RuneScape clock

For the piece of furniture, see Clock.

The RuneScape clock is a term that is used to refer to the time-frame used for actions in Old School RuneScape. The game plays out in units of time of approximately 0.6 seconds called game cycles, although they are more commonly referred to as "ticks". All events occur at the end of the previous tick / beginning of the next tick. All delayed actions are delayed by a whole number of ticks. A message appearing in the chat interface, any experience gain, a monster spawning, and all other actions and events, happen in time with the game's "ticking clock". Purely client-side interactions are independent of the game tick. (e.g. opening a right-click menu)

An action taken during one tick can only happen, at the soonest, at the beginning of the next tick. This can cause your action to be carried out instantaneously, or after a delay of nearly 0.6 seconds, depending on how long you had to wait until the next tick.

Length of a tick

Cannons are a great visual tick timer, as they rotate 45 degrees once every tick.

The length of a tick can be measured by timing a repeated action using a stopwatch. For example, lighting 25 logs without re-lighting a log takes 100 ticks. If the stopwatch can be stopped to within 0.1 seconds, the tick can be measured to within 0.001 seconds.

Theoretically, there should be 100 ticks per minute, exactly 0.600 seconds per tick. However, the observed duration of a tick can vary due to connection speed, client-side lag, or server-side lag as the game server processes all actions and events affecting all online players. The tick length is constant throughout a server for all players, which is due to the fact that player's actions are processed in the same order every time, so even if someone is processed last, they will still have the same tick as previously due to them being processed last every time. However, the tick length is not constant between different servers. In general, the more players that are on a given server, the longer the tick length; the fewer players are on a server, the shorter the tick length. While there seem to be other factors that affect tick length as well, the number of players on the server seems to be the largest factor. It is typical for ticks on World 302 to be 0.616 to 0.618 seconds each, whereas ticks on less full worlds typically are 0.606 to 0.611 seconds each.

It is possible for a server to lag and "miss" a tick or multiple ticks from time to time. This seems to happen most often on worlds with the greatest number of players.

Length of selected actions

The length of the following actions are given in ticks.

Melee weapons

• Abyssal whip, Saradomin sword, and Zamorakian spear: 4 per hit
• Any scimitar, dagger, mace, spear, hasta, or shortsword: 4 per hit
• Any longsword: 5 per hit
• Godswords, warhammers, and battleaxes: 6 per hit
• Two-handed swords and Dharok's greataxe: 7 per hit

Ranged weapons

Note: These times are all for the accurate or longranged style. Switching to the rapid attack style decreases the number of ticks by 1.

• Any darts or throwing knives or toxic blowpipe: 3 per hit
• Karil's crossbow: 4 per hit
• Any shortbow: 4 per hit
• Any longbow: 6 per hit
• Composite bows, the Crystal bow and the Seercull: 5 per hit
• Throwing axes: 5 per hit
• Dorgeshuun crossbow: 5 per hit
• Any metal crossbow: 6 per hit
• The Ogre bow: 8 per hit
• The Dark bow: 9 per hit

Agility

• Fastest lap of Ape Atoll Agility Course without tick manipulation: 63

Construction

• Building and removing a larder or door or table: 5 per item
• The Demon butler spends 10 ticks to bank while the Butler needs 20 ticks.

Cooking

• Cooking fish: 4 per food item using the cook-all option. When cooking karambwan, it may be cooked once every tick when repeatedly using the raw food on the fire or range while holding the corresponding key to cook it.
• Making wine: 2 per wine

Crafting

• Attaching orbs to battlestaves: 2 per battlestaff
• Crafting d'hide bodies: 3 per body
• Cutting gems: 2 per gem
• Making jewellery: 3 ticks per item
• Glass blowing: 3 ticks per item
• String an unstrung amulet: 2 ticks per item, even when autocast

Farming

Unlike other skills, Farming uses a real-time clock to determine when plants and other farming produce grow as opposed to relying on a specific number of game ticks. More information may be found here.

• Harvesting an Herb: 3 per auto-harvest or 2 per manual harvest
  • Mobile users can get 1.5 average per harvest by timing their taps
• Harvesting an Allotment: 3 per auto-harvest or 2 per manual harvest

Firemaking

• Burning logs: 4 per log

Fishing

• Chance of catching a fish from any fishing spot (except minnow, karambwan, and karambwanji): 5 per fish
• Chance of catching karambwanji: 6 per catch (which may include up to 23 fish per catch)
• Chance of catching minnow: 2 per fish
• Chance of catching karambwan: 4 per fish

However, you are not guaranteed a fish every 5 ticks; rather, every 5 ticks there is a chance to catch a fish.

