Invention

Invention is a skill which allows players to disassemble items and obtain new materials. These can be used to manufacture newly discovered devices and augment a variety of high-level weapons, armour, and tools, enhancing them with perks. Invention is RuneScape's 27th skill, as well as the first elite skill. Levels 80 Divination, Crafting, and Smithing are required to access this skill.

Invention is the second skill (after Dungeoneering) to have a level cap higher than 99. It has both a cape of accomplishment and a master cape of accomplishment, both of which are sold by Doc. These both feature similar emotes, which are slightly different from each other. A retro style cape of accomplishment was also released.

Invention will be released through many updates. The initial batch, released on 25 January 2016, included content for levels 1 to 99. Future significant updates include content for levels 100 to 120, machines, full access to the Invention Guild, and additional technology trees. There are also many smaller updates to the skill planned throughout 2016, as well as an Invention theme to other content released, including quest rewards. See Upcoming updates for more details about planned future content for Invention.

Starting out
Players can start by going through a tutorial for Invention by speaking to Doc at the Invention Guild, north-east of the Falador lodestone. While working on the Invention skill, players help to develop the guild. During the tutorial the player's tool belt is upgraded to include a charge pack, material pouch, and inventor's tools.

In addition to the Invention Guild, there are six other Inventor's workbenches around Gielinor:
 * 1) Ardougne, furnace west of church
 * 2) Dorgesh-Kaan, Oldak's laboratory
 * 3) Keldagrim, anvil in western part of the Consortium building
 * 4) Seers' village, anvil
 * 5) Varrock, anvil south of west bank
 * 6) Yanille, anvil south of bank

Concept art from RuneFest 2015 suggested that Invention may include the ability for a player to become a guild master. The player could then be able to build machines and decorations in the guild, using a hotspot system similar to the one used in the player-owned houses system; build various workshops including cave goblin workshop, dwarven workshop, and human Divination workshop, and be able to employ people to work in the built workshops. The examples of NPCs who could potentially be hired included Oldak and Professor Oddenstein.

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


 * Levelling equipment, afterwards, it may be siphoned to keep the equipment but give less experience, or disassembled to destroy the item and get more experience.
 * Creating gizmos, by using materials in a gizmo shell
 * Creating items, such as equipment siphons and pogo sticks

Bonus experience
Between the skill's release and 25 July 2016 there was an Invention Amnesty where players could not gain direct or bonus experience in Invention from sources such as experience lamps, stars and books, the Jack of trades aura, and Distractions and Diversions.

Since the 25 July 2016 players are able to use bonus experience on Invention providing that they have completed the Invention Tutorial. However, players will only be able to gain 50% of the bonus experience from these sources for Invention that they would in other skills.


 * Bonus experience is applied when disassembling or siphoning tools or combat equipment, but other boosts will not.
 * During Bonus XP Weekends double experience is awarded to items' experience gains rather than Invention experience gained. Other modifiers, including Clan avatars and the Wisdom aura, are also be applied to items' experience gains rather than Invention experience from disassembly.
 * Tears of Guthix and Guthixian butterflies will only grant the player Invention experience if all other skills except Dungeoneering and Invention are at level 99 and they have a lower level or experience in Invention than Dungeoneering.
 * Ancient effigies do not have an Invention skill requirement to open them, but it is possible to use a Dragonkin lamp on Invention, at the 50% experience rate.
 * It is possible to use the Jack of trades aura reward on Invention.

Specialisation and tech trees
While levelling Invention players are able to pursue specialisations by choosing different tech trees. The type of tech tree that the player selects determines what items can be unlocked and manufactured first, by providing different sets of blueprints. Batch one of Invention includes 3 tech trees. All players use the basic human tech tree when they begin training the skill. Once the player reaches level 40 they are given the option to specialise in either the cave goblin tech tree or dwarven tech tree.

Inspiration and discovery
At an Inventor's workbench, using their current blueprints, the player can discover new materials and devices by using inspiration in a process called discovery. Unlocking a new device or material will give a one time chunk of experience after which the player will be able to build and use the device or material.

Inspiration can be gained both inside and outside of the Invention skill. Using an augmented item or manufacturing a device might give you inspiration, but so might training other skills. The discovery process involves a micropuzzle where the player arranges modules to optimise the cost of discovering a new thing, so that less inspiration is required. The process indicates how well optimised the modules are, ranging from Poor, Satisfactory, Good, Excellent or Perfect, with Perfect using the least amount of inspiration. The ideal order of modules is random for each player.

