# Skills

(Redirected from Skill)
The skills tab.

Skills are a player's attributes that can be advanced throughout the game. Skills are trained by repetitive actions that give experience in the skill, until enough experience is earned for the next level. Some skills allow players to cook food, chop down trees, make fires, use magic and more. Some skills are "interlaced", meaning that they can be used together. For example, logs obtained from Woodcutting can be used for Firemaking, and fires from Firemaking can be used for Cooking.

A player levels up a skill.

There are 23 skills in Old School RuneScape.

All skills start out at level 1 except for Hitpoints, which starts with level 10. Players can advance a skill to level 99. After that, they can increase their experience up to 200,000,000 but get no more levels for doing so. See Hiscores for the relative rankings of the different skills.

A player could bring a level of a skill to 100 while wearing a Cape of Accomplishment of that skill, with no great significant bonus; it is just for the feeling of having a skill boosted over the level 99 mark. Skills can also be temporarily boosted through special equipment, items, Prayer, or potions.

All players are currently displayed on the Hiscores regardless of level attained.

## Skills

### Free-to-play skills

There are 15 free-to-play skills:

Skill Description
Attack Allows players to wield stronger melee weapons and fight more accurately in Melee.
Strength Allows players to deal more melee damage and equip certain weapons. It also gives access to several agility shortcuts.
Defence Allows players to wear stronger armour and decrease chance of being hit (does not reduce damage dealt, as is a common misconception).
Ranged Allows players to fight with missiles and projectiles from a distance.
Prayer Allows players to pray for assistance, such as ability boosts.
Magic Allows players to cast spells and teleportation.
Runecraft Allows players to make runes for Magic.
Hitpoints Allows players to sustain more damage.
Crafting Allows players to create items, from pottery to ranged armour.
Mining Allows players to obtain ores from rocks.
Smithing Allows players to smelt ores into bars and smith bars into armour and weapons.
Fishing Allows players to catch fish.
Cooking Allows players to cook food. The food can then be eaten to heal players' Hitpoints.
Firemaking Allows players to make fires.
Woodcutting Allows players to cut down trees to obtain logs.

### Members-only skills

There are 8 members-only skills:

Skill Description
Agility Allows players to use shortcuts and increases the rate at which energy recharges.
Herblore Allows players to make potions.
Thieving Allows players to steal from market stalls and chests and pickpocket non-player characters.
Fletching Allows players to create projectiles (arrows, bolts) and bows which can be used for Ranged.
Slayer Allows players to kill certain monsters that can't normally be defeated.
Farming Allows players to grow plants (fruits, vegetables, herbs, trees, etc.).
Construction Allows players to build a house.
Hunter Allows players to hunt and catch animals through various methods.

## Skill types

There are four types of skills in RuneScape: Combat, Gathering, Artisan and Support.

Combat skills - These 7 skills involve fighting in Combat.

Attack, Strength, Defence, Magic, Ranged, Prayer, and Hitpoints.

Gathering skills - These 5 skills involve obtaining resources or items from the environment.

Mining, Fishing, Woodcutting, Hunter, and Farming.

Artisan skills - These 8 skills involve processing items obtained through gathering skills into finished products.

Cooking, Smithing, Fletching, Firemaking, Herblore, Crafting, Runecraft and Construction.

Support skills - These 3 skills have no classification.

Agility, Thieving, and, Slayer.

## Experience increase

The amount of experience needed for every level-up increases approximately by 10% for every level. This is shown in the way that it is 83 experience between levels 1 and 2, but 91 experience between levels 2 and 3. (10% of 83 is roughly 8, therefore the next level-up would require 91 experience.) Therefore the required experience for each level-up grows exponentially; the growth of experience gaps between levels gets larger and larger at higher levels. The experience table clearly indicates this.

In addition, the experience required doubles approximately every seven levels. For example, the experience needed for level 92 in a skill is almost exactly half of that needed to reach level 99.

The below equation directly gives the number of experience per level:

${\displaystyle total\ experience=\left\lfloor {\frac {\sum _{x=1}^{L-1}\left\lfloor x+300\times 2^{\frac {x}{7}}\right\rfloor }{4}}\right\rfloor }$

This can be further derived into a closed-form function with a positive real variable L (standing for level), although this requires ignoring one floor function of the exact formula and thus contains an exceedingly minor error margin. The approximation rapidly approaches the original sum asymptotically. The function is as follows:

${\displaystyle total\ experience\approx \left\lfloor {\frac {1}{8}}\cdot \left({L}^{2}-L\right)+75\cdot {\frac {{2}^{\frac {L-1}{7}}-1}{1-{\sqrt[{7}]{0.5}}}}\right\rfloor }$

## History of release

Skill Release date Time since last skill Notes
Hunter 21 November 2006 (Update) 5 months, 21 days
Construction 31 May 2006 (Update) 10 months, 20 days Originally planned to be called Carpentry.
Farming 11 July 2005 (Update) 5 months, 15 days Originally planned to be released along with Carpentry.
Slayer 26 January 2005 (Update) 9 months, 28 days
Runecraft 29 March 2004 (Update) 1 year, 3 months, 17 days Released alongside RuneScape 2.
Agility 12 December 2002 (Update) 7 months, 12 days
Thieving 30 April 2002 (Update) 1 month, 5 days Added to skill list on 4 January 2001, but had no function or way to train until over a year later.
Carpentry Had no function or way to train on release. Removed from the skill list on 12 December 2002. Later re-added as Construction on 31 May 2006.
Fletching 25 March 2002 (Update) 26 days
Herblore 27 February 2002 (Update) 8 months, 16 days Known as Herblaw in RuneScape Classic. Added to skill list on 4 January 2001, but had no function or way to train until over a year later.
Fishing 11 June 2001 (Update) 18 days
Magic 24 May 2001 (Update) 16 days Initially divided into GoodMagic and EvilMagic at the time of release, 4 January 2001.
Prayer Initially divided into PrayGood and PrayEvil at the time of release, 4 January 2001. When the two skills were combined, constant effect Magic spells were moved from the spellbooks into the prayer book.
Crafting 8 May 2001 (Update) 4 months, 4 days
Attack 4 January 2001 (Update) Initial batch of skills. [confirmation needed]
Hitpoints Known as Hits at the time of release.
Cooking
Defence
EvilMagic Removed from the skill list on 10 May 2001. Combined with GoodMagic into Magic skill on 24 May 2001.
Firemaking
GoodMagic Removed from the skill list on 10 May 2001. Combined with EvilMagic into Magic skill on 24 May 2001.
Influence Removed and replaced with quest points on 10 May 2001.
Mining
PrayGood Lacked any prayers on release but could still be trained. Removed from the skill list on 10 May 2001. Combined with PrayEvil into Prayer skill on 24 May 2001, taking some of the constant effect Magic spells.
PrayEvil Lacked any prayers on release but could still be trained. Removed from the skill list on 10 May 2001. Combined with PrayGood into Prayer skill on 24 May 2001, taking some of the constant effect Magic spells.
Ranged
Smithing
Strength
Tailoring Had few functions or ways to train on release. Removed on 10 May 2001. Concepts were combined into Crafting on 23 June 2001.
Woodcutting

## Changes

Date Changes
9 April 2015
(update)

You'll now see all level up messages when receiving more than one in a short amount of time.