1 - 99 OSRS Runecrafting Guide (FASTEST/AFK) - OSRS Guide (2024)

Runecrafting is one of the least-liked skills in osrs. However, runecrafting can be extremely profitable with methods that earn up to 1m GP per hour. In this osrs runecrafting guide we’ll look at every possible method in the game to get to 99. As always, you can use the navigation below to navigate to your current level and preferred method.

How to train Runecrafting

Skip to the training methods, or learn the basics below.

• Fastest way to 99 Runecrafting
• Best way to train Runecrafting
• AFK Runecrafting
• Moneymaking Path

Before we get into the guide, let’s first look at the quests, training methods, item requirements, and plugins.

Quest First

The quest ‘Rune Mysteries‘ is required to start training Runecrafting. You can also complete the miniquest ‘Enter the Abyss’ which bumps you to level 9 RC, as well as ‘Temple of the Eye‘ which bumps you to level 27 and unlocks the ‘Guardians of the rift’ minigame.

Go traditional or Guardians of the Rift

There are two ways to train Runecrafting:

• Traditional training which involves running to a Runic altar with essence to turn them into runes
• Guardians of the Rift, a Runecrafting minigame.

Since the arrival of GOTR, many players have started training via that method as it involves less running than traditional training.

You can read my written guide to get started with Guardians of the Rift.

How traditional training works

During traditional RC, players run to a Runic altar with a full inventory of pure essence and a talisman that is attuned to that Runic altar (e.g. air talisman for air altar). They then craft their runes on the altar and teleport to a bank to repeat the cycle.

Recommended Gear

Here are some gear recommendations for traditioanl training:

• Graceful outfit(or other weight-reducing pieces)
• Stamina/ energy potions to keep your run up
• Rings of dueling (banking & lava runes)
• Binding necklace (increases your chance to make runes from 50% to 100%)
• Lunar Spellbook (magic Imbue & NPC Contact)

Useful items

Essence pouches

Runecrafting pouches can be used to store pure essence in them. This way you can bring way more than a full inventory to the altar.

To unlock Essence Pouches, you must have completed the Enter the Abyss Quest.

You can acquire the pouches by killing abyssal creatures. You don’t need to have the required runecrafting level to get the larger pouches as a drop but you won’t be able to use them until you meet the requirements.

P.s. you get a Medium Pouch as a reward from the Temple of the Eye quest.

To repair your pouches, you need to speak to the dark mage located in the inner ring of the Abyss. You can use NPC Contact in the lunar spellbook to do this from anywhere. Once you reach level 99 your pouches will no longer decay while you’re wearing the skillcape.

Raiments of the Eye outfit

Each piece of the Raiments of the Eye outfit offers 10% more runes when Runecrafting, with the full set giving you 60% more runes. While this doesn’t give you any additional experience, it’s a must if you want to make money from Runecrafting.

The outfit pieces can only be obtained by spending ‘Abyssal Pearls’ in the GOTR reward shop.

1,350 Abyssal Pearls are required for the full set which takes between 30 to 45 hours to get.

Daeyalt Essence

Players who have completed the Sins of the Father quest can mine Daeyalt Essence which gives 50% bonus experience per rune compared to Pure Essence!

Runelite plugins for runecrafting

Menu Entry Swapper

You should turn on the Menu Entry Swapper plugin for Runelite to swap your pouch settings while banking.

Open the bank, and shift-click your pouches to swap their shift-click to fill.

Now you can fill your pouches at the bank without having to exit the bank interface.

Guardians of the Rift helper

If you plan to play Guardians of the Rift to train Runecrafting, you should install the Guardians of the Rift helper plugin from the Runelite Plugin Hub. This helper highlights the yellow pool and portals which just makes the minigame a bit easier.

Now that we know the basics, let’s get started with the training methods!

Fastest way to 99 runecrafting

Levels 1 – 27 Questing

Levels 1-9: The Abyss Mini-quest

For the fastest way to reach 99 runecrafting, you’ll want to start off with doing the abyss mini-quest. This quest takes about 3 minutes with teleports and unlocks the ability to use runecrafting pouches. It also grants you 1,000 exp which will instantly put you at level 9 runecrafting.

Levels 9-10: Running Earth Runs in Varrock

For Runecrafting levels 9-10 you will need an Earth Talisman or Tiara and a full inventory of Pure Essence and run some Earth Runes in Varrock.

If you use the Small Pouch from Enter the Abyss quest, you only need to complete 1 run!

Alternatively, you can also use an Experience lamp (e.g. the reward lamp from X Marks the Spot) to unlock 10 Runecrafting.

Levels 10-27 – Temple of the Eye Quest

Next, you should complete the Temple of the Eye quest to bump your Runecrafting from level 10 – 27! This quest also unlocks the Guardians of the Rift minigame.

Levels 27 – 99 lava runes

Because of how close the fire altar is to the PVP Arena, crafting lava runes is the fastest way to train rune crafting in old-school Runescape. Simply use your dueling ring to teleport to the altar and then use it again to bank in castle wars. Repeat.

The downside to lava runes is that you won’t make any money doing this method.

EXP Rate: 50 – 70K/hr

Location: Fire Altar (next to the duel arena)

Best Way to Train Runecrafting: Guardians of the Rift

The best way to Train Runecrafting right now is to play the Guardians of the Rift minigame, which is more fun than running Lava runes and has USEFUL rewards.

