Construction

Construction is a skill that allows players to build their own houses and provide furnishings for it. It is also very useful in connection to many other skills, such as prayer, and can be a way to show off houses to others. It was released on May 31, 2006.

Basics
To begin Construction, players must buy a house from one of the Estate Agents; see below for locations. A starter house will cost 1000 coins, and will be in Rimmington. A level 40 Magic spell can then be used to teleport to the house, or players can walk to Rimmington, where there is a portal ( icon on map) that will teleport players to their house. The house starts off with only a small room and garden, but more can be built. To build, go to Player Controls, select "House Options", and set the build mode to on. Players will then see what looks like ghost-like "Hot Spots" where new objects can be built. Players can also visit a friend's house if they are home and using the same portal.

Construction is widely regarded as one of the most costly skills to level up. To get to level 99 fast it would take about 139 million coins using mahogany planks or about 54 million coins using the slower oak planks. A player with no money could just mine 1.3 million clays or 651K limestone bricks to build fireplaces.

See the Constructed items list for details on what you can build at what level. (As stated above, Construction will not be cheap, getting to just level 25 might cost 150k)

Estate agents
Estate agents are located (identified with the house icon on the map) in
 * Varrock, just east of the palace.
 * Seers' Village northeast of the bank.
 * Falador between the furnace and the east bank.
 * Ardougne west of the south bank.

House portals
Estate agents can move a player's house from its starter location Rimmington to a new location identified by the portal icon on the map.

House styles
Estate agents can also redecorate the outside of your house for a fee.

It is worth noting that for each new style of house you get, the enter tune for the house changes, based on the style your house has.



Rooms
There are many different rooms that can be added to houses. The house a player buys will begin with a garden and parlour, but more rooms can be added. Different rooms will require different Construction levels and will cost money. Due to Chaos Elementals letters people think a bathroom may be coming soon.

Maximum Number of Rooms and Area
Up to level 49 construction, a maximum of 20 rooms and gardens can be built. This rises to a maximum of 30 rooms at level 99 construction.

There is also a maximum area that can be built on that also goes up with construction level, starting at 3 rooms by 3 rooms up to 8 rooms by 8 rooms.

Materials
Many different items are needed for Construction, especially planks, nails, cloth, bricks, soft clay, and steel bars.

Sawmill Operator

 * Main article:Sawmill

The sawmill operator (AKA the richest person in RuneScape), just east of the Varrock lumberyard with the icon on the minimap, can turn logs into planks for a fee. He also sells bolts of cloth, some nails, and saws. A saw is essential to begin construction. Only members can enter the area.

Plank Make spell

 * Main article:Plank make

As an alternative to the sawmill operator, the Plank make spell can be used to create planks for use in construction. Unfortunately, this requires a minimum Magic level of 86 and to have completed the Lunar Diplomacy and Dream Mentor quests (it uses the Lunar spellbook). While superficially it may appear to be a cheaper alternative to the sawmill operator, when you factor in the cost of the runes consumed (even using an Earth staff to eliminate the need for Earth runes) it will end up costing you more than the sawmill operator. Still, for those players who have high Runecrafting and Magic levels, this is an alternative that allows you to train multiple skills simultaneously that includes construction with a lower overall coin cost... assuming you craft your own runes to perform this spell.

Nails
Nails can be smithed from all types of metals 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 likely. Because higher level nails are expensive, most players prefer to use mid-level nails such as iron or steel. However, with oak items and above, joints are used in place of nails.

Stonemason
Players can buy various stoneworking materials from the Stonemason in west Keldagrim just south of the bank.

Limestone bricks (21 coins) and limestone (10 coins) can also be bought from Mort'ton building/general store.

Players can also mine their own limestone east of Varrock or Arandar and use a chisel to make it into limestone bricks.

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

Stuffed heads
Players can get monster heads, randomly dropped from monsters, turned into trophies at the Taxidermist in Canifis. These trophies can then be used in Skill halls. Players can talk to these trophies for humour relating to the monster the trophy is from. For example, talking to the Crawling Hand trophy will cause the player's character and the trophy to make puns relating to hands.

The taxidermist can also stuff Big bass, Big swordfish and Big shark, which are randomly obtained through fishing the correct type of fish.

Herald
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. You may also make steel and rune full helmets into Heraldic with your crest.

