Free-to-play Crafting training

Crafting in free play (F2P) worlds is not very hard to train, but training it requires patience and a lot of cash. The main use of F2P crafting is to craft valuable gems into a variety of jewellery, but it still incurs only slow profits. Compared to smithing, crafting has a similar loss but profitable training is much faster, though it needs much more base fund for money making through crafting.

Quests and Spinning Wool
Starting at level 1, it is easier to start with the F2P quests related to crafting: Sheep Shearer (miniquest) and Goblin Diplomacy. This alone will give you 350 crafting experience points with no pre-requisites to start these quests. You can do the Gunnar's Ground quest at crafting level 5, which will reward you with 300 xp.

As a part of the Sheep Shearer miniquest, players are asked to make balls of black wool. Shears can be purchased from most general stores (for example, the general store by Lumbridge Castle) or found on a table in Farmer Fred's house, and the black sheep are found in the pen north of Lumbridge.

Normal (white) balls of wool have other uses, and can be sold on the Grand Exchange for coins each, giving some initial money to early crafters that will be needed later. These balls are also used for making amulets, so players may simply want to put these balls of wool in the bank. Spinning up to about 200 pieces of wool to make the same number of balls of wool is also worthwhile, which will give you an additional 500 experience points, getting you to level 8, where you can do other tasks. Therefore, some players shear white sheep while at Farmer Fred's sheep pen and use the wool to spin these balls.

Processing Clay
Players can purchase clay for coins each at the Grand Exchange, or it can be mined from several locations in F2P areas. Mining clay has no mining skill requirements, and is a fairly easy way to level mining for the early levels. One mining spot that is fairly easy to reach for new players is south-west of Varrock and north-west from the Champions' Guild building. Clay respawns very quickly – usually as fast as the rock can be clicked unless the player has very high mining levels. The spots for clay are usually free with comparatively little competition from other players. This distance to the Varrock west bank is relatively short, and there are no aggressive creatures to worry about that would attack new players.

If the mine near Varrock is busy with several players mining clay, other sites include the mine between Falador and Rimmington (2 clay rocks), and the Dwarven Mines below Falador (3 rocks). For high-level crafters, there are also six rocks of clay at the Crafting Guild, although entry to the guild requires level 40 crafting.

For easy XP: Go to the south of Gunnarsgrunn (Barbarian Village) and mine clay until your inventory is full. Then, go to the Northwest area of the centre of the village (Next to the house with the fire in it) and "use" your clay on the well to turn it all into soft clay. Head to the potter's house in the southeast corner of the village, use your clay on the potter's wheel then use your new items on the furnace to turn them in to fired items. This is by far the quickest way for non-members to make clay to gain xp.

Soft clay is usually more expensive than the "hard clay", and currently sells on the Grand Exchange for coins each. Because of this, F2P players are advised to make their own soft clay. There is a well almost immediately next to a bank in Edgeville where they can make soft clay with one click. (Due to a recent update you can now make soft clay without buckets.) Players can usually travel between the well and the bank while running and recover the run energy while making the soft clay and exchanging the soft clay with more "hard" clay from the bank. Sources of water close to a bank can be found in other places as well, including near the Varrock east bank and the Falador west bank (near the barber shop). The best place to make soft clay is in the west Varrock bank where it is conveniently close to the four fountains just east of the bank.

New players would find that it is easier to produce clay items by travelling between Edgeville bank and Gunnarsgrunn or alternatively Draynor bank and the pottery kiln located in Draynor.

Bowls
At level 8, players can make unfired bowls or bowls. Bowls are the best clay item a F2P player can produce in terms of experience. For every 28 bowls produced (a full load), players gain about 830 experience points, assuming an average success rate of 90%. As you increase your crafting levels, the success rate of making a bowl will improve to 100%. For players wishing to sell the bowls on the Grand Exchange, it would be recommended to fill them with water first for increased value. Bowls sell well on the Grand Exchange (especially when filled with water), so this can be a steady source of both money and experience.

