Magic

(F2P) (P2P)

Magic is a versatile skill that uses elemental energy released from runes for a variety of subjects such as combat, enchantments for certain items, teleporting, and alchemy. While it is possible to play the game without being skilled in Magic, there are considerable advantages gained when highly levelled. This is especially true with spells such as high level alchemy and various teleports.

Players who employ the tactics of Magic as their primary arsenal are often referred to as "Magicians", or more commonly: "Mages"(proper "magi"). Once achieving a level of 66 Magic, a player will be able to access the Wizards' Guild that is located in Yanille. Unfortunately, Yanille is in a members' only area, so the guild is currently unavailable for non-members.

As with all guides in the Skills section, members-only items are in italics.

Spells
Magic is used almost exclusively through the casting of spells on another player or a non-player character (referred to as an NPC), on oneself, or on an item with the use of three groups of magicks.

The three kinds of Magic in RuneScape are: Standard Magicks (commonly called "modern" or "regular"), Ancient Magicks, and Lunar Magicks. Each kind of Magic has a different spellbook, and typically, only one can be used at once (for an exception to this rule, see Spell Book Swap). The Lunar Magic Spellbook and Ancient Magic Spellbook are only available on member worlds, with the completion of their respective quests.

To cast a spell, a player chooses the desired spell from their spellbook, then selects an appropriate target (whether it be an item, a player, or an NPC). It should be noted that spells that affect the caster are usually activated when the spell is clicked. In order to access the spellbook, click on the spellbook icon in the game's interface.



Ancient Magicks
The Ancient Magicks spellbook focuses on the destruction of enemies and contains some of the most dangerous offensive spells in RuneScape. These spells can only be used after completing the Desert Treasure quest. Wielding an Ancient staff will increase the amount of damage dealt by Ancient spells by 10%. Ancient Magicks use the following types of spells: Ice, Smoke, Blood, Shadow, Miasmic, and Teleportation.

Ancient offensive spells are divided into 2 groups: Normal spells and area effect spells. The normal spells are Rush and Blitz spells, which only affect the targeted person. Burst and Barrage are the area effect spells, and will, if fighting in a multiway combat zone, affect every person next to the targeted person in a 3x3 square zone. Note, however, that it is impossible to hit more than 9 targets with a single spell cast.

Ancient Magicks are most commonly used for their offensive potential. However, just like the other two Magicks, Ancient Magicks come with teleport spells, which are able to teleport a player to many different locations. Most of the Ancient Magick teleportations lead to areas that existed in the ancient Zarosian empire. (Many of which lie in the Wilderness, an area that is extremely dangerous.)

Ancient Magick spells are capable of earning the highest experience for Magic due to the nature of the area effect spells; however, the high price of runes used in Ancient Magick spells makes this a very expensive way to train. This is comparable to using Chinchompas for Ranged, which also can hit multiple targets.



Lunar spells
The Lunar Spellbook contains spells that focus on the non-combat nature of magic. The spells are useful for training noncombat skills or assisting other players, both in and out of a combat situation. As with the other 2 spellbooks, the Lunar Spellbook includes a range of teleport spells (along with 1 group teleport version of each of them) with locations covering a large area of the Members only lands. To use Lunar Magicks, the completion of the Lunar Diplomacy quest is required. A large spellbook extension becomes available after completion of the Dream Mentor quest.

Many of these spells make other skills easier to train; for example, the Plank Make spell provides an alternative, faster way of making planks rather than using the sawmill.

Standard spells
The Standard Spells are activated on any new character's account and they are available on all worlds. There is no requirement to use the standard spellbook (although some spells are only available on member worlds, and others require completion of certain quests or tasks). As with other skills, new capabilities require higher skill levels.

All spells yield their associated amount of experience when cast; combat spells give additional experience directly related to the amount of damage caused to the opponent(s). Non-Combat spells always give a set amount of experience.

In the skill of Magic, spells fall into one of several categories: combat, curse, teleportation, alchemy, and enchantment.

Teleportation spells
Teleportation spells are divided into three categories: Teleother, Group Teleport and Personal Teleport spells. The latter is most popular with all players, free and member alike, as personal teleportation spells allow players to almost instantaneously transport themselves to many major cities and towns across the world of RuneScape. Teleother spells are a little different and are only available on the Normal Spellbook. They allow a player to teleport another player to a standard teleportation location. In order to do this, the casting player must have permission to teleport the target player, or the spell will not activate. Teleother spells are only available to Members, and are considerably more expensive than the basic teleport spells. They also require a considerably higher Magic level. Group teleports are available only in the Lunar Magicks spellbook for Members and are about the same as teleother spells, these teleports allow you to teleport yourself, and at the same time teleothers people that are standing next to or on you

Combat spells
Combat Spells are the spells used by mages to fight, and can range from basic elemental spells that hit damage, to effect spells like the Ancient spells that have the possibility to hit multiple people, leech life, poison the enemy etc. and to bind spells, that will render the enemy unable to move.

