Skills

For the Skills achievements, see Skills achievements.

"Level" redirects here. For the Invention mechanic, see Equipment level.

The Skills interface

A player levels up their Firemaking skill.

Gold trimmed level-up icon for members only skills.

Skills are a player's trainable abilities that may be levelled throughout their game play. Any given skill can be trained by various actions that relate to the skill. Performing any of these various actions grants the player experience in that skill. Using items such as experience lamps can increase a skill by a variable amount of experience points based on the player's skill selection.

Players may view another player's total skill level by right clicking them if they have their weapons sheathed. If their weapons are unsheathed, their combat level is shown instead. A player can toggle between showing their skill or combat level to other players by right-clicking the maximise/minimise button on the top-right of their action bar and selecting "Sheathe/Unsheathe Weapon".

Introduction

There are 29 skills available to train in RuneScape. Members have access to all 29 skills, while free-to-play players may only access 17 of these skills. However, free-to-play players can train the members' skills up to level 5, with the exception of the elite skill Invention, which can't be trained by free-to-play players, and Archaeology and Necromancy, which can be levelled up to 20. After reaching this level, no more experience is gained on a free-to-play world.

Certain skills may allow players to cook, chop down trees, make fires, use magic, craft runes, and so on. Some skills complement other skills. For example, logs obtained from Woodcutting can be used for Firemaking, and fires from Firemaking can be used for Cooking food. Food can then be used to replenish life points to help in combat, which can be used to kill NPCs that drop herbs, which may then be used for Herblore. Some Herblore potions may, for example, boost mining so players can mine ores to smith with, which may then be used to create nails. Nails can be used in Construction. A chapel may be constructed within one's player-owned house with this skill which can be used to further train Prayer. The higher the players level is in a given skill, the more resources the player will unlock from that skill to enhance game play.

Achieving higher levels in skills can give players various advantages, such as Agility shortcuts, faster cutting of wood, etc. Skills are often contrasted with money, some of which are profitable, and others which do not provide the player with any in game wealth whatsoever.

Training certain skills may be profitable, such as selling logs obtained from Woodcutting, selling the fish from the Fishing skill, or selling the drops from a Slayer assignment. Refer to the Money-making guide for more details. Conversely, other skills may not be profitable. While some skills may be less profitable than others, the main cause of loss of profit is through a lack of the player acquiring their own materials.

All skills start out at level 1, with the exception of Constitution, which starts out at level 10, giving the player an early advantage against monsters. Players can advance most skills up to level 99. Mining, Smithing, Woodcutting, Fletching, Firemaking, Runecrafting, and Crafting can be trained up to level 110, and Dungeoneering, Invention, Slayer, Herblore, Farming, Archaeology, Necromancy, Attack, Strength, Ranged and Magic up to level 120. After reaching the highest level for a skill, players can increase their experience up to 200 million, but gain no more levels for doing so. A player's combat level, calculated based on combat-related skills, begins at level 3. The maximum combat level a player can reach is level 152. A player will appear on the hiscores if they are in the top 2,000,000 players of a skill, and are level 15 or greater in that skill.

Every skill has a unique jingle that plays when the skill is levelled up. This jingle changes with each skill to be slightly more complex whenever the skill reaches level 50.

Skills can be temporarily boosted or lowered by using certain items or equipment, such as Capes of Accomplishment, beer, potions, pies, or a summoning familiar if the player is a member.

List of skills

Free-to-play skills

Free players can train up to the maximum level in 17 skills.

