OSRS Pest Control Guide: Boats, Points, Void Costs and XP per Point

Overview

Pest Control is a co-operative combat minigame on the Void Knights' Outpost. Every win pays commendation points, and those points buy two things: Void Knight equipment and combat XP. Both come out of the same points, so most of the planning is about which one you buy first.

Short answer: board the highest lander your combat level allows, because a veteran win pays 5 points against 3 on the novice boat. Spend the first 850 points on the Void top, robe, gloves and one helm. After that, buy XP 100 points at a time for the 10% bonus. Prayer XP from points costs nothing but is slow, so it suits ironmen and leftover points.

Requirements and How to Get There

The only requirement to play is combat level: 40 for the novice lander, 70 for intermediate and 100 for veteran (Pest Control). Pest Control is members only.

The rewards ask for more. Every Void piece except the seal needs 42 Attack, Strength, Defence, Hitpoints, Ranged and Magic, plus 22 Prayer, to buy as well as to wear (Void Knight equipment). The 22 Prayer is the requirement people forget. Buying XP needs level 25 in the skill you spend on, and only Attack, Strength, Defence, Hitpoints, Ranged, Magic and Prayer are on offer.

Getting to the outpost

1. 1

   Minigame Teleport

   from the grouping tab drops you at the Void Knights' Outpost, on a 20-minute cooldown.

2. 2

   Pest Control Teleport

   scrolls come from Treasure Trails and can be bought on the Grand Exchange.

3. 3

   The squire on the Port Sarim docks

   , south of the Lady Lumbridge, sails you to the outpost.

4. 4

   Your own boat

   can dock at the outpost's port with 50 Sailing.

Play on world 344, the official Pest Control world. Landers on other worlds usually sit empty unless you bring a group, and nothing starts until five players are on board.

Stats and gear

The wiki's Pest Control/Strategies page recommends 60+ Attack, Strength, Defence, Ranged and Magic and 75+ Hitpoints. Below that you still earn points on the novice boat; you just add less to portal kills. Bring one good weapon; food is optional, because dying is safe and you respawn on the lander. Hitpoints, Prayer, special attack and run energy are fully restored at the end of every game, so a session costs no supplies.

How a Game of Pest Control Works

You board a lander. Once five players are on it, a 2-minute countdown starts, and a boat that reaches 25 players leaves straight away. Anyone left behind on a full boat gets priority for the next one.

On the island, four portals spawn pests that go after the Void Knight in the middle. All four portals start shielded. The first shield drops 15 seconds in, the rest follow every 30 seconds, and all are down by 1:45. You win by destroying all four portals or by keeping the knight alive for 20 minutes. If the knight dies, the game is lost and nobody gets points.

Portals have 200 Hitpoints on the novice boat and 250 on intermediate and veteran. Each one you destroy stops its spawns and heals the Void Knight by 50. The red portal is never the first shield to drop, and the yellow one is often the easiest to burst with special attacks such as the dragon dagger's.

What to kill first

1. 1

   Spinners

   heal portals, and several together can out-heal your damage. Kill them before the portal, even while its shield is still up. If the portal dies first, they explode for 5 damage plus poison.

2. 2

   Shifters, defilers and torchers

   do the damage to the knight. Defilers and torchers attack over the walls, so pull them off him first when they show up.

3. 3

   Brawlers

   block movement and line of sight but never attack the knight.

4. 4

   Splatters

   explode for 5–24 damage in a 3x3 area when killed or when they reach a gate or barricade.

5. 5

   Ravagers

   break gates and barricades. Close gates behind you so pests can't walk through to the knight.

One myth to drop: special attacks and prayers do not make spinners spawn. The wiki's strategy page lists it as a common misconception.

The activity bar

Points only go to players whose activity bar stays above 0% for the whole game. Hitting portals and spinners fills it fastest, and other pests fill it at a moderate rate. Repairing barricades with a hammer and logs fills it well too and gives 5 Crafting XP per repair. Standing by the knight doing nothing drains it to zero, and that game pays you nothing.

A win also pays coins worth 10 times your combat level, and you get full combat XP for the damage you deal. Cannons and alchemy spells are blocked, teleports don't work inside, and you leave by right-clicking the squire.