The maximum hit using a combat spell in the standard spellbook is over 1100 with Fire Surge, given the right circumstances.

The maximum hit using a combat spell for free players outside Daemonheim, can be achieved by using Fire Blast while wearing arcane blast necklace and drinking Wizard's Mind Bomb to attain over level 100 magic. The max hit inside Daemonheim can be attained by turning on enhance magic prayer to attain over 100 magic, wielding a catalytic staff and casting Fire Blast.

Combat spells will occasionally splash upon contact with a target (i.e. they will do no damage). When splashing, the caster will receive only the base experience for that spell and no additional experience. As a result, there is no technical difference between splashing with a spell and hitting a 0 with the same spell. The splash rate depends on eight factors:
 * The caster's Magic level.
 * The Magic attack bonus of the equipment the caster is wearing.
 * Any Magic prayers the caster has activated.
 * The target's Magic level.
 * The target's Defence level.
 * The Magic defence bonus of the equipment the target is wearing.
 * Any Magic prayers the target has activated (including Protect from Magic).
 * Any Defence prayers the target has activated.

Improving the factors as much as possible is one of the keys to becoming a successful combat mage. To gain the best advantage, it is recommended to focus on getting a higher Magic level. For every Magic level gained, combat spells become more accurate, and less likely to splash.

Curses
A Curse spell is any spell that causes a negative effect to its target other than damage, usually reducing a stat. An example of a curse spell is the Weaken spell in the standard spellbook, which causes a slight loss to a target's Defence.

Alchemy
All Alchemy spells make use of nature runes, in order to transform items into coins, or unrefined ores into bars. Particularly note High Alchemy in this section, as it is probably the most widely used spell in the game, but is usually considered a somewhat expensive training method at higher levels because of the accumulated money lost. Low Alchemy can be done for free 30 times each day if the player has an Explorer's Ring 3, and will still get experience. The other standard spellbook spell is Superheat Item, which lets you smelt an ore or combination of ores into the corresponding bars without a furnace.

Enchantments
All Enchantment spells use Cosmic Runes to improve an items abilities. For standard spellbook users, there are multiple enchantment spells, but all have the same generic effect of enchanting an amulet. Using the appropriate enchant spell on an amulet results in special bonuses to strength, defence, etc... The normal amulets and enchanted versions are both tradeable.

Runes
All spells (except Home Teleport) require the use of runes as a resource. Runes are commonly traded stackable items which are obtained by various methods.

Elemental staves
The required elemental runes of one type for a spell can be fulfilled infinitely if the player wields an Elemental staff corresponding to the required elemental rune. As an example, wielding a Fire staff allows a player to cast High Level Alchemy using only one Nature rune. Elemental staves provide the equivalent elemental rune in limitless quantities, making them extremely useful for all kinds of Magic training.

Players who are lucky enough may obtain a combination staff (available only to Members). This is a staff with more than one rune's power. So far, the only existing combination staffs are the lava battlestaff (which is fire and earth), mud battlestaff (which is water and earth), and the steam battlestaff (which is water and fire), and their mystic counterparts. As with normal elemental staves, combination staves provide unlimited amounts of the corresponding runes.

Various magical staves are available in RuneScape. In the list below are all the free-to-play staves, which can all be obtained at Zaff's Superior Staffs! store in Varrock. The main effect of a staff or magic staff is to boost magic attack and defence, while elemental staves provide unlimited amounts of their elementary rune in addition to the boosts provided by a magic staff. There are many members-only staves such as battlestaves, mystic staves, the Slayer staff, the Lunar staff, the Ancient staff, and God staves.

Some members magic staves can increase the power of combat spells by 10% if they are wielding it. The staves which fall into this category are: Ahrim's staff, Ancient staff, Master wand, Void Knight Mace, Zuriel's staff and Corrupt Zuriel's staff.

The Staff of Light goes further, providing a hefty 15% power bonus towards magical attacks, while the Chaotic staff offers a tremendous 20% damage boost.

