Free-to-play Crafting training
From the RuneScape Wiki, the wiki for all things RuneScape
Crafting in free play (F2P) worlds is not very hard to train, but training it requires patience and a lot of cash. The main use of F2P crafting is to craft valuable gems into a variety of jewellery, but it still incurs only slow profits. Compared to smithing, crafting has a similar loss but profitable training is much faster, though it needs much more base fund for money making through crafting.
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[edit] Quests and Spinning Wool
Starting at level 1, it is easier to start with the F2P quests related to crafting: Sheep Shearer and Goblin Diplomacy. This alone will give you 350 crafting experience points with no pre-requisites to start these quests.
As a part of the Sheep Shearer quest, players are asked to make balls of wool. Shears can be purchased from most general stores (for example, the general store by Lumbridge Castle), and the sheep are found to the north of Lumbridge. Balls of wool have other uses as well, and can be sold on the Grand Exchange for 46 coins each, giving some initial money to early crafters that will be needed later. These balls are also used for making amulets, so players may simply want to put these balls of wool in the bank.
Spinning up to about 200 pieces of wool to make the same number of balls of wool is also worthwhile, which will give you an additional 550 experience points, getting you to level 8, where you can do other tasks.
[edit] Clay processing
As the materials for making pottery can be easily obtained by a low-level player for little or no cost and be made relatively quickly, this is certainly a recommended method of training for beginning players wishing to improve their crafting skill.
Players can purchase clay for 133 coins each at the Grand Exchange, or it can be mined from several locations in F2P areas. Mining clay has no mining skill requirements, and is a fairly easy way to level mining for the early levels of mining as well. One mining spot that is fairly easy to get at for new players can be found south-west of Varrock and north-west from the Champions' Guild building. Clay respawns very quickly... usually as fast as it can be clicked to mine the rock unless a player has very high mining levels. The spots for clay are usually open with comparatively little competition with other players for these mining spots. This is also a relatively short distance to the Varrock west bank, and has no aggressive creatures to worry about that would attack new players.
On the off chance that the mine near Varrock is busy with several players seeking to mine clay, other mining sites to obtain clay include the mine between Falador and Rimmington (2 clay rocks), and in the Dwarven Mines below Falador (3 rocks). For high level crafters, there are also six rocks of clay that can be mined at the Crafting Guild, but that requires level 40 crafting in order to enter the guild.
Soft clay is usually more expensive than the "hard clay", and currently sells on the Grand Exchange for 246 coins each. Because of this, it is recommended that F2P players make their own soft clay. There is a well almost immediately next to a bank in Edgeville where they can fill the buckets with water, making 14 pieces of soft clay with one click, and re-filling the buckets with just one other click. Buckets can be purchased at a general store, which is also near the bank at Edgeville. Players can usually travel between the well and the bank while running and recover the run energy while making the soft clay and exchanging the soft clay with more "hard" clay from the bank. Other sources of water close to a bank can be found in other places as well, including near the Varrock east bank and the Falador west bank (near the barber shop).
New players would find that it is easier to produce clay items by travelling between Edgeville bank and Barbarian village or alternatively Draynor bank and the pottery kiln located in Draynor.
At level 8, players can make unfired bowls, as the best clay item a F2P player can produce in terms of experience. For every 14 bowls produced (a full load), players gain about 415 experience points, assuming an average success rate of 90%. As you increase your crafting levels, the success rate of making a bowl will improve to 100%. For players wishing to sell the bowls on the Grand Exchange, it would be recommended to fill them with water first for increased value.
[edit] Silver item production
For players who have reached at least level 16 crafting, an option opens up for crafting items out of silver. For players who lack mining and smithing skills, this can be a rather expensive option, so it would be recommended to at least get these two other skills to the point you can work on silver. Silver can be mined at level 20 and smithed at level 20 smithing. Even if players purchase silver bars or have those bars given to them by another player, having that mining and smithing level will at least give several different options.
Silver bars can be pucrhased for 311 coins each and silver ore for 286 coins each, so it does take a substantial number of coins to be seriously engaged in this crafting method without obtaining the ore yourself.
Silver ore for low-level F2P crafters can be found at the following locations:
- South-east Varrock Mine: 3 rocks
- Desert Chasm Mine (north of Al-Kharid): 5 rocks (and level 14 scorpions that attack players with less than combat level 29)
- Edgeville Dungeon Mine: 3 rocks (and level 22/25 aggressive skeletons requiring higher combat levels to have them leave you alone)
- Crafting Guild: 6 rocks (but requires crafting level 40 to enter)
All of these locations usually have several players competing to mine these rocks, particularly the mine south-east from Varrock. The crafting guild usually isn't quite so difficult to mine the silver, as most players who have that crafting level are usually seeking after the seven rocks with gold ore instead. There is a 6th rock of silver ore that can only be mined once in the chasm mine: See the Exhausted silver ore for details.
