There are four Construction boosts in OSRS: the crystal saw at +3, a trimmed cup of tea at +3, an orange spicy stew at up to +5, and the Construction cape at +1. The crystal saw is invisible and stacks on top of any one of the others, which makes +8 the ceiling and +6 the largest boost you can rely on.
Everything else about Construction boosting comes down to two rules. Visible boosts do not stack with each other, and the crystal saw only applies to builds that need a saw.
Every Construction boost
| Boost | Amount | Visibility | Stacks with saw | Works on | Requirements |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crystal saw | +3 | Invisible | n/a | Saw-required builds only | The Eyes of Glouphrie |
| Cup of tea (clay) | +1 | Visible | Yes | Anything Construction | POH kitchen |
| Cup of tea (porcelain) | +2 | Visible | Yes | Anything Construction | 23 Construction for the cup |
| Cup of tea (trimmed) | +3 | Visible | Yes | Anything Construction | 67 Construction for the cup |
| Spicy stew (orange spice) | 0 to +5, or negative | Visible | Yes | Anything Construction | Recipe for Disaster, Freeing Evil Dave |
| Construct. cape | +1 | Visible | Yes | Anything Construction | 99 Construction |
The cape is listed for completeness. If you have it, you have 99, and the +1 only matters for the handful of hotspots above that.
Visible and invisible, and why it matters
An invisible boost does not change the number on your skills tab. The game checks it separately when you try to build something. The crystal saw is the only one Construction has.
A visible boost raises the number on your skills tab, and it sets that number rather than adding to it. Drink a trimmed tea at base 84 and you are at 87. Drink another one and you are still at 87. Eat a stew that rolls +2 while you are sitting at 87 from tea, and you drop to 86.
That is the mechanic behind the single most common boosting mistake. Consume one visible boost, check the number, then build.
The saw sits on top of whichever visible boost you are carrying, which gives you these combinations.
| Combination | Total | Guaranteed |
|---|---|---|
| Crystal saw alone | +3 | Yes |
| Trimmed tea alone | +3 | Yes |
| Crystal saw and trimmed tea | +6 | Yes |
| Spicy stew alone | up to +5 | No |
| Crystal saw and spicy stew | up to +8 | No |
Crystal saw
The saw comes from a crystal saw seed, awarded for completing The Eyes of Glouphrie. Sing the seed into a saw at the singing bowl in Brimstail’s cave or in Prifddinas.
What it does. Lets you build furniture up to 3 levels above your Construction level, without changing your visible level.
Charges. 28, or 56 if you have completed the medium Western Provinces Diary. When it runs out it reverts to a seed and needs re-singing. It is destroyed on death, and Brimstail will give you a replacement seed if you have neither the seed nor the saw.
When a charge is spent. Only when the invisible boost is actually doing something. Building furniture you already have the base level for costs nothing, which means you can carry it permanently without wasting charges. Building a STASH unit above your level also costs nothing.
What the crystal saw works on
It applies to anything requiring both a saw and a hammer, which is most player-owned house furniture, plus:
- STASH units, without consuming charges
- Fire pits
- Shipbuilding, including Sailing facilities and core boat parts, again without consuming charges on core boat parts
What the crystal saw does not work on
- Rooms. Building an achievement gallery at level 80 is not something the saw helps with.
- Garden plants. The spirit tree and the fairy ring in a superior garden use a watering can, not a saw.
- Placing dungeon monsters.
- Mahogany Homes contract tiers. The saw will not get you Expert contracts below 70 Construction.
The room exclusion is the one that catches people. There is no point boosting to 83 for an ornate jewellery box if you cannot build the achievement gallery it lives in.
Spicy stew
Orange spice is the Construction colour. The stew is made by adding spice to a bowl of stew and gives a random result.
| Doses added | Boost range |
|---|---|
| 1 | -1 to +1 |
| 2 | -3 to +3 |
| 3 | -5 to +5 |
Getting the spice. After the Freeing Evil Dave subquest of Recipe for Disaster, take a cat into Evil Dave’s basement and kill hell-rat behemoths. Each one guarding orange spice drops a 4-dose orange spice shaker.
How the roll works. Two separate rolls decide the result: one for direction, one for magnitude. A three-dose stew is as likely to drain you as to boost you, and a zero is common.
Rerolling. There is no way to influence the roll. The practical approach is to bring a stack of stews to the hotspot, eat one, glance at the skills tab, and eat another if the number is wrong. A drained level is not a problem because the next stew resets it.
Budget for it. A build needing +5 exactly needs, on average, several stews. If you are one level short rather than five, a trimmed tea is a better use of your time because it always lands.