Urns
Since the release of urns, crafting is a good way to level up other skills too.

To do this you need:


 * At least 41 Mining and a rune pickaxe for faster results


 * (Optional) Have at least 32 Crafting for better experience
 * Some earth runes (to re-craft Mining urns once you have teleported the full one to Ernie)

First, equip your pickaxe and head for the mining spot just south of Gunnarsgrunn. Mine clay until your inventory is full, then make soft clay at the water source just a little ways north. Due to an update, players can now make soft clay without a container for water. Use the clay on the water source to make soft clay. After that go to the potter's wheel in Gunnarsgrunn, then make the highest possible urn you can make. For a list of urns that a player can make according to his/her level and the experience gained, see here. For extra experience in Mining, make one Mining urn since this method includes mining clay. Then fire the urns in the pottery oven. Attach an earth rune to the Mining urn (nr). When you have a full inventory of urns (nr), you can either bank them at the Edgeville bank or drop them. It is advised to drop them if you want quicker experience, due to how cheap urns sell for. Remember not to drop your Mining urn. After your Mining urn is 100% full, players can teleport it to Ernie for extra mining experience. Then, if the player wants another mining urn, the player need to attach another earth rune to a Mining urn (nr) to make a Mining urn.

Though higher level urns provide more crafting experience per item, urns need two pieces of clay to make, therefore it can be less effective than bowls. The urns giving high experience also have very high crafting requirements. Because of these reasons and the fact that urns does not earn money, many players only train with bowls.

Silver item production
For players who have reached at least level 16 crafting, an option opens up for crafting items out of silver. For players who lack mining and smithing skills, this can be a rather expensive option, so it would be recommended to at least get these two other skills to the point you can work on silver. Silver can be mined at level 20 and smithed at level 20 smithing. Even if players purchase silver bars or have those bars given to them by another player, having that mining and smithing level will at least give several different options.

Silver bars can be purchased for coins each and silver ore for  coins each, so it does take a substantial number of coins to be seriously engaged in this crafting method without obtaining the ore yourself.

Silver ore for low-level F2P crafters can be found at the following locations:


 * South-west Varrock Mine: 3 rocks
 * Desert Chasm Mine (north of Al-Kharid): 5 rocks (and level 14 scorpions that attack players with less than combat level 29)
 * Edgeville Dungeon Mine: 3 rocks (and level 22/25 aggressive skeletons requiring higher combat levels to have them leave you alone, combat level of 51 or higher is recommended)
 * Crafting Guild: 6 rocks (but requires crafting level 40 and a worn brown apron or crafting skillcape to enter)
 * Dwarven Mine Resource dungeon (requires 15 Dungeoneering): 3 Rocks (and a bank deposit box)

All of these locations usually have several players competing to mine these rocks, particularly the mine south-east from Varrock. The crafting guild usually isn't quite so difficult to mine the silver, as most players who have that crafting level are usually seeking after the eight rocks with gold ore instead. There is a 6th rock of silver ore that can only be mined once in the chasm mine: See exhausted silver rock for details.

Silver ore is usually smelted and then crafted at once by experienced crafters, and this can be done at any furnace used for smelting ores. Commonly this is done at the furnace in Falador, but the furnace at Al-Kharid is even closer to a bank for serious crafters wishing to rapidly raise their skill levels. A store that sells crafting supplies is also found in Al-Kharid, with the only other F2P crafting store found in Rimmington and quite distant from any furnace. Moulds are required to make silver items, and they must be in your inventory in order to make the silver items.

