Skills

Level up fireworks (link)

Plays when you level up in any skill

Skills are a player's abilities that may be developed throughout the game. Any given skill can be trained by various actions that relate to the skill. Performing any action that requires a certain level in a given skill will give experience in the skill. Using items like experience lamps, which give various amounts of experience in a skill of your choice, can increase your experience points. Some skills allow players to cook, chop down trees, make fires, use magic, make runes, and so on. Some skills support each other. For example, logs obtained from Woodcutting can be used for Firemaking, and fires from Firemaking can be used for Cooking food, and food can be used to replenish life points to help in Combat, which can be used to kill monks to get herbs which can be used for Herblore. Some herblore potion can, for example, boost mining so you can mine ores to smith with, and with that you can create nails. You can use nails with Construction. In your house you can also build an altar to help train prayer. The higher your level is in a skill, the greater pool of content from the skill you will have access to.

Having higher levels in skills can give players various advantages around RuneScape, such as agility shortcuts, faster cutting of wood, etc. Skills are often contrasted with money, skills being considered permanent and money temporary due to scams and hacking.

With the release of Dungeoneering, there are 25 skills in Runescape. Members have access to all 25 skills, while free-to-play can only access 16 skills, with less content and advantages (especially towards the higher levels).

Training certain skills can result with a profit in coins, such as selling the logs from woodcutting, the fish from the Fishing skill or selling the drop(s) from a Slayer assignment. Please refer to the Money-making guide for more details. Certain skills, however, can cost you coins to train - If you don't want to acquire your own raw materials, some skills may cost only a little (Cooking, Firemaking) to a lot of money (Herblore, Construction) to train at a regular speed.

Players should weigh-up the balance between cheap/profitable skilling against buying the raw materials needed for 'processing' skills. Players can obtain their own raw materials (logs, fish and mined ore etc), or they can buy it. On one hand, when players get their own materials, skilling costs nothing and can easily return a profit, but due to time taken acquiring the materials, it can also be an extremely slow process. On the other hand, players can buy these raw materials. This almost certainly results in making a net loss but is a faster way of improving the appropriate skill.

All skills, with the exception of Constitution, start out at level 1. Constitution starts out at level 10, so the player has a fair advantage against monsters. A player has 10 life points per Constitution level. Players can advance a skill to level 99 (except for Dungeoneering, which can go to level 120); after that, they can increase their experience up to 200,000,000 - but gain no more levels for doing so. A player's combat level begins at level 3, because of 10 Constitution. The maximum combat level a member can reach is level 138, although while standing in the wilderness, a player's combat level is a maximum of 126+12. Non-members can reach up to level 126 because a non-member can't train the Summoning skill. See the highscores for the relative rankings of the different skills.

Every skill has a unique jingle that plays when the skill is levelled up. This jingle changes with each skill to be slightly more complex whenever the skill reaches level 50.

Skills can be temporarily boosted or lowered by using certain items or equipment, such as Capes of Accomplishment, beer, potions, certain foods, or a summoning familiar if the player is a member.

If a player is in the top 2,000,000 players in a skill, is of level 15 or greater in that skill, and is a member they will appear on the hiscores.

Free to play skills

Free players have access to 16 skills.

Skill	Description
Attack	Grants players using melee weapons higher accuracy, thus increasing the number of hits dealt to an opponent during any given time period. Because more of the player's hits will be successful, the player's opponent will incur more damage per any given time period. Stronger weapons also require higher levels of Attack in order to equip.
Strength	During melee, higher strength increases a player's maximum potential damage to an opponent for each successful hit. Stronger member's weapons may also require higher levels to equip. Also gives access to various agility shortcuts.
Defence	Allows players to wear stronger armour, as well as decrease their chance of being hit. A common misconception is that high Defence reduces the maximum possible damage taken during melee with an opponent's successful hit. This is not true. However, because the chances of being hit are lower, the player will sustain less total damage per any given time period during melee. When the player is hit by an opponent, though, the full damage amount can be incurred.
Ranged	Allows players to fight with arrows and other projectiles from a distance and increases a player's chance to hit when using ranged. Ranged weapons, armour and some other items require a certain ranged level. Also gives members access to various agility shortcuts.
Prayer	Allows players to pray for assistance in combat, such as for stat boosts and immunity from attacks. Effects last until the player runs out of prayer points, or turns their prayers off. Can also be used to repair or bless gravestones. With a higher level you can also wear God robes and Temple Knight armour.
Magic	Allows players to cast spells, including teleports and enchantments, through the use of different types of runes. Increases magic-based attack accuracy and reduces the chance for magic-based attacks to hit you.
Constitution	Allows players to sustain more damage without dying. Your Life Points are ten times your Constitution level. All combat skills train Constitution at a rate of 1.33 experience per 10 damage done (with a few exceptions, eg, experience is not gained for any skill in the Stealing Creation activity).
Crafting	Allows players to craft items from raw materials, such as pottery, ranged armour, and jewellery.
Mining	Allows players to obtain ores and gems from rocks found in some specific places. Ores can be used with the Smithing skill. Gems can be used with the Crafting skill.
Smithing	Allows players to smelt ores into bars, and smith bars into armour, weapons, and other useful items.
Fishing	Allows players to catch certain fish. The fish can then be sold or cooked and eaten.
Cooking	Allows players to cook food. The food can then be consumed to heal a player's life points. The higher the cooking level, the less chances of burning food.
Firemaking	Allows players to light fires, lanterns, etc. Players can cook on these fires.
Woodcutting	Allows players to cut down trees for logs, and to carve out canoes for transportation.
Runecrafting	Allows players to make runes in special altars using tiaras, talisman staffs, or talismans, aiding in the Magic skill. Also a requirement to wield blast and surge boxes.
Dungeoneering	Allows players to progress further down the dungeons of Daemonheim, unlocking access to exclusive weapons, treasures, monsters and areas. Relies on all non-member skills in F2P and all skills in P2P. Gives rewards only accessible through Dungeoneering.

