You’re standing in the Ectofuntus, staring at that massive, spinning machine of death. You’ve got a backpack full of Dragon bones and a desperate need for Prayer experience. Most players just start clicking, but then the realization hits. This thing is slow. Like, really slow. If you’re wondering how many bones can you put in bone grinder osrs at once, the answer is frustratingly simple: one. Just one.
That’s the reality of Morytania’s most famous bone-crunching machine. It doesn’t matter if you have 28 bones or 2,000; the hopper only accepts a single bone per interaction. It’s a bottleneck that has driven Runescape players crazy for two decades. You click the hopper, you watch the animation, you wind the wheel, you empty the bin. Rinse and repeat. It's a manual labor simulator hidden inside a fantasy RPG.
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Why the Bone Grinder Limits Your Gains
The Ectofuntus was released back in 2004. Back then, getting 400% experience was an insane buff. The developers didn't want you to just dump a whole inventory and walk away. They wanted you to earn those ecto-tokens. Because of this, the "load" capacity is strictly capped.
You can technically "fill" the hopper with one bone, but you can’t stack them. If you try to use another bone on the hopper while it’s already full, the game basically tells you to hold your horses. You have to grind the current bone before the machine is ready for the next one. This creates a rhythmic, albeit soul-crushing, gameplay loop. Load. Wind. Bin. Load. Wind. Bin. Honestly, it’s one of the most click-intensive activities in the game if you're trying to be efficient.
The Bone Grinder Mechanics You’re Probably Missing
While the capacity is one, the efficiency varies based on your actual inputs.
A lot of people think they have to wait for every single pixel of the animation to finish. You don't. You can actually "queue" your movements to a degree, though the machine itself has hard-coded delays. The grinder consists of three distinct parts: the hopper at the top, the grinding wheel on the side, and the collection bin at the bottom.
- The Hopper: This is where that single bone goes.
- The Wheel: You have to click this to turn the bone into "bonemeal."
- The Bin: This is where you collect the dust.
The bin has a slightly different rule than the hopper. While you can only grind one bone at a time, the bin can actually hold up to 13 units of bonemeal before it must be emptied. This is a huge detail people miss. You don't have to empty the bin after every single grind. You can stand there, loading and winding, loading and winding, until you've processed 13 bones. Only then do you have to click the bin to scoop it all out into your pots. This 13-bone limit is the closest thing the Ectofuntus has to "bulk" processing.
The Morytania Diary Shortcut
If you’re doing this without the Morytania Legs 2 or higher, you’re basically playing on hard mode. Once you complete the Medium Morytania Diary, Robin (that guy in the green hat) will exchange your bones for bonemeal and slime automatically.
He does this 13 times a day for the Medium diary, 26 for Hard, and 39 for Elite.
It’s an instant skip. No grinding. No winding. No bins.
If you have a massive stack of bones, this is obviously not a long-term solution, but for daily gains, it’s the only way to bypass the "one bone at a time" rule. For everyone else, you're stuck with the manual grind.
Comparing the Grinder to Chaos Altar
Why even bother with how many bones you can put in the grinder when the Chaos Altar exists? This is the question that haunts the Ectofuntus.
The Chaos Altar in the Wilderness gives the same 350% experience boost as a Gilded Altar, but with a 50% chance to not consume the bone. This mathematically works out to an average of 700% experience per bone. The Ectofuntus gives 400%.
So, why use the grinder? Ironmen.
Ironmen often need the Ecto-tokens for things like the Bonecrusher or just to unlock the Ghostspeak amulet benefits early on. If you’re a main account, the bone grinder is almost never worth your time unless you have a deep-seated hatred for the Wilderness or a very specific obsession with the lore of Necrovarus. The time it takes to grind 28 bones, fill 28 buckets of slime, and then worship the altar is nearly triple the time it takes to use them at a POH altar.
Breaking Down the Math of a Grinding Trip
Let’s look at a standard inventory of 14 bones and 14 pots.
You run to the hopper.
You click 14 times to load and 14 times to wind.
You click the bin twice (since it holds 13, then you do the final 1).
Total time? Roughly two minutes.
In that same time at the Chaos Altar, you could have burned through two full inventories of bones with double the experience yield.
It’s not just about the capacity of the machine; it’s about the "tick" delay. Every time you interact with the grinder, the game forces a delay of a few ticks. This is why it feels "clunky." It is. It’s 2004 code preserved in amber.
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Surprising Details About Different Bone Types
Does the type of bone change how many you can put in? No.
Whether it’s a standard chicken bone or a Superior Dragon Bone, the hopper remains a "one-in, one-out" system. However, the experience waste is much higher on expensive bones. If you misclick or lose a tick while grinding a Superior Dragon Bone, you're losing out on the massive XP-per-hour rates that bone is capable of. Most high-level players suggest only using the Ectofuntus for things like Wyvern bones or Dragon bones if you're an Ironman who desperately needs the tokens.
Practical Steps for Efficient Grinding
If you are determined to use the bone grinder, you need a rhythm.
- Bank at the nearby bank chest: Don't run back to Canifis. Use the Ectophial to teleport directly to the patch and walk a few steps north.
- The 13-Bone Rule: Always remember that the bin holds 13. Don't waste clicks emptying it every time. Load, wind, load, wind. Count it out.
- Buckets of Slime First: Fill your buckets of slime in the basement before you even touch the grinder. It’s better to have a stack of slime ready so you can do the worshiping phase in one continuous block of time.
- Key Remapping: If you're on RuneLite, use the "Menu Entry Swapper" to make sure your left-click is always the most efficient action on the hopper and the bin.
The Ectofuntus remains a relic of an older era of RuneScape. It represents a time when Prayer was a prestigious, slow-moving skill rather than something you could "power-level" in a few afternoons. While the "one bone" limit is a hurdle, understanding the 13-count bin capacity is the real secret to maintaining your sanity while training here.
Next Steps for Your Prayer Training:
Check your Morytania Diary progress immediately. If you aren't at least at the Medium tier, the manual grinding process is going to be significantly more tedious. Complete the "Ghosts Ahoy" quest if you haven't already to get the Ectophial, which is the only way to make the travel time to the bone grinder viable. If you're looking for raw speed and aren't an Ironman, pivot your training to the Chaos Altar in level 14 Wilderness; the risk is generally worth the 50% bone-saving proc, which far outclasses the 400% static bonus of the Ectofuntus.