Skill		Description	Max level
	Attack	Improves the hit chance in melee combat, allows the use of more powerful melee weapons, and grants access to Attack abilities.	120
	Constitution	Increases the maximum amount of life points, unlocks several Constitution abilities.	99
	Mining	Allows players to obtain ores and gems from rocks, for use in skills such as Smithing, Crafting and Invention, or to be sold. Higher levels allow rarer, more valuable types of ore to be mined.	110
	Strength	Improves the maximum potential damage in melee combat, increasing the amount of damage caused, and grants access to Strength abilities. Higher Strength is also a requirement to wield some melee weapons and access to some shortcuts.	120
	Smithing	Allows metallic bars and items to be made from ores. Higher levels allow better items to be made from higher-level materials.	110
	Defence	Reduces the hit chance of opponents' attacks and damage taken from all combat classes, allows stronger armour to be equipped, and grants access to Defence abilities.	99
	Fishing	Allows fish – one of the main sources of food – to be retrieved from fishing spots. Higher levels allow more types of fish to be caught.	99
	Ranged	Increases the hit chance of ranged attacks such as bows, thrown weapons and crossbows, allows the usage of better ranged weapons and armour, and grants access to Ranged abilities. Higher Ranged is also a requirement to access to some shortcuts.	120
	Cooking	Allows fish and other food to be cooked on a fire or range. Higher levels allow better foods (that heal more life points) to be prepared.	99
	Prayer	Grants access to prayers and Ancient Curses, which are useful in many areas of the game. Levelling unlocks new prayers, and allows prayers to stay active for longer. Higher Prayer is also a requirement to equip some armour, for example god robe outfits, spirit shields, and repair or bless gravestones.	99
	Crafting	Allows the creation of a wide range of items such as jewellery, leather armour and battlestaves. Higher levels allow more items to be crafted.	110
	Firemaking	Allows fires to be built and incense sticks to be crafted from logs. Higher levels allow more types of logs to be burnt and more types of incense sticks to be crafted.	110
	Magic	Increases the hit chance of magic attacks, and grants access to Magic abilities. Allows more spells and better magical weapons and armour to be used.	120
	Fletching	Allows the creation of bows, arrows, bolts and crossbows from logs. Higher levels allow more advanced items to be made.	110
	Woodcutting	Allows trees to be cut down, producing logs for Fletching, Firemaking and Construction. Higher levels allow more types of trees to be cut down, yielding better logs.	110
	Runecrafting	Allows the creation of runes for use in spells. Higher levels allow more rune types to be made, as well as multiple runes per essence.	110
	Dungeoneering	Allows exploration of the randomly generated dungeons of Daemonheim. Higher levels allow deeper floors, more resource dungeons, and rewards to be accessed.	120

Member skills

Skill tooltip in game indicating a user has hit the level cap for a member's skill on a f2p server.

Members have access to 12 additional skills for a total of 29.

Free-to-play players are only able to train these skills to level 5, with the exception of Archaeology and Necromancy which can be levelled up to 20. Invention is inaccessible to free-to-play players due to its level 80 Divination requirement and will thus remain at level 1. No experience can be gained by free players after the level cap, including via rewards such as experience lamps.

Skill		Description	Max level
	Agility	Improves run energy regeneration rate, allows access to shortcuts around the world, and grants access to Agility abilities. Higher levels allow the possilility of multiple loot from Thieving, Fishing, and Hunter.	99
	Herblore	Allows the creation of potions from herbs, used to temporarily bestow a variety of different effects. Higher levels create more potent potions.	120
	Thieving	Allows the player to steal from non-player characters and stalls, disarm traps and pick locks and open certain locked doors and chests. Higher levels reduce failure rate and open up more lucrative targets.	120
	Slayer	Allows otherwise-resilient monsters to be damaged, often using specialist equipment. Higher levels allow more powerful monsters to be slain.	120
	Farming	Allows crops to be grown on farming patches for use in other skills, notably herbs for Herblore. Higher levels allow more crop types to be grown.	120
	Construction	Allows the creation and improvement of a player-owned house. Higher levels allow the creation of more furniture and rooms.	99
	Hunter	Allows the trapping of various wild creatures using different methods. Higher levels allow more types of creatures to be caught.	110
	Summoning	Allows familiars to be summoned, which help in combat and other activities. Higher levels allow more powerful familiars to be summoned.	99
	Divination	Gather the scattered divine energy and weave it into powerful portents, signs, and divine locations.	99
	Invention	Disassemble items in order to break them down into materials used in creating new devices and machines and customising the gear with cutting-edge augmentations. Invention is an Elite skill, and requires 80 in Smithing, Crafting and Divination to begin training.	120
	Archaeology	Uncover and repair artefacts that grants access to Ancient Summoning, Ancient Invention and relic powers that offer passive benefits.	120
	Necromancy	Allows access to Necromancy abilities including conjuring powerful spirits and incantations to assist the players in combat. Perform rituals to gain more talents and materials to craft necromancy weapons and armour.	120

