OSRS 1-99 Magic Guide
- Theoatrix
- Sep 13
- 16 min read
What's going on guys, my name's Theoatrix and welcome to my updated 1-99 Magic guide for OSRS. This guide will teach you everything you need to know to effectively level your Magic in OldSchool RuneScape.
Guide Outline
In recent years, Jagex has reshaped magic in Oldschool, with elemental weaknesses, as well as item and prayer rebalancing. More armour sets now give a magic strength bonus, and monsters with an elemental weakness are far more viable for the lower levels.
In this guide, I'll explain how magic works including the best equipment to use, then I'll show a range of pathways to 99, and I'll take you through every viable method.
If you would prefer to watch a video-version of this guide, I have linked that below. Otherwise, continue scrolling to read the written-version of this guide.
How Magic Works
I’ll start by explaining how magic works after Jagex’s changes.
An elemental weakness is where you deal bonus damage by using spells of the right element. For example, the giant mole has a 50% weakness to water, so if your max hit was 20 with water spells, it becomes 30 on mole.
Jagex recently changed magic so that every elemental spell of the same tier deals the same amount of damage, so for example, air strike, water, earth and fire strike, all do the same damage, except, your damage scales with your magic level.
Your magic level affects both your offense and defence for magic.
Having a higher level makes you more accurate, and it also unlocks spells which have a higher max hit.
Your magical defence is 70% of your magic level and 30% of your defence level, so its very important to level up for both PvM and PvP.
Your magic attack bonus comes from your gear, and this affects your accuracy.
And your magic strength bonus generally comes from armour and equipment, and this boosts the max hit of your attacks.
In Oldschool, there are 4 different spellbooks that you can use:
The first being the Standard spellbook, which all accounts start with, and this contains a range of combat, teleportation and utility spells.
The Arceuus Spellbook is another one, which is accessible to all members' accounts, and to change to this spellbook, you go to the dark altar in the Arceuus area. This spellbook has a range of combat assisting and utility spells.
There’s the Ancient spellbook, unlocked after the Desert Treasure 1 Quest, and this spellbook is most powerful for its combat spells, although it does include a range of teleports.
And the Lunar spellbook, unlocked after the Lunar Diplomacy Quest, contains mostly utility spells with a few combat ones, and there's a range of fast training methods and money makers too.
Why Train Magic
Training will significantly improve PvM, PvP and even skilling...
Levelling up unlocks a broad range of useful spells, and a variety of bosses are weak to magic, like Leviathan and nightmare. A lot of end-game PvM requires magic, including getting your infernal cape or quiver.
There's also a range of important quests that have a magic level requirement, with the highest being Dragon Slayer 2.
So this means you need 75 magic to get your Quest Cape.
And you need 96 magic for the Achievement Diary Cape.
Once you reach 99, the Magic Skillcape comes with a perk. You can change your spellbook 5 times per day with the cape, which is the fastest way to change spellbook.
Armour & weaponry
Now let's talk about magic equipment, but, in fact, a lot of your magic training won't actually be done in combat, so armour and weapons aren't really required for the most part.
To train though, you will almost always need runes… which are used to cast spells, and you can buy these from the grand exchange, or ironmen can buy them from various magic shops.
When casting a magical combat spell, you’ll usually want to be using a staff, or a magical weapon, and there are a broad range of them in Oldschool.
There’s the standard elemental staves, like air and fire, or there's some staves that can be charged. These include the warped sceptre, trident of the seas, or the most powerful, the Tumekens Shadow. There are some very powerful staves in Oldschool, for both PvM and PvP situations.
If you're using a combat staff, you should wear magic armour, which usually gives a magic accuracy bonus, sometimes a magic strength bonus, and generally has low melee and ranged defence.
When you're just getting started, beginning with Wizard's or Zamorak robes, then Xerician, Mystic, Elder Chaos, Void, and Infinity are your best for the first 50 levels.