Typically, players will bring 27 pieces of silver ore to a furnace, smelt the silver ore into silver bars, and then players will click on the silver bar and "use" the bar on the furnace to make the silver items, depending on which mould that player happens to have in their inventory. Unstrung symbols require a Holy mould and can be made for 50 experience points each, yielding a full load of 27 symbols for 1350 crafting experience points and 370 smithing experience points (instead make tiaras which give a player 52.5 experience points each). The product unstrung symbols can be strung with a ball of wool for an additional 4 crafting experience and blessed by Brother Jered in the Monastery, provided the player has level 31 prayer. Having Brother Jered bless these amulets is a very tedious process and generally not worth the extra effort, as the blessed amulet is only worth coins. Keeping the symbols unstrung is a very good idea for crafters on a budget, as they currently sell for around 120 coins each. At level 23, a tiara can be made for 52.5 experience each, where a full load of 27 tiaras yields a total of 1417 crafting experience. Tiara's currently sell for 24 coins each. Be warned, using a ball of wool with unstrung symbols will turn them into unblessed symbols, and they are worth 40 coins. If you choose to do this for the extra 4xp, then you should also bring them to Brother Jered in the Prayer guild, so that he can bless them. Blessed symbols are worth 90 coins.

Leather working
Crafting items out of leather is something that can be done by players of any level, as Leather gloves can be made at crafting level 1. In terms of experience per piece of leather, it is suggested that players wait until they reach level 28 when they can make a Hard leather body. This gives 35 experience for each one made.

The basic resource to make leather items is the Cowhide, which can be obtained by killing a cow. For most F2P worlds this is a common combat training creature and indeed one of the best low-level multi-skill tasks that can be performed with the burial of bones to increase Prayer, combat training for the various combat arts (including Range and even Magic), Raw beef for Cooking, and of course to use the cowhides for training crafting.

Places where players commonly engage in slaughtering cows include the field on the road between Lumbridge and Varrock (banking in Al-Kharid is recommended if you have completed the Prince Ali Rescue quest), a field directly north of Lumbridge where players can send the cowhides and raw beef to the bank by using Beefy Bill, and a cow field between Falador and Draynor Village, where players can rapidly travel to the field with an Explorer's ring upon completing the medium Lumbridge and Draynor Tasks. An additional group of cows of note can be found next to the Crafting Guild. It does not require entry into the Crafting Guild in order to use these cows, but this is quite distant from any bank for F2P players.

Cowhides are turned into leather at a tanner, of which there are only three in F2P worlds. The easiest to use is found in Al-Kharid and operated by Ellis, who will exchange the cowhides for Soft leather or Hard leather for 1 coin or 3 coins respectively. For players simply wishing to bypass the hassle of slaughtering cows, they can purchase cowhides for coins each, or even buy the soft leather for  coins and hard leather for  coins. Another tanner can be found upstairs in the Crafting Guild, which is convenient for players wishing to make a small number of leather items for personal use. There is also a tanner south of the Varrock East Bank; unfortunately there is no 'Tan' option. However, players can use their cowhide with the tanner as an alternative.

In addition, players must have a needle and thread in order to craft leather items, and these must be in the inventory in order to be used. Each spool of thread is good for between 4 and 5 leather items made (usually 4). Thread is "stackable", so it is useful to have close to a hundred or more in your inventory before you start to make several items at once. A needle and thread can be purchased at a crafting store, which are found in Al-Kharid and Rimmington and can also be found in Varrock's clothing shop.

Soft leather (also sometimes simply called "leather") is used to make most of the items that a F2P player can make, of which the best experience can be obtained by making leather chaps for 27 experience each at level 18. Hard leather body is the best leather item a F2P player can craft for 35 experience points each, available when a player reaches level 28 crafting. This requires hard leather, however.

If you wish to gain combat experience, then go to the cow field near the crafting guild (south-west of Falador), equip a brown apron and bring money, a needle and thread, then kill cows for their hides. When a full inventory of hides has been obtained, tan them in the crafting guild.

