Prayer

Prayer is a skill that allows players to use spells to their advantage in combat. It is one of the slowest skills to raise on the free world, though can be invaluable against opponents. It is much faster on member servers, given the right resources.

History
Prayer was called Necromancy in the extremely early stages of RuneScape and was the last of the original skills in which players were able to reach the maximum skill level of 99. Prayer is also unique in that it was the first skill in which experience could be gained long before any use of the skill was released. Before any of the "Prayers" were made available, players could gain Prayer levels through burying bones and completing The Restless Ghost quest.

Overview
To increase a player's prayer level, they must bury bones. Non-members are only limited to this, though members have other options that are faster.

Similar to magic, prayer has its own spells. To use a prayer spell, players can click on the prayer menu, to the right of the equipment menu. Prayer spells available for use are highlighted, while prayers unavailable are dark. When a player clicks on a spell, a circle will appear around it, indicating that they are using it.

Using a prayer spell lowers the player's prayer points, causing the spells to be temporary. To increase the time, players simply have to increase their prayer level. Once the player's prayer level reaches zero, the spell will be stopped, and they will not be able to use another spell until they recharge their prayer points. To recharge, players must pray at an altar. Drinking Prayer potions can also restore prayer points. If a Holy wrench is in a player's inventory, an additional 1-2 prayer points is added when drinking a prayer potion.

Prayers are great in combat because they give players advantages. For example, some spells improve a player's combat skills, while others can protect them, and others can damage opponents.

Prayer bonus
To the right of the inventory menu is the equipment menu. Here, players can see their bonuses. These bonuses give players advantages and disadvantages in combat.

Players have a prayer bonus. The higher the prayer bonus is, the longer a player can use a prayer spell.

To have a prayer bonus, players have to wear certain types of armour, clothing, weapons, and jewellery. See Equipment section for more information.

Prayers
Members have access to all 26 prayer spells, while non-members cannot use the last five. Players can also use some prayers at the same time with others, though doing so will drain their prayer faster. Spells that cannot be used simultaneously are marked in the table with the same background colour. For example, selecting Smite while Protect from Melee is activated will automatically remove the effects of Protect from Melee.

Notes:
 * + These Prayers will not stack with better versions of themselves (e.g. no Rock Skin + Steel Skin)
 * * These Prayers cannot be used at the same time as each other.
 * ~ Hold time is not reduced against Ancient Magick ice spells.

Burying bones
There are many types of bones that players can bury, giving them some Prayer experience. However, most of them are only available to members. To bury bones, players simply have to click on them or right-click the bury bones option.

Worshipping the Ectofuntus

 * Main article: Ectofuntus

Doing the Ghosts Ahoy quest allows players to learn to worship the Ectofuntus in Port Phasmatys. At the Ectofuntus, players can bring bones to it to receive 4 times the normal experience they would receive from burying those bones. It is a fairly long method, but the experience earned is much better than slowly burying bones.

Note: Finishing Ghosts Ahoy gives you the ability to use the Ectophial, which helps significantly when worshipping the EctoFuntus

Shades of Mort'ton
After completing the Shades of Mort'ton quest, players will then be able to to cremate Shades to earn some prayer experience as well as some rewards. To learn more, see Shades of Mort'ton (minigame).

Ghasts
After completing the Nature Spirit quest, players can kill ghasts and earn prayer experience. You will need a blessed Silver sickle and about 3 or 4 druid pouchs. Ghasts are not corporeal until you use the druid pouch on them, which is why 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.

Player Owned Houses
Members can also offer bones to their altar they made in their houses by 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. The ectofuntus gives 400% experience compared to burying bones. See RuneScape Knowledge Base

Use a Marrentill on each burner to light it, while a tinderbox is in your inventory. The burners will stay lit for two minutes, or until you leave your house.

The below bonuses are based on having Marble incense burners. However, any incense burners will give the same bonuses. Candles and torches do NOT give any bonus.

Many players with a high construction level choose to build a gilded altar 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 official forums are a good place to find other players who are happy to allow 'loan' of their alters for a short amount of time.

Armour and weapons
Initiate armour, Proselyte armour, white weapons and armour give small prayer bonuses. However, they are only available to members. Initiate armour can be bought from Sir Tiffy Cashien after completing the Recruitment Drive quest, and Proselyte can be bought after finishing Slug Menace, while white armour and weapons can be bought after completing the Wanted! quest. All white items give a +1 prayer bonus.

Maces
All maces also give a small prayer bonus. However, the dragon mace and void knight mace are only available to members.

Neckwear
Some of the more powerful amulets as well as religious symbols give prayer bonuses.

Prayer Books
Wield in shield slot.

Random events
Burying bones can result in two "guardian" type of events, a Zombie or Shade attack, as with all of this type of monster, it's level is related to, and higher than yours.

The Zombie is vulnerable to the "Crumble undead" spell, and may drop some good items (especially for members), but most commonly drops a large quantity of fishing bait.

The Shade can drop shade robe top or bottom, bones, or nothing at all - they also seem to be a tough fight, at least at some points on the level scale.

Besides the "guardian" random events, it is possible to trigger the Leo the Gravedigger random event, where a player is teleported to a remote area and told to reorganize caskets into their proper burial site. The event will yield special "zombie" clothing and emotes until you have them all, after which you will receive 500 GP.

Training
The most effective training is to bury bones, or play minigames and miniquests.

Free-to-play:

There are a number of bone respawn locations : OR Use this strategy. Since the update on December 10, 2007 the bone yard is now defunct due to it being replaced by clan wars arena. So further more the best resource of bones is lost. All players can now still have one dependable resource.Go to lumbridge and either go to the goblin house, chicken coops or the cow fields. Go there and collect all the bones you can. It is recomended that you have your inventetory clear and wear the lightest clothing or nothing at all due to the fact that more and more players are using this stratagy so you have to run to get the bones. Once you have a full inventetory bury and repeat. This is a basic way to train prayer at an unbeliveably fast rate at 140 xp for each load.
 * Wilderness chaos altar (level 10-11) :  10-13 normal bones
 * Wilderness Graveyard of Shadows/Forgotten Cemetery (level 16-21) :  ~10 normal bones
 * Edgeville dungeon : ~7 normal bones

Pay-to-play:
 * Ectofuntus (renewable)
 * Ghast hunting/killing (renewable)
 * Goblin High Priest/Hopespear's will (non-renewable)

Trivia

 * The maximum prayer bonus possible for members, disregarding requirements and the lack of other bonuses for items wielded, is +45. The cheapest option to achieve the maximum prayer bonus is shown below:
 * God Mitre +5
 * Any Skill Cape (t) +4 (The most difficult piece of prayer equipment; replace with vestment cloak for +44 prayer)
 * Any God Stole +10
 * God Crozier +6
 * Proselyte Hauberk +8
 * Broodoo Shield +5
 * Monk's Robe bottom +5
 * White Gloves +1
 * White Boots +1


 * For Free-to-Play players, the maximum prayer bonus is 23:
 * Holy Symbol (No requirement) +8
 * Rune Mace (40 Attack) +4
 * Monk's Robe top (No requirement) +6
 * Monk's robe bottom (No requirement) +5


 * For members, the minimum prayer bonus is -1, due to the ancient staff's negative prayer bonus.
 * Interestingly enough, in the Prayer menu, it says that prayers that have a level requirement less than 10 appear as 01, 03, 07, and so on.
 * It is possible to obtain 136/99 prayer with the effect of the Ancient Mace special attack (Absolute maximum of 36 at the moment).