
A player casts Fire Surge, the most powerful elemental spell available.
Elemental spells are the primary source of damage for mages. The standard and ancient spellbooks contain a variety of elemental spells across many levels. Lunar mages can only cast elemental spells with a polypore staff or through the use of Borrowed Power.
Types of spells[]
Many monsters have a weakness to a specific element. For example, TzHaar-Kets are weak to water spells. Any spell will be effective against such an opponent, but a water spell will offer higher accuracy. A player who is weak to magic attacks will have no specific elemental weakness.
In order of ascending required level, the four elements of the standard spellbook are:
On the Ancient Magicks, the same elements come in a slightly different order:
Each elemental class has a range of different spells. For the standard spellbook these are as follows, in order of ascending power:
The range of different spells in the ancient spellbook are as follows, in order of ascending power:
Comparison between Standard and Ancient spells[]
Element | ![]() |
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Strike | Bolt | Blast | Wave | Surge | Equivalent | Rush | Burst | Blitz | Barrage | |||||||
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Air | 1 (48) | 17 (163) | 41 (393) | 62 (595) | 81 (777) | Smoke | 50 (480) | 62 (595) | 74 (710) | 86 (825) | |||||
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Water | 5 (48) | 23 (220) | 47 (451) | 65 (624) | 85 (816) | Ice | 58 (556) | 70 (672) | 82 (787) | 94 (883) | |||||
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Earth | 9 (86) | 29 (278) | 53 (508) | 70 (672) | 90 (864) | Shadow | 52 (499) | 64 (614) | 76 (729) | 88 (844) | |||||
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Fire | 13 (124) | 35 (336) | 59 (566) | 75 (720) | 95 (883) | Blood | 56 (535) | 68 (652) | 80 (786) | 92 (883) | |||||
Required level to cast (Maximum damage dealt) |
In addition to those above, there are four special air spells. The first three are unique to the standard spellbook, whereas the last is on all spellbooks.
Spell | ![]() |
Damage | Notes | |
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Slayer Dart | 50 | 480 | Also requires 55 slayer, a Death rune and a Slayer's staff, abyssal wand, abyssal orb, or Staff of light. |
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Divine Storm | 60 | 576 | Unlocked at the Mage Arena. |
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Storm of Armadyl | 77 | 739 | Unlocked by completing the Ritual of the Mahjarrat quest. Uses Armadyl runes instead of air runes. |
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Polypore Strike | 80 | 768 | Requires a charged polypore staff and is available with any spellbook. |
Spell damage and scaling[]
The spell damage values listed above and on other articles correspond to , and may be different than the value found by mousing over the damage in Offensive Stats. This is because a spell's level scales with your Magic, which allows for elemental weaknesses to be exploited without sacrificing damage. Like ranged ammunition, spell damage caps at the level of your weapon.
Spells scale until a stronger variant of the spell is unlocked. For example, Air Blast requires 41 Magic, and it scales with the player's Magic up to level 61. Air Wave is unlocked at 62 Magic. Spell scaling ends early at higher levels; this may be so that the strongest spells are always worth using over spells with smaller rune costs. However, the weapon's damage cap still takes precedence over the scaling of spell damage. Therefore, the player generally cannot benefit by using the higher level spells with lower level weapons, particularly if the damage cap of a lower-levelled spell would be greater than or equal to the weapon being used. For instance, while using a tier 75 staff of light, there is no benefit to using the level 95 spell Fire Surge over the level 75 spell Fire Wave, as both spells would be scaled to the same damage (tier 75), while the former would cost an extra fire rune and air rune per cast.
All spell damage is capped at level 92, the level of the staff of Sliske, and the wand of the praesul and its off-hand counterpart, which are the strongest magic weapons in the game. However, while Dungeoneering, it can scale all the way up to level 99 when used with a celestial catalytic staff or a celestial catalytic wand and orb.
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Ancient spells | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Other spells | ||||||||||||||||||||
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