Silver ore is usually smelted and then crafted at once by experienced crafters, and this can be done at any furnace used for smelting ores. Commonly this is done at the furnace in Falador, but the furnace at Al-Kharid is even closer to a bank for serious crafters wishing to rapidly raise their skill levels. A store that sells crafting supplies is also found in Al-Kharid, with the only other F2P crafting store found in Rimmington and quite distant from any furnace. Moulds are required to make silver items, and they must be in your inventory in order to make the silver items.
Typically, players will bring 27 pieces of silver ore to a furnace, smelt the silver ore into silver bars, and then players will click on the silver bar and "use" the bar on the furnace to make the silver items, depending on which mold that player happens to have in their inventory.
Unstrung symbols require a Holy mould and can be made for 50 experience points each, yielding a full load of 27 symbols for 1350 crafting experience points and 370 smithing experience points. The product unstrung symbols can be strung with a ball of wool for an additional 4 crafting experience and blessed by Brother Jered in the Monastery, provided the player has level 31 prayer. Having Brother Jered bless these amulets is a very tedious process and generally not worth the extra effort, as the blessed amulet is only worth 98 coins. Keeping the symbols unstrung is a very good idea for crafters on a budget, as they sell for around 260gp each. This allows a player to buy silver bars and craft them with minimal loss of coins, and as such is an excellent way of training.
At level 23, a tiara can be made for 52.5 experience each, where a full load of 27 tiaras yields a total of 1417 crafting experience.
It should be noted that most of these silver items are considered junk when you are through making them and are difficult to sell in large volume to other players, especially on the Grand Exchange. There are players who collect these items as junk and they are useful when trying to purchase items that have a street value outside of the normal trading range.
[edit] Leather working
Crafting items out of leather is something that can be done by players of any level, as Leather gloves can be made at crafting level 1. In terms of experience per piece of leather, it is suggested that players wait until they reach level 28 when they can make a Hard leather body. This give 35 experience for each one made.
The basic resource to make leather items is the Cowhide, which can be obtained by killing a cow. For most F2P worlds this is a common combat training creature and indeed one of the best low-level multi-skill tasks that can be performed with the burial of bones to increase Prayer, combat training for the various combat arts (including Range and even Magic), Raw beef for Cooking, and of course to use the cowhides for training crafting.
Places where players commonly engage in slaughtering cows include the field on the road between Lumbridge and Varrock (banking in Al-Kharid is recommended if you have completed the Prince Ali Rescue quest), a field directly north of Lumbridge where players can send the cowhides and raw beef to the bank by using Beefy Bill, and a cow field between Falador and Draynor Village, where players can rapidly travel to the field with an Explorer's ring upon completing the medium level tasks of the Lumbridge and Draynor Diary. An additional group of cows of note can be found next to the Crafting Guild. It does not require entry into the Crafting Guild in order to use these cows, but this is quite distant from any bank for F2P players.
Cowhides are turned into leather at a tanner, of which there are only two in F2P worlds. The easiest to use is found in Al-Kharid and operated by Ellis, who will exchange the cowhides for Soft leather or Hard leather for 1 coin or 3 coins respectively. For players simply wishing to bypass the hassle of slaughtering cows, they can purchase cowhides for 193 coins each, or even buy the soft leather for 238 coins and hard leather for 251 coins. Another tanner can be found upstairs in the Crafting Guild, which is convenient for players wishing to make a small number of leather items for personal use.
In addition, players must have a needle and thread in order to craft leather items, and these must be in the inventory in order to be used. Each spool of thread is good for between 4 and 5 leather items made (usually 4). Thread is "stackable", so it is useful to have close to a hundred or more in your inventory before you start to make several items at once. A needle and thread can be purchased at a crafting store, which are found in Al-Kharid and Rimmington.
Soft leather (also sometimes simply called "leather") is used to make most of the items that a F2P player can make, of which the best experience can be obtained by making leather chaps for 27 experience each at level 18. Hard leather body is the best leather item a F2P player can craft for 35 experience points each, available when a player reaches level 28 crafting. This requires hard leather, however.
