Invention Guide

Introduction

Invention is the first of Jagex's planned elite skills. Elite skills require level 80 in certain other skills before one can start them. In particular, one requires 80 Crafting, Divination, and Smithing to begin Invention training. In addition, the experience curve is flatter and not exponential as with regular skills. This means a more uniform progression in the skill levels and unlocks, as compared with regular skills where, for example, level 92 is halfway to 99.

To train Invention, assuming the requirements are met, head to Doc's workshop just northwest of Falador lodestone (east of the borehole leading to Vorago). Speak to Doc to begin the Invention tutorial, which will teach you the basics. You will learn to construct an Augmentor, augment your very first fragrant weapon, and be given the tools you will need to progress in the skill, including the Charge pack.

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Invention Experience Curve

Unlike the skills before it, Invention was designated as an Elite skill. This means that:

• Invention follows a different skill experience curve, as outlined below.
• Most lamps and stars from Treasure Hunter and other sources grant half experience in Invention as they do for other skills.

The skill can be trained up to level 120, like Dungeoneering, and virtual levels continue up to 150. A table of experience for each level is below.

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Disassembly & Inspiration

One main currency involved in the Invention skill is inspiration. Inspiration can be awarded from levelling up the Invention skill, at random times whilst levelling other skills, or occasionally by disassembling an augmented weapon back into parts, destroying it in the process. Inspiration is used to discover and unlock new content within the skill - for example, the ability to to hold more charge in your charge pack, as seen in the tutorial.

The amount of inspiration you receive is not unlimited, so be sure to prioritize upgrades that are important for you, and build them with 'perfect' optimisation. For example, unlocking the ability level equipment up to higher levels, increasing the size of the charge pack, and decreasing your charge drain rate are generally regarded as wise investments. To begin a project, click the left-hand side of the workshop bench, where it will say "Manufacture Inventor's Bench." You can then start a project from the list of available ones on the left-hand side of the interface that opens up.

For the first stage, you need to put components in the modules and click to confirm when ready. These appear to be completely random and have no bearing on the actual result. One can expect things to fail several times. Simply continue adding components that are not crossed off until you are successful.

The next part involves a bit more strategy. You are given the five modules that proved successful and asked to arrange them in five positions. Depending on which positions you choose, the inspiration cost can be lessened. The hint text at the bottom will give categories which are, in decreasing cost order: poor, satisfactory, good, excellent, and perfect. Ideally, one should always aim for perfect to conserve inspiration.

There are 120 different combinations and only one perfect one among them, so brute force is generally an ineffectual method here. Instead, to find the perfect combination efficiently, it is best to "swap" pairs and solve the puzzle one piece at a time, much in the same way as a Treasure Trail sliding clue. To solve it, do the following, noting the diagram below:

1. Start by noting (mentally or on paper) the result of your initial try. Swap 1 with 2, note the result, and swap them back. Repeat this for 1 and 3, 1 and 4, and 1 and 5.
2. If one of those 5 numbers is the lowest, you have likely found the right match for piece #1 and can leave it alone. If there was a tie, you may have to come back to it later.
3. Now, note the current inspiration cost, and swap 2 with 3, swap back, and then 2 and 4 and 2 and 5 in the same way.
4. If one of those 4 numbers is lowest, you have likely found the right match for piece #2 and can move on to 3. If not, you may have to come back later.
5. Perform the same process for #3, swapping it with 4 and then with 5 to see what is lowest.
6. If one of those three numbers (the original, swap with 4, or the swap with 5) is lowest and unique, you have found the right piece for 3. If not, you may have to repeat it later.
7. Check the result and swap 4 with 5. If one of those gives you a 'perfect' cost, congratulations, you are done! If not, you will need to repeat the process again but you will eventually succeed.

This is illustrated in the picture below as well - components to be swapped are highlighted in green, and highlighted in red to indicate swapping back.The general idea is to swap out for each component, find the best match, and then move on.

When you are finished/satisfied with the inspiration cost, click the "Invent" button, confirm, and you will unlock the invention along with receiving a small amount of Invention experience. Note if you interrupt the process or click away from the bench, you will have to start all over.

