Prayer

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Prayer cape can be purchased for 99,000 coins from Brother Jered at the Monastery by players who have achieved level 99 Prayer. It is the Cape of Accomplishment for the Prayer skill. Prayer capes are white in colour, and have a yellow-gold trim if the player has more than one level 99 skill. The Prayer Cape's primary colour appears to change based on the player's gender (white for females and slightly grey for males). The "operate cape" boost will have no effect if the players prayer is not full when activated. The extra point is immediately lost if the prayer cape is removed.


Prayer is a skill that allows players to use prayer(s) to generate advantages in combat. The ability to do so is achieved through evoking the power of certain gods of RuneScape. All players start with limited access to the Prayer skill. As one's Prayer level increases, they gain access to new prayers. As players traverse the land and complete many adventures, they find themselves presented with the opportunity to gain the prayers and blessings of various gods such as Zaros, who is related to RuneScape's deep past, and Saradomin, the god of order. Some of the strongest prayers are only available after doing certain member quests.

The current minimum requirement to be ranked (at rank 2,000,000) on the hiscores for Prayer is level 43. As of 4 August 2011, there are 33,988 players that have achieved level 99 in Prayer.

The main ways to train prayer are to bury Bones and scatter Demon Ashes. Bones can be obtained by killing various creatures, by taking bone drops that other players leave behind, or by collecting the bones that spawn in various places, such as in parts of the Edgeville Dungeon or at the Chaos Temple in the southern Wilderness. Demon ashes can be obtained by killing Demons or by taking demon ashes drops that other players leave behind. Prayer is difficult to train in Free-to-play, because the most amount of experience granted in Free-to-Play that is a renewable sources comes from big bones, which give only 15 experience.

According to Zamorak[1] the God of Order deals with prayers, "so that when you give the dead an honourable burial in his name it strengthens the bond between you, allowing him to help you out in little ways that others such as Guthix won't notice." Yauchomi, the Lumbridge Prayer tutor (removed from the game) stated that burying bones raise your Prayer level by increasing your 'holy energies'.

Prayer, unlike most skills that are directly related to their name, cannot be trained just through the act of "praying." In fact, Prayer almost completely relies on the act of burying bones to gain experience (there are certain ways to gain Prayer experience without burying bones, but those are covered later in this article).

Prayer is currently the slowest skill (according to player polls) to raise as a free player. However, its benefits in combat can be exceedingly useful, especially amongst members. Through various members' benefits, Prayer can become much faster and easier to raise on member servers

Quick Prayers

As of 25 March 2009, the Prayer icon next to the minimap had a function added, expanding on its function as a simple meter. This new function was recognised as "quick prayers". It can now be left-clicked to activate, or deactivate, a group of Prayers preselected by the player simultaneously. You can select which prayers are activated by right-clicking the button and choosing the "Select quick prayers" option. (You can do the same with curses; the option changes to "Select quick curses". Quick curses and quick prayers are saved separately.) Before the addition of this function, players had to (sometimes frantically) locate the Prayer icon and activate them one by one, this function allows players to place many of the most useful Prayers on immediate standby. However, many players use the button simply to turn off Prayers when accessing Prayers through its tab, by double left-clicking it to turn off all prayers. This was the official release of the "quick prayers" function, as provided by Jagex:

"The fourth upgrade for this week will save you valuable seconds in times of need. The Prayer button near the minimap has undergone an overhaul so you can now set a Prayer, or group of Prayers, before you go into action, and activate or de-activate it with one click. The button will also indicate the loss of Prayer points by gradually fading out – similar to the behaviour of the life points button. This should help prevent you accidentally running out of Prayer points, and finding yourself suddenly vulnerable to your opponent's attacks." - Jagex.

History and origins

Prayer is one of the older skills in the game, dating back to early RuneScape Classic.
The standard Prayer book with all the prayers.

As with (good and evil) Magic it was then made up of two skills in RuneScape Classic: PrayGood and PrayEvil. Earlier than this, Prayer was known as Necromancy - the reason this was changed is probably because the term Necromancy was the moniker given to the Magic Class (back when the game had classes).

