Free-to-play Prayer training

Prayer is considered by some to be the hardest skill to train in F2P worlds. It takes money, patience, and effort. In F2P worlds, raising prayer above level 45 is considered to be near useless, besides blessing graves (70), which many people consider as no benefit. However, the higher your prayer level is, the longer you are able to sustain prayers. This can be very handy during player-killing and when fighting high-levelled monsters.

Prayer has the highest cost per experience point to power level among all the free skills. While other reasonable methods cost no more than 10 coins per experience point, prayer can cost over 40 coins per experience point in free worlds.

Beginners
Prayer is relatively straightforward to train, the main source of experience is regular bones which yield 4.5 experience each, and are worth each if sold to the Grand Exchange. Here is a list of things that can help raise prayer level slightly more efficiently:

The Restless Ghost
The Restless Ghost is a quest that gives 125 prayer experience and 5 Ancient bones which offer 200xp each. This allows a player to raise prayer from level 1 to 9 upon completion. There are no requirements to begin this quest (although magic resistant armour is useful against the skeleton) and is strongly recommended for beginning players as it provides a fairly substantial number of experience points for relatively little effort. From the viewpoint of buying bones on the Grand Exchange and burying them for experience, completing this quest is the equivalent of buying 250 bones, or coins in current Grand Exchange price.

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

Respawn places
For players not willing to power level prayer, here is a list of locations where bones can be found:

This place is considered one of the best places for F2P players to train Prayer, even better than the Chaos temple as it has 4 big bones respawns and ten normal bones respawns. However, as it is located in the Wilderness, there is the risk of PKers as well as the level 25 Skeletons that will be dangerous to low level players. Bring food and armour if you want to train there indefinitely, but do not bring anything you are not willing to lose.
 * Bone Yard

For the following method to work efficiently, you must have at least level 22 prayer but having level 43 prayer is strongly recommended.

Bring 3 of your best ranged armour (preferably Coif, Green d'hide body, and Green d'hide chaps) and nothing else along. This is to ensure that when a PKer interrupts your training, you will have time to run away before taking massive damage from any attack types. Make sure that run mode and Rapid Heal is on (best chosen via Quick Prayers) and Auto-Retaliate is off at all times. When you are at the Boneyard be sure to only pick up Big Bones. If you are doing this correctly, you should be running in a circle (either clockwise or counter-clockwise) to gather the bones as they respawn.

When you are low on run energy, find a spot where the skeletons cannot attack you (the best spot for this is usually the area largely enclosed by a massive animal skeleton) and rest. When you get 28 Big Bones, run out of the area and bury them. Unless you have a very high Defence level, your Health points should have been scrapped away by the skeletons. Run south to the Chaos Temple and rest there (making sure that Rapid Heal is still on) until you recharge to full health and run energy. Recharge your prayer at the altar and repeat the process. Alternatively, you can bring a Twisted bird skull necklace, which recharges 10 prayer points for every bone buried. This enables you to pray indefinitely.

If you encounter a PKer, either:

1.Turn on Protect From Magic/Missiles/Melee if you have at least level 37 to 43+ prayer.

2.Turn on your best Defence Prayer (Thick Skin, Rock Skin, or Steel Skin) if you have under level 43 or 37 prayer.

And run south to Varrock. Go to the altar nearby and turn on Rapid Heal, then recharge your prayer when you have full Health Points.

When you reach level 43 prayer, do not use Rapid Heal anymore. Continue picking up Big Bones and bury them whenever you get 28 in total while choosing Protect from Melee as your new Quick Prayer. When you are safe and resting for run energy, turn it off until you're ready to collect Big Bones again. This method yields 420xp per run. The time taken depends largely on how well you time your movement between the Big Bone spawns in order to avoid being attacked by the skeletons. Also, turning the camera while picking up the Big Bones makes it more efficient because if timed properly, you do not have to physically stop between picking up each Big Bone until you feel like resting.

