Drift Net Fishing - Fast Hunter & Fishing XP (OSRS)
- Theoatrix
- 4 hours ago
- 7 min read
What's going on guys, my name's Theoatrix and this guide will explain everything you need to know about drift net fishing in Old School Runescape.
Guide Outline
If you would prefer to watch a video-version of this guide, I have linked that below. Otherwise, continue scrolling to read the written-version of this guide.
What is Drift Net Fishing?
Driftnet fishing, if done correctly, is one of the fastest ways to train both your hunter and fishing skills.
It's a method where you chase fish shoals into drift nets and when they enter the net you gain XP scaled to your levels.
Drift Net Fishing Requirements
It requires 47 fishing and 44 hunter to do, you also need access to Fossil Island as well as diving equipment.
Using a trident, whether it be a Trident of the Seas, Swamp or a Merfolk trident, will significantly increase the chance of successfully catching a shoal into the net. I'll show you exactly how to do the method in a moment but I want to talk about the XP rates, and what levels it's worth doing.
XP Rates
I've tested drift nets on accounts with a broad level range in the two skills to see how catch rates and XP rates are affected.
The amount of XP you get scales to your levels up to level 80 hunter and level 70 fishing. The chance of successfully chasing a shoal into the net dramatically changes with your level, but if you use a trident the chance of success is close to a hundred percent all the time, even at a lower fishing and hunter level.
I'm not sure whether this was intentional by Jagex, but the rate of catching is very much the same in the level 50's as it was in the 90's, only because I was using a trident.
With full concentration you can easily catch 950 to 1050 fish shoals per hour. Which gives you these XP rates, and they're surprisingly high. Let's say you have 60 fishing and 60 hunter, the best method to train is barbarian fishing. Where you can expect about 39k fishing XP per hour normally, and if you're three ticking, you can get over 65k per hour. As well as that, you get one tenth of those rates into agility and strength and if you bring a knife you get 1/5 to cooking as well.
The fastest method for hunter at level 60 is red salamanders, where you can get a maximum of 85k XP per hour. With drift net fishing, at these levels, you get 67k fishing XP and 82k hunter XP per hour.
Since you're getting both fishing and hunter XP, to make it comparable with the other methods, you can perceive it as 30 minutes of fishing and then 30 minutes of hunter. The drift net fishing method is considerably faster, like a lot faster, at level 60.
What about at level 80? Your XP rates can consistently reach 77k fishing and 100k hunter XP per hour. At level 80 the fastest fishing method is 3 ticking barb fishing. Again, three ticking you can get up to 90k XP per hour.
At 80 hunter, the best method is black chinchompers. Where normally you get around 180k XP per hour and with an alt attacking the stray chinchompers you can get up to 210k per hour. Comparing that to drift net fishing you particularly get a lot more fishing XP per hour, although the hunter XP is slightly better at black chin's, only if you're using an alt though.
Onwards from level 80 drift, net fishing won't become any faster. So this means the traditional methods are the better option, particularly for hunter. The agility experience is another fairly big trade-off. If you were to get 99 fishing at barbarian fishing, you get one point three million agility XP, getting you past level 70. Whereas with drift net fishing, you'll get none.
Currently with drift net fishing, you lose money at lower levels, where you can only catch the low level fish. Above level 70 you can make around 200k coins per hour, with more profit at the higher levels reaching 300k.
Ironman Advice
As an Ironman drift net fishing can be hard to do consistently since you need to create the nets yourself.
You need to farm jute fibres in hop patches, they have a fast 50 minute growth time but there's only five hops patches. In Old School Runescape, each patch will give you approximately fourteen fibers if you use Ultra compost, and you use two fibers to make a net. So every 50 minutes you can only get 28 nets from all of the patches.
If you're willing to make drift nets, it is a great way to get high level fish on an ironman at a very quick rate.
Best XP Rate Method
So now I'm going to show you how to drift net fish to get the best possible XP rates.