Prayer was the last of the original skills in which players were able to reach the maximum skill level of 99. Before any of the "Prayers" were made available (the only reason why people choose to train this skill in the first place), players could still gain Prayer levels through burying bones and completing The Restless Ghost. While Prayer did not have any uses, the Prayers used to exist in the Good Magic and Evil Magic skills simply as a "moral compass" of sorts. Although burying bones may not seem to have much to do with prayer, it has been said in Postbag from the Hedge that although Saradomin condemns violence, he does like the player to bury the body honourably. A quote from issue 13 of the 'Postbag From the Hedge':

"Saradomin has a great pride upon himself, and his time is mostly spent with listening to the songs of his glories from the religious and the offerings of bones made to him by those seeking to gain his favour through prayers".

These, and Zamorak's statement above, would indicate that prayer is more closely related to Saradomin than to any other Gods.

Overview of how Prayer works

Increasing a player's Prayer level is generally done through various uses of bones, with non-members limited to burying them (except in Daemonheim, where they can use them on altars). Members have other options that are faster, such as offering bones to the gods at a Gilded altar constructed using the Construction skill, worshipping at the Ectofuntus or taking part in activities that award prayer experience such as Soul Wars, Conquest and Pest Control.

To use a Prayer, players can click on the Prayer menu and Prayer spells that the player has access to will be listed. Prayers that are highlighted with colour can be used by the player, while Prayers unavailable are darkened. When a player clicks on a spell, a lighted circle will appear around it, indicating that they are using it.

For some Prayers, such as Protect from melee, the Prayer is indicated by a small icon above the player's head, to further delegate the source of the player's Prayer when in Combat.

Using a Prayer spell drains the player's Prayer energy at varying speeds, and once this energy is depleted, Prayers can no longer be used; therefore, use of any and all Prayers is temporary. To slow the rate of drain, players may equip items that add Prayer bonuses, such as a blessed holy symbol or priest robes, which reduces the drain rate by increasing Prayer bonuses. Increasing Prayer level does not reduce the drain rate of prayers.

Once the player's "Prayer points" reaches zero, all Prayers will deactivate and no Prayers will be able to be in use until the player recharges their Prayer points, through various mediums.

To recharge, players usually pray at an altar, commonly found in various cities and towns and also small villages and abandonments, scattered all across RuneScape. There are other, less commonly used and/or known methods for recharging Prayer though, however, these methods are usually either expensive or unwieldy. Drinking Prayer potions, for example, is a fast and effective way to recharge Prayer, however, it can sometimes be expensive if used in large quantities over a period of time. Another option is to enter a "safe" minigame such as the Fight Caves, and allow themselves to be killed, which will regenerate their prayer to its maximum level. Players can also recharge their prayer points by entering a dungeon in Daemonheim and exiting it without opening any door. Nevertheless, it's recommended for players to wear a ring of kinship to make it faster. This method also gives back full hp.

There are some altar locations in RuneScape that when used will charge the player's Prayer Points while adding two extra, allowing a prayer to last longer. These locations are: The Monk Altar-top floor of the Monastery, the Nature Altar-Grotto tree in Filliman Tarlock's Camp (Morytania), the Elidinis Altar-Nardah, and the Zaros Altar-Temple of Senntisten. Note: Praying at these altars will not raise the player's actual level. Ex: Player's level is 41 which would raise it to 43 Prayer Points, but this does not allow the player to use the Protect from Melee prayer.

Subsequently, if a Holy wrench is in a player's inventory, an additional 1-2 Prayer points is added when drinking a Prayer potion. The Box of Health (which is the reward on the third level of the Stronghold of Security) not only fully restores your life points but also completely restores your Prayer points when opened, however, this only works once upon completion of the Stronghold level.

The Falador shield from the Falador Tasks, which is accessible to only members, can also restore your Prayer points by increasing amounts, depending on the shield, but the shield may only be activated once per day. The Ancient Mace and the Saradomin godsword also have Prayer-restoration properties as well. Burying bones while wearing certain necklaces that can be received as Dungeoneering rewards will restore prayer points. Also the full Penance armour set (which can be obtained in the Barbarian Assault minigame)can recharge your prayer over time.