In the Wilderness level 12, the chaos temple has 15 bones and respawn once taken. Players should beware of pkers patrolling the area. Few other players may train there, but an empty world can easily be found. It is one of the best places for low-level free-to-players to train. Four of the bones are more out of the way and take more time to reach, these should be ignored and only the inner 11 bones should be picked up and buried.
 * Chaos temple

Deep in the wilderness, there are the Demonic Ruins. In the Demonic Ruins several Burnt bones respawn. Beware of Greater Demons and pkers. The trouble is getting to the ruins. You must avoid getting hit by the Greater Demons and pkers on the way.
 * Demonic Ruins

Many players don't bother to pick up or bury the bones they receive after killing monsters in Lumbridge. Bones are often abundant there for players to pick up.
 * Lumbridge

Four bones respawn at the Edgeville entrance to the dungeon, and another four bones spawn at the south end of the dungeon where the Hill giants reside. Both of these areas have aggressive monsters, although other players are likely to engage the Hill giants in combat in a crowded world.
 * Edgeville Dungeon

Low level Al-Kharid warriors are often killed by players while training. Bones are often left without being buried or picked up.
 * Al Kharid palace

New players who need money tend to kill cows for their cowhides to be sold at the Grand Exchange. Normally, there would be swarms of players there during busy days in world 1 who would normally leave tons of bones and meat scattered. If you could luckily enter world 1 during that time of the day, you could pick up all the bones you want and bury them right on the spot. It would also be helpful if your inventory is empty when collecting and burying bones.
 * Lumbridge Cows

Low level players like to kill men in the house just North of the Edgeville bank, however they just leave the bones from the kills on the ground. This is very easy to train on busy worlds.
 * Edgeville

Training prayer by killing monsters
Depending on the combat skills of a player, different monsters should be trained on for prayer experience. A good prayer training monster should be weak enough to be killed in 1-3 hits for the current ability of player. When killing monsters for prayer training, one should, to save time, bury the bones in between attacks, this will not cause the next attack delay.

Weak NPCs around busy places

 * Requirements
 * None
 * Advantages
 * Any fighting methods can be used because they are weak enough to be killed even at low levels.
 * Even if NPCs are killed by others, they might leave bones around.
 * Disadvantages
 * Negligible income.
 * Too weak to raise much combat experience.
 * Tiring mouse clicks.

Weak NPCs are introductory to prayer training. They may be boring to kill, but their bone drops are good enough for low levels.

Chickens in Chicken Coops

 * Requirements
 * None
 * Advantages
 * Any fighting method can be used because they are weak enough to be killed even at low levels.
 * Many players just kill chickens to get easy experience or to earn feathers. Or commonly-crowded world you even don't need to kill chickens, because there is so many bone piles lying on the ground that you won't manage to earn them all.
 * You can also earn feathers. After one hour you will get feathers worth around 15k.
 * Disadvantages
 * It can get crowded on some F2P worlds

Chickens are great for beginners and are very common and close to Lumbridge. There is one chicken coop on the road to Draynor Village and another one on the road to Varrock. A third area is the farm just south of Falador.

Cattle

 * Requirements
 * Combat 5+
 * Iron armour or Bronze armour strongly recommended for new players
 * Advantages
 * Very common and easy to get at a cow, even when the area is crowded with other players.
 * Close to Lumbridge and easy to travel to
 * Drops Cowhides and raw beef, providing training for other skills
 * Disadvantages
 * Sometimes very crowded on some F2P worlds with players numbering in the dozens or more.

Training with cattle is perhaps one of the best multi-skill training options available for low-level players, where you can train not only combat but also prayer, crafting (from tanning the cowhides and making leather items) and cooking. Formerly the Gnomecopter area provided a deposit box in the cattle yard north of Lumbridge. This has been replaced by Beefy Bill, who will take your raw beef and cowhides to the bank in exchange for 1 in 9 of each kind. It would be recommended to only give 9 items at a time to Beefy Bill for maximum profit. Bones can no longer be banked in the area, but the value is still there to bury the bones as you kill the cattle. Cowhides and raw beef can be sold for coins (cowhide) and  coins (raw beef) respectively, giving a source of early cash for new players. Bringing an axe and tinderbox can be used to cook the raw beef to heal wounds if you are just starting to train combat. There are several trees in and around all of the cattle yards as a source of logs for making fires.

