Ensouled Heads or Dragon Bones? The Ironman Prayer Efficiency Guide

Game screenshots and facts are cited from the Old School RuneScape Wiki (strategy, equipment, drops, and related pages). Writing is original editorial, not a copy of the wiki article.

Ironman Prayer is one of the few skills where the training method you choose does not just change your XP per hour—it changes how you play the rest of your account. If you are still burying bones from your inventory, you are leaving 85% of the XP on the table. The real debate on an iron is between two self-sufficient loops: farming ensouled heads through Slayer for reanimation, or stockpiling dragon bones and braving the Wilderness Chaos Altar's 700% average multiplier. Both work, but they demand very different time, attention, and risk budgets.

This guide compares the two paths in detail, with quest unlocks, gear setups, rune costs, and honest time-to-goal math. We will also cover the construction-based gilded altar and the ectofuntus/offering spell alternatives, so you can pick the method that fits your account stage and tolerance for player killers.

Why Prayer Is the Account-Breaker Skill (and the Level Goals That Matter)

Prayer on an ironman gates nearly every serious PvM upgrade. The most cited breakpoints are 43 for all three protection prayers, 45 for Mystic Might, 70 for Piety, and 85 for the Elite Desert Diary. If you plan to raid or kill bosses, you will also eventually want 77 for Rigour and Augury, but those are long-term targets that most irons postpone until they have a steady bone source.

Before you gather a single bone, finish the quests that shovel Prayer XP into your account for nearly zero cost. The Ironman Guide/Prayer lists enough quest rewards to take you from level 1 to 42 without training. The big ones are Holy Grail (11,000 XP, requires 20 Attack and Merlin's Crystal), Spirits of the Elid (8,000 XP, requires 33 Magic, 37 Ranged, 37 Thieving, 37 Mining), and His Faithful Servants (20,000 XP, requires Priest in Peril and protection prayers). Combined with smaller rewards like Recruitment Drive, Ghosts Ahoy, and Rag and Bone Man I, you can hit 42 Prayer and unlock all protection prayers before your combat stats are even 50.

If you are an ironman who hates questing, you can still grind early levels on big bones from hill giants or baby dragons, but that is a miserable use of time. Quest XP is the single fastest early boost.

Two Realistic Paths: Ensouled Heads vs. Chaos Altar Bones

At its core, every ironman Prayer method is a supply chain. You either collect ensouled heads as a by-product of Slayer and reanimate them for moderate XP with zero wilderness risk, or you dedicate time to killing green dragons, banking bones, and running them to the Chaos Altar for the best multiplier in the game—at the cost of player killer exposure. The table below breaks down the decision.

Notice that ensouled heads are not a primary training method in the sense of camping a monster for heads. They are a passive side effect of Slayer. If you already plan to get 85+ Slayer, you will accumulate hundreds of heads across tasks—abyssal demons, bloodvelds, hellhounds, and more. If you are rushing Prayer for Piety, however, the Chaos Altar is the only realistic fast lane.

Ensouled Heads: The Slayer-Powered Prayer Engine

The ensouled head method has one giant advantage: it turns a task you are already doing into Prayer XP without a single extra wilderness step. You need the Arceuus spellbook, which requires completion of the Arceuus favour line in Great Kourend—check the wiki for the exact unlock requirement, as it changed in 2024. Once unlocked, you can cast reanimate spells on certain heads in your inventory. The reanimated creature spawns with low health; kill it for Prayer XP equal to a portion of the head's tier, plus standard combat XP.

The Ironman Guide lists ensouled heads as a viable method from level 1 all the way to 99, but in practice it scales with your Slayer progression. Early Slayer tasks do not drop many valuable heads, so the XP/hour is poor. By the time you are killing aberrant spectres, bloodvelds, and abyssal demons, you will bank dozens of heads per task. Reanimate them between tasks or in a bank-safe zone. The rune cost is modest—mostly nature, cosmic, and body runes for the basic spells—but the exact cost per head varies, so always check current GE or ironman resource costs.

Because the method relies on drops, it is impossible to give a single XP/hour number. If you are 80 Slayer and camp abyssal demons with a venator bow (or by barraging), you will see significantly more heads than an account at 60 Slayer. Treat ensouled heads as a bonus, not a rush method.

Green Dragon Bones: Wilderness vs. Myths' Guild

If you choose the Chaos Altar route, you first need a mountain of dragon bones. For most ironmen, green dragons are the earliest sustainable source. The Ironman Guide/Prayer splits this into two locations: Wilderness green dragons and Myths' Guild green dragons.

Wilderness green dragons are spread across several locations in levels 11–17 Wilderness, with the most popular being the far east near the Chaos Temple and the western spawns near the Bone Yard. They drop dragonhide, dragon bones, and are easy to kill with melee or ranged. However, you need dragonfire protection—an anti-dragon shield or a super antifire potion if using two-handed weapons. The real threat is player killers, because these spots are well-known and often camped by low-level pures. Bring only what you are willing to lose.

Myths' Guild green dragons are locked behind Dragon Slayer II and require 60+ combat stats, but they are in a safe area with a bank close by. If you have completed DS2, this is the best ironman-friendly dragon bone source because there is no PK risk. Kill them with your best melee or ranged setup, bank bones, and later take them to the Chaos Altar or gilded altar. The wiki's Ironman Guide recommends this over wilderness dragons once available.