While activating Prayers are the main and most commonly known way of draining Prayer points, certain NPCs can also do so, such as the Sea Troll Queen, Damis, Glod, Nezikchened and Shadow spiders, just to name a few.

Certain locations in RuneScape (mainly P2P), such as the Abyss and the Entrana dungeon, also contain this Prayer-draining effect. Other NPCs can directly lower your Prayer level (temporarily, of course), as well as other statistics, instead of just draining your Prayer points, such as certain Mourners and Broodoo victims.

Prayers are excellent in combat because they give players certain advantages. For example, some Prayers improve a player's combat abilities, while others can protect them from damage, and others can damage opponents.

Players with level 70 or greater Prayer may also bless the gravestones of others to increase a gravestone's lifespan, up to an hour.

Players under level 70 in prayer can repair the gravestones of others to return the gravestone's timer back to its original time. For example, a gravestone that lasts for four minutes, when repaired, will return to its time of four minutes.

Prayer bonus

This Prayer level is drained by 34 points. Prayer bonuses can be viewed in the Equipment and Stats window. Here, players can see all their bonuses, including Prayer. Prayer points will drain slower or quicker, depending upon the amount of Prayer bonuses a player has. Players who have a positive Prayer bonus will drain slower Prayer points than usual. The higher the Prayer bonus is, the slower the player's Prayer points will drain when using Prayer.

Each point of Prayer bonus slows the drain rate by 3⅓% of the regular drain rate of the Prayer(s). A general formula for the time (interval) between dropping Prayer points with a given Prayer bonus is: modified drain interval = Prayer drain interval × (1 + (Prayer bonus / 30))

Where the drain interval is the number of seconds per point (i.e. 1 point per x seconds).

For example, if a player uses the "Protect From Melee" Prayer with a Prayer bonus of 0, their Prayer points would drain at a rate of 1 point every 3 seconds. If that player then equips armour giving a Prayer bonus of +15, the drain rate of this Prayer is slowed by 15 / 30 = 0.5, so the drain interval becomes 3 × (1 + 0.5) = 4.5, or 1 point per 4.5 seconds instead of 1 point every 3 seconds.

To generate a Prayer bonus, players must equip certain types of armour, clothing, weapons, and jewellery. See the Equipment section for more information.

Prayer bonuses, however, do not help to stave off the side-effects of locations and NPC's which drain Prayer.

Prayers

A player demonstrating overhead Prayers.

This is the list of all Prayers that players begin the game with access to. As a player's Prayer level increases, more of these Prayers will become available for usage.

While Members have the ability to be granted access to all 30 Prayer spells (depending upon their preferences), free players can access 21 out of 30 Prayer spells but cannot use the last eight (including Augury, Rigour and Rapid Renewal) or Protect From Summoning, due to members quests being required. Prayers can be activated in the Prayer List interface () Players can also use some Prayers at the same time with others, though doing so will compound the drain rate of these Prayers. Some Prayers cannot be used simultaneously and are marked in the table with the same background colour. For example, activating the "Smite" Prayer while the "Protect From Melee" Prayer is active will automatically deactivate "Protect from Melee" as they are incompatible Prayers.


Notes:
■ + These Prayers will not stack with other versions of themselves (e.g. no Rock Skin + Steel Skin)
■% These Prayers cannot be used at the same time
■ ~ Hold time is not reduced against Ancient Magick ice spells.
■ & These Prayers have no restrictions, can be used with any others.
■ = Protect from Summoning can't be used at same time as Smite, Redemption or Retribution, but stacks with any other Protect Prayer.

Ancient curses

Ancient Curses are the prayers of the god Zaros. They are high-level prayers that are accessed after The Temple at Senntisten. They are only available to members. Similar rules from the regular Prayer list apply: sap curses cannot be used with leech curses. Deflect curses cannot be used together, except Deflect Summoning can be used with another deflect curse.


