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.

	Level up fireworks
The sound effect when a player levels up.
File:Level up fireworks.ogg

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.

Skills can be temporarily boosted through special equipment, items, Prayer, or potions.

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 logs into fire.
	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

As defined by Jagex, there are four types of skills: Combat, Gathering, Production and Utility.

Combat skills - A skill that directly integrates with the existing combat system and can improve your power in combat.

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

Gathering skills - A skill that focuses on collecting resources generally to train Production skills.

Farming, Fishing, Hunter, Mining, and Woodcutting.

Production skills - A skill used to take raw resources and use them to make something useful. In Old School RuneScape, these tend to resemble real-life trades.

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

Utility skills - A skill that enhances gameplay mechanics in a unique way. These tend to expand a player's tool-kit in a way that is difficult to describe.

Agility, Construction, Firemaking, 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:

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

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:

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

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.
	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 only one has successfully passed a poll.

Sailing

Main articles: Sailing and Sailing (2015 proposed skill)

Sailing was first added as part of the 2014 April Fools event, then later developed to become a proper skill in 2015 and polled on 10 September. Sailing would have been free-to-play, and involved building various types of ships and navigating them to new regions. A redesigned version of Sailing was proposed in March 2023, alongside Shamanism and Taming, as a concept for a potential new skill to be developed. It was polled against Shamanism and Taming on 4 April, receiving the most votes. The redesigned Sailing passed polling with 71.9% and will be added to the game, becoming Old School's first new skill.

Artisan

Main article: 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

Main article: 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.

Shamanism

Main article: Shamanism

Shamanism was proposed in March 2023, alongside Taming and a redesigned Sailing, as a concept for a potential new skill to be developed. Shamanism would have focused on gathering materials and using them to craft items imbued with shamanistic magic, such as relics or totems. The Spirit Realm would have also been added, to be accessed through Shamanism. It was polled against Sailing and Taming on 4 April, receiving the second most votes and losing to Sailing. Despite losing the poll, it was considered popular enough for the concept to be retained for potential development in the future.

Taming

Main article: Taming

Taming was proposed in March 2023, alongside Shamanism and a redesigned Sailing, as a concept for a potential new skill to be developed. Taming would have focused on taming creatures, which could be trained. Trained creatures would have been able to assist a player in a variety of ways, such as unlocking new areas, or assisting with other skills. It was polled against Sailing and Shamanism on 4 April, where it received the least votes, resulting in the concept being scrapped.

Changes

Date	Changes
[[{{#explode:29 March 2023| |0}} {{#explode:29 March 2023| |1}}]] [[{{#explode:29 March 2023| |2}}]] (update)	A new Gameplay setting has been added to allow players to disable the level-up interface.
[[{{#explode:27 January 2021| |0}} {{#explode:27 January 2021| |1}}]] [[{{#explode:27 January 2021| |2}}]] (update)	Level up fireworks are now accompanied by a little sound effect.
[[{{#explode:9 April 2015| |0}} {{#explode:9 April 2015| |1}}]] [[{{#explode:9 April 2015| |2}}]] (update)	You'll now see all level up messages when receiving more than one in a short amount of time.