Urns

Urns are a type of pot that can be made using the crafting skill. They were released on 15 February 2011 and were first mentioned in the February 2011 Behind the Scenes article. While training Fishing, Mining, Smithing, Cooking, or Woodcutting, urns will collect "scraps" and eventually become full based on the experience gained from the activity. For Prayer urns, see below. Items (fish, ore, logs, etc.) are still produced normally from the activity; the urns are simply a way of generating bonus experience. For every five normal experience points generated by the activity, one bonus experience point is added to the urn. Once the urn has been filled to its capacity, it can be teleported to Ernie, and the experience it had collected is awarded to the player's character. Thus, having a suitable urn in inventory while training a skill results in a 20% higher experience gain. The various urns differ in the skill for which they collect bonus experience, their capacity, and restrictions on the quality of resources from which they can "collect scraps."

Only "base" experience counts towards filling the urn. For example, if you were to mine two ores at once using the Varrock Armour, only the experience from the first ore will be added to the urn, but not the second. Any time "bonus" experience is given (such as from a Penance horn or Sacred clay item, or a special experience gain such as a minigame reward or Genie Lamp), it is not counted towards filling the urn. For example: collecting Magic logs with a Sacred Clay Hatchet will add the "base" 250 exp to the urn, but not the extra "bonus" 250 rewarded from the hatchet.

Prayer urns give a 20% bonus to the experience gained from Demonic ashes. They operate differently in that you do not receive ashes as a drop when killing a demon with a suitable urn in your inventory; instead, all the experience you would have gained from scattering the ashes plus a 20% bonus are directly added to the urn, and the Prayer experience so collected is awarded to the player's character once the full urn is teleported away. This eliminates having to collect the ashes and scattering them by yourself, and allows training Prayer by killing Demons from a safe spot without having to leave the safe spot to collect ashes. Killing demons is the only way of filling prayer urns. Scattering ashes by yourself, such as ashes that were obtained as drops or by trade, has no effect on urns and receives no bonus.

You will need to finish the urn that you have started filling before you can fill another of the same skill type. You may have multiple urns from various skills, however; for example, you could start filling a cracked fishing urn while you are still filling a cracked mining urn. You may only have 10 non-empty urns in one skill type at a time (these are urns with any number of scraps in them: a pot with one scrap in, all the way to a pot that is completely full). Unfired urns, urns without runes, and empty urns with runes do not count towards this total. If a player has two or more urns of the same type and one gets full, leftovers of the first urn will be added to the second urn.

When using the Assist system, any suitable urns held by the assistee are filled, but none of the assister.

Creating Urns
Note: A fired urn without a rune attached is tradeable; all other urns are untradeable.

First, the player must go to a Pottery wheel and use 2 pieces of soft clay on the potter's wheel. Players must then select a type of urn and craft it on the wheel to make an Urn (unf). The types of urns that players can craft depends on the player's crafting level. Urns that require a higher crafting level to create will catch scraps from higher level training activities. The Assist System can be used to craft urns that are above a player's Crafting level. Alternatively, the urn (nr) can be bought from other players.

Once a player has an Urn (unf), they can then use the urn on a pottery oven to make an Urn (nr). Players must then add a rune to the urn in order to make an Urn (r) which can be used to gain bonus XP. Each urn uses the following rune:
 * Fishing - Water rune
 * Cooking - Fire rune
 * Mining - Earth rune
 * Smithing - Fire rune
 * Woodcutting - Earth rune
 * Prayer - Air rune

To attach a rune to an urn you must have the crafting level required for that specific urn. Staves cannot be used to insert runes into urns. Example: To add a rune to a decorated cooking urn (nr) you must have at least 81 crafting. The assist system can be used for attaching runes to urns, which allows players with any Crafting level to use any urns.

Players can then train any skill as they normally would with the urn in their inventory. When the urn is full, the player will receive a chatbox notification and the Urn (full) will have a teleport option. Players can then teleport the urn to receive experience. A maximum amount of 10 full urns can be held in bank or inventory at once, before having to be teleported away.

Calculation of the materials required
All urns give a 20% bonus on the experience required to fill them. Therefore, you can use the following to calculate the required amount of the material gathered in order to fill the urn:
 * Material needed

$$\mbox{Material needed} = \frac{5 \times \mbox{urn exp}}{\mbox{unit exp}}$$

For example: A yew log gives 175 experience and a strong woodcutting urn gives 1662.5 experience. The formula calculates that 47.5 logs are required, so the urn will be full after 48 logs are cut. (If a second woodcutting urn is present in the inventory, the remaining half a log worth of experience will be transferred to the new urn.)

The contribution of each unit material toward filling the urn can also be calculated. The following can be used to estimate the percentage contribution of filling the urn per unit material:
 * Percentage filled

$$\mbox{Percentage per material} = \frac{20\times \mbox{unit exp}}{\mbox{urn exp}}$$

Example continued: $$\frac{20\times 175}{1662.5} \approx 2.1\%$$, so each log will fill the urn by about 2.1%.

For the prayer urns the formula is a bit different, since the bonus exp including the unit exp is awarded when the urn is teleported. In this case the "urn exp" above should just be the bonus experience, i.e. one sixth of the experience awarded when teleporting the urn.
 * Prayer urns

Trivia



 * When you "Check Level" of an urn that is exactly half full, the message shown is "This (urn type) is half full, or is it half empty?" as opposed to "This (urn type) is 50% full." This is a reference to the common optimist/pessimist comparison, "Is the glass half empty or half full?"
 * Gold bars do not work with any of the smelting urns.
 * Churning butter, brewing beverages and making bowl dishes does not work with any of the cooking urns.
 * The urns with the highest capacity for an assistable skill for Free-to-Play are Cooking urns with 950 experience per urn (for members, Decorated Cooking urns with 1547.5 experience per urn). With the assist system, it is possible to fill urns without gaining any of the regular experience from the activity. Up to 10 urns of one skill can be teleported at a time. This makes it possible for a player at Cooking level 1 to gain 9500 experience and so advance by 25 levels at once (for members, gain 15475 experience and so advance by 30 levels at once).
 * When teleporting an urn with a Santa Costume Top on, the bottom white trim will stick to the urn and look like the white is being pulled away.
 * When trying to send more than 10 Urns at one time you will get a message saying "You should send no more than 10 Urns at one time."
 * You could get more than 10 full urns at once by dropping enough Urns so you only have 9 or less Urns in your bank and inventory. However this is no longer possble since the urns are now destroyed upon dropping them.

Urns