Servants
To hire a servant, players must have at least two bedrooms. There are five different servants, which can do different things. If you already have a servant, you will need to fire him or her in order to hire a new servant. All servants are able to greet guests entering a players' home, but some will have different abilities, such as taking items to and from the bank or sawmill. The higher level servant you have, the faster his or her service is. After using a servant's services seven times, you will be asked to pay him or her again. After using a servent's services eight times, you are required to pay him or her or the servant will quit. They can be found in the building of the very north-east of Ardougne.

Strategy
Building oak furniture at your workbench provides a nice balance of cost and experience. You could also break down and build oak larders in your kitchen, which uses 8 planks each build and is thus as fast or faster than building oak furniture at your workbench which you have to drop.

You can use noted oak logs with your butler, who will exchange them for un-noted oak logs, and then send him to the sawmill to get oak planks.

At level 28 Construction, players can make Skill Hall armour stands, provided that they have either full Castle Wars armour or have 68 or higher smithing. These stands provide either 67.5, 75, or 82.5 experience per oak plank (2 needed), and can be taken apart, allowing players to regain their armour. As most things made with oak planks provide only 60 experience per plank, this provides more experience, however, it is much slower than building oak larders which use 8 oak planks instead of 2.

For level 33-40, limestone seems to be a cheap option - building lots of fireplaces. After you have reached level 40 or above, you should switch back to oak because the experience will be too slow after this for you to level.

At level 74 Construction, dungeon oak doors (10 oak planks) may be faster than oak larders (8 oak planks); 4 dungeon doors instead of 5 larders for the same experience.

1Butler costs roughly halved if you're doing armour stands, because you only have 20 free inventory spots you may as well have a normal butler rather than a demon butler.

As we can see from the table, Construction costs at least 3 coins per experience point, and in practice, getting fast experience will mean spending more like 6-7 coins per experience point.

Have a Dining Room near the Kitchen (if you're doing larders), the Workshop (if you're making flat-packs) or the Skill Hall (if you're making armour stands) and therefore use the butler bell-pull so you can summon him quickly when he wanders off around the house.

Experience
This chart shows the experience given per object when each object is used. The cost per experience point is based in part off of what the raw components cost with Grand Exchange prices for raw components. The cost of "free" components is based on what you may be able to sell those items for (aka lost opportunity costs).

Total Supplies

 * 500 iron nails
 * 100 planks
 * 510 oak planks
 * 4 steel bars
 * 1,040 teak planks
 * 300 bolts of cloth
 * 92,140 mahogany planks

The cost to get from level 52 (123,660 xp) to level 99 (13,034,431 xp OR total 12,910,771 xp) is:

92,220 Mahogany planks (140 xp) * 1500 coins = 138.3 million coins for fastest xp

143,453 Teak planks (90 xp) * 500 coins = 71.7 million coins

215,180 Oak planks (60 xp) * 250 coins = 53.7 million coins for cheaper slower xp

Total Supplies

 * 250 iron nails
 * 100 wooden planks
 * 217198 oak planks (this is looking much, but you get 99 fast)

Get there cheap

 * Spend a lot of time using 1,303,443 soft clay to make clay fireplaces without spending a single coin. With house in Rimmington get clay from nearby mine.
 * A lesser known alternative is to create your own teak planks (providing you buy the teak logs) and bolts of cloth to create Large teak beds which give 480 experiance points a piece. These may be flatpacked and sold at upwards of 1472, 2 gp more than you spend making the bed.
 * Use 651,722 Limestone bricks to build only stone fireplaces.
 * Buy from the Stonemason in Keldagrim for 26 coins, about 16.9 million coins.
 * Buy from Razmire Keelgan's builders store in Mort'ton 21 coins for about 13.7 million coins.
 * Buy Limestone from Razmire Keelgan's builders store in Mort'ton 10 coins each. Craft them to bricks with a chisel. It's a bit slower, but considerably cheaper. In addition, this yields you a sizable amount of crafting experience.
 * Mine from next to Rag and Bone man, teleport to Castle Wars, use Balloon Transport to get back quickly. Craft limestone bricks with your chisel. This is the slowest, but cheapest and practically free method.

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-rimmed cup, tea gives +3 Construction.

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) It will also work simultaneously with bonuses from tea (to get max of +6) or Evil Dave's spicy stew, allowing for a max of +9 to Construction!

For the maximum effect in evil Dave's stew, add orange spice 3 times. Any more will ruin the stew.

Trivia
Initially, Construction seems to be an extremely money-intensive skill. It may be that Jagex have intended player-owned houses as gold sinks, and the intention is to take considerable amounts of cash out of the game.

The watch, sextant and chart cannot be used in your house, trying to use it will give 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 was 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.