Invention training

There are many ways to gain experience for the Invention skill. However, you must begin by completing the tutorial, which can be started by speaking to Doc in the invention guild.

Inspiration
The first thing necessary for Invention is inspiration, which is gained by levelling Invention or from training other skills. Inspiration is used to discover new items. There is an inspiration cap for each level beyond which no more inspiration is earned. Inspiration can be earned in a number of ways. These include:
 * Leveling up the Invention skill
 * Training other skills
 * Leveling up enhanced weapons, and disassembling or siphoning them

Discovery
Before being able to manufacture specific items, players need to discover their blueprints first. During the tutorial, players discover a handful of useful items for training the skill, including the charge pack, augmentor, and weapon gizmo shell. Discovering different items requires varying amounts of Inspiration.

When players first begin to discover a new invention, they can begin to create a "prototype" for what you are trying to create. This interface includes five modules for you to place parts into, and a selection of ten different parts to place. These parts can be placed in any order to begin, as players only need to determine which five parts are used to build the device. Placing the parts incorrectly has no penalties, so it is often easiest to select five at random, and continue to fill the modules as you discover which parts are not used. When players fail to place parts correctly, any correct parts stay on the blueprint, and any incorrect parts are removed and crossed out.

Interface when discovering new invention:



Continue building prototypes until the correct five components are chosen:



After determining the correct parts that are used for creating the device, players are prompted to place the items in a new blueprint to determine their order. Again, there are five slots to place the parts into, except this time their position is the important factor, as it affects the amount of inspiration needed in order to unlock the ability to create the device. When the pieces have been all been placed into the blueprint, the box beneath tells players both the amount of inspiration required to invent in that specific configuration and the optimisation of the configuration. Ideally players should achieve "Perfect" optimisation in order to minimise the amount of inspiration needed to invent the device, however it is not mandatory to do so.

Rearrange the ordering of the components to reduce the amount of inspiration needed:



The possible levels of optimisation, in order from the worst to the best, are:

An effective method to find the best combination is by filling out the blueprint, and noting the inspiration required and optimisation you begin with. After you have done this, begin to swap each component individually with the component in the module at the far left, and noting how the inspiration required and optimisation change. Once you have swapped all components at least once, place the component that resulted in the lowest inspiration required into the first module, proceed to repeat this with each module in turn. Eventually, players should achieve perfect optimisation with this method.

Disassembling items
Most alchable items can be disassembled for materials. The materials given can be checked by using the Analyse spell on the item. The lower tier-ed the item, the higher chance you'll get junk (for example, it is more likely to receive junk by disassembling an adamant platebody than a rune plate body). In some cases though, this isn't true. For example, Standard, common and uncommon materials follow this rule entirely. As for rare materials, the chance of receiving a rare material only alters if the item you have chosen skips a number of tiers. For example, a Tier 1 Fish (Shrimp) give fewer Living Components compared to a Tier 8 Fish (Lobster).

Materials are used to manufacture items you have discovered. They are also used to make perks with Gizmo Shells.

Materials
There's a wide variety of materials that can be obtained from multiple items. Specific items can give specific materials, such as a cabbage giving Brassican components. Materials can be found in almost every item, except those won from Treasure Hunter and a few in-game items. Many items are called 'Dead' items which means they hold no materials except junk and a small chance of obtaining a rare component.

There are many items which give a high chance of obtaining certain materials. This has also helped tier items that were not tiered before. An example would be flasks and vials. Normal flasks and vials have an uncommon chance of giving clear components, while using a crystal flask has a common rate of obtaining clear Components. This makes vials tier 1, flasks tier 2, and crystal flasks tier 3. So the higher the tier on the item, the better chance of getting the materials you would rarely get from a tier 1 item of the same kind. Another example would be jade gems compared to dragonstone gems. Jade is tier 1. Dragonstone is tier 6.

The best items to disassemble for materials are items that are cheap to buy while having a low junk chance. White equipment from Sir Vyvin or mithril and adamant equipment can be useful to disassemble.

Manufacturing
When you have collected materials, you can begin to manufacture items in order to facilitate experience gain. Typically, a device requires a larger number of common materials and a smaller number of uncommon materials. A list of possible devices that can be manufactured, as well as the materials required to assemble them, can be found here.

Augmenting items
To augment an item, players need an augmentor, which is manufactured with a number of divine energy (the amount depends on the tier; for example, it can be 2,000 pale energy or 225 incandescent energy), 45 Base parts, 45 flexible parts, 45 tensile parts, 8 enhancing components, and 7 powerful components. The augmentor can then be used on any augmentable item in order to allow the player to level that item up in order to gain Invention experience at a later time. The player may also optionally add gizmos to it to gain perks.

Perks
Up to 5 types of materials can be exchanged for a perk. The perk received is often random, depending on the materials, with junk components giving almost useless perks. A list of perks that can be gained can be seen when adding materials to your gizmo shell. When creating the gizmo, one or more of those is selected. Some perks have ranks, reaching up to a maximum rank of 5. Each perk's maximum rank is different.

Gizmos
Gizmos can only be added to augmented items. A weapon gizmo shell can be manufactured with 10 blade parts, 5 crafted parts, and 2 strong components. They can then be charged with other materials (obtained from disassembling) to create perks.

Creating gizmos gives some experience, but is not meant to be the main source of experience. Immediately after the release of the skill, creating gizmos was the most effective method to train Invention, but this has since been heavily reduced in order to be more aligned with the original intention of the skill.

