Lobster

A Lobster is a type of shellfish that players can use as food. They are considered one of the most popular healing foods in the game, especially on free-to-play servers because they heal 120 Life Points each, and they can be easily caught in bulk.

(Not to be confused with Crayfish which is similar in appearance.)

Players can catch lobsters with a Fishing level of 40 or higher, granting 90 Fishing experience. Lobsters can be caught at any Cage/Harpoon fishing spot with a lobster pot.

Raw lobsters can be cooked with a Cooking level of 40 or higher, granting 120 Cooking experience. Players may accidentally burn lobsters while cooking until they reach a Cooking level of 74 (or 68 while wearing Cooking gauntlets).

On free-to-play servers, lobsters can be caught on Karamja island near the banana plantation. The fastest way for free players is to use the free noting service of Stiles, southwest of the docks. They can also be caught in the north-eastern corner of the Wilderness, but this is also not recommended, and the risk of being attacked by revenants renders this method not useful.

Free players also may find it most convenient to use Stiles to convert lobsters into banknotes, so as to be able to continue to catch fish without leaving Karamja. Stiles is located on the coast of the south side of Karamja Volcano. Most players are able to make a trip to Stiles in less than a minute, and without completely depleting their run energy.

For members, lobsters can be caught at in Catherby, Rellekka, and Jatizso. Players may also fish for lobsters in the Fishing Guild, which requires level 68 Fishing to enter. Catherby is the recommended place to fish for members below 68 Fishing.

Though many players cook lobsters in Karamja while fishing, it is less expensive to sell them to the Grand Exchange and just buy cooked lobsters instead, as raw lobsters have higher market prices than cooked ones. However, many players cook the lobsters for Cooking experience rather than selling them raw and buying cooked. You can also sell lobster in the general store in Karamja. This saves time and money as opposed to going back to Falador to store one's catch.

Recently, the value of Lobsters have been dropping rapidly due to over-supply. This is causing those who fish lobster for profit to become concerned about how much further the Lobsters value will drop before it will start to recover to its traditional value of around 350gp each.

Free-to-play popularity
They are the most popular food for player-killing, due to their low price and the fact that they can easily be collected in bulk. Wealthier players will use lobsters while training on monsters as well.

It is also common for players to fish and cook lobsters on Karamja, use them to train on lesser demons in the dungeon and then repeat the cycle. Bring a tinderbox and hatchet of any kind, cut a dead tree near the volcano entrance to make a fire. Less wealthy players will find trout (70 Life Points) and salmon (90 Life Points) more cost-effective ways of training combat.

In free-to-play worlds, before the Grand Exchange was released, lobsters were one of the most profitable commodities to players fishing for them as well as merchants in Edgeville and many other banks. This is partly because Edgeville is the nearest town in the wilderness that has a bank where players of clan wars, player killers, and wilderness duelers prepare and these players are in need of food during battles. Traded in bulk, cooked lobsters could sell from 200 to 250 coins each and rarely can even sell for 300 coins each. Each full inventory of lobsters gives the player 2,430 fishing exp.

When the Grand Exchange was set up in Varrock and the 10 December 2007 updates took effect (which put up the 5k trade limit, removed player-killing in the Wilderness), prices of cooked lobsters dropped from 250 to 200 coins to as low as 150 to 200 (due to the ease of trading cooked lobsters), but prices of raw lobsters sky-rocketed from as low as 100 coins each to as high as 339 each. The increase in the prices of raw lobsters was due to the fact that loss of macroers, which provided most of the supply of lobsters in the economy, were also lost. However, when player-killing worlds were put up, which also increase the demand for food, prices of cooked and raw lobsters rebounded to beyond 300 coins where it stood for a few weeks before slowly declining to its present prices.

Pay-to-play popularity
While lobsters are often used for training on pay-to-play servers, it is not recommended that they are used for player killing in Bounty Hunter or on PvP worlds. Instead, rocktails, sharks or at least monkfish are recommended so that the player is not easily killed. An alternative for members with low level Fishing is to use the thieving skill to steal them in Rellekka or Miscellania at level 42 thieving, though in Rellekka there is no bank nearby to store them—unless the player is wearing Fremennik Sea Boots 1, 2, or 3 (obtained by completing the Fremennik Province Diary) in which case you can talk to Peer the Seer to access a bank deposit box. If you wish to cook the lobsters before banking them, Yrsa has an everlasting fire in her hut, quite close to the marketplace.

However, most members use lobsters for questing and training combat on low to medium-levelled Non-player characters, and/or when they need quick cheap food.

Macros
Lobsters were a popular item for macroers to produce, especially in free-to-play worlds at Karamja and member worlds at Catherby, because of the high demand of both raw and cooked lobsters, and they would sell for quite a good profit.

This was all changed by the "Trade and Drop Changes" game update on 10 December 2007, which attempted to block virtually all forms of real world trading from the game. As a result, lobster fishing macros are now rare. Due to the disappearance of macros, the price of raw lobsters began to sky-rocket, rising to over 400 coins. However, when Stiles was created on 21 April 2010, macros become far more common and lobster prices decreased.

Trivia

 * Back in RuneScape Classic, the colour of the lobster was actually the other way around. Raw lobsters were a bright red colour when caught, and turned a deep brown when cooked. It was not until the implementation of the RuneScape 2 upgrade that it was changed to the way it is now.
 * There is a glitch while fishing, if you have started barbarian training, start to harpoon fish without a harpoon, while wielding a magnifying glass with a lobster pot in your inventory, then start to cage lobsters, you can move your hand rapidly like barbarian harpooning but the text "You attempt to catch a lobster" will appear and you can still catch lobsters until you stop. This glitch has not yet been fixed by Jagex. There are no benefits from performing this glitch.
 * On the coast line of Daemonheim, there are non-attackable cyan-coloured Lobster NPCs that can only be examined. They have levels: "Examine Lobster (Level 2)", which is probably a bug because they used to be attackable, and when they were attacked, they dropped raw lobster. The examine of these NPCs is: He looks really cold.
 * While fishing lobsters in Catherby, there is a slight graphic glitch where if the character is viewed from above, when the cage is plunged into the water, the avatar's head also appears to be underwater. This has also been known to work at Karamja, at the right angle.
 * If you go to a cage/harpoon fishing spot and first press harpoon fish, then immediately click to cage fishing, the barbarian fishing style will play while fishing for Lobsters.
 * The equivalent of these fish in Daemonheim are short finned eels, which also heal 120 life points. Short finned eels are also the best food available to non-members in Daemonheim.