Magic

Magic is one of the most important skills in RuneScape and is one of the three Combat classes. It is used in Combat; it allows crafted items to be enchanted, fast transport around the world via teleports, and create gold from items via High Level Alchemy. Magic is probably the largest source of coins into the game. While it is possible to play the game without being skilled in Magic, it is a considerable advantage to be able to use many spells, especially High Level Alchemy and the teleports.

As with all guides in the Skills section, members only items are in italics.

Spells

 * For a list of all the spells in the game, see List of spells.

Magic is used almost exclusively through casting Spells on another player, on one's self (reflexively), or on an item.

Runes
All spells (with the exception of the home teleports in Standard, Ancient, and Lunar spell books) require the use of runes as a consumed resource. Runes are stackable, commonly traded items which are obtained by various methods. For hints on obtaining runes, see Runes: Obtaining runes.

Elemental Staves
The requirement for certain runes in a spell can be removed if the player wields an Elemental staff corresponding to an elemental rune. As an example, wielding a Fire staff allows a player to cast High Level Alchemy using only one Nature rune.

Spellbooks
There are three divisions of Magic in RuneScape - standard (commonly called "modern"), Ancient Magicks, and Lunar Spells. Each has a different Spellbook and typically only one can be used at once (for an exception to this rule, see Spell Book Swap). The special spellbooks are only available on member worlds.

To cast a spell, a player must choose the wanted spell from their spellbook. To access the activated spellbook, click on the Spellbook icon in the game's interface.

Standard Spells
This article only covers the standard spells. The standard spells are activated on any new character's account, and they are available on all worlds. There is no prerequisite to using the standard spellbook, although some spells are only available on member worlds and others require completion of certain quests or tasks. As with other skills, new capabilities require higher skill levels.

Ancient Magicks
The Ancient Magicks contain some of the most dangerous offensive spells. These spells can only be used after completing the fiendish Desert Treasure quest.

Lunar spells
The Lunar spells are mostly helper spells unrelated to Combat, and require the Lunar Diplomacy quest before being usable. A spellbook extension becomes available after completion of the Dream Mentor quest.

Standard Spellbook Description
In the standard spellbook, spells fall into one of several categories: Combat, Curse, Teleportation, Alchemy and Enchantment. All spells yield their associated amount of experience when cast. Combat spells additionally give experience related to the amount of damage caused to the opponent(s).

Teleportation Spells
Teleportation spells are very popular with all players—free-to-players and members alike, as teleportation spells save lots of time when travelling around the world. Note that using a teleport spell is not possible north of level 20 Wilderness, nor in any of the combat-based minigames such as Castle Wars and Pest Control.

Combat Spells
All Combat spells result in a spell related amount of experience when cast, but also give experience depending on the amount of damage caused to the opponent. Each damage point caused by a combat spell yields 2 Magic experience points (i.e. hitting a 30 with a spell yields the spell's base XP + 60 Magic XP) and 1.33 Hitpoint experience points. Generally, most combat spells use some Air runes in combination with some other "Combat" runes, though there are exceptions with the special spells such as Magic Dart.

Stronger spells can do greater damage but are less accurate than their weaker spell counterparts. To maximize accuracy, especially in training and player killing, players are advised to equip magic-boosting equipment, unequip magic-lowering equiptment, drink Wizard's mind bomb, and raise Magic levels.

Defensive casting
Although each damage point caused by a Combat spell yields 2 Magic experience points and 1.33 Hitpoint experience points when casting regularly, the other option, which is denoted by a shield icon in the interface, represents 'defensive casting'. If you click this button instead of the regular option, you will gain Defence experience whenever you cast combat spells at the cost of receiving a reduced amount of Magic experience. On defensive, you get 1.33 Magic experience points and 1 Defence experience point for every damage point you inflict as well as the usual 1.33 Hitpoint experience points and base Magic experience that is earned for each cast.

Curses
A curse spell is any spell that causes a negative effect to its target other than damage. Curses are an underused part of Magic, mainly because spellcasters have little time to waste in casting damage spells. In long, prolonged fights, using a curse spell or two at the beginning may be a very good idea. Curses also are useful when competing for a monster respawn, as the curse immediately engages the monster.

Alchemy
All Alchemy spells use nature runes to convert some thing into some other thing. Particularly note High Alchemy in this section, as it is probably the most widely used spell in the game.

