Elemental spells

A player casts Fire Surge, the most powerful elemental spell available.

Elemental spells are the primary source of damage for mages. The standard and ancient spellbooks contain a variety of elemental spells across many levels. Lunar mages can only cast elemental spells with a polypore staff or through the use of Borrowed Power.

Types of spells

Many monsters have a weakness to a specific element. For example, TzHaar-Kets are weak to water spells. Any spell will be effective against such an opponent, but a water spell will offer higher accuracy. A player who is weak to magic attacks will have no specific elemental weakness.

In order of ascending required level, the four elements of the standard spellbook are:

• Air spells
• Water spells
• Earth spells
• Fire spells

On the Ancient Magicks, the same elements come in a slightly different order:

• Smoke (Air)
• Shadow (Earth)
• Blood (Fire)
• Ice (Water)

Each elemental class has a range of different spells. For the standard spellbook these are as follows, in order of ascending power:

• Strike spells
• Bolt spells
• Blast spells
• Wave spells
• Surge spells

The range of different spells in the ancient spellbook are as follows, in order of ascending power:

• Rush spells
• Burst spells
• Blitz spells
• Barrage spells

Comparison between Standard and Ancient spells

Arranged spells by level and base damage, separated by spellbook

Element		Classic combat spells					Ancient Magicks combat spells
		Strike	Bolt	Blast	Wave	Surge	Equivalent	Rush	Burst	Blitz	Barrage
	Air	1 (48)	17 (163)	41 (393)	62 (595)	81 (777)	Smoke	50 (480)	62 (595)	74 (710)	86 (825)
	Water	5 (48)	23 (220)	47 (451)	65 (624)	85 (816)	Ice	58 (556)	70 (672)	82 (787)	94 (902)
	Earth	9 (86)	29 (278)	53 (508)	70 (672)	90 (864)	Shadow	52 (499)	64 (614)	76 (729)	88 (844)
	Fire	13 (124)	35 (336)	59 (566)	75 (720)	95 (912)	Blood	56 (535)	68 (652)	80 (786)	92 (883)
Required level to cast (maximum base damage)

In addition to those above, there are four special air spells. The first three are unique to the standard spellbook, whereas the last is on all spellbooks.

Spell		level	Damage	Notes
	Slayer Dart	50	480	Also requires 55 slayer, a Death rune and a Slayer's staff, abyssal wand, abyssal orb, or Staff of light.
	Divine Storm	60	576	Unlocked at the Mage Arena.
	Storm of Armadyl	77	739	Unlocked by completing the Ritual of the Mahjarrat quest. Uses Armadyl runes instead of air runes.
	Polypore Strike	80	768	Requires a charged polypore staff and is available with any spellbook.

Spell damage and scaling

The spell damage values listed above and on other articles correspond to $(9.6*SpellLevel)$, and may be different than the value found by mousing over the damage in Offensive Stats. This is because a spell's level scales with your Magic, which allows for elemental weaknesses to be exploited without sacrificing damage. Like ranged ammunition, spell damage caps at the level of your weapon.

Spells scale until a stronger variant of the spell is unlocked. For example, Air Blast requires 41 Magic, and it scales with the player's Magic up to level 61. Air Wave is unlocked at 62 Magic. Spell scaling ends early at higher levels; this may be so that the strongest spells are always worth using over spells with smaller rune costs. However, the weapon's damage cap still takes precedence over the scaling of spell damage. Therefore, the player generally cannot benefit by using the higher level spells with lower level weapons, particularly if the damage cap of a lower-levelled spell would be greater than or equal to the weapon being used. For instance, while using a tier 75 staff of light, there is no benefit to using the level 95 spell Fire Surge over the level 75 spell Fire Wave, as both spells would be scaled to the same damage (tier 75), while the former would cost an extra fire rune and air rune per cast.

All spell damage is capped at level 95, the level of the Fractured Staff of Armadyl, which is the strongest magic weapon in the game. However, while Dungeoneering, it can scale all the way up to level 99 when used with a celestial catalytic staff or a celestial catalytic wand and orb.

Standard spells

Spell Level requirement Level for maximum scaling Original damage Maximum scaled damage  Air Strike 1 16 48 153  Water Strike 5 22 48 211  Earth Strike 9 28 86 268  Fire Strike 13 34 124 326  Air Bolt 17 40 163 384  Water Bolt 23 45 220 432  Earth Bolt 29 52 278 499  Fire Bolt 35 58 336 556  Air Blast 41 61 393 585  Water Blast 47 64 451 614  Earth Blast 53 69 508 662  Fire Blast 59 74 566 710  Air Wave 62 80 595 768  Water Wave 65 80 624 768  Earth Wave 70 80 672 768  Fire Wave 75 80 720 768  Air Surge 81 99 777 950  Water Surge 85 99 816 950  Earth Surge 90 99 864 950  Fire Surge 95 99 912 950

Ancient spells

Spell Level requirement Level for maximum scaling Original damage Maximum scaled damage  Smoke Rush 50 60 480 576  Shadow Rush 52 63 499 604  Blood Rush 56 67 537 643  Ice Rush 58 69 556 662  Smoke Burst 62 73 595 700  Shadow Burst 64 75 614 720  Blood Burst 68 79 652 758  Ice Burst 70 80 672 768  Smoke Blitz 74 92 710 883  Shadow Blitz 76 92 729 883  Blood Blitz 80 92 768 883  Ice Blitz 82 92 787 883  Smoke Barrage 86 99 825 950  Shadow Barrage 88 99 844 950  Blood Barrage 92 99 883 950  Ice Barrage 94 99 902 950

Other spells
Spell Level requirement Level for maximum scaling Original damage Maximum scaled damage  Slayer Dart 50 65 480 624  Divine Storm 60 71 576 681  Storm of Armadyl 77 85 739 816

Dual wielding

When dual wielding magic weapons, both main hand and off hand can have a spell set to autocast, and they can be different spells. If you originally have a two-handed magic weapon set to autocast a spell, and change to dual wielding, by default only the main hand would inherit your autocast setting from two-handed - you must set off hand to autocast a spell or it would not deal its 50% damage. When separate spells for the main and off hand are selected for autocasting, the main hand spell will be surrounded with a red outline and the off hand spell will be surrounded with a yellow outline.

Update history

This information has been compiled as part of the update history project. Some updates may not be included – see here for how to help out!

• ninja 26 June 2017 (Update):
  • Active spells now have a red outline for main-hand spell, and yellow outline for off-hand spell selected.

Trivia

• The graphics for the standard spells were updated with particles on 24 June 2010, with animation that is likely a reference to Avatar: The Last Airbender. They are updated again after the Evolution of Combat, which also made it impossible to cast elemental spells without a magical weapon. Some magic-using monsters retained their weapon-less spellcasting as well as the previous animation, such as dark wizards.