Prayer is a non-member combat skill that can be trained in multiple ways, namely: Using them on an altar in the chaos temple or player-owned house, burying them, praying at Ectofuntus with bonemeal and buckets of slime, killing reanimated monsters using the Arceuus Spellbook, or by scattering demonic ashes. When your prayers are activated, they will drain your prayer points till it is turned off again or used up. Prayers aid in combat by helping with the attack, defense, strength, etc. Prayer is unlocked as the level of the skill goes up. Prayer is versatile and has many uses; it is also counted as a combat stat which improves your combat skills. Eight prayer levels are equal to an increase in one prayer level.
A Note on free-to-play Players
Additionally, having a high prayer level will result in using fewer prayer potions, saving you a lot of money in the long run. As a free-to-play player, you do not really have access to free-to-play training methods at all, except burying big bones, which will still take up to 3 hours and a lot of money. The best thing to do would be to complete the restless ghost quest and then leave your prayer at that until you become a member.
You could also spend some time killing Hill Giants at Edgeville dungeon and either burying their bones, which could be viable in the long run for combat and prayer experience or, more profitably, just sell their big bones as a f2p money maker and use the money to buy bonds. Prayer is a very difficult skill to level up when you are free-to-play and low on cash. If you need more gold, you could buy some on websites like ChicksGold.
Pay-to-play
The Gilded Altar
The Gilded altar will be the first method we are going to explore. It is very expensive, but the payoff is that it is fast and has no requirements. Using bones on a Gilded Altar with two burners lit will give you three and a half times more experience than you would get just burying the bone. If you have level 75 construction, you could build a Gilded Burner like this in your own house. If you don’t, you could just go to world 330 to someone’s house and use their Gilded Altar.
There are a few ways you could boost your experience on the Gilded Altar even more. The best way to do this would be to go to Remington Portal and bring Noted Bones and coins. Using the base training method, you could use about a thousand bones per hour if you are attentive enough, which will give you a decent amount of experience. As soon as one bone is consumed, quickly use another one. This is more click intensive but allows for a huge experience boost.
Reanimation of Ensouled Heads
You will need at least a level 3 magic for this method, but preferably much higher as level 3 will only give you access to ensouled Goblin heads, at least 60% Arceuus House Favour as then you can unlock the spellbook, and also good combat stats, so you do not die to the reanimated monsters.
When you cast reanimation on an ensouled head, you will have to be near the dark altar. The fastest way to get to the dark altar is by using fairy rings which you get after completing the Fairytale part 2 quest. The fastest way to get to fairy rings is to either Slayer Ring Teleport to Rellekka Dungeon, Quest Cape teleport to Legend’s Guild, or Glory teleport to Edgeville.
Luckily, the cost for Ensouled heads is way cheaper than the Gilded Altar, and the rates are still very good. If you work quickly, you can get about 200 Ensouled heads per hour.
Closing Off
When starting out on a new account, it is best to start off with doing the Gilded Altar and then move on to reanimation when you have more of the requirements that you need. As you will need better gear, food, and magic levels when taking on the reanimation of enslaved heads.
Prayer is really difficult to do as a free-to-play player, so if you are one, we would recommend not using these methods as they will take too much time and money. However, as a pay-to-play player, these are absolutely the best methods.
We hope that this guide has helped you with leveling up your account; OSRS is a beautiful and versatile game, so jump in and see if you can find any better methods yourself. Happy gaming!