POH tea
Tea is the boost most players do not know they have.
| Cup | Boost | Shelf | Construction for the shelf |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clay | +1 | Wooden shelves 1 or 2 | 6 |
| Porcelain | +2 | Wooden shelves 3 | 23 |
| Gold trimmed | +3 | Teak shelves 2 | 67 |
The trimmed cup is the one worth having, and 67 Construction is well below any level where you would be boosting for a max house build. Teak shelves 2 cost 3 teak planks, 6 soft clay and 2 gold leaf, so the shelf itself is the expensive part rather than the tea.
What your kitchen needs. A built stove space, a larder, a shelf and a built sink space. Making the tea itself needs 20 Cooking and gives 52 Cooking experience.
Making it.
- Take a kettle, a teapot and a cup from the shelf.
- Take tea leaves from the larder.
- Fill the kettle at the sink, then put it on the stove.
- Use the tea leaves on the teapot.
- Take the kettle off when it boils, and use it on the teapot with leaves to get four servings.
- Pour a cup.
You can also ask a servant to serve tea, and they will serve whatever tier your best kitchen shelf holds.
The catch. The cup vanishes from your inventory the moment you leave the house. The boost itself persists outside, so drink it inside and walk out boosted.
Practical combinations
| You need | Do this |
|---|---|
| 1 to 3 levels on saw-required furniture | Crystal saw alone, no consumables |
| 1 to 3 levels on a room or a plant | Trimmed tea |
| 4 to 6 levels on saw-required furniture | Crystal saw and trimmed tea |
| 4 to 5 levels on a room or a plant | Spicy stew, reroll until it lands |
| 7 or 8 levels on saw-required furniture | Crystal saw and spicy stew, reroll |
Worked POH examples
These are the boosted floors the wiki records for the builds people actually boost for.
| Build | Level | Needs saw | Saw and stew | Saw and tea | Stew alone |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gilded altar | 75 | Yes | 67 | 69 | |
| Achievement gallery (room) | 80 | No | 75 | ||
| Basic jewellery box | 81 | Yes | 73 | 75 | |
| Gilded portal nexus | 82 | Yes | 74 | 76 | |
| Fairy ring | 85 | No | 80 | ||
| Fancy jewellery box | 86 | Yes | 78 | 80 | |
| Boss lair display | 87 | Yes | 79 | 81 | |
| Ornate rejuvenation pool | 90 | Yes | 82 | 84 | |
| Occult altar | 90 | Yes | 82 | 84 | |
| Ornate jewellery box | 91 | Yes | 83 | 85 | |
| Crystalline portal nexus | 92 | Yes | 84 | 86 |
For a full plan built around those numbers, including what the materials cost and where to stop, see the max house Construction level guide.
Boosts and Sailing
The crystal saw works at the shipwrights’ workbench, which means every repair kit and hull part tier can be reached three levels early. Core boat parts do not consume a charge when built with the boost.
That is the cheapest use of the saw in the game, because you can sit three tiers ahead of your base level indefinitely. The Sailing Construction guide covers the recipes and what they cost.
Common mistakes
Drinking two visible boosts. Tea after stew, or stew after tea. The second one replaces the first and usually lowers it.
Boosting the room instead of the furniture. Rooms need the visible boost. Furniture inside them can use the saw. Plan them as two separate problems.
Assuming the boost is permanent. The build is permanent once made. The level is not. If a hotspot needs to be rebuilt, or you want to upgrade it later, you will need the boost again.
Building an upgrade chain out of order. Jewellery boxes, portal nexuses and pools are sequential. Boosting to the top tier does not let you skip the ones below it, so budget boosts for every step.
Forgetting the saw is destroyed on death. Take it into anything dangerous and you are walking back to Brimstail.
Using a spicy stew for a single level. A trimmed tea is guaranteed, free after the first kitchen, and takes about a minute to make.
Boosts do not change your training plan
None of this affects how you train. A boosted level cannot be used to unlock a faster training method for a full session, because the boost expires and the method requirement does not.
What boosts change is the level you need to stop at. Reaching an ornate pool at base 82 rather than 90 saves nearly three million experience, which is the largest single saving available in the skill.
Put your current experience and a target of 82, 83 or 84 into the OSRS Construction Calculator to see what each boosted target actually costs, and the 1-99 training methods guide for how to get there.
Sources for this Construction boosts guide
Boost sizes, visibility and stacking rules come from the OSRS Wiki temporary skill boost table for Construction and the crystal saw item page, including the saw’s charge behaviour, its Sailing and STASH exceptions and the Mahogany Homes exclusion. Spicy stew dose ranges come from the spicy stew page. Tea tiers, shelf requirements and the kitchen recipe come from the cup of tea pages. Boosted build floors are the wiki’s own stated figures on each furniture page. No prices are quoted in this guide, so nothing here goes stale with the market.