OSRS Ironman Crafting Guide

OSRS Ironmen have access to numerous crafting leveling paths; some are fast, others are slow. How you decide to level up your crafting depends on your resource allocation, as some items are much easier to gather than others. Typically, the trading method will have less hourly experience if you can quickly acquire the items. 

Crafting is an essential skill for Ironman accounts in OSRS because it’s used to create staffs, range gear, and jewelry. It’s a skill that allows these already restricted accounts to become self-sufficient. This means you won’t need to go and kill monsters for hours, relying on the drop rate to receive an item. Instead, you can craft the items yourself in a matter of minutes. This will save you a lot of time and help out with requirements for quests and other activities. 

This OSRS Ironman crafting guide will showcase the top trading methods to quickly level the skill. Also, we’ll offer some money-making options, so you can high alch the items to gain GP.

Bottom Line Up Front

If you don’t have time to read the full guide, here’s a shortened version. First, you’ll want to complete the quests you can access based on your levels. This lets you blow by the early stages and get to the more advanced training methods.

The first training method is glassblowing, which is combining buckets of sand and soda ash on a furnace. Aftward, you use a glassblowing pipe to create various items. On the other hand, you can create battlestaffs, which offer more XP per hour. However, gathering the resources can be a lengthy process.

In addition, if you want to achieve level 99 the fastest way, then cut gemstones. They provide the best experience rates out of all the training methods. Also, you can do it by standing next to a bank so you won’t have to constantly run from point A to B.

I would stick to glassblowing since it has the lowest requirements to get started. However, you’ll get bored quite quickly if you’re like me. Therefore, I’d have a few bank setups that let me train crafting several ways to keep the skill fresh.

Crafting Quests

Quests are the best way to quickly skip past the first few levels while exploring the RuneScape world. Most of these are requirements for other quests, so you’ll be killing 2 birds with 1 stone by completing them. They have minimum requirements, so you’ll likely be able to start now unless you have a fresh account.

Crafting Quests To Get Started:

After completing these beginner-friendly quests, you’ll receive 12,768 experiences, giving you level 29 crafting. Now, you can continue to the more difficult quests or use one of the guides underneath. 

Intermediate Quests:

If you’ve done the previous storylines, you’ll have the crafting level requirements to complete the following quests. However, if you still need crafting experience to achieve the requirements, look at the leveling guides in the next sections.

Advanced Quests:

These quests provide the most experience but have high skill requirements. Also, they will take you all around Gielinor and places you’ve probably never visited, so I recommend trying them out. 

Best OSRS Crafting Experience 

There are several ways to earn crafting experience, from making gear to chiseling gemstones. Your strategy will depend on your current levels, items in the bank, and the time you have to spend on training the skill.

Overall Best: Molten Glass and Glassblowing

The fastest and easiest way to level crafting in OSRS is by making molten glass and using a glassblowing pipe to turn them into various items. 

How to get materials

First, you’ll need buckets of sand that you will turn to glass later. The fastest way to acquire the material is by taking a full inventory of buckets and going to the sandpit near the Yanille house portal. Gather the sand by using the buckets on them. Afterward, teleport to Camelot and bank the items. Repeat this process until you have a sufficient amount of sand. 

The next item you’ll need is soda ash, obtained by cooking seaweed or swamp weed. You can find seaweed on the coasts of Gielinor, making them easy to obtain. Swamp weed can be found in various areas in the Mort’ton swamps.

Alternatively, if you have GP, you can buy buckets of sand and soda ash from a charter. However, you may encounter a limit when purchasing the materials.

To acquire the glassblowing pipe, you can use the following methods:

• Talk to Fritz the Glassblower, who is found in south-western Entrana.
• Take from the tool store 3 in a player-owned house, requiring 35 construction.
• Taken from Grandpa Jack’s house after completing the Fishing Contest quest.
• Buy it from the Piscatoris Fishing Colony once you finish the Swan Song quest.
• Buy it from a charter ship.

