Crystal Key OSRS Guide

Intro

Throughout your journey across Runescape, you will obtain a lot of keys. Many are quest-specific, and you or the Wise Old Man can dump them when the quest is complete. Others are worth keeping around on a steel key ring for regular use (Like the Dusty and Brass keys).

But there are some keys in Runescape that you should never throw away and can’t place on a key ring. These are one-time-only keys. These typically open up doors or containers that lead to boss fights or treasure. One such key is the crystal key.

The crystal key is just one of those items that any Runescape veteran will recognize instantly. But for those new to Runescape, it might be a bit of an unknown.

What is the crystal key exactly, and what is its’ usage? I’m no Sora, and this isn’t Kingdom Hearts, but allow me to unlock this mystery door for you. It’s time to learn everything about the crystal key. 

What Does the Crystal Key Do?

Brace yourself for the biggest plot twist since Aizen, but the crystal key unlocks things. Shocking, I know. 

Specifically, there are two chests in Gielinor that you can only open with the crystal key. 

Taverley Crystal Chest

Directly south of the Witch’s House is a house with a druid inside. Also inside this house is a chest. Despite its’ unassuming appearance, this is the famous crystal chest of Runescape. You can only open the crystal chest with a crystal key.

What Does the Crystal Chest Contain?

Opening the crystal chest will always give the player at least an uncut dragonstone. And that makes the crystal chest great for Ironman accounts, as dragonstones aren’t the easiest to obtain and are raw components for useful items like the Ring of Wealth, Amulet of Glory, and Combat bracelet. 

Along with the uncut dragonstone, players have 11 possible drop tables they can roll when looting the crystal chest. 

Possibility 1: Spinach roll & coins

• • Spinach roll
  • 2,000 coins

Possibility 2: Runes

• • 50 air runes
  • 50 water runes
  • 50 earth runes
  • 50 fire runes
  • 50 body runes
  • 50 mind runes
  • 10 chaos runes
  • 10 death runes
  • 10 cosmic runes
  • 10 nature runes
  • 10 law runes

Possibility 3: Gems 

• • 2 rubies
  • 2 diamonds

Possibility 4: Runite bars

• • 3 runite bars

Possibility 5: Crystal key halves & coins

• • Loop half of key
  • Tooth half of key
  • 750 coins

Possibility 6: Iron ore

• • 150 iron ore (noted)

Possibility 7: Coal

• • 100 coal (noted)

Possibility 8: Raw swordfish & coins

• • 5 raw swordfish 
  • 1,000 coins

Possibility 9: Adamant square shield

• • Adamant square shield

Possibility 10: Rune platelegs or plateskirt

• • Rune platelegs (If male character)
  • Rune plateskirt (If female character)

Possibility 11: Nothing (Ouch)

• • With the exceptions of the rune equipment and key halves possibilities, all multi-drop possibilities will give you every item from those drop tables.

Enhanced Crystal Key

Deep in Elven territory exists a chest; an Elven Crystal Chest. To open it, players need to have an enhanced crystal key. 

Players must use a crystal key and ten crystal shards at a singing bowl to get an enhanced crystal key. They can then open up the Elven Crystal Chest found on the upper level of the Tower of Voices in Prifddinas. Unlike the standard crystal chest, the Elven Crystal Chest has a distinct appearance and is actually crystal. 

Just reaching Prifddinas, however, has some pretty steep requirements. Just entering the city requires completion of Song of the Elves, a Grandmaster quest with relatively high skill requirements and many quest requirements just to begin.

What Does The Elven Crystal Chest Contain?

With all the trouble it takes to reach this chest, it had better be worth it. Like the standard crystal chest, the Elven Crystal Chest will always reward the player with an uncut dragonstone. It has 15 possible drop tables players can roll (Don’t worry; nothing isn’t one of them).

