OSRS 1-99 Runecrafting Guide (Fastest/AFK/Profitable Methods)

What’s going on guys! My name's Theoatrix, and welcome to my level 1 – 99 Runecrafting Guide.

In this guide, I’ll take you through everything you need to know to train your Runecrafting in Old School. This guide is Ironman friendly - all of the methods are suitable for Ironmen.

GUIDE OUTLINE

Why Train Runecrafting

Important Unlocks

Pathways To 99

Recommended Pathway

Fastest Pathway

AFK Methods

Profitable Methods

Conclusion

If you would prefer to watch a video version of this guide, you can watch that below. Otherwise you can continue down the page to read the written guide.

Why Train Runecrafting?

At a high Runecrafting level, you unlock some of the best skilling money makers in the game. For example, at level 95, you can runecraft Wrath Runes, which give up to 1.8 mil gp per hour. 

There are 6 quests in OSRS that have a Runecrafting Level Requirement. The recently added Desert Treasure 2 has a Runecrafting Requirement of 60, and the Fremennik Exiles quest is an important one for Ironmen.

You need level 60 Runecrafting to get the Quest cape, and you need level 91 Runecrafting for the Achievement Diary Cape.

Another reason to train Runecrafting is you get millions of Mining and Crafting XP on your journey to 99. Runecrafting at Zeah from 77 to 99 gives a significant amount of XP, and so does training at Guardians of the Rift.

Important Unlocks

Essence pouches are an essential unlock. There's 2 ways to get essence pouches:

You can kill monsters in either the Abyss or in the Abyssal Area.

Or you can obtain pouches from the Guardians of the Rift minigame.

I recommend killing monsters in the Abyssal Area at the (ALR) Fairy Ring. Here, you can kill Abyssal Leeches, which have a 1 in 42 chance of dropping a pouch, and pouches are dropped in order from smallest to largest.

After some usage, pouches need to be repaired. To do this, you talk to the Dark Mage located at the centre of the Abyss. This requires the Enter the Abyss miniquest, which makes the miniquest pretty much essential for Runecrafting.

With Lunar Diplomacy, and 67 Magic, you can cast the NPC Contact spell. With that, you can contact the Dark Mage from anywhere, so having NPC Contact is highly recommended.

Completing the Temple of the Eye quest unlocks the Guardians of the Rift, the Runecrafting minigame. It is highly recommended to train there on your journey to 99. You get efficient XP rates, and you get decent rewards too.

You can get the Raiments of the Eye set, which gives 60% more runes when Runecrafting.

Or you can get the Abyssal needle to make the Colossal Pouch, which combines all of the pouches plus holds 10 extra essence. Plus, a few more rewards..

Daeyalt Essence can be used with Runecrafting to get 50% more XP compared to regular essence.

This requires 60 mining and completion of the Sins of the Father quest. Overall, mining Daeyalt Essence is not efficient – you are better off using regular essence. Although it can be worthwhile if you are looking for something to AFK while you do something else.

The Daeyalt Mine is underneath Darkmeyer and here there is 3 Daeyalt rocks. Only 1 rock is active at a time, and you can tell by the magical aura resonating from it.

Mining these rocks gives you Daeyalt Shards, which you can then take to Noranna Tytanin, who converts the shards to essence, and sends them straight to the bank.

There's a few quests in Old School that unlock the ability to craft certain runes. The Sins of the Father quest is required to craft Blood Runes the regular way, but you don’t need Sins of the Father to make Blood Runes on Zeah.

Completing Rune Mysteries is not actually required to train Runecrafting. Rune Mysteries only unlocks the ability to use XP lamps on Runecrafting, although Rune Mysteries is a requirement for the Enter the Abyss miniquest, so Rune Mysteries is highly recommended.

Pathways to 99

Now let’s get into the pathways to 99. I will be showing 2 pathways.

The first is the Recommended Pathway, which takes 276 Hours, and gets you more than 96 Mil in profit. The second is the Fastest Pathway in the game, without runners. It takes 140 Hours for 99, but costs 18 mil. Alongside these pathways, I am going to show the best AFK Runecrafting methods, as well as the most Profitable Methods.

Recommended Pathway

So, on the Recommended Pathway, you start off with questing all the way to level 27. Then you will train at Guardians of the Rift and the Ourania Altar until 77 Runecrafting, where you unlock Zeah Blood Runecrafting. Then, you continue to level 90, where you unlock Zeah Soul Runecrafting.