Robes and armour


Most mages typically wear various types of magical robes (although some light armour is available that is made from special material and does not hinder the wearer's ability to perform magic attacks). For the different sets of armour and detailed information on each piece, see the Armour: Magic armour article.

A player's maximum magic attack bonus is +152, and the maximum magic defence bonus is +196.

How to successfully fight as a mage
A player who is a mage is weak against Ranged attacks, and is strong against Melee fighters. When attacking others, a mage should use a combination of curse spells (Bind, Snare, and Entangle spells in Standard spells, Ice spells in Ancient Magicks) and highly damaging combat spells such as Surge and Wave spells, the Mage Arena spells, or spells from the Ancient Magicks spell book. Curses tend to be underused, but do not underestimate them. The -10% curse spells (Vulnerability, Enfeeble and Stun) and Shadow Barrage can unpot any warrior and the spell can be cast again if the warrior takes another sip of his (super) attack, strength, or defence potion. Another useful tactic to fight meleers is to time your attacks so you know when your opponent will be able to move again. Magic combat spells take 3 seconds to cast. For example: you freeze a meleer with Entangle. Entangle freezes your opponent for 15 seconds. Entangle takes 3 seconds to cast, leaving you with 12 seconds to cast spells. 12/3 is 4, so you can cast 4 spells until your opponent can move again. When this happens, run in the opposite direction of where your opponent is standing (so if your opponent is standing north of you, run south) and cast Entangle again. Rinse and repeat until your opponent is dead. When fighting monsters, using battle tactics (such as staying in a safe spot) is very helpfull. Most undead creatures and demons are weak to magic attacks, providing an advantage over these creatures. One should take note of a monster's weakness to a particular element (wind, water, earth, or fire).

A little known fact about Magic is that as a player's Magic skill level increases, so does their defence against magical attacks. Magical defence is calculated from 70% of a player's Magic level and 30% of their defence level. Thus, even if a player does not care to use Magic offensively too often, having a high Magic skill can help to protect them from Magic attacks.

Training magic
Generally, the fastest way to obtain runes is to buy them (in most cases). If a player can not afford them, it is recommended that a player uses the Runecrafting skill to make runes for magic training. Alternatively, a player can play Fist of Guthix activity for free runes, although these cannot be taken from the arena. Using magic this way is the cheapest way to gain magic levels, while also gaining the Fist of Guthix tokens to purchase items. Players have an option to make teleport tablets with the tokens, gaining money and experience at the same time.

Certain locations, such as the prison in Port Sarim, and the demon's cage atop the Wizards' Tower, can prove to be useful when training magic because of the safe spot: this leaves enemies unable to retaliate.

Finishing the beginner and easy tasks of the Lumbridge and Draynor achievement diary gives as a reward an Explorer's ring, which allows 30 Low level alchemy casts per day for free. This allows low level mages to level up their magic very quickly. The easiest but not the most profitable way to level magic up using this method is to head to a field of crops (ex. potatoes, cabbage), pick up 28 of them, and then using the ring, low-level alchemy them all. Each cast is 31 experience, so for one day, 930 experience can be gained in a few minutes.

Participating in Fist of Guthix is another way to level Magic. This activity is found in the Wilderness just outside of Varrock and is best played on a world specifically for Fist of Guthix, such as World 20. When you start the game, you are granted 1000 elemental runes and 300 catalytic runes. Don't worry about winning or losing; find your target and auto cast your spells. Since they give you free runes, this is an excellent place to level up your magic.

With the recent drop in the relative price on fires and mind runes versus air runes, fire spells are strongly recommended in conjunction with a staff of air.

The bandits west of the Grand Exchange can be killed from behind the safety of the small stone wall there. The Dark Wizards by Varrock's south entrance can also be killed with the chance of rune drops. Dark wizards of level 20 will not attack anyone above level 40. When killing dark wizards, it is highly recommended to wear Ranging armour, as it provides extra defence against the wizards Magic attacks and they hit 60s and 80s often with Earth and Fire strike..

At the moment, for low-level mages, Curse splashing is a good technique to use for levelling magic, as it is cheap and fast (29 base exp points per cast). Use the highest level strike when attacking an NPC.

Defensive casting
When this option in the Magic interface is selected, it gives the player 1.33 Magic experience and 1 Defence experience for every ten damage, as well as the usual 1.33 Constitution experience and base magic experience that is earned for each cast.

