The tick is the fundamental quantum of time used in RuneScape. It is a unit equal to length of 0.6 seconds. All actions that require server processing are governed by this value. Purely client-side actions (such as opening a right-click menu) are processed separately, and thus unaffected by the tick.
Cannons demonstrate game ticks clearly, rotating 45° every tick
Each action you register within one tick, will start to take place by the beginning of the next tick.
The length of a tick can be measured by timing a repeated action. For example, Disassembly takes 2 ticks (1.2 seconds) per item.
Length of selected actions
The length of the following actions are given in ticks.
Melee weapons
- Abyssal whip: 4 per hit
- Any scimitar, mace, dagger, or claw: 4 per hit
- Any sword, longsword or rapier: 5 per hit
- Godswords, Saradomin sword, Zamorakian spear and Dharok's greataxe: 6 per hit
- Any battleaxe or warhammer: 6 per hit
- Any spear, halberd, maul, or two-handed sword: 6 per hit
Ranged weapons
- Any dart, throwing knife or shortbow: 4 per hit
- Seercull: 4 per hit
- Most crossbows: 4 per hit
- Crystal bow: 5 per hit
- Any longbow, thrownaxe, javelin, sighted longbow, composite bow or god bow: 6 per hit
- Ogre bow, Royal crossbow, Karil's crossbow and Hand cannon: 6 per hit
- Dark Bow: 12 per hit
Agility
- Fastest lap of Ape Atoll Agility Course: 65 (Changed from 64 to 65 on the update of 13 May 2010)
- Fastest lap of Extended Barbarian Agility Course: 61
- Fastest lap of Extended Gnome Agility Course: 61 or 64 (randomly depending on which part of the bars the player takes)
Construction
- Building and removing a larder or door or table: 5 per item
- The Demon Butler spends 10 ticks to bank while the Butler needs 20 ticks.
Cooking
- Cooking fish: 4 per food item using the cook-all option.
- Making wine: 1 per wine
Crafting
- Attaching orbs to battlestaves: 2 per battlestaff
- Crafting d'hide bodies: 3 per body
- Cutting gems: 1 per gem
- Making jewellery: 3 ticks per item
- Glass blowing: 3 ticks per item
Divination
- Transmutation: 3 ticks
Dungeoneering
- In between dungeons, a timer counts down from 30. These are often assumed to be seconds, but really they are 30 time periods of 2 ticks each, so the timer runs a little over 36 seconds, not 30 seconds.
Farming
- Weeds grow every 500 ticks.
- Saplings grow every 500 ticks.
Firemaking
- Burning logs normally: 4 per log
- Burning logs with a Pyrelord: 5 per log
- Adding logs to a bonfire: 6 per log
Fishing
- Chance of catching a fish from any fishing spot: 5 per fish
- Chance of catching a fish from any fishing spot with a sacred clay harpoon: 8 per fish
Fletching
- Cutting wood into unstrung bows: 3 per bow
- Stringing a bow: 2 per bow
- Fletching arrows: 2 per set of 15 arrows
- Fletching bolts: 1 per set of 10
- Cutting gems into bolt tips: 4 ticks per gem
Herblore
- Putting a herb into a vial: 1 per herb
- Putting a second ingredient into a potion: 2 per potion (an exception is Serum 207, for which the make-x option operates at 1 tick per potion.)
- Cleaning grimy herbs: 1 per herb
Hunting
- Catching Red chinchompas: 8 per chinchompa (if sufficient box traps are ready to be checked)
Invention
- Disassembly: 2 per item
Magic
- Combat spells with wand: 4 per cast
- Combat spells with staff: 6 per cast
- High Level Alchemy: 5 per cast
- Enchant Jewellery spells: 3 per cast
- Superheat Item: 2 per cast
- Humidify: 3 per cast
- Plank Make: 3 per cast
- Bake Pie: 3 per cast
- String Jewellery: 3 per cast
- Camelot teleport: 4 per cast
- Enchant Crossbow Bolt: 1 or 2 per cast(The game allows this spell to be cast every tick, but it is virtually impossible to do so)
- Vengeance: 50 per cast
Mining
With a rune pickaxe or inferno adze, there is a chance to mine an ore every 3 ticks.
This does not apply to rune essence, which comes more frequently than this, or to using a dragon pickaxe, which can mine ores at varying rates.
Prayer
- POH Altar Offerings: 3 per bone
- Burying bones: 1 per bone (used to be 2)
- Ectofuntus: 1 per bonemeal+slime
Prayer activation and deactivation is applied on the next game tick, and the drain rate of each prayer is measured by a number of ticks.
Runecrafting
At fastest, there are 6 ticks between crafts at the Nature altar if 2 or 3 pouches are emptied, or 5 ticks if 1 pouch is emptied. At fastest, there are 5 ticks between crafts at the Ourania altar if 2 or 3 pouches are emptied, or 4 ticks if 1 pouch is emptied.
Smithing
- Smelting ores at a furnace: 4 per ore
- Forging at an anvil: 4 per item smithed
- Making Cannonballs: 10 per steel bar
Thieving
- Blackjacking: 6 per round
- A Pyramid Plunder activity is 500 ticks.
Woodcutting
- Chance of cutting a log from any type of tree: 4 per chance
However, you are not guaranteed a log every 4 ticks; rather, every 4 ticks there is a chance to cut a log.
Other
- Running covers 2 squares per tick, while walking covers 1 square per tick.
- Bankers used to count down in ticks when there was a big drop in the falador party room. But as of the Free Trade return on 1 February 2011, they no longer do this.
- The amount of time a player can spend collecting tears in Tears of Guthix is a number of game ticks equal to the player's quest points.
- Boosted or reduced stats move towards normal at a rate of 1 level per 100 ticks, which is just a tiny bit over one minute.
- Player chat messages stay above their heads for 5 ticks. (exception: if a second message is sent sooner it will replace the first and last 5 ticks unless another message is sent sooner etc.)
- The 40 minutes of triple charms reward from Familiarisation seems to actually last around 40.5-41.5 minutes, which would suggest that it is measured as 4000 ticks rather than as 40 actual minutes.
- When playing Fist of Guthix, the person being hunted collects charges every 5 ticks when holding the stone.
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