Summoning Training Guide for RS3: 1 to 99, Pouches and Familiars

Summoning lets you call familiars from the Spirit Plane: creatures that fight beside you, carry items, heal you, teleport you or boost other skills. The Wiki warns that training it "can become very expensive and tedious", but says the familiars at higher levels make it a rewarding skill. It is members-only past level 5.

How to start

• Wolf Whistle is a free-to-play quest that starts with Pikkupstix in his shop just north of Taverley's east entrance. It isn't required, but the Wiki calls it a great way to begin. It gives a 276 XP lamp (enough for level 4 from scratch) and 275 gold charms.
• Those charms are enough for level 16 by the Wiki's training guide, using dreadfowl and granite crab pouches. Its Summoning page gets them to 18 by using each charm most effectively, across dreadfowl (4), spirit spider (10), thorny snail (13) and granite crab (16) pouches. Made at the empowered obelisks of the Shrine of Inanna, the same charms reach about level 23.
• Free-to-play limits: F2P players can train to level 5 and keep collecting gold charms after that, useful if you plan to become a member. Gold is the only F2P charm, and troll brutes and troll chuckers in Burthorpe are the only monsters that drop charms on free worlds.

What a pouch needs

Every pouch is infused at a large obelisk from four things:

• An empty pouch, 1 gp each from Pikkupstix.
• One charm, which you must collect yourself. Charms are not tradeable.
• Spirit shards, from 1 to 222 per pouch. Pikkupstix sells them for 25 coins each or 5,000 for 125,000. Summoning shops buy spares back at the same price, and so does the Taverley pet shop owner, but only in lots of more than 500.
• A tertiary ingredient specific to that familiar, such as raw chicken for dreadfowl or iron ore for granite crabs.

Get shards back: Bogrog in Gu'Tanoth and Lord Amlodd in Prifddinas swap your pouches for 70% of their shard cost, or 77% with Lord Amlodd once the hard Tirannwn achievements are done. Swapping repeatedly greatly cuts how many shards you need to buy.

Charms, and where they come from

The four main charms need Summoning 1, 18, 19 and 23 to use. Elder charms (81) make five pouches, such as the nightmare muspah, which use elder energy instead of shards.

• Slayer: the Wiki says most tasks have favourable charm drop rates, and that 99 Slayer can give enough charms for 99 Summoning, depending on your tasks.
• Camping a monster: the Wiki lists waterfiends and rock lobsters, and says to favour monsters that drop crimson and blue charms. Ice-bursting rock lobsters can give over 180 crimson charms an hour, barraging up to 270.
• Exiled kalphites in the Exiled Kalphite Hive: the Wiki's method for level 99+ players, near AFK, at 550+ blue, 500+ crimson and 350+ green charms an hour.
• Skilling: charm sprites (72 Hunter), charming moths (88 Hunter, 83 Agility), Thieving chests and pickpockets, and fire spirits at bonfires (members only).
• Boosts to drops: Familiarisation gives 40 minutes of triple charm drops once a week, a charming potion adds one charm per drop for 6 minutes, and the Fang of Mohegan can double a drop. A charming imp (21 Summoning, bought after some Dungeoneering training) picks charms up for you.

Which pouches to make, by level

These are the Wiki's picks for the pouches that give the most XP per charm at a reasonable cost, charm by charm. "Save" means hold that charm for later. The Wiki stresses these are recommendations only: prices change, and some pouches are only worth making at certain times.

• Gold: dreadfowl (4-16), granite crab (16-28), save (28-52), spirit terrorbird (52-66), then barker toad (66-99).
• Green: save until 22, then desert wyrm, compost mound (28-33); beaver, macaw (41+) or spirit cockatrice (43+) at 33-46; macaw, cockatrice or magpie (47+) at 46-52; magpie (52-56); ibis (56-69); fruit bat or bunyip (69-89), with hydra from 80; unicorn stallion (88-99), and abyssal titan from 93.
• Crimson: save until 22, then spirit tz-kih to 33; vampyre bat or honey badger (33-46); pyrelord, then bloated leech (49+) up to 61; smoke devil (61+) or stranger plant (64+) to 74; granite lobster (74-83); spirit dagannoth (83+) or swamp titan (85+) to 89; spirit dagannoth or pack yak (96+) at 89-99.
• Blue: save until 56; spirit jelly, steel minotaur or karamthulhu overlord (58+), or keep saving (56-66); mithril minotaur, then obsidian golem (73+) to 79; fire or moss titan, lava titan (83+) or rune minotaur (86+) at 79-89; geyser titan (89-99).