Requirements
To be able to drift net in the first place you need 47 fishing and 44 hunter. As well as access to Fossil Island, which is the Bone Voyage quest. You also need a diving apparatus and fish bowl helmet, which is made during the Pirate Pete sub-quest of Recipe for Disaster.
You need a trident. A merfolk trident has no requirements to wear but it costs over 700k. You can use a trident of the Seas or Swamp trident, where the Seas is only 43k but you need 75 magic to wear it. Having a trident is a requirement to get the XP rates that I showed.
It's highly recommended to get flippers as well which you can get with level 32 slayer and the Skippy and the Mogar's mini quest, which is very fast. Flippers allow you to use run underwater which is vital for chasing fish shoals. Here, while you need to wear the apparatus, fishbowl and flippers, you should also wear graceful in the other slots for their slight run regeneration effect.
In your invent you'll need your trader stamina potions as well as numulite. I was using around five full stamina potions per hour and you'll need at least a thousand new numulite, but ideally you want a few thousand, so five to ten thousand. You will also need noted driftnets and you'll be able to un-note them within the method.
Getting There
To begin, you need to make your way to the small diving island north of Fossil Island.
The fastest way there is using a dig site pendent to fossil Island and use the mushroom teleport system to mushroom meadow. Where then, you run east and the boat near the ammonite crab, takes you to the island.
Before Starting
From here you right-click the boat and dive underwater you can't do that while you're wearing a weapon though so this is why your trident should be in your invent.
Once you're underwater the entry to drift net fishing is very close to the north. To partake you pay Seto 200 numulite and that gives you 24 hours of entry. Alternatively, you can give a 20,000 numulite for permanent access.
Once you're in here you need to pass the seaweed door and then you can put on your trident. With your noted drift nets you can right-click "Annette" and press "Nets". Here you can store up to 2,000 drift nets and you can give them to her in noted form then withdraw them as un-noted.
Method Explained
So now that you're set and ready, to start you can go ahead and set up the two drift nets in their locations. Each net requires one drift net and they can catch up to ten fish shoals in each.
Once they're set up you have to click on the fish shoals to chase them and after a few seconds or even instantly they'll make their way into the drift net the shoals can easily get stuck behind each other so you need to prioritize the ones that are already close to the nets.
To have a better chance of chasing them in, it's best to ignore any fish holes that are near a net and near the seaweed door. Since they have a really high chance of getting stuck behind each other or an in-game object.
Fairly quickly your nets will become full where you can see they puff up full of fish, you can also use the drift net Runelite plug-in to see how many fish have gone into each net. To harvest them, you click on them and then press 1 or click the first option to open the harvest screen.
Here you should press the "bank all" button, then press escape to close the harvest window. You'll also get puffer fish which won't be banked and there's no point keeping the puffer fish since they'll just fill up your invent, and with the diving apparatus you have no need for them since you have oxygen. Pressing escape will destroy them which is faster than pressing the "discard all" option, then going on to close the window.
Method Tips
So these are the main pointers you'll need to follow to get the max XP rates.
Firstly you need to reset off your nets as fast as possible this obviously speeds up your rate being able to get back to training faster but there's also some fish Shoals that are already on their way to the net and if you harvest fast enough they'll enter the new net.
It's a good idea to use the rune light plugin for drift nets because it shows you which of the shoals you've recently chased so you don't chase them twice.
The next tip is to swap from net to net depending on how many shoals are in the area, but don't swap too often. A lot of the time you'll notice that the shoals are flocking near one of the nets so target those shoals around that net and wait until new shells spawn and crowd the opposite net. And as I mentioned avoid chasing any of the shoals in the far corner there's a very good chance that they'll get stuck.
So that's how to drift net fish effectively it's the best way to train your fishing and hunter level until level 80, where the traditional methods will slowly become faster as you go to a higher level.
So that's my drift net fishing guide for OSRS. If you learned something today leave a like on the guide for more Old School Runescape content, thanks for reading.