OSRS Agility: What Actually Works Right Now
Agility training in Old School RuneScape is one of those skills where the theory looks fine until you're actually doing it and realize everything takes longer than the wiki says. The routes have barely changed since 2024 launched, but the meta around them has shifted a bit because of how the server handles clipping and some minor tweaks to XP rates. I run my account on two alters for agility training, one dedicated to gnome roller and another for the loop at the Rogue's Den. It's tedious, and honestly if you're doing it purely for the XP it's not particularly efficient compared to say, fletching or fishing. But the agility levels unlock other income streams, and that's the part people usually forget about.
The Ultimate Guide To Agility Courses Osrs Maximizing Efficiency And Profit In 2024
Before we get into numbers, let me clear up a common misconception. Most people think you just find the highest XP per hour route and do it. That's not how it works. The route you choose depends entirely on what level you're at and whether you care about profit or just want the skill up. They're completely separate concerns. Hard Gnome Dungeon This is the best pure XP route once you hit level 52 agility. The standard loop involves the rope swing, balance beam, pole slide, gap jump, and the final pipe. You'll see a lot of guides tell you to grab a power orb and cheese the rope swing, but the time saved is minimal. Maybe two minutes per hour if you're consistently pulling it off, which you won't be. Just run the loop normally. The rope swing has a 1 in 8 failure rate that sends you back to the start. It's annoying but the XP still comes out ahead of almost everything else at mid-levels.
One thing nobody mentions enough: the gnome dungeon has a shortcut at the end that requires 68 agility. If you hit that level, go take it. It saves roughly 30 seconds on your route and you can combine this with the Varrock Palace rooftop loop for decent xp stacking. Varrock Palace Rooftop Level 52 starts the Varrock Palace route. It's short, it's got a decent obstacle density, and it sits somewhere between acceptable and good for xp per hour. The real reason people do it isn't the agility XP though. It's the proximity to the bank and the fact that you can combine it with gold farming or herb running if you're patient.
Get the Full Details
I spent about three weeks doing Varrock rooftop while also fletting on my alt and made roughly 40 million GP per day across both accounts. That's not a huge amount by 2024 standards but it's passive enough that you barely notice it. The agility training itself averaged about 70k XP per hour at level 60. Ape Atoll Level 75 opens up Ape Atoll, which is probably the most controversial route in the game. On paper it's incredible. The pendulum vines, the nets, the zip line - the obstacle sequence is dense and the XP award is generous. In practice, the route is miserable because Ape Atoll has a massive player population bottleneck. You will spend 40 percent of your time waiting for the zip line.
The workaround I use is simple. I run the route from the fishing platform side instead of the main landing. It's slightly longer but the zip line queue is almost always empty. Takes about five extra seconds per lap but you never wait. Over a full session this adds up to maybe 20 minutes of saved time per thousand laps. Mourning's End Part 1 Level 79 gets you the Mourning's End partial route, and this is where things get genuinely interesting for profit seekers. The obstacle course itself isn't amazing for XP - you're looking at roughly 50 to 60k per hour depending on your level - but the real value is what spawns around it. Glories, nature runes, and occasionally energy potions appear as drop tables from the area's creatures. More importantly, the route puts you next to the fishing guild bank with zero travel time, so you can do any money-making method while the character auto-trains.
