Free-to-play Prayer training

Prayer is regarded to be the most difficult skill to train in free-to-play due to the expense involved in purchasing large numbers of remains from the Grand Exchange, low experience rates, and the high amount of clicking required to train the skill.

The Restless Ghost provides you with 1,125 Prayer experience which allows a player to raise Prayer from level 1 to 9 upon completion. There are no requirements to begin this quest (melee defensive armour is optional but useful) and is strongly recommended for beginning players as it provides a fairly decent amount of experience for relatively little effort.

If your desire is to maximise prayer bonus to be able to use prayers for a longer period of time in melee combat, this is the best-in-slot for prayer bonuses. This also suggests that the player has protection prayers unlocked to negate damage ( 37 Prayer for Protect from Magic, 40 Prayer for Protect from Missiles, and 43 Prayer for Protect from Melee); otherwise, use the best-in-slot melee table to fill in the rest of the slots for defence bonuses.

When fighting against greater demons in the Demonic Ruins with melee while sustaining prayer with the Demonic Ruins' passive ability of restoring prayer, it is recommended to only bring a holy symbol, monk's robe top, monk's robe, and rune mace, and optionally two other items (three other items if using Protect Item). Keep in mind that rune full helm drops obtain from killing greater demons may take up slots for protected items on death. Monk's robes are always easily replaceable should the player die by another player. A holy symbol can be remade from scratch should the player lose it, but to reduce time required to obtain another one, multiple holy symbols should be crafted and blessed by Brother Jered in one inventory. The rune mace will usually be protected on death if not an Ultimate Ironman or skulled.

Offering fish at the altar in the Ruins of Camdozaal is a less click-intensive method of training prayer, requiring at least 7 Fishing and Cooking and completion of the Below Ice Mountain quest. Having 33 Fishing and Cooking is recommended to fish for tetra, which provide the most prayer experience among the free-to-play fish. Tetra stop ruining at Cooking level 61. However, players can stop ruining tetra around level 54 Cooking if they purchase the Preparation buff from Ramarno's Shard Exchange for 2500 Barronite shards. Purchasing the Fishing and Preparation buffs from Ramarno's shard exchange slightly increases the experience rates for lower Fishing and Cooking levels respectively.

1. Use a small fishing net to catch fish in the fishing spot nearby. A small fishing net spawn is located near the waterfall, and not marked on the minimap. Only the fishing spots with 'Small Net' and 'Big Net' options will work for this (the singular other type of fishing spot is Members only).
2. Prepare these fish at the preparation table using a knife. You'll gain Cooking experience. A knife lies on the floor nearby the table.
   • You can increase the speed of fish preparation by repeatedly clicking and preparing fish on a 3 tick cycle, instead of clicking once and letting it take the normal 4 ticks. This is a form of tick manipulation.
3. Offer the prepared fish at the altar for Prayer experience.

Experience rates are 5,600 Fishing, 7,400 Cooking, and 2,400 Prayer experience per hour or less when offering all fish types (only possible at Level 61+ cooking, when tetra stop ruining) with decent efficiency and no tick manipulation.

The Bone Yard in the Wilderness has many bones spawns and several big bones spawns, circumventing the need to kill monsters. The Bone Yard is located directly north of Varrock past level 20 Wilderness. With 57 , a Waka can be taken to the Wilderness pond which is north-west of the Bone Yard.

Recommendations

• Food (optional) - There are multiple aggressive level 20–25 skeletons in this area. Bring enough food to tank hits, unless using method three below.
• Armour (optional) - If tanking hits from skeletons, bringing armour is advisable. However, players should remember not to bring more than three valuable items into the Wilderness.
• A weapon (optional) - Fighting skeletons can provide some combat experience as well as additional bones.

There are multiple possible strategies for this method. Any way works, choose which one is best is for you.

Method one:

1. Run in and collect bones.
2. Run out to safety and bury all bones.
3. Repeat.

Method two:

1. Fight skeletons to obtain additional bones. A higher combat level makes this easier.
2. Once the area is safe, collect all bones.
3. Bury all bones.
4. Repeat.