In the cattle yard between the River Lum and Al-Kharid on the road to Varrock, there are many more cows and this is a very common low-level F2P combat training area. Many players, especially ones trying to do Pure combat training will deliberately leave the bones on the grounds. This can be a free source of bones for an aspiring low level player trying to train prayer and doesn't require any sort of combat at all.

Another cattle yard exists south of Falador that is moderately close to the east bank of Falador and the bank in Draynor Village. Like the cattle yard east of the River Lum, this is also a low-level player training area with many bones left on the ground when busy.

Catacombs (low level monsters)

 * Requirements
 * Combat level of at least 10
 * Steel armour if possible to reduce damage taken
 * Completion of The Blood Pact
 * Advantages
 * Very fast spawn.
 * Close to Lumbridge bank.
 * Drops lots of runes, feathers, threads, fishing bait, low level armour which can be sold to make a small profit
 * Disadvantages
 * Low levelled players will not be able to train prayer as fast as the high levelled ones since they are not able to one-hit KO the monster most of the times.

Monkeys and snakes near Karamja volcano
An alternative to mainland NPCs is Karamja inhabitants. They have slightly more life points and more experience to give, but convenience is sacrificed.
 * Requirements
 * 30 coins
 * Advantages
 * Very uncrowded.
 * Monkeys drop monkey bones with slightly more prayer experience.
 * Easy to kill.
 * Disadvantages
 * Respawn very slow.

Dark wizards around stone circle

 * Requirements
 * Combat 41(new update made wizards not aggressive due to the circle lying in beginner's area)
 * Advantages
 * Similar to the weak NPCs, bones are often left on floor.
 * Doesn't need expensive armour to fight.
 * Good supply of runes.
 * Close to Varrock west bank.
 * Disadvantages
 * Many players tend to kill the level 7 wizards, making killing wizards harder.
 * Level 20 wizards are hard to defeat until high levels.
 * Often crowded.

Dark wizards can be killed, as they no longer are aggressive towards the player. Bones on the ground can be also be picked up and buried. It would be recommended to wear range armour such as Hardleather body or Green dragonhide armour, as that gives players reasonable protection against the magic that these creatures cast. See also Combat triangle for further information about this concept, noting that these are magic using creatures. Metal armour is actually more harmful than no armour at all.

Skeletons, Zombies, Minotaurs

 * Requirements
 * Combat 51
 * Advantages
 * Fair drops
 * Low defence and life point
 * Not very crowded
 * Disadvantages
 * Far from bank
 * Drops not stackable and excessive

Skeletons and Zombies can be killed in several dungeons, and Minotaurs can be killed in the Stronghold of Security. Because minotaurs are popular with rangers, and as they are weak, bones can be found on the ground quite often in busy worlds. Aside from their rather common bronze and iron arrow drops, they mainly drop non-stackable bronze items, which should not be picked up.

Monks At Monastery

 * Requirements
 * Ability to kill a Level 5 Monk (about 10+ Combat level recommended)
 * Advantages
 * Always drop Bones
 * If you talk to a monk, they will heal you
 * Once you get to level 31 Prayer, you can go to the upper floor of the Monastery, getting easy money by collecting and selling the monk's robes you find there.

The Monastery is located northwest of Gunnarsgrunn (also known as the Barbarian Village), west of Edgeville. There is also a handy musician located south of the Monastery.

Hill Giants

 * Requirements
 * Combat 30+ (40+ for easier killing)
 * Recommended: Brass Key (to quickly access the dungeon)
 * Recommended: Full Rune, Lighter armour if high defence to constantly run around
 * Recommended: 20 Dungeoneering (to enter the resource dungeon)
 * Advantages
 * Good drops
 * Big bones
 * Respawn of bones on floor
 * Close to Grand Exchange
 * Many safe spots.
 * Not very crowded (resource dungeon)-As of April '11, many bots wearing rune chainmail can be found in this dungeon, making it extremely crowded.
 * Disadvantages
 * It is very crowded in Edgeville dungeon.
 * They can hit relatively high and often depending on your defence, meaning food will be needed for the lower levels.

Hill giants in Edgeville dungeon drop big bones, and two bone respawns are available there. Hill giants drop limpwurt roots which sell for 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 can be quite difficult. Another place is east of Clan Wars, several giants inhabit the place, and its not vey crowded.

