Impious and accursed urns automatically collect ashes as they are dropped from monsters, saving inventory space and giving extra Prayer experience when they are teleported. However, the urns will only fill when the monster is killed and the urn is in the inventory; players cannot use traded ashes to fill them.

Adding ashes to incense sticks

Adding ashes to incense sticks produces low amounts of prayer xp and some firemaking xp. Although not fast, this can be a profitable way of training prayer, dependent upon Grand Exchange prices. The profitability of this varies, the grand exchange sale price may not be accurate or you may not be able to sell some items, do not trust the listed profit/cost without double-checking them yourself first.

Level	Inputs	Outputs	Experience						Profit/Loss
			Per stick	Per hour	Per stick	Per hour	Total per stick	Total per hour	per experience	per experience	Total per experience	Total per hour
1	1x Wooden incense sticks 2x Impious ashes	1x Impious incense sticks	16	17,888	8	8,944	24	26,832	−50.75	−101.5	−33.83	−907,816
20	1x Oak incense sticks 2x Impious ashes	1x Impious oak incense sticks	24	26,832	10	11,180	34	38,012	−234.79	−563.5	−165.73	−6,299,930
30	1x Willow incense sticks 2x Impious ashes	1x Impious willow incense sticks	36	40,248	12	13,416	48	53,664	67.08	201.25	50.31	2,699,970
40	1x Maple incense sticks 2x Accursed ashes	1x Accursed maple incense sticks	54.2	60,595.6	20	22,360	74.2	82,955.6	53.4	144.7	39	3,235,492

Lamps

Completing the entire four-part Lumbridge Tasks award one-time lamps granting increasingly higher amounts of experience for any chosen skill(s). They grant 500, 1,000, 1,500, and 9,000 experience for the Beginner, Easy, Medium and Hard tasks, respectively. That is a total of 12,000 experience, however the Hard tasks (9,000 experience) requires 45 Prayer to finish. Players may also win small and medium prismatic lamps from daily Treasure Hunter keys. Considering that Prayer is one of the hardest skills, either expensive or time-consuming, to train in free-to-play, it is a common choice.

You can get Prayer experience rewards or Lamp experience rewards from the following free-to-play quests:

• Death Plateau - 3 x 100 experience reward lamps on completion. After the quest, you can make 5 supply runs to gain a total of 15 x 180 experience lamps. Supply runs require a combat level of 10 to 18, depending on how many you have done.
• Gunnar's Ground - 1 antique lamp (200 experience, Requires 5+ in the skill)
• Myths of the White Lands - 1 antique lamp (500 experience)
• The Restless Ghost - 125 Prayer experience, 5 ancient bones giving 200 Prayer experience each (Total of 1,125 Prayer experience)
• Stolen Hearts - 250 experience Combat XP lamp
• Swept Away - 10 sips of Goulash which give experience in a skill of your choice. Each sip is equal to Your Current Level X 10
• All quests also award you with 2 Treasure Hunter keys which give you chances to win small and medium prismatic lamps as well.
• You can get 2,375 experience from all the quests, excluding Swept Away. With Swept Away, you can get an additional 120-9,900 experience.

Dungeoneering

Dungeoneering provides a new method of training Prayer, though needing to train other skills as well. Almost all monsters in the dungeons drop some type of bones: regular bones, bat bones, big bones, dragon bones or even frost dragon bones if you are lucky. Players are advised to open the dark spirit doors and turn experience share on, since it will lead to stable experience. Bovimastyx should be all killed, as they give big bones. All types of bones found during Dungeoneering can be used on the altars within, granting 4 times the normal experience.

This may be especially worthwhile with big bones and dragon bones. To free up your inventory space, you can place bones on the table in the Smuggler's room without fear of them disappearing. However, if you drop bones on the floor, they will disappear after a while.