Novice vs Intermediate vs Veteran: Pick Your Boat

Points per win depend on two things: the lander and your Combat Achievement tier (Void Knight commendation points). Combat level only decides which boats you can board.

Verdict: pick the highest boat you can board. With no Combat Achievements a veteran win pays 67% more than a novice win (5 points against 3), which cuts the Void set from 284 wins to 170. Drop a tier only when the higher lander on your world isn't filling, because an empty boat earns nothing.

Combat Achievements add points to every win

Reaching the Easy, Medium or Hard reward tier of Combat Achievements adds 1, 2 or 3 points to each Pest Control win. Tiers unlock by total task points, so you don't need every Easy task done before Medium counts. If you are close to a tier, finishing it before a long grind is the cheapest speed-up there is: Hard turns a 5-point veteran win into 8. Our Combat Achievements guide covers the quickest ways to farm task points.

Void Knight Equipment Costs and Elite Void

Everything is bought from the reward shop by talking to any Void Knight at the outpost (Void Knights' Reward Options).

The set effect needs one helm, the gloves, and the top and robe in either version. The mace and seal add nothing to it. Each elite piece also gives +3 Prayer bonus, so the pair adds +6.

What elite Void really costs

The Elite Void Knight at the outpost upgrades your top and robe for 200 points each, but only after the Hard Western Provinces Diary. The points are the cheap part. Per the Elite Void Knight equipment page, the diary needs:

1. 1

   Quests:

   Swan Song, Freeing King Awowogei (Recipe for Disaster), Eagles' Peak, The Eyes of Glouphrie, Big Chompy Bird Hunting and Rune Mysteries, plus Mourning's End Part I and One Small Favour started.

2. 2

   Kills:

   a Zulrah kill and 300 chompy bird kills.

3. 3

   Skills:

   70 Mining, 56 Agility, 62 Fishing, 70 Ranged, 75 Thieving, 70 Cooking, 50 Firemaking, 64 Magic, 20 Fletching, 50 Woodcutting, 68 Farming, 65 Construction and 69 Hunter. Every skill on this list except Ranged can be boosted.

4. 4

   Combat level 100

   , which the diary's veteran-game task needs anyway.

Our Achievement Diaries guide has the requirement overview for every diary, Western Provinces included. If you buy the wrong piece, the Dodgy Squire takes Void back for 80% of its point cost, so a 200-point helm returns 160.

Pest Control Points to XP by Skill

XP per point uses the level of the skill you spend on: floor(level² ÷ 600) × 35 for Attack, Strength, Defence and Hitpoints, × 32 for Ranged and Magic, and × 18 for Prayer (Void Knights' Reward Options). Spending 10 points at once adds 1%, and spending 100 at once adds 10%.

Combat level plays no part in it. A 100-combat account with 50 Prayer gets exactly the same Prayer XP per point as a 70-combat account with 50 Prayer.

Single points get no bonus, so each is worth about 9% less than in the table: at 70–73 one point is 280 melee XP, 256 Ranged or Magic XP, or 144 Prayer XP. XP per point doubles between 70 and 98, so points go further in skills that are already high.

What the Void set costs you in XP

So the full set costs about 238,000 Ranged XP at 70 Ranged, or about 134,000 Prayer XP at 70 Prayer. That Prayer figure equals roughly 532 dragon bones on a gilded altar at 252 XP each, which is the yardstick for the Void-or-XP choice below.

Is Pest Control Good for Prayer XP?

Only as a free option. Fighting pests gives XP to the style you attack with, never Prayer, so Prayer XP comes from points alone. The rates below use the 26 veteran games an hour assumed on the wiki's Pay-to-play Ranged training page, spending points 100 at a time.

For scale, the Pay-to-play Prayer training page works on about 2,550 bones offered per hour at a gilded altar. With dragon bones at 252 XP each that is roughly 642,600 XP an hour, 20 to 30 times the Pest Control rate at 70 Prayer.

Pest Control Prayer makes sense in three cases: you are an ironman without a steady bone supply, you have finished Void and have points left over, or you are playing for Void anyway and want the extra points to land somewhere useful. For a main with gold, the Prayer guide is far faster per hour. Avoid spending on Prayer below 43, where a point is worth only 18 to 36 XP.

Void First or XP First?