Fletching

• Cutting wood into unstrung bows: 3 per bow
• Stringing a bow: 2 per bow
• Fletching arrows: 2 per set of 15 arrows
• Fletching bolts: 2 per set of 10
• Cutting gems into bolt tips: 5 ticks per gem
• Fletching wooden shields: 7 ticks per shield

Herblore

• Putting a herb into a vial: 1 per herb
• Putting a second ingredient into a potion: 2 per potion
• Cleaning grimy herbs: There is an apparent limit of how many herbs can be cleaned per tick: a maximum of 10 requests can be processed at once when cleaning herbs. When not clicked manually the herbs will get auto cleaned with a speed of 2 ticks per herb.

Hunting

• Catching Red chinchompas: 8 per chinchompa (if sufficient box traps are ready to be checked)
• Laying down a trap: 4 per trap

Magic

These are the cooldowns of each spell, and not necessarily the casting times. A good example is Vengeance, as the actual cast is relatively short compared to the 30 second cooldown.

• Combat spells: 5 per cast
• Harmonised nightmare staff (when casting standard spells) and powered staves: 4 per hit
• High Level Alchemy: 5 per cast
• Low Level Alchemy: 3 per cast
• Enchant Jewellery spells: 3 per cast or 7 to autocast
• Superheat Item: 3 per cast
• Humidify: 3 per cast
• Plank Make: 3 per cast or 6 to autocast
• Bake Pie: 3 per cast
• Spin Flax: 5 per cast
• String Jewellery: 3 per cast
• Camelot teleport: 4 per cast
• Enchant Crossbow Bolt: 2/3 per cast (the game allows this spell to be cast every tick with manual recasting, but automatically it starts at two ticks and continues at three)
• Vengeance: 50 per cast

Mining

With a rune and dragon pickaxe, there is a chance to mine an ore every 3 ticks, and the dragon pickaxe has an additional 15% chance to mine an ore in 2 ticks. This does not apply to rune essence, which comes more frequently than this. The quality of the pickaxe dictates how many ticks it takes to have a chance at mining an ore: 8 ticks with bronze, 7 with iron and so on until 3 ticks with rune.

Prayer

• Player-owned house altar offerings: 3 per bone (can be reduced to one with manual input)
• Burying bones: 2 per bone
• Ectofuntus: 1 per bonemeal+slime

Prayer activation and deactivation is applied on the next game tick, and the drain rate of each prayer is measured by a number of ticks.

Runecraft

• Crafting at Ourania Altar: No delay
• Crafting combination runes: No delay
• Crafting regular runes at any other altar: No delay

Smithing

• Smelting ores at a furnace: 5 per ore
• Forging at an anvil: 5 per item smithed, which has the chance of only 4 ticks while wearing pieces of the Smiths' Uniform.
• Making cannonballs: 6 tick

Thieving

• Pickpocketing: 2 per pickpocket
• Failed pickpocket: 7 - 10 tick penalty depending on NPC, in addition to pickpocket time
• Blackjacking: 6 per round
• A Pyramid Plunder activity is 500 ticks.

Woodcutting

• Chance of cutting a log from any type of tree: 4 per chance

However, you are not guaranteed a log every 4 ticks; rather, every 4 ticks there is a chance to cut a log.

Other

• The make-x and smithing menus take 1 tick to close after selecting an action.
• Using Balloon transport system takes 5 ticks.
• Running covers 2 squares per tick, while walking covers 1 square per tick.
• The amount of time a player can spend collecting tears in Tears of Guthix is a number of game ticks equal to the player's quest points.
• Boosted or reduced stats move towards normal at a rate of 1 level per 100 ticks, which is just a tiny bit over one minute. With Preserve active, boosted stats will drain 1 level per 150 ticks. Checks every 20 ticks.
• NPC and player chat messages stay above their heads for 5 ticks (exception: if a second message is sent sooner it will replace the first and last 5 ticks unless another message is sent sooner etc).
• The special attack bar recovers at a rate of 10% per 50 ticks. When wearing a Lightbearer, the special attack bar will recover at a rate of 10% per 25 ticks.

Application

Main article: Tick manipulation

In general, knowledge of the RuneScape clock will provide a benefit to players, and it can make it easier to time actions. Timing just one of a repeated action may clearly give a tick number, which may be able to be used to estimate experience per hour. For example, Superheat Item, Plank Make, and Bake Pie all are spells that take 3 ticks each and are cast one by one on an inventory of supplies. If it is known that Superheat Item may be cast about 1800 times per hour, Plank Make and Bake Pie would be known to be very nearly the same rate merely by timing a single cast. The 1800 itself could even be estimated without actual measurement by noting that about 5940 ticks per hour divided by 3 ticks per cast is 1980 casts per hour of hypothetical continuous casting, and that 7-10% should be subtracted for mistakes and banking.