Member skills

Members have access to all 25 skills, including the 16 free-to-play skills, and 9 additional skills, and more items that F2P can't use. For example, Dragon platelegs for Defence, Magic Trees for Woodcutting.

Skill	Description
Agility	Allows players to use shortcuts and increases the rate at which energy recharges. Certain pieces of equipment such as the Crystal bow also requires certain agility levels to wield. It is also used to enhance several other skills, such as allowing the player to catch multiple fish at once.
Herblore	Allows players to clean grimy herbs and to make potions which can be used to boost/restore skills. Certain potions also have other specific uses to players (such as curing poisoning, protecting from dragonfire without an Anti-dragon shield, or restoring health at the cost of offensive stats) and are sometimes necessary for survival. Also the higher the herblore level, the more untradable and powerful potions the player can make.
Thieving	Allows players to steal from market stalls, chests and certain non-player characters (and other players in Stealing Creation) and to lockpick doors.
Fletching	Allows players to create projectiles (such as arrows, bolts, and darts) and bows/crossbows which can be used for Ranged.
Slayer	Allows players to kill certain monsters using tactics not used in normal combat. Useful in raising combat skills. Has the potential to give very rewarding drops unique to slayer monsters. It is also helpful in the minigame Soul Wars.
Farming	Allows players to grow plants (such as fruits, vegetables, herbs, or trees) in certain patches across the world of RuneScape. Farming is notably very useful for collecting many common and rare herbs for Herblore.
Construction	Allows players to build a house and its contents, such as chairs, tables, workshops, dungeons, and more. Every players house is located inside its own instance, separated from the rest of the game. Portals around the world are used to gain entry into the player's own house, and to gain access to other players houses, allowing anyone to gain access to some of the very useful, high level rooms and furniture. Some very popular and useful house features include Teleport Tabs and Portals, storing of many costumes, play-fighting other players, Gilded Altars for huge prayer training bonuses, and much more.
Hunter	Allows players to track, net, deadfall, snare, and trap animals for their hides, abilities and treasures. Some of the animals caught can be used in other skills. For example, Red Chinchompa can be used as a ranging weapon, and salamanders can be used as a weapon in all three attack styles.
Summoning	Allows players to summon familiars and pets to enhance gameplay in both combat and non-combat skills. Certain familiars can also hold additional items, allowing players to hold more than 28 items, and allows for an expanded pet list.

Skills types

There are four types of skills in RuneScape: Combat, Gathering, Artisan, and Support.

Combat: - These skills involve fighting in Combat.

Attack, Strength, Defence, Ranged, Prayer, Magic<ref>Magic could be an Artisan skill because of Enchantment, Superheat Item and Lunar spells. It could also be a Support skill because of Teleport spells (a commonly used method of travel) and Alchemy spells.</ref>, Constitution and Summoning<ref>Summoning familiars have a wide variety of abilities. Although most are designed to help with combat, several have gathering based abilities (not considered Gathering because you don't take anything from the environment), others Artisan abilities, and others help with traveling, making them have Support abilities.

</ref> Gathering: - These skills involve gathering raw materials (Resources) directly from the source.

Mining, Fishing, Woodcutting, Farming and Hunter.

Artisan: - These skills involve using Resource items to create other, generally more useful items.

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

Support: - These skills help the player in various different ways:

Agility, Thieving, Slayer and Dungeoneering.