Possibility 1: Uncut onyx

• • Uncut onyx

Possibility 2: Dragonstone armour

• • Dragonstone full helm
  • Dragonstone platebody
  • Dragonstone platelegs
  • Dragonstone gauntlets
  • Dragonstone boots

Possibility 3: Crystal key halves

• • Uncut dragonstone
  • 10,000-15,000 coins
  • Loop half of key
  • Tooth half of key

Possibility 4: Gems

• • Uncut dragonstone
  • 8-13 uncut rubies (Noted)
  • 5-8 uncut diamonds (Noted)

Possibility 5: Crystal key

• • Uncut dragonstone
  • Crystal key

Possibility 6: Coins

• • Uncut dragonstone
  • 30,000-50,000 coins
  • 8-13 crystal shards

Possibility 7: Crystal shards

• • Uncut dragonstone
  • 20-30 crystal shards

Possibility 8: Rune platelegs or plateskirt

• • Uncut dragonstone
  • 4-6 crystal shards
  • Rune platelegs
  • Rune plateskirt

Possibility 9: Runes

• • Uncut dragonstone
  • 50-100 cosmic runes
  • 50-100 chaos runes
  • 50-100 nature runes
  • 50-100 law runes
  • 50-100 death runes

Possibility 10: Yew seed

• • Uncut dragonstone
  • Yew seed

Possibility 11: Raw sharks

• • Uncut dragonstone
  • 50-100 raw sharks (noted)

Possibility 12: Gold ore

• • Uncut dragonstone
  • 350-500 gold ore

Possibility 13: Runite ore

• • Uncut dragonstone
  • 7-10 runite ore

Possibility 14: Crystal acorn

• • Uncut dragonstone
  • 1-2 crystal acorns

Possibility 15: Dragon equipment

• • Uncut dragonstone
  • Dragon platelegs
  • Dragon plateskirt
  • Shield left half

The removal of the chance of landing no additional rewards is sweet, as is Jagex slotting in an additional uncut dragonstone on every non-jackpot drop table.

How Do I Obtain a Crystal Key?

The easiest way to obtain a crystal key is by purchasing one from the Grand Exchange or another player. The current going rate for crystal keys is about 20K GP each.

Alternatively, you can combine a tooth half of key and a loop half of key to make a crystal key. Both halves go for around 10K GP each these days. 

Ironmen players may have some trouble getting their hands on crystal keys. The complete key and halves are not dropped reliably by any monsters until the late game.

The best options for Ironmen would be Magpie implings (Which require 65 Hunter before you can capture them) or the seldom-played Gnome Restuarant minigame. Magpies drop key halves at a 1/20 rate, and you have around a 1/28 rate of getting them from Gnome Restuarant.

How Do I Obtain an Enhanced Crystal Key?

You have to combine a crystal key and 10 crystal shards via a singing bowl to get an enhanced crystal key. You can obtain crystal shards in numerous ways by engaging in activities around Prifddinas. These activities include killing guards, defeating Zalcano, and catching crystal implings. 

The easiest way of immediately obtaining crystal shards is by purchasing one of five crystal seeds on the Grand Exchange. You can exchange these seeds with the NPC Amrod, and he will convert them into varying amounts of crystal shards.

Some of these are ludicrously expensive, like the enhanced crystal weapon seed, which is presently 151 mil GP. The crystal weapon seed, however, is only 342K, and you can convert it into 10 crystal shards. 

If you’re an Iron Man, getting both crystal shards and crystal keys will not be easy, making the enhanced crystal key not worth your time. And that leads into the next section.

Are the Crystal Chest and Elven Crystal Chest Worth Opening?

Everyone should open the crystal chest at least once as it is a task for the Falador Medium Diary. Besides that? If you’re an Iron Man, the crystal chest is good for some uncut dragonstones. But if you’re not an Iron Man, the crystal chest is mostly just good for nostalgia. 

Some players in the community fondly refer to OSRS as 2007Scape. Here’s the problem; it’s not 2007. The game is far different from what it was like when we were kids.

The contents of this 20-year-old chest haven’t changed in the two decades since it came out. The prices of said items sure have. 

