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.

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 closest place to bank is the deposit box by the Entrana Monks, and it is recommended to use an Explorer's ring to cut run time. However NPC Stiles has been introduced who will note all the fish caught on Karamja for you without any cost. Thus elminated the need to bank each load of fish. Stiles reside south of the Karamja volcano along the southern shoreline. 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. Though also not a very effective method, some players can kill blue lobsters south-east of Daemonheim and get lobsters.

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. Do this to save time and money instead of going back to Falador to store your catch.

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.Also, icy looking lobsters can be found at Daemonheim. They can be located near small pools below Daemonheim and they also have a combat level of 2, yet cannot be attacked.

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 and virtually all macroers), 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, 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 Miscellanea 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.

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.
 * A glitch was found 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" 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 npc's that can only be examined, but they show "Examine Lobster (Level 2)", which is probably a bug because they used to be attackable, and when they were attacked, they dropped raw lobster. Now when you right click them. - examine: He looks really cold.