Construction



Construction is a members-only skill that allows players to build a Player-owned house (or POH) and provide the furnishings for them. It is also very useful in its connection to other skills, such as Prayer, Mining, Magic, Crafting and Summoning. Construction is generally regarded as one of the most expensive skills to train because of the materials needed for it, although it is currently one of the fastest skills to train depending on how much money a player is willing to spend. Construction can be trained even faster if the player has earned the Sacred clay hammers which are obtained from playing the activity Stealing Creation. It is also used during the Dungeoneering skill to replace the Gatestone portal with other options. Construction is regarded by many players as a unique 99 skill that many players do not have, due to its high cost.

Introduction
After purchasing a basic house of their own, players earn Construction XP by decorating or making furniture items for it. As you progress through the levels, more rooms, more types of rooms, and better room items become available, and you can build a better and more impressive house. Some rooms and items are decorative and are built to show off your advancing skills or have fun with your friends. You can also build games rooms for you and your friends, or even build a dungeon and imprison them. Some rooms and items, however, are useful in their own right. These items include an altar which give more XP per bone than burying them, or teleport portals for you and your friends.

History
Construction was originally released on 31 May 2006. It did exist in RuneScape Classic as the Carpentry skill, but no one knew how to train it. It was removed with the introduction of the Agility skill on 12 December, probably because Jagex wanted to release it later for some reason.



Purchasing a House
To begin Construction, players must buy a house by paying one of the four Estate Agents found in cities all over RuneScape. A basic house will cost 1000 coins, and will be in Rimmington by default. As a player advances in Construction, more house locations will be made available, as well as house styles. To change either of these, it is required to speak to the Estate Agent again who will charge a fee for changing either.

Estate Agent Locations
The Estate agents can be found in 4 locations:
 * Seers' Village, northeast of the bank.
 * Falador, west of the east bank.
 * Ardougne, west of the south bank.
 * Varrock, north of the east bank.

Travelling to a House
The most basic way to get to a house is by walking to the POH portal ( icon on map) that is in the location of the house. From here a player will be prompted to either enter their own house or enter a friend's house. It is also possible to use the Teleport to House spell to teleport directly into a player's own house if that player has acquired a magic level of at least 40. (Stat boosters will work for House teleport) Another way to get there is a teleport tablet. In the house options screen you can choose whether you want to teleport into the house itself or outside the POH portal.

Note: Players can only enter through the portal in the location that they bought from the Estate Agent.

House Portals Locations
Estate agents can move a player's house from its starter location in Rimmington to any of the other house portal locations identified by the portal icon on the map. These locations include Rimmington, Taverley, Pollnivneach, Rellekka, Brimhaven, and Yanille.

House Locations Advantages and Disadvantages
There are also several advantages and disadvantages to each house portal location. When you start, a convenient place to run/walk to is probably the most important consideration. However, as you advance you will probably use House teleports more and more, in which case the exit location is a more important for its uses. See POH portal for more information.

Building a House
To build a house, a player must enter their house portal and go into building mode. This can be done either by using the portal or changing the building mode settings in house options in the options menu. If you change these settings while not in a house, you will automatically be in building mode the next time you teleport to your house using the teleport or teleport tablet.

Building Mode
A basic house starts off with only a parlour and garden, but more rooms can be added at higher levels. In building mode, players will see ghost versions of some furniture and doors called "Hotspots", where new objects can be built in the various rooms. Right-click on these and select build to construct different items for the current room, if you have the required materials and tools. You cannot drop items while in building mode. building mode can be turned on and off using the house options menu, as this makes it easy to enter building mode while inside the house instead of going out and back in to the house.

Planning the layout
There are a few important points to consider when building a house. For example: what rooms are placed next to a portal. Portal Chambers are very useful to place directly adjacent to the portal, since this allows quick and easy access to any portals, for when players wish to use their house as a teleport hub. Another room that is useful to put near the portal is a Chapel, which will allow players to train and recharge prayer more quickly.