Skill types

There are four types of skills: Combat, Gathering, Artisan, and Support. Players can earn expert capes of accomplishment by obtaining level 99 in all the skills of a particular type.

Invention is not included in any of the four types of skills.

Type	Description	Skills	Expert cape	Experience-boosting Relic power
Combat	These skills involve fighting in Combat.	Attack, Constitution, Defence, Magic, Necromancy, Prayer, Ranged, Strength, and Summoning.	Combatant's cape	Inspire Awe
Artisan	These skills involve using resource items to create other, generally more useful items.	Construction, Cooking, Crafting, Firemaking, Fletching, Herblore, Runecrafting, and Smithing.	Artisan's cape	Inspire Genius
Gathering	These skills involve gathering raw materials (resources) directly from the source.	Archaeology, Divination, Farming, Fishing, Hunter, Mining, and Woodcutting.	Gatherer's cape	Inspire Effort
Support	These skills help the player in various different ways.	Agility, Dungeoneering, Slayer, and Thieving.	Support cape	Inspire Love

Elite skills

The elite skill interface for the launch of Invention.

Elite skills (currently only one: Invention) require two or more regular skills to be at a certain level in order to unlock the ability to begin training them. They contribute to a player's total level and experience, and show up in the stats interface. Elite skills have a level range from 1 to 120. As with other skills, they need to be levelled to 99 to be able to equip the max cape, and to 120 to be able to equip the true skill mastery cape. They also feature a different experience to level ratio compared to regular skills. Elite skills are not intended to replace regular skills, instead existing alongside them.

The first and only elite skill, Invention, was released on 25 January 2016. It requires level 80 in Smithing, Crafting and Divination to train. When using experience rewards that are based on current level such as experience lamps, stars and books, dragonkin lamps, and Distractions and Diversions such as Tears of Guthix and Guthixian butterflies, elite skills require double the amount of rewards to level up compared to regular skills. Experience rewards that give fixed experience are reduced by 50% for elite skills. During Double XP events, elite skills' experience bonus will be 1.5x (or 2.5x with bonus experience). Players will be unable to gain additional experience in elite skills from these sources for 6 months after they are released, compared to 3 months for regular skills.

April Fools Skills

In the 2014 April Fools event, Sailing showed up as a skill under the skill guide. The skill didn't show up directly in the skill tab interface. During the event the player would need to scroll to the bottom of the guide to find the sailing skill. The skill mastery showed a variety of boat upgrades, islands to unlock, diving depth increases, a grey parrot pet at 99, and even that it was a 120 mastery skill. A full list of ship unlocks can be found at the Sailing level up table.

For the 2024 April Fools event, Benchsitting was added as a skill under both the skill tab interface as well as the skill guide. The skill was fairly quick to train to level 99. It was not possible to train past 99. This skill would unlock the Bench Warmer title as well as the Benchsitting cape. There were four benches across Gielinor to train the skill and other benches would not grant experience.

Experience

Main article: Experience

Experience, commonly abbreviated as exp or XP, is a measure of progress in a certain skill. It is generally obtained by performing tasks related to that skill. After gaining a certain amount of experience, players will advance to the next level in that skill, which can result in new abilities, items, and other achievements. Players can earn experience by training the skills, completing quests, and participating in various events, minigames or Distractions and Diversions.

Frequency of skill milestones

These are the number of players currently listed on the hiscores as having reached these levels in the skill.