If you wish to gain combat experience, then go to the cow field near the crafting guild (south-west of Falador), equip a brown apron and bring money, a needle and thread, then kill cows for their hides. When a full inventory of hides has been obtained, tan them in the crafting guild, then drop.
For players trying to "power level" crafting, it can either be done simply by sitting in a bank and going through a large stack of leather at once and simply exchanging the finished goods for leather at the bank booth, or for players tanning leather they can bring 25 cowhides together with 75 coins to Ellis and make the hard leather bodies on the trip back to the bank. That would be one slot for the needle, another for thread, a third for the coins, and the other 25 for the cowhides. Alternatively, players can bring 27 cowhides at once for tanning and then make the cowhides at once.
About 1000 cowhides turned into hard leather and then made into hard leather bodies will give 35,000 experience points and can be done in less than an hour, and plan on an extra hour for turning cowhides into hard leather. For players who are at least level 28, this would put them well over level 40 for entrance into the Crafting Guild for many other options in terms of making items with the crafting skill.
[edit] Crafting Guild
The Crafting Guild is one sign of distinction among players who have been significantly training their crafting skills and opens up additional resources to players wishing to train their crafting skills. The only significant drawback for the Crafting Guild is that the nearest bank is quite distant for F2P players, and is somewhat incomplete for making jewelry as there is no furnace for smelting ores there.
Remember that it requires a brown apron in order to enter into the guild. This apron can be purchased either on the Grand Exchange or from Thessalia's Fine Clothes shop in Varrock.
There is a mine inside of the guild area that includes seven gold rocks, six silver rocks, and six clay rocks. Of these, usually there are players who are mining the gold rocks, with only some players occasionally mining silver or clay.
Other resources at the guild include several sheep just to the north of the guild (some shears can be found on a barrel inside of the guild), a cow pasture for collecting leather, and several tools to help crafters inside of the guild as well. A spinning wheel is available to turn the wool into balls of wool, and a tanner who will make leather from cowhides (for the same price that Ellis charges). The crafting guild also includes the full tools necessary for making clay items, including a sink with water to make soft clay, a potter's wheel to make clay products, and a kiln. There is even a jug that players can fill with water in order to make the soft clay. In addition, all of the moulds necessary for making F2P jewelry are available inside of the guild as free spawns. A crafting store is nearby in Rimmington for a needle and thread if a player wants to craft leather items.
Running between the guild and bank can happen, but an explorer's ring 3 might help (with various requirements) with the cabbage teleport to speed up the depositing of resources in the Draynor Village bank. With level 40 Mining, players can mine gold ores in the guild and sell that in Grand Exchange, the money used for buying more silver ores. The current ratio of value of gold to silver ore is 1.378.
[edit] Jewellery making
Jewellery making is the ultimate goal of F2P crafting. Making amulets with gems consists of several step, considering:
- Buy or obtain gem,
- Buy or obtain gold bar
- Cut the gem,
- Smelt the gem and gold bar in a furnace,
- Use ball of wool on the amulet to string it,
- Sell it.
For jewellery other than amulets, step 5 is omitted, for pure gold jewellery, step 1 and 3 are omitted.
[edit] Buying or obtaining gems
Gems can only be obtained in a few ways for F2P players: Random events, purchasing from Grand Exchange, purchasing from shops or players, monster drops, extracting from rocks while mining, or the sapphire spawn in deep wilderness. Uncut gems can be cut for crafting experience, but cut gems are much cheaper if being purchased. Below is a list of values for uncut and cut gems based on prices at the Grand Exchage:
| Gemstone | Uncut Value | Cut Value | Loss |
|---|---|---|---|
 Sapphire | 1,222 coins | 804 coins | 418 coins |
 Emerald | 2,121 coins | 1,236 coins | 885 coins |
 Ruby | 4524 coins | 3451 coins | 1073 coins |
 Diamond | 15600 coins | 13900 coins | 1700 coins |
Notice that the value of gems drops significantly by being cut.
Various monsters drop gems, including flesh crawlers and lesser demons. There was speculation that the Stronghold of Security had a significantly higher rate of random events, many people chose to kill flesh crawlers there and wait for random events, although the popularity has dropped since Jagex fixed the bug, preventing unfair advantages training there. Uncut gems are always given as single unnoted item but noted gems are stackable notes, ranging from 2-5 gems. Please see the random events page for more details.
Gems are also "found" by players when they are mining ores. There is a random chance (depending on the ore being extracted, your mining level, and a few other factors) that when a player attempts to mine ore that a gem will be extracted instead of that ore. Often players are not even interested in these gemstones as they take up additional bank space and that is not why they are trying to mine. When that happens, these players simply dump these gemstones on the ground and can be picked up by other players. This is quite common inside of the Mining Guild, particularly with Sapphires and Emeralds.
