OSRS Guardians Of The Rift Guide: XP Rates & GP Per hour

The Guardian of Rift minigame is a cool non-combat minigame that was released in March 2022, and it has certainly improved people's perceptions of runecraft skill. Although the minigame does not provide the fastest experience rates, it is still quite enjoyable for most players and yields some pretty nice rewards, especially for iron men.

The main goal is to assist the great guardian in closing an abyssal rift to the Scar, the most dangerous part of the Abyssal space, by providing him with guardian stones, which can be obtained by mining guardian fragments and imbuing them at various altars, and also by protecting him from abyssal creatures that come through the rift.

Requirements 

  Completion of the Temple of the Eye quest: The Temple of the Eye quest was released at the same time as the Guardian of the Rift minigame. You would assist the Wizard Person at the temple where the minigame takes place. Doing the Temple of the Eye quest will also give you some understanding of how this minigame works, as you will need to complete a few rounds before you can complete the quest. This quest requires 10 runecraft and completion of Enter the Abyss and Rune Mysteries, both of which are simple and can be completed in a matter of minutes. In addition, the Temple of the Eye quest takes about 20 minutes to complete. Completing this quest grants you 5000 runecrafting experience and advances you from 10 to 27 runecrafting. The quest requires a chiseland aa pickaxe to play the minigame a few times, and these are what you will need to play the minigame whenever you want.

Recommended Requirements

• 56 Agility – lets you access the eastern large remains for faster mining
• 67 Magic – for NPC Contact spell (to repair pouches remotely)
• Lunar Diplomacy – required for the NPC Contact spell
• High Combat & Mining levels – useful for mining fragments faster and surviving comfortably

Location

The portal to the Temple of the Eye resides in the basement of the Wizards' Tower. First, you have to get to the Wizard's Tower, go down the stairs, and then enter the portal to finally reach the desired location.

The fastest way to get there

Guardian of the rift minigame teleport

After completing the Temple of the Eye quest, you can use the Guardian of the Rift minigame teleport to get to the Temple of the Eye faster.

  Necklace of Passage

You can also use this to teleport to the Wizard's tower, where you can enter the basement and run to the portal on the west to reach the Temple of the Eye. It is possible to make this necklace by enchanting a jade necklace at Lvl-2, or buy it from the Grand Exchange.

  Fairy Ring

Code: DIS (Draynor Manor) → run south to tower.

Best Gear setup

Although there is a lot of running involved in Guardian of the Rift, you do not need to use a graceful outfit because giving energy to the Guardian restores your stamina.

Items Needed/Inventory Setup

• Chisel: Chisel can be used to create rift guardians to gain extra energy.
• Pouches: You should carry all the pouches to store essence to be imbued
• Rune/Divine Pouch: Air runes, Cosmic runes, Astral runes.

Worlds for playing Guardian of the Rift

Australia (W425, W523) 

US West (W441, W445)

US East (W478, W490, W492)

Germany (W464, W459)

UK (W507, W522)

These are the worlds for playing the guardian of the rift, and they are usually crowded with other players; there is a maximum of 200 players in the temple at any given time. However, if a world is full, you can spam-click the portal to get inside. If another player exits, you will be allowed to enter; otherwise, you will have to wait for the round to finish before entering.

After each round, you have 120 seconds before the next begins. If it is full, you will receive the message "the world has enough players."

RuneLite Plugin

If you’re playing on RuneLite, enabling the Guardians of the Rift plugin is highly recommended. This plugin enhances visibility, organization, and efficiency during the minigame — especially for players aiming to maximize XP or points per hour.

What the Plugin Does

Highlights active altars – shows which elemental or catalytic altar is currently available.

Marks mining remains – helps you locate large and small guardian remains quickly.

Tracks barrier status & cell charges – so you know when to reinforce the Guardian or recharge barriers.

Displays portal timers – shows when the next yellow essence portal will appear.

Shows remaining Guardian HP & shield integrity – allowing you to react faster to the rift’s status.

Helps you monitor how many elemental/catalytic points you’ve earned.

Pro Tip: Combine the RuneLite plugin with the “Menu Entry Swapper” plugin — it lets you one-click create guardians or deposit stones faster, saving precious seconds each round.

With the plugin enabled, you’ll have a much smoother and more optimized GOTR experience, whether you’re soloing or participating in mass worlds.

How to play the Guardian of the Rift 

Powering up the Guardian

To gain rewards and the optimum experience rate, you need to power up the Guardian using imbued essence or catalytic/elemental stones as many times as possible.

