Prayer



Prayer is a skill which grants the player specialised buffs in combat by evoking the power of certain RuneScape gods. All players start with limited access to the Prayer skill. As one's Prayer level increases, they gain access to new prayers. As players traverse the land and complete many adventures, they find themselves presented with the opportunity to gain the prayers and blessings of various gods such as Zaros, who is related to RuneScape's deep past, and Saradomin, the god of order. Some of the strongest prayers are only available after doing certain member quests or activities. Prayer is currently one of the quickest skills to achieve skill mastery in, as it could take just a few days to reach level 99, using the appropriate bones and methods.

The main free-to-play ways to train prayer are to bury certain types of bones and scatter demonic ashes. While for players that are members, using bones or ashes on a gilded altar in a player-owned house's Chapel. For rich members, frost bones are a quick and easy way to level 99 Prayer, while semi-prosperous players resort to dragon bones (though it's not much slower). Bones can be obtained by killing various creatures, by taking bone drops that other players leave behind, or by collecting the bones that spawn in various places, such as in parts of the Edgeville Dungeon or at the Chaos Temple in the southern Wilderness. Demon ashes can be obtained by killing demons or by taking demon ashes drops that other players leave behind. Prayer is difficult to train in free-to-play, because the most amount of experience granted in free-to-play that is a renewable sources comes from big bones, which give only 15 experience.

According to Zamorak, the God of Order deals with prayers, "so that when you give the dead an honourable burial in his name it strengthens the bond between you, allowing him to help you out in little ways that others such as Guthix won't notice." Yauchomi, the old Lumbridge Prayer Tutor, stated that burying bones raised the player's Prayer level by increasing their 'holy energies'.

Prayer, unlike most skills that are directly related to their name, cannot be trained just through the act of "praying." In fact, Prayer almost completely relies on the act of burying bones to gain experience (there are certain ways to gain Prayer experience without burying bones, but those are covered later throughout this article).

Quick prayers
On 25 March 2009, the Prayer icon next to the minimap (now next to the prayer bar on the action bar) had a function added which expanded on its function as a simple meter. This new function was recognised as "quick prayers". It can now be left-clicked to activate, or deactivate, a group of Prayers preselected by the player simultaneously. You can select which prayers are activated by right-clicking the button and choosing the "Select quick prayers" option. (You can do the same with curses; the option changes to "Select quick curses". Quick curses and quick prayers are saved separately.) Before the addition of this function, players had to, sometimes frantically, locate the Prayer icon and activate them one by one. This new function allows players to place many of the most useful prayers on immediate standby. However, many players use the button simply to turn off Prayers when accessing prayers through its tab, by double left-clicking it to turn off all prayers. This was the official release of the "quick prayers" function, as provided by Jagex:

History and origins
Prayer is one of the older skills in the game, dating back to early RuneScape Classic. As with (good and evil) Magic it was then made up of two skills in RuneScape Classic: PrayGood and PrayEvil. Earlier than this, Prayer was known as Necromancy - the reason this was changed is probably because the term Necromancy was the moniker given to the Magic Class (back when the game had classes).

Prayer was the last of the original skills in which players were able to reach the maximum skill level of 99. Before any of the "prayers" were made available (the only reason why people choose to train this skill in the first place), players could still gain Prayer levels through burying bones and completing The Restless Ghost. While Prayer did not have any uses, the prayers used to exist in the Good Magic and Evil Magic skills simply as a "moral compass" of sorts. Although burying bones may not seem to have much to do with Prayer, it has been said in Postbag from the Hedge that although Saradomin condemns violence, he does like the player to bury the body honourably. A quote from issue 13 of the 'Postbag From the Hedge':

These, and Zamorak's statement above, would indicate that prayer is more closely related to Saradomin than to any other gods.

On 6 September 2011 Prayer points were updated to work in the same way as life points, i.e. the maximum number of Prayer points a player normally has is 10x their Prayer level. The drain rate of Prayer points has been updated to match the change.

On 20 November 2012, the Evolution of Combat update reduced the effect of many prayers. For example, the damage reduction of protection prayers was changed from 100% to 50%. It also nerfed stat-boosting prayers severely. But it did introduce some new prayers for mages and rangers, to make the combat triangle balanced prayer-wise. Melee still appears to be a little better in the original prayers as melee prayers require lower Prayer levels than Magic prayers.

