OSRS 1-99 Prayer Training Guide (Fastest & Cheapest Methods) (2024)

What’s going on guys! My name is Theoatrix, and welcome to my level 1–99 Prayer Guide for OSRS.

Guide Contents

In this guide, I'll show you the best prayer training methods in OSRS, and compare their cost and XP rates. I'm also including the new prayer training methods that came with Varlamore.

If 99 is not your goal, I'm going to include the figures to reach level 43, for protection prayers, and level 77, for all the prayers in the game.

If you'd prefer to watch a video version of this guide, you can watch that below. Otherwise you can continue down the page to read the written guide.

How Prayer Works

For every 8 prayer levels, you gain 1 combat level, so level 99 prayer increases your combat by 12 levels. Increasing your prayer level also increases the amount of prayer restored from potions..

With Prayer potions, for example, they restore 25% of your prayer level plus 7.

For every 30 Prayer bonus that you have, your prayer drain rate gets halved… so prayers last twice as long. Prayer bonus comes from gear and some weapons.

Methods Overview

As a main account in OSRS, you have 6 viable prayer training methods at your disposal. There are bone shards, gilded altars, the chaos altar, ensouled heads, offering spells, and passive training methods.

The new bone shards method with Varlamore is also excellent for Ironmen. It is a safe and fairly fast way to train.

There are some extra training methods you should use as an Ironman as well. Places like the Ectofuntus and Forthos dungeon are great on a low-level Ironman, and I'll talk more about that later in the video.

In free-to-play, your best option is scattering ashes and burying bones at the same time.

Now let's compare the costs and XP rates. Below is a complete summary of every viable training method. With almost every method, the cost scales with the XP per hour.

Cost & XP Comparison

Superior dragon bones provide the fastest XP in the game, but they require 70 Prayer to use. Cutting bones into bone shards gives you more XP per bone than what you would get at a Gilded altar.

But, You can see that the Chaos altar is quite cheap due to the bone-saving effect. However it assumes you do one inventory per run, so the XP rates are slower. With offerings, you should only cast on ashes. You're better off using bones at an altar.

If you're reading this guide down the track, the pricing might be quite different from what I’m showing now. To see the current cost of all of these methods, I made a calculator on theoatrix.netwhich updates every hour.

For free to play, burying big bones while scattering vile ashes gets you around 100k XP per hour, but for 180 mil for 99.

Bone Shards

Now let's get into the methods, and I'm going to start with the brand new prayer training method, Bone Shards.

To do this method, you need to have completed the Children of the Sun quest to enter Varlamore. Completing the Twilight’s Promisequest will speed up this method, and completing the Perilous Moonsquest allows you to mine bone shards which is optional.

There are some ways to acquire bone shards.Youcan mine them for up to 45k mining XP per hour.

You can get bone shards by doing activities around Varlamore or you can chisel blessed bones into shards.

Blessing is done on top of the temple in Ralo's Rise, and there's an NPC nearby that can un-note bones for you

The number of bone shards you get scales with the type of bone you're chiseling, with superior dragon bones giving the most.

After you have your bone shards, you need to bless jugs of wine. To do this, you can go to the same temple where you blessed the bones. You can also make Sunfire wines with Sunfire shards for an extra bit of prayer experience.

Then, with blessed wines plus bone shards in your inventory, head to the northernmost house in Ralo's Rise, and click on the Libation bowl. You can AFK here, or you can spam-click it for the fastest experience.

Once you are done, you can bank to retrieve more jugs of wine, or more bones if you need them. Overall, With this method, you can get over 1 million prayer XP per hour, but that doesn’t account for the time taken to get bone shards.

At 99 mining, you can expect 45 to 50k mining XP per hour if mining the bone shards yourself. And if you account for the time mining, your prayer XP rate ranges from 20k to 30k depending on the type of wines you use.

However you do need level 30 prayer to attempt this method. To start from level 1 you can try the next training strategy in this guide..

Gilded Altar

The method involves using bones on a Gilded altar within a player-owned house while 2 incense burners are lit.

This gives 3.5 times the prayer experience you normally get for burying that bone.

You can build a Gilded altar in your house with level 75 construction, but you don’t need to do that.

You can go to World 330 and use someone else's house, which is better since someone will light the burners for you.

So this is a full walkthrough on how to train at Gilded altars. First off, decide on which bones you want to use and buy bulk.

This is how many bones you'll need to get from levels 1 to 43, 77, and 99. I'm showing the popular bones, and if you're using Wyvern bones, they give the same XP as Dragon bones, so you can use the same quantities.

Once you have your bones, withdraw them noted with at least 50k coins and a teleport to Rimmington.

