Protect Item

While the  prayer is active, the user will keep one extra item if they die. This means that if the player is Skulled, they will still keep one item and if they don't have a skull, they will keep four items.

There is known to be a glitch within this prayer, in which players have lost very valuable items. In places such as the PvP worlds, when a player uses the Protect Item prayer on when they die, at certain times, they have still lost their item. This has not yet been fixed.

Player Killing
A popular use for the Protect Item prayer is to use it while Player killing. It is common to see players in Bounty Hunter with only one item, often an Abyssal whip or poisoned Dragon dagger. Their logic is that even if they die, they can use the Protect Item prayer to over-write the effect of the skull and keep their weapon. This tactic is commonly referred to as "1 iteming". Members who depend on this are advised to bring a Prayer potion as player killers often use spells and prayers to drain their victims prayer points before they kill them, however because smite will only drain 1/4 of damage dealt from the opponent's prayer points, the "1 itemer" would generaly be safe from losing their item unless they allow themselves to be drained further by either healing during a fight or using prayer point use intensive prayers. furthermore, the level 92 lunar magic spell 'heal other' may be used on an "1 itemer" in addition to the smite prayer to drain their prayer points.

As of 15 July 2009, the Protect Item prayer will no longer work on PVP or Bounty worlds.

Kalphite Queen Hunting
The most popular way to kill the Kalphite Queen is to use a full set of Verac's Armour. Since the set has four pieces, and the Kalphite Queen is a very dangerous monster, it is common practice to keep the Protect Item prayer active at all times while fighting her, but however when group hunting the prayer is not required since the release of player graves (allowing players to recover any items dropped on death).