Disassembly and materials
Players are able to break down items (including noted stacks) by dragging them into their Invention pouch, which is located in the inventory interface, next to the bond pouch, or by using the Disassemble ability from their spellbook. This gives a small amount of Invention experience and produces materials. Each item also has a junk chance, dependent on its tier.

The materials produced are a mixture of common materials, called parts, and rarer materials, called components. Components have more powerful applications than parts. Some specific components are only obtainable from particular items. Players are able to obtain materials even if they do not have the Invention level required to use them. It is possible for an item to give up to 12 standard components as well as up to 7 rare components upon being dismantled. The number of materials given will depend on the value, nature and size of the item dismantled.

Obtained materials are stored in the weapon or armour gizmo shell interface, with the tool gizmo shell interface planned for a future update. Materials can be used to create devices or to augment weapons or armour, after the player has unlocked the ability to do so. It is possible to disassemble noted items.

Players are able to use the Analyse ability to determine the materials that may be obtained from breaking down an item. This opens the Material Analysis interface which will display the junk chance rate for the item, as well as a list of the materials that may possibly be gained from it. Materials are rated as being obtained often, sometimes, rarely, or special.

Augmenting items
Players are able to augment certain tools, weapons, shields, torso-, and leg-slot armours. To do so, one must first build and apply an augmentor to an item. The augmented item can then have a gizmo with perks applied to it and be levelled up. Augmenting an item will make it untradeable and you will not be able to return an item to its original tradeable version without using an Augmentation dissolver.

Perks are mechanical effects that may be positive or negative. Some perks are new, though most are generally already found elsewhere in the game. For example, the occasional damage reduction effect of Warpriest of Saradomin armour can be granted by a perk, though it is less effective than this armour's effect (equivalent to wearing around 3 pieces of the set).

To create perks, a player must craft and fill a gizmo shell with materials. Each gizmo shell has 5 slots that can be filled. After filling the gizmo shell, the player will be able to choose which perks they wish to make out of the range of possible perks that can be made from the materials inserted. Gizmos can be socketed onto an augmented item to impart its perks to that item. Creating a gizmo will grant Invention experience for each material that is used up. Using rarer materials grants more experience.

Each material may produce a variety of perks. Additionally, perks may be of different tiers – up to 5 ranks for certain perks – and materials are weighted in their likelihood of making different levels of a given perk. Materials are balanced so that adding the same material to all 5 slots of a gizmo shell will result in the creation of 1 slightly negative perk and 1 slightly positive perk; therefore, players will need use a mixture of different materials – aiming to leverage the positive effects of each and avoid the negatives of each – in order to create a gizmo with a net-positive effect. The term "prototyping" refers to this process of trying to create useful gizmos from experimenting with different combinations of perks.

Two-handed weaponry allows the attachment of two gizmos, each with up to 2 perks, while only one gizmo may be attached to one-handed weaponry.

Levelling up items
Once an item has been augmented it will gain experience and advance levels when it is used in combat. Levelling an item increases the experience and materials received when disassembling it. The maximum level achievable is dependent on research.

An augmented item receives a proportion of the base combat experience that the player earns when killing a monster. The base value, which applies to armour and main-hand weapons, is 4%; two-handed weapons gain 50% more for 6% total, and off-hand weapons gain half as much for 2% total. The maximum amount of experience an augmented item can earn per kill is capped at 300. Killing players does not increase the gear's experience.

Levelling a piece of equipment from level 1–10 increases the amount of stored Invention experience that is contained within it each time that its level increases. Although items can be levelled up to a maximum of level 20 at 99 Invention, the maximum effects are at level 10.

There are also two options when claiming the experience from augmented items:
 * Fully disassemble both item and any gizmos for full Invention experience and materials.
 * Use an equipment siphon, retaining both the item and any perks, for experience equal to disassembling it at 2 levels lower. The equipment siphon can be made by the player at level 27 or bought from the Grand Exchange. The equipment dissolver needs to be unlocked first then it will give the option to learn to make the siphon.

Any augmented equipment that has the same level will give the same amount of Invention experience when disassembled. However, it should be faster to level higher tier equipment as equipment's experience gains are dependent on the amount of combat experience earned by the player. Additionally the rate of levelling will be balanced by number of slots; so a two handed weapon will level twice as fast as a one handed weapon and as fast as dual wielded weapons.