POH rooms such as a chapel, throne room, study, and dungeon rooms, once filled with expensive gilded/opulent furniture, are not recommended to be moved. The only way to move a room, with the exception of the Menagerie and Costume Room, is to delete it and rebuild it in the desired new location. By doing this you will have to build everything in this room again as if you have never had any of it before. It is essential to plan your house layout using a fansite or a sheet of paper because it may save you many millions of GP later down the road. Further more, a well planned house looks much more impressive to players and is more often than not much more accessible.

For more information, see POH

Removing rooms
Some players occasionally decide to remove rooms, such as when they wish to build different types of rooms but have reached their limit for the number of rooms in the house. A room can be removed in building mode by right clicking the door to the room and select the 'build' option. This brings up an option to remove the room. You cannot remove a room on the ground level that is supporting another room on the second floor. This rule does not apply to dungeon rooms under the ground level rooms.

It is advisable to remove all the built items in a room before removing the room. In most cases, nothing is gained by removing items, but in some cases items are recovered. For example, armour, swords, and capes that are part of a display can be recovered. An exception to this is the Shattered Hearts statue in the Study. If you destroy the statue, you have to rebuild it from the beginning; if you destroy the study with the partly completed statue, then building another study you will get a new plinth and when you place it in the house the pieces will reappear to where you had been before.

Moving Rooms
It is possible to completely move a room which you may only have 1 of (examples being the Menagerie and Costume room). To move, simply try to build a new room without removing the current room. You will then be told that they can only have one and will be asked if they want to move it. Upon selecting "yes", the player will be prompted to choose the rotation of the new room. The new room (after being relocated) will have all the same items, furniture and pets as it had at the old location. The player will have to pay the cost of building the room in order to move it. After all, large scale landscaping isn't cheap!

Rooms
There are many different types of rooms that can be added to a house. When a player buys a house, it will begin with a garden and parlour; however, more rooms can be added later. Different rooms will require different Construction levels and will cost money. Boosts (such as tea) can be used to meet level requirements for building rooms. All rooms in a house are the same size (8 x 8 squares).

Room Types


Note: A Parlour is automatically generated when you buy a starter house. It is essential initially for low-level training, and later its main useful item are bookshelves, which save bankspace by making available every reference book ever unlocked by the player, meaning books held in your bank are no longer needed. However, once a Study or a Quest hall is built, this rooms also contains bookshelves and therefore the Parlour can be deleted without significant loss of utility, if you are short of rooms.

Number of Rooms / Maximum Area
Initially, at level 1 Construction the maximum number of rooms is 20. This rises to 32 rooms at level 99 construction. Note that each part of a dungeon that is built counts as a room against the total number of rooms. For example, building a dungeon stairs room, a dungeon junction, and two dungeon corridors counts as four rooms.

There is also a maximum area of land that can be built on that increases with higher construction levels.

Construction Training
XP is earned by constructing items on the room hotspots. Because you need to advance through the levels, training mostly consist of building something, and then removing (destroying) it, over and over. Most POH therefore mostly consist of high-level and expensive items, with one hotspot reserved for building and rebuilding a single relatively cheap item. Training items should be chosen on the basis they consist of a single type of component (for simplicity), and planks are cheaper than any other component per XP earned. Common training items are dining room tables and kitchen larders.

Once a Workshop and Workbench are built it is possible to make Flatpack furniture for sale. However the resale price of flatpack furniture is so low the flatpacks are often dropped anyway.

Construction Items
See the Constructed items list for details on what players can build on the hotspots of each room at a specific level.


 * Levels 1 to 24: Constructed items (1-24)
 * Levels 25 to 50: Constructed items (25-50)
 * Levels 51 to 74: Constructed items (51-74)
 * Levels 75 to 99: Constructed items (75-99)

Basic Materials
Many different items are needed for Construction, but some of the more basic ones include planks, nails, bolts of cloth, soft clay, and steel bars. Also, a saw and hammer are required to build anything while in Building Mode.

