# Skills

The skills interface.

Skills are a player's attributes that can be advanced throughout the game. Skills are trained by repeating actions that give experience in the skill until enough experience is earned to advance to the next level. Skills range from cooking food, to chopping trees and to casting magic. Some skills are "interlaced", meaning that they can be used together. For example, logs obtained from Woodcutting can be lit for Firemaking, which can then be used to cook food for Cooking.

A player levels up a skill.

There are 23 different 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 Uses
Attack Wielding stronger melee weapons and hitting monsters more accurately in Melee.
Strength Dealing more melee damage and equipping certain weapons.
Defence Wearing stronger armour and decreasing chance of being hit.
Ranged Equipping stronger ranged weapons and armour. It also increases ranged accuracy.
Prayer Activating temporary aids to assist in combat.
Magic Casting various combat and utility spells.
Runecraft Creating runes used for casting Magic.
Hitpoints Amount of damage you can withstand.
Crafting Creating items such as jewellery, pottery, and ranged armour.
Mining Obtaining ores and minerals from rocks.
Smithing Smelting ores into bars and forging bars into armour and weapons.
Fishing Catching fish.
Cooking Making and cooking food.
Firemaking Lighting fires.
Woodcutting Chopping down trees.

### Members-only skills

There are 8 members-only skills:

Skill Uses
Agility Traversing shortcuts and increases the rate at which energy recharges.
Herblore Cleaning and using herbs to create potions.
Thieving Stealing from market stalls and chests and pickpocketing non-player characters.
Fletching Creating ranged weapons and ammunition.
Slayer Killing certain monsters that can't normally be defeated.
Farming Planting and harvesting crops.
Construction Building a player-owned house.
Hunter Capturing wild animals and creatures.

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

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

Farming, Fishing, Hunter, Mining, and Woodcutting.

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

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

Support skills - These 3 skills have no classification.

Agility, Slayer, and Thieving.

## 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.) 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:

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

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:

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

## 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

## Proposed skills

Several new skills have been proposed since the release of Old School RuneScape, but none have successfully passed a poll to be added.

### Sailing

Sailing was first added as part of the 2014 April Fools event, then later developed to become a proper skill in 2015. Sailing would have been free-to-play, and involved building various types of ships and navigating them to new regions.

### Artisan

Artisan was developed in 2014 and was polled twice on 17 July and 21 August. Artisan would have been similar to Slayer, but for skills, rather than combat. The skill would have involved getting tasks from Artisan masters, then gathering and crafting specific items to gain experience. Some content originally designed for Artisan was repurposed and released separately, such as Redwood Trees and wieldable fishing rods from Aerial fishing.

### Warding

Warding was first announced at RuneFest 2018 and was developed over the course of 2019. The skill would have involved creation of magical robes and armour using fabrics and vis. Warding was polled on 19 July.

## Changes

Date Changes
27 January 2021
(update)

Level up fireworks are now accompanied by a little sound effect.

9 April 2015
(update)

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