For players trying to "power level" crafting, it can either be done simply by sitting in a bank and going through a large stack of leather at once and simply exchanging the finished goods for leather at the bank booth, or for players tanning leather they can bring 25 cowhides together with 75 coins to Ellis and make the hard leather bodies on the trip back to the bank. That would be one slot for the needle, another for thread, a third for the coins, and the other 25 for the cowhides. Alternatively, players can bring 27 cowhides at once for tanning and then make the cowhides at once.

About 1000 cowhides turned into hard leather and then made into hard leather bodies will give 35,000 experience points and can be done in less than an hour, and plan on an extra hour for turning cowhides into hard leather. For players who are at least level 28, this would put them well over level 40 for entrance into the Crafting Guild for many other options in terms of making items with the crafting skill.

Crafting Guild
The Crafting Guild is one sign of distinction among players who have been significantly training their crafting skills and opens up additional resources to players wishing to train their crafting skills. The only significant drawback for the Crafting Guild is that the nearest bank is quite distant for F2P players, and is somewhat incomplete for making jewellery as there is no furnace for smelting ores there. Teleporting to Lumbridge bank and using a clan vexillum to teleport back to west of the clan camp reduces travel times significantly.

Remember that it requires level 40 crafting and a brown apron in order to enter into the guild. This apron can be purchased either on the Grand Exchange or from Thessalia's Fine Clothes shop in Varrock.

There is a mine inside of the guild area that includes seven gold rocks, six silver rocks, and six clay rocks. Of these, usually there are players who are mining the gold rocks, with only some players occasionally mining silver or clay.

A common technique for guild training is the making of urns. Players have everything they need at the crafting guild to make urns (clay, water, a potter's wheel and a furnace), and it is common for players to make full batches of urns without runes and drop them. This technique can yield over one thousand experience.

Other resources at the guild include several sheep just to the north of the guild (some shears can be found on a barrel inside of the guild), a cow pasture for collecting leather, and several tools to help crafters inside of the guild as well. A spinning wheel is available to turn the wool into balls of wool, and a tanner who will make leather from cowhides (for the same price that Ellis charges). The crafting guild also includes the full tools necessary for making clay items, including a sink with water to make soft clay, a potter's wheel to make clay products, and a kiln. But due to the urn update players can now use the clay on the sink and it will make soft clay. In addition, all of the moulds necessary for making F2P jewellery are available inside of the guild as free spawns. A crafting store is nearby in Rimmington for a needle and thread if a player wants to craft leather items.

Running between the guild and bank can happen, but an explorer's ring 3 might help (with various requirements) with the cabbage teleport to speed up the depositing of resources in the Draynor Village bank, or in the bank deposit in Port Sarim. With level 40 Mining, players can mine gold ores in the guild and sell that in Grand Exchange, the money used for buying more silver ores. The current ratio of value of gold to silver ore is.

Alternatively, You can wield a Clan vexillum and a Ring of kinship. Use the "Teleport" option on the Clan Vexillum to get to the Clan Camp, run west to the crafting guild, get crafting materials, then use the Ring of Kinship to Teleport to Daemonheim, Bank the materials at the Fremennik banker, Teleport to the clan camp, and repeat.

Jewellery making
Jewellery making is the ultimate goal of F2P crafting. Making amulets with gems consists of several steps, considering:
 * 1) Buy or obtain gem,
 * 2) Buy or obtain gold bar,
 * 3) Cut the gem,
 * 4) Smelt the gem and gold bar in a furnace,
 * 5) Use ball of wool on the amulet to string it,
 * 6) Sell it.

For jewellery other than amulets, step 5 is omitted, for pure gold jewellery, steps 1, 3 and 5 are omitted.

Buying or obtaining gems
Gems can only be obtained in a few ways for F2P players: Random events, purchasing from Grand Exchange, purchasing from shops or players, monster drops, extracting from rocks while mining, the gem shops in northern Al Kharid and Falador, or the sapphire spawn in deep wilderness. Uncut gems can be cut for crafting experience, but cut gems are much cheaper if being purchased. Below is a list of values for uncut and cut gems based on prices at the Grand Exchage:

Notice that the value of gems drops significantly by being cut.