Then once you reach level 70 magic, you can wear some high level magic armour, including Dagon Hai, Ahrims, or Frostmoon Robes.
And the best in slot magic armour in the game is ancestral, wearable with level 75 magic. But the Virtus armour set can sometimes be the best in slot, but only when using ancient spells.
There are some other pieces of magic equipment that you need to know...
A key upgrade is to get the Mage Arena Capes, deep in the wilderness, where you complete the mage arena 1 and mage arena 2 miniquests. The first requires level 60 magic, and rewards a cape with a plus 10 magic attack bonus.
Mage arena 2 gives the Imbued God Capes, requiring level 75 magic, and these also give a magic strength bonus.
Three other key pieces of magic gear are the Occult Necklace, the Tormented Bracelet, and the Confliction Gauntlets, all giving huge bonuses to magic.
Pathways To 99
Alright, now I'm going to show you 4 example pathways from 1 to 99 magic, each with their own unique benefits. Then after this, I'll go through a mini guide for each of the methods.
First up, is the absolute fastest pathway to level 99… and this involves questing until level 10, then enchanting bolts through to 99, and to be able to get these XP rates, you need to be 1 ticking the bolts. Overall, its going to cost about 130 mil at this current time, and will take around 27 hours.
But what about the fastest way to 99 with-out tick manipulation?
Well, that would involve Questing, taking advantage of elemental weaknesses, tele alch cursing, and then from 62 to 99, it involves bursting, then barraging groups of monsters. This takes 45 hours, and the estimated cost would be around 50 mil.
Next I have a pathway for AFK players, with long AFK intervals, and decent XP rates. It involves AFK-ing at crabs, where you can also train on the Gemstone Crab. Then at 65 there's bake pie, then string jewellery, and plank make, and these afk methods will all take 100 hours minimum for 99.
But what if you wanted to profit while getting 99 magic? Well enchanting jewellery is an excellent way to train while making good money, which would take about 100 hours to reach 99, with a profit of 60 mil. But you can enchant certain types of jewellery to make even more money, where enchanting topaz amulets would currently bring in over 100 mil in profit to 99.
Or you can cast tan leather to 99 for a big profit, and high alchemy could also be considered as a profitable magic training method.
Low Level Methods
Starting with the low level methods, and firstly, questing is the fastest way to train from level 1 to 10 magic by doing imp catcher and witches potion. These 2 quests can be completed very quickly since you just need to hand in a bunch of items.
But, you can continue questing, where completing Fairytale Part 1, The Grand Tree, Watchtower, and The Recipe for Disaster Lumbridge guide segment, will get you through to level 34 magic without even touching the skill.
But for those of you that don't want to quest, the new updates to elemental weaknesses and the elemental spells make it faster to level your magic with combat.
Right from level 1, there's a range of monsters you can fight with air strike with a weakness to air, and the most easily accessed are skeletons in Draynor sewers or in Edgeville dungeon. Skeletons have a 35% weakness to air spells, meaning you'll hit 35% higher.
With a bit of Slayer under your belt, you can also fight Banshees or Twisted Banshees which have a 30% and 25% weakness respectively.
Then once you unlock water spells, you can move onto fire giants which have a huge 100% weakness to water.
With earth spells, fighting crabs is a great move, where rock crabs have a 20% weakness, and swamp crabs have a 35% weakness, and its worth noting that sand crabs do not have an elemental weakness, so you're best off going to rock crabs, or better yet, if you've done the Heart of Darkness Quest, you can train with fire spells on Frost Crabs, which are probably the best low level training option if you're using elemental spells, and these guys have a 100% weakness to fire spells.
There’s also Ice Giants which don't have a quest requirement, also with a 100% weakness to fire spells, doubling your damage.
The new Gemstone Crab is not a bad option either, but it doesn't have an elemental weakness which makes frost crabs or rock crabs the better option.
Now next, is the fastest possible low level training method, and that is enchanting bolts.