Gem shops such as Herquin's Gems in Falador and the Gem Trader in Al-Kharid used to be an occasional source of gemstones, particularly on F2P worlds. Unfortunately due to changes in how shops have worked with the personalized shop update, these shops only have marginal value as places to sell gemstones on the occasion that the prices crash on the Grand Exchange. That seems highly unlikely to happen.
Unless a player is very strong in combat, the sapphire spawn in deep wilderness should not be used. Should one take the risk, world hopping should be used.
[edit] Buying or obtaining gold bars
Gold bars can be obtained in two ways: smelting gold ore which needs 40 smithing or directly buying them from the GE. The current price of gold ore is 394 gold coins and gold bars are 167 gold coins each. This gives purchasers a distinct advantage, since the difference in the GE price is because many members like to work their Smithing skill by using the Goldsmithing gauntlets, a reward from the Family crest quest that increases the Smithing experience to 52.2 points per bar. Thus, gold bars should be bought directly from the Grand Exchange.
If you have a magic level of at least 33, you can go to the basement of the Varrock bank near the GE and use Telekinetic Grab on the gold bar or gold ore. Note that Telekinetic Grab consumes a Law rune, having a value of 433 coins. This would usually offer a loss of value in terms of simply selling the runes and buying gold bars.
[edit] Cutting gems
Cutting uncut sapphires, emeralds, rubys and diamonds needs a minimum crafting level of 20, 27, 34, or 43, and yields 50, 67, 85, or 107.5 XP for each gem. One should stock on uncut gems obtained from random events even though the player does not have the crafting experience to cut them. The cost saved in time or money would help a lot in later training. A chisel is needed for cutting. Buying uncut gems for cutting is not worthwhile because, although the experience is very fast, the power levelling cost is very high, up to 7 coins per XP. Using uncut gems from random events reduces the problem, though the theoretical loss is equal.
For players who have a great many coins that they wish to "burn through" in order to power-level their crafting skill, cutting gemstones is one method to very rapidly raise crafting experience. About 1000-1500 gemstones can be cut each hour, where cutting this many diamonds will yield about 150,000 experience points. There are cheaper ways to earn crafting experience, but this is something that some players with considerable wealth have been known to use.
[edit] Smelting jewellery
A furnace close to a bank should be chosen to mass-produce jewellery. An amulet mould, necklace mould or ring mould is brought along with an equal number of gold bars and cut gems. The closest furnaces for F2P players are the Al Kharid furnace or Falador furnace. A detailed experience table can be seen in the Crafting article. Rings require the lowest level to craft, necklaces give the best reward of cash, and amulets bear the maximum experience and highest requirement, while carrying some inconvenience as stringing is needed. Gold jewellery is much cheaper and yields much lower experience, which is not recommended for low level players. Gold bars are expensive and yield low experience points compared to silver jewellery.
A way to make a small profit and gain experience (although not much) is to buy gold bars on the Grand Exchange and smelt them into gold rings (or even gold necklaces). They can be sold immediately for small profit. This can be done at low crafting level, and 15-20XP are gained making each ring (or necklace). Gold rings are a tertiary component for members training Summoning, so they are in a modest demand on the Grand Exchange.
[edit] Stringing amulets
Ball of wool can be bought at GE for 46 coins each, or made using wool on a spinning wheel. Casual players can take advantage of Fred the farmer's farm. Sheep inhabit the area and there is a shears spawn available nearby. The closest spinning wheel from the farm is on the first floor of the castle.
[edit] Selling jewellery
F2P players can sell jewellery at Grum's Gold Exchange for profit and a quick sale. The shop has a lot of necklaces, then rings and lastly amulets. Regardless of the kind of jewellery, world hopping is recommended to maximise profit. Amulets should be made for casual training, as the stock is often low in most worlds. Necklaces should be made by money makers. Though the shop is rather busy, there is a constant need of necklaces from P2P worlds to enchant. Both gold rings and gold necklaces without jewels are often hard to sell because they cannot be enchanted and they don't make much profit even when the stock is low.
Gold rings, however are the tertiary ingredient in infusing Magpie pouches so they do sell on the Grand Exchange.
[edit] Enchanting
With sufficient magic level, amulets with gems can be enchanted. It sacrifices a large portion of profit by enchanting it. The cost of cosmic runes and a decrease in value of amulet take away from the final price. It is not recommended to do so unless the amulet is for personal use.
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