Overview of how Prayer works
Increasing a player's Prayer level is generally done through various uses of bones or demonic ashes, with non-members limited to burying them (except in Daemonheim, where they can be used on altars). Members have other options that are faster; such as offering bones to the gods at a gilded altar; worshipping at the Ectofuntus; or taking part in activities that award prayer experience such as Soul Wars, Conquest and Pest Control.

To use a prayer, players must click on any prayer available. Prayers that are highlighted with colour can be used by the player, while Prayers unavailable are darkened. When a player clicks on a prayer, a lighted circle will appear around it, indicating that they are using it.

Using a prayer drains the player's Prayer energy at varying speeds, and once this energy is depleted, prayers can no longer be used; therefore, use of any and all prayers are temporary. To slow the rate of drain, players may equip items that add Prayer bonuses, such as a blessed holy symbol or a priest gown, which reduces the drain rate by increasing Prayer bonuses. Increasing Prayer level does not reduce the drain rate of prayers.

Once the player's Prayer points reaches zero, all prayers will deactivate and no prayers will be able to be in use until the player recharges their Prayer points.

Prayer level determines the player's maximum prayer points: if it's drained due to factors such as a trap in a Clan Battlefield, the maximum amount of prayer points is reduced accordingly. This can be remedied with the use of a restore potion or super restore.

Recharging
To recharge Prayer points, a player must pray at an altar or drink a potion that restores Prayer points - if a holy wrench is in the player's inventory while drinking a Prayer-restoring potion, additional Prayer points will be restored. Other options include dying or entering one of the many minigames that are PvP related.

There are some altar locations that will charge the player's Prayer points and offer a small boost to Prayer. These locations are: Note: Praying at these altars will not raise the player's base level, it will only provide a small boost - similar to other stat-boosting potions.
 * Edgeville Monastery - the altar on the first floor.
 * Nature Grotto - deep within the Mort Myre Swamp
 * Seers' Village Altar - after completion of Seers' Village hard tasks
 * The Elidinis Statuette - located within Nardah
 * The Altar of Zaros - located within the Senntisten Temple
 * The Amascut statue - located within the Uzer Mastaba (drains several life points)
 * The sulphur spring - located in Oo'glog

The prayer cape's special ability will raise it from 990 to 1000.

The Dungeoneering reward items split dragontooth necklace, twisted bird skull necklace, and demon horn necklace recharge Prayer points while burying various types of bones, which can be very useful in combination with the bonecrusher, another Dungeoneering reward item.

The Falador shields, obtainable from the Falador Tasks, can also restore the player's Prayer points, but may only be activated once per day. The saradomin godsword has a passive effect giving it a chance to restore both life and Prayer points with each hit.

Jangerberries restore 10 Prayer points. Spicy stew with yellow spice can increase Prayer points by 10-60 points, however it may also decrease it by the same amount.

While wearing full Citharede robes, a player can listen to a musician, restoring 30 Prayer points every game tick, or 150 points every 3 seconds.

The Penance aura enables the player to gain Prayer points equal to 5% of any damage they receive.

Other uses
Players with level 70 or greater Prayer may also bless the gravestones of others to increase a gravestone's lifespan, up to an hour.

Players under level 70 Prayer can repair the gravestones of others to return the gravestone's timer back to its original time. For example, a gravestone that lasts for four minutes, when repaired, will return to its time of four minutes.

Prayer bonus
Prayer bonuses can be viewed in the Equipment and Stats window. Here, players can see all their bonuses, including Prayer. Prayer points will drain slower or quicker, depending upon the amount of Prayer bonuses a player has. Players who have a positive Prayer bonus will drain slower Prayer points than usual. The higher the Prayer bonus is, the slower the player's Prayer points will drain when using Prayer.

Each point of Prayer bonus slows the drain rate by 2% of the regular drain rate of the Prayer(s). A general formula for the time (interval) between dropping Prayer points with a given Prayer bonus is:
 * $$interval_{modified} = interval_{original} \times (1+\frac{bonus}{50})$$

Where the drain interval is the number of seconds per point (i.e. 1 point per x seconds).

For example, if a player uses the Protect from Melee prayer with a Prayer bonus of 0, their Prayer points would drain at a rate of 1 point every 0.3 seconds. If that player then equips armour giving a Prayer bonus of +25, the drain rate of this Prayer is slowed by 25 / 50 = 0.5, so the drain interval becomes 0.3 × (1 + 0.5) = 0.45, or 1 point per 0.45 seconds instead of 1 point every 0.3 seconds.