Planks
One of the most affordable ways to level up the early levels of Construction is by collecting free planks which can be found at various spawn points. It is also possible to collect the convenient noted plank drops of armoured zombies after the Defender of Varrock quest or the Tormented wraith after Summer's end.

To make planks, the usual option is to go to the Sawmill operator on the south side of the Varrock lumberyard with the icon on the minimap. He can turn logs into planks for a fee. He also sells bolts of cloth, some nails, and saws.

As an alternative to the sawmill operator, the Plank make spell can be used to create planks for use in Construction. However the spell costs runes and coins which together costs more than the sawmill operator.

Nails
Nails can be smithed from all types of metals from bronze to rune by players. Additionally, the Sawmill Operator sells bronze, iron, and steel nails. When constructing objects using nails, there is a possibility that players will bend a nail. With higher level nails such as rune, this possibility becomes less. Since there is no XP advantage between the types of nail, and higher level nails are expensive, most players prefer using iron nails or steel nails. With oak items and above, nails are not needed since joints are used in place of nails.

Soft Clay
Soft clay can be bought from the Grand Exchange for coins each. They can also be made by combining mined clay with a bucket of water or by using the Humidify spell. Many players also mine clay while wearing a bracelet of clay which allows you to automatically mine soft clay. Soft clay can be used to make fireplaces and ponds in Construction, but is mainly used in the Study to make teleport tablets.

Steel Bars
Steel Bars can be created using the Smithing skill. They can also be bought from the Grand Exchange for a price of coins each.

Advanced Materials
Once a player has developed a higher Construction level, new materials will be available to use. These materials may be harder to get and much more expensive. Some of them include limestone bricks, marble blocks, gold leaves, and magic stones, as mentioned below.

Stonemason of Keldagrim
The Stonemason of Keldagrim sells more expensive and exclusive building materials, such as gold leaves, limestone bricks, marble blocks, and magic stones.

Garden Supplier of Falador
The Garden supplier in Falador Park sells a variety of different plants that can be used by players in their Gardens and Formal Gardens.

Taxidermist of Canifis
Players can get monster heads, which are randomly dropped from monsters. These can be turned into trophies from the Taxidermist in Canifis. These trophies can then be put in Skill halls. Players can interact with the stuffed heads for some funny puns. The taxidermist can also stuff Big bass, Big swordfish and Big shark, which are randomly obtained through fishing the correct type of fish.

Sir Renitee of Falador
Players can buy maps, landscapes and portraits for decoration by talking to Sir Renitee in Falador Castle - he's upstairs on the east side of the building. Additionally, the Herald can change a player's family crest, which appears throughout the house and on armour created by the player. Players may also decorate steel and rune full helmets/kiteshields with the colours of their crest. If you wish to change your crest he will charge you a fee of 5,000 coins.

POH Use in Questing
Using three Portal Chambers it is possible to build 7 infinite-use portals - Lumbridge, Varrock, Falador, Camelot, Ardougne, Yannille, and Kharyrll. Adding a mounted Amulet of Glory in a Quest Hall adds a further 4 locations - Edgeville, Karamja, Draynor Village and Al Kharid. Counting the exit portal as another useful transport location, this gives a total of 12 teleport locations from a house. In quests and similar activities, where you are not sure where you need to go next, a single house teleport tablet can give you access to most of Runescape for a single inventory slot, recharging Prayer and Summoning on the way.

Note you cannot heal inside a house. Although you can eat food that you brought with you, or from a larder, or brought to you by a servant, your Constitution will reset to the value you entered with when you exit. You can however heal by dying inside the house. If you really want to heal and you have a dungeon, fight the guards until they kill you. You will respawn outside the house with all your items.

Emergency Teleport
A House teleport is a single click escape from any location that allows teleporting. House teleports can be bought from the Grand Exchange for use at any construction level, but the player must have a house to teleport to.

