How temporary boosts work
A visible boost shows on your skill tab as a higher number, such as 84/80. It counts for skill actions, most quest steps and achievement diary tasks, but never for equipping gear. It drains one level per minute on a background timer, so the first level can disappear in seconds. With 55 Prayer and the scroll from Chambers of Xeric read, you can slow that to 90 seconds a level once the effect has run for 15 seconds. A few boosts, such as the saturated heart, hold for five minutes before they start to fall.
An invisible boost does not show on the skill tab. Guild boosts such as the +7 inside the Woodcutting, Mining and Fishing Guilds are the common ones, along with the celestial ring (+4 Mining) and the crystal saw (+3 Construction). They speed up actions but, apart from the crystal saw, do not let you do anything above your real level.
Rules worth remembering
- Visible boosts do not stack. Only the highest one counts, so a cape plus a pie is still the pie's boost.
- Invisible boosts do stack with visible ones, and with each other.
- Some quest requirements are marked not boostable. Dragon Slayer II and Monkey Madness II are two well known examples.
- The Warriors' Guild cannot be entered on boosted levels.
- Hopping to or logging into a free-to-play world resets your boosts, except Prayer points, Mining and Smithing.
Spicy stew: the +5 option for almost any skill
When a skill has no reliable boost, spicy stew usually fills the gap. You need Evil Dave's part of Recipe for Disaster. Each colour of spice covers a group of skills, and three doses make the widest roll, from -5 to +5. It is the main option on the OSRS Smithing boost page, where no pie exists.
| Spice | Skills it rolls |
|---|---|
| Red | Attack, Strength, Defence, Ranged, Magic |
| Orange | Smithing, Crafting, Fletching, Runecraft, Cooking, Construction, Firemaking |
| Brown | Woodcutting, Farming, Fishing, Mining, Herblore |
| Yellow | Agility, Hunter, Slayer, Thieving, Sailing, Prayer points |
Start with the skill you need. The pages below list every boost for that skill with its current price, and point out the levels people most often boost for. For the xp side of the same skill, the OSRS skill calculator works out actions to your target, and the xp table shows how far each level really is.