The Wiki's notes on these picks:

• Stopping gold and green: some players stop using gold charms around 66, where the Wiki puts the rate at about 230,000-240,000 XP an hour, and green charms around 80, at 370,000-420,000 XP an hour, because both are expensive for the XP.
• Blue charms: the Wiki says to save them for geyser titans at 89-99 if you can, because you gain more XP from them in the long run.
• Cost, not just XP: in its cost comparison, which is sensitive to prices, the Wiki finds spirit terrorbirds may beat barker toads, fruit bats may beat unicorn stallions, and pack mammoths (99) then pack yaks (96) are the best crimson pouches.

Making pouches faster

• Bank and obelisk close together: the Wiki names the Menaphos Merchant district, the Amlodd district of Prifddinas and Taverley. Use bank presets.
• Beast of burden: a familiar carrying extra tertiaries gives you two batches a trip.
• Spirit kyatt (57+): teleport near the Piscatoris obelisk, then bank with a teleport. The Wiki says this can make over 2,700 pouches an hour.
• Voice of Seren in Amlodd: 20% more base XP at the Amlodd obelisk.
• The Taverley shop method (un-noting tertiaries at the shop beside the obelisk) is the fastest, the Wiki says, but very expensive.

Boosts worth having

• Shaman's outfit: 1% XP per piece, 6% for the full set. Buy it with Blessings of the Wolf from pouches made at the Shrine of Inanna (3,600 for the full set plus the headdress add-on). The modified headdress adds a 5% chance to save a charm.
• Spirit gems in the pocket slot: a 10 to 60% chance to save a charm. The Wiki suggests them for blue and crimson pouches.
• Summoning focus: 20% more XP per pouch, one focus each, cutting the pouches needed by roughly 17%.
• Spirit Weaver relic (87 Archaeology): 50% more XP, but pouches are made one at a time.
• Summoning cape at 99: a 2% chance to save a charm.

Familiars you train it for

Each familiar has a special move fired with scrolls made from its pouch. For how familiars fit into combat, see the prayers and familiars guide.

• Beasts of burden: the war tortoise (67) holds 18 items. The pack yak (96) holds 30, and its Winter Storage scroll banks an item from your backpack.
• Healer: the bunyip (68) heals 2% of your life points every 15 seconds.
• Combat: the steel titan (99) uses melee, ranged and magic. The Wiki says Ancient Summoning's ripper demon took over as the strongest, but the steel titan is still useful when you account for cost.

What you unlock

• 4: dreadfowl (free-to-play stops at 5).
• 23: needed to start Summer's End and While Guthix Sleeps.
• 67 / 68: war tortoise, then bunyip.
• 75: needed to start Plague's End, the quest that opens Prifddinas.
• 79: fire, moss and ice titans.
• 88 / 89: unicorn stallion, then geyser titan.
• 96: pack yak, and ripper demon binding contracts.
• 99: steel titan, pack mammoth, and the Summoning cape from Pikkupstix.

99 takes 13,034,431 XP.

Track your Summoning on The Codex

• Look yourself up and your profile shows your daily and weekly Summoning gains. The box at the top of this guide then shows your level.
• The Summoning skill page has the XP table and who gained most this week.
• Use the XP calculator for the XP between two levels, and the goal planner to plan the road to 99.

Sources

• RuneScape Wiki, Summoning training: pouch ingredients, shard prices and returns, the pouch-by-level table, XP rate notes, training methods, boosts and the cost comparison.
• RuneScape Wiki, Summoning: getting started, the beginner table, Shrine of Inanna, charm and shard basics, familiar types, the shaman's outfit.
• RuneScape Wiki, Summoning training/Obtaining charms: charm types and levels, monsters, skilling sources and charm boosts.
• RuneScape Wiki, Summoning/Level up table: unlocks by level.
• RuneScape Wiki, Wolf Whistle: where it starts, F2P status and rewards.
• RuneScape Wiki, War tortoise, Pack yak, Bunyip and Steel titan: what each familiar does.

References courtesy of the RuneScape Wiki.