You can enchant your first bolt at level 4 magic, which you can easily get just by completing the imp catcher quest. From level 4, you already can get 45K xp per hour, and it moves up each gemstone, increasing in XP rates.
With bolt enchanting, you can either use the regular metal bolt, or you can use the dragon bolt version, and each one varies in terms of their cost but the XP rates stay the same.
To go from 4 to 50 magic, its going to take about 1 hour while costing 3 mil with the regular bolts, which really isn't that bad for such a fast method.
I mentioned earlier, to get the fastest XP rates you need to 1 tick the bolts.
To do this, you hold down the spacebar while clicking the bolt enchantment spell every game tick, and its important that you're on a world with good ping. Then you keep clicking every 0.6 seconds or every game tick and your character will constantly enchant the bolts. So bolt enchanting is the absolute fastest way to level up, and that leads me onto the next section of this video, the fastest training methods…
Fastest Methods
With bolt enchanting being the fastest, id like to show the total time and cost to reach level 99.
With this entire pathway to 99, its going to cost 80 mil doing regular bolts, and will take 27 hours.
But, there are certain bolts where you can actually profit, particularly with dragon ruby and dragon diamond bolts.
So with that, you can enchant the best bolts possible until you unlock these bolts, then you can enchant those all the way to 99 for far less cost and still a very fast 99.
With dragon ruby bolt enchanting, from level 49 its going to take about 40 hours, and currently, you’ll currently break even.
And with dragon diamond bolts at 57 magic, you profit a bit more, where its going to take 35 hours and at a profit of 15 mil.
So those stats are for going to level 99, but you unlock another fast method at level 62 magic, which is bursting, and you may consider enchanting bolts until level 62, then moving onto bursting.
So with that, the total cost doing the best bolts possible is going to be 11 mil, and will take about 1 and a half hours to reach 62.
But in order to reach 62 this fast, you do need to 1 tick. So what about the fastest way to 62 without tick manipulation?
Well that involves questing or taking advantage of elemental weaknesses up until you reach level 21 magic, then you unlock low level alchemy.
With low alch, you already get about 62k XP per hour if you're clicking constantly, which is very fast for level 21.
But, once you unlock your first teleport spell at level 25, you can start tele alching for nearly 100k XP per hour, and this involves casting alchemy, then teleporting and repeating.
And once you reach level 37 magic, you can cast teleport to Falador, which unlocks yet another method, which is tele curse alching. This is done the same way as tele alching, but with the added action of casting curse on a Falador guard, and doing this gives up to 150k XP per hour. From there, its your fastest method until level 51 where you unlock the Ardy teleport spell, which has monsters nearby that you can curse, so you can tele curse alch to Ardy as well.
Then at level 55, you unlock high alchemy, further increasing the XP rate.
So those are the fastest until 62, but at higher levels, you also unlock the vulnerability, enfeeble, and stun spells, which further increases the XP rate of these methods, where with Ardy tele stun alching, you can get over 200k XP per hour.
Next, from level 62, the fastest training method without tick manipulation is bursting, and I'm going to go through a mini bursting guide for magic training.
The concept involves fighting monsters in multicombat, stacking them up, and bursting them all at once. Burst spells attack up to 9 Targets at a time, which means you get huge XP drops nearly every time you cast.
Bursting and barraging requires completion of the desert treasure 1 quest, and the first spell, smoke burst, is unlocked at level 62.
There’s a number of different locations that you can train by bursting, and this includes either the skeleton monkeys after Monkey Madness 1, Maniacal monkeys after monkey madness 2, or there are a range of slayer monsters that are excellent for bursting, like Dust Devils, Nechryaels and Custodia Stalkers.
For the absolute fastest experience, you want to burst maniacal monkeys since there are a tonne of them in the cave.
But bursting the slayer monsters is usually a way to make some money back since they have some valuable drops.
You will of course, also need magic gear, and you should prioritize your magic strength bonus to get the best XP rates, so elder chaos druid robes would be the lowest level set, all the way up to Virtus for ancient spells.