Void first, for nearly every account that can wear it. Combat XP can be bought many ways, but Void only comes from these points. The 850-point set costs about 238,000 Ranged XP at 70 Ranged, which is around three hours of the wiki's 70–73 Pest Control Ranged rate of 76,600 XP an hour.

Buy it for what it does in PvM, not as a training upgrade. The wiki's Ranged training page says the full set isn't worth the time for training alone unless you're chasing the fastest 99. The same page names Vorkath, low-switch Zulrah and Theatre of Blood as places it pays off, and the Elite Western Provinces Diary has a task to wear a full set.

A spending order that works

1. 1

   Void top, robe, gloves and the helm for your main style:

   850 points.

2. 2

   Elite top and robe after the Hard Western Provinces Diary:

   400 points.

3. 3

   Other helms only when you have a use for them:

   200 each.

4. 4

   XP after that, 100 points at a time, into your highest combat skill in training, or Prayer if bones are your bottleneck.

5. 5

   The mace (250) and seal (10) last, and only for the collection log.

Hours and Points to Your Goal

Void targets

These are best-case figures. The Void Knight equipment page itself says a realistic novice-boat set takes 12–14 hours once waits and lost games are counted. Points for the elite upgrade can be banked before 100 combat; only the upgrade itself waits on the diary.

XP goals

The Ranged hours include the wiki's estimate of 40,000 XP an hour from fighting pests with Ranged, which is why they beat the Prayer rows. On that model the wiki's Pest Control Ranged rate runs from 76,600 XP an hour at 70–73 with no Combat Achievements to 157,100 at 98–99 with Hard. Prayer gets nothing from fighting, so its hours are points only.

Ironman, Hardcore and Pure Notes

Ironman

Points work the same for ironmen. The herb pack is the standout: 30 points (25 Herblore) for noted grimy harralander, ranarr, toadflax, irit, avantoe and kwuarm, and unlike the herb boxes at Nightmare Zone, ironmen can buy it. The shop also sells a mineral pack for 15 points (25 Mining), with 25 noted coal and 18 noted iron ore, and a seed pack for 15 points (25 Farming).

A sensible iron order is the core set first, then Prayer XP or herb packs, whichever bottleneck hurts more. Our ironman combat training guide covers the rest of the route to 70 combat stats.

Hardcore Ironman and Hardcore Group Ironman

Pest Control is a safe activity, so a death there does not cost Hardcore Ironman status (Ironman Mode). It is not safe for Hardcore Group Ironman: the wiki marks these deaths as unsafe for HCGIM and warns that chained splatter explosions can kill. HCGIM players should stay well clear of splatter groups or skip it.

Pures and zerkers

A 1 Defence pure can play from 40 combat but cannot wear Void, which needs 42 Defence. Spend its points on Strength, Ranged, Hitpoints or Prayer, and never on Defence. A zerker with 45 Defence can wear the melee set once Attack, Strength, Hitpoints, Ranged and Magic reach 42 and Prayer reaches 22. The pure builds guide compares the 1 Defence and zerker builds.

Common Mistakes

1. 1

   Letting the activity bar hit 0%.

   One idle stretch by the knight and the whole game pays nothing. Stay on portals and spinners.

2. 2

   Spending points one at a time.

   100 points at once gives 10% more XP and 10 at once gives 1% more. Bank up to the next hundred before you spend.

3. 3

   Buying XP while the skill is low.

   XP per point scales with the skill's level: a Prayer point is 54 XP at 43 and 144 at 70. Spend early points on Void and later points on high skills.

4. 4

   Buying the mace or extra helms before the core set.

   The mace does nothing for the set effect, and a second helm is useless until you own the top, robe and gloves.

5. 5

   Staying on the novice boat at 100 combat.

   Novice pays 3 points a win against veteran's 5, so the Void set takes 284 wins instead of 170.

Where Paid Help Fits

The games themselves are simple; the count is the problem. The base set alone is 107 to 284 wins depending on boat and Combat Achievements, and elite Void or a Prayer goal adds hundreds more. If that is the part you'd rather skip, our Pest Control service has separate novice, intermediate and veteran lander lines, and a player on the team plays the games on your account by hand.

FAQ

Still stuck on a mechanic? Ask the team on our Discord, it is free.