If you die in your house as a result of poisoning, you still die in the normal manner. However, your gravestone appears outside the house portal location which is always in a safe place, and you can get to the gravestone location with a second house teleport stored in your bank, meaning it is certain and very quick to get gravestone items back. The fact that you can have more than one means it is preferable to other single-click emergency teleports such as the Ectophial, because with this if you after teleport you also drop the token needed to get you back to the gravestone.

POH Use in Making/Saving Money
At level 55, an Armour stand allows players and friends to repair Barrows equipment for a cost saving compared to the NPC cost:

At level 67, a Mahogany eagle lectern allows the player the make House teleports, possibly the most profitable activity available to a mid-level player outside of Merchanting.

POH Use in Prayer Training
Beginning at level 61, an altar (see Chapel) with burners allows increased experience from bones. At level 75, a Gilded Altar gives 350% XP (3.5 times), and is an essential part of any attempt at 99 prayer using Dragon bones or similar. It is possible to use an Altar in a friends house, but this is slower.

Cape
Players who have achieved 99 construction may purchase the Construction cape from any estate agent. The emote shows the player building a house around themselves.

House styles
Estate agents can also redecorate the outside of a player's house for a fee. Along with a total redecoration of a house, each house style comes with a unique tune that plays upon entering the house. For more information, see POH.

House states: ordinary, challenge, and PvP modes
Once a player builds a lever in the Throne Room, the player can set the mode of the house by right-clicking on the lever. The default state is ordinary mode (a term not defined at all in the game), which means that neither challenge mode or PvP mode is on.

Challenge mode allows the first player who can find and open the chest in the Treasure Room to gain the treasure (1,500 coins). In this mode, the traps and guards in the Dungeon and Oubliette can damage players. Challenge mode is safe, as players lose no items when they die but just respawn outside the house.

PvP mode has the features of challenge mode and in addition allows players to attack other players in the house. This mode, too, is safe.

Ordinary mode is the default mode. When challenge mode or PvP is on, ordinary mode can be restored by right clicking the lever. (It can be hard to tell which mode is current if the house owners forgets. In this case, if no mode choice appears when the lever is right clicked, the mode was challenge or PvP but was changed to ordinary by right clicking.) In ordinary mode, traps and guards do not affect players, and players cannot fight one another (other than using the Combat Room).

Note that it is possible to turn on challenge or PvP mode as soon as a lever is built in the throne room, even if a treasure room and chest have not been built. This is presumably to allow players the chance to 'enjoy' the dungeon and oubliette even without the lure of gaining a 1,500-coin treasure.

Servants
When you reach a minimum construction level of 20, you can hire a servant. You must have two bedrooms with beds. Servants are hired from Servants' Guild in East Ardougne. Different servant need different construction levels and they provide different services, such as greeting guests, serving food, and taking items to and from bank and unnoting items. The higher the servant's level, the better and faster the quality of their services is, but the more they cost.

Besides impressing your friends, the main use of a servant is fetching items from your bank, quicker than you can make the trip yourself. Advanced servants can make planks from logs significantly cheaper than buying planks ready-made from the Grand Exchange, but not cheaper than you could make yourself.

Costume Room Furniture
All the furniture in a Costume Room is available flatpacked. This means that once a player has reached level 42 and built the room, the room can immediately be filled with the highest level items by buying the flatpacks from the Grand Exchange. This costs approximately 1,000,000 GP. If this is done the room can be used to its maximum, saving many bank spaces.

Sacred Clay Hammers
A Sacred clay hammer is a reward from the Stealing Creation activity. It is used to double the XP earned from each item constructed. While doubling the XP rate can be considered to be a worthwhile timesaving for any skill, construction is such an expensive skill to train doubling the XP and hence halving the cost is highly significant. Because it is extremely difficult to make money training Construction, any training regime must include doing something else, earning money to spend on construction. In this context, spending time playing Stealing Creation can be considered a valid part of construction training.

