Lobster

A Lobster is a type of shellfish that players can use as food. They are considered to be one of the most popular healing foods in the game, especially on free-to-play servers, because they heal 12 hitpoints each and can easily be 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. Lobsters can also 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 (See Cooking gauntlets for lower requirements).

On free-to-play servers, lobsters can be caught on Karamja island near the banana plantation. This location is far away from a bank, 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 useless.

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.

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 (7 hitpoints) and salmon (9 hitpoints) 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 (Including lobster pot to catch lobsters) gives 2,430 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 200 to 250 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 270 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.

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 Relleka or Miscellanea at level 42 thieving, though in Relleka there is no bank nearby to store them.

However, most members use lobsters for questing and training combat on low to medium-levelled NPCs.

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.