Players will need to use charge packs to run their augmented equipment. The player's charge pack will be stored on their character's tool belt and will be shared by all augmented equipment that the player uses. It will be powered by divine charges created from divine energy. The amount of divine charges used by a item will depend on its drain rate. Using higher level divine energy should be more economical for creating divine charges. It will cost 225 incandescent energy to create a divine charge, or larger quantities of lower-tier energy. On death, any augmented equipment not protected drains 2 hours worth of drain rate from the charge pack; e.g. an item that drains 1 charge/second will drain 7200 charges.

Devices
Materials can also be used to create devices which have an effect on the in game world. Devices will include:

There are plans to add machines that will allow players to gather resources over time, although at a slower rate than obtaining them manually. Managing the machines will be comparable to the Managing Miscellania minigame. These will not be added with the first batch of Invention.
 * Mechanised chinchompas which will do more damage than non-augmented counterparts.
 * Woodcutting, Mining and Fishing accumulators. These will work like urns that are charged up when the player fails to gain resources (as opposed to when resources are obtained) and which can be teleported away to gain experience when they are fully charged.
 * Equipment siphons to extract stored Invention experience from levelled up equipment without destroying the item, instead causing its levels to be reset. This will give the player a lower amount of Invention experience than disassembly, equivalent to that which would have been gained from a piece of equipment 2 levels lower.

Experience-level relationship
Invention was originally planned to have a different experience-per-level relationship to previous skills, with the skill being slower to level at lower levels. It was mentioned that the new halfway to 99 level would have been level 77 and not 92. The maximum virtual level for this skill would have been level 150.

However, in a Developer Q&A it was announced that the previously planned experience curve had been abandoned, due to play testers finding the "flatter" experience curve dissatisfying. As a result, Invention now has a more "traditional curve". Level 84 is halfway to 99 (as opposed to level 92 in other skills). Invention is a little slower to progress at early levels compared to other skills, but faster to level at higher levels.

Unlike other skills, the major aspects of Invention are available from level 1, with higher levels unlocking extras such as rarer materials and passive upgrades.

History
Invention, along with Divination, was first mentioned by Mod Mark in the fourth live Q&A session. One, Divination, would be a gathering skill like Mining and Woodcutting. The other, Invention, would be a production skill like Crafting. In a November 2012 Behind the Scenes, the new skills were described as "designed to suit the old-school, yet complement the entire game" since they were modelled "on some of our oldest and dearest content." The August 2013 Behind the Scenes pushed the time for the second skill back to 2014.

During RuneFest 2013 the second skill was revealed to be the Invention skill.

In January 2014, a Power to the Players dragonstone poll included the Invention skill versus the elf city Prifddinas. The winner was the elf city (ETA July/August), resulting in the Invention skill to be developed at a later time.

At RuneFest 2014, it was mentioned that:

During March 2015, Invention was confirmed to soon be integrated in many skills instead of being a standalone skill, possibly with its own ranking highscores table. On 2 June 2015, Invention was again confirmed to be planned as a skill in a Twitch Q&A stream, but was referred to as an elite skill. This was confirmed in the official podcast of 11 June 2015.

During RuneFest 2015, it was revealed that Invention would allow for perks to be added to items. During this RuneFest a total of 187 perks were shown in a presentation slide.

Bonus XP
As of 25 July 2016, bonus experience can be applied to the invention skill. However, since it is considered an elite skill, there are some limitations.
 * The invention skill tutorial must be completed in order to apply any XP or Bonus XP to the skill
 * XP from lamps and bonus xp from prismatic stars are half of what would be awarded to a regular skill at that level
 * Siphoning and disassembly of augmented weapons, armor, and tools are still exempt, except from the bonus XP from prismatic stars.

Trivia

 * The level 90 weapons seen in the concept art are combinations of currently existing weapons in game, though this concept was scrapped later on.
 * Invention is the fastest skill that a player has reached skill mastery in since its release. The first player to achieve 99 Invention did it within 20 hours of the skill's release. This record was previously Construction with an 8-day lapse.
 * The first player to achieve level 120 Invention did so merely 38 hours after its release, at 00:50:54 GMT on 27 January 2016.
 * The first player to achieve 200 million experience in Invention did so within six days after the initial release of the skill.
 * During Runefest 2015, it was stated that because Invention is aimed at high-level players, they would only allow higher-level equipment to be augmentable in order to prevent dead content. As a result, it was stated that it would only include tier 70+ weapons, armour, and tools, as well as fishing rods and some joke weapons.
 * The skill was stated by Mod Mark in Runefest 2014 to be mortals' defence against the gods. The Godless were planned on being heavily featured in the skill, but this idea was later scrapped.