It is possible with practice to earn five hammers per hour, although this is extraordinarily difficult. On average a person will earn between three and four hammers per hour on world 158 and 164. If you join a skilling only Stealing Creation Clan Chat you can easily earn 4 hammers per hour, and further more these Clan Chats are the only way that it is remotely possible to earn 5 hammers per hour. Each Sacred Clay Hammer will give 50,750 experience (25,375 bonus) before crumbling to dust. If this is worthwhile obviously depends on the cost of the construction materials used versus the rate at which the player can earn money doing their favourite money-earning activity. For more information see construction training

Barlak
Barlak is a cave goblin is located in a side room on the west side of the main floor of Dorgesh-Kaan. Players can trade special bones for coins and construction experience.


 * Long bone: 1,000 coins and 1,500 Construction experience.
 * Curved bone: 2,000 coins and 2,250 Construction experience.

Strange Rocks
Originally a Strange rock could only be obtained in non-building mode, and could be obtained just standing in a Player-owned house doing non-construction activities, such as alching or just standing around. Rock appeared on the ground next to the Portal.

As of the 4 August 2010 update, rocks could be obtained from any activity that gives construction xp, including in building mode. Rock now appears in inventory like all other rocks. They can no longer be obtained by just standing in your house in non-building mode.

Temporary boosts


Depending on the type of shelf, tea will give a 1, 2, or 3 level bonus. With a normal cup, tea gives +1 Construction. With a porcelain cup, tea gives +2 Construction. With a gold-trimmed cup, tea gives +3 Construction. Note: Once you log out or exit your house, the tea will disappear.

Note: You can use boosts to make higher level shelves.

Note: '''Tea and stew effects will not stack with each other. They will stack, separately, with the Crystal Saw.'''

The crystal saw will only work with items that require a saw to build them (will not work when building rooms, placing monsters or growing plants) The crystal saw also has a limited use, and when it runs out you have to recharge it again. You can check how many charges it has left by right-clicking and clicking "Check-Charges." It will also work simultaneously with bonuses from tea (to get max of +6) or Evil Dave's spicy stew, allowing for a theoretical max of +9 to Construction.

For the maximum effect in spicy stew, add orange spice 3 times. Adding more will not increase the effect. You can eat spicy stew with only 1 colour in it.

Wearing the construction skillcape will boost construction from 99 to 100 for a short amount of time. When it runs out you can click operate on the skillcape again to receive that little bonus.

It is important to note that any skill boost will not allow you to build past your room limit. For example, someone with 71 construction will not be able to build 27 rooms if they boost to level 74 (with any of available boosts), you will only be able to make 26 rooms, as your level 71 construction would allow you to.

For instructions on making POH tea, see the cup of tea article.

Green cells are those which offer the highest bonuses obtainable for the item on that row.

Recommended items

 * 1) Crystal Saw
 * 2) 5 bowls of stew
 * 3) 4 Orange spice (4)
 * 4) 1 to 4 cups of tea and the equipment to make more.
 * 5) Equipment and materials to build the addition to your house that you desire.

Method
Note: Getting the required +6 boost is very rare - perhaps impossible. +6 boosts were common several years ago, but may have been removed during an update. See Spicy stew for more info. Since orange spice is time-consuming to obtain, and a +5 boost fairly common, it is almost certainly quicker to train the extra level than obtain the large amounts of spice necessary for the elusive extra +1 boost.
 * 1) Go to your house in build mode with your equipment and items needed and make some tea.
 * 2) Go to the spot in your house where you want to build your high level furniture.
 * 3) Add 3 doses of orange spice to a bowl of stew.
 * 4) Eat the stew.
 * 5) Check your Construction level and make sure your skill level hasn't dropped. If it has, drink some tea until your level is back to normal or above. If your construction level is 5 or lower, go to step 2. If you run out of stew or spice, return to you bank and restock. If you run out of tea, make some more.
 * 6) If your construction level is now 6 above maximum, equip your crystal saw and make your house item as soon as possible as the boost effect can wear off.

