OSRS Bossing Progression Guide

The honest answer to “what boss should I fight next?” starts with a warning: there is no single correct order. The right next boss depends on your gear, your mechanics and, most of all, what you actually want out of the game. So rather than one universal ladder, this guide gives you a way to decide. First, figure out which of these three players you are right now.

If you're new to bossing

Don't chase gp yet — chase skills. Pick a mechanically forgiving fight and use it to learn the fundamentals that every boss in the game shares: prayer-switching, moving while attacking, eating before you're low, reading telegraphed (wind-up) attacks, managing your inventory, and keeping your damage uptime high instead of standing idle. Those transfer everywhere. A cheap boss where mistakes don't cost much is the best classroom you'll get.

If you already have some PvM experience

Your goal shifts to a repeatable boss — one you can farm for hours that teaches transferable mechanics and pays for your account's growth. This is the single highest-leverage step a developing account can take, because a money boss on farm removes the “I can't afford supplies” problem for good.

If you already farm Zulrah, Vorkath or similar

You're past the hard part. From here there's no “next boss everyone does” — your step depends on your destination: God Wars for lasting armour, Slayer bosses for gear and XP, the Wilderness for cheap spec weapons, or raids for best-in-slot. The decision tree further down maps those out.

Here's the shape of the whole journey. Think of it as five skills to develop rather than a fixed list of kills — each tier teaches the thing the next one assumes you already know. A well-geared, mechanically confident account can skip rungs; an under-geared one shouldn't force the next tier just because a chart says so.

The rest of this guide walks each rung — but the tiers are a map, not a set of gates. If you want the details for your exact account, the bossing hub ranks every boss by profit and difficulty against your stats and gear.

“Beginner” does not mean “lowest combat requirement.” It means a good learning environment for your current ability: forgiving mechanics, a low death cost, and cheap supplies, so you can make mistakes and learn from them without going broke. The bosses below fit that description — but they don't all serve the same purpose, so match one to what you actually need.

If you only learn one, make it Barrows. It needs no quests, carries essentially no death risk, drops gear you'll actually use (Dharok's, Ahrim's and the off-hand pieces), and forces you to practise the exact prayer-switching and inventory habits that every later boss rewards. It is the definitive bridge from “never bossed” to “confident soloing.” The others are situational: Obor and Bryophyta are free-to-play stepping stones, the Giant Mole and Scurrius are cheap mechanics practice with a pet on the side, and Sarachnis is a forgiving supply-and-cudgel farm.

This is the step that changes an account. A repeatable money boss turns gp from a constant worry into a renewable resource: it funds your gear, your supplies and every upgrade after it. But the popular “Zulrah, then Vorkath” advice isn't a rule — pick based on what you want, because these fights reward different things.

For live gp/hr on any of these, filtered to what your account can actually do, use the Money Makers hub; the money making guide breaks earning down by account stage.

The God Wars Dungeon (GWD) is a genuine progression milestone: it's the jump from a single-mechanic money boss to holding DPS while managing a room of aggressive followers, and it drops armour you'll keep for years. Getting in needs 60 Strength or 60 Agility plus Troll Stronghold (or the Easy Combat Achievements), and each general's room needs 70 in a specific stat and 40 killcount against their followers to enter — a natural pace-setter while you learn the dungeon.

All four are soloable, and all four go faster in a team — teams share killcount and speed up the grind, which is why many players duo or mass for the initial KC. Bandos (Graardor) is the usual first target because its armour is such durable value. Which general suits you depends on your strongest style: ranged accounts lean toward Kree'arra, melee accounts toward Graardor and K'ril.

Slayer builds its own PvM ladder, parallel to the money-boss route: Slayer level unlocks a boss, the boss drops gear, the gear opens harder content. What makes Slayer bosses different from simply picking a money boss is that most are only accessible while you're on the matching task — so they fold combat XP, gp and gear upgrades into one activity, which is why Slayer is the most rewarding non-combat skill for a PvM account.

You don't grind Slayer bosses in this order — you meet them as your Slayer level climbs and the tasks come up. Training Slayer is therefore one of the most direct ways to keep unlocking new PvM.

Wilderness bossing is an optional branch, not a mandatory step. The trade is real: you accept the risk of being attacked by other players (and losing your gear) in exchange for access to some uniquely strong, cheap rewards. If you dislike that risk, you can reach comparable power by other routes — nothing here is required to progress.

The headline draws are Callisto, Venenatis and Vet'ion, which between them drop the three Voidwaker components (the hilt from Venenatis, the gem from Callisto and the blade from Vet'ion) plus the Wilderness rings. The Voidwaker is a fantastic, relatively cheap special-attack weapon, which is what makes this branch worth considering even for accounts that otherwise avoid the Wilderness.