Skill		Members	# of 99s	# of 120s	# of 200m xp
	Attack	No	267,587	36,772	12,012
	Constitution	No	296,013	62,502	31,161
	Mining	No	236,838	38,722	13,218
	Strength	No	282,291	34,715	11,800
	Agility	Yes	209,443	33,469	11,801
	Smithing	No	245,933	31,198	10,828
	Defence	No	287,916	57,469	23,855
	Herblore	Yes	258,141	93,372	16,775
	Fishing	No	224,685	32,859	11,198
	Ranged	No	263,115	45,426	17,677
	Thieving	Yes	214,166	60,105	20,654
	Cooking	No	248,370	24,794	9,137
	Prayer	No	250,379	28,959	10,059
	Crafting	No	219,517	26,207	9,122
	Firemaking	No	258,193	33,950	11,878
	Magic	No	288,577	51,382	22,485
	Fletching	No	244,061	25,639	9,315
	Woodcutting	No	242,578	30,515	11,147
	Runecrafting	No	190,261	29,210	10,550
	Slayer	Yes	229,451	77,893	18,358
	Farming	Yes	203,534	75,672	24,410
	Construction	Yes	198,742	25,527	9,060
	Hunter	Yes	197,214	32,789	10,390
	Summoning	Yes	222,876	32,878	11,540
	Dungeoneering	No	202,932	76,841	16,802
	Divination	Yes	197,726	27,273	9,510
	Invention	Yes	188,788	129,198	39,408
	Archaeology	Yes	176,771	88,664	25,463
	Necromancy	Yes	161,784	66,439	18,497

Stat wipe

It is possible for accounts with less than 10 Constitution to exist. In the early days of RuneScape Classic, rule-breakers would be stat-wiped, meaning all their skills would be taken back to level 1, including Hitpoints, the predecessor to Constitution. When RuneScape 2 was released, many of these accounts were banned. As of today, these accounts are extremely rare.

On 29 May 2002, Jagex released the following statement:

“	As part of our promised commitment to stamping down and stopping cheats in RuneScape we have developed a new system to automatically detect people using macro/bot software to gain stats unfairly. It clearly says in our rules that using software to automatically play the game for you and raise your stats for you is cheating! This will not be tolerated. It is just not fair on the players who play the game honestly and get their levels fairly. Our new system is extremely efficient and accurate, and in the last 24 hours we have already identified nearly 2000 players who have been cheating in this way. We also believe that we will be able to identify all future offenders and will continue modifying and improving our detection software to do so. From this point on if you use a macro or use a modified version of the RuneScape client, it is almost 100% certain that you WILL be banned or erased. Since these people gained their stats/items unfairly we have unfortunately had no choice but to completely wipe the stats and inventory of the approximately 2000 people who we have caught using macro/bot software. It seems obvious that these players should not be allowed to keep what they did not gain honestly in the first place. If you are one of the people who we stat-wiped then whining and making excuses to us won't help. Our new system is designed to have a 0% rate of false positives, and we KNOW you were cheating. The stat-wipe is irreversible, so if you want to get your stats back then the only way to do it is to start playing the game fairly, and EARN your way to greatness like everyone else has to. Click here for a complete list of all the people who have already been stat-wiped. We expect to catch more people at it over the next few days. I hope this proves we are deadly serious about stopping this cheating in RuneScape.	”
— Update:Massive crackdown on cheating players.

Mod Jon H confirming that stat wipes are used against offenders.

Since late 2010 Jagex began stat wiping accounts as an alternative punishment against macroers. However, unlike the stat wipes in RuneScape Classic where all stats where brought down to level 1, these were focussed on removing a specific amount of experience/levels which included exploited skills as well as unrelated skills.

Consequently, some of the botted players ended up with rather unusual stats, including having a high constitution level while having lower attack, strength and defence, and even constitution levels lower than level 10, due to experience removal in some cases being greater than was gained through botting. Also, some accounts ended up owning items (such as quest items) and having unlocked content (such as the Lunar spellbook) that are normally impossible with their reduced levels. It's unknown whether current stat resets still cause accounts to have stats and item combinations otherwise impossible (or at least very unlikely) to happen.