Level 1-9 Questing:

You can complete the Rune Mysteries quest, then the Enter the Abyss miniquest for 1000 Runecrafting XP plus a small essence pouch. Both quests are very fast with the right teleports. On the screen are all the teleports you will need for the quests.

A Necklace of Passage teleports you straight to the Wizard’s Tower. If you can’t use an Ardougne Teleport, then you can use a Skills Necklace to the Fishing Guild instead. After completing Enter the Abyss, you’ll reach level 9 Runecrafting.

Level 9-10: XP Lamp

From here, you need to reach level 10 to be able to do the Temple of the Eye quest. So, to go from 9 to 10, you should complete a quest that gives an XP lamp as a reward. I recommend doing either X Marks the Spot or Client of Kourend, which are both short easy quests.

If you have already done these quests, but did not use the lamps on Runecrafting, you should make Mind tiara's instead to get from level 9 to 10. Skip to the Fastest Pathway section of this guide to learn how to make Mind tiaras.

Temple of the Eye 10-27:

At level 10, you can now complete the Temple of the Eye quest, which gives over 9000 Runecrafting XP as a reward, taking you from 10 to 27. The quest unlocks the Guardians of the Rift, so you will want to do this quest at some point. Its best to do it at level 10 to skip the early levels.

Level 27-77:

There are 2 recommended methods at level 27, Guardians of the Rift, and the Ourania Altar.

They give very similar experience rates, except the Ourania Altar is faster at a low level. Although, the Ourania Altar is only recommended if you have completed Lunar Diplomacy for the Ourania Altar Teleport spell.

So, from 27 to 77, if you have Lunar Diplomacy completed, you should do the Ourania Altar to level 50, then you should alternate between the Ourania Altar and Guardians of the Rift to level 77.

Until you have done Lunar Diplomacy, you should train with Guardians of the Rift. Overall, the Ourania Altar is more AFK, whereas the Guardians of the Rift minigame gives more rewards.

Guardians of the Rift 27-77:

On the screen are all the worlds, there’s a couple for each region.

Once you complete the Temple of the Eye quest, you unlock the minigame teleport to guardians. So whenever you want to train Runecrafting, you can go into the minigame grouping tab and teleport straight there.

I strongly recommend using the Guardians of the Rift helper plugin, available on the Runelite plugin hub. This highlights important objects, and keeps you informed as you go.

While you’re at it, you should install the Runecrafting Utilities plugin, which has some useful features like swapping the fill and empty option on your essence pouches.

Recommended Items:

You’ll need a chisel, and a pickaxe, which you could wear. You’ll need rune pouches and runes for NPC Contact. In terms of armour, you should bring Varrock Armour if you have it, even Varrock Armour 1. It gives a 10% chance to give double the guardian fragments when mining. You should also bring Graceful in the other slots, to regenerate your run energy more quickly. If you have the Raiments of the Eye set, you should wear that over Graceful and Varrock rmour.

Now I’m going to give a rundown of how to efficiently play the Guardians of the Rift minigame.

Starting off, when you enter a game, you firstly grab a weak cell and 10 uncharged cells from the table, then you create a guardian or repair a barrier when the game starts.

To create a guardian, you click on the stone piles near the entry. To repair barriers, you click on the floor tiles near each barrier to the north.

Then, if you have 56 Agility, run to the East, and climb down the rocks to the large guardian remains. This is where you'll mine guardian fragments at the start of the round.

If you don't have 56 Agility, then you'll mine fragments to the south, around the edge of the arena. Continue mining until you have at least 160 guardian fragments. Once you've finished mining, head over to the entry area.

Now, to get started Runecrafting, you firstly need to chisel your fragments into essence at the workbench. Once your inventory is full, be sure to fill your pouches then refill your inventory.

Once full, head to the centre of the arena.

This is where you access the altars, and at any given time, there will be only 2 altars active. You can see which ones are active by the aura resonating from it.

Note that you need the Runecrafting level requirement to craft each type of rune.

So, once you pick an altar, enter it, then run to the centre and craft your essence into runes. Then, empty your essence pouches and craft those too.

Then exit the altar area, and go back to the centre and deposit your stones at the guardian by clicking on him.

Then, repair any barriers with the cell that you received. You receive charged cells when you craft runes.

At this point, you will have some runes in your inventory. You can deposit them straight to your bank by clicking on the blue deposit pool, or if they are worthless runes, I would suggest dropping them.

