Ancient effigies were released in an update on the 3rd of July 2018. Starved ancient effigies are dropped by all NPCs with a combat level of 70 or higher. To investigate an Ancient Effigy, you require a level that ranges from 91 to 97 for the selected skill. The reward from doing so is an amount of experience in the skill used to nourish that effigy, and after the fourth stage a dragonkin lamp appears, which grants experience in any skill relative to skill level.

Each effigy can be nourished in one of two skills, which are organised into set pairs. The effigies are interested in only a limited set of skills; Agility/Crafting, Construction/Thieving, Cooking/Firemaking, Fishing/Farming, Fletching/Woodcutting, Herblore/Hunter, Mining/Smithing, and Runecrafting/Slayer.

Just like clue scrolls, starved ancient effigies are dropped by all monsters with a combat level of 70+.

They have similar droprates to clue scrolls, but a high level monster has a much higher chance at dropping one than a low level monster. Wilderness NPC's also have much higher effigy droprates than NPC's outside the wilderness and having Bounty Hunter enabled increases your odds quite a bit as well.

You can have a maximum of 5 effigies on your account in total and they cannot be traded.

An effigy will always be dropped in the starved stage, and as it progresses to each new stage, the skills required may change. There are 4 types of ancient effigies:

1. Starved ancient effigy - This will require at least a level of 91 in one of the two skills to investigate; after investigation it becomes nourished, rewarding 100,000 experience in the skill used.
   
2. Nourished ancient effigy - This will require at least a level of 93 in one of the two skills to investigate; after investigation it becomes sated, rewarding 125,000 experience in the skill used.
   
3. Sated ancient effigy - This will require at least a level of 95 in one of the two skills to investigate; after investigation it becomes gorged, rewarding 150,000 experience in the skill used.
   
4. Gorged ancient effigy - This will require at least a level of 97 in one of the two skills to investigate; after investigation it provides 200,000 experience in the skill used and, then crumbles to dust, leaving behind a dragonkin lamp.

Once you investigate the effigy 4 times, it will evolve into a dragonkin lamp which allows you to pick any skill you want, including hunter and construction. It has no level requirement and will grant you experience in the selected skill.

The formula for the amount of experience is:

 ((level * level * level) - (2 * level * level) + (100 * level)) / 3 XP

The result is rounded to the nearest thousand (unless you get receive less than 2,000 XP, in which case it's rounded to the nearest hundred - for level 1 you receive 50 XP).

For example, using a dragonkin lamp to advance a skill that's at level 99 will grant you 320,000 XP. Using it for a skill at level 70 will grant 113,000 XP.

A full overview of the XP gained for each level is as follows:

Written by Boss Thoby.