History of release

Skill		Release date	Time since last skill	Notes
	Necromancy	7 August 2023 (Update)	3 years, 4 months, 8 days	Standalone combat style that sits outside of the existing combat triangle.
	Archaeology	30 March 2020 (Update)	4 years, 2 months, 5 days
	Invention	25 January 2016 (Update)	2 years, 5 months, 28 days	First and so far only Elite Skill.
	Divination	20 August 2013 (Update)	3 years, 4 months, 8 days	First skill released since RuneScape 3 and the last new skill to cap at level 99 on release.
	Dungeoneering	12 April 2010 (Update)	2 years, 2 months, 28 days	First ever skill to cap at level 120 and the last new skill to be available to F2P on release.
	Summoning	15 January 2008 (Update)	1 year, 1 month, 25 days	Originally envisioned to be an extension to the Magic skill. (Existed in DeviousMUD.)
	Hunter	21 November 2006 (Update)	5 months, 21 days	The latest skill from the August 2007 Archive of RuneScape.
	Construction	31 May 2006 (Update)	10 months, 20 days	Originally planned to be called Carpentry.
	Farming	11 July 2005 (Update)	5 months, 15 days	Originally planned to be released along with Carpentry.
	Slayer	26 January 2005 (Update)	9 months, 28 days
	Runecrafting	29 March 2004 (Update)	1 year, 3 months, 17 days	Released alongside RuneScape 2.
	Agility	12 December 2002 (Update)	7 months, 12 days
	Thieving	30 April 2002 (Update)	1 month, 5 days	Added to skill list on 4 January 2001, but had no function or way to train until over a year later.
	Carpentry			Had no function or way to train on release. Removed from the skill list on 12 December 2002. Later re-added as Construction on 31 May 2006.
	Fletching	25 March 2002 (Update)	26 days	Added to the skill-list between May and August 2001, but wasn't trainable until its full release in 2002.
	Herblore	27 February 2002 (Update)	8 months, 16 days	Known as Herblaw in RuneScape Classic. Added to skill list on 4 January 2001, but had no function or way to train until over a year later. First ever skill only available to members.
	Fishing	11 June 2001 (Update)	18 days
	Magic	24 May 2001 (Update)	16 days	Initially divided into GoodMagic and EvilMagic at the time of release, 4 January 2001.
	Prayer			Initially divided into PrayGood and PrayEvil at the time of release, 4 January 2001. When the two skills were combined, constant effect Magic spells were moved from the spellbooks into the prayer book.
	Crafting	8 May 2001 (Update)	4 months, 4 days
	Attack	4 January 2001 (Update)	Initial batch of skills.
	Constitution			Known as Hits and subsequently Hitpoints at the time of release.
	Cooking
	Defence
	EvilMagic			Removed from the skill list on 10 May 2001. Combined with GoodMagic into Magic skill on 24 May 2001.
	Firemaking
	GoodMagic			Removed from the skill list on 10 May 2001. Combined with EvilMagic into Magic skill on 24 May 2001.
	Influence			Removed and replaced with quest points on 10 May 2001.
	Mining
	PrayGood			Lacked any prayers on release but could still be trained. Removed from the skill list on 10 May 2001. Combined with PrayEvil into Prayer skill on 24 May 2001, taking some of the constant effect Magic spells.
	PrayEvil			Lacked any prayers on release but could still be trained. Removed from the skill list on 10 May 2001. Combined with PrayGood into Prayer skill on 24 May 2001, taking some of the constant effect Magic spells.
	Ranged
	Smithing
	Strength
	Tailoring			Had few functions or ways to train on release. Removed on 10 May 2001. Concepts were combined into Crafting on 23 June 2001.
	Woodcutting

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Graphical updates

Level up interface

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  Level up interface after Unknown date (edit)
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Lamp interface

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  Skill selection interface for experience lamps after Unknown date (edit)
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  Skill selection interface for experience lamps after Unknown date (edit)
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  Skill selection interface for experience lamps after Unknown date (edit)
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  Skill selection interface for experience lamps after Unknown date (edit)
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  Skill selection interface for experience lamps after Unknown date (edit)
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  Skill selection interface for experience lamps after Unknown date (edit)
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  Skill selection interface for experience lamps after Unknown date (edit)
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  Skill selection interface for experience lamps after Unknown date (edit)
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  Skill selection interface for experience lamps after Unknown date (edit)

Update history

This information has been compiled as part of the update history project. Some updates may not be included – see here for how to help out!