Using the Wilderness Chaos Altar Without Dying Every Trip

The Chaos Altar's 700% average multiplier is the best in the game, but the level 38 Wilderness location makes it a PK magnet. That said, with the right approach, you can lose very little and still get 500,000+ Prayer XP per hour using dragon bones, according to the Ironman Guide.

Getting there: The fastest options are Ghorrock Teleport (96 Magic, Ancient Magicks) which puts you a short run south; Cemetery Teleport (71 Magic, Arceuus spellbook) which puts you north; or a burning amulet's Lava Maze teleport. A player-owned house obelisk can send you to level 44 Wilderness if you have the Hard Wilderness Diary done, then run south. Avoid running from Edgeville if possible—it is slow and dangerous.

Inventory setup: Use cheap, high-defence gear in 3 or 4 protected slots—proselyte is fine, or black dragonhide for magic defence. Bring an inventory of bones, a few high-healing food items like sharks, and a teleport out if you are not deep wilderness teleblocked. If you are bringing noted bones, the Elder Chaos druid just outside the temple will unnote them for 50 gp per bone, saving you banking runs. Many players instead bring one inventory, offer all bones, and then suicide on the wine of Zamorak spawn or the Chaos Fanatic to return quickly. Use a locator orb or dwarven rock cake to speed up death.

The 50% bone-saving effect means your average dragon bone gives 7x normal burying XP. If you have Zealot's robes, the save chance stacks to 52.5%, pushing the effective multiplier to 7.37x. That is a huge boost for the small effort of obtaining the robes from the Shades of Mort'ton minigame.

Gilded Altar and Construction: The Safe, Expensive Alternative

If you absolutely refuse to set foot in the Wilderness, the gilded altar in a player-owned house is the classic safe method. With 75 Construction, you can build a gilded altar and two incense burners. Lighting both burners with marrentill gives 3.5x Prayer XP per bone. That is half the Chaos Altar's average multiplier, but there is zero PK risk and you can use a house party world to be near a bank—use a PvP world with Camelot Teleport for the closest bank chest to a house portal, or unnote bones at Phials in Rimmington for a fee.

The Construction requirement is the hurdle. The Construction training guide shows that 75 is not cheap: oak larders from 33 to 52, then mahogany furniture to 75. For an ironman, you will need to cut and process thousands of planks. If you already have a main account, buying gold to fund Construction is one of the most time-efficient ways to get a safe, repeatable Prayer training method. If you are an iron, you will have to gather the planks yourself, which can take longer than just doing Chaos Altar runs with wilderness risk.

Common Mistakes That Cost Ironmen Hours (or Bank Loots)

• Burying bones instead of using an altar: Burying a dragon bone gives 72 XP; the Chaos Altar average is 504 XP. Every bone you bury is seven bones wasted.
• Doing Chaos Altar runs in full gear: You only need 3-4 protected items. Everything else is free loot for a pker.
• Ignoring quests: The quest list in the first section gets you to 42 Prayer with zero gathering. Skipping it means grinding big bones for hours.
• Reanimating ensouled heads without the right spellbook: You must be on the Arceuus spellbook; if you are on standard or ancients, the heads just sit in your bank.
• Not using Zealot's robes if you have them: The 5% save bonus at the Chaos Altar is multiplicative, effectively 7.37x XP per bone. It is free extra XP.
• Training on green dragons without dragonfire protection: One dragonfire hit can kill a low-level account. Always bring an anti-dragon shield or super antifire.

The Honest Shortcut: Gold, Services, and Your Time

Let us be blunt: on an ironman, there is no legitimate way to buy your way to 70 Prayer. You cannot trade bones, heads, or gold. Any service that logs into your account to train is against Jagex's rules and risks a ban. If you value your account, do not take that route.

However, if you also play a main account, the calculus changes. Buying OSRS gold lets you purchase dragon bones from the Grand Exchange in bulk, use a gilded altar on a house party world, and get 400k+ Prayer XP per hour with zero gathering and zero wilderness risk. That is the single fastest real-life-time path to 70 or 85 Prayer on a main. GP Trillionaire's gold marketplace exists for exactly this reason: to convert real-world money into in-game time saved. If your main needs Piety for bossing, buying gold and bones is not cheating; it is the same economy Jagex designed around the GE.

For ironmen, the honest shortcut is to use the methods in this guide in the most efficient order: quest to 42, do Slayer for ensouled heads as passive XP, and when you are ready to rush 70, do short Chaos Altar trips with dragon bones from Myths' Guild if you have finished DS2. Accept that Prayer is a marathon, not a sprint, on an iron.

View live gold rates if you are on a main account and want to skip the bone-gathering stage entirely.

Sources and Further Reading

• Ironman Guide/Prayer — core method overview, quest rewards, chaos altar, ensouled heads, bone gathering.
• Chaos Temple (church) — altar mechanics, transportation, un-noting, Zealot's robes stacking.
• Agility training — for run energy management and shortcuts that speed up bone runs (Wilderness Agility Course shares similar PK risk).
• Construction training — requirements and methods for 75 Construction gilded altar.
• Combat Achievements — some combat achievements reward Prayer XP as a side benefit for completing PvM tasks; verify current rewards on this page.
• Defence training — higher Defence reduces damage from dragons and PKers, improving survival during bone gathering.