Gaining experience
After augmenting items, players are then able to level them up by using them normally. For example, an augmented weapon can be levelled up by using it in combat. Doing so drains energy from the charge pack. The rate of drain depends upon how many augmented items are being used at the same time and the tiers of the items. Higher-tiered items drain energy more quickly.

Players can disassemble augmented items for materials and experience. Beginning at level 27, players can discover and construct equipment siphons to extract experience without destroying the items. Siphons are single-use. The experience gained from siphoning an item is the same as from disassembling it two levels lower. The ratio of Invention experience gained to item experience generally increases with level, but there are some notable exceptions. Cells marked in red above denote levels where the Invention experience per item experience is less than lower levels. Cells marked in green are the optimum levels for siphoning or disassembling. Players may consider it more convenient to train items to level 10 (or 12) before using siphons, if they wish to construct or buy fewer siphons.

Level 2–4
Full completion of the tutorial should be enough to get you to level 4 or 5. If this fails, it is recommended to disassemble items for materials, and create augmentors and gizmo shells in order to train these levels, as they will be used to gain experience at higher levels. At level 4, the ability to train equipment to level 5 should be researched.

Level 4–27
After researching the ability to train equipment to level 5, two items should be trained to level 5 then disassembled. This grants a total of 216,000 experience, putting the player at at least level 28. When the player reaches level 27, they should unlock the ability to train augmented equipment to level 10. One relatively cheap option for training these levels is by augmenting black salamanders, as they are easy to obtain, and have a lower cost than most other augmentable weapons.

Level 27+
The fastest method of training Invention is currently training augmented weapons and armour. If you plan to disassemble the augmented equipment, then it should be trained to level 10, as this maximises the amount of experience gained without wasting your time. However, if you plan to siphon the equipment, you should train it to level 9 or 12. As shown in the table above, training to level 9 will maximise invention experience per item experience (roughly 20k extra invention xp per item), at the cost of extra siphons; training to level 12 maximizes invention experience per siphon, at the cost of extra time spent leveling the item.

Recommended weapons for augment training include the enhanced excalibur, Balmung, and Korasi's sword. These weapons are ideal due to their low cost, ease of replacement, and immunity to price action in the Grand Exchange. Additionally, if the player has enough Commendations or Thaler, Jessika's sword is a very affordable weapon usable for augmentation and disassembly (especially since you can level the weapon during the Pest Control games, making the most of your time). Cheaper yet still effective alternatives are black salamanders, hand cannons and Balmung. For mages, popular weapons to augment and disassemble include the Abyssal wand and abyssal orb, Crystal staff, and staff of light. It is important to remember that the invention experience rewards remain the same regardless of the tier of the weapon you're using, though higher tier weapons will deal more damage and should level up faster.

Levelling up weapons
Equipment experience is a function of combat experience, so you generally want to choose a monster that gives fast combat experience rates. Note that equipment experience for weapons is gained per hit, so other forms of damage (e.g. familiars) will not grant equipment experience. The important factor is damage dealt with the augmented weapon, so familiars can still be used to increase combat experience rates without hurting equipment levelling.

Summary
There are three basic ways to train Invention, with the method of choice applied right after you complete the tutorial.


 * The least costly and slowest - levelling top tier (Tier 90) gear through combat and applying equipment siphons to reset each item as it reaches item level 12. This will require very approximately one weapon set, body armour, leg armour, 3 augmentors (4 if using dual-wielding), 67 equipment siphons, and 278 divine charges. This translates to 135 Base parts, 135 Tensile parts, 135 Flexible parts, 24 Enhancing components, 21 Powerful components, 10250 Simple parts, 335 Dextrous components, and 335 Precious components. It is recommended to obtain Ascended components or Shifting components for Efficient 3 perks.
 * Slightly costly (Low hundreds of millions coins or profitable depending on training location) - levelling lower tier (Tier 70 to 85) gear through combat and disassembling each item as it reaches item level 10. This will require very approximately 28 weapon sets, 19 body armours, 18 leg armours, 65 augmentors, and 136 divine charges. This translates to 2925 Base parts, 2925 Tensile parts, 2925 Flexible parts, 520 Enhancing components, 455 Powerful components, and 2720 Simple parts. It is recommended to obtain Ascended components or Shifting components for Efficient 3 perks.
 * The most expensive and fastest (one to two billion coins) but no combat required - manufacture Weapon gizmo shells and Armour gizmo shells, fill five slots with the highest level materials you can use, create perks, and repeat. Recommended materials include Explosive components, Rumbling components, and Undead components as the supporting items provide enough components to fill a full gizmo shell.

If levelling your gear, priority unlocks are Augmented armour, Augmented leg armour, Augmented item maximum level 5/10/15, Charge drain reduction 1-8, and Junk chance reduction 1-8. If manufacturing gizmos, priority unlocks are Junk chance reduction 1-8 and unlocking the components you will use to train to level 99. As the final inspiration unlocks are at level 105, after reaching 105 you should unlock all discoveries for the full 3,573,297 extra experience.

To offset costs when levelling gear to disassemble, it's recommended to take advantage of any untradable items you may have in your bank, as in a sense the items are prepaid. Examples include Korasi's sword, Balmung, Enhanced excalibur, the Crystal bow from the elf quest series, Chaotic equipment, superior Player-owned port armour, and Player-owned port magic/melee weapons.

After reaching level 105 you should unlock all discoveries for a total 3,573,297 extra experience.

Completing quests
Main article: Quest experience rewards - Invention