Notes:
■ + These curses can be used with the Deflect, Wrath, and Soul Split curses, and others of the same type (e.g. Sap Warrior and Sap Mage), but Sap and Leech curses cannot be used at the same time, Turmoil follows the same rules except it cannot be used with Sap or Leech curses.
■ = Deflect Summoning can be used with other Deflect Curses, but not with Wrath, or Soul Split.
■% These curses cannot be used at the same time
■& These curses can be used with any others

Formula

The formula for protection Prayers used against players is:
■Melee, Ranged, Magic, and Summoning attacks: Reduced damage = ( 0.60 x normal damage ) ■For example, if 40 damage were inflicted to you, the damage would be reduced to 24 damage (i.e. for every 5 damage that you normally take, only 3 damage is dealt instead.
■If you were to take 3 damage for example, the result would be rounded off as follows: Reduced damage = ( 0.60 x 3 = 1.8 [1.8 --> 1 damage)

■Magic bind spells: Reduced time = ( 0.50 * Time ) ■For example, a spell that would normally hold you for 10 seconds, would be halved to only hold you for 5 seconds. However this shorter holding effect does not work for Ancient Magicks ice spells.

Remember, these formulas are just against players. They will negate the full damage of NPCs if possible.

Burying bones and scattering ashes

A player burying bones into the ground. Many types of bones and demon ashes exist that players can bury or scatter for Prayer experience. However, most of them are available only to members. To bury bones or scatter ashes, simply left-click on the bone or ashes in your inventory.


Worshipping the Ectofuntus

Main article: Ectofuntus

A player praying to the Ectofuntus.

Members are able to worship the Ectofuntus north of Port Phasmatys. At the Ectofuntus, players use ground-up bones and Ectoplasm to receive four times the normal experience they would receive from burying those bones regularly. It is a somewhat slow method, but the experience earned is much better than burying bones.

NOTE: Completing the Ghosts Ahoy quest gives players the ability to use the Ectophial, which helps significantly when worshipping the Ectofuntus. Also, achieving level 58 Agility allows a player to use a shortcut within the Ectofuntus which saves a considerable amount of time while gathering ectoplasm.

Shades of Mort'ton

After completing the Shades of Mort'ton quest, players will then be able to cremate Shades to earn Prayer experience and other rewards. To learn more, see Shades of Mort'ton (activity).

Ghasts

After completing the Nature Spirit quest, players can kill ghasts and earn Prayer experience. Players will need a blessed Silver sickle and about 3 or 4 druid pouches. Ghasts are not corporeal until players use the druid pouch on them; thus, an empty druid pouch will not work. Ghasts can be found in Mort'ton and Mort Myre swamp. Killing a ghast earns 30 Prayer experience. Larger, more powerful varieties of ghasts that give more Prayer experience can be found during Temple Trekking.

Player-owned houses

An altar dedicated to Zamorak. A player using bones on an altar in a POH. Members can also offer bones to their Altar in the Chapel room of a player-owned house (built with the Construction skill).

The experience ranges from 100% to 250% depending upon the type of altar with an additional 50% or 100% for lighting 1 or 2 burners for a maximum of 350% for the best altar and burners.

Players need to use a Clean marrentill on each burner to light it, while a tinderbox is in the inventory. The burners will stay lit for 2 minutes and 10 seconds before they burn out. They will stay lit when the player leaves the house and will still be burning if the player returns to the house quickly enough. However, it is not recommended to use a second load of bones with the lit burners. The burners will likely go out during the offering. If the player selected the 'all' option when offering the bones, the offering is not halted and no warning is given when the burners go out. The amount of prayer experience thus decreases when the burners go out, which is not what most players want.

All incense burners will give the same bonus. Candles and torches do NOT give any bonus.

As of 25 March players can now right click on the bones icon over the chatbox and offer "X" amount of bones, making it easier to train Prayer. Some players disliked this update because the automatic pray-x function is not as fast as manual clicking was, but others considered it a trade-off since it caused less strain to their fingers.