Here's the counter-intuitive part that catches most people off guard. Running the full Mourning's End route (which requires 95 agility) is actually worse for XP per hour than running the partial version if your level is below about 85. The full route has more obstacles but the XP curve for higher level obstacles scales poorly. The partial route at level 79 to 84 gives you more consistent XP gains because you're hitting obstacles at an optimal level ratio rather than barely scraping through hard ones. I learned this the hard way. I pushed to 85 agility specifically to run the full route, and my XP per hour actually dropped by about 15 percent because I was failing the rope swing obstacle so often. Went back to the partial and it smoothed out immediately. TzHaar City
Level 85 unlocks TzHaar City, and it's easily the best rooftop course in the game for raw XP. The obstacle spacing is perfect, failures are rare if you memorize the route, and the XP per lap is significantly higher than Varrock or Draynor. A typical run at level 85 yields around 100 to 120k XP per hour, climbing to 150k at 90. The catch is access. Getting to TzHaar requires either a completed Fire Cape (or at minimum a ring of forging and fire runecrafting setup), or you buy the teleport from other players for about 500k each way. That travel cost eats into your profit if you're trying to make money alongside training. For pure XP grinding it's worth it. For a hybrid approach you need to calculate whether the XP gain justifies the teleport expense. Seers' Courthouse
Level 90 gives you Seers', and honestly it's overrated. The XP per hour is fine but the route has a narrow ledge section that causes frequent clipping issues on standard clients. I've seen average XP rates dip by 20 percent for people using older or lower-end setups because of this. If you're at Seers' level, just stick with TzHaar unless you have a specific reason not to. Profit Methods Combined With Agility Training The real question people ask is whether you can make money while training. The answer is yes but it's not as straightforward as running a single route and hoping for drops. Here are the methods that actually work in 2024 without requiring another skill to be near-maxed.
Glory Spamming At TzHaar and Ape Atoll, enchanted gems spawn frequently enough that if you have a spare inventory slot you can fill it with glories and sell them. A single glory runs about 25k to 35k on the grand exchange. Filling one inventory per hour translates to roughly 200k to 300k GP per hour in glory sales alone. This works best on TzHaar where the spawn rate is highest. Herb Running From Varrock
While doing Varrock rooftop, you can pick up weeds and secondary herbs that spawn in the area. It's slow but consistent. Over a full day of training you'll accumulate enough secondaries to make a meaningful difference, especially if you're already banking and cleaning herbs as part of your routine. Dagannoth Kings Route This one is niche but worth mentioning. The route from the Fishing Guild through the maze to the Dagannoth Kings requires moderate agility and the XP while running through is decent. More importantly, you're right next to the King encounters. If you bring weak gear and a couple of food supplies you can kill one or two kings per hour of agility training time. The PK loot from the kings alone often covers the cost of the training equipment you'd otherwise need.
What Doesn't Work Let me save you some time here. Don't try to rune pouch spam at TzHaar. The natural rune spawns are too infrequent and you'll waste more time waiting than you'd gain. Don't attempt to bone daggers while training - the drop rate is negligible and you'll lose focus on the route. Don't combine agility training with bossing in the same instance unless you're specifically set up for it. The attention split reduces your agility XP rate by about 30 percent because you're pausing to fight instead of maintaining your loop. The Level 99 Question
People always ask about the final stretch. Going from 95 to 99 agility at TzHaar takes roughly 8 to 10 hours of focused training. That's about 1.2 to 1.5 million XP per hour at that level range if you're running cleanly. The main issue here is mental fatigue. After about four hours the route becomes muscle memory and you start making small mistakes that cost you seconds per obstacle. I recommend splitting it across two sessions with a break in between rather than grinding it in one marathon. The 99 cap also opens up the full Agility Arena shortcut and the final obstacles in the Hard Gnome Dungeon that give substantial XP boosts. It's worth pushing through the discomfort because the endgame utility is real. A Final Note On Setup
Your client settings matter more than most guides admit. Use a static camera angle for rooftop courses. The dynamic camera causes clipping detection failures on about 5 percent of obstacle attempts, which compounds into lost time over hundreds of laps. Turn off the agility overlay if it slows your frame rate. Enable run energy display so you can track when to drink a super restore or energy potion without opening your inventory. And if you're doing this on a mobile client or a very old computer, be aware that TzHaar has the highest object density of any course and it will struggle more than the others. In that case, stick to Varrock or Seers' where the obstacle count is lower and the performance impact is minimal.