In World 330, you can un-note your bones with Phials in the general store at Rimmington.

Then head over to the house portal and click view on the house advertisem*nt object. You can select from any of the houses with a Y in the gilded altar column.

Once inside, head to the altar room and use a bone on the altar. Your player automatically uses bones on the altar. The menu entry swapper plugin is useful at altars since it lets you swap the left-click option of any bones to use instead of bury.

This is especially useful for 1 ticking, which is when you manually use every bone on the altar for 3 times faster experience.Youshould use the runelite plugin, entity hider if you're 1 ticking.

You can also set your client to resizable modern, then you can hold alt to drag your inventory over the altar. Then you press your hotkey for your inventory and left-click repeatedly to use all the bones on the altar.

Once you've used all your bones, you exit the house by the portal, then run to the nearby general store, un-note more bones, and repeat.

You can reenter the previous house you were in by right-clicking the house advertisem*nt object and selecting "visit last".

You can also hire a bone runner for the fastest experience in the game, where they go and retrieve more bones while you're using bones on the altar.

I wouldn't recommend using a bone runner since prayer at an altar is already fast and expensive, but if you're going for the absolute fastest experience, using a bone runner, superior dragon bones, and 1 ticking is the fastest.

Chaos Altar

The Chaos Altar, is similar to the Gilded altar in that it gives 3.5 times the experience per bone, but the Chaos altar has a 50% chance of saving a bone, effectively halving the cost.

But, the Chaos altar is in the Wilderness, so it can be risky or slower depending on how you train. I'm going to show you how to train theresafely.

You'll first need bones, and on the screen right now are the quantities of bones you'll need to buy to reach the goal. These figures don’t account for any deaths in the Wilderness, and also it assumes exactly 50% of your bones are saved.

For this method, you'll also need a teleport to the Chaos Altar in the Wilderness, and this could be with Burning amulets or Ghorrock teleports

For the fastest experience, you should bring an enchanted symbol from the mage arena 2 mini-quest, and this is used to lower your health to bank.

So, withdraw 1 Burning Amulet or Ghorrock teleport and a full inventory of unnoted bones. Then you teleport to the lava maze with the burning amulet and run west, and slightly south to the chaos altar.

Then, you can use your bones on the altar, and I strongly recommend 1 ticking if you're doing the chaos altar since you get through the bones faster.

Once you’ve used all your bones, you can spam-click the enchanted symbol to die.

without the symbol, you can click the nearby wine jug to lower your health and return to your respawn location

Alternatively, some players choose to run to the chaos fanatic nearby to die.

At the chaos altar, you can utilize the 1 ticking method with runelite so that you don’t have to move your mouse.

You can also bring noted bones and unnote them just outside for swift experience, about as fast as using a bone runner at a gilded altar. BUT, it's very dangerous here, there are a lot of pkers. So I would strongly suggest doing the safe method that I explained just before.

Ensouled Heads

The next method I'm covering is reanimating ensouled heads. With this, you use Arceuus spells to reanimate monsters and then you defeat them for a lot of prayer experience. Overall, ensouled heads are cheaper than the other methods, but are slightly slower XP per hour.

Favor no longer exists in OSRS, so you can now use the Arceuus spellbook straight off Tutorial Island, just by talking to Tyss. This means the only requirement to reanimate ensouled heads is the required magic level to cast the spell.

So this is a full rundown of how to do this method

You first need ensouled heads, and on the screen is exactly how many heads you'll need to reach level 43, 77, or 99. You can buy these straight off the grand exchange but I would suggest leaving them in overnight at market price since they don’t have huge trade volumes.

Once you have the heads, you'll need the runes to cast the reanimation spells, and on the screen, I'm showing the runes. You need the specific spell for the head you're using.

While training, you'll need combat equipment to kill the reanimated creatures, and a dwarf multi-cannon is very useful here to speed up kills.

Also, bring a teleport to a bank with you on each trip.

Now you're ready to train, so you should make your way to the dark altar in the Arceuus house with a full inventory of ensouled heads.

To get there, you can use an Arceuus Library teleport, or you can use the C-I-S fairy ring.

So run north then east from the teleport locations until you reach the dark altar, then you can cast the reanimation spell and click on the ensouled head to train.

A reanimated monster will spawn, and then you kill it for a lot of prayer XP.

You continue and repeat this until you've used all of the ensouled heads in your inventory,

then you teleport to a bank, get more heads, teleport back to Arceuus, and repeat.

Offerings

After the Kingdom Dividedquest, you can cast the demonic and sinister offering spells. These consume 3 bones or ashes and give you 3 times the regular prayer experience.

Demonic Offering is for ashes, and Sinister Offering is for bones, although keep in mind that these do have quite high magic requirements of levels 84 and 92 to cast.