Near the Hill Giants in Edgeville dungeon is a resource dungeon that requires a Dungeoneering level of 20 to enter. There are 4 limpwurt root spawns in the dungeon and 11 Hill Giants. It is not as crowded as Edgeville dungeon.

Tips:
 * It is recommended to fight hill giants in crowded areas with magic or ranged. This means a player can hit before a person meleeing, and a further advantage is that there are many safe spots.

Moss Giants

 * Requirements
 * Combat 45+ (55+ for easier killing)
 * Recommended: Partial completion of the Dragon Slayer quest (to quickly access the Crandor)
 * Recommended: Melee or Range
 * Recommended: For melee: Maximize Crush defence and Stab attack
 * Recommended: For range: Maximize Range attack
 * Optional: Explorer's ring 3 or Explorer's ring 4 for fast bank deposit in Port Sarim
 * Optional: Staff of fire and a stack of Nature runes
 * Optional: Rune Pickaxe
 * Advantages
 * Good drops
 * Big bones
 * Many safe spots.
 * Not very crowded (resource dungeon)
 * Mine Adamantite ore and Coal
 * Much less crowded spot than Hill giants (see above)
 * Much easier spot than Ice giants (see below)
 * Disadvantages
 * If it gets crowded, there can be fierce competition
 * They can hit relatively high and often, meaning food will be needed for the lower levels
 * Aggressive, but they stop after 10 minutes or if player is over Combat level 85

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. There are three safe spots for rangers, or if you are low on health and have no means of teleportation. The one safe spot in the centre is best for ranging, as you can reach all three Moss giants with ease. The safe spot to the east is second best for ranging, as you can reach two of the Moss giants with ease. The third will often try to run away towards the north west, causing you to run out in pursuit. Even if you are maging or using long range attacks, it will take longer.

With the Staff of fire and Nature runes you may cast High Alchemy on junk items for some profit or Superheat Adamant bars. It is a place to train mining, melee or range, and prayer at the same time.

Tips:
 * To maximize Free-to-play Crush defence, wear the following: Rune full helm, Rune chainbody, Green d'hide vambraces or Safety gloves, Rune platelegs or Rune plateskirt, Fighting boots or Fancy boots, an Amulet of power, Rune kite shield. This odd combination will often draw comments. However, it provides the best possible crush defence, which means your food lasts longer, and you can stay longer.


 * To maximize Free-to-play Stab attack, wield the Rune sword and select the Stab attack style. It has the advantage of exploiting the defensive weakness, and being nearly as fast as the more commonly used Rune scimitar.


 * Grab some free tunas on the way up. You may want to bring a hatchet and tinderbox to cook your own food.

Ice giants

 * Requirements
 * Combat 60+
 * Advantages
 * Good drops
 * Big bones
 * Relatively uncrowded, especially compared to the Hill Giant and Moss Giant areas
 * Disadvantages
 * High combat level
 * Distant from bank
 * Has aggressive Ice warriors (level 57) nearby, which may prevent you from attacking the giants often

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. The Black kiteshield is perhaps the best drop that a player can hang onto for resale, where about 1 in 50 drops contains this shield. This is also the only source of Black kiteshields via F2P methods, keeping the value of the item fairly high and easily traded on the Grand Exchange for coins. 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, who unfortunately don't drop any bones when killed and can be considered annoying for players training Prayer. 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. Seeing very high combat level (100+) F2P players and former members training in this area is quite common. Several spots to hide behind ice columns exist to also train ranging or magic are in this dungeon as well, and can be used against the Ice Giants.

Ice Giants can also be found at the Frozen Waste Plateau in the high level Wilderness. In addition to the problems of fighting Ice Giants, you also have to deal with eventual PKers if you stay there for any prolonged period of time thus risking loss of items. If you decide to train here anyways, keep in mind you shall keep whatever you are not willing to lose in bank. Generally this is not considered a good prayer training area.

Lamps
Easier methods to obtain experience lamps, even as a non-member, include completing the entire Lumbridge Tasks, where for each of the four parts players complete they will be rewarded with lamps granting them increasingly higher amounts of experience for any chosen skill(s).