Now that you have done your first load of essence, you should now wait for a portal to appear. Portals appear every 160 seconds, and they teleport you to a guardian essence mine, saving your fragments. So once the yellow portal appears, you run to it and click on it to enter.

Then you mine a full inventory of essence, fill up your pouches, remine another inventory, then exit the area.

Then you once again enter an altar, craft runes, exit, then deposit guardian stones, repair barriers, deposit your runes, then you return to chiseling fragments into essence.

Then, after you go and craft the essence into runes, if you have done this fast enough, you will have time to chisel another inventory into essence and craft those runes too. After that inventory is done, you should wait for the next portal to appear.

Then you repeat the process, doing 1 inventory of portal essence, then 1 or 2 inventories of chiseled essence, then wait for portals.

At the end of the round, you'll receive a Runecrafting XP bonus, along with elemental and catalytic reward points.

To use your points, click on the Rewards Guardian outside of the guardian’s entry. You need 1 elemental and 1 catalytic reward point per roll.

Ourania Altar 27-77:

Now this is a rundown of the Ourania Altar. This is what you’ll need: in your inventory, bring a rune pouch with runes for teleports and the NPC Contact spell. You should wear a Dust Battlestaff if you can for the unlimited earth and air runes. If you don’t have 71 magic for the Teleport to Ourania spell, you can buy Ourania Teleport tablets off the Grand Exchange, but you still need Lunar Diplomacy to be able to use them

You will also need a stack of cheap runes to pay the banker. I recommend bringing mind runes since they’re the cheapest, being only 2 coins each.

In your bank, you need a stack of pure essence and some spare stamina potions.

If you have 96 magic, instead of bringing stamina potions, you can use the Vile Vigour spell on the Arceuus spellbook with spellbook swap.

From the Ourania Teleport location, run West across the bridge, then South to the ladder going down.

This is the entry to the Ourania Altar, and here you can find the banker with a huge backpack.

On your first time here, you should speak to the banker, Eniola, and ask to set up a quick payment deal, then select the rune you wish to use when banking.

Then, once you have a full inventory of essence, use an item on a player that’s running south towards the altar. This follows the player, and this is better than clicking follow because using an item ensures that you don’t get caught on objects along the way.

Then, after a 25 second run, you then click on the altar to craft runes. And be sure to empty out your essence pouches too.

Then you teleport to Ourania using either the spell or the teleport tablet, and you repeat the whole process again.

Level 77-90:

Once you reach level 77 Runecrafting, you unlock Blood Runes on Zeah.

Blood Runes give nearly half of the XP per hour compared to Guardians, but its far less click intensive. So, from here, you should alternate between Blood Runes for AFK, and Guardians of the Rift for better XP.

To craft Blood Runes on Zeah, you need 100% Arceuus House Favour, and it’s recommended to have at least 69 agility, but 73 agility helps. I would also suggest completing at least the Medium Kourend Achievement Diary, and this slightly increases your XP rates.

Blood Runecrafting is quite profitable - you can use Blood Essence when training here, and each essence gives a net profit of 135k. The Kourend Elite Diary gives you 10% more runes when Runecrafting on Zeah, adding 3 mil to your total profit to level 90. In total, if you had the Raiments of the Eye set, Blood Essence, and the Diary completed, you would profit 59 mil going to level 90 Runecrafting.

This is what you need to bring. In your inventory you should have a chisel and Blood Essence. In terms of equipment, you should wear the Raiments of the Eye set, or otherwise just wear Graceful. And you should bring a pickaxe, and it does not actually matter what type of pickaxe, they all work the same.

To get started, make your way to the essence rocks in the North Eastern part of Arceuus.

On the way, there's an agility shortcut that saves you some time, requiring 69 agility.

When you reach the essence rocks, you can start mining and chiseling a full inventory of essence blocks. The essence rocks deplete after some time, so just move between them to continue gathering.

Once your inventory is full, make your way back to the 69 agility shortcut, and then follow the path west until you reach the Dark Altar. Click on the Dark Altar to convert your essence into Dark Essence.

Then make your way back to the essence rocks, and as you’re running, you should chisel the Dark Essence in your inventory.

Once you reach the rocks, mine until you have a full inventory again. Then make your way back to the Dark Altar, and turn the essence into Dark Essence.

Then continue running West until you reach an opening in the fence, then head back East, then South until you reach the Blood Altar.