Many players with a high Construction level choose to build a gilded altar with incense burners in their house as this is a much faster way to gain Prayer experience than any other. Although less experience is granted per bone than the Ectofuntus, more bones may be processed in a shorter time span. Often the official forums are a good place to find other players who are happy to allow 'loan' of their altars for a short amount of time. Alternatively, one can go to a house party world, and at peak times many players advertise gilded altars.

Prayer restoring potions


Main article: Prayer items

Clothing


Armour and weapons

Initiate armour, Proselyte armour, and white weapons and armour give small Prayer bonuses. However, they are only available to members. Initiate armour can be bought from Sir Tiffy Cashien after completing the Recruitment Drive quest, and Proselyte equipment can be bought after finishing Slug Menace, while white armour and weapons can be bought after completing the Wanted! quest. All white weapons and armour give a +1 Prayer bonus

Spoiler:

Maces

All maces also give small Prayer bonuses. However, the granite mace, white mace, dragon mace, ancient mace and void knight mace are only available to members.



Neckwear

Some of the more powerful amulets, as well as religious symbols, give Prayer bonuses.


Rings

Currently only one ring gives a Prayer bonus and can be used by both Free-to-play and Pay-to-play players.


Prayer books

Prayer books are wielded in the shield slot. They may be obtained after completing the Horror from the Deep quest. Even with all the pages in the Prayer book missing, it will still give you 5 Prayer bonus.


Spirit shields

The Spirit shield is made available upon completion of Summer's End. The Spirit Shield can be combined with a Holy elixir to make a Blessed spirit shield. Once a spirit shield is blessed the shield can be further modified by attaching Spirit sigils to create enhanced spirit shields. All spirit shields require completion of Summer's End to wield.


1. Players must use the elixir with the spirit shield at an altar of Saradomin, which requires 85 Prayer. If they lack the required skill level, they can alternatively talk to Brother Jered with a Holy elixir and a plain Spirit shield in their inventory. The monk will then bless the shield, while charging the player in a manner akin to Oziach making a dragon fire shield.

2. To attach a sigil to a Blessed spirit shield requires 90 Prayer and 85 smithing. If the player lacks the required levels, Brother Bordiss will attach sigils to a blessed shield for 1,500,000 coins. If only the Smithing level is insufficient, the player can still attach the sigil using the Assist System.

Capes


Aura

The Reverence aura is helpful when praying. It has an activation time of one hour and a cooldown period of three hours. When activated, it does the following:
■ It gives an invisible +2 Prayer bonus.
■ It gives 10% extra prayer points when a player drinks a Prayer potion (1-3 extra points depending upon level) or Super prayer potion (1-4 extra points depending upon level).
■ Prayer drains around 4-9% slower than usual (depending on prayer level and prayer bonus).

Gravestones

Players may use their Prayer level to repair or bless decaying gravestones. Players with 70+ Prayer may bless a gravestone. When blessing a gravestone it's timer goes up to a maximum of one hour. A grave can only be blessed once but repaired multiple times. As of an update, gravestones no longer require the player to have prayer points to repair/bless.

The most common method of training is to bury bones, or play activities and miniquests.

Free-to-play

Main article: Free-to-play Prayer training

Power Training

If all the bones used to raise Prayer to level 99 are bought, and the player only buried regular bones, a player will likely spend 408 million coins to buy them all.

But for many players, the most viable solution to power train prayer is to use dragon bones at POH's altar or ecto (faster xp/hour and use less bones)

Gathering Bones

There are a number of bone respawn locations:
■ Wilderness Graveyard of Shadows/Forgotten Cemetery (level 16-21): ~10 normal bones respawn
■ Edgeville dungeon: 7 normal bones respawn
■ Lower level Lumbridge catacombs in the room full of corpse mages. There is almost always a swarm of botters killing them, with lots of bones lying on the ground.
■ Wilderness Chaos Temple (Level 13) 11-15 normal bones respawn
■ Taverley Dungeon Blue Dragons lair, 5 normal bones respawn
■ Bone Yard (previous Clan Wars location) has big bones and normal bones. Extremely good for f2p players.