Experience

Main article: Experience

Experience, commonly abbreviated as Exp or XP, is a measure of progress in a certain skill. It is generally obtained by performing tasks related to that skill. After gaining a certain amount of experience, players will advance to the next level in that skill, which can result in new abilities, items, and other achievements. You can earn XP (experience) by training skills, completing quests, doing activities such asPenguin Hide and Seek, Mage Training Arena, and other Minigames and activities. You can also gain experience by finishing random events (If you chose the Experience Lamp or Book.)

Skill release timeline

Skill	Release date	Notes
Dungeoneering	12 April 2010
Summoning	15 January 2008	Originally envisioned to be an extension to the Magic skill. (Existed in DeviousMUD.)
Hunter	21 November 2006
Construction	31 May 2006	Originally planned to be called Carpentry.
Farming	11 July 2005	Originally planned to be released along with Carpentry.
Slayer	26 January 2005
Runecrafting	29 March 2004	Released alongside RuneScape 2.
Agility	12 December 2002
Thieving	30 April 2002
Fletching	25 March 2002
Herblore	21 February 2002	Was named Herblaw in RuneScape Classic.
Fishing	11 June 2001	The first F2P skill released without being previously known as another skill.
Prayer	24 May 2001	Known as Necromancy at time of release. Was also known as good prayer and evil prayer at one point in Classic. (Also released initially on 4 January 2001)
Crafting	8 May 2001	Known as Tailoring at time of release.
Magic	17 March 2001	This original skill was initially divided into good magics and evil magics. (Was initially released on 4 January 2001).
Smithing	4 January 2001

Stat Wipe

It is possible for accounts with less than 10 Constitution to exist. In the early days of RuneScape Classic, rule-breakers would be stat-wiped, meaning all their skills would be taken back to 1, including Hitpoints, the predecessor to Constitution. When RS2 was released, Jagex banned many of these accounts. As of today, these accounts are extremely rare.

Accounts may also have less than 10 Constitution if they were created during the period where players chose a class when the account was created. Depending on the class chosen, it was possible to have a Hitpoints level lower than 10 (while starting with other stats boosted over 1), and this would remain if they never trained their Constitution level. In this case, this is extremely rare.

Accounts may also have less than 10 Constitution if they were created during RuneScape Classic and did not level it. This is because the required XP for level 10 was raised for RS2; therefore, characters who had not trained hitpoints in RuneScape Classic did not have enough XP for level 10 Constitution.

As of today, accounts still are able to be wiped in their skills, and this skill can be wiped with other unrelated skills if the offence is serious. This skill is normally the skill that they are caught botting in. However, if botting combat, it might be possible that Jagex wipes all combat skills in that 'class' (for magic: Magic, Defence, Constitution, for melee: Attack, Strength, Defence, Constitution, etc.).

On May 29th, 2001, Jagex released the following statement:

As part of our promised commitment to stamping down and stopping cheats in RuneScape we have developed a new system to automatically detect people using macro/bot software to gain stats unfairly.
It clearly says in our rules that using software to automatically play the game for you and raise your stats for you is cheating! This will not be tolerated. It is just not fair on the players who play the game honestly and get their levels fairly.
Our new system is extremely efficient and accurate, and in the last 24 hours we have already identified nearly 2000 players who have been cheating in this way. We also believe that we will be able to identify all future offenders and will continue modifing and improving our detection software to do so. From this point on if you use a macro or use a modified version of the RuneScape client, it is almost 100% certain that you WILL be banned or erased.
Since these people gained their stats/items unfairly we have unfortunately had no choice but to completely wipe the stats and inventory of the aprox 2000 people who we have caught using macro/bot software. It seems obvious that these players should not be allowed to keep what they did not gain honestly in the first place.
If you are one of the people who we stat-wiped then whining and making excuses to us won't help. Our new system is designed to have a 0% rate of false positives, and we KNOW you were cheating. The stat-wipe is irreversible, so if you want to get your stats back then the only way to do it is to start playing the game fairly, and EARN your way to greatness like everyone else has to.

Click here For a complete list of all the people who have already been stat-wiped. We expect to catch more people at it over the next few days. I hope this proves we are deadly serious about stopping this cheating in runescape.

Gallery

The skills screen prior to 2 April 2012
The skills screen prior to 12 April 2010
The skills screen prior to 15 January 2008

The skills screen prior to 15 January 2008
The skills screen prior to 5 November 2007
The skills screen prior to 3 July 2007
The skills screen prior to 21 November 2006
The skills screen before the Construction Skill
The skills screen prior to 31 May 2005
The skills screen prior to 26 January 2005

The skills screen prior to 26 January 2005
The skills screen used during the beta of RS2 and prior to the release of RS2 on 29 March, 2004.

The skills screen used during the beta of RS2 and prior to the release of RS2 on 29 March, 2004.
The skills screen prior to 2001 in the first weeks of RSC.
Current RuneScape Classic skills menu

Current RuneScape Classic skills menu
A strange loading bug. Note the total level "1337" in leet-speak.