So this is how you train with offerings.

Firstly you'll need bones or ashes, and if you're buying in bulk I would recommend leaving them in at market value.

You'll then need the runes to cast the offering spell you're using, and putting the runes in a rune pouch is helpful. Then with a full inventory of bones or ashes, you just click the spell and it consumes 3, giving prayer and magic experience. You then have to wait 8 game times, or 4.8 seconds before you can cast it again.

So you repeat this until you've finished your inventory, then you bank and repeat.

Overall, I would only recommend doing offerings if you're using ashes. Bones are better used at a gilded altar, and it's a faster experience at an altar if you 1 tick. With infernal ashes, for example, you can get around 590k xp per hour while the cost is 12 gp per XP, which is cheaper than dragon bones at a gilded altar.

Passive Methods

There are 5 Ways to passively train prayer.

The first is the Ectoplasmator, a reward from the Soul Wars minigame. With this, you get prayer xp when you kill a spectral creature, which could be aberrant Spectres, Ankous, the Barrows brothers, and more. Although, it's not entirely worth going out of your way to get this unless you enjoy Soul Wars.

After the Hard Morytania diary, you obtain the Bonecrusher. This automatically crushes bones from monsters you kill and gives you half of the prayer experience that you would normally get. This is very useful on your journey to 99 Slayer.

The Bonecrusher can be combined with the Dragonbone necklace to restore prayer points while automatically crushing bones, useful with chinning or bursting maniacal monkeys.

Another useful one is the ash sanctifier, which is a reward from the hard Kourend diary. With this, it automatically gives you Prayer experience from monsters that drop ashes, and you get half of the regular prayer experience you'd get from scattering them.

If you kill a monster and you get an ensouled head as a drop, you can reanimate the monster on the spot. You don't need to go to the Dark Altar. So this is a passive way to train prayer experience, especially while training Slayer.

From birdhouses and woodcutting, you can obtain nests with God eggs inside. With these God eggs

You can take them to the Woodcutting Guild shrine to exchange them for a reward (typically bird nests) plus Prayer experience. Each God egg gives 100 Prayer XP and could be considered a somewhat passive way to get prayer xp.

Now I'm going to cover Ironman prayer training.

Ironman Methods

As a low-level ironman, a great option to level up prayer is by completing quests. I haven't covered questing yet since prayer is so fast on a main account, but as an Ironman, it is worth it.

The quests on the screen have low requirements and can be completed to go from level 1 to 30 prayer. Particularly the restless ghostand priest in peril have little to no requirements.

Once you've quested, or if you decide not to quest, there are 4 prayer training methods at your disposal as a low-level ironman.

There are bone shards, the chaos altar, the fornthos dungeon, and the ectofuntus.

Bone shards are a safe way for hardcore Ironmen to train at a low level, and are still a decent method for high-level Ironmen

The Chaos Altar is for fast experience, Fornthos is great for ultimate Ironmen, and the ectofuntus is a safe way to use up bones.

At higher levels on an ironman, you can construct your own Gilded Altar with 75 Construction in your house.

There are also the offering spells that I talked about earlier, and Ironmen can utilize the Fountain of Rune if they don’t have the runes to cast the offering spells.

However, the majority of your time training prayer will be spent collecting bones and supplies to level up.

At an early level, the blue dragons in the Taverley dungeon are an easy way to get dragon bones since they're safe-spottable.

The red dragons in Fornthos dungeon are also safe-spottable and there's an altar you can use your bones on right near

At a higher combat level, once you can train Slayer effectively, you will get ensouled heads, bones, and ashes to train your prayer.

You can also access the Myths Guild dragons after Dragon Slayer 2, and the wilderness green dragons are another option.

Bosses like Zulrah, Cerberus, Vorkath, and others, all drop noted bones, and you'll get a lot of xp from high-level bosses like the Alchemical Hydra and Dagannoth kings, whose bones give high amounts of XP.

F2P Methods

To finish off the guide, I'm going to show you the best ways to train prayer in free-to-play.

Free-to-play Prayer training is expensive. There are not any fast methods, and it's very click-intensive too.

The fastest method in the game is burying big bones while scattering vile ashes. You can process both of these at the same time, so you're doing 2 prayer methods at once, and doing this to 99 Prayer is going to take over 110 hours and at a cost of 180 mil. Obtaining membership may be the wisest course.

Thanks for reading my1 – 99 Prayer Guide for OSRS. Anyways guys, I hope you learned something helpful and enjoyed. If you have any questions or just want to chat with me, you can join the Theoatrix friend chat in game. As always, thanks for reading this guide, and have a nice day!