RuneScape clock

For the piece of furniture, see Clock.

The RuneScape clock is a term that is used to refer to the time-frame used for actions in Old School RuneScape. The game plays out in units of time of approximately 0.6 seconds called game cycles, although they are more commonly referred to as "ticks". All events that are queued to occur, all simultaneously occur at the end of the previous tick / beginning of the next tick. All delayed actions are delayed by a whole number of ticks. A message appearing in the chat interface, any experience gain, a monster spawning, and all other actions and events, happen in time with the game's "ticking clock". Purely client-side interactions are independent of the game tick. (e.g. opening a right-click menu)

An action taken during one tick can only happen, at the soonest, at the beginning of the next tick. This can cause your action to be carried out instantaneously, or after a delay of nearly 0.6 seconds, depending on how long you had to wait until the next tick.

Length of a tick

Cannons are a great visual tick timer, as they rotate 45 degrees once every tick.

The length of a tick can be measured by timing a repeated action using a stopwatch. For example, lighting 25 logs without re-lighting a log takes 100 ticks. If the stopwatch can be stopped to within 0.1 seconds, the tick can be measured to within 0.001 seconds.

Theoretically, there should be 100 ticks per minute, exactly 0.600 seconds per tick. However, the observed duration of a tick can vary due to connection speed, client-side lag, or server-side lag as the game server processes all actions and events affecting all online players. The tick length is constant throughout a server for all players, which is due to the fact that player's actions are processed in the same order every time, so even if someone is processed last, they will still have the same tick as previously due to them being processed last every time. However, the tick length is not constant between different servers. In general, the more players that are on a given server, the longer the tick length; the fewer players are on a server, the shorter the tick length. While there seem to be other factors that affect tick length as well, the number of players on the server seems to be the largest factor. It is typical for ticks on World 302 to be 0.616 to 0.618 seconds each, whereas ticks on less full worlds typically are 0.606 to 0.611 seconds each.

It is possible for a server to lag and "miss" a tick or multiple ticks from time to time. This seems to happen most often on worlds with the greatest number of players.

Length of selected actions

The lengths of the certain actions and notable weapon attack speeds are given in ticks below. Note that this list is not comprehensive, and that exceptions may apply.

Melee weapons

• Ham joint, swift blade, goblin paint cannon: 3 ticks per attack
• Abyssal whip, Saradomin sword, and Zamorakian spear: 4 ticks per attack
• Any scimitar, dagger, mace, spear, hasta, shortsword or claws, and unarmed: 4 ticks per attack
• Any longsword, standard axe or pickaxe, and scythe of Vitur: 5 ticks per attack
• Godswords, any standard warhammer or battleaxe: 6 ticks per attack
• Any standard two-handed sword or halberd, and Dharok's greataxe: 7 ticks per attack

Ranged weapons

Note: These times are all for the accurate or longranged style. Switching to the rapid attack style decreases the number of ticks by 1.

• Any darts or throwing knives, and toxic blowpipe: 3 ticks per attack
• Karil's crossbow, eclipse atlatl, webweaver bow, Craw's bow, hunters' crossbow, hunters' sunlight crossbow, and toktz-xil-ul: 4 ticks per attack
• Any shortbow or chinchompa: 4 ticks per attack
• Dorgeshuun crossbow, crystal bow, bow of Faerdhinen, venator bow, scorching bow, and seercull: 5 ticks per attack
• Any composite bow or throwing axe: 5 ticks per attack
• Armadyl crossbow, zaryte crossbow, dragon hunter crossbow, and twisted bow: 6 ticks per attack
• Any longbow or metal crossbow: 6 ticks per attack
• Ballistae, and tonalztics of Ralos: 7 ticks per attack
• Ogre bow: 8 ticks per attack
• Dark bow: 9 ticks per attack

Agility

• Fastest lap of Ape Atoll Agility Course without tick manipulation: 63 ticks

Construction

• Building and removing a larder or door or table: 5 ticks per item
• The Demon butler spends 10 ticks to bank while the Butler needs 20 ticks.

Cooking

• Cooking fish: 3 ticks, then 4 ticks per food item using the cook-all option. Karambwan may be cooked once every tick by repeatedly using the raw food on the fire or range while holding the corresponding key to cook it.
• Making wine: 2 ticks per wine

Crafting

• Attaching orbs to battlestaves: 2 ticks per battlestaff
• Crafting d'hide bodies: 3 ticks per body
• Cutting gems: 2 ticks per gem
• Making jewellery: 3 ticks per item
• Blowing glass: 3 ticks per item
• String an unstrung amulet: 2 ticks per item, even when autocast

Farming

Unlike other skills, Farming uses a real-time clock to determine when plants and other farming produce grow as opposed to relying on a specific number of game ticks. More information may be found here.

• Harvesting a herb or allotment patch: 3 ticks per auto-harvest, or 2 ticks per manual harvest
  • Players can get an average of 1.5 ticks per auto-harvest by clicking once, then again on both of the two ticks right after receiving an item.

Firemaking

• Lighting any logs: 4 ticks per log

Fishing

• Chance of catching fish from any fishing spot (except minnow, karambwan, and karambwanji): 5 ticks per catch
• Chance of catching karambwanji: 6 ticks per catch (which may include up to 23 fish per catch)
• Chance of catching minnow: 2 ticks per catch
• Chance of catching karambwan: 4 ticks per catch

However, you are not guaranteed a fish every 5 ticks; rather, every 5 ticks there is a chance to catch a fish.

