Runescape 3 Invention Guide, Levels 1 to 120

Invention is Runescape's only elite skill and as such the ways of unlocking and training the skill is vastly different than any other skill in the current game. Invention leaks into all of the other skills in Runescape 3 so training it will be hugely beneficial for any player who enjoys any sort of activity in the game.

Also at higher levels you will unlock machines that you can build that will generate a consistent passive income for you!

In order to unlock this skill, you must first have at least level 80 in Crafting, Divination and Smithing. When you have these requirements, head to the Invention guild north of Falador and have a chat with Doc.

Experience mechanics

Invention is weird in this regard since early levels of Invention require more experience than other skills but later levels require less experience. For level 120 Invention about 23 million less total experience is required.

Also disassembly and siphoning are not affected by any experience boosts but other sources of Invention experience can be boosted.

Useful Items for Invention

XP Capacitor 5000

This item when activated will double your item experience gain. It can be purchased from the Grand Exchange. Each capacitor has a 100K item experience limit in it and when it's finished the item will crumble to dust.

Enlightened Perk

This perk is great for training as it increases the rate at which the item gains experience. This perk directly increases your experience rates throughout your entire journey. You can add this perk to your weapons, armours and tools. Enlightened 4 increases your experience rates by 3%.

You can start putting this perk on your items at level 27.

Mechanised Siphon

You can discover this item at level 77 Invention. This item can be configured to automatically siphon items that reach a certain equipment level, making sure you do not waste experience while AFK training!

Scavenging Perk

This perk does not affect experience rates but it will save you quite a bit of gold in the long run. When you have this attached to a piece of armour that you are using, it will automatically find and collect Invention materials as you slay mobs. The highest tier (which is scavenger 4) can be created upon reaching level 85 Invention.

1-120 Invention Training

Before you begin your Invention journey, you must know that there are 3 different ways of training your Invention:

1. Skilling with augmented items.
2. Combat.
3. Creating Gizmos.

The most popular way to train this skill is through combat, the best way to do this is to AOE killing hordes of monsters. The slowest way to train this skill is through skilling and the most expensive way is through creating gizmos. If you have the money for it, creating ancient weapon or armour gizmos from scratch where all the slots are filled with timeworn components yields the fastest invention experience in the game.

Levels 1-4 Discovery

Levels 1 through 4 are pretty simple, just talk to the Doc and complete the invention tutorial and complete all the discoveries with a perfect score, this should put you at level 4 Invention from the get go.

Discoveries are pretty simple, just move around the different pieces until you get the perfect order. The better you do these the more experience you will get. Poor configuration will only give you 20% of the experience, satisfactory is 40%, good is 60%, very good is 70%, excellent is 80% and perfect is 100%. If you see the configuration showing excellent just know that you are one move away from perfect.

If you couldn't do the discoveries in perfect order, you can disassemble some items to reach this level.

Levels 4-27 Augmentation

At level 4 you should immediately research the maximum equipment level 5 blueprint. After this augment two tier 70-75 combat equipment with augmentors. Train the weapons to level 5 and disassemble them. Be careful as you will lose both the augmentor and the item in this process. One of the best ways to be cost effective is by augmenting black salamanders.

The best place to power train items are doing The Shadow Reef trash runs.

Levels 4-27 Divine Charges

This method is a lot slower compared to the previous one but is a cost effective alternative. For this mass-disassemble common items for simple parts and then craft divine charges with them. One of the best items to disassemble for this method is magic logs.

Levels 27+ Combat

At level 27 go back to the inventors workbench and discover the ability to train augmented equipment to level 10 and unlock the equipment siphon. Siphoning will be your main way of training from now on as you will no longer have to destroy the item to gain experience.

At this point you should start using XP Capacitor 5000s and start adding useful perks to your weapons and armour.

You should always siphon your equipment at level 12 for maximum experience rates. Training it past level 12 will not yield any additional experience.

Combat is the best way to train your invention. For this, augment all the equipment that you use and start training! The fastest way to train is by killing mass amounts of monsters by AOEing them down.

If you are solely looking to train your Invention as fast as possible you can consider spamming Shatter World runs or The Shadow Reef runs as mentioned before. If you are not in a rush it is recommended to get it naturally up by training Slayer.

Level 27+ Skilling

You can also do the same with skilling albeit a lot slower. You can augment tools for Woodcutting, Fishing, Mining, Firemaking, Smithing and Archaeology. There are a lot of different useful perks that can be used to enhance said skills.

Just like combat equipment these tools should be siphoned at level 12.

Alternative Ways of Gaining Experience

Discoveries

As explained before, you will get a lot of discoverable blueprints as you level up your skill. You do not necessarily need all of them but it's a quick extra experience. You should complete them all with perfect results to gain the maximum experience.

You can also save your discoveries for double xp events or knowledge bombs which increases discovery experience by 50% or 25% respectively.

Level 86+ Crafting Gizmos

This method as mentioned before is the fastest and the most expensive method of training your Invention. At level 86 Invention you can drink an extreme invention potion to boost your invention to level 103 and then can discover timeworn components. You can buy this component directly from the grand exchange as crates. Crafting a gizmo with these will yield 32,200 experience. If you have the materials you can create up to 667 gizmos per hour which will result in 21.5M experience per hour!

You can basically get to level 120 Invention in little less than 3 hours with this method however with the current prices this will cost you around 1.5B gold.

Protean Cogs

These cogs can be earned from the Treasure Hunter and is a AFK way of training your Invention. The experience you get from these cogs scales with your Invention level. The highest experience rates can be earned after reaching level 101 and it is 367K per hour. Which is not great but this method is completely AFK and effectively cost free.

Hope you found this guide useful! Goodluck on your Invention Journey!