Making Molten Glass

To make Molten Glass, you’ll need to use a bucket of sand and soda ash on a furnace. You’ll earn around 30k/XP per hour by just making the glass, which is perfect for blowing by the early levels. For maximum efficiency, have 14 of each item in your inventory when going on furnace runs to make the most molten glass.

The best place to do this task is at the Edgeville furnace because it’s next to a bank. Other great locations are Falador and Prifddinas.

Glassblowing

Now that you have your molten glass, you can begin glassblowing to earn significantly more experience. However, the XP varies depending on the item you can create. 

Here are the most efficient glassblowing items to craft:

Fastest: Cutting Gems

Cutting gemstones is the fastest way to level up crafting. Unfortunately, as an ironman, gathering the materials takes an extremely long time. Typically, it will take you 1 hour to mine roughly 800 gems. As a result, you’ll need to spend 5-6 hours of gem mining to acquire 1 hour’s worth of crafting training.

This makes cutting gems extremely unviable due to the long gathering process. However, if you are doing grouped ironman, you can all gather materials for the person specializing in crafting. You can acquire over 2,500 gems per hour, making the training method viable. 

Moreover, you’ll encounter monsters that drop gems if you train slayer or combat abilities. This is a brilliant way to collect gems since you train other skills simultaneously. 

How to get materials

The best way to gather gems is to mine the stones in Shilo Village Mine. The bank is nearby, so you can quickly deposit the gems and run back to repeat the process. To achieve maximum efficiency, it’s best to use Karamja gloves 3 and a crystal pickaxe. Also, to access the gemstones, you’ll need to complete the Shilo Village quest.

Furthermore, you’ll want to complete the hard Karamja diary because you’ll gain access to the underground mining area. This place has an additional 48 gem veins and a deposit chest. By using this area, you can boost your gems per hour to around 1,400.

In addition, players can purchase gems in Mor Ui Rek, a stall you can access after defeating Jad. The seller only accepts TOKKUL tokens and not regular GP. The store offers 6 diamonds, 16 sapphires, 8 rubies, and 12 emeralds. The great advantage of this method is you can hop worlds to reset the store and buy as many stones as you need.

How to get gemstones

You’ll need to have a chisel in your inventory to cut a gem. Use the chisel or select the gemstone and choose the option to cut all the gems in your inventory. You can do this method at any bank since it only requires having a chisel. Once you get the gems, bank them, and withdraw another round. Repeat the process until you reach your desired level or have no more stones to cut.

Unfortunately, you will accidentally destroy some gems, depending on your crafting level. Therefore, increasing your crafting ability before using the rarer gems is recommended since they have a higher chance of failing.

Alternative: Battlestaffs

If you have the materials and want to make some profit, you can create battlestaffs from level 54 crafting. Until you meet the required level, you can create unpowered orbs, which are one of the components in making a battlestaff. The benefit of this training method is that you can make serious GP by high alching the weapons afterward.

Item Requirements

• Battlestaff
• 3 cosmic runes
• 30 elemental runes
• Unpowered Orb
• Optional: 1 nature and 5 fire runes for high alchemy

How to get materials

Battlestaffs

Players can buy battlestaffs in Varrock from Zaff’s Superior Staffs! The NPC will sell the items after completing the What Lies Below quest. First, he will stock 15 battlestaffs, but you can increase the sell count to 120 by completing different difficulties of the Varrock diary.

Cosmic runes

Cosmic runes can be made with level 27 runecrafting. However, buying them at stores is the fastest way to acquire them. The best locations are:

• Al Kharid – Ali’s Discount Wares
• Prifddinas – Amlodd’s Magical Supplies
• Mage Arena – Lundail’s Arena-side Rune Shop

Elemental Runes

You’ll need air, earth, fire, and water runes for this training method. You can gather them through the runecrafting skill or go to various rune shops. Here are the best stores:

• Al Kharid – Ali’s Discount Wares
• Varrock – Aubury’s Rune Shop
• Prifddinas – Amlodd’s Magical Supplies
• Port Sarim – Betty’s Magic Emporium
• Mage Arena – Lundail’s Arena-side Rune Shop

Unpowered orb

Making unpowered orbs is easy as you only need a glassblower pipe, seaweed, and buckets of sand. 

