Fletching



Fletching involves the making of bows and arrows. The products of this skill are primarily used in the Ranged skill. It also provides material with relatively high alchemy prices, so its products are often used to train Magic as well.

At a higher level, the skill can be trained without losing any coins, although a decent amount of working capital is very useful. A small profit can be generated at higher Fletching levels. The current minimum to be ranked on the highscores in Fletching is 50 fletching and 102,691 experience as of 10 June 2008. Many players go for 99 fletching as it is one of the easiest skills to get to 99, along with cooking.

Materials Used
Fletchers use the following materials:

Bows
To fletch bows, a player must use a knife on a log to whittle a short bow or long bow of that wood. Then, bow string must be attached to the unstrung bow. Bows, especially Yew longbows and Magic longbows, are frequently high alched as a means of income.

Arrows
To fletch arrows, use a knife on logs to create arrow shafts. Each log yields 15 arrow shafts. Add feathers and arrow heads.

Achey logs can be whittled into Ogre arrow shafts. Each achey log yields between 2 and 6 arrow shafts. Four feathers are needed for each shaft. The shafts may be tipped with wolf bone arrow heads or with nails. Ogre shafts tipped with nails are called "brutals" and are especially useful for killing Zogres. Any type of metal may be used for the nails.

The following table shows experience per item made, although 15 items are made at a time.

Bolts
Bolts are made by "using" a metal bar at an anvil while you have a hammer in your inventory. This grants smithing experience. The bolts created in this process are unfinished and still require fletching (they need feathers). This part provides the fletching experience.

The following table shows experience per item made and per 10 items made (the amount made per metal bar).

Darts
You can fletch darts by adding feathers to a smithed dart, noted that finishing Tourist Trap Quest is needed for making these.

The fletching hole
Some players had asked for a string-x feature, and Jagex eventually added it to the game. There have been some complaints that the string-x feature is actually slower, because the automatic fletching speed is lower than what players could originally do manually (manual stringing is now much slower because players now have to go through an additional menu), but others welcomed the fact that there would be less clicking and sore fingers.

As the GE was introduced, raw supply prices have soared, leaving the finished products in a muck. It is now rarely profitable to buy raw materials and sell the final, as the GE prices are usually lower and players have started buying less finished products. Because of the GE's set prices, many players have gone to buying raw materials in the races to 99s, a great fad as of yet, and thus making items has become less profitable.

On that same note, players suffer a great loss by making full bows now, as Nature rune prices rise, surpassing alchemy prices of items if raw supplies were purchased. Due to these rises, the number of players willing to lose money on buying these bows has dropped severely. Concludingly, fletching has become a non-profit skill, as many have with the GE update and players must beware of the price.

Fletch in the correct environment
Fletching is a tedious and monotonous skill. However, players can take advantage of the fact that fletching must be done in a bank, preferably a crowded one.

Some banks are not so crowded, but are designed with one-click opening. Castle Wars chest, the Culinaromancer's Chest in Lumbridge Castle cellar and the Duel Arena bank chest work this way.

At Yanille's bank in world 132, there is a player made fletching guild where people can fletch and talk. The population of the bank has since gone down because of the 3-30k max trade that has made it harder to trade supplies for longbows or just sell your longbows which used to be a popular method of training fletch very fast.

Temporary boosts
Currently, the only known method to give a boost to the fletching level is by eating spicy stews. However, the amount of boost is random.

As with all skills, your Fletching level will temporarily rise by one when a Fletching skillcape is worn, though it requires level 99 Fletching to buy/wear.