A list of free-to-play monsters which do not drop bones:

All floors

• Mysterious shade
• Ghost

Frozen floors

• Ice elemental
• Ice spider
• Icefiend

Abandoned floors

• Dungeon spider
• Animated pickaxe

Furnished floors

• Dungeon spider

Purchasing bones and/or ashes

Various bones and ashes can be bought and buried and scattered, respectively. It is possible to bury one bone and one ash every game tick or 0.6 seconds. At 14 bones and 14 ashes per inventory and about 1.2 seconds for banking, one inventory will take 9 seconds, for about 5,600 bones and 5,600 ashes per hour. To approach this theoretical limit, one should find a server with minimal lag, use a bank preset, and place the bones and ashes on the Action bar and keep clicking the two keybinds. If you prefer to hold the keybinds instead of clicking, it will take 1 more tick per inventory which results in 5,250 bones and 5,250 ashes per hour which is 6.25% slower.

This is overall the fastest method, but is almost always very expensive. Prices change and methods may need to adjust.

Methods

	Item	XP/Hour	Items for 1-99	Cost per item	Total for 1-99	GP/XP
	Dragon bones Accursed ashes	473,200	154,254	4,698 421	−789,626,226	60.58
	Dragon bones Impious ashes	425,600	171,506	4,698 3,412	−1,390,913,660	106.71
	Dragon bones	403,200	181,033	4,698	−850,493,034	65.25
	Baby dragon bones Accursed ashes	238,000	306,692	4,106 421	−1,388,394,684	106.52
	Baby dragon bones Impious ashes	190,400	383,366	4,106 3,412	−2,882,145,588	221.12
	Baby dragon bones	168,000	434,482	4,106	−1,783,983,092	136.87
	Big bones Accursed ashes	154,000	473,980	487 421	−430,373,840	33.02
	Big bones Impious ashes	106,400	686,023	487 3,412	−2,674,803,677	205.21
	Bones Accursed ashes	95,200	766,732	435 421	−656,322,592	50.35
	Big bones	84,000	868,963	487	−423,184,981	32.47
	Accursed ashes	70,000	1,042,755	421	−438,999,855	33.68
	Bones Impious ashes	47,600	1,533,463	435 3,412	−5,899,232,161	452.59
	Bones	25,000	2,896,541	435	−1,259,995,335	96.67
	Impious ashes	22,400	3,258,608	3,412	−11,118,370,496	853

Cremation

Cremation was released in the 2014 Halloween event and allows burning bones on a fire. Players can still obtain the cremation ability as a rare drop from ghost-like monsters. Doing so uses the bone and gives Prayer experience equal to 250% of the base experience, plus 200% of the base experience as Firemaking experience. Each bone takes three game ticks or 2.4 seconds to cremate. At 28 bones per inventory and about 1.2 seconds for banking after the last experience from the last bone is received, one inventory will take 66.6 seconds, for about 1,513 bones per hour. One cannot cremate ashes. The cost to level using cremation will be about 40% of the above numbers, and it is a lot less input intensive.

Each bone takes 1.8 seconds to burn with perfect clicking which takes 51 seconds per inventory including banking, results in burning 1,976 bones per hour which is 30.6% faster.

Methods

Item		XP/Hour	Items for 1-99	Cost per item	Total for 1-99	GP/XP
	Dragon bones	272,340	72,414	4,698	−340,200,972	26.1
	Baby dragon bones	113,513.514	173,793	4,106	−713,594,058	54.75
	Big bones	56,756.76	347,585	487	−169,273,895	12.99
	Bones	17,027.03	1,158,617	435	−503,998,395	38.67

Quests for Prayer experience

Quest	Members	Experience reward	Prayer requirement	Other requirements
One Piercing Note		250	N/A	N/A
The Death of Chivalry		250	N/A	N/A
Missing, Presumed Death		500	N/A	N/A
The Restless Ghost		1,125	N/A	N/A
Priest in Peril		1,406	N/A	N/A
Total		3,531

Bonus experience

One method of training prayer that is easy to overlook is bonus experience from fallen stars. Normally, free players cannot use bonus experience, but recently, they have been able to during Bonus XP Weekends, along with a 20% boost. The combined boost gives players 2.2 times the normal experience for various actions. These include burying bones and scattering ashes, but not cremation or lamps. The mechanics of Bonus XP Weekends are subject to change.

See also

• Prayer
• Prayer/Level up table