Beyond discovering new devices, there is also the matter of materials with which to build them. To obtain materials, one must break down items into certain components, and then build with them. There are many different types of components. Some are common, others are uncommon, and still others are rare or special and require breaking down expensive items or gear to obtain. It is worth noting that if you are just starting out, there is no need to break down rare items to train. Relatively commonplace items can be used to acquire most of the parts you will need to train. In fact, some rarer parts require higher levels to use (but not obtain).

Virtually every item that is able to be alchemized can be disassembled. Drag it to the icon below to start disassembling. Noted items can also be disassembled in batches of 60, although this will not be instant and will take around 72 seconds to complete. Be warned that you will not receive a warning even for some moderately expensive items. If you realize that you have accidentally dragged an item that you do not wish to disassemble to the pouch, spamclick somewhere in the screen area. This should interrupt the action and may well save your item if you are quick enough. Note that experience gained from disassembly is nominal and the main bulk of experience comes from siphoning or disassembling augmented items, as well as researching blueprints.

There is a catch, though - lower level items can have quite a high junk chance. For example, an item like shrimps will nearly always disassemble into junk, whilst a higher level fish like shark has a quite reasonable chance to produce worthwhile components. The lower the junk chance, the more non-junk components one will receive. To check what components an item can potentially disassemble into, use the Analyse ability under the skilling section of your spellbook, marked in green. Red is disassemble; do not confuse them!

Then, click the item on your inventory that you wish to check. For example, you might want to check shrimps and shark:

Junk is not particularly useful in Invention, and one can anticipate to accumulate much of it from disassembling. This creates a bit of an optimisation issue - one has a choice between waiting longer to disassemble more cheap items, or waiting perhaps a shorter period of time to obtain the same amount of components from a higher level resource. Generally there is plenty of room for compromise in between as well. It is also important to note that some items disassemble into multiple components. Both the shrimp and shark above give only one component, but a ruby ring gives 5. These costs should be considered before making an investment in making or buying items to with the intention of obtaining specific parts.

You can see the current parts you have by clicking the invention pouch button, which is the leftmost button located at the bottom of your inventory tab, with the money and bond pouches. Parts are grouped into categories and sorted alphabetically automatically. The name of a component can be seen by hovering over its image in the pouch.

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Augmenting and Levelling Combat Equipment

Once you have disassembled some items, it is time to put the components to work. Recall that in the tutorial, you augmented a flowers and attached a gizmo that barred you from using prayers due to a perk on them. To train Invention at any reasonable pace, you will need to augment weapons and level them up by using them in combat, followed by either taking them apart or siphoning off their experience. Disassembling them will destroy the weapon permanently and there is no way to get it back. Therefore, it is not recommended to augment an expensive weapon unless you plan to siphon repeatedly. It is also worth noting that the tool to do this, the Equipment siphon, is unlocked at level 27, so it may be more worthwhile to disassemble a couple cheap weapons to get there, for example a black salamander. Alternatively, one can purchase a siphon from another player or through the Grand Exchange.

Only a few higher level weapons, as well as body and leg armor, can be augmented. As a general rule, most equipment above level 70 can potentially be augmented. There is currently no safe way to un-augment gear, so be aware that this is irreversible before augmenting anything. In the interest of controlling cost, weapons such as Black salamanders, Balmung, Korasi's sword, and Enhanced excalibur can be used. The ability to augment body armor is unlocked at level 16, and leg armor at 45.

When augmenting equipment, they will begin to use charges from your charge pack. The amount of charge consumed depends heavily on the tier of the equipment. For example, an augmented noxious staff will drain far more charge than an augmented staff of light, and Sirenic armour more than Pernix which will drain more than Armadyl. There is somewhat of a silver lining though, in that augmented items no longer incur the traditional degradation cost. There is no need to repair augmented gear in the usual Bob/PoH way, just the cost of divine charges to replenish your energy. Players considering augmenting high level equipment should check the current cost of making or buying charges and choose what is suitable for them.

In addition, dying with augmented equipment will incur a penalty equal to two hours' worth of charge if the item is not protected. This means that in the event of death and a successful run back to one's gravestone, the player may wish to prioritize the augmented weapon as a protected item by clicking it in the reclaim interface. Note that this strategy is only really viable when not carrying many degradable items.

It is possible to unaugment an item by using an Augmentation dissolver on it. If the original weapon was degradable, i.e. Ascension crossbow, you will have your item returned in its broken state and have to repair it again before being able to use it.

