Magic/Training

The comparison of Combat and Alt Magic can be found in the following spreadsheet: (link).

Method

Do
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Alt.Magic until
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Level 48.
Make the Fire Adept wizard gear and choose a monster to fight with the Combat Simulator. It will likely be the Giant Crab.

Explanation of the Method

The Combat method starts to be better than Alt Magic in terms of XP gain almost right from the start.
However, in order to maintain that edge over the Alt Magic method, you need to check the game more often.

Let's compare the progression of Alt Magic and Combat.

For Alt Magic, you need to prepare a disposable item, then craft the Staff of Air and runes. After that, you can leave the

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Just Learning

spell to idle. The same steps apply to most other Alt Magic skills - you come back, prepare a disposable item and runes for the next idle session, and leave the game to do its thing.

For Combat Magic, you need to change your gear regularly in order to have an advantage over the Alt Magic option. Depending in your involvement, you can go through the whole spectrum of Wizard Robes because each of them has slightly higher Magic requirement than the previous one. In addition to that, you need to prepare food and to come back before it runs out.

Therefore, the Combat option is either for those that keep their attention on the game or for those who have all resources ready and want to level Magic fast.

After

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Level 14

, the Combat method starts to have an advantage. If you have food, runes, and you are okay with checking the game every hour, then you can switch to Combat straight after

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Level 14

. For the approach with less involvement, Alt Magic is a way to go - use the highest spell you can and stop on Blessed Offering to accumulate prayer points. You will need at least 250k if you are just starting, so you can sit on this spell even until

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Level 78

when you unlock the Fire Expert gear to prevent any further armor swaps.

Alternative Method (delayed Magic Leveling)

Since thieving rework, it seems benecial to delay magic leveling. A good route seem to start training magic after reaching 100 Volcanic Cave clears for ancient magic wich calls for

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Level 85

in order to craft Ancient Rune. The advantage of this method is that you don't need to care about storing runes before then. The other advantage is that there are lots of fairly easy to acquire items in the game that give you the oportunity to deal huge damages right of the bat using magic from level 1, leveling the skill extremly fast for roughly 5K runes/hour. The cornerstone item of this strategy is Ring of Spirit Power

Pros and cons of the method

+ Can toss away Runes until mid game wich saves lots of inventory space
+ Combat progression takes fully advantage of the combat triangle
+ Makes magic leveling up to ancient magic use extremly fast while keeping it fairly inexpensive in terms of rune costs

- fairly heavy on non combat skills that are not related to magic, doesn't require lvl99 skills however
- does prevent you from using alt magic earlier wich is not really a big issue

Skills Required for this method

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Level 75

for Wizard's Sigil, Side benefit to this farm are Book of Scholars that is good for every non combat skill, Amulet of Incantation, some Wizard's Scroll, Prayer Scroll and a large assortment of runes

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Level 90

for Ring of Spirit Power

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Level 80

for Spirit Rune

Other skills recommendation before going magic

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Level 63

to master and craft related potions

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Level 45

to unlock the combat tablets, craft every tablet at least once as soon you get it

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Level 80

to unlock the Bear/Fox Synergie for Runecrafting wich is great. But you should have that if you are in the mid game already

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Level 40

or more to start farming monster drops that will be used for the lvl1 BiS. These are low power level enemies, can also be done with melee but it's really suboptimal

Level 1 Gear and Level 1 combat

Item name	Gear Slot	Acquisition	Notes
Ring	Air Acolyte Wizard Hat	Thieving Acolyte or Error creating thumbnail: File missing Level 1	common table
Head	Air Acolyte Wizard Hat	Thieving Acolyte or Error creating thumbnail: File missing Level 1	common table
Boots	Air Acolyte Wizard Boots	Thieving Acolyte or Error creating thumbnail: File missing Level 4	common table
Legs	Air Acolyte Wizard Bottoms	Thieving Acolyte or Error creating thumbnail: File missing Level 7	common table
Chest	Air Acolyte Wizard Robes	Thieving Acolyte or Error creating thumbnail: File missing Level 11	common table
Weapon	Staff of Air	Killing Fairy or Error creating thumbnail: File missing Level 1	7.41% droprate
Back	Enchanted Cape	Killing Master Wizard	1.11% droprate, You'll get some Amulet of Magic on top
	Firemaking Skillcape	Error creating thumbnail: File missing Level 99	Does not break even in terms of XP
	Skull Cape	Slayer Points	Absolute BiS for magic outside of DR considerations for dungeons
Gloves	Elementalist Gloves	Killing Elementalist	0.50% droprate, must have item even for end game
Amulet	Amulet of Incantation	Thieving Wizard	NPC unique drop

Enemy chosen: Mummy (mediocre xp rates but "mandatory" drop). Swap to Giant Crab if you have done the Mummy farm already
Spell chosen: Wind Strike Xp rates: 30K+ to 36K+ (varies between capes and if used ranged assistance potion or not)
Drop rates: 30+ Amulet of Strength per hour
Runes consumption(high rolled): 4500/h with no conservation and firecape, 2600/h using Skull Cape and Wizard's Scroll, can go lower using Agility and Astrology rune conservation effects
Food: Combat simulator says that no food is required but prepare a small cushion anyway especially if you feel like you may have not enough runes

Afterward

After This grind you should be able to meet up the requirements for casting ancient magic and use mid and end game guides. However, you may find rooms for personnal strategies that are more rune efficient. The next big non ancient magic upgrade would be getting imbued wands and use them alongside Book of Eli for farming Melee enemies or getting Nature's Wrath Staff for optimizing

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Prayer

training.