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). By cooking lobster you receive ~160 k xp/hour

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. 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.

For members, lobsters can be caught at in Catherby, Relleka, 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.

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 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 stood for a few weeks before declining slowly to its present prices.

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 300 coins.

Scams
Players have been known to sell burnt lobsters as a "rare black lobster" for outrageous prices in the past. The term "rare black lobster" is now mostly used by new players.

Lobsters were also a target for the inventory scam, in which players are tricked into trading their inventory for some lobsters. This is now obsolete due to the removal of unbalanced trade.

Trivia

 * Back in RuneScape Classic, the colouration 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.