Once you're at your bursting location, you can stack up the monsters by getting their aggression then running back and forth along a corner wall. This piles them up into one tile.
For the highest XP rates, you should move up the bursting spells as you unlock them, and then move onto the barrage spells for even more XP per hour, although a higher cost.
And the final method in the fastest methods section, is actually one of the fastest in the game, and that is constantly casting the cure-me spell.
This can bring in over 400k XP per hour right from when you unlock it at level 71.
The method requires the Lunar spellbook, along with access to Morytania and high prayer gear.
Its done in the Arraxytes cave, and can be quickly accessed with spider cave teleport scrolls.
71 to 99 costs about 70 mil currently, and its important to keep in mind that this method is very very click intensive.
Zero-Time Methods
Next up, I'm going to talk about the zero-time training methods for magic, and zero time means that you're training while doing other in-game activities...
The first zero time method is using magic while training slayer, and there's a handful of tasks that you can burst on your journey to 99 slayer, including Custodia Stalkers, Nechryaels, and Abyssal Demons.
Going from 1 to 99 slayer, bursting as many tasks as possible, is going to bring in over 1 million magic XP. Which is enough to go from 62 to 76 magic.
But there are more zero time methods for magic, where you can either bolt enchant, cast low or high alchemy, or magic imbue.
You can cast these spells while you do a range of activities in-game, training your magic for no extra time on your account.
You can level magic while training agility, questing, farming, birdhouses, or any activity where you're running across long distances, like Zeah Runecrafting.
This is hypothetically the most efficient way to level 99 magic since you aren't actually spending any time training the skill.
AFK Methods
Now lets talk about the afk magic training methods, and there’s quite a few of them.
Crabs is an obvious one, and its recommended to train on Rock Crabs, the gemstone crab, or the best is frost crabs. At crabs, you can AFK for 10 minutes at a time before needed to reset the aggression.
Splashing is another option for AFK magic experience, and this is where you equip armour that has bad magic attack bonuses, and it causes you to splash every attack, so you can just keep casting without dealing damage. But I would strongly recommend just training at crabs instead of splashing since the XP rates are considerably higher.
For example, with fire strike, you only get 13k XP per hour, which is going to take 945 hours to reach 99.
And even fire bolt, with 27k XP per hour, will take almost 500 hours, plus will cost 40 mil.
But at level 65, you unlock a great AFK magic and cooking method, and that is casting the bake pie spell, from the Lunar spellbook.
This gives 110k magic XP per hour, while giving up to 450k cooking XP per hour. Essentially this spell allows you to afk a full inventory of pie cooking, however the prices of certain pies can make this method very expensive, or sometimes profitable.
As an AFK training method though, bake pie gives around 48 seconds of AFK time per inventory.
Another AFK method for magic, is casting the string jewellery spell, which is also on the lunar spellbook, and also has an afk interval of 48 seconds. With this, you can get more magic XP per hour than bake pie, at 150k, while getting a small amount of crafting XP. It can also be quite profitable depending on what jewellery you string, and the most profitable ones are stringing topaz or dragonstone amulets. Although, stringing gold amulets is usually a safe bet that doesn't cost too much.
Then at 86 magic, you can start casting the plank make spell, which has an afk interval of 90 seconds at a time, although you can click to cast it faster. AFK though, you can still get XP rates of around 90k magic per hour, and generally, making mahogany planks is the most profitable, where going from 86 to 99 will currently earn you about 40 mil in profit. To cast plank make, its on the lunar spellbook, and you need dream mentor as well to use it.
Now the final afk magic method is AFK-ing on Kraken, and I've left this for last since it has the highest requirements. And you need level 87 slayer plus a Kraken slayer task to do this, and basically you can earn the XP for damaging kraken while its underwater, and you get the full amount of experience.
So with this, you can afk for 20 minutes at a time, and you'll stay in combat, casting spells, and depending on the spell you use, you can get well over 100k magic XP per hour, with 3 clicks an hour.