When a round starts, the Guardian power shown in the image above starts at 10% and this increases as you and other players use the Catalytic or Elemental stones on him. When it gets to 100%, the round has ended, and you will get additional runecraft experience.

How to get Guardian Essence

To obtain guardian essence, mine guardian fragments and then craft them into guardian essence using the crafting table. Guardian fragments can be mined from guardian remains found around the temple's edges, and a larger guardian remains can be found in the western area of ​​the minigame. 56 agility is required to enter.

For every guardian fragment used on the workbench, you get a guardian essence, and this is when your essence pouch becomes useful because it will enable you to carry more essence. You should fill up all your pouches to be efficient and get optimum experience rates.

The Yellow Portal

Whenever this icon shows, it means that a portal to access the huge guardian remains has appeared. This usually occurs every 2 minutes, and you can mine twice as fast because you can mine guardian essence directly without having to craft the elemental fragments.

The Icon indicates the location of the portal, for instance, S means that the portal is located at the southern part of the temple, and the timer shows how much time you have before the portal closes. Ideally, you should enter the portal anytime you see this;t, this would ramp up your experience rates.

Open Portal Guardian

After transforming the guardian fragments into guardian essence, you must imbue the guardian essence with the runic altars found in the temple's portal guardians. Portal guardians are divided into elemental portal guardians and catalytic portal guardians.

During a round, two random runic portals open at all times, one catalytic and one elemental, and this changes every 25 seconds. The icon represents the portal guardian that is currently open, and the timer in between shows how long they will be open for. The numbers under the icons represent how much energy you have in each, and you should aim to balance this energy to get the best rewards because you will not receive any rewards if you have catalytic energy but no elemental energy, and vice versa.

Based on the color of an open portal guardia, as shown below, and the icon, you can tell the altar a portal guardian leads to. If you are a beginner, it may be difficult to tell which is which at first, but after a few rounds, you should be able to tell the altar by looking at it.

Here is what an open portal guardian looks like

Some of these altars have runecraft level requirements or quest requirements. Here is a list of the portal guardians, where they are located, their skill/quest requirements, and the kind of cells they produce.

For the elemental guardians:

1. Guardian of air - requires 1 runecrafting and produces Weak cells
2. Guardian of water.  - requires 5 runecrafting and produces Medium cells
3. Guardian of fire  -requires 14 runecrafting and produces Weak cells.
4. Guardian of Earth.  - requires 9  runecrafting and produces Strong cells

Then the catalytic portal guardians include:

1. Guardian of Nature - requires 44 runecrafting and Strong cells
2. Guardian of Law: requires 54 runecrafting, the completion of Troll Stronghold, and produces Strong cells
3. Guardian of Cosmic: - requires 27 runecrafting, completion of Lost City, and produces Medium cells
4. Guardian of Mind: requires 2 runecrafting and produces Weak cells
5. Guardian of chaos: requires 35 rune crafting and produces Medium cells
6. Guardian of Body: requires 20 runecrafting and produces Weak cells
7. Guardian of blood: requires 77 runecrafting and completion of Sins of the Father. And produces overcharged cells
8. Guardian of death: this requires the completion of Mourning’s End Part II and produces Overcharged cells 

When you enter any of the portals, simply click the altar to imbue all of your guardian essence. Don't forget to empty your pouches if you filled them with guardian essence; on PC, the quickest way to do this is to hold shift and click on the pouch to empty it, then imbue them as well. You will get the equivalent runes depending on the altar you used.

As stated above, for every point during a round, only one catalytic and one elemental portal is active in the temple, and the other portals would be inaccessible unless you have a portal talisman. Portal talismans have a 1/250 chance of being obtained for every guardian essence crafted; you should ensure you use them during the game because they cannot be kept after the round ends.

After you have imbued your guardian essence, you should exit the portal and power up the guardian using the imbued guardian stones. You should repeat this process as many times as possible during each round to get the best experience rates.

Also note that the catalytic energy and elemental energy are equally important when you are looking for better rewards. You should aim to balance both energy, because for every catalytic and elemental energy you get, you get to search the reward pool.

Deposit pool

This pool, shown below, can be used to store the runes gotten from altars without leaving the rift. It can be found in the western part of the entrance.

Charged and weak Cells

Uncharged Cells can be found near the entry barrier in a container, and when charged, they can be used to create rift guardians and erect barriers. It is possible to collect up to ten uncharged cells. Uncharged cells can be recharged when the guardian stones are imbued, but only one charged cell can be held at a time. 