Fletching

• Cutting wood into unstrung bows or crossbows: 3 ticks per item
• Stringing bows or crossbows: 2 ticks per item
• Fletching arrows (all steps) or feathering bolts: 2 ticks per set of 15 arrows/10 bolts
• Fletching celastrus bark into battlestaves: 4 ticks per staff
• Cutting gems into bolt tips: 5 ticks per gem
• Fletching wooden shields: 7 ticks per shield

Herblore

• Mixing herbs into a vial of water: 1 tick per herb
• Adding secondary ingredients into unfinished potions: 2 ticks per potion

There is an apparent limit of how many grimy herbs can be cleaned per tick: a maximum of 10 requests can be processed at once when cleaning herbs. When not clicked manually the herbs will be auto-cleaned at a rate of 2 ticks per herb.

Hunter

• Catching chinchompas: 8 ticks per catch (if sufficient box traps are ready to be checked)
• Laying down a trap: 4 ticks per trap

Magic

These are the cooldowns of each spell, and not necessarily the casting times. A good example of this is Vengeance, as the actual cast is relatively short compared to the 30 second cooldown.

• Combat spells: 5 ticks per cast
• Harmonised nightmare staff (when casting standard spells) and powered staves: 4 ticks per attack
  • Tumeken's shadow, although a powered staff, attacks at a rate of 5 ticks per attack
• High Level Alchemy: 5 ticks per cast
• Low Level Alchemy: 3 ticks per cast
• Enchant Jewellery spells: 3 ticks per cast, or 7 ticks to autocast
• Superheat Item: 3 ticks per cast
• Humidify: 3 ticks per cast
• Plank Make: 3 ticks per cast, or 6 ticks to autocast
• Bake Pie: 3 ticks per cast
• Spin Flax: 5 ticks per cast
• String Jewellery: 3 ticks per cast
• Camelot teleport: 4 ticks per cast
• Enchant Crossbow Bolt: 1 tick per manual cast, or 2/3 ticks to autocast (the first cast is instant; autocasting starts at 2 ticks and continues at a rate of 3 ticks)
• Vengeance: 50 ticks per cast

Mining

The quality of the player's pickaxe dictates how many ticks it takes to have a chance at mining an ore: 8 ticks with bronze, 7 with iron, and so on, until 3 ticks with rune. The dragon, crystal and 3rd age pickaxes also mine at a speed of 3 ticks but additionally have a chance for this to be lowered to 2 ticks.

Prayer

• Player-owned house altar offerings: 3 ticks per bone (can be reduced to one with manual input)
• Burying bones: 2 ticks per bone
• Ectofuntus: 1 ticks per bonemeal+slime

Prayer activation and deactivation is applied on the next game tick, and the drain rate of each prayer is measured by a number of ticks.

Runecraft

• Crafting at Ourania Altar: No delay
• Crafting combination runes: No delay
• Crafting regular runes at any other altar: No delay

Smithing

• Smelting ores at a furnace: 5 ticks per bar
• Forging at an anvil: 5 ticks per item smithed, which has the chance of only 4 ticks while wearing pieces of the Smiths' Uniform
• Making cannonballs: 6 ticks per batch

Thieving

• Pickpocketing: 2 ticks per pickpocket
• Failed pickpocket: 7-10 tick penalty depending on NPC, in addition to pickpocket time
• Blackjacking: 6 ticks per round
• A run of Pyramid Plunder: maximum of 500 ticks

Woodcutting

• Chance of cutting a log from any type of tree: 4 ticks per chance

However, you are not guaranteed a log every 4 ticks; rather, every 4 ticks there is a chance to cut a log.

Other

• The make-x and smithing menus take 1 tick to close after selecting an action.
• Using the Balloon transport system takes 5 ticks.
• Running covers 2 squares per tick, while walking covers 1 square per tick.
• The amount of time a player can spend collecting tears in Tears of Guthix is a number of game ticks equal to the player's quest points.
• Boosted or reduced stats move towards normal at a rate of 1 level per 100 ticks, which is just a tiny bit over one minute. With Preserve active, boosted stats will drain 1 level per 150 ticks. Checks every 20 ticks.
• NPC and player chat messages stay above their heads for 5 ticks (exception: if a second message is sent sooner it will replace the first and last 5 ticks unless another message is sent sooner etc).
• The special attack bar recovers at a rate of 10% per 50 ticks. When wearing a Lightbearer, the special attack bar will recover at a rate of 10% per 25 ticks.

Application

Main article: Tick manipulation

In general, knowledge of the RuneScape clock will provide a benefit to players, and it can make it easier to time actions. Timing just one of a repeated action may clearly give a tick number, which may be able to be used to estimate experience per hour. For example, Superheat Item, Plank Make, and Bake Pie all are spells that take 3 ticks each and are cast one by one on an inventory of supplies. If it is known that Superheat Item may be cast about 1800 times per hour, Plank Make and Bake Pie would be known to be very nearly the same rate merely by timing a single cast. The 1800 itself could even be estimated without actual measurement by noting that about 5940 ticks per hour divided by 3 ticks per cast is 1980 casts per hour of hypothetical continuous casting, and that 7-10% should be subtracted for mistakes and banking.