Since the Free Trade/Wildy update, the Bone Yard was brought back This place is extremely good for free to play players as it has normal and big bones spawning. But make sure you watch out for Pkers as this is part of the wilderness.

Players may also frequent popular training areas and gather the unwanted bones left behind by players that kill the monsters.

A highly recommended way for free players to train Prayer is to bury Big bones, as they give 15 xp, while normal bones give about 4.5 xp. If players have enough coins, they could buy Big bones at the Grand Exchange. When burying large numbers of bones, you can cut the time spent in half with some timing. To do this, click any bone. About halfway through the animation, click another. You will have buried two bones while viewing the animation a single time. Players have also reported that it is possible to bury three sets of bones during a single animation using a similar technique. When simply burying bones after monster killing, Big bones are useful only if you can kill the monster faster than the time it takes to kill four Chickens.

Lamps

Methods to obtain experience lamps, even as a non-member,include completing all of the Lumbridge Tasks, where for each of the four parts you have completed you will be rewarded with lamps granting you increasingly higher amounts of experience for any chosen skill(s); and venturing north to the Barbarian Village, reaching the Stronghold of Player Safety, which will contain two antique lamps.

Members

Main article: Pay-to-play Prayer training

Bones Cost Analysis
■See the bone burial calculator for coins-per-experience-point analysis of bones using live data from the Grand Exchange Market Watch.

Prayer flashing

Occasionally, a player may "Prayer flash" by turning prayers on right before their effects are required, and turning them off immediately after. For prayer flashing involving Protection prayers, for example, the player will activate the prayer just before they are about to be hit, and turn it off immediately after the hit lands. This uses very few Prayer points. Although it requires timing and skill (the game allows for some leeway on the timing), doing it successfully can effectively save Prayer points and allow a player to continue fighting monsters for much longer or increase experience with offensive prayers. Flashing is considerably easier when fighting a monster that matches your weapon's speed. A large number of monsters attack with speed 6, which is good news for users of the popular abyssal whip (also speed 6).

Prayer flashing was altered on 1 April 2009. Jagex made it so that the protection Prayer only activates when the icon appears above which had made it harder for players to kill TzTok-Jad, tormented demons and other strong monsters. Only TzTok-Jad has been fixed on 3 April 2009, due to complaints of players on the Official forums.

How to Prayer flash

First of all, recognise that all relevant calculations concerning damage are done at the very beginning of an attack. By the time an attack animation has started, the decision about whether it is going to hit, and how hard, has already been made. This includes the effect of any prayers, which means that you need to have your prayer on during the tick when the attack begins. Most often, this is the tick that the animation begins, but see below for a few important exceptions. This initial tick is the only tick that matters, even if the monster has a long attack animation, or shoots a projectile that may take several seconds to reach you. It can be difficult to identify which tick this is. Two methods exist for determining this information:
■Play around with the timing and see whether the monster attacks connect (could be dangerous)
■Use Deflect curses, which have an animation when an attack is blocked (could require up to 71 prayer and a long quest line)

Of course, you may also wish to flash prayers for your attacks, such as Piety or Soul Split, to increase your hits or heal yourself while avoiding these prayers' significant prayer drain. Soul Split is trivial to test since there is an animation when the curse is successfully used to heal a player. Piety can be tested within a reasonably short time since noticeably higher hits will occur. Activating Piety just for the relevant attack ticks of your blows while using a speed 6 weapon is capable of saving you three quarters of your prayer usage, though it comes at the cost of requiring constant attention and clicking. For this reason, prayers are not generally flashed for a significant duration, instead only being flashed when particularly useful (prayer nearly out near the end of a slayer task, soul splitting when injured, etc).

The aforementioned exceptions to the rule of initial-tick-counts are Tormented demons and TzTok-Jad.
■Tormented demons, when using ranged or magic attacks, have a distinctive animation for each (e.g ranged is the demon reaching across its ribcage and throwing something at the player). The attack is not decided during this animation, rather, when the projectile appears.
■TzTok-Jad obeys similar mechanics. He has distinctive attack animations which telegraph the nature of the next attack, but are not part of the attack itself.