Spinach rolls were only good for scammers in the pre-GE days who would try to pass them off as rare items. Diamonds used to go for over 10K GP each but now go for less than half that.

Rune platelegs/skirts were nice for the GP gains, but you can purchase both from several stores across Gielinor, so even Ironmen won’t be overly hype for those. The crystal chest is just one of many victims of time that haven’t aged well. 

To give you an example of how outdated the crystal chest is in 2022, look no further than the YouTube channel MrNoSleepOSRS.

He opened up 25,000 crystal chests three years ago, which cost over half a billion GP and only made an 8.5 mil profit. I reckon if he attempted to do this now, he’d lose money.  

The Elven Crystal Chest is arguably worse. Unlike the crystal chest, it’s a modern piece of content but has even more problems than its’ predecessor. 

The first problem is how hard Jagex decided to gatekeep this chest. By the time you even reach the area where it’s accessible, your account is probably well-sorted out GP-wise.

The jackpots of the chest are Dragonstone armour pieces. Some of them are worth over 1 million GP each. And that would be pretty cool.

Well, except for the fact that they all have a drop rate of 1/2,500. And that includes the boots, which are only worth around 100K. Getting those would probably just make me mad. 

Iron Men haven’t a chance of getting the complete set, and everyone else can easily just buy it from the GE. The rest of the rewards are useful, but again, it’s too late game.

It reminds me of games like the Elder Scrolls or Fallout, where containers need level 100 Lockpicking and only contains mid-level at best items. Thanks, mate. This stuff would’ve been useful 75 hours ago. 

The second mistake is the crystal shard requirement. There are a lot of things you can use crystal shards for, and pretty much all of them rank higher in importance than gambling on the Elven Crystal Chest.

What would you like more? To use your crystal shards to gamble on a chest with an average loot value of 54K or on an eternal teleport crystal for unlimited teleportation to Lletya and Prifddinas? 

The EdB0ys did a loot video from 100 Elven Crystal Chest two years ago, and he spent around 12 million GP and ended up with only 9 million worth in loot. As with the crystal chest loot video, results would likely be worse now as prices of items in the chest have dropped significantly. 

Sorry Jagex, but this piece of endgame content is a misfire.

FAQs

Conclusion

Part of me hates covering outdated elements of OSRS as it forces me to take off the rose-tinted glasses and smell the cadava berries. There are a lot of things in OSRS that are so decrepit that you can use the Crumble Undead spell on them. The crystal chest falls into this category. 

There’s not much Jagex can do to change this either. Sure, they could buff the items, but there’s no real reason to do so. But the Elven Crystal Chest? Yeah, Jagex should do something about that.

There are a ton of tradeable crystal items, and the only ones in the dang thing are crystal shards and crystal acorns.

Why does an uncut onyx have a ludicrous 1/10,000 drop rate when it’s not even the most expensive item in the chest? Why isn’t the jackpot item of the Elven Crystal Chest an Elven crystal item? 

I suspect Jagex is too busy with the upcoming Raids 3 (Not the Shadow Legends kind) to care about buffing the Elven Crystal Chest, but one can dream. 

Here are other interesting readings for you:

• OSRS Bracelet Of Slaughter Guide
• Ring Of Wealth OSRS Guide
• Smoke Devil OSRS Guide [2022]: The Mutant Cousin Of Dust Devils
• Combat Bracelet OSRS Guide

• About
• Latest Posts

Xavier Geitz

Xavier has been playing Runescape for over 15 years. He's had periods of absence like every seasoned Runescape player, but he always came back. Whether it was Varrock General Store wars, sniping every uncut gem in stock, or juking players in Fist of Guthix, Runescape has provided Xavier with endless fond memories. Runescape is an irreplaceable piece of nostalgic goodness that Xavier will play until the end of time.

Latest posts by Xavier Geitz (see all)

• Anachronia RS3 Guide - December 9, 2022
• Recipe for Disaster OSRS Guide - November 20, 2022
• Tasks to Block OSRS Guide - November 18, 2022