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. At 50 prayer bonus (Currently impossible to achieve), all prayers last indefinitely. How long a prayer will last is determined by your prayer bonus in the following way:

Prayer Bonus=B 50÷(50-B)=Prayer Boost factor

To find out how long a prayer will last, simply find how long a prayer lasts without prayer bonus, multiply the number of seconds by the PBF, and the resultant number of seconds is how long the prayer will last with the given bonus. For example, with a prayer bonus of 10, prayers will last 1.25 times longer than usual, whereas a +25 prayer bonus doubles the duration of all of your prayers. A +49 prayer bonus makes all of your prayers last 50 times longer!

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
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. Below are steps to worship the Ectofuntus.


 * 1) Collect slime - Players must take empty buckets and enter the trapdoor near the ectofuntus and then travel down the stairs. There is also an agility shortcut here that will shorten the journey considerably. At the bottom of the stairs is a pool of slime, where players must use their empty buckets with it. Members can buy up to 10 slime buckets from any charter ship crew.
 * 2) Crush bones - Players next must take their bones and some empty pots and go up the stairs near the Ectofuntus. They can then use the bone grinder to grind their bones and collect the contents in the pots.
 * 3) Worship the Ectofuntus - With buckets of slime and pots of bonemeal, players can then click on the Ectofuntus and they will begin to worship it to get prayer experience. After 12 worships, players need to talk to the disciples when the ectofuntus is full in order to worship further; they also receive ectotokens a currency used in Port Phasmatys. After this, players can repeat the steps and worship again.

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. However, they will need a blessed Silver sickle and a druid pouch full of flowers, gathered by using the sickle. Once a player has these items, they can simply walk around Mort'ton until one of them attacks. 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.

By people with high Building levels and a lot of cash, this is seen as a quicker way to increase prayers levels as even though it gives less exp than praying at Ectofuntus, as it requires less work so bones can be offered much quicker.

Quests
Many quests in RuneScape give a player experience points in Prayer. The following quests give a player Prayer experience.
 * Holy Grail: 11,000 experience
 * Priest in Peril: 1,406 experience
 * The Restless Ghost: 1,125 experience
 * Making History: 1,000 experience
 * Rum Deal: 7,000 experience
 * Swan Song: 10,000 experience
 * Spirits of the Elid: 8,000 experience
 * Recruitment Drive: 1,000 experience
 * Rag and Bone Man: 500-5,000 experience
 * Mountain Daughter: 2,000 experience
 * Ghosts Ahoy: 2,400 experience
 * Another Slice of H.A.M.: 3,000 experience

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 is 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 stuff (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 normally yields special "zombie" items and emotes.

Trivia

 * The maximum prayer bonus possible for members, disregarding requirements and the lack of other bonuses for items wielded, is 44. The equipped items are:
 * Proselyte Sallet (Slug Menace, 30 Defence) +4
 * Any Skill Cape (t) (Two 99 skills) +4
 * Any God Stole (60 prayer) +10
 * Arrows do not give prayer bonuses +0
 * Void Knight Mace (250 pest control points, 42 Attack, Strength, Defence, Ranged, Magic, and 22 Prayer) +6
 * Proselyte Hauberk (Slug Menace, 30 Defence, used to require nothing) +8
 * Any God book (Complete or incomplete) (Horror From the Deep plus god pages for complete god books) +5
 * Proselyte or Initiate Cuisse/Tasset, or Monk's Robe bottom (Slug Menace/Recruitment Drive plus 20 Defence, No requirement for Monk's Robes) +5
 * White Gloves (Wanted!, 10 Defence) +1
 * White Boots (Wanted!, 10 Defence) +1
 * Rings do not give prayer bonuses +0


 * For Free-to-Play players, the maximum prayer bonus is 23:
 * No F2P helm provide prayer bonuses +0
 * No F2P cape provide prayer bonuses +0
 * Holy Symbol (No requirement) +8
 * Arrows do not give prayer bonuses +0
 * Rune Mace (40 Attack) +4
 * Monk's Robe top (No requirement) +6
 * No F2P shield provide prayer bonuses +0
 * Monk's robe bottom (No requirement) +5
 * No F2P gloves provide prayer bonuses +0
 * No F2P boots provide prayer bonuses +0
 * Rings do not give prayer bonuses +0


 * 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 255/99 prayer with the effect of the Ancient Mace special attack.