Its easily the best AFK magic method there is, but it does have high requirements.
Profitable Methods
Next is the profitable magic training methods…
First, enchanting jewellery, and there is either gold or silver jewellery to enchant.
Gold jewellery is reliably profitable, whereas silver jewellery, for the highly traded items, can be super profitable.
But firstly, here is a pathway from 1 to 99 enchanting gold jewellery, and currently you profit about 60 mil doing this.
With jewellery enchanting you can now let your character automatically enchant a full inventory, although it is still slower than manually casting each time.
With silver jewellery, at just level 7 magic, you can enchant opal necklaces or opal bracelets, which are both used commonly for thieving and slayer, which makes them in high demand, and very profitable. Currently, going from 7 to 99 with either of these is going to net around 200 mil in profit, although the XP rates are quite slow.
So a faster piece of silver jewellery is enchanting topaz amulets or bracelets, which bring in a very similar amount of profit, but give triple the XP per hour. Topaz amulets are used to make burning amulets, and bracelets of slaughter are very useful for slayer training.
The next profitable magic method I'm showing, is high alchemy, which can be a very profitable money maker depending on what items you alch.
Generally, battlestaves are usually slightly profitable with a high buy limit, or yew and magic longbows are also low cost.
But, you can google a high alchemy calculator online to find items that have huge profit margins, and some include the trimmed mithril platebody, or the gold trimmed climbing boots.
It is possible to make well over 500k gp per hour just by alching, and that's while getting nearly 80k XP per hour.
Another great profitable magic method is casting the tan leather spell, which requires 78 magic, access to the lunar spellbook as well as the hard Fremennik achievement diaries. This gives 130k XP per hour, and generally the most profitable hide to tan is black dragonhide, which currently brings in over 1 mil profit per hour. So going to 99 with this, will net over 100 mil in profit at this point in time.
Ironman Magic
So those were all of the viable training methods, but what about ironmen?
Well magic is similar in most cases for training, but with a few key differences.
A lot of magic XP is gained from casting high alchemy, superheat, and plank make, and there’s also a lot of teleports, enchantments, bossing, and slayer training that will contribute to your magic level.
A range of necessary upgrades can be done with magic, like safespotting Zamorak warriors for a rune scimitar, safespotting Blue Dragons for their bones, Twisted Banshees drop a range of valuables, and for free to play Ironmen, ogress warriors drop useful items.
A key difference for ironmen is how they obtain their runes, and runes shops are generally the best. For elemental, chaos and death runes, you can go to Varrock , Port Sarim or Void Knight Outpost easily to get them.
For law nature and cosmic runes, you can go to the Mage Arena, or with Ali Morrisane.
The Wizards Guild, Baba Yaga or Priffdinas are also useful for getting certain types of runes.
F2P 1-99 Magic
In free to play, magic works a little differently.
The fastest way to 99 magic in free worlds is to cast tele curse alch Falador, which is going to take a bit over 90 hours for the entire pathway from 1 to 99.
You can still complete the Witches Potion and Imp Catcher Quests in free to play, which are very fast to complete.
A range of monsters in free to play have an elemental weakness which you can take advantage of. Ice giants and warriors have a 100% weakness to fire, and lesser demons have a 40% water weakness.
There's also the spiders in the Stronghold of Security, with a 40 to 50 percent fire weakness. And I mentioned in the low level pathway, that skeletons aren't bad when you're just starting out, with a 35 percent earth weakness.
In free to play, you may also consider enchanting jewellery for some low cost training. Currently, enchanting amulets up to diamond will earn XP rates up to and over 100k per hour. You also make decent money enchanting diamond amulets, currently about 300k profit per hour, so that's one way to earn a bond.
Some players also prefer training by teleporting in free to play, just spam clicking and constantly teleporting, and with teleport to Falador, the highest level free to play teleport, you can get nearly 70k XP per hour…
Anyways that was my updated level 1 to 99 Magic Guide for Oldschool Runescape.
Thanks for reading.
