Money making guide

This money making guide is a list of ideas that players may want to use to make money. When using it, keep in mind that the RuneScape economy is continually changing, so not all of the information given here will be 100% accurate. Also, although these methods have worked for some (or many) players, they are not guaranteed to work for every player. Making money is about working hard, using resources and, usually, having good luck. The ideas expressed here will hopefully help players to make their own money.

Rating scale
Different star ratings are relevant to how quickly money can be made. The more stars there are, the better the money maker.

Somewhat slow and inconvenient. Only recommended for players with little money making experience.

Good for players who need a little bit of cash in a small period of time. There are more effective methods for a long-term investment.

Solid for nearly all players.

Very quick for purchasing items worth hundreds of thousands of coins, although high skill levels are usually required.

The ultimate money makers. Most of these require investment and experience and high skill levels.

Stronghold of Player Safety and Stronghold of Security
Players can attempt the Stronghold of Player Safety between Barbarian Village and Edgeville in the Misthalin Training Centre of Excellence. Once a player has completed it, he/she will be awarded with 2 skill lamps, 10,000 coins and a nice pair of gloves. While tricky to navigate through the Stronghold of Player Safety and with high level creatures, they are not aggressive and will not attack players unless the player attacks first.

If players are brave enough, they can attempt the Stronghold of Security in Barbarian Village. Food is recommended for players at all levels. Once a player has their account's recovery questions set and gone through the four levels in the Stronghold, they will be awarded 10,000 coins and a pair of boots. The monsters in this dungeon are aggressive and get stronger and stronger each floor the player descends. There are some "safe" spots on all levels where a player can wait to recover their run energy and hit points with food before he/she proceeds any further.

Silk Merchanting
This method is slow: 4-5 silk acquired per minute - 3 if the player bargains - plus about 45 seconds each way running between Lumbridge and Al Kharid. The player will spend about 8 minutes to earn 126 coins (after the tolls and initial investment), far below the average income for other methods. (Even member players taking advantage of the East Ardougne Silk Merchant will find it earns less than 300 coins per minute of work.) It is therefore only suitable for beginning players with no other options.

With 101 coins (74 if bargaining), follow the road east from Lumbridge across the bridge and through the toll gate (expect a toll of 10 coins). Follow the road as it turns south into Al Kharid. A Silk Trader is just east of the first building. Buy silk from him at 3 coins per sheet (or 2 if a player bargains). The silk can then be sold at the Lumbridge (or any other) general store or the Silk Merchant in East Ardougne (Members). If the store currently has no silk, a pack of 27 sold all at once will fetch 227 coins. Al Kharid has a bank, so players can bank their purchases and return for more. However, keep in mind that it takes the general store about a half-hour to clear a pack's worth of sales, so plan to run a fishing or mining (or whatever) trip between trips to the store. Three or four such trips will net a beginner enough for his first full suit of Iron armour.

Food collecting
Collecting food materials can be quite profitable for beginning players. Of particular note are potatoes, which can be found in several places on both member and free to play worlds. The current price of potatoes are coins each and are in strong demand due to several member food items that can be prepared with them, as well as stews in F2P cooking. The fastest location in F2P worlds is to collect them on the potato farm just to the east of Draynor Village, and to bring them to the bank in Draynor Village.

With a little bit of cash, you can also travel to Port Sarim and buy Cheese for 8 coins each at Wydin's Food Store and in turn sell them on the Grand Exchange for coins each, making a modest profit from just a few coins. You can buy large quantities quickly from the grocer, so the main drawback is having to run back an forth from Port Sarim to the bank in Draynor Village. You can make about 5-8 trips per hour, assuming that you leave all of your equipment in the bank and only bring coins to purchase the cheese. If you bring precisely 224 coins on each trip, you can purchase a full 28 slices of cheese, maximizing your profit.

If you are a member, you can earn money even faster by bringing empty sacks to the potato fields and harvesting the potatoes and filling them while in the field, then selling the sacks of potatoes. Sacks of potatoes are fixed at 10x the price of individual potatoes (by Jagex), but are used as a payment option in farming and a few other areas in member areas. You can also collect some potato seeds in this fashion if you want to start farming for the first time (for free), as about 1 in ten potatoes that you will harvest on member servers will also give you a seed. The seeds are "stackable" so you don't have to keep running to the bank as often if you collect several potato seeds. If you bring 24 empty sacks (purchase the sacks on the Grand Exchange), you can fill them and sell the sacks for coins with about an hour's worth of work and requires no skills of any kind, including farming. Certainly this is faster than begging, which can only earn you a maximum of 12000 coins per hour if you are lucky.

Harvesting onions and redberries can give some modest profit as well, but by far and away more profitable is to make dyes from these items. For only 5 coins (even on F2P worlds) you can trade 2 onions for yellow dyes or 3 redberries for red dyes. These can in turn be sold on the Grand Exchange for coins each for yellow dye or  coins for red dye. These would sell for more, but Jagex has imposed a price ceiling on dyes of all colors, where demand has far outstripped supply. You can usually sell dyes immediately on the Grand Exchange at the maximum price.

Mining
Mining is frequently used among lower levels as a way to make money. However, many higher levels and/or members abandon it in search of faster methods.

Smithing
Overall, it is not incredibly good for money making in the short term, but good if a player sticks with it long enough. In addition to players buying bars because smithing experience is earned faster at the anvil rather than at the furnace, bars of all types are also tertiary ingredients for Summoning, which has increased the demand for most types of bars above and beyond their smithing potential. There is also a small demand for steel bars due to their use in Construction.

Fishing
Fishing is another popular and efficient way to make money. Since fish can be cooked, cooking fish is also mentioned in this guide. However, raw fish tends to fetch higher prices than cooked fish, due to the high demand of players who want to train cooking. Therefore, it is recommended to leave all captured fish raw if maximum profit is desired. However fishing can take some time to get a full inventory, so patience is required.

Woodcutting
Similar to fishing, woodcutting is also a popular way to make money. Though like fishing, it can take some time to get a full inventory. However, because of the lack of attention usually required, one does not have to be glued to the screen every moment.

Asterisks (*) mark often crowded woodcutting spots.

Runecrafting
A very good money maker, although it requires membership to make money from it, even though it isn't a members-only skill. Either way, there are several ways to make over 300k per hour with Runecrafting, including nature, law, double cosmic, death and double nature crafting, meaning that if players feel the market is too unstable in one of the runes their can hop to another for no loss.

Fletching (members)
Not one of the best money makers, but still fairly good at level 70. Many players train this for the 99 skill cape, and a large amount of money can be made while doing this.

Slayer (members)
All slayer monsters have a chance of dropping a Dragon spear, though it's a rare drop.

Magic
Magic can be a decent money maker, but it is usually combined with other skills, and one needs to know what they are doing.

Thieving (members)
Thieving is a members skill, which can be used to make loads of money if players have a high level.

Construction (members)
This skill is commonly referred as a money-wasting skill to level. However, if players have a decent level, they can certainly earn some money to cover their "output".

Merchanting
Merchanting requires no in-game skills. Merchanting has taken a big blow due to the release of the Grand Exchange, but it is still possible.

Tips and hints

 * Use the RuneScape official forums or the forums of a clan site to help money makers buy and sell items.


 * The Grand Exchange in the specified trade worlds, (world 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.) is the busiest trading centre for both free players and members.