Siphoning and Disassembling

The bulk of Invention experience is earned from siphoning or disassembling your equipment. Disassembling it permanently destroys it, but may return any gizmos installed on it, depending on the level. Another option is siphoning your equipment using either an Equipment siphon or Crystal tool siphon. Siphoning gives less experience, but allows you to keep your item, resetting its item experience to zero. The amount of Invention experience from siphoning is equivalent to the amount received from disassembling the same item two item levels lower.

The amount of experience also depends on the tier of the augmented item. Higher level items consume divine charge at a faster rate, and yield more experience when siphoned or disassembled than their lower level counterparts. Regular tools are automatically counted as tier 60, and crystal tools are tier 70. However, by using a Crystal tool siphon on them, the experience gained can be boosted to that of a tier 90 item. Tables for experience given from siphoning or disassembling various tiers of items are below. Note that there is no experience granted for siphoning an item below item level 3. It is recommended to train an item to level 10 if disassembling or to level 12 if siphoning.

Disassembling at higher item levels also conveys further benefits, increasing with the level of the item, as explained in the table below.

The maximum item XP that an item can have is 1,000,000.

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Skilling equipment and Invention

Invention can also be trained through various skilling activities. Similar to weaponry or armour, an Augmentor can be used on various skilling tools like fishing rod, hatches, and pickaxes to upgrade them into augmented versions. While wielding these and skilling as usual, they will accumulate item experience just like weapons or armour, and can then be siphoned or disassembled. A list of such items follows below.

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Perks

Of course, augmenting a weapon isn't all you can do. By crafting a Weapon gizmo shell and tacking on parts, one can create a gizmo and attach it to a weapon for various perks. Several perks reduce energy cost of using augmented equipment, but other than that they have no bearing on the drain rate. Most perks are small enough that they do not make too much difference for powertraining Invention on weaker mobs. However, some of them can be quite useful for bossing situations, i.e. 7% extra damage to dragons (inclusive of the Queen Black Dragon) or demons (inclusive of K'ril Tsutsaroth) or the Genocidal perk for Slayer, which boosts damage as one progresses further into a task. Some combinations can be potent as well, for example Clear Headed 2-3 & Reflexes, to allow Anticipation to be used much more frequently at the cost of shorter duration and no damage reduction. Some perks have ranks, meaning that a higher rank in said perk will compound the effect, listed as "per rank" - they stack up additively. A full list of perks can be found below.

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Devices & Improvements

Along the way levelling your Invention, you will unlock the ability to research various devices used in the skill, along with other passive improvements. See the table below for a list.

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Specialisation

Along the way in your Invention skilling, you will unlock access to technology trees called specialisations. At level 40 you will have the choice between researching Cave Goblin Electricity (talk to Oldak in Dorgesh-Kaan labratory) or Dwarven Steam (talk to Drorkar in Keldagrim's Palace forge). Several components and inventions in the skill require one tree or the other. The tree not chosen can still be accessed later on, but you will have to pay a penalty of 100 currency to switch focus on it and gather currency for the non-focused tree more slowly, so choose wisely.

In order to unlock technologies, you will need currency with either the goblins or dwarves, as indicated in the table below. They come in tiers and you must purchase at least one piece of technology in one tier before unlocking anything in the next. You receive currency by completing tasks from the noticeboard by Oldak and Drorkar, respectively, for 10 points each. If you are currently focused on one tree, you will gain an additional 5 points for each task.

Skill mastery and Beyond

Cape of Achievement

Once you have mastered the skill and reached level 99 you may want to buy an Invention cape from Doc in the Invention Worskhop north of Falador. If you already have another 99 skill, or obtain another one while wearing the cape (unless you have it keepsaked), it will become an Invention cape (t).

Please refer to the Achievement Capes guide for more details.

True Invention Mastery

Achieving 99 is the ultimate goal for many players, however the skill does not stop there. For players wanting to show off their dedication to the skill it is possible to obtain "True Mastery" by obtaining 120 Invention which is 80,618,654 experience. The Invention master cape can then be purchased, also from Doc.

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Credits

Original Guide by: Arceus

Special thanks to: Howlin1

Thanks to: Matt258

Last updated by: Arceus

Last updated on: 2-Jul-2018