To generate a Prayer bonus, players must equip certain types of armour, clothing, weapons, and jewellery. See the Equipment section for more information.

Prayer bonuses, however, do not help to stave off the side-effects of locations (such as the Barrows crypts and tunnels) and NPCs which drain Prayer.

'''
 * For example, if 40 damage were inflicted to you, the damage would be reduced to 20 damage (i.e. for every 2 damage that you normally take, only 1 damage is dealt instead.
 * If you were to take 3 damage for example, the result would be rounded off as follows:


 * Magic bind spells:  
 * For example, a spell that would normally hold you for 10 seconds, would be halved to only hold you for 5 seconds. However this shorter holding effect does not work for Ancient Magicks ice spells.

Burying bones and scattering ashes
Many types of bones and demon ashes exist that players can bury or scatter for Prayer experience. However, most of them are available only to members. To bury bones or scatter ashes, simply left-click on the bone or ashes in your inventory.

Worshipping the Ectofuntus
Members are able to worship the Ectofuntus north of Port Phasmatys. At the Ectofuntus, players use ground-up bones and ectoplasm to receive four times the normal experience they would receive from burying those bones regularly. It is a somewhat slow method, but the experience earned is much better than burying bones.

NOTE: Completing the Ghosts Ahoy quest gives players the ability to use the ectophial, which helps significantly when worshipping the Ectofuntus. Also, achieving level 58 Agility allows a player to use a shortcut within the Ectofuntus which saves a considerable amount of time while gathering ectoplasm.

Shades of Mort'ton
After completing the Shades of Mort'ton quest, players will then be able to cremate shades to earn Prayer experience and other rewards.

Ghasts
After completing the Nature Spirit quest, players can kill ghasts and earn Prayer experience. Players will need a blessed silver sickle and about 3 or 4 druid pouches. Ghasts are not corporeal until players use the druid pouch on them; thus, an empty druid pouch will not work. Ghasts can be found in Mort'ton and Mort Myre Swamp. Killing a ghast earns 30 Prayer experience. Larger, more powerful varieties of ghasts that give more Prayer experience can be found during Temple Trekking.

Player-owned houses
Members can also offer bones to their altar in the Chapel room of a player-owned house (built with the Construction skill).

The experience ranges from 100% to 250% depending upon the type of altar with an additional 50% or 100% for lighting 1 or 2 burners for a maximum of 350% for the best altar and burners.

Players need to use a Clean marrentill on each burner to light it, while a tinderbox is in the inventory (or tool belt). The burners will stay lit for 2 minutes and 10 seconds before they burn out. They will stay lit when the player leaves the house and will still be burning if the player returns to the house quickly enough. However, it is not recommended to use a second load of bones with the lit burners. The burners will likely go out during the offering. If the player selected the 'all' option when offering the bones, the offering is not halted and no warning is given when the burners go out. The amount of Prayer experience thus decreases when the burners go out, which is not what most players want.

All incense burners will give the same bonus. Candles and torches do NOT give any bonus.

As of 25 March players can now right click on the bones icon over the chatbox and offer "X" amount of bones, making it easier to train Prayer. Some players disliked this update because the automatic pray-x function is not as fast as manual clicking was, but others considered it a trade-off since it caused less strain to their fingers.

Many players with a high Construction level choose to build a gilded altar with incense burners in their house as this is a much faster way to gain Prayer experience than any other. Although less experience is granted per bone than the Ectofuntus, more bones may be processed in a shorter time span. Often the RuneScape Forums are a good place to find other players who are happy to allow 'loan' of their altars for a short amount of time. Alternatively, one can go to a house party world, and at peak times many players advertise gilded altars.

Aura
The Reverence aura is helpful when praying. It has an activation time of one hour and a cooldown period of three hours. When activated, it does the following: Note: The above is taken from the supreme reverence aura.
 * It restores 10% extra Prayer points when a player drinks a prayer potion (10-30 extra points depending upon level) or super prayer potion (10-40 extra points depending upon level).
 * Prayer drains 10% slower than usual.

Gravestones
Players may use their Prayer level to repair or bless decaying gravestones. Players with 70+ Prayer may bless a gravestone. When blessing a gravestone its timer goes up to a maximum of one hour. A grave can only be blessed once but repaired multiple times. As of an update, gravestones no longer require the player to have Prayer points to repair/bless.

