To my surprise and to the surprise of many, Jagex announced that they were planning another Bonus Experience Weekend at the end of October, when the general consensus among the community was that Jagex was getting rid of them in favor of other styles of bonus experience. But, it is coming so I thought I’d give some advice on what to train during this weekend for those of you who were caught off guard by this announcement and aren’t as ready as you may have been for the previous bonus experience weekends that were announced long in advance.

The first thing that should be noted is the differences between this bonus experience weekends and the ones in the past. In the past they have started on Friday and ended on Monday, giving players 72 hours of bonus experience. The experience was also tiered, starting at 2.7 times the normal rate and dropped .2 percent every half hour for 10 hours, until a level 1.1 times for the rest of the weekend. There were also numerous restrictions on experience, the most important being Summoning and items that already boost experience, such as Gilded Altars or Sacred Clay tools. This upcoming bonus experience weekend seems to be different though. Jagex has also confirmed in some forum posts that members will get 2 times experience and free players 1.2 times experience for the entirety of the weekend and that Summoning will indeed work unlike previous weekend, but experience boosting items will not. Also in this case the weekend is only 48 hours, as it lasts from Saturday to Monday.

Now, let’s look at the various categories of skilling and how or if they can use a bonus experience weekend to their benefit. I am going to break down the skills in to two different categories: buyable skills and non-buyable skills. Buyable skills are those that you can stock up a large amount of raw materials beforehand and then make them in to new items and are generally “money sinks”. These include Prayer, Construction, Herblore, Crafting, Fletching, Smithing, Summoning and Farming. The non-buyable skills are obviously all of the rest of the skills, which I will divide up even farther later.

First up, buyable skills. These have been a very common choice for people in the past as a bonus experience weekend can potentially double the experience you get for the same cost. However this is not always the case because of the price increases of raw materials between the announcement of the bonus experience weekend and the weekend itself. Say you would normally spend 5 million GP to earn 1 million experience, on this weekend you would earn 2 million experience, which is essentially halving the cost to get that experience if you want to look at it that way. But if you don’t get around to buying your supplies until after the bonus experience weekend has been announced and prices have already risen, then you will could end up paying anywhere from 5 percent to 30 percent or perhaps even more just to earn that double experience. So because the cost to earn that double experience goes up, it really isn’t double experience anymore. However if you stocked up on supplies before the rise in cost or are able to snag some raw materials that still haven’t risen, then training buyable skills is just as viable as training any other skill, as long as you don’t pay an inflated price for your materials. Do note that Summoning will work on this bonus experience weekend. I strongly recommend you save up all of your charms and use them this weekend. Although secondaries will rise just as other raw materials will, because a lot of the price from Summoning is incurred from Spirit Shards which are a flat 25 GP from shops, costs aren’t likely to rise quite as much as other buyable skills.

After saying that, I don’t want to totally put someone off training a buyable skill just because it isn’t the most efficient way to spend your time. If you have a certain goal in a buyable skill that you really want to pursue, then go for it! As long as you don’t pay twice as much for the supplies, which I don’t imagine anyone would need to, you will still be taking advantage of the bonus time.

So that leaves us with the non-buyable skills. Within this group I there are three categories of skill that I would either recommend you train or don’t train, depending on your current goals. The category of skills I will start with is skills that I don’t recommend that you train if you want to be the most efficient. These are Cooking, Firemaking, Woodcutting, Fishing, and Runecrafting. This is because these skills already have medium to faster experience rates, they incur little to no cost, and they don’t require much attention. The second group is the skills that I definitely recommend training, and these two are Agility and Mining. This is because these two skills are generally on the slower side when it comes to experience rates and also require a significant amount of attention. The last group of skills is one that comes down to your personal preference. They are by no means a bad choice to make as everybody’s situation is different, but I wouldn’t consider them the most efficient choices. The first of these would be the combat skills and Slayer. Although Slayer is considered to be one of the slowest skills in the game, many people find it enjoyable, so spending your bonus experience time on it might not be the best choice. The next to I will place together are Hunter and Thieving. Both of these skills have relatively faster experience rates, but many players find them more tedious to train, therefore training them during the weekend could be a good choice.

Although some skills may be more efficient to train than others, the only real waste is not training during the bonus experience weekend. Whether you are doing a slow skill or a fast skill it doesn’t matter, because for however much time you spend training over the weekend is how much time you save. Whether you want to save money in a buyable skill, spend less time on a more tedious skill you don’t enjoy, train an already fast skill just for some more experience, or go kill some bosses while everybody else is out skilling, you can benefit immensely from the bonus experience weekend. Happy training everyone!