Various monsters drop gems, including flesh crawlers and lesser demons. There was speculation that the Stronghold of Security had a significantly higher rate of random events, many people chose to kill flesh crawlers there and wait for random events, although the popularity has dropped since Jagex fixed the bug, preventing unfair advantages training there. Uncut gems are always given as single unnoted item but noted gems are stackable notes, ranging from 2-5 gems. Please see the random events page for more details.

Gems are also "found" by players when they are mining ores. There is a random chance (depending on the ore being extracted, your mining level, and a few other factors) that when a player attempts to mine ore that a gem will be extracted in addition to that ore. Often players are not even interested in these gemstones as they take up additional bank space and that is not why they are trying to mine. When that happens, these players simply dump these gemstones on the ground and can be picked up by other players. This is quite common inside of the Mining Guild, particularly with Sapphires and Emeralds.

Gem shops such as Herquin's Gems in Falador and the Gem Trader in Al-Kharid used to be an occasional source of gemstones, particularly on F2P worlds. Unfortunately due to changes in how shops have worked with the personalized shop update, these shops only have marginal value as places to sell gemstones on the occasion that the prices crash on the Grand Exchange. That seems highly unlikely to happen.

Unless a player is very strong in combat, the sapphire spawn in deep wilderness should not be used. Should one take the risk, world hopping should be used.

Buying or smelting gold bars
Gold bars can be obtained in two ways: smelting gold ore which needs 40 smithing or directly buying them from the GE. The current price of gold ore is gold coins and gold bars are  gold coins each. This gives purchasers a distinct advantage, since the difference in the GE price is because many members like to work their Smithing skill by using the Goldsmithing gauntlets, a reward from the Family crest quest that increases the Smithing experience to 56 experience per bar. Thus, gold bars should be bought directly from the Grand Exchange.

Cutting gems
Cutting uncut sapphires, emeralds, rubies or diamonds needs a minimum crafting level of 20, 27, 34, or 43 respectively, and yields 50, 67, 85, or 107.5 experience respectively for each gem. One should stock on uncut gems obtained from random events even if the player does not have the crafting level to cut them. The cost saved in time or money would help a lot in later training. A chisel is needed for cutting. Buying uncut gems for cutting is not worthwhile because, although the experience is very fast, the power levelling cost is very high, up to 20 coins per XP. Using uncut gems from random events reduces the problem, though the theoretical loss is equal.

For players who have a great many coins that they wish to "burn through" in order to power-level their crafting skill, cutting gemstones is one method to very rapidly raise crafting experience. About 3000-4500 gemstones can be cut each hour, where cutting this many diamonds will yield about 450,000 experience points. There are cheaper ways to earn crafting experience, but this is something that some players with considerable wealth have been known to use.

Smelting jewellery
A furnace close to a bank should be chosen to mass-produce jewellery. An amulet mould, necklace mould or ring mould is brought along with an equal number of gold bars and cut gems. The closest furnaces for F2P players are the Al Kharid furnace or Falador furnace. A detailed experience table can be seen in the Crafting article. Rings require the lowest level to craft, necklaces give the best reward of cash, and amulets bear the maximum experience and highest requirement, while carrying some inconvenience as stringing is needed. Silver jewellery is much cheaper and yields much lower experience, which is not recommended for low level players. Gold bars are expensive and yield low experience points compared to silver jewellery.

A way to make a small profit and gain experience (although not much) is to buy gold bars on the Grand Exchange and smelt them into gold rings, necklaces and unstrung gold amulets. They can be sold immediately for small profit. This can be done at low crafting level, and 15-20-30XP are gained making each ring, necklace or amulet. Gold rings are a tertiary component for members training Summoning, so they are in a modest demand on the Grand Exchange, members training magic with the string jewelry spell often use unstrung gold amulets, so they too are in modest demand on the Grand Exchange.