The weak cell can be used in conjunction with a chisel to make weak elemental and catalytic guardians, placed on an inactive cell tile to make weak barriers, or to reinforce an existing barrier. 

Erecting Barriers

Barriers can be created by using charged cells on the cell tiles that can be found in the northern part of the guardian, as shown in the image below.w

Charged cells on the front-center cell tiles are used to create barriers. Using cells in increasing tiers (for example, medium to strong cells) will also strengthen them. Using less charged cells (for example, a strong cell on an overcharged barrier) will recharge the barriers by "healing" them instead. If a barrier breaks, the cell tile must be repaired, which costs ten guardian essence.

Creating Rift Guardians

Another important use of the charged cell is the creation of rift Guardians by using a chisel via the essence piles near the tables at the south. Rift Guardians can either be catalytic or elemental, and only ten rift guardians can be active at a time. 

This number shows the number of rift guardians currently active and protecting the barrier from damage; therefore, anytime you or any other player creates a rift guardian through the method shown above, this number increases if it was less than 10 previously.

If you use the official worlds, this number is rarely below 10, as other players create rift guardians quickly, but if it is less, you can create one. 

Gameplay of Guardian of the Rift

I’m going to show you how to do an efficient round of the Guardian of the Rift minigame in this section.

Step 1: When you enter the temple, grab a weak cell and 10 uncharged cells from the table below.

Step 2: Run north and help erect/charge barriers.

Step 3: Mine guardian remains to get guardian fragments until 170 fragments or the first yellow portal appears. If you have less than 56 agility, mine the normal guardian piles, and if you have 56 agility, you should mine Large Guardian remains. The portal does not show yet till 170 fragments, start turning in some fragments to Guardian Essen.ce 

Step 4: Always enter the portal if it appears and mine the guardian essence directly.

Step 5: After getting the Guardian essence, depending on the energy you are looking for, jump into the correct portal and craft the Guardian essence.

Step 6: Power up the guardian when you come out of the portal, then use your charged cell on the barrier to repair or upgrade it if you have a stronger cell.

Step 7: Go to the Crafting bench south and turn the fragments you have into essence until a portal shows up, then you start to follow step 4 till the end.

Experience rates and GP/hr

The experience rates and GP/hr may vary depending on how many portals you have access to, but if you have access to all the portals and you follow the steps above, you can achieve these rates:

At level 27, you should expect 20,000 XP/hr and 45,000 GP/hr.

At level 40, you should expect 25,000 XP/hr and 90,000 GP/hr.

At level 50, you should expect 30,000 XP/hr and 150,000 GP/hr.

At level 60, you should expect 35,0000 XP/hr and 200,000 GP/hr

At level 70, you should expect 40,000 XP/hr and  300,000 GP/hr

At level 80, you should expect 45,000 XP/hr and 400,000 GP/hr

At level 90, you should get 55,000 XP/hr and 500,000 GP/hr

Rewards

Here are some of the rewards you can get from Rewards Guardian

  Abyssal Pearls

Abyssal pearls can be used to purchase items from The Apprentice Felix, who is outside the entrance of the temple. They can also be used to repair pouches through Apprentice Cordelia by paying a one-time fee of 25 pearls to unlock.

  Intricate Pouch

This has a chance of 1/28 to be obtained from the rewards guardian. It contains random items such as runes, a crystal key, a lost bag, taa tarnished locklet, a shield left half, a crystal key dragon spear, a dragon med helm, a lamp, or blood essence.

   Catalytic Talisman

This Talisman allows you to enter the Catalytic runic altars to craft catalytic runes.

Abyssal Needle

This needle is used for making the Collosal pouch described above; it has a chance of 1/300 to be obtained.

  Abyssal dyes 

There are different dyes available that can be gotten from the reward guardia; these include the abyssal red dye, abyssal blue dye, and abyssal green dye. All the dyes can be obtained at a chance of 1 in 1,200.

Abyssal Lantern

The Abyssal lantern needs to be filled with 6 logs of a certain type to be lit. It gives varying benefits depending on the type of logs it is filled with.

  Abyssal Protector (pet) 

If you get a message in your chat that says “You have a funny feeling like you’re being followed” while searching the reward guardian, then you have gotten this cool pet. Like other pets, it is pretty hard to find and has a chance of 1 / 4,000.

Elemental Talisman

This talisman allows you to enter the catalytic runic altars to craft catalytic runes.