We recommend that everyone do Guardians of the Rift at least until they have the full Raiments of the Eye outfit.

EXP Rates

At Guardians of the Rift, you can get 20-60K Runecrafting EXP/hr depending on your Runecrafting level.

GP/hr

At Guardians of the Rift, you can expect 50-500K GP/hr depending on your Runecrafting level.

Regular accounts can sell the runes they craft at the Grand Exchange for profit. Ironmen can sell their runes to Ali Morrisane.

Requirements:

You need to complete the Temple of the Eye quest first. Which only takes about 5-10 minutes, gives you a lot of Runecrafting experience and also functions as a tutorial for the minigame.

How to play

Guardians of the Rift is a minigame in which you have to protect and power the Great Guardian.

For a full guide on how to play the mini-game and the best strategies check out our Complete Guardians of the Rift Guide.

Alternative: 27 – 99 Ourania Altar

The Ourania Altar is an alternative to Guardians of the Rift. This used to be the Runecrafting method, but with the arrival of GOTR, it has become second-tier, especially for lower-level accounts.

Unlike other runecrafting altars, the Ourania altar turns your pure essence into random runes instead of one designated rune. There’s also a chance of obtaining bonus runes to those who have the Ardougne Medium Diary completed.

There are no runecrafting level requirements for the Ourania, also called the ZMI altar. However, with a higher runecrafting level, your chance of obtaining more valuable runes increases, and thus your hourly profits increase with your runecrafting level.

Another thing unique about the Ourania altar is that it doesn’t require a talisman, tiara, or staff to enter.

Requirements

• 100% RECOMMENDED: 71 magic + lunar diplomacy for Ourania altar teleport spell, this is not a requirement to access the altar but you’ll be destroying your experience rates if you have to constantly run back and forth so you should NOT consider this method if you do not meet these requirements.
• You can access the altar from level 1 runecrafting but a higher level (40+) is highly recommended.

EXP Rates

At the ZMI Altar, you can get 30-80K Runecrafting EXP/hr depending on your Runecrafting level.

How to get to the Ourania altar

• Ourania teleport on the lunar spellbook (requires 71 magic)
• Battlefield teleport through the spirit tree network
• Ardougne teleport and walk there

Running the altar

There are two ways to run the Ourania altar, a short and a longer pathway. The short way is guarded by aggressive warriors, mages, rangers, and more. The longer way is completely monster-free but takes almost double as long.

TIP: if you’re running the altarin the official world: 327, you will rarely take damage from the monsters.

AFK runecrafting method at Zeah

For those who hate the old-school way of runecrafting, the skill now has a semi-AFK method to gain runecrafting experience. This method can only be done in Zeah and requires 100% Arceuus favour to access. Other requirements will be listed below. This method is considered semi-AFK because the mining part of the method is pretty slow.

Requirements:

• 100% Arceuus Favour
• 77 Runecrafting (blood runes) and 90 runecrafting (soul runes)
• 73 Agility (Not required but 100% recommended)
• 38 Crafting
• 38 Mining

Gear/inventory setup

• Graceful outfit (must)
• pickaxe (doesn’t matter which)
• chisel

How to get there

• Arceeus home teleport on the Arceuus spellbook
• Fairy ring code AIS (if this is your first time you will have to pay Trossa 80K first to unlock it, she is located next to the fairy ring)

How Zeah runecrafting works

1. Mine 27 dense essence blocks
2. Run to the dark altar to turn them into dark essence blocks
3. Chisel them into fragments as you run back to the mine
4. Once you have a second full inventory, head back to the dark altar to once again turn them into dark essence blocks, this time you won’t be able to chisel them as you can only carry 27 fragments at a time
5. Run towards the blood/soul altar and use the fragments on the altar to turn them into runes
6. Chisel the remainder of your inventory and use the fragments on the altar again
7. Repeat 1 through 6

RC Money making method

Prices of runes, just like everything in old school Runescape, change every day. So you might want to check out a runecrafting calculator to calculate your profits. You can click on any of the methods below to be taken to an appropriate running guide.

Check out our runecrafting moneymaking guide for more info on the moneymaking methods.

Using the moneymaking method all the way to 99, you will end up with a 1.06B profit. This will take you around 508 hours to do from levels 44 to 99.

P.S. Since the Runecrafting outfit gives you 60% more runes, it’s recommended to train at Guardians of the Rift until you have the full outfit.

Runecrafting Tips

Don’t grind out runecrafting at once

Runecrafting is one of the least liked skills in osrs. If you want to reach 99, don’t try to do it all at once as the experience rates are slow so you will likely get discouraged. Instead, train your runecrafting once or twice a week for a couple of hours and gradually level up.

Switch out your altars

Constantly running the same altar can be very boring, especially when you’re barely making money like with the lava rune altar. Instead, switch it up with some ZMI altar runs in between, they are more fun and will make you some profit.

Efficient leveling

If you’re going for the max cape, it’s important that you level your account efficiently. Runecrafting requires you to do A LOT of running, therefore it’s essential you have the graceful outfit. This means you should train your agility before you train your runecrafting. A higher agility level also means your run restores faster.

Hopefully, this osrs runecrafting guide was helpful to you. If you’re interested in more guides, we have skilling guides for every skill in osrs.

More osrs skilling guides