Training
The most common method of training is to bury bones, or play minigames and miniquests.

Gathering bones
There are a number of bone respawn locations:
 * Wilderness Graveyard of Shadows/Forgotten Cemetery (level 16-21): ~10 normal bones respawn
 * Edgeville Dungeon: 7 normal bones respawn
 * Lower level Lumbridge Catacombs in the room full of corpse mages. There is almost always a swarm of botters killing them, with lots of bones lying on the ground.
 * Wilderness Chaos Temple (level 13) 11-15 normal bones respawn
 * Taverley Dungeon blue dragon lair, 5 normal bones respawn
 * Boneyard (previous Clan Wars location) has big bones and normal bones. Extremely good for free-to-play players.

Players may also frequent popular training areas and gather the unwanted bones left behind by players that kill the monsters.

A highly recommended way for free players to train Prayer is to bury big bones, as they give 15 experience, while normal bones give about 4.5 experience. If players have enough coins, they could buy big bones at the Grand Exchange. When burying large numbers of bones, you can cut the time spent in half with some timing. To do this, click any bone. About halfway through the animation, click another. You will have buried two bones while viewing the animation a single time. Players have also reported that it is possible to bury three sets of bones during a single animation using a similar technique. When simply burying bones after monster killing, Big bones are useful only if you can kill the monster faster than the time it takes to kill four chickens.

Lamps
Methods to obtain experience lamps, even as a non-member,include completing all of the Lumbridge and Draynor Tasks, where for each of the four parts you have completed you will be rewarded with lamps granting you increasingly higher amounts of experience for any chosen skill(s); and venturing north to the Barbarian Village, reaching the Stronghold of Player Safety, which will contain two antique lamps.

Bones cost analysis

 * See the bone burial calculator for coins-per-experience-point analysis of bones using live data from the Grand Exchange Market Watch.

Prayer flashing
The act of prayer flashing is where a player switches a prayer on when its effect is required, and turns it off immediately after. If done correctly, the prayer will be used without a loss to Prayer points. This can be done with combat prayers, protection prayers, and Soul Split.

Flashing requires constant attention and a lot of practice, but it can be very useful where Prayer points need to be conserved, such as in Daemonheim or the TzHaar Fight Cave.

How to prayer flash
To prayer flash, one must activate and deactivate a prayer so it is active on the needed game tick. If flashing a combat prayer or Soul Split, this is the tick you attack; if flashing a protection prayer, this is the tick your enemy attacks (which is not necessarily the tick you take damage). TzTok-Jad, tormented demons, and glacors are the exception, for their attacks are instead calculated when their hit lands.

Players can access prayers via the prayer book, their action bar or their Quick Prayers (which can be placed on your action bar). Quick prayers can be used to flash multiple prayers such as Soul Split alongside a combat prayer.

If flashing auto-attacks, the player must gain a feel for your weapon's speed. Flashing abilities can be easier, since you use each ability manually, but the timing of ability flashing varies greatly between abilities and you will need extensive practice.

If flashing monsters, the player will have to study their attack speed first, and then flash as you would auto-attacks.

Where prayer is a near necessity



 * Fighting in the higher levels of the TzHaar Fight Cave and TzTok-Jad, and the Fight Kiln.
 * The following quests: Desert Treasure, While Guthix Sleeps, Nomad's Requiem, Contact!, Mourning's Ends Part II, Ritual of the Mahjarrat, The Brink of Extinction.
 * The following monsters/bosses: Corporeal Beast, Dagannoth Kings, Kalphite Queen, tormented demons.
 * Finding a good Corporeal Beast team is near impossible without 70+ Prayer. Additionally, finding a skilled Corporeal Beast team or soloing the Corporeal beast is very difficult without the ability of the Turmoil curse.
 * All God Wars Dungeon bosses
 * The Queen Black Dragon
 * PvP minigames (Castle Wars, Soul Wars, Stealing Creation, etc.)
 * Chaos Dwarf Battlefield