Method three:

1. After 10 minutes in the same area, monsters in the immediate vicinity will lose aggression towards the player and become tolerant. While this method has an initial delay, it allows the player to collect and bury bones undisturbed by monsters.
   1. It is advisable to make one loop of collecting bones before waiting to ensure the currently loaded tolerance regions encompass the route the player intends to take while collecting bones.
   2. Make sure not to venture too far from the current area, otherwise the skeletons will become aggressive again for another 10 minutes.
   3. World hopping does not reset the aggression timer.
2. Food and armour are not needed, and without bringing any heavy items (thus, having 0kg of weight), the player can run around burying bones for a much longer period of time before running out of run energy.
3. After the initial 10 minute aggression period, players can expect to gain ~6,000 Prayer experience per hour.

You can always find what works for yourself as well.

Burying bones at the south-east Chaos Temple ruins in the Wilderness is more click-intensive but it is located in a lower-leveled Wilderness area (Levels 11–12) making it a slightly safer alternative to the Bone Yard, plus there are no monsters located in this area in free-to-play worlds. The idea would be to bury the bones inside the temple ruins on the western and southern side and hop between two worlds. Ignore the lone bones on the north-eastern side inside the temple ruin (to maintain run energy) and the bones outside the temple ruins.

Many low level areas consist of people killing monsters. People often do not pick up the bones that lie on the ground, therefore there is often an endless supply of free bones.

Areas and enemies include:

• Lumbridge Swamp
• Chicken pens
• Cow fields
• Goblins (e.g. near the gate to Al Kharid)
• Imps (commonly found south of Falador) drop fiendish ashes that give 10 Prayer experience when scattered.

There are of course more spots, but these are amongst the most common spots for people to be leaving loot on the ground.

Big bones are dropped by the following monsters in free-to-play in these areas.

• Giant frogs (Lumbridge Swamp)
• Hill giants (Edgeville Dungeon or Giants' Plateau)
• Moss giants (Varrock Sewers or Crandor)
• Ice giants (Asgarnian Ice Dungeon)
• Ogresses (Corsair Cove Dungeon)

Vile ashes are dropped by the following monsters in free-to-play in these areas.

• Lesser demons (Crandor and Karamja Dungeon, Lava Maze, or Demonic Ruins)
• Greater demons (Demonic Ruins)

Among the higher-level monsters that drop big bones or ashes, killing giant frogs is the fastest due to their low hitpoints and defence. Killing lesser demons at higher levels would give more profit, but has a lower prayer experience rate.

After completing The Ides of Milk, the player can fight Brutus in Lumbridge's eastern cow pen, who is a fairly easy boss for free-to-play characters to kill with best-in-slot free-to-play equipment. Brutus drops bull bones worth 40 Prayer XP per kill.

The best prayer experience rates for prayer in free-to-play are achieved by burying large numbers of bones and demonic ashes bought from the Grand Exchange. This is a click intensive and expensive method for training the skill. The high cost can be offset by a focus on efficiently making money.

The fastest method of training Prayer would be burying big bones and scattering vile ashes at the same time as bones and ashes can be buried and scattered simultaneously, granting the player 40 Prayer experience in a single tick within two quick clicks, up to a little less than 116,000 experience per hour within a combination of 2,900 buries and scatters per hour. However, players realistically won't achieve that high with the amount of clicking and banking, realistically reaching around ~100,000 experience per hour. From Levels 1 to 99, this method would require 325,861 big bones (80,161,806) and 325,861 vile ashes (42,361,930).

It should be noted that training Prayer as a member is significantly more cost-effective, so you may want to postpone training until after you become member. One could consider buying a bond and using a members method of training prayer. With the current price of a bond at 11,151,442 and dragon bones at 3,324, getting to level 99 would require one bond and 51,724 dragon bones when using a gilded altar. The total price would be 183,082,018, which is 30,682,634 cheaper than using big bones. When compared to burying and scattering this would save the player about 92 hours (20 hours compared to 112 hours).

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Ironman guides	Money making Melee Ranged Magic Defence Prayer Hitpoints Crafting Mining Smithing Fishing Cooking Firemaking Woodcutting Runecraft Agility Herblore Thieving Fletching Slayer Farming Construction Hunter Sailing
Ultimate Ironman guides	Item management Equipment Quests Minigames Money making Melee Ranged Magic Defence Prayer Hitpoints Crafting Mining Smithing Fishing Cooking Firemaking Woodcutting Runecraft Agility Herblore Thieving Fletching Slayer Farming Construction Hunter Sailing
General guidelines	Efficiency

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