The XP Counter can help with offensive prayer flashing. When attacking, prayer should be activated before and while xp is gained, then deactivated after that. Single-tick prayer flashing often requires that you click to deactivate your prayer before it has even activated.



1.^ 15th edition of God Letters
2.^ All of the Halos slow down prayer drain rate to what is approximated at a +15 prayer bonus but can only be obtained as a Castle Wars reward. However, they give no physical prayer bonus. Mitres are the second best item for this slot, giving +5 prayer bonus.
3.^ Bandos boots are harder to obtain and give the same prayer bonus, but a higher Defence bonus.
4.^ Proselyte cuisse, Monk's robe (bottom), and Third-age druidic robe give the same prayer bonus.
5.^ A godsword gives a +8 bonus, but godswords are two-handed, meaning a shield cannot be equipped. Croziers are the second best one-handed weapon, giving +6 prayer bonus.
6.^ Falador shield 4 gives the same bonus. The second best shield, the Faithful Shield, gives a +6 bonus. Third best shields all give +5 and may be the easier to obtain. These include any of the six god books, complete or incomplete, a Falador Shield 2 and broodoo shields. Broodoo shields require 25 defence and 25 magic to wield. God books require the completion of Horror from the Deep quest.
7.^ The Ardougne cloak 2 gives a +4 bonus, where as the Ardougne cloak 3 gives +6, and the Soul Wars cape gives a +12 bonus.
8.^ Stoles give +10 prayer bonus, require only 60 Prayer and are much easier to obtain.
9.^ Explorer's ring 1, 2, 3, and 4 give the same bonus.

Best free-to-play Prayer bonus

The following armour gives the highest possible Prayer bonus for non-members.

1.Corrupt dragon mace only lasts 30 minutes of wielding. An alternative is the Rune mace which does not crumble to dust after 30 minutes, but only gives a bonus of +4.

2. A Holy symbol is a cheaper but only gives a bonus of +8 plus the Twisted bird skull necklace gives Prayer Points when burying bones

3. Explorer's ring 1, 2, 3 and 4 give the same bonus.

Where Prayer is a near necessity

TzTok-Jad, the ultimate test for your Prayer!
■Fighting in the higher levels of the TzHaar Fight Cave and TzTok-Jad.
■The following quests: Desert Treasure, While Guthix Sleeps, Nomad's Requiem, Contact!, Mourning's Ends Part II
■The following monsters/bosses: Corporeal Beast, Dagannoth Kings, Kalphite Queen, Tormented Demon
■Finding a good Corporeal Beast team is impossible without 70+ prayer. Additionally, finding a skilled Corporeal beast team or soloing the Corporeal beast is very hard without the ability of the Turmoil prayer.
■ALL God Wars Dungeon bosses
■The Barrows activity
■PvP activities (Castle wars, Soul wars, Stealing creation, etc.)
■Chaos Dwarf Battlefield
■Most dungeoneering boss monsters (E.g. Sagittare will constantly bind you to the spot with his magical attacks.)

NPCs that use Prayer
■ Nex
■ Kalphite Queen
■ Sigmund
■ Zaromark Sliver
■ Fistandantilus
■ Tormented demon
■ Elite black knight
■ Elite dark ranger
■ Elite dark mage
■ Elite dark warrior
■ Zanik
■ Astea Frostweb
■ Sagittare
■ Zenevivia
■ Runebound Behemoth
■ Skeletal trio

Level-up table

Main article: Prayer/Level-up table

Temporary boosts
■The altars at God Wars Dungeon (providing you are wearing a relevant god item).
■Praying at the statue of the devourer in the Uzer Mastaba (this will drain several life points).
■The altar in seers village (if the player has a seers headband 3).
■The altar in the nature grotto (requires completion of Nature Spirit) adds two to prayer level.
■A spicy stew with yellow spice can increase it by 1-6 levels (however it can also decrease it by 1-6 levels).
■A Prayer skillcapes special ability will raise it from 99 to 100.
■An ancient mace's favour of the War god special attack will raise a characters Prayer level by one tenth the amount they hit.
■The Sulphur Spring in Oo'glog will raise the Prayer level depending on what it currently is (at 50 Prayer it would be 57/50, at 70 it would be 78/70).
■The Monastery's altar adds two onto a Prayer level, making it the best free to play altar.
■Praying at the Altar of Zaros in the Senntisten Temple will boost Prayer by 15%.
■Falador Shield 1, 2, 3, and 4 restore 25%, 50%, 100%, and 200% (100% 2 times) of your Prayer but does not boost it.

