RS3 Combat Prayers & Curses

A protection prayer cuts damage from one combat style by half (40% in PvP). They are overhead prayers: you can only run one overhead at a time, so you pick the style hurting you most. Many boss special attacks go straight through them, so treat them as a big reduction, not immunity.

• Protect from Magic: level 37
• Protect from Ranged: level 40
• Protect from Melee: level 43
• Protect from Necromancy: level 46

The Defence ability Devotion makes your protection prayer block everything it covers for about ten seconds; it is one of the best tools for a big incoming hit. See combat basics.

The deflect curses on the Ancient Curses book block the same amount as protection prayers and also have a chance to send some damage back at the attacker. Once you have curses, they simply replace the protection prayers.

• Deflect Magic: level 65
• Deflect Ranged: level 68
• Deflect Melee: level 71
• Deflect Necromancy: level 73

Soul Split (92 Prayer) heals you for a share of the damage you deal: 10% of each hit, with smaller returns on very big hits. It is an overhead, so it replaces your protection prayer, but on most bosses it turns your own damage into healing and saves a large amount of food. For an Ironman who has to cook every shark or catch every fish, that is the biggest single reason to get curses.

A simple habit: protection or deflect while a monster is using its dangerous attacks, Soul Split the rest of the time.

Damage prayers raise your accuracy and damage with one style (and your Defence for armour). Use the highest one you have for the style you are fighting with.

Numbers are the Prayer level needed. Levels from the prayer data on /prayers, checked 2026-10-09.

• Piety, Rigour and Augury need the quest King's Ransom, the Knight Waves Training Grounds, and 70 Prayer and Defence. Sanctity needs the same plus 60 Necromancy, and you learn it from Selene in the City of Um.
• All Necromancy prayers and curses except the protection ones are learned from Selene once you have the levels.
• The 95 curses come with Ancient Curses (Sorrow also needs 90 Necromancy and a visit to Selene).
• The 99 curses each need a praesul codex, a drop from Nex: Angel of Death. Ruination also needs 95 Necromancy, and you hand the codex to Selene instead of reading it.

Ancient Curses are the reward from The Temple at Senntisten. The quest itself needs 50 Prayer, but its prerequisites (Desert Treasure, Devious Minds and The Curse of Arrav, with their own chains) ask for a spread of skills, so it is a mid-game goal; the Ironman route puts it in order.

You switch books at the Altar of Zaros in the temple under the Varrock Dig Site. Later you can switch at more places: the White Knights' Castle altar after the elite Falador achievements, the elven grimoire in Prifddinas after Plague's End, a tier 3 chapel in Fort Forinthry, or War's Retreat once unlocked. Curses come in at 50 Prayer but only pull ahead of the normal book at about 92 (Soul Split) and 95 (the damage curses), so many Ironmen keep the normal book until then.

Every active prayer drains points, faster for stronger prayers and faster still when you stack them. Your options, roughly in the order you get them:

• Recharge at any altar between trips. Equipment with a prayer bonus slows the drain.
• Prayer potions at 38 Herblore: a ranarr unfinished potion and snape grass. Grow ranarr yourself; it is the herb you will use most.
• Super restores at 63 Herblore: snapdragon and red spiders' eggs. They restore prayer and drained stats, so most bossing trips use them.
• Super prayers at 94 Herblore (a prayer potion with ground wyvern bones) restore more per dose.
• Prayer renewals at 94 Herblore (fellstalk and morchella mushroom) restore slowly over six minutes, which pairs well with one of the above.

Soul Split heals life points, not prayer, so it does not replace potions. Plan your herb runs around ranarr and snapdragon early: see the Herblore guide and the Ironman sourcing guides.

• Protect Item keeps one extra item if you die. Turn it on anywhere risky.
• Rapid Renewal heals life points slowly; handy while questing or skilling.
• Divine Rage (85 in Prayer and each combat style, from a codex) adds damage to every style and stacks with your style prayer.
• Eclipsed Soul (75 in Prayer and each combat style, from a codex dropped by the Gate of Elidinis) is an overhead that adds critical strike chance and heals on critical hits.

Every prayer and curse with its level is on the prayers page.