“Raid-ready” isn't a single stat line — it's a readiness across several dimensions. Don't chase an arbitrary combat level; check yourself against these instead:

• Combat: stats high enough to keep reasonable DPS through long fights.
• Gear: functional setups in more than one style — raids ask you to switch.
• Mechanics: comfortable prayer-switching, movement, positioning and inventory management under pressure.
• Unlocks: the quests and gear access your setups depend on.
• Experience: enough time at the earlier bosses that basic mechanics are second nature, not a struggle.

When you clear that checklist, start with Tombs of Amascut: its invocation system lets you set a low, forgiving difficulty and scale up as you improve, which makes it the most beginner-friendly of the three. Chambers of Xeric is the classic next step, and Theatre of Blood is the hardest and most team-dependent — but there is no single correct order. The raids hub lists each raid's requirements and rewards, and the raids progression guide covers preparation in depth.

Put it together as a decision. Find the row that matches you — it's a starting point tuned to real requirements, not a law:

The same boss list isn't right for every account. The tiers hold; the priorities shift:

• Mains optimise for gp and unlocks — you can buy any gear a boss would drop, so a boss is mostly worth its gp/hr and the content it opens.
• Ironmen can't buy gear, so a boss's drops become the progression. You might farm the Abyssal Sire specifically for a whip you can't purchase, or grind Slayer bosses for boots — the “best” boss is the one that drops what you need next.
• Hardcore Ironmen weigh survival above all: the Wilderness and any fight with sharp death spikes become far less attractive, and over-preparing is rational when a mistake ends the account's status.
• Restricted accounts (skillers, other locks) progress around whatever content they can actually access, so their ladder can look nothing like a main's.

Sometimes the correct progression decision is “not yet.” An hour of questing or training often beats an hour of dying at a boss you weren't ready for. Hold off when:

• You're missing a quest unlock the boss (or its gear) needs.
• Your gear can't sustain the fight — you're eating through supplies faster than you deal damage.
• Your Prayer is too low to protect through the mechanics, or your survivability is shaky.
• You have no reliable supply income, so every trip is a net loss.
• The boss would take so long per kill that a simpler method earns more for the same effort.
• You don't yet have the basic mechanics — go practise them somewhere cheap first.

Bossing is a skill you build, not a wall you clear. A few habits separate players who improve quickly from those who stay stuck:

• Learn one mechanic at a time. Nail the prayer flicks before you worry about optimal gear swaps.
• Survive before you maximise DPS. A slow kill beats a death; speed comes naturally as you relax.
• Learn the attack patterns. Most bosses telegraph everything — once you read the wind-ups, the fight slows down.
• Cut unnecessary movement and downtime. Idle ticks are lost damage; wasted steps are lost ticks.
• Review your deaths. Ask what specifically killed you, and fix that one thing next trip.
• Upgrade gear only when it changes the kill. A marginal weapon rarely fixes a mechanics problem.
• Don't judge a boss on five bad tries. Almost everyone's first hour at a new boss is rough — give it a real sample.

Most stalled PvM accounts share a few of these. None are absolute — there are exceptions — but each hurts more often than it helps:

• Chasing gp/hr instead of learning mechanics. The mechanics are what let you do the profitable content in the first place.
• Jumping to high-level PvM because your gear “can.” Gear doesn't save a fight your prayer-switching can't handle.
• Buying expensive gear before learning the fight. Learn it in cheap gear, then upgrade what actually matters.
• Ignoring Prayer or quest unlocks. Both quietly gate huge chunks of the boss list.
• Farming a boss you hate because a tier list calls it optimal. The boss you'll actually keep doing beats the “best” one you quit.
• Staying at comfortable content forever, or the opposite — boss-hopping constantly instead of learning one properly.
• Ignoring death and supply costs when comparing profit — a big loot number with big losses can be worse than a steady one.
• Assuming the most profitable boss is the best progression choice. Sometimes the right pick is the one that teaches a mechanic or drops an upgrade you need.
• Treating bossing as a rigid linear ladder instead of a set of branches you choose between.

A guide like this can explain the branches. The hard part in practice is working out which branch your account should take right now — checking each boss's requirements against your stats and quests, weighing profit against difficulty, and spotting the ones you're only a level or a quest away from. That's what ScapePath does.

Link your account and the bossing hub ranks every boss by profit and difficulty for your stats and gear, marks what you're ready for, and spells out the exact quest or Slayer level standing between you and the rest. The planner ties that to your wider goals, the gear paths show what to bring, and the Money Makers hub puts live gp/hr on each option. The guide explains the branches; ScapePath tells you which one fits your account. None of it is needed to read this page — signing in just swaps the general answer for your specific one.