Enchantments
Enchant spells all use cosmic runes to make an item magical. For the enchant orb group of spells, you need to travel to the appropriate obelisk and cast the spell on that. Simiarly with the jewellery spells, you must have a piece of jewellery to cast the spell on.

Enchanted gold jewellery
Gold jewellery is made with the Crafting skill.

How to successfully fight as a mage
As a mage, you are weak against Ranged and strong against Melee fighters. When attacking others, you should use a combination of Entangle-like spells (Bind, Snare, Entangle, Ice spells in Ancient Magicks) and highly damaging spells such as Fire Wave, Iban Blast, or the Mage Arena spells. Curses tend to be underused, but do not underestimate them. Lunar spells appear to be helper spells for a team of PKers. When fighting monsters, using battle tactics helps, such as hiding behind a rock. Also, most undead creatures and demons are weak to Magic attacks. This will provide an advantage over these creatures. However, you must be careful because certain monsters are weak to certain elemental attacks (air, water, earth, fire).

Magic Staves
Various staves are available in RuneScape. In the list below are all the free-to-play staves, which all be obtained at Zaff's store in Varrock. The main effect of a staff is to boost Magic Attack and Defence, while the elementary staff provide unlimited amounts of their elementary rune. There are many members staves such as battlestaves, mystic staves, Slayer staff, Lunar staff, and Ancient staff. Please visit the Staves' page for a complete description.

Magic Armour and Robes
Most mages wear robes, although some light armour is available that is made from special material and does not hinder the wearer's ability to perform magical attacks. For the different sets of armour and detailed information on each piece, see the armour guide.

A player can have a Magic Attack bonus of up to 149, and a Magic Defence bonus up to 219. The lowest Magic attack bonus is -105, which will help prevent spells from hitting an opponent while training (i.e. splashing).

Training Magic
In general, Magic is one of those skills that is so useful you often cannot help but train it. Most players reach level 55 and then most of their experience comes from High Alchemy thereafter.

Using Ancient Magicks
Using Ancient Magicks is a quick, yet expensive way to train Magic. The way many people train with Ancients is by utilising Ice Burst. They have some of their friends come with them to either the Tzhaar Fight Pits or to a combat ring in a player owned house. There, they arrange themselves in a 3x3 box. The trainer then casts Ice Burst on the center person, thus hitting everybody in the box. This gains a lot of experience, as you get 2 experience for every point of damage you give.

A much cheaper approach (and considered the best Magic XP in the game by many at apx. 160k xp/hr) is through Nightmare Zone. Here, you can get unlimited free runes provided your team captain has completed Horror from the Deep. However, due to an update, gaining XP in this fashion has been largely mitigated.

Getting to level 55
If money is tight, it is recommended that you use the Runecrafting skill to make plenty of mind runes and air runes to train in Magic. You can buy a fire staff or earth staff from Zaff's Staffs and cast Fire Strike or Earth Strike on any monster that cannot reach you, such as the Hobgoblins near the Crafting Guild, the Skeletons in the Varrock Sewers, the Scorpions in the Scorpion pit mine near Al Kharid, or the Lesser Demon at the top of the Wizard's Tower.

For those with far more fire runes than air runes, a Staff of air can prove more useful than a Staff of fire as every damage spell requires air runes to cast. Certain locations such as the prison in Port Sarim and the demon's cage in the Wizards' Tower can prove to be useful when training Magic. As well, there are hidden benefits to players who can use the spell Telekinetic Grab at Magic level 33: items can be taken from the vault beneath the Varrock West Bank, used to collect Wine of Zamorak (highly valued by high level herblorists) and one can retrieve items (such as dropped arrows) which end up out of normal reach.

Cursing creatures such as Monks of Zamorak and Moss giants is also an effective way of levelling up your Magic level. Using Curse gives you 29 experience per cast, and body runes nearly always have the maximum stock in magic stores.

If you have money to spend, buy your runes instead, and if you have lots of money, use chaos runes for faster training. Alternatively, you may want to investigate the Mage Training Arena where you can gain plenty of experience from non-combat spells.

High Alchemy
High Alchemy is perhaps the single most used spell in the game. It allows you to convert items that you possess into coins. Most players owe their high level of Magic to this spell, at 65 Magic experience per casting, using a fire staff so as to only consume 1 nature rune per spell. Players with high Fletching, Crafting or Smithing can turn the items they make into coins, thereby adding money to the economy or to their own wealth.

With Fletching combined with either Runecrafting (making the nature runes, which requires 44 Runecrafting), Woodcutting (cutting the logs) or Crafting (making bow strings), it is possible to make large amounts of profit by using the High Alchemy spells on the completed bows. If the raw materials are bought (yew logs for 300 coins each, bowstrings for 200 coins each, and nature runes for 290 coins each) then Magic can be trained at a loss of 0.34 coins per experience point.

Smithing and Crafting items may also be "alched" for decent amounts, if they are high level items.

Mage Training Arena
Our guide to the Mage Training Arena covers this in more detail, but essentially, you can gain excellent Magic experience here, as well as gaining access to a new spell Bones to Peaches.

Barrows
Our guide to the Barrows covers this in more detail, but the Barrows can be extremely good Magic experience, mainly because you receive large amounts of runes from the chest as a reward. It is profitable to train Magic here, and is good experience at the same time.

Splashing
This method of Magic training involves endlessly doing zero damage to a low level enemy such as a cow. All Combat spells give a base exp gain for casting the spell regardless of damage - e.g. Fire Strike gives 11.5 base experience per cast. This can be used by giving yourself less than a -65 Magic attack bonus by equipping metal armors, ensuring that your attack will never do any damage to the enemy you are attacking. This method can be used to stay logged in for up to six hours at a time before you are kicked from the server, allowing for Magic experience gains even while completely away from keyboard ("AFK'ing") dedicating yourself to another time commitment. Fire Strike and Fire Wave are the most common spells used for this method, usually with a Smoke battlestaff to save runes, with Fire Strike giving up to 75k experience over the course of the 6 hours. Fire Strike with a smoke battlestaff is very cheap and less than 1gp per experience point.

Quests
The quests listed in the table below give Magic experience.

Temporary boosts
All boosts to your Magic level allow you to perform spells above your current level.
 * Three Prayers can boost Magic by 5%, 10%, or 15%. This boost does not increase damage nor does it allow you to perform spells above your current level. Jagex has confirmed that these prayers only help your magical accuracy.
 * Wizard's mind bomb is a type of beer which increases mage by 3, but it only increases your Magic by 2 if your Magic level is below 49. It can be bought in the Falador inn, as well as various places in the members world, and also brewed by players.
 * Magic essence potion made using the Herblore skill boosts Magic by 3.
 * Magic potion made using the Herblore skill boosts Magic by 4.
 * Red spicy stew can boost Magic by up to 5 or it can also decrease it by 5.

Trivia
In early 2001, there were two magic skills, Good Magic and Evil Magic. However, with the introduction of a new magic system, the lower skill was removed, and the higher skill changed to Magic. For example, if the player had level 50 Good Magic and level 40 Evil Magic, he would keep level 50 Magic, and the experience for the Evil Magic was discarded. Because of this, some players were upset that they lost money for training their lower magic skill, and that the experience was thrown away instead of carried over. There were also spells like Shock Bolt, Elemental Bolt, Camouflage, and Fear.

Prior to the introduction of RuneScape 2, Combat spells were universally represented by a simple, flying blue star, which proved difficult to distinguish from arrows, which were green stars. Also, in RuneScape Classic, players were capable of casting magic spells while wearing full Rune armour, leading to a massive imbalance in favour of high-level mages.

Prior to the advent of multi-combat areas in RuneScape 2, mages and archers could attack enemies while a Melee fighter engaged the monster in direct combat. This was the most common way for multiple players to attack the same creature, usually high level bosses like the King Black Dragon. The loot would go to whoever dealt the most damage, and the person who dealt the last hit would be the only one to receive exp, though less than if they had killed the monster themselves.

In RuneScape Classic, each spell gave the fixed experience using the formula 2 * spell level + 20. Magic was a much faster skill to train if you could get sufficient runes, though runes were much harder to obtain. With RuneScape 2 came the introduction of Runecrafting and many monsters with much higher rune drop rates, so runes became much easier to obtain. Accordingly, XP rates were also reduced to where they are today.

In terms of accuracy, 1 Magic level is equal to 24 Defence; this has been a problem spoken of but was told by Mod Mark.

A Runescape Mythbusters episode aired on twitch revealed that a player's magic level plays a role in defending against magic attacks.