At Level 27, Emerald rings can be created. If you have Teleports for Varrock and Falador, you can use them to speed up the process of buying cut gems and gold bars. The furnace is to the immediate SE in Falador. Do a batch of 12 rings and either bank them and withdraw more gems and gold, OR teleport back to Varrock and sell the rings and buy more gems and gold bars. The great thing about this is that rings sell quickly, and for a profit, allowing more materials to be purchased. The longest time is waiting for purchases to settle on the GE (only an issue if trying to max your profits).

Stringing amulets
Ball of wool can be bought at GE for coins each, or made using wool on a spinning wheel. Casual players can take advantage of Fred the farmer's farm. Sheep inhabit the area and there is a shears spawn available nearby. The closest spinning wheel from the farm is on the second floor of Lumbridge castle.

Enchanting
With sufficient magic level, amulets with gems can be enchanted. It sacrifices a large portion of profit by enchanting it. The cost of cosmic runes and a decrease in value of amulet take away from the final price. It is not recommended to do so unless the amulet is for personal use. Amulets of Strength have become popular for players and especially Pure combat players for enhancing their combat skills. As a result, the price of a Strength Amulet will occasionally permit a modest profit margin for players with the requisite skills to buy cut gemstones and enchant the amulet.

Dungeoneering training
Recently the induction of Dungeoneering skill has become a reliable method to train crafting. It should be noted that this method is entirely free, but strongly depends on the player's ability to gather coins in Daemonheim. Players should always choose ranged hides (leathers) to craft as the magic armours need to be spun on spinning wheel. Although experience per hide increases according to the requirement of armour crafted, an upper tier hide will cost much more but not yield proportional experience.

Using the methods below, a semi-experienced player (≥ 20 Dungeoneering) can expect to go from 1 to 31 Crafting raiding less than five small dungeons. This especially benefits any players who have neglected Crafting (but not many other skills, which Dungeoneering depends on).

Generally players should craft Protoleather Bodies, available at 9 Crafting. The idea is to buy (or otherwise obtain) Protomastyx Hide, 1 needle, and thread, and use the needle on the hide to craft a Protoleather body (consuming 5 hides and 1 thread per body). This method is most cost effective and will yield 99.5 experience for 1690 coins spent in dungeon, counting the 5 hides and one thread used minus refund by selling the body. About 85000 coins will be needed to craft 50 protoleather bodies, At least 20 empty inventory space is recommended to allocate for 4 bodies per inventory, and if desired players can free spaces to make 25 slots for crafting 5 bodies. This means that any items to be bound should be dropped and bound only after all coins are spent.

Note, to prolong this method on a tight budget, if you have Magic 55 and Runecrafting 44, especially if you have a Fire Staff (a mage would usually have this bound), you can craft Nature Runes and then cast High Alchemy on the protoleather bodies. This will give 840 coins, minus the 50 coins per essence (if bought) = 790 coins, instead of the usual 420 from selling. This method, however, can be quite tedious. You might consider crafting the bodies in bulk first, dropping them on the floor, and then, when you're out of money, pick them up and start casting High Alchemy. Using this method will allow you to craft 1 extra body for every 5-6 bodies. You can slightly increase the efficiency of this method if you find rune essence or nature runes instead of buying them, and if you are able to craft multiple nature runes. If you don't have a fire staff, you would have to craft the fire runes, decreasing the payback of this method by 50 coins per each essence used (assuming the essence is bought).

There was once a problem that players had to click to make hides one by one. It was identified as a glitch has since been fixed. Craft 5, 10, X can be properly used nowadays.

You can also do Salve Nettles, but it is somewhat inefficient compared to protoleather. Each salve robe top only gives 4 more experience, total of 200 extra experience for the run. Use this method only if you have a good amount of time (~30 minutes for a medium map with 150k gold).

In team play please notice experience will be shared as far as other players have the required level to craft the armour and turned on experience sharing.