Overhead
Some monsters are able to utilize prayers, mainly overhead prayers. Nex is exceptional to the rest in that she uses Curses, not prayers. Nex is able to use all deflect overhead curses (including Soul Split and Wrath) while fighting her. She randomly switches between the three deflect overhead curses and during her final phase she can also switch to Soul Split. When she dies, she uses Wrath which has a slightly larger area of effect radius than that of a player's. The Kalphite Queen uses Protect from Ranged and Magic simultaneously during her first form, while she uses Protect from Melee during her second form. Unlike other monsters who use these prayers, it is still possible, albeit less likely, to damage her using the styles she is protecting from. Sigmund will counter any attack by using a protection prayer before it is able to do any damage unless the player uses the backhand ability with the ancient mace while he doesn't have Protect from Melee active; causing his prayer to deactivate. Tormented demons initially use Protect from Melee when they spawn and counter attacks by switching their protection prayer after 3100 or more damage has been inflicted with that particular style. Astea Frostweb uses protection prayers randomly and switches to another random protection prayer at regular intervals. Sagittare uses Protect from Ranged indefinitely and does not switch. The runebound behemoth is able to use overhead protection prayers simultaneously and they can be deactivated temporarily by activating particular crystals in the room to expose him to a particular style. The skeletal trio use protection prayers randomly and switch to another random protection prayer at regular intervals. They may use different protection prayers at any one time. Akrisae the Doomed can use any protection prayer and counter attacks by switching or activating a protection prayer after 1500 or more damage has been inflicted with that particular style.
 * Nex
 * Kalphite Queen
 * Sigmund
 * Zaromark Sliver
 * Fistandantilus
 * Tormented demon
 * Elite Black Knight
 * Elite Dark Ranger
 * Elite Dark Mage
 * Elite Dark Warrior
 * Zanik
 * Astea Frostweb
 * Sagittare
 * Zenevivia
 * Runebound behemoth
 * Skeletal trio
 * Akrisae the Doomed

Other
Other behavior by monsters can be induced by the player's prayer. The Black Knight Guardian can regenerate his health if the player has any prayer points left and is within melee range, while draining the player's prayer points. These monsters are more likely to use their special attack that deals heavy, unblockable damage if the player is using overhead prayers/Curses. The Hobgoblin Geomancer is more likely to use his prayer-draining special attack if players are using any prayer against him (including non-overhead). Revenants, the Balance Elemental and airut are able to recognize overhead prayer and will use alternate styles to counter them when battling.
 * Black Knight Guardian
 * TokTz-Ket-Dill
 * TokHaar-Ket-Dill
 * Hobgoblin Geomancer
 * Kal'Ger the Warmonger
 * Revenants
 * Airut
 * Balance Elemental

Level
A player's Prayer level can be boosted by stepping on a properly configured powerup tile in a Clan Citadel battlefield. This boost simply boosts a player's temporary level. It does not boost the player's Prayer points above normal while in the battlefield. Like most other temporary boosts, this boost will wear off at the standard rate. This Prayer boost does not allow a player to use prayers that are above their base level.

Points
Prayer points can be boosted above the normal maximum (Prayer level x 10). Boosting Prayer points does Not enable a player to use prayers above his or her original Prayer level.

The following allow a boost to maximum Prayer points:
 * The altars at God Wars Dungeon (providing you are wearing a relevant god item).
 * Praying at the statue of the devourer in the Uzer Mastaba (this will drain several life points).
 * The altar in Seers' Village boosts prayer points by 20, if the player has completed the hard Seers' Village Tasks.
 * The altar in the nature grotto (requires completion of Nature Spirit), boosts 20 prayer points above maximum.
 * A spicy stew with yellow spice can increase it by 10-60 points (however it can also decrease it by 10-60 points).
 * A Prayer cape's special ability will raise it from 990 to 1000.
 * The Sulphur spring in Oo'glog will raise Prayer points above maximum depending on prayer level (at 50 Prayer it would be 570/500, at 70 it would be 780/700).
 * The Monastery's altar recharges twenty prayer points above normal maximum, making it the best free-to-play altar.
 * Praying at the Altar of Zaros in the Senntisten Temple will boost Prayer points by 15%.
 * Falador Shield 1, 2, 3 and 4 restores 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% (2 charges) of maximum Prayer points, respectively. It does not boost above maximum, however.
 * Jangerberries restore 10 prayer points each as well as restore 20 lifepoints, and raise your attack + strength by 2, however it lowers your defence by 1 point.

Trivia

 * A Prayer bonus of +30 is required to halve the drain rate of Prayers.
 * The Prayer icon colour was originally yellow, but Jagex changed the colour on 21 November 2006 when Hunter was released.
 * Some NPCs will explain to you that most attackable monsters (like the Kalphite queen) do not pray to gods, but are merely immune to certain types of attacks.