 Click on the Blood Altar to craft some Blood Runes, then start chiseling the rest of your Dark Essence in your inventory.

Then craft those runes as well, and then make your way back to the essence rocks.

If you have 73 agility, you can take a shortcut which saves about 30 seconds, speeding up your XP rates. Then you repeat the whole process, doing 2 inventories of Dark Essence for each time that you craft runes.

Level 77-90:

On your journey from 77 to 90 Runecrafting, you'll also want to train at Guardians of the Rift. The strategy is pretty much the same as the one I showed in the previous section, so if you skipped over it, you can go back and watch it for the full run down. The main difference at 77 Runecrafting is that you'll be using the Giant Pouch, getting higher XP rates.

At level 90, you unlock Soul Runecrafting on Zeah. This is approximately 20% faster XP per hour when compared with Blood Runecrafting. You will once again be alternating Zeah Runecrafting with the Guardians of the Rift minigame.

At 90 Runecrafting, you can get up to 65k XP per hour at the Guardians of the Rift. And Soul Runes get around 45k.

From 90 to 99 Runecrafting, if you solely did Soul Runes, you would profit 63 mil, or 102 mil with the Raiments of the Eye set. In total, from levels 77 to 99, if you solely trained at Zeah Runecrafting, you could make up to 161 mil.

Your inventory and gear for Soul Runes is the same as Blood Runes, except you won’t need any Blood Essence. The Raiments of the Eye set is the best gear to wear, followed by Graceful.

Crafting Soul Runes on Zeah is the same as Bloods, except the only difference is you run to a different altar. So, to get started, you make your way to the essence rocks in Arceuus.

Then you mine a full inventory, and run to the Dark Altar to turn it into Dark Essence. Then you chisel it on the way back, and grab another full inventory of essence.

Then you go back to the Dark Altar and turn it into Dark Essence, and from here, you run on the North Eastern path. continue following the path East, then go South until you reach the Soul Altar.

Then, click on it to craft Soul Runes, then chisel the Dark Essence in your inventory, then click the altar again to craft more runes.

Then, head back to the essence rocks, and on the way there is a level 49 agility shortcut which saves you a little bit of time. Then you repeat the whole process.

On your journey from 90 to 99, you will be training at Guardians as well as Soul runes. The Guardians of the Rift strategy is much the same as I’ve shown in the previous sections. The big change is the Colossal Pouch at 85 Runecrafting, which you can make with an Abyssal needle. You can get the needle from the Reward Guardian at a rate of 1 in 300.

Fastest Pathway

Now I am going to show you the Fastest Pathway to 99.

The method involves making tiaras at a low level, then Lava Runes to 99.

Level 1-2:

So, to start off, you will need 4 Air Talismans and 4 empty tiaras. Then make your way to the Air Altar, South of Falador. To enter the altar, you use a talisman on it, then run to the altar and use talismans on the main altar. This creates tiara's which are very fast at a low level.

Level 2-23:

Once you reach level 2, you can make Mind Tiaras, which are the fastest of all the tiaras. This is due to the existence of a Mind Altar Teleport. This can be casted on the Arceuus spellbook, or anyone can use the tablets off the Grand Exchange.

You need to make 225 Mind Tiaras to get to the next goal, which will require 18 Mind Altar Teleports. So, the method involves firstly teleporting to the Mind Altar, then you use a Mind Talisman on the altar to enter it. Then you use a talisman on the altar, and if you have tiaras in your inventory, you will make Mind Tiaras.

You can 1 tick tiaras by using the talismans on the altar as fast as you can, and this gives up to 45k XP per hour.

Level 23-99:

At 23 Runecrafting, you unlock the Fastest Method in the game, Lava Runes.

At 23, you can get around 38k XP per hour, and it scales up to 110k at higher levels.

It’s recommended to have 82 magic and Lunar Diplomacy completed for the Magic Imbue spell for this method. Now I am going to show you how to do a run of Lavas, with Magic Imbue and without Magic Imbue.

In terms of items, you’ll need Rings of Dueling to teleport to and from the altar. Or you can use a Ring of the Elements. You’ll need Stamina Potions, Binding Necklaces, and a Rune Pouch containing runes for NPC Contact, to repair your pouches. I also recommend wearing a Fire Tiara for easy access to the altar.