Future rooms
In a development blog, Mod Mark commented that Jagex was planning to release many more rooms and the Menagerie was only the start. What the new rooms could be is unknown.

Trivia

 * When Using Lumbridge Home Teleport while sitting, your character will make the circle while still sitting, and the book will appear at your feet.
 * Initially, Construction seems to be an extremely money-intensive skill. It may be that Jagex have intended player-owned houses as Money Sinks, and the intention is to take considerable amounts of cash out of the game.
 * While Construction is incredibly expensive, it is actually one of the fastest skills to raise (provided the player has the money necessary on hand), with players in the early stages easily gaining a level or more per trip to their house.
 * The watch, sextant and chart cannot be used in a player's house. Attempting to use it will yield the message: "The sextant doesn't seem to work here".
 * In RuneScape Classic, there was a skill that had no use called Carpentry. The skill today of Construction is said to be an updated version of this dead skill.
 * 'Cursed You' was the first player to get 99 Construction; to celebrate it, he hosted a house party which led to the notorious Falador Massacre.
 * On 18 August 2009, there were many updates to Construction, including the menagerie. However, a glitch arose where some players couldn't get into their houses. This caused a temporary uproar amongst some of the player population.
 * Construction is the only skill whose high scores skill symbol is noticeably different to the in-game one.
 * If a player selects the option to enter a friend's house and types in their own name, the player will get the message, "They do not seem to be home."
 * After a recent update, it was no longer possible to see the "milestones" for Construction. This is most likely due to the fact that adding the Menagerie to the list of rooms available has maxed out the space provided in the side bar. This has since been fixed in a hidden update.
 * If a player sits in a chair in someone's house and clicks on a door, the chair will spin around towards the door, then back to the wall. Then the player will get up of the chair.
 * If a player gets dropped into slimy water with their pet out or being followed by serveant, the cat/serveant will appear to walk on the water.
 * As of 17 September 2009 the Room Limit has been raised to 32.
 * Some players claim the rewards from chests in the house are absurdly low given the costs of the house. The maximum that can be obtained from a chest in the Games Room or Treasure Room is 1,500 coins, yet the house owner had to have spent at least hundreds of thousands of coins to build the rooms. Some players advocate that the chests should be like how the Trade limits work.
 * When the skill was first introduced, the log in screen was changed. The most notable part of the screen was the old ladders with multiple paint buckets surrounding them and partly painted plaster walls. Keeping with tradition, there were two torches with the smoke forming rune symbols while changing colours.
 * When you gain construction xp through the Tears of Guthix distraction and diversion, you get the message, "You feel homesick."
 * Construction is currently the only skill with multiple NPC skill cape owners.
 * Construction was in the process of creation stated in an update on 21 February 2001.
 * Theoretically, a player could get from level 99 to 200 million xp in only a few hours. This would be done by making Demonic thrones. Of course, this would cost billions.
 * The loading house screen is same as it was before RuneScape got the big HD update.
 * In the Construction Skill Guide under Servants, the image representing the five servants is of the grail bell from The Holy Grail.
 * A rare glitch is when following a home owner to its Player Owned House portal, entering in the Player Owned House without facing, and sitting at any chair, the chair will turn to the direction to the home owner, while walking or running, it will look like the player is Moonwalking at their target. This happened May 22, 2010 to two players. It can also happen if you follow someone to a Teleportation Portal and have the first, then second person enter it.
 * One of the few places in Runescape where you can examine "Nothing", instead of showing just "Cancel" it will let you examine "Nothing" in which it will say "There is nothing there." This also works when examining a friend sitting down (not resting).
 * There is a glitch where if you follow your friend while in his/her POH, and the owner leaves before you leave, after you leave the house, it will have a similar moonwalk effect while walking or running. This also happened to 3 players on 2 and 3 July 2010 and has yet to be fixed by Jagex
 * While sitting in a throne if a player selects the "Leave House" option in their tools menu they will take the throne with then, this can be fixed by the POH owner logging out then back in.