One can also earn experience lamps via random events, selecting the option to receive an experience lamp (if offered) or Book of Knowledge if certain option is given. This was considered the fastest method of earning experience points for prayer, particularly if you reach higher prayer levels. Considering that prayer is one of the hardest skills to train, many players only select prayer skill as the skill to improve when they receive these lamps as the prayer skill is costly if you do not wish to simply kill the target and bury the bones it drops.

It is debatable whether an using XP lamp is better on Prayer or Runecrafting, but it usually depends on how much money the player can make per hour and partly the levels. Via flipping effectively and mining runite, money can be made considerably fast, and XP lamps should be used on Runecrafting instead. It can also depend on your level in the respective skill - for example, if you had 80 Runecrafting and 1 Prayer, using the random event xp lamps on Runecrafting would be more efficient (unless you wanted to get Prayer up.) With the introduction of the Runespan runecrafting xp is much easier to accumulate now, as a result many see fit to use XP lamps for prayer experience.

Dungeoneering
Dungeoneering provides a new method of training prayer, though needing to train other skills as well. This is best done by killing most monsters in the dungeon, who will give varying types 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. Lastly, the mastyx should be all killed, as they give big bones, and these "big bones" can now be used on altars. (A bug that prevented this was present when altars were added to dungeons, but this has been fixed). All other bones can also be used on the altars, granting 4 times the normal experience. Please note mastyx are classified as hunter resources (for members) and do not affect the Dungeoneering experience received at the end of the floor in any world.

Bones can be saved and "used" on altars, granting four times the 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 not dropping bones:
 * All floors
 * Mysterious shade
 * Ghost


 * Frozen floors
 * Ice elemental
 * Ice spider
 * Icefiend


 * Abandoned floors
 * Dungeon spider
 * Animated pickaxe


 * Furnished floors
 * Dungeon spider

Power levelling by purchasing bones
There is only one way to power level prayer: burying regular or big bones mass-bought from Grand Exchange. However, burying regular bones or burying big bones makes all the difference between cost factor and speed.

Bones are currently sold at coins each, yielding 4.5 experience when buried. To power level prayer using regular bones, 0 coins per experience are lost, meaning 0 coins are needed for 1,000 experience. To attain level 45 from zero experience merely by power levelling, 13,670 bones are needed, costing 0 coins. It is possible to bury one bone every game tick or 0.6 seconds. At 28 bones per load, one load will take a bare minimum of 21 seconds (including 4 seconds of bank time), resulting in a maximum of 21,600 xp per hour.

Big bones are currently sold coins each, yielding 15 experience when buried. To power level prayer using big bones, 0 coins per experience are lost, meaning 0 coins are needed for 1,000 experience. To attain level 45 from zero experience merely by power levelling, 4,101 big bones are needed, costing 0 coins. It is possible to bury one big bone every game tick or 0.6 seconds. At 28 big bones per load, one load will take a bare minimum of 21 seconds (including 4 seconds of bank time), resulting in a maximum of 72,000 xp per hour.

A player can expect to bury a maximum of about 4800 bones per hour. However, due to the tediousness of this skill this figure is very difficult to maintain.

As an alternative Accursed Ashes can be bought and scattered. Prices change and sometimes a different method may be at a cheaper experience/cost ratio. Time wise, the big bones are fastest.


 * 1) It takes 2,896,541 bones to get from level 1 prayer to level 99 prayer at 0 coins in GE
 * 2) It takes 868,963 big bones to get from level 1 prayer to level 99 prayer at 0 coins in GE
 * 3) It takes 1,042,723 accursed ashes to get from level 1 prayer to level 99 prayer at 0 coins in GE

Scattering Ashes
Scattering ashes for Prayer experience was introduced into the game on the 15th of February, 2011.

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), Accursed ashes (Lesser and Greater demons) or infernal ashes which are unobtainable on F2P.

Scattering impious ashes will yield 4 Prayer experience and Accursed ashes will give 12.5 experience. Bringing Prayer urns with you will increase the experience gained over time, and save scattering time. (The effective average of accursed ashes + urn gives the same a big bone experience.) Unfortunately, players cannot use traded ashes to utilize the urns, so they must kill imps and demons instead.