In terms of gear, you should wear Graceful over the Raiments of the Eye set, because Lava Runes are barely worth anything. So, starting out, you'll need to be wearing a Binding Necklace and if you don’t have Magic Imbue you'll need an Earth Talisman for each time you craft runes, so up to 3 Earth Talismans with the Colossal Pouch.

So, then you teleport to the Fire Altar, using a Ring of Dueling to the PVP arena, or a Ring of The Elements to the Fire Altar.

Then you enter the altar and make your way to the centre. If you are using Magic Imbue, you should cast it now.

And then you use your stack of earth runes on the altar. Then you empty your pouches and use the earth runes again on the altar.

Then you teleport to the bank, and repeat the process, keeping an eye on the charges of your jewellery.

AFK Methods

The Ourania Altar is semi-AFK, with AFK intervals lasting around 25 seconds. The AFK aspect of the Ourania Altar happens when you are running to the altar. You can use an item on a player ahead of you to run there without clicking.

Another AFK Runecrafting method is Astral Runes, which have an AFK interval of 30 seconds. To craft Astral Runes, you need 40 Runecrafting and the Lunar Diplomacy quest completed.

You will be AFKing when you are running to the altar again. To AFK, you click next to the altar from the bank to run all the way there. This only works on clients where you can increase the render distance. So, this could be Runelite GPU mode or HD. The XP rates are on the slower side, with up to 40k with the Colossal Pouch.

The last AFK aspect of Runecrafting is one I have already talked about, and that is Zeah Runecrafting. During the mining process, you can AFK for up to 3 minutes at a time. The XP rates are decent for such a low intensity method, reaching up to 45k with Soul Runes.

Profitable Methods

Now I’m going to show you 2 Profitable Methods. For these methods, you’re going to want to get the Raiments of the Eye set from the Guardians of the Rift minigame. The whole set gives 60% more runes when Runecrafting.

Runecrafting Blood runes without Zeah is one of the most Profitable Methods in the game, giving up to 1.7 mil per hour in profit. To get the most profit, you'll be using Blood Essence, which give a 50% chance to craft an extra Blood rune for no additional XP.

Runecrafting Blood Runes this way requires 77 Runecrafting and the Sins of the Father quest completed. It’s also helpful to have 74 or 93 agility for the shortcuts, and for the 93 agility shortcut you’ll also need 78 mining.

At this method, you can get up to 47k Runecrafting XP per hour with a Colossal Pouch and the level 93 agility shortcut, and slightly lower without the shortcut and Colossal Pouch.

In terms of items needed, you'll need a teleport to a Fairy Ring, a teleport to a bank, your essence pouches, and a Rune Pouch with NPC Contact runes. I also recommend having a Blood Tiara to enter easily.

So, starting off, you teleport to a Fairy Ring and use the Fairy Ring code DLS. 

You then enter the wall to the South.

Then, run North East and enter a wall there.

 Then, if you have 93 agility, you run all the way South to the agility shortcut.

If it’s your first time here, you'll need to bring a pickaxe and run all the way around to clear the blockage.

So, follow the 74 agility shortcut pathway for that.

So if you have 74 agility but not 93, instead of running South in the 3rd room,

you run slightly North.

Then South.

Then follow the path East, then South to the 74 agility shortcut.

Once you’ve reached the Blood Altar, enter it by clicking on it, and then you can craft your Blood Runes at the altar.

Be sure to empty your rune pouches, and then you teleport to the bank and repeat.

Wrath Runes level 95:

At 95 Runecrafting, and with completion of Dragon Slayer 2, you can Runecraft Wrath Runes.

These give up to 1.8 mil gp per hour with the Raiments of the Eye set.

At Wrath Runes, you can get up to 40k XP per hour with a Colossal Pouch, which isn’t too bad for such a Profitable Method.

For Wrath Runes, you’ll need an Anti-Dragon shield, Mythical Cape, and a teleport to a bank. You’ll also need your essence pouches and I recommend a Wrath Tiara.

So, to start out, you use the Mythical Cape teleport and enter the Mythic Statue in the centre.

From here, you run south through some dragons until you see a cave opening. Enter the opening, and this brings you to the Wrath Altar.

Click on the altar to enter it, and then craft your Wrath Runes, ensuring that you empty your Rune Pouches as well.

OSRS Runecrafting Guide

Thanks for reading my complete OSRS Runecrafting guide. I hope you learned something pretty helpful today or enjoyed. If you have any questions or just want to chat to me, you can join the Theoatrix friend chat in game. As always, thanks for reading this article, and have a nice day!