• patch 11 January 2021 (Update):
  • Fixed a large number of grammatical issues and inconsistencies in level up messages.

• patch 11 May 2020 (Update):
  • Fixed an issue which caused the level up icon to be partially cropped when opening a full-screen interface.

• patch 9 September 2019 (Update):
  • Removed an erroneous message when levelling up.

• ninja 3 June 2019 (Update):
  • Added a toggle for the colour overlay when skills are boosted or drained on the skills tab.

• ninja 26 November 2018 (Update):
  • Toned down the amount of fireworks displayed when levelling multiple skills to milestones simultaneously.

• patch 13 August 2018 (Update):
  • Fixed a typo stating that new unlocks in the Skill Guide said above instead of below.

• update 9 October 2017 (Update):
  • Fletching becomes a free-to-play skill.

• patch 22 May 2017 (Update):
  • The level 3 Herblore level-up message has been corrected to mention Recruitment Drive instead of null.

• patch 18 April 2016 (Update):
  • Level up unlocks are no longer cleared if the player clicks on the interface while still in combat.
  • The level up popup no longer displays an incorrect skill or level upon gaining a level.

• patch 4 April 2016 (Update):
  • Corrected the additional defence requirement listing for Focus Sight and Hexcrest in the Ranged and Magic skill guides respectively.
  • Corrected Enchanted robes to level 45 in the Defence skill guide.
  • A typo for the Augmented hatchet description in the skill guide has been corrected.

• patch 4 January 2016 (Update):
  • The “level up” pop-up no longer gets interrupted when gaining XP.

• ninja 9 March 2015 (Update):
  • The Skills tab - including Player Examine - now shows quest points alongside total and combat levels.

• patch 14 July 2014 (Update):
  • A players combat level will now show on the skills interface.

• patch 13 January 2014 (Update):
  • A small tutorial on how the skills interface works has been added, played after completing The Blood Pact quest while on the Path System.

• patch 10 September 2013 (Update):
  • The colours of the icons in the Skills interface are now brighter.

• patch 29 May 2013 (Update):
  • XP popups will no longer appear for skills at their maximum level.

• patch 4 December 2012 (Update):
  • The progress bar for skilling will no longer remain on screen after a full screen interface is opened, interrupting the skilling.

• patch 28 February 2012 (Update):
  • Clicking to open 2 Skill Guides at the same time now opens the correct one.

• patch 28 March 2011 (Update):
  • The sound effects for the level-up fireworks have been improved.

• patch 15 March 2011 (Update):
  • Levelling up multiple times in one skill will now tell you how many levels you gained, and the skill advance guide will display new actions available for each level gained since you last clicked on the advance guide in that session.

• patch 10 August 2009 (Update):
  • Godsword smithing has been added to the in-game Smithing guide.
  • Castle Wars armour has been added to the in-game Defence guide.
  • Defence guide now mentions the need to complete Dragon Slayer before wearing green dragonhide bodies.

• update 8 December 2001 (Update):
  • Level requirements have been added.
    • You now need a certain minimum attack/defence to use the higher level weapons/armour respectively.

• update 13 August 2001 (Update):
  • Fixed a problem with the new stats menu where the XP indicator didn't update properly.
  • The stats menu now shows you the exact number of experience points you have in each skill, and the number you need to reach to advance a level.

• update 4 January 2001 (Update):
  • Runescape beta goes live.

See also

• Milestones
• Experience
• Experience-boosting sets
• Temporary skill boost
• Skill mastery
• Total level
• Cape of Accomplishment
• Expert cape of Accomplishment
• Max cape
• 200 million experience