Fletching



Fletching involves the making of bows and arrows. The products of this skill are primarily used in the combat skill, ranging. It also provides the primary material for High Alchemy, which is one of the main methods for training the Magic skill. At a higher fletching level, the skill can be trained without losing any coins, although a decent amount of working capital is very useful. Some little money can be generated at higher Fletching levels.

Materials Used
Fletchers use the following materials:

Bows
To fletch bows, a player must use a knife on a log to whittle a short bow or long bow of that wood. Then, bow string must be attached to the unstrung bow. Bows, especially Yew longbows and Magic longbows, are frequently high alched as a means of income.

Arrows
To fletch arrows, use a knife on logs to create arrow shafts. Each log yields 15 arrow shafts. Add feathers and arrow heads.

Achey logs can be whittled into Ogre arrow shafts. Each achey log yields between 2 and 6 arrow shafts. Four feathers are needed for each shaft. The shafts may be tipped with wolf bone arrow heads or with nails. Ogre shafts tipped with nails are called "brutals" and are especially useful for killing Zogres. Any type of metal may be used for the nails.

The following table shows experience per item made, although 15 items are made at a time.

Bolts
Bolts are made by "using" a metal bar at an anvil while you have a hammer in your inventory. This grants smithing experience. The bolts created in this process are unfinished and still require fletching (they need feathers). This part provides the fletching experience.

The following table shows experience per item made and per 10 items made (the amount made per metal bar).

Darts
You can fletch darts by adding feathers to a smithed dart, noted that finishing Tourist Trap Quest is needed for making these.

The fletching cycle
If you do not like the hassle of buying materials and sell the finished bows every time, you may want to try trading your finished bows for the materials (logs and bowstrings) in community forums, especially the official Fletching marketplace forum. This means that you only need to purchase materials only for the first batch of bows you make.

Sometimes, you might even receive some money for every bow you trade. Do note that this method works only for higher level bows, especially yew longbows.

This trading method usually gives less profit than if you were to buy and sell separately. Therefore, if you're looking to earn a little cash and do not mind the trouble, sell your bows off at the market price first, then buy fresh materials.

The stringing of the bows is very intensive work and allows little room for other interaction. Any merchanting for materials would need to overlap with the cutting phase of fletching bows. An option is to keep both coins and a noted log in your inventory while fletching unstrung bows, to be able to engage in trades easily. Another good time to merchant for materials is during the high alching of the fletched bows.

Some players have asked for a string-x feature, and Jagex eventually added it to the game. There have been some complaints that the string-x feature is actually slower, because the automatic fletching speed is lower than what players could originally do manually (manual stringing is now much more slower because players now have to go through an additional menu), but others welcomed the fact that there would be less clicking and sore fingers.

Fletch in the correct environment
Fletching is a tedious and monotonous skill. However, players can take advantage of the fact that fletching must be done in a bank, preferably a crowded one.

Some banks are not so crowded, but are designed with one-click opening. Castle Wars chest and the culinaromancer bank chest under Lumbridge work this way.

At Yanille's bank in world 132, there is a player made fletching guild where people can fletch and talk. The population of the bank has since gone down because of the 3-30k max trade that has made it harder to trade supplies for longbows or just sell your longbows which use to be a popular method of training fletch very fast. The grand exchange is the reason it is made so hard because of the inaccurate prices on there are making the standard for trading.

Temporary boosts
Currently, the only known method to give a boost to the fletching level is by eating spicy stews. However, the amount of boost is random.

As with all skills, your Fletching level will temporarily rise by one when a Fletching skillcape is worn, though it requires level 99 Fletching to buy/wear.