1. Use the seaweed and buckets of sand on the furnace to make glass
2. Use the glassblower pipe on the molten glass to make an unpowered orb

Powering The Orbs

You’ll need to use cosmic and the corresponding elemental rune on an obelisk to power the orbs. For example, if you want to create a fire orb, you’ll need to use 3 cosmic and 30 fire runes on an obelisk of fire. The obelisks are located throughout Gielinor, and finding them can be somewhat challenging. Here are the locations:

• Water Obelisk: The obelisk is located on an island across the seaside of Catherby. You’ll need to enter the Taverly dungeon and climb up the ladder near the black dragons.
• Earth Obelisk: You can find the obelisk in the Wilderness area nearby the Edgeville dungeon. It’s easy to find by going south of the black demons within this location.
• Fire Obelisk: The obelisk is inside the Taverley dungeon, west of the black dragons.
• Air Obelisk: The air obelisk is at level 7 Wilderness by the black demons in Edgeville dungeon.

Creating Elemental Battlestaffs

Making battlestaffs is the easiest step since you only need to use the elemental orb on the staff. This will create the final version of the weapon and grant you experience based on which elemental orb you use. It’s my favorite way to train due to the huge hourly experience rates and the potential money you can make.

OSRS Ironman Crafting Tips

Tip 1 – Complete Quests: The best way to start training crafting as an ironman is by completing quests. The entry-level quests take less than 10 minutes to finish and help you pass the boring stages of crafting. Also, you’ll likely need to complete these quests as they are often requirements to begin other ones. I began with quests since ironman is all about saving resources and these quick tasks provide a decent amount of experience.

Tip 2 – Complete the hard Karamja diary: If you complete this region’s hard tasks, you’ll gain access to over a dozen gem rocks. This is highly beneficial if you decide to cut gems till level 99 crafting since you can obtain more stones per hour.

Tip 3 – Have all the tools: Before training the skill, have all the tools you’ll need in your bank. Most players train the skill to create the best magic and ranged armor. Therefore, you’ll need a needle and thread. You’ll also need molds, a hammer, chisel, needle, threads, and a glassblowing pipe.

Tip 4 – Stick to glassblowing or gem cutting: Doing an alternative training method to glassblowing or gem cutting is not worth the time and effort. These are the best ways to train crafting as an ironman. However, if you have resources to craft specific items that you’ll use in the future, go ahead. For example, making green d’hide bodies. You can make them for ranged training and then high alch the unneeded pieces.

Tip 5 – Calculate: Before training the skill, calculate all the items you’ll need. This saves time as you won’t need to allocate time for gathering when mid-training crafting. There are many available OSRS crafting calculators that you can use, which showcase the items needed to achieve a specific level.

FAQs

Summary

That concludes our OSRS ironman crafting guide. We’ve shown the best way to train the skill on the self-sufficient game mode. I recommend cutting gems because you’ll gain mining experience while gathering resources; however, if you want a less intensive way to train the skill, glassblow items until level 99.

Crafting is an amazing skill that is helpful to ironman players because it lets you create your own gear. Therefore, you should prioritize the skill before training magic or ranged since you’ll need armor to train effectively. We hope you enjoyed reading our OSRS ironman crafting guide and will apply the information you learned in Gielinor.

For more interesting readings check out:

• OSRS Combat Overview
• Kalphite OSRS Location Guide [2021]: The Best Guide!
• Zalcano OSRS Guide: Slaying The Imprisoned Demon

• About
• Latest Posts

Martynas Pupkevicius

Martnyas wants ot help other Runescape members express their creativity to its full potential. She’s willing to help other people in the Runescape community achieve their goals while playing, which is why she’s dedicated to breaking down the most common challenges and questions Runescape members run into. She’s got the passion and experience to deliver high-quality content to all of our readers, no matter how new they are to playing Runescape.

Latest posts by Martynas Pupkevicius (see all)

• Contact OSRS Guide - September 13, 2022
• Violet is Blue RS3 Guide - August 3, 2022
• Falador Diary OSRS Guide - July 12, 2022