History
When RuneScape Classic was released, the Magic skill was originally split up into two separate skills, GoodMagic and EvilMagic. The Evil Magic spells were Confuse, Thick Skin, Shock Bolt, Elemental Bolt and Fear, and the Good Magic spells were Chill Bolt, Burst of Strength, Camouflage, Rock Skin and Wind bolt.

Magic spells could be "failed" - the player would keep their runes but be unable to cast another spell for 20 seconds. It was less likely for the player to fail spells at a higher level. Because runes were less common on RuneScape Classic, they gave far more experience. Each spell gave the fixed experience using the formula 2 * spell level + 20. Jagex explains that the reduction of Magic experience in RuneScape 2 was due to the fact that runes were easier to obtain on the new version.

Prior to the introduction of RuneScape 2, spells were universally represented by a simple 2 Dimensional flying blue star, which proved difficult to distinguish from arrows, which were green stars. Also, in the original RuneScape, players were capable of casting magic spells while wearing full rune armour, leading to a massive imbalance in favour of high-level mages.

On 22 September 2003, the Mage Arena was introduced, together with the three god spells Saradomin Strike, Claws of Guthix, and Flames of Zamorak. On the 24th of November, the Bind, Snare and Entangle spells were released in an attempt to balance out the combat triangle. Also, failing spells no longer made you incompetent to cast spells for 20 seconds, but you would lose the runes.

18 October 2004 was the release date of the Splitbark armour.

On 18 April 2005, the Desert Treasure quest was released, together with the Ancient Magicks and a truckload of new spells.

On the 4th of January, 2006, the Mage Training Arena was released. The 24th of July of the same year the Lunar Diplomacy quest was released, with the introduction of the Lunar Spellbook.

At first, the Lunar spellbook had 33 spells. On 15 May 2007, Jagex added 7 new spells that could be used after completing the Dream Mentor quest. Also, on 18 September 2007, the spell Ourania Teleport was released by Jagex along with the Ourania Runecrafting Altar. On 2 October 2007, Jagex changed the effects of the Lunar Home Teleport spell so that, if cast on a Non-members world, it would teleport the player to Lumbridge.

Trivia

 * The word Magic is the shortest name of any skill so far, having only 5 letters.
 * Magic in RuneScape Classic was very different from its current incarnation:
 * There were two magic skills, Good Magic and Evil Magic. When the current Magic system was released, the player's Magic level was set as whatever his or her highest old magic level was.
 * Melee armour offered no Magic attack penalties, leading to a massive imbalance in favour of high-level mages.
 * Spells gave the fixed experience using the formula 2 * spell level + 20. Jagex claims that the reduction of Magic experience in RuneScape 2 was due to the fact that runes were easier to obtain on the new version, because Runecrafting (2004) and the Grand Exchange (2008) were added to the game.
 * Spells were sometimes failed, which did not use any runes, but stopped players from using any magic for 20 seconds.
 * Combat spells cast on Dummies do not give Constitution experience.
 * Note that with Magic one can raise their combat level without ever attacking a monster.
 * It is possible to achieve 99 Magic without raising one's Constitution level (although it is not recommended). A player would first have to use experience lamps to gain enough experience to cast a teleport spell, then use teleport spells to raise their magic level to 99 (or they could make use of various other spells, such as High Alchemy. This requires millions of gold, and would take much longer to train to 99 without the use of combat spells.), or a player may equip a bow without arrows, and bandage players in Soul Wars. You can then spend the zeal on magic experience.
 * Ever since RuneScape HD's release, failed spells will sometimes fly straight up instead of splashing and disappearing as usual.
 * If a player is far enough from their opponent, their spells will take longer to reach their opponent than an attack cycle, leading them to fire another spell before the first spell hit. This can sometimes lead to a spell being in the air when the opponent dies.
 * Projectile spells will change directions to hit players that teleport.
 * Before the Autocast update on 9 September 2009, spells could only be autocast if wielding staves, and even then only certain spells could be autocast.
 * During an update on 17 November 2009 Jagex changed the Magic potion to give a stat bonus of +5 instead of the earlier +4. However, Magic potions made in Stealing Creation still give a +4 bonus. This has yet to be fixed.
 * Some of the more potent and ancient magical races shown in the game, such as the Mahjarrat of Freneskae or the Fairies of Zanaris, do not require runes to use their magic, though most other races, such as the Humans, Dwarves and even the Elves, utilise Guthix's runestones to cast spells.
 * On 21 June 2010 the animation for the combat spells in the standard spellbook was updated from the previous generic blast with different colors to actually individual animations that were unique for each element. The emote for making a teleport tab in a house was also changed.