Note: Boosting Prayer points does NOT enable a player to use Prayers above their original Prayer level.

Trivia

A player with 43 Prayer with the Retribution Prayer available.
■ Approximately 12 combat levels can also be achieved from level 1 to level 99 Prayer.
■ A Prayer bonus of +30 is required to halve the drain rate of Prayers, which would allow all Prayers to last twice as long.
■ For Free to Play, the minimum Prayer bonus is -8, due to Amulet of Zealots and for Members the minimum Prayer bonus is -13 with Amulet of Zealots and Zaniks Crossbow.
■ In the Prayer menu, Prayers that have a level requirement less than 10 appear as 01, 03, 07, and so on.
■ It is possible to obtain 139/99 Prayer with the effect of the Ancient Mace special attack (Absolute maximum of 400 at the moment).
■ It is possible to boost one's Prayer 7 points above their current level when praying at the altar found in General Kree'arra's chamber, while wearing the 7 pieces of Armadyl armour (Armadyl chestplate, Armadyl plateskirt, Armadyl helmet, Book of law, Armadyl crozier, Armadyl cloak and the Armadyl pendant).
■ Previously there was a glitch causing players who have just reached 43 Prayer and 45 Prayer to "gain" the Retribution Prayer, although it cannot be used. This was fixed on 2 April 2009.
■ The Prayer icon colour was originally yellow but Jagex changed the colour on 9 June 2009.
■ When the QuickPrayer option was released, it enabled players to use Member only Prayers such as Smite and Piety in Free worlds, just by setting them and pressing the QuickPrayer button. It was soon fixed.
■ Prior to the removal of random events, a player could have a Shade or Zombie attack them whenever they bury a bone. Shade Robes can still be obtained by killing shades in the Stronghold of Security.
■ Before the random event update on 25 February 2009, Leo the Gravedigger only targeted players who buried a bone. Succeeding this date, he now goes after anyone randomly, not just when they bury a bone. For instance, he has been known to target players while they are training completely unrelated skills, such as Woodcutting and Cooking.
■ On 9 November 2009 an update made it so Prayer icons should now be correctly removed if you run out of Prayer points in a random event.
■ When you level up in prayer, you recover 1 prayer point unless your prayer points are already boosted above their normal capacity. For example, if you had 47/45 prayer points after praying at the altar in the monastery and you subsequently gained a level your prayer points would stay at 47.
■ There is currently a glitch where if you run out of prayer points while having your quick prayer activated, and then either drink a prayer potion or pray at an altar, your quick prayer button will indicate that your quick prayer is active, even though you have no prayers on and your prayer points aren't draining. This seems to happen randomly.
■ Some NPCs will explain to you that most attackable monsters (like the Kalphite queen) do not pray to gods, but are merely immune to certain types of attacks.
■ On Monday 20 December 2010, the Prayer tab icon on the interface bar was changed, but the Prayer icon on the minimap was left unaltered.
■Prior to the return of Wilderness PKing and Free Trade in February 2011, blessing gravestones cost prayer points; one point per minute added to its timer, though your prayer points could not be reduced below 10 in this way.
■Theoretically, it is possible to drop a players prayer to zero if using the Ancient Mace special attack, the prayer Smite, enchanted Sapphire Bolts, along with a Spirit Tz-Kih.
■There are currently 21 prayers available to Free Players.
■The amount of normal bones needed from level 1-99 Prayer (if buried) is 2,896,541 (  196,964,788